Floor Statements

Mr. President, each year the Department of Education honors schools around the country that have a clear record of serving students of all backgrounds and helping all students excel.

This year, 16 Ohio schools were among 349 National Blue Ribbon Schools, honoring the hard work of students, teachers, parents, and everyone in the community who works to make these schools a success-- from cafeteria workers to principals, to students, to parents, to neighbors.

These schools represent the great diversity in our State--rural and small-town schools, urban and suburban schools, all designated as ``exemplary high performing schools.''

I would like to read the names of these 16 schools in Ohio: Bath Elementary School, Bluffton Elementary School, Brecksville-Broadview Heights Middle School, Central Elementary School, Hazel Harvey Elementary School, Indian Riffle Elementary School, John Foster Dulles Elementary School, Maplewood Elementary School, Mariemont Elementary School, Mother Teresa Catholic Elementary School, Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin School, Oakwood Elementary School, Saint Andrew-Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic School, Stadium Drive Elementary School, and Twin Oak Elementary School.

The other school, in addition to these 16, is particularly close to my heart. It is called the Mansfield Spanish Immersion School. It sits on Euclid Avenue. It is the new school in the building where I went to elementary school, then called Brinkerhoff Elementary. It has since become a Spanish immersion school. Brinkerhoff was built, I believe, in the 1950s. I attended there and both of my brothers attended there from kindergarten through the sixth grade.

The school reopened as a public magnet school a decade ago, with a class of 11 kindergartners, under the leadership of our neighbor Jody Nash.

Over the past 10 years, under Principal Nash, and now under the current principal, Gabe Costa, the school has grown to more than 250 students across 9 grades.

Last year the school expanded to add seventh and eighth grade for the first time and had a third section of kindergartners.

Core subjects are taught in Spanish, helping Richland County students learn a second language from a young age. These students don't just excel in Spanish. The school is consistently ranked a top school in the State and has gotten high marks for serving students from diverse backgrounds.

I would add that there are not a huge number of people in Mansfield, OH, my hometown, whose parents are speaking Spanish at home. Most of these students are learning Spanish for the first time in their families.

Two years ago, the Brinkerhoff School, or the Mansfield Spanish Immersion School, was 1 of 2 schools in Ohio and 100 across the Nation to receive a National Title I Distinguished Schools Award for making progress in closing the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and their peers.

Awards like this mean so much to a community. They are a reminder that academic excellence isn't limited to exclusive private schools or wealthy communities on the coasts.

Too many people in this town of Washington want to refer to us as the Rust Belt--that outdated, offensive term that demeans our workers and devalues who we are. It devalues the incredible work schools like this are doing in our State, preparing our students for the global economy of the future. These schools are not rusty. They are thriving.

Congratulations to all 16 of this year's Ohio Blue Ribbon Schools-- all examples to our State and to our country and why we are so proud of them.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today in the Senate we were faced with two opportunities to side with cancer patients over insurance companies. In our country, almost everybody would say that we ought to side with the cancer patients over the insurance companies, but the Senate failed again in both cases. Let me explain.

Today, as we considered this, we wanted to make clear whose side we are on. The side the Senate chose, and it looks like the Judiciary Committee chose, is not the side of patients.

This morning, I testified at the Judiciary Committee's hearing on the White House's two nominees to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, Chad Readler and Eric Murphy. Both of these men have a troubling record of stripping Ohioans of their rights, and Mr. Readler's actions on healthcare are particularly threatening to millions of Americans--not just the 5 million Ohioans who have preexisting conditions but millions of Americans with preexisting conditions. Five million Ohioans under age 65, as I said, have preexisting conditions. That is half the population in my State.

Because of the Affordable Care Act, these Ohioans can rest a little easier, knowing they can't be turned down for health coverage or have their rates skyrocket because their child has asthma or their husband has diabetes or their wife has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Mr. Readler is willing to take that peace of mind away and throw those families into financial chaos.

This summer, he did what three career attorneys with the Department of Justice refused to do. He filed a brief challenging the law that protects Americans with preexisting conditions. The next day, the White House appointed him to a Federal circuit court judgeship. Filing this brief earned him rebukes from across the legal community. Three attorneys withdrew from the case, and one actually resigned in objection to the Department of Justice's unprecedented action.

Our Republican Senate colleague from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander, called the brief ``as far-fetched as any [he has] ever heard.'' Mr. Readler had no problem putting his name right at the top and filing it.

We should not be putting on the bench for life anyone who puts partisanship ahead of cancer patients or ahead of people with diabetes or ahead of someone with high blood pressure or ahead of Americans' healthcare.

Unfortunately, the White House is also chipping away at the ability of Ohioans with preexisting conditions to get affordable coverage that actually covers their conditions. Again, we are talking about 5 million Ohioans, tens of millions of Americans. You can talk about anxiety and autism. You can talk about heart disease or heartburn, cholesterol, stroke, thyroid issues. We are talking about families. We are talking about neighbors. We are talking about some of the people in this body.

Everyone here, by the way, takes care of themselves. We all have good health insurance. We don't mind, apparently, denying it to millions of others.

Some Senators think it is fine to let insurance companies sell junk to our constituents back home. These insurance policies are just that: They are junk. They are insurance until you need the insurance. Allowing insurance companies to sell these plans drives up healthcare for everyone. They weaken protection for anyone with a preexisting condition.

Under their new rules, insurance companies could force Americans with preexisting conditions into these junk plans--and ``junk'' is the right word--that barely cover anything. They can charge exorbitant, unaffordable rates for a decent plan.

Half of my colleagues--exactly half--voted for Senator Baldwin's motion. Senator Baldwin, from Wisconsin, has been a hero on this. Half of my colleagues--all with health insurance paid for by taxpayers--have told the people: Sorry, you are on your own. We are letting the insurance companies do whatever they want--rip you off, hike up your costs. That is the way it goes.

It all comes down to whose side you are on. Chad Readler, the President's nomination for the Sixth Circuit, has made it clear: He stands with insurance companies, not with cancer patients. The administration has made it clear: They stand with insurance companies, not kids with asthma.

Today, the Senate chose to stand with those insurance companies over their constituents who need prescription medicines.

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

Madam President, I announced my decision to vote against Judge Kavanaugh several weeks ago, after meeting with him and after studying his record, because he essentially put his thumb on the scale in support of corporate interests. He has

consistently sided with corporate special interests, large corporations that outsource jobs over workers, and has sided with Wall Street over consumers.

I made that decision before Dr. Ford came forward, but I am grateful for her. I am grateful she did, even at great personal cost and personal risk. I believe Dr. Ford. Why in the world would someone do what she said--again, at great personal cost and great personal risk-- if she weren't telling the truth precisely? I am grateful to her. I am grateful for all of the brave women inspired by her to speak out and share their own stories. A number of them have written to my office. A number of them I have spoken to on the phone. Some of them told us for the first time in their lives, after--one woman was in her seventies, and it was the first time she had spoken of her sexual assault.

Please understand, all of the people, all of the women and men--I have gotten letters from men, too, but mostly women--understand. To all of you all over the country: We see you. We hear you. Your story matters, and you make a difference.

It is wrong that political influence and artificial deadlines put on them, imposed by the majority leader down the hall and the President of the United States--artificial deadlines and political influence prevented the FBI from performing the complete and thorough investigation the American people deserve. Instead, Senate leaders and the White House straightjacketed the FBI.

I don't blame the FBI. They only did what Senate leaders--what Republican leaders who wanted to ram this nomination through as quickly as possible and the White House, which would never want to compromise on anything like this--they straightjacketed the FBI. They kept our law enforcement professionals from doing their job.

According to Dr. Ford's lawyer, the FBI didn't even speak to more than a dozen witnesses that Dr. Ford asked them to interview. They are trying to corroborate whether her story was true, but the FBI then didn't interview Dr. Ford or Judge Kavanaugh, nor did they interview the people Dr. Ford suggested to them, the names that Dr. Ford gave them, people who could corroborate what happened. So the FBI did not interview any of the people that Dr. Ford asked or Dr. Ford herself.

Then my colleagues say that there is no corroborating evidence, so she didn't do it, so we have to believe Judge Kavanaugh. That is their logic: The investigation--again, not because the FBI didn't want to do it right but because of what leadership, what political leadership, elected officials and bureaucrats in the White House and the Senate did to prevent the FBI from doing its job--that is why that was a scam.

So what really matters here? It really matters that we listen to women. It also really matters because the Supreme Court has enormous influence over the lives of everyone in my State. Any nominee must defend the rights of all Americans to have comprehensive healthcare coverage and make their own healthcare decisions, must defend the rights of Americans to collectively bargain for safe workplaces and fair pay.

I don't think my colleagues really understand the process of collective bargaining. I am working on a bipartisan basis with a number of our colleagues on a pension bill right now. I don't know that our colleagues here understand that people--when it comes to pensions, they sit down at the bargaining table, and they give up wages today so they will have a secure retirement. I am concerned about this Supreme Court's rejection, potentially, of collective bargaining rights and safe workplaces and fair pay and fair benefits. I am concerned about this Court in terms of protecting American workers and American consumers from discrimination and, shall we say, Wall Street greed.

I am troubled already by the Supreme Court's recent decisions stripping rights from Ohioans on many issues. That is why I met with Judge Kavanaugh before I made my decision earlier this summer and why I asked him about his views on the issues that matter to Ohioans. I reviewed his record. I am not a lawyer, but I pay a lot of attention to these issues. I looked at these decisions, and I listened to Ohioans who weighed in. It was clear that I could not support Judge Kavanaugh's nomination to our highest Court, again, because he puts his thumb on the scale of justice, always with a bias toward corporate interests over workers, over consumers.

On healthcare, you have heard Senator Shaheen, Senator Markey, Senator Hassan; I listened late last night. You have heard them talk about preexisting conditions. This Court is moving toward saying to the health insurance industry: You can cancel the insurance of people with preexisting conditions.

For 10 years, we have had consumer protections. If you are a cancer survivor, if you have asthma, as my wife had at a young age and has continued to manage her asthma well--and she has said very publicly that we can talk about this--or if you have Parkinson's or any other preexisting condition--heart disease or high blood pressure--you are protected from the insurance company canceling your insurance. That has been the law for 10 years. That law is under duress.

If this body votes to confirm Judge Kavanaugh today, it means that 5 million Ohioans--almost half of the people in my State have a preexisting condition. It means they should be concerned that this Supreme Court will take away those consumer protections and will say to the insurance company: You can cancel somebody if they get expensive. You can cancel somebody's insurance if you find out they had cancer. You can do all those things.

Its rulings and positions on the rights of Ohio workers and women and consumers would take us in exactly the wrong direction. His nomination comes when the stakes for working Ohioans couldn't be higher. He will talk about settled law, but settled law is only settled--again, I am not a lawyer, but this is pretty obvious. Settled law is only settled until the Supreme Court says it isn't. We know it with voter rights; we know it just recently with worker rights.

Last term, the Court issued a string of anti-worker decisions. In Janus v. AFSCME, the Court overturned decades of precedent--oh, yeah, settled law--and limited the ability of public sector unions to advocate for the workers they serve. This is a Supreme Court that almost always sides with corporations over unions, with corporations over workers, with corporations over consumers.

The decision in Epic Systems Corp v. Lewis limited the ability of workers to have their day in court when they are mistreated by their employer. The power already rests with employers on all of these kinds of worker-employer issues. This Court wants to make it worse. Judge Kavanaugh's record shows that he will accelerate that direction. This Court has proved time and again that it stands on the side of powerful corporations, not American workers.

We know what has happened in this country. We know that profits have gone up. We know that executive compensation has exploded. We know that productivity is up for workers, but we know that workers' wages have been stagnant. So the top 1 percent or 5 percent--they are doing great. They get big tax cuts. They get stock dividend buybacks. They get all kinds of breaks. The fact is, workers have seen their wages stagnate. This Court will make it worse.

There are several cases next term where the Court has the power to fundamentally tip the balance of power even further toward corporations--cases like Lamps Plus Inc. v. Varela, in which the Court could rule on whether a worker can file a class action suit against an employer that violates her privacy and releases personal information to the public. An individual worker never has the power or the money to hire an attorney to take on these companies. That is why workers need to band together to take on a powerful company, a powerful employer, a powerful corporation.

In another case, New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira, the Court will decide whether a worker who was misclassified as an independent contractor can bring a class action lawsuit, whether the Federal Arbitration Act applies to an independent contractor agreement. In other words, this Court has already moved in the direction--as this Congress did, by one vote, if I recall--of giving corporations more power, in saying to employees: Sorry, you don't

get your day in court. Again, employees individually don't have the financial wherewithal to be able to go to court and hire a lawyer, but if the employees band together, they can. That is what the issue of forced arbitration is about. That is what Judge Kavanaugh has consistently been wrong about.

I have looked at his record. It is clear, we can't trust him to stand with Ohio workers in any of these cases. He has opposed basic protections for workers trying to hold employers accountable--cases like AFGE v. Gates. He has consistently ruled against claims of worker discrimination and worker safety violations. He has consistently ruled against workers who stand up to corporate mistreatment in cases like Verizon New England v. National Labor Relations Board.

His nomination also poses a serious threat to the 5 million Americans under age 65 with preexisting conditions. Again, that is half of my State. If you meet a 40- or a 50-year-old--if you are in almost any group, you sit there and you look to your right and you look to your left, one of those two people, on average, is going to have a preexisting condition. Is their insurance going to be jeopardized? It is with this Congress, which wants to do this, and this Supreme Court and this President want to strip away the consumer protections for people with preexisting conditions.

They want to give the insurance companies the right to cancel your insurance. Oh, you have cancer? You cost us a lot. I am the insurance company; you cost us a lot. I am going to cancel your insurance then because you cost us too much money. You can't do that under present law. You can't do that because of the Affordable Care Act. They will be able to do it if Judge Kavanaugh gets on the Court because you can bet the Court is moving in that direction.

Consumer protections are under attack in our court system right now with the case of Texas v. United States. It is likely going to make its way to the Supreme Court, and Judge Kavanaugh's record on healthcare gives us a pretty darned good clue how he would rule.

He refused to uphold the entire law that is constitutional--a law that says if your child has diabetes or your mother has asthma, the insurance companies can't raise your costs or turn them away.

This is about the cost of health insurance. It is about saying all of us want good insurance. All of us want to be able--nobody wants to get sick. Nobody wants to have high healthcare costs. The reason we have insurance is so that people who get sick can make sure they keep their insurance and can have help. But the insurance companies--if they get their way now, they may not deny you care if you have cancer; they will just raise your rates so high that you will not be able to afford it. There really is no difference.

Without these protections, insurance companies will once again be free to charge you five times the rate of your neighbor. If you are sick, if you have neighbors on both sides who aren't, they will raise your rates because you are sick, if they have their way. We can't risk it. You are lucky enough to be well; your neighbor is diagnosed with high blood pressure; the other neighbor, their child has epilepsy, and their rates get raised, but yours don't, all because Judge Kavanaugh and this Court and this Congress seem to want it that way. We can't risk Ohio families not having access to care by sending him to the Supreme Court.

It is not just on preexisting conditions where he would pose a threat to Ohio's healthcare. Dozens of cases pending in lower courts could determine the price you pay for healthcare over the next few years or whether you get care at all. Again, if the price is so high, it is the same as denying you care because you can't afford it. There are cases on everything from false advertising by insurance companies to whether your employer is required to give you access to healthcare.

Of course, we know that the stakes are particularly high for women. That was true before Dr. Ford courageously came forward. It remains true. We can't risk the ability of Ohio women to make their own personal private health decisions between themselves and their doctors by giving a lifetime appointment to a judge who has shown repeated hostility to women's healthcare freedom.

We know the promises President Trump made when he was a candidate, saying that he would put somebody on the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade. We know the list of judges he chose from, and the Federalist Society had that same commitment to overturn Roe v. Wade. Anybody in this body that thinks the judge is promising that this is settled law ought to use the cliche that I have a bridge to sell you. It is clear what he is going to do if he is on the Court.

This whole issue, this whole vote, this whole nomination comes down to this: Whose side are you on? Are you a judge who stands on the side of workers or multinational corporations? Will you stand on the side of a mother seeking treatment or on the side of insurance companies who want to raise her rates to deny her care?

Judge Kavanaugh's record is clear. He has consistently sided with the most powerful special interests in this country--not American workers, not American consumers, not American patients who struggle with the cost of their healthcare. The stakes for Ohio are too high to give this judge a lifetime appointment to our highest Court.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that several documents corroborating Dr. Ford's allegations against Judge Kavanaugh and a statement from Dr. Ford's attorneys be printed in the Record

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, everyone in this Chamber knows how bad the opioid crisis is. In Ohio, based on the averages, 11 people died yesterday, 11

people will die today, and 11 people will die tomorrow from a drug overdose. We have a long way to go to fight this, but right now, we are taking an important step to get resources to communities, doing innovative work, and tearing down the redtape regulations that prevent people from getting treatment.

This week we will pass a comprehensive package of legislation to fight addiction. Several of these bills are important to Ohio.

I worked with my Republican colleague from West Virginia, Senator Capito, on a bipartisan CRIB Act to support treatment centers for babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome, like Brigid's Path in Dayton, Lily's Place in Huntington that serves people across the river in Lawrence County, OH, and elsewhere.

Brigid's Path in Ohio is one of just two residential treatment centers like this in the country. Again, Huntington, WV, on the Ohio River, across the river from Ohio, and Brigid's Path in Dayton are the only two of these in the country.

I am meeting in my office tomorrow with folks from Brigid's Path to talk with them about the important work they are doing in our State.

NAS is caused by the use of opioids or other addictive substances during pregnancy. It has become a growing challenge for families and healthcare providers in States like Ohio.

Recent studies show that cases of NAS have tripled over the past decade. Right now, babies are usually treated in the neonatal intensive care unit, known as NICUs--the neonatal intensive care unit--where treatment costs are five times the cost of treating other newborns, but given the relative bright lights and the relative loud noises in neonatal units, the NICU is not always the best place for newborns struggling with withdrawal. They are even more sensitive to noise and light than other premature babies that might be in a NICU.

Residential pediatric recovery facilities like Brigid's Path can give these infants specialized care as well as bringing the mothers and the families in for counseling in a setting outside the chaos of a hospital. So while they are treating the newborn baby, they also have opportunities with some wraparound services to treat the addicted mothers so mother and child and others in the family can have a normal, healthy life.

These unique venues are relatively new. The CRIB Act will allow them to bill Medicaid for the services they offer. The CRIB Act, Brigid's Path in Dayton, OH, and the Huntington program are not eligible for Medicaid because they are neither a doctor nor a hospital. So this bill will make them eligible for Medicaid and will save millions of dollars. As more of these facilities like Brigid's Path and Lily's Place are formed around the country, we will be saving millions and millions of Medicaid dollars. Instead of going to the more expensive, less- effective neonatal intensive care unit, they are going to Brigid's Path and other places like that.

As I said, the CRIB Act will allow them to bill Medicaid for their services, expanding options for care for the thousands of babies who need specialized treatment. Unfortunately, thousands of babies are born to addicted mothers.

This package will also do some other things that matter. It will lift the cap on the number of beds at Medicaid-funded treatment facilities for 5 years, something Senator Portman and I have worked on for a long time. My colleague from Ohio, in the opposite party from me, has been working on opioid issues for some time, and this is one of the issues on which we worked together.

The bill includes Senator Portman's STOP Act that I supported and that will work with my INTERDICT Act that Senator Portman and others supported, that was signed into law by the White House several months ago, that will help keep illegal fentanyl, a synthetic substance much more toxic and powerful than heroin, and something called carfentanil off the streets.

We know we have more work to do to fight this crisis. We need more resources in our communities in Ohio. This package is a bipartisan step forward. I hope we can get this to the President's desk and signed into law soon.

One sort of editorial comment also. I was a fairly young kid when I first started hearing about this, and we all know about this. In the mid-1960s--a huge number of Americans smoked tobacco--the U.S. Surgeon General first brought to the public's attention that smoking caused people's life expectancy, lifespans, to be considerably shorter because of all the illnesses coming from smoking. In one of the great success stories in public health in the last half century, the Federal Government worked together with local health officials, physicians, nurses, hospitals, cancer societies, the American Heart Association, and others--starting with warnings on cigarette packs and all the things we do now--and the rate of smoking in this country considerably dropped from what it was in the mid-1960s.

Our country, led by the Federal Government in many cases--and people can say what they want about the government, but the Federal Government led the way on tobacco, on that public health initiative against tobacco. We can help lead the way, and we can work with local communities in addressing this terrible public health affliction of opioid addiction. It will matter to the next many generations if we do this right.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, last month, we were reminded again of the important work journalists do in our communities, bringing Ohioans, Oklahomans, people from Kansas, or wherever the information they need in an unfolding crisis.

In September, we got one of the worst news alerts any of us can imagine. There was an active shooter in Cincinnati. We hugged our loved ones a little tighter that night as we prayed for everyone affected by the latest senseless shooting that took the lives of three innocent Ohioans.

We thank the first responders who rushed to the scene. We thank the law enforcement officers who have spent the week investigating. We thank everyone caring for the injured. We also thank the local reporters who rushed to the scene, doing their job to keep our community informed in a crisis.

Reporters gave Ohioans real-time information online and on TV, immediately getting the word out to warn people to avoid the area where the shooter was active. They talked to law enforcement, and they talked to witnesses on the scene. From firsthand accounts, they established the first shots were heard just before 9:11 a.m.

One reporter talked to a witness who told of the heroism of the Cincinnati police officer, saying he saw a lady down. A Cincinnati police officer dragged her out of the bank. She was talking. She was bleeding. Her shirt was red.

It is yet another horrific scene among far too many we have endured in this country. At every one of these tragedies--every single one-- courageous journalists and citizens of our country, not enemies of the people, are among the first on the scene. They tell us the stories behind the victims, and they help us honor the memories of those we have lost.

After the incident is over, after the immediate danger has passed, reporters keep working, interviewing loved ones, giving us a full picture of what yet another shooting has cost our country. They reported that Cincinnati lost a father, a grandfather, and a son. They brought us stories of a young programmer just getting started in his career whose life was cut short, of a father of two teenagers who will forever have to live with the scars of losing a parent, and of a grandfather of eight who helped build the Queen City as a construction supervisor.

It is despicable that Congress refuses to pass commonsense gun safety laws to protect Americans from yet more gun violence. As these tragedies keep happening, we keep pressing for change. We will keep thanking law enforcement and our medical professionals who deal with the unthinkable of a mass shooting. We will keep thanking the reporters who are just doing their jobs--newspaper, radio, television, online--to bring us the facts and who deserve our respect no matter the comments of some people in elected office.

Mr. President, last week we learned from investigative reporting that a senior political appointee--a political appointee at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Eric Blankenstein, has written hateful, bigoted blog posts.

This is a man handpicked for the job--and paid very well from tax dollars--by Mick Mulvaney, the head of the CFPB, the sort of part-time head of the CFPB. He is tasked with enforcing laws to protect consumers, laws protecting Americans from discrimination and lending.

The Consumer Protection Bureau is supposed to be on the frontlines, fighting for families getting ripped off by shady payday lenders and big banks.

The person with Blankenstein's job should be fighting and preventing the very real financial discrimination that everybody in this body knows happens all too often today in Ohio and Oklahoma and across this country.

Instead, now, because of news reports, we know the person tasked with this job has written that most hate crimes ``are hoaxes.'' These blog posts are filled with disgusting, bigoted language that I will not repeat on the Senate floor because we have a better decorum than that and this language is so offensive.

But this is the man Mick Mulvaney wants going after big banks that discriminate. How is it that the Director of Management and Budget failed to look into the background of such a senior, well-paid political appointee? Placing Blankenstein in charge of fair lending was a moral mistake, a managerial failure, and he should be fired immediately. It has been a week now since reporters found those hateful writings. The fact that he is still in the job is a disgrace. The President should act; the CFPB head should act.

We have seen no contrition from Blankenstein--no contrition from him, no apology for the hateful posts, no acknowledgement that these are totally inappropriate and immoral views for someone whose job it is at the agency to root out discrimination.

How can you expect to lead a staff dedicated to that mission after these revelations, after this attitude, after expressing these kinds of views? There should be no place in the Consumer Protection Bureau for people who don't believe discrimination is real or don't believe discrimination is a serious problem.

Too many Americans are turned down for loans or charged higher rates based on the color of their skin. We know that. That is proven. That is documented.

A report this year from the Center for Investigative Reporting analyzed tens of millions of mortgage records. They found that across the country, people of color are far more likely to be turned down for a loan, even when you take into account factors like their income and the size of the loan. Someone who is African American or Latino with the same income, the same size of loan, the same financial information--the person of color is more likely to be turned down than the person who looks like me.

In the runup to the 2008 crisis, faulty mortgages were often targeted--we know this--to people of color. Even African-American and Hispanic borrowers with higher incomes than other borrowers found themselves in subprime products, and then they had to pay for it later. These practices of discrimination stripped--stripped--a generation's worth of equity from communities that had fought hard for equal access to home ownership.

Borrowers with these higher cost loans were foreclosed on at almost triple the rate of borrowers with standard 30-year fixed rates--almost triple the rate.

It is important, when you talk about statistics and you think about these foreclosures, to think about the family that is foreclosed on, to think about the conversations at the kitchen table, to think about the discussion with sons or daughters who are teenagers about what is going to happen to them in school, changes in the school that they are going to go to, the different neighborhood, the different sets of friends. All of these are about foreclosures. All of these are about evictions, and that is just in the housing market.

We know discrimination is a serious problem in all sorts of lending markets. It is why we created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to look after bank customers, to root out discrimination.

But under Mick Mulvaney, the agency has been doing the opposite. Rather than policing shady corporations trying to get away with ripping off and discriminating against consumers, Mulvaney gutted the office of the CFPB that was supposed to stop discrimination in lending. He disbanded the team that protected student loan borrowers. He canceled an investigation into the payday lending industry that preys on consumers and traps them in a downward spiral of debt. He exhorted a group of bank lobbyists saying: You have to lobby harder. You have to go to people; you have to give campaign money so that they will listen to you.

He has hired a bunch of political cronies, people like Eric Blankenstein, and has given them enormous salaries to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into the ground, and we now know specifically of one. The abuses look pretty common, but we know of one--again, Eric Blankenstein--who has a history of spewing disgusting, bigoted views. He is still collecting a $260,000 paycheck from taxpayers. That is unacceptable.

It is past time that Eric Blankenstein--I don't think I have ever gone to the floor and personally called out somebody and their salary and asked that they be fired, but when he has these kinds of positions and this kind of background and has spewed this kind of hatred, and we are paying him $260,000 of taxpayer money, that is morally outrageous.

Mick Mulvaney, do your job. President Trump, do your job. He should not be employed there.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, yesterday around the country, Americans gathered to honor the women and men who built our economy and continue to power it today--American workers.

Almost every year when we return after Labor Day, I speak about American workers--those who work with their hands, their shoulders, their arms, their brains--because all work has dignity. All work matters to our country.

Martin Luther King said, ``All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance.'' He told the Local 1199 hospital workers union more than 50 years ago that ``no labor is really menial unless you're not getting adequate wages''--something that is too often the case today. Let me talk a little bit about that.

All work has dignity. That is what Labor Day is all about. Over the last week, I traveled all over Ohio, meeting with workers who power our State and support our families. Last week, I talked with mineworkers and Teamsters in Cambridge, in Eastern Ohio, in Appalachia. They are fighting to protect the pensions they earned over a lifetime of work.

One retired coal miner, John Vargo, who was there with his wife Linda, gave me a coal-black beer stein that was given to his father. Five thousand of those steins were given out to UMWA members 40 years ago. The front features a miner with a pickax doing his job working through a black tunnel. The inscription on the bottom says that it ``represents the long struggle historically for humane working conditions.''

On Sunday, I talked to firefighters and steelworkers and so many others--several hundred workers in Lorain; auto, steel, iron workers, carpenters, and other tradespeople; machinists, service workers, SEIU, AFSCME, and others.

Yesterday in Cleveland, I spoke with workers at the 47th annual Labor Day parade and festival. This event was started nearly half a century ago by Mayor Carl Stokes, continued by his brother Lou Stokes and by Stephanie Tubbs Jones, and carried on today by my friend Congresswoman Marcia Fudge. It is a reminder of the historic connection between the civil rights movement and our labor movement. Both are movements for justice. They are about treating Americans--no matter whether you work in a hospital, punch a clock, work construction, are an hourly wage worker, work for tips--treating all Americans with dignity and respect.

This morning, I met with a group of firefighters, several of them retired--union firefighters and fire chiefs--in Shaker Heights, Lakewood, and Cleveland, all of whom talked to me about how we know that when there is a fire, firefighters rush into danger while all of us civilians flee and rush out. What we don't think about enough--and we know the dangers of the job: a collapsing roof, a floor falling in-- what we don't think enough about is the chemicals they are exposed to. That is why we pushed legislation here--and then the dollars to go with it--for a cancer registry, so we can figure out why so many firefighters are dying from cancer and why so many have developed cancer after 10, 15, or 20 years on the job exposed to these chemicals.

All these workers--retired firefighters, mineworkers, Teamsters, steelworkers--all of these workers are part of the struggle.

On my lapel, I wear this pin depicting a canary in a birdcage. It was given to me at a workers Memorial Day in Lorain, OH, as a reminder of what American workers have done for this country.

At the turn of the last century, in 1900, mineworkers took a canary in a cage down in the mines. If the canary stopped singing, if the canary died from toxic gas or lack of oxygen, the mineworker knew he had minutes to get out alive. He didn't have a union strong enough to protect him. He didn't have a government that cared enough to protect him.

American workers in the labor movement changed all that. Workers organized. They ended child labor. They pushed through Congress the 40- hour workweek and overtime pay. They helped to create Social Security and Medicare. They fought for workers' rights, women's rights, and civil rights.

The economy grew, and workers' wages grew along with it. Profits were up, compensation for executives went up, productivity went up, and workers' wages pretty much went up with it. That was then. American workers have been the engine behind all that success.

You build an economy from the middle out, not from the top down-- although, from the tax bill this Congress passed, you would think my colleagues believe that if you shovel enough money to the rich, it will trickle down and help the middle class. It has never really worked that way.

When I say that workers are the engine behind that success, I mean all workers--whether you punch a clock, swipe a badge, earn a salary, or make tips. But today this hard work isn't paying off. Corporate profits have gone up, executive compensation has exploded, stock prices have gone up, workers are ever more productive, but wages have barely budged. Wages have declined this year in spite of the administration singing its own praises for a growing economy.

At the same time, do you know what else has gone up? Healthcare costs have gone up. Healthcare costs go up while executive compensation goes up, while profits go up, but workers' wages have simply plateaued. Workers are getting squeezed at both ends. Paychecks aren't growing fast enough. Workers' budgets are being stretched thin with the cost of everything--particularly housing, prescription drugs, and college tuition.

We need to think differently about the American economy. Corporations don't drive the economy; workers do. We grow the economy from the middle class out. If work isn't valued, Americans can't earn their way to a better life for their families no matter how hard they work.

Millions of Americans work long hours but struggle to get by, and they don't feel as though anyone notices or cares. That feeling was captured pretty well by my friend, Ohioan Rita Lewis, the widow of Teamster Butch Lewis. She herself has become an advocate, fighting for the pensions her husband and other Teamsters earned. Not long ago, Rita said, ``It's like we're invisible.'' Too often, she is right.

To the millions of Americans working too many hours for too little pay, let me tell you this: You aren't invisible. You may be invisible to most Members of the Senate, you may be invisible to Washington, you may be invisible to the corrupt State government in Columbus, OH, but you are not invisible to me, and you are not invisible to some people in this body. We see you. We hear you. We fight for you. We fight for paid family leave. We fight for paid sick leave. We fight for the overtime pay that you earn.

We fight to give workers a say in their jobs. We fight to save American pensions, give people a break, and make it a bit easier to save for retirement. We work to encourage companies to invest in their greatest asset: you, the American workers. That is what we will fight for not just on Labor Day but the next day and the day after that and every day throughout the year.

If you love this country, you fight for people who make it grow, and you fight for people who make it work.

I encourage my colleagues to reflect this week on what we do to honor American workers who make our country great.

Honoring Journalists

Mr. President, last week, we were reminded again of the important work journalists do in their communities, breaking stories that affect Ohioans. We know what comes out of the White House, as the President calls journalists and reporters enemies of the people. Last Wednesday, I saw something again to underscore and illustrate how wrong that is.

The Chillicothe Gazette--a town 50 miles south of Columbus--reported that 28 people at an Ohio correctional institution were sent to the hospital after being exposed to a mysterious substance, prison guards and inmates alike. The reporters talked to the Ohio

Highway Patrol. They were able to confirm that the incident began when an inmate began showing signs of an overdose. They learned that more than 20 staff members had potentially been exposed and were sent to a hospital for treatment. They reported that some received the drug naloxone, which is used to reverse an overdose.

After investigating, the reporters at the Chillicothe Gazette were able to confirm that it was fentanyl-laced heroin that sent workers to the hospital. Reporters talked with one corrections officer who told them: We were trying to keep up with everything. It was a form of controlled chaos.

The journalists at the Gazette did what good reporters do in a rapidly unfolding incident like this one: They talked to witnesses. They reached out to the institutions involved. They established a hotline. They tracked down a pair of 911 calls, tracing the first call to 8:45 a.m. on Wednesday.

They didn't stop there. They published multiple followup stories. They looked into the prison's history. They found that the institution had a history of high drug use. They tracked down the most recent prison report. They found that Ross Correctional led the State in positive random drug tests in 2015.

Like so much good reporting, these stories were a team effort among journalists at the Gazette. I happened to be at the Gazette that morning around the time the story broke. I talked to Mike Throne, the editor. Mike understands, as all of his reporters do and as the community does, that people don't see the Chillicothe Gazette--people don't see these hard-working reporters, who are not paid a lot of money--not paid anything close to what they earn, frankly--they don't see them as enemies of the people; they see them as serving their community. These reporters do their job. They were informing us, the citizens of their State and this country. They were serving their communities in Chillicothe, Bournville, Circleville, Waverly--all over Southern Ohio. They deserve our respect.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I appreciate what my colleague from Ohio said. I appreciate his comments about Senator McCain and Cindy McCain. I made remarks on the floor earlier about Senator McCain in my tribute to him, as my colleagues are all doing, as we should, and as people have done so well.

I appreciate particularly Senator Portman's comments about the sex trafficking issue that Senator McCain was so interested in, and Cindy really led the way. I saw Cindy at a conference in Cincinnati, Senator Portman's hometown. I live at the other end of the State. Her passion about that issue clearly infected John and his passion about that issue especially. North of Cincinnati, along the 75 corridor and especially in Toledo, we see how troubling that is. He took on so many issues that matter. I thank Rob for mentioning that.

Mr. President, this week, of course, we remember and honor our colleague and an American hero John McCain. He embodied our most cherished values of service and sacrifice, and he understood the principles that make our country great.

One of those principles, as we know, is our First Amendment protections for a free and independent press. Something I always admired about Senator McCain, even before I got to know him well many years ago, was his openness with the journalists, the workaday reporters who were doing their jobs every day and who covered him on behalf of the American people. He didn't hide from the people he served, and he was always willing to stand up for freedom of the press.

When those freedoms came under attack, he stood up and said to journalists: ``The fact is we need you.'' He wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post in January that I would like to quote from. This op-ed was partly in response to the President's declaring several times, repeatedly, that the media are enemies of the people. John McCain put that to rest with these comments:

Ultimately, freedom of information is critical for a

democracy to succeed. . . . Journalists play a major role in

the promotion and protection of democracy and our unalienable

rights, and they must be able to do their jobs freely. Only

truth and transparency can guarantee freedom.

Senator McCain was right. We will miss his moral leadership on this issue and his moral leadership on so many others. It is up to all of us to continue to stand up for the freedom of the press to serve and inform our communities. That is why I want to highlight, like I do every week, yet another story in an Ohio paper informing the public, reported by a journalist serving her community.

Last week, the Dayton Daily News ran a story by staff writer Emily Kronenberger on the opening of the city of Trotwood's new, renovated community and cultural arts center. The facility was in need of major repairs and had been shuttered for a decade. After this major remodeling, the center is reopening and will provide the community with art exhibits, concerts, and classes.

Ms. Kronenberger talked to the Trotwood city manager, who said the new center ``will make impacts on the community and region for decades to come.''

The paper also informed Miami Valley readers about a new partnership with Central State University. The school will have a satellite office in the reopened community center that will offer 4-H youth development programs on everything from agriculture to engineering to scholarship opportunities.

This kind of reporting is what journalists do every single day in Ohio, in Oklahoma, and across this country. They do their jobs: They serve their readers, they serve their viewers, and they serve their communities.

As we pay our respects to Senator McCain this week, let us also recommit ourselves to the values he fought for his entire life. That includes a free and independent press.

Mr. President, Americans are getting pretty tired of how much power special interests have in this town. That is why we created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to look out for the millions of ordinary Americans who don't have armies of lobbyists. The Bureau was supposed to be an independent watchdog--a place free from Wall Street influence, which is pervasive around here pretty much all of the time.

Remember what happened last year when powerful corporations demanded that Congress overturn a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule that guaranteed customers who were harmed by their bank would have their day in court? You might think protecting Americans' right to their day in court is something we would all agree on. Wall Street is so powerful, the Vice President of the United States had to come to this Chamber in the dead of night so that he could break a tie on behalf of Wall Street to vote to repeal.

We have seen in this town a collective amnesia about what happened a decade ago. People forget that a decade ago people lost billions of dollars in wealth. People lost billions of dollars in their businesses. People lost jobs. People lost their homes. Over and over, we have heard those stories about what happened a decade ago. We saw it in our communities. I see it where my wife and I live in Cleveland. Yet the Banking Committee in this Congress, this Senate, seems to have forgotten about what happened 10 years ago. They are already going back to weakening the rules to help Wall Street, as if Wall Street doesn't have enough.

Imagine if the same people who voted to repeal the rule we talked about a moment ago were in charge of deciding whether the Consumer Bureau could start an investigation into one of the big banks or payday lenders or credit bureaus like Equifax. That is what would happen if we put Congress in charge of the Consumer Bureau's budget.

Do we think this current crowd in charge wouldn't do Wall Street's bidding, wouldn't punish the Bureau every time it tries to hold the big banks accountable? That is why it is independent. We don't want Congress to be able to cut its budget every time it goes after the bad guys.

If the Consumer Bureau decides it wants to go after a payday lender that has preyed on veterans and servicemembers outside of Wright- Patterson Air Force Base, if the Consumer Bureau decides that it wants to clamp down on discrimination in auto lending, we don't want Congress at the behest of Wall Street, at the behest of the auto industry--auto dealers in this case--to be able to cut their budget. That is clearly what they do.

This year, under Mick Mulvaney, we have already seen what having a Consumer Bureau that is accountable to Wall Street rather than regular Americans looks like. Mulvaney has canceled enforcement actions against payday lenders. He has gutted the office responsible for going after discriminatory lenders. He encourages big banks to throw even more money at Members of Congress. I believe he went in front of the American Bankers Association--one of the big trade associations. He went in front of them and said: If you want to get your way with Congress, you have to put more money in, you have to give more campaign contributions.

This was the President's appointed head of the Consumer Bureau. Perhaps most despicably, earlier this month, he announced he would no longer--get this--protect servicemembers and their families from shady lenders that tried to cheat them by ending the CFPB's

monitoring for violations of the Military Lending Act.

Just today, the head student lending watchdog at the Consumer Bureau resigned. He said in his letter of resignation that ``it has become clear that consumers no longer have a strong, independent Consumer Bureau on their side.''

Because of Mulvaney, because of the White House looking like a retreat for Wall Street executives, this leader in the Consumer Bureau, who is fighting to protect students who have been defrauded by financial institutions, said that it is ``clear that consumers no longer have a strong, independent Consumer Bureau on their side.''

We created that Bureau 8 years ago. I pushed to include that office, the Student Loan Ombudsman, because I know hard-working families struggle with enormous education loans but rarely get any help from big banks or services or even their own government. The office was meant to be an independent check on the Education Department, which is even more important now that it is run by a Secretary, a billionaire, who doesn't seem to understand or care about the struggles that so many working families face.

Right now, we have surpassed $1.5 trillion--that is $1,500 billion-- in student loan debt in this country. That debt has ripple effects for families for our entire economy. More than 1 million Americans are forced to default on their student loan debt every year. That is 3,000 new defaults every single day. A disproportionate number of those are students who had borrowed to attend a for-profit school--schools that we know often trick and mislead Americans into taking out huge predatory loans; schools that spend way more time recruiting, marketing, advertising, and helping students get loans than they do coaching and mentoring and ultimately helping in the job search for these students when they finish. That is why we need a truly independent watchdog looking out for those students. That was the job of the outgoing Student Loan Ombudsman, but he has not been able to do his job, protecting students, because of Director Mulvaney.

In his resignation, he confirmed what we all suspected--that Mulvaney is not independent. He is working for the same special interests as the rest of this administration. Rather than letting the career staff at CFPB do their jobs enforcing the law, Mulvaney has put a bunch of political lackeys in charge of the Consumer Bureau while independent experts are forced out of the agency.

When the CFPB had an independent Director, it recovered $12 billion in relief for 29 million Americans. They had been harmed by Wells Fargo or a payday lender or a credit bureau like Equifax. Think of that: 29 million Americans had recovered $12 billion from these companies and these banks that had cheated them. The student loan office was able to return $750 million specifically to students who had been preyed upon by for-profit schools or predatory collectors.

Under Mulvaney, the CFPB doesn't do its job. That is why it is so important for the Senate to demand an independent leader to be in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--not Mick Mulvaney, not his protege, Kathy Kraninger. We need someone fighting back against these corporations that take advantage of hard-working families, not taking orders from Wall Street.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I join the chorus of Senators Grassley and Durbin about their proposal.

Wall Street Profits

Madam President, I want to talk about another issue. Today, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation--which is the agency that does such things as every quarter announcing bank profits and bank profitability--issued an assessment of the banking industry. Lo and behold, as a number of us have been saying on this floor week after week, month after month, year and year: It is a great time to be on Wall Street.

Bank profits this second quarter of 2018--we announce it now--were $60 billion, with a b. That is 60,000 million dollars--$60 billion in bank profits. That number is fairly meaningless. It is a really big number. It is hard to grasp, but think about it this way. These bank profits this quarter were up 25 percent from 1 year ago, and it is typical of being able to compare quarter to quarter or year to year that way.

What is fairly stunning about this is that this Congress can't do enough for the banks. First, it was a decade ago, when Congress bailed out the banks. Then, we see bank profits go up and up and up. Congress last year gave a huge tax cut. The financial services industry did better than the rest of the economy with this tax cut, and, interestingly, the big banks did better than the community banks with the tax cut in terms of percentage, per capita--and anyway you measure it--in the amount of money or in assets, whatever.

Then, earlier this year, Congress passed another giveaway to the banks on legislation, another deregulation bill. When you hear ``deregulation'' think that it means that Wall Street gets away with even more. Now we are seeing even bigger profits from the banks.

It is like this. Congress thinks it never can do enough for Wall Street. Every time Wall Street asks for something, Republican leadership--Senator McConnell's office down the hall, Speaker Ryan's office way down the hall, the President of the United States, President Trump--always want to do more for Wall Street, with $60 billion in profits this quarter and 25 percent greater profits than 1 year ago.

Why does this Congress continue to do the bidding of Wall Street at the expense of Main Street?

During the 1\1/2\ years of President Trump, we have seen wages go down. We have seen profits go up. We have seen the stock market go up. We have seen executive compensation go way up. We have seen the banks do especially well. Yet wages, literally since President Trump has taken office, have declined in this country.

So why do we continue to help Wall Street, to shovel more money to Wall Street--more money, Senator Grassley, to the drug companies--and the middle class continues to get squeezed.

I just think it is another lesson when bank profits keep going up, executive compensation keeps going up, profits overall keep going up, but the middle class continues to get squeezed. There is a lesson there.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the work that reporters do as members of a free and independent press is vital to our country and to our communities.

It is why, last week, in an unprecedented action, nearly 300 newspapers all over the country--a dozen or so in my State--came together to stand up for the free press and defend the First Amendment. There were 300 newspapers that wrote editorials--all independently written, of course, with all different takes on this--to advocate for a free press and to defend the First Amendment.

The Chagrin Valley Times, which is not far from where I live in Northeast Ohio, wrote:

We are indeed your lens into your community. We are not

your enemy.

Clearly, this was a takeoff on the President's comments that the media are the enemies of the people.

The Athens NEWS, from Southeast Ohio, wrote: ``Good reporting often succeeds in righting wrongs and making things better for people.''

The Akron Beacon Journal, one of the great newspapers in this State, wrote:

Power . . . belongs to the people. The press thus received

extraordinary protection because of its capacity to inform

readers and check the powerful.

It is shameful that journalists have to defend their First Amendment rights, our First Amendment rights, our Nation's First Amendment rights just so they can do their jobs. As these community papers show us, nothing could be further from the truth. That is why I want to highlight yet another story by an Ohio paper, informing the public, that has been reported by a journalist who serves her community.

CityBeat Cincinnati describes itself as having been ``a voice in Greater Cincinnati for nearly a quarter of a century now, publishing a print edition weekly, and producing regular content throughout the week online to try to help keep you informed of what is happening in your city.''

A great example of that content was in a story last week that was reported by Maija Zummo on the Black Family Reunion that took place in Cincinnati and its celebrating its 30th year. The event was founded in 1989 by the iconic Dr. Dorothy Height, who served as President of the National Council of Negro Women for more than 50 years.

As Ms. Zummo reported, the festival brings together community groups, performers, and small businesses to ``celebrate the values and strengths of the black family.'' Ms. Zummo's reporting informed Cincinnati readers about the events they could attend that weekend, including a parade, festival, church service, and other community activities.

That kind of reporting is what journalists do every day, every week, every month across Ohio and around the country. They serve their readers, their viewers, and their communities. They deserve our respect. They don't deserve a President who calls reporters, journalists, and all kinds of people in this business the enemies of the people. Again, reporters serve their viewers, their readers, and their communities. They serve all of us. They deserve our respect.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, as a number of my colleagues did, last week when the Senate wasn't in session, as I always do, I returned to my beloved State of Ohio and went home to Cleveland and spent much of last week going around the State.

I love Pope Francis's comment when he exhorted his parish priests to go out

and smell like the flock. That says to me how important it is to go out and listen to people and listen to people's concerns.

I was in Lima talking to workers about pensions and about their work manufacturing. I was in Findlay with the mayor and a number of providers, and we listened to people talk about what they are doing to address the opioid crisis in Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton, and around the State.

What strikes me perhaps more than anything is the dignity of work; that whether you see someone waiting tables in a diner, whether you see someone at a plant working on an assembly line, whether you see somebody doing construction, whether you see somebody in a school or in a hospital, taking care of children in a school, taking care of patients in a hospital, what comes through to me is just the dignity of work.

What concerns me is, this body doesn't really understand that. They don't understand people want a chance to make a living, they want a decent wage, they want a chance to raise their children in a safe neighborhood, and they want access to housing.

We know one out of four people who rent in this country spend more than half their income for housing, and we know what that means if something goes wrong in their lives, if their car breaks down, if their child gets sick, that they can lose their apartment, they can be foreclosed on, they can be evicted.

To me, what came through this trip around the State this week more than anything was how this body is so out of touch with what work means; the honor, the dignity of work, how honorable it is; that people, whether they work with their brains or their hands or their brains and their hands, as most people do, that work should be rewarded.

We are seeing workers work harder than ever before. We are seeing corporate profits go up. We are seeing executive compensation explode. We are seeing productivity rise. Yet workers' wages are flat.

In fact, during the last year and a half, while the stock market is up and the President brags about job growth--and we all are happy with job growth--what we don't hear said, which is true, is that workers' wages have been stagnant or have gone down. Workers are actually making less than they were a year and a half ago.

We know that since 2010, since the auto rescue, we have seen job growth every quarter, every month since 2010. We saw greater job growth 3 years ago than we have the last 2 years, but we have not seen wage growth, and I will give you one of the reasons for that.

Congress passed a tax bill less than a year ago, and that tax bill, first of all, blew a hole in the budget. That is a problem because now my Republican colleagues want to raise the retirement age for Medicare, want to cut spending for the cleanup of Lake Erie, want to cut spending on things like LIHEAP, the low-income energy heating assistance plan for seniors who are struggling with the decision, do I pay for my medicine or my heat or do I have enough food to eat. So it is a question of this Congress has not really--they passed a tax bill that blows a hole in the deficit. At the same time, think about this one provision in the tax bill.

If you are making cars in Youngstown, OH, Lordstown, or in Toledo, if you are making the Jeep or the Chevy Cruze in Youngstown, and you pay a 21-percent tax rate--that corporation--but if that corporation decides to move overseas, they pay a tax rate of 10.5 percent. So, in other words, because of the tax bill the President signed fewer than 12 months ago, the Federal Government is saying, we are going to give a corporation a 50-percent-off coupon on their taxes if they move overseas.

So what did GM just do? The same day GM announced more than 1,000 workers in Lordstown, OH, were laid off--the same day--they announced they were going to build a plant in Mexico to make the Chevy Blazer.

Now, I asked the CEO of GM, if you are going to lay off people in Lordstown, if you are making fewer Chevy Cruzes, why don't you retool, invest some of those billions of dollars in tax savings in Lordstown, OH, in the Mahoning Valley and Youngstown or at the GM plant in Defiance or at the GM plant in Toledo or in some of your GM supply chain, GM suppliers? Why don't you invest there instead of in Mexico? She didn't say this was the reason, but it is pretty clear because the special interests in this body, meeting in the majority leader's office, meeting in the Speaker's office, meeting in the White House-- and the White House looks like a retreat for corporate executives if we have ever seen any such thing--made a decision to give tax breaks to companies that move overseas. So more and more companies are going to see it is attractive. They like that idea of a 50-percent-off coupon to shut down production in Mansfield, OH, and move to Vietnam or to China or to South Korea or to Turkey or to Mexico.

Imagine that. Imagine both the economic illiteracy and the moral debauchery, if you will, of setting up a tax bill that says: We will give you a lower tax rate if you move overseas. I mean, what kind of a Congress passes a bill that says if you move overseas, we will lower your tax rate? That is what Congress did. It was already bad enough before we passed this last tax bill, but now we are seeing what I think is going to happen more and more. GM makes a decision: They lay off people in Youngstown, paying a 21-percent tax rate, they move overseas, and they are paying a 10.5-percent tax rate. I don't understand the logic. I don't understand the morality of that.

I hope this Congress will look at my legislation, which will turn that around. It is our jobs and car act that simply will say: If you buy an American car--and 100 different models of cars and trucks qualify for this--if you buy an American car or an American truck, meaning mostly made in the United States, assembled here, you will get $3,500 off the price of that car at the dealership, and that is, in essence, paid for by making the tax rate we charge U.S. companies that move overseas--charge that same tax rate that we charge in this country. That is how you pay for it.

It makes sense. It would mean more jobs in Ohio. It would matter for the dignity of work because autoworkers and the supply chain and steelworkers, glassmakers, and people making car seats in Northwest Ohio--all of them will have more jobs and will be able to provide for their families in a way that they really believe the American dream is all about.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, a free, independent press is vital to our democracy, and it is vital to communities from Kansas to Ohio and across this country.

Reporters are not enemies of the people. They do vital work not just in Washington but around the country. I want to continue my, more or less, weekly honoring of local reporters who are doing their jobs, who understand that a free press is crucial to a free country and a free people.

This past week, I have been all over Ohio, from talking about investing in national security jobs in Dayton to meeting with local leaders tackling the opioid epidemic in Findlay, to promoting auto jobs in Lima, Toledo, and Cleveland. At every one of these stops, I talk with Ohio reporters who are out there doing their jobs, covering the important stories in their communities. Local journalists do that kind of reporting in every community in Ohio, in Kansas, and across this country.

Earlier this month, the Circleville Herald--a town 25, 30 miles south of Columbus, straight down U.S. 23--ran a story on the upcoming Veterans' Benefits Day in Pickaway County on August 25, reported by local reporter Heather Barr. The reporter talked with the executive director of the Pickaway County Veterans' Services Office, who said that veterans don't realize there is someone in their county to help them.

That is why they set up this event, to show veterans all the services available through the local county Veterans' Services Office and the Chillicothe Veterans' Administration Medical Center. I would add, Ohio is one of the lucky States in the country. Not nearly every State does this. Every single county has a Veterans' Service Office whose only function is to serve veterans.

Through its work, the Circleville Herald and local reporters like Ms. Barr are informing their community about ways veterans can get assistance with the benefits they have earned--everything from help applying for benefits to transportation to the Chillicothe VA or the Dayton VA or wherever, to VA appointments in local community-based outpatient clinics. That is the kind of work Ms. Barr does. That is the kind of work local communities' journalists do all over this country. This kind of reporting is what journalists do every day in my State. So when I hear the President of the United States call journalists enemies of the people, I think of Heather Barr; I think of reporters in Cleveland and Akron and smaller cities like Mansfield and smaller towns yet like Van Wert and Wapakoneta. They serve their readers. They serve their viewers. They serve their communities. They deserve our respect, not the venom of the President of the United States.

Auto Industry

Mr. President, over the past week, I have traveled my State visiting communities that rely on the American auto industry--Ford in Lima, Jeep in Toledo, the Ford engine plant in Cleveland. This Monday, I will go to Youngstown, which relies on GM, and Lordstown. I can personally attest to how great these cars are.

A number of members of my family, including my wife and me, for years drove a Chevy Cruz made by union workers in Lordstown, near Youngstown, OH. A couple years ago, my wife and I each bought Jeep Cherokees made by union labor in Toledo. I can speak to how great these cars are because in October of 2016, a young man ran a stop sign--I was in the passenger seat--hit the Jeep right where I sat and knocked this Jeep 30, 40 feet off the road. Neither I nor the gentleman driving, Will Young, were injured because of American-made steel, the American-made Jeep itself made in Toledo, and because of the U.S. Government, with airbags and seatbelts and all the kinds of rules they have set for auto safety.

We know American cars, made by American workers with American steel, are the best in the world. Too often, though, American workers and American suppliers aren't competing on a level playing field. Last fall, in the tax giveaway to corporations, Republicans in Congress created--believe it or not, they didn't close loopholes that encouraged companies to move overseas; they created a big, new incentive to send jobs overseas. They allow companies to pay 10.5 percent in taxes on their overseas profits while in the United States they pay a 23-percent corporate tax rate.

What it says to a company in Mansfield, OH, or Ravenna, OH, or Zanesville, OH, that shuts down and thinks about moving overseas: You have a 21-percent corporate rate if you are in Youngstown, but if you move to Reynosa, Mexico, you have a 10.5-percent rate. So what the Republican leadership said when they passed this tax bill was--it was like handing out a 50-percent-off coupon to companies that send jobs overseas. Why would we do that? We see the consequences of bad trade policy, bad tax policy at plants across Ohio and in communities in my State.

Earlier this summer--pretty unbelievable--on the very same day General Motors laid off the entire second shift, more than 1,000 workers--the same day General Motors laid off more than 1,000 workers in Lordstown, OH, a 50-year-old plant there, and it is a historic plant, we got word the same day that GM plans to build its new Chevy Blazer in Mexico. The company is laying off their Ohio plant. They could have retooled. They got billions of dollars in tax cuts under the Republican tax bill. They could have used some of that money to retool in Lordstown with a trained workforce. Instead, they are bypassing American workers. They are setting up the plant in Mexico. They are sending more jobs to Mexico. Announcements like GM's are proof we need to do more to keep auto jobs in the United States. Stop rewarding companies that send jobs overseas.

A moment ago, I said it is like giving them a 50-percent-off coupon on their tax bills. That is why, this month, I introduced legislation to help us level the playing field with foreign competition by making it more affordable to American-made cars and trucks and revoking-- revoking--that special GOP tax cut for auto companies that send jobs overseas.

The American Cars, American Jobs Act, two simple parts. First, customers who buy cars made in the United States get $3,500 off. If you by a new car made by American workers with principally American components, you get $3,500 off. The discount would apply to some 100 cars, trucks, and SUVs, including all passenger vehicles assembled in Ohio.

Second, companies that cut the number of American jobs they had on the day the GOP tax bill passed and add those jobs overseas lose a tax break they get on some of those overseas profits. It says that when an auto company chooses to send jobs overseas, they lose that 50-percent- off coupon. They pay the full 21 percent.

So, again, GM in Lordstown pays a 21-percent corporate tax rate, but thanks to the President and the Republican Congress, if they move to Mexico, they pay a 10.5-percent corporate tax rate. How morally bankrupt is that and how stupid is that economic policy? So 21 percent if they are in the United States, 10.5 percent--half off--if they go to Mexico.

I heard from Ohioans this past week about what our legislation would mean to their plant. Mike Copeland, president of UAW Local 1219 in Lima, said:

We need a level playing field to compete with foreign

manufacturers. . . . The U.S. auto industry has made a

magnificent recovery on the backs of hard working people

across the country.

I would count in that list of hard-working people certainly the autoworkers at the assembly plant, certainly the workers--union and nonunion--in the supply chain for that plant but also American taxpayers who helped to bail out the auto industry. We all got our money back as taxpayers from the auto industry, but, nonetheless, they helped in a big way.

He goes on to say:

We are in the fight of our lives for every job, every day;

the American Cars, American Jobs Act will help us fight for

those jobs.

Jeep worker Mario Duran, in Toledo, said:

It's important to my family, it's important to the whole

community here that we keep selling our American-made

product. If we don't have people buying our cars, we lose

jobs.

It is not just workers. I heard from mayors and chambers of commerce that back this bill. The mayor of Lima, Mayor Berger, came to the union hall in Lima, joining the president of the chamber of commerce, and spoke up for this bill. Jed Metzger, the president of the Lima Chamber of Commerce, told me our bill ``would make our American companies more competitive with foreign auto workers and make it more costly for companies to choose to offshore their production overseas.'' So we are incentivizing people to produce here, and we are penalizing them if they shut down production and move overseas.

The Toledo Blade editorial board agrees. They called our bill ``a solid proposal to support the U.S. auto industry.'' It rewards consumers who support American manufacturing in this country and who believe it is patriotic and good public policy.

The world was reminded 8 years ago to never bet against the American auto industry and the workers who are the engine behind it. We invested in saving this industry. Yet we continue to have a trade and tax policy that undermines it. In fact, it is worse. It is worse than it was 2 years ago because of this break. Again, if you are in Youngstown, you pay a 21-percent tax rate; if you move to Mexico, you pay a 10.5-tax rate.

That 50-percent-off tax coupon given to companies that go overseas just makes no sense. Let's come together in this legislation to change that. Let's level the playing field for American cars and for American workers.

I yield the floor.

Cloture Motion