Floor Statements

Mr. President, it gives me great pleasure to celebrate 100 years and four generations of McGregor Industries, an outstanding metal fabrication firm based in Dunmore, PA.

Since its establishment 1919, McGregor Industries has been renowned for its production of quality railings, staircases, and iron and steel works. The company's roots in Scranton's South Side neighborhood firmly placed McGregor Industries at the center of the highly competitive iron and steel trade market of the Northeast. Their many high-profile projects have built our businesses, our churches, our schools, and even our airports in northeastern Pennsylvania and across the Commonwealth.

When the company faced hardship in a changing market of the early 2000s and again in the 2008 financial crisis, Robert R. ``Bob'' McGregor readily took on the challenge to save his grandfather's enterprise. Bob's engineering background encouraged McGregor Industries to evolve and thrive in changing times through innovations in engineering and development, eventually resulting in the McGregor Stair Tower and Stair Systems. McGregor Stair Systems soon became prominent features of many Philadelphia area building projects. Under the leadership of a fourth generation McGregor and Wharton graduate, Grace McGregor Kramer, the company's high-rise stair towers have expanded to the Boston area. Contracts with MIT and the Encore Boston Harbor casino are among the largest construction projects in Massachusetts history, with McGregor Industries securing contracts for over 4,000 workers.

This family-led operation upholds its reputation as a reliable and innovative leader in its industry that architects, engineers, contractors, and construction managers can depend upon. McGregor Industries and its devoted employees possess the focus and innovation required of steel industries in the 21st century, while maintaining the spirit of a family business committed to its community. McGregor should take great pride in its decades of growth and tradition of excellence passed from generation to generation.

McGregor Industries remains a testament to American-made ingenuity. Their commitment to service and the betterment of communities across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and beyond is inspirational. I wish their leadership and employees success for many years to come.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Madam President, we are on the floor, and I will be joined by colleagues to talk about the program we know as Medicaid--a program that I think we are beginning to appreciate more, especially in the last couple of years--and the impact it has on the American people.

Unfortunately, the debates on healthcare have resulted in Medicaid becoming a target. Too often, both in the Senate and in the other body--the other body, the House--the Medicaid Program has been the subject of attempts to do at least one of three things, if not all three.

One is attempts to decimate the program by way of funding cuts over the next 10 years. We know the President's budget has proposed cutting Medicaid by $1.5 trillion over 10 years--that is with a ``t''--roughly, $150 billion each and every year for 10 years. That is a bad idea, and we are going to fight that with all we have.

Other attempts to slash Medicaid have been perpetuated over time, either to cut it over 10 years or to cut it in a particular year.

The third thing we have seen is sabotage efforts by the administration when it comes to the exchanges resulting from the Affordable Care Act but also attempts to sabotage the Medicaid Program itself. I will develop that in a moment in terms of the attempts by the administration.

Medicaid is a program that, I think, tells us who we are as a nation. We are a great nation for a number of reasons. We all know we have the strongest military and the strongest economy. When we are at our best, we are an example to the world. We are also the greatest country in the world because of the way we attempt--don't always do the right thing and don't always do as much as we should--but because of our attempts to take care of folks who need help and to give opportunity to folks who might need a door to be opened or an opportunity to be presented to them.

Medicaid is one of those examples of American greatness when we get it right. Medicaid is the program that we know is responsible for making sure seniors can get into nursing homes. Absent Medicaid, millions of seniors wouldn't be able to have the benefit of skilled care in a nursing home. Something on the order of 60 percent of seniors have an opportunity to get skilled care because of Medicaid. Absent Medicaid, it is highly likely they wouldn't be able to get that care, especially when you consider the cost of care to just one family. It would cost tens and tens of thousands of dollars.

Medicaid is the program that takes care of a huge share of the Nation's children, and a subset of that, of course, is children with disabilities. We are told, just in Pennsylvania alone--the most recent number I have seen--54 percent of children with disabilities have their healthcare provided to them by Medicaid. Thank goodness that is the case, and we have to make sure that continues.

Just consider the birth of a child. We know, whether it is Pennsylvania or the Nation, the number exceeds 40 percent. Forty percent of all the births in the country--more than 40 percent, I should say--are paid for by the Medicaid Program. So the Medicaid Program affects the family in so many different ways: the family, when it comes to a birth, in very high numbers across the country; the family, when it comes to providing healthcare for children and to give children the opportunity not just to have coverage and insurance but to have early screening, early diagnosis, and testing--the kind of preventive care, in a sense, that we hope anyone would receive but especially a young child.

Medicaid, of course, goes from, to use Senator Hubert Humphrey's line, ``the dawn of life to the twilight of life''--from children all the way through to older Americans and folks in between there who might have a disability. Probably every Member of the Senate has received a letter from a family who has a loved one with a disability, especially a child, expressing how Medicaid is important to them.

We all know these debates are critically important to what happens to Medicaid. If we allow the majority in the Senate, and if we allow the administration to have its way, we would have substantial cuts to Medicaid--maybe not a trillion and a half, as the administration has proposed, but substantial cuts that would hurt the American family.

I wanted to highlight some of the ways I mentioned earlier that the administration has tried to sabotage Medicaid. That is my view of it. Here are some examples: Starting in January of 2018, the administration undertook an effort to allow States, for the first time, to take away Medicaid coverage from people who are not working or who are not engaged in work-related activities for a specific number of hours each month. In Arkansas, for example--this was the first State to implement this new policy by the administration--over 18,000 Medicaid beneficiaries lost coverage in 2018 due to the new requirements. Almost one in four people were subject to the new rules.

While a Federal district court recently struck down restrictive waivers in both Arkansas and Kentucky, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the so-called CMS, continues to approve these policies in additional States.

So that is one attempt to knock people off Medicaid in the calendar year 2018--18,000.

Another attempt was in the State of Utah. HHS, Health and Human Services, a Federal agency, has also approved an unprecedented authority for States to deny coverage for people who otherwise would be eligible for Medicaid. This authority undermines Medicaid's guarantee of healthcare coverage to low-income people who meet the eligibility criteria set by Congress.

Earlier this year, Health and Human Services approved a proposal to allow the State of Utah to cap enrollment based solely on State funding decisions. So, in other words, once the number of enrollees reaches the State's funding cap, other eligible people would be shut out of coverage. An arbitrary enrollment cap limits enrollment on a first- come, first-serve basis and would treat similarly situated people very differently, depending on when they apply for coverage, effectively holding low-income people's healthcare coverage hostage--hostage to State lawmakers' annual budget decisions on how many people should get coverage. So this is another way to limit Medicaid coverage.

Now, Health and Human Services is reportedly working on a block grant guidance for States that could give States the latitude to cut coverage of services or provide payments in ways not allowed under Federal law.

So here are just a couple of examples of what the administration is doing that I would argue is sabotage: cutting Medicaid by providing waivers that have not been provided before to the States. I don't think coverage of Medicaid should be determined by a purely budgetary decision at the State level. States have to balance their budget. They have constraints. The Federal Government should ensure that anyone who is eligible for Medicaid should receive it. There are those who say: Well, if you go down that path, the Federal Government will not be able to afford it.

I have heard words used on this floor and other places around the Capitol that the cost of Medicaid is ``unsustainable.'' That is the word that is used over and over--unsustainable.

I wonder if the same people, the same Members of Congress, use the word ``unsustainable'' for corporate tax cuts that went into effect starting in late 2017, where there was a corporate tax reduction voted on in the Senate where that reduction went from a 35-percent rate down to a 21-percent rate. The original idea was to go from 35 to 20, and it ended up at 21. So that is a 14-point reduction in the corporate tax rate. We were told, if we did that, if we all agreed to do that--I did not agree with it--but if we were to agree to do that and the bill went through and became law, which it did, that somehow wages would be increased for workers across the board. In fact, the White House, at that time, promised that wages would go up $4,000 per worker--$4,000. I haven't had a steady stream of workers coming to my office saying they got a $4,000 wage increase because of the December 2017 tax bill. In fact, they are telling me the opposite. Many of them are paying more than they were before that tax bill.

I make that point and relate it to Medicaid very simply because the same folks who talked about and have advocated for and even voted repeatedly to cut Medicaid are the same folks who often supported a corporate tax cut that cost over a trillion dollars and was not paid for. Then the same people say: Oh, my goodness. We have a trillion-plus hole in the budget so we have to go and cut Medicaid or Medicare. So what results now is a little more than a year later--a year and a half later, after the tax bill passed, what do we have? We have the administration coming forward saying: We have to cut Medicaid by a trillion and a half over the next 10 years and Medicare by over $845 billion over the next 10 years. That is the tradeoff: cut Medicaid and Medicare, in essence, to pay for a corporate tax cut.

Remember, every point they reduce that corporate tax cut--when they went from 35 to 34, the cost of that is $100 billion over 10 years. Then, when it went from 34 to 33, another $100 billion is implicated in that cut, and you can see the reduction. For every point of the corporate tax cut, it will cost the Nation, over 10 years, $100 billion.

So when folks start talking about the cost of Medicaid being unsustainable, I just think that is a camouflage for what they really want to do, which is to cut Medicaid and reduce those who are eligible.

I am going to try, with everything I have, to prevent them from doing that because last time I checked, Medicaid was a program about us. It is an ``us'' program, not a program for someone over there--someone who is distant from us. Medicaid, as we found out most recently in the debates about healthcare, is a program about us, about who we are. It is about babies being born. It is about kids with disabilities. It is about children who live in families who are very low income. The families are thereby eligible for Medicaid, and that child not only has coverage but has the kind of early preventive healthcare we would hope every child has.

And Medicaid is also about the members of our family who are senior citizens trying to get skilled care.

So we are going to have a long discussion today, at least for the better part of an hour, about Medicaid, and I am grateful that colleagues of mine are willing to come to the floor and talk about this critically important program and what is at stake for our families.

Mr. President, I will at this time yield the floor to my distinguished colleague from the State of Washington, Senator Murray. We are honored by her presence here on the floor. I will come back a little later.

Mr. President I want to thank my colleague from the State of Washington for outlining the challenges presented now to Medicaid in terms of efforts by Republicans, which I have described with three words: decimate, slash, and sabotage. I think all three are an accurate description of what they have tried to do.

But I am also grateful that Senator Murray was highlighting some of the great benefits of the program in her initial remarks on the floor.

We just had a report yesterday from a great organization called Protect Our Care. I will not read the entire report, but I was struck by a few findings that they summarized in that report, quoting from various studies about the impact of Medicaid. Here are just a few. A number of these findings relate to Medicaid expansion, which was the expansion of Medicaid that became law when the Affordable Care Act was passed back in 2010, but it is only now, years after Medicaid expansion has gone into effect, that the impact is being felt in a very positive way.

For just a couple of highlights here on Medicaid expansion, for example, expansion was associated with lower rates of maternal mortality. In this case, the research was done by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. The research also found that States that had expanded Medicaid experienced 1.6 fewer maternal deaths per 100,000 women than States that refused to expand Medicaid.

As folks might remember, the law allowed States to expand Medicaid, but a number of States had not taken advantage of that. There is a clear advantage for States that expanded on this indicator for maternal mortality.

A second finding, in addition to reducing maternal mortality, is that Medicaid expansion has also been associated with a significant reduction in infant mortality.

A study published in the American Journal of Public Health in April of 2018 found that the decline in infant mortality was more than 50 percent greater in States that expanded Medicaid, compared to those that did not. So there is a second finding on infant mortality.

Beyond improving health surrounding childbirth, Medicaid expansion improves access to family planning. A University of Michigan study found that one-third of women enrolled in the State of Michigan's expanded Medicaid Program reported that their coverage improved access to birth control and family planning services.

Michelle Moniz, a doctor, the study's lead author, concluded that her team's findings ``suggest that the expansion provided an important service for populations with a high unmet need for family planning care.''

So there are just three examples and three different studies, with one validating the benefit of Medicaid expansion to reduce maternal mortality. So fewer pregnant mothers are dying, in the case of one study, because of Medicaid expansion.

The second study is talking about reducing infant mortality because of Medicaid expansion, and the third says that, because of Medicaid expansion, there is improving access to family planning.

So those are just three examples in three different studies about the benefit of Medicaid expansion.

Unfortunately--and it is important to put this on the record--when you see the Republican bills to repeal the Affordable Care Act, every one of them seems to have one thing the common: They don't simply talk about limiting Medicaid expansion. They don't just talk about cutting it back. A number of these proposals that we have debated here--and I guess we only had a vote in the Senate on one--they all have in common that they want to eliminate Medicaid expansion--not just cut it but eliminate it.

Somehow, for some reason, and I will never understand this, my Republican colleagues want to get rid of Medicaid expansion. They seem to think it was a bad thing, that it was a bad result for the American people that Medicaid expansion became law and States were able to take advantage of it, increasing the number of people covered by something on the order, at last count, of 12 million people.

Why is it a bad thing that 12 million people got healthcare? I will never be able to understand that, as long as I live. Why is it wrong, why is it bad that 12 million more people got healthcare through Medicaid expansion?

Is it also then, by extension, a bad thing to reduce maternal mortality? Is that a bad thing as well? Is that a bad result? Is it also a bad result of Medicaid expansion that we were able to

show in States that expanded Medicaid that infant mortality goes down? Is that a bad result? Is it a bad result in States that expanded Medicaid, as opposed to States that did not, that in addition to the reduction in maternal mortality and infant mortality, that there was access to family planning? Is that a bad thing as well?

I don't think many Americans would reach that conclusion. They would argue, I think, just upon the coverage question, that 12 million people or more getting healthcare is an advancement--that we are all better off when 12 million get healthcare coverage.

There seems to be a prevailing point of view here among some that if the guy next to you gets healthcare, somehow that diminishes you. That is contrary to all the evidence, contrary to all the studies about coverage. But in the case of Medicaid expansion, it is not simply that 12 million more Americans got coverage, but now there is empirical data and empirical results that tell us that maternal mortality is likely to go down and infant mortality is likely to go down. That is a good result.

That is why, when people talk about cutting Medicaid by a trillion and a half over the next 10 years, or eliminating Medicaid expansion, they have some explaining to do.

Now, maybe if they have a study showing that in States that did not expand Medicaid they have a strategy to get infant mortality numbers down and maternal mortality numbers down, let's hear the competing argument. I haven't heard that, though. I am still waiting for it.

Here is another good result of Medicaid expansion. It has also proven to be a potent tool for reducing--this is according to the Protect Our Care report from yesterday. Again, I am still quoting from it. Medicaid expansion has proven to be a potent tool for reducing racial disparities in healthcare. Black babies are twice as likely, according to this report, as White babies to be born at low birth weight, and are 1.5 times as likely to be born prematurely.

One study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April 2019 found that when considering low birthweight babies and preterm birth outcomes overall, Medicaid expansion was associated with significant improvements in relative disparities for Black infants compared with White infants in States that expanded Medicaid versus those that did not--significant improvements in relative disparities. That is a good result we know about now--not a theory, a good result from Medicaid expansion.

I will give you another one. This is about opioid use disorder. I have no doubt that the problems we have had all across the country--the epidemic of substance use disorder, a subset of that being the problems with opioid addiction--and all of the horror and misery and skyrocketing deaths from that scourge, that public health emergency--I have no doubt that the concern about that is bipartisan. We have done a lot of bipartisan work here in the Senate to dedicate new dollars-- billions and billions of dollars--to help on that. The only problem is, we need many billions more just to meet the treatment needs of those who are already in that awful grip of an opioid addiction.

We have bipartisan concern and bipartisan action. That is good. I want to acknowledge that. But here is the problem: When it comes to Medicaid expansion's role, there seems to be a little disconnect between and among Members of the Senate on that.

Here is what Protect Our Care tells us: Multiple studies suggest that Medicaid expansion plays a crucial role in improving access to treatment for opioid use disorder.

A February 2018 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of data from the Federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found that Medicaid expansion dramatically reduced--I will say it again-- dramatically reduced the share of opioid-related hospitalizations in which patients were uninsured, so making sure that more people in the grip of that addiction who present themselves for help actually have insurance coverage.

Here is a quotation from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities study: ``The share of hospitalizations in which the patient was uninsured fell dramatically in states that expanded Medicaid: from 13.4 percent in 2013 (the year before expansion took effect) to just 2.9 percent two years later.'' So it went from roughly 13 percent down to basically just 3 percent. So that is another result.

I have to ask the question again. Why is it a bad thing that roughly 12 million people got health insurance through Medicaid expansion? Why is it a bad thing that Medicaid expansion now has a demonstrated track record on reducing infant mortality and maternal mortality and helping begin to bridge a racial disparity between a child who happens to be an African American child versus a child who is not? Why is that a bad thing?

Why would you propose, with that track record--and I am only mentioning a few--why would you propose eliminating the program? That seems to be the prevailing point of view in virtually every healthcare bill that is offered on this side of the aisle--to take Medicaid expansion and eliminate it over time. Why would you do that?

I could understand better the argument where they said: Well, look, we have a new idea. We have an idea that will reduce infant mortality, maternal mortality, bridge some of those racial gaps, and cover 12 million people with a new program, a new approach. I would listen a little then and maybe consider their ideas. But when you call for the elimination over and over again of a program with that track record in just a couple of years--and this isn't longitudinal data over decades; we know right away the benefits of more people getting coverage, more children getting treatment, and people in the grip of an opioid addiction having insurance and therefore having coverage.

In Pennsylvania, there are tens of thousands of people--not thousands, tens of thousands--who are getting treatment for an opioid or substance use disorder condition solely because they happen to live in a State that expanded Medicaid. If they lived in a State that didn't expand it, they would be pretty much on their own when it comes to getting treatment or services for that kind of an addiction.

I really have trouble understanding what my colleagues have presented. If you want to introduce a bill to change healthcare, I think it is incumbent upon you to have an alternative, have a better way of covering as many people, have coverage that is affordable, and have a strategy that will accomplish what we have already accomplished through the Affordable Care Act. That number is even bigger. It is the Medicaid expansion number plus folks who get their coverage through the exchanges. That number is above 20 million.

So if you have a better proposal, you ought to present it. But they haven't. That is unfortunate because now we are facing the prospect of not just proposals that could pass and be signed into law by this President that would destroy the opportunity for 20 million people to have healthcare, but a big share of that would be cutting Medicaid expansion.

The other part that is a direct threat to Medicaid itself is the lawsuit making its way through a Federal court. I have heard a number of my colleagues say: Oh, no, we want to preserve protections for preexisting conditions. We want to preserve most of Medicaid. We want to cut the costs, and we want to preserve it.

Well, if you have those goals, if you say you are really for having all those consumer protections from the Affordable Care Act, and if you really care about seniors getting into nursing homes because of Medicaid and you care and you want to preserve that, and you care about kids with disabilities who have their healthcare through Medicaid and you want to preserve their healthcare, and you want to preserve healthcare for kids from low-income families through Medicaid--if you believe all that, you have to oppose the lawsuit. You can't make the argument that you care about those Americans and you care about healthcare and protections and all of that and then say you support the lawsuit. You have to come out against the lawsuit.

Make a statement--you should if you are serious about it, if you are honest about it--or maybe file something with the Federal court, maybe a formal filing to say: Here is why I oppose the

lawsuit. File a brief. Do something. But at least tell the American people the truth. If you are going to be for preserving these kinds of protections, you can't be for the lawsuit. In fact, you would have to be unalterably opposed to the lawsuit if you really care about those kinds of major healthcare issues, including Medicaid.

If you were really concerned about Medicaid and you wanted to preserve most of it and you had ideas about how to change it for the better, you can't support the sabotage by the administration because the effect in a number of these States with these waivers is that people lose their Medicaid coverage--as I said, we now know that in 2018, 18,000 people in Arkansas lost coverage. That will be replicated in other States. Tennessee now is one of the States considering a block-grant proposal. Utah--I mentioned what they are doing--tying Medicaid to the State budget, instead of covering folks who are eligible as opposed to tying coverage and care to how much money is in the State budget.

I think that if you are going to make an argument in favor of Medicaid, you have to oppose the lawsuit and you have to stop the sabotage.

The third thing you can do to be honest about what you say you believe in--and constructive here--is to say we shouldn't cut Medicaid by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, as the administration proposed. Just say you are against what the administration proposed and you don't think we should cut it by $1.5 trillion. And you should add your opposition to the cuts to Medicare. The administration proposal is to cut Medicare by $845 billion over 10 years. You should oppose that as well.

If you do that--if you oppose the sabotage, oppose the lawsuit, and oppose the budget cuts--then we can have a conversation about lowering the cost of healthcare, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, and preserving Medicaid as much as humanly possible even when costs go up. It is pretty apparent to me that a lot of Americans rely upon Medicaid.

How about if you represent a State, for example, that has a substantial rural population? I represent the State of Pennsylvania, which has 67 counties, but 48 of them are considered rural. We have a lot of rural communities, a lot of counties where there may not be agriculture in every corner, but there are a lot of small towns and a lot of rural communities, and they tend to be one and the same. These are communities that are faced with several levels of challenges. They often have job loss because a substantial employer has left. They often have infrastructure problems because they have a lot of bridges that are structurally deficient. They have all kinds of other economic challenges that sometimes relate to the markets and agriculture and so many other problems. Many of these communities also have a so-called digital divide--they are living in a county where 40, 50, 60 percent of the people who live in that county don't have access to broadband, high-speed internet.

In addition to all those problems in some rural areas, they also have a problem with healthcare access. The good news here is that there are a lot of kids in rural areas who get their healthcare through--guess what--Medicaid. Big numbers. In some places, the numbers of children covered by Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program are much higher than in urban areas.

In a rural area, if you start cutting Medicaid and eliminating Medicaid expansion, as many around here want to do, you are not only going to hurt a child in an urban community or in a small town, but you are also going to hurt a child in a rural community very badly.

It gets worse from there. If you cut Medicaid, rural hospitals that are already on the brink of failure or bankruptcy or at least downturn in their ability to balance their budgets--a lot of those rural hospitals will fail. We know that. The data is pretty clear on that.

If all of your focus is on a rural area and you think rural children should have the chance for good-quality healthcare, and if you think rural hospitals--sometimes the biggest employers in a community--should remain open, you should really care about Medicaid. You should really be worried about proposals to cut it by $1.5 trillion over a decade, as the administration proposes. You should be very concerned about proposals to eliminate Medicaid expansion because guess what is another challenge in a lot of these communities--the opioid substance use disorder crisis.

My colleagues are here, and I want to make sure they have an opportunity to weigh in as well. We are privileged to be joined by two colleagues.

I yield the floor to my colleague from the State of Oregon, the senior Senator from the State of Oregon.

Mr. President, this week marks the 10th anniversary of the end of Sri Lanka's decades-long civil war. On May 19, 2009, Sri Lanka's 26-year conflict between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTTE, and the government of Sri Lanka came to a close with the LTTE's military defeat and surrender. This anniversary comes on the heels of the horrible Easter Sunday terrorist attacks on churches across Sri Lanka for which we are still seeking answers and accountability from ISIS and its affiliates on the island.

While the end of the war was a counterterrorism victory, we have since learned the ugly cost of this effort. According to International Crisis Group, in the final months of Sri Lanka's civil war, Sri Lankan Government ``attacks on its own self-declared `no-fire zones' killed tens of thousands of [Tamil] civilians . . . claims range from 7,000 to 147,000 dead.'' For several years, I have been calling for an international, independent mechanism to investigate allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Sri Lankan conflict. I also remain concerned about recent violations of human rights and religious freedom in that country.

Since the end of the war, there has yet to be real progress made on reconciliation and accountability for Tamils through domestic processes, as recommended by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 2015 Investigation on Sri Lanka, OISL. Human rights violations against Tamil, Christian, and Muslim minorities continue, and the Sri Lankan Government has

failed to bring to justice the perpetrators of attacks against journalists, religious, and ethnic minorities and opposition politicians.

Sri Lanka has a long way to go on its path to reconciliation. In addition to pursuing meaningful justice and accountability, the Sri Lankan Government must implement comprehensive security sector reform, fully operationalize the Office of Missing Persons to provide families with answers on what happened to their loved ones, repeal the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act, PTA, release political prisoners as called for by our own State Department and required by fiscal year 2019 Appropriations bill and address the root causes of the civil war and the government's responsibility to protect citizens of all communities.

Concerns over intercommunal strife are exacerbated by the horrific April 21 Easter attacks on churches and hotels across the island that killed over 200 civilians. We are learning that ISIS-affiliated entities were behind the attacks. As Sri Lanka deals with the very new threat of Islamic extremism, it is critical that its government not repeat its pattern of suppressing media, civil society, and religious freedom under the veil of counterterrorism. The government's abuse of emergency powers, recent ban on Muslim face-covers, coupled with retaliatory attacks against mosques and Muslim businesses with little response from Sri Lanka law enforcement is problematic and only serves to heighten tensions between religious and ethnic communities. I urge the Sri Lankan security forces to exercise restraint in their response to the Easter attacks.

While horrific on their own, the Easter attacks were a stark reminder that, as we come upon the 10th anniversary of the end of Sri Lanka's civil war, intercommunal conflict remains a reality on the island. The Sri Lankan Government's response to the Easter attacks echoes of the country's history of conflict and oppression under cover of counterterrorism. As we remember and commemorate the tens of thousands of lives lost leading up to May 2009, I urge Sri Lanka, the United States and the international community to continue to pursue justice, accountability, and reconciliation for a war-torn nation.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Madam President, I come to the floor again this morning to discuss several judicial nominations considered by the Senate this week.

Earlier this week, the Senate voted to confirm Michael Truncale to the Eastern District of Texas and Kenneth Lee to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals seat in California, and today we will be voting on the nomination of Wendy Vitter to the Eastern District of Louisiana.

The Senate is considering and confirming nominees whose records indicate they are far outside the mainstream. I have worked very hard over a number of years now--I guess we are in our eighth year--working with Senator Toomey, to fill district court vacancies in Pennsylvania with well-qualified and experienced judges whom I believe will be able to set aside their ideologies or personal beliefs and apply the law to the cases before them. But I do not have the same confidence in many of the nominees before this body today and especially the nominees we are considering.

I will go in the order that I mentioned before--first, Michael Truncale, then Kenneth Lee, and Wendy Vitter. I believe that in all three cases, all are not mainstream conservatives. Their backgrounds and records are very political, and they have long records of advocating for certain positions on issues that may come before them as either a U.S. district court judge or an appellate judge.

First of all, Mr. Truncale has advocated strongly for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which provided healthcare coverage and critical patient protections for 20 million people

in terms of coverage and tens of millions more in terms of protection.

He said that the Affordable Care Act would ``lead to the rationing of healthcare.'' He has personally advocated for abolishing the Department of Education, and he used false, unfounded claims of voter fraud to support voter ID laws that disproportionately affect low-income voters and communities of color.

Second, Kenneth Lee was confirmed over the objections of both California Senators, Senator Harris and Senator Feinstein--Senator Feinstein, in this case, being the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, the very committee that considers judges. Mr. Lee has a litany of writings that include offensive statements about immigrants, people of color, and LGBT Americans. He has strongly opposed affirmative action policies that help make our institutions of higher learning more diverse, and it is very possible that he may consider matters relating to these policies as a member of the Ninth Circuit.

Finally, Wendy Vitter has virtually no Federal trial court experience, has a long record of opposing contraception, and has promoted false information about the safety of oral contraceptives. These views are not only outside of the mainstream--the judicial or legal mainstream--but they are also not supported by science.

I don't believe these nominees will be able to set aside their personal views and apply relevant precedent, and my concern is compounded by recent efforts by conservative jurists to overturn longstanding precedents. Most Americans thought that the Voting Rights Act, which for decades protected the franchise for Americans of color, particularly Black Americans, was a foundational, almost untouchable statute. But in 2013, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, which has gotten only more conservative, moved to the right even more. That Court, the Supreme Court, gutted the protections of the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County v. Holder case.

Just last year, in the Janus decision, the Supreme Court overturned a four-decades-old precedent in the Abood case that allowed public sector unions to collect nonpolitical, so-called fair share fees to cover the costs of negotiations that benefit all workers. So you have the union doing the work, and the law allowed them, for four decades, to charge other employees who benefit from the work of the union, and the Supreme Court struck that down.

Pennsylvania passed a similar law in the 1980s, which has been the law of the land in Pennsylvania for years. It was signed into law in the late 1980s by my father when he was serving as Governor, so that is an important issue in Pennsylvania for working men and women.

The conservative majority of the Supreme Court overturned the Abood case, eviscerating a precedent that was relied upon by public sector unions and their governmental employers all over the country. I believe the next step by the far right and by this court and maybe by the Supreme Court and maybe in another court would be to make illegal the very right to organize for wages and benefits. I hope I am wrong about that, but I believe that is the logical next step for the right.

Just this week, a conservative majority of the Supreme Court overturned a 40-year precedent regarding States' sovereign immunity in the courts of other States. In the last line of his dissent, Justice Breyer sounded alarm bells about this kind of judicial activism from the right, saying: ``Today's decision can only cause one to wonder which cases the court will overrule next.''

He is right. We no longer know what is civil law and what could be up for debate. We thought that Abood was settled law in the context of labor unions and the right to organize or an issue related to the right to organize. We thought the Voting Rights Act was settled law.

This week we mark the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, a unanimous Supreme Court decision holding that segregation in our public school system, in addition to being a profound moral failure, was a violation of our Constitution. I would hope--we all would hope that Brown v. Board of Education would remain rock solid settled law. Yet, because of what we have seen in the last couple of years with this Court, we must stay vigilant. We cannot let civil rights that Americans fought for and earned and have cherished for decades be chipped away by extreme judicial nominees who hold insuperable political and policy preferences.

I oppose the nominees that the Senate has considered this week, and I will continue to oppose extreme nominees to our Federal courts.

I yield the floor to the distinguished Democratic leader.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the Senate's failure to meet its constitutional obligation and conduct effective oversight of what seems to me and many others to be this administration's inexorable march toward war with Iran.

This week, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is making plans to deploy 120,000 American troops to the Middle East in anticipation of a confrontation with Iran. It is no secret that some of the President's closest advisers are focused on regime change and possibly military engagement with Iran.

I was encouraged by a story in the Washington Post that was posted

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, I rise to celebrate the 54th anniversary of Head Start and the 25th anniversary of Early Head Start on May 18.

We know that in January of 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson declared the War on Poverty in his State of the Union Address. Sargent Shriver, who was the then-Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, assembled a panel of experts to develop a comprehensive child development program to help communities meet the needs of disadvantaged preschool children. It resulted in Project Head Start's launching in the summer of 1965.

Over 50 years later, Head Start and Early Head Start have served hundreds of thousands of children with high-quality, comprehensive early learning and wraparound services. Just to give the Senate a reminder of what Head Start is in terms of the ages, Head Start serves children who are ages 3 to 5. Early Head Start serves children who are up to the age of 3--so under the age of 3.

We know that these early learning experiences provide children with the tools they need to develop and succeed in school. When children learn more earlier in life, they earn more later in life. It is not just a rhyme. All the evidence and research show that there is a direct connection between early learning and later earning. A study of Head Start children in Harrisburg, PA, found that they had higher scores in the fifth grade than a control group on all academic and executive functioning outcomes.

These benefits stay with children through adulthood. Research shows Head Start children have a higher likelihood of graduating from high school and receiving postsecondary degrees. These benefits even flow to the next generation. The children of Head Start graduates are significantly more likely to finish high school and enroll in college, and they are significantly less likely to become teen parents or to be involved in the criminal justice system.

One of the core tenets of Head Start that has made it so successful is its responsiveness to local community needs. In Pennsylvania, for example, as in many other States, the opioid epidemic has hit far too many communities, and Head Start has responded to that crisis with innovative programming.

For example, the SafeStart Program in Allentown, which is an Early Head Start program, provides early intervention to assist the development of infants and toddlers who have suffered abuse or neglect. After having completed SafeStart--the new program in Allentown--68 percent of 3-year-olds were on age developmentally, and 100 percent of the children showed significant improvement in their drug-impacted symptoms, with 53 percent having shown resolution. Of the women who became pregnant while their substance-impacted children were enrolled in SafeStart, 88 percent gave birth to full-term, drug-free, and healthy second children.

The whole family approach and integration with local community partners

have created not just better outcomes for families but have resulted in significant savings. Through this program, 91 percent of the children achieved stable, permanent homes and caregivers, and it is estimated that the SafeStart Program has resulted in nearly $1.5 million in foster care savings and in over $9.5 million in child welfare involvement by stabilizing 106 families. So we are grateful for those results from the SafeStart Program in Allentown.

Head Start is a critical program for lifting families out of poverty, obviously, and providing children with the early learning experiences they need to start kindergarten and to be ready to learn. Unfortunately, only about a third of eligible children still have access to Head Start, and less than 10 percent--these are national numbers--have access to Early Head Start. Again, Early Head Start serves those who are up to 3 years old, and Head Start serves those who are 3 to 5 years old. So funding for these programs is critical.

To give you an example of those numbers in Pennsylvania--and the numbers are even a little lower--just 27 percent of eligible 3- to 5- year-olds have access to Head Start, and only 7 percent of eligible children under 3 years old have access to Early Head Start. Even with a lot of children being eligible but not being served, this is purely a question of funding.

As we celebrate over 50 years of Head Start on May 18, we must work to ensure these programs receive robust funding and continue to serve low-income children and families across the Nation.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I rise to speak about the pending nominations. I will have comments on both.

First, I ask unanimous consent that both sets of remarks appear in separate parts of the Record that are relevant to those nominations.

Mr. President, I want to say a few words about the nomination of Janet Dhillon to be Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which we know by the shorthand EEOC. I will vote against her nomination. I have voted against it in the past in committee.

But let me tell you about the EEOC. We need a little reminder of this once in a while. It is a bipartisan Commission that for decades has worked to protect American workers from discrimination in the workplace--all kinds of discrimination.

Many lawyers know that if you bring an action in a State court or in a Federal court, the first step is that you have to go through all of your administrative remedies. So if you bring a Federal lawsuit or a civil action based upon discrimination, the first thing you have to do is to go to the EEOC. Before you can get to a Federal district court, you have to go through the EEOC. So it becomes the first court, in essence. It is not technically a court, but it becomes the first place you go to have your ``discrimination in the workplace'' claim considered.

During that time, since the founding or the beginnings of the EEOC, people in both parties in the Senate have worked together to move forward nominees from both parties in tandem so the Commission could continue its essential work.

Today this bipartisan process is being cast aside by the majority in the Senate because no Democratic nominee is being considered along with Janet Dhillon, who has been proposed by the administration. My colleagues in the majority have decided to abandon this bipartisan cooperation.

We know that the EEOC plays a critical role in protecting workers from all forms--all forms--of workplace discrimination and in ensuring that all workers have equal access to employment opportunities.

Another point that is important is that the EEOC is currently in the middle of collecting data on pay gaps faced by women in the workplace, and the EEOC's leadership is badly needed so that we can work to eliminate workplace sexual harassment--still a big problem where we have a long way to go.

So instead of working with Democrats to make their sure that all-- all--EEOC positions are filled so the Commission can undertake this work, the majority is instead working only to advance the Republican nominees put forward by the White House.

This is not how the Senate should work. It certainly is not how the Senate should work as it relates to the EEOC, and the most significant losers here are American workers. They will pay the price because of the EEOC not having more nominations that are bipartisan.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this week, we know that the Senate is considering the nomination of Michael Park, who has been nominated by the President to serve on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. I have a number of concerns with Mr. Park's nomination and his record. I will highlight just one that I think is a major concern for many Americans.

In 2011, Mr. Park submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion was unconstitutional. That is the argument he made. He claimed that the Medicaid expansion provision coerced States into accepting a ``greatly enlarged Medicaid program.'' I will come back to that later because those words are important. The rationale for this, he asserted, was that these States could not realistically opt out. Obviously, I disagree with his argument, and I disagree with his rationale. Yet I want to talk about the program and, more importantly, the people who will be affected by his point of view on this policy if he is to be successful in his arguments.

If he is to be confirmed, I have a real concern about how he will make decisions as a judge as they relate to healthcare, Medicaid expansion, and related topics.

So I am not going to go through the legal arguments, but I do want to talk about Medicaid expansion, the importance of it, and the people it helps. Everyone here knows that Medicaid itself has been a program that we have enjoyed the benefits of for more than 50 years. Right now, about 75 million people are covered by Medicaid. Approximately 17 million of those individuals are eligible because of Medicaid expansion. So millions of people got healthcare because of the Medicaid expansion part of the Affordable Care Act.

Medicaid itself covers 38 percent of the 1.9 million people younger than age 65 who are battling an opioid addiction. So 38 percent of the 1.9 million people are helped who are in the grip of that addiction. That affects every State, every community, and, increasingly, virtually every family, or at least we all seem to know someone who has been adversely impacted by an opioid addiction or a substance use disorder issue.

So 38 percent is almost 4 in 10. So 4 in 10 people who need that help are benefiting from Medicaid itself because of Medicaid expansion.

A lot of politicians in Washington tried to convince people, both here and around the country, that Medicaid was about some other person over there, some person that you didn't know, some person that you may not have to be too concerned about, or so the argument went--that Medicaid was not about you or your family. It was about some other person. The implicit message was this: Don't worry about them. They probably don't need it, and you can vote for repeal and everything will be OK for the country.

Well, we know now better than ever, probably, in the last 2 years since that debate and the ongoing debate we had starting in 2017 and a debate, frankly, that has been playing out over many years, that Medicaid is not a program for someone else. It is an ``us'' program. Medicaid is about us, about who we are as a country. It tells us a lot about our values--whom we value, for whom we will fight, and whom we stand up for.

Medicaid provides coverage--basically, if you wanted to simplify it-- for three groups of Americans: seniors, kids, and people with disabilities.

In my home State of Pennsylvania, Medicaid could be simplified this way. It is an oversimplification, but it is a good way to describe it in numerical terms. Medicaid is a 40, 50, 60 program--40, 50, 60, pretty easy to remember.

Forty percent of all the births in Pennsylvania--the national number is actually higher--and roughly 40 percent of all the kids in our State have Medicaid. The 50 is when you look at this through the lens of individuals with disabilities--certainly, for children with disabilities. It is actually 54 percent of children with disabilities in Pennsylvania who get Medicaid. It is a big number, and those families don't want to hear talk of repeal or talk of eliminating Medicaid expansion or talk of in any way undermining Medicaid itself.

How about 60? Where does the 60 come in the 40, 50, 60 equation? The 60 are people in nursing homes. So there are a lot of families out there who may not have realized before but certainly after 2017 and 2018 that their loved one--their mom or their dad or their grandparent or relative, or their grandmother or grandfather--was getting into a nursing home in many cases solely--solely--because of the Medicaid Program. They couldn't get there any other way. They couldn't afford it unless you could shell out tens and tens of thousands of dollars a year for long-term care.

So Medicaid affects that many people just in Pennsylvania--literally millions in our State. That is just one State. The numbers are very similar across the country.

The exact numbers for Medicaid expansion in Pennsylvania exceed 700,000. So after the Affordable Care Act was passed and then implemented after 2010, over the course of several years we gained coverage in Pennsylvania of over 1.1 million people--a big number.

Unfortunately, because of the administration's sabotage over the last 2 years, that number has gone down. It is still above 1.1 million, but it is going down.

The Medicaid expansion part of that, of course, was over 700,000 people.

Now comes the administration's budget--this current budget proposal by the administration, which I predict will be rejected by the Congress. But we have to make sure it gets rejected because one of the proposals in that budget is to cut Medicaid by a trillion and a half-- $1.5 trillion--over 10 years.

The other reality here is that the official Republican position on the Affordable Care Act and related issues is that they, the Republican Members of Congress, want to eliminate Medicaid expansion over time-- not just to cut it, not to change it, but to eliminate it. They want to eliminate Medicaid expansion, and, of course, based upon the $1.5 trillion proposed cut, along with other proposals, one after another, they want to cut Medicaid itself.

So when Mr. Park uses words like his concern about the Medicaid expansion being greatly enlarged Medicaid programs, or the program itself, overall, I worry what he might do as a judge, not just on Medicaid expansion, but what he might do and decisions he might make based upon Medicaid itself.

So my original concerns about his arguments about the Affordable Care Act are now greatly and significantly increased because of what he has said about Medicaid itself, indirectly saying that he is not sure whether Medicaid itself would be worthy of the kind of support that it is going to require over time.

So I have real concerns on Medicaid.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Madam President, I come to the floor tonight to discuss the troubling state of judicial nominations before the Senate. This week, we are voting on, among others, two district court nominees-- Campbell Barker and Andrew Brasher--who have, in my judgment, very concerning records.

Just several weeks ago, Senate Republicans changed the Senate rules so that they can continue to put on the Federal bench highly ideological and sometimes unqualified jurists who have the corporate stamp of approval but I don't think the mainstream stamp of approval. Under new Senate rules, these nominees will receive only 2 hours of postcloture consideration time on the Senate floor, but if confirmed, they would sit on the Federal bench for life. So 2 hours postcloture for a lifetime appointment.

I will start with Mr. Campbell Barker, who has been nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. He has a troubling record from his time as deputy solicitor general of the State of Texas. In 2016, he defended Texas's voter ID law, which the Fifth Circuit said violated the Voting Rights Act because it prevented minority voters from exercising their right to vote.

Second, Mr. Barker submitted amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court attacking the Affordable Care Act. In those briefs, he argued that the individual mandate is unconstitutional--a position rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. He also opposed the contraceptive coverage mandate, which was a critical part of the ACA's efforts to make sure that women have access to the medical care they need. He also signed amicus briefs arguing that businesses should be allowed to discriminate against LGBT customers and supporting the President's travel ban, which, in my judgment, was a bigoted policy that discriminated against the Muslim community.

The second nominee I will make some comments about tonight is Mr. Andrew Brasher, a nominee to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. Like Mr. Barker, Mr. Brasher has a troubling record from his time in the state solicitor general's office. In 2014, he defended the Alabama State redistricting scheme, which a Federal court determined violated the Constitution because it packed African- American voters into a few districts, diluting the power of their vote on the basis of their race.

Similar to Mr. Barker, Mr. Brasher challenged the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act and argued that the reasonable accommodations made for religious nonprofits were still too burdensome--an argument that the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected.

In 2015, he submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing against the right of same-sex couples to marry--a position the Supreme Court has rejected.

Lastly, Mr. Brasher submitted amicus briefs to the Supreme Court arguing against commonsense gun laws, such as age requirements for gun purchases and restrictions on concealed carry licenses.

There is no good reason why we should be confirming these judges with these troubling records on matters of critical importance to many Americans. There is no shortage of qualified, mainstream attorneys or judges, State court judges and other judges across the country. Of course, in the case of a Republican Senate and Republican President, these judges are often Republican in their party affiliation or by way of their philosophy, but I think there is often a big difference between a conservative jurist or potential judge who has a conservative view on issues--that is different from being extreme right, as many of these nominees are.

Just by way of contrast to these nominees and others we will be considering, Senator Toomey and I have worked together jointly to recommend experienced, consensus nominees for Federal district courts in Pennsylvania. Everyone knows we are in different parties. We have different views. We rarely vote together. But we have figured out a way on most days--not every day, not every nominee or potential nominee, but on most days--to work together to try to find consensus for district court nominees.

I want to thank my colleague from Pennsylvania, Senator Toomey, for his commitment to our process over these many years we have served together now, since 2011. This process has allowed us to confirm 18 Federal judges to the 3 Federal district courts in Pennsylvania since 2011. We have five others who are being considered by the Senate now, including Joshua Wolson, whose nomination is on the floor this week. I returned a blue slip and will vote for Josh Wolson. He is experienced. He has strong academic credentials. He is a conservative. He probably

wouldn't be my first pick, but I am supporting him. He has been a partner at a distinguished Philadelphia law firm, the Dilworth Paxson firm, since 2008 and has both the ability and I think the integrity to serve as a Federal district court judge. So that is a demonstration that this process can work when you have consensus, even between Senators who don't often vote together.

This is a bipartisan process. It requires both parties to work very hard. It requires our staff to work hard. It requires consensus. It has required several White Houses now--the Obama administration's White House, as well as the Trump administration--to work with us. But we found a way to make it work on most days.

This bipartisan district court process is indeed the exception, not the rule. In so many other instances, especially with regard to circuit court nominees, we have seen extreme nominees being pushed through. The rule change that I referred to earlier that cut the postcloture time to just 2 hours means there is very little time to fully consider nominees to these lifetime appointments to the Bench. The Judiciary Committee has stacked multiple circuit court nominees in single hearings, giving Senators on the Judiciary Committee less time to ask nominees questions.

Circuit court nominees now receive votes over the objection of their home state Senators. That is new. That wasn't happening just a few years ago, and it wasn't happening many years before that.

The blue-slip process has been eviscerated for circuit court judicial nominees. That is a loss for the Senate, which may be the only body in the world that has the kind of rules that govern our work so that we will arrive at a consensus by empowering the minority to work with the majority to arrive at that consensus. It is a loss for the Senate, but it is also a loss for our constituents who are served by Federal district courts and Federal circuit courts.

Last year, the Senate confirmed David Porter to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania--Pennsylvania being one of the States represented in the circuit. That nomination and confirmation was over my objection as a home State Senator. This was in spite of my record of bipartisan work on judicial nominations. My record now goes back over the course of three Presidencies and different Senates--Democratic Senate, Republican Senate. Despite all the bipartisan work, this nominee was both nominated and confirmed without my consent.

For the first time in history, we have confirmed two judges to the circuit court--Eric Miller and Paul Matey--without the consent of any home State Senators, meaning you have two Democratic Senators who did not give consent, and now they have been confirmed. I don't think that is good for the Senate in the long run. I am certain it is not good for our constituents, as I said. I think they would prefer judges who come through a process where there is a degree of consensus, including all of the vetting that these nominees go through.

This isn't how the process is supposed to work. This process is supposed to be one of advice and consent. Advice and consent as to nominating people for lifetime appointments to the Federal courts, especially the circuit courts, has been gutted. ``Gutted'' might be an understatement. These nominees will impact not just the lives of the parties before them in court, but, of course, the lives of all Americans.

It is true that in our system, one Federal judge can affect the whole country. We know that from our history. And that includes both district court judges, as well as circuit court judges.

In the case of circuit court judges, often that is the last stop. Very few cases are briefed and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. In many cases, the last stop is the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. For all intents and purposes, that becomes the Supreme Court for a lot of cases--the highest level of review.

I hope we can return to a more inclusive process that focuses on putting experienced, mainstream judges on the bench rather than ramming through--and that is the best way to describe what has been happening lately--nominees with views and with records that are out of the mainstream. I would argue for purposes of the near-term votes that both Mr. Barker and Mr. Brasher would not fit under the umbrella of being mainstream.

I think there are plenty of folks around here in the Senate who would like to work together to arrive at more of a consensus. It doesn't mean that we will not have disagreements; it doesn't mean that one side will not have a different point of view. But I think someone can be conservative and philosophically aligned with one party or one point of view without being so far out of the mainstream that a lot of Americans would consider them extreme.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President. I recently visited two senior centers in Pennsylvania, the Emporium Senior Center in Cameron County and the Clearfield Senior Center in Clearfield County, to discuss issues on the minds of older Pennsylvanians and those who serve them. We spoke about the need to protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security; the importance of bringing down the high cost of prescription drugs; and how to prevent con artists from scamming older adults out of their hard-earned savings.

We must continue to support senior centers and other gathering places for older adults. For many, senior centers are a hub for services and a place where older Americans find a sense of community and belonging. They are the

place where seniors gather with friends to socialize, look for help with everyday challenges, and learn about timely topics. I am pleased that the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, of which I am the ranking member, has examined ways to enhance the services and supports that senior centers provide. I'd like to commend the Emporium Senior Center and Clearfield Senior Center for the excellent services that they provide seniors and important role they play in the community.

Mr. President, today I wish to remember and pay tribute to former Senator Harris Llewellyn Wofford, Jr. and his life of dedicated service to our country and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Harris lived a life of service, committed to advancing civil rights and ending injustice. Early in his career, Harris went to India to study nonviolence and the teachings of Gandhi. The lessons he learned during that time would become indispensable as Harris got to know Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and became involved in the civil rights movement, helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation since reconstruction.

When John F. Kennedy was running for President in 1960, Harris was an adviser on his campaign. Days before the election, Dr. King was unjustly imprisoned, and Wofford urged Kennedy and his team to call Coretta Scott King to comfort her and demonstrate his commitments to civil rights. Once Kennedy was elected, Harris Wofford served as Special Assistant to the President for Civil Rights and chairman of the Subcabinet Group on Civil Rights. He urged the President and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to pursue civil rights legislation. Wofford would join Martin Luther King and others in the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights marches in 1965 in support of voting rights for African- Americans.

While serving in the Kennedy administration, Wofford worked with R. Sargent Shriver on the creation of the Peace Corps, eventually leaving the White House to serve as the Peace Corps' special representative to Africa and director of operations in Ethiopia, as well as associate director. He would also play a role in the creation of Volunteers in Service to America, a domestic version of the Peace Corps.

In 1991, when former Pennsylvania Senator H. John Heinz was killed in a plane crash, my father, Governor Robert P. Casey, turned to Harris Wofford to fill the vacancy. Harris went on to win a special election and served until 1994 when he narrowly lost reelection. While in office, he worked to pass the National and Community Service Act, creating AmeriCorps, the Senior Corps and Learn and Serve America. Harris would go on to serve as the head of AmeriCorps.

If one tried to sum up Harris Wofford's life in one word, it would be service. He truly believed that through service every individual could contribute to the betterment of his or her community, State, country, and the world. Harris Wofford's friend, Martin Luther King, Jr., said ``everyone can be great, because everyone can serve.'' Today we honor Harris Wofford's life of service which will continue to inspire Americans to serve one another and our Nation.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about an issue that I know is on the minds of many, many Americans, especially folks who are in the middle class or who are struggling to get to the middle class, and that is the issue of childcare.

I think most of us in this Chamber agree that all children born in this country have a light inside of them. For some children, that light will shine very brightly without a lot of help as they have innate abilities or they have circumstances they are born into for which they don't need a lot of help from public policy or from programs or from legislation. Yet there are a lot of children who have a light inside of them that can burn to the full measure of its potential if we do our job. When I say ``our job,'' I mean the job of elected officials. I think it is the job of every elected official at every level of government and of those who work with them to do everything they can to make sure that the light inside of every child burns as brightly as at least the full measure of his or her potential.

We know, just by way of one example in the context of childcare, that affordable, high-quality childcare enables parents to work so they can support their families. Also, quality, affordable healthcare helps give children the early learning experiences they need to develop and succeed in school. When children learn more and it is early in life, they will earn more much later in their lives. That connection between learning and earning isn't just a rhyme; all the research shows that there is a direct connection. When that child learns at a younger age because of early education and quality childcare and so many other strategies, we are all better off. Not only is that child better off in his or her family, but we are all better off. We will have a higher skilled workforce; we will have a more productive workforce; and we will grow and be able to out-compete any country in the world if we invest in early learning.

Unfortunately, we know the challenges. The cost of childcare has increased by 25 percent in just the last decade, which has created significant

financial strains for those same middle-class families. According to data from Child Care Aware, which is in my home Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the average cost of full-time, center-based childcare is about $11,560 for an infant and about $8,712 for a 4-year-old. This is about 12 percent of a married couple's annual income in Pennsylvania, and it is nearly 46 percent of a single parent's annual income--46 percent. That is not sustainable. That is not a number that anyone should be satisfied with. Frankly, I am not sure that 12 percent of the annual income for a two-parent family is sustainable. We should get that number into the single digits. The bill I will talk about in a moment seeks to do that.

Just this past week, when we were all back in our States and were able to travel for the better part of a week, I had the chance to get to six childcare centers in cities across Pennsylvania, and I spoke to more than 25 families who shared their stories about their struggles. The struggle, of course, in this case, was the struggle to afford high- quality childcare.

I was in Philadelphia, Pottstown, Gettysburg, Verona, Erie, and Reading. If you had charted those cities on a map, you would have literally gone from the furthest corner of the southeastern part of our State, which is Philadelphia, to the most remote, northwestern corner of the State, in Erie. I went to communities below Erie and to the northeast as well--so literally every corner of the State. Across those communities, we heard a lot of the same challenges, a lot of similar stories.

For example, one single mom in Philadelphia told us recently what, I think, is emblematic of what is happening in a lot of communities:

I struggle every day to make ends meet. I am not eligible

for any public assistance, so I juggle my bills just to make

ends meet. I have to become very creative in making sure that

I pay my mortgage, utilities, and childcare.

Then she goes on from there to write:

Then I decide if I can pay for anything in addition to

that, such as healthcare, food, necessities for my child or

my home. I knew I would not be able to afford childcare.

Luckily, I have the support of loved ones in my life who

support me when I fall short. Most do not have this.

Then this single mother goes on to write the following:

All of my family and friends struggle to pay for childcare

because we are middle class individuals who make too much

money to qualify for childcare assistance or any other

programs, but we also don't make enough money to actually

afford childcare out of pocket. Oftentimes, we have to choose

a childcare based off of a price and not based off of the

quality of education they will provide our children at the

childcare facility.

Notice what she wrote at the end there. She is making a decision about the childcare she will provide for her children based off only one consideration--the price. It is not based on the quality.

Therein lies the problem that we have to try to solve. If we have millions and millions of families--middle class or who are struggling to get to the middle class--making childcare determinations based solely on the cost, we will all be in trouble over time. That is not what we should be doing. It doesn't mean the price will not be a challenge for so many, and it doesn't mean the price will be irrelevant, but if they are not able to find quality childcare that is affordable, that child will be worse off over time; that community will be; and the rest of us will be. We will not have the high-skilled workforce that we need. We will not be able to compete and win the battle across the world that we need to win, and that is the battle to create the highest skilled workforce in the world and to maintain that advantage.

When I was in Gettysburg this past week, I heard from two parents who had adopted two children, one of whom has significant medical issues and has been in and out of the hospital. They have struggled to find a childcare center that is able to handle the behavioral and developmental needs of their children. The father, who is a small business owner, has had to make adjustments to his work schedule and sell off some of his business assets to make ends meet. He has had to choose between paying for his own health insurance or that of his children. He has had to give up his own insurance to ensure there will never be a lapse in coverage for his children. He makes too much money to qualify for childcare subsidies but lives with constant anxiety over his financial situation.

Part of his testimony and that of his wife was very emotional because of the stress and the pressure on that family--the stress and pressure of the healthcare itself and also of the stress and pressure because of the cost of childcare.

I was grateful he was willing to share his story. In a public setting, it is not easy to talk about the burdens that you live with every day in order to push a policy forward so as to make life better for another family. Like a lot of these parents, I was grateful they were willing to help us better understand those struggles so that we could better propose good policy.

We also heard from a single mom who works long hours as she tries to advance and work her way up the corporate ladder. Prior to her current circumstance, she was waitressing and barely making $11,000 a year. When she was hardly making any income, she was able to make ends meet with the assistance of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and CCIS, which is our State's childcare program that helps families. Now she is in a different circumstance. She works full time--an achievement that she is quite proud of. She is no longer eligible, though, for these programs because her income has gone up.

The good news is her income went up, and she has a full-time job. The bad news is that it knocks her out of eligibility. She must pay the full cost of childcare and be away from her children. She doesn't know what she will do during the summer as she will need to increase the time her children are in care, which will result in higher costs when her children are on summer break. So that is the dilemma she faces-- working harder and getting a full-time job but then not being able to afford help. She needs help from us as well.

I spoke with a mother in Verona, PA, in Allegheny County, who has an 11-month-old child who is in childcare now. Though both she and her husband work full time, they struggle to afford care. They would like to grow their family, but, again, the cost of childcare is their main reason for not doing so. We know that childcare helps children grow and learn, that it helps parents work and provide for their families, and that it helps employers retain a productive workforce. Yet families across the country are unable to afford care. That is why it is so important that we increase Federal investments in early learning and childcare.

For example, in fiscal year 2018, the Childcare and Development Block Grant program was funded at $5.27 billion here in Washington. That was an 83-percent increase--the largest single increase in the history of the program. In that same year--the last budget year, the last appropriations year--Head Start received a little more than $9.8 billion, and that was $610 million more than the program got in 2017.

Both of those were good results. It doesn't happen every day in Washington, we know. These historic, bipartisan investments were continued in the last fiscal year. So there was an increase in this last fiscal year. It was nowhere near the increase of the prior year, but there were extra dollars to sustain funding. These investments are already making an impact in States like Pennsylvania and across our country, but there is so much more unmet need and so much more work to be done. So it is good news on the block grants, but, of course, that is not the whole story on childcare.

I am pushing for both increased funding for the next fiscal year--the one we are working on now, 2020--as well as two bills that will make high-quality childcare accessible and affordable for low- and middle- income families. The first is the Childcare for Working Families Act, and the second is the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit Enhancement Act. I will discuss them in that order.

The Childcare for Working Families Act would first provide direct financial assistance to working parents to help pay for childcare and early learning to ensure that no parents would pay more than 7 percent of their household incomes for childcare if they earn less than 150 percent of the State's median income.

These numbers change between median household income and median

family income, but if you are just looking at the median household income in Pennsylvania, it is about $57,000. If you do 150 percent of that, you will be into the eighties, roughly. We don't know where the line would be drawn for certain State by State, but if we can come up with a way to keep costs below 7 percent for folks who are in that income range--say, roughly, in the low eighties down--we can help these families do two things: go to work while providing childcare for their children that is quality childcare and also be able to afford it.

The second part of the bill--and it is, basically, three parts--will be universal access to high-quality preschool programs for 3- and 4- year-olds.

The third part would be to improve workforce compensation by ensuring that all childcare workers are paid a living wage and that early childhood educators are provided parity with elementary schoolteachers who have similar credentials and experience. So there are three parts to that bill--childcare help, early learning help with preschool, and paying the workforce more.

People in both parties say it all the time: We care about our children, and we care about our seniors. But sometimes the folks who provide care to both groups of Americans--those who provide care and early learning to children and those who provide skilled care in nursing homes and other settings to seniors--are among the lowest paid workers in our society. So we say we prioritize those Americans, and we don't lift them up with the kind of workforce that they sometimes need.

The second bill I will talk about--and then I will wrap up--I will soon reintroduce with Congressman Davis. It is a proposal to improve and expand an existing tax credit which we know as the child and dependent care tax credit, not to be confused with the child tax credit, the tax credit you may have eligibility for if you have a child. This one focuses on child care and dependent care.

This bill would help families pay for childcare expenses by doing the following: first, increasing the maximum amount of the credit from just over 1,000 bucks--about $1,050--to $3,000 per child, and it could go up as high as 6,000 if you have more than one child, making the full tax credit available to most working families with incomes up to $120,000 a year.

Now, under the current law, that credit starts to lose its value once you hit only $15,000 of income--not that high of an income level. By raising that number, you are going to get a lot more middle-class families that will benefit, as well as some trying to get to the middle class.

The third part of the bill would ensure that lower income families are better able to benefit from the credit by making it fully refundable.

You have this strange dynamic where folks are working and they have an income, but the income is rather limited and the credit is not refundable. So they don't get anything back from that credit. So it isn't worth much to them in many cases.

The last part of the bill will retain the value over time by indexing the benefits of this child and dependent care tax credit and raise those thresholds based upon inflation.

In conclusion, I think it is pretty simple. All children deserve the chance to learn and succeed, regardless of where they are born or regardless of their family's income. That is why it is so important to make sure that all families have access to high-quality, affordable childcare and early learning. Together, these proposals will help to bring us closer to that reality and, I would argue, closer to meeting our obligation as elected officials at every level of government--this being the Federal level in the Congress, the Senate and the House, meeting our obligation to make sure that the light inside of every child burns to the full measure and shines to the full measure of its potential.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.