Floor Statements

I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth) is necessarily absent.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, the issue of quality, affordable health insurance is personal to me. I know what it feels like to be a new dad with a beautiful little baby girl with a serious medical condition. It happened in my life when I was a student in law school at Georgetown here in Washington, DC.

God gave us this beautiful little girl, but I didn't have health insurance as a law student. We ended up in the charity ward of Children's National Hospital waiting for our name to be called to be introduced to the doctor--the new doctor--at the hospital who would do his best to help my daughter.

I thought about it as I sat in this ward with other people who could not afford to pay their medical bills and thought to myself, I failed as a father and husband. I didn't do the basics. I didn't have health insurance when my baby came along.

Well, there were some wonderful people who did some wonderful things for our daughter, and I will never forget it. But I also never will forget sitting in that chair wondering who would come through that door and be my daughter's doctor. I would be meeting him for the first time. I never felt so helpless as I did at that moment.

As lawmakers, I believe our job is to help make life a little bit better for the people we represent. This week, it means tackling the quality, affordable health insurance issue. It is no secret what happened in this Chamber over the last several weeks and months. We had the longest government shutdown in history--42, 43 days, depending on how you calculate it, but it was a record.

The issue was whether or not we would do something to provide health insurance to some 20 million Americans who stand to lose it because the premiums are too expensive.

We went back and forth, and every day I came to this floor and stated our

position on the case. Senator Thune, Senator Barrasso stated their position. Senator Schumer, of course, was part of this dialogue that went on week after week.

The decision was finally made by a number of us to end the government shutdown by voting to open the government. There was an understanding that certain things would happen: Appropriations bills would pass as part of the continuing resolution, and many Agencies of government, which were in a questionable position, would be funded.

That was important.

But when it came to health insurance, we reached an agreement that this week, before the Christmas recess, we would have a debate and a vote on extending health insurance.

Why are we doing this? Because the Affordable Care Act passed under President Obama provides tax credits, help in premium payments, for millions of Americans who could otherwise not afford to have it. And the decision in the Big Beautiful Bill--the budget bill of President Trump--to end those tax credits meant that millions of Americans stood to lose the health insurance that they had before starting January 1 with new and higher premiums.

Senator Thune promised a vote, and I believed--he told me personally--he would keep his word, and I believe he will. I think we will have a vote this week, but a vote is not enough if we can't come to an agreement.

We need 13 Republicans to join us in a bipartisan effort to extend this tax credit so that millions of Americans don't lose their health insurance--13 of them. They need to step forward and, frankly, join us in a bipartisan effort. There is a lot more to be done. This is not all that we will do, but extending this health insurance premium assistance to these families can make a real difference.

Let me tell you a story. If you are looking for breakfast in downtown Chicago on a Sunday morning, let me recommend a restaurant. The name of the restaurant is Lou Mitchell's. Lou Mitchell's restaurant is in the shadow of Union Station, the Amtrak station downtown Chicago. It is two or three blocks from our Catholic parish, and we are there regularly on Sunday mornings, 8 o'clock. We have got two stools by the counter that my wife and I sit at and eat breakfast. We have come to know just about all of the waitresses and helpers in this restaurant.

It is legendary, by Chicago standards. They claim to be the starting point for the creation of U.S. Route 66. There are people, literally, coming from all over the world to make that journey down Route 66 and start with breakfast at Lou Mitchell's.

Donna Fenton is my personal friend, my wife's as well, and she is the maitre d' at the breakfast restaurant. She is 94 years old. She never misses a day of work. She is a wonderful person, a diehard Cubs fan who wears earrings with the Cubs logo on them. I have taken her to games over at Wrigley Field, and she, even at her age, is just as lively and involved as any person in the whole audience.

Yesterday, when my wife and I went to Lou Mitchell's for breakfast before church, I had conversation with another person who is on their staff, a waitress. She is a manager as well, and she has been working at this job for years. She is 63 years old.

Her husband just qualified for Medicare, and she felt relieved that that worry about his health insurance would be take care of. She then found out that the Medicare Advantage Program that she would be having him sign up for runs $200 a month. Her original premium that she is paying for health insurance for him and for her is $279 a month.

So right off the bat, she faced an increase over her base premium that she has been paying for some time, but she had the good fortune, at least now--up to now--to have a tax credit to help pay for those premiums. Then she got the notice from her insurance company that the cost of her insurance, even with her husband not covered by the same policy, is going to virtually double.

I can tell you, this is a hard-working lady. I have come to know what it means to be in your sixties and still working as a busy waitress in a busy restaurant. It isn't easy, physically demanding. She has had orthopedic surgeries and other problems occasioned by the fact that it is just an act of life. At a time when most of us would like to think we are going to close that chapter and take it easy, she is not able to.

She said to me: What is going to happen to me when I can't afford health insurance?

And I thought back to my own experience here in Washington.

I said: Well, I hope you don't get sick. It is the best I can say for you.

She said: Who wants to raise my premiums more than double? Who is behind all this?

I said: Unfortunately, there is a political difference here. I won't go into details. It will sound too partisan. But there are some Members of the Senate, who, frankly, know you are going to have to pay twice as much and really don't want to see changes made--let it go forward.

I think that is unfair to her. I could give you her name, but I am not going to because I didn't ask her permission, but I believe every word she told me.

Hard-working woman, 63 years old, whose health insurance is going to more than double each month. She doesn't make a fortune as a waitress. She makes a basic wage in tips. And now she is asking me as her U.S. Senator: Why did you do this to me?

Well, my answer is: We have a chance this week to change it.

And that is what I told her.

If we can get a bipartisan group to agree to just extend these credits, we are going to be able to bring your premiums down to be more affordable. It won't be the same. It will still be high. But it won't double or triple, which is likely to happen otherwise.

I think about her as I stand on the floor of the Senate and think of the tears in her eyes as she talked to me about what her life is going to be like if we fail. We can't fail. We have an obligation to her as Democrats and Republicans.

Are there things we can do to deal with the Affordable Care Act? Yes. I still think it is fundamentally sound, but there are elements in it that need to be changed.

We look forward to not only extending these tax credits but also a meaningful, bipartisan gathering in the appropriate committees to talk about changes in the Affordable Care Act.

Now, there are some people who want to see changes that are politically volatile. To go into the issue of abortion now instead of just expending these premium benefits--I know because I have lived through the Affordable Care Act--it is a nonstarter. It is a poison pill. It is the end of the conversation. We are too divided on the issue.

Prior to the ACA, we must remember that insurance companies could deny coverage to patients with a preexisting condition. This waitress I am talking about has a long list of preexisting conditions now. I won't go through them here, but under the old school, before the Affordable Care Act, she would have had exclusions in all of her health insurance policies for all of these medical conditions.

Under the Affordable Care Act, she must be offered health insurance, regardless of preexisting conditions.

If someone had, for example, a history of diabetes, heart disease, or even a past pregnancy, insurance companies used to be able to exclude those services from your plan or charge you an amount that you couldn't afford.

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies are no longer allowed to discriminate against patients with preexisting conditions. We required in that law that health insurance plans cover comprehensive benefits, hospitalizations, prescription drugs, and even mental health and addiction treatment, and we allowed children to stay on their parents' health insurance until the kids reached--no longer kids, young men and women reached the age of 26.

What was the result? It worked. For 15 years, it worked.

We achieved the lowest number of uninsured Americans in our country's history. Millions more Americans suddenly had the peace of mind of having quality healthcare.

But faced with high costs, from expensive medications to specialty treatment, too many hard-working families

are struggling to keep up with the high price of healthcare.

I have heard my colleagues on the Republican side, who didn't support the bill when it was created, come in and say: But healthcare is still too expensive.

That is a fact. But imagine, if there were no help in paying the premiums, what families would be doing with these increased costs.

Do you want to know one of reasons that the health insurance is so expensive? I have asked Blue Cross Blue Shield in Chicago, and they tell me it is pretty simple.

Did you ever see an ad for a pharmaceutical product on television? I will bet you did, and I bet you saw more than one. They play it all the time. There are only two countries in the whole world that run these ads for drugs: the United States of America and New Zealand. In every other country, it is prohibited.

What difference does it make? People get into their minds that these drugs just might be the cure for my problem, and they go to the doctor's office, and they sit down for the 10 or 15 minutes they have with that doctor and say: I have been hearing all these ads about Xarelto.

The doctor says: Xarelto? I am surprised you can pronounce it.

The person says: I can spell it. I have seen so many ads. I think I need it, Doctor.

And in too many cases, the doctor, rather than get into a debate or say there is a cheaper generic for this drug or the other, ends up writing a prescription for an expensive drug. It is one of the major reasons that health insurance premiums have gone up so high in the United States of America.

Now, I have a bill that eliminates directed consumer advertising, as approved and requested by the American Medical Association. I won't be able to add it to this bill--I want to--but I am prepared to join in the debate about making the system better and more affordable that will follow after this vote.

So what I am saying is this: The Affordable Care Act is so important. It is one of the most important votes I have ever cast. I still stand by it, but it needs to be improved, and we need to do that. We won't do it this week, but, this week, let's give peace of mind to my friend who is a waitress at Lou Mitchell's, and others that have written to me from all over the State of Illinois, that they can afford health insurance, that their premiums will get a helping hand.

It takes 13 Republicans to join the Democrats for that to happen. It has to be bipartisan.

As a result of the enhanced premium tax credits, the number of Americans covered in the ACA marketplace plans has increased from 11 million in the year 2020 to 24 million this year, including my waitress friend at Lou Mitchell's.

In Florida, the number of residents with healthcare coverage has doubled since passage of the Affordable Care Act. In Alabama, tens of thousands of children and older Americans have obtained health insurance for the very first time because of the Affordable Care Act.

Why do we want to reverse this? Why do we want to put the waitress that I mentioned to you in a situation where she can't afford her premiums anymore? That is going to happen in just a few days if we don't act in a responsible, bipartisan way.

This summer, Congressional Republicans eliminated $1 trillion in spending for Medicaid. It is a different but related issue. This will take healthcare away from 11 million Americans and threaten rural and intercity hospitals. But in also refusing to extend premium tax credits, 22 million Americans may see their health premiums double, on average--double what the health insurance payments were just today and a few weeks ago. These could get raised by more than $3,000 next year.

In Jackson County, in Southern Illinois, an area of small towns and rural areas, residents there, on average, will see their monthly premiums go from $122 a month to $458. That is a difference of $330 a month, a 274-percent increase.

In Crawford County, in Downstate Illinois, monthly premiums could rise from $170 a month to $517, a 204-percent increase. That is why our vote this week is so important.

We can stop these premiums from increasing in my State, in Alabama, in every State where people are affected by it. In Western Illinois, residents, on average, will see a 120-percent increase if we don't do something this week.

What is our excuse? We are too busy? Look around you. Does this place look too busy? Not to me. We used to have legislation on the floor regularly--and amendments and debate--and we would actually pass laws that had to be considered by the House and Senate. And it would happen. It doesn't happen anymore. We come to the floor and make a speech. We may, once a month, have something to vote on the floor.

This Senate is described as one of the great legislative bodies-- deliberative legislative bodies--in the world. You couldn't prove it by the history of our schedule over the last several months.

This week, the Senate Democrats are going to put forward a proposal to extend health insurance premium tax credits for 3 years. I have heard some people say: Well, that is too long.

Well, come back with an amendment for 2 years or 1 year or something. Show there is a beating heart there that actually cares to solve a problem--a problem that affects a waitress in a restaurant in downtown Chicago.

We have tried many times to have this debate. It never gets off the ground. But now we have come to a moment where, on January 1, the world is going to change for millions of Americans if we do nothing.

I want to work with the Republicans on this bill. I want to make the Affordable Care Act better. But we have got to take care of the immediate crisis before January 1.

If Republicans, 13 Republicans--13 brave Republicans--will step up and say, ``We want to extend the tax credits,'' there is going to be an opportunity for us to sit down and say: All right, what do we need to consider to do to make the Affordable Care Act better?

There is an editorial in the Wall Street Journal this morning. I don't usually buy that newspaper, but I am glad I did. There is a long list of things they raised questions on when it came to fraud in the Affordable Care Act. It is legitimate to raise those questions. We should ask that of every single program.

They suggested in their editorial that the tax credits are somehow an inducement toward fraudulent enrollment. The Wall Street Journal came out with an editorial, as I said, highlighting the findings from the General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog.

My response: Sign me up to sit down, put that editorial on the table, and, on a bipartisan basis, address the very things they have raised. But let's not allow these findings about malfeasance by brokers of insurance--and those are the ones they are blaming, not the patients-- to be the reason that 24 million Americans face unaffordable premiums, and not the reason my friend the waitress at the restaurant is going to face premiums she and her husband cannot afford.

To be sure, what the GAO found is unacceptable. But there are proposals on the table that Democrats would support to crack down on malicious brokers who fraudulently enroll customers. No excuse--that has got to stop. I will be part of it, on a bipartisan basis, if we get that opportunity, and I hope we do.

But to argue that tax credits to help my waitress friend pay her premiums are the reason for fraud and, therefore, should be eliminated is the wrong conclusion. It is an outsized, collective punishment to her. And what did she do wrong?

We don't punish seniors when their identity is stolen. We punish the grifters who did it, and the same things are true when it comes to fraud. Let's hold those accountable for it--strictly accountable. Raising premiums so that patients have skin in the game would still not deter malicious brokers from their illegal behavior--we can address this, and we should--and it would ignore the fact that the Medicare Advantage plans also have zero premium policies. I don't hear any bipartisan howling about that.

I am willing to work with Republicans to take on fraud, but let's be honest about the scope of the problem and not use it as an excuse to abandon the tax credits that more than 20 million Americans rely on.

I want to go back to that restaurant--maybe not next Sunday, maybe after Christmas--and tell that friend of mine that we heard her and we did something about it, and we are going to give her a helping hand, at a time when she has nowhere else to turn. She is working hard every single day and has done that all of her life. All she has asked us to do is to give her a fighting chance to have health insurance for her family. Isn't it really incumbent upon us to meet that responsibility?

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Merkley), the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Rosen), and the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Wyden) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy), the Senator from California (Mr. Schiff), and the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Blumenthal), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly), the Senator from Maine (Mr. King), the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Ossoff), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), the Senator from California (Mr. Schiff), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen), and the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Slotkin) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy), the Senator from California (Mr. Schiff), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen), and the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse) are necessarily absent.

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

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

Mr. President, in my office here in the U.S. Capitol, which is a few steps away from this Chamber, I have behind my desk a credenza. On that credenza is a document that is dear to me and my family and really defines who I am. It is my mother's naturalization certificate.

Despite all the speeches you hear on the floor about immigrants, we are a nation of immigrants, and my mother was an immigrant from Lithuania to the United States, brought here at the age of 2. Her brother and sister were with her on that boat, and her mom was bringing them along.

They went from Lithuania to Germany and then took the ship to Baltimore, eventually catching a train that took them to what they considered to be the land of opportunity, my hometown of East St. Louis, IL. That is my story. That is my family story. It is an immigrant story, and I am proud of it.

There were problems with immigration throughout our history. But there is also an opportunity with immigration which we have taken advantage of over and over and over again. We are a nation of immigrants. You will hear many of the speeches--and even this morning-- from the other side of the aisle on what is wrong with immigrants and immigration. It is not a perfect system by any means.

But I think we can all agree on some basics. Whoever the President may be, whatever political party, we need an orderly process at the border when it comes to immigrants, No. 1. No. 2, we should never knowingly allow any dangerous person to come into the United States. No. 3, anyone who is here seeking citizenship and is a danger to the community or neighborhood they live in should be removed from the United States, period, end of story.

Finally, we need a process that allows people who have the best intentions to come here, work hard, pay their taxes, and be part of America's future. That is the story of my family. It is a story of millions of American families.

About 25 years ago, a young woman in Chicago contacted my office and asked for help. Her name was Tereza Lee--an interesting story. Tereza was born in Korea. She came to the United States through South America, and her father and mother brought her to Chicago where her father, a Protestant minister, was looking for a church to serve.

He spent many years doing that with limited success, and he brought along his little daughter Tereza with him as he visited these churches. Many times, when the services were not taking place, this little girl would go over to the beat-up old piano in each of these churches and start hammering away. Someone noticed that and invited her to be part of something called the Merit Music Program in Chicago. The Merit Music Program provides money for poor kids in public schools to buy instruments and take lessons and learn how to play. They decided to give Tereza that chance. They let her take

lessons in piano. She turned out to be a child prodigy when it came to music.

At the end of her high school years, her friends and those who taught her encouraged her to apply to the very best music schools in America. Tereza applied to the Manhattan Conservatory of Music, but she had a problem. Filling out the application, there was a question: ``What is your citizenship?''

She turned to her parents and said: ``What do I put here?''

They said: ``We don't know. You came here on a visitor visa. We didn't renew the request for a permanent visa. We don't know what your status may be.''

``What are we going to do,'' she said.

They said: ``We are going to call the office of a U.S. Senator named Durbin and see if he can give us advice.''

We checked the law. The law was clear. Tereza had overstayed her visitor visa. She was in the United States as a child, grew up here, but she didn't have legal status. She was undocumented. The law was and is very clear. That 18-year-old girl had to leave the United States for 10 years and then apply to come back in.

When we found that out, my staff came to me and said this isn't even possible for her to do. She has never really lived any other place than the United States. So at that point, I decided to address this with legislation. It was 24 years ago that I introduced a measure called the DREAM Act.

What the DREAM Act basically said was these young immigrants brought to the United States as children, like any American child, were destined to grow up dreaming of getting their first job, passing their driver's license test, and applying to college. But they had a problem. Under the current law, they were not legal to do those things. So the DREAM Act gave them a chance--those brought to the United States as children to have a path to citizenship after earning their way in a rather long and rigorous process. Many of them did. These Dreamers have gone on to serve as our Nation's doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, and first responders over the last 24 years. But, unlike many of their peers, Dreamers live in fear that their lives will be uprooted and that they will be deported to a country they don't even call home. That was the threat that faced Tereza.

It was 2001 when I first introduced bipartisan legislation to provide Dreamers with a pathway to citizenship. My cosponsor was Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, who was then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In fact, we had a little argument as to who would be the lead name on the legislation. Since he was chairman of the Judiciary, I deferred to him, and the first DREAM Act was a Hatch-Durbin piece of legislation. I am sad to say that more than two decades later, Dreamers are still waiting for that bill to pass.

Just over 13 years ago, President Barack Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, widely known as DACA. He created DACA in response to a bipartisan request from myself and the late Indiana Republican Senator Richard Lugar. Over those 13 years, DACA has protected more than 830,000 young people from deportation. All of them were brought to this country as children, some as young as a few months old.

Sadly, since President Obama established the program, many Republicans have waged a relentless campaign to overturn DACA and deport these Dreamers back to countries they left as infants, toddlers, and children--countries they may not even remember.

Now this program is hanging by a thread in the courts due to legal challenges from Republican States' attorneys general, and many Dreamers--even those who have protections under DACA--have been caught up in deportation raids by the Trump administration.

What does a person in DACA have to do to qualify for that status? First, they have to report themselves to our government; second, submit themselves to a background check so that if there is any evidence of criminal wrongdoing, it is going to come out, and they will be disqualified. They have to pay a substantial fee, and every 2 years, they have to go through that process again--and again and again. That is what DACA is.

So when we hear stories on the floor about immigrants committing crimes and such, let's make it clear that Dreamers are cleared by review and investigation by our government before they can ever qualify for the program, and every 2 years, they have to submit their names again for review.

I want to tell you about one of these Dreamers. She is a college student with a merit scholarship. She was deported from the United States without due process 2 weeks ago. This is the 150th story of a Dreamer that I have highlighted on the Senate floor. I had hoped that we would have passed the DREAM Act long before I reached this milestone.

Any Lucia Lopez Belloza was brought to the United States from Honduras when she was 8 years old. Any worked hard in high school. She was an honor student. In her free time, she volunteered as a tutor in algebra. Her hard work ultimately paid off. This year, she received a merit scholarship to study at Babson College in Massachusetts.

Like a lot of college students, Any planned to visit her family during the Thanksgiving holiday. Her dad's employer in Texas paid for her travel home to surprise her dad at work. But when Ms. Lopez Belloza arrived at Boston's Logan Airport, she was told there was a problem with her ticket. When she went to customer service, she was surrounded by Federal agents and shackled.

The next day, a Federal district court judge issued an order blocking her transfer or deportation for 72 hours. Despite this court order, the Trump administration quickly deported her to Honduras, the country she had not been to since she was a little girl. She had nothing but the few belongings she had brought with her for the Thanksgiving holiday at home with her family in Texas.

You will remember the President's campaign rallies and how often he stood before cheering crowds and said that it was time to stop the rapists, murderers, terrorists, and the criminally insane from flowing into this Nation--the worst of the worst. He repeated it over and over again.

Does this young lady look like the worst of the worst? The answer is clearly no. Ms. Lopez Belloza is one of countless Dreamers who have great potential to make this a better country. They are not asking for a free ride; they are hard-working and determined.

Think of the odds against her as she was growing up. She came to know that she didn't have legal status in this country. Her family is a hard-working family with limited income, and the prospects of her ever getting admitted to a college were limited. Yet she was damned determined to do it, and she did. It is that kind of determination and talent and skill that should be part of this country's future. She is going to be someday, I am sure, a leader in America--a small business owner, a teacher, a doctor. I am not certain what it will be.

The vast majority of Americans, including most Republicans, agree that Dreamers like her should have a path to citizenship--to earn her way to citizenship, to work hard and prove that she is part of America's future.

This is not just the right thing to do for Dreamers and their families; it is the right thing to do for America. One study found that if DACA were rescinded, the Federal Government would lose $60 billion in tax revenue and that U.S. economic growth would shrink.

The time to pass the DREAM Act is now. That is why I am proud to announce that I will be reintroducing the DREAM Act this week on a bipartisan basis with my good friend and colleague Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska.

While I have introduced the DREAM Act in every Congress since 2001, this one is different. This is my last year in the Senate. This is my last opportunity as a Senator to make it a law.

Over the years, I have met hundreds of amazing Dreamers who are American in every sense of the word except on paper.

To those Dreamers who have been with me in this fight, I promise to do everything in my power to fight for you and your future every day that I am here. As I have said to you many times, I am not giving up on you; don't give up on me.

To Senator Murkowski, thank you. It took courage to cosponsor this bill, and I will never forget it.

Can we get to work on a bipartisan basis and agree that if we are going to keep safe borders, we also want to make sure that the right immigrants are here for our future?

Any is one of those people. Without due process, she was sent back to Honduras. Her fate is still uncertain despite a court order. But there are hundreds of thousands like her who, with enough determination, hard work, and opportunity, can make America a greater nation. She is my 150th Dreamer. I hope she is part of America for years to come.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons) and the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons) is necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons) is necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons) and the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, before he became President, a member of Congress, or even a lawyer, Abraham Lincoln was a postal worker. From 1833 to 1836, Lincoln served as the postmaster of New Salem, IL. He walked for miles delivering letters to Illinoisans, and he developed a habit of storing them in his now-famous stovepipe hat. As he traversed the prairies of Sangamon County, he learned about the State that would eventually be known as the Land of Lincoln. Although postmaster was just one of the many jobs Lincoln had during his days in New Salem, it was his first taste of civil service and his introduction to the people of Sangamon County.

But Abraham Lincoln is not the only person whose life has been shaped by the Post Office. For 250 years, the U.S. Post Office has provided essential services that connect Americans, support commerce, and strengthen the foundations of our democracy. Founded during the Second Continental Congress, even before the Declaration of Independence was signed, the Post Office played an indispensable role in the success of our young democracy. Not only was the Post Office crucial in facilitating communication between American revolutionaries, it also strengthened the ties between the 13 Original Colonies, allowing our country to develop into one cohesive Nation. After the Colonies won independence, the Post Office continued to grow, ensuring Americans anywhere could have access to the information necessary to participate in the democratic process.

But as the Post Office grew, there was one glaring gap in its services. People living in rural areas would need to venture to the nearest Post Office to access their mail, which could be located miles away. While Americans living in more populous locations had access to free home delivery for decades, rural Americans were still walking for miles to retrieve their post at the end of the 19th century. In 1896, the U.S. Post Office decided to try a new service in two counties in West Virgina, free rural home delivery. In less than a decade, this experiment was adopted nationwide, and today, millions of rural Americans count on home delivery.

This commitment to equitable, universal delivery is one that is near and dear to my heart as a Senator from Illinois. Across Illinois, especially downstate, we have many rural counties and towns that struggle to attract the attention of for-profit shipping corporations. For these communities, USPS is often the only option to receive mail and send packages. That is what separates USPS from the rest of America's shipping industry. USPS is not a company; it is a public service. Its employees are public servants. The role USPS plays in connecting Americans is one that is vital for my home State and for many others across the country.

Today, USPS delivers more mail than any other company in the world. There are more than 30,000 Post Offices that serve 169 million homes across the United States. Americans rely on the United States Postal Service to deliver their medications, Social Security checks, and other important correspondence, along with birthday cards from Grandma. The post remains a lifeline for small businesses, who often cannot afford to use large for-profit shipping corporations, as well as for rural Americans. And USPS continues to support our democracy by helping Americans send and receive their mail-in ballots for local, State, and national elections.

On October 9, the Senate passed S. Res. 337, a resolution recognizing the 250th anniversary of the Postal Service of the United States and commending its indispensable role in the success of our Nation. But any recognition of the USPS would be incomplete without acknowledging America's incredible postal workers. Continuing in the tradition of President Lincoln, postal workers ensure that through rain or snow, heatwaves and arctic blasts, Americans receive their essential mail. As we celebrate the U.S. Post Office's anniversary, I want to extend my sincere gratitude to postal workers and letter carriers, both past and present, for their essential service to Illinois and the Nation.

While much has changed since the founding of the U.S. Post Office, its role as an essential pillar of our democracy and community remains the same. Congratulations to this 250-year-old public institution, and here is to many more years of service.

Mr. President, many of us bring life experiences to the Senate Chamber, and it shapes our judgment on critical issues.

When I was first married, my wife and I were blessed with a beautiful little baby girl. I was going to law school here in Washington, DC. It turns out that our little girl had a serious, serious medical problem.

The difficulty I faced was the fact that I had no health insurance. I was a law student, and I ended up going to Children's Hospital here in Washington, DC, with my wife and our little baby girl and sitting in the charity ward, which basically was there for people who couldn't pay their medical bills and had no health insurance. We waited for the door to open and for our family name to be called out to meet, for the first time, the doctor who was going to treat my little girl.

I never felt more helpless in my life, as a father, to have that baby with that medical problem and to have no health insurance. I am sure that colored my judgment the rest of my life and my service of over 40 years in Congress.

I have always voted to give families a better chance of having health insurance. Having lived without it, I value it so much. It has been a major part of my feelings about healthcare and about the role of Congress.

And so then, 15 years ago, when President Obama, my former colleague from Illinois, was President of the United States and set out to achieve something that had never been done in the United States--to dramatically expand the coverage of health insurance to families that otherwise wouldn't qualify under the existing law or couldn't afford it--I worked hard to pass that bill. It took us a long time and a lot of effort.

I was whip of the Senate Democrats at that point, and I used to go to Harry Reid's office several times a day to talk about the next step in passing the Affordable Care Act.

The day finally came. I won't dwell on the minutia or the details of how we reached, but we did it. Unfortunately, throughout that process, we never--never--had one Republican vote of support, ever. We were fortunate to have 60 Democrats at the right moment politically to pass a bill in the U.S. Senate.

I was sorry that the Republicans didn't join us in this effort. They could have made a better bill out of it--I am sure of it--if they had joined us, but they decided not to.

And so, for the last 15 years, the Affordable Care Act has offered to millions of Americans health insurance coverage, which was unthinkable before it passed.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

There was a time when health insurance plans in the United States, before the Affordable Care Act, didn't cover mental health issues or addiction issues. You think to yourself, well, those are serious issues. They affect people's health. Why wouldn't they cover it? Because they are expensive, and they didn't want to.

But two Senators came out on the floor here--one a Democrat, Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, and the other a Republican, Pete Domenici of New Mexico--and pushed to include as a requirement, in all health insurance plans, that they cover mental illness.

I supported that. My family, like most families, has a story to tell when it comes to mental illness, and I viewed it as an issue of health, not an issue of a curse that a person has to try to outlive. So we included it. Thank goodness we did. Not only did mental illness have health insurance coverage, but

the addiction problem did as well. Just at the time, we entered into the opioid addiction, which swamped the United States and needed this kind of response in Congress. That was one thing.

The second thing, before the Affordable Care Act, if you had any history of any illness, coverage would be excluded for that illness when you got your health insurance plan. So most plans were worthless for people who came into the market looking for healthcare coverage if they had any history whatsoever. That was eliminated, and I am glad it was.

We also extended health insurance coverage for children of families to age 26. The belief was simple: When your child, your son or your daughter, graduates college and starts looking for a job, they may not have luck at the outset. They may not have a full-time job when they finally do find employment. And they probably, in those days, had no health insurance offered to them as part-time employees. So we let young people stay under their family health insurance plan until they reached the age of 26.

Those are the types of things that have been decried by many Republicans as socialism, too much government, too much regulation. But it meant that the health insurance market was actually worth something to families who otherwise were excluded from it or found it too expensive.

As I said, we passed that major legislation 15 years ago--roughly 15 years ago--at a time when not a single Republican would support it.

Now we are back into a period--and I listened closely to the Republican leader this morning--where we are asking: What are we going to do moving forward?

Here is the problem: For those people who had limited income, health insurance was beyond their reach. And so we offered a tax break--a tax credit--for people to help pay their health insurance premiums. Otherwise, they were too expensive. That health insurance tax credit helped millions of American families afford health insurance, and we moved forward.

But there came a time when the Republicans had a chance, with their own majority, to address the Affordable Care Act, and they started eliminating that health insurance credit.

As a consequence, many families--24 million, we believe, nationwide-- face the prospect that their health insurance premiums are going to be too high and increase dramatically, beyond their reach in family income.

And that is exactly what is happening. Families across America who qualify for the Affordable Care Act health insurance tax credit are learning that their health insurance premiums are going up dramatically. I receive letters and contacts from people in Illinois, which I will put in the record in just a moment here.

But Senator Thune, who is a friend and the Republican leader of the Senate, came to the floor this morning and pointed to two areas he thinks needed to be changed in the Affordable Care Act. One is whether your income level should be taken into consideration for the tax credit, and I believe it should and he does, too, I think. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but that is what I understood him to say this morning. Secondly, that there are zero premium policies that are being taken advantage of by some unethical people.

I think those are two legitimate areas of debate. I want to offer, as a Democratic Senator, my good offices and personal effort to try to fix those two problems if it means we can come together and restore tax credits for families that otherwise cannot afford their health insurance premiums. We are going to have a chance to do it.

And it was Senator Thune who created that chance. He said the Democrats could offer a basic bill to improve the system, which I am sure we will. And I hope that the Republicans may offer amendments to it or may have their own approach that we can debate leading into it. The problem is, we have precious little time. It is supposed to be done before December 12, and that is only a few days away. Some of these changes are significant. We ought to take a little time to make sure we get them right.

I am just saying, as an offer--and I hope the American people follow this closely--this Democrat, and I am sure others as well on my side of the aisle, will sit down with Senator Thune to try to address the problems that he raised this morning. They are legitimate concerns. We may see them a little differently, but let's discuss it.

Let's do something we hardly ever do in the U.S. Senate anymore: Let's legislate. Let's do it on a bipartisan basis. They don't have 60 votes on their side of the aisle, nor do we. But if we come together, we can muster 60 votes for a good change and say to millions of Americans with health insurance premiums they can't afford that there is a way out of this.

Let us extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits with some changes, as suggested, but do it for a period of time that is reasonable and gives people peace of mind. If we are concerned about the cost of living and family budgets, for goodness' sake, it starts with healthcare. Health insurance premiums can be so high, people have no choice.