Floor Statements

Mr. President, last Friday, I went to Rockford, IL, and had a roundtable discussion about healthcare. There is a lot of debate about healthcare in the Congress and certainly in Washington. What I have tried to do is to take this issue home and ask the people who actually are responsible for providing healthcare, and the people I represent, what they think about the new Republican alternative to the Affordable Care Act. What I found is that with virtually no exceptions, they are all gravely concerned that the changes that are going to be made to the healthcare system in America, which represents a dramatic portion of our economy, could have a very negative impact on the real lives of people across my State and across the Nation.

Hospital administrators were there to talk about this issue. Swedish Covenant is one of the hospitals well known and respected in the area; OSF as well, and the administrators of both of these hospitals talked about the negative impacts of cutting back Medicaid coverage.

What the Republicans are suggesting in their proposal is that the expansion of Medicaid to provide health insurance for low-income Americans would continue until 2020 and then be cut off, and, they would argue, we will make it more cost efficient. We will let the Governors come up with alternatives. Well, the Governors aren't very happy with this because they know the cost of healthcare continues to go up and they are fearful that when you try to put this all together, the net result is fewer people covered by Medicaid.

Over 600,000 people, because of ObamaCare--the Affordable Care Act-- in Illinois now have health insurance. Who are they? Well, I met Ray Romanowski. Ray, a big Polish American fellow from Chicago, is a musician, and he has made most of his income during his life doing work as a musician. Ray Romanowski, in his 60s today, has never had health insurance until now. Because of the Affordable Care Act, he qualifies for Medicaid, and because he has Medicaid--he patted his wallet and said: I finally have that card in my wallet where I can walk into a hospital or a clinic and get good treatment.

It is the first time in his life, and he is in his sixties.

Judy is a friend of mine in Southern Illinois, and she works at local motels there--in hospitality--at places where they serve breakfast to you. She gets up early in the morning. She is a hard-working lady. It is the kind of job she has had her entire life, and she never, ever had health insurance--not once. She worked 20, 30, 40 hours a week, sometimes two different jobs, but never with health insurance. Now she has it because of the Affordable Care Act, and thank goodness she does because she has been diagnosed with diabetes and she needs that kind of care.

So what happened before, when people like Ray and Judy got sick? Before the Affordable Care Act, they would show up in the hospital, go to the emergency room, and they would get treatment, but they wouldn't be able to pay for it. What happens to those expenses at hospitals, under the old way of doing things? They are passed along. The rest of us pay. Anyone who has health insurance and goes in for treatment, part of it is going to be what your treatment is or for your family; the other part is to make up the difference for charity care, uncompensated care.

Now the Republicans believe they have a new idea: Let's restrict access to Medicaid. Let's restrict the health insurance that is available to people like Ray and Judy. Well, they are still going to get sick, and they are still going to come to the hospital, and their costs are going to be passed along to others.

The Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, a neighbor from the State of Wisconsin, said that it is all about competition and choice. Well, when it came to competition and choice, Ray and Judy didn't have a chance. They just didn't make enough money. But they did get coverage under the Affordable Care Act, and they stand to see that coverage endangered, if not lost, under this new approach.

We also had representatives of the nursing association in Illinois. These are women and men who are the most respected medical providers. Just take a look and ask whether people have higher respect for doctors or whomever; it is always the nurses, No. 1, because the nurses are the ones who are there day in and day out, hour after hour, in the hospital rooms with the people we love who desperately need medical care. The nurses are opposed to this Republican replacement plan as well.

The doctors--the American Medical Association and the Illinois State Medical Society--are also opposed to it because they looked at the Republican competition and choice alternative and said that at the end of the day, fewer people will have health insurance and the costs will go up dramatically for some. We had a representative of the American Association of Retired Persons there, and they are especially opposed to it. Why? We had a provision in the Affordable Care Act which said that the disparity in premiums can never be more than 3 to 1. Well, the Republicans decided as part of their replacement to make that 5 to 1. Who is going to pay five times instead of three times the base premium? Seniors, those over the age of 55. The Republicans built this into their proposal, and AARP has come out against it.

The second thing to go is--the Affordable Care Act has really brought some savings to healthcare; we wish there were more. But that savings in healthcare is translated into 10 more years of solvency for Medicare. Medicare is a lifeline for 40 million or 50 million Americans. So we gave it 10 more years of solvency with the changes in the Affordable Care Act. Now we are waiting for a score from the Congressional Budget Office, but the early indications are we are going to lose 4 years of solvency in Medicare because the Republicans want to bring in ``competition and choice.'' It turns out that phrase is not going to be good for the future of Medicare--one of the other reasons the American Association of Retired Persons opposes the Republican proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act.

This bill will be scored this week by the Congressional Budget Office. It was interesting to watch the Sunday shows and watch the procession of Republicans calling themselves fiscal conservatives who came in and discounted any conclusions from the Congressional Budget Office. Interesting.

When we wrote the Affordable Care Act, we waited sometimes for weeks for the Congressional Budget Office to give us a score: Is this bill going to add to the deficit or reduce the deficit? We had to wait to find out. Is this bill going to cover more people with health insurance or not? We had to wait to find out. But the Republicans went ahead with their proposal without a Congressional Budget Office score, and what they have done over the weekend is downplay the credibility of an office which Democrats and Republicans have relied on for decades. It shows that they are very concerned. I think they know what they are going to find. They are afraid it is going to add to the deficit and it is going to dramatically reduce health insurance for Americans.

There are some who estimate that 10 million to 15 million Americans could lose their health insurance. That is half of all of those in the past 6 years who have gained health insurance. It would also increase out-of-pocket healthcare costs for the average person--the Republican plan would--by $1,500 a year, seniors paying approximately $5,000 more a year because of that 5-to-1 premium change that I mentioned earlier. It would basically end Medicaid as we know it.

The Governors are telling us that this is a bad idea because it would shift the cost onto the families and to the Governors to find ways to save money.

It would shorten the solvency of the Medicare trust fund by 4 years.

It would allow insurers to once again charge older people significantly more than younger people for health insurance.

And--Republicans added a little grace note there--they defund Planned Parenthood and cut 12 percent of the funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here is something my colleagues may not know. Because of family planning efforts in America, in the last 30 years, we are now at the lowest point in teenage pregnancies and the lowest point in unplanned pregnancies. So information and education are paying off to reduce unwanted pregnancies, unplanned pregnancies, and, I might add, the likelihood of abortions. So now, as the Republicans say we are going to defund Planned Parenthood for hundreds of thousands of women, that means stopping their access to the healthcare they trust across America. So in the name of choice, the Republican plan reduces choices for women when it comes to healthcare by defunding Planned Parenthood.

To top it off, the bill cuts taxes for the very wealthy. Those making over $1 million a year in income get a $50,000 tax cut because of the Republican proposal for this new health insurance approach. If you happen to be in the wealthiest 0.1 percent of Americans, the average tax cut is nearly $200,000. They just can't help themselves.

We put together a revenue source so that we could dramatically expand health insurance coverage in this Nation. We now have the lowest percentage of uninsured Americans in our history, and the Republicans-- because they are opposed to it--have said: We are going to cut the taxes that help people pay for their health insurance, and we are going to reduce the options that are available to them. So for Americans, it means less coverage, higher costs.

We will see when it goes to the House of Representatives on the floor. The most conservative Republicans don't like it; certainly the Democrats don't like it. The question is whether Speaker Paul Ryan has enough votes. It has united America. The Republican approach has united America, in opposition. I don't know of a major health-providing group that supports it--not one; not doctors, not hospitals, not clinics, not AARP. Patients' groups all say the same thing about TrumpCare.

The American Medical Association said:

We cannot support the [bill] as drafted because of the

expected decline in health insurance coverage and the

potential harm it would cause to vulnerable patient

populations.

The American Medical Association goes on to say:

We are concerned with the proposed rollback of the Medicaid

expansion. . . . Medicaid expansion has proven highly

successful in providing coverage for lower income

individuals.

The AMA cannot support provisions that repeal the

Prevention and Public Health Trust Fund . . . and we cannot

support provisions that prevent Americans from choosing to

receive care from physicians and qualified providers . . .

[including] those associated with Planned Parenthood

affiliates.

The American Medical Association is saying to the Republicans that they reject their proposal for healthcare and is warning them not to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood.

What does the American Hospital Association say?

We cannot support the [bill]--

the Republican bill--

in its current form.

In addition to the lack of a CBO score, we have some

additional policy concerns with the proposal.

For example, it appears that the effort to restructure the

Medicaid program will have the effect of making significant

reductions in a program that provides services to our most

vulnerable populations.

That is from the American Hospital Association. They estimate that in our State of Illinois, we could lose up to 90,000 jobs by repealing the Affordable Care Act without a suitable substitute--90,000 jobs in my State. President Trump made a lot of news when he went to visit one of the manufacturing companies after he was first

sworn in and saved a couple hundred jobs. Well, I am glad he saved those jobs. I hope he saves a lot more. But if he is going to eliminate 90,000 jobs in my State--people who work at hospitals, some of the best-paying jobs in downstate communities--for goodness sake, that isn't hiring American. It isn't really focusing on creating jobs in this country. It is just the opposite.

Here is what the American Nurses Association says about the Republican bill:

[The bill] threatens health care affordability, access, and

delivery for individuals across the nation. . . . [T]he bill

changes Medicaid to a per capita cap funding model,

eliminates the Prevention . . . Fund, restricts millions of

women from access to critical health services, repeals income

based subsidies that millions of people rely on. These

changes in no way will improve care for the American people.

What about the U.S. Conference of Mayors? Here is what they said:

States will be forced to end coverage and eliminate health

care for low-income seniors, people with disabilities,

children, and working families.

The GOP plan is bad for cities, bad for people who live in

cities and bad for people who provide healthcare in

cities.

It is interesting. We had a representative at a Rockford meeting of the disabled community. They are scared to death of this Republican alternative because these folks many times are in serious need of very expensive healthcare. If they are pushed off into these so-called money-saving insurance plans that really are empty inside and don't provide coverage, it could be devastating to these families. They have been through it over and over.

The American Association of Retired Persons said:

This Republican bill would weaken Medicare's fiscal

sustainability, dramatically increase health care costs for

Americans aged 50-64 and put at risk the health care of

millions of children and adults with disabilities, and poor

seniors who depend on the Medicaid program for long-term

services and supports.

It could hasten the insolvency of Medicare by up to 4 years

and diminish Medicare's ability to pay for services in the

future.

I remember when Candidate Donald Trump was telling us he would do nothing to hurt Medicare. Now the first major piece of legislation that comes up threatens the solvency of Medicare.

Here is what the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare said:

[We] oppose the . . . bill to repeal the Affordable Care

Act because it would weaken Medicare's solvency . . .

threaten access to Medicaid long-term care benefits, and

require ``near seniors'' to pay more for less health care

coverage. The . . . bill puts seniors and people with

disabilities at significant risk of ending up uninsured or

losing access to needed care.

In my own State, the Illinois Health and Hospital Association says:

[This organization] has serious concerns with the direction

of the [bill]. It would cut coverage for hundreds of

thousands of Illinoisans and impose a cap on . . . federal

Medicaid funding--our state is unable to absorb funding cuts

without impacting healthcare for all patients.

I was surprised last week when the Republican Governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner, said of the Republican plan: ``My first blush read is Illinois won't do very well under the changes that they're recommending.''

He is very careful not to say things about Federal legislation. This he understands: Cutting back on Medicaid is going to impose a new debt on our State and reduce coverage for hundreds of thousands of people in our State.

So we said to the Republicans: You want to repeal the Affordable Care Act; you have been dead set on doing this for 6 years. Please come up with an alternative that at least expands the coverage of health insurance and makes it more affordable. They tried, and they failed. But now they are going to push it through as a matter of showing political purity. They don't care that there is not a single group of medical providers in this country who support their plan. They obviously don't care that the American Association of Retired Persons believes this is not good for seniors across the board.

I heard the Director of OMB say: Oh, that group--they are going to end up opposing this and then they are going to ask people to donate. Well, it is true that they live on donations. But they are taking a bold position in saying that the Republican approach is going to hurt seniors across America. Talk to the disability community, and you will hear exactly the same thing. Talk to the advocates for children.

I am really looking for the first group to stand up and say that this new Republican approach is good for this country or good for people when it comes to the cost or availability of health insurance, and I haven't found it yet. I don't know what they are waiting on, but they can't produce it.

What we are looking for is just the opposite. If you will take repeal of the Affordable Care Act off the table, I will pull up a chair. It is not perfect, it can be improved, and I am ready to sit down and do it on a bipartisan basis. But it is ``our way or the highway'' when it comes to the Republican majority on this bill. I hope we can do better. I think the American people expect us to do better.

At the end of the day, they want a better healthcare system, not one that is worse--not one that supposedly gives them ``competition and choice,'' yet they have less coverage in their insurance policies and end up paying more for it.

I announce that the Senator from Michigan (Mr. Peters) is necessarily absent.

Mr. President, if I could speak for 5 minutes----

Mr. President, I just want to comment very briefly on the comments of the Republican leader.

It was interesting when he said the courtesies that were extended to President Clinton and President Obama when it came to Supreme Court nominees; he left out 1 year--last year.

Last year, when there was a vacancy on the Supreme Court when Antonin Scalia passed away and President Obama sent the nomination of Merrick Garland to the floor of the Senate, it was refused by the Republican leader to even give him a hearing, let alone a vote. So there was an omission in his call for courtesy when it comes to Nominee Gorsuch, a very grievous omission from the point of American history.

For the first time in the history of the U.S. Senate--for the first time--Republican leaders in the Senate refused to give a hearing and a vote to a Supreme Court nominee sent by President Obama. Many of us came to this floor pleading that we follow tradition and the Constitution. I am going to stand by that. Even though I think Merrick Garland was treated poorly by the Republican majority, I believe that Neil Gorsuch is entitled to a hearing and a vote. I made that argument before; I will make it again.

Republican Healthcare Bill

Mr. President, the second point I want to make, and very briefly, is that we now have seen the Affordable Care Act repeal that has been brought forward by the Republicans in the House. We still do not know its fiscal impact. The Congressional Budget Office, which traditionally scores legislation, tells us the impact it will have both on the deficit as well as on the American economy. In this case, we believe we will learn as early as next week what that impact will be. There are several things we know for certain. The Republican approach to changing the Affordable Care Act is going to reduce health insurance coverage in America, and it is going to raise the cost.

The cost, incidentally, will be especially hurtful to those over the age of 55. If you are a senior citizen or over the age of 55, this Republican bill says that your health insurance premiums can be substantially increased. There is a limit in the current law that you can't have a disparity of more than 3 to 1 in premiums between people of different age groups. That is changed by the Republican bill to say that older people can be charged up to five times

the premiums that are being paid by those in younger groups. That is substantial.

Secondly, it is painful and hurtful to Medicare. Don't take my word for it; the American Association of Retired Persons has come out against the Republican healthcare plan, saying that it is going to reduce the number of years of solvency for the Medicare trust fund. That is not a positive thing; it is a negative thing for the tens of millions of Americans who count on Medicare.

We also know that when it comes to this bill, there are provisions in here which are inconsistent with our goal to increase coverage across America. My Republican Governor in Illinois, who has been very careful to be critical of Republicans in Washington, came out this week and said that the elimination of Medicaid coverage and reduction in Medicaid coverage would create a budget hardship in our State.

I might add that it will be a hardship on the thousands of people in Illinois who rely on Medicaid to provide for their medical expenses. That includes not only the children and mothers in lower income groups but, substantially, seniors who are in nursing homes who have no place to turn. They are living on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. That is how they survive. Reducing the Medicaid coverage is a danger to them when it comes to continuing on in a safe and healthy environment.

In addition to that, we know that Medicaid for many low-income Illinoisans and low-income Americans is the only health insurance they have. Many who work hard every day don't make enough money to buy health insurance, and their employer doesn't provide it. Medicaid came to their rescue under the Affordable Care Act, and it is going to be severely restricted. That is why my Republican Governor has come out against this Republican healthcare bill, and many others feel the same.

When we take a look at this bill when it comes over here--first, I plead with my colleagues, don't rush it through. Let's take the time to look at it carefully. It will affect the healthcare of millions of Americans. Second, let's hold to the standard that whatever changes we make will provide more healthcare protection in America and make a serious effort at reducing cost. We can only do that if we have the time to honestly debate it on a bipartisan basis.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Missouri for giving me this opportunity.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I come to the floor in opposition to the resolution to repeal regulations that help States and districts implement important provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act.

In the last Congress, Members of Congress did what seems nearly unimaginable today. We passed a bipartisan bill, the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, to fix No Child Left Behind. After 14 years, Democrats and Republicans in both Chambers came together on compromise legislation to reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). It gave States and districts flexibility to develop their own plans for holding schools accountable and encouraging improvements. At the same time, it included important Federal guardrails--including through regulatory authority--to fulfill the civil rights legacy of the original ESEA, ensuring that all students have equal access to high-quality public education.

Today, we should be focusing on the implementation of ESSA and providing critical resources to students, teachers, and schools. But, instead, we are on the Senate floor debating a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval that would gut the regulations that help maintain the important balance that ESSA strikes between local control and making sure that States are held accountable for educating our students.

After listening to teachers, parents, principals, and superintendents, the Obama Administration issued the final accountability regulation last November. Among other things, this regulation provides important information to help States draft their State plans and develop accountability systems to determine whether children are actually learning. It gives more flexibility to States to develop academic standards, to measure student achievement, and to determine intervention strategies when subgroups of students are consistently underperforming. It also lays out how States should comply with important provisions of the law, including identifying low- performing schools for improvement.

Eliminating this regulation would roll back the Federal role in education that has been in place for more than 50 years. In 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, it created an extraordinary opportunity for our Nation to make an even deeper commitment to civil rights. It ensured that all children, regardless of their ZIP Code, background, disability, or family wealth, would have a right to a quality education. Repealing this regulation would overturn 52 years of progress. We should be committing ourselves to advancing equity in education, but instead Republicans are using a political tool--the Congressional Review Act-- to remove important Federal protections for students. I believe it is a betrayal of the bipartisan framework that underpins ESSA.

Striking this rule could also send States into chaos. Many States, including my home State of Illinois, have prepared their State plans to align with this regulation. Without the guidance and clarity that this regulation provides, states will not have the support they need to successfully implement ESSA. It could ultimately lead to greater liability for States and districts that are responsible for complying with the law but are left to interpret how to implement the law for themselves. If this partisan CRA effort is successful, the Education Department will not be able to promulgate new rules related to these issues. Instead of policy that is subject to the public scrutiny and review of the formal Federal rulemaking process, repealing this rule gives incredible latitude to an administration that wants to dismantle public education.

When I voted for ESSA, it was with the understanding that the law allowed the Secretary of Education to promulgate rules to implement the bill's accountability provisions. Gutting these regulations swings the pendulum way too far in the direction of local control. Giving States more control with a blank check from the Federal Government is not responsible Federal policy. We should maintain critical Federal guardrails to hold States accountable for educating our children. We should uphold our vital role in protecting the civil rights of all children. Anything less says to our children that they don't matter. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting against this resolution.

Mr President, I am proud to introduce the Fairness in Federal Disaster Declarations Act today, together with my colleague Senator Duckworth, to try to bring some transparency and fairness into FEMA's disaster declaration process.

The inspiration for this bill was a tragic one. On February 29, 2012, a category F-4 tornado tore through southeastern Illinois, causing major damage in the towns of Harrisburg and Ridgway. Eight people in Harrisburg died in that event and 15 people were killed in total. Winds reached 175 miles per hour. It is not too much of a stretch to say these two small towns were almost wiped off the map.

And just last week, on February 28, 2017, another tragedy struck the small towns of Ottawa and Naplate after a category F-3 tornado tore through North Central Illinois. Two people in Ottawa died in last week's storm and at least 50 homes were damaged or destroyed.

Requests for Federal assistance after a disaster are made by the Governor of each State based on State emergency management damage assessments. In the case of the Harrisburg and Ridgway tornado, the Governor's request for a Federal emergency declaration for individual assistance was denied, as was the State's appeal of that decision. With that denial, individuals whose homes or properties were damaged were precluded from direct Federal help.

When I asked FEMA why it denied the Governor's request, I was told that the disaster did not meet or exceed the State's per capita figure. Currently, FEMA multiplies the number of people in a State by $1.43 to determine a threshold of the amount of damage a State would incur to be considered for Federal assistance. In Illinois, that figure is more than $18 million. In other words, because Illinois is a highly populous State, it is presumed it can absorb the costs of cleanup and recovery from disasters up to more than $18 million.

From 2002 to 2012, Illinois was denied Federal disaster assistance seven times. Texas was denied 13 times. Florida was denied Federal disaster assistance eight times during that period, and California, New Jersey, and New York were each denied four times.

FEMA's formula does not work for large, populous States, particularly those with a concentrated urban area, like Illinois.

Illinois ran into this issue again in November 2013 when tornadoes swept through the State. That time, six people were killed and whole neighborhoods were nearly destroyed. The cities of Washington, Gifford, and New Minden, Illinois, experienced some of the worst tornado damage I have ever seen. Their infrastructure was decimated, but because Illinois did not meet one of FEMA's criteria, we were denied Federal public assistance.

In the case of last week's tornado in Ottawa and Naplate, Illinois, may not even be able to request federal help because damage assessments are too low to reach anything close to FEMA's per capita requirement. But for these small towns, covering losses and cleaning up damage of this magnitude can put a real strain on the community.

The Fairness in Federal Disaster Declaration seeks to improve the disaster analysis by assigning a value to each of the factors FEMA must consider when determining whether Federal disaster assistance will be made available. When it comes to individual assistance--funding to help people repair and rebuild their homes--the breakdown would be as follows:

Concentration of damages--the density of damage in an individual community--would be considered 20 percent of the analysis. Trauma--the loss of life and injuries and the disruption of normal community functions--would be 20 percent. Special Populations--including the age and income of the residents, the amount of home ownership, etc.--would comprise 20 percent. Voluntary agency assistance--a consideration of what the volunteer and charitable groups are providing--would make up 5 percent. The amount of Insurance coverage--20 percent. And average amount of individual assistance by State, which includes the per capita analysis, would make up 5 percent of the analysis.

The bill also would add a seventh consideration to FEMA's metrics-- the economics of the area, which will receive 10 percent consideration. This includes factors such as the local assessable tax base, the median income as it compares to that of the State, and the poverty rate as it compares to that of the State.

For Federal public assistance, the breakdown would be similar, with a greater emphasis placed on the localized impacts of the disaster, which would warrant 40 percent of the analysis.

It is reasonable that FEMA should take into consideration the size of the State requesting assistance, but current regulations penalize large States. Assigning values to the factors will help ensure that the damage to a specific community weighs more than a State's population.

Illinois is a geographically large State with a concentrated urban area. And downstate communities are being punished for it.

If the cities of Ottawa and Naplate, Washington and Gifford, and Harrisburg and Ridgway cannot qualify under FEMA's current criteria for Federal assistance, something is wrong. The way FEMA evaluates whether to declare an area Federal disaster is not effective. It is working against small communities in States with large populations.

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

Mr. President, today, Senator Wicker of Mississippi and I are reintroducing the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Program Act. This bill, named for a mentor of mine--the late Senator from Illinois, embodies a vision Paul Simon believed in throughout his life: a vision centered on our country's need for a culturally aware, and globally knowledgeable population and workforce.

Senator Simon saw these characteristics as essential to our country's economy, society, and national security. He believed that by building meaningful relationships with people around the world, America would grow even stronger as a nation. In his words, ``America's incompetence in foreign languages and cultural awareness jeopardizes our Nation's future in global affairs. This lack of global perspective damages America's ability to compete in world markets. The more our country becomes competent in foreign languages and cultures, the more enhanced our foreign policy decisions will become.''

He also believed that to truly be educated, our students needed more than a minimal understanding of the world around them. To be truly educated, they need to immerse themselves in the beliefs, customs, language, and environment of a culture other than their own. I share these beliefs with Senator Simon and many Republicans in this Chamber share them as well.

At a time when there are calls from some to shut out immigrants and refugees and pull away from other parts of the world, these beliefs are more important than ever. We need to continue to give our young people the opportunity to interact with people from all over the world, so they can develop their own informed opinions and beliefs.

Undergraduate study abroad programs are a popular source for this type of engagement. Unfortunately, far too few students take advantage or have the means to take advantage of this opportunity. Annually, less than 2 percent of undergraduate students participate in study abroad.

Those who do study abroad don't reflect the incredible diversity of our postsecondary institutions. Minority students, first-generation college students, community college students, and students with disabilities are significantly underrepresented in the study abroad population. These students miss out on the valuable personal and educational growth that comes from a study abroad experience, including interacting with other cultures, developing foreign language skills, and expanding international knowledge through firsthand experience.

We also know that those who currently study abroad do so mostly in highly developed countries. In fact, over 50 percent of students who study abroad each year do so in Europe. Increasing the diversity of study abroad destinations to include countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Latin America will help American students develop a global perspective and build the insight and skills needed to better understand the global challenges of the 21st century.

In 2004, Congress took the first step towards expanding study abroad when it authorized the Commission on Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program to provide recommendations to Congress and the President on expanding study abroad programs.

The Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Program Act combines the vision of Senator Simon with the recommendations of the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Commission. It establishes a competitive grant program for institutions of higher education to encourage the sustainable expansion of study abroad opportunities for students in the United States.

Over the next 10 years, this grant program aims to increase the number of undergraduate students stud g abroad each year to one million students. It also emphasizes increasing opportunities for nontraditional students, minority students, and students with disabilities so that the demographics of students who study abroad more closely reflect the population of current undergraduate students.

This bill also focuses on getting students to study abroad in nontraditional destinations particularly in developing countries. We need to send more students to developing nations because these are the places that America needs to better understand. This legislation takes important steps toward expanding and diversifying participation in study abroad.

Senator Wicker and I are pleased to be joined today in introducing this bill by Senators Reed, Cochran, Merkley, and Brown. I am also pleased that several organizations have endorsed this bill including the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the Association of International Educators, the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, and the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.

In today's increasingly interconnected world, study abroad participation is an important element of a meaningful undergraduate education. Expanded access to study abroad opportunities is necessary to prepare the next generation of Americans with the global knowledge and skills needed to succeed. I hope other colleagues will join us in that effort.

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

Mr President, I am proud to introduce the Fairness in Federal Disaster Declarations Act today, together with my colleague Senator Duckworth, to try to bring some transparency and fairness into FEMA's disaster declaration process.

The inspiration for this bill was a tragic one. On February 29, 2012, a category F-4 tornado tore through southeastern Illinois, causing major damage in the towns of Harrisburg and Ridgway. Eight people in Harrisburg died in that event and 15 people were killed in total. Winds reached 175 miles per hour. It is not too much of a stretch to say these two small towns were almost wiped off the map.

And just last week, on February 28, 2017, another tragedy struck the small towns of Ottawa and Naplate after a category F-3 tornado tore through North Central Illinois. Two people in Ottawa died in last week's storm and at least 50 homes were damaged or destroyed.

Requests for Federal assistance after a disaster are made by the Governor of each State based on State emergency management damage assessments. In the case of the Harrisburg and Ridgway tornado, the Governor's request for a Federal emergency declaration for individual assistance was denied, as was the State's appeal of that decision. With that denial, individuals whose homes or properties were damaged were precluded from direct Federal help.

When I asked FEMA why it denied the Governor's request, I was told that the disaster did not meet or exceed the State's per capita figure. Currently, FEMA multiplies the number of people in a State by $1.43 to determine a threshold of the amount of damage a State would incur to be considered for Federal assistance. In Illinois, that figure is more than $18 million. In other words, because Illinois is a highly populous State, it is presumed it can absorb the costs of cleanup and recovery from disasters up to more than $18 million.

From 2002 to 2012, Illinois was denied Federal disaster assistance seven times. Texas was denied 13 times. Florida was denied Federal disaster assistance eight times during that period, and California, New Jersey, and New York were each denied four times.

FEMA's formula does not work for large, populous States, particularly those with a concentrated urban area, like Illinois.

Illinois ran into this issue again in November 2013 when tornadoes swept through the State. That time, six people were killed and whole neighborhoods were nearly destroyed. The cities of Washington, Gifford, and New Minden, Illinois, experienced some of the worst tornado damage I have ever seen. Their infrastructure was decimated, but because Illinois did not meet one of FEMA's criteria, we were denied Federal public assistance.

In the case of last week's tornado in Ottawa and Naplate, Illinois, may not even be able to request federal help because damage assessments are too low to reach anything close to FEMA's per capita requirement. But for these small towns, covering losses and cleaning up damage of this magnitude can put a real strain on the community.

The Fairness in Federal Disaster Declaration seeks to improve the disaster analysis by assigning a value to each of the factors FEMA must consider when determining whether Federal disaster assistance will be made available. When it comes to individual assistance--funding to help people repair and rebuild their homes--the breakdown would be as follows:

Concentration of damages--the density of damage in an individual community--would be considered 20 percent of the analysis. Trauma--the loss of life and injuries and the disruption of normal community functions--would be 20 percent. Special Populations--including the age and income of the residents, the amount of home ownership, etc.--would comprise 20 percent. Voluntary agency assistance--a consideration of what the volunteer and charitable groups are providing--would make up 5 percent. The amount of Insurance coverage--20 percent. And average amount of individual assistance by State, which includes the per capita analysis, would make up 5 percent of the analysis.

The bill also would add a seventh consideration to FEMA's metrics-- the economics of the area, which will receive 10 percent consideration. This includes factors such as the local assessable tax base, the median income as it compares to that of the State, and the poverty rate as it compares to that of the State.

For Federal public assistance, the breakdown would be similar, with a greater emphasis placed on the localized impacts of the disaster, which would warrant 40 percent of the analysis.

It is reasonable that FEMA should take into consideration the size of the State requesting assistance, but current regulations penalize large States. Assigning values to the factors will help ensure that the damage to a specific community weighs more than a State's population.

Illinois is a geographically large State with a concentrated urban area. And downstate communities are being punished for it.

If the cities of Ottawa and Naplate, Washington and Gifford, and Harrisburg and Ridgway cannot qualify under FEMA's current criteria for Federal assistance, something is wrong. The way FEMA evaluates whether to declare an area Federal disaster is not effective. It is working against small communities in States with large populations.

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

Mr. President, today, Senator Wicker of Mississippi and I are reintroducing the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Program Act. This bill, named for a mentor of mine--the late Senator from Illinois, embodies a vision Paul Simon believed in throughout his life: a vision centered on our country's need for a culturally aware, and globally knowledgeable population and workforce.

Senator Simon saw these characteristics as essential to our country's economy, society, and national security. He believed that by building meaningful relationships with people around the world, America would grow even stronger as a nation. In his words, ``America's incompetence in foreign languages and cultural awareness jeopardizes our Nation's future in global affairs. This lack of global perspective damages America's ability to compete in world markets. The more our country becomes competent in foreign languages and cultures, the more enhanced our foreign policy decisions will become.''

He also believed that to truly be educated, our students needed more than a minimal understanding of the world around them. To be truly educated, they need to immerse themselves in the beliefs, customs, language, and environment of a culture other than their own. I share these beliefs with Senator Simon and many Republicans in this Chamber share them as well.

At a time when there are calls from some to shut out immigrants and refugees and pull away from other parts of the world, these beliefs are more important than ever. We need to continue to give our young people the opportunity to interact with people from all over the world, so they can develop their own informed opinions and beliefs.

Undergraduate study abroad programs are a popular source for this type of engagement. Unfortunately, far too few students take advantage or have the means to take advantage of this opportunity. Annually, less than 2 percent of undergraduate students participate in study abroad.

Those who do study abroad don't reflect the incredible diversity of our postsecondary institutions. Minority students, first-generation college students, community college students, and students with disabilities are significantly underrepresented in the study abroad population. These students miss out on the valuable personal and educational growth that comes from a study abroad experience, including interacting with other cultures, developing foreign language skills, and expanding international knowledge through firsthand experience.

We also know that those who currently study abroad do so mostly in highly developed countries. In fact, over 50 percent of students who study abroad each year do so in Europe. Increasing the diversity of study abroad destinations to include countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Latin America will help American students develop a global perspective and build the insight and skills needed to better understand the global challenges of the 21st century.

In 2004, Congress took the first step towards expanding study abroad when it authorized the Commission on Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program to provide recommendations to Congress and the President on expanding study abroad programs.

The Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Program Act combines the vision of Senator Simon with the recommendations of the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Commission. It establishes a competitive grant program for institutions of higher education to encourage the sustainable expansion of study abroad opportunities for students in the United States.

Over the next 10 years, this grant program aims to increase the number of undergraduate students stud g abroad each year to one million students. It also emphasizes increasing opportunities for nontraditional students, minority students, and students with disabilities so that the demographics of students who study abroad more closely reflect the population of current undergraduate students.

This bill also focuses on getting students to study abroad in nontraditional destinations particularly in developing countries. We need to send more students to developing nations because these are the places that America needs to better understand. This legislation takes important steps toward expanding and diversifying participation in study abroad.

Senator Wicker and I are pleased to be joined today in introducing this bill by Senators Reed, Cochran, Merkley, and Brown. I am also pleased that several organizations have endorsed this bill including the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the Association of International Educators, the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, and the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.

In today's increasingly interconnected world, study abroad participation is an important element of a meaningful undergraduate education. Expanded access to study abroad opportunities is necessary to prepare the next generation of Americans with the global knowledge and skills needed to succeed. I hope other colleagues will join us in that effort.

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 order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, in recent weeks, we have seen an astonishing series of revelations about Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 election in support of the Donald Trump campaign. Last week, the Washington Post reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with the Russian Ambassador in July and September during the campaign. Yet, during his confirmation hearing, the Attorney General said under oath: ``I did not have communications with the Russians.''

Last Thursday, the Attorney General announced he would partially recuse himself from any investigation into the Presidential campaign. I note that this was a partial recusal when it comes to investigations into Russia's influence on President Trump and his circle of advisers and associates. The scope of the recusal is still unclear. For example, Attorney General Sessions does not even appear to believe that his own meeting with the Russian Ambassador on September 8, 2016, was related to the campaign. The scope of his recusal will need to be clarified.

We also continue to learn of previously undisclosed communications between the Russians and President Trump's inner circle. For example, we learned last week that Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, had met in December with the Russian Ambassador in Trump Tower, along with the President's National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, who resigned on February 13. People across America are wondering when the next shoe will drop.

It is becoming clear that the President is desperate to change the headlines from these Russian revelations--so desperate, in fact, that in a series of tweets on Saturday morning, President Trump claimed that President Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower in an act President Trump described as ``McCarthyism'' and ``Nixon/Watergate.'' Well, President Trump's tweets again made news but not in the way he had hoped. It quickly became clear that President Trump has no evidence to back up his claims. In fact, it appeared he got his information not from America's law enforcement or intelligence agencies but from rightwing talk radio.

On Sunday, the former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, denied the President's claims, and the Director of the FBI, James Comey, took an extraordinary step of calling on the Justice Department to publicly deny the President's claims. Even Republicans like House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz and Trey Gowdy, chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, said they had not seen any evidence that would support what President Trump tweeted. Nonetheless, the President's spokespeople doubled down, saying that the President does not accept the contention of the FBI Director and he stands by his tweets.

Let's be clear. President Trump is playing games with the credibility of his Presidency. Donald Trump is destroying the credibility of the Office of the President 140 characters at a time. If President Trump had consulted with his adviser--any credible adviser--prior to his tweets, he would have learned something that is crucial, and it is as follows: The President of the United States does not have the authority to order a wiretap. Instead, such a wiretap can be granted upon a finding by a court that there is probable cause to believe the target has committed a crime or is an agent of a foreign power.

Clearly, there are more revelations to come. The only question: How long is it going to take? How much damage will be done to the credibility of the Office of the President and America in the process?

These recent events confirm yet again the need for an independent, transparent, bipartisan commission led by Americans of unimpeachable integrity to get to the bottom of this Russian attack on the United States. Russia attacked our democracy. We need to fully understand what happened. We certainly need to prevent it from happening in the next election or ever again.

This week, a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll found that Americans, by a margin of 58 percent to 35 percent, believe an outside independent investigation is needed into Russian involvement in our election. It is worthy of note that just a few weeks ago, only 30-something percent of the American people were aware of this controversy with Russia. Now over 55 percent of people want an independent investigation. America is listening.

We also need the Justice Department and the FBI to proceed with a credible, impartial investigation to determine if there may have been any criminal conduct involved.

Yesterday, the President's nominee for Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. If confirmed, Mr. Rosenstein would oversee any Justice Department investigation into the Trump administration's Russian connections after Attorney General Sessions has partially recused himself. So I pressed Mr. Rosenstein to clarify the scope of Attorney General Sessions' recusal commitment. I also asked, as did Senator Feinstein, whether Mr. Rosenstein had read the January 6 Intelligence Community assessment into Russian election interference. I cannot explain it, but in 2 months Mr. Rosenstein had not read this 15-page, unclassified report that is available on the internet. It focuses on the major issue he will face initially as Deputy Attorney General, and he told us he had not read it.

Let me add that I respect Rod Rosenstein. He served as U.S. attorney in Maryland, appointed first under a Republican President and held over under a Democratic President, and that says a lot about his professionalism as a prosecutor, his reputation, and his integrity. It is hard for me to believe that he could come before a hearing, which he knew would focus on the need for a special prosecutor to look into this Russian interference, and not have been briefed to read the 15-page public report that summarizes the conclusions of all of America's intelligence agencies when it comes to this Russian interference.

I am sure he is an excellent lawyer who wouldn't enter a courtroom or stand before a judge or jury without complete preparation to the best of his ability, but yesterday, time and again, he told us he didn't take the time to read this report. I urge him to do so as quickly as possible, and when he reads it, he will see that our intelligence agencies are unequivocal in their statement that Vladimir Putin was setting out to elect Donald Trump and to defeat Hillary Clinton. This is not a report from the Democratic National Committee; it is a report from our intelligence agencies. And whomever Putin was trying to help, that is secondary to the fact that he was hacking into the internet, disclosing materials, and trying to become a material player in our Presidential election.

Mr. President, 3 weeks ago, I went to visit Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine. They are watching this carefully because they have been the victims of Vladimir Putin and Russia's attempts to interfere in their elections, and now they hear the United States has been victimized by Putin, as well.

One of the scholars in Poland asked me what I thought was a very clear question, and I can't answer. He said: If

the United States will not take the interference of Putin in your election seriously, how can the people of Poland believe you will take your NATO commitment to protect us from Putin seriously? Important question. Valid question.

There are exceptions on the Republican side of the aisle, and I would like to point out one of them. My friend, my colleague, and the chairman of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of Appropriations, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, made an extraordinarily forthright statement yesterday about the need for an investigation into this Russian interference. Thank goodness he is stepping away from party loyalty and stepping up when it comes to defending this Nation. I salute my Republican colleague for his leadership on this issue.

It is important to step back from the daily dysfunction we have when it comes to the Russian investigation and the White House and lack of governing and remember what is really at stake.

Five months ago, our intelligence services disclosed evidence that a foreign adversary--one ruled by a dictatorial former Communist KGB agent--was trying to help its preferred candidate in the U.S. Presidential election. Think about that for a moment. An adversary of the United States--a country which has imprisoned millions of Europeans in the Communist system for almost half a century and which today rigs elections and silences or murders members of the media and opposition-- committed what I believe is akin to a cyber act of war against America in trying to elect someone they saw as more sympathetic to their interests.

Since those early reports, we have been provided with damning evidence by our intelligence agencies on the depth and sophistication of this operation--so favorable to its nefarious goal that it had Russian intelligence operatives boastfully celebrating after the outcome of the election.

We also know that members of President Trump's campaign met with those thought to be Russian intelligence; had suspiciously timed communications with the Russian Government just after the Obama administration placed sanctions on Russia; and in the case of top Trump advisers Michael Flynn and Jeff Sessions, refused to disclose those meetings, both in public and in one case to the Vice President and in another case to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

No candidate would or at least should want help from a foreign dictator to help win political office in the United States. So in a situation like this, the response is obvious: Help in any way possible to clear suspicions and concerns. Go forward and serve the American people with an investigation. It seems so obvious.

Leon Panetta was on one of the Sunday morning talk shows. Leon Panetta is a friend. I served with him in the House of Representatives. He was the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, President Clinton. He served as Secretary of Defense. He headed up the Central Intelligence Agency. He is an extraordinarily gifted and well- thought-of person who has a record of public service that is enviable. He was asked about what the Trump White House should do about this allegation of Russian interference in the election and the suggestion that they might have been complicit.

He said: Get out in front.

The President of the United States should say: I have nothing to hide, and we will fully cooperate with an independent commission to get to the bottom of what happened in that election. But instead, what do we have? Fanciful--in fact, patently false--tweets by the President, alleging a wiretap by the former President. President Trump, if he has nothing to hide, should help us clear this up once and for all.

To my Republican colleagues, so many patriots and champions of American national security, it is time for more to join Senator Graham and others to step up and speak out even on the floor of the Senate about this situation.

Each one of us in the Senate swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against enemies foreign and domestic. Clearly, the Russian attack is a call for all of us--of both political parties--to step up. This issue is not going to go away. We are going to continue to pursue the truth.

Nomination of Seema Verma and the Republican Healthcare Bill

Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak about the recently released Republican healthcare repeal bill and to speak on the nomination of Seema Verma to serve as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

CMS is an agency touching the lives of 125 million people, and 34 percent of Americans receive their health insurance under one of the three Federal programs run by that agency--Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program. These programs are vital to the health and well-being of seniors, children, persons with disabilities, and low-income families. Yet, with those vows to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Trump, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, and congressional Republicans are sadly attempting to gut the Medicaid program and to jeopardize the future of Medicare.

The head of CMS should be someone who believes in these core programs and is willing to fight to preserve them. Instead, Ms. Seema Verma's record--as well as comments she made during her confirmation hearing-- indicates she is more than willing to take dramatic steps to force people to lose their health insurance or dramatically increase out-of- pocket costs.

From her refusal to disavow efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act to her willingness to cut the Medicaid Program, I do not believe Ms. Verma is the right person for this job.

When it comes to the Affordable Care Act, our constituents-- Republicans, Democrats, Independents--are angry and frightened about what the Trump administration and congressional Republicans might do to healthcare. Based on what has finally been released, they have good reason.

In over 2 months, Republican leaders in Washington have taken numerous steps to change and even sabotage our healthcare system, jeopardizing patient access to care and throwing the system into chaos.

Before President Trump took office, congressional Republicans rammed through a budget bill, laying the groundwork for a quick, silent repeal of the Affordable Care Act, despite the fact that they had no replacement. Then, on his first day in office, the President signed an Executive order to weaken the Affordable Care Act, instructing Federal agencies to stop doing their job under the law. The President then acted hastily to stop Federal outreach efforts--TV ads, radio spots, and emails intended to encourage more Americans to sign up for health insurance.

I watched yesterday as the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, said that the Affordable Care Act is collapsing. Well, I can tell you, it needs help and it should be bipartisan. Instead, the Republicans are doing everything they can to jeopardize it.

Last week, the President met with big insurance companies to discuss what they want for healthcare. But where were the patients, the hospitals, the doctors, the nurses, the community health centers in these conversations?

It is clear that congressional Republicans want to move full steam ahead on repealing our healthcare law. The problem has always been and still is that they can't agree on how to move forward. They don't have a plan to protect people. Some Republicans just want to repeal. Others want to repair. Others want to rebuild. They can throw out all the ``R'' words they can find in the dictionary, but at the end of the day, they don't know what they want to do. These disagreements are becoming even more obvious in the last week.

For the past few months, House Republican leaders have been meeting secretly to craft a repeal bill. Well, they finally unveiled it. No wonder they wanted to keep it secret.

Incidentally, this bill, which has been authored by the Republicans-- a party that claims a commitment to fiscal soundness--has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office. We don't know, even as it is being considered by committees in the House of Representatives, whether it is going to add to the deficit or not. You would think that the party of fiscal integrity--the Republican Party--would ask that question early on. As yet, they have no answer, and they are proceeding full steam ahead.

The bill, first, would end Medicaid as we know it, cutting $370 billion from the program and limiting care. Who are the beneficiaries of Medicaid? The largest group of beneficiaries are kids and mothers. The second most expensive group are seniors, many of them in nursing homes who, without Medicaid and Medicare, could not even continue in a good nursing home environment.

Keep in mind that one in five Americans currently depend on Medicaid for their health insurance--65 million people nationwide. That includes 35 million children, 7 million seniors, 11 million people with disabilities.

We used to say: Well, Medicaid is for poor people. Well, it certainly is for lower income Americans, but many of them are working low-income Americans who still qualify for Medicaid.

My friend, who has worked in the motel-hospitality industry all of her life, in her sixties, sadly, is a part-time employee, despite her hard work. She can't afford health insurance, but she qualifies for Medicaid. She is part of the working poor, and she is one who needs this benefit. If the Republicans have their way and reduce Medicaid coverage, she could certainly lose it.

In my home State of Illinois, 650,000 people have gained healthcare coverage under Medicaid, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. For her and others I have met, it is the first time in their life that these men and women--often in their sixties--for the first time in their life have health insurance.

Of Illinois' 18 congressional districts, not a single one has less than 71,000 Medicaid enrollees. Nearly half of all the kids in Illinois, 1.5 million children, get their healthcare through Medicaid, and the Republican repeal bill is going to endanger that.

That is so obvious that yesterday the Republican Governor of Illinois, who was careful in his words and seldom reacts, came out publicly and said that the Republican repeal bill would significantly hurt our State of Illinois. That is from a Republican Governor.

Medicaid is the largest payer of long-term care for seniors in the Nation and in Illinois. It is one of our best tools, incidentally, for addressing the opioid epidemic, ensuring that those facing addiction have access to treatment. And the Republicans want to cut that.

Medicaid has been a lifesaver to Illinois hospitals, especially in my part of the State, downstate Illinois.

Repeal of the Medicaid expansion, as the House bill proposes, could result in the loss of up to 90,000 jobs in Illinois.

The Republican repeal bill on healthcare is a jobs killer in Illinois and across this Nation. We will see hospitals cutting back on personnel in an attempt to adjust to the cutbacks in coverage and the increases in cost brought on by the Republican repeal bill.

But the bill goes even further. It dramatically restructures the entire Medicaid Program. When talking about the plan for Medicaid, congressional Republicans throw around innocuous terms: per capita caps, block grants, more flexibility, modernizing. Don't be lulled in a false sense of security by these words. This Republican healthcare repeal bill would significantly cut back on Federal spending on Medicaid, shifting the cost to States, families, and individuals who are currently struggling to get by today.

With less funding, States would be forced to throw people off of Medicaid, limit the types of healthcare services offered, create waiting lists, and much more. In the name of State flexibility and modernizing, it would mean that more and more people would be showing up in emergency rooms in Illinois and across the Nation with no health insurance coverage under the Republican approach.

Oh, they will get care, and it will cost. They can't pay for it, and that cost will be shifted to others with health insurance.

Unfortunately, Ms. Verma has significant experience in this exact type of healthcare rationing. In her role as a private healthcare consultant, she championed radical Medicaid overhauls. She supports making low-income Medicaid beneficiaries pay more money. She believes that Medicaid beneficiaries need ``more skin in the game.'' I wonder how many Medicaid recipients Ms. Verma has actually sat down and met with.

The Illinois folks whom I know are the mom working two jobs, struggling to take time off from work to take her kid to the doctor, or the senior who has literally spent down all of her life savings on nursing home care and has no place else to turn.

Devising plans that restrict access to care for the most vulnerable among us are not the qualifications I am looking for in the person who wants to run the agency responsible for Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP.

Finally, on the House Republican repeal bill, in addition to gutting Medicaid, the bill eliminates the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which currently provides the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention $900 million, or 12 percent of their annual budget. The bill defunds Planned Parenthood. The bill allows insurers to charge older people significantly more in premiums than allowed under current law. The bill, incidentally, dramatically cuts taxes for the wealthiest people in America and increases costs for middle-income families. What is most telling, as I mentioned earlier, is that the House Republicans won't even send this bill or wait for a report from the Congressional Budget Office before proceeding.

How many people will lose their health insurance under the Republican repeal plan? How will out-of-pocket expenses go up for families under the Republican repeal plan? How much responsibility and burden will be shifted to the States under the Republican repeal plan?

For now, Republicans can claim ignorance because they have decided to move forward before there was a report from the Congressional Budget Office.

Thank goodness some Republicans are speaking out against this terrible plan--maybe not for the same reasons I oppose it. But conservatives say it doesn't rip health insurance away from more people more quickly, and moderates worry about Medicaid--demonstrating, again, the lack of a consensus on the Republican side when it comes to the future of healthcare.

We have big challenges ahead--challenges that will determine whether we have as many people in America with health insurance tomorrow as we have today and how much it will cost.

I don't believe the Republican repeal bill is the right path forward, and I don't believe Seema Verma is the right person to stand up and fight for our Nation's seniors, children, and low-income families. For that reason, I will be voting against her nomination to serve as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from New Jersey for his excellent statement summarizing the challenge we face. I thank my colleagues from Maryland and from Delaware as well.

Yesterday, we had a hearing in the Judiciary Committee. There is an individual seeking the Deputy Attorney General spot. Of course, he is seeking this position--a key position--at a critical moment in American history.

The Attorney General of the United States of America, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, announced publicly last week, on Thursday, that he was going to recuse himself from any prosecution involving the Russians and the last Presidential campaign. That is historic, and it was the right thing to do. Many of us on the Democratic side have called on him for weeks to do just that.

Senator Sessions had been an active participant in the Trump campaign, and when he became Attorney General, we felt that, in the best interests of preserving the integrity of the Department of Justice, he had to step aside when it came to the investigation of Russian involvement in that campaign.

Of course, in the meantime, during the course of this national debate, the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States, General Flynn, resigned after he misrepresented to the American people and to the Vice President of the United States conversations he had with the Russian Ambassador. It came to light last week that then- Senator Sessions, during the course of his confirmation hearing, gave misleading comments and answers to a question by Senator Franken, saying that he had had no contact with the Russians, either. In fact, he had.

He sent a clarification letter, but yesterday's hearing was about his successor, the Deputy Attorney General, who would have the power to oversee this investigation. The gentleman who was nominated is well known to the Senator from Maryland because he served as U.S. Attorney there for a number of years--since 2005. He served under President Obama. He was initially appointed under President Bush, a rare bipartisan selection, who, by every indication, is a professional prosecutor.

The disappointing moment at the hearing is when we asked Mr. Rosenstein if he had read the intelligence report that was publicly announced in January about the Russian involvement in our election campaign. It is an unclassified report. It is on the internet. It is about 15 pages long. It is as precise and conclusive as you can expect. It said quite clearly that the Russians did attempt to change the outcome of the election, that they were, in fact, working to benefit Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton.

I quickly added that this was not published by the Democratic National Committee. This was by the intelligence agencies of the U.S. Government. I was disappointed when Mr.

Rosenstein said no, he had not read it. He was asked over and over again why he would not read a piece of information, a document so critical to his service as Deputy Attorney General.

I will set that aside for a moment and just observe the obvious. If you believe our intelligence agencies, there is no question that Russia was trying to change the outcome of the Presidential election. They were engaged, we believe, with up to a thousand trolls in some office buildings in Moscow, invading the internet, invading emails in the United States in an attempt to glean information that they could feed back to the public through Wikileaks and other sources.

Although there is no evidence to date that they had any impact on the actual casting or counting of ballots, their intent is clear. They wanted to pick Donald Trump as President. They believed he was a better choice for Russian interests than Hillary Clinton.

Is that worthy of an investigation? I certainly hope so. To our knowledge, it is the first time in the history of the United States that a foreign power--and one that has been an adversary time and again to our interests around the world--tried to invade our election. It was, in fact, a day that will live in cyber infamy in terms of this Russian effort.

If we ignore it, we can expect several things. Get ready for the next election. Do you think they learned anything during the course of the last one? Do you think the Russians will be involved again? It would be naive to believe otherwise.

Secondly, there is a critical element here that we cannot ignore. Three weeks ago I visited Warsaw, Poland; Vilnius, Lithuania; and Kiev, Ukraine. I talked to those leaders--in a couple of instances, the Presidents of those countries, as well as opinion leaders, parliamentarians--and they continued to raise the same question to me. It came down to this: If the United States does not take seriously the invasion of Russia in your own Presidential campaign, will you take it seriously when Putin invades our country? You have told us under the NATO alliance, article 5, that you will stand by our side and protect us. If you don't take Putin seriously when he invades your own Presidential election, there is a lot of doubt.

Questions are being asked. Several Republican Senators have stepped up. I want to salute them. I will start with Lindsey Graham, who yesterday, again before the Senate Foreign Operations Subcommittee on Appropriations, made it clear that he believes we have to thoroughly investigate this Russian involvement in our Presidential election.

A few others have said the same. Unfortunately, the reaction by many Republican Senators has been lukewarm to cold. They don't want to spend the time to look into this. They would rather start talking about investigating leaks in the Trump administration or even the President's far-fetched tweets suggesting that somehow President Obama was engaged in a wiretap. It is something that has been denied not only by the former President but also by the former Director of National Intelligence and the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

To date, there is not one shred of evidence for the claim made by President Trump in his tweets in the early morning hours of Saturday. At the same time, the need for this investigation continues. You have heard cataloged in detail--and I will not repeat it--Russian aggression over the last several years.

I have seen it. I have seen it throughout history, at least during my lifetime, and I have seen it more recently in Ukraine, in Georgia, and threats that go on every single day in countries in the Baltics and Poland. It is clear to them that they are fighting a hybrid war, not just the military threat, which is very real, but also cyber threats that at one point closed down the Estonian economy--a Russian cyber invasion closed it down--and propaganda threats, which are nonstop through cable television known as RT, Russia Today. They continue to broadcast false information into countries like the Baltics and try to do it with impunity. That is the reality of what we are facing.

The question we face, though, as the U.S. Senate sworn to uphold this Constitution, is whether we are prepared to defend it against foreign powers that will undermine it, in this case the Russian Federation.

There has been a suggestion that the intelligence committees can have an investigation of this matter. I would say that in and of itself is not objectionable, but it is certainly not complete and satisfactory. The Intelligence Committee is going meet behind closed doors. We will not see the witnesses. We will not hear their testimony. The American people may not ever hear who testified and what they had to say.

Some parts of this must continue to be classified, and I understand that. But by and large, the American people have a right to know what the Russians did and how they did it so that we can make sure we defend ourselves against this in the future. The Intelligence Committees have a role, but not in its entirety.

I think there should be a special prosecutor from the Department of Justice to see if any crimes have been committed. I don't know where the evidence will lead, but we should have someone we trust, a person of integrity, who will step up and assume that role and make that investigation for the Department of Justice.

One other thing: I think this is of sufficient gravity that we should have an independent, transparent, bipartisan commission. My colleague, Senator Cardin of Maryland, is the sponsor of that legislation, which I am happy to cosponsor. That is the ultimate answer.

Let's get to the bottom of this once and for all to make certain we know what the Russians tried to do to us and to make doubly certain that it never happens again. That is the reality of this challenge.

I hope we can get bipartisan support for it. When it comes to sanctions against Russia, we have had good bipartisan support, and that is encouraging--equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans saying they should pay a price for what they did. Let's get the investigation to its conclusion.

Leon Panetta is a friend of mine and served in our government at many different levels. In the Sunday talk shows, he talked about what he would recommend to the Trump administration. He said to them very simply: Get in front of this. Don't keep reacting to this. Say that if you have done nothing wrong you are going to cooperate fully with any investigation to get to the bottom of it. That is the way to deal with it.

I hope we will have an end to the tweets and a beginning of the cooperation that is necessary so that we can get to the bottom of this situation and know the facts, wherever they may lead us.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire, I ask unanimous consent that Sonia Tarantolo, a foreign policy fellow in her office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the 115th Congress.

Mr. President, I want to take a few moments to acknowledge Charles Thomas, a veteran broadcast journalist and political reporter. Last week, after a career spanning four decades, Charles Thomas appeared in his final newscast at ABC 7 Chicago.

Born in Webster Groves, MO, Charles grew up in the St. Louis area and graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism. Shortly after graduation, Charles began his career as a radio reporter at KCMO in Kansas City. He has also worked in news stations in San Francisco and Philadelphia before becoming the ABC News bureau Midwest correspondent in St. Louis. In 1991, Charles was hired as a general assignment reporter at ABC 7 Chicago and later named to the coveted position of political reporter in 2009.

Since joining ABC 7's ``Eyewitness News'' in 1991, its newscast was and remains the most watched TV news in Chicago. On Charles's 25th anniversary at the station, he said: ``I am very blessed to have worked here and like to think that my efforts have had something to do with that success.'' As an avid viewer, I am here to say it has. His unique perspective and keen ability to tell stories make him invaluable to any newsroom. Let me tell you, Charles asks the tough questions and holds us all accountable. As the politician often in the crosshairs, I can tell you I knew Charles was always prepared and ready to challenge any weak response. I speak for all of Chicago when I say Charles Thomas will be missed.

For more than a quarter century, Charles has covered the biggest stories in the country--the OJ Simpson Trial, Oklahoma City bombing, Rodney King trials, Great Chicago Flood, and the election of the first African-American President, to name just a few. He truly had a front row seat to history. He even joined then-Senator Barack Obama on a trip to Africa in 2006. His remarkable career has taken him to every State in America and five continents, and he leaves with no regrets. Reflecting on his years covering national, State, and local politics, he said: ``Without a moment's hesitation, I can look back and say I had the best TV reporting job in America.''

Charles Thomas has had an amazing career. His work earned him two Emmy awards for reporting in 1983 and 1992. Although he is retiring, Charles is not done telling stories. He plans to explore digital storytelling focusing on the African-American community, celebrating positive stories often missing in local and national broadcasts--what a noble and necessary endeavor. I am heartened that Charles will remain an inspirational voice in the community.

I want to congratulate Charles Thomas on his distinguished career and thank him for his outstanding service to the people of Chicago. I especially want to thank Charles's wife, Maria, and their three children for sharing so much of their husband and father with our community. I wish him and his family all the best in their next chapter.

Mr. President, earlier today, President Trump signed a new Executive order that bans travel to the United States from a new list of Muslim-majority countries and bans all refugees. This new Executive order includes some cosmetic changes, but these changes do not alter the fact that President Trump's travel ban is still unconstitutional and still inconsistent with the values of this Nation.

This Executive order plays directly into ISIS's argument that the United States is waging a war against a religion. The President's first travel ban was blocked by multiple Federal courts, and his latest, I hope, will face the same fate.

Let's consider how we have arrived at this point. During his first full week in office, President Trump signed his first Executive order that banned Muslims and refugees. This order resulted in chaos in airports across the country. Dozens of legal immigrants were detained, not because they did anything wrong or because they were any danger to our Nation. It was solely because of where they came from. There was an Iraqi immigrant who put himself and his family in harm's way by working with American troops as an interpreter, two disabled seniors--a husband and wife--and a 5-year-old child. These were people who were the victims of President Trump's first Executive order.

The order faced widespread resistance from the American people, the courts, and even from the administration itself. Acting Attorney General Sally Yates said the Justice Department could not in good conscience defend the President's Executive order. So the President fired her.

Now comes this new Executive order. We know that, over time, Ms. Yates was right. She stood for principle, and when multiple Federal courts blocked that Executive order, we understood that she appreciated the law, unlike those who crafted this terrible order.

Rather than repeal the Executive order or defend it in court, the Trump administration is trying to evade these

legal challenges by issuing a new version but with some tweaks. The original Executive order banned travelers to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries. The President heard the plea about this ban on Muslim travelers. He issued a new order today which does not ban travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries but from only six. This is still, nevertheless, an attack on religious freedom that risks alienating hundreds of millions of Muslims across the world.

Our focus should be on people with suspected links to terrorism. The President will have no resistance from this Congress--from either side of the aisle--if he goes after actual suspects of terrorism, but this should be done regardless of the suspect's religion.

This order--the new one--still blocks refugees from coming to the United States for at least 120 days, and it cuts by more than 50 percent the number of refugees who will be settled in the United States this year. Turning away innocent people who are fleeing persecution, genocide, and terror is not the American way. It will not keep us safer. Sadly, it projects an image of America to the world that is totally inconsistent with where we have been as a Nation.

No matter what spin the White House puts on it, the President's new Executive order is still fatally flawed. Multiple statements from the President himself and from several of his advisers have made clear that his intention is to bar Muslims from entering the United States and to give priority to Christian refugees. This violates the Constitution's establishment clause and the equal protection clause. Tweaking the language of the ban cannot remedy the President's original unlawful intent.

During the Presidential campaign, the President issued the following statement:

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete

shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our

country's representatives can figure out what is going on.

When the President signed his original Executive order, his advisers made clear that it was intending to carry out this campaign promise. Listen to what former mayor of New York City--and one of the closest advisers to Donald Trump--Rudy Giuliani said:

I'll tell you the whole history of it: When President Trump

first announced it, he said ``Muslim ban.'' He called me up.

He said, ``Put a commission together. Show me the right way

to do it legally.''

Rudy Giuliani.

Now White House Adviser Stephen Miller has made it clear that his intention is to ban Muslims, and he says:

These are mostly minor, technical differences.

Fundamentally, you are still going to have the same, basic

policy outcome for the country.

Stephen Miller.

We are in the midst of the largest refugee crisis in the history of the world. More than 65 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes. The brutal Syrian conflict--the epicenter of this crisis--has killed hundreds of thousands, injured more than a million, and displaced more than half of Syria's population. In some areas, children in this country--in the 21st century--are starving to death.

The conflict has forced more than 4.7 million refugees to flee Syria. Around 70 percent of all Syrian refugees are women and children. Half of the Syrian refugee children are not in school. Millions in and outside of Syria are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

We cannot forget the lessons of history. In 1939, the United States refused to let the SS St. Louis dock in our country, sending over 900 Jewish refugees back to Europe, where many died in concentration camps.

After that tragic moral failure in the United States--after we turned our back on Jewish refugees who were fleeing Hitler--the United States examined its conscience and came up with a new program. It came up with a new approach, and it was bipartisan. Since World War II, the American people have worked to set an example for the world by accepting refugees.

Listen to those who have been accepted and made a part of America-- almost 400,000 Eastern Europeans after World War II, close to 400,000 Vietnamese refugees fleeing the Vietnam war, approximately 650,000 Cuban refugees after Castro came to power.

Let me note, parenthetically, that, of the four Hispanic U.S. Senators today, three can trace their roots to this Cuban migration to the United States, and their families were refugees. They sit on the floor of the Senate and represent some of our great States. Yet, with this President, he is asking them and all of us to ignore this history.

We have accepted more than 150,000 refugees from the former Yugoslavia. Over 100,000 Soviet Jews, who were escaping the persecution of their religion and looking for freedom, came to the United States. Many of these refugees were fleeing regimes that were hostile to our country. Some argued that spies and other hostile elements could be hidden among them.

Think about the hundreds of thousands who came from Communist- controlled Cuba into the United States. Were they subjected to extreme vetting? No. They were people who said: We have come here and are looking for freedom. We opened our doors, and they have made us a better country because of it. The United States was not frightened by the fearmongers when it came to these refugees joining us in the United States, and we shouldn't be today.

Let's be clear. Refugees who come into our country this day are the most carefully vetted and investigated of all of the travelers to the United States. Before refugees are admitted to the United States, they have to pass careful, rigorous security screenings. All of that screening takes place before they even set foot in America, and Syrian refugees undergo a new layer of enhanced review before they are allowed to come to America.

President Trump's own Department of Homeland Security has determined that his travel ban will not make us safer. Listen to this memo from the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis in President Trump's administration:

Country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable

indicator of potential terrorist activity. Since the

beginning of the Syrian conflict in March 2011, the foreign-

born, primarily U.S.-based individuals who were inspired by a

foreign terrorist organization to participate in terrorism-

related activity were citizens of 26 different countries.

The Trump administration believes they have found--first seven--now six countries from where they will deny terrorists access to the United States, even those who have gone through the vetting to be considered refugees.

Listen to this. It is another memo from the same Department--the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis-- under President Trump:

Most foreign-born, U.S.-based violent extremists likely

radicalized several years after their entry to the United

States, limiting the ability of screening and vetting

officials to prevent their entry because of national security

concerns.

The point is that it is not likely a terrorist is going to stand in line for 2 years to become a refugee to the United States and go through all of the background checks and live in a refugee camp for that purpose. Those who ended up being involved in terrorist activities were converted after their having arrived in the United States, and they included in their ranks many who were born in the United States.

If we are serious--really serious--about protecting America, we should close the loopholes that make it too easy for foreign visitors and suspected terrorists to buy deadly weapons. Most people do not know, but we have not precluded--or stopped--those who are visiting the United States from buying weapons. Even if we have not checked them, there are no background checks when it comes to terrorism. We should focus on individuals who are engaged in suspicious behavior, not target entire Muslim countries or the entire refugee population.

It makes no sense. Even President Trump's Department of Homeland Security says as much, but this President is determined to go forward with his Muslim ban. He is determined to build walls at our borders. He is determined to instill fear in our hearts.

That is not how America works, and it is not how we will move forward. Let's not continue the cruelty and deception of blaming immigrants and refugees for our security and economic challenges. We should work together, in the spirit of post-World War II America, and set an example for the world in order to build a better America for all Americans, including new

Americans--no matter the color of their skin, where their parents were born, or how they pray.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Leahy) and the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Schatz) are necessarily absent.

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

Mr. President, the highlight of the week, of course, is President Trump's speech to the joint session of Congress, the first major public speech he has given since his inauguration. The Chamber of the House of Representatives was filled with Members of both the House and Senate, the Supreme Court Justices, the Cabinet, and many other dignitaries for the speech. It went for about 60 minutes, which is reasonable under Presidential standards. Many have gone much longer, and I listened carefully to the statement by the new President to really glean his priorities, in terms of his administration and what he hopes to see happen in this country.

There were many issues that he touched on, but there was one he didn't. He didn't say a word--not one word--about the Russian intervention in our last Presidential campaign. This is not speculation. It is a reality that 17 different U.S. intelligence agencies have told us that Vladimir Putin and the Russian Government were attempting to subvert and undermine our Presidential election. To our knowledge, that has never happened at any time in the history of the United States. It is the first time a sovereign nation has tried to literally launch a cyber invasion of the United States of America to try to change the outcome of the most important electoral choice under the Constitution--the choice of President of the United States. It is a major issue. It is one President Trump cannot ignore.

During the course of that speech, he never once mentioned the word ``Russia.'' He never raised this issue as to whether it was worthy of investigation. He described it as a ruse. He has dismissed it and basically has paid no attention to it whatsoever and wants the rest of America to forget it as well.

That is not going to happen because the investigation about this Russian cyber invasion continues. We know the Federal Bureau of Investigation is deep into an investigation. I don't know what it will find. I don't know if they will find any complicity with anyone in the United States, anyone in the Trump campaign. It is only after we have an independent, complete, and credible investigation that we may know the facts.

We also have an investigation underway by many of our intelligence agencies, which are looking at the involvement of the Russians trying to change the outcome of our election. Those investigations are underway.

One element came up last night that has changed the conversation in Washington about this whole issue. Even before last night's news, we knew Attorney General Jeff Sessions needed to recuse himself from any Justice Department investigation into Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 election in support of the Trump campaign.

The Department of Justice standard for recusal--that is, the removal of the Attorney General from an investigation--is pretty clear. It requires recusal by someone who has ``a personal or political relationship with any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation.''

The Department of Justice regulations define ``political relationship'' to include service as a principal adviser to a candidate or campaign organization. Well, that certainly covers Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Trump campaign. Attorney General Sessions was named in March 2016 as chairman of then-Candidate Trump's National Security Advisory Committee. Steve Bannon, formerly of Breitbart News and now a close adviser to the President, described Jeff Sessions to the Washington Post as follows: ``Throughout the campaign, Sessions has been the fiercest, most dedicated, and most loyal promoter in Congress of Trump's agenda, and has played a critical role as the clearinghouse for policy and philosophy to undergird the implementation of that agenda.''

Attorney General Sessions close relationship with the Trump campaign creates a compelling basis for his recusal from any investigation of Russian involvement in that campaign.

So far, to this day, to this moment, Jeff Sessions has refused to recuse himself from this investigation. He refused when I asked him about it during the course of the hearing, and he has refused since he was named Attorney General. Now it is clear that his unwillingness to recuse himself is no longer tenable or acceptable or even explainable.

Last night, the Washington Post reported that then-Senator Jeff Sessions spoke with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice during the Presidential campaign--in July at a Heritage Foundation event near the Republican National Convention and in September in a private conversation in the Senator's office. These communications came as a great surprise because until last night, Attorney General Sessions did not disclose them.

During his hearing in January, in preparation to become Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, then Senator, was asked by Senator Al Franken of Minnesota: ``If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what would you do?''

Jeff Sessions' answer under oath included this statement: ``I did not have communications with the Russians.''

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont also asked Attorney General Sessions in writing: ``Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?'' Attorney General Sessions' response was ``No.''

It is hard to understand why Attorney General Sessions has not been more forthcoming and upfront with Congress and the American people about communications which we now know in fact did take place. If he thinks there was nothing wrong with these communications, why would he conceal them? It is deeply troubling.

The reality is, the Attorney General has compromised his credibility when it comes to investigating Russia's cyber invasion of America's election. His recusal is no longer an option, it is a necessity.

People say: Oh, of course, a Democratic Senator is saying that the Republican Attorney General should recuse himself. This morning, it has been reported that a number of top Republicans in Congress have called for the Attorney General's recusal, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz.

It is imperative that career Justice Department professionals be allowed to follow the facts in this investigation to discover the truth. We may need a special counsel, but these steps alone are not sufficient. I believe we need an independent, bipartisan commission, led by Americans of unimpeachable integrity, to get to the bottom and get to the facts on this attack on our democracy.

I know the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is also conducting an investigation. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which, incidentally, is chaired by Representative Devin Nunes, who served on the executive committee of President Trump's transition team, agreed to the parameters of an investigation yesterday.

The Intelligence Committees cannot, by their very nature, provide the transparency and accountability that an independent commission would bring to this issue, and the chairmen of those two committees--House and Senate--have already raised serious questions about their own impartiality by calling on the media organizations at the behest of the White House to challenge news stories on this issue.

How could you possibly maintain objectivity if the elements of an investigation are compromised before the investigation even starts?

I am particularly concerned that Chairman Nunes has already publicly expressed views of the outcome of his committee's investigation before it has even started. That is not a professional, honest, or credible way to approach this.

We need an independent, bipartisan commission to get to the truth, and that may include taking a hard look at the Attorney General's communications with the Russians and at his refusal to disclose those communications. We also need to point out the obvious, which is that when it comes to investigating Russia's involvement in helping the Trump campaign, we have to follow the money, and that includes reviewing President Trump's tax returns, which, unlike any other Presidential candidate in modern times, he has refused to share with the American people.

Yesterday, Senators Stabenow, Wyden, and a number of my colleagues sent a letter to the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Orrin Hatch, of Utah, urging him to allow committee members to review the President's tax returns in a closed executive session. That is something the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee has the authority to do. The letter pointed out that this oversight is essential given the media reports about Russia as well as the possible unconstitutional emoluments being accepted by President Trump's vast business empire.

I support this request from my colleagues. It is imperative that President Trump level with the American people about his business's foreign entanglements, especially those involving Russia.

This issue is not going away. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in pursuing all of the facts about last year's Russian attack on our democracy.

It was just a few weeks ago that the President's National Security Advisor, General Flynn, resigned. Do you remember why? He misrepresented to the Vice President and the American people conversations which he had had with the Russians. He ended up giving up his position as the No. 1 person in national security in the White House.

Now questions have been raised about the credibility of the Attorney General--the No. 1 person in the Trump administration when it comes to the administration of justice. What is the issue? It is the same issue as with General Flynn--conversations with the Russians which were not disclosed to the American public.

This is an issue that is going to continue to be in the forefront, as it should be, until we can bring the facts to the American people. The only way to reach that point is by having the Attorney General recuse himself from any investigation, appointing as a special prosecutor--or someone in that capacity--someone who is credible who can pursue this matter and then initiating an independent, bipartisan investigation by a national commission with credible chairs who have no political agenda and care enough for the United States to view this invasion by Russia as absolutely unacceptable.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, last night, I joined most of the Members of Congress to hear President Trump give his first address to a joint session. His speech lasted about 60 minutes, and I listened carefully, as did everyone in the Chamber, to the President's first remarks from that historic setting as he addressed a joint session of Congress.

There were some omissions, which I found very interesting. Not once-- not one time--in the course of an hour did President Trump ever say the word ``Russia''--not one time--even though we have been told by 17 of our intelligence agencies that Russia made an overt effort to influence the outcome of the last Presidential campaign. That has never happened before in American history. A foreign country attacked the sovereignty of the United States in the election process for the highest office in the land. I think that is noteworthy. It is certainly historic. It would certainly be worth at least a mention when a President speaks to a joint session of Congress just a few months after that election. Instead, there was radio silence, mute button, crickets--nothing about Russia.

What do we have in terms of congressional response to the possibility that Vladimir Putin was trying to pick our next President? We have the suggestion by the Republican leaders in the Senate and the House that this matter should be taken up by the Intelligence Committees.

It sounds reasonable on its face. Having served on Intelligence Committees, I can tell you it is an awesome responsibility and assignment. I can also tell you we have some extraordinarily gifted, talented, patriotic members of those committees from both political parties in the Senate and in the House, but there is a fundamental flaw to this approach. If you went searching on Capitol Hill to find the room in which the Senate Intelligence Committee meets, you would come up empty. There is no sign on the door. It is basically kept clandestine, confidential, and secret. For 4 years, I entered that door, sat down in closed hearings, with no one from the public able to hear or even appreciate what we were doing. It is a lonely assignment-- unlike any other committee on Capitol Hill.

I wonder: Is that what we want to do to explore the involvement of Vladimir Putin in our Presidential campaign--to go behind closed doors in secret and meet clandestinely? I think not.

There is an aspect of this that will require some intelligence gathering, some discussion of intelligence--and certainly that would be secret--but there is much more of it that is public in nature that will never be disclosed if we rely on the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is an invisible process, and that invisible process does not serve the needs of a democracy that wants the truth--the straight talk, the answers.

Secondly, the work of an Intelligence Committee ends up in a report that is classified, which means the public doesn't get to see it. We have seen some renditions of it--heavily redacted pages, where one or two words might escape being crossed out.

How do you move from a classified document on Putin's involvement in our Presidential campaign to a public document the people can understand? It takes declassification. Who makes the decision on whether we declassify the information from the Intelligence Committee investigation? The White House.

So, with the possibility--and I underline that word--with the possibility that some people in the President's campaign may or may not have been involved in this, the President has the last word as to the American people ever hearing the results of an Intelligence Committee report.

Many of us believe this is serious, and many of us believe there should be an independent, transparent commission, just like the 9/11 Commission. Let's call on people we respect, such as GEN Colin L. Powell, Sandra Day O'Connor, a former Supreme Court Justice, and many others just like them, who could get to the bottom of this and answer the basic questions: What were the Russians up to? We hear they had 1,000 trolls sitting in offices in Moscow dreaming up ways to hack into the computers and Internet of the United States and to disclose information to try to influence the outcome of the election. It is not a new tactic from Russia. They have done it over and over again.

The last couple of weeks I visited Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine. They know these tactics oh so well. Under Soviet times and since, Russia has tried to invade their space when it comes to election decisions-- overtly, covertly, through propaganda, through cyber attacks. They have done it in many countries around the world. Sadly, they are good at it. Now they have decided they can do it in the United States. They can decide who our President will be or at least try to. Are we going to take this sitting down?

November 8, 2016, election day, was a day that will live in cyber infamy in the United States. The Russians invaded the U.S. election process. The President of the United States spoke to the American people last night and never mentioned one word--not a single word-- about this.

How many Republican Senators and Congressmen have come to the floor? I don't know about in the House, but I can tell my colleagues I know about the Senate. None. Not one has come to the floor to even address this issue.

So when President Trump ignored it last night, refused to even mention it, I wasn't surprised, but it is not going away. It is a fact.

We currently have an investigation underway in our intelligence agencies. I just met with former Senator Dan Coats of Indiana. He has been designated by the President to be the DNI--the Director of National Intelligence. He made a statement publicly yesterday before a hearing in Congress that he is going to cooperate with the committees and with Congress in disclosing information they have accumulated in our intelligence agencies as to this Russian involvement in our election.

We also know the Federal Bureau of Investigation is involved in this same exercise to find out exactly what happened and to disclose as much as possible and take action--prosecutorial action--if necessary.

There is a problem, though. The Federal Bureau of Investigation works for the Attorney General. The Department of Justice has the power to impede or stop any FBI investigation. Our former colleague Jeff Sessions was deeply and personally involved in the Trump Presidential campaign. He should recuse himself. He has an obvious conflict of interest on this issue. For the integrity of the office and for his own personal integrity, he should step aside and appoint a special prosecutor who can follow up, if necessary, with this FBI investigation.

This is a serious matter that was not addressed at all last night by the President of the United States speaking to a joint session of Congress.

The Associated Press went through some of the claims that were made by the President last night, and I want to give them credit for their homework on this. It is important for the Record that some of the things the President said be explained.

The President said:

According to the National Academy of Sciences, our current

immigration system

costs American taxpayers many billions of dollars a year.

The Associated Press writes:

That's not exactly what the report says. It says immigrants

``contribute to government finances by paying taxes and add

expenditures by consuming public service.''

The report found that while first-generation immigrants are

more expensive to governments than their native-born

counterparts, primarily at the state and local level,

immigrants' children ``are among the strongest economic and

fiscal contributors in the population.'' This second

generation contributed more in taxes on a per capita basis,

for example, than non-immigrants in the period, 1994-2013.

The report [that the President unfortunately

mischaracterized] found that the ``long-run fiscal impact''

of immigrants and their children would probably be seen as

more positive ``if their role in sustaining labor force

growth and contributing to innovation and entrepreneurial

activity were taken into account.''

So to argue, as the President did yesterday, that the National Academy of Sciences, as he said, stated that our current immigration system costs American taxpayers many billions of dollars is, at best, incomplete and misleading.

The President then went on to say during the course of his speech last night:

We've saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by

bringing down the price of the F-35 jet fighter.

I remember when he said that.

The Associated Press says as follows:

The cost savings he persists in bragging about were secured

in full or large part before he became President.

He has taken credit for something he didn't do.

According to the AP:

The head of the Air Force program announced significant

price reductions in the contract for the Lockheed F-35

fighter on December 19--after [candidate] Trump, [President-

Elect Trump] had tweeted about the cost but weeks before he

met with the company's CEO.

The AP goes on:

Pentagon managers took action even before the election to

save [this] money. . . . Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with

the aerospace consulting firm Teal Group, said there is no

evidence of any additional cost savings as a result of

President Trump's actions.

Here is another statement made by the President last night:

We will provide massive tax relief for the middle class.

I remember that one. That is something I hope we all can aspire to, but let me tell my colleagues what the Associated Press says about that claim.

Trump has provided little detail on how this would happen.

Independent analyses of his campaign tax proposals found that

most of the benefits would flow to the wealthiest families.

The richest 1 percent would see an average tax cut of nearly

$215,000 a year, while the middle one-fifth of the population

would get a tax cut of just $1,010, according to the Tax

Policy Center, a joint project with the Brookings Institution

and Urban Institute.

Here is another statement the President made last night:

Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force.

The Associated Press says:

That's true, but for the vast majority of them, it's

because they choose to be. That 94 million figure includes

everyone aged 16 and older who doesn't have a job and isn't

looking for one. So it includes retirees, parents who are

staying home to raise children, high school and college

students who are studying rather than working.

They are unlikely to work regardless of the state of the

economy. With the huge baby boomer generation reaching

retirement age many of them retiring, the population of those

out of the labor force is increasing and will continue to do

so, most economists forecast.

It's true that some of those out of the workforce are of

working age and have given up looking for work. But that

number is probably a small fraction of the 94 million

President Trump cited.

Another statement the President made: He said his budget plan will offer ``one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.''

I will not dwell on this other than to say that the absolute number-- a $54 billion increase, or about 10 percent, is the largest single number. On a percentage basis, there have been larger increases in previous years, like 2002, 2003, and 2008.

Here is another claim made by the President last night:

Since my election, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler, General Motors,

Sprint, Softbank, Lockheed, Intel, Walmart, and many others

have announced they will invest billions of dollars in the

United States and will create tens of thousands of new

American jobs.

The Associated Press reports that ``many of the announcements reflect corporate decisions that predate [Trump's Presidential] election,'' making it unlikely his administration ``is the sole or even primary reason for the expected hiring. . . . In the case of Intel, construction of the Chandler, Arizona, factory referred to by Trump actually began during Barack Obama's presidency. The project was delayed by insufficient demand for Intel's high-powered computer chips, but the company now expects to finish the factory within four years because it anticipates business growth.

Another statement made by President Trump last night in his speech:

We will stop the drugs from pouring into our country and

poisoning our youth, and we will expand treatment for those

who have become so badly addicted.

The facts:

Addicts and mentally ill people who gain access to

treatment programs for the first time as a result of

ObamaCare--the Affordable Care Act--are worried about repeal

that President Trump has called for. Repeal could end

coverage for 1.8 million people who have undergone addiction

or mental health treatment, cut $5.5 billion on spending on

such services according to estimates by economist Richard

Frank, a former administration official under Barack Obama,

now with the Harvard Medical School.

The AP goes on to say:

The key question is what will happen to Medicaid as a

result of changes Republicans are pursuing? Broadly speaking,

Republicans want to transform the health insurance program

for low-income people from an open-ended Federal entitlement

to a system that provides States with a limited amount of

financing and gives them latitude on how to spend it.

The AP goes on to say:

If Congress is too stingy with State allotments, States

would be hampered dealing with the emergencies like the

opioid epidemic.

The next statement by President Trump last night:

According to data provided by the Department of Justice,

the vast majority of individuals convicted for terrorism-

related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our

country. We have seen the attacks at home, from Boston to San

Bernardino to the Pentagon, and yes, even the World Trade

Center.

The Associated Press responds:

It's unclear what Justice Department data the President is

citing. The most recent government information that has come

out doesn't back up his claim. Just over half the people

President Trump talks about were actually born in the United

States, according to Homeland Security Department research.

That report said of 82 people the government determined were

inspired by foreign terrorist groups to attempt to carry out

an attack on the U.S., just over half [of them] were [born in

the United States] native-born citizens.

The AP goes on to say:

Even the attacks Trump singled out weren't entirely the

work of foreigners. Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his

Pakistani wife killed 14 people in the deadly 2015 attack in

San Bernardino, California, was born in Chicago.

It's true that in the immediate aftermath of September 11,

the FBI's primary concern was with terrorists from overseas

feared to be plotting attacks in the United States. But

that's no longer the case. The FBI and Justice Department

have been preoccupied with violent extremists from inside the

U.S. who are inspired by the calls to violence and mayhem of

the Islamic State group. The Justice Department has

prosecuted scores of Islamic State-related cases since 2014,

and many of the defendants are U.S. citizens.

Another statement by President Trump last night:

ObamaCare is collapsing . . . imploding Obamacare disaster.

The AP writes:

There are problems with the 2010 health care law, but

whether it's collapsing is hotly disputed.

One of the two major components of the Affordable Care Act

has been a spike in premiums and a drop in participation from

insurers. But the other component, equally important, seems

to be working fairly well, even if its costs are a concern.

Trump and congressional Republicans want to repeal the

whole thing, which risks leaving millions of people uninsured

if the replacement plan has shortcomings. Some critics say

GOP rhetoric itself is making things worse by creating

uncertainty about the future.

The health law offers subsidized private health insurance

along with a state option to expand Medicaid for low-income

people. Together, the two arms of the program reach more than

20 million people.

Republican governors whose states have expanded Medicaid

are trying to find a way to persuade Congress and the

administration to keep this expansion, and maybe even build

on it, while imposing limits on the long-term costs of

Medicaid.

While the Medicaid expansion seems to be working, the

markets for subsidized health insurance are stressed in many

states. Also affected are millions of people who buy

individual policies outside the government markets, and face

the same high premiums with no financial help from the health

law. Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation

says ``implosion'' is too strong a term. An AP count found

that 12.2 million people signed up for this year, despite

the Trump administration's threats to repeal the law.

I might add, that it is despite all of the speeches made on the floor of the Senate and the House, promising that it would be repealed as well.

The last point I want to make is this. I was troubled last night by a recurring theme in the President's speech. It was a theme about immigration in the United States. We are a nation of immigrants. My mother was an immigrant to this country. I am proud to serve as a Senator from the State where she and her family settled. I am proud of the struggle they went through--coming to this country, not knowing the language, going through some pretty rough times, facing poverty, taking the dirtiest and toughest jobs. Because of that, the second generation of my family--the one I represent--has brought some great people to this world in our own families and perhaps even added to the benefits of the United States for others.

Last night, if you listened to the characterization of immigrants, it was negative, virtually from start to finish.

In the audience last night, I had a young lady as my guest. She is an extraordinary lady. Her name is Aaima Sayed. She is Pakistani, and she was brought to the United States at the age of 3 by her parents from Pakistan. They settled in Chicago and eventually moved to New Jersey. It turns out the family had its difficulties and the mother and father split and separated. When the father left, he left behind his paperwork--which was in place or at least in the process--of trying to legalize the presence of his family, and nothing was done.

It wasn't until she was in high school that this young lady realized that she was undocumented. That creates obstacles for any young person. In her case, a special obstacle was the cost of higher education. As an undocumented child in America, she didn't qualify for government assistance--Federal Government assistance--and limited State assistance. Yet she aspired to go on to school and to borrow the money, if necessary, at high interest rates from private sources in order to finish her education. She graduated from Rutgers University magna cum laude and then wanted to go to medical school.

There weren't many medical schools accepting undocumented students, but there was one. I am proud to tell you that it was Loyola University of Chicago, the Stritch School of Medicine. There were about 65 undocumented young people in medical school in the United States, and 30 of them were at Loyola in Chicago. I have met most of them. Each and every one of them is more inspiring than the next.

They opened up the competition. They didn't give them slots to fill. They said: Compete with everyone. These students were so outstanding from across the United States that they made it to Loyola.

This young lady, in her third year, faces another 6 years of education before she completes her medical degree. When she is finished with those 6 years, it isn't over. In Illinois, we told her she could go to school, but it was part of a contract. She could attend school, and we would reduce the interest payments at a later part in her life if she gave us 1 year of service in an underserved community in Illinois for each year of medical school. She has 6 years of school left and 4 years of serving in a rural community or an underserved neighborhood clinic in the city of Chicago or nearby.

She signed up for it. She is an amazing young person. She is determined to get this medical degree--despite the debt, despite the obstacles. The only reason she can do this is because she is protected by something called DACA.

Let me explain. Some 16 years ago, I introduced a bill called the DREAM Act. It said that if you were brought to the United States, like she was, under the age of 16, you had a good life, no criminal record or history of a problematic nature, and completed your education, you can stay in the United States and eventually work your way toward legalization.

President Obama took it up and created an Executive order called DACA and said to the young people in that situation: Come and apply, pay a $600 filing fee, then go through a criminal background check, and if you make it, we will give you 2 years to live in the United States without fear of deportation, with a work permit.

She signed up. That is how she can go to medical school. You need to work to go to medical school. She is going through a clinical experience where she is actually working in these hospitals. Without a work permit, she wouldn't be able to complete medical school.

The obvious question is this: What is going to happen to this program under President Trump? In fairness, the President has said positive things about DACA and DREAMers. I thanked him personally. I have only met him three times, but I thanked him personally twice for doing that. I hope that it means that ultimately there will be some path for the 750,000 young people, just like her, who are simply asking for a chance to be educated and be part of America's future.

I hope that, as people who listened to the speech last night think about immigrants to the United States, they will think about this young woman, as well, who has worked so hard her entire life to better herself and to be able to help others at a later point in life.

She is an extraordinary person, and there are so many more just like her. They are immigrants to this country. In this case it is Muslim immigrant to this country who someday will be an exceptional doctor, who is going to give 4 years of her life back to my home State and then is going to help others all across the United States. That, to me, is an image of immigrants that shouldn't be lost with the negative connotations that were raised last night.

I yield the floor.