Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to honor a woman whose remarkable life included decades of service fighting hard for fishers on the Oregon Coast, practicing with distinction as an attorney and together with her husband Bob, raising a family.

My friend Michele Longo Eder tackled the many administrative duties in the family's fishing business and somehow found time to serve on numerous advisory boards to protect fishing families' across Oregon and the Nation. In the course of her extraordinary life, Michele was appointed to the National Fishing Vessel Safety Advisory Committee, the Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee, and the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. My overarching memory of this dynamic Oregonian was her constant presence in my office. She never backed down from advocating for fishers and always tried to find solutions to the challenges they faced.

Michele also worked as a trial attorney. In 2004, she and Gerry Spence represented Brandon Mayfield, an Oregonian wrongfully investigated by the FBI for the 2004 train bombing in Madrid. The FBI targeted Brandon because of a mismatched fingerprint, going so far as to arrest him for several weeks, even when Spanish authorities clearly indicated they had other suspects. Michele worked tirelessly and successfully for Brandon until he regained his rights and freedom.

Michele also volunteered within her own community, finding multiple ways to be a true public servant in Oregon. She was president of the Yaquina Bay YMCA, board member for Newport Fishermen's Wives, and a member of the board of trustees at Oregon State University. She also screened cases for the Oregon Innocence Project, helping to fight injustices in our legal system. In a 2014 interview, Michele was asked to describe fishing with one word. Michele answered ``hope.'' That is the word that always leaps to mind when I think of Michele along with grace and the wealth of knowledge she brought to every situation.

I extend my condolences to her husband Bob, their son Dylan, and their grandkids August Benjamin and Lark Michele.

Michele Longo Eder lived an extraordinary life and deserves huge thanks for her career of contributions to our State and Nation. Her dedication to public service will be greatly missed.

Mr. President, as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, I am pleased to be joining my colleagues on the Senate floor today to discuss the importance of Medicaid to American families.

Right now, Republicans in the House of Representatives are pushing a scheme that threatens Medicaid coverage for over 20 million Americans.

Over the course of the evening, my colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee and I will make clear why this is a bad deal for all Americans. Democrats in the Senate won't stand for it.

Now I am going to turn it over to Senator Casey for his remarks, and I believe we will have other Senators from the Finance Committee coming next. And I will wrap it up.

Senator Casey.

We are going to recognize next our distinguished colleague from Massachusetts. I just want to say, Senator Casey has made, as is usually the case, an eloquent argument that preventing default and standing up for the most vulnerable people, those two are not mutually exclusive. You can do both.

And Senator Casey's arguments, as is usually the case in our Senate Finance Committee, really strike home to this Senator. And I want to thank him for day in and day out talking common sense and making it clear that default is unacceptable and harming so many vulnerable Americans, in Pennsylvania, Oregon, Massachusetts, and elsewhere, is also unacceptable. And I thank my friend.

And we have another passionate advocate for people who are vulnerable from the Senate Finance Committee, our friend from Massachusetts Senator Warren.

Mr. President, before she leaves, I would like to thank my colleague for an eloquent statement that really lays this case out, and I am going to try to pick up now where you left it, and I thank you for it.

These compelling arguments from the Senators from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts show the importance of Medicaid to all of us on our side, and I am just going to wrap up by laying out three key laws in the House Republican proposal to cut Medicaid.

First, most Americans with health coverage through Medicaid are already working if they are able.

Second, the House Republican plan to cut Medicaid is going to put millions of Americans at risk, including seniors in nursing homes. And I am going to describe a little bit later how that happens.

And, third, the track record laid out by Senator Warren shows that working requirements have been a bureaucratic nightmare for Americans.

It is hard, Senator Warren, to figure out how the so-called ``small government'' Republicans have become so fond of bureaucracy and redtape.

Here is why House Republicans want to slash Medicaid by billions. They say it is about work. It is really about securing an ideological trophy on the evidence-free proposition that Americans near the poverty line are actively choosing to stay there instead of working.

So what has this work reporting requirement really been about? It has been about ripping away health coverage from Americans who Republicans have judged to be unworthy.

Don't take it from me. An analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation paints a pretty clear picture of who is going to be at risk of losing coverage.

As of 2021, there are 25 million adults ages 19 to 64 who are enrolled in Medicaid. Forty-three percent are working full time, and 18 percent are working part time. I will stop right there and note that that is equal to the national labor force participation rate at 61 percent.

For the remainder with Medicaid coverage who are not working, 13 percent are caregiving for a child or relative; 11 percent are unable to work because of illness or disability; 6 percent are attending school. The remaining 9 percent of Americans are not working because they are retired or unable to work.

Here is the catch. Under the House Republican scheme, the majority of these Americans would be forced to report to the States whether they are working and how much, each and every month, under the threat of losing their health insurance. My Republican colleagues are fond of sharing their small government bona fides, but to me that sounds like a lot of bureaucratic redtape. What is worse, the Congressional Budget Office found in an analysis just last year that these work requirements that we are talking about did not increase employment.

Mr. President, now I am going to explain how this ill-conceived proposal is going to hurt more Americans than those who are subject to work requirements.

The House Republican bill cuts Medicaid by over $100 billion. It comes from one source: Americans getting kicked off Medicaid. The only way for Americans to retain Medicaid coverage would be for States to pick up the whole bill. That means you are just shifting the Federal share of Medicaid on to States that don't want to saddle their health programs with more bureaucracy and bureaucracy that has never been shown to increase employment.

Shifting Medicaid costs to States has real consequences. This is not some kind of abstract theory. When the Federal Government reduces how much it contributes to a State's Medicaid Program, the State has to make up the difference. That means States face tough choices about which Americans will have health coverage and whether hospitals and nursing homes are going to face funding cuts which threaten their ability to stay open. Doctors could see their pay cut. State options, like a full year of postpartum care, which Congress created on a bipartisan basis, something which has been of special importance to the Presiding Officer, would be subject to cancellation.

These cuts will jeopardize our parents' or spouse's access to Medicaid nursing home benefits or cut resources for home care, which allows people with disabilities and the elderly to receive care in their homes instead of moving into an institution.

Unfortunately--and I will close with this--there are real-world examples to illustrate what happens when a State conducts counterproductive bureaucratic requirements. During the Trump administration, Federal health Agencies allowed Arkansas to conduct this work reporting experiment. Within the first year, 18,000 people lost Medicaid coverage, about a quarter of those subject to work reporting. A year later, nearly 90 percent of those who lost coverage had not reenrolled. Those who were enrolled in the Arkansas Works, as it was titled, program painted a very bleak picture. Reporting their work was all kinds of redtape. The website was down nights and weekends, supposedly for maintenance, and plagued by errors, difficult to access on mobile devices. Calling the help line resulted in an endless parade of robotic questions and dead ends.

These are just some of the hoops that bureaucrats designed primarily to keep Americans from health coverage. Keep in mind that these are families who walk an economic tightrope every week, balancing food against housing, housing against transportation. Many don't have reliable access to the internet or a cell phone, especially true in rural areas.

It is no secret that affordable health coverage is critical to staying healthy and financially stable. If you need medical treatment but you can't afford it, getting or keeping work up is going to be that much harder. That is why this policy envisioned in the House is upside down and cruel. It slams the door and throws away the key on Americans trying to get back on their feet. The reality is that having Medicaid health coverage supports Americans' ability to join the workforce. It doesn't deter them from working.

And it is not just Medicaid that the House Republicans want to come after. My colleagues talked about food assistance, like SNAP. I mean, you talk about food assistance, a real lifeline to people staying healthy.

Even in the early months of this Congress, I want to say tonight that it is possible to find lots of room for bipartisan agreement on healthcare. Right now, I am working closely with my partner on the Senate Finance Committee, my colleague from Idaho Senator Crapo, to take on the drug middlemen known as the pharmacy benefit managers. I am confident that we can find common ground, and we will be on the Senate floor with this idea to make a positive, bipartisan change for American families.

For everybody who is paying attention to this, it is not a big secret that there are other ways to save taxpayer dollars. You know, last week, the Senate Finance Committee dug into the question of how the big pharma companies generate their sales. Almost all of them are in the United States, and then for purposes of paying taxes, they race overseas for lower rates and hiding their profits.

I will close by saying that, in cutting vulnerable people, like I think is going to happen with all of this back-and-forth in States that are trying to figure out how to pay their bills, it is going to hurt nursing home patients.

What this is all about is the House is going to create an entirely new level of bureaucracy and paperwork, all in the name of taking away health coverage for more Americans. This is not a proposition that colleagues on this side of the aisle are going to support.

I want it understood as we wrap up, as chairman of the Senate Finance

Committee, I am going to work with my colleagues on our committee and throughout this side of the Chamber to fight these policies that come after Medicaid. We will fight them every step of the way because they are wrong, wrong, wrong.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, as the second week of May is Public Service Recognition Week, I wish to recognize the honorable public employees who work tirelessly to provide outstanding service to Oregonians. These men and women, who serve our Nation as Federal, State, Tribal, county, and local government employees work hard to support Oregonians and make our State and our country a great place to live. I would like to acknowledge the important work that public servants do, and I will give just a few examples to illustrate how valuable public service work is.

The Oregon Farm Service Agency is dedicated to helping local Oregon farmers with assistance when they face financial risk or a natural disaster, as well as providing funding for conservation programs. Thanks to the efforts of employees at the Oregon Farm Service Agency, countless farmers and their families have been able to sustain their livelihoods through hard times. Oregonians are fortunate to have such committed public servants in the Oregon Farm Service Agency.

I would also like to honor the many public service employees that work at the Oregon Social Security offices. Their professionalism and courtesy in serving Oregonians is commendable. Without this work, numerous families could miss out on vital benefits. My staff and I also appreciate these offices' assistance in answering our inquiries on behalf of constituents. The replies we receive have helped me help hundreds of people across Oregon.

Turning to another Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration--NOAA--Office for Coastal Management is making a difference in Oregon in countless ways. For example, NOAA's program on Oregon coastal and estuarine land conservation is vital for the preservation of Oregon's famous beaches. NOAA also helps with research on environmental challenges that Oregon communities might soon face and has partnerships with Oregon's Confederated Tribes to create opportunities for environmental education.

Public employees at the NOAA Fisheries office in Oregon also work tirelessly to ensure the conservation of fishery resources, eliminate overfishing, and maintain healthy commercial and recreational fisheries. For Oregon, the NOAA Fisheries office is vital to keeping ecosystems like the Willamette River healthy.

To give one more example, for over 100 years, public employees have worked for the National Park Service in order to maintain national parks, like the beautiful Crater Lake in Oregon, and to preserve local history and celebrate local heritage. National Park Service employees also work to provide funding for conservation projects throughout Oregon, making sure that Oregonians and people from all over the country are able to enjoy our State's natural beauty.

It is an honor during Public Service Recognition Week to recognize the wonderful public employees that work day in and day out to help Oregonians. Again, I thank public service employees for their dedication and their service.

Reserving the right to object.

Mr. President and colleagues, there are ideas in Senator Braun's bill that Democrats and Republicans definitely could work together on, and I have always enjoyed working with Senator Braun. Unfortunately, there are two ideas in this proposal that are showstoppers. The first, in effect, deals with rigging America's tax system, and the second issue deals with rigging our political system.

As far as I am concerned, the tax laws on the books already make it too easy for the very wealthy, multinational corporations, and the politically powerful to avoid paying taxes already. To a great extent, those people can pretty much pay what they want, when they want to. And, unfortunately, the bill that Senator Braun has brought forward would rig this system even more.

Democrats, in the inflation reduction legislation, put a focus on coming down hard on tax cheating by the ultrawealthy. Republican budget cuts in the past have made it far too easy for the wealthy and the multinational corporations to get away with cheating on their taxes. So, in late 2022, Democrats said ``enough already'' and put special protections in place to ensure that the IRS would focus on cheating at the top, not on people earning under $400,000.

The way this proposal busts open a huge new tax loophole is it would, in effect, redefine what counts as income when it comes to deciding who gets audited, and it would encourage billionaires to disguise their wealth. The bill would give billionaires like Jeff Bezos, who, allegedly, reported less than $100,000 of adjusted gross income, a free pass. It would be a loophole.

The tax part of this would encourage tax cheating and be a huge gift to these scofflaw billionaires who are ripping off working Americans who do the right thing and follow the law.

The second aspect of this proposal that, regrettably, I have to oppose is that this proposal would lock in a Trump policy that opens the floodgates to more dark money influencing our elections and our laws. It codifies, in black letter law, rules to make it easier for illegal donations and foreign actors to intervene in our elections undetected, encouraging illegal campaign activity, and inviting Russia and China to undermine our democratic process.

I have just gone through seven open-to-all townhall meetings in counties in my State, in areas that were pretty darn red, and I don't recall anybody ever telling me they wanted to get hit with more nasty, shadowy political ads.

So, for those reasons, I object.

Mr. President, before the Senator leaves the floor, I just want everyone to note that what the Senate just heard was Senator Hassan--vintage Senator Hassan--saying repeatedly: Let us find a way to move forward in a bipartisan way. And through example after example, she cited the progress. It has always been that, even before the Affordable Care Act.

I was the author of the Healthy Americans Act, the first bipartisan universal coverage bill in the history of the Senate--14 Senators, 7 Democrats and 7 Republicans--because we learned the lesson Senator Hassan has described and took it into the Affordable Care Act. So I thank my colleague for her wonderful remarks. And for people who are paying attention, this is what we get in the Senate Finance Committee every single time Senator Hassan is in the house.

Mr. President, the landscape of American healthcare is shifting dramatically in the 13 years since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law.

I believe many find it hard to even recall the day when an American could be denied health insurance because of preexisting medical conditions, but we ought to remember the history. Those were the days when healthcare was for the healthy and the wealthy. The insurance companies, under the law, could just clobber--clobber--somebody

with a preexisting condition. You were basically on your own.

And, apropos of the implications to the economy, I have talked to the President of the Senate often about encouraging innovation enterprise. When we discriminated against people with preexisting conditions, the big problem we saw was job loss. When somebody had the opportunity to be mobile and to move somewhere else, they weren't able to do it because they were tethered to their position because they had coverage, and they couldn't get it if they moved on. Now, tens of millions of Americans have health and financial security thanks to 39 States--39 States--that have moved beyond just ending the discrimination against those with preexisting conditions to expanding Medicaid coverage.

The Affordable Care Act was also, we should remember, passed in a moment of great need. The recession--the great recession--caused massive economic damage and layoffs across the country. Millions lost the employer-provided health insurance they had. More than 50 million Americans lacked any form of health insurance coverage, and there was no backstop for them.

At that time, you basically were literally on your own. If you were sick and you were faced with providing for your family, you could lose virtually everything in those tragic kind of days when people didn't realize the importance of the changes that needed to be made.

It is now clear, for example, how important the Medicaid safety net truly is. The number of uninsured Americans has been cut in half. In addition to Medicaid, the individual marketplace hit record enrollment with 16 million people buying plans. In Oregon, that amounts to 140,000 Oregonians getting high quality, affordable health insurance. This was particularly obvious when the pandemic hit in 2020. Not only was the individual marketplace there to help the millions who lost their jobs, but Medicaid was the lifeline to help families get healthcare.

By the way, it is clear now that Medicaid can be a leader when it comes to innovative healthcare. I was particularly proud that in the rescue plan in 2021, we were able to bring together, for the first time, mental health leaders and law enforcement leaders to develop a multidisciplinary system with mental health and law enforcement to provide crisis services when someone on the streets of this country is struggling.

At the end of last year, the Congress passed a nationwide-- nationwide--guarantee of a full year of continuous health coverage for kids up to 19 years of age who were enrolled in Medicaid and a permanent option for States to provide a full year of postpartum coverage for new moms. I am proud that Oregon pioneered this continuous coverage policy for kids before it was adopted nationwide.

It is just commonsense that kids need reliable health coverage even if their parents' income is changing from month to month, and all of the research--all of the healthcare research about brain development-- makes that very clear.

We understand that there is a lot more to do. Tomorrow, we will hear from the administration in the Senate Finance Committee about some of the next steps. The Affordable Care Act moved forward significantly to resolve the crisis of health coverage, but there are still gaps.

I also mention that, for a lot of us, we now recognize that it is not just a question of expanding coverage. It is a question of controlling costs, and we are going to be focusing on that in the days ahead as well. Elected officials are often pretty good talking about expanding coverage, but not so good at controlling costs.

With respect to that, the Inflation Reduction Act made a significant down payment on cost containment by finally lifting that Holy Grail guarded zealously by Pharma--the prohibition on negotiating. Now Medicare can negotiate lower drug prices and implement what we wrote in the Senate Finance Committee in 2019--the price-gouging penalty. In 2019, with bipartisan support in the Finance Committee, we said, if Big Pharma raises prices faster than inflation, there is finally accountability for high pharmaceutical prices, and they are going to pay penalties.

Improvements to the affordable healthcare system is still in progress. Last week, the North Carolina State Senate passed a Medicaid expansion bill by an astounding 44-to-2 margin. That is a very obvious indication that, as Senator Hassan talked about and Senator Casey, there could be bipartisan support here. Medicaid expansion saves lives. It is a good deal for States, and it is wonderful to see States across the political spectrum following the example of North Carolina.

Finally, we took additional steps recently to help improve our coverage, particularly with the advanced premium tax credit, increasing the amount of financial help for middle-class families trying to balance health expenses against food, rent, and other costs. It also expanded eligibility for these tax credits for more middle-class Americans. The President's budget supports making these kinds of enhancements in coverage permanent and so do I.

I will close with this. One of the dividing lines in American Government is whether you think healthcare is a basic human right. My experience, having specialized in this for a lot of years, since the days when I was director of the Gray Panthers, is that there are a variety of ways you can get there. And that is what we do in the Congress. We debate ideas. But I feel right to the core of my time in public service and those days with the Gray Panthers that healthcare is a basic human right. The Affordable Care Act was a monumental step toward that long sought goal, and, as long as I have the honor and the privilege to chair the Senate Finance Committee, I will do everything I possibly can to work with Senators of both political parties to make that crucial goal a reality.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to highlight a new rule by the State Department that honors a 15-year-old Portland girl whose life was cut short by a hit-and-run driver in 2016. The girl's name is Fallon Smart, and the man accused of manslaughter in her hit-and-run death was a Saudi national.

Subsequent reporting by my hometown paper, The Oregonian, uncovered that the Saudi national likely fled the country with the assistance of the Saudi Government. The paper's reporting later revealed that this Saudi affront to American justice was not--repeat, was not--an isolated example when its nationals face criminal charges in our country.

Our paper found 17 cases in the United States and Canada of Saudi nationals who fled justice while facing criminal charges. These cases-- some go back decades--are not for parking tickets. The charges against these Saudi men include rape, manslaughter, and felony hit-and-run.

In Oregon alone, journalists identified seven cases of Saudi nationals absconding justice. Their crimes included first-degree manslaughter, unlawful firearm possession, intoxicated driving, third- degree felony assault, and multiple sex crimes including sexual abuse, first-degree rape, and numerous counts of first-degree encouraging child sex abuse.

In Montana, two Saudi nationals fled after accusations of sexual assault.

In Ohio, two Saudi nationals fled after being accused of third-degree involuntary manslaughter and beating people with weapons at a college bar.

In Oklahoma, a Saudi national fled after being convicted of first- degree rape.

In Pennsylvania, a Saudi national fled after being accused of attempted rape.

In Utah, a Saudi national fled after being convicted of rape.

In Washington State, three Saudi nationals fled after respective accusations of rape, sexual assault of a child, and beating and stabbing a classmate.

In Wisconsin, a Saudi national fled after being accused of two counts of sexual assault.

In most of these cases, local law enforcement confiscated the passports of the accused criminals and set bail at thresholds the individuals were unlikely to be able to pay themselves. Yet we now know that many of these individuals somehow made bail and quickly received the resources and travel documents necessary to board a plane and leave, only to resurface in Saudi Arabia.

How did they leave the country without a passport?

Based on this evidence, it appears that the Saudi Government was assisting their citizens in evading prosecution in the United States.

I repeatedly pressed Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the State Department to explain what they knew about this pattern of cases. Despite all my efforts to get some answers, the Trump administration failed to even acknowledge the disturbing pattern or explain what, if anything, was being done to stop it.

That is why, in 2019, I authored and got passed a law to declassify an FBI report on this issue. The FBI report contended that the Saudis were assisting fugitives, and they would not stop whisking away criminals until ``the U.S. Government directly addresses this issue with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and ties U.S. cooperation on KSA priorities to ceasing this activity.''

So, in a sentence, you have foreign nationals in our country facing the most serious criminal charges and our supposed Saudi ally helping its citizens flee the American justice system. That is a disgrace, and, in my view, it demanded action.

Once President Biden was sworn in, his administration assured me that American diplomats in Riyadh had raised this issue with Saudi officials at the highest level, but that was just the start. The State Department further pledged to me that it is acting to put in place a new policy named for Fallon Smart that would revoke visas ``in cases where a foreign official has provided concerning forms of assistance to foreign nationals in evading prosecution in the United States by absconding from the United States.''

This Fallon Smart rule came after I put a hold on Michael Ratney's nomination to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. I did it to raise the profile of this issue and get commitments from the State Department. I lifted my hold on that nomination, and Mr. Ratney has been confirmed. I want to thank Secretary Blinken for agreeing to take concrete actions that are going to deter other foreign officials from assisting fugitives on American soil.

I plan to watchdog the State Department's implementation of the new policy to ensure there is real accountability for foreign officials who prevented justice from being carried out in the manslaughter of Fallon Smart and other horrendous crimes across the country.

There is no way to bring Fallon Smart back to her family and no punishment to heal the family's grief and loss, but today is a good day on the march to justice for Fallon Smart and so many others. The Fallon Smart rule sends a strong message that there is no place in our country for foreign officials who help criminal suspects evade the law, and I am going to continue to bird-dog this, closely watching the administration to make sure it enforces the Fallon Smart rule whenever there is evidence that foreign diplomats are undermining the American justice system.

I promised never to be silent whenever Saudi Arabia tries to cleanse its blood-stained hands in the fight for U.S. justice in the hit-and- run death of Fallon Smart. Her death at the hands of a Saudi national on Hawthorne Boulevard in Southeast Portland--near our home--must never be forgotten, and I can tell you the work to hold the Saudi officials accountable in this case will not ever be forgotten.

Unfortunately, despite all the progress in achieving the Fallon Smart rule, some Federal bureaucrats in this administration continue to defer to the interests of dictators in the Middle East. That callous attitude by Federal immigration officials has had devastating impact at home in Oregon for two people who have done everything right to contribute to their adopted communities.

The names of these two standout Oregonians are Matar Matar and his wife Dr. Amal Alyusuf, and the saga of this couple's unconscionable wait for asylum has also been detailed by in-depth reporting in The Oregonian newspaper.

The couple's appeal for asylum began more than a decade ago. Matar was the youngest member of Bahrain's Parliament and had been jailed and tortured for weeks on end by Saudi-led security forces. The couple fled with their children to the United States for refuge and applied in good faith for asylum. More than 10 years later, their case somehow remains ``pending'' in America.

Our country, of course, has always taken great pride in providing refuge for people fleeing the worst abuses in their native countries. It is a path to freedom that the Wyden family knows more than a little about. My parents fled the Nazis in the thirties for safety in America. I am the proud first-generation son of those refugees, both of whom worked every day to contribute to our country.

As has been well documented in The Oregonian, this Bahraini couple is doing the same thing in Oregon as my parents and uncounted millions of immigrants have done for centuries here; namely, this couple is making every available effort, while raising their three children, to make their new communities even better places to live and work. Matar works for the Willamette Dental Group in Portland, and Dr. Alyusuf provides essential healthcare in rural Oregon, practicing as a physician in Douglas County.

Yet my office has run into a bureaucratic morass again and again from unresponsive immigration officials closing their eyes and ears to all the evidence of how this exemplary Oregon family is owed better. So just as I pledged to seek justice for Fallon Smart and to make sure this administration follows the Fallon Smart rule, I am, today, putting this administration on notice that I will be just as dogged in pursuing a just solution for this Bahraini family.

Simply put, this family should not have to endure this brutal limbo of more than 10 years waiting to know that it can continue contributing to a better Oregon, free of fear from deportation at a moment's notice. And I intend to be relentless in helping this family, as we did with Fallon Smart, achieve the security and justice that they so deserve.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in a few minutes, the Senate will vote on Danny Werfel's nomination to be the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.

Mr. Werfel told the Finance Committee that he will make his priorities those of delivering fairness and building trust.

We know that he is going to do just that because he has done it before. President Obama asked Mr. Werfel, during a very challenging time, to serve as Acting Commissioner in 2013.

Then, the Internal Revenue Service was under intense scrutiny for its sloppy reviews of tax-exempt organizations and their political activities. Mr. Werfel did his job in a way that improved trust in the Internal Revenue Service.

He worked with both sides of the Senate Finance Committee. Our investigation found that both left-leaning and right-leaning groups were affected. The late Senator Orrin Hatch, a friend to many in this Chamber, told me on a number of occasions how much he appreciated Danny Werfel's professionalism and his open door for all sides.

It is time to rebalance the American system of tax enforcement. Audits today, too often, are a burden that fall heavily on working families--on nurses and firefighters and teachers and the middle class. It is far too easy for the very wealthy and the multinational corporations, which have armies of tax lawyers and accountants, to get away with cheating and breaking the law. That is what the Democrats sought to address in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Now, I understand that not everybody in the Chamber shares those priorities. However, Mr. Werfel--and I will close with this--has committed to the Finance Committee that he is going to work with both sides of the aisle and bring transparency to the job. That includes how the IRS will spend funding to improve taxpayer services, upgrade information technology, and crack down on those wealthy tax cheats. He is going to protect confidential taxpayer data. That is an enormous priority for both sides. I think I am about as big a privacy hawk as there is here in this body, and it is certainly a priority of mine.

Danny Werfel is a highly qualified nominee. He has agreed to take on one of the toughest and most scrutinized jobs in public service. I urge my colleagues to now support Danny Werfel's nomination to head the Internal Revenue Service.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

I thank my colleague, and I thank both of my colleagues for their very, very powerful remarks.

Nomination of Daniel I. Werfel

Madam President, the Senate this afternoon is going to vote on the nomination of Mr. Danny Werfel to serve as the next Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.

I want to say that I believe Mr. Werfel is superbly qualified. He is a good-government nominee, and I urge my colleagues strongly to support him.

Mr. Werfel--and this is true of his professional life and at his hearing--has made it clear that he is going to make sure that the IRS does its job consistent with the law and that transparency will be a top priority for his service, which is focused on building trust.

This means a lot because Mr. Werfel has done that at the IRS before. He stepped up when President Obama asked him to serve as Acting Commissioner during a very challenging time a decade ago.

Now, the issues were different then. Danny Werfel came in after the public learned that the IRS had used some very sloppy methods of monitoring the political activities of tax-exempt groups. In the Finance Committee, particularly Chairman Hatch and myself, we did an extensive investigation, and we found that both left-leaning and right- leaning groups were affected.

While Mr. Werfel served in that acting role, he worked effectively with both sides of the Finance Committee. He helped right the ship and improve confidence in the IRS.

The late-Senator Hatch, who was certainly conservative but somebody who always valued fairness and professionalism, spoke to me several times and to our colleagues about his high regard for Danny Werfel. In my view, that is a big reason why Danny Werfel has bipartisan support today.

I have a few comments on the big initiatives he is going to lead when he is confirmed.

After a decade of Republican budget cuts, the Inflation Reduction Act finally gave the IRS the resources it needs to go after tax cheating by too many of the very wealthy and multinational corporations, and it is in a position to improve customer service for everybody else, the vast majority of Americans who follow the law.

I will start with customer service, where the IRS is making significant improvements. Let's go back a few years when the IRS was able to answer only 11 percent of the phone calls it was receiving. In 2022, it was 13 percent. This time last year, there was a backlog of 24 million unresolved tax returns. As of a few days ago, the IRS was answering 90 percent of phone calls. It has processed more than 99 percent of the returns filed so far this season. And the IRS has cut the backlog of individual returns by 92 percent.

Now, they have achieved that by spending about 1 percent of the IRA funding. In my view, that is a record that we ought to put a lot of focus on because, if it continues, it will be an historic return on investment. We expect it to continue. We are counting on Mr. Werfel to maintain that progress.

The long-term initiative is also stepping up the fight against, unfortunately, the fact that there are too many of those wealthy tax cheats and scofflaw corporations that rip off American taxpayers too easily today, and the Republican budget cuts over the years resulted in a double standard in tax enforcement. The IRS' ability to go after sophisticated wealthy tax cheats, who are employing armies of lawyers and accountants, was severely limited for years. The burden of tax audits shifted far too heavily onto working people and the middle class.

The reason that was the case is that for working people in Wisconsin and Oregon--nurses and firefighters and teachers--the government has most of the information about their lives. So it is very straightforward, if there is something to question there.

The wealthy tax cheats use their accountants and the lawyers to pay taxes very differently. Billionaires tend, to a great extent, to pay little or nothing for years on end because they structure their affairs to knock out their annual income.

Democrats have made clear from the very beginning that this isn't about increasing audits of people with incomes under $400,000. In fact, we wrote that limitation into the Inflation Reduction Act.

Republicans struck the language from the bill during the debate. Nevertheless, Secretary Yellen has ensured the Congress and everyone concerned know that the Treasury will stand by that commitment. The plan laying out how the IRA funding will be used is in the works.

I want to be clear this afternoon because I have been asked about this. Colleagues on the Finance Committee, of both political parties, are insisting that we get that report on how the funds are going to be used--that we get it soon.

Frankly, that is one of the reasons to support Danny Werfel this afternoon, because he is experienced in this deal. He stepped in for President Obama. We are convinced that he is going to follow that directive and focus on getting us the plan and ensure that the focus is on better service and on wealthy tax cheats and multinational corporations paying their fair share.

I think he is going to handle his position in a way that is transparent. He made it clear that he would be open to talking to Senators on both sides of the aisle and that he will strongly favor protections for confidentiality of taxpayer data. That is the kind of good-government approach that both sides of the aisle should support.

This is a highly qualified, highly experienced nominee. He is the right choice to lead the IRS. He has earned bipartisan support. A number of our colleagues, both in the committee and here on the floor on both sides of the aisle, support him. I would just urge my colleagues, this afternoon--I think we will vote in a couple of hours-- to strongly support his nomination.

Remembering Bill and Dottie Schonely

Madam President, I want to rise today on behalf of all the people that I have the honor to represent to honor the late Bill Schonely, the Portland Trail Blazers' radio voice for the better part of three decades, and his late wife Dottie.

Bill passed in January, leaving a timeless legacy for all of us Blazer fans in ``Rip City,'' the name that Bill coined for my hometown.

Dottie passed last month, leaving her own legacy as an accomplished woman who radiated smarts and kindness to everybody she met in Oregon.

Bill and Dottie were the ultimate teammates, as the ``First Couple of Rip City.'' So perhaps it is fitting they could not be separated for long.

In fact, when Bill and I spoke last, before his passing in January, he made sure to ask me if I was doing my level best to protect Social Security. I have kept the message on my phone with his resonating voice saying: Ron, what are you doing to protect Social Security and the Gray Panthers? I am really concerned about it. And make sure you also do it for Dottie as well.

That will be on my phone forever.

Like storied broadcasters Johnny Most for the Boston Celtics fans or Chick Hearn for Los Angeles Lakers fans, my friend Bill was much more than an NBA play-by-play guy for us Trail Blazers fans in Portland and throughout Oregon. As the Blazers' first broadcaster, starting with the team's inaugural season in 1970--that was a world long before ESPN or even before the team's games aired on local TV--Bill became the soundtrack for generations of Portland fans. He connected our State's first big-league franchise with Oregonians in every nook and cranny of Oregon.

I have logged lots of miles getting around Oregon for 1,040 open-to- all townhall meetings. In fact, I have got two more scheduled this weekend in Jefferson and Deschutes Counties in Central Oregon. But I bet Bill covered just as many miles as the Blazers' ambassador in every part of Oregon.

I can't tell you how many times I would show up at a radio station in a small Oregon town--you know, there are lots of those kinds of towns in Wisconsin--and I would see a photo of Bill there, from back in the day, when he was on a local golf course or some local community function. And any elected official in Oregon will tell you how fortunate we were that Bill Schonely never ran against any of us.

In addition to coining the phrase ``Rip City,'' which is forever tied with my hometown, Bill had an expansive basketball lexicon in his unofficial role as professor of basketball English for Blazers fans.

Unlike me, he had a baritone voice, and he taught all of us how rebounders

``climbed the golden ladder'' and how point guards dribbled ``lickety brindle up the middle.'' As a former player myself, I always nodded my head in agreement whenever Bill would intone, pausing theatrically with each word, ``You've got to make your free throws.''

So as Rip City prepares to say good-bye to Bill and Dottie at a public memorial service in Portland, in which I will be at on Monday the 13th, I will close with this:

Oregon is said to have ``Seven Wonders,'' including Mount Hood and Crater Lake. In my scorebook and the scorebooks of Blazer fans, ``The Schonz'' and Dottie are our State's ``Eighth Wonder.''

So today, on behalf of all Oregonians, I extend my condolences to all Bill and Dottie's loved ones. I will always remember both with a smile and be forever grateful that they leave so many wonderful memories as part of their unforgettable legacy for our community.

On behalf of all Oregonians, today, I close by simply saying: Thank you, Bill and Dottie Schonely.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I rise in strong support of the Women's Health Protection Act.

This legislation needs to be a centerpiece in the battle to defend privacy rights in America. This is the third week I have stood on the Senate floor to talk about this extraordinary assault on privacy and bodily independence that is taking place in America, and it started, of course, with the horrendous Dobbs decision.

When that decision came down, Republicans all over America said that this was going to be a matter of State's rights. They weren't telling the truth to the American people.

Shortly after the decision, there was a full-court press by Republicans at the local level, State level, and, yes, the national level to claw back the rights of women and deny access to reproductive care. Months after the Dobbs decision, a bill to enact a 6-week abortion ban, to ban abortion before most women even know they are pregnant, was introduced in this body.

That was a national ban--every single State--every single State. So much for State's rights.

Anti-abortion activists are not only working Senate Republicans, they are working the court system as well. I call it court washing. It goes way beyond the issue--and I know we have got an expert lawyer in the Chair. It goes way beyond so-called judge shopping that everybody has heard about in the past. It is not simply a matter of looking at a judge's long record of soundly reasoned opinions and hoping for an outcome.

Republicans--particularly talking about this Texas case, this one in Amarillo, TX. Republicans picked him because he was a lifelong rightwing activist who was planted in a district court to deliver the decision they wanted, the verdict that they have been scheming to deliver. We are talking about banning mifepristone nationwide, a drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration. This is something I care about deeply because I held the first congressional hearing on the role of the FDA, particularly with

mifepristone. It has been safe and effective, and it has been the law of the land for years and years. If you throw that out, you take away women's independence, and the government puts itself front and center in the exam room and in the private decisions about whether and when to start a family.

As women grapple with restrictive State laws that take away their right to privacy and threaten their health, they are also facing a crisis of digital privacy and--what I call--the threat of uterus surveillance.

We have long been concerned about location data leaching from phone apps and how ripe for abuse it is. In States where extremists have restricted or banned abortion, the whole issue of women having their personal data weaponized against them is now front and center. Shady data brokers have already tracked women to and from Planned Parenthood health centers and have sold their information, basically, to anybody who has got a credit card. In States where abortion is illegal, anything women say or read online can be used against them. Researching birth control online, updating a period tracking app, or even carrying a phone into a doctor's office may become weaponized against you. It could be evidence for the prosecution--the most personal and private data about women's bodies and their health. Just imagine how much worse it could get if more States pass draconian laws or Republicans get their nationwide ban.

That is why we are here to pass this legislation: to ensure that every woman in every State is in a position to make private medical decisions, where that woman is in the driver's seat with respect to her privacy and her independence. To do otherwise is going to keep healthcare providers from doing their jobs. To do otherwise is going to mean more delaying care for women and more bullying pharmacies out of providing medications that are completely legal and FDA-approved.

These providers ought to be able to do their jobs based on science. That is what the FDA decision was all about. It wasn't a political decision. It wasn't made here on the floor of the U.S. Senate and having people go back and forth about their opinions. It was an FDA decision based on science. These policies are common sense, and they are popular.

I am going to close with just a couple of quick points.

Once women lose the ability to make private healthcare choices about their reproductive healthcare, I think we ought to make sure everybody understands that there will be women who will die.

I think we need to understand that what this is about is whether freedom is going to mean the same thing for women as it does for men. Women do not have the same privacy rights right now. They don't have the same freedom. If women are subjected to uterus surveillance, they don't have true freedom. If Republican politicians dictate what goes on in an exam room, they don't have true freedom. If women can't control their own bodies and make their own decisions about when and whether to get pregnant, they don't have true freedom. If women are forced to give birth--and in some cases, Republicans want to force women to give birth even after cases of rape and incest--those women do not have true freedom.

So if there is one word--one word--that this debate is all about for women as to what is at stake, that one word is ``freedom,'' and our legislation ensures they will have it. I urge colleagues to support it.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I would ask unanimous consent that the following members of my team be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the Congress: Marta Silva, Sophie Song, Robert Walsh, Jacob Medvitz, and Veronique Bourassa.

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

Madam President, today, I begin an effort to provide regular updates to the Senate and the country about the devastating consequences for women in every State if Texas Judge Kacsmaryk issues a ruling banning mifepristone nationwide.

Two weeks ago, I stood on the Senate floor and laid out what has to happen if and when this decision comes down. President Biden and the Food and Drug Administration must ignore it. The Food and Drug Administration has the authority it needs to keep this medication on the market without interruption, regardless of what this ruling says.

I have already laid out the rationale for why the case is absurd, meritless, and lacks any legal standing, as well as the FDA's legal authority to ignore such a ruling.

Today, I am not going to rehash those important points. I want to discuss what I have heard over the last couple of weeks about the human cost if every woman in this country loses access to mifepristone. Republicans on the Supreme Court said that the issue of abortion ought to be returned to the States, that the country shouldn't have a ``one size fits all'' policy on this subject that is so essential to protecting the privacy rights of women in our country.

I am going to talk about the States for a minute or two.

My home State of Oregon has some of the strongest protections for reproductive health in the Nation. Abortion is legal. If you have health insurance, it is required to cover this critical priority. If you don't, you can still access care. There are no waiting periods. You can get abortion medication via telemedicine and by mail, something that is crucial in large States and small States with very large rural populations, like mine. In fact, despite the dangerous Dobbs decision, access to reproductive care has been expanding in Oregon, partially to accommodate women traveling from nearby States whose own home State laws deny them this critical right to privacy.

Oregon has leaders like Governor Tina Kotek and Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum fighting to keep mifepristone legal and accessible to women in our State. I am proud to come from a State where the law reflects the fact that a woman's right to privacy is paramount and a woman's right to choose is hers and hers alone.

But if the plaintiffs and the anti-abortion activists prevail in that case in Texas, everything changes--everything changes--for the people facing important reproductive decisions every day and everywhere in the United States. We are talking about every single State--every one.

Despite strong laws on the books, women in my State of Oregon stand to lose mifepristone, a drug that is used now in more than 50 percent of abortions. So much for the idea of States' rights. All that talk about returning abortion law to the States is just going straight out the window.

I have said it before, and I will repeat it here. So often, the Republican Party often seems concerned about the States' rights only when they think a State is right. Otherwise, they seem happy to take over and tell the States what to do. Well, the people I am honored to represent, Oregonians, don't appreciate that selective application of their philosophy, but here it is.

Because of one judge, handpicked by Donald Trump, in the 16th largest city in Texas, there is serious potential that soon Americans, from one side of the country to the other and everywhere in between, will no longer be able to access the safest, most effective, and most relied on form of abortion care.

This is not leaving decisions to the States, like the U.S. Supreme Court told us would happen back in June.

Look at the Dobbs decision. That was the very foundation of the Dobbs decision. And, no shock to anybody, that is not what is being seen today. Here is what is going to ensue when the reckless decision in Texas comes down. We know that providers are already being stretched very thin. They are harassed and subject to vile threats. They are going to be thrown into a landscape of chaos and confusion.

Over the last few months, I have heard nonstop from these heroic medical professionals in my State. They worry there will be lines out the doors of women needing help. They worry about long wait times for the women who are fortunate enough to eventually receive in-person care. They worry about the women who will never make it to a doctor's office because they live in a rural county or lack the means to make the journey that will now be necessary to receive abortion care. They worry about what will happen next. When will another judge in another State that looks nothing like Oregon make it so that these providers are not able to treat women seeking to exercise their privacy rights?

This is not some far-fetched slippery slope. It is happening now-- now--right in front of our eyes.

Women have relied on mifepristone for more than 20 years. I held the first congressional hearing on this drug in 1990, when I was a Member of the other body. And finally--finally--there has been access to this drug, and it provides freedom to women to make their own private medical decisions and face far less stigma. That fundamental right is potentially about to be further gutted.

This is America. Aren't we for freedom--freedom to determine our own lives and futures, freedom to decide whether and when to have a family?

We have heard lots of horror stories of life before Roe. There are too many people with immense power in this country who tragically want to yank America back to those times. I doubt those people have given a moment's consideration to the danger women face when a pregnancy goes wrong, how their lives can be at risk.

This is about women's health and survival. This is about control over their lives, control over their bodies. It is about depriving Oregonians and women everywhere of their fundamental right to privacy.

I am here to say that, unfortunately, these anti-abortion activists aren't going to stop until abortion in every form and in every State is simply banned. The need to control women's bodies is not going to end at attacking mifepristone, which I would say, as I did earlier, has a long record--a long record--grounded not in political rhetoric but in scientific evidence for being safe and effective.

It will not end with the topic of abortion either. Rightwing extremists are coming after access to reproductive healthcare more broadly. Some lawmakers and their allies have filed legislation and lawsuits to block access to birth control--birth control.

I remember the President of the Senate helping us in this body to champion for so many years those priorities. And now we have legislation to block access to birth control, lifesaving cancer screenings, HIV prevention. The list goes on.

As these attacks go forward, we also know who is going to be hurt the most--people of modest means, people in rural areas, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ Americans.

I said it 2 weeks ago when I was on the floor to discuss the case, I will say

it again: Enough, enough, enough. No more sitting back and just letting things happen. I don't want to be back here in a few days, but I fear that will be the case.

Let me talk about political change. Ever since the days when I was director at the Gray Panthers, the senior citizens group, I always said political change rarely starts here in Washington, DC, and trickles down. It starts at the grassroots level. What we really need now is a nationwide mobilization to protect a woman's right to privacy and the right to make these choices for herself. What I would like to ask today, for everybody who shares that view, is to go on out there and keep mobilizing. Talk to your city council member, talk to your mayor, talk to your State legislator, talk to anybody who has an election certificate about how important this is to you. Momentum is needed more now than ever to ensure that mifepristone stays legal and accessible.

I will close with this. The FDA, using the authority it already has, needs to keep mifepristone on the market without any interruption, regardless of Judge Kacsmaryk's ruling. And we the people need to mobilize in Oregon, in Michigan, in Florida, and in every nook and cranny of the Nation.

Madam President, I have three requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Jonathan Hayes, a fellow from Senator Durbin's office, be granted floor privileges for the duration of the 118th Congress.

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