Floor Statements

Mr. President, I thank Senators Whitehouse and Blumenthal for their remarks.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks, I yield the floor to Senators Johnson and Markey.

Madam President, I wish to thank my colleagues Senator Warner and Senator Blumenthal for their words on the Senate floor-- Senator Warner's words yesterday especially, defending Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in his leadership on the Senate Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation. Senator Warner is absolutely right that we must protect the integrity of the Justice Department's independent investigation.

Congress needs to make clear that there are redlines. Any attempt to fire Robert Mueller, to shut down the investigation, or to presumptively pardon key witnesses essential to the investigation would be an abuse of power and a direct threat to the rule of law and to our constitutional system.

Ohio's Ukrainian community knows the impact of unchecked Russian aggression in Russia's effort to undermine democracy around the world. Getting to the bottom of Russian interference and protecting our future elections from that interference are critical.

My priority is getting to the bottom of what happened so that our democratic process is upheld and so we can move forward with the business we were sent here to do--creating jobs, combatting the opioid crisis, as Senators Johnson, Markey, and I will speak about in a moment, and helping middle-class families. Any efforts to delay that conclusion or interfere in the investigation, I believe, will not be tolerated by Senators in either party.

Thanks to Senator Warner for making that clear. Thanks to my colleagues in both parties who take this seriously. All of us have had serious conversations with Members of both parties to discuss what all this means, and thank you for all of us working together to complete the independent Senate investigation. It is important that we make clear to the American people that this is not a partisan issue. It is about the integrity of our elections, about protecting our country from foreign powers.

Any attempt to discredit Robert Mueller and his investigation and to turn it into a partisan issue makes us less safe as a nation. Let's allow the Justice Department and the special counsel to do their jobs. Let's get back to doing ours.

Madam President, as we await Senator Markey's and Senator Johnson's remarks, I wish to set the stage. The CDC released a new report last night showing a massive increase in the number of Americans dying from drug overdoses.

My State is second to the Presiding Officer's State. It has the second highest rate of deaths per capita in the country. In my State of Ohio, unfortunately, far too many people die from opioid overdoses than any other State in country. Families are torn apart. Children lose parents. Parents lose sons and daughters.

The CDC pins much of the blame of this epidemic on this relatively new deadly synthetic fentanyl. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin. Senator Capito knows that, as do Senators Johnson and Markey. All of us in the Senate are aware of that.

This drug is being illegally trafficked into this country from Mexico and China. We have a bill to stop this today. The INTERDICT Act. I want to thank Senator Markey for his leadership on this bill and also my colleague Senator Portman for his support. Senator Portman and I have been working on a number of issues across party lines for months and months. It would provide more funds for Customs and Border Protection to screen packages effectively and safely, to stop fentanyl whenever possible before it reaches Akron, Toledo, Dayton, or the smaller cities of Chillicothe, Mansfield, and Zanesville.

This passed the House with only two or three negative votes. It has the support of major law enforcement organizations, including sheriffs and police officers. Our law enforcement officials, better than anybody, see the devastation that fentanyl causes our communities. They know the risk our officers face dealing with this deadly substance. That is why this bill needs to pass into law.

Just this week, the National FOP, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the Police Assisted Addiction Recovery Initiative--a recent phenomenon, unfortunately--all publicly asked us to pass the bill.

Americans are dying in record numbers. Life expectancy in our country--I believe, for the first time in the lifetimes of any of us-- actually dropped last year. Think about that.

We have made progress, as I mentioned, in this body. I wear a pin on my lapel of a canary in a bird cage. The mine workers in West Virginia, Ohio, and elsewhere would take this canary down to the mines. If the canary died, the mine worker was on his own. He didn't have a union strong enough or a government that cared enough to help him. In those days, people lived 45 years on average--for a person born in the United States in 1900.

Today we live 30 years longer for a whole host of public health reasons--from Medicare to Medicaid, to safe drinking laws, to clean air, to minimum wage--all the things that we do. For the first time, I believe, in our lifetime, life expectancy actually has dropped because of drug overdoses for the second year in a row, and it is in large part because of these overdose deaths.

Why shouldn't we take steps today to stop this? We can do this by putting the INTERDICT Act on the President's desk, immediately giving law enforcement the tools they need to keep fentanyl out of the country and off our streets.

Of course.

Madam President, will the Senator yield?

Madam President, I thank Senator Markey for his leadership on this issue. This has gotten this far because of his efforts in so many ways.

I want to enter into the Record three letters that are dated yesterday and today. Actually, one is from the National Fraternal Order of Police, signed by Chuck Canterbury, their national president, in support of this bill, with a very persuasive, passionate laying out of reasons it matters. The second is a letter from the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, signed by Dominick Stokes. Mr. Stokes is a longtime friend of mine. The third letter is from the Police Assisted Addiction Recovery Initiative group, signed by Frederick Ryan, all making endorsements for this bill.

I ask unanimous consent those three letters be printed in the Record.

I think it is pretty clear how important this is. This bill got, I believe, 2 or maybe 3 negative votes out of 400-some in the House of Representatives. There is no organization I know of that opposes it. I hear from people in my State consistently about how important this is, from police organizations to parents, to individual police officers and county sheriffs and all, and deputy sheriffs.

There is just no reason we shouldn't be able to do this before we go home for Christmas. There are a lot of things we should do before we go home for Christmas, including the Children's Health Insurance Program, but this is one we know we can do. There seems to be no substantive disagreement from any large number of groups or individuals that I can see, so I am hopeful we can move forward with this in the next few minutes.

Yes.

Madam President, I thank Senator Markey and hope we can work things out with Senator Johnson on this issue.

Yesterday, Madam President, a bunch of Members of Congress, with healthcare paid for by taxpayers, went to the White House and celebrated a handout for corporations that sends jobs overseas--companies that shut down in Mansfield, in Zanesville, in Lima, and Toledo moved to Wuhan and Sheshan and Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Families here in America, at the same time--I am still incredulous about this. Families in this country, at the same time--in this State of Virginia, just a few miles from here--are getting letters in the mail saying their kids are about to be kicked off their health insurance through something that was bipartisan and never interrupted for 20 years since Chairman Hatch and Senator Rockefeller and Senator Kennedy wrote this bill to create CHIP--and a number of us worked on it in the House of Representatives--because Congress hasn't done its job.

Think about that. Because Congress hasn't done its job, we are about to go home for Christmas--most of us--and those who don't celebrate Christmas are about to go home for the holidays and celebrate the new year. My grandchildren are coming from Columbus, and another one is coming from the Virgin Islands with his father--our son and his daughter-in-law. We are going to go home, and our families have health insurance, but Members of Congress who get good health insurance paid for by taxpayers are willing to leave here and not reauthorize, not continue the Children's Health Insurance Program. To make it worse, several States, including Virginia--Ohio is in a little better position because there is a little more money left over to take care of this-- but letters are going out in State after State after State to parents saying: Sorry, the health insurance for your children is going to expire. The health insurance for your children will no longer be there.

Imagine you are a parent, and you get this letter. You are just vaguely aware that Congress is fighting about something. You are vaguely aware of the hard-heartedness of a whole lot of people in this Congress. You are vaguely aware that a bunch of politicians-- privileged, elected officials who make good salaries and make good benefits--are going to turn their backs on you. You don't really think much about that. All you know is, you take this piece of paper, tear open this envelope, and you start reading this letter, and you see, oh, my gosh, the insurance for my children.

Now, overwhelmingly, these parents are people who are working. They are earning $8, $10, $12, $15 an hour. They are not making enough that they can afford insurance for their families. They are not working at a job where insurance is provided as part of the compensation your employer is paying you. So that is why the Children's Health Insurance Program is so important.

A new report from the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families reports that 1.9 million children could lose coverage in January--1.9 million children. Almost all of them have a mother or a father who will open a letter and see that, oh, my gosh, the insurance for my daughter, for my son is about to expire. That is 1.9 million in January and another 1 million will lose insurance by the end of February.

Parents will panic, parents will be confused, and parents, to be sure, will have their Christmas ruined by this. Think about those families getting that letter. It should be a joyful time of year for families, spending time with family, enjoying the holidays. Imagine checking that mailbox and kind of thinking maybe this is a Christmas card and opening it and finding out it is that letter. Imagine telling your daughter: I am sorry, honey. Santa is not going to bring much this year. We don't make a lot of money--you know that--but we will not have any presents under the tree. Then you have to

look into your children's eyes--you have to look into your son's eyes, you have to look into your daughter's eyes, and you hope they don't see the worry in your eyes because you just got this letter. Now you are wondering how you will afford to take him or her to the doctor if he or she gets sick. These are often families with two working parents who, as I said, aren't lucky enough to work for an employer who provides insurance.

These are often families with children who have special needs. Like Crystal Lett and her son Noble, a first-grader in Dublin, OH, which is a suburb just west and northwest of Columbus. Crystal and her son Noble--I met them. This is obviously Noble. I met Noble and his mother Crystal in Washington this spring when they came all the way from Ohio to talk about what CHIP means to their family.

Noble was born with a rare genetic disorder. He needs three therapy sessions a week. He needs daily hormone injections to treat his condition. His medications run about $1,500 a month.

I talked to Crystal again at the end of last month. She and her family are scared to death about what will happen to them if Congress doesn't save CHIP. She said CHIP is ``the difference between living a middle class lifestyle, or being part of the poverty line.'' It is the difference between a middle-class lifestyle or being part of the poverty line.

Over the last several weeks, Congress was busy. Congress had the time to hand out massive tax cuts to the richest Americans and the biggest corporations but didn't have time to help these families. Some of you may have been in this Chamber a few nights ago when I pointed down the hall to Senator McConnell's office, the Senate Republican leader, and described the lobbyists who went in and out of his office to get these tax breaks. It was the lobbyists from the oil companies and from the oil industry. There were lobbyists walking in and out of Senator McConnell's office, the leader's office, from the tobacco companies. The lobbyists from the big drug companies and the lobbyists from Wall Street were going in and out of his office.

When you look down the hall to Senator McConnell's office, do you know who didn't come out of his office? There were no lobbyists for the Children's Health Insurance Program because, you know what, children like Noble don't have lobbyists. They can't hire lobbyists. Parents are just hoping to keep their head above water because they have a child who needs medical attention, and any child obviously can need medical attention. That is the importance of CHIP.

So CHIP doesn't have a lobbyist. CHIP has people like Crystal Lett, who stands up for her family, who stands up for her children, but she can't come to Washington full time. She came here with a delegation from Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus.

Congress had time to hand out these massive tax cuts, but they don't have time for Noble Lett. It is a disgrace. It is a program that was bipartisan, and it has always been bipartisan. It was voted out of committee bipartisanly, but I guess the right crowd of lobbyists hasn't visited Senator McConnell down the hall in his office. It is despicable.

We passed a bipartisan CHIP extension out of the Finance Committee. It is ready to go. If Republican leaders would put it on the floor today, it would pass. I assume it would pass with at least 90 votes. There is no excuse for this delay.

There is talk the House is going to pass a 3-month CHIP extension. We have never done that. We have extended CHIP 1 year, 2 years, 3 years. This is going to get a 5-year extension. That is what we ought to do. They are going to do a 3-month extension.

Three months provides no certainty to the States that are running CHIP. It provides no certainty to Crystal Lett to take care of Noble and manage his healthcare. It provides no certainty to anybody. The Presiding Officer's State of Alabama is already taking steps to close down their programs and freeze enrollment. I know Senator Strange doesn't want that to happen, but I also know Senate Republicans need to talk to their leader to make this happen.

States have to give families a heads-up so these parents have time to do what they can. Maybe some of these parents can find an alternative source of coverage, maybe they are going to fit in one more doctor's appointment before their coverage lapses. Think of that. You get this letter in the mail saying the insurance for your children is about to expire, so what do you do? You start dialing the hospital and dialing the doctor's office because you have CHIP coverage for another month or another 5 weeks or whatever, and you start scheduling any possible appointment you can, the Christmas season notwithstanding.

Providing a 3-month extension doesn't solve this problem; it just makes the situation more complicated. This body can pass massive permanent tax cuts, but they can't give families certainty? I know the tax cuts are permanent for corporations, and I know they are temporary for individual people in this country. Of course, this Congress--as special-interest controlled as it is--first takes care of corporations, but it would be nice if they gave some certainty to these children's families.

I want my colleagues to explain to the Crystal Letts in your State-- because every State has thousands of concerned parents who don't know what to do with the expiration of this. My State has 209,000 children who rely on this program.

Senator Hatch said last month: We are going to get it done. Now we are hearing that Senator McConnell is only going to let us vote on a 3- month extension.

This is about whose side you are on. Do we work for corporations that send our jobs overseas, or do we work for families, such as Crystal Lett and her son Noble? Do we work for families who might wake up on Christmas morning without health insurance? I guess the answer is pretty clear: Most people in this body are working for large corporations that are getting huge tax cuts and that send their jobs overseas, and they are turning their backs on those families who need us to simply do our jobs and pass this extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to this special interest, tax breaks for the rich, trickle-down economics bill that history shows doesn't work.

I want to start by thanking Senator Wyden from Oregon, the leader on our side--the Finance Committee has done very good work--and Gideon Bragin in my office who has been one of the tax reform experts in this body. I want to thank both of them.

This bill should have been an opportunity for all of us to work together to put money in the pockets of working

people. It is pretty simple. Instead of cutting taxes for the middle class, though, Washington chose to cut taxes for millionaires and corporations and pay for it by cutting Medicare and kicking people off their health insurance.

It ought to be pretty simple. If we want to cut taxes--if we want to talk about cutting taxes for the middle class--if we want to cut taxes for the middle class, then let's pass a bill to cut taxes for the middle class instead of giving the money to corporations and the richest CEOs and relying on a bank shot, hoping it trickles down. Cut out the middleman. That is what my colleagues claim to want. That is what the President said to us and the country that he wanted, but that is not what this bill does. This isn't a middle-class tax cut--not even close.

According to the Tax Policy Center, 83 percent--you see a Monopoly man here on this chart--83 percent of the benefits in this tax bill by the end of the decade go to the wealthiest 1 percent in this country. Imagine, 83 percent of the benefits go to the richest 1 percent of people in this country. That is even worse than the Senate bill passed--which wasn't that great--earlier this month. It was already pretty bad. Sixty-two percent of the bill's benefits would have gone to the top 1 percent of households by the end of the decade. Apparently, 62 percent wasn't good enough for the Republican members of the conference committee. They thought 83 percent of the benefits--83 percent of the benefits--should go to the richest 1 percent in this country, so the bill has actually gotten worse and worse and worse for middle-class families.

How did the bill get this bad? It got this bad through massive, permanent tax cuts for the wealthy, for so-called passthrough businesses and corporations, which mostly benefit the richest people in this country. It got this bad through paltry tax cuts for some middle- class families that expire after a few years.

Get this. The corporate tax cuts are permanent. They last forever. The tax cuts for individuals, inadequate and immodest as they are, expire after a few years. Gee, I wonder why they did that. It was through a new way of calculating inflation called Chained CPI, which will primarily hurt middle-class families. That doesn't even take into account the millions of Americans--my colleague from Pennsylvania was part of it; in the middle of the night they put a new provision in this bill that will cost 13 million Americans their health insurance. So 13 million Americans will lose insurance under this bill.

All kinds of elected officials, all kinds of us in the House and Senate have insurance paid for by taxpayers, and my colleagues are willing to take insurance away from 13 million people, most of whom have jobs. They don't have jobs that pay what we make. They don't have health insurance like we have. They don't get pensions like we have. They are making $8, $10, $12 an hour and can't afford insurance. We, as privileged elected officials, are going to take insurance away from 13 million people, and at the same time it will raise insurance premiums 10 percent--not 10 percent over time, but 10 percent a year. If you are paying $500 a month in insurance now, you will pay $550 the next year, and you will pay more than $600 the following year.

It didn't have to be this way. Our door, as Democrats, has always been open. Democrats represent half this country. Democrats wanted a seat at the table and wanted to help write a bill. Let me illustrate.

A number of us in the Finance Committee in both parties, including my colleague from Ohio, Senator Portman, and Senator Toomey, Senator Wyden, and others, were invited to the White House to meet with the President to talk about the tax reform bill. I presented the President two bills I have been working on. One was the Patriot Corporation Act, which was pretty simple. It says that if corporations do the right thing--if they pay good wages, if they provide good health insurance and pension benefits for their employees, and if they keep their production in the United States of America--they get lower tax rates.

The other bill, called the Working Families Relief Act, is also pretty simple. It puts money directly in the pockets of people making $25,000, $50,000, and $75,000 a year. The President of the United States looked at me and said: I like the Patriot Corporation Act, and I like the Working Families Tax Relief Act.

After the hour-and-a-half meeting, which was witnessed by a dozen Senators in both parties and a number of his Cabinet officials, including Secretary Mnuchin in the Cabinet room at the White House, I walked up to the President and said: Thank you for your interest. I handed him and his chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn--whom I am proud to say is from Cleveland--copies of the bill.

Then, something started to happen. Then the meetings started in Mitch McConnell's office. For people who don't work here and live here and see this, I would point out that down the hall, 100 feet, is Senator McConnell's office. Pass the Ohio clock--that is my State; pass the Ohio clock, and 100 feet down the hall is Senator McConnell's office.

The meetings started in Senator McConnell's office. The President of the United States said that he liked the idea of the Patriot Corporation Act, liked the idea of the Working Families Relief Act, but then he turned it over to Senator McConnell. Do you know what happened? Wall Street lobbyist after Wall Street lobbyist walked in that door and out that door; tobacco lobbyist after tobacco lobbyist walked in that door and out that door; oil company lobbyist after oil company lobbyist walked in that door and out that door; drug company lobbyists from all over the country walked in that door and out that door.

They walked in that door. They didn't literally carry bags of money out that door after they made their points and made their pitches, but they carried provisions in the tax bill that will make their employers bags of money. They didn't carry bags of money themselves. That would be uncouth. But they sure wrote provisions in this tax bill that provide bags of money for their companies--for the tobacco companies, for Wall Street, for the oil companies, for the drug companies.

Over and over and over, Republicans made clear--not that they would pass the Patriot Corporation Act even though the President had said that he liked it, not to pass legislation like the Working Families Tax Relief Act even though the President had said that he liked it; they made clear that they are benefiting one class of people--the wealthiest Americans, corporate CEOs, board members, and stockholders who see their profits rise and grow their businesses when they ship jobs overseas.

Remember, we have said many times here as we have tried to end this tax loophole that if you shut down production in Mansfield, OH, or you shut down production in Hamilton or Zanesville or Chillicothe or Lima and you move it overseas, you get a tax break. They open a factory there and ship it back into the United States of America.

This bill didn't fix it. It didn't close that loophole. It didn't fix that. It made it worse. It greased the skids for those companies to shut down faster in Mansfield, Lima, Chillicothe, and Zanesville, OH, and move their production overseas. They get bigger bonuses, they make bigger profits, and they get bigger stock dividends.

Republican leaders like to claim that somehow, if you give a big corporate tax increase, if you cut corporate taxes as this bill does, about 40 percent, $4,000 would end up in the pockets of every working man and woman in this country; workers would get a $4,000 raise. Of course, nobody believed them, but that is what they said: They would get a $4,000 raise.

Do you know why I know that is not true? Because history shows that anytime they get big tax cuts, anytime they bring dollars from overseas, the money doesn't go into employees' pockets. It doesn't usually go to create jobs. It goes to give more benefits to the executives.

The other reason I know that is not going to happen--that these dollars will not go to employees and not go to investing in more jobs-- is that their corporate pals let the cat out of the bag and made clear they won't. CEOs from the largest corporations, already on record, state plainly that they are not raising wages; they are not going to hire more workers.

What are they going to do with this windfall? I know this will come as a shock. They are going to keep it for themselves.

Imagine, these CEOs in and out of Senator McConnell's office--the drug companies, Wall Street, tobacco companies, oil companies, all the others. Believe it or not, the CEOs of these corporations are already making $8 million, $10 million, $12 million--some are making $20 million a year. That is not enough for them. Why would that possibly be enough? If you are making only $20 million a year, you have to do something to juice it a little bit, so they will keep that money for themselves. They will do bigger bonuses, they will do stock buybacks, and they will do dividends.

End this charade. I have heard all this happy talk on the floor about how this is going to make Americans more competitive and how it will trickle down to the middle class. If you want to do a middle-class tax cut, do a middle-class tax cut. Don't bank-shot it. Don't take out the middleman. Don't give it to corporations and say: Please, oh please, oh please, give us a middle-class tax break. It never works that way.

Republican leaders had a chance to work across the aisle. I heard Senator Toomey say that Democrats didn't want to be involved. I heard Senator Cornyn say that Democrats didn't want to be involved. I like those two gentlemen. I have worked particularly with Senator Cornyn on a number of things. We are working on a couple of issues right now. They know that is not true. They sat in that White House meeting. They heard the President of the United States say to me and to Senator Casey and to Senator McCaskill and to Senator Stabenow and to Senator Wyden and to a couple others--they heard us offer reasonable proposals. The President was agreeable. Many of them were part of his campaign. Candidate Trump was saying a lot of these things during the campaign. But then, lo and behold, they said: Democrats don't want to be a part of this. Well, not exactly.

We had a bill to expand the child tax credit. We had a plan to reward companies that create jobs here. All that got jettisoned down the hall in Senator McConnell's office. Down this hall, down this hall in Senator McConnell's office, 100 feet away, is where these deals were cut--these deals with the drug companies and oil companies and tobacco companies and Wall Street lobbyists going in and out of his office. I didn't see all of them come out, but I am guessing they had really big smiles on their faces.

These massive cuts for corporations come at a heavy price for the middle class. When 1 percent gets richer and richer and richer, we know the middle class shrinks. These massive cuts come at a heavy price.

This bill will explode the deficit. We know that. Even my colleagues call themselves deficit hawks when there is a Democratic President, but following the enforcer in chief, the Wall Street Journal editorial page--they call themselves deficit hawks when there is a Democratic President, but all of a sudden, they say: We will grow out of the deficit.

We know this bill will explode the deficit. We know what the plan is to deal with the deficit. Do you know what they will do? They will steal the money Americans have paid into Social Security and Medicare. How do we know that? I am not just saying it. As a progressive Democrat in this body, I am not just saying: Of course they are going to cut Social Security and Medicare. I think that, but do you know why I am sure of it? I am always pretty sure of it because that is what they do. But I am sure of it because they said that. They made their plans crystal clear. Speaker Ryan said that he wants to turn next year to what he calls entitlement reform.

There are retirement and health benefits that people earn over a lifetime of work--social insurance. You pay into Medicare over the course of your life. When you need Medicare, when you are 65, you get this insurance. You pay into Social Security your entire life. You either get survivors benefits for your children or you get disability or you get retirement when you reach the age of 66, more or less. You pay into unemployment insurance. If you need it--God willing, you don't, but if you need it, you get help. That is what social insurance is. You pay for it, and you get help from society. It is societywide social insurance. But the Ways and Means chairman, Kevin Brady, said that the next stop for Republicans is to tackle entitlements.

Here is what we know. This bill is going to cause huge deficits. We know that. They have acknowledged it, and 2, 3, 4 years from now, Republican Members will come to us--after the lobbyists have been down the hall in Senator McConnell's office, they will come back and say to us: We have this huge budget deficit. We are going to have to raise the eligibility age to maybe to 70. Some of them have talked about that. We are going to have to privatize Medicare. They will say: We have to make these programs stronger and sustainable. Nobody thinks they want to make them stronger. They want to cut them. That is how you save money, even though you don't in the end.

Here is what is aggravating about this. Think about it. All of us--a number of people here in this body are past what society has designated as retirement age, 65. A number of Members of this Congress, particularly in the Senate, are over 65.

I work in my garden. I work outside. I do things. But I am not working in a diner, I am not working construction, and I don't use my arms and shoulders and brain and legs to do my work. We work here. We work in jobs we are privileged to have, and we get good compensation. We get a good salary, and we get good benefits. But we are going to tell a bunch of people who work with their hands and work with their brains and work with their bodies and work with their arms and shoulders and whose knees break down over time--we are going to tell the barber in Barberton, we are going to tell the truckdriver in Evendale, we are going to tell the construction worker in Conneaut, we are going to tell the waitress in Warren, we are going to tell the nurse in Newark that they are going to have to work until they are 70, sorry. Is that what we are going to do?

Follow this simply. This tax cut causes a huge budget deficit to give money to the wealthiest people in the country and creates a huge hole in the budget. Who is going to fill the hole in the budget? Not the lobbyists walking in and out of Senator McConnell's office 100 feet down the hall. They are not going to pay for it; they are not going to have to pay for it. It is going to be the nurse in Newark who has to work until she is 70; it is going to be the waitress in Warren who has to work until she is 70; it is going to be the carpenter or construction worker in Conneaut; it is going to be the barber in Barberton and the truckdriver in Evendale.

If we pass this bill, 83 percent of the benefits go to the top 1 percent, and this 83 percent, a lot of which blows a hole in the budget deficit, is going to be paid for by working families. So cut out all the crap about this being something for working families. It is not.

I will say this for Republicans in Congress: They are making it pretty easy for the American people to see whose side they are on. You are either on the side of everyday working Americans, who are working more hours than ever before and getting too little pay for the hours they are working--they are either working for them or they are working for the people in Senator McConnell's office down the hall.

I want my colleagues to just pick through this. I want my colleagues to think about this picture, this stream of lobbyists in and out of Senator McConnell's office, this stream of lobbyists from America's largest, richest corporations--the drug companies, the tobacco companies, the insurance companies, the companies that tend to run this government. I want you to think about that.

Are you on the side of the workers who are doing the heavy work and can't work until they are 70 or are you on the side of CEOs and politicians who do the bidding of these CEOs? It is a pretty clear case. It is a picture that is pretty obvious. Americans deserve better. We can do better for them by starting from scratch with one goal in mind: If we want a middle-class tax cut, I say to the Senator from Utah, don't talk about a middle-class tax cut, don't do trickle-down economics. If you want a

middle-class tax cut, then give a middle-class tax cut. Give a tax cut to the middle class. It is pretty simple.

I yield the floor.

Will Senator Hatch yield for a question?

Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, I would just like to ask Senator Hatch a question.

I want to state my objection. There is objection, Mr. President. I would like to state my objection. May I state the reason for my objection?

Mr. President, may I state the reason for my objection?

Mr. President, I rise to oppose the nomination of Paul Compton, which came out of the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. I might add that he is President Trump's nominee to serve as general counsel of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Mr. Compton is a longtime affordable housing and financial services attorney in the State of Alabama. Mr. Compton, if confirmed, would bring a deep familiarity with affordable housing to the Office of General Counsel. That part I like. With 11 million families paying over half their income for rent and with homelessness on the rise for the first time in years, a nominee who appreciates the importance of affordable housing could be a positive addition at HUD. Think about that. There are 11 million families who pay more than half their income on rent.

In a book written by Matthew Desmond called ``Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,'' the author said of the people at that income level: When your paycheck comes, the rent eats first. Everything depends on being able to stay in your home and not being foreclosed on. When 11 million people pay over half their income on rent, homelessness is going to be on the rise.

I appreciate Mr. Compton's commitment to me during our Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing that he would look out for the interests of renters and homeowners if confirmed, but I am voting against him because I am concerned about the administration's approach to fair housing protections and the role that he will likely play in helping to carry that out.

I was troubled to learn that Secretary Carson had said that he plans to ``reinterpret'' HUD's affirmatively furthering fair housing--or AFFH--rule. Since 1968, the Fair Housing Act has required HUD and its grantees to affirmatively further fair housing. Unfortunately, in the 50 years since our country passed the Fair Housing Act, HUD has not provided enough direction to help communities meet this goal.

A 2010 General Accountability Office report recommended that HUD improve its processes for meeting its obligations to affirmatively further fair housing. In response, HUD developed a revised rule to finally help local governments across the country support and foster fair housing policies throughout their communities.

The rule gives clearer guidance to communities to help them think in new ways about how to create housing opportunities for all of their residents regardless of race or religion or disability or the size of their family. The rule helps them to assess their own fair housing needs, and it provides them publicly available data with which to inform their decisions while they set their own goals and timelines.

Since its adoption 2-plus years ago, HUD has been working with communities to implement the new guidelines. That is the good news. The bad news is that the Secretary has said that he wants to reinterpret, but he is not elaborating on what he meant by his plan to reinterpret the rule. If the Secretary intends to reinterpret the rule in a way that undermines HUD's efforts to help communities fulfill their longstanding obligations under this 50-year-old law, Mr. Compton will be called upon to carry out this vision.

I voted against his nomination in committee because of my concern that he could help guide administration efforts to reverse progress on this fair housing rule. More recent activities by administration officials have only heightened the concerns that many of us have about their approaches to fair housing.

In 2013, HUD issued its discriminatory effects rule. This rule formalized HUD's longstanding prohibition against practices with discriminatory effects under the Fair Housing Act and provided uniform guidance for applying standards across the country.

Because homeowners' insurance is central to the ability to obtain housing, HUD and the courts have held for decades that the Fair Housing Act applies to discriminatory practices in insurance--a very easy-to- understand, logical step. Nevertheless, insurance industry representatives sued to block HUD's application of the discriminatory effects rule--also known as disparate impact--to their industry. HUD and the Department of Justice have been fighting this suit ever since. As general counsel, Mr. Compton would guide HUD's enforcement and litigation strategy.

In response to a written question, Mr. Compton declined to provide his views on the discriminatory effects rule and whether it should apply to the insurance industry. He noted that ``it would be inappropriate'' for him to comment on the matter given the pending litigation.

The administration, it seems, does not share his reluctance to comment on pending litigation. A month and a half ago, the Treasury Department issued a report entitled ``A Financial System that Creates Economic Opportunities--Asset Management and Insurance.'' In this report, Treasury recommends that HUD reconsider the use of the disparate impact rule.

It is not that this administration decides to support the side of big insurance companies every time--maybe it doesn't every time--but it seems like it almost always does. It did it in this case. Yet Mr. Compton thinks that he shouldn't comment when other already confirmed Trump appointees have. The Treasury's report sides with arguments that have been made by the insurance industry despite the fact that litigation is pending, and HUD and the Department of Justice, at least until now, have been defending the rule. The next court date for the suit is scheduled for later this week.

If the administration continues its drive to reconsider fair housing protections that are opposed to by industry, Mr. Compton will likely be called upon to help the administration in its efforts. Because he declined to answer my question, we don't know what his thinking will be.

While I might be inclined to give Mr. Compton the benefit of the doubt, we have seen too many officials in this administration who are working against the missions of the agencies to which they have been appointed. Financial regulators so often come from Wall Street. Environmental regulators so often come from the chemical industry and the oil industry. We have seen it time and again.

This is happening at a time when we see the administration taking steps to remove protections for average Americans and consumers in order to carry out the bidding of its supporters on Wall Street. These include sending in Mick Mulvaney, who once called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau a ``sick, sad joke.'' He is now serving as its Director. It is his moonlighting job, as he is also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. His first act as Director of the CFPB was to block the payments of funds that were owed to consumers-- consumers who were cheated or wronged by Wells Fargo and other big banks or big financial institutions. The consumers, in many cases, were servicemembers who had been cheated by these financial institutions. On Mulvaney's first day on the job, he said: No, we are not going to move forward in collecting those penalties and in paying those consumers and those servicemembers and those seniors and those families.

I am concerned about this emerging effort to roll back protections for consumers. I hope that Mr. Compton proves me wrong. I hope that he is a strong advocate within the agency and the administration for fair housing, for consumer protection, and for affordable housing. When given the chance to demonstrate his commitment to fair housing, he took a pass. These matters are too important to far too many Americans for us to leave their futures to chance. I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing Mr. Compton's nomination.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, this month, this body has spent much of its time pushing a tax bill that rewards corporations that ship jobs overseas while doing nothing for hard-working families. It has spent time cutting taxes on the wealthiest people in the country--cutting taxes for corporations that ship jobs overseas and giving them more incentives to do it by the way they have actually constructed the bill and rewarding their largest billionaire contributors. At the same time, they have ignored the Children's Health Insurance Program.

Letters are going out to families. There are 200,000 children in my State who are enrolled in the Children's Health Insurance Program. Parents in many States are getting letters from

the government that read: Sorry, your insurance is going away. Because of the inaction of this body--of Senators and House Members who have insurance provided for by taxpayers--we are not doing our jobs. We get insurance paid for by taxpayers while 200,000 children in Ohio and 60,000, 70,000, 80,000, 90,000, 100,000 families are going to lose theirs. That is it.

We are giving tax cuts to the richest people in the country and tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas instead of fixing the healthcare law, instead of doing the Children's Health Insurance Program--instead of doing infrastructure, instead of doing the things that we should be doing. Forget about what we are not doing to serve the public; the priorities reflected in this tax bill are completely backward, which has become pretty standard in this Congress.

Time and again, our economy, our leaders, our politics reward Wall Street, not just instead of workers; we reward Wall Street at the expense of workers. The people of Ohio and people around the country are working harder than ever and working longer than ever, but they have less and less to show for it.

Imagine this: 44 percent of Americans who have an emergency--that would be four out of nine Americans--cannot afford that emergency expense of $400. Four out of every nine Americans cannot come up with $400 to pay for an emergency, but Wall Street is doing just fine. It is getting richer. So what do we do? We give more tax cuts and more tax breaks to corporations that outsource jobs, and we give more help in the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee for some of the most profitable banks in America. Yet we can't do anything for workers, and we can't do anything for families.

The wealth held on Wall Street has gone up. Corporate profits have gone up. CEO salaries have gone up. CEO salaries are 271 times greater than workers' pay. For a worker who makes $20,000--I almost can't even do the math--it is 271 times that. Imagine that. For every $1 a worker makes in the country, the average CEO makes $271. How much do they need? Do you know what the answer to that is? Let's give tax cuts to the people making $271 and maybe a few crumbs for the workers making $1. Is that fair?

Over the next few months, I am going to lay out the case for how Wall Street undermines American workers and lay out some of the changes that we need to make in this country to grow our middle class and make hard work pay off. Each installment of this series, which we are calling Wall Street's War on Workers, will be posted on my medium page. You can follow along at www.medium.com/@SenatorBrown.

Today, I want to talk about workers' paychecks. It is pretty simple. It is really simple. Wall Street doesn't want you to get a raise. It doesn't sound plausible. You heard that right. Wall Street doesn't want you to get a raise. Let me explain. Wall Street tries to convince us that when the stock market does well, the economy does well and vice versa.

Well, look around. Visit the town where I grew up, Mansfield. Visit Chillicothe, visit Dover, New Philly, visit Lima, Middletown or Hamilton. Visit a community in my State that was once a proud industrial town that has been hit by globalization. Talk to the workers.

Stock prices are still going up. Yes, they are, and the President of the United States likes to take credit for that as if that is the only story. Talk to workers who haven't had a meaningful raise in years. Talk to workers who have seen their retirement cut. Talk to workers who have watched their healthcare premiums rise. Talk to workers who have seen the cost of childcare and saving for their kids' college and paying off their student loans go up and up and up. That is what happened.

For most Americans, the idea that a stock market rally means more money in their pocket is laughable. That is why, when the President-- even today, when he was talking about this tax cut, he was promising that we are doing all these tax cuts for middle-class Americans. Well, if you want to give tax cuts to middle-class Americans, give tax cuts to middle-class Americans. Don't cut taxes on corporations, cutting them 43 percent--that is what the bill does--if they would let us read it. The last time I read it, that is what it said. They cut the corporate tax rate by 43 percent. They say that money will trickle down, you will get a raise, there will be more jobs. It has never really worked that way. It didn't work in North Carolina that way. It hasn't worked in Ohio that way. It simply doesn't happen.

The President stands there and says: We are going to give the best tax cuts for Christmas you ever saw. He brags about the stock market going up. One of the reasons two-thirds of Americans don't much like this President is because they heard him brag about the stock market and how great that is, but there is nothing in their own pockets when he does that. The money is not trickling down. Workers aren't seeing a $4,000 raise. Nobody really believes that.

The White House made up some phony study that said all this money is going to workers' pockets. It never works that way. It didn't work that way when President Bush--in 2001, 2003, President Bush did a big tax cut bill. Let me give you one statistic about that tax cut bill in 2001 and 2003, those two bills. In that tax cut bill, 27 percent of the benefits went to the richest 1 percent--27 percent.

The pages are pretty good in math because they are still taking math class--27 percent of the benefits of that tax bill went to the richest 1 percent. That sounds pretty outrageous, because the richest 1 percent didn't really need it. Now, in this tax bill, 62 percent of the benefits in this tax bill go to the richest 1 percent--62 percent of the benefits in this tax bill go to the 1 percent. Why is that? Well, one reason is that a number of Members of Congress have said this. When they go across the street to Republican headquarters to make their fundraising calls, their contributors say: Don't call me back for campaign money until you give me and my friends a tax cut.

Get that. Don't call me for campaign money until you go back across the street and give me and my rich friends a tax cut. How corrupt is that? How awful is that? How unfeeling is that? How counterproductive is that for our economy?

The data backs that up. Workers' share of income has fallen over the last four decades. Wage inequality has risen, especially at the largest companies. Some may argue that workers who have retirement accounts share in the benefits when the stock market does well. Only 50 percent of private sector workers have these types of accounts at all, and they use them to make long-term investments for their retirement. The short- term profits that drive so much of corporate decision making have little effect on accounts workers will not touch for several decades. Just because workers have retirement accounts doesn't mean they are able to save. In fact, 70 percent of Americans have less than $1,000 in retirement savings.

Remember I said four out of nine or 44 percent of Americans couldn't come up with $400 in emergency spending for a trip to the dentist or $400 to fix a car? Four out of nine Americans couldn't come up with that. Well, it is even worse because 70 percent of Americans have less than $1,000 in retirement savings. Do you know why they have less than $1,000 in retirement savings? Because their wages haven't gone up for a decade or so.

The fact is, a paycheck is how most workers pay their bills every month and put food on the table each night. Wall Street has a lot to say about how much should be in that paycheck.

Remember, at the beginning of this speech, I stated that Wall Street doesn't want you to get a raise. Some of my colleagues--particularly those who get a lot of money from Wall Street and think Wall Street should run the country even more than they do--but when I said Wall Street doesn't want people to have a raise, here is how that works.

Last month, Bank of America downgraded Chipotle's stock because an analyst decided the company employees were working too many hours and getting paid too much. Wall Street downgraded their stock because the analyst said their workers were making too much.

Do you remember what happened when American Airlines gave their employees a raise? They were punished in

the stock exchange. They were getting paid too much. The banks decided that Chipotle employees worked too many hours and earned too much money. The stock declined by 3 percent. It didn't matter that they were profitable, employees were happy. It didn't matter that their employees were productive. It didn't matter that they were a good company. Their stock price went down because the analyst said they were paying their workers too much. Some of you have been to Chipotle. I am guessing their workers are not making $100,000 a year. I guess they are making $10, $12 an hour.

I went to my high school reunion a couple of years ago. I sat across from a woman who worked at a major national bank, a well-known bank. I don't need to cite the name. When I worked at my family farm growing up, I used to put my $120-every-2-week paycheck in that bank. It has been sold several times and is now part of a major Wall Street bank. She has worked there 30 years. She has been a teller in that bank for 30 years. She makes $30,000 a year. She has 30 years of service in this bank and makes $30,000 a year. Do you want me to list what the top management of that bank makes? Tens of millions of dollars in compensation, stock options, and stock buybacks, huge dividends because they own so much of the bank. This woman makes $30,000 a year. What is right about an economy like that?

The entry level wage at Chipotle is between $9 and $10 an hour. It is typical for fast food. It is clearly not enough to lift a family of three out of poverty. So Chipotle wanted to give raises to their workers, and Wall Street slapped them for doing it. Wall Street's attacks on workers' wages have not been limited to Chipotle.

I mentioned American Airlines. They announced pay raises for their pilots and flight attendants earlier this year. Wall Street punished the company, dropping its stock by 5 percent.

Citibank, one of the Wall Street firms we sometimes talk about, is a $2 trillion bank--somewhere close to that. I may be wrong about that, but there are six banks in the country whose assets are over $1 trillion, as high as--I think JPMorgan Chase is higher. Citibank analysts actually wrote this about American Airlines:

This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again.

Shareholders get leftovers.

Think of that. So they gave their workers, their pilots--I assume the Senator from North Carolina and Leigh and all the people at the desk there--I think that probably you want airline pilots to be paid pretty well. I think you do. Flight attendants make all the flying we do a little bit easier. This company wanted to pay them more and Wall Street says:

This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again.

Shareholders get leftovers.

Really? Think about this. Companies are more profitable, CEOs are getting paid more and more, and executive compensation is up, stock prices are up, and workers are getting paid less. Then, when they want to pay the flight attendants and the pilots a little more, they complain because labor is being paid first again. Never mind that the labor in question simply pushed to get paid the same as their counterparts at United and Delta. Think about that.

American Airlines decided they should pay their workers who do roughly the same job the same as United and Delta. They thought that would be a good thing for competition reasons, for hiring workers, and maybe even for Wall Street. Wall Street said: No, really, we don't want that to happen.

I wonder how much that analyst at Citibank is paid. Some of you would call that class warfare, but I would call it an interesting fact if I knew what it was, but imagine the nerve of saying that shareholders get the leftovers. When is the last time Wall Street got the leftovers?

By ``labor,'' what we are talking about is people who create wealth for the company. It is the workers who create wealth. Management is important, of course, setting the direction of the company and doing all that management does in most corporations and does well, but rank- and-file workers--whether it is the woman who cleans the floor or the food service people in the basement, or whether it is the data entry person or whether it is the mid-level management person, whether it is the sales force, whether it is the CFO, workers create wealth for their companies, and shouldn't they share in some of that wealth? Don't you think pilots provide a lot of productivity and wealth to that company?

A JPMorgan analyst described the raises to the American Airlines pilots a different way. He said it is a ``wealth transfer of nearly $1 billion to its labor groups.'' Think about that.

One of the things that amuses me--except it bothers me more--whenever we talk about a wage increase, do you know what companies always say? They say: If we raise the minimum wage for these $7 or $8 or $9 workers, we are going to have to raise prices and lay people off, but they never say that when a top management employee gets a $1 million raise. You only have to lay people off and raise the price of the product if you raise the minimum wage, but if you give somebody a six- or seven-figure bonus, you don't have to worry, that is not going to cause anything. That is how phony these arguments are that they make and frankly how revolting these arguments are.

Wall Street didn't call it a wealth transfer of $1 billion to its labor group. Wall Street didn't call it a wealth transfer when the CEO of JPMorgan got a 4-percent raise and was paid--anybody want to guess? Do any of the pages want to guess? Does any of the staff want to guess? Their CEO is paid $28 million a year, but that happens to be the same company where the woman I sat across from at a high school reunion makes $30,000 a year after 30 years of service. I don't wish him any ill will, certainly, for the $28 million he makes. The people who work directly with the public, who have to listen directly to the complaints, who have to spend money coming to work and wearing nice clothes because they are a bank teller, making $30,000 a year? What is fair about that? None of the banks complained about that being a wealth transfer.

Remember that line, a wealth transfer of $1 billion to its labor group? None of the banks complained about a wealth transfer when Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf was allowed to retire with tens of millions of dollars in compensation after overseeing a massive scandal that caused the bank's stock to tank.

Do you know what I hear in the Banking Committee from time to time? These CEOs, if their company has cheated people, their company has made a huge mistake that caused problems for the company, they often come in and say: You know, we are sorry--we are kind of sorry--and we are going to give up our bonus. They say they are going to give up their bonus. They are already making $8 or $10 or $12 or $15 million. Now they are going to give up their bonus. How generous of them.

If paying employees is a wealth transfer, as the JPMorgan analyst said, but CEO bonuses are not a wealth transfer, it raises the question: Who exactly does Wall Street think the wealth belongs to? Who does it think is creating the wealth for these companies? Companies can't be profitable without the workers. Wall Street seems to think the whole cake belongs to the CEOs and stockholders while workers only deserve crumbs.

It has not always been like this.

In the past, banks actually invested in businesses and the workers on Main Street, but the corporate business models have changed. According to a recent analysis, only 15 percent of Wall Street funds are invested in businesses, down from the majority of funds several decades ago. Instead of investing in real businesses, in real towns that create real jobs and build real communities, they spend billions buying back stock and handing out CEO bonuses. This change has worked out pretty well for Wall Street.

Even though Wall Street has 4 percent of all U.S. jobs, it accounts for 25 percent of all corporate profits. Pretty good, huh? It is not for that teller who works at the bank in Mansfield, OH, but for the stockholders and the CEO. As anyone can tell you, it hasn't worked out that well for most people.

CEOs are evaluated on the quarterly performance of their company's stock. They are compensated, in large part, with company shares, but most Americans 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, and they think in

terms of how many years before I retire and how much money do I have to save to be able to.

Main Street investors and workers only make a profit when a company's stock market value continues to rise over time. Wall Street and Main Street's interests no longer match up. That is the problem with our economy today. Wall Street's interest are not the same as Main Street's interests. Wall Street does well, Wall Street gets bigger and bigger compensation, and workers see their wages stagnate. Folks in the corporate boardroom are not forced to consider what is in the long-term interest of workers, what is in the long-term interest of small-time investors, what is in the long-term interest of the communities that have helped them grow and made them rich. For them, workers are nothing more than a line item in a budget that ought to be minimized. It is why they have no problem taking pay out of the pockets of workers--pay that would otherwise drive innovation and productivity--all to boost short- term profits for CEOs and speculators.

When you get short-term profits, you are going to get more money in your bonus, you are going to get more money in your stock buybacks, and you are going to get more money in your executive compensation. All of it is set up and all of it is aimed at helping top management and top stockholders enrich themselves. It is not giving back to the community, not creating workers' wealth, and not investing in the future. It is all about short-term profits because that means huge compensation for the CEOs of America. Nothing in their business model forces these executives to view the workers making burritos at Chipotle as real people with real families.

I will go back to that. Chipotle did the right thing, and they gave raises to their employees. American Airlines did the right thing, and they gave raises to their employees. But the stock market, Wall Street crushed them for it, and that is what has to change.

Until the banks and Wall Street respect a hard day's work and understand that work must have a value for the economy to grow, we will continue to see the consequences. The gap between Wall Street and Main Street will keep growing. Workers' wages will decline. Our middle class will shrink. Wall Street executives and CEOs will get bigger and bigger bonuses.

We will continue here to give tax cuts to the richest people in the country, and our economy and our economic growth will continue to lag. The rich get richer and the middle class shrinks. That is the formula. The rich get richer and the middle class shrinks. Haven't we had enough of that? Why should we still be doing that?

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank my friend from Hawaii and Senator Durbin for his work and Senator Cortez Masto, who is off to a really good start in her first year in the Senate. I thank them for their work on this issue that is personal to Senator Cortez Masto and Senator Hirono because they are not that far removed from coming to this country.

My family has been here longer, but this issue is personal to me because of the people I met whom I will mention in my relatively short remarks. I want to tell some stories about people I have met.

Immigrants in my State and across this country make vital contributions to our economy and local communities. They are business owners and entrepreneurs. They are educators and students. They are workers and leaders in the community. They serve our Nation in the military.

For many immigrants brought here as children--and this is the key point--this is the only country they have ever known. They may speak Spanish at home or speak Arabic at home or they may speak Bengali at home or they may speak Urdu at home, but they don't know those countries they came from because they were small children when they came.

President Trump promised to go after violent criminals, not innocent children. Unfortunately, his efforts have been aimed not at violent criminals who should, in fact, be removed from our country, but he has gone after so many innocent families and innocent children.

My daughter Emily is a legal aid lawyer for immigration in Columbus. She has told me stories of families who have played by the rules, they worked hard, they are active in their church, they hold full-time jobs, and they are raising their kids. Their kids are doing well in school, and the mother and father get deported, not because they have ever committed a crime but because they came here a number of years ago to escape violence in the countries they came from.

Those are not the same situations exactly as these DACA kids, but we know who these DACA children are--these Dreamers. We shouldn't be targeting young people who are contributing to this country--the country they grew up in, and the only home they have ever known. They are working, going to school, paying taxes, and serving in our military.

Ariel was brought to the United States as a baby when he needed medical treatment for a rare condition. He has lived here ever since. He attends Cuyahoga Community College, a few hours from my home. He is working toward a degree in business administration. He wants to be an entrepreneur who will create jobs in his community and my community. Other Dreamers have jobs, and they are contributing already to our community.

I heard from Elvis, who grew up in Northwest Ohio. He graduated from Ohio State and works at Nationwide. He told us:

The contributions of DACA recipients are not only present

in metropolitan areas but also in rural ones. This is evident

to me, someone who grew up in rural Ohio, and whose family

continues to live there, every day.

Nathali in Columbus works as a product development and design engineer at Honda. She has lived here since she was 9. Her DACA status expires this summer. If she isn't protected, she will probably have to give up her job. She is contributing to America's economy, to Ohio's auto industry, and she pays taxes.

I heard from Vania in Delta, OH, a suburban farm community west of Toledo. She oversees the entire human resources department in her company, one of the largest bell pepper growers in the country. She said:

I was raised in this community, graduated high school and

college here, and am currently giving back to it in my role.

I have established myself as a contributing member of this

community and for this reason, among many others, I deserve a

chance to continue my work.

All she says is: I want to continue my work. I want to continue raising a family. I want to continue contributing to this country. I want to continue to work in my community. I want to continue to be a good citizen. She is not asking for a handout. She wants what most Americans want, to be able to keep doing her work.

There is no question our immigration system is broken, but we don't fix it by kicking out these contributing members of our communities who grew up here--underscore that. They may not have been born here, but they grew up here. They know our country. They live in Toledo and Dayton and Xenia, and they live in Mansfield. Those are their lives, as it was my life growing up in Mansfield.

We don't fix our immigration system by kicking out these contributing members who grew up here and made their home here--who are American in every sense except the paperwork. It is time for us to come together to put partisan considerations aside and pass a commonsense solution that protects these kids, protects these Dreamers, and upholds our American values

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I wish to celebrate the career and accomplishments of an exceptional public safety advocate and a dear friend, Jacqueline S. Gillan. Jackie is a legend in the public health and public safety community. As both a public servant and as the president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, she has championed the three cornerstones of traffic safety: safer drivers, safer vehicles, and safer roads. Her career in public service began in the government affairs office of the U.S. Department of Transportation, in the Carter administration. She went on to hold senior policy positions in the U.S. Senate and with three State transportation agencies, New Jersey, California, and the great state of Ohio, which is when I first met Jackie.

After leaving public service, she continued to fight for safer roads for all Americans. Jackie helped to launch Advocates nearly three decades ago and has been at the helm of Advocates since 1990. She has led with extraordinary vision, dogged determination, and keen political judgment.

Jackie helped pass numerous Federal and State laws advancing motor vehicle and motor carrier safety standards. She was instrumental in achieving major advances, including requirements for airbags, electronic stability control, and back-up cameras. Her advocacy efforts had a significant impact on a dozen major transportation bills, ranging from the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act in 1991 to the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act in 2015.

A decade ago, after a tragic accident killed five members of Ohio's Bluffton University baseball team, I worked together with Jackie, Congressman John Lewis, Senator Kay Bailey-Hutchison, and many brave families--including John and Joy Betts--whose loved ones were killed in motorcoach crashes to enact the Nation's first comprehensive motorcoach safety law, the Motorcoach Enhanced Safety Act. It took longer than it should have to pass this commonsense bill into law, but Jackie was there every step of the way, helping us fight for these lifesaving safety improvements.

A native Californian, Jackie's introduction to public service began at home. Her father, Henry Gillan, served on the city council and was elected mayor of El Cerrito. Now, after decades fighting for the safety of ordinary Americans, Jackie has earned a long and happy retirement spent with her husband, Ernie Beyard; her children, Kristin Beyard and Alex Beyard; and Barkley, an exuberant English springer spaniel who is frequently sighted on walks around Capitol Hill.

There is no question countless lives have been saved and injuries averted and that many families will enjoy the upcoming holidays safely together because of Jackie's work. We are so grateful.

Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for recognizing me.

Last week, the Senate gave tax handouts to millionaires, billionaires, and multinational corporations that ship jobs overseas, and the middle class got almost nothing. This week, it is the banks' turn, and just like last week, working people get ignored again.

The bill the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee will take up tomorrow, S. 2155, puts taxpayers at risk of another bank bailout and puts homeowners at risk of the same traps that led to the foreclosure crisis, all while, again, doing virtually nothing for hard- working Americans.

While Congress has been preoccupied doing the bidding of special interest lobbyists, American families started getting notices in the mail that their Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, health insurance will be yanked away. There are 209,000 children in my State, the sons and daughters of low-income workers making 8, 10, or $12 an hour and who don't have insurance. Having started bipartisan and having always been enacted and renewed in a bipartisan manner over the last 20 years, the CHIP program will be yanked away. Virginia will be next, then Ohio, and then other States where parents will go to their mailbox and open up a letter from the government saying: Sorry, your children's health insurance is gone.

The Senate is doing nothing to stop it. Instead this body, made up of Senators who have insurance paid for by taxpayers, devotes its energy to helping banks of all sizes that are making record profits. In the third quarter of this year, the five largest U.S. banks--just the five largest U.S. banks--raked in a combined $21 billion in profits. In the third quarter only, the five banks have $21 billion in profits. In fact, profits at the five biggest banks are even higher than they were before the crisis. Meanwhile working Americans haven't gotten a raise in 16 years.

I sat at my high school reunion in Mansfield, OH, about a year ago, with a woman who has been a teller at a large bank for 30 years. Her income, after 30 years at this bank, is $30,000 a year. She is working for one of those largest five banks. Yet those banks, as I said, have $21 billion in profits in the third quarter.

Forty-four million Americans are saddled with student loan debt. Communities are littered with abandoned homes and hollowed-out factories. Yet this bill has no help for Americans burdened with student loan debt, no help for homeowners still underwater, and no help for workers who haven't had a raise in years.

Congress, especially the Banking Committee, have a collective amnesia about the financial crisis. It is like it didn't even happen 10 years ago. They have a collective amnesia about the housing crisis and the devastation it brought to families across the country. We know how many people lost jobs 10 years ago because of Wall Street's overreach. We know how many people lost their savings. We know how many people lost their homes. Families in Ohio don't have the luxury of this collective amnesia. Families don't have the luxury in my neighborhood of forgetting what happened 10 years ago because so many of them are still digging out.

We passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation to protect those families and make sure a crisis like we saw 9 years doesn't happen again. Stress tests were put in place to ensure that banks could weather the next downturn without putting the economy at risk. According to the President's designee to be Chair of the Federal Reserve and according to so many others who understand these issues and understand banking, stress tests are one of the most effective tools we have to prevent taxpayers from being asked once again to bail out the banks.

This bill weakens stress tests for all large banks, which together took $239 billion--that is $239,000 million--in taxpayer bailouts last time. They are banks like JPMorgan Chase and other Wall Street megabanks that are designated as global systemically important banks-- we call them G-SIBs around here--which means their collapse could cause harm that ripples throughout the world. It is not just the damage it does to Main Street in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Cleveland, or Toledo, but it would do damage to the economy all over the world. Without rigorous, annual stress tests, taxpayers could once again be on the hook if those too-big-to-fail banks collapse and we don't have the right tools in place to see it coming.

So I ask my fellow Senators: Are you willing to go back to your homes, are you willing to go back to your States and tell taxpayers you work for that you are willing to gamble another $240 billion of their money on a bill like this? For some other large banks, those stress tests could be even easier under this bill. Make no mistake, these aren't small banks we are talking about, and I am not talking about the largest 10 banks. I am talking about the banks in more detail affected by this bill. Together these banks--about 30 of them--hold $4 trillion in combined assets. That is $4,000 billion in combined assets. That is more than one-quarter of all assets across the entire banking industry. Would you trust your family's health to a doctor who only passed a dumbed-down version of their board exams? Why would we trust the health of our economy to banks that only passed diluted weakened stress tests?

This bill doesn't stop at stress tests. It allows these same large banks to

borrow more money than they can afford by weakening capital requirements. It exempts dozens of the largest banks from making plans called living wills. These are plans that make sure that if a bank fails, taxpayers will not be paying the bills once again.

It weakens oversight of foreign megabanks operating in the United States, the same banks that have repeatedly violated U.S. laws. Let's run through a few of their rap sheets. Santander, I believe, is a Spanish bank. It illegally repossessed cars from members of our military. It repossessed cars from our servicemen and servicewomen who were serving our country overseas. Are we giving them a break? Are we going to deregulate them?

Deutsche Bank manipulated the benchmark interest rates used to set borrowers' mortgages. Barclays manipulated electric energy prices in the western United States. Credit Suisse illegally did business with Iran. UBS sold toxic mortgage-backed securities. So are we going to give these banks a break? They have repeatedly violated U.S. law. Are these the banks we want to help?

The bill also puts American homeowners at risk of the same sorts of mortgage abuses that brought us to foreclosure crisis. My wife and I live in Cleveland, OH, in ZIP Code 44105. In the first half of 2007, my ZIP Code had more foreclosures than any ZIP Code in the United States of America. It is pretty hard for most of us to imagine here what it might be like to be kicked out of our homes. I ask my colleagues to try for a minute to put yourselves in the shoes of one of these families. Pope Francis exhorted his parish priests to go out and smell like the flock--go out and listen to people, see the kinds of lives, ask them questions about the kinds of lives they live.

So what happens when a family is thrown out of its house? Before you are thrown out, you give up the family pet to try to save money even though that dog may have been your son's or daughter's. My son and my grandson and granddaughter just got a little stray that their father picked up when he was out jogging and picked a little dog. It has only been a week and a half, and they love this beautiful little dog. So families give up the pet to try to save money. When that is not enough, you sit the kids down and you have to tell them you are moving. They will have to change schools. Mom will not be around as much because mom has gotten a second job.

These are the impossible decisions and painful conversations millions of Americans were forced to have in 2007, 2008, and 2009 because of the big banks' greed and, in some cases, their illegal activity. Trillions of dollars of housing wealth were destroyed. African-American and Hispanic families lost more than half of their accumulated wealth-- wealth they still have not fully recovered.

We can't go back there. These stakes are too high. That is why some of the provisions in this bill are so troubling.

Let me run through a few of them. This bill permits mortgages for homes up to $400,000 in some areas to be offered without an appraisal to verify the home is worth what you are paying. Without an appraisal, you know what would happen. You could end up in an underwater mortgage on day one. It no longer requires banks to set up accounts that help you budget for your property tax and homeowner's insurance. Instead of manageable payments built into your monthly mortgage, you could end up with an unexpected tax bill at the end of the year. You could end up with an unexpected insurance bill at the end of the year. If you can't pay, then, the foreclosure proceedings start.

It allows some banks to sell you an adjustable rate mortgage without the bank assuming any responsibility for whether you can afford your payments once the initial rate expires. People don't always know what it means with an adjustable rate mortgage. It might be in the small print. We know forced arbitration is in the small print, too. We know how that works out. Say you are a customer in Youngstown, and you could take out a mortgage at 4 percent. Say your payment is $400 a month. After 3 years, your interest rate jumps to 9 percent, so your monthly payment is all of a sudden almost $700. Your bank knows you can't afford that. The bank knew it when it sold you the mortgage or it should have known. That is the bank's job. That is the law today. It is not the law under this bill.

Under this bill, when your mortgage suddenly spikes, when you have to start having these tough conversations around the dinner table with your partner, with your children, the bank that sold you the mortgage is protected. It gets off scot-free. Today, you could go to a judge and fight to stay in your home. You might not be able to under this bill. What is fair about that?

This bill blocks some homeowners from going to court to stop banks that foreclosed on them. Sound familiar?

Not that long ago Vice President Pence came to the Senate floor to sit in the chair that the Senator from Oklahoma is sitting in, and he came to the floor late at night to stop customers like those 140 million cheated by Equifax and several million cheated by Wells Fargo from having their day in court. When the Vice President shows up in this body to break a tie, Wall Street wins every single time.

Now, this bill blocks homeowners from having their day in court. It is the context under which we will consider this bill. American families and American taxpayers, who stand to lose the most, get almost nothing--no help with student debt and no help with underwater mortgages. But we are hearing consumers being told: Don't worry. Trust us. Trust us.

The Trump administration regulators will make sure everything is just fine. Trust us. Trust people like Vice President Pence, who cast the tie-breaking vote to strip consumers from their day in court. Trust Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, whose former bank made a fortune kicking families, including veterans, including people in the Army and the Marines and seniors, out of their homes and has now merged into a new bank that gets relief under this bill.

Trust Secretary Mnuchin's colleague at that same foreclosure machine, Joseph Otting, now leading the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the financial watchdog in charge of overseeing the national banks. Think about that. Trust him.

Trust Mick Mulvaney, installed as the new part-time head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, despite what the law says, whose first action on the job was to stop payments to veterans, to seniors, to consumers, and to stop payments to people who had been cheated by banks. These payments were on their way. The banks had been found guilty of cheating their customers, and Mick Mulvaney's first action as head of the consumer bureau was to stop those payments.

Trust Randy Quarles, the new head of Supervision at the Federal Reserve Board, who was a Treasury official in the years leading up to the crisis and who said on the eve of the financial crisis: ``Fundamentally, the economy is strong, the financial sector is healthy, and our future looks bright.'' He was in the Treasury Department in a highly placed job in the Bush administration. As the economy started to implode, that was his observation of the state of housing and that was his observation of the state of the economy. He is now head of bank supervision at the Federal Reserve.

Is this track record what taxpayers and homeowners are supposed to trust? Is this the track record that gives Senators the confidence to take a gamble with taxpayer dollars? Are these guys going to protect us from another crisis or prevent another bailout?

I don't know about my colleagues, but I will tell you that when I am home in Ohio and when my friend from Delaware is at home in Wilmington, we meet a lot of people who feel invisible. Entire communities feel invisible. They feel used, they feel abused, and they feel some other things I can't say on the Senate floor by banks, by mega corporations, by Wall Street and, yes, by Washington and by this U.S. Senate. Too often, they are right. They are being used and abused by banks and by mega corporations and by Wall Street and by people in this body.

We have a chance to show these people that we see them, we hear them, we work for them, and that we will do our jobs and fight for them. We do that by blocking this bill.

As I conclude, I want to say something about some people who are affected by this bill that makes sense. Regional community banks provide

critical services to customers and homeowners and small businesses. I respect my colleagues' desire to support them. I do support efforts to help community and regional banks fill important needs. I don't support efforts to roll back accountability measures on the largest banks, with nothing to help hard-working Americans who have the most to lose.

It is this simple: If we want to help the middle class, let's help the middle class.

We sat here the last couple of weeks--both in the Finance Committee and on the floor--on the tax bill. I heard ad nauseam my colleagues say that this tax bill is for the middle class. Well, it really wasn't for the middle class. If you want to cut taxes for the middle class, you cut taxes for the middle class. Same here. If we want to help the middle class, let's help the middle class, whether it is the Tax Code or banking laws. You don't grow our economy by handing out more money to the people at the top, whether it is Wall Street banks or whether it is large corporations that outsource jobs. You don't give handouts to the wealthiest people with sort of a bank shot. Get rid of the middleman. If you want to help the middle class, darn it, help the middle class. Don't filter it through the largest banks and the largest corporations, hoping something will trickle down. We grow our economy by putting money directly into the pockets of middle-class families.

Let's cut the corporate middleman. Let's throw out the Wall Street lobbyists. Let's provide relief for student loan debt and mortgages and community banks. Let's help workers who haven't seen a raise in over a decade. Let's show the people of this country that we actually do, in fact, work for them.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Wyden.

Mr. President, if we want to cut taxes for the middle class, as my colleagues keep saying, then let's cut taxes for the middle class. Instead of giving the money to the corporations and hoping it trickles down, let's cut out the middleman. Let's put the money directly in the pockets of working families.

I will say that again. Instead of giving the money to corporations and hoping it trickles down, cut out the middleman and put the money directly in the pockets of working families. I will keep saying this, because tax reform should be that simple.

I spent the last 2 weeks, and in particular the past 2 days, working with Senators Rubio and Lee on a good-faith effort to bring the child tax credit into this conversation.

I don't believe their proposal goes far enough because it fails to index the CTC for inflation. For inflation, it is temporary. Remember, the tax cuts for individuals are temporary; the tax cuts for corporations are permanent. It continues to be tied only to payroll taxes. It ignores the burdens we place on working families.

We can find trillions--trillions--for corporations. This is all we can do for working families?

Unfortunately, while Senators Lee and Rubio were making a real effort at middle-class tax cuts, and I thought we were close to a bipartisan bill that could save this bill, it didn't happen. Republican leadership--coming down the hall from Senator McConnell's office-- swooped in and made it clear that this bill is being written to benefit one class of people: corporations that shift jobs overseas and their CEOs.

While Senators' sons and daughters will do just fine under this proposal--they will get the full tax cut for their children--working families will pay the price.

What we should do--frankly, what we must do--is vote this bill down and start over.

Senators Rubio and Lee and I could work together, along with our colleague, Senator Bennet, to pass real middle-class tax cuts built around a compromise that begins with our shared goals on the child tax credit. That is where we start because, right now, this bill is not a tax cut for working families. Everybody on this side of the aisle knows it. Every single person knows it. Whether they were personally a CEO, whether they were an accountant, whether they were a lawyer in a small town, they all know this is not a cut for middle-class families.

Right now this bill is a massive giveaway to multinational corporations that outsource American jobs. We know the companies shut down in Mansfield, OH, in Zanesville, in Lima, and in Chillicothe, they get a tax break, they move overseas, build a new factory, and sell those products back into the United States. We know that is what has been happening. We choose not to fix that and instead we do more of the same.

Even before we take into account the loss of healthcare coverage for tens of millions of Americans, a full 62 percent of these tax cuts will go to the top 1 percent of households by the end of the decade. Sixty- two percent of these tax cuts go to the top 1 percent of households. Even with the Bush tax cuts, which were clearly weighted way too much to the wealthiest people in our country--the most privileged--that was only 27 percent of those tax cuts, those benefits that went to the wealthiest 1 percent.

So let's end the charade that this bill is a tax cut for ordinary Americans. It is simply not.

Their CEO pals have let the cat out of the bag. Bloomberg said this morning: ``Instead of hiring more workers. . . .'' My friends on the other side of the aisle say, if we cut taxes on corporations, it will raise wages, and they will hire more workers.

Bloomberg said: ``Instead of hiring more workers or raising their pay, companies say they will first increase dividends or buy back their own shares.''

That is what they always do. They take the money for themselves. They take the money for stockholders and stock buybacks and more executive compensation. The corporate CEOs couldn't be clearer: They are keeping the money for themselves. It is not going into the pockets of workers.

Again, take out the middleman. If you want to do tax cuts for the middle class, then do tax cuts for the middle class. If my colleagues mean what they say--if they want to cut taxes for the middle class-- work with us bipartisanly on a good child tax credit that will really work for working families and cut taxes directly for the middle class.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, without the Brown-Bennet amendment, a Senator's kid gets more tax relief than the daughter of a family in Garfield Heights, OH, who makes $40,000 a year. I will say that again. A Senator's kid gets more tax relief than the daughter of a family earning $30,000 or $40,000.

Brown-Bennet is permanent; Rubio-Lee isn't.

Brown-Bennet provides more for small children at the most important time in their young lives.

My wife and I live in Cleveland, OH, in ZIP Code 44105. Our ZIP Code had more foreclosures in 2007 than any ZIP Code in the United States of America. This amendment helps to answer that. ZIP Codes should not be the determining factor for the future of a child.

Madam President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive all applicable sections of that act for purposes of the pending amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Senator Hatch?

Thank you, Senator Hatch.

The question is this. I appreciated the exchange we had in the Finance Committee the other night----

I am fine. I just wanted to clarify something. When we had our little exchange a couple of Thursdays ago, I talked about the bill I thought was much more heavily weighted toward the top 1 percent. I wanted to put another number out there and just ask you your opinion.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities yesterday said that in the Bush tax cuts, 27 percent of the tax cuts went to the top 1 percent. Their studies show that 62 percent of this tax cut goes to the 1 percent. I know in the Bush days people thought too much of it went to the top 1 percent. That was only one-quarter. This is almost two-thirds of that goes to the top 1 percent.

I wonder, Senator Hatch, if you would explain that to us.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Thank you. I accept that, but this bill was not spending money on the poor, except Senator Lee and Senator Rubio wanted to do a child tax credit, and we have done the earned-income tax credit. You supported some of this----

But one of the things we could be doing instead of this bill is the CHIP program, which you proudly, with Senator Kennedy, offered 20 years ago. There are going to be letters that will go out to people in Virginia next and Ohio and other States----

This is not a giveaway. This is something we have done bipartisanly. Is there something we can do to----

We recognize that.

Will the Senator yield?

Will the chairman yield for a moment?

OK. My one comment about CHIP, if that is OK, is that there are letters that are going to go out. I so respect what you did with Senator Kennedy. I know that your work was exemplary on it, 20 years ago, to start the Children's Health Insurance Program.

I know. We all understand that.

We so appreciate that, Mr. Chairman.

My concern is that you know some of these families. When you write a bill like that, you meet a lot of these families who benefit--209,000 in my State alone. Some of the parents of those kids, if we don't move on CHIP in the next week or so, are going to get letters in the mail that read, ``Sorry, your child's health insurance is going to expire,'' while we are sitting here, dressed pretty well. I know you said that you grew up with the poor people, is how you said it the other night, but I worry about these families, and these are families with jobs. You know that about CHIP. These are families who make $8 and $10 and $12 an hour, who don't have insurance, and they are going to get letters, reading: Your insurance is canceled.

How can we let that happen, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Will Senator Toomey yield?

Mr. President, has the Republicans' time expired?

Mr. President, I am so amused at how any of my Republican colleagues can talk about this being a legitimate process and that they want Democratic support. I sat at the White House with Senator Wyden, with Senator Cornyn, with Senator Toomey, with a number of--probably 11 or 12--Republican Senators on the Finance Committee, and with 6 on the Democratic side of the Finance Committee.

I went up to the President and had a copy of two bills in my hand. I brought it up to the whole group--the Patriot Corporation Act, on which I will speak in a moment. It does exactly what President Trump wants to do. It rewards corporations that pay good wages, that pay decent benefits, and that keep their production in this country. The President said that he liked it. He had had an interview with either Forbes or Fortune Magazine not too much earlier, and he had talked about it. Then I brought up to the President the Working Families Tax Relief Act, which puts money directly in the pockets of people who are making $25,000 and $50,000 and $75,000 a year. The President said that he liked that.

But do you know what happened? He said it then, and he said it in a phone call that a group of us were on a little bit later. Do you know what happened? We know exactly what happened. They all went down the hall here to the majority leader's office. All of my Republican friends walked into that office, and they had their Wall Street lobbyists with them; they had their drug company lobbyists; and they had their tobacco company lobbyists. That is where they wrote the bill. There was no light of day on this.

Then my colleagues on this committee told us that it was a legitimate process on the night that we had the markup in the Finance Committee. They call it legitimate, but they give us a bill with almost no warning. They try to jam it through. They change it in the middle of the night. Then we talk about it the next day. Then they change it in the middle of the night again. They add a healthcare provision about which the Congressional Budget Office said 13 million people will lose their insurance; rates will go up; premiums will go up 10 percent a year. If you are paying $500 a month today, you will pay $550 next year, and you will pay $605 the following year, and you will pay $660- something a month the following year.

I mean, don't even insult us by saying that this is a legitimate process. I don't even want to talk about the process, because that really doesn't mean much to people.

In this letter that my friend mentioned, the first line states: ``We write to express our interest in working with you on bipartisan tax reform.'' That is what Senator Wyden said, if you would like to look at it.

I want to talk about my amendment, which is exactly what Candidate Trump campaigned on, exactly what pretty much everybody on this side of the aisle stands for, but most importantly, it is exactly what the American people have asked for.

It is simple. It is called the Patriot Corporation Act. If a company does the right thing, if a company pays good wages and provides decent healthcare and retirement benefits to its employees and does its production in the United States, it will get a significant tax break based on the number of employees it hires--a significant tax break. President Trump said he liked that. He told Forbes that he wanted a bill with economic development incentives for companies. The President has said repeatedly that he wants legislation--a tax bill that supports companies that stay here and are patriotic, and he said that we should penalize companies that don't do their production in this country.

This bill now--comments from my friend from Pennsylvania notwithstanding--gives a massive, permanent tax cuts to large, multinational corporations, and it gives them more incentives to move offshore.

The Presiding Officer grew up in the Cleveland suburbs. A plant shuts down in Cleveland or Garfield Heights or Mansfield, where I grew up, it moves overseas, and it gets a tax break now. Don't you think we should fix that? Instead, this bill greases the wheels to send more jobs overseas. Of all the things we should fix, that is it. That is what the President wants to do, and that is what Senate Democrats want to do. Instead, Senate Republicans--again, that deal was struck back there in Senator McConnell's office--Senate Republicans are writing a bill that gives huge tax cuts to the wealthiest people in this country.

The Center for Budget Priorities just yesterday came out with this, done precisely according to the numbers. In 2001 and 2003, 27 percent of the Bush tax cuts went to the top 1 percent. I thought that was too high at the time. This bill more than doubles that--61 percent of the benefits. It is not going to the middle class, and they know that when they say it over and over. In addition, it kicks 13 million people off of their insurance. We know that.

Under this bill, U.S. companies would pay a rate of 20 percent on profit earned in a manufacturing plant in Akron, OH. That same plant can shut down, lay off its workers, build a new factory in Asia, and get a tax deduction for the cost of moving. Do you know what they pay? They potentially likely pay a zero-percent tax rate. So what are they going to do? Even in the Senate Finance Committee, where people are not as quick as one might think they are, 20 is a larger number than zero. Even we can figure that out. At 20 percent, what that means is that there is an even greater tax incentive to go overseas.

The Presiding Officer knows Cleveland well. He knows that my wife and I live in a neighborhood in Cleveland, OH. Our neighborhood ZIP Code is 44105. There were more foreclosures in my neighborhood in the first half of 2007 than any ZIP Code in the United States of America. Why? It wasn't the Wall Street scam that caused so many foreclosures later; it was mostly because of the loss of manufacturing jobs. Do you know why that is? Partly because of trade agreements like NAFTA, other trade policies, PNTR with China, and all that. Much of it was about tax legislation giving incentives to move overseas. Why are we doing more of it? This bill rewards companies for sending jobs overseas.

Our legislation, the Patriot Corporation Act, will work to keep jobs here. We know these corporate tax cuts are not going to end up in the pockets of ordinary working Americans.

Senator Hatch and I had a very public discussion in the Finance Committee a couple Thursdays ago when the bill was voted out. We talked about a number of things. One of the things we talked about was this promise, this assertion, this myth that if we give a company a big tax cut, then we know what they are going to do. They are going to hand it out to their employees. They are going to give a $4,000 or $5,000 or $6,000 or $7,000 a year raise. That doesn't happen. That has never happened. When this body passed a tax holiday a decade-plus ago, the money that was brought back from overseas at a lower tax rate went to executive compensation, to stock buybacks, and to dividends--almost all of it. Workers didn't get raises and they didn't invest more in our economy.

Companies are sitting on large stacks, huge caches of cash. Those companies can hire more people now. They can raise wages now. They are not doing any of that.

What we ought to do, instead of shoveling more money to the top, to these large corporations that outsource jobs, we ought to cut out the middleman and put the money directly into the middle class. If my friends want to give a tax cut to the middle class, why don't we

give a tax cut to the middle class? Why don't we directly put the money there?

I know the President said that he is a big loser on this bill personally, that it will cost him zillions of dollars--whatever he said. We know that is not even close to true. But if we really care about the middle class, I say to my colleagues, let's give a tax break to the middle class.

Think about it. They are not even hiding what they are doing. These cuts go to corporate stockholders. They don't go to raise wages; they go to executive compensation. They don't go to create jobs; they go to stock buybacks. They don't go to middle-class Ohioans, Oregonians, Texans, Pennsylvanians, or Alaskans. We know what will happen. Do you know what will happen? As Senator Rubio said, after we pass this bill and the President signs it into law, the budget deficit will explode again. Do you know what will happen? Senator Wyden knows. This will come back, and you guys will say: You know, we have this budget deficit, and we are going to have to raise the Social Security retirement age. Do you know what that means to a barber in Garfield Heights? Do you know what that means to a construction worker in Warren, OH? Do you know what that means to somebody who is working in manufacturing in Mansfield, OH? They can't work until they are 70. We can all work until we are 70, if our constituents allow us, because we have these jobs. Well, a lot of our constituents can't. And if that is the scenario--and it is almost inevitable--if we pass this bill, if we do this bill, if we pass this bill of big tax cuts for the wealthiest people in this country, we will drive a hole in the budget deficit, and then we will come back and make the middle class and working families pay to fill that hole. That is irresponsible. That is morally reprehensible.

I yield.

Mr. President, I call up my motion that is at the desk.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Oregon, and I appreciate the time in this as we wind down this debate.

The answer is yes. We have a tax system right now in place. I hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle disingenuously say: Well, as for the Democrats, because they don't like our tax plan, that means they are for the tax system the way it is. Of course, we don't like the tax system the way it is, and we particularly don't like it in States like mine and, I would say, especially in places like Eastern Oregon, where companies shut down production in Lima, OH, or Springfield, OR, and move to Wuhan or Beijing and get a tax break for doing it. We want to close that loophole, but you know what, this bill explodes that loophole. It explodes it, because, as I said a few minutes ago, if a plant shuts down in Barberton or it shuts down in Xenia or it shuts down in Zanesville, the company, under this bill, would pay a rate of 20 percent on profits. If it shuts down and moves to Asia, it can build a new factory and get a tax deduction for the cost of moving, still, and pay a U.S. tax rate of zero. So why wouldn't they move?

Briefly, very briefly.

I take back my time.

Sure.

OK, I will yield for a question, if it is a question.

Madam President, I reclaim my time.

Madam President, I reclaim my time.

Of course, I don't believe that is the new normal. It is the same old game they played before. If you are not for our tax plan, then you are not for tax reform. Nobody believes that.

Of course, we don't think 1.5 percent is the normal. But do you know what else we know? We know that the last time, 20 years ago, when we focused on the middle class and cut taxes on the middle class during the Clinton years, the economy exploded. There were 22 million private sector jobs.

But do you know what happened a dozen years ago? President Bush did two tax cuts for the wealthy, under the view that it trickles down and everybody will do better. During 8 years of President Bush, there was no net job growth.

Yes, during the last few years, we have had this low level of GDP growth for a whole lot of reasons, but you don't fix it--you don't grow the economy--by giving tax cuts for the rich with the hope of it trickling down. One of the ways you fix that is to do the patriot corporation legislation. If a company does the right thing, if a company pays good wages, if a company provides decent health benefits and retirement benefits and keeps its production in the United States, that company gets a better tax rate--$1,500 for workers, the way this amendment would work. That is how you grow the economy. That is what Candidate Trump said and then President Trump said to me in a meeting with all my Finance Committee Republicans in the room--in the President's Cabinet room. Now, we know that. That just goes without saying, in spite of the myth that we continue to propagate on the floor.

Before I turn it to Senator Durbin, who is one of the original authors of the patriot corporation legislation, I want to say one other thing. We have seen some pretty charts on this floor about middle-class tax cuts. Well, what we didn't hear mention was that on about the third year of this bill, the tax cuts go down and down and down and then they cross zero, and then you have tax increases. The Tax Policy Center said that, in 2019, 13 million

households will have a tax increase; in 2025, 19 million households will have a tax increase; and in 2027, 87 million will have tax increases. Those aren't the Trump family that will have tax increases. Those aren't Senators' families that will have tax increases. Those are working families in Toledo, in Dayton, and working families in Omaha and in East St. Louis, IL. They are the ones who are going to get hit with these tax increases while the wealthy continue to get more tax breaks.

I will yield the remainder of the Democratic time to the assistant Democratic leader, Senator Durbin

Madam President, how much time remains on the Democratic side?

I appreciate the leadership of Senator Durbin on this issue.

I want to ask Democratic Ranking Member Wyden a question as we wrap up. We have heard that in order to sell this scam that we see rushed through and negotiated in the majority leader's office with his Wall Street and drug company lobbyist friends, that to sell this scam for the 1 percent and their billionaire contributors, that Republicans continue to say the Democrats didn't want to participate, didn't want to do this in a bipartisan way. Senator Wyden and I were at the White House when I handed the President the Patriot Corporation Act and handed the President the Tax Relief for Working Families Act. Other Democrats were saying: Here are some ideas that can make this truly a bill aimed at the middle class, helping the middle class and expanding the economy.

I keep hearing them say: We didn't want to do this. I mean, really. So I want to ask Senator Wyden--he is the senior Democrat on the Tax Committee--would you just expand on that? I mean, what really happened?

This is a really simple debate. Then-Candidate Trump, President Trump, has said: We reward corporations that do the right thing: They pay good wages. They provide decent benefits. They keep their production in the United States. He then went on to say: Penalize companies that don't, but if they are patriotic, you give them a tax break.

The Brown-Durbin amendment bill provides roughly $1,500 for every employee when companies do the right thing. Why would we not want to reward American companies that are making things in America?

This suit I wear is made by union workers 10 miles from my house. Why wouldn't we want to reward companies that do that instead of reward companies that go overseas?

Vote for the Brown-Durbin Patriot Corporation Act Amendment.

I yield back my time.

Mr. President, right now, as we all return from Thanksgiving--some of the American people did not have to work over Thanksgiving weekend, but many, many people in this country do and struggle and continue to work two jobs--and as Congress returns from Thanksgiving, the priorities of this Congress are becoming pretty darned clear to the American people. People want to know the answer to a fundamental question. In this body we all stand up for election every 6 years--in some cases, a little more often--and people fundamentally want to know which side you are on. Are you on their side? Are you on the side of Wall Street or the side of corporations that outsource jobs?

So the question is this: Whose side are you on? The question is this: Are you going to stand with multinational corporations that ship jobs overseas, all to pad their own executives' fat bonus checks? Are you going to stand with banks that rip off consumers or that steal their information and get off scot-free? Maybe some of their executives give their bonuses back, but that is about the only penalty they pay. Are you going to stand with American workers who have been working too hard for too long for too little pay and who are just looking to catch a break? Are you going to stand with children whose parents work two jobs to put food on the table when, unfortunately, both jobs that they work do not pay for health insurance? These are the choices we face.

Right now, the leader of the Senate--the majority leader, who works in that office down the hall, the majority leader back in that office there--negotiates with lobbyists, negotiates healthcare bills, and writes healthcare bills in the back room with drug company lobbyists and insurance lobbyists. Now he has written a tax bill in the back room. We voted on it last week in committee, but it just keeps changing. That is all done in the back room with Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, and his lobbyist friends from corporate America-- with the corporate America that ships jobs overseas, with the Wall Street banks that fleece Main Street taxpayers, and with other corporations, which are the drug companies and oil companies and the Koch brothers and all of that. These are the choices that we face. The leaders of the Senate have made it really clear whose side they are on--period.

While the Senate spends its time on a bill to cut taxes for corporations that send jobs overseas--that is the bill that Senator McConnell is negotiating, is writing, is drafting with his lobbyist friends in that office down the hall--children here in America, pure and simple--there is no other way to say it--are about to be kicked off of their health insurance through the Children's Health Insurance Program. As soon as this week, families of young children are going to get letters in the mail that will bring devastating news--that their children will lose their health insurance--period. There are 209,000 of them who live in my State of Ohio--209,000 of them alone.

This is what this program is. It was founded more than two decades ago. Senator Hatch--I give him credit as chairman of the Finance Committee--doesn't seem as interested, frankly, in this bill today as he was when he started, when he wrote the bill, because it has passed out of his committee, and Senator McConnell is too busy to put this bill on the floor so that we can pass it.

The bill works this way: If there is a family and the parents lose their insurance, as many families do, the children still get insurance. That is why 209,000 children--tens of thousands of families in my State--rely on the Children's Health Insurance Program. But this fall, because this Congress is too busy giving tax cuts to rich people, because this Congress is too busy giving all kinds of breaks to the Nation's banks, because this Congress is too busy doing the bidding of the drug companies and the health insurance companies and the bidding of the oil companies, this Congress let CHIP expire.

States are beginning to run out of money for CHIP. States are preparing to shut down this lifeline for 9 million children in Kansas, Ohio, Florida, and all over the country. Folks in this body--don't forget, we all get our health insurance funded by taxpayers, but we haven't done our job. As a result, families of 209,000 children in Ohio and 9 million children in the United States are going to pay the price.

Think about how devastating it would be to get that letter in the mail. It is already an expensive and stressful time of year. Parents are worried about all kinds of things--higher heating bills, visits to their families for the holidays, the cost of childcare when kids take off from school for the holidays. They are scraping together what they can for gifts. They are already stressed enough. Imagine having to tell your daughter: I am sorry, honey, Santa probably isn't bringing much this year. We won't have any presents under the tree.

You try not to let the child see the worry in your eyes because you are wondering how you are going to afford the debt for regular checkups each year, or God forbid she gets an ear infection or something happens and she needs to go to the doctor. But, oh my gosh, no, we got this letter in the mail that says--and I don't know if the letter will say it this way, but it should--that because Congress failed to do its job--a bunch of elected officials who have insurance paid by taxpayers failed

to do their job to reauthorize and fund this bill so that 209,000 children in Ohio will be protected, as well as 9 million people in the country--Ohio, Arizona, California, Minnesota, and Oregon are all expected to run out of CHIP money by the end of the year, early January. Some States will need to start notifying families right now that they could lose their coverage. Virginia will have to start sending out notices as early as this week. Many other States expect funds to run out the first of the year.

This is not just a few children whom maybe we don't want to think about; this is 9 million children--209,000 children in my State, tens of thousands of children in Kansas, and it is hundreds of thousands of children in Senator Nelson's Florida. These are working families who don't qualify for Medicaid but can't afford private insurance. They are families with two working parents who often aren't lucky enough to work for companies that provide health insurance. They are families with children who have special needs. CHIP helps provide access to specialty providers so the kids are never faced with a situation where their family can't afford the therapy or the expensive prescription drugs they need.

Healthcare for all of our children is something on which we ought to be able to come together, wouldn't you think--especially at the holiday season. Leading into Christmas, wouldn't you think we could agree on that, that we ought to take care of the Children's Health Insurance Program?

There has never been a gap for funding in the CHIP program. It was created in a bipartisan way. Senator Kennedy, who sat over here, Senator Rockefeller, who sat over here, and Senator Hatch, who is still in this body, all worked to create this program.

In those days, Senator Hatch said: ``As a nation, as a society, we have a moral responsibility'' to ensure our children have healthcare. We have maintained that bipartisanship ever since, until now--until Speaker Ryan and Leader McConnell, who would rather worry about tax cuts for the rich, would rather worry about helping banks keep consumers from having their day in court, would rather worry about helping the Koch brothers and the drug companies. That is way more important than taking care of 209,000 children in Ohio. I guess it is more important for Senator McConnell to go back in that room and write a bill with his lobbyist friends from the Koch brothers, oil companies, drug companies, and Wall Street--all his special interest buddies. He can write a bill for those big tax breaks for those companies but just not get around to taking care of these kids.

Two years ago, with the support of advocates all over the country, we extended funding for CHIP with bipartisan support. We did it for 2 more years. We put kids first in this body, acted early to extend CHIP so families wouldn't have to worry. This year, in committee--and I give credit to Senator Hatch in this case, as well as Senators Portman, Wyden, and others. We passed a 5-year extension of CHIP, and almost all my colleagues voted for it, but passing it out of committee and patting ourselves on the back doesn't get the job done.

I ask all my colleagues who sit here--again, with health insurance paid for by taxpayers--for one time this Christmas season to set partisanship aside and actually do the right thing. Let's forget the tax bill for just a few days. Let's forget helping the Wall Street banks for a few days. Let's forget about helping the oil companies and billionaire contributors on whom Senator McConnell and his colleagues rely. Let's forget about that just for a few days, and let's take care of 209,000 children in Ohio and tens of thousands of children in Kansas and 9 million children around the country.

My friend Bill Considine is the CEO of Akron Children's Hospital. He is the longest serving CEO of any children's hospital in the country. He said: ``The fact that this reauthorization has been delayed for political reasons, for shallow campaign promises, is inexcusable.'' I have known Bill Considine for 25 years. I don't know if he is a Republican or a Democrat. Certainly, I don't think he cares much about that. What he cares about is taking care of kids. He says that the fact that we are putting these children and families at risk in the country we live in--there are no words we can use to justify it. He is right. There is no way to justify Congress's negligence. We need to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program this week--now.

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