Floor Statements

Mr. President, later today, the Senate will vote on H.J. Res. 42, the resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act relating to a Department of Labor regulation on the drug testing of unemployment insurance applicants. I rise to speak in support of that resolution and to urge my colleagues to vote in favor of its passage.

Let's put this resolution and the regulation it would repeal in proper context. In 2012, Congress passed and President Obama signed the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act. Among many other things, that law included a number of carefully negotiated provisions relating to the unemployment insurance program, including a number of reforms to address program efficiency and integrity issues.

One of those provisions overturned a DOL ban on drug screening for UI applicants. Specifically, the law allowed States to test UI applicants who either lost their job due to drug use or were seeking employment in an occupation that generally required drug tests as a condition of employment.

It did not require States to begin drug testing; it only gave them that option. In addition, the law required DOL to issue regulations to define those occupations that regularly conduct drug tests. States would not be allowed to implement any drug testing policies pursuant to the law until the regulations were finalized. DOL issued its proposed regulation in 2014.

At that time, Members of Congress and stakeholders at the State level argued that the proposal fell far short of Congress's intent. The final rule was issued in August of last year, about 4\1/2\ years after the provision was signed into law. As before, the final regulation defined the relevant occupations so narrowly that it basically makes it impossible for States to implement any meaningful drug testing policy.

So here we are, debating a CRA resolution that would wipe this regulation off the books and give DOL an opportunity to put forward something new that better reflects Congress's intent.

Let's talk about why this drug testing provision is important. The UI Program requires beneficiaries to be able and available to work and be actively seeking work. This is a condition of eligibility for UI benefits. This is what it boils down to. If a worker loses his or her job due to drug use, he or she cannot affirmatively establish that they are fully able to work. Likewise, if an unemployed individual is unable to accept a new job because they cannot pass a required drug test, they are not available for work.

Congress intended to give States the power to withhold benefits in these cases because, by definition, individuals in these situations are not eligible for unemployment insurance benefits.

Keep in mind that, according to recent surveys, more than half of all U.S. employers require prospective employees to take a drug test. It isn't some fringe or mean-spirited notion that there is a connection between the use of illegal drugs and the ability to obtain and maintain employment.

Furthermore, 20 States already limit UI benefits for applicants who have refused to take or who fail a drug test required by an employer or who have previous employment issues relating to drugs. The next logical step really is to allow States to conduct the tests themselves in order to maintain program integrity and to improve the solvency of their UI trust funds. Once again, that was what Congress intended with the passage of the 2012 statute.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration took it upon themselves to undo congressional intent. We have heard from a number of Governors on this issue--including the Governor of Utah, who will support this CRA resolution--who want to see new and better regulations.

A number of organizations, including the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, have chimed in as well, expressing their strong support for State flexibility in governing their UI programs.

Ultimately, that is what this is about--State flexibility. Do we want States to have the freedom to run their own programs as they see fit, or do we believe that bureaucrats in Washington have all the answers?

It is probably pretty clear where I come down on this particular issue. The law we drafted and passed in 2012--the one that passed with bipartisan support--struck a careful balance on these issues. It was the right balance and the right approach. Hopefully, a majority of our colleagues will share that view and vote today to restore that balance.

Once again, I urge all Senators to vote in favor of H.J. Res. 42.

With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I withhold that suggestion.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak in favor of the nomination of Seema Verma to serve as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

I think we can all agree that this is a critical time for healthcare in America. Health costs continue to rise, and patients face growing uncertainty over coverage. At the same time, the health of too many Americans continues to decline, healthcare costs continue to grow, and millions of new baby boomers are becoming eligible for Medicare each and every year.

I might add, you heard the minority leader talk today as if Democrats have had nothing to do with all of this mess. Much to the contrary. Congress and our new President face intense pressure to address these challenges, and the stakes are very high. I am confident that Ms. Verma is up for that challenge. She has over two decades of experience working with State healthcare and industry leaders to reform and improve services for the most vulnerable members of our community. Ms. Verma's experience as an entrepreneur and industry leader allowed her to work extensively on a wide variety of policy and strategic projects involving Medicaid, insurance, and public health in conjunction with the Indiana Governor's office, State Medicaid agencies, State health departments, State departments of insurance, the Federal Government, and private companies and foundations. She has had a tremendous amount of experience in those areas, and I have every confidence that she will be a great leader. There are few professionals in the country who have her level of close relationships with State leaders that will be critical as Congress and the administration work to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act--the so-called Affordable Care Act; it is anything but affordable.

Medicaid represents an enormous burden on State budgets, and we now have an unprecedented opportunity to reform a Federal entitlement program long in need of structural changes. Ms. Verma is the ideal candidate to oversee the reform of the Medicaid Program and take steps administratively to give States the flexibility they have been clamoring for.

In Indiana, Ms. Verma worked with Governors Daniels and Pence to design a Medicaid expansion program that extended health coverage to nearly

400,000 low-income working Americans. She did so in a way that empowered people to take greater responsibility for their own health by providing incentives to use healthcare resources efficiently. The program ensured that many people got health care coverage for the first time. Now this innovative program has become a national model for other States.

Ms. Verma's experience will be invaluable as we work together to improve healthcare across the country and bring down the costs thereof. In addition to her work in Indiana, Ms. Verma has developed several other Medicaid reform programs, including 1,115 Medicaid waivers for Iowa, Ohio, and Kentucky. Her firm helped design Tennessee's coverage expansion proposal and also provided technical assistance to Michigan when the State implemented its Medicaid waiver. She also helped guide the transition of Iowa's Medicaid Program to a managed care program and supported strategy efforts for Maine's Medicaid plan.

Having dealt with CMS in her capacity as a consultant working on these myriad projects, she knows firsthand what is needed to make the programs work effectively. Her job as CMS Administrator will not be easy, and that is a heck of an understatement.

CMS is the world's largest health insurer. It has a budget of over $1 trillion and processes over 1.2 billion claims a year for services provided to some of our Nation's most vulnerable citizens receiving Medicare and Medicaid. As such, this is a critical agency, and we need a qualified, dedicated leader at the helm. She is certainly that.

In addition to ensuring that Medicare and Medicaid work effectively, Ms. Verma will also be charged with helping to ensure the longevity and solvency of the Medicare trust fund, which is projected to go bankrupt in the year 2028. Maintaining the solvency of the Medicare Program while continuing to provide care for an ever-increasing beneficiary base is going to require creative solutions, skillful administration, and a lot of knowledge and experience.

All told, between now and 2030, 76 million baby boomers will become eligible for Medicare. Even factoring in deaths over that period, the program will grow from approximately 47 million beneficiaries today to roughly 80 million beneficiaries in 2030. This will also create challenges that will require steady leadership and, at times, decisive action.

I believe Ms. Verma is especially qualified to lead CMS and modernize its programs to increase its effectiveness of healthcare delivery. She brings the experience and, importantly, bipartisan solutions that can and should unite people across the political spectrum in addressing some of the greatest challenges in our healthcare system.

Ms. Verma has a keen understanding of patients' needs. She certainly has the expertise to create a healthcare law that this country needs and improve the lives of the 100 million Americans covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

At a time when the healthcare challenges we face are very real and extremely complex, our Nation needs leaders, like Ms. Verma, who have demonstrated their ability to deliver results.

I know that many people have different ideas about the best direction for the Medicare and Medicaid Programs and how we should meet the complex challenges facing CMS. While we can disagree on policy, we should all agree that the agency needs smart, experienced leadership at its helm.

That being the case, I urge all of my colleagues to join me in supporting Ms. Verma's nomination to this important position. I personally am very grateful that she is willing to dive into this very difficult process and these problems right in the middle of politics being played and that she is willing to do the job America needs at this particular time, especially for those who need healthcare.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to speak once again on the so- called Affordable Care Act and the ongoing effort to repeal and replace. We all know the House of Representatives has produced a repeal and replace package, and both the Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees have been marking it up. We don't know what it is right now. In other words, the endeavor to right the wrongs of ObamaCare is moving steadily forward on the other side of the Capitol, and soon it will be the Senate's turn to act. I commend my colleagues for introducing this legislation and moving it forward. This is an important step, and I don't think I am alone when I say that I am watching the progress in the House very carefully to see how things proceed and what the final House product will look like.

Of course, virtually all Republicans in Congress want to repeal and replace ObamaCare. We are in unison there. While there are some differences of opinion on how best to do that, there is generally unanimity on that point. I am confident that whatever differences exist among House Members will be worked out through the House's legislative process.

In addition, whatever passes in the House will be subject to the input and review of the Senate and to the rules of the budget reconciliation process. I want to note that I have heard from a number of Senators who have items they would like to see included when the bill comes before the Senate. I actually have several ideas of my own. However, there are limits as to what we can do under the budget reconciliation rule. Many of the proposed policy changes I have heard, although they have merit, would be banned by the rules and subject to the 60-vote threshold. That said, I am committed to working with my colleagues on both sides of the floor to ensure that the

Senate process on this bill is productive and that it yields a result we can support.

Long story short: This process is far from over. We have a lot more work to do. It is worth pointing out that the vast majority of the policies at play in this discussion and virtually all of the spending fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Senate Finance Committee, which I chair. Make no mistake. The Finance Committee is already hard at work and has been for some time. In many respects, I suppose you could say we have been working on this effort since the day ObamaCare was signed into law. However, for obvious reasons, our work has intensified over the past several months.

In working through this process, I have been in constant contact with Chairmen Brady and Walden, who head up the relevant committees in the House. I have also been working closely with the Speaker's office, and I have been gathering input from Governors around the country. In addition, I have been working closely with the distinguished chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Enzi, who has the chief responsibility of navigating the budget process and shepherding a final repeal-and-replace bill through all the necessary rules and restrictions.

In all of those conversations, we have been talking about the process, and we have been talking about the timing. Most importantly, we have been talking about the substance of the healthcare reforms and how we can best serve the interests of the American people.

Throughout this effort, we have been reminded that Republicans currently control the White House and both Chambers in Congress due, in large part, to our stated commitment to repeal and replace ObamaCare, and we intend to deliver on that promise.

I would like to take a few minutes to talk about some of the policies we will need to tackle as we take up the House healthcare bill in the coming weeks.

Once again, the vast majority of the policies and virtually all of the spending involved in this effort fall under the Finance Committee's exclusive jurisdiction, and I intend to make sure all of my colleagues are well informed on the issues and that in the end whatever version of the bill we pass in the Senate reflects the collective will of a majority of Senators.

All told, there are five major policy areas that are addressed in the House bill that fall under the Finance Committee's purview.

First, there are the provisions to repeal the ObamaCare taxes. This is big. If one recalls, I came to the floor a few weeks ago and pointed out how misguided it would be, in my view, to start picking and sorting through the ObamaCare taxes to decide which to keep and which to leave in place. The House bill repeals them, along with the individual and employer mandates, both of which reside in the Tax Code. I have been working with Chairman Brady on this issue. In the end, I believe the Senate version of the bill should do the same, and I am going to continue to push to ensure it does.

Second, there is the issue of premium tax credits. Chairman Brady and I have been working extensively on this issue as well. The House bill replaces the ObamaCare premium subsidies with a refundable tax credit for the purpose of State-approved health insurance, limited to those who do not qualify for other governmental healthcare programs and who have not been offered insurance benefits from their employers. Most major ObamaCare replacement proposals that we have seen contain some version of health insurance tax credits. The House approach represents a significant improvement over the ObamaCare premium subsidies. The Senate, when it takes up the bill, will have to consider how best to implement the tax credits. I will continue to work with my House and Senate colleagues to ensure that the tax credits are designed to help those lower and middle-income Americans who are the most in need.

Third, there are the issues surrounding Medicaid. Chairman Walden and his predecessor, Chairman Upton, and I have been working extensively on this matter. As we know, the vast majority of the newly insured people who the proponents of ObamaCare have cited as proof that the system is working have been covered by the expanded Medicaid Program.

The problem, of course, is that the Affordable Care Act did not do anything to improve Medicaid, which was already absurdly expensive for States, and ultimately unsustainable, not to mention the fact that it provides substandard healthcare coverage.

The House bill draws down the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion and makes a number of significant changes to the underlying program. Most notably, it establishes per capita caps on Federal Medicaid spending, which are intended to give States more flexibility and predictability while also controlling Federal outlays related to the program.

We have received substantial input on this matter from Governors around the country, and virtually all of them agree changes need to be made. Given these concerns and the sheer vastness of the Medicaid Program under ObamaCare, the Senate will have to tackle this issue when it takes up the budget reconciliation legislation in the next few weeks.

I am confident that in working with my colleagues in the House and Senate and with the Governors, we can find the right solution.

Fourth, there is the issue of savings accounts for healthcare costs. I have long been an advocate for the expanded use of HSAs and FSAs. Needless to say, I was particularly opposed to the ObamaCare provisions that limited the use of these savings accounts and essentially marginalized their usefulness for consumers and patients.

The House bill removes a number of restrictions on these accounts that have been imposed by ObamaCare, and it goes further to remove longstanding restrictions on HSAs in order to expand their use and give patients and consumers more options to pay for health expenses.

I am very supportive of this approach. In fact, the language from the House bill mirrors the legislation I introduced this year--the Health Savings Act of 2017.

Fifth, there are some important transition issues that need to be addressed.

To get at these issues, the House bill creates a Patient and State Stability Program, under the Social Security Act, that would distribute $100 billion to States over 10 years to enhance flexibility for States in how they manage healthcare for their high-risk and low-income populations.

For example, the funds could be used to, among other things, help individuals with cost-sharing. This program was proposed with the idea of giving States an expanded role in the healthcare system, a goal that is shared by most Republicans in Congress and something that almost all of the Governors have told us they want to see.

There are other issues from the House bill in the broader healthcare debate that will demand some attention when we consider the bill in the Senate. However, almost all of them fall under these general categories. Once again, the vast majority of them fall under the sole jurisdiction of the Senate Finance Committee, the primary committee.

There are other critical issues out there which do not involve the Tax Code, the Social Security Act, or Federal health programs. Yet they are extremely important.

The biggest mistake made by those who drafted ObamaCare and forced it through Congress was their failure to address healthcare costs in any meaningful way. After all, cost is the largest barrier preventing people from obtaining health insurance coverage, and the increasing healthcare costs are among the most prominent factors leading to wage stagnation for U.S. workers. Yet ObamaCare did little to address this problem, and in fact it has made things worse.

If we are going to fully keep our promises to the American people with regard to ObamaCare, we are going to have to eventually address these issues. After all, most people's negative interaction with the Affordable Care Act has come in the form of increased healthcare costs. If we are going to truly right all of ObamaCare's wrongs, we need to tackle the costs head on.

This will mean, among other things, fixing the draconian regulatory regime in our health insurance markets and giving individuals the ability to select only the coverage they want and need.

Many of these types of issues fall far outside of the Finance Committee's jurisdiction and are under the watchful eye of the distinguished chairman of the Senate HELP Committee.

The House bill also includes some provisions that are intended to address these concerns. I assume our distinguished colleague running the HELP Committee is working tirelessly to address the issues, and others, both through the reconciliation exercise or some alternative means.

Ultimately, if our goal is to place the healthcare system in a better position than it has been under ObamaCare, costs will have to factor heavily into the equation. I am looking forward to receiving guidance and leadership on the HELP Committee on these important market reform issues.

Overall, I believe we can and will be successful in this endeavor to fix our broken healthcare system. The American people are counting on us to do so. At the end of the day, success in that endeavor is, in my view, going to require a robust Senate process that allows this Chamber to work its will.

We have two Chambers in Congress for a reason. The House reconciliation bill needs 218 votes to pass. The Senate will also have to act when we receive the bill, and we will need to produce a package that can get at least 51 votes in this Chamber and hopefully more. That may mean some differences between the Senate and the House versions of the bill, but that is not problematic in my view. It is not particularly novel or unusual for different views and ideas to be resolved through the legislative process rather than simply dissipating when a bill is introduced. It seems to me that is not novel, and I am not the only one who has this view.

Earlier this week, Secretary Price sent a letter to the chairmen of the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees. The letter commended the chairmen for their work and praised the legislation they unveiled to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

The Secretary also noted that this was not the end of the process but that the introduction of the House bill was a ``necessary and important first step'' and that the administration anticipated that the Congress would be ``making necessary technical and appropriate changes'' to get a final bill to the President that he can sign, which reminds us of the other important advocate in this endeavor. President Trump ultimately needs to support the bill that is passed by each Chamber of Congress, and his support for our efforts is paramount.

While, at this point, it may not be entirely clear what the final bill will look like, we do know two things for certain. First, we know that ObamaCare is not working. As the majority leader said yesterday, ObamaCare is a direct attack on the American middle class. Thanks to skyrocketing premiums, shrinking options in the health insurance market, burdensome mandates, and harmful taxes, millions of Americans are dealing with the failures of ObamaCare on a daily basis. We need to act now to fix these problems.

Second, we know that by introducing its bill and moving it through the legislative process, the House has taken significant steps in advancing this effort, and the leaders in the House should be commended for doing so.

Long story short, I have nothing but praise for the leaders in the House this week for the work they have done on these issues. Remember, this is just the beginning. I look forward to working with my colleagues in both Chambers to get this over the finish line so the Republicans can collectively make good on our promises with regard to ObamaCare.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage Senator Klobuchar in a colloquy to commemorate Rare Disease Day in order to discuss issues facing patients and the families of those who have been diagnosed with these types of conditions.

Mr. President, as cochairs of the Rare Disease Caucus, Senator Klobuchar and I have worked hard to bring more hope to patients and their families who are coping with rare diseases on a daily basis.

Today 1 in 20 individuals worldwide is living with one or more of the more than 7,000 rare diseases, 95 percent of which do not have an effective treatment. While the incentives provided by the Orphan Drug Act, first championed by me in 1983, has led to the approval of nearly 600 orphan drugs, much more needs to be done.

Many patients living with rare diseases rely on the FDA to evaluate and approve treatment options for their conditions. That is why it is so important for the FDA to use its authority to accelerate the evaluation and approval of drugs for treating rare diseases and for Congress to ensure that proper incentives exist for research to discover and make affordable treatments and cures available for this community.

To address this issue, Congress passed the FDA Safety and Innovation Act of 2012, which refined and strengthened the tools available to FDA to accelerate the evaluation and approval of new drugs targeting unmet medical needs for rare conditions. I have been paying close attention to how this new authority translates into advances for patients suffering from conditions such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome, Bertrand-N-glycanase deficiency, and other rare diseases.

In light of these changes over the past few years, I ask my friend from Minnesota whether the current approval process is achieving its goals of safety and efficacy without hampering the development of new therapies.

I appreciate that question.

We must continue to urge the FDA to fully implement its relatively new authority. Every one of us in this body represents constituents who are battling rare diseases, and I urge the FDA to consider this flexibility as applied in reviewing all candidates' therapies.

I will continue to work closely with my Senate colleagues to ensure that the FDA uses the tools, authorities, and resources required to provide patients and physicians with new treatment options. I have also contacted the FDA frequently during the past year to encourage the agency to listen to the voices of patients during the agency's evaluation process.

When the Senate considers the nominee for FDA Commissioner, I will continue to stress the importance of incorporating a balanced and flexible approach when weighing risks, benefits, and outcomes, especially when dealing with small patient populations with such rapidly progressing prognoses.

Patients with limited or no treatment options are depending on FDA to utilize the flexibility outlined in FDASIA. This law, which provides full and fair review of new drug therapies in a timely manner, gives hope to patients suffering from life threatening diseases and, of course, their families as well.

I ask Senator Klobuchar, how can we move forward into the next user fee agreement?

I thank my dear friend, the senior Senator from Minnesota, for her time with me today. It is very meaningful to me and, I think, to everybody who is concerned about this rare disease situation in our country.

This is just the start of our conversation for this Congress. There is so much left for us to do, and I am certain we will succeed as long as we stay together and work in a bipartisan way. So I thank my dear colleague for her words and support and the good leadership she provides in the Senate.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, in a little more than 2 weeks, the Judiciary Committee will open its hearing on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the U.S. Supreme Court. This is the 14th Supreme Court confirmation process in which I have participated. Over that time, while some things have changed, others have stayed the same.

The conflict over judicial appointments, especially to the Supreme Court, remains at its core a conflict over the proper role of judges in our system of government. The two sides of this conflict want two very different kinds of judges. Some of my colleagues, joined by their liberal allies, instead want judges who owe their fidelity to a particular political agenda.

For them, the judiciary is simply a backup plan for achieving political objectives. If the legislative branch does not deliver, they go to the executive--as they often did in the previous administration. If that does not work, they figure that the courts offer a second or third bite at the political apple.

This vision is fundamentally inconsistent with the way our system of government was destined, designed, and intended to be. Instead, the Framers devised the role of the judiciary on the wisdom of Montesquieu, who posited:

Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the

life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary

control. . . . Were it joined to the executive power, the

judge might behave [as] an oppressor.

That was Montesquieu. Reflecting this wisdom, the Constitution endows the judge with the role of saying what the law is, rather than what he wishes the law would be.

Alexander Hamilton rightly observed: The people's liberty cannot be endangered by the judiciary ``so long as the judiciary remains truly distinct from both the legislature and the executive.''

The stakes in this conflict over judicial power are really enormous. The choice determines whether the people or unelected judges will govern the country and define the culture. Our system of government and the liberty it makes possible allow only one answer. The confirmation process allows us to determine which kind of judge Neil Gorsuch is and which kind of Justice he will be.

The dynamics of the confirmation process often reveal what kind of judge Senators and interest groups really

seek. Those who want political judges, for example, use a variety of strategies to determine how a judicial nominee, especially to the Supreme Court, will rule on issues and cases they care about. In fact, most of the time it seems that the policy consequences of how a judge will rule is the only thing that some Senators and advocates really care about.

For example, when President Bush nominated Chief Justice John Roberts in 2005, one Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee said that the real question was this: ``Whose side is Judge Roberts really on, on the really important issues of our time?''

Another Democratic Senator said: ``Before we vote, it is important to know where Judge Roberts stands on key issues.''

Another said that she needed to know whether ``Judge Roberts will stand with us and with our families or be on the side of major special interests.''

Now, something is seriously wrong when the confirmation process for a Supreme Court nominee sounds more like an election campaign for a Senator or a Senate seat. Unfortunately, the same thing is happening again today regarding Judge Gorsuch. If a corporation won a case before him on the Tenth Circuit, for example, those groups claim that he is a champion of corporate interests, no matter the legal grounds of the decision, the facts, or anything else.

If another decision's result does not sufficiently advance the feminist agenda, they say that he is anti-woman. This radical approach seems to say that judges are free to decide every case based on the political popularity of the result and, therefore, that the judge personally intends every outcome. These advocates do not distinguish between the commands of the law and the personal preferences of the judge.

In this view, statutes and the Constitution mean whatever judges want them to mean, making unelected, unaccountable, lifetime appointees the master of the people. Political judges take away from the people the power to govern themselves and undermine their liberty. Using political or theological litmus tests in the quest for such political judges, demanding that they take sides and insisting that they make commitments to certain policy agendas before even taking office, poses a similar threat to the independence and impartiality of the judiciary.

There is nothing mainstream about political judges and nothing mainstream in the tactics used to appoint them. In contrast, impartial judges are consistent with the principles on which our system of government is based and the independence that judges must have. When Judge Gorsuch took his seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in 2006, he took the oath required by title 28, section 453, of the United States Code. He pledged to administer justice without respect to persons and to faithfully and impartially discharge his judiciary duties.

Now, I want to suggest that my colleagues try an experiment. Ask your constituents whether judges should make up their mind on a case before hearing all of the evidence and arguments. Ask whether judges should take positions on issues before those issues even come before them in court.

I know what Utahns would say. The ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct, for example, twice states this principle:

A judge shall not, in connection with cases, controversies,

or issues that are likely to come before the court, make

pledges, promises, or commitments that are inconsistent with

the impartial performance of the adjudicative [functions and]

duties of judicial office.

State codes of judicial conduct include the same commonsense protection for judicial impartiality. The California code, for example, prohibits statements, whether public or not, that ``commit the judge with respect to cases, controversies, or issues that are likely to come before the courts.''

Now, this has been the consistent practice of judicial nominees before the Judiciary Committee. Elena Kagan came before the Judiciary Committee in June 2010, after being nominated by President Obama to replace Justice John Paul Stevens. On June 29, 2010, she said that it would not be appropriate for her to comment on an issue that could come before the Court.

Samuel Alito--Justice Alito--came before the committee in January 2006, after being nominated by President Bush to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. On January 11, 2006, he said:

But the line I have to draw, and I think every nominee,

including Justice Ginsburg, has drawn, is to say that when it

comes to something that realistically could come before the

Court, they can't answer about how they would decide that

question. That would be a disservice to the judicial process.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Ginsburg appeared before the Judiciary Committee in July 1993, nominated by President Clinton to replace Justice Byron White. On July 20, 1993, she said this: ``A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.''

Antonin Scalia came before the committee in August 1986, after being nominated by President Reagan to replace Justice William Rehnquist. On August 5, 1986, he said that taking positions in a hearing on issues that could come before him was not just a slippery slope but, in his words, a precipice. He said: ``I just cannot do it, and I think the only way to be sure that I am not impairing my ability to be impartial in future cases . . . is simply to respectfully decline to give an opinion.''

Let me reach even further back. Justice Abe Fortas came before the Judiciary Committee in July 1968, after being nominated by President Johnson to replace Chief Justice Earl Warren. The committee sent the nomination to the full Senate and said these words in its report:

To require a Justice to state his views on legal questions

or to discuss his past decisions before the committee would

threaten the independence of the judiciary and the integrity

of the judicial system itself. It would also impinge on the

constitutional doctrine of separation of powers among the

three branches of Government as required by the Constitution.

Judge Thurgood Marshall came before the committee in July 1967, nominated by President Johnson to replace Justice Tom Clark. The committee sent the nomination to the full Senate and its report noted that the nominee had said he would ``wisely and forthrightly decline to give a judicial opinion on hypothetical questions.''

Just 2 years earlier, when the committee reported the nomination of Abe Fortas to be an Associate Justice, its report said: ``We have always felt it would be unfair to ask any nominee for any judicial office to give a legal opinion on the basis of a hypothetical question.''

I think the point is obvious. Every nominee, of either party, for decades has taken the same position, and it is the right position. It reflects a commitment to judicial independence, to impartiality, and to the integrity of the judicial branch of government.

If my Democratic colleagues and their liberal allies believe that Justices Kagan, Alito, Ginsburg, Scalia, Fortas, and Marshall were all wrong, they should say so. If they believe that judges should prejudge cases by committing to particular outcomes, then they should make that case. If they believe that the oath of judicial office and code of judicial conduct are all misguided, then, it seems to me, they should be upfront about it. I, for one, believe that judges should be impartial, that they should follow the law, and that they should stay within their designated role.

America needs impartial, not political, judges. I don't care which party you are in. If you are an attorney, you have to appreciate judges who are impartial, especially if you are an honest attorney.

We need judges who will follow, rather than lead, the law. The Constitution, after all, is the primary way that the American people set rules for government, and that includes--God bless it--the judicial branch. The Constitution cannot control judges if judges control the Constitution.

Yesterday the Judiciary Committee received a letter signed by more than 30 prominent members of the Supreme Court bar. In combination, they have argued more than 500 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Though they hold different political and legal views, they are united in strongly supporting Judge Gorsuch's nomination. They

write that he is fair-minded, principled, and ``has the unusual combination of character, dedication, and intellect that would make him an asset to our Nation's highest court.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

I believe the record demonstrates that Judge Neil Gorsuch is an impartial judge and will, when confirmed, be an impartial Supreme Court Justice. He will take the law as he finds it and apply it ``without respect to persons,'' just as the oath commands. With him on the bench, the law--made by the people's elected representatives--will determine winners and losers. In doing so, he will be exactly the kind of Justice America needs.

Judge Gorsuch has a tremendous reputation on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. Judge Gorsuch is a brilliant lawyer and an even more brilliant judge.

He is a person of impeccable reputation and integrity. He is exactly the type of person you would want deciding your case if you had a case before the Supreme Court. He is exactly the type of person whom other judges could emulate and follow, so he is exactly the type of person we want on the Supreme Court.

I have heard some ugly rumors that some of my colleagues in this body might, because of political concerns and political pressure, want to vote against Judge Gorsuch. I would caution them not to do that.

I think Judge Gorsuch will basically please almost everyone in this body over the years that he serves as a Supreme Court Justice. He is a really fine man. He is a fine family man. He is a very fine lawyer and a fantastic court of appeals judge.

He will make a great Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. So I urge my colleagues on both sides to vote for him and help us fill this void so that the Court can continue to act as the Court should.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, with all the division and conflict in politics today, it would take something truly compelling to unite all 100 Senators, including Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. Well, it has happened. This week I sent to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson a letter, signed by all 100 Senators, asking that it be conveyed to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The letter supports the decades-long quest by Agudas Chasidei Chabad of the United States to recover from Russia its collection of sacred religious texts and manuscripts.

Chabad was established in the 18th century in Russia and is today the largest Hasidic Jewish organization in the world. The organization's past leaders, or rebbes, accumulated this collection of sacred texts, which includes a library and an archive and is central to Chabad's religious life. The Soviets took control of the library in 1920 and in 1927 arrested the sixth rebbe and sentenced him to death. He was allowed to leave Russia later that year but had to leave the library behind. In 1933, the sixth rebbe and the archive moved to Poland.

In 1940, after both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, the sixth rebbe fled to the United States without the archive. It was confiscated, first by the Nazis and then by the Soviets. Chabad has since worked to reclaim both the library and the archive.

It is important to place the letter we sent this week in its full context because this is only the latest in a long series of actions by all three branches of the U.S. Government to support Chabad's quest. Members of Congress, for example, began calling for the return of these works in the 1930s. Just weeks before the Soviet Union dissolved on Christmas Day 1991, both President Mikhail Gorbachev and a state arbitration panel ordered that the library be returned to Chabad. On January 24, 1992, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe wrote President Boris Yeltsin, urging him to carry out the court's order and return the collection.

Unfortunately, both President Gorbachev's directive and the court's order were effectively nullified when the Russian Federation replaced the Soviet Union. Within a few months, however, the U.S. State Department expressed ``strong support'' for returning the full collection to Chabad. On May 31, 1992, all 100 Senators signed a letter to President Boris Yeltsin urging the collection's ``quick release.''

On February 20, 2005, all 100 Senators signed a letter to President Putin, again urging that the collection be returned to Chabad. The letter said this: ``The religious texts that Chabad seeks to retrieve consist of rare and irreplaceable books, archives and manuscripts on Chabad philosophy, Jewish religious law, prayer and tradition. . . . We urge you to return these sacred religious texts, archives, and manuscripts to Chabad, which would be a significant example of your government's commitment to justice, human rights, and religious freedom.''

Chabad filed suit against Russia in Federal court. During this litigation, the United States filed statements of interest reiterating its ``strong support'' for returning the collection to Chabad. On July 30, 2010, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered Russia to return both the library and the archive to Chabad.

I am truly grateful to all of my colleagues for your support of Chabad and their effort to recover this important component of their religious life. As striking as this unity is, I hope my colleagues also see it as part of a much longer story of extraordinary faith and commitment in the face of loss and persecution. I hope and pray that such efforts will be successful and that Russia will respond favorably to Chabad's request. It would indeed be a demonstration of their commitment to justice, human rights, and religious freedom.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the 1992, 2005, and 2017 Senate letters to which I referred be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 2:55 p.m., the Senate stand in recess subject to the call of the chair to prepare for Washington's Farewell Address.

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

Mr. President, 70 years ago this May, the Senate Appropriations Committee sent to the full Senate a constitutional amendment to require a balanced Federal budget. It had been proposed by Senator Millard Tydings, a Democrat from Maryland. In its report, the committee said this: ``In no other way except by an amendment to the Constitution can Congress be compelled to balance its budget in peacetime.''

Seven decades of experience proved that the Appropriations Committee was right, and we have never been in a more serious, perilous situation than we are today.

Two essential facts compel me once again to introduce a constitutional amendment to require fiscal responsibility: the gravity of the national debt crisis and the fact that neither willpower nor legislation will solve it.

The greatest challenge in describing the gravity of the national debt crisis is deciding how much of the bad news to present at one time. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, one of the candidates criticized the outgoing President for adding $4 trillion to the national debt. That increase, Barack Obama said, was not only irresponsible but ``unpatriotic.'' The national debt on inauguration day 2009 was $10.6 trillion, and on inauguration day 2017 it was $19.9 trillion. If a $4 trillion increase was irresponsible and unpatriotic, what words describe a $9.3 trillion increase?

President Obama won the 2008 election with the Government Accountability Office warning that the Nation's long-term fiscal outlook was unsustainable. In its January 2017 assessment of the Nation's fiscal health, GAO reports that the national debt as a share of GDP in 2016 was 75 percent higher than the average since World War II. As it had been before, GAO concluded that ``the federal government's fiscal path is unsustainable.''

One way to understand the gravity of the national debt is to compare it to the size of the economy, or the gross domestic product. In other words, we can compare what we owe to our ability to pay. When President Obama took office, the national debt was 82 percent of GDP and is now 105 percent of GDP today. Some economists prefer to evaluate the national debt as a percentage of tax revenue; that is, by comparing what we owe to what we earn. The national debt rose from approximately 350 percent of Federal revenue when President Obama took office to 600 percent of Federal revenue today.

But neither numbers nor percentages tell the whole story because the national debt crisis is becoming not only a bigger crisis but a different kind of crisis. During the last several years of skyrocketing national debt, the interest rate on that debt has been nearly zero. If interest rates had been at the historical average, annual interest costs would be more than twice what they are today and on their way to consuming more than half of all Federal revenue. And now interest rates are starting to creep up. The Concord Coalition and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget both anticipate that over the next decade, interest payments on the national debt alone will approach $1 trillion per year. That is interest payments. In other words, as GAO found in its new fiscal report, the growing national debt now means that the rising cost of servicing that debt becomes one of the drivers of the growing debt itself. This is becoming what one study calls a self- propelling crisis.

A national debt of this magnitude dampens the economic growth necessary to minimize borrowing to fund the government, and rising interest costs for such a monstrous debt add to the debt on which more interest must then be paid. Last month, for instance, the Treasury Department echoed this point in its financial report with the U.S. Government for fiscal year 2016. The Treasury Department concluded:

The debt-to-GDP ratio rises at an accelerating rate despite

primary deficits that flatten out because higher levels of

debt lead to higher net interest expenditures, and higher net

interest expenditures lead to

higher debt. The continuous rise of the debt-to-GDP ratio . .

. indicates that current policy is unsustainable.

We can also consider the legislative budget and economic outlook from the Congressional Budget Office. I want to highlight a few things that stood out to me.

First, annual budget deficits are on their way back up after 6 years of decline. In fact, the budget deficit for fiscal year 2016 will be one-third larger than in 2015.

Second, CBO projects that the national debt will rise by nearly $10 trillion over the next decade. Looking beyond the next decade, CBO says that under current law, the national debt will explode to more than 150 percent of GDP--by far the highest level in American history.

Third, CBO also says that interest on the national debt is itself an increasingly forceful engine driving the debt even higher. Interest payments on the national debt are increasing nearly twice as fast as spending on Social Security and Medicare. Just last month, CBO Director Keith Hall said that over the next 10 years, interest payments are expected to triple in nominal terms and double relative to GDP.

Fourth, CBO repeated some of the serious negative consequences of this national debt for the budget, the economy, and the Nation. In addition to substantially higher interest payments, these include lower productivity and wages, less flexibility by lawmakers to respond to fiscal challenges, and increased likelihood of a fiscal crisis.

In addition to these problems, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen and experts from the Heritage Foundation to the Brookings Institution warn that the national debt crisis is a serious threat to national security.

Economists tell us that national debt above 90 percent of GDP for a sustained period of time will lead to substantially slower economic growth and higher interest rates. The United States is now in the longest period in its history with the national debt above that toxic 90-percent level. Not surprisingly, since the recession ended in June 2009, the national debt has grown more than twice as fast and GDP has grown less than half as fast as during the comparable period after previous recessions.

It is no wonder to me and to many others that more than two-thirds of Americans say that their concern over the national debt is growing and more than three-quarters of Americans say that the national debt should be among Congress's top three priorities. The national debt was once such a top priority. In fact, America's Founders were so determined to avoid debt that their commitment to fiscal balance was often called our unwritten fiscal constitution. President George Washington, for example, told Congress that the regular redemption of the public debt was the most urgent fiscal priority. That was George Washington. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1798 that if he could add a single amendment to the Constitution, it would prohibit the Federal Government from borrowing. That commitment, of course, is long gone. The Federal budget has been balanced in only a dozen of the last 80 years. And, as I said earlier, we are in the longest period in American history with a debt above 90 percent of GDP.

As its fiscal willpower failed, Congress has also tried to address the debt crisis by legislation. The first bill requiring a balanced budget was introduced in 1934 when the national debt was 40 percent of GDP. Fifty years later, Congress enacted the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act. Since then, we have enacted multiple budget control acts and budget enforcement acts, only to see the national debt climb from 42 percent of GDP in 1985 to 105 percent of GDP today.

Good intentions will not balance the Nation's checkbook. Statutes that Congress can change or ignore will not keep our fiscal house in order. Neither willpower nor legislation will tackle the national debt crisis. Pretending otherwise is the fiscal equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns.

All the evidence--every bit of it--proves true the conclusion drawn by the Appropriations Committee 70 years ago. In no other way except by amendment to the Constitution can Congress be compelled to balanced its budget in peacetime. We have, as lawyers put it, exhausted our other remedies for this crisis. This would be a very different country--a freer and more prosperous country--if Congress had already proposed the only solution that exists, a constitutional amendment which requires fiscal responsibility.

The first balanced budget amendment was introduced in the House of Representatives in 1936. As you can see, the national debt as a percentage of GDP has been going up by leaps and bounds. I introduced my first balanced budget amendment in June of 1979, during my first term in the Senate when the national debt was 32 percent of GDP. That share of GDP doubled by 1997 when the Senate came within one vote of passing a balanced budget amendment that I introduced--one vote. It rose to 95 percent when the Senate last voted on a balanced budget amendment in 2011 and is 105 percent of GDP today.

Since this crisis is already so grave and getting worse, since the only way to tackle it is through the Constitution, we should propose a balanced budget amendment and let the American people decide whether to take this step. After all, Congress cannot amend the Constitution. A requirement that Congress keep its fiscal house in order cannot become part of the Constitution until that is approved by three-quarters of the States.

Congress, however, is not the only way to propose constitutional amendments. Article V of the Constitution also allows the States to apply for a convention to propose constitutional amendments. Concerned citizens have been working since the mid-1970s to reach the two-thirds threshold for calling such a convention to propose a balanced budget amendment and are only six States away from that goal. Since Congress has never called an article V convention, questions remain unresolved and theories untested regarding that method of proposing an amendment. I can assure my colleagues, however, that Congress's continued failure to propose a balanced budget--and a balanced budget amendment at that-- guarantees that our fellow citizens will continue working to force that course upon us.

There are two facts that we must face: the gravity of the nation's debt crisis and the failure to address it by willpower or legislation. Perhaps some of my colleagues believe that the Congressional Budget Office is wrong in its disturbing projections and dire warnings; that the Government Accountability Office is mistaken and the fiscal path we are on is sustainable after all; that the Treasury Department is wrong about the spiral of increased debt and growing interest payments--some people feel that way; that the Concord Coalition and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget are wrong about how national debt interest payments will continue to grow and add to the debt; and that economists are wrong to warn about the impact of sustained national debt of this magnitude.

If my colleagues are convinced that everyone else is wrong and our fiscal future is just fine after all, then they should say so and then try to make that case to the American people. Even they will not do that because they know they are wrong, yet we can't seem to get them to do what is right. I, for one, think that would be a very tough sell for them to make. Americans have been polled about this issue dozens of times over the years by major polling firms and national news organizations. Three-quarters of Americans supported a balanced budget amendment in 1976, and three-quarters support it today.

Perhaps all of these polls over the last 40 years are wrong. Perhaps the American people are content watching their national debt swallow the economy. Perhaps our fellow citizens are actually OK with slower economic growth, a rising threat to national security, the greater likelihood of a fiscal crisis, and an unsustainable path to fiscal disaster. If that is what the American people actually believe, then they certainly are inclined to ratify a balanced budget amendment.

The real reason Members of Congress refuse to give the American people this choice is that they know what the American people will say. I say with respect, but as strongly as I can, that this is not a legitimate basis for refusing to propose a balanced budget

amendment. In our system of government, as Founder James Wilson once put it, the people are the masters of government. They alone have authority to set rules for government. This choice must be theirs, not ours.

Here is the heart of the matter. First, the national debt crisis poses a significant and growing threat to the economic and national security of this country. In fact, we have never been in such an extended, perilous period as we are right now. Second, Congress has tried and failed to address this crisis by either willpower or legislation and will actually do so only if the Constitution requires it. Third, the decision of whether to use the Constitution to require fiscal responsibility belongs to the American people, not to Congress.

We can either take the responsibility we were elected for and propose a balanced budget amendment or the American people may do it for us. I hope we have the guts to do what is right. Our very country is hanging in the balance. The rest of the world depends on the United States and the strong principles of the United States, and we need to do what is right.

I think it is time for us to wake up and realize this is the Congress that can make the difference. After all these years of impropriety and excessive spending, we can do it. We can live within certain constraints. It may take a period of time to wind this down, but we can do it. This amendment does provide for some ways of getting there.

Mr. President, 70 years ago this May, the Senate Appropriations Committee sent to the full Senate a constitutional amendment to require a balanced Federal budget. It had been proposed by Senator Millard Tydings, a Democrat from Maryland. In its report, the committee said this: ``In no other way except by an amendment to the Constitution can Congress be compelled to balance its budget in peacetime.''

Seven decades of experience proved that the Appropriations Committee was right, and we have never been in a more serious, perilous situation than we are today.

Two essential facts compel me once again to introduce a constitutional amendment to require fiscal responsibility: the gravity of the national debt crisis and the fact that neither willpower nor legislation will solve it.

The greatest challenge in describing the gravity of the national debt crisis is deciding how much of the bad news to present at one time. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, one of the candidates criticized the outgoing President for adding $4 trillion to the national debt. That increase, Barack Obama said, was not only irresponsible but ``unpatriotic.'' The national debt on inauguration day 2009 was $10.6 trillion, and on inauguration day 2017 it was $19.9 trillion. If a $4 trillion increase was irresponsible and unpatriotic, what words describe a $9.3 trillion increase?

President Obama won the 2008 election with the Government Accountability Office warning that the Nation's long-term fiscal outlook was unsustainable. In its January 2017 assessment of the Nation's fiscal health, GAO reports that the national debt as a share of GDP in 2016 was 75 percent higher than the average since World War II. As it had been before, GAO concluded that ``the federal government's fiscal path is unsustainable.''

One way to understand the gravity of the national debt is to compare it to the size of the economy, or the gross domestic product. In other words, we can compare what we owe to our ability to pay. When President Obama took office, the national debt was 82 percent of GDP and is now 105 percent of GDP today. Some economists prefer to evaluate the national debt as a percentage of tax revenue; that is, by comparing what we owe to what we earn. The national debt rose from approximately 350 percent of Federal revenue when President Obama took office to 600 percent of Federal revenue today.

But neither numbers nor percentages tell the whole story because the national debt crisis is becoming not only a bigger crisis but a different kind of crisis. During the last several years of skyrocketing national debt, the interest rate on that debt has been nearly zero. If interest rates had been at the historical average, annual interest costs would be more than twice what they are today and on their way to consuming more than half of all Federal revenue. And now interest rates are starting to creep up. The Concord Coalition and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget both anticipate that over the next decade, interest payments on the national debt alone will approach $1 trillion per year. That is interest payments. In other words, as GAO found in its new fiscal report, the growing national debt now means that the rising cost of servicing that debt becomes one of the drivers of the growing debt itself. This is becoming what one study calls a self- propelling crisis.

A national debt of this magnitude dampens the economic growth necessary to minimize borrowing to fund the government, and rising interest costs for such a monstrous debt add to the debt on which more interest must then be paid. Last month, for instance, the Treasury Department echoed this point in its financial report with the U.S. Government for fiscal year 2016. The Treasury Department concluded:

The debt-to-GDP ratio rises at an accelerating rate despite

primary deficits that flatten out because higher levels of

debt lead to higher net interest expenditures, and higher net

interest expenditures lead to

higher debt. The continuous rise of the debt-to-GDP ratio . .

. indicates that current policy is unsustainable.

We can also consider the legislative budget and economic outlook from the Congressional Budget Office. I want to highlight a few things that stood out to me.

First, annual budget deficits are on their way back up after 6 years of decline. In fact, the budget deficit for fiscal year 2016 will be one-third larger than in 2015.

Second, CBO projects that the national debt will rise by nearly $10 trillion over the next decade. Looking beyond the next decade, CBO says that under current law, the national debt will explode to more than 150 percent of GDP--by far the highest level in American history.

Third, CBO also says that interest on the national debt is itself an increasingly forceful engine driving the debt even higher. Interest payments on the national debt are increasing nearly twice as fast as spending on Social Security and Medicare. Just last month, CBO Director Keith Hall said that over the next 10 years, interest payments are expected to triple in nominal terms and double relative to GDP.

Fourth, CBO repeated some of the serious negative consequences of this national debt for the budget, the economy, and the Nation. In addition to substantially higher interest payments, these include lower productivity and wages, less flexibility by lawmakers to respond to fiscal challenges, and increased likelihood of a fiscal crisis.

In addition to these problems, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen and experts from the Heritage Foundation to the Brookings Institution warn that the national debt crisis is a serious threat to national security.

Economists tell us that national debt above 90 percent of GDP for a sustained period of time will lead to substantially slower economic growth and higher interest rates. The United States is now in the longest period in its history with the national debt above that toxic 90-percent level. Not surprisingly, since the recession ended in June 2009, the national debt has grown more than twice as fast and GDP has grown less than half as fast as during the comparable period after previous recessions.

It is no wonder to me and to many others that more than two-thirds of Americans say that their concern over the national debt is growing and more than three-quarters of Americans say that the national debt should be among Congress's top three priorities. The national debt was once such a top priority. In fact, America's Founders were so determined to avoid debt that their commitment to fiscal balance was often called our unwritten fiscal constitution. President George Washington, for example, told Congress that the regular redemption of the public debt was the most urgent fiscal priority. That was George Washington. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1798 that if he could add a single amendment to the Constitution, it would prohibit the Federal Government from borrowing. That commitment, of course, is long gone. The Federal budget has been balanced in only a dozen of the last 80 years. And, as I said earlier, we are in the longest period in American history with a debt above 90 percent of GDP.

As its fiscal willpower failed, Congress has also tried to address the debt crisis by legislation. The first bill requiring a balanced budget was introduced in 1934 when the national debt was 40 percent of GDP. Fifty years later, Congress enacted the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act. Since then, we have enacted multiple budget control acts and budget enforcement acts, only to see the national debt climb from 42 percent of GDP in 1985 to 105 percent of GDP today.

Good intentions will not balance the Nation's checkbook. Statutes that Congress can change or ignore will not keep our fiscal house in order. Neither willpower nor legislation will tackle the national debt crisis. Pretending otherwise is the fiscal equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns.

All the evidence--every bit of it--proves true the conclusion drawn by the Appropriations Committee 70 years ago. In no other way except by amendment to the Constitution can Congress be compelled to balanced its budget in peacetime. We have, as lawyers put it, exhausted our other remedies for this crisis. This would be a very different country--a freer and more prosperous country--if Congress had already proposed the only solution that exists, a constitutional amendment which requires fiscal responsibility.

The first balanced budget amendment was introduced in the House of Representatives in 1936. As you can see, the national debt as a percentage of GDP has been going up by leaps and bounds. I introduced my first balanced budget amendment in June of 1979, during my first term in the Senate when the national debt was 32 percent of GDP. That share of GDP doubled by 1997 when the Senate came within one vote of passing a balanced budget amendment that I introduced--one vote. It rose to 95 percent when the Senate last voted on a balanced budget amendment in 2011 and is 105 percent of GDP today.

Since this crisis is already so grave and getting worse, since the only way to tackle it is through the Constitution, we should propose a balanced budget amendment and let the American people decide whether to take this step. After all, Congress cannot amend the Constitution. A requirement that Congress keep its fiscal house in order cannot become part of the Constitution until that is approved by three-quarters of the States.

Congress, however, is not the only way to propose constitutional amendments. Article V of the Constitution also allows the States to apply for a convention to propose constitutional amendments. Concerned citizens have been working since the mid-1970s to reach the two-thirds threshold for calling such a convention to propose a balanced budget amendment and are only six States away from that goal. Since Congress has never called an article V convention, questions remain unresolved and theories untested regarding that method of proposing an amendment. I can assure my colleagues, however, that Congress's continued failure to propose a balanced budget--and a balanced budget amendment at that-- guarantees that our fellow citizens will continue working to force that course upon us.

There are two facts that we must face: the gravity of the nation's debt crisis and the failure to address it by willpower or legislation. Perhaps some of my colleagues believe that the Congressional Budget Office is wrong in its disturbing projections and dire warnings; that the Government Accountability Office is mistaken and the fiscal path we are on is sustainable after all; that the Treasury Department is wrong about the spiral of increased debt and growing interest payments--some people feel that way; that the Concord Coalition and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget are wrong about how national debt interest payments will continue to grow and add to the debt; and that economists are wrong to warn about the impact of sustained national debt of this magnitude.

If my colleagues are convinced that everyone else is wrong and our fiscal future is just fine after all, then they should say so and then try to make that case to the American people. Even they will not do that because they know they are wrong, yet we can't seem to get them to do what is right. I, for one, think that would be a very tough sell for them to make. Americans have been polled about this issue dozens of times over the years by major polling firms and national news organizations. Three-quarters of Americans supported a balanced budget amendment in 1976, and three-quarters support it today.

Perhaps all of these polls over the last 40 years are wrong. Perhaps the American people are content watching their national debt swallow the economy. Perhaps our fellow citizens are actually OK with slower economic growth, a rising threat to national security, the greater likelihood of a fiscal crisis, and an unsustainable path to fiscal disaster. If that is what the American people actually believe, then they certainly are inclined to ratify a balanced budget amendment.

The real reason Members of Congress refuse to give the American people this choice is that they know what the American people will say. I say with respect, but as strongly as I can, that this is not a legitimate basis for refusing to propose a balanced budget

amendment. In our system of government, as Founder James Wilson once put it, the people are the masters of government. They alone have authority to set rules for government. This choice must be theirs, not ours.

Here is the heart of the matter. First, the national debt crisis poses a significant and growing threat to the economic and national security of this country. In fact, we have never been in such an extended, perilous period as we are right now. Second, Congress has tried and failed to address this crisis by either willpower or legislation and will actually do so only if the Constitution requires it. Third, the decision of whether to use the Constitution to require fiscal responsibility belongs to the American people, not to Congress.

We can either take the responsibility we were elected for and propose a balanced budget amendment or the American people may do it for us. I hope we have the guts to do what is right. Our very country is hanging in the balance. The rest of the world depends on the United States and the strong principles of the United States, and we need to do what is right.

I think it is time for us to wake up and realize this is the Congress that can make the difference. After all these years of impropriety and excessive spending, we can do it. We can live within certain constraints. It may take a period of time to wind this down, but we can do it. This amendment does provide for some ways of getting there.

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

Madam President, I rise to speak in support of the nomination of Scott Pruitt for Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Attorney General Pruitt has a distinguished record of public service in having served for 8 years in the Oklahoma State Senate before being sworn in as the attorney general of Oklahoma in 2010. Two dozen State attorneys general wrote to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in support of Mr. Pruitt's nomination. He has been endorsed by a wide variety of organizations representing a broad swath of America culture and industry, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Home Builders, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the Western Energy Alliance, and the Western Growers Association, just to name a few.

In his capacity as State attorney general, Mr. Pruitt has consistently fought against Federal intrusion on State and individual liberties, and he has shown himself to be a thoughtful attorney who is dedicated to the Constitution and to the rule of law. The

next Administrator of the EPA must respect the limits of Federal power. Few know these limits better than Mr. Pruitt, which is why I believe he will be a capable leader at the EPA.

Mr. Pruitt will rein in Federal overreach and put a stop to many of the overbearing regulations that have done very little to protect the environment but much to hurt businesses, large and small.

Modernization of the Environmental Protection Agency is long overdue. For too long, the Agency has acted outside its legal authority. For too long, the Agency has strayed from its core mission of protecting human health and the environment. For too long, it has imposed draconian regulations that cause undue harm to America's small businesses and rural communities.

I have long held that the EPA can fulfill its vitally important mission of protecting the environment without causing unnecessary harm to the economy, but to achieve this objective will require a massive culture change at the Agency--a culture change that only Mr. Pruitt can bring.

Mr. Pruitt wants an EPA that is both pro-environment and pro-growth. What is wrong with that? That is long overdue. He understands that protecting our lands and helping our businesses succeed is not a zero- sum game. With Mr. Pruitt at the helm, I am confident he will bring much needed change to the EPA and restore the public's trust in the Agency.

Once confirmed, I am eager to work with Mr. Pruitt to discuss how we can best protect our air and our water and how we can best modernize the EPA.

It is amazing to me that some of the greatest leaders in the bureaucracy over the years have been people who have worked in the fields that really constitute what we are talking about here today. They have surprised people by making sure that both sides have really been taken care of and that the laws are faithfully executed and some of the partisanship and biased approaches toward the environment are overcome.

Mr. Pruitt is capable of doing that--a brilliant man with a brilliant record. He is supported by an awful lot of attorneys general in this country. He is a person who, if liberally given the chance, might be able to help turn around some of the things that are just plain wrong at the EPA.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, 2 weeks ago, President Trump nominated Tenth Circuit judge Neil Gorsuch of Colorado to fill the vacancy left by the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Judge Gorsuch, in my opinion, is the ideal choice to fill this seat. He has impeccable credentials and a decade-long record on the bench demonstrating a keen understanding of the proper role of a judge.

Given the increasingly contentious nature of the confirmation process, it is not surprising that many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and their special interest group allies are stretching to find anything objectionable about Judge Gorsuch, no matter how ridiculous.

Today, I wish to address one of their latest, most outlandish claims: that Judge Gorsuch would not serve as an independent check on the executive branch. For example, last week in Politico, Senator Schumer, the distinguished Senator from New York, declared in an opinion piece: ``The most important factor in assessing a Supreme Court nominee . . . is whether or not the potential justice will be an independent check on an executive who may act outside our nation's laws and the Constitution.'' Senator Schumer doubled down on these comments in the New York Times. There, he argued that it was impossible for him to discern Judge Gorsuch's judicial independence when they met in person. Why? Because Judge Gorsuch refused to say how he would rule on specific issues or how he would review particular government actions. These misleading narratives are an irrelevant, wasteful distraction from our consideration of Judge Gorsuch's sterling record and the merits of confirming him to the Supreme Court.

Last month, I warned that the left would use these diversion tactics in an attempt to discredit the President's nominee. Shortly before Judge Gorsuch's nomination was announced, I predicted in an opinion piece in the Washington Post that advocates and interest groups would want to know how the nominee would decide particular cases before those cases ever reached the Court to make sure the nominee is on the right team. I was right.

Our Nation's Founders would have been embarrassed by such questions. Instead, the questions we ask should focus on whether the nominee will interpret and apply the law faithfully and neutrally no matter what the issue is. After all, that is what our Constitution demands.

Our Founders are not the only ones who would be embarrassed. I have been in the Senate for the last dozen Supreme Court confirmations. Every nominee we have considered has rightly refused to answer such questions. Consider, for example, Justice Ginsburg's response at her confirmation hearing. She said:

A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts,

no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the

specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain

for the entire judicial process.

Just last month in a speech in Arizona, Justice Sotomayor had an even stronger warning against asking and answering such questions. She said:

What you want is for us to tell you how as a judicial

nominee we're going to rule on the important issues you find

vexing. . . . Any self-respecting judge who comes in with an

agenda that would permit that judge to tell you how they will

vote is the kind of person you don't want as a judge.

So let's stop with this nonsense of trying to get Judge Gorsuch to prejudge issues that could come before the Court. I hope my colleagues appreciate the irony in asking a judge to say how they would rule on particular issues in order to prove that the judge is judicially independent. I agree with Justice Sotomayor: A nominee who will tell you how she would vote is the kind of person you do not want as a judge.

But if judicial independence really is the most important factor, as Senator Schumer suggests, then this confirmation process should be the easiest one in the Senate's history. Over 11 years on the Tenth Circuit, Judge Gorsuch has consistently demonstrated in his judicial opinions and other writings that he deeply values the constitutional separation of powers between the three branches of the Federal Government. Judge Gorsuch understands that the Constitution gives each branch distinct roles: Congress makes the laws, the President enforces those laws, and the courts interpret those laws and the Constitution. The branches may act only according to the powers the Constitution grants them, with the remaining powers and rights reserved to the States and ultimately to the people.

With respect to the power of the executive branch, Judge Gorsuch has a strong record of reining in actions which violate the Constitution and the

law. Perhaps the best example is his opinion in the immigration case Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch. There, the Attorney General attempted to apply a new agency rule retroactively prohibiting a noncitizen from receiving relief under Federal immigration law. Writing for the Tenth Circuit, Judge Gorsuch ruled that such action exceeded the executive's power to enforce the law.

In a separate opinion, he noted that there is an elephant in the room: the so-called Chevron deference doctrine, which requires courts to defer to Federal agency interpretations of the law we pass. He expressed constitutional concerns about Chevron deference. Judge Gorsuch wrote:

[T]he fact is Chevron . . . permit[s] executive

bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and

legislative power and concentrate federal power in a way that

seems more than a little difficult to square with the

Constitution of the framers' design. Maybe the time has come

to face the behemoth.

Judge Gorsch then proceeded to provide a textbook explanation of the proper separation of powers under our Constitution. As he stated, the Founders included a strong separation of powers in the Constitution because ``[a] government of diffused powers, they knew, is a government less capable of invading the liberties of the people.''

As my colleagues know, I am no fan of Chevron deference. Last Congress, I introduced the Separation of Powers Restoration Act to get rid of it. As I noted when I introduced the legislation, regulators have taken advantage of the courts' deference under Chevron to shoehorn the law for their own political agenda, expanding their authority well beyond congressional intent. But the Constitution's separation of powers makes clear that it is the responsibility of the courts, not the bureaucracy, to interpret the law. So I am pleased Judge Gorsuch understands that the Constitution requires Federal judges to serve as an independent check on how Federal agencies interpret the laws we enact.

Separation of powers is not just about ensuring that the executive branch performs its proper role of executing the law; separation of powers is also about making sure Federal judges understand their proper role under the Constitution. As Chief Justice Marshall famously explained in Marbury v. Madison, judges have a constitutional duty to say what the law is. Simply put, judges must be faithful interpreters of our laws and the Constitution.

Under our constitutional separation of powers, it is not the role of Federal judges to make or change laws by imposing their own policy preferences. It is not their role to look beyond the law to consider their personal views and feelings. And it is not their role to choose winners and losers based on subjective beliefs that favor one group over another.

In my 40 years in the Senate, I have reviewed the record of hundreds of nominees for the Federal bench. I don't think I have ever reviewed the record of a nominee who better understands his proper role under the Constitution than Judge Gorsuch. Consider, for example, Judge Gorsuch's touching tribute to Justice Scalia that was published last year in the Case Western Reserve Law Review. In that speech, Judge Gorsuch eloquently explained how judges should not be in the business of ruling in ways that reflect their own political views or policy preferences. Judges, after all, are not elected legislators. Instead, judges should interpret the law as written. They must start with the text of the statute and then utilize the traditional tools of statutory interpretations to discern the meaning of any particular law.

Judge Gorsuch understands, to borrow from Alexander Hamilton, that the judiciary should be the least dangerous branch. These aren't just words; Judge Gorsuch's judicial record confirms that he lives this judicial philosophy of restraint and humility.

In an essay I published last week on SCOTUSblog, I reviewed a number of judicial opinions by Judge Gorsuch that demonstrate his commitment to the separation of powers and the proper role of a judge in our Federal system. I will not go through all of those cases here, but I ask unanimous consent that the essay be printed in the Record.

To be sure, that Justice Gorsuch would be a fierce defender of the separation of powers does not mean his rulings will match his policy preferences. As Justice Scalia wisely remarked, good and faithful judges will not always like the conclusions they reach in interpreting the law. And it certainly does not mean that his rulings will match my policy preferences or those of my colleagues. As I have repeatedly stated on this floor over decades, that is not the proper inquiry when we assess the qualifications of a nominee to the Federal bench. Federal judges must be judges, not super-legislators.

The bottom line is, even a casual review of Judge Gorsuch's opinions should eliminate any concerns my colleagues may have concerning Judge Gorsuch's commitment to the Constitution's separation of powers. Any review would lead to that conclusion. In his opinions, Judge Gorsuch has resisted executive branch efforts to make laws as opposed to merely enforcing those laws. Judge Gorsuch's opinions and other writings make the compelling case for separation of powers in a way that finds few rivals on the current Federal bench.

If my colleagues are truly concerned about the proper separation of powers between the three branches of government, there is a simple solution: Confirm Judge Gorsuch as an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court.

While we are setting the record straight on ObamaCare, my colleagues on the other side have repeated a particular false claim that needs correction. My Democrat friends are fond of characterizing the repeal of ObamaCare as a tax cut for high-income earners and a tax increase for low- and middle-income taxpayers. That claim is simply false.

According to JCT, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Affordable Care Act imposed significant and widespread tax increases on taxpayers earning less than $200,000 a year, despite President Obama's repeated promises that the law would not do so. In fact, in 2017, a single provision--the reduction in the deductibility of catastrophic losses-- is projected to raise taxes on 13.8 million taxpaying families and individuals, mostly from the middle class. That is more than the number of taxpayers who receive exchange credits and other premium subsidies under

current law. That is just one example. There are others.

Fortunately, we have been able to forestall the impact of a number of the ObamaCare tax provisions. We have fought and negotiated long and hard to do so, but virtually all of those taxes are still looming on the ObamaCare horizon.

Most of us on the Republican side have been fighting these taxes more or less since the day ObamaCare was signed into law. We have highlighted their harmful impact on the economy and decried the crony capitalism that was behind the effort to draft and enact them.

Given this long history, at least in my view, it is essential that we repeal all of these taxes, along with the rest of ObamaCare. It is difficult to imagine how Republicans, who are now in the majority in large part due to the promises we made to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, can now sift through ObamaCare's taxes and decide which ones are the least objectionable so that we can use them to pay for our own healthcare reforms.

ObamaCare isn't problematic simply because healthcare costs are not going up; it was fundamentally flawed at the outset. The way the law was drafted was, and still is, a problem. The way the law was negotiated--with stakeholders being played against each other--was, and still is, a problem. Of course, the way the law was paid for was, and still is, a problem. The ObamaCare taxes are a big part of this equation. In my view--and, I think, the view of the vast majority of my Republican colleagues--they have to go.

As I said, there really are not widespread disagreements among Republicans on these issues. Overall, we broadly agree on the fundamental issues surrounding ObamaCare, and, as I noted last week, it is not all that problematic to have some differences of opinion on the initial stage, so long as we can overcome those differences in the end. I think we can do that. More importantly, I think we will.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Senate is now considering H.J. Res. 40, a resolution of disapproval regarding a misguided Social Security Administration regulation that infringes on many Americans' Second Amendment rights. As a cosponsor of the Senate companion to this resolution, which was filed by Chairman Grassley, I would like to add my voice to that of the many advocates, including the National Disabilities Rights Network and groups such as the National Rifle Association that work to protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners who have expressed support for this important legislation.

I would also like to express my appreciation to Chairman Grassley and others for their leadership on this issue. This ill-advised regulation not only stigmatizes individuals with disabilities, it also violates the Second Amendment and due process rights of many Americans, and it should be repealed.

As a longtime supporter of Americans' constitutional right to keep and bear arms, I was deeply troubled by this regulation, which allows the Social Security Administration to report individuals they consider, in the words used in the regulation, to be ``mentally defective'' to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, if they have ``mental impairments,'' receive disability insurance benefits, and receive those benefits through a representative payee.

When someone receives benefits through SSA's representative payee program, SSA field office employees have deemed them unable to manage their finances. However, SSA's representative payee program itself is, by many accounts, ineffectively administered.

You don't have to take my word for it. As recently as 2013, the Government Accountability Office identified that SSA ``struggles to effectively administer its Payee Program.'' There are unexplained and large discrepancies across various regions of the country that SSA serves in numbers of beneficiaries who are assigned by SSA field offices to be in the payee program. Yet, despite these known gaps and discrepancies, SSA apparently thought that this system was sufficient to determine whether some beneficiaries should be afforded a constitutional right.

Let's be clear. Under SSA's rule, individuals who are not found by SSA employees or any other competent authority to be a danger to themselves or others but rather simply need help managing their finances will be prohibited from legally purchasing a firearm. While we all want to make sure that the NICS system works effectively to prevent violent criminals and those who actually do pose a threat from purchasing firearms, this regulation is exceedingly overbroad. Moreover, it is not at all clear to me that SSA employees in field offices should be put in charge of deciding who can legally purchase a firearm. Of course, the bureaucrats at SSA who were prodded by the Obama administration to write the rule say they will create some sort of internal structure to allow beneficiaries to appeal the decisions of SSA employees. Of course, that means SSA would need to construct a new costly adjudication system to review decisions that its employees are not well-equipped to make in the first place. This is particularly strange, given that it is standard practice at SSA to decry the agency's funding levels while also claiming it is already unable to adequately serve its beneficiaries due to budgetary shortfalls.

All of this simply does not add up. The SSA is not at all equipped for this kind of decisionmaking; moreover, the standards that would apply under the regulation for SSA to report a beneficiary to the NICS represent a much lower bar than the one anticipated in the applicable Federal statutes to determine the eligibility to purchase a firearm. That being the case, we need to pass Chairman Grassley's resolution of disapproval, which has already been approved by the House of Representatives with bipartisan support.

I encourage my colleagues to join me in voting in favor of this resolution.

I thank my friend from Oregon for allowing me to go forward on this short set of remarks.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we are currently in the midst of the longest transitional leadership gap at the Department of Treasury in our Nation's history. The Senate has never let this much time go without a Treasury Secretary. In fact, the Senate has never left Treasury without a confirmed Secretary in between administrations for this long. Yet, despite the obvious need to fill this position, we have had to deal with continual and pointless delays, courtesy of some of our colleagues.

I will not begrudge any Senator for taking advantage of the privileges offered to them under the rules of the Senate; however, I think we have ample reason to question some of our colleagues' judgment and priorities with regard to how we have dealt with the nomination of Steven Mnuchin to the Office of Treasury Secretary.

Let's get the obvious points out of the way. Mr. Mnuchin has 30 years' experience working in a variety of capacities in the financial sector. He has experience managing large and complicated private-sector enterprises and in negotiating difficult compromises and making tough decisions--and being accountable for those decisions. He has the support of a number of key organizations and associations within the finance industry, and experts across the ideological spectrum have endorsed his nomination.

Long story short: Under any objective standard, Mr. Mnuchin has ample experience, credentials, and qualifications for this important position. Yet my colleagues have done all they can under the rules-- even to the point of casting aside some longstanding customs and traditions of the Senate--in order to delay his confirmation.

I will not relive the entire chain of events that got this nomination through the Finance Committee, bringing us to this point. For now, I would urge my colleagues to look fairly at the record. In every case, as the committee processed his nomination, Mr. Mnuchin responded to questions and allegations with full and complete answers and demonstrated no signs of acting or responding in bad faith toward the committee or its members.

People are free, I suppose, to walk into the confirmation process with an assumption of bad faith. But throughout my time in the Senate-- and keep in mind, I have been here a long time--that isn't usually how we operate around here.

My colleagues on the other side have put forward a number of claims and allegations about Mr. Mnuchin. They have essentially thrown everything, including the kitchen sink, at this nominee in a desperate attempt to block his confirmation. Well, so far, nothing has worked. That is because none of the allegations my colleagues have raised can withstand even a modest amount of scrutiny. But that hasn't stopped some of them from trying.

I have found it particularly interesting to see my friends raise concerns about matters that did not bother them in the least when it came to voting for Democratic nominees for Treasury Secretary. Indeed, with regard to Mr. Mnuchin, my Democratic colleagues have created a wholly new set of standards from those that were applied to the most recent previous Treasury Secretary. Many issues that seemed to be of little or no concern to my colleagues and my friends on the other side during the confirmation process for Secretary Jack Lew have been considered disqualifying for Mr. Mnuchin. By the way, many of these problems existed in the prior Treasury Secretary too. But we, in good faith, brought him through and allowed him to go through without a lot of fuss and bother.

Let me review just a few of the discrepancies that are claimed.

Mr. Mnuchin placed some investments offshore, in full conformity with the law and not for the purpose of avoiding U.S. taxes. But my friends have simply asserted that no one uses offshore financial vehicles unless they are trying to avoid U.S. taxes, and, therefore, Mr. Mnuchin's investments disqualify him to serve as Treasury Secretary. Yet Secretary Lew, prior to his confirmation, actually made investments in the famous Ugland House in the Cayman Islands, which President Obama described as ``outrageous'' and ``the biggest tax scheme in the world.'' My Democratic colleagues knew this, but did not care, and happily confirmed Secretary Lew with hardly a mention of this matter. We allowed him to go through, in the interest of civility and getting along with our colleagues.

Democrats have argued that Mr. Mnuchin unduly profited from the housing market collapse. Yet Secretary Lew, prior to his nomination, ran ``proprietary trading'' groups at Citigroup, where they invested in a hedge fund that bet heavily on the collapse of the housing market. My Democratic colleagues knew this, but did not care, and happily confirmed Secretary Lew without really ever acknowledging this part of his record.

Democrats claim that Mr. Mnuchin unfairly foreclosed on homeowners, despite evidence to the contrary. Yet Secretary Lew, prior to being nominated, ran a Citigroup division that was, according to arbitration panels at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and later the SEC, ``defrauding investors.'' When asked about the toxic securities sold by his Citigroup unit, Secretary Lew's answers varied between not remembering any specific securities to claiming he somehow wasn't involved in the investment decisions made at the Citigroup unit he oversaw. My Democratic colleagues knew this, but they did not care, and happily confirmed Secretary Lew without anything resembling full and complete answers to these questions.

Despite ample evidence to the contrary, Democrats claim that Mr. Mnuchin ran a ``robo-signing'' foreclosure machine. Yet Citigroup, while Jack Lew was in senior management, sliced and diced mortgages and was alleged to have ``robo-signed'' mortgage documents. Democrats knew this, but they did not care, and happily confirmed Secretary Lew without ever really asking him about these issues.

I can go on and on. There are many other issues that my colleagues were willing to overlook, if not outright ignore, with regard to Secretary Lew that have resulted in hyperbolic attacks on Mr. Mnuchin.

I wish to remind my colleagues that despite the numerous concerns that I and others have had about Secretary Lew and the many significant disagreements that I had with President Obama's agenda, I voted in favor of Secretary Lew's confirmation. On this very floor, I stated the following:

I have always believed that . . . [the] President--any

President, regardless of party--is owed a certain degree of

deference when choosing people to work in his administration.

Therefore, though I personally would have chosen a different

person for this position, I intend to vote in favor of Mr.

Lew's confirmation.

I wasn't alone. Many other Republicans also voted to confirm Secretary Lew, despite serious reservations, in recognition that the President had a right to appoint who he wanted to--as long as they were not crooks and people of unsavory reputation. Well, Mr. Lew was not either of those.

My, how times have changed. As is typically the case, when a group of Senators is unable to make a believable case against a nominee, they tend to just raise every possible issue and hope something gains traction. When in the end nothing works, they cling to whatever allegation came last and hope it is enough to change the outcome. That is why, over the past couple of weeks or so, we have heard an awful lot about ``robo-signing.''

Here is the basic rundown of what has happened on this issue: My friends on the other side got an answer to a poorly and vaguely worded question that was not the answer they wanted to receive. The answer from Mr. Mnuchin, that OneWest Bank did not engage in ``robo-signing'' under his leadership, was truthful and defensible, but it did not conform to the Democratic talking points drafted for this nominee.

Since that time, Senate Democrats have repeatedly referenced new stories that purportedly prove that not only did Mr. Mnuchin run a bank that engaged in the nefarious, yet not well-defined practice of ``robo- signing'' mortgage documents, he lied about it in his answers to the committee. However, I would urge my colleagues on both sides to actually look at the supposed evidence from those news articles.

Put simply, to say that my Democratic friends are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill would be an insult to moles everywhere. There is no molehill to be found here.

To make the case that Mr. Mnuchin was untruthful in his answers, the articles rely on quotes mined from a single deposition of a OneWest employee. Quoted out of context, the employee seems to have said that she rapidly signed several hundred foreclosure-related documents a week without fully verifying their accuracy. That is the supposed smoking gun on the Mnuchin ``robo-signing'' question.

However, if you read the full deposition, the employee makes it absolutely clear that she was not the employee responsible for verifying the accuracy or validity of everything in the documents. She was part of a process that included several steps and multiple employees to verify the accuracy of different parts of the documents. We don't even have to dig for this explanation. It is not a matter of any interpretation. That explanation, in plain

English, is right there in the deposition my colleagues and the news articles have been using as ``evidence'' that Mr. Mnuchin lied to the Finance Committee.

Nothing--not a single thing--in the deposition quoted in those news articles could be considered evidence of ``robo-signing'' on the part of OneWest Bank.

While I can understand that my colleagues don't like seeing or hearing anything that contradicts their preconceived notions, particularly when it comes in the form of an answer to one of their questions, that is no basis or justification to make wild and brazen accusations that a nominee has been lying. And make no mistake, that is precisely what they are doing with Mr. Mnuchin.

On a related note, it is really amazing to me that my friends on the other side are now feigning outrage over alleged lack of responsiveness to their questions after having gone through the last 8 years with Treasury Secretaries who routinely ignored questions and requests for briefings posed by myself and a number of my other Senate colleagues. But I digress.

I certainly sympathize with the many people who suffered through the foreclosure crisis and with Democrats in Congress who were, and continue to be, frustrated that Treasury officials in the Obama administration failed to construct effective homeowner relief programs, despite having made numerous promises to do so.

However, given that frustration, it is odd to me that my colleagues remain so opposed to Mr. Mnuchin's nomination when he was very much engaged in the practice of making mortgage modifications work during his time as the head of OneWest Bank. Moreover, Mr. Mnuchin worked diligently with regulators and others to clean up the system under which foreclosure documents were being processed. You don't have to take my word for it; you can examine the numerous letters of support we have received from a range of people and organizations, from community groups to community bankers, which attest to Mr. Mnuchin's success in turning a bank that was plagued by toxic loans and numerous processing errors into a viable financial services firm that provides jobs and support to communities.

Along the way, Mr. Mnuchin's companies significantly outperformed rivals in the industry in terms of offering loan modifications to help keep Americans facing foreclosure in their homes. Mr. Mnuchin has acknowledged that his efforts were not without errors and that he genuinely regrets any mistakes that were made. He has also made clear that OneWest was committed to providing remediation in order to compensate those who were affected.

It should also be noted that in the vast majority of independent evaluations of OneWest's practices, the banks's error rates were routinely below the average for the industry and often zero.

I think people should quit using false arguments against this man. All of this was discussed out in the open during the Finance Committee's hearing on the Mnuchin nomination. Nothing was hidden. No one was misled.

Unfortunately, rather than focusing on the actual facts surrounding OneWest's performance under the nominee's leadership, my friends on the other side opted to try to smear Mr. Mnuchin. In essence, they have tried to relitigate the foreclosure crisis, with Mr. Mnuchin's company confusingly placed in the crosshairs. This is a company that, according to a letter from Faith Schwartz, former executive director of the Hope Now Alliance, ``was committed to avoiding foreclosures where possible.''

As I said, with Mr. Mnuchin, my colleagues are applying a clear double standard for confirming a Treasury Secretary. For Republican Treasury Secretary nominees, any allegation, no matter how careless or untrustworthy the source, is enough to inspire the Democrats' outrage and trigger a seemingly endless bout of name-calling. For Democratic nominees, on the other hand, even proven instances of questionable actions and poor judgment on the part of the nominee fail to even make a blip on their radar screens.

I have spent quite a bit of time in recent weeks decrying the antics of my Democratic colleagues with regard to President Trump's Cabinet nominations. Frankly, I am tired of talking about it. My colleagues are, of course, free to do whatever they think will help them hobble the new administration and score points with their political base, even if it breaks from the longstanding customs and traditions of the Senate and even if it puts our financial stability and the stability of our relations with Finance Ministers of other countries at greater risk. However, they should know that these tactics do absolutely nothing to help American families seeking greater opportunities and economic growth. They don't help us fix our broken Tax Code, reform our failing health care system, and empower businesses and job creators to grow and expand.

The bottom line is this: Mr. Mnuchin is clearly qualified to serve as Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle made clear they intend to vote no on the nomination, and that is their right. However, while each Senator has a right to vote according to his or her own judgment, Senators do a disservice to the country and the Senate as an institution when they concoct stories and antics designed merely to delay a vote for the sake of delay. Going forward, I hope my colleagues will recognize the problematic precedence they are setting with regard to these nominees and opt to change course.

I intend to vote in favor of confirming Mr. Mnuchin, and so should everybody else in the U.S. Senate. I urge all of my colleagues to do so.

When I first met Mr. Mnuchin, I hadn't met him before. I didn't even know his name. I have to say I was really impressed.

I said to him: Why are you doing this? You are going to lose a lot of money because you are going to have to sell your holdings and get rid of them. Why are you doing this?

He looked at me, looked me square in the eyes, and he said: I am doing it because I love my country, and I want to help. I want to help turn it around.

I was pretty impressed with that. I have been pretty impressed with Mr. Mnuchin ever since. I think we need a terribly smart guy who is honest, who is decent, who has made a great success of his life, who understands where money comes from and where it goes, who literally is willing to sacrifice and lose some of his savings and money in order to save this country and because he wants to work with our good President, who every day is going through calumny and slanders like I have never seen anybody go through before.

The slowdown in the Senate that is occurring here is unbelievably stupid. Yes, I know they want his first 100 days to not be successful, but gee-whiz, to do this kind of maneuvering and this kind of playing around with the facts is beneath the dignity of my colleagues on the other side.

If my side was doing this, I would be chewing them up. The fact is, we didn't do this. The past two Treasury Secretaries--I personally said ``We are going to support them'' even though we could have pulled this kind of stuff on them, and the facts were true. Both of them were good people. Both of them had made a couple of mistakes. Both of them made mistakes in their filings. But they were good men, good people, and so is Mr. Mnuchin.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if both sides would treat people with respect and dignity? I have to admit, sometimes our side could do better, but what we have been going through for the last almost 2 months now is pathetic. I think it is all done in the hope that they can ruin the first 100 days of this President. Well, there are 200 days, and we are going to keep going.

They are not making any headway with the President where they could make headway. He is someone who actually came from their side of the floor--at least at one time when I knew him long ago. He is a person with an open mind. He is a person who has supreme intelligence. He is a person who is bringing with him some of the best people in this country, not the least of whom is Mr. Mnuchin.

I think they ought to wake up and quit this slandering and even libeling this really fine man who is willing to sacrifice much of his personal fortune to serve in this government as the Treasury Secretary. We are lucky that

people like this are willing to do it, to take all the guff and calumny and slander and libel they have to go through. Thank goodness we have people like Mr. Mnuchin who are willing to do this. I don't intend to see him fail, so I hope we can all vote for him tonight and send a message. I hope some of my colleagues on the other side will vote for him. They should. They should, in good faith. Yes, they can play this game of having a lot of votes against him, but some of them should vote for him. The truly honest, the truly fair, and the truly good people--I think all of them are good people on the other side and on this side, but it is not showing up as well as I would like it to show up in these confirmation fights.

In this particular one, there is a fellow who is willing to sacrifice immensely to be able to help our country, who is known on Wall Street, who is known as one of the bright lights up there, who has been immensely successful, and he has had a wide variety of experiences in the area of finance. We ought to be getting on our knees and thanking him for being willing to go through this and being willing to serve his country.

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

I ask for the yeas and nays.