Floor Statements

Madam President, I both concur and applaud the senior Senator from Washington State for her comments. We saw Senator Manchin here. I know Senator Kaine was here. Senator Murphy was here. Senator Blumenthal was here. I know there are probably a dozen others, all of whom know people and have talked to people, who get out and, as Lincoln said, listen to people and get their public opinion baths.

They meet people like Susan Halpern from Columbus, whom I will talk about in a few minutes. They talk to them. They meet. They see that what we do here actually matters to people's lives.

They can play games with the Affordable Care Act. They have been doing that for a decade now, literally almost a decade, putting people's healthcare at risk, scaring people, and alarming people, trying to take their healthcare away. These are real people, as these pictures show and as these stories show.

Let me back up for a minute. A Federal judge is hearing arguments in a case that would literally yank health coverage away from millions of Americans.

I know what that means in my State. There are 900,000 people in Ohio who have insurance today because of the Affordable Care Act. There are 100,000 Ohio seniors who have gotten major savings on their prescription drugs through the Affordable Care Act. One million Ohio seniors have had osteoporosis screenings, diabetes screenings, physicals with no copay and no deductible, and preventive care so they don't get sick, saving the healthcare system money, saving taxpayers' dollars, and making their lives better. Yet my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, all of whom have good insurance paid for by taxpayers, want to take it away from them.

Almost any day you could look down the hall--you can open this door and walk down the hall, look down the hall, and you will see the healthcare lobbyists, the drug company lobbyists, the tobacco lobbyists, and the gun lobbyists. You will see one after another going to the Republican leader's office, Senator McConnell. Every one of those lobbyists causes us to spend more dollars on health insurance. The health insurance lobby, the gun lobby, the tobacco lobby, the alcohol lobby, the spirits lobby coming out of Kentucky--all of them cost taxpayers more because it means people's health gets worse because they don't stand up to these interest groups.

We know what is happening in Texas. A partisan judge, an absolutely partisan hack of a judge, ruled in December to strike down the Ohio healthcare law. I know Justice Roberts said we don't talk about Obama judges or Bush judges or Clinton judges or Trump judges. Yes, that is what they say, and that is what Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts says, but we know what has happened here. We know how Senator McConnell is looking for the most extreme and young judges possible to put on the court to go after labor rights, to go after voting rights, to go after healthcare, costing our citizens their health and costing citizens billions of dollars.

We know the President wants to get rid of the entire Affordable Care Act. If President Trump gets his way, if the court decides to wipe it off the books, to take away the entire healthcare law, here is what happens: tax credits to help you afford your health insurance--gone; protections for preexisting conditions--gone.

Right now, 5 million Ohioans have a preexisting condition. Most of the rest of us will have a preexisting condition at some time in our lives. It is called aging, when people are more likely to develop illnesses and get sick.

So consumer protections built in by Obama, built in by the Affordable Care Act so insurance companies can't deny you coverage, and they can't say: ``Sorry, we are not going to insure you'' or ``You already have insurance''--and they will take the insurance away if you just happen to get too sick and you cost the private insurance companies too much money--gone. Republicans in this body and President Trump want to take those protections away.

The ability to stay on your parents' health insurance until you are 26--gone. We know what that has meant to so many families. If my colleagues would leave this building, leave their foreign travel, leave their nice homes that most of us have in our States and get out and listen to people, they will hear people say: Well, this is really important to my 26-year-old sister or my 26-year-old daughter or my 24- year-old son.

Ohio's entire Medicaid expansion that Republican Governor Kasich did--

gone. Limits on how much you pay out-of-pocket each year--gone. Many more affordable prescription drugs for seniors through closing the doughnut hole under the Affordable Care Act, if they get their way-- gone.

Free preventive services, like mammograms and bone density screenings for Medicare beneficiaries--millions of them in my State and tens of millions of them in the country--gone. The list goes on.

There are 5 million Ohioans under 65 who have preexisting conditions. That is half the population of our State.

I am not being an alarmist. We know this is what so many of you who were in the House earlier voted on time and again to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act. You had no replacement. You said you did, but there was no replacement for the Affordable Care Act. It was the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, taking away all of these benefits that tens and tens of million Americans benefit from.

These Ohioans have been able to rest a little easier knowing they can't be turned down for healthcare coverage or have their rates skyrocket because a child has asthma, because a husband has diabetes, or because a wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, but this case intentionally puts all of that at risk.

President Trump has thrown the whole power and all of the attorneys-- the battery of lawyers--in the Justice Department into this case to try to take the away the Affordable Care Act. That is what he promised in his campaign; that is what all these Republican Members of the Senate promised; and that is what all the Republican Members of the House promised. Do you know what? A lot of them lost last year because they want to take their insurance away. They are not doing it through Congress because that might be politically risky. They don't want to do that. They are trying to do it through the court system and then blame who knows what for this.

In Columbus, I met Susan Halpern. Ms. Halpern is a cancer survivor. She is pictured here. She told me this:

As a breast cancer survivor and self-employed small

business owner in Ohio--

Creating jobs--

I depend on the ACA for my healthcare. I am aware that

without the ACA, I would not be able to purchase health

insurance for any price. Even though my cancer has been in

complete remission for 12 years, I would still be

uninsurable.

These stories from Michigan that Senator Stabenow tells, from Washington State that Senator Murray just told, that Senator Kaine told, that Senator Murphy has told, and that Senator Blumenthal has told go on and on. These are all cases where people have insurance, and a bunch of people in this body--all of whom get insurance paid for by taxpayers--are trying to take it away from them. All of these benefits are gone, thanks to the lobbyists lining up in Senator McConnell's office from the gun lobby, the tobacco lobby, the insurance lobby, the spirits lobby, and all the rest.

Last week, in Cleveland, I met Maya Brown-Zimmerman, who pointed out to me that I had met her many years before when she was a student in high school. She went to high school with my daughter. I met her at a school event once. She has a rare genetic disorder that one of her four children also inherited. Here is what she said:

I cried the day the ACA was passed because it meant a

safety net for my family. No lifetime caps on medical

coverage, and the guarantee of being able to get health

insurance even if something were to happen to my husband's

job.

She went on:

Whether or not my family loses these protections literally

keeps me awake at night.

Think about that. Think about the selfishness of my Republican colleagues, of President Trump, and of the people in this administration--all the Justice Department lawyers and all these judges. Think about their selfishness. They have a political agenda, and they are keeping Ms. Brown-Zimmerman awake at night because she worries about her insurance. Think about the selfishness. Think about the morality of that.

She said:

I want our elected officials to remember we can't predict

when we will need to access the healthcare system and so

access to healthcare is an issue that is going to affect us

all.

There are not too many people who are not able to sleep in this body. There were not too many people who were not able to sleep in the House as they were all voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That doesn't seem to cross their mind, but it crosses the minds of millions of people in Detroit, in Ann Harbor, in Cleveland, and in Mansfield.

Today, tomorrow, and the day after, 14 Ohioans will die of an overdose. Medicaid is the No. 1 tool we have to get people into treatment. Ohio is in the throes of an addiction crisis, like much of the rest of the country but only worse in many cases. We know Medicaid expansion has been a lifeline to so many Ohioans.

Sometime ago, I was at Albert House in Cincinnati, one of the best addiction treatment centers in the country. I sat with a man and his daughter. He put his hand gently on his daughter's arm. He looked at me, and he said: ``Senator, my daughter would be dead if it were not for Medicaid.'' He said: ``My daughter would be dead if it were not for Medicaid.''

Yet Federal judges--Trump-appointed judges and Bush-appointed judges--and Republican Senators, all of whom get health insurance from the Federal Government, from taxpayers, are apparently willing to have that on their conscience. They are willing to work to repeal the Affordable Care Act with no real replacement. That matters in the life of Ms. Halpern. That matters in the life of Ms. Brown-Zimmerman, whom I just talked about. That matters in the life of the gentleman in Cincinnati who talked to me about his daughter.

The President wants to make it harder for Ohioans to get that care. I don't know how Members of this Congress and this President--all with good insurance that is paid for by taxpayers--can support dismantling this lifeline that so many Americans rely on.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, at the end of June, we received news that sickened so many of us. The Youngstown Vindicator, one of Ohio's greatest local newspapers, is closing after 150 years in business.

It is devastating news for a community that is already reeling from General Motors' abandonment of

Lordstown--and ``abandonment'' is the right word. General Motors made the decision to shut down production, losing 4,500 jobs in Lordstown, OH. They moved some of their production to Mexico. They took part of their tax cuts and their profits and used that money to buy stock options for their top executives.

The Vindicator was reporting the story about GM's abandonment of Lordstown before the national media came to town. When GM laid off one shift of workers back in late 2016, after the Presidential election, then a second shift several months later, the Vindicator was there covering what those job losses meant to this community. We know the end of the Vindicator's coverage is another huge blow to Mahoning Valley.

Our hearts break for the dedicated journalists and support staff losing their jobs. This was a family-owned paper for 132 years.

This will not just be a loss for those who worked there. When local newspapers close, everyone suffers. Local reporters know their communities better than anyone. David Skolnick, Mark Sweetwood, and the entire Vindicator team have held local officials accountable. They told the stories of how national issues affect real Ohioans, how our trade policy hurts Ohio workers, and how the opioid crisis has devastated the valley. Craig Graziosi and many others have done vital work covering Lordstown. These journalists care about the cities and towns they serve. They hold those in power accountable, whether it is local government or city business leaders.

NPR reported on what happens when local papers shut down. First of all, investigative reporting suffers. Long investigations are expensive. Usually, when there are no local newspapers to do these stories, no one steps in to fill the void. The investigations don't happen. Corruption increases, the city's financial health suffers, and citizens get hurt.

Three researchers looked at local newspaper closures over a 19-year period. From 1996 to 2015, 300 papers across the country closed in that time. They found that where papers closed, city borrowing costs went up. Without local journalists, city watchdogs, the city's finances took a hit. It became more costly for taxpayers to fund local schools and other projects. It is just more evidence that journalists are vital to our communities and are necessary for our democracy.

Too many people in this country already undermine the work that journalists do--or worse. We see reporters restricted, vilified, and even threatened--all for getting up every day and doing their jobs honorably.

On the anniversary of the shooting at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, MD, where several reporters were murdered in cold blood, the President of the United States joked about getting rid of journalists. That is pretty sick. He is the same President who says journalists are the enemy of the people.

Meanwhile, Wall Street hedge funds gobble up local papers around the country. Just this spring, the Cincinnati Enquirer and other papers around the country that are owned by Gannett fought off a hostile takeover by a New York hedge fund. These guys--and they are mostly guys in the hedge funds--buy up local newspapers and turn around and dismantle them. They fire reporters, and they sell company assets. That is their business model--to put tens of millions of dollars in their pockets. There is no public benefit to that; there are only benefits to the hedge fund operators. It is the last thing we need as the news business gets tougher and tougher.

We have lost veteran reporters at Cleveland.com and at the Columbus Dispatch. The Dispatch's parent company, GateHouse Media, laid off more than 100 journalists this spring, including its longtime Washington bureau chief, Jack Torry, and now The Vindicator is closing its doors for good.

It is time for us in the White House and in this Congress to stand up for the free press, to stand up for community newspapers, and to stand up for local journalists, who are vital to the fabric of cities and towns like Youngstown and all across this country.

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

Mr. President, I want to first of all thank Senator Hirono for introducing one of the most important bills this session. It is all about collective bargaining rights. It is all about workers' voices being heard and all about the dignity of work.

Just last week I was with Senator Hirono with a number of her constituents from her State, and they talked about her support for manufacturing or especially her support for workers. I was particularly pleased when she mentioned the Communications Workers of America. I have staff with me on the floor--some of my Ohio staff, including my State director, who came out of the CWA. I know how important workers' rights are. So I thank Senator Hirono for introducing this bill. If we did nothing this session but pass that legislation, it would be a huge victory for workers.

Unfortunately, we have a Supreme Court that puts its thumb on the scales of justice in every case, choosing corporations over workers, choosing Wall Street over consumers, choosing, in far too many cases, health insurance companies over sick people. And today's Supreme Court case is aimed and targeted directly at States like mine, Ohio, a State that is a swing State and has 12 Republican House Members, 4 Democratic House Members and has had that same configuration of 12 and 4 for 4 State elections because of redistricting. But it is no surprise, with the Supreme Court deciding that they were

going to put their thumb on the scale of justice again, against voting rights, against civil rights. That is what has happened in support of corporate money.

So dark money has affected the special-interest Supreme Court. We have never seen a Supreme Court in my lifetime that is this beholden to corporate interests, that is this beholden to billionaire contributors, that is this beholden to special interests. We have never seen a Court like this.

What does this mean? It means that instead of citizens choosing their elected officials, it is politicians choosing whom they represent. That is why you get these districts that will stay 12-to-4 Republican, where voters have no real say in these elections because of the way it is lined up.

We have a Supreme Court that is hostile to voting rights, hostile to worker rights, hostile to women's rights, hostile to LGBTQ rights. That is what this Supreme Court has given us, as Senator McConnell, in his office down the hall, continues to push judges like this who don't look toward the public interest. They are always looking toward rewarding their billionaire contributors.

Again, I thank Senator Hirono for her work.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following members of my staff from Ohio and Washington be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the day: Diana Baron, Mary Topolinski, Shilesha Bamberg, Alea Brown, John Patterson, Joe Gilligan, Ann Longsworth Orr, and John Ryan.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from the chairman and the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee regarding the referral of S. 1879 be printed in the Record.

Madam President, this month, we surpassed the record for the longest period in American history without an increase in the minimum wage. It has been nearly a decade since minimum wage workers last got a raise--literally a decade. Because of inflation, the salary of a minimum wage worker today is worth $3,000 less than it was in 2009. Think about that. It is not like minimum wage workers are making a lot of money. A minimum wage worker's salary today is equivalent to $3,000 less than it was a decade ago because of inflation.

President Trump and Republicans in Congress don't have a plan and don't even propose to have a plan. In fact, they block any plans the rest of us have. They don't have a plan to give millions of workers a raise. Why? Because the corporate lobbyists going in and out of the office of the Senate majority leader don't want them to.

We know it is not just minimum wage workers who are losing out on money in their pockets because the President and the Members of this body always stand on the side of corporate interests, always put their thumb on the scale supporting corporations over workers. Look at the priorities Democrats fight for every day in this body, and then look at what this administration does. It is pretty clear who is on the side of American workers.

Democrats have plans to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. President Trump is against it. He wants to do nothing to raise wages.

Democrats have a plan to strengthen collective bargaining rights to give workers more power in the workplace--the PRO Act. President Trump nominates judge after judge who puts their thumb on the scale for Wall Street over consumers and workers.

Democrats have a plan to put more money back in the pockets of 114 million American workers--the Working Families Tax Relief Act. It means if you are making $25,000 or $30,000 and if you have children or if you don't have children, through the earned-income tax credit, you get more money in your pocket. Again, President Trump and the special interest Republicans in this town show their hostility to workers by opposing it.

President Trump, though, did sign a tax cut for corporations that led to record stock buybacks. The tax cut that President Trump pushed through this Senate, with the majority leader doing his groundwork for him--the bill he pushed, the tax cut he pushed through the Senate, over time, more than 75 percent of that tax cut will go to the richest 1 percent of the people. Think about that. There was $1\1/2\ trillion in tax cuts. Who benefits? Seventy-five percent of the benefits go to the richest 1 percent of the people in this country.

Democrats also have a plan to give American workers more control over their lives and their schedules--the Schedules that Work Act, which we will be introducing soon.

We have a plan to protect workers from companies that steal their hard-earned money by refusing to pay them for the hours they have worked--the Wage Theft Protection Act. Think about how that works. You work at a salary. Say you are making $35,000 a year. You are a night manager at a fast-food restaurant. The company decides to list you as a manager, so you are making a $35,000-a-year salary. The company can work you 42, 45, 50 hours a week and pay you not a cent for the hours above 40 because you earn that salary and because the company declared you manager. I call it wage theft.

We used to have laws in this country that we enacted many years ago, updated with President Ford, President Nixon, and then President Obama, but President Trump has said no and scaled that back. His administration rolled back rule after rule that protects workers from companies that cheat them out of the wages they have earned.

Again, whose side are you on when you have a President who is hostile to workers and who betrays workers while talking a good game but is clearly on the side of corporate interests every single time?

Democrats are united in demanding that any new North America Free Trade Agreement--any new NAFTA have strong labor standards so we don't end up with another race to the bottom on workers' rights and benefits. So far, President Trump hasn't produced a deal that protects workers from corporations that want to move to Mexico so they can pay the workers less. In fact, the Trump tax cut bill that Senator McConnell-- down the hall--fought for and rammed through this Senate by only a couple of votes gave corporations a 21-percent tax rate.

You shut down the Lordstown GM plant in Youngstown, OH. You are paying a 21-percent tax rate. When you move to Mexico, you pay half that tax rate. You pay 10.5 percent. That is

what has happened as the President has failed to renegotiate NAFTA to help workers.

Let me give you an example. Let me give a real quick story. After NAFTA passed, 5 months later, I went to the Mexican border with a friend. I went across the border and visited a Mexican auto plant. That auto plant looked just like an auto plant in Cleveland or just like an auto plant in Cincinnati and just like the Jeep plant in Toledo.

There was one difference. The workers were working hard. The floors were clean. The technology was up-to-date. There was one difference between the auto plant in Mexico and the auto plant in Toledo. The difference was the Mexican auto plant didn't have a parking lot because the workers who work there can't afford to buy the cars they make.

Yet President Trump's renegotiation of NAFTA left those workers' wages out so the workers will continue to be far, far underpaid in Mexico, will have weaker environmental laws--especially with the Trump tax plan--encouraging more American companies to move to Mexico.

On another issue so important to so many in this country, especially elderly people, Democrats have a plan to lower the price of prescription drugs. One news outlet said it combines just about every policy idea that drug lobbyists hate. Yet President Trump and Members of this Senate, all with good healthcare paid for by taxpayers--don't ever forget that. All of us who represent people in this country have good healthcare paid for by taxpayers. They are all trying to take away the protections for Americans with preexisting conditions.

Let me go back to the overtime issue for a minute. Three years ago, I stood in Columbus to announce the Obama administration was going to raise the salary threshold to earn overtime pay and make millions of more workers eligible. That would have meant 4 million Americans and 130,000 Ohioans were going to get a raise. As I explained earlier, when you make $35,000 or $40,000 and are paid a salary, they call you management. So when you work more than 40 hours, you don't get paid a nickel for any time you work over 40 hours. So what President Obama's rule did was give a raise to 130,000 Ohioans, 4 million workers, but workers didn't get that raise because attorneys general--far-right and extremely conservative attorneys general--around the country first sued to stop it, and then when President Trump won the election, he came up with a new rule that leaves most of those workers behind.

We are talking about people making $38,000 or $40,000 a year--middle managers at banks, restaurants, and grocery stores. They are often required to work 60 to 70 hours a week without getting a cent of overtime. It is an American value and what we stand for as a nation. It is how we should govern, through the eyes of workers, through the dignity of work. If people work 50 or 60 hours--obviously, Senators and bank presidents and CEO's and doctors and lawyers shouldn't get paid overtime, but people making $35,000 or $40,000, if you work more than 40 hours a week, you should get overtime. That is what we used to do in this country, but we don't do it all the time now because of President Trump's opposition.

Democrats have a bill to fix this, the Restoring Overtime Pay Act, that would allow 4.6 million Americans to be newly eligible for overtime pay.

The President clearly doesn't understand how somebody living on $35,000 or $40,000 a year--what that person's challenges are. The President thinks it is fine to leave those workers behind. So much for fighting for American workers. That was his campaign promise. He would put them back to work. He would have good manufacturing wages for them. He would pay them. He would make sure they made good wages. It is all part of Donald Trump's phony populism. He divides to distract from the fact that his administration looks like a Wall Street retreat.

True populism is never racist; it is never anti-Semitic. True populists don't pass tax cuts for rich people and leave out workers with children. Populists don't choose Wall Street over consumers. Populists don't choose corporations over workers. Populists don't choose health insurance companies over sick people.

It all comes down to whose side you are on. Are you going to fight for the dignity of work or are you going to fight for the privilege of the wealthy?

The President promised to fight for American workers. He breaks that promise every day. He has broken that promise for more than 2 years. If you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work. I wish President Trump would remember that.

I yield the floor.

Fifty years ago this Saturday, in Cleveland, OH, about 7 miles from where my wife and I now live, sparks from a railcar traveling over the Cuyahoga River near Lake Erie ignited debris in the water below, lighting our river on fire for what would be the last time. It wasn't the first time the river had burned. It wasn't the biggest fire ever on the river, but it surely had the most impact.

Soon after that fire, Time magazine published a story calling the Cuyahoga River one of the worst rivers in the country. It was hard even for us who live in Ohio to argue otherwise.

I remember how polluted the river was and the lake was when I was growing up. Even to a child, it was obvious that most of what was in the river didn't belong in that river. Industry used the river as an open sewer, and oil coated the Cuyahoga River.

We knew that for generations Ohio's industry powered our country, making the steel that won our wars, built our skyscrapers, and went into the cars and trucks that carried our products and workers around the country. But our river--the Cuyahoga River--paid the price.

The city's own wastewater system was outdated and ill-equipped for what was then America's tenth largest city. Americans were horrified by the scenes of that burning river. It was a wake-up call to people all over our great country that industrial pollution had real costs.

People were becoming more and more aware of the scope of our environmental problems--polluted air, dirty rivers and lakes, oil spills off our coasts.

Citizens woke up. Citizens demanded that their government take action. Our mayor in Cleveland, Carl Stokes, helped to lead the charge, pressing this Congress for Federal help.

Congress passed the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency. The country celebrated the first Earth Day, and we made real progress.

The city of Cleveland, the State of Ohio, and citizen activists transformed

the Cuyahoga River Valley. Representatives Ralph Regula, a Republican, and John Seiberling, a Democrat, led efforts to create the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, which later became the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Think of that. There aren't that many national parks east of the Mississippi River--a national park in the Cuyahoga River Valley.

Today our river is home to more than 60 species of fish. Families canoe and kayak and fish. The industrial river valley in downtown Cleveland, what we call the Flats, has been transformed into a center for recreation entertainment.

NPR this week said that the cleanup ``has been such a success that environmental officials travel from around the world to take notes.''

All the cleanup we have done has not hurt our economy--far from it. We know the talking points. We hear from lobbyists in this building. We know the talking points we hear from corporations. They say that environmental protections hurt businesses and kill jobs.

The Cuyahoga proves them 180 degrees wrong. The river transports millions of tons of materials to and from local industries and supports 15,000 jobs. It produces $1.7 billion in economic activity.

For all that progress, more needs to be done. Last week, I was on the shores of Lake Erie and held a roundtable with Ohioans who love this lake. They told me they are worried that after 50 years of progress on the Cuyahoga and across Lake Erie, the shallowest and most vulnerable of the Great Lakes, we are at risk of going backward. The lake is threatened by harmful algal blooms and by climate change. I thank Senator Whitehouse for being the most important Member of this Senate talking about that issue every day, every day, every day. The lake is threatened by invasive species, and it is threatened by emerging contaminants that are in our drinking water.

Unfortunately, we have a President and an administration that deny climate science and that yesterday, again, with their announcement, want to give polluters free rein.

The President has tried every year to gut the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which keeps our five Great Lakes clean. Every single year the President has tried to do that. His EPA proposes leaving thousands of miles of waterways unprotected. They have abandoned the Paris Agreement--the best blueprint we have to combat climate change.

Having watched for 50 years, first as a young child, then, having seen what has happened, having watched for 50 years the cleanup of this great lake and the waterways in my State, which is still an industrial State and still an agriculture State, I know we can't go back. We can't let our country return to the days when our rivers flowed with trash, sewage, and industrial waste, and our air and water made our children sick.

We can't ignore climate change, one of the great moral issues of our time.

Let's honor this 50th anniversary by committing ourselves to trusting our scientists, protecting our lakes and rivers, taking action to preserve our country for our children and our grandchildren before it is too late.

I want to join my friend Senator Casey today to talk about the importance of Medicaid. I want to echo his comments and Senator Wyden's comments, particularly given the attacks from the White House and State legislatures and, frankly, too many in this body.

I am still incredulous when I think about what happened in this body and has happened many times. In my State, 900,000 people have insurance because of the Affordable Care Act. The expansion of Medicaid meant hundreds of thousands of families can rest easier knowing they will have health insurance when they need it.

I have sat in this body a number of times and watched my colleagues-- mostly on that said of the aisle, well-dressed, well-paid, health insurance paid for by taxpayers--who are willing to cast a vote to take insurance away from hundreds of thousands in their States. Again, these are elected officials who have taken an oath of office, who have insurance paid for by taxpayers, and they are willing to take insurance away from others.

I will illustrate with one story. Fourteen people in Ohio die every day from an overdose--more than any State in the country. I know it is a serious problem in Montana and a serious problem all over the country but more in Ohio than most places. Our State legislature wants to make it harder for Ohioans to get that care and so does President Trump. President Trump continues to try to take insurance away.

These aren't people sitting at home. Most of these people under Medicaid expansion were workers making $10, $12, and $15 an hour, working every bit as hard as Senators do, but they don't have jobs that provide insurance so they depended on the expansion of Medicaid. These are people working hard.

This President wants to take their insurance from them. Senator McConnell, down the hall, wants to take their insurance from them. They cast votes. This isn't hyperbole or me making this up.

Let me tell you a story real quick. One of the best treatment centers in Ohio is called Talbert House. I was at Talbert House one day in Cincinnati. I sat with a man and his daughter. He turned to me, put his hand on his daughter's arm, and said: Without Medicaid, my daughter would be dead. How dare Members of this body--elected officials who are supposed to represent the public interest--take away insurance from people like his daughter. Every day I just can't believe it.

Mr. President, there are a lots of things we know about American workers today; that is, that workers understand that they are working harder than ever and have less to show for it. Productivity is up. Stock prices are soaring. Executive compensation has gone through the roof. Profits are up, but wages are largely flat. It is not

a coincidence, not an accident of the market. It is not an inevitable result of capitalism that compensation for executives just vaults skyward, that profits are up, and that stock prices are up and wages are flat. Capitalism doesn't have to be that way. It is just the way it is now.

Wall Street's laser focus on accumulated wealth for people who already have great wealth is by their explicit design. It comes at the direct expense of American workers. That is why I am laying out the case for how Wall Street undermines workers and some of the changes we need to make in this country to grow our middle class and make hard work pay off.

Each installment of this series, what we are calling ``Wall Street's War on Workers,'' is posted on my media page. You can follow along at www.medium.com/@SenatorBrown.

I have talked about how Wall Street's business model encourages companies to pay workers low wages and to lay off workers. It is the cost of doing business to minimize the expense of workers. Today I want to talk about how corporations use stock buybacks to withhold profits from workers who create them. The workers create this value, these profits and, instead, Wall Street and these corporations keep more and more profits for their CEOs and for Wall Street investors.

Corporations focus on the short-term performance on the stock market, not the long-term success of their company and its workers. Their main goal becomes increasing stock prices quarter-to-quarter. That is how CEO's performances are evaluated. They are not thinking 10 years down the road. They are certainly not thinking of their country or community or even long-term of their company. They are thinking about stock prices quarter-to-quarter. That is how their performance is evaluated. They are compensated, in large part, with company shares.

Increasingly, corporations juice those stock prices by repurchasing their own stock--what we call a stock buyback. Because there are a finite number of company shares at any given time, purchasing shares will decrease the number of shares available to investors and therefore drive up the value of the remaining shares. Existing stockholders will see their stock value increase. Lo and behold, who are those existing shareholders? Many of them owning great numbers of shares are-- shocking--the executives of the companies.

They offer an even more attractive option to executives than dividends because buybacks are more flexible, and they aren't taxed until the shares are sold.

Stock buybacks have been a way for companies to return cash to shareholders rather than investing in workers, rather than investing in new products since at least the 1980s, but since the past decade or so, the amount corporations are spending on buybacks has dramatically increased. Between 2010 and 2017, corporations spent more than $3 trillion on stock buybacks. How much is that? Three trillion is 3,000 billion.

You all remember last year down this hall, as I pointed out before, where Senator McConnell works, the majority leader's office, lobbyists were going in and out of there writing the tax bill a year and a half ago. We had that discussion a number of times. Last year, following President Trump's tax giveaway to corporations, that tax bill that was written down the hall in the leader's office, 75 percent of the benefits of that tax bill went to the richest 1 percent.

Last year, following President Trump's tax giveaway to corporations, companies spent $1.5 million every minute of every day on stock buybacks. Since that bill passed--that giveaway to the richest people in this country--companies have spent $1.5 million every minute of every day on stock buybacks.

A couple of years ago, Home Depot spent 99 percent of its net-net income on stock buybacks; IBM spent 92 percent. Think about that--99 percent and 92 percent of its income spent on stock buybacks. That is not money going to a $14-an-hour worker at that company. That is not money going to reinvest in equipment or building the company or research. Ninety-nine cents on the dollar is going to stock buybacks to enrich the biggest--not the small-time investors, to enrich the biggest investors. Companies are spending close to 100 percent of their profits on that--not on wages, not on other things.

Do you know what? When all this was going on back when this tax bill was written--and I remember opening this door and pointing down the hall to Senator McConnell's office--around that time, President Trump invited some Senators of both parties to the White House. He promised us that every American would get at least a $4,000 raise; some would get a $9,000 raise. Do you know what happened? I know the President figured out he wasn't really telling the truth. He was doing his typical exaggeration.

When he said every American would get a $4,000 pay increase, at least, that money didn't go to wage increases. In those two companies, more than 90 percent of it went to stock buybacks. It went to increases in salaries and wages but only to the top executives. Don't even try to tell us that these tax cuts for the rich trickle down to middle-income workers or trickle down to middle-income Americans. They simply don't.

Buybacks jumped even more after President Trump signed that bill. More money was spent on stock buybacks in 2018 than on debt payment, capital expenditures, research and development, on dividends.

Virtually almost every Republican voted for that tax bill. Don't try to come here, my friends on the other side of the aisle, and say we are going to vote for this huge tax cut for rich people--this bill written down the hall in Senator McConnell's office--we are going to vote for a bill to give big tax cuts to rich people, and that money is going to work its way down to help the middle class. Don't even bother trying to lie to us and tell us that. That never happens.

Proponents of stock buybacks argue that companies purchase their own shares only after considering other value-creating investment options. There is not a lot of consideration of other options when more than 90 cents on the dollar is spent on stock buybacks. They expect us to believe America is truly out of ideas. Are all our factories as updated as they can be? Are all workers earning a fair wage they can live on? Of course not.

Talk to any family in Cleveland, where I live now; or Lorraine, where I lived before; Mansfield, where I grew up; or Chillicothe; or Marietta. Talk to anyone outside of Wall Street or the richest enclaves of this country. Ask these families if they can think of a better investment for the trillions of dollars in wealth American workers have created.

It doesn't have to be this way. The Tax Code is one of the best tools we have to influence businesses. Tax reform should have been an opportunity for companies to encourage people to invest more in workers.

When I went to the White House in that meeting with President Trump, I gave him a couple of ideas. I actually handed him legislation. I handed him the Patriot Corporation Act. Do you know what that bill does? It doesn't just give tax breaks to the big corporate lobbyists who come in and out of Senator McConnell's office. The Patriot Corporation Act says that if your company pays good wages, if your company provides decent benefits for health and retirement, if your company makes your product in the United States of America, you get a lower tax rate.

A comparable bill, the freeloader fee bill, says that if you, on the other hand, are a company where a huge number of your workers receive Medicaid because you don't provide health insurance, a huge number of your workers get food stamps because you don't pay high enough wages, and a huge number of your workers get section 8 housing tax credits, you pay a corporate freeloader fee. That corporation is penalized.

If the company does the right thing, they should have a lower tax break. If a company depends on American taxpayers to subsidize their low-wage employees, that company should be penalized. It is as simple as that.

The President said he liked these ideas, but then the special interests came funneling into Senator McConnell's office, lining up out in the hall as far as you can see. They were going

into the office petitioning, asking, begging, pleading for the majority leader to take care of them, and he did.

If we started corporate tax reform with the Patriot Corporation Act, we would have seen rising wages. Instead, we see exploding stock buybacks. Again, we know why. Depending on the size of the companies, stocks can account for as much as half of an executive's compensation. An executives' personal interest influences decision making.

One study of 2,500 companies found that the greater the percentage stock options in executive compensation packages, the more likely a company was to do stock buybacks. No kidding. If I am a CEO, and I see that my compensation depends on stock buybacks, I am going to maybe cash in and do stock buybacks. That is at least what we have seen.

We shouldn't be surprised that when the President and Leader McConnell handed them a windfall, those executives turned around, plowed their money right back into stock buybacks and into their own pockets.

A good example of that is really close to home for me. It is what happened to General Motors. General Motors pays almost no taxes anyway. It is a profitable corporation. Ten years ago, in this Senate, I was proud of what I did. I worked with Senator Voinovich, Republican from Ohio; I worked with President Bush, the second; and worked with President Obama in saving those two plant companies, Chrysler and GM. It meant that a lot of Ohioans and a lot of people around the country continued to have decent jobs.

What happened 10 years later? They closed their plants. They do major stock buybacks. The executives get richer, and because of this Trump tax law, more production goes to Mexico.

How do we stop this never-ending cycle of corporate greed and make sure the workers share the profits they created? It may not seem like it, but there are already regulations in place to prevent stock price manipulation.

The problem is, the SEC rule put in place in 1982 has big loopholes. We need to strengthen the SEC rules to ban buybacks and provide more transparency.

Some have suggested we ban buybacks altogether. That might sound good, but it will not do anything to put that money in the pockets of workers where it belongs. The goal is not to tax the rich. The goal is to quit giving them tax breaks, and the goal is to plow money into the middle class, to help American workers get their fair share, to help American workers share in the wealth they create for corporate America.

My proposal is simple. If corporations want to transfer wealth to Wall Street, workers simply get a proportionate share of the pie. For every $1 million passed on to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks or dividends, corporations will have to pass on $1 to every worker in that company. I am calling it a worker dividend, and all public corporations would be required to pay it.

I will be introducing legislation to strengthen SEC rules and to establish the worker dividend in the coming weeks. It simply comes back to the dignity of work. We should honor work. We should respect work. It means better wages. It means retirement benefits. It means healthcare. It means more control over your work schedule. It means a safe workplace. It means childcare. It means all the values that we appreciate as Americans. With the dignity of work and respecting and honoring work, we would see a worker dividend.

Wall Street so often doesn't recognize that all work has dignity. Whether you swipe a badge or punch a clock, whether you work for tips, whether you work on salary, whether you are caring for an aging parent, whether you are raising your children, all work has dignity. Dr. King said there is no job that is menial if it has adequate compensation.

Wall Street considers shareholders' equity in a company to be all that matters. Workers have equity in a company too. It is called sweat equity. For the first time in years in this country, it is time that workers are rewarded for their work.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, this weekend another community was torn apart by gun violence. Once again, politicians do what so many politicians in this body do. They offer thoughts and prayers to the people of Virginia Beach, and then they move on. It is tragic, and it is obscene how routine this has become in our country and how routine that reaction from far too many politicians--from the White House on down--has become.

This month we mark Gun Violence Awareness Month, but in our country every month, every week, and every day we endure senseless gun violence. Congress has ignored for too long the millions of Americans who want reasonable gun safety measures instead of doing the bidding of the gun lobby.

We cannot say we are doing what it takes to keep our country safe until we are finally willing to pass commonsense laws to protect all Americans from gun violence. Many of us have tried.

I supported the original Federal assault weapons ban in 1994. I joined with many of my colleagues to vote to renew it after Sandy Hook. Weapons of war and assault weapons do not belong on our streets.

We have tried to pass legislation to close loopholes in our background check system so that people who buy guns on the internet or at gun shows have to go through the same background checks as law- abiding gun owners who buy their guns at stores in Ohio.

After the tragedy at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, we tried to pass legislation to prevent people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns. If you are too dangerous to get on an airplane--if the government says you can't ride in the plane because you are on the terrorist watch list--it should be too dangerous for you to buy a deadly weapon. But this body is so, so in the pocket of the NRA that they will not even pass legislation like that. The gun lobby, again, stood in the way. We know what happened each and every time. They stood in the way, despite the fact that the laws we are talking about would not undermine the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

I respect the rights of hunters, of collectors, and of responsible law-abiding gun owners. No one is trying to take away their guns. When our students aren't safe in our schools, it is clear that something has to be done. When workers aren't safe on the job, it is clear that we have to do something. When too many Americans don't feel safe going about their daily lives in their communities, we can't sit here and do nothing.

We will not give up on making our country safer. We will keep working until we get weapons of war out of our schools, out of our workplaces, out of our neighborhoods, and out of our

places of worship. Creating change in our country isn't easy. It requires going up against powerful special interests. Few are as powerful as the NRA. Change never starts in Washington. We make progress because of grassroots movements of Americans all across our country demanding action. From Marches for Our Lives to the Women's March, to the activism around the Affordable Care Act, Americans proved again and again and again the power of activism. Mothers and fathers, students and teachers all across this country who stood up and marched for gun safety are the people we sent here to serve, not the special interest gun lobby.

I hope my colleagues will not so easily forget what happened in Virginia Beach and at the Poway synagogue and in Pittsburgh and in Parkland and in Orlando and at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis and in Las Vegas and in Sandy Hook and in our neighborhoods around this country every month, every week, and every day.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, there was an article in the paper today telling us something that surprises nobody in this Chamber, really, on either side, surveying the tax packages, the proposals from Democrats and Republicans, and making the contrast, and it said the Democratic tax packages are significantly better for the middle class than the Republican tax package.

We know what happened 2-plus years ago when the Finance Committee, in the middle of the night, kept writing new language and biasing it towards the wealthiest people in the county.

We know that the Trump tax bill, voted for by the majority, opposed by all of us because over 75 percent of the benefits, over time, went to the richest 1 percent. Contrast that with our Working Families Tax Relief Act, which focuses on middle-class and working-class taxpayers, focuses on the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit under the theory that, if you cut taxes for the rich, which Republicans always do, that the money trickles down, but it doesn't trickle down. They say it is going to trickle down and help the middle class. Well, it really never does.

I heard President Trump promise a group of us in the White House that everybody would get a $4,000 raise and several thousand dollars in tax cuts for middle-class families--it just didn't happen.

The way you grow the economy is you focus on the middle class, you cut taxes for the middle class, put money in their pocket, they spend it in local communities. You cut taxes for the rich, it goes to a Swiss bank account or wherever it goes.

So the newspaper today said what everybody already knows, that the best way to grow the economy, the best way to help this country, the best way to help the middle class is--surprise--cut taxes for the middle class. That is what the Working Families Tax Relief Act does. It helps working class kids.

The Trump tax bill pretended to cut taxes through the child tax credit. For the child tax credit, it actually left 26 million children out. Our legislation focuses on those 26 million children. They are not children of the rich. They are children of the middle class. They are working families. They are low-income kids.

So it is clear that that is the way this body should go. I understand who has the votes. I understand that the President of the United States--where the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives--the President of the United States can always jam another tax cut for billionaires through this body.

But let's do the right thing and actually put our focus on working families.

I yield the floor.