Floor Statements

Thank you, Mr. President.

I rise in opposition to the nomination of Mark Calabria. He is the wrong man for this job.

Sometimes I kind of can't believe this place. I see these people. I see the President of the United States, who never really experienced any of these challenges that homeowners in Cleveland, OH, or in Muncie, IN, face. He can't even get a loan from a local bank; he has to go to Germany to go to Deutsche Bank. That is really beside the point.

I just don't understand, when we have these academicians or people who work in government for a while, and then they go out and they do these writings, and over time--I look at someone like Mark Calabria. He seems like a genuinely nice fellow and an honorable guy, but some of the things he said and has written in his career--let me start with this. He questions the need for the 30-year mortgage. A lot of Members of Congress, a lot of people voting on this nomination, and a lot of people in the White House--the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives. The majority leader's office down the hall has a stream of lobbyists going in and out from the banks and the oil companies and the gun lobbyists and all that.

Mr. Calabria has said he questions the need for a 30-year mortgage. Many of my colleagues here and in the White House don't really have to worry about paying their mortgage. They don't have to think about saving for retirement and planning for retirement and thinking: I have 7 years until I want to retire; I have 14 years to save money for my children to go on to college, to go to Lorain Community College, or to go to Dennis Center, or to Ohio State, or to go to Bloomington, or to go the University of Indiana.

Mr. Calabria's questioning of 30-year mortgages--most people can't afford to buy a house if they don't have a long-term 25- or 30-year mortgage. They can't put 50 percent down, like it was before Franklin Roosevelt, and then pay it off in 5 years. That is how we did homeownership in this country 70, 80, or 90 years ago. That is why there wasn't much homeownership then, and then we figured out how to do it.

Mark Calabria just wants to blow all that up and say: I don't really like the idea of a 30-year mortgage.

He is not being nominated for the Secretary of the Interior. He is not being nominated for the EPA. He is being nominated for the Federal Housing Finance Agency. It is a critical job.

We know we have a housing affordability crisis in this country. Think about this. One-fourth of all renters pay at least half of their income in housing costs. That is one-fourth of people who rent. I assume it may be higher in Indiana, as it is in Appalachia, OH, or it may be higher in East Cleveland or in Gary than it is in some other places, but whatever the number, overall, one-quarter of renters in this country pay 50 percent of their income in housing. Do you know what that means? It means that if your car breaks down, you have to borrow money from a payday lender so you can go to work so you can keep making $12 or $14 an hour. It eventually means you may get evicted because you can't meet your monthly rent.

The homeownership rate among African Americans is at the same dismal level it was before Congress put those open housing, anti- discrimination laws in place, and now this administration is not even enforcing those laws.

Mr. Calabria doesn't think we need the current affordable housing goals. He thinks we should eliminate the GSEs, and--my favorite--he called homeowners who are underwater in their mortgages deadbeats.

I don't know if he has ever actually been to Ohio. He might have. He might have ties there, for all I know. I don't know that he does, but 8 years ago in Ohio, one out of five homeowners was underwater. You know what that means. It means they owed more for their house than their home was worth. It wasn't their fault. It is not their fault that in their community the worth of their home was dropping. It is not because they didn't keep it up, but it is because people were foreclosed on or homes were abandoned or they were evicted from those homes, and the value kept dropping so they actually owed more than their home was worth. He calls those people deadbeats.

Somebody who loses their job and can't pay their mortgage, does that make them a deadbeat? Somebody who gets hurt on a construction project, he or she is a carpenter or a boilermaker, and they can't work--he calls them deadbeats? This is the person we want in charge of housing?

He questioned the need for the Hardest Hit Fund. I know, in the Presiding Officer's State and in my State, that the Hardest Hit Fund really has mattered in helping clean up some neighborhoods and trying to get a floor under prices so they start going up again.

He said: Just let prices fall. It is easy for him to say to just let prices fall. How about the people who are affected by this?

My colleagues who support his nomination today shouldn't act surprised when he raises costs for borrowers, when he makes it more difficult to develop affordable housing, and when he cuts off access to homeownership for

American families, especially people of color.

That is what he has advocated his entire career. We should reject Dr. Calabria's nomination. We should tell the President of the United States to send us a new nominee who will take this job seriously and a nominee who will make it easier, not harder, for Americans to afford housing.

I ask for a ``no'' vote for the nomination of Mark Calabria to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, as you know and as we know, our Nation is facing an affordable housing crisis.

Right now, we are considering the nomination of someone who will have the power to do something about it--Mark Calabria, the President's nominee to spend the next half decade heading the Federal Housing Finance Agency. He would be responsible for overseeing a $6.5 trillion housing market that provides homes for millions of American families, and $6.5 trillion is $6.5 thousand billion; that is how big a trillion is. He would oversee a $6.5 trillion housing market that provides homes for millions of families.

Far too many Americans are left behind in our housing policy. Think about this. One-third of all households spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. A number that is even more frightening is that one-quarter of American renters spend at least half their income on housing.

One-quarter of American renters spend half of their income on housing. What does that mean?

That is not something people around here, frankly, think about very much. If you are a Senator, if you are a Congressman, if you are some of the highly paid staff people, and many aren't, but if you are the chief of staff or legislative director or if you are a staff director, you don't think about those things.

If you do what Lincoln used to do and say ``I need to go out and get my public-opinion baths'' and if you see how people live and you see that somebody is paying half their income in rent, and their car breaks down and they don't have $600 to fix their car, what happens is they can't pay their rent. Then, if something else happens and they get evicted, their whole life turns upside down. They have to give away their pet, no matter what their kids think. They have to move out of that apartment. They have to send their children to a different school. They often have to live in the basement of a neighbor's or a cousin's home. They end up putting their things in storage and losing them.

I don't think we understand what the housing crisis means to, literally, tens of millions of Americans. It is not just in the city, as the Presiding Officer knows. It is in rural areas. His State is pretty rural. Big parts of my State are pretty rural. It is not just East Cleveland or Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati. It is Appalachia, small towns, and small cities like Zanesville, OH, and Mansfield, OH--places where you can't pay the rent or you get your home foreclosed and you lose your home; you get thrown out of your home, and your whole life turns upside down. That is why this is so important.

We are not only talking about renting but also about homeownership too. The homeownership rate among African Americans is at the same dismal level it was before we had laws in place to protect against discrimination. Those laws are barely being enforced. The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development seems to have little interest in enforcing housing discrimination laws. The Senate Banking Committee majority seems to have little interest in enforcing anti-discrimination laws. Hispanic households are hardly better off than African-American households. These are serious issues we have to solve.

As we face this crisis, Mark Calabria, the President's nominee for FHFA will be on the frontlines. He will set policies that determine how many families can afford to buy a home and how much they pay. He will have the power to promote or discourage building affordable apartments to serve the lowest income renters. It is not just that people's wages are stagnant in the Trump economy. Wages are flat. It is not just that. As prices go up, there simply isn't enough housing, so rental units are getting more and more expensive.

If your wages are flat, no matter how hard you work--you might have two jobs, a job making $9 and a job making $14, but it is not enough if your rent keeps going up, as it does in far too many cases.

The record shows that Dr. Calabria is exactly the wrong person for this job. He actually questioned the need for the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. Think about that. That is the primary tool

families use to afford homes and build wealth. I am guessing that almost every one of my colleagues, except those born extraordinarily rich--I am guessing that for most of us in this body, most people watching this, most of our staffs, and most Americans who own homes, especially the first home they bought had a 25- or 30-year fixed mortgage. Before people owned homes much in this country, a century ago, they had to pay off their home in 3 or 4 or 5 years, typically. Almost nobody can do that. That is why we have the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.

Dr. Calabria wonders whether we need the 30-year mortgage at all. President Trump clearly doesn't know. President Trump knows how to build big apartment buildings and borrow money from Deutsche Bank because no reputable bank in the United States will lend to him. But he doesn't know what it is like to pay off a mortgage and for people who think in terms of, ``How am I going to pay off my mortgage?'' He doesn't understand what the importance of a 30-year mortgage is. Presumably, that is why President Trump picked somebody like Dr. Calabria to be in charge of housing.

Dr. Calabria has called for repealing the affordable housing goals. One-third of households are spending more than one-third of their income on housing, and it is worse for renters. You would think making housing affordable would be one of Dr. Calabria's top priorities, but he doesn't think we need the current affordable housing goals. He told Congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which he would be in charge of, should be eliminated. He would be the one overseeing a housing finance system that has helped more than 28 million American families become homeowners. He has questioned the need for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. He has called for the end of the entities he would oversee that contribute to this housing market.

It is pretty clear--over his years of writing--whose side he is on. During the financial crisis, when Wall Street wrecked the economy and American communities were left to clean up the mess, Dr. Calabria blamed homeowners for this. He called homeowners who were underwater on their mortgage ``deadbeats.'' Think about that. The guy who is going to oversee the whole housing agency market for the U.S. Government said that the people who were underwater--what does underwater mean? Underwater means that you have been paying your mortgage, but because of a drop in the economy or in your community, what you owe is more than what the house is worth. The house becomes devalued because of the neighborhood, because of other foreclosures, because of other people being evicted, and your home is worth less than what you owe the bank for your mortgage. That is called underwater. Dr. Calabria called those people deadbeats. Those people probably work every bit as hard as Dr. Calabria does--not to make it personal--or as hard as most of us in the Senate work. These are people working hard to try to get ahead. Because of circumstances in this global economy where wages are flat, where the rich are getting richer, where most of America is treading water, Dr. Calabria calls these people deadbeats for something they didn't even do. Anybody who doesn't think families will do everything they possibly can to stay in their homes has clearly never met those who have actually had their homes foreclosed on. I have met those families.

My wife, Connie, and I live in ZIP Code 44105 in Cleveland, OH. That means nothing to anybody who is listening, but the ZIP Code in which we lived in the first half of 2007 had more foreclosures than had any ZIP Code in the United States. We live in a development of about 200 homes that are priced at $100,000 to $200,000 to $250,000, but not far away, in the rest of this ZIP Code, there is home, after home, after home, after home that has been foreclosed on. These homes are generally old. They are generally not in good shape. They generally have very toxic levels of lead that poison children in their central nervous systems.

He is saying that these people are deadbeats--those who are working hard. They lost their jobs. That is the main reason most of them couldn't keep up with their mortgages. These families aren't deadbeats. They work hard. They work a lot harder than the Wall Street traders-- that is t-r-a-d-e-r-s, perhaps--who are taking big risks with other people's money.

Some of Ohio's families were laid off, and they tried to find new jobs. They were making $22 an hour, and they found new jobs at $14 an hour. They work just as hard, maybe harder, but the new jobs don't pay as much. Some couldn't find new jobs because the economy was in a free fall. In 2010, one in five homeowners in Ohio was underwater in his mortgage. Yet he calls them deadbeats? One out of five people is a deadbeat because the worth of his home dropped, and he couldn't keep up with his mortgage?

At that time, Ohio had lost 375,000 jobs. In that year, Dr. Calabria criticized one of the most important tools that States like Ohio had in trying to help homeowners--the Hardest Hit Fund. The Hardest Hit Fund helps States like Ohio and Indiana and Arizona and Florida. It helps us weather a crisis. The housing markets and the workers in those States were devastated. The Hardest Hit Fund helped more than 25,000 struggling homeowners. It was not enough because the effort from the Senate was not enough, but it helped in the tearing down of thousands of plighted homes; it helped to make neighborhoods safer; and it helped them to recover.

Dr. Calabria said the Hardest Hit Fund was just subsidizing States because their housing markets were getting more affordable. What kind of person thinks this way? What kind of person says these things? What kind of person is so hardhearted that he or she would possibly take these positions if he or she knows any of these people? Maybe he needs to go out and get to know some of these people.

We asked about his solution. He said we should just let prices fall. He would sit back and let homeowners suffer and communities suffer because of Wall Street's greed. This is the man the President of the United States and, apparently, the majority leader in the Senate--down the hall--want to lead in the overseeing of the housing finance in this country.

In more than 100 blog posts, articles, and papers, Dr. Calabria made his views clear. He said the goal of housing reform should actually be to shrink our mortgage market, that we should eliminate the GSEs and the Federal Housing Administration. My colleagues who plan to support his nomination today or tomorrow or whenever the vote comes should not act surprised if he raises costs for borrowers, if he makes it more difficult to develop affordable housing, or if he cuts off access to homeownership for American families. That is exactly what he has advocated for in his entire career.

This is a critical job. It is why nominees like him should be debated. Americans should have the chance to make their voices heard on a nominee like him, who can make it harder for them to buy homes.

My colleague down the hall is Senator McConnell. He has the office 100 feet or so down the hall in which you see high-powered, expensive, suited, well-compensated lobbyists going in and out all day, streaming in and out. They are writing tax bills, fighting for the oil companies, enriching the pharmaceutical companies, and all of the kinds of things that lobbyists down the hall do who, I was going to say, work for Senator McConnell. They don't actually work for Senator McConnell, but they help Senator McConnell with part of what his political organization is. As a result, Senator McConnell, in order to help these special interests, is changing the Senate rules.

It is not enough that Senator McConnell blocked a Supreme Court Justice for over a year. It is not enough that Senator McConnell supports all of the dark money in politics or that billionaires can put money into political campaigns and nobody knows exactly where the money comes from. It is not enough that the Supreme Court is now controlled by the corporate elite in this country. It is not enough that the Senate is controlled by the corporate elite. It is not enough that the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives except on the day it looks like a retreat for oil company executives, except on the day it looks like a retreat for big drug companies. That is not enough for Senator McConnell. So what is he going to do? He is going to change the rules. He is going

to give less time to debate nominees who will have immense power over people's lives.

We talk about judges who serve lifetime appointments. We talk about the heads of Agencies, like of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who have the power to hold corporations accountable if they use that power. Of course, we are talking about Dr. Calabria, who is supposed to make the housing market work for all Americans, yet who isn't sure we need the 30-year mortgage. Think about that.

We shouldn't be rushing these people through. We need time for the people we serve to make their voices heard. I would hope my colleagues would agree that these nominees deserve thoughtful consideration; they deserve debates; they deserve somebody who will defend them to come to the Senate floor. Let my fellow Republicans from the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee--people with whom I get along well and personally like--make the case for Dr. Calabria. Let them answer why he is not for the 30-year fixed mortgage, why he calls people who are underwater in their mortgages deadbeats. Why is that?

I would hope my colleagues would come to this floor and debate. I would hope that Senator McConnell would allow enough time for us to debate. I would hope my colleagues would reject Dr. Calabria's nomination and tell the President to send us a new nominee who will take the job at the FHFA seriously and make it easier, not harder, for Americans to afford housing.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, last week the dedicated journalists at the Cincinnati Enquirer published the first in a series of reports on the Ohioans left behind by the economic recovery. This is a big project that seven reporters, three editors, photographers, and videographers are all working on. They are doing what reporters do best--going behind the headlines about stock market performance and actually talking to people from all walks of life in southwest Ohio, in their circulation area.

When you look beyond the numbers, you see a pretty different story from what this President and his Wall Street Cabinet like to brag about. These reporters traveled the 80-mile road that stretches from Middletown to Cincinnati and beyond. They talked to teachers and factory workers. They talked to pastors and truckdrivers, people of all ages, and people of all races. Over and over they found the same things. These Ohioans have simply not recovered from the Wall Street recession of a decade ago. They haven't recovered from decades of trade and tax policies that funneled wealth to the richest CEOs and the biggest multinational corporations.

These reporters wrote:

[These workers] may find jobs, but they don't earn the

salaries and benefits they once did. They may pay their bills

on time, but they're one illness or broken-down car from

financial crisis.

Their savings accounts are stretched. Their health and

retirement benefits inadequate. They need more than they

have.

In other words, their hard work isn't paying off. Listen to some of the stories these reporters tell. They talked to a subcontractor for AK Steel. His employer is renegotiating its contract with the factory.

The authors wrote:

If the contract vanishes, someone will still do the work he

does, but that's about the only thing he knows for sure. A

new company might fire everyone and hire new drivers or

decide to cut his pay.

More and more companies use subcontractors and independent contractors as a way to--as they always put it--``cut labor costs.'' What they really mean is to pay people less.

Listen to the story of a Mexican immigrant in West Chester Township in Butler County. He is here legally. He has a work permit. He works 60 hours a week to support his family. Do you know what he told reporters?

It's real tight with four kids. . . . I'm not here to take

anybody else's jobs or money or benefits. . . . I'm here to

work.

Another woman, a cancer survivor, talked to reporters about her crippling medical debt. She had to leave her job because of her condition, and she owes thousands of dollars because of her cancer treatment.

They wrote that ``the debt took her car first, then her home of 12 years.''

Think about that. The debt took her car first because she got sick and because we don't protect people with preexisting conditions because of the President's comments and antics and all. They took her car first, and then they took her home of 12 years.

Listen to a story of a man in Middletown. He is trying to get a job, but he can't yet afford a computer or a car. He is applying for a job in an auto parts plant. He has to fill out forms online, and he has to have a drug test. That means trying to figure out how to get to a job counseling center to use a computer. It means trying to get a friend to drive him another 7 miles to the drug testing center.

The competition for a decent-paying job like that is so stiff that he is afraid

if he doesn't get the application in very soon, the job will be gone.

Think about the many layers of these stories. The reporting makes clear, as they say, that these are not outliers. These are not unusual cases. ``Household income is lower today than before the recession in almost half the counties in Greater Cincinnati.''

Greater Cincinnati is partly in Kentucky, represented by Senator McConnell and Senator Paul, partly in Indiana, represented by Senator Young and our new colleague from Indiana, and much in Ohio, represented by Senator Portman and me.

Poverty is worse in one-third of those counties.

Wages for the poorest workers have barely budged since the

recovery began.

And we know it isn't just southwest Ohio. It is the whole State. It is the whole country. It is the same story we see repeated over and over and over in this country. Wall Street recovers, corporations recover, and the wealthiest CEOs recover and then some. They all do better than ever.

Corporations spent more than $800 billion with a ``b''--800,000 million--in stock buybacks last year.

Remember the President's tax bill? I heard him say in his Cabinet Room, every American would get at least a $4,000 raise. Some Americans would get a $9,000 raise. He told a group of Senators face-to-face. There would be many more good-paying jobs created. He went to Youngstown, OH, only 1 year ago and said: Don't sell your homes. Stay here. The jobs are going to come back. We are going to build new factories. We are going to repopulate these factories.

Well, on his watch, three shifts of 1,500 people each at Lordstown--a GM plant--and Youngstown have been laid off, it appears, permanently.

The President's tax bill? That money didn't end up in the pockets of the company's workers. Stock buybacks go straight to the pockets of CEOs and other corporate managers who make the decisions about what to do with corporate stock buybacks.

So do you remember I said $800 billion in stock buybacks last year? For the first time in a decade, corporations spent more on buying back their own stock, meaning taking the money and putting it in their pockets. They spent more money buying back their own stock then they did in long-term capital expenditures and investing in their workers' pay. They took more money for themselves--as if the President didn't know that of his tax cut, between 70 percent and 80 percent went to the richest 1-percent of the people in the country over time. He knew that. I think he knew that.

He also knew that in this tax bill there was a 50-percent-off coupon. If you produce in the United States, you pay a 21-percent corporate tax rate. If you move to Mexico you pay a 10.5-percent corporate tax rate. So what the President did and what the Senate did is to give a 50- percent-off coupon as a reward for shutting down your production in Lordstown, OH, and moving to Mexico.

Corporations spent more on their stock than investing in long-term capital expenditures and workers, but ordinary Americans--what happened to the people in this story?

As for this story that the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote about and all of the people they interviewed--White, Black, Latino, Asian American, young and old, middle class and people falling out of the middle class, and low-income people who work hard and aspire to the middle class-- what happened to them? They got left behind.

We need to change how we think about our economy. It is time for people in this Congress and in the White House to stop measuring the economy in quarterly earnings reports and stock prices.

Who thinks that way? People don't structure their lives thinking about quarterly financial reports. They don't structure their lives thinking of stock prices. People don't think in terms of 3-month earnings quarters. They think in terms of school years. They think in terms of 30-year mortgages. They think in terms of ``the number of years left that I have to work before my retirement, and am I going to have enough?'' That is the way that people think, but that is who we are here to serve, in South Dakota, Ohio, or anywhere else. We are here to serve workers and here to serve families. We are not here on the Senate Banking Committee to serve Wall Street. We are not here on the Senate Finance Committee or on the floor of the Senate to serve the biggest companies in the country that typically reward us by moving jobs overseas.

We need policies that restructure our economy to recognize that all work has dignity. When work has dignity, everyone can afford healthcare and everyone can afford housing. They have power over their schedules. They have the economic security to start a family, to pay for daycare or college or both, to take time off to care for themselves or their families when they are sick, and they save for their retirement.

The dignity of work fundamentally is about wages. It is about benefits. It is about having power over your own schedule. It is about daycare. It is about saving for retirement. It is about being able to take off to care for a loved one, whether you are raising children or taking care of an aging parent.

When work has dignity, our country has a strong middle class and a prosperous future.

Mr. President, last month, the courts once again stepped in and allowed politicians to meddle in women's healthcare. Last month the courts once again stepped in. Unelected judges--unelected, conservative, mostly male judges--stepped in and allowed politicians to meddle in women's healthcare. These unelected judges ruled that Ohio can defund Planned Parenthood, limiting healthcare options for tens of thousands of Ohioans.

Planned Parenthood centers just in my State alone provide 70,000 free STD and HIV tests, cancer screenings, domestic violence education, and prenatal care. These clinics--and I have been to a number of them--are often the only places that many women and some men have to turn. Think again about the services they provide. They provide STD and HIV tests. They provide cancer screenings. They provide prenatal care. They provide domestic violence education.

What happens if they can't go to Planned Parenthood because of a political movement? Because of the politicizing of women's health, we see elected officials in Ohio taking away that care. They can't afford care somewhere else or they live too far away from other healthcare providers to have any real options. They turned to Planned Parenthood.

This decision by these judges is devastating for Ohioans. I get letters all the time from Ohioans who rely on Planned Parenthood.

One woman in Cincinnati wrote:

[Planned Parenthood] performed several of my yearly

screenings, one of which detected an abnormality that was

taken care of early and didn't develop into a major problem.

Also, I was able to buy highly effective birth control at a

reasonable price and avoid harder choices down the road.

Why would a legislature and a judge want to take that away?

A woman from West Liberty, a conservative community in our State, wrote:

If Planned Parenthood was not available to me as a young

woman, I would've had nowhere to turn.

I was comfortable with seeking the help of the kind women

and staff at Planned Parenthood. I was young and naive, but

at least I knew there was somewhere safe to turn to.

A Columbus woman who wrote from the State's largest city:

At the age of 18, I became a young new mother. Throughout

my years as a new mom, struggling to manage financial

responsibilities on top of everything else, I used Planned

Parenthood for most of my OB needs.

Planned Parenthood not only provided a well-rounded

education in which I had received none previously--

That happens so often--

but they also provided services that I would not have had

access to otherwise.

Another woman from Cincinnati wrote:

I am 42 years old, but when I was a young woman in college

I went to a Planned Parenthood clinic to receive my yearly

check-ups. It was cheap, near my college, and easy to access.

During one of my appointments they shared with me that they

had found an irregular pap-smear and that I needed immediate

medical attention.

[The doctor] suggested a surgery for an issue she found

that may later cause issues

with having children. The doctor was amazing, supportive, and

provided me the guidance as a young woman of what to do to

ensure I was safe and getting the proper next steps.

Planned Parenthood saved my life.

The animosity coming out of the majority leader's office, the animosity toward Planned Parenthood coming from so many of my colleagues, and so much of the animosity coming out of the White House toward Planned Parenthood just amazes me because this woman said: ``Planned Parenthood saved my life.''

Think about that.

It is time for old White men in Washington and in courtrooms--and that is usually who they are. They are very affluent, they are generally older men judges, they are generally White, and they are making decisions in courtrooms and dictating decisions that should be made between a woman and her doctor.

That is what this is. This, along with heartbeat bills and all the other bills making their way through the State legislature in my State of Ohio and around the country--they spread lies. They spread disinformation. They are all about the same thing--intimidating women, intimidating doctors, and making it harder for women to get comprehensive healthcare. It is immoral, and it is despicable. I join so many of my colleagues in pledging never to stop fighting to protect women's freedom to make their own healthcare decisions.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I join my friend and colleague, Senator Portman, in rising to recognize the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of

the giants of American religious life, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise. Rabbi Wise adopted Ohio as his home and is recognized as the father of American Reform Judaism. His ideas and teachings and the many great institutions he founded have had a profound effect on American Judaism and on people of faith throughout our country and around the world.

Rabbi Wise believed in liberty, in life, and in faith; he wanted to ensure that his ancient religious tradition, which had sustained people for millennia, remained relevant in a new and fast-changing nation. He pioneered ideas like men and women sitting together during services and choral singing and gave so many a new way to understand and practice their faith.

The groundbreaking institutions he founded left an indelible mark on Judaism and remain an integral part of our country's religious life to this day: the Central Conference of American Rabbis--CCAR--the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, today known as the Union for Reform Judaism, and Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.

Rabbi Wise made Cincinnati his home, and in large part because of the institutions he created, Cincinnati became central to the fabric of American Judaism. HUC is a center of Jewish thought, and this year, the CCAR will celebrate its 130th anniversary in the Queen City. The weekly newspaper Rabbi Wise founded, the Israelite, was based in Cincinnati, and that paper helped shape Reform Judaism.

Senator Portman and I join the people of Ohio in remembering this great Ohioan on the bicentennial of his birth. Rabbi Wise and his legacy are a great source of pride for so many Ohioans; we are honored to recognize his incredible contributions to Judaism, to Ohio, and to our country.

Mr. President, I concur with the comments of my friend from Montana. I know what this President wants to potentially do to the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and to the air bases in Springfield, in my hometown of Mansfield, in Youngstown, and in Toledo in my State and so much more.

Last week, we got yet another clear illustration of whose side President Trump is on. All week, we got news of favor after favor from the Trump administration in what it is doing for Wall Street. The White House looks

like a retreat for Wall Street executives except on the days it looks like a retreat for drug company executives.

Wall Street banks have complained to the President about the Volcker rule. That is the rule that stops the big banks from taking big risks with American families' money. Wall Street didn't like it, but it had passed this Congress a decade ago. The rules were being written far too slowly because of Wall Street's influence even during the Obama years, but because Wall Street didn't like it, the Trump administration agreed to rewrite them. The Wall Street banks complained that even the rewrite was not weak enough, so the administration reportedly is going to water it down even further.

Secretary Mnuchin, the Secretary of the Treasury--another Wall Street guy who was appointed by this President--announced he is going to go easier on shadow banks, and the Fed announced it would make it easier for big banks to pass the annual stress test. It is like this body and Senator McConnell, who is down the hall, have forgotten what happened 10 years ago. It is this collective amnesia that has worked its virus through this body and through the administration so that people forget what happened 10 years ago with regard to our economy.

My wife and I live in Cleveland, OH--ZIP Code 44105. In the first half of 2007, that ZIP Code had more foreclosures than any ZIP Code in the United States. I see what happens when people lose their homes. I think about what happens to families who have to explain it to their children, who have to give away their pets, who have to move to new school districts--all the things that happen to families when their homes are foreclosed on or when they are evicted from their apartments. Yet none of these executives seem to mind. None of these executives have to have those conversations. Nobody in the Trump administration has to have those conversations with one's kids.

The Trump administration is weakening the stress test. It is weakening some of the capital. It is simply doing Wall Street's bidding over and over--and that was just last week. Of course, we know that comes after 2 years of this President's and this Congress's doing Wall Street's bidding.

To me, the one what was even more personal was how this administration decided to weaken the overtime rule. Here is how it works. If somebody is making $40,000 a year and is working as a night manager at a restaurant, say, or at any kind of job in which one may manage a few people and is making $35,000 or $40,000 or $45,000 a year, if the top people of the company give this gentleman or gentlewoman who is doing this job the title of management, then they don't have to pay him or her overtime.

They can work them 45, they can work them 50, they can work them 60 hours a week and pay them not a dime of overtime--nothing. They get a salary for 40 hours.

So you take a worker, you pay that worker $45,000 a year, $40,000 a year, the owners of the company classify them as management, and they can refuse to pay them for the extra 10 or 15 hours. That is 10 or 15 hours without pay or it is 10 or 15 hours away from family, away from raising your kids, and the administration, of course, sided with the companies. Of course, they sided with Wall Street. Of course, they betrayed workers. They never ever side with workers.

Look at Youngstown, OH, right now. This President stood by while General Motors closed the Chevy Cruze plant. It had been there 53 years--Lordstown, OH, a valley of about 400,000 people. This is 5,000 jobs. There are probably another 4,000 to 5,000 jobs for people who worked in the supply chain and made components that go into the Chevy Cruze. I asked the President personally--first, he didn't even know about the plant closing when I talked to him, even though by that time they had laid off about half of the workers. Then I asked him face-to- face, and I asked him on the phone to actually call the CEO of GM to make an appeal to say: Instead of using your huge tax cut that you got from the White House to build more jobs overseas and to do stock buybacks so the executives are getting richer, how about investing in this General Motors plant, how about retooling, which this company has done many times in the past?

I remember one of the best days, other than the birth of six of my grandchildren during my last term in the Senate, during that several years--I remember the best day of that last term was when President Obama, Secretary of Labor Perez, and I stood together in Columbus, OH, at Jeni's ice cream, and we announced that the Obama administration was going to update that salary threshold on the overtime rule. If you work extra hours, you get extra pay, you get time and a half under the law-- under the law the way that President Obama did it.

The Obama rule would have meant that more than 4 million Americans-- 130,000 people just in my State, 130,000 people, if they work 10 hours, they get hundreds of dollars in overtime pay. If they are working 50 hours instead of 40, they literally would get--depending on their wage, of course--at least another $100 in their pay.

Now, because of Trump and the Secretary of Labor in this administration--first because of some judges and now the President-- those workers never got that raise.

Attorneys general around the country, Republican, far-right attorneys general, including one in the Presiding Officer's State, are always glad to do the bidding of their corporate sponsors. They are always glad to do the bidding of billionaires. They are always glad to do the bidding of the richest 1 percent in this country. They blocked it.

Now President Trump has come up with a new rule that leaves most of those workers behind.

Again, these aren't rich executives who are working. I am sure the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Texas, most of us work well over 40 hours in these jobs. We get paid a salary; it is a good salary. We shouldn't get paid overtime; neither should a corporate lawyer who is working more than 40 hours overtime, and neither should an executive nor should a doctor who works more than 40 hours get overtime. But these are workers who are making $30,000 and $35,000 and $40,000 a year, and you classify them as management, so you refuse to pay them overtime. That is what this rule is about. It means that millions of ordinary workers are not getting the pay they have earned.

As if the richest 1 percent aren't doing well enough without this rule, President Trump again--President Trump again--betrayed workers. Again he stood with the billionaires. Again he stood with the largest corporations that ship jobs overseas.

It comes down to whose side you are on. Are you on Wall Street's side? Are you on the side of Senator McConnell, who responds to every special interest in this country that wants something from this Senate? Are you on their side or are you going to be on the side of the American workers?

This President came to Youngstown. He promised to fight for American workers. He breaks that promise damn near every single day. He breaks it over and over and over.

If you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work. I wish President Trump would understand that.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I wish to honor a great Ohioan, Courtney Noble, for her heroic actions this past December.

Ms. Noble works as a direct support professional for New Avenues To Independence, Inc.--NATI--in Mentor, OH. NATI is a social service organization that provides support and aid for people with disabilities and special needs in the greater Cleveland area.

On the morning of December 20, 2018, Ms. Noble was the only one on duty while tending to three male residents in the Heisley group home. As she was helping the residents get ready for their day, she heard popping and crackling and sounds coming from the garage. When she opened the garage door, she discovered that a fire had started and was rapidly growing out of control. Without hesitation, Ms. Noble sprang into action. She immediately evacuated all three residents from the house, one of whom was in a wheelchair.

Throughout the whole situation, Ms. Noble's biggest concern was the safety and well-being of her residents. Even as her car was engulfed in flames, she calmly escorted the three men to safety at a nearby child daycare center and called 911.

Thank you, Courtney Noble, for your courageous actions and for all the work you do as a caregiver. It is because of your quick thinking and fearlessness that three Ohioans are alive today. I am sure that my Senate colleagues will join me in honoring Ms. Courtney Noble for her exemplary acts.

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

Madam President, judges are making decisions around the country right now on voting rights, on civil rights, on LGBT rights, on women's rights, on healthcare, on sentencing, and on corporate power. Several times over the last couple of years, this body has said no even though almost every Republican in this body--all with good, government- paid health insurance, all with good salaries, all well-dressed, all of the above--has tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act or take away Medicaid or take away consumer protections so that people who have preexisting conditions would have their insurance canceled. They all stood on that.

Do you know what? Because millions and millions were affected, enough people in this country said no and pushed back and stopped the Republican majority from taking away the protections for preexisting conditions, and they stopped insurance companies from canceling people's insurance who got too sick and too expensive and who could never get insurance in the first place.

So do you know what those in the Republican majority did? They went through the courts. They voted for and supported Supreme Court Justices and district judges and circuit judges who have put their thumbs on the scales of justice and have picked corporations over workers, chosen Wall Street over consumers, and chosen insurance companies over sick people. Over and over again, this body tried to do it, but democracy rose up and said: No, you aren't going to take our health insurance. No, you aren't going to let the insurance companies run everything. No, you aren't going to let Wall Street run everything. No, you aren't going to do it.

Do you know what? Because they couldn't do it through Democratic participation and because they couldn't do it by going down to Mitch McConnell's office, who is the Republican leader--they couldn't walk down the hall, all of their lobbyists, and stop that from happening-- they decided to try doing it through the Federal judiciary. Remember what I said. They have put their thumbs on the scales of justice. They have chosen Wall Street over consumers. They have chosen insurance companies over sick people. That is what this vote is about. That is what this judge is all about today.

This body confirmed a judge yesterday who would limit rights for a generation. These are judges who are almost all inexperienced. These are lawyers who are in their thirties or early forties. They are not who we used to pick. President Obama used to do this; President Bush often did this; and President Bush, Sr., used to do this. They would pick sort of--``prudent'' would be the word that President Bush, Sr., would use--wise, prudent lawyers who believed in public service and didn't believe in some far-right agenda

whereby they would put their thumbs on the scales of justice and hurt workers and hurt consumers. They picked middle-of-the-road, thoughtful, prudent judges who actually believed in civil rights--shocking--who actually believed gay people should have a chance in this country, and who actually believed workers should get a fair shot.

Do you know what? Because they have picked judges who have put their thumbs on the scales of justice, we see the rich are getting richer and richer, and we see the middle class in New Hampshire and in Ohio and in Nebraska getting squeezed over and over and over again.

We see what has happened to this country. We see lobbyists going down the hall to Senator McConnell's office, who is the Republican leader, writing tax bills. Do you know what that tax law does that President Trump signed? Do you know what it does? It says, if a company shuts down in Lordstown, OH, which General Motors has done this week--4,500 people have lost their jobs--General Motors will pay a tax rate of 21 percent. Do you know what? Under the Trump tax law, they can move south of the border and pay a tax rate of 10\1/2\ percent.

In other words, they get a 50-percent off coupon. Companies that shut down production in Omaha or in Manchester or in Cleveland and move overseas get a 50-percent off coupon on their taxes. That is what these fights are about. These fights are about the special interests that run this Senate, the companies that outsource, and the drug companies and Wall Street. Heck, the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street.

Madam President, I ask for an additional 5 minutes.

This issue today we are about to vote on is about Eric Murphy. It is about confirming a very young, very inexperienced lawyer in Cleveland whose claim to fame is that he argued against marriage equality in the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges case. It is why Jim Obergefell has spoken out against his nomination.

Here is what he said. He actually argued that marriage equality would be disruptive--disruptive--to our Nation. Telling people who love each other that they can marry is disruptive to our Nation? Who does that harm? Why would it matter? A couple in Atlanta or Decatur or a couple in Sioux Falls or Topeka or Omaha or Lincoln or Manchester or Laconia or Cleveland or Mansfield--why would it matter? Why would it be disruptive?

This gentleman whom we are about to--I know every Republican, except maybe one courageous one, will vote for him because that is how we do it nowadays. You can't win through the democratic process; you win through the back door of the judiciary. That is what they are going to do. They are going to vote for a man who said it is disruptive to allow people who love each other to marry. He will make decisions on the rights of LGBTQ couples. Some in this body like to claim they support people regardless of their orientation. He has moved to restrict access to contraceptives for women. We are going to have women Republicans vote for somebody like that? He has defended Big Tobacco, as if there is any defense for addicting our children to tobacco.

We have had huge public health victories, but let's go back. Let's go back on voting rights. Let's go back on supporting public health. Let's go back on equal rights for people. Let's go back on civil rights. Is that what we are going to do today?

But maybe most despicable, on this day today 54 years ago, in Mr. Figures' State of Alabama--my wife has visited this bridge five times, crossed it since then--54 years ago, John Lewis, our colleague down the hall--you know, just on the other side of the special interest majority leader's office down the hall--John Lewis--I think he was 25 years old at that point--got his head beat in by Alabama State troopers. Do you know why? Because he wanted people to register to vote. He wanted people to have their full rights. That happened 54 years ago today--the day we are going to vote on Mr. Murphy.

Mr. Murphy defended Ohio's voter purge, taking registered voters off the rolls. He led the efforts to take away Golden Week in Ohio, passed by a Republican legislature on a bipartisan basis. He defended restrictive voter ID and provisional ballot rules.

This weekend, Connie and I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. We saw foot soldiers who had been beaten up 54 years ago as they were trying to cross this bridge. We listened to their stories. These men and women were beaten. Many of them were 15, 16, 18, 20 years old. They did that so that in the future, they and their children would have the right to vote.

But judges around this country, judges supported by this majority-- none of whom think for themselves when it comes to voting on these nominations--all the way up to the Supreme Court, they are dismantling these rights.

I can't imagine my Republican colleagues who came here from Georgia and Kansas and Nebraska and Montana--and I think he is going to vote right--I just can't imagine they came here thinking: I am going to take the oath of office--right in that corner--and do you know one of the things I am going to do? I am going to vote to restrict voting rights. I am going to vote to tell gay people they can't marry. I am going to vote to take away workers' rights. I am going to vote for judges who put their thumbs on the scales of justice and choose corporations that outsource jobs over workers. I am going to choose Wall Street over consumers. I am going to choose big health insurance companies, with their multimillion-dollar salaries for executives, and hurt sick people.

I can't believe that is why any of you came. So please vote no on Murphy. Please. As the 54th anniversary of Selma happens right about this time of day--I think they tried to cross the bridge around noon--I ask my colleagues to vote no.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 30 seconds.

Madam President, I appreciate Senator Isakson's work as the leader of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, his bipartisan work to advance the causes of veterans in our country.

I was in Columbia, SC, last week, and a veteran who had attempted suicide seven times told us that veterans are more than paintings on the wall, and Senator Isakson embodies that as somebody who advocates for those veterans. I thank him for that.

Mr. President, judges are making decisions around the country right now on voting rights, on civil rights, on women's rights, on LGBTQ rights, decisions that could limit those rights not just for a year or for a decade but for a generation. They make decisions on healthcare; they make decisions on sentencing; and they make decisions on corporate power. We have seen judge after judge, especially on the Supreme Court, put their thumbs on the scales of justice by favoring corporations over workers, by favoring Wall Street over consumers, and by favoring health insurance companies over patients. That is, fundamentally, why we in Ohio cannot afford to have Chad Readler on the bench.

Look at an op-ed he took upon himself to write as a private citizen, which reads we should allow the execution of 16-year-olds--kids, children who are 16 years old.

This is at a time when we are taking important, bipartisan steps forward on sentencing reform, and this Senate doesn't come together very often. This Senate, under Senator McConnell's leadership, actually came together in a bipartisan way. After all of the mostly unworkable pieces of legislation he has written that always help the rich, the President of the United States signed a bill, in this case, in which we did the right thing by taking bipartisan steps forward on sentencing reform.

How do you turn around and put someone on the bench for life who supports executing children? That is what a 16-year-old is--still a teenager, still a child under the law. Yet he thinks it is something we should do--execute children who are found guilty.

During his nomination hearing, it was pretty unbelievable that Readler stood by his op-ed and refused to disavow his support for using the death penalty on high schoolers and, possibly, on even younger children. I guess I give him credit for consistency.

His record on voting rights is equally despicable. He worked on behalf of a far-right group and argued for the elimination of Golden Week, something passed by Republicans that had been in effect for more than a decade, which means he was limiting the amount of time people can vote early, and he defended restrictive voter ID and provisional ballot laws. We know exactly whom those laws target--people of color, the elderly, young voters. They are the same people, in many cases, who face literacy tests and poll taxes. They are the people John Lewis and the foot soldiers of Selma were marching for 54 years ago tomorrow across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

It is shameful that, half a century later, we are fighting that same fight. Chad Readler again is on the wrong side. We can't afford another judge on the bench who works to undo Selma's legacy.

We can't afford another judge who has made it his mission to take away Americans' healthcare. Chad Readler's work threatens the healthcare coverage of 20 million Americans who have preexisting conditions. Last summer, Readler did what three career attorneys with the Department of Justice refused to do. He filed a brief that challenged the law that protects Americans with preexisting conditions. He filed a brief nobody else was willing to file. They all recused themselves. They all refused to do it. They thought it was

something improper and unconstitutional. One of them, I believe, resigned.

Do you know what happened then? The next day, he was nominated for this very judgeship.

So the message is loud and clear from the administration: If you go after preexisting conditions under consumer protections, if you attack workers' rights, if you attack voters' rights within any job you hold-- and there is a real incentive to do this from this administration--you may get a good, lifetime Federal judgeship. The arguments he made in his brief were unprecedented. As I said, three attorneys withdrew from the case. One resigned altogether in his objections to the Department of Justice's unprecedented actions.

One of our Republican colleagues, Senator Alexander, who works with Senator Murray to run the HELP Committee, called Readler's argument as farfetched--Senator Alexander's words, who is a conservative Republican from Tennessee--as he had ever seen. Yet, in December, a partisan Texas judge decided to go along with Readler's opinion, and he handed down the decision that undermines preexisting condition protections for all Americans.

Right now, judges are deciding the future of Americans' healthcare every day. We can't afford to put another extremist--and he is way out of the mainstream--in my increasingly conservative, Republican State. He is way out of the mainstream among lawyers, way out of the mainstream among judges, and way out of the mainstream as a citizen. We can't afford to put another extreme judge on the court who will not defend Americans' right to healthcare.

We know there have been a number of times this body has refused to take away the consumer protections for preexisting conditions. We remember the vote late at night when we defeated the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. We know that all kinds of Republican candidates who were victorious went on television and said they were going to defend the consumer protections for preexisting conditions. We heard that over and over.

Why did we hear that? Even though that was not their position a few months earlier, in the cases of a lot of them, we heard it because they knew how popular it was and how much the public cared about the consumer protections for preexisting conditions. In a moment, I am going to share some letters from Ohioans who make the point that even though, this year, Republican candidates thought it was all OK to say we are going to preserve preexisting conditions, a vote for Judge Readler is exactly the opposite.

Don't go home and say you support consumer protections for preexisting conditions and then vote for a judge who has a history of wanting to take that right away and who will now have a lifetime appointment and get another chance to likely take away the protections for preexisting conditions.

Let me share a few letters from people.

A man from Sandusky wrote to me about how the marketplaces that were created by the Affordable Care Act helped him to start his own business because he had a way to purchase insurance. He was later diagnosed with lung cancer. He wrote: ``I am watching the dismantling of the only program available to me with a pre-existing condition that I can afford. I am devastated.''

I don't know what Mr. Readler thinks when he reads something like that, but let me give another example.

A woman from Cleveland writes:

Protect real health care coverage for all people with pre-

existing conditions. Real people's lives depend on it. My

husband's life depends on it.

Chad Readler wants to be a judge. Chad Readler did the President's bidding and the insurance industry's bidding at the Department of Justice. I don't know if he knows these people exist, like the woman from Cleveland or the man from Sandusky. I hope Chad Readler would have gone out and, as President Lincoln said, gotten his public opinion badge by actually listening to how the decisions he makes affect real people.

A woman from Chagrin Falls, which is a fairly wealthy suburb of Cleveland, wrote:

I've been a cancer patient since 2011. If pre-existing

conditions are no longer covered, I--along with countless

others--will probably be screwed.

A mother from Waynesville, OH, wrote:

My family has lived every day worrying about the ACA being

dismantled. We have a son who was born with a neurological

condition before the ACA.

We lived in constant fear of medical caps and pre-existing

conditions.

Just putting Chad Readler on the bench increases people's anxiety. Is Congress going to take away the Affordable Care Act? Is Congress going to wipe away those protections for preexisting conditions? If Congress isn't, are judges going to do that? No wonder people are so anxious about that.

A woman from Fairborn writes:

I previously lost health insurance from a possible

preexisting condition and now, being a 2-time cancer

survivor, I'm scared of losing coverage again.

The security of having insurance since the ACA allowed me

to sleep at night and focus on my health.

My editorial comment on her comments is to focus on her health, not on whether she loses her coverage.

It is unimaginable that politicians want to deny so many

Americans access to health insurance and quality of life.

Senator Murray and I sat and watched a bunch of mostly men on the other side of the aisle cast their votes--all who had good health insurance--to take away insurance for millions of Americans and for hundreds of thousands in my State and to take away their consumer protections for preexisting conditions.

A mother from New Albany writes:

My daughter had two autoimmune diseases by the age of 6--

SIX. That means her entire life she will be a ``preexisting

condition.'' But she isn't just a label. She is a person.

Please protect my baby. She already deals with enough.

I mean, hear the passion in that letter, the strong feelings in that letter, the cries for help in that letter. Yet this body may be about to put on the Sixth Circuit, in a lifetime appointment, someone who clearly doesn't care about people like them.

Another woman from Hillsboro writes:

We are a family of pre-existing conditions and survive

because we have insurance that we can afford. My husband

works long, hard hours and has to work 60 hours a week for us

to make it. I'm a teacher. I work about 18 out of 24 hours a

day but make $40,000 a year. We can't work any more than we

already do.

Again, these are people who are working hard and who are doing everything right. They didn't ask to be sick. They didn't ask for their healthcare costs to go up. Are we going to put somebody on the court who wants to take away the consumer protections for people like this lady from Hillsboro?

These Americans work hard. They pay their premiums. Many of them deal with all that comes with caring for a child or a family member who has a chronic condition. How can Members of Congress and how can this President--all who have good insurance paid for by the taxpayers--stand by and allow activist, partisan judges to dismantle these protections that Americans rely on?

It is bad enough that so many Members of Congress want to take away these consumer protections. Now it is unelected judges the American public really doesn't know, and this body is about to put one more of them on the court, even more extreme and younger than so many other of these judges.

We can't afford another judge on the courts who will vote to take away Americans' healthcare, who will vote to take away Americans' voting rights, who will vote to take away Americans' civil rights.

I ask my colleagues to vote no on Chad Readler for the Sixth Circuit.

Mr. President, I rise to speak on the judicial nomination coming up and the cloture vote on the other nominee.

With both nominees, I offered the White House cooperation to choose two more moderate nominees for Ohio, both of whom had been vetted by a bipartisan commission Senator Portman and I had, and the White House said they would rather pick these two extremist judges--these two young, far-right judges who have attacked America's healthcare and have attacked the consumer protection on preexisting condition.

Judges are making decisions right now--in this body, fortunately, as Members of the Senate, we all have good coverage and health insurance-- that try to take insurance away from millions of Americans and several thousands in my State, even as they have tried to eliminate the consumer protections for those people who have preexisting conditions. There are millions of Americans who are anxious about holding onto their insurance because they get sick a lot and it is expensive to take care of them. They are afraid of having their insurance canceled, and they can't get insurance because of a preexisting condition, and this Congress tried to repeal that law and it failed.

Now, Senator McConnell has turned to the Federal Judiciary, and the President of the United States seems to think the only way to eliminate the consumer protection for those with preexisting conditions is through the Judiciary. Judges are making decisions right now on voting rights, on civil rights, on women's rights, LGBT rights, on healthcare, on sentencing, and on corporate power--decisions that could limit those rights for a generation.

We know that the Federal Judiciary already puts its thumb on the scales of justice to support corporations over workers, to support Wall Street over consumers, and to support insurance companies over patients. We know that the Federal Judiciary and the Supreme Court have done that dozens of times. We know that the Federal Judiciary, increasingly, is looking like a group of far-right, young, detached people who never go out and get their public opinion pass, as Lincoln said. They never consider what the public wants in this country.

Chad Readler, the nominee whom we will vote on in a moment, took it upon himself as a Jones Day lawyer--one of the greatest law firms in the country, headquartered in Cleveland--to write an op-ed as a private citizen saying we should allow the execution of 16-year-olds. He actually wasn't that specific. He implied it could be even younger than that. He said we would allow the execution of teenagers. At a time when this body--something we should be proud of--took important bipartisan steps forward on sentencing reform that was supported by the White House, supported by a lot of Republicans, and supported by virtually all Democrats, how do we turn around and put someone on the bench for life who supports executing children? How does that compute? How we can do that?

He argued on behalf of the far-right think tank for the elimination of ``Golden Week'' in Ohio, a period where people can vote early. They can register and vote early. It was passed by a Republican legislature. It has bipartisan support, but not by this rightwing nominee who thinks it is OK to eliminate people's right to vote and restrict it. He defended restrictive voter ID. He defended the squeezing of provisional ballot laws.

On the eve of the 54th anniversary tomorrow of Bloody Sunday in Selma, AL, it is shameful to put on the bench another judge who will rubberstamp modern-day literacy tests and poll taxes. Fundamentally, it is the same purpose. You find ways to suppress the vote. You find ways to take people's voting rights away. You find ways to disqualify people who want to vote.

Chad Readler's record on healthcare is clear. He has been a ringleader in the Republican effort to take away the protections on preexisting conditions for all Americans. He wrote the White House's brief. We all know that now. He wrote a brief that nobody else above him at the Justice Department was willing to do. Three people refused to write it. One actually resigned. The next day, he was rewarded by this lifetime appointment as a Sixth Circuit Federal judge. Remember that. The White House rewarded him after suggesting that we block the consumer protections for preexisting conditions for millions of Americans and for hundreds of thousands in Virginia, Arkansas, and in Ohio. Millions of Americans would lose their consumer protections under his views, and the next day the White House decided to reward him with a judgeship.

As I said, three career attorneys withdrew from the case. One resigned altogether in objection to doing this. Senator Alexander, our friend from Tennessee, who sits near where Senator Kaine is sitting, said this was just amazingly awful language that Chad Readler had suggested.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. President, judges are deciding the future of America's healthcare right now, the right to vote right now, civil rights right now, LGBTQ rights right now, women's rights right now. Judges around the country are deciding that. We can't afford to put another out-of- the-mainstream judge on the court--and he is clearly out of the mainstream among Ohio lawyers, among Ohio judges, among Ohio citizens-- who will not defend America's right to healthcare.

I ask my colleagues to think about the families you promised to vote for. If any of you in your campaigns, if any of you in discussions you have had with your constituents, if any of you in your public statements, and if any of you running for office committed that you would support consumer protections for preexisting conditions, the only way you can prove you actually believe that is by voting no on Chad Readler in about 1 minute from now. If you really believe in preserving preexisting condition consumer protections so you don't see in your State--in Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, and Ohio--millions of Americans lose their insurance, then your only way to support what you promise is to vote no on Chad Readler.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank my friend from Cincinnati for his work on both the issues he spoke about--both, on sex trafficking, which is a terrible affliction in our country and especially in Ohio, and on the issue of opioid deaths. We lose almost 100 people a week in Ohio to overdoses, and more than 11 a day on opioid overdoses. So I thank my colleague from Cincinnati for that.

Madam President, this week, General Motors is set to lay off thousands of workers in Lordstown, OH, and around the country. Tomorrow is the day that most of the first shift lose their jobs. Several months ago, the second shift lost their jobs. A couple years ago, the third shift lost their jobs. That totals about 4,500 human beings with families.

What is the President's response? He boasts nonsense and rubs salt in these workers' wounds. Last week, as if he didn't know about Lordstown and other places, he said: We have car companies opening up in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and so many other places.

I don't know where those mystery factories are in Ohio that the President brags about. They aren't in Lordstown, where people are about to lose those jobs. President Trump's remarks, his uncaring feelings, and his ignorance of even knowing what has happened in Ohio--the State he seems to boast about and credit for his victory--are a slap in the face to the workers, and there is the fact that he has done nothing to help.

Think about the workers who are out of a job at the end of the week. Think about their families. Think about the other families in Lordstown who are about to lose customers.

Senator Portman and I spent a lot of time working with General Motors, visiting a restaurant near the plant and talking to the workers there who know their jobs are affected as fewer Lordstown workers come to that restaurant. Multiply that with hardware stores, police and fire jobs and teacher jobs and all that afflicts the Mahoning Valley when GM does what it does.

Remember what Donald Trump promised people in communities like Youngstown. He said that he would fight for them, that he would fight for their jobs. Last year, he told the people of Mahoning Valley-- Mahoning Valley is Youngstown, Warren, Lordstown, and that area: ``Don't move.''

These are the President's words:

Don't move, don't sell your house. We're going to fill up

those factories or rip them down and build new ones.

He said:

We never again will sacrifice Ohio jobs and those in other

states to enrich other countries.

Think about that. The President of the United States comes in, in the midst of these GM layoffs, and says: Don't sell your house. Don't move. We are going to fill those factories up. If

we don't fill them up, we are going to rip them down and build new ones.

He went on to say: Workers will come back. Jobs will come back from these countries.

Then, even when I called and talked to him about the second-shift layoff, he didn't even know about it. I am not sure what his staff is telling him. Maybe FOX doesn't cover these stories, but the mainstream media does. These are real stories. These aren't political opinions. Some 4,500 people lost their jobs, and the President doesn't seem to know or care.

Those weren't the only promises he made. Over and over, Candidate Trump and then-President Trump promised American autoworkers that he would fight for their jobs.

In Warren, just a few miles from Lordstown, in 2016, he said: ``If I'm elected, you won't lose one plant, I promise you that.'' ``If I'm elected, you won't lose one plant, I promise you that.''

In Michigan in the fall of 2016--another State with a lot of auto jobs--he said: ``We will bring back your auto manufacturing business like you have never seen it before.''

In February 2017, he promised again: ``A lot of jobs are going to be coming back into Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania and all the places that have been hurt so badly.''

In March 2017, he said: ``The assault on the American auto industry, believe me, is over.''

Last year, after GM announced the layoffs, he said: ``Ohio is going to replace those jobs like in two minutes.'' ``Ohio is going to replace those jobs like in two minutes.''

First of all, why would he say this stuff? Second, does he not ever follow the news? Does his staff not tell him what has happened in the seventh largest State in the country and the State that he in part credits for his election? He lost the popular vote by 3 million votes. He won the electoral college because of Ohio and because of two or three other States. But wouldn't he know that a valley of 450,000 people, just during the time since the election, has lost 4,500 jobs just in that plant alone, and another 5,000 manufacturing jobs that make the components that go into the Chevy Cruze, and another 5,000 to 6,000 to 8,000 to 10,000 jobs? Nobody knows for sure how many they will lose in restaurants, hardware stores, and car dealerships and cuts in public dollars because the local governments have lost tax revenue so there are fewer police and fire and street cleaners and people who work in the cities, the counties, and the school districts.

The workers who are going to be out of a job by this week are still waiting. These people trusted him. President Trump did really well in the election in this valley of 450,000 people. He did really well.

He did really well. He did better than Republicans ever do, but what did he do for them after he made those promises? I am going to make a statement that is provably true but almost doesn't even make sense that it could be true. His tax bill says: If you do your production in Lordstown, OH, you pay a 21-percent tax rate, but if you move your production to Mexico, you pay a 10.5-percent tax rate.

In other words, because of Trump's tax law that, frankly, was written down the hall in Senator McConnell's office but with the President's signature on it, these companies get a 50-percent-off coupon for moving overseas. Think about that. If these companies move overseas, they get a 50-percent-off coupon on their taxes.

I talked to the President about that. I asked him to reconsider that law, and he said: ``Where did that law come from?''

I said: ``Well, Mr. President, it was in your tax bill, and you signed it.''

Then I talked to him about the American Cars, American Jobs Act and how he can fix this. Here is what the bill does. Customers who buy cars made in the United States get a $3,500 discount at the dealership. If the American car is electric or a plug-in hybrid, they get an even bigger discount. These are the cars GM said it was going to start making instead of the Cruze. There is no reason they can't make them in Lordstown instead of Mexico.

Second, companies that cut the number of American jobs they had on the day the GOP tax bill passed, if they move those jobs overseas, they lose their tax breaks. Under my bill, the American Cars, American Jobs Act, they lose their tax breaks, they lose that 50-percent-off coupon, and then that money they have to pay because they lose their tax break goes to car consumers at the dealerships, meaning they will buy more American cars. So what will happen is it will actually do what Candidate Trump said he wanted to do and promised that he would do, and that is to bring American jobs back.

This President who says: ``I am the workers' best friend, and I fight for these jobs,'' that is phony populism. Do you know something? Populism is never racist. Populism is never anti-Semitic. Populism doesn't divide people. Populism doesn't push people down to lift people up. Populism doesn't give tax cuts to rich people and then turn around and cut Medicare and Head Start. Populism fights for people and fights to lift up all workers. That is what we are not seeing here now.

I am calling on the President, again, to try keeping his promises and actually fight for autoworkers, fight for these communities like Lordstown, and help us pass the Americans Cars, American Jobs Act, end the tax cut for corporations to shut down American plants and move jobs overseas, and take this 50-percent-off coupon away that some of the richest people and biggest corporations in this country enjoy when they send jobs overseas because if you love your country, you fight for the people who make it work.

Madam President, the last vote we took today was about Americans' healthcare. It was about consumer protections for preexisting conditions that are at risk because of partisan judges.

The Presiding Officer was running for the Senate at the time and wasn't in this body, but I assume she knows, and all of us remember the day when the repeal of the Affordable Care Act failed.

The people on that side of the aisle, the Republicans, were all voting to take away consumer protections for preexisting conditions. That was part of the vote for the repeal. Among other things, it was to cut people off Medicaid, many of whom were getting treatment for opioid addiction, and it was to take away the consumer protections for preexisting conditions. That is when people can't get insurance because they are sick or they get their insurance canceled because they are too expensive. They are sick, their insurance is too expensive, and the insurance companies come down on them.

So the stage was set. The Republican Members who said they wanted to preserve preexisting conditions, many of them ran their campaigns on-- because they knew the voters were very upset with Republicans for trying to take away the consumer protections on preexisting conditions, they ran their campaigns on that issue. So the Republicans quickly flipped and said: Well, we are going to protect you too.

Well, tomorrow is the day we have a chance to really protect the consumers with preexisting conditions and to keep the protections for consumers with preexisting conditions. The problem is, they can't do it in Congress. They can't take it away because voters don't like it if they take away the protections so they do it through the Federal judiciary. That is how they work around here.

These partisan judges who are voted out of here--maybe the worst one yet is from Columbus, OH, named Chad Readler. Last summer, Readler did what three career attorneys with the Department of Justice refused to do--he filed a brief challenging the law protecting Americans with preexisting conditions.

He was the person in the Trump administration who was the point person for taking away the consumer protections protecting Americans against losing their insurance because of a preexisting condition.

Do you know what? After he filed that brief, the very next day the lights went on. The very next day, Chad Readler was nominated for a lifetime appointment to the Sixth Circuit Court--the next day.

He did his work for the insurance companies. He did his work for the Trump White House. He did his work for the Republican majority who is going to take away any consumer protections. What is his reward? I guess

you can't say ``payoff'' because there were no dollars actually exchanged, but the reward that this party--the Senate majority leader down the hall and the President of the United States--gave the guy who wants to take those protections away and do the bidding of the insurance company is a lifetime--I don't know, $180,000, $200,000-a- year, whatever it is--Federal judgeship. It is for life. Mr. Readler is in his forties, so lifetime could be a very long time.

The arguments he made were unprecedented. Three career attorneys withdrew from the case after Readler made that decision. One went so far as to resign in objection to the Department of Justice's unprecedented actions.

Our Republican colleague Senator Alexander from Tennessee called Readler's arguments as farfetched as he had ever seen. This is a Republican saying that the Trump White House's Department of Justice Chad Readler's, Acting Assistant Attorney General, logic was as farfetched as he had ever seen.

We saw what happened with the Texas decision in December, going along with Readler's arguments and threatening the healthcare coverage of 20 million Americans; that is, 20 million people because of a decision he made.

Judges are deciding the fate of Americans' healthcare right now. Judges are. It is not their elected body. It is judges who are taking away healthcare. The elected officials failed to take it away. They tried. They tried, and they tried. They did it 50 times in the House. They tried in the Senate. We defeated it by one vote. The Vice President was here on behalf of the President just in case he had to break the tie. He didn't have to because we defeated it by one vote. He didn't get to break the tie.

Now it is judges. Judges decide right now. We can't afford to put one of the White House's ringleaders in the fight to dismantle healthcare protections on the bench for life.

It is not just healthcare. It is LGBTQ rights. It is women's rights. It is voting rights. Judges make decisions right now that eliminate and limit Americans' rights for a generation.

On these issues, the President's nominees for the Sixth Circuit, Chad Readler and the other one, Eric Murphy, have a proven record of fighting to strip Americans of their rights.

Get this. Chad Readler not only supported the death penalty for minors, for 16-year-olds, as a private citizen, he took it upon himself to pen an op-ed saying he wanted to allow the execution of 16-year- olds--the execution of 16-year-olds. Think about that.

Apparently, he thinks it is OK for a mistake someone makes as a child to not only get them locked up for life but to actually take away their life altogether. What kind of person writes an editorial calling for the execution of 16-year-olds, and we are going to put him on the Federal court for life?

At a time when we are taking important bipartisan steps forward on sentencing reform, how do you turn around and put someone on the bench for life who supports executing children? A 16-year-old is still a teenager, a child, in our State, in our country, and in our society.

During his nomination hearing, Readler stood by his op-ed. He refused to disavow his support for using the death penalty on high schoolers.

As for Eric Murphy, he argued against marriage equality in the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges case. That is why Jim Obergefell has spoken out against his nomination.

He worked to restrict access to contraceptives for women, and my favorite, he defended Big Tobacco because those companies were doing such useful things for our country. As a lawyer, he defended Big Tobacco.

He also defended Ohio's voter purge. Think about the anniversary we will mark this week. This Thursday will mark 54 years, to the day, since Bloody Sunday.

Last weekend, my wife Connie and I were in Selma and walked across the Selma bridge. For me, it was the fifth time. I took my teenage daughters once. I took my mother, who was born in a small town in the South and taught me about civil rights. My wife and I went. We went back again this year to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

I listened to their stories. Women and men were beaten, their blood was spilled, and their homes were broken into. Why? Because people of color couldn't vote in many places in this country, and Alabama was one of those places. They were willing to suffer and, in some cases, die so they could have a right to vote. That was only a half century ago. That happened only 54 years ago.

Judges around this country, all the way to the Supreme Court, are systematically dismantling those rights. Without question, they are taking away people's right to vote by voter suppression. We can't let the sacrifices of the foot soldiers in Selma be in vain.

It is pretty despicable that a bunch of Members of Congress who have health insurance are willing to take it away for millions of people. That is pretty despicable. It is also despicable that Members of this body are going to mark this anniversary by putting another judge on the bench for life who will work to undo that legacy, who will likely be another judge ruling to send us back to those days, and who will rubberstamp modern-day poll taxes and literacy tests. They will not exactly do poll taxes and literacy tests, but they will find plenty of ways to take voters off the rolls.

We know the Governor's race in Georgia was essentially stolen from the African-American woman who was the nominee because of the sitting Secretary of State--oh, yes, who happened to be running for Governor. We know that. We know the election in Georgia was stolen. We know voters were purged prior to that election by the Secretary of State, who happened to be running for Governor.

I ask my colleagues, if you will not listen to me, listen to those foot soldiers in Selma, listen to the civil rights leaders who ask you to reject these judges.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, think about what we just heard, first from Senator Markey talking about a fossil fuel lobbyist in the year 2019 being chosen to head the EPA--a fossil fuel lobbyist--when there has not been a bill on this floor or any motion coming from Senator McConnell to deal with climate change, to deal with one of the greatest if not the greatest moral issue of our times--nothing on this floor. You heard what Senator Markey said. This administration has done nothing to address this issue, and President Trump selects a fossil fuel lobbyist to be head of the EPA. It is the same thing over and over again.

We have to take aggressive action to protect our planet and protect our future now. That means accelerating our transition to carbon-free power. It means investing in technologies that make our manufacturers the most energy efficient in the world. It means creating jobs in clean energy all around the country.

I have always, as a House Member living in Lorain, OH, and as a Member of the Senate--for years, I have always refused to accept the idea that you have to choose between good environmental policy and good-paying jobs. We have proved that is simply not true. We have proved it in my State, where we have lots of wind turbines, made usually with American-made steel. We have proved it in Toledo, where we have one of the biggest solar energy manufacturers in the country. We proved it in the auto industry, where the auto industry has generally had a pretty good decade making more fuel-efficient cars. We put Americans to work, and we can change course on climate change before it is too late.

Mitch McConnell and President Trump seem to think climate change-- that is notwithstanding what Senator Whitehouse said--is a joke. I have news for them. Climate change is not something to play political games with; it is a crisis we need to confront and set an example around the world. It is a crisis we need to confront and to set an example for our partners around the world.

It would be shameful enough to have no ideas and no plan to confront our biggest threats. But not only do President Trump and Leader McConnell have no plan, not only are they denying the problem, and not only are they standing in the way of solutions, but they are actually working to make climate change worse. It is just despicable.

They are spreading lies and stacking the administration with shills for the fossil fuel industry. They stacked the administration with Wall Street cronies to do bank regulation. They stacked the administration with fossil fuel cronies and shills to do energy and climate and environmental regulation.

We got news this week that the White House is going to use your taxpayer dollars to set up a panel to promote junk science and spread the debunked conspiracy theory that climate change is a hoax.

This week we will vote on the President's nominee to head the EPA, a lobbyist who would be overseeing the same special interests who have paid his salary. Andrew Wheeler is just the latest in a long line of cronies from the fossil fuel industry who President Trump has put in charge at the EPA and the Department of the Interior.

Climate change is not a future problem. It does damage to this country right now. It is threatening thousands of Ohio workers who rely on Lake Erie for their livelihood, whether it is tourism or other industries that rely on clean water.

Climate change makes algal blooms worse. Off the shores of Toledo, it contaminates our lake, threatens our drinking water, and hurts small business. Nobody on that side of the aisle seems to give a darn.

I have talked to farmers who have been farming in the Western Lake Erie Basin for decades. They tell me they are experiencing heavier rain events more often and with greater intensity compared to even 15 years ago. Hotter summers and shorter winters will only make this problem worse.

It is time for the President of the United States to stop sabotaging the country he is supposed to lead. It is past time to rejoin the Paris Agreement, to restart the Clean Power Plan, and to implement aggressive fuel economy standards for cars and trucks. It is time to create new jobs in clean energy and energy-efficient manufacturing. It is time for the United States to be the leader the world looks to. It is time to take this threat seriously to preserve our country for our children, and their children, and their children's children before it is too late.