Floor Statements

Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call for the cloture motion filed today, September 17, be waived.

Mr. President, on behalf of the majority leader, I ask the Chair to execute the order from yesterday with respect to the confirmation vote on the Costello nomination.

Mr. President, today the Senate will vote to confirm Mary Kay Costello to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

From 1986 to 1994, Ms. Costello served as a staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force. She then earned her B.A. from Temple University and her J.D. from Temple University Beasley School of Law.

After completing law school, she began her legal career in private practice as a litigation associate with Saul Ewing LLP, then moved to Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in 2004. While in private practice, she handled a range of commercial litigation matters.

Since 2008, Ms. Costello has served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She is currently assigned to the public corruption and civil rights unit, and she previously served in the healthcare fraud and government fraud unit and the consumer and commercial fraud unit. She has prosecuted criminal cases involving bribery, drug diversion schemes, and schemes to defraud the government, including successful prosecutions in several illegal drug distribution cases involving ``pill mills.''

Over the course of her legal career, Ms. Costello has tried 11 cases to verdict, all of which were before a jury.

Ms. Costello has the strong support of both of her home State Senators, Mr. Casey and Mr. Fetterman, and the American Bar Association unanimously rated her as ``well qualified.''

Ms. Costello is a highly accomplished litigator whose breadth of experience and dedication to service make her an outstanding nominee to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting her nomination.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Manchin), and the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Wyden), are necessarily absent.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Madam President, like many Americans yesterday afternoon, I heard reports of what Federal law enforcement is investigating as a possible assassination attempt on former President Trump while he was golfing in Florida. Thankfully, the former President was not harmed, and there were no injuries, and the subject was quickly taken into custody.

I am grateful for the work of the Secret Service and their law enforcement partners to keep the President and those around him safe.

My staff was briefed by the Secret Service last night, and there is an active investigation into this incident as law enforcement gathers more details about what happened. As I have said many times, there is no place for violence in our country no matter what the motive. It must come to an end.

Madam President, on a different topic, a recent report from The Wall Street Journal had a stark headline. It read: ``Your Ambulance Is on the Way, ETA: 65 Minutes.''

Across rural America, nearly 5 million Americans live in an ambulance desert, where access to critical emergency care is limited, and in eight States, there were fewer than three ambulances for every 1,000 square miles of land. Think about it. If you or a loved one experienced cardiac arrest or an overdose--when seconds truly matter--you may not be able to receive timely care; and across rural Illinois, EMS personnel are often the only healthcare providers around, with many being volunteers.

To keep our rural communities thriving, we must ensure our first responders are ready for the call. So in 2018, 6 years ago, I worked with then-Republican Senator Pat Roberts, of Kansas, to pass into law a bill called the SIREN Act. I was inspired by a visit from Mark Kennedy, a paramedic from Nauvoo, IL, in Hancock County, who told me some of the challenges they were facing. The SIREN Act provides Federal funding for rural fire and EMS Agencies for recruitment, certification courses, and purchasing equipment--everything from Naloxone to power stretchers. Over the past 5 years, we have steadily increased funding for this small but important program. In total, we have sent $40 million to rural communities in 42 States, both red and blue.

The SIREN Act is up for reauthorization now. Senator Susan Collins, of Maine, and I have teamed up in recent years to increase the funding for it and on legislation to extend funding for another 5 years. Our bill is endorsed by the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the International Association of Firefighters, and the National Rural Health Association. Last December, it unanimously passed the Senate.

This week, the House is scheduled to take it up. I applaud the sponsors for their work in the House to advance the bill out of committee by a 46-to-nothing vote, and I urge the House to

quickly pass out the SIREN Reauthorization Act this week.

Madam President, on another health-related topic, the question of women's reproductive freedom continues to be a matter of importance in the upcoming election.

At the Presidential debate last week, it became clear that the two candidates could not be further apart on the issue. The former President took credit for the ``great service'' he said he did in erasing the constitutional right under Roe v. Wade. On the other hand, Vice President Harris asked us to consider what abortion bans mean for young survivors of rape or incest who are forced to carry pregnancies to term or for women who miscarry and are repeatedly denied access to lifesaving care.

That is the world we live in today because of the Dobbs decision, because of Donald Trump and his success in choosing three ultraconservative Supreme Court Justices who overruled Roe v. Wade.

Make no mistake, the former President sees the polls, and he knows that limiting women's access to making their own decisions on reproductive care and choice is wildly unpopular, even in conservative red States. That is why former President Trump is twisting himself into knots trying to have it both ways: taking credit for overruling Roe v. Wade to appease his base while refusing to acknowledge all of the suffering that has resulted.

Madam President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Kevin Ritz to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Mr. Ritz grew up in Memphis and received his B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Virginia, his M.S. from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and his J.D from the University of Virginia School of Law. After law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Julia Smith Gibbons on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Memphis.

Mr. Ritz then went to work as an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Tennessee in Memphis, serving as criminal appellate chief, special counsel to the U.S. attorney, and appellate chief. Mr. Ritz has tried 11 cases to verdict, including 10 jury trials. While serving as appellate chief, he personally wrote more than 200 briefs and argued 37 Federal appeals.

Since September 2022, Mr. Ritz has served as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee. The Senate confirmed him to that role by voice vote. Notably, both of his home State Senators--Mrs. Blackburn and Mr. Hagerty--returned positive blue slips on his U.S. attorney nomination. In his role as U.S. attorney, Mr. Ritz serves as the chief Federal law enforcement officer for the district and oversees an office of attorneys who engage in defensive and affirmative civil work, appellate work, and criminal work.

The American Bar Association unanimously rated Mr. Ritz as ``well qualified'' to serve on the bench. He has deep ties to Tennessee, and his significant litigation background and extensive experience in Federal court will serve him well on the Sixth Circuit.

Mr. Ritz has dedicated his entire legal career to public service. I look forward to his continued service as a circuit judge, and I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting his nomination.

I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman) and the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Manchin) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, there was a time not that long ago when families had a similar challenge across America: what to do with mom and dad. At that time, there wasn't much to turn to. If you were fortunate, your parents, during the course of their lifetime, saved up enough money to take care of themselves.

But in my family and many others, it was common to have that spare bedroom for grandma and grandpa because there was no place else to go. It was part of American family life. It caused some hardship. The kids had to double up in the bedrooms, and some of the activities in the family were limited. But you did it because you loved them and they needed help and they couldn't take care of themselves.

In 1939, that started to change. A President named Franklin Delano Roosevelt thought, It is time for us to give some relief to these families, to give dignity to seniors in their retirement years. And he created a program called Social Security--now one of the most popular programs in the United States.

You don't hear many candidates for President standing up and saying, ``I am going to cut Social Security benefits,'' do you? It is worshiped and venerated and respected and followed by families across America. But the critics in the creation of Social Security called it socialism. Socialism: Too much government, leave us alone; let mom and dad live in that spare bedroom; don't give them a separate savings account they can accumulate during their lifetime. If they do it, fine. If they don't, fine too. Socialism.

Fast forward to the 1960s. Now we have a new concern: How are we going to pay for the healthcare of seniors now that they are living longer because of Social Security? What are we going to do about it?

There was a concern in Washington that the cost of medical care-- surgeries and treatment--was just too expensive for the average person. And so President Lyndon Baines Johnson created Medicare. Medicare was a health insurance program for senior citizens across America.

When it started, it ushered in a dramatic change in healthcare in America. The construction of hospitals started expanding their pace across this country. Medicare made a big difference.

What did they say about it in criticizing it? Socialism: Too much government trying to provide healthcare for senior citizens. Of course, Medicaid came on its heels, as well, to take care of low-income individuals facing the same challenge.

``Socialism''--we hear that time and again. This morning, the Republican Senate leader criticized efforts to lower pharmacy drug costs across America. He called it prescription drug socialism. Here we go again. Any effort to help the average family who is trying to get by and trying to make ends meet that involves the government is criticized as socialism. The argument was made by the Republican leader that this socialism, this lowering of prescription drug prices, is ultimately going to stifle research and competition. He failed to mention one or two things.

First, he failed to mention that virtually every single prescription drug that is now making a difference across America started with government research. The National Institutes of Health--the premier medical research Agency in the world--did the basic research for virtually every single one of these drugs. As much as I admire the private sector--and I do--and as much as I wish the pharmaceutical industry well, the fact is, if they are honest about it, they are simply bargaining with the government that helped them get started to find profitable products.

The second thing I want to note that the Republican leader did not mention this morning is that, for decades now, we have allowed the Veterans Health Administration to negotiate drug prices. In other words, what we are now doing in Medicare, we have been doing for veterans. Our theory was our veterans deserve the best, and we have got to be able to afford it as a government, and they have to be able to afford it as individuals. So we negotiated these drug prices. I didn't hear any screaming and hollering about helping our veterans, because it was the right thing to do.

Doing that for veterans is virtually the same thing that is happening in other countries. Why are exactly the same drugs that are made in the United States sold in Canada for a fraction of the cost? Because the Canadian

Government negotiated--just like the Veterans Health Administration in the United States--for reasonable prices for Canadian citizens. Now we are doing the same thing. Finally, after decades of promise, it is happening. This notion that the top 10 drugs under Medicare are now going to be negotiated so that we can bring prices within reach of the government and individuals is simply an extension of what we have been doing at the VA for years. I have to tell you it makes a difference, a serious difference.

Imagine that the Biden-Harris proposal not only allows for negotiating prices down to a reasonable level for Medicare, but it also says that you in Medicare are limited to a $2,000 annual expenditure for prescription drugs. And $2,000 is a lot of money. Don't get me wrong. For a lot of people, it is a hardship to come up with that kind of money, but it is within the reach for most Americans to pay that amount of money. We know that drugs, otherwise, are too darned expensive for them.

Now, the critics of that, like the Senator from Kentucky, this morning, call it socialism. I call it the American approach to helping families--a realistic approach that says that pharmaceutical drugs should be affordable. If I understood the position of the Kentucky Senator this morning, he thinks it is a big mistake. I think it is a breakthrough. Finally, we are going to reach the day when we can negotiate prices for those not in Medicare who will be helped as well. So I wanted to start my remarks with that.

Mr. President, in 2018, 6 years ago, I visited Venezuela--a once prosperous, albeit imperfect, democracy suffering terrible economic and political decline.

As we drove around the streets of Caracas, the person from the Embassy in the car said: Take a look at something you might not notice. Notice the belts that the people of Caracas are wearing, particularly the men, and notice how long the end of the belt is and how many notches they have put in the belt. The people are starving in this country because of the government of Nicolas Maduro.

I told President Maduro at a meeting during that visit that the upcoming election, which was just months away, would only be credible if it was monitored and honest. He went ahead with the discredited election anyway. The result was as predicted: an exodus of millions of desperate people fleeing repression and economic collapse.

A few weeks ago, Venezuela held another Presidential election in which the regime had arbitrarily blocked key opposition candidates from the ballot and had tried to undermine the preelectoral process. This is an indication of what activities are going on. Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez eventually left the country, even though it was pretty clear from the results that we were able to glean from the Venezuelan election that he was the winner. Ten million Venezuelans peacefully had voted. Results that were meticulously documented by credible monitors showed an overall win for this opposition candidate. Despite this, the Maduro regime refused to release the results and announced that they had won instead. It arbitrarily arrested thousands of opposition supporters and issued an outrageous warrant for the arrest of Gonzalez, forcing him to leave the country.

Enough of this madness. Enough of this outright theft of the Venezuelan voters' overwhelming choice for a better future. This week, I have introduced a simple 2-page bill terminating all U.S. petroleum cooperation and related trade with Venezuela until the legitimate results of the election are respected. I also filed it as an amendment to the annual Defense authorization bill.

The entrenched regime clings to power using oil revenues dependent on U.S. involvement. Under my bill, that is going to end and so will Maduro's financial strength. It is simply that simple. Are we going to do business as usual with a dictator who ignores the results of a freely held election?

I also appealed to our democratic allies in the region, including the democracies of the Caribbean, to stand resolute in the defense of a sweeping and clear vote by the Venezuelan people. They cannot sit idly by for another 6 years amidst regime-inflicted suffering and economic collapse in Venezuela. Our neighbors in Venezuela deserve better.

Mr. President, today the Senate will vote to confirm Laura Provinzino to the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.

Born in St. Cloud, MN, Ms. Provinzino received her B.A. from Lewis & Clark College, her B.A. from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and her J.D. from Yale Law School. After law school, she served as a law clerk to Judge Diana E. Murphy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Minneapolis.

Following her clerkship, Ms. Provinzino worked at Robins Kaplan LLP as a litigation associate, where her work involved civil litigation and criminal defense. Since 2010, she has been an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Minnesota. She handles all aspects of criminal investigation and prosecution and has prosecuted a wide variety of Federal crimes. Ms. Provinzino has served as a missing and murdered indigenous persons assistant U.S. attorney since 2023, after previously serving as deputy chief of the violent and major crimes section, deputy chief of the major crimes section, human trafficking coordinator, and Project Safe Childhood coordinator. She has tried 16 cases to verdict, all of which were jury trials.

The American Bar Association unanimously rated Ms. Provinzino as ``well qualified'' to serve on the district court. She has deep ties to the District of Minnesota, and she enjoys the strong support of both of her home State senators, Ms. Klobuchar and Ms. Smith. Ms. Provinzino's nomination has also received support from a range of individuals and organizations, including law enforcement officers, former Federal prosecutors, and organizations working to combat human trafficking.

Ms. Provinzino's significant litigation background and extensive experience in Federal court ensure that she will be a valuable addition to the district court. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting her nomination.

I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Rosen) is necessarily absent.