Floor Statements

Mr. President, the Committee on Finance has adopted rules governing its procedures for the 118th Congress. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying rules for the Senate Committee on Finance be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, colleagues, I would strongly urge opposition to the Scott motion. The Scott motion would strip funding the IRS needs very much to go after wealthy tax cheats who are refusing to pay taxes they already owe. The most recent IRS Commissioner, a Republican appointee, estimated that the amount of taxes owed that are not collected could be as much as $1 trillion per year.

Working Americans--firefighters and nurses--who pay their taxes with every paycheck believe that the IRS must have the resources it needs to go after the sophisticated, wealthy tax cheats at the top, but powerful special interests who don't want to pay what they already owe are lying to the American people about how the additional IRS funding will be used.

I urge my colleagues to strongly oppose the Scott motion.

Mr. President, in a moment, I intend to put forward a unanimous consent request to pass my bipartisan bill with our colleague from Utah, Senator Lee, entitled the Protect Reporters from Excessive State Suppression Act, also known as the PRESS Act.

Before I make the unanimous consent request, I want to take just a few minutes to talk about why our colleague from Utah Senator Lee and I feel this legislation is so important, and I will start with the basic proposition behind the legislation.

If you don't have a free press, you don't have a democracy. My dad was a journalist. After fleeing the Nazis, he came to this country, taught himself English, worked in our Army developing propaganda that we dropped on the Nazis. He believed deeply in individual freedom and in press freedom and would always tell me: Ron, they go hand in hand.

If you want to see what happens when governments undermine and eliminate the free press, look at Russia, look at Saudi Arabia, look at Iran. Information became a tool of power, abuse, and manipulation. That is what governments do when they want to keep freedom from breaking out in their countries. And so they abuse power rather than promote education, expression, and enlightenment among the countryside and the people.

So--let's be clear--the threat of government overreach interfering with the free press in the United States is not some distant, far-off, hypothetical idea. It happened very recently. The Trump administration spied on several journalists at outlets the disgraced ex-President personally disliked and attacked, grabbing phone and email records. The extent of this abuse of power has come out in shocking revelations over the last few years.

And let me emphasize, the Trump administration was not the first to do this sort of thing. Both the Trump administration and the Obama administration went too far in prosecuting journalists just for doing their jobs.

Now, Members of the Senate talk pretty frequently about their interest in protecting journalism in America. My view is the bipartisan PRESS Act is the best opportunity we have to make progress on that goal before the Congress ends--and we all hope that that is fairly shortly.

The PRESS Act would protect the free flow of information by shielding journalists from being ordered by the courts to give up their sources. The bill includes key exceptions, such as when that information is necessary to prevent an act of terrorism against the United States or necessary to prevent the threat of imminent violence. Those exceptions were very important to Senator Lee and me.

I see our colleague here from Arkansas. He and I serve on the Select Committee on Intelligence, so we know about the importance of protecting our country against terrorism.

This legislation is very similar to legislation already on the books in several States, including my home State of Oregon and Senator Lee's home State of Utah. It is our view, though, that these protections should extend from sea to shining sea in our great country.

Now, I will close by saying this is a proposal that brings both sides together. The House passed the PRESS Act a few months ago unanimously. And I think our colleagues would agree that sometimes these days it seems you can't get every Member of the House to even agree that there are 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week, yet they passed our bill unanimously.

This is a can't-miss opportunity to protect the free press in America. It is good for the free flow of information. It is good for holding government accountable, and it is good for the democratic ideals on which this country was founded.

And I will just close by saying that if you read the writings of the Founding Fathers, it was almost as if they thought a free press was as important, if not more so, than government. That is how strongly they felt.

Let's pass this unanimous consent request when we make it, and let's send the PRESS Act to the President's desk today.

And I will now ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 4330 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I think the fact that there has been an objection here is very unfortunate. I am just going to briefly respond.

Our colleague from Arkansas has talked about the exceptions that are made in this bipartisan bill. And I would only say that the exceptions to make sure we can protect our country to deal with national security in this bill were strong enough to get the support of 435 Members of the House of Representatives.

I look at the President of the Senate, and he and I were in the other body. And sometimes, you would think you couldn't order a 7UP over there. But the fact is, it got the support of every Member of the House of Representatives--all 435--because they thought the exceptions made sense here.

Second, my colleague from Arkansas said that this was somehow giving special status--special protection--to the press in America. That is not accurate. This gives the press the kind of protection I believe the Founding Fathers would have supported because I have read their writings and saw what they had to say about the press and have already noted it.

And then our colleague seemed to make the case that this was somehow for liberal journalists--not for journalists for moderates and conservatives--for liberal journalists. The legislation extends to people in the press across the political spectrum. There are no special fast-track arrangements for people of one philosophy or another. And that was something that was especially important to me.

I mentioned in my remarks my dad, who fled the Nazis, taught himself English, and served in our Army. And he worked--particularly, after his service--writing historical nonfiction. He wrote a very important book about the Bay of Pigs where he highlighted what really happened. And what I enjoyed so much about my dad's book and what happened afterwards, the first person to call my dad, because, he said, Peter-- my dad was Peter Wyden--you are writing the truth about what happened, was the late Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois, one of the most conservative Members of the other body. And he and my dad struck up a fast friendship over the phone because they were interested in the facts. And that is what journalists do: They get the facts out.

So I think it is unfortunate there has been an objection here on all of these points. These issues were considered by the other body. And 435 Members of the other body said: This is important for our country. This is important for getting the facts out to the American people-- unvarnished information, not information from the left, center, or right--unvarnished information.

I just want to close by saying we are going to be back on this floor. We are going to push this again and again and again because at a crucial time in America, where--and I mentioned this has not been relegated to one administration or another. This has been happening too often. It happens in any kind of administration, any philosophy. It is time to end it, and it is time to make sure that our free press is in a position to get the facts to the American people. We need this particular bipartisan effort, Senator Lee and I. And we will be back on this floor until we get it passed.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Reserving the right to object, Mr. President.

Mr. President, let me say to our colleague from Louisiana that I very much agree with much of the statement he has given. I have been interested in these sensible policies with respect to providers since the days when I was codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers. So our colleague from Louisiana is talking about important issues.

As chair of the Finance Committee, I can say that nobody on either side wants to see financial hardship for healthcare providers or disruption to the healthcare system. This is particularly important when you have got COVID, what looks like a god-awful flu, and an RSV crisis filling up the doctors' and hospitals' waiting rooms nationwide.

What I can tell my colleague from Louisiana is that, on both sides of the aisle on the Finance Committee, Democrats and Republicans have put in some long hours--long hours--discussing solutions to these physician payment issues with our colleagues in the House on both sides and the administration.

Our discussions include other critical healthcare issues. For example, I think my colleague knows that Senator Crapo and I have been very focused on mental healthcare, making it easier for Americans to get mental healthcare when they need it.

And we are especially proud that this bipartisanship is paying off. As our colleagues may know, Senator Crapo and I got four major provisions--four--into the commonsense gun safety law--everything from helping kids on Medicaid, behavioral health--our colleague, Senator Stabenow. So we believe strongly in writing black-letter law on a bipartisan basis.

Now, the reason I am taking the time to put this into context, it is very important that our bipartisan discussions on a yearend healthcare package continue. Time is, obviously, short.

I am just coming off two red-eye flights to Oregon in the last 4 days, and I want my colleague to know, again, I appreciate much of what he has said. I didn't come to the floor to say, Senator Kennedy is horrible. Quite the contrary. I think he has good ideas here. Time is tight, and I am confident there is a bipartisan agreement around the corner.

I do say to my colleague, passing this proposal now, in my view, would make this process that we are part of, Senator Crapo and I-- talking to the administration, talking to the House, and doing all the things that my colleagues have a lot of experience on--passing this proposal now would make it harder to reach a bipartisan agreement on physician payments, mental health, a variety of other key kinds of issues. So I will just say, with the understanding, a, that my colleague has raised important points and, b, that Members on both sides are working towards a

shared goal on this issue, Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, I often speak on the Senate floor about what I call the ``Oregon Way.'' It is about Oregonians of all backgrounds setting aside partisan politics and coming together to build on what makes our State such a wonderful place to live, work, raise a family, and run a business.

I don't know of anybody who exemplifies and believes in the Oregon Way more than my friend Duncan Wyse. Duncan is the head of the Oregon Business Council and the man behind the Oregon Economic Leadership Summit, which is meeting for the 20th year in just a few days. So on this 20th anniversary, it is my great pleasure to share a few thoughts about my friend Duncan and all the good he has done over the years for the State we both love.

Duncan has always been a humble guy. He has never been the kind to seek out the spotlight. He will put in all the hard work behind the scenes if it pays off for Oregon and creates new opportunities for people to get ahead. He has been incredibly successful in that.

A little bit about the origin of the Leadership Summit. It was back in the recession of the early 2000s. Oregon's economy, like a lot of the country, was down in the dumps. The tech bubble had popped. Unemployment was up. The September 11, 2001, attacks had shaken the country to its core. Between State and local officials, Members of Congress, business and community leaders, a lot of us were looking at every opportunity to get Oregon's economy growing again.

Duncan had the idea that what we needed to do was bring all those people together at one big event. Get focused. Zero in on the solutions that would be the most impactful and longest lasting for businesses and workers all across the State. He and I got in touch, and I told him, Count me in. I will be your co-founder, I will bring then-Senator Gordon Smith along, and I will do whatever I need to do to make this a success.

Nobody had tried this before. I would be blowing smoke if I said we were confident about it the entire time. At a few points early on, we probably doubted whether we would get enough people to field a competitive football game. The idea was, we were hoping for a decent crowd with at least one representative from each of Oregon's 36 counties. But in the end, that first summit brought together upward of 1,000 people from all over the State.

It was a huge success, and the summit is now in year 20 because of Duncan's commitment to the Oregon Way. It remains the premier venue for bringing Oregonians together to tackle the big economic challenges.

The summit brings together business leaders, local, State, and Federal elected officials; urban Oregon and rural Oregon; leaders in the nonprofit sector and community groups; leaders from some of the biggest and most established companies in the world, like Nike and Intel, as well as the newest startups and most treasured small businesses; people who vote Republican and people who vote Democrat.

I don't know of any other event like this one happening anywhere else in the country. Political disagreements stay at home, and the focus is on finding practical ways to tackle big challenges.

One of the top priorities at this upcoming summit is bringing more cutting-edge manufacturing to Oregon, particularly after the passage of the CHIPS Act.

About a year ago, it was Duncan's idea to create a Semiconductor Competitiveness Task Force made up of industry leaders and elected officials. The task force, which I cochaired, worked for several months to figure out how to cement Oregon's leadership on chips and take advantage of the Federal chips legislation. We released a report in August looking at all the key issues and proposing several policy updates. It is a huge opportunity in terms of creating good-paying jobs and building on one of Oregon's major economic strengths. It is something we have got to get right.

The Leadership Summit has tackled equally important issues in years past. Everything from housing to energy to transportation to education to rural economic growth. The discussions that happen when we gather every December help to bring a host of good ideas forward and give leaders from across the State a sense of common purpose. It sets the table ahead of the new legislative session.

In a few days people from across Oregon are going to gather in Portland at the 20th Economic Leadership Summit. Duncan is certainly not somebody who will seek out a whole lot of applause on that special anniversary, but he deserves enormous credit for his many years of service to Oregon. He represents the best of the Oregon Way, and many, many people in our State are better off as a result of his hard work. It is my great pleasure to call him a friend, and I look forward to continuing our work together in the years ahead.

Madam President, a little later today, the Senate is going to vote on the Respect for Marriage Act.

This vote is an affirmation that the U.S. Senate will stand up and protect the rights of all Americans to marry the person they love. Although this is about codifying rights that same-sex couples already enjoy, this is an important step in a long-running battle for equality.

During my 1996 campaign for the Senate, I ran on the proposition that there is a fundamental right to privacy in America, and I summed it up by saying ``If you don't like gay marriage, don't get one.''

So I became the first Member of the Senate to openly support marriage equality. Soon afterwards, there was a debate on a truly bad law, the Defense of Marriage Act, which I opposed for the same reasons. It was a breach of our country's fundamental right to privacy. Now the Senate has a chance to rectify that wrong and repeal it.

I am always going to go to the mat to defend the right to privacy in America. The bottom line is that protecting somebody else's rights doesn't take anything away from your own rights. Our country is indisputably stronger when everyone's rights are protected.

Some Members of this body have questioned why we need to pass this bill when marriage equality is the law of the land. The answer is pretty straightforward. The Dobbs ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade, showed that the Senate cannot take any modern legal precedent for granted.

With the possible exception of Brown v. Board, no precedent is safe as long as Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito are openly calling for the Court to revisit major rulings. It is not just Justice Thomas and Justice Alito making these arguments in public. These days, many Republicans have openly talked about their belief that the Court ruled incorrectly in some of the most significant cases dealing with the expansion and recognition of individual rights in America: The Obergefell ruling, marriage equality; the Griswold v. Connecticut ruling, the rights of women to use contraception; even the Loving v. Virginia ruling, the right to interracial marriage. Some Members of Congress have called all those other legal precedents into question.

These backward debates now unfold in Congress, in courts, and in statehouses. The backdrop behind them is frightening, raising levels of hatred and bile spewed at LGBTQ Americans every day of the week.

The far right is now targeting gay and trans Americans in an effort to scare everybody else into taking away their rights. There is no question that when leaders participate in ratcheting up antigay rhetoric, it spills out into the real world across the country.

The community of Colorado Springs is still mourning the lives lost in a mass shooting at a gay nightclub a few days before Thanksgiving. Five people were killed. More than a dozen others were hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

If not for the actions of a few brave individuals, including a military veteran, the death toll would have been much higher.

Passing the Respect for Marriage Act is not going to end the hateful rhetoric and violence for good, but the Senate has an opportunity and an obligation to declare with this vote that hate is wrong, that we will stand up and defend the vulnerable, that we will protect the individual rights of all Americans from a far-right Supreme Court majority determined to turn the clock back by decades.

There just is no place for hate or intolerance in our great country. So today I am proud to be able to cast a vote in a bit for individual rights, for freedom, for privacy, and for equality.

I want to thank all the Members of this body who have worked for months to bring the bill to the floor with bipartisan support, and I hope that the Senate will be able to continue this progress with colleagues on both sides in the months and years ahead.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, this is at least the third time the Senate is debating Senator Marshall's proposal to terminate the national emergency declaration related to COVID-19. I am going to have just a few brief remarks on why the Senate ought to vote this down and move on to the crucial year-end priorities that actually have a chance of becoming law.

First, the Marshall resolution has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee. As the chairman of the committee, we have long focused on healthcare and, particularly, Medicare.

And my view is that the Marshall resolution is part of a larger effort to create more redtape and less flexibility in American healthcare.

Now, I have been talking to a lot of Oregonians about many issues over the last few months. And I can just say, nobody has come up to me in one of our iconic Fred Meyer stores or to a townhall meeting and said, ``Hey, Ron, we need more healthcare redtape.''

I want to be specific about what this means. The Marshall resolution will make it harder to keep waivers on the books that have helped resolve critical shortages of healthcare providers in hospitals overwhelmed with sick patients. The policies allowed under the national emergency have also helped address shortages of medical supplies needed to treat patients and protect medical workers.

Looking at the bigger picture, the Marshall resolution is part of a broader effort by Republicans to wipe out a host of important policies that have saved lives and helped our healthcare system stay afloat over the last few years.

This larger effort by Republicans, for example, could make it harder for people to get hospital quality services provided at home where they are most comfortable. There is a risk it would lead to a whole lot of vulnerable Americans losing coverage through Medicaid.

Taken together, that is a recipe for chaos in American healthcare and serious headaches for millions of patients who would have their coverage and their care upended.

Nobody is saying that emergency policies that began in the pandemic are going to stick around forever. Changes do have to be handled responsibly. And what we try to do in the Finance Committee is work in a bipartisan way.

So, colleagues, in my view, this Republican effort--and it has been what we have been debating now again and again--comes down to less flexibility and more chaos in American healthcare, and that sounds like an idea the U.S. Senate ought to avoid.

That begins with voting down the Marshall resolution. My sense is this is also exactly the wrong time to start undermining important healthcare flexibilities. Doctors and public health experts--we have all read these articles--are telling us this is going to be a painful flu season. We are hearing this across the country. Hospitalizations, colleagues, for the flu are already surging.

At the same time, there is a huge wave of RSV infections across the country. That is particularly serious for infants and toddlers. It can be a big problem for adults, too. Many pediatric hospitals are overwhelmed. The flu and RSV are hitting just as the country braces for possibly another COVID wave during the winter.

Congress ought to be looking here to support medical workers, protect our healthcare system from becoming totally overwhelmed by viruses, and save lives. The Marshall resolution and this broader Republican effort that we have been hearing about on the floor to eliminate healthcare flexibilities does the opposite.

An earlier version of this Marshall resolution passed back in the spring because some Members were absent for the vote.

Colleagues, this is going nowhere in the other body.

Now, I will close by saying there are serious healthcare issues that deserve bipartisan attention here in the Senate. For example, Democrats and Republicans on the Finance Committee, many of them have been working with Democrats in a very thoughtful way for months on improving mental healthcare in America.

We are very proud on the Finance Committee that four major provisions of our bipartisan work that we put in a year and a half on came out to be the back letter text on mental health in the gun safety legislation. So we want to work in a constructive way. You see that with mental health. Members on the Finance Committee come forward with good ideas. That is the kind of work we ought to be doing on healthcare.

My view is the Marshall resolution is a partisan step in the wrong direction. I think it is a mistake for American healthcare at this crucial moment to reduce flexibility for government to deal with the challenges. I oppose the Marshall proposal.

I yield the floor.

The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read the third time.

Vote on S.J. Res. 63

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

Mr. President, I am on the floor this afternoon with a request to confirm a highly qualified nominee with bipartisan support, whose nomination has stalled for 210 days since it was approved by the Finance Committee.

My understanding is there may be an objection to a unanimous consent request that I would like to offer, and, hopefully, any Senate Republican who seeks to object will come to me. And I hope, whatever concern they have--if, in fact, it is the case--that we can work it out and this very, very qualified individual can serve as Commissioner on Children, Youth, and Families within the Department of Health and Human Services.

I am talking about Rebecca Jones Gaston. And my view is that this Agency is a hugely underappreciated part of our government. Its whole mission is to help vulnerable kids and families stay safe and get ahead in life. It is challenging work, and that means you have got to have strong leadership in place.

One of the big recent jobs for this Agency has been implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act. Our colleague, the late Orrin Hatch, and I worked on this for years because we wanted to transform the child welfare system, and that is an undertaking now underway because Chairman Hatch went to members on the other side of the aisle and reached out. And we built a coalition for this hugely consequential bill.

Before the bill, there was essentially a set of two choices, neither perfect, for kids looking at the prospects of families and foster homes. You could keep a child with a family in a situation that was not exactly ideal. You would have problems with alcohol. You would have problems with drugs. There were just problems at home. If you didn't keep the child there, you would send them off to a foster care facility. Well, there are some good foster care homes, but we know that there are some that are not exactly up to par.

What Chairman Hatch and I did, with bipartisan support in the Finance Committee, is devise a third path, and that is what Ms. Gaston would be working on at this Agency that does so much good for kids. We essentially said this third path meant that there could be support at home for the parents who were dealing with alcohol challenges or drug dependency or something of that nature. You could also have an older individual, a grandparent, come in and assist.

But the point was, we came up with a third, far healthier path. It was a landmark. Marian Wright Edelman, who has done so much work for young people, so much effort, said that it was a monumental achievement. And, in fact, it was, and that is why we want Rebecca Jones Gaston there to implement it.

And what the status quo was before that legislation was families, essentially, breaking apart. And so the bill is called Families First because it keeps families together--keep them together whenever you can come up with a strategy to make it safe for the child. It could be with mental health care for Mom and Dad. As I said, maybe a grandparent steps in to take care of the grandkids. Lots more flexibility.

Mr. President, as former Governor, you and I have talked about that flexibility in human services. That is what Chairman Hatch and I worked on, and it is how we got it passed into law.

Now, obviously, you then have to go forward to implement it. That means you have to work with State and local agencies, the administration, the Congress. Everybody wants to get this right.

Rebecca Jones Gaston is an ideal nominee to lead the effort. She has experience in Oregon. She has also been a highly successful advocate for young people as Oregon's child welfare director within the State's Department of Human Services.

She had a similar post--I hope everybody hears this who is watching it--under a Republican Governor in the State of Maryland. So this is a person who can work well with both sides.

She brings 25 years of experience in dealing with families and kids. Her qualifications for this job are undeniable. And I think it is fair to say members on the Finance Committee are looking forward to working with her.

I previously sought to pass this nomination by unanimous consent earlier in the summer. There was one Senate objection. I believe that issue has been resolved.

This nomination has waited long enough. We have a very good person, bipartisan support. There is lots of work to do.

And I would just close by way of saying, I heard one Senator might be objecting. That Senator has lifted their objection. And now I hear some kind of report that someone else is objecting. And my hope is the Senator with the objection will contact me so we can address the concern, clear the nomination before we leave, which, I think, we are all very hopeful will be the case.

At this point, I want it understood that I am going to ask unanimous consent later in this session, and I hope there will be no objection.

With that, I yield the floor.

And I have additional business here in a few minutes.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor this afternoon to speak about Mike Evans, the Finance Committee's chief counsel, who is retiring at the end of this week. This is going to bring to a close 27 years of extraordinary Senate service and almost 9 years on the Finance Committee staff.

It is not an atomic secret that I am very, very much involved in basketball with my children and still dreaming about how it didn't work out to play in the NBA. But to just paraphrase one thought with respect to the way this place works in terms of actually getting results the way Mike Evans did on the IRA--a hugely important bill, where the major pieces came from the Finance Committee, where we had extraordinary work done by the president of the Senate--if you speak in the parlance of basketball, Mike Evans will long be remembered as one of the all- stars--the NBA all-stars, so to speak--in Senate service.

He has, without any doubt, for millions of people in Oregon and across the country, caused them to have a better life because of his work in the Senate. And to just tick off a few of the reasons why I feel that way, let me just give a bit of history.

In early 2014, I had a brief tenure as chairman of the Finance Committee. And to the Senate's great fortune, Mike agreed to return to be the Senate Finance Committee's chief counsel. His experience goes back to days when he did good work for Chairman Baucus.

And the reality is, since then, you name a big legislative accomplishment in the areas of healthcare, tax policy, support for working families, Mike has been right at the heart of it. A few examples: Not long after Mike's return, the Senate passed the largest set of tax cuts for working families in many years.

There was the 2015 trade debate that was all about what I call getting trade done right: strong enforcement, serious protections for workers in the environment, more sunlight in our trade policy than ever before.

Many members had said we had never approached trade in that way. With Mike's good work, there were colleagues on our side of the aisle who said this is the first trade bill we are voting for.

Starting in 2017, there was a shift in our work as Finance Committee Democrats focused on protecting vulnerable Americans from the Trump administration's policies that singled out the vulnerable. We stopped the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act and destroy Medicaid in its tracks. We showed the American people that the Trump tax law was not a middle-class tax cut. Above all, it disproportionately favored billionaires and corporations. And we saw that all through the Trump years.

Mike was absolutely crucial developing a strong, innovative, progressive

agenda for the next time Democrats led the committee. When the pandemic hit, the committee stepped up and sprung into action. We came up with historic legislation to support workers and small businesses to prevent an economic collapse.

More recently, with the good work, particularly done by Senator Brown and Senator Bennet, Senator Casey, Senator Booker--my colleagues--the Finance Committee led the effort to pass the largest reduction in child poverty ever to come from one bill.

The President of the Senate knows we worked for a full decade--a full decade--to pass the largest clean energy bill in U.S. history, a major step in the fight against climate change.

It does not happen, it simply does not happen without the gentleman sitting next to me, Mike Evans.

Medicare is going to start delivering a big dose of price relief for prescription drugs. So seniors are going to benefit. In fact, Mike Evans always told me: Let's make sure you can get help to people soon. That means in literally a couple of days, on October 1, because of Mike's good work, we are going to start seeing penalties for price gouging by big pharmaceutical companies. They are going to have to write out checks to Medicare for the amount over inflation. Mike Evans led the fight on those issues, right at the center of our major accomplishments.

In the column of ongoing priorities, we said: Something is not right. If nurses and firefighters in Maine or Mississippi or any other State pay taxes with every paycheck, billionaires can pay what they want, when they want to. And we have been saying we want everybody to be successful. My goodness, that is what America is about. But we also want everybody to pay their fair share.

And I am really pleased that the President has been talking about a billionaire minimum income tax. We have been coming together all in the name of fairness. And Mike looks specifically at how to do that and address the parliamentary and legal concerns.

I would be on the floor until breakfast time tomorrow--and I see our friend from Mississippi has something that is important to him--and I just want to close with one last point.

You know, I think if you walked into a coffee shop in Maine or Oregon or Mississippi and you said: ``Well, let me talk to you a little bit about reconciliation,'' people would be a little baffled with you, but maybe they would say, I hope the couples can work it out, or something; and haven't thought of this reconciliation too much.

Well, we know here in the Senate reconciliation is a briar patch of tricky rules and procedures; get something wrong, and all the work you have done to come up with a good policy goes by the boards.

So you have to comply with the Byrd rule, which is something resembling English, and Mike, of course, speaks this unique tongue of the whole Byrd rule world. It means scrubbing your legislation for Byrd rule violations, writing tomes of legal memoranda. Then you have to go before the Senate Parliamentarian to make sure your bill stands up to scrutiny.

I see the Parliamentarian right there, and as she knows, we are very appreciative of her professionalism. Mike and I, I think, would be the first to say you don't win all the calls. That is kind of the way it works, but the Parliamentarian has always been professional. And somehow I think Mike Evans and the Parliamentarian, wherever they are going to be in the years ahead, they are going to be batting around the ideas of what it takes to move legislation forward in the Senate.

This is as much a compliment to Mike and the Parliamentarian as to say this is, for all its flaws, part of what you have to do to get issues addressed and do it fairly. Nobody in this country is more experienced on this floor than Mike Evans.

If you want to think about remembering Mike as I will, opposing counsels sort of weep when Mike Evans walks through the door because they know that with that full stack of binders and materials, he is ready. If I can go back to my basketball roots, when you are dealing with Mike Evans, you better come to play because he is ready every single time out.

Typically, these arguments are handled by brilliant staff before the Parliamentarian. On one occasion, I gather, a Senator kind of strutted into the room and challenged Mike to a debate. I am not sure how it ended, but Mike is pretty much undefeated against colleagues on the other side who actually have election certificates.

In all seriousness, the many hours of work he has put into these Byrd rule arguments--work that I know feels like a real slog--it is part of making life better for people, and we appreciate Mike doing it.

Last point I want to make is about Mike's character. He has a great sense of humor. He is wonderful to be around. He is kind. He is a mentor to younger staff. He is the only person I know who can pepper Shakespeare quotes and Springsteen lyrics into the same discussion of dense economic policy.

Some people get lost around here in the jargon of what happens up here. Mike is about helping the real people get ahead in life, particularly somebody who doesn't have power and clout and somebody who just deserves a fair shake. He has never lost sight of that. It is his loadstar. We are so thankful for his years of service.

Last announcement, just to wrap up. I think Mike feels, and I do, too, if you are going to step into big shoes--and these are NBA-style shoes, they are big--we are really thrilled that Tiffany Smith will be the new Finance Committee chief counsel starting next week. She is a 15-year veteran of the Finance Committee. She has been our chief tax counsel since 2016. She leads the best and most effective tax team there is. She has been in the trenches with Mike for years, and I think she is going to reflect very well on the Finance Committee and the Senate. She has a huge record of accomplishments as well. You will see those talents in action soon. She is going to hit the ground running.

I just say, as I see my friend from Mississippi here, if any colleagues on the other side of the aisle think they are going to get a break in reconciliation debates when Mike retires, they have another thing coming with Tiffany Smith. She is somebody who is going to be able to fill his shoes very well.

Mike can now get on to the season passes that apparently he wants to the Folger; he can go tour with the Boss; and he can catch all the Red Sox and Celtics games he wants. But I have said this before, staff can leave our office, but they don't get to leave our special family.

With enduring thanks to Mike Evans, enduring thanks to the good work he has done that has made lives better in this country, Mike, big thanks. Godspeed.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, Madam President.

Madam President, I just went over to our colleague from Kansas and told him that I would much rather be on the floor this afternoon working in a bipartisan way on something like this, and I hope that can be part of Senate proceedings in the future.

Here is what I think is important for the public to know about this proposal. It is that in the real world, the Marshall proposal is a prescription for less flexibility and more redtape in American healthcare. I want to be very specific.

Every Member of this body understands that America has a serious shortage of nurses and healthcare providers. Every single time we go home--I am sure this is the case for our colleague from Kansas, who is a physician. He hears from physicians and providers. Every time we are home, we hear from healthcare providers. I see the Presiding Officer of the Senate has been a very strong advocate for healthcare improvement for patients and providers. Every time we are home, we hear about the need for more healthcare providers.

Right now, there are requirements in Medicare for a lengthy process that must be completed before it is possible to hire healthcare providers to serve Medicare patients. If the Marshall proposal goes into effect as written, Health and Human Services could not waive this complicated process to take care of patients. So that would leave our country short of healthcare providers when there is an acute, even more serious need for them.

I am just going to close with this because we are all hoping to be home over the next week or so. When I am home, I always do these open- to-all townhall meetings. I go to every one of my counties every year. I have had more than 1,020 of them--open to all, ask whatever you want. I have never had a constituent at home, an Oregonian, say: Ron, what we need is more complicated processes and redtape in American healthcare. Usually, they are talking to us about waiving things.

For those reasons, Madam President, I object.

Thank you very much, Senator Brown. And I see in the Chair another strong supporter of Social Security, the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts.

And for colleagues who aren't aware, Senator Brown is our chair of the Subcommittee on Social Security in the Senate Finance Committee. This is a crucial subcommittee for all the reasons that Senator Brown just mentioned, and I am just going to make a couple of points, and if my colleague is still on the floor, maybe we can have a little bit of a colloquy.

Thank you.

What Senator Brown has illustrated again is the differences between the two parties on Social Security and Medicare, and my colleague was kind enough to go back to my past as codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers.

Ever since those days, the difference between the two parties has been that on our side of the aisle, we are very blunt when we get asked about Social Security and Medicare. As Senator Brown just said, on our side, we make it clear that Social Security and Medicare are a guarantee. They are not a voucher. They are not something that is going to be thrown to the private market. They are a guarantee.

What we hear from our colleagues on the other side is sort of a word salad, but it nearly always involves a statement about how much they want to protect Social Security, but then we hear a lot about privatization, about portability, about investment.

It is anything but what you just heard Senator Brown say; that Medicare and Social Security are not something to be privatized; they are about a guarantee.

And we should make no mistake about it, seniors, others who are eligible for the programs have earned these benefits. They have earned these benefits.

And yet, somehow, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and candidates don't get what the programs are really all about.

For example, not long ago, I saw a Republican Senate candidate out West say in a primary forum: Congress ought to ``privatize Social Security and just get the government out of it.''

``Just get the government out of it.''

Now, apparently, he is the nominee, and he is for protecting Social Security. He swears up and down he is for protecting Social Security-- huge about-face.

I heard another westerner asked on live TV about his thoughts on Social Security. And he said nothing about a guarantee. He said: We ought to look at portability issues and individual accounts and benefit cuts are on the menu.

Again, this is kind of Washington lingo, Washington code for unraveling the guarantee that is Social Security and Medicare that I learned about in those days when I was codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers.

And Americans don't want their elected representatives to cut this crucial set of programs that are earned benefits. And they certainly don't want their elected officials and candidates to talk out of both sides of their mouth.

Now, I mentioned this question of westerners and where westerners stand, but apparently this opposition to these core principles of Social Security doesn't just reside in the West. It seems to spread across the country. Senator Rick Scott has proposed ending, again, the guarantees of these bedrock programs--Social Security and Medicare--and just sunsetting them after just a few years--sunsetting them.

So as I would say to my colleague, who has worked with me on a lot of these issues, let's just unpack that for a minute. We believe that Social Security and Medicare are guaranteed. They are not subject to these annual, political kind of battles and pushed and prodded for political advantage. They are guaranteed. But yet, after quoting those in the West who want to come join us, now we have a southerner in a position of great importance who wants to sunset programs like Social

Security and Medicare after just a few years and, in effect, throw them to the winds to see what kind of politics might be put in place.

I don't believe that is acceptable. Senator Brown, the chair of our subcommittee, doesn't believe that is acceptable. Social Security is among the most foundational principles in our country's history, providing financial security through guaranteed benefits for millions of Americans. Over 70 million Americans receive Social Security and Supplemental Security Income every year.

I would be happy to and, particularly, so you can tell everybody again why you feel so strongly.

Yes. What ``sunset'' means is you would unravel the basic principles of Social Security and Medicare. We don't subject them to annual or regular political fights. We have said that people have earned those benefits, and we aren't just going to set arbitrary dates and say we are going to, in effect, move on and we will decide what happens to seniors and the disabled based on the politics of the moment.

It is a 180-degree departure from the kind of guarantee that you spelled out that I feel so strongly about. We don't say we are just going to have these arbitrary changes that could put at risk the entire program.

My colleague from Ohio is being way too logical because, you bet, what this essentially means is if you sunset it, the program and the benefits are not going to continue as they have. As you said, if people decide because of some particular kind of flurry at the moment that for some cause they don't want to continue it, the well- being and security of seniors is jeopardized.

You have stated it well. It would mean that when you sunset it, you would have to have a brand-new fight to reestablish its primacy as a guarantee. You sunset it.

Nope, no question about it, and it would put in jeopardy fundamental core principles that seniors all across the country--in Ohio and Oregon and Massachusetts--have been able to count on. When you sunset it, you say you can't count on it. You have to wait for another political battle.

And I would just say to my colleagues--showing how extreme the position is of our colleague from Florida, Senator Scott--that Senator Orrin Hatch, the late Senator Hatch who worked with us, when he was in the Senate said: We will update the Medicare guarantee to start covering chronic care. This is something the Senator from Massachusetts has worked with me on, home care for seniors. So Senator Orrin Hatch, our late colleague and my personal friend, who was not exactly a liberal, he understood what you and I are talking about: that Medicare and Social Security are a guarantee. And when we talked about chronic care, he said: We are going to update the Medicare guarantee--nothing about saying: Well, gee, maybe we will do something after we sunset it. So my colleague has said it well.

He hasn't talked about it, but I think that would certainly be one of the questions our constituents would ask about, because this issue of there being a double standard between seniors at home and their elected officials would be very real. He hasn't spelled out how he would deal with that, but there is certainly the question of elected officials, because we have these retirement benefits that have been part, again, of a program that has been established for some time. They haven't been talked about.

But I will tell you, I think the chair of the Social Security Subcommittee and myself on the Finance Committee, we are going to go out there and say: No double standard.

You can be sure of that. If something is sunsetted for working people and seniors and the disabled, we are certainly not going to let Senator Scott pretend that somehow it is business as usual for elected officials.

Mr. President, I think Senator Brown started us off very well, and he is asking questions that I think millions of Americans are going to ask. My understanding is that my colleague from Ohio, the chairman of the subcommittee, is going to be looking at a lot of these issues in his subcommittee. But certainly this last point, about politicians talking out of both sides of their mouth and saying somehow that we are going to have a program sunsetted for seniors and the disabled--Social Security, Medicare and others--but we are not going to even talk about what happens for elected officials is an example of how you shouldn't legislate. It is an example of what I believe could be a double standard.

And I will just close, unless Senator Brown wants to. In fact, I am going to let Senator Brown do it. I thought, as I listened to Senator Brown, and I put it in the context of all these years with the Gray Panthers, that everybody can understand what Senator Brown is talking about. Medicare and Social Security are a guarantee--period--inviolate, as a result of the history that we have had in this country where people worked so hard for this.

On the other side, we are talking about privatization, we are talking about portability, and we are talking about lots of new cost analyses in the private sector and individualized programs. I am for individualized programs on top of Social Security, not in place of it.

So I really appreciate your resolution, Senator Brown, and I am going to do everything I can to support it.

Mr. President, we are now several weeks on from the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.

The IRA is transformational legislation that will improve the lives of millions and millions of Americans: more affordable prescription drugs, cheaper energy bills, the largest investment in the climate in history, a serious commitment to cracking down on tax cheats who rip off the American people for billions of dollars every year, and ensuring that corporations pay a fair share.

I am proud to say that the vast majority of the Inflation Reduction Act came from the Finance Committee majority.

It is no exaggeration to say that the team on the committee and in my personal office collectively spent thousands and thousands of hours developing these proposals, building support for them under zero margin for error, and guaranteeing that they would pass under challenging Senate rules.

Senate Democrats spent more than a year debating what would go into this bill before it finally came together, but the staff of the Finance Committee began its work long before that. Some of the components of the IRA go back more than a decade.

So before the Senate goes out in the coming days, I wanted to come down to the floor to thank my committee and personal office staff, as well as the brilliant teams at the Joint Committee on Tax, Congressional Budget Office, and legislative counsel who made this achievement possible.

I will shout out a few specifics as I thank the staff, but understand that legislation this significant is always a collaborative effort. And furthermore, there are major priorities that did not make it into the final version of the IRA, and the staff who worked on those issues deserve credit, too.

I will start out with Tiffany Smith, who leads the best and hardest working tax policy team there is.

Bobby Andres has honcho'd the Clean Energy for America Act for 7-plus years. He tweaked and edited and improved that bill so many times, he can probably recite the text in his sleep.

Chris Arneson, Jon Goldman, and Sarah Schaefer have been instrumental in going after the tax loopholes that allow massive, profitable corporations to get away with paying little to nothing. Their work on those issues is going to continue to find its way into law.

Adam Carasso and Eric LoPresti helped to make sure the IRS has the resources it needs to go after wealthy tax cheats who skip out on paying what they owe.

And proof positive that Finance Teams support one another: Drew Crouch contributed tax policy help to the prescription drug reforms.

Rachael Kauss has put a ton of work into developing the billionaire's income tax, and although that proposal didn't make it in the final bill, there is more support than ever for making sure that those at the very top pay a fair share like everybody else.

Grace Enda assisted on the clean energy tax policies and more. Ursula Clausing supported the tax team and also made sure that our team and Senate Democrats were ready and organized for a tough floor debate. Arthur Shemitz and Melanie Jonas also supported the tax team's hard work.

One other point about the Finance Committee majority's tax team--and this applies across the board, not just to the Inflation Reduction Act. If anybody out there mistakenly believes it is easy to offset the legislation passed here in the Senate, it is only because our tax team, time and time again, makes it look effortless. The truth is, it takes a ton of hard work, but they get it done.

Patricio Gonzalez, a member of the committee's investigations team, has been digging into the tax practices of some of the biggest drug companies out there. His work went a long way to convincing key Senators that our corporate tax laws needed reform. Ryder Tobin, another member of the investigations team, contributed to that work and also helped us survive the grueling floor debate, as did Madison Moskowitz, Claire Kaliban, and Bonnie Million.

Next up: healthcare. When it comes to drug prices, Big Pharma has had a stranglehold on the U.S. Senate for a long, long time. A lot of people have gone up against Big Pharma and lost. Shawn Bishop and the Finance Committee health team took on Big Pharma and won.

Anna Kaltenboeck played a key role in our efforts on finally allowing Medicare to negotiate on behalf of seniors for a better deal on prescription drugs. She also worked with Raghav Aggarwal on crafting the Senate version of drug price negotiation, as well as key protections for seniors in Medicare Part D. That includes a $2,000 annual out-of-pocket cap on their medications and a

price-gouging penalty for drug companies that hike prices faster than inflation.

At a time when families in Oregon and across the country are getting hit by rising prices, Eva DuGoff worked on extending subsidies for ACA health insurance coverage. It will save people hundreds of dollars a year and a family of four up to $2,400 a year.

Peter Fise worked on capping the out-of-pocket cost of insulin for seniors at $35 per month--another huge savings for many Americans. Liz Dervan expanded Medicaid's coverage of vaccines for adults.

There is a long list of people who pitched in on the vital process of making sure the bill was compliant with the rules of the Senate known as the Byrd Rules. It includes Liz Dervan, whose legal acumen was invaluable to supporting the committee's efforts to navigate the Byrd rule, as well as major efforts by Peter Fise, Kristen Lunde, Kimberly Lattimore, Mary Ellis and Daniel Whittam from the health team. It also includes Sally Laing and Virginia Lenahan from our trade team, who contributed to the clean energy provisions.

When it comes to Byrd rules, the point man on the Finance Committee is our chief counsel, Mike Evans. For all the months of work that goes into writing legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, the whole thing can come crashing down if it doesn't comply with the Byrd rules. Nobody is more skilled or experienced than Mike at making sure legislation is Byrd-compliant from the start and protecting it in Byrd rule arguments before the Senate Parliamentarian. Opposing counsels weep when they see Mike Evans and his stacks of papers enter the room. Reconciliation under the Byrd rule is arduous work, yet Mike approaches it with humor and grace along with great skill.

Mike is a valued member of my senior leadership team, who have directed years of effort that made the IRA possible. I want to thank him, Jeff Michels, Joshua Sheinkman, Sarah Bittleman, John Dickas, and Isaiah Akin for guiding the team through setbacks and struggles to get this bill done.

The Finance Committee's communications leads on the IRA were Ashley Schapitl on tax and investigations; Taylor Harvey on healthcare; Ryan Carey, speechwriter; and Emily Zahnle-Hostetler, digital director. The IRA dealt with some incredibly complicated policy issues, and it challenged a lot of powerful special interests. But our team got the word out and stood up to withering attacks in the press and here in the Senate.

The Finance Committee works with many, many skilled and dedicated staff at the Joint Committee on Taxation on a daily basis. Suffice it to say, we would be out in the cold without Tom Barthold and the team of all-stars at JCT:

Rob Harvey

Chris Giosa

Tim Dowd

Cecily Rock

Natalie Tucker

Ross Margelefsky

Jeff Arbeit

Jared Hermann

Carol Wang

Kristine Roth

Harold Hirsch

Sanjay Misra

Clare Diefenbach

Rhonda Migdail

Andrew Lai

David Lenter

Vivek Chandrasekhar

Chia Chang

Lin Xu

James Elwell

Kelly Scanlon

Sally Kwak

Chris Overend

Kashi Way

Bert Lue

Deirdre James

Connor Dowd

Nick Bull

Melani Houser

Tanya Butler

The same goes for the highly skilled and dedicated team at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office under Director Phil Swagel. They do a difficult job to keep Congress informed of what proposed changes to our Federal programs will cost and always come through under extremely tight deadlines:

Terri Gullo

Leo Lex

Paul Masi

Chad Chirico

Lara Robillard

Asha Saavoss

Stuart Hammond

Carrie Colla

Tamara Hayford

Christopher Adams

Evan Herrnstadt

Colin Baker

Scott Laughery

and other CBO staff who analyzed drug pricing in the U.S.

over the last decade.

And finally I want to thank the talented legal team at the Senate legislative counsel's office who help committee staff write the law--on tax policies, Mark McGunagle, Jim Fransen, Allison Otto, and Vince Gaiani; on health policies, John Goetcheus, Kelly Thornburg, Ruth Ernst and Phil Lynch.

Whether you are talking about JCT, CBO or legislative counsel, the Congress grinds to a halt without their work.

Finally, I would like to commend the work of the Senate Parliamentarian and her assistants. A reconciliation bill turns up a lot of highly complex procedural questions, and the Parliamentarian has to make the calls. I was not happy with all of the decisions, but the Parliamentarians worked tirelessly, skillfully, and with an even hand. Also, I would like to thank the clerks and floor staff for their work and endurance during the vote-a-rama.

The debate the American people read about and watched on TV is just a small portion of all the work that went into the Inflation Reduction Act. It can be awfully frustrating to spend years developing legislation when Congress is this polarized. We dealt with a lot of setbacks. At certain points, we thought it was over. And there is still a lot more to get done.

But the IRA truly is an accomplishment that will improve life for the American people: more affordable medications, more affordable health insurance, cheaper energy, the biggest ever investment in the fight against climate change, major progress cracking down on tax cheats and improving tax fairness--that is progress to be proud of. I thank the Finance Committee majority staff, my personal office staff, and all the other teams who contributed to this effort.

I yield the floor.

I thank my colleague, and I know that Senator Van Hollen is here as well.

I am going to be brief. I particularly want to thank our colleague from Rhode Island because he has been relentless in terms of making this case day after day. I want to put this in very personal kind of terms because all of us who have the honor of serving in the U.S. Senate can relate to this issue.

Senator Whitehouse has added a reform to his proposal that is very personal to me and I think embodies the accountability and the transparency that Oregonians and people in Minnesota, Michigan, and Maryland are calling for. Here is how I would start it: A number of years ago, I authored legislation that millions of Americans now understand is called Stand By Your Ad. Stand By Your Ad stipulated that as an elected official or a candidate, you would have to actually put your name behind these attack ads where you go after your opponent. And, now, day after day, in these next 50-plus days, we are going to see plenty of these ads.

The law worked well, and it is still on the books today, much to the chagrin of some officials who would like to take a quick hit on their opponent--an official or a candidate--and then scamper off without any accountability.

I do want to make clear, because of the good work of the Senator from Rhode Island, that Stand By Your Ad doesn't mean as much today because we now know the premium is ongoing for these secret, incredibly negative ads on your opponent because the people paying for dark money ads aren't required to put their name behind what they are saying.

That is an extraordinarily strong hit against openness and accountability and transparency in our democracy. Oregonians and people across the country are rightfully disgusted by it. It is extraordinary the lengths that those who are orchestrating these dark money attacks will go in order to make their case when there is no accountability.

I see my seatmate from the Finance Committee. We have worked together for years to change the Medicare statute that barred Medicare from negotiating to hold down the price of medicine. Big Pharma protected this negotiating ban like it was the Holy Grail. My colleague and I would come to the committee day after day and talk about: How is this common sense? Everybody in America negotiates in order to get the best possible deal.

But we looked, particularly in this session, at the start of the debate as a classic study in dark money. Big Pharma, and groups associated with it, spent enormous sums of money attacking me personally in Washington, DC, media. There was scary music, and there were attacks about how anybody who wanted these reforms was like a leech and taking away cures from the American people.

The striking part of all of this, and why what Senator Whitehouse has had to say is so important, is that the ad wasn't even directed at me, because it was in Washington, DC. I am barely a household word in my own household, let alone in Washington, DC.

And what was the point of these extraordinarily large sums attacking me in Washington, DC? The point of it was to scare my colleagues-- Senator Stabenow, Senator Van Hollen, all of my colleagues here-- because there was so much money at the hands of these extreme groups associated with Big Pharma that wanted to undermine a commonsense reform backed by millions of Americans that Medicare should negotiate.

At one point, someone said: Oh, there is so much opposition to this effort to negotiate.

I said: Are you kidding me? The opponents of negotiating on Medicare must be in a witness protection program because we can't find anybody who thinks you shouldn't negotiate.

Yet Big Pharma was willing to spend huge sums of money--dark money-- not really to damage me politically, because my constituents live in Oregon, but to scare other Senators.

So people, of course, are going to get bludgeoned with these dark money ads every time they turn on the television, the radio, or watch a video online. I just don't think that Americans should be forced to guess or wonder what special interest is funding these ads that come from murky groups that have these radical names like the Coalition for Prosperity and Justice. We all know that they are not going to tell you who they really are.

My colleague from Maryland has been very patient. We had some glitches in the schedule, and we want to hear from our friend from Michigan as well.

I want to thank Senator Whitehouse for basically taking the ``Stand By Your Ad'' concept and kind of reconfiguring it in the DISCLOSE legislation. Senator Whitehouse's bill would require the heads of corporations, unions, or other organizations to identify when they are behind political ads, the same way Stand By Your Ad works under the original version of the law that I authored.

And remember--and I want this to be the takeaway about this issue-- Senator Whitehouse's proposal and extending ``Stand by Your Ad'' in this kind of fashion treats everybody the same. This is quintessential good government. It is not about going after somebody on the right or somebody on the left. This is about common sense. It is not a radical, leftwing proposal.

The American people ought to know who is trying to influence their votes. By the way, when we authored the original ``Stand by Your Ad'' proposal, it used to be bipartisan. And as my colleague from Rhode Island has mentioned, of late, it has been the Republicans who have been protecting dark money and protecting the basic kind of disclosure that I think our system of government has been all about.

The American people have strong differences of opinion on issues. There is no question about that. But I have had more than 1,020 open- to-all townhall meetings. What nobody disputes is that openness and accountability is what the American system is all about.

So, Senator Whitehouse, our thanks to you for spending years and years at it because you are taking us, in a significant way, back to what I think used to be common sense, used to be accountability, used to be something that transcended the kind of thing that Big Pharma was doing early on where they didn't even pretend--they didn't even pretend--it was about an individual legislator; it was about scaring off all Members of Congress.

We can do better. Senator Whitehouse's proposal moves us in that direction, and I want to thank my colleague from Maryland, who also was trying to deal with the scheduling kind of challenge, and look forward to working with him and my seatmate on the Finance Committee and Senator Whitehouse, another exemplary member of the Finance Committee.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I come to the floor to discuss the new Graham legislation to create a national abortion ban. The centerpiece of the Senator's argument is that Senator Graham wants our country to believe that his national abortion ban is a moderate proposal--his words. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

A moderate bill would not institute criminal penalties for doctors providing lifesaving medical care. That is what this so-called moderate bill does. A moderate bill would not take rights away from American women, no matter where they live. That is what this so-called moderate bill does. A moderate bill would not create a presumption of women's guilt by requiring them to report a rape or seek counseling before they get an abortion. This so-called moderate bill does that, too.

Just think about that last point. If you are trying to assess our colleague from South Carolina's argument that his bill is moderate, under Senator Graham's new restrictions, a 12-year-old rape victim, regardless of the terror she feels or the danger she faces, would have to find a way to report her assault to police before she could get the care she needs. That is a stunning overreach and there is absolutely nothing that is moderate about this proposal. The reality is this is not a moderate proposal. It is an extreme proposal, way out of step with the overwhelming opinion of the American people.

The other important argument I wanted to discuss was this whole matter of how so many of my colleagues on

the other side of the aisle have pledged loyalty--pledged loyalty--to the importance of States' rights that they are going to leave the decision on abortion to the States. But Senator Graham has shown us that all his talk about States' rights means that the States have to agree with Senator Graham. That is what his idea about States' rights is all about.

His bill tramples, for example, on the rights of Oregonians, who sure don't share Senator Graham's view on this, and people in many other States, women and men who voted to protect abortion, women's healthcare, and women's individual freedom.

Senator Graham's bill is about control. It is about government-- government--mind these words--government having control over women's bodies rather than women having control over their bodies.

It is also clear that what has always been envisioned is not just a nationwide ban on abortions but criminalizing this with women and doctors at some point, I gather, possibly locked behind bars.

It is election season and Senator McConnell wants everybody to forget the Republicans' top priorities include passing these extreme restrictions through Congress and the courts. I believe that Americans know better. When it comes to this kind of legislation that is so far removed--far removed--from the moderate claim of its sponsor, I think we ought to recognize what we are looking at is a total national abortion ban, criminalization, and the rights of women curtailed and the power of government over them increased.

Senator Graham's bill is the next step in that direction for Republicans. Introducing his proposal, Senator Graham basically confirmed that:

If [we] take back the House and Senate, I can assure you

we'll have a vote [on our bill].

Madam President, I think we have a lot of speakers coming, but I think the American people ought to take Senator Graham at his word. This is what his agenda is about. This is what he is going to be championing from sea to shining sea. I just hope we do everything we can here in the Senate--in this country--to make sure that the Graham bill does not see the light of day.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, it is time for a reality check here in the Senate.

The far right has had an awful lot to say about the IRS in these last few days. Even Senators who should supposedly know better are spinning wild fantasy stories about 87,000 agents who are armed to the teeth and coming to

the doors of innocent small business people. All this talk is unscathed by the truth.

Here is what is true: Every year, wealthy tax cheats and scofflaw corporations skip out on paying what they owe and rip off the American people for billions and billions of dollars. Let me say that again. Wealthy tax cheats are ripping off innocent taxpayers, every year, of billions and billions of dollars. They are sophisticated. They are wealthy. They want to protect the status quo. By attacking the IRS, the Republicans are helping high-flying tax cheats get away with breaking the law.

The IRS has had its resources gutted by the Republicans over the last decade. It is badly outmatched now by the wealthy tax cheats, who have armies of lawyers and accountants who are prying open loopholes and hiding income in the shadows. Let me give the Senate an example.

A few weeks ago, I put out the findings of a yearlong Finance Committee investigation into the largest alleged tax evasion scheme by one individual in American history. With the right financial wizardry and a complicated network of offshore accounts and partnerships, this individual, Robert Brockman, was able to evade taxes on over $2 billion in income. To hide his money, he set up offshore entities that we call shell banks. They were offshore entities dressed up like financial institutions that Mr. Brockman set up to hide his money from the IRS, betting correctly that the IRS wouldn't have the resources to uncover his scheme. There may be hundreds of thousands more of these shell banks that the IRS has never examined.

The Finance Committee is also in the midst of an investigation into the tax practices of some of the biggest members of Big Pharma. One of the companies whose tax data we examined was AbbVie. In 2020, 75 percent of AbbVie's sales were made in the United States, but AbbVie reported only 1 percent of its income to the United States for tax purposes. Earlier this year, we requested financial information from Merck, which makes nearly half of its sales in the United States, but it reported only 14 percent of its income here. We also requested information from Bristol Myers Squibb, which reportedly used a thicket of foreign subsidiaries and partnerships to take its effective tax rate from 24.7 percent all the way down to a negative 7 percent in a single year.

The IRS struggles to do anything about many of these cases even when they get reported in the press. Criminal tax evasion cases have fallen nearly by half. The number of highly trained experts who know how to break down these complex tax evasion cases has fallen by a third. It takes hundreds and hundreds of hours to review the tax filings of corporations and the rich, and the IRS just doesn't have the resources to go after these wealthy tax cheats and scofflaw corporations. So there is a reason the Democrats believe you have to invest more resources to enforce the laws on the books.

Here is the most important point: It doesn't have anything to do with middle-class taxpayers, because their taxes are taken out automatically of every single paycheck. That is really different than the way the big guys go about their activities in ripping off the little guys with complex tax evasion schemes. What so many Republicans want to do is preserve the status quo so that only the little guys get audited while billionaire friends like Robert Brockman get off scot-free.

Funding for the IRS is also about providing a basic level of customer service to taxpayers who are in Colorado, in Oregon, and in every part of the country. At one point during the filing season this year, the IRS told the Finance Committee that it was able to answer only 11 percent of the service phone calls it was receiving. Taxpayers in America deserve better service from their government, and that means making sure the IRS has the resources to provide it.

The far right and the tax cheats--the wealthy tax cheats--want the IRS, apparently, to continue to struggle because it makes it easier to attack and vilify. That is why we have heard so many falsehoods about the thousands of new IRS agents. I don't know where this number came from. It is absolute nonsense that has been conjured out of nothing.

Even worse are the falsehoods about IRS agents and firearms. Alongside the DEA, the FBI, and other law enforcement Agencies, the IRS often plays a part in going after drug cartels, money launderers, and other serious, hardened criminals. So the question is, How do my Republican colleagues expect IRS criminal investigation officers to defend themselves during drug busts against violent cartels? Should they bring a set of sharpened No. 2 pencils?

We are talking about living in the real world. The IRS funding that the Democrats passed last month is about making sure that the IRS can do its job and meet the expectations of the American people.

I can tell you, as a Senator who has townhall meetings in every county of my State every year, the people of my State say: Look, we are law-abiding. We pay our taxes. There is something way out of whack when these wealthy tax cheats and scofflaw corporations can pay little or nothing.

It is time for Members of Congress to stop going to bat for these wealthy tax cheats who break the law. The IRS needs to be able to crack down on these rip-offs. The IRS needs to be able to provide adequate and timely service. The taxpayers need help, and that is what the IRS funding does.

What we have heard so much about from my colleagues on the far right in raising this specter of agents--thousands of them, armed to the teeth, coming to the doors of small businesses--is simply unscathed by the truth.

For that reason, I object.

Mr. President, I would just like to briefly discuss the amendment that came up during the budget discussion.

Senate Democrats made it very, very clear that we were strongly against taxing those in our country with incomes under $400,000. The problem with the amendment that the Republicans offered is they used the word ``taxable'' income. So, while we strongly opposed raising taxes on middle-class people and others making under $400,000, the wording of the Republicans' amendment, which talked about taxable income, could have immunized billionaires from being subject to an audit. That is because, as the Presiding Officer and I have talked about, billionaires often live by this ``buy, borrow, and die'' philosophy, and they have little or no taxable income for years on end. My colleagues probably saw some of the stories, for example, about billionaires who are claiming the child tax credit because their taxable income

is actually low under the way it is defined.

Just to make sure the record is clear, we are all in on this effort of not taxing middle-income folks. We subscribe completely. In fact, it is what we had in the bill, and our enforcement section made that clear as well. But we are not for creating new paths to tax evasion for billionaires. Regrettably, that is what the language in the Republicans' amendment would have done.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, public service is about making people's lives better, and here is what is on offer this afternoon to make people's lives better in our country: Reduced healthcare costs for seniors, reduced carbon emissions, reduced energy costs, and reduced cheating by wealthy tax cheats. That is just a part of what is on offer this afternoon.

Let me just briefly touch on each of them.

We all know that medicines are way too expensive in our country. People always come back from trips, and they say: Why is it so much cheaper overseas?

It is because these big pharmaceutical companies are under absolutely no restraints to hold down the prices, and that is what we are beginning to change today.

What we are beginning to change today is to say that for those seniors who count on Medicare, for the first time, the program that they love, Medicare, is going to have the power to negotiate lower drug prices for them. The fact is, the Senate is lifting a curse with this legislation. That is how seniors feel when they hear that Medicare can't even go to bat for them. And, of course, Big Pharma has protected this ban on Medicare negotiating like it was the Holy Grail. Even today, they are warning that when we pass this, they are going to try to tie it up with the courts and the State legislatures and the Agencies. But we are not going to let that happen.

The prediction from some independent authorities on medicine has said that because of the compounding benefits of our bill--with more drugs being negotiated on a regular basis--we are looking at the possibility of a trillion dollars in savings before too long.

If a drug company refuses to negotiate, they are going to face a steep excise tax on the sale of their products until they come to the table. If they are price gouging, if they are raising their prices above the rate of inflation, say, for an older drug, they are going to pay a penalty.

And then we have new significant relief for seniors who, when they get mugged at the pharmacy counter, come home and say they just can't pay all the bills. Our legislation puts a new $2,000 out-of-pocket cap on Medicare Part D so that seniors are no longer forced to choose between paying for medicine and paying for food.

Those are all important benefits. The fact is, that penalty for price gouging is going into in effect in a couple of months, in November, so seniors are going to be able to say: We are seeing real relief from this legislation.

There are other steps that we would have liked to take. I understand that. I pushed for them. The President of the Senate has pushed for them. But let's understand the bottom line here. Every one of the policies I have outlined, on their own, is going to be life-changing for millions of senior citizens, and it is going to lay the groundwork for doing more.

I would also like to move briefly from healthcare to climate because the Inflation Reduction Act includes the biggest effort in history to save our climate and invest in clean energy and jobs. And because we all worked together, those are going to be jobs here in America. They are going to be clean energy jobs in our country because of the black letter text that we wrote into the bill.

The old system was a joke. It picked winners and losers, and anybody who was powerful could probably figure out how to get a tax break. And there were permanent breaks for oil and gas but only temporary incentives for clean energy. The system was broken. It was out of date a long time ago.

We put that old system into the dustbin of history, and we put in place emissions-based credits to turbocharge investment in clean energy, clean transportation, and energy conservation. Our new plan is going to reduce the typical American household's energy cost by $500 per year, and it is going to create 600,000 new jobs from Portland, OR, to Portland, ME.

As the President of the Senate knows, we pay for this bill with a few important changes in our tax law. For example, we just showed a couple of days ago that of 100 companies--these are companies with billions of dollars in profits--they are paying--many of them, more than 100--an effective tax rate of 1.1 percent.

Let me say that again: More than 100 hugely profitable companies that are going to pay under this legislation, and the President of the Senate did very important work on this, they are paying, on average, 1.1 percent in taxes.

Now, it is no surprise that those companies that are paying 1.1 percent think that somehow making them pay a minimum rate--a minimum rate, by the way, which is far less than the rate that a firefighter and a nurse pay--that, oh, my goodness, we won't have jobs, we won't have businesses if they do.

And we make it clear that we are not raising taxes on anybody. Anybody making less than $400,000 is not going to pay any additional taxes under this bill. I know there are some of our colleagues on the other side who have always subscribed to this trickle-down theory of economics and say that, well, if those at the very top--say, those corporations paying 1.1 percent--actually pay some taxes, that means that nurses and firefighters are going to pay more taxes, and nurses and firefighters don't buy that for a second.

We also paid for the legislation in an important way that was proposed by our colleague from Ohio, Senator Brown, that I was proud to join him on, and that is a 1-percent tax on stock buybacks.

Corporations have spent trillions of dollars on stock buybacks in recent years, a huge windfall for corporate executives and wealthy shareholder. It set a record in 2018, broke it again in 2021 right in the middle of a global pandemic, and I just noticed the profits of some of the biggest oil companies here in the last few weeks, again, they are kind of leading the league in stock buybacks.

Stock buybacks make a lot of wealthy people even wealthier on paper, but they do very little to strengthen the economy, drive innovation, or improve the well-being of American workers.

Our 1 percent tax is not only going to help pay to prevent the worst effects of climate change, it is also going to encourage big corporations to invest in their workers and research and development instead of more handouts to the top.

Finally, I just want to emphasize this question of tougher IRS tax enforcement. We have heard some of our colleagues on the other side say that somehow this is going to target the working person. I see our good friend from Delaware, another member of the committee. That is just not going to happen. And the reason it is not, as my colleagues on the Finance Committee know so well, working people are not the problem here. They pay taxes with every single paycheck. It is right there on their paycheck. Everybody knows what taxes they pay, and should they be engaging in any questionable activities, it would end up showing up on these forms. They are not the problem.

But as we have been told again and again by independent experts, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, we do have a problem with big, wealthy tax cheats. Big, wealthy tax cheats don't pay taxes with every single paycheck like firefighters and nurses.

And after a decade of Republican budget cuts, we are now in a very difficult position to go after these wealthy tax cheats who rip off the American people for billions of dollars every year.

The current Commissioner who joins many Democratic Commissioners and Republican Commissioners in the past--the current one is a Republican appointee--estimated the number of

taxes owed that are not collected could be as much as a trillion dollars per year.

We believe that the Agency ought to have the resources it needs to go after sophisticated, lawbreaking tax cheats at the top. And I know that my colleagues on the Finance Committee join me in saying: We are going to watchdog the Agency very carefully and make sure the focus is on these wealthy tax cheats and not the typical working person, as my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have talked about.

So there you have it, folks. Here is what is on offer: What is on offer are lower costs for seniors, reduced climate emissions, help for working families, cracking down on wealthy tax cheats. That is what this is all about today. That is why this legislation, I believe, is going to give public service a good name.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.