Floor Statements

Mr. President, today we are considering the nomination of Randal Quarles to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

Since 1984, Mr. Quarles has revolved between the public and private sectors. He was most recently the director of the Carlyle Group from 2007 to 2013, and then founded Cynosure Group, an investment management company.

I appreciate Mr. Quarles' willingness to serve the public once again, but I don't think he is the person we want in this important role at the Federal Reserve.

The financial crisis devastated communities in my State and across the country--devastated in terms of lost jobs, foreclosed homes, and evaporated savings. We have made a lot of progress in the 7 years since we passed Wall Street reform. The Vice Chair of Supervision at the Federal Reserve, a position created in Dodd-Frank, is supposed to look out for our financial system and make sure that our financial system is sound.

Mr. Quarles served as Treasury's Under Secretary for Domestic Finance in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. It was his job to coordinate oversight of the financial industry. Many of his statements, however, leading up to the crisis were far too credulous. He seemed to believe whatever the banks were telling him. They were far too credulous when it came to industry claims that we simply need not worry; the economy is in good shape and we don't have to worry about a credit bubble.

In the early 2000s, while at the Treasury Department, Mr. Quarles espoused the following view of the role of regulators in financial markets. It is a long quote, and I will quote him directly:

Markets are always ahead of the regulators, and frankly

that's how it should be. It's analogous to the advice that my

father

provided me that ``if you don't miss at least two or three

planes a year, you're spending too much time in airports.''

If the regulators aren't a little behind the market in a few

areas at any given time, they would be stifling innovation

and evolution. The regulators' task is to promote investor

protection, while ensuring that prudential and supervisory

activities do not stifle efficiency gains. For effective

regulation, the regulators must work with the markets.

I am not sure where to start on picking that apart. More importantly, it is showing that someone who says that shouldn't be in charge of financial regulation at the Federal Reserve.

He said at his Senate nomination hearing: ``That is probably the most unfortunate use of language that I ever made, and I do not stand behind that statement.'' That is what he said when presented with these words at his confirmation hearing. He made other similarly unfortunate statements in the years leading up to the financial crisis.

In 2006, as Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, he discussed the prospects for an impending financial crisis. This was before things looked really, really bad. He said:

How would our current financial system stand up to this

sort of canonical crisis? On the whole, I would say that the

U.S. economy is well positioned to weather such a

retrenchment in risk-taking.

This was about a year and a half before the economy began to implode. He was in a high position in the Treasury Department, and he had access to all of the information he might possibly want, and he said that the ``economy is well positioned to weather such a retrenchment.''

In the same speech, on the potential harm posed by increases in mortgage payments for families with exotic mortgages he said:

While that is certainly a large number, it represents only

a small hit to aggregate personal income. Moreover, market

reports indicate that borrowers using such non-traditional

mortgages tend to be upper income individuals that can manage

a sizable increase in their mortgage payment.

He concluded by saying, again, in 2006:

Fundamentally, the economy is strong, the financial sector

is healthy, and our future looks bright. We will surely face

challenges in the future, but we can take comfort in the

knowledge that our economy and financial system have

proven remarkably resilient to all manner of adverse

shocks in the past.

That was a lot of comfort to the millions of Americans afflicted by the financial crisis.

My wife and I live in Cleveland, in ZIP Code 44105. The year after Mr. Quarles made that statement and the economy started to really tank, my ZIP Code had more foreclosures than any other ZIP Code in the United States. I know what that does to a neighborhood.

I am not confident Mr. Quarles took to heart the costly lessons of the financial crisis. He seems far too ready to relax the rules for Wall Street and those who protect consumers. He is another example that this administration, which said it wants to drain the swamp, instead looks like a retreat for Goldman Sachs executives. The number of people on Wall Street who have influence on our government is just far and away worse than we have ever seen it.

Putting Mr. Quarles--who should know better but apparently doesn't, from his statements--at the Federal Reserve, in charge of financial regulation, is just the wrong thing. In 2015, when asked about Dodd- Frank, he said:

The macro issue is that the government should not be a

player in the financial sector. It should be a referee. And

the practice, and the policy, and the legislation that

resulted from the financial crisis tended to make the

government a player. They put it on the field as opposed to

simply reffing the game.

How could he think that, when he was part of the government when it didn't do its job and didn't do the job that regulators are supposed to do? In response to questions for the record at his nomination hearing, he stated: ``My approach to policy making, and particularly to regulation, has been that the discretion of policy makers, and particularly of regulators, should be as constrained as possible.''

He is really saying: Let Wall Street do what it wants to do; let Wall Street run the financial sector of our economy, and government regulators should sort of step aside.

As vice chair for supervision and as a Member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Mr. Quarles will be making decisions about risk- based capital, leverage and liquidity requirements, resolution plans, concentration limits, risk committees, stress tests, and other important safeguards put into place after the crisis for the Nation's largest banks. The crisis showed we need strong financial watchdogs, not, as he said, ``constrained'' ones. If confirmed, I am not sure who Mr. Quarles will be working for, taxpayers and working families or Wall Street.

Let me close by reminding my colleagues that, last Congress, the Banking Committee refused to consider President Obama's nominees to the Federal Reserve Board. Mr. Quarles is the first nominee President Trump has chosen. There are currently three other vacancies. The term for Chair of the Federal Reserve expires early next year. Because of that, President Trump will likely fill at least five of the seven Federal Reserve Board seats, which are 14-year terms.

Again, if the first one is someone who is so close to Wall Street, what does that tell you about who is in the White House? What does it tell you about the advisers in the White House? What does it tell you about that executive retreat for Goldman Sachs I talked about in the White House?

If all the nominees to the Federal Reserve are like Mr. Quarles, average Americans may once again pay the price. We can't return to a time when financial watchdogs are asleep on the job.

There seems to be a collective amnesia in this body, in the White House, and in the Banking Committee about what people in our country went through in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012, which was, in large part, because of the influence of Wall Street in our government. We can't let that happen. That is why I urge my colleagues to oppose the nomination of Mr. Quarles to the Federal Reserve.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, we have the recent fake accounts scandal at Wells Fargo and the massive data breach at Equifax. I don't think any of us can go home and not hear, certainly, about the Equifax scandal that we found out about just a couple of weeks ago. The massive data breach at Equifax and the fake accounts scandal at Wells Fargo drive home the fact that so-called forced arbitration clauses have become almost unavoidable in everyday life.

Whether it is a credit card or a bank account, whether it is a student loan or a college enrollment, whether it is a nursing home contract, your phone service, or even--now far too often--your job, you have probably signed a contract that forced you to give up your right to a day in court, usually, without even realizing it.

Forced arbitration is a tool that big corporations use to silence victims of corporate fraud and corporate abuse. These victims never get to tell their stories to a judge or a jury of their peers. Why? Because of the small print in these contracts. Victims are pushed into a secret process behind closed doors, where corporations win about 90 percent of the time.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have had an opportunity to hear from some of these victims. Let me tell you about George from Mentor, OH. George's wife suffered physical and mental abuse in a nursing home, but George and his wife have been denied a day in court. He said the lawyers he reached out to for help turned him away because they didn't think he had a chance fighting against the forced arbitration clause in his family's nursing home admittance agreement.

Any family who has been through the transition of admitting a loved one into a nursing home will tell you it is a difficult time in the best of circumstances. Forcing these families to sign away their rights is not only wrong. It is dangerous. Typically, because of all the trauma of moving a family member into a nursing home, you are not even aware that you have signed away your rights.

After the Equifax breach, my office was flooded with calls from scared consumers seeking help. Let me tell you about another one. Bill is from Hamilton, OH, which is at the other end of the State from Mentor. He and his wife are retired, and they worked hard to pay their bills on time. He has had excellent credit, and this is the story of millions of Americans. That was all put at risk when Equifax allowed his family's personal information to be stolen, along with that of 143 million other Americans. It is pretty much half of the country.

This breach was so huge and harmed so many people that the company's CEO, Richard Smith, retired suddenly today. Well, he will probably have a very comfortable retirement. His compensation was millions of dollars a year. The millions of people he has harmed will continue to struggle with the mess that he left behind.

That is bad enough, but Equifax was also demanding that Bill in Hamilton, OH, give up his right to hold the company accountable in court if Bill signed up for their credit monitoring service. Do you remember, after the story broke--I believe it was in July when the executives found out about the 143 million Americans breached, or the 140-

plus million Americans breached--that a couple of executives sold some of their stock. That is interesting. We will see what happens about that. Then it became public in September. So we know that.

Now, we also know that Equifax, then, to make it up to their customers, said that they would give them a free year of credit monitoring. A year ago, I believe it was, when there was another situation like that of a data breech, Congress voted to protect Federal employees and to give them free credit monitoring for 10 years. But Equifax, generously--I believe some used that word, but they probably didn't--gave the 1 year, but they had a forced arbitration clause. It was only because of a staff person on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, that Cory saw that they had that provision in these contracts--this free year of credit monitoring--and Equifax decided to back off of that.

These forced arbitration clauses are incredibly powerful. To understand them better, big companies use the small print not just against regular families back in Ohio but even against people who could afford top-notch legal teams.

Gretchen Carlson, a well-known news anchor, endured sexual harassment at FOX but was prevented from suing her employer by a forced arbitration clause. She didn't really know that or hadn't thought much about that when she signed her contract. She wrote of forced arbitration: It is ``often argued to be a quicker and cheaper method of dispute resolution for employees'' but, ``instead [it] has silenced millions of women who otherwise may have come forward.''

The power of forced arbitration clauses to silence victims has allowed potentially millions of people to be harmed by big banks and other financial institutions.

Let's take another one, Wells Fargo. In 2013, Wells Fargo used a forced arbitration clause to silence a customer who had accused the company of opening fake accounts in his name. You will remember that Wells Fargo opened as many as 3.5 million fake accounts, meaning they opened an account that the Senator from Texas or that I or others had not given permission to do so. They opened accounts in people's names. Obviously, I am not saying that personally of the Senator from Texas and me, but they opened 3 million fake accounts of customers who didn't even know these accounts had been opened. They subjected their employees to harsh sales goals. They threatened to fire anyone who didn't keep up.

Think about how much damage could have been prevented if that customer was allowed to take Wells Fargo to open court 4 years ago, but they couldn't because of forced arbitration.

Well, Equifax pulled back its use of forced arbitration clauses after the public shaming of what they did, but Wells Fargo seems to have no shame in continuing to hide behind arbitration following scandal after scandal. You will remember what Warren Buffet, who is a major stockholder in Wells Fargo, said: You rarely find just one cockroach in the kitchen. Well, with Wells Fargo, there was one case after they said: This is it. Then, there was another, and they said: Well, this is it. Then, there was another one. We don't know what is next.

We know that many of the victims of Wells Fargo's scandal were servicemembers. In 2015, Santander Bank illegally repossessed cars from servicemembers and, then, used a forced arbitration clause to silence their claims. So they are willing to go against servicemembers, in the case of Santander. Wells Fargo is willing to do it against servicemembers. Wells Fargo is willing to do it against up to 3.5 million customers for whom they opened fake accounts.

Servicemembers and all Americans deserve to be protected from this shady legal fine print. That is what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has done with its new rule on the issue of forced arbitration--a rule that some in this body want to overturn.

It is despicable that Congress is trying to cover for big corporations looking to cheat consumers and overturn this rule. Make no mistake. Voting to overturn the CFPB rule about forced arbitration is simply saying that we support corporations' ability and efforts to cheat their consumers. They simply don't have their day in court.

The American Legion adopted a resolution at its national conference last month opposing repeal of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule. They understand that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau did the right thing to protect servicemembers from forced arbitration.

John Kamin, assistant director of the American Legion's veterans employment and education division, said: ``Our membership has stated unequivocally that we will not accept a future where our military veterans' financial protections are chipped away to increase the margins of the financial sector.''

Let me say that again: ``We will not accept a future''--this is from the American Legion--``where our military veterans' financial protections are chipped away to increase the margins of the financial sector.''

The right to have your day in court is enshrined in the Constitution that our servicemembers fight to uphold. The least we can do is to protect this right for the women and the men who protect our country-- to protect this right for the men and the women who protect our country.

How can Members of this body, when this vote approaches, if they support the CRA to overturn the rule of the CFPB, look those servicemen and servicewomen in the eyes and explain that they chose to stand with Wall Street over these people who served their country and over their families and over hard-working people all across America?

It is our job to protect the people we serve, not to protect Wall Street banks and corporations when they try to scam consumers. Big companies use small print to silence the hard-working Americans they have cheated.

When a resolution to repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule comes to this floor, I urge my colleagues to speak up for the people whom we serve.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Cathy Glenn and Dave Ahart of the Senate recording studio be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the legislative day.

Mr. President, I want to make a couple of comments. Thanks to Senator Boozman for honoring the little known, courageous, now no longer young men and women but then boys and girls of Little Rock.

I have had the good fortune of getting to know over the years Ernie Green, who was the senior in high school of the Little Rock group. He went on to Michigan State. Martin Luther King attended his, I believe, high school graduation, maybe his Michigan State graduation. I am not sure.

My brother arranged for my daughter, some years ago on her birthday, to get to have dinner with Ernie Green because we had watched the docudrama of the Ernie Green story, about the young men and women of Little Rock.

I say thank you to Senator Boozman for honoring them.

Disaster Relief for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands

Mr. President, I want to take a moment for the millions of American citizens who are fighting for their lives in Puerto Rico, to never ever forget that the people in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are, in fact, American citizens.

It has been 5 days since Hurricane Maria ripped through the island of Puerto Rico. People are without power, they are without communication, and in many cases with no end in sight.

My staff has checked to see the condition of the veterans hospitals, both in Puerto Rico and in the three American Virgin Islands. There has been a mixed response. Some of them are up and running with electricity and water. Some of them are running with a generator. Some of them have been simply suspended or closed for a period of time.

It is up to us to make sure--one of the first things we can do is make sure those hospitals are served and running, and there is obviously so much more we need to do.

Much of the island of Puerto Rico remains mostly cut off from San Juan. The government has dispatched runners on foot to try to maintain contact in towns outside the capital. Towns are blocked from rescuers. Patients are worried they will run out of medicine.

The Washington Post talked to a woman in a mountain town. Her mother has diabetes. They have no power. She worries they will run out of prescriptions or generator fuel to keep her insulin refrigerated. I repeat. These are citizens of the United States of America. She is worried her mother's ulcer will become infected. She fans her mother with a piece of cardboard to keep the flies away.

These are American citizens. We cannot ignore them. Puerto Rico's secretary of the Department of Agriculture estimated the storm wiped out 80 percent of the crop value on the island. Entire farms were wiped out. Entire plantations are destroyed. One farmer said there will be no food in Puerto Rico. Officials predict the storm will set the island back for decades.

Listen to Jenniffer Gonzalez, Puerto Rico's representative in Congress. Understand that Puerto Rico elects a Congressman or, in this case, a Congresswoman. She comes here. She doesn't have voting rights on the floor of the House of Representatives so Puerto Rico has representation but not the kind of representation Oklahoma or Ohio has, but, again, they are citizens of the United States of America.

The Resident Commissioner said:

The devastation . . . has set us back 20 to 30 years. I

can't deny that the Puerto Rico of now is different from that

of a week ago. The destruction of properties, of flattened

structures, of families without homes, of debris everywhere.

The island's greenery is gone.

Our country has been hit hard by hurricanes this year. I was proud of the way we came together in this body to support the people of Texas after Hurricane Harvey. That seems almost like ancient history. We have seen bipartisan cooperation on getting aid to Florida following Hurricane Irma. Our job is far from done. There is more to do.

We must do the same thing for our brothers and sisters, our fellow American citizens in Puerto Rico. We need to provide relief to the people of Puerto Rico with all the resources we always provide to American citizens when Mother Nature deals us a devastating blow. We can't allow children and grandparents to die waiting for help in our own backyard.

Tribute to Cathy Glenn and Dave Ahart

Mr. President, this building is full of people who work hard to make our government function. I am not really talking about Senators. I am talking about low-paid workers in our cafeteria, I am talking about people who keep the offices clean for our constituents, I am talking about the tour guides who give

Americans from all over the country a glimpse of the historic buildings, and I am talking about the clerks right here on the Senate floor. These people work so hard in the background. Too often they don't get the credit they deserve serving the American public. I want to honor two of them today.

This week, the Senate is losing two of the kindest, most cheerfully hard-working and imaginative people in this building, my dear friends Cathy Glenn and Dave Ahart.

For nearly three decades, Cathy and Dave worked in the Senate recording studio, helping all of us do one of our most important jobs, talking with and listening to the people with whom we serve.

For a decade, I have spent my Thursday mornings--virtually every Thursday morning the Senate is in session--with Cathy and Dave. Every Thursday morning, I go to the radio studio to talk with radio stations across Ohio. It is early. It is toward the end of the week so no one would blame them for being quiet or even being grumpy, but Dave and Cathy always bring joy to everyone around them.

Because of them and Ohio's great radio hosts, Thursday morning is among the highlights of my week here. We share friendship. We share baseball. They give me baseball trivia questions I can later then test on Senator McCain or Senator Schumer. They do all right, I should say.

Anyone who knows me knows I am a Cleveland Indians fan. The Indians have won 29 out of the last 31--never equaled in Major League history, except in 1884, it is believed.

I am also a pretty big fan of baseball trivia, and that is something Dave, Cathy, and I share. About every week since 2007, I arrive at the radio studio to a new baseball trivia question before I do my radio interview. We lost the records from the first couple of years, but the first question we have on record is dated July 29, 2010: Name the only two Hall of Fame pitchers--at that time--with losing records.

Sometimes they give me hints, especially early in the morning.

They had hints. Hint No. 1: One pitcher was a starter and one was a reliever. Hint No. 2: One of the pitchers pitched in the big leagues from 1948 to 1965. Hint No. 3: One of them pitched for the Major Leagues from 1968 to 1985. The answer is--not to keep you in suspense-- Satchel Paige, who played for the Indians and St. Louis Browns. Lifetime, he had 28 wins and 31 losses, but he was one of the greatest pitchers in the Negro League. He was born in the early 1900s, starting in the 1920s, when he was perhaps the single best pitcher in the Negro League. The Cleveland Indians, under the ownership of Bill Veeck, soon after they signed Larry Doby, the first Black player in the league, signed Satchel Paige, who helped to take the Indians to the World Series that year.

The other pitcher was Rollie Fingers of Steubenville, OH. He played for the Oakland A's and San Diego Padres. He had 114 wins and 118 losses. He had more losses than he had wins because he was a closer or relief pitcher who finished off games, and typically they have more losses than they have wins. I don't want to go into those details on the Senate floor because many people who are listening probably don't really care, but I do, and so I am going to continue.

Dave and Cathy's dedication to America's game and to bringing joy to their jobs didn't end there. They made baseball dioramas, a word I did not even know until I came to the Senate and met them. Sometimes a baseball diorama is sort of a 3-D replication of a baseball stadium, complete with a nod to their favorite baseball-loving canine, my dog Franklin Roosevelt. People who know me know that of course our dog is named after Franklin Roosevelt.

They celebrated opening day every April--all of us having hope for the next year--with popcorn, peanuts, and crackerjacks in the radio studio. What always moved me wasn't just the love for baseball--that counted for a lot--but their incredible kindness, thoughtfulness, and joy of living. That is what makes them such good friends to each other, to Connie, Rachel, and me.

I can't think of anyone in this building who deserves a long, happy retirement more than Dave and Cathy. I wish them years of time spent with friends and loved ones and with a husband and a wife watching a lot of baseball games. Selfishly, I wish Dave and Cathy wouldn't go. Your friendship has meant so much to me. Thursday mornings just will not be the same.

Thank you.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I rise to speak about the nomination of Pam Patenaude to be Deputy Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ms. Patenaude comes to this nomination with valuable experience in the field of housing and community development and a history of affordable housing advocacy. In her previous work at HUD, she helped administer the Department's disaster relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina.

While I don't agree with Ms. Patenaude on every element of housing policy, I respect her experience, and I respect her government service in her recent work to raise awareness about the affordable housing shortage facing so many families.

I agreed with her in her testimony in front of the Banking Committee that ``as a nation we must recognize that housing is not just a commodity but a foundation for economic mobility and personal growth.'' That is why I was so troubled that during her nomination hearing, Ms. Patenaude defended the administration's terrible budget for the agency she has been nominated to help lead. The President would cut more than $7 billion, 15 percent, from HUD's budget, right in the midst of a shortage of affordable housing, about which she so articulately spoke. This budget cut

would eliminate programs like community development block grants and the HOME Program. These grants help our cities and small towns repair their infrastructure, retrofit homes for seniors and people with disabilities, combat homelessness among families, veterans, and people struggling with mental illness and substance abuse.

Just last week, Congress approved new CDBG funds to speed up disaster recovery assistance to communities upended by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Ms. Patenaude came in front of this committee and defended those budget cuts--programs for which she has advocated but doing, apparently, the dirty work for the administration and for the HUD Secretary, she agreed with this budget.

This budget would devastate public housing. It would cut funding for major repairs by some 70 percent. Again, in the face of substandard housing, unavailable shortages of affordable housing, it would cut funding for repairs by 70 percent, and it would expose more families to poor building conditions and health hazards.

I have told this story before on the floor. My wife and I live in Cleveland, OH, in ZIP Code 44105. Ten years ago, in 2007, that ZIP Code had more foreclosures than any ZIP Code in the United States of America. Within a not very great distance from my home, there is block after block of homes that are in need of repair--rentals and people living in homes they own--far too much devastation, crying out for some help from this HUD budget. Yet this administration turns their back on them.

It reduces funding for lead hazard control and healthy housing grants. Secretary Carson, whom I voted for--and not many Democrats did--I voted for him because he is a neurosurgeon. He didn't know much about housing when he took this job, but he knew about lead paint and what the exposure to lead meant to babies and infants. Yet this budget cuts lead hazard control.

I know, in my city, the public health department has said that in the old sections in my city of Cleveland, where homes are generally 60, 70, 80 years old, virtually almost every single home has high toxic levels of lead. Do we not care about what we sentence the next generation of children to by doing nothing about the lead-based paint around the windows, the lead around the pipes? All of that we have a moral responsibility to do something about.

These cuts to HUD programs have generated bipartisan concern about their effects on our communities, including concerns raised, in fact, by Republican members of the Banking Committee.

I am voting against Ms. Patenaude's nomination because I can't support the direction the President's budget proposes for HUD, proposes for housing, proposes for our communities, and proposes for our country. She has pledged allegiance--in spite of her background, her skills, and her advocacy inside and outside the Department since, she has pledged allegiance to that disastrous vision and those horrible budget cuts to HUD.

I hope she uses her experience and knowledge to convince others in the administration of the importance of the Federal Government's role in housing and community development.

Too often, in this administration, we see officials who come to their agencies with valuable experience and they quickly set it aside to push an agenda that does not serve working families in Appalachia, OH, and inner-city Ohio, in inner-ring suburbs, and affluent suburbs.

We have two very visible crises; one on the gulf coast and one stretching from Florida to the Virgin Islands, which we absolutely must tackle. We have a less visible crisis as well--not because of flooding or hurricanes but because decent affordable housing is beyond the reach of more and more Americans.

Ms. Patenaude is intelligent. She has good insight. She knows this. She knows in her heart what this budget would mean to a whole lot of Americans who work full time, who have generally low incomes--$8, $10, $12 an hour--who simply can't find affordable, clean decent housing. Her support for that budget will make the problem worse, and it is very troubling. I ask my colleagues to vote no on her nomination.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 5 minutes on the Hassett nomination.

Mr. President, I rise to discuss the nomination of Kevin Hassett to be Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Dr. Hassett came through the Banking Committee with a mixed vote, not so much because of him and his qualifications but because of some of his past statements and because of the economic philosophy of the person who nominated Dr. Hassett.

After meeting with him and being impressed with his integrity and openness, I hope he will not forget where he came from. I hope he will approach the job in a thoughtful way. I hope that he will stay grounded in sound research and that he will be transparent about his methods. I would caution him about embracing ideas about economic growth that are not supported by empirical evidence. I hope his new colleagues will listen to him.

For too long, our trade policy and tax policy have encouraged a corporate business model that shuts down production in Hamilton or Middletown or Mansfield or Toledo or Youngstown, gets a tax break, cashes in a tax break, then moves production overseas and then to China or Mexico, and then ships production back into the United States. Fundamentally, that has become the business plan of far too many companies--that sort of outsourcing.

I had a long discussion with Dr. Hassett about that. As I said, I hope he remembers where he came from. He saw that happen as he was growing up, if I recall, in western Massachusetts, where production was shut down in his communities, moved overseas for production, and then the goods were made overseas, and then sent back to the United States.

I am concerned about the White House in which he will work. I am concerned that at that White House, it often looks like a retreat for Goldman Sachs executives. The President's tax proposal benefits the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations. Its budget is based on GDP predictions that are unrealistic. In fact, when it came to the issue of Social Security solvency years ago, Dr. Hassett found a sustained 3-percent growth rate too optimistic for planning purposes. That is the same rate--that same rate is what the Trump budget uses to gloss over its true costs.

I plan to support Dr. Hassett. I think he is an honorable man. I disagree fundamentally on a lot of these issues. I again implore him, as I cast my vote in support of him--because the President is entitled to an adviser and to choose within a band, of course, of support from whom he wants--but I am hopeful, especially, that Dr. Hassett remembers what it was like when he grew up in Greenfield, MA. Greenfield is a town not much different from my hometown of Mansfield, OH, where bad tax policy and bad trade policy have dashed the dreams of far, far too many people in those communities.

I count on Dr. Hassett to do the right thing. I am hopeful that he will help President Trump see what these communities look like, not from standing in a rally in front of thousands of people but by meeting people and individually talking with them and understanding what happens with the trade policy and the tax policy.

More trickle-down economics, more tax cuts for the rich are not the ways to build an economy. We build an economy by building from the middle class out. That means a tax system and a trade system that works for Greenfield, MA, and works for Mansfield, OH.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, during his campaign, President Trump made a lot of big promises to workers in Ohio and across the country. He told them he would look out for them.

In a letter I sent to the President 2 days after the election, on November 10 or 11, asking the President to work with me to renegotiate NAFTA, insisting on ``Buy American'' provisions and infrastructure, the President scrawled across the top of the letter: ``I will never let down workers.''

He said he would look out for them, but too often the people he puts in charge are along the lines of this latest nominee to the National Labor Relations Board, Marvin Kaplan. Mr. Kaplan has devoted his career--imagine such a thing--to working to strip workers of their rights and trying to undermine the workers' watchdog he is now seeking to join. I never question people's motives in this body. I just don't quite understand why somebody would devote his work life to trying to take away workers' rights and undermine labor protections. Someone who views unions and collective bargaining as a threat to be dealt with rather than as essential rights to be protected has no business serving on the National Labor Relations Board.

The National Labor Relations Board was created, in part, at this desk. Then Senator Hugo Black of Alabama, in the early 1930s, sat at this desk. At this desk, one of the pieces of legislation he wrote was the minimum wage law. One of the other pieces of legislation he worked on with Senator Wagner was the National Labor Relations Act. In those days, people understood that you had created the National Labor Relations Act to strengthen workers, to create workers' rights, and to protect those workers' rights.

Mr. Kaplan's nomination sets that on its head. It is the latest in a long, long line of evidence that we in this country

simply don't value work the way that we used to. Workers have continually seen their rights undermined. Workers' wages have been stagnant. People who work hard and play by the rules don't have the standard of living they had in our parents' generation or even half of a generation ago.

We see companies refusing to pay overtime to workers who have earned it. We see companies misclassify workers so that companies can pay them less. We see executive salaries and CEO compensation going up and up and up. Yet for the broad middle class in this country, for people who aspire to be middle class, for low-wage workers, they have simply not gotten a raise for the last 20 years. So then, are we going to appoint somebody to the National Labor Relations Board--the President says we are going to confirm somebody to the National Labor Relations Board-- who has devoted his entire career to undermining workers, to taking away workers' rights, to scaling back workers' protections, and to scaling back wages--all these things we as a country never stood for?

I don't know what is happening in this country that we think it is right to deprive workers of their wages, to take away overtime, to basically hit workers day after day after day in their pocketbooks, all while productivity goes up, profits go up, and while executive compensation goes up.

When I was a kid, the average CEO-to-worker ratio of pay was about 35 to 1 or maybe even less than that. Today it is often 300 or 400 to 1. The CEO will make 300 times what the average worker in the same company makes. How much is enough? What moral principle says to pay a CEO 300 or 400 times what a worker makes? How much do they need? Why do they keep doing that?

They keep doing that in part because of people like Mr. Kaplan, who always sides with the CEOs against the workers. As we think about this, I think everybody in this body can learn something from Pope Francis. At the end of June, Pope Francis spoke to workers in Italy at the Italian Confederation of Trade Unions. He was talking about something we do not think about much in this town that really ought to be at the heart of everything we do. He talked about the value and the dignity of work. An employer--a CEO--cannot say that he--and it is usually a ``he''--values work when he takes away workers' rights. He cannot say he appreciates the dignity of work, when he scales back their wages or cheats them out of their overtime or takes away, by misclassification, the dollars she has earned.

When Pope Francis talked about the dignity and value of work, he meant all work. He meant looking out for the little guy whether she punches a time clock or fills out a timesheet or makes a salary or earns tips, whether she is a contract worker or a temporary worker, whether he works in a call center or in a bank or on a factory floor.

I went to my high school reunion in Mansfield, OH, about a year and a half ago. I sat across from a bank teller who works for one of the largest banks in the United States. She has worked at that bank for 30 years. She makes $30,000 a year, and she has worked at a bank, as a bank teller, for most of the last 30 years. That is not respecting the dignity of work. That is simply undermining the value of work.

Pope Francis said:

The person thrives in work. Labour is the most common form

of cooperation that humanity has generated in its history.

Work is a form of civil love . . . that makes the world

live and carry on.

Yet too often that work--the cooperation that gives life purpose and that powers our country--does not pay off for the people who are doing it. While corporate profits are up, the GDP is up, and executive salaries have exploded upward, wages have barely budged. Workers simply have not shared in the wealth they have created.

I went to an auto plant once after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement. At my own expense, I flew to Texas. I was representing a congressional district in Northeast Ohio then. I rented a car with a friend, went across the border from New Mexico, and I visited an auto plant in Mexico. It was an American company, but it was in Mexico.

This auto plant looked just like an American auto plant. It was clean, and it was up-to-date. In fact, it was newer than most of our auto plants. The floors were clean, the workers were working hard, and the technology was up-to-date.

Do you know the difference between the American auto plant and the Mexican auto plant? The Mexican auto plant did not have a parking lot because the workers did not make enough. They were not paid enough by this American auto company. They were not paid enough in Mexico to buy the cars they make. The work was not respected, profits were going up, the GDP was going up, executive salaries were going up, and the workers were not sharing in the wealth they created.

This is a universal problem. It affects blue-collar workers, and it affects white-collar workers. It is in the industrial heartland of Ohio, and it is on the farmlands of Iowa. It is a problem on both coasts. People earn less. People cannot save for retirement. People feel less stable--all while working harder, all while producing more for their employers, which feeds right into huge executive compensation, but they do not share in the wealth they create for their companies. They are also less likely to have a union card that protects them.

So the President's appointment to the National Labor Relations Board is pretty much a guy who has tried to make sure unions do not get a foothold in our economy and in our companies.

The Pope spoke about the labor group. He said it performs an ``essential role for the common good.''

He said:

It gives voice to those who have none . . . unmasks the

powerful who trample on the rights of the most vulnerable

workers, defends the cause of the foreigner, the least, the

discarded.

This is the Pope talking.

Think about airline baggage handlers. Airline baggage handlers used to make a good union wage. They used to work for United. They used to work for American. They used to work for Delta. Now they work for private companies that are contracted by United, American, and Delta. Airline baggage handlers' wages in the last 10 years have dropped 40 percent. They are working just as hard--they are probably working harder--but they are making 40 percent less than they used to.

Again, the Pope said:

. . . unmasks the powerful who trample on the rights of the

most vulnerable workers, defends the cause of the foreigner,

the least, the discarded.

The capitalism of our time does not understand the value of

the trade union because it has forgotten the social nature of

the economy, of the business. This is one of the greatest

sins.

We know from rightwing attacks on the labor movement, from so-called right-to-work bills to Mr. Kaplan's efforts to undercut rules that protect workers, that too many in this country do not understand the value of the trade union.

Right now, in Mississippi, autoworkers at Nissan are organizing and trying to form a union, and the corporation has responded. This foreign corporation has responded with despicable intimidation tactics. This is one of the most powerful, profitable companies in the world that is attacking workers one at a time in Mississippi.

One worker said: ``There is no atmosphere of free choice in the Canton plant--just fear--which is what Nissan intends.''

It is shameful the lengths that this corporation is going to--all to prevent workers from bargaining for fair pay. It is why we need a strong, not an undercut, weakened, emasculated National Labor Relations Board. We need a strong National Labor Relations Board to defend these workers and defend our laws on the books because an attack on unions is an attack on all workers. It is an attack on our economy as a whole because it depresses wages.

There is the idea that you give tax cuts to the richest people in the country and that you make sure executive salaries are $5- and $10- and $15 million. You squeeze workers so they do not get increases. Is that a good economy? No. The money does not trickle down and build the economy. You build the economy from the middle out. We know that.

In the 1990s, we built the economy from the middle out, with 22 million private sector jobs during the Clinton years. In the Bush years, they had two

huge tax cuts for the rich under the Wall Street Journal theory that it would trickle down and everybody would be better. There was literally no net private sector job increase during the Bush years. There were 22 million private sector jobs in the Clinton years and zero net growth in the Bush years. That is because, during the Bush years, they believed the economy was built from the top down. It is not large businesses that drive the economy--it is the workers. That is how you grow the economy--from the middle class out. If work is not valued, Americans cannot earn their way to better lives for their families no matter how hard they work.

That is what I think of when I hear Pope Francis talk about the social nature of our economy. Work has to support families and communities. Today businesses seem to be more focused on cutting costs than on investing in their workforces. Workers are often nothing more than a line item in a budget, a cost to be minimized. More businesses use temp workers, more businesses use contractors--look at the airlines--and more businesses use subcontractors. They pay a lower wage. They provide less job security. They roll back their retirement benefits. They undercut their health benefits, and they take away legal protections. We have to change this.

This spring, I laid out a plan to make work pay off by raising wages and benefits, including retirement, giving workers more say and more power in the workplace, encouraging companies to invest in their greatest asset--the American worker. My plan to restore the value of work has to include the labor movement. Modernizing labor law means recognizing the right of all workers, even those in alternative work arrangements, to collectively bargain for higher pay and better wages.

Pope Francis concluded:

There is no good society without a good union, and there is

no good union that is not reborn every day in the peripheries

that does not transform the discarded stones of the economy

into its cornerstones.

We are a country of discarded stones--of people who rose from humble beginnings and joined together to build institutions that were greater than any one of us. We need laws that reflect that--that reflect the dignity of work and that reflect, as in the Pope's words, the dignity of every discarded stone, of each and every American who works too many hours for too little pay.

The last thing we need for the National Labor Relations Board is another nominee who does not value work, who demeans work, and who demeans the workers and the unions who do it. Everyone in this town ought to listen a little more to Pope Francis and a little less to corporate lobbyists, a little less to big banks, and a little less to Wall Street. Maybe, then, we will start to make hard work pay off again for American workers. We can start today by rejecting this anti-worker nominee.

I yield the floor.

(Disturbance in the Visitors' Galleries.)

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, this week, the city I call home lost a great Ohioan, and Connie and I lost a friend, Belle Likover of Shaker Heights. Belle passed away at age 97, and over her extraordinary life, she saw the creation of our country's greatest social insurance programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--and fought to protect those lifelines for American seniors.

Ms. Likover was born the same year as my mother and grew up in Beaver Falls, PA. She remembered her childhood as a happy one, with one big exception: the Great Depression. In an interview several years ago, she talked about the lasting effects those memories had on her, saying, ``We saw everybody else suffer. I remember the shantytowns. I remember people living in what used to be packing crates. There was a constant stream of people who came to our backdoor for food. My mother never turned anybody away.''

Those experiences would shape her activism throughout her life. In high school and later in college, at the Ohio State University, she said she was ``never bashful about speaking out.'' She joined the high school varsity debate team as a sophomore, as the only girl on the team, and learned how to marshal an argument. She told an interviewer that, ``Every position of leadership I've had, I owe to that debate coach.''

In college, she put that training to use, first getting involved in political causes in 1937, when she and a friend helped organize an antifascist group at Ohio State. They saw what was happening in Germany and across Europe and how dangerous that was for the world.

Growing up in that time of turmoil and as a woman at a time when her abilities would be constantly questioned, Belle faced setbacks. As a child, she asked for chemistry sets instead of dolls, but in college, a chemistry professor told her, ``If you want a Ph.D., you better marry one.'' Her first husband laid down his life for our country during World War II, leaving Ms. Likover with a newborn daughter to raise.

She published papers without the Ph.D. that her male peers had and worked at the Cleveland Jewish Community Center's senior department, where she saw what a difference Social Security made in the lives of the elderly--and later how Medicaid and Medicare would change their lives. She went to grad school on a JCC scholarship.

Throughout the years, she never ceased in her activism. She joined me at events many times to talk about the importance of Medicare. I interviewed Belle in the summer of 2015, marking the 50th anniversary of the passage of Medicare and Medicaid. She told me she was thrilled when it passed because she remember how poor older people were when she was growing up--``They didn't have Medicare, they ended up in poorhouses,'' she told me. And she added, ``Do you know how many people can't wait until they're 65 to get covered by Medicare?''

Just last fall, she joined us on a call with Ohio reporters to talk about how devastating it would be to raise the retirement age. That was Belle Likover--an activist and advocate, full of compassion but never bashful, all the way through age 97. Our family's thoughts and prayers are with Belle's loved ones. We will miss her, and we will strive to carry on her advocacy for Ohio seniors.

Mr. President, a number of Wall Street banks, car title lenders, big corporations, and payday loan sharks have two things in common: They have a record of ripping off consumers, and they have armies of expensive lawyers and lobbyists in Washington, in Columbus, and in State capitals all over this country who protect them from facing the consequences.

That is why it is so important that ordinary American consumers have their own cop on the beat--the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The recent abuses by Wells Fargo are the latest proof of how necessary the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's work is.

Less than a year ago, we learned that Wells Fargo secretly opened millions of phony bank and credit card accounts without customers' permission. The CEO of Wells Fargo had to resign as a result. This was an outrageous abuse of American consumers. The sheer size and scope of this scam are breathtaking. In total, Wells Fargo may have opened as many as 3.5 million unauthorized accounts--meaning, it opened these accounts without the accountholders even necessarily knowing that they did it, without permission--costing customers some $2.5 million in fees.

The abuses are bad enough. To make matters worse, Wells Fargo tried to keep this scandal hidden from the public, and it used something called the ``forced arbitration clauses,'' which are buried in the fine print of customers' contracts, to deny them their day in court. There is hardly anybody in this country who has not confronted small print in a contract when signing that contract, especially with a financial institution. Customers first sued over these fake accounts back in 2013, but Wells Fargo then forced them into secret arbitration proceedings, keeping this scam under wraps and blocking consumers from obtaining any relief.

Last year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other watchdogs blew the lid off of this scandal. Customers sued once again, and, once again, the bank tried to block them from getting relief in court. This time, because of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the LA Times, and others who shone a light on the scandal and on all of the bad press that went with it, Wells Fargo relented. So, after two congressional hearings and a flood of bad headlines, Wells Fargo is cutting a deal in its phony account scandal. Yet now we have learned that this is not the only scam that one of America's largest banks has pulled.

Just last week, we learned that the bank forced unwanted insurance on 800,000 auto loan borrowers, potentially pushing tens of thousands into default and repossession, and it is still using these forced arbitration clauses in its contracts in order to cheat future consumers, including in the contracts in this auto loan scam.

The only thing more outrageous than the fact that Wells Fargo continues to cheat its customers is the fact that Members of Congress-- a lot of Members of Congress in this body and down the hall--are trying to make it even harder for those customers to seek justice in their overturning the arbitration rule. They think that forced arbitration and the fine print, which most people do not read and most people do not understand if they do read it, is legitimate. No wonder so many hard-working Americans believe that the system is rigged against them in Wall Street's favor.

These scams have caused real damage for hundreds of thousands of Americans as 275,000 Wells Fargo customers have been forced into delinquency by being charged for unnecessary insurance, and 20,000 vehicles have been unfairly repossessed because of this bank's behavior.

Wells Fargo is not alone. Santander has used forced arbitration clauses against servicemembers. It is a Spanish company that does business in the United States and uses forced arbitration clauses against American servicemembers--again, for illegal car repossessions. In 2015, Santander used forced arbitration to block an Army National Guard sergeant from seeking justice after the bank illegally repossessed his car while he was serving our country overseas.

I see that kind of thing happening at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. Air Force men and women are not always making big salaries, to put it mildly, as they are serving their country. They do not make a lot of money, and a lot of these young families struggle. Yet predators--companies like Wells Fargo and payday lenders--continue to prey on them. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau stands with them. The CFPB is looking out for folks like the Army National Guard sergeant, like those at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and like those at the Air Force bases in Springfield and Mansfield and Toledo and Youngstown.

Yet, with all of this happening, some Members of Congress, again, are doing

the bidding of Wall Street lobbyists. The Bureau just finalized a new rule that limits the arbitration clauses that allow big corporations to get away with ripping off servicemembers, students, and other hard- working Americans, but the ink is barely dry on this new consumer protection, and big banks and their allies in Congress--and God knows they have a lot of allies in Congress and allies in the administration--are already trying to overturn this rule.

Last week, Republicans in the House voted to overturn this rule that ensures that all Ohioans who have been ripped off by banks or payday lenders are able to have their day in court. Despite promising during his campaign to look out for the little guy, President Trump's Acting Comptroller of the Currency, who is also--alas--a former Wells Fargo lawyer, is trying to get the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to back off that rule.

It is unconscionable that Washington politicians are undermining the rights of consumers to have their day in court when they are cheated by banks and payday lenders. Folks in Washington who want to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and gut its rules seem to have collective amnesia about the devastation that Wall Street greed has wreaked on communities across the country, but most Ohioans do not have that luxury. They are still recovering.

I and my wife, Connie, live in the city of Cleveland, with the ZIP Code 44105. At this time 10 years ago, during the first half of 2007, there were more foreclosures in that ZIP Code than in any ZIP Code in the United States of America. So I have seen the aftermath. I have seen what has happened with Wall Street greed and the kind of collective amnesia in this body whenever Wall Street wants something, whenever the payday lenders want something, whenever the big banks want something, and Congress rushes in to help them and to respond to their lobbyists and their lawyers who lobby this body.

It is pretty simple. Gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's arbitration rule means banks get away with cheating their customers.

So I ask Senators in this body to ask themselves: Whose side are you on? Are you on the side of the payday lenders and Wells Fargo when they defraud the public or are you on the side of service men and women and the side of people who have lost their cars, which were repossessed because of the unilateral actions by this bank?

Those are the same big banks that preyed on working families before the crisis wrecked the economy and handed taxpayers the bill. Is that whose side we are on or are we on the side of consumers?

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Adjournment Until 10 a.m. Tomorrow

Mr. President, I intend to offer the following motion to H.R. 1628, and I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

This motion would commit the bill to the Finance Committee with instructions to eliminate all provisions that would increase healthcare costs for the middle class and those struggling to get into the middle class.

I am offering this motion because healthcare costs are already too high for hard-working Ohioans, and this bill would make them even higher. We ought to be working to bring down costs; yet as my colleague Senator Heller said, there is nothing in this bill that would lower premiums.

The first test of a bill should be, do no harm so I would hope all my colleagues will join me in ensuring that any bill that comes out of this body doesn't saddle working families with higher healthcare bills.

My motion is supported by the following Senators: Baldwin, Blumenthal, Whitehouse, Hirono, Feinstein, Leahy, Van Hollen, Harris, Franken, Carper, Udall, Coons, Menendez, Duckworth, Durbin, Reed, Stabenow, Warren, Booker, Nelson, and Klobuchar.

Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and the ranking member, Senator Cardin.

Senator Crapo and I began working on this months and months ago. I appreciate that partnership.

Senator McCain--I read an op-ed he wrote in USA Today about 3 weeks ago. It was about what Putin tried to do with some level of success in Montenegro, and nobody has watched Putin and his intervention in our elections and European elections and their governments and his desire to destabilize democracy around the world--nobody has recognized it quite as early or with the acute sense that Senator McCain has, and we thank him for that.

I rise to urge my colleagues to join me and vote for this critical sanctions

legislation, which is the product of months of bipartisan effort in this body.

At a time when it is difficult to get things done in this far-too partisan Senate, this effort proves it is still possible for Congress to come together and accomplish big things. The bill provides for a range of tough new sanctions against Iran, Russia, and North Korea.

The Ukrainian community in my State knows firsthand the dangers of decades of unchecked Russian aggression. Congress must act to punish Russia for its continued actions in Ukraine, in East Ukraine, in Crimea, and for its interference in our Presidential election and to deter future such aggression.

This bill will prevent President Trump from relaxing sanctions on Russia without congressional review. We are all concerned about that.

Iran is one of the world's leading state sponsors of terrorism and a continuing source of instability throughout the region. This bill is carefully written to avoid violating U.S. commitments under the Iran nuclear agreement, and it applies new sanctions in response to Iran's support for terrorism, its human rights abuses, and its ballistic missile program.

It also incorporates sanctions on North Korea, including measures to toughen enforcement of current U.N. Security Council rules. North Korea's efforts to develop nuclear capabilities must be countered. We must take a stand against its horrendous human rights record, including the savage treatment of Otto Warmbier that led to his death.

These are important steps. More can be done to address the situation in North Korea.

I thank my staff, Colin McGinnis, Mark Powden, and Graham Steele on this. I appreciate the work of the staff in all four of these offices on Banking and Foreign Relations, and I ask my colleagues to concur.

Mr. President, let's look at how all this started. Right down this hall, a few months ago, Senator McConnell, a handful of Republican Senators, the drug lobbyists, insurance company lobbyists, and Wall Street lobbyists met in that office behind closed doors. Most Republican Senators didn't know what was happening, no Democratic Senators knew what was happening, and the American public didn't know what was happening.

This bill--written by drug companies, insurance companies, and Wall Street--was sent to the Senate floor, was discussed, and, alas, it was big tax cuts for the drug companies and the insurance companies.

When you think about this, you have U.S. Senators who get taxpayer- subsidized insurance, Senators who get insurance provided by taxpayers who are going to rip it away from potentially 700-, 800-, 900,000 Ohioans.

I stand with Governor Kasich. Governor Kasich said: You don't pass legislation--you don't meet in the majority's leader's office down the hall here, write legislation with drug company and insurance company lobbyists, and then take Medicaid away, take insurance away, disrupt the insurance markets. You just don't do things that way.

A professor of healthcare finance at Case Western in Cleveland wrote yesterday that millions would lose coverage and that middle-income Americans would be ``priced out of the market.''

If I could talk for a moment about what happens to individuals, yesterday I was on the phone with Donna May from Gahanna, OH. She told me:

My mother is 91 years old. She worked hard all her life.

I'm 73 years old and still work. Without Medicaid, or even

large cuts in Medicaid, I will not be able to care for my

Mom.

Donna and so many others pay into Social Security. They pay into Medicare. They pay into unemployment insurance. And then this Congress is going to cut their Medicaid. This Congress is going to take money away from them when they need it, when they run out of money at the end of their lives and they are in nursing homes. Is that what we stand for as a country?

In Toledo, I talked to Kelly Peterson. Her dad is in a nursing home and relies on Medicare. She told me:

My family would be devastated by these proposed cuts to

Medicaid. My dad worked in the auto industry and paid into

the system 30 years. Now when he needs it most, conservatives

in Congress want to take it all away.

Again, these people paid into Social Security. They paid into Medicare. Now we are going to take their insurance away from them as they grow older. A bunch of Members of Congress who have insurance provided by taxpayers think it is morally OK to strip the insurance from millions of people in our States.

Again, I side with Governor Kasich. I am a Democrat. He is a Republican. He is as repulsed as I am that down this hall, Senator McConnell and Republican leadership, with the drug and insurance company lobbyists, wrote this bill.

I stand with Governor Kasich, who wants to do a simple thing: Stop this outrageous attempt tonight. Sit down with Republicans and Democrats in both parties. I could sit with Senator Portman. We could come up with legislation to fix the Affordable Care Act; to encourage more young, healthy people into the insurance pools; to stabilize the insurance market; to go after the outrageous cost of prescription drugs; maybe even to open up Medicare eligibility for people between 55 and 64. It is not complicated.

The special interests have taken over this Chamber. We should be ashamed of ourselves. We ought to do this right. I ask my colleagues to vote yes on the Murray motion to recommit.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after my remarks, the senior Senator from Hawaii be recognized.

Mr. President, what is happening today on the Senate floor is outrageous. I still cannot quite believe my colleagues as their staff members stood behind them in the Senate Chamber to my right. All of them have health insurance that is paid for by taxpayers. All of us--all of them, all of the staff, all of the Senators, all of the House Members--have insurance paid for by taxpayers. Yet they would come to the Senate floor with their votes entrusted to them and given to them by

the voting public in their districts and their States. All of them have health insurance that is paid for by the taxpayers, and they would vote to take insurance away from hundreds of thousands of people in my State and in Washington and in Wyoming and in Alabama and in Hawaii.

Millions of people around the country, most of whom have jobs--people who are working $8-, $10-, $12-, $15-an-hour jobs--are not as well paid as the staff who stand behind us as these floor sessions go on, and they would take insurance away from people like them. I am still just incredulous that that would have happened. This bill affects all of our constituents. It would upend one-fifth of the American economy. Yet the people whom we serve have no idea what is in this bill. We really do not know what is in it.

Over the weekend, people said Senator McConnell was going to bring us all to the floor on Tuesday to vote on the healthcare law. This is the law to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I was part of writing the Affordable Care Act as a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. That bill took months and months and months, dozens of hearings, and hundreds of amendments. The committee adopted, and I supported, 150 Republican amendments. It was the way we should do things here. Instead, Senator McConnell met just down this hall--I know the camera does not quite show this. Down this hall in his office, he met with lobbyists from Wall Street, with lobbyists from the drug companies, and with lobbyists from the insurance companies. I do not think the Presiding Officer was part of this--he is, perhaps, too junior--but four or five Republican Senators were in there, and they wrote a bill that, alas, was good for drug companies, was good for insurance companies, and was good for Wall Street. It just left out the public.

Now, we do not really know what is in the bill this time. One of the things we do know is, all of the options are bad for my State of Ohio and that all of the options are bad for the people who elected us to serve here. Let me talk about those options.

First, behind door No. 1, we have the repeal of the Affordable Care Act with no replacement. Again, behind door No. 1, I do not know if that is what this bill is. I do know it is one of the options. So behind door No. 1 is repeal with no replacement. That means repealing the entire Affordable Care Act with no plan to replace it. It creates dangerous uncertainty that of course will drive prices up for everyone. When insurance companies, when the people who have insurance now have no idea what is going to happen, of course it drives prices up. Of course, it means insurance companies will pull out of Wyoming and Alabama and Washington State and Hawaii and Ohio.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, 18 million Americans will lose their health insurance next year, and premiums will go up 20 percent. Professionals hold these jobs. They are people who are not Republicans, who are not Democrats, who are just like the Parliamentarian, who is not aligned with either party. The Congressional Budget Office is just like that.

Again, think about that. Think of the Members of the Senate. Think of the Senate's staff who line up along this wall during floor sessions. All of us have insurance. Yet we are going to take it away. According to this plan behind door No. 1, we are going to take it away from 18 million Americans. There would be less coverage, and premiums would go up 20 percent--higher costs. By the end of this decade, 32 million Americans--that is like 1 out of 10 Americans--who currently have insurance would be without health coverage and premiums would double. So 32 million people lose their insurance within the decade and premiums double.

Let's talk about Barbara. Barbara, whom I met in Toledo just recently, is 63. She is not old enough for Medicare; she relies on the healthcare exchanges. Repeal with no replacement would create massive uncertainty for Ohioans.

The people in this body who voted yes today--does the Senate staff who stands behind here who have insurance from--taxpayers like Barbara--do they think about Barbara? Do they think about somebody who reads in the paper that the Senate took the first--still reversible but barely--step toward taking their insurance away? Do they ever think about people like Barbara? Do they, as President Lincoln said, ever get out and get their public opinion pass and listen to people like Barbara? She is 63 years old, and she doesn't know if she will have insurance next month. Imagine that. Do the staff back here, do the Senators who get insurance from taxpayers--do they think: Oh, maybe my insurance won't exist a few months from now. Do they think about that? I am guessing they don't.

Repeal with no replacement creates massive uncertainty for Ohioans like her. We have already seen this year what that uncertainty does to Ohio families, with insurance companies that have been forced to pull out of the market as Congress and the White House create more and more uncertainty. When Aetna pulled out of Dayton and other communities in Ohio--in that part of Ohio--they and others left nearly 20 counties in Ohio without any insurer next year. When they did that, they announced it was because of the uncertainty in this Congress, that nobody really quite knows what is happening.

So that is door No. 1--repeal with no replacement, higher cost, less coverage.

Let's look at door No. 2. Behind door No. 2 is the plan that Mitch McConnell negotiated in secret. As I said, straight down this hall, go to the right, that is Mitch McConnell's office. That is where the drug company lobbyists hung out; that is where the insurance company lobbyists hung out; that is where the Wall Street lobbyists hung out and a small number of Senators, and then they slammed the door shut. That is how they wrote this bill. The Presiding Officer knows this from his constituents in Florida. The drug companies wrote the bill. The insurance companies wrote the bill. Wall Street wrote the bill. And, alas, the bill: tax cuts for insurance companies and tax cuts for the drug companies. The 400 richest families in America--many of them contribute huge numbers of dollars, with lots of zeroes on them, to my Republican colleagues who voted for this bill. The 400 richest families in America will get--under this McConnell door No. 2, there are not just higher costs with less coverage for the public, but 400 families will average a $7 million tax cut for each of the next 10 years. Four hundred families will get a $7 million tax cut for each of the next 10 years.

The McConnell plan would increase healthcare costs for working families. We know that. They would slap on higher costs. They would slap an age tax on Ohioans over 50 when they buy insurance. And when it comes to healthcare costs, Senator Heller from Nevada said it best: There is nothing in this bill that would lower premiums.

So they give tax cuts to rich people. They give tax breaks to the insurance and the drug companies. They cut Medicaid. But there is nothing in this bill, according to Senator Heller, a Republican from Nevada, that would lower premiums. There are, however, those massive tax breaks for drug companies that have been jacking up prices on lifesaving medicines like insulin and those drug companies that played a role in creating the opioid epidemic that devastates my State. More people in my State--as the Presiding Officer, who also represents a large State, knows--more people in my State died of opioid overdose than any other State in the United States.

What does this plan do for the opioid epidemic? I have had dozens-- maybe not dozens--I have done at least 15 or 20 roundtables around Ohio to talk about the opioid epidemic with doctors and counselors, psychologists and therapists and nurses, people who are recovering from addiction and their families, and others. One thing they all agree on is that the single best tool to help with opioid addiction is, alas, Medicaid. The single best tool to combat the opioid epidemic is Medicaid. This bill would take away the No. 1 tool we have to fight that.

So 220,000 Ohioans right now struggling with opioid addiction, getting treatment for opioid addiction--220,000--they are getting their addiction treatment because they have the Affordable Care Act and insurance provided by the Affordable Care Act. We are going to take that away from them.

At one of my roundtables in Cincinnati--the Talbot House--a father

sitting next to his daughter, who I believe was in her early thirties, looked at me and said: My daughter would be dead from an opioid overdose had it not been for Medicaid expansion. I thank Governor Kasich for having the courage to stand up against his President and stand up against the Republican leadership in this town and do the right thing in expanding Medicaid.

This plan, door No. 2, has higher costs, less coverage, and would kick many of those 220,000 people off their insurance. It would disrupt treatment for hundreds of thousands of Ohioans as they fight for their lives. It would pull the rug out from under local police and communities in the midst of an epidemic.

A number of police officers told me that when they go to a home--a police officer or a firefighter or another first responder--when they go to a home where somebody is unconscious because of an opioid epidemic, first they give them Narcan to revive them, and the second thing they do is sign them up for Medicaid. They sign them up for Medicaid so they can get treatment. Otherwise, there is a very good chance that person will die.

The most important tool for fighting opioid addiction is Medicaid. Yet this body voted today--2 Republicans stood up and voted against this--today, 50 Republicans and the Vice President of the United States, who honored us with his presence today with the tie-breaking vote, voted essentially to kick those people off their treatment.

So door No. 2, the insurance company lobbyist plan: higher costs, less coverage. The same plan written by lobbyists.

Let's talk about door No. 3. Behind door No. 3 are higher costs and less coverage. It is the same plan written by lobbyists, just with taxpayer dollars thrown in to buy off votes. Same result--higher costs and less coverage.

They can't just throw money at this bill and make it better.

Take opioids. They want to take away Medicaid, which is the No. 1 tool we have to get people treated, and then they throw in a $45 billion Federal grant program instead.

Governor Kasich said that those dollars--taking away Medicaid, taking away treatment, taking away insurance from the 700,000 Ohioans in Medicaid expansion and hundreds of thousands of Ohioans later--Governor Kasich is a Republican, and he and I see this pretty much the same way. Governor Kasich said that putting that money in after taking away Medicaid is like spitting in the ocean.

The director of Ohio's Medicaid Program said the Republican Senate plan would be devastating for Ohio. For instance, if someone had cancer, I don't think the best treatment for cancer is to cut off their insurance and then give them a Federal grant to pay their oncologist-- not even a Federal grant to pay their oncologist. You don't treat people by a Federal grant, you treat people by insurance and all of the wraparound part of insurance that matters.

It is not just those fighting addiction--I talked a lot about opioids--it is kids with special healthcare needs. It is Ohio schools. There is a program called Medicaid in Schools that helps young people struggling with various kinds of physical and mental illnesses in the schools. That is helpful.

It is rural hospitals. I have been on the phone with literally four dozen hospital CEOs in this State--at least four dozen, a number of them a number of times--and small hospitals in rural communities know that they may close if this bill, the one behind door No. 3, is adopted.

It is seniors in nursing homes, and it is their families who help care for them. Few people realize that three in five nursing home residents in my State rely on Medicaid to cover the cost of their care. That is 60 percent. They are our parents and our grandparents. These are middle-class families and working-class families who end up in nursing homes. They run out of money at the end of their lives. That is Medicaid dollars. Two-thirds of Medicaid dollars don't go to children or opioid addiction, they go to nursing homes to take care of our parents and grandparents.

I met with families again in Toledo last week who rely on Medicaid to help afford nursing home care.

Bob's mother Blanche lives at a home in Perrysburg, a suburb of Toledo.

My mother and father worked all their lives. My mother is

95 and receives a pension of only $1,500 a month. Medicaid

keeps her alive so she is able to spend time with her kids

and her grandkids.

I remember Margaret Mead, the great anthropologist, who said that wisdom and knowledge are passed from grandparent to grandchild. A child can spend time with her grandparents, as my daughters got to spend time with their grandparents, especially my grandmother in her last years. It didn't just bring great joy to the grandparents, it imparts wisdom and understanding and education to the grandchildren. Medicaid does that, too, when people have insurance, when people are taken care of in nursing homes and assisted living.

We talk about people like Blanche who worked hard to build a good life for their families. They paid their taxes. They paid their insurance premiums. They paid into Medicare and Social Security. So we are going to cut their Medicaid in the last years of their lives. They shouldn't have to lose everything because they need more intensive care in the later years of their lives, and neither should their families, who are already squeezed--people in their forties and fifties and early sixties--who worry about their children's education on the one hand and then worry about paying for nursing home care for their parents on the other.

Another huge portion of the people Medicaid helps are Ohioans who are workers, who pay taxes, who have children with a disability or with serious special needs. Nearly 500,000 kids in Ohio--20 percent of Ohio kids, 2 in 10--have special healthcare needs. Boaz, whom I met in Cleveland, was born with several heart defects. He wouldn't be alive today without treatment covered by Medicaid. Benjamin Dworning from Akron, born with Down syndrome, visited my office recently with his parents.

It is not just kids with special needs who will lose out. Ohio schools could lose $12 million a year. Twenty-two percent of rural hospitals would be at risk of closing. It goes on and on.

These are all problems created by this bill behind door No. 3, written by lobbyists, written down the hall in Senator McConnell's office by drug company and insurance company and Wall Street lobbyists. That is the bill--undisclosed, unknown until he regurgitated it on the Senate floor and gave us this bill.

Cleveland.com wrote: ``As for the proposed $200 billion to ease the path for ACA funding losses, this too would pale compared with the losses themselves.''

Again, Governor Kasich--he, a Republican; I, a Democrat--said this is spitting in the ocean.

So that is what is behind door No. 3--higher costs, less coverage.

That brings us to door No. 4. What is behind the last door? We have no idea. It is the ultimate mystery plan.

Remember what Washington uncertainty has already done to Ohio families? There are 20 counties with no insurer next year.

As an editor at the Columbus Dispatch--Ohio's most conservative newspaper--said to me about a month and a half ago, uncertainty is like carbon monoxide for business, a silent killer.

Now, the Republican Party, which fashions itself as the party of business, seems to have specialized over the last 10 years in injecting uncertainty into the economy--uncertainties such as, are we going to pass the Export-Import Bank, which Senator Murray worked so hard on, so our companies can export American-manufactured, well-made products? Are we going to pay our debts or are we not going to meet our obligations and shut down the government? Are we going to leave hanging out there the Affordable Care Act repeal? All of these things create uncertainty, and as a result, business investment freezes. We know what happens. So who knows what kind of damage this latest vote will do in the insurance market.

What we know for certain is that this mystery plan behind door No. 4 will mean higher costs and it will mean less coverage, because nothing so far--nothing that has been put on the table--could result in anything else. The math doesn't work. How can anyone stand here--again, staff standing by the wall here and Members of the Senate, all getting insurance provided by taxpayers--how can you stand here and

threaten to take away the insurance of others and at the same time drive up costs?

The Affordable Care Act is not perfect. Of course, it is not. We have work to do. Senator Schumer talked today about it. Sit down with us. We would love to work through many of the items and get more young, healthy people into the insurance pool, to stabilize the insurance market, to go after the high cost of prescription drugs and maybe, even to consider Medicare at 55. We were one vote away from opening up Medicare in a revenue-neutral way for people between 55 and 64 who might have lost their insurance as they get sick or as they get older. There are all of those options, but don't start with repeal, throwing millions of Americans off of their insurance.

I agree with Governor Kasich one more time. Yesterday, Governor Kasich said: Until Congress can step back from political gamesmanship-- which we saw in spades today, as Senator Johnson and Majority Leader McConnell were negotiating the last parts of the bill, and as, more or less, 98 of us sat here and watched and wondered what was going on and saw that political gamesmanship--and come together with a workable bipartisan plan, it is a mistake for the Senate to proceed with the vote we just took on Tuesday. He said that yesterday.

Instead of down the hall Senator McConnell working with insurance company and drug company lobbyists, instead of listening to the drug companies so that he puts the tax break for drug companies in the bill, let's listen to the people of Kentucky, Wyoming, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina, Ohio, Hawaii, and Washington. Let's listen to the people of the States of my colleagues in this body.

Let's work on a bipartisan plan to fix what is not working in the Affordable Care Act. Let's keep what is working and make healthcare work better for the people whom we serve.

Mr. President, I want to echo the comments of the senior Senator from Idaho, the chairman of the Banking Committee, and thank Mr. Alvarez for his service at the Federal Reserve.

I specifically want to thank him for his service during the financial crisis of 2008. Our country faced daunting challenges during that period, and the Federal Reserve and the government's response to the financial crisis was not an easy undertaking.

The crisis demanded great effort and ingenuity from many people. It required close coordination across the executive branch, the regulatory agencies, Congress, and the private sector. Working with key decisionmakers at the board and throughout the government, Mr. Alvarez played an important role in developing and articulating the legal dimensions to virtually every initiative taken by the Federal Reserve to address the crisis.

Mr. Alvarez also worked closely with Congress during consideration of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and played a crucial role in implementing rulemakings required of the Federal Reserve by Dodd-Frank. I am particularly grateful for the work he did to implement strong rules to increase the capital and leverage requirements for the Nation's largest banks--a necessary and critical step after the crisis--and the work that he did with my office in making one of the first substantive amendments to Dodd-Frank related to capital standards for insurance companies.

Scott Alvarez has served the Federal Reserve and the American people with great distinction and deserves thanks for a job well done.