Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to say to the Senator from Washington that I fully subscribe to her remarks. She is the ranking Democrat on the HELP Committee, and we work together to produce results. I like it when we can, and I think the American people do as well. I had a chance to come to the floor earlier this afternoon to thank Senator Murray and her staff and the other Senators and their staffs and the large number of people who made this bill possible, so I will not repeat all that. I would like to say, I think it is worthwhile to stop and say that at the time of a contentious debate about the Supreme Court, the U.S. Senate has found something that is equally important and really more important to hundreds of families across this country, maybe thousands, in virtually every community because the opioid epidemic is our most severe public health epidemic, and we have worked together, and we literally have unanimously agreed on this bill in the Senate, all 100 of us--well, maybe not all 100 but almost all 100 of us. At least all 100 of us agreed to let it go forward, and almost all 100 of us will vote for it. The House of Representatives was nearly as unanimous. We have a bipartisan sense of urgency to deal with this. Senator McConnell has called it landmark legislation. It is not the first step the Senate and the House have taken. There was the CARA Act, Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. There was the 21st Century Cures Act, which Senator Murray and I worked on and presented to the Congress and which Senator McConnell called the most important piece of legislation in the last Congress. There are the appropriations bills, which have produced this year $8.5 billion for the opioid crisis when you combine the money appropriated in March and the money that is being approved this month. Then there are the provisions of this act. More than 70 Senators have made contributions to it. Senator Murray listed many of them: Senator Portman's STOP Act to stop fentanyl from coming through the mail; the Holy Grail, in my opinion, nonaddictive painkillers. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an extra 60 seconds to finish my remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Authority for the FDA to require manufacturers to sell smaller doses of opioids; extending treatment for Medicaid patients from 15 to 30 days in covering all substances; the TREAT Act, Senator Markey, Senator Paul worked hard on this. I want to especially thank Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer for creating the environment so we could put together the work of five different committees in the Senate and eight different committees in the House of Representatives. That rarely happens. It takes a good deal of restraint and good will, and the reason for it is because of this bipartisan urgency to deal with this problem. This is not a moonshot from Washington. It is everything, though, we could think of to do; more than 70 different proposals to support patients and support communities as they continue to fight our No. 1 public health epidemic. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, building on Senator Hatch's comments, we are grateful for his service to the U.S. Senate for more than four decades and grateful he is a songwriter. Of course, he comes from a culture and a faith that emphasizes music. As a little boy in the East Tennessee mountains, I remember every week listening on the Zenith radio to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I think everybody in Utah and in the Mormon faith actually grows up learning to sing and to enjoy music. Orrin Hatch is not just a U.S. Senator, he is a genuine songwriter. He has a gold and a platinum record. I know many national songwriters who have cowritten with him, and they admire him greatly. I can think of no more important tribute to him than the Hatch- Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, which should pass the House this week and be on its way to the President. Then it will be, as Senator Hatch said, the single-most important piece of legislation in decades or in a generation that changes copyright law in a way that is fair to songwriters. Senator Hatch is correct. This has not been easy. It has taken several years. There are a great many different people to it. The heavy lifts and the unexpected developments were occurring all the way down to about 30 minutes before it passed last Tuesday night. It has been a great privilege to work with Senator Hatch and his staff on this legislation whom I will have more to say about in a minute. The Senator from Utah has done a very good job of explaining what the bill does, but the truth is, copyright law is complicated. About the first 25 times somebody explains to you the law governing songwriting, you will not have a clue what they are talking about. So let me tell a couple of stories about songwriting that might help make it clear. Right after World War II, two national songwriters, Pee Wee King and Redd Stewart, were driving from Memphis to Nashville, back before the interstates were created, and one said to the other: Well, Missouri has a waltz and Kentucky has a waltz, why doesn't Tennessee have a waltz? So on that drive--probably about a 5-hour drive then--they took a matchbox, an old penny matchbox that held wooden matches, threw the matches on the floorboard, and on the back of it they wrote the words to the ``Tennessee Waltz.'' Now, the ``Tennessee Waltz'' was already a waltz. It was called the ``No Name Waltz.'' People played it and sang it in different places. It was just a random song, but they added these few words to it. Then, that night when he got back, Pee Wee King wrote it on a lead sheet. That is what you call a blank page of music. He took it in to Fred Rose the next day, who was his publisher. Fred Rose was the publisher for Hank Williams, Roy Acuff--all kinds of people. He made one change in the words. Where it said: ``Oh, the Tennessee waltz, the Tennessee waltz,'' he changed the words to ``I remember the night and the Tennessee waltz.'' That song went nowhere for a while. It was performed around by Pee Wee King until Mercury Records decided they had a song, a different song, called ``Boogie Woogie Santa Claus.'' They wanted the hottest young female singer in America to sing it so they flew Patti Page to New York in about 1950. She sang ``Boogie Woogie Santa Clause'' on Mercury Records, but they had nothing to put on the back of the record. So somebody suggested they just throw on the back of the record this ``Tennessee Waltz.'' Well, the ``Tennessee Waltz'' sold 5 million copies. It became the most recorded song ever by a female artist. In many ways, it is the Magna Carta of country music. So the question is, How did that happen? What is the mystery that causes a waltz that is just kicked around for a long time, has a few words placed on it by a few songwriters driving from Memphis to Nashville, to suddenly sell 5 million copies? Well, none of us really knows. It is just a magnificent form of art. All over my State of Tennessee, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of teachers, taxi drivers, waitresses, people thinking of songs, getting together and writing songs, hoping to have the next No. 1 hit. I saw Bob DiPiero at the Bluebird Cafe a week ago Saturday. I say to Senator Hatch, he was a guitar teacher in RiverGate Mall, outside of Nashville, in the early 1980s. At about 3, he would take a bus from downtown Nashville out to RiverGate Mall, and he would teach guitar lessons to all of these kids after school until 9. Then, during the day, he would write songs. He didn't do well at all until one day he wrote a song with the lyrics: ``My baby is American made, born and bred in the U.S.A.'' Well, everybody knows that song now, and Bob DiPiero is a great songwriter. So I guess he makes a living off of songwriting, but lots of people don't. This bill is about songs that are played over the internet. The way Bob DiPiero or Redd Stewart or Pee Wee King's descendants would get paid for their creative work is whenever the song is played over the internet, this Hatch-Goodlatte legislation says: We have a way to make sure you get paid if you are the songwriter or you own the rights, and, No. 2, we have changed the law to make it more likely that you will get a fair market value for what you get paid--those two things. I have asked several of the songwriters and the people in the music industry: Do you really think this will make a difference? They, to a person, say yes. Will it make it as good as it was? No, it probably will not, but it will be fair, and it will create an environment where not just Bob DiPiero can get paid for ``My baby is American made'' but where a lot more songwriters can make a decent living because they get paid and get paid a fair market value for their work. I will tell you another story I have repeated on the floor about that. Unfortunately, I don't have a gold record, and I don't have a platinum record, but I can play the piano. I am as grateful for music as Senator Hatch is. When I was 4, my mother took me to the Maryville College, and I began piano lessons, which I continued until I was 16. Senator McConnell, the majority leader, who had a wonderful and sainted mother who helped him recover from polio, once told me the one thing he regrets about his mother is she allowed him to stop taking piano lessons. I said back to Senator McConnell: I don't ever remember ever having a choice. I made a deal with my mother that I would practice 30 minutes in the morning, and I would get to do what I wanted to in the afternoon, and I had a wonderful time with music. I say to the Senator from Utah, when I was Governor, I was trying to think what could unite our State. The Presiding Officer probably had thoughts like that when he was Governor of his State. All I could think of that would unite our big, long State, from Memphis to Bristol, was music, from Beale Street in Memphis through Music City in Nashville, to the home of country music in Bristol, TN, where they brought a recording machine in 1927 and called for the hillbillies to come down out of the mountains. Among the hillbillies who came and had their music recorded were Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter family. That was the beginning of what we call country music, what you hear on the radio in Nashville. So as I was thinking about what united Tennessee, I thought, well, music. I asked the legislature in our State in the 1980s--and they did it--to appropriate some moneys for endowments for all of our community orchestras. There are about two dozen of them. If we give the Nashville Symphony or the Greenville Community Orchestra some State dollars, if they matched it, then they would have a little endowment that would support that music. I went around the State and played the piano with all of those community orchestras and had a good time when people came out to see the Governor make a mistake or miss a chord or that kind of thing. So music is terribly important to our State, as it is to Utah and as it is to our country. Ken Burns has a new film coming out. I think Ken Burns is America's greatest storyteller today. I mean, we have other good ones, but today he is. He has done more than 30 films. There is one about the Mayo Clinic that is out today. There is the Civil War, National Parks, all of those films--Vietnam more recently. His new film is the film he thinks may be the most popular film of all he has produced, of the 30, and it is about country music. It is about the stories and the lives of the people whom country music is about. I think of Jessi Alexander, whom I just heard play a song at the Bluebird Cafe. She had heard on the radio about the father from Texas whose son was killed in Afghanistan, and they asked him how he grieved, and he said: I drive his truck. She wrote a song, ``I Drive Your Truck,'' about that father and his son who had been killed defending our country. It won the song of the year, as it should have. So these emotional stories about life and death and whiskey and love and romance and cheating and everything that goes into human nature, these are the stories that make it into these songs. Sometimes--sometimes--they are like the ``Tennessee Waltz.'' You put some words with a waltz that has been around for a while, and out comes 5 million records sold. Sometimes it is more like this story. I was coming out of the drugstore in Maryville, TN, and I ran into an old couple in a pickup truck. I walked by them, and I said: How are you all doing? The older lady said: Well, we are just falling apart together. So I told that story to Lee Brice and some songwriters who were at our home for the weekend writing songs. They said: We could do something with that, and they wrote a song, ``Falling Apart Together.'' Lee Brice is a pretty well-known singer. He and Billy Montana and John Stone wrote it. According to Nashville tradition, they gave me a fourth of the royalties because that is what they do. If you make any contribution to the song, you get a little piece of the action. I thought: Well, this is good. I can actually do that as a U.S. Senator. That is legal. The Ethics Committee will approve that. So in 2016, the royalty I received for ``Falling Apart Together,'' which was recorded by Lee Brice and is on one of his albums, was $101.75. You can't make a living on that. What Senator Hatch and the Senate has done, and the House is about to do and it will go on to the President, is to change the law. First, it will create an entity. Those two songwriters who wrote the ``Tennessee Waltz'' after World War II, let's say their great- grandchildren now own all of the rights, and they are spread all over the place. Let's say Spotify wants to play the ``Tennessee Waltz.'' Now all they have to do is to go down to this new entity to get a license. They have a right to do it, and nobody can sue them. It is the entity's job to go find all of these 100 descendants and pay them the royalty. Then we changed the law to try to make sure the royalties are a fair market value. Now, in that case, if some company owns that, it might be easier to find them, but that is why everybody came together to pass this bill. Specifically, the legislation will help make sure songwriters are paid when their songs are played by creating a new simplified licensing entity. This new licensing entity will make it easier for digital music companies to obtain a license to play songs and ensure songwriters are paid when their music is played. This new entity helps songwriters because it will collect royalties each time a song is played, look for the songwriter, and hold on to their royalties for 3 years until they can be found. This new entity also helps digital music companies because it makes sure songwriters get paid, which means fewer lawsuits. Second, the legislation will help make sure songwriters are paid a fair market value for their work by doing three things. The legislation revises outdated songwriter royalty standards to ensure songwriters are paid a fair market rate for their work. The new royalty payments will be based on what a willing buyer and willing seller would agree to in a free market--not the statutory below-market standard of today. The legislation allows ASCAP and BMI--the two largest performing rights organizations--to present new evidence about the fair market value of a songwriter's works--like what the performer earns for their songs--to a Federal rate court judge when there is a dispute about royalty rates for songwriters. The legislation allows ASCAP and BMI to have Federal judges in the Southern District of New York randomly assigned to hear their rate cases, rather than have all the proceedings occur before the same judge each time. This should lead to better outcomes for songwriters. This change in the law made sense in the internet world. Today, in the world we live in, more than half of the revenues in the music business are for songs played over the internet. The internet has changed music just like it has changed everything else. This changes the law to put us into the internet age. It changes some laws that have been around for centuries, since the days of the player piano. Since there are others who will be wanting to speak, I have had other chances to talk about the bill. I have said most of what I wanted to say, except for a couple of thank-yous. First, Orrin Hatch is exactly the right leader for this bill in the Senate for a variety of reasons. He is chairman of one important committee and nearly ranking on another. Through his prestige and his position in the Senate and through the respect we have for him, he was able to ask Senators to step back and allow us to do this very complex piece of legislation in a situation where any one Senator could have blocked it--and many did for a while, until they were persuaded not to. I want to thank Chairman Grassley and Senator Feinstein for moving it through the Judiciary Committee expeditiously. This could not have happened if Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer had not created an environment in which we could do this. Senator Hatch mentioned Senator Whitehouse and Senator Coons, who were among the lead Democratic cosponsors. We had 82 cosponsors of this bill. We only have 100 Senators, and we had 82 cosponsors of the bill. I want to particularly thank Senator Durbin, who may be a Democrat from Illinois, but he loves to go to Nashville and go to the Grand Ole Opry, and he jumped on early. He is the No. 2 Democrat, and he has been a big help. Doug Collins, Hakeem Jeffries, and Darrell Issa in the House of Representatives were real leaders from the beginning, and, of course, Bob Goodlatte and Ranking Member Nadler were as well. I think it is important to join Senator Hatch in mentioning again those music groups whom we sat down with more than 2 years ago and said: Look, we have been here for a long time, and we could continue to argue about what you disagree on or we could try to pass what you can agree on. And for the last 2\1/2\ years, they have worked to compromise, to agree on what they could agree on, and they have done that in an important way. I thank the Nashville Song Writers Association International--Bart Herbison especially, but a whole bunch of them, including the National Music Publishers Association, ASCAP, BMI, the Recording Academy, Sound Exchange, Digital Media Association, Song Writers of North America, Internet Association, Recording Industry Association of America, and the National Association of Broadcasters, which came with a strongly support recommendation in the end, which was a big, big help. Senator Hatch was correct. The most valuable players in all of this most likely have been the staff members on both sides of the aisle and in both Houses who helped put the competing interests together--and there were many--in a way that produced this bill. I would especially like to thank Lindsey Garcia, who is sitting here with me, and Paul McKernan, who worked on this for a long time, and David Cleary and Allison Martin on my staff. Chris Bates, Matt Jensen, and Matt Sandgren on Senator Hatch's staff have been terrific and essential. I thank Rita Lari from the Senate Judiciary staff. We were joking the other day. When we first talked to her about this, she said: Are you sure you can pass a bill like this? Most people didn't think it was possible to get all of the competing interests here to agree. Congressman Doug Collins and his staff have really been at the forefront of this, including Sally Rose Larson. Republican floor staff Megan Mercer was a big help. A special shout-out to Reema Dodin, who works for Senator Durbin and who was a consistent help but was especially helpful on last Tuesday afternoon when we only had a little bit of time and we needed to get some last-minute changes cleared in the Democratic cloakroom as well as the Republican cloakroom. This would be a good exercise for a chapter in a book on legislation sometime. But it is going to be the Hatch-Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, and the result is going to be that thousands and thousands of songwriters in this country for the first time in a long time are, A, going to get paid for their work, and, B, they are going to get paid more of a fair market value, as they should. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have worked on it, and I thank all of my colleagues for working so well with Senator Hatch and me to get it done. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, if the Senator from Utah has concluded his remarks, I would like to say a word or two. We have just passed in the Senate a bill that is named the Orrin G. Hatch Music Modernization Act. It was an amendment I had offered to the bill, not Senator Hatch's amendment. He is the principal sponsor of the bill, along with Senator Whitehouse and 82 Members of this body, but I ask that it be named in his honor. It is fitting because it is the most important piece of legislation in a generation to help make sure songwriters in our country are paid and are paid a fair market value for their work. It is fitting because Senator Hatch is a songwriter himself and has long been an advocate for musicians. So I can think of no better way to memorialize his four decades of service in the U.S. Senate than by renaming this legislation the Orrin G. Hatch Music Modernization Act. Under his leadership, as I just mentioned, the bill gained nearly unanimous support in the Senate. It passed in the House earlier. After its having been thoroughly vetted and compromised and changed, it passed unanimously. It went to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it was considered and passed by voice vote. Then, tonight, it passed by voice vote. I join with Senator Hatch in especially thanking the other Senators who have worked so hard on this, both Democrats as well as Republicans--Senator Whitehouse; Senator Durbin, the Assistant Democratic Leader, who enjoys going to Nashville on a regular basis and has lots of good stories about it; and Senator Coons of Delaware. The bill, which passed the House unanimously and has now passed the Senate, will go back to the House because we have made some changes in the bill. That is the way the process works. We have stayed in close touch with the House of Representatives as we have done this. Representative Doug Collins and a number of others in the House have been really extraordinary leaders in pushing this, so I know Representative Collins and others will work hard. My hope is, the House will be able to pass the Senate's bill next week and that the bill will then go to the President and become law. Earlier this evening, Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, was on the floor, but he had to leave. I join Senator Hatch in thanking Senator Grassley, who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, for having expedited the consideration of this bill and for having been here to speak about it. Senator Grassley asked me to read these words on his behalf: The Music Modernization Act will really help songwriters, artists, publishers, producers, distributors, and other music industry stakeholders. This bill is the product of long and hard negotiations and compromise. Senators Hatch and Alexander especially--but many other Senators--contributed to this bill. I am pleased to support this bill. One reason this bill has been successful--and one of the senior members of the staff of the Judiciary Committee was talking to me tonight and said it was a really remarkable piece of legislation--is that it touches so many of the aspects of the creation of music in our country. I think that is true. It is a very complex piece of legislation. I asked some of those who were working on it the other day: Will this really help the songwriters? The answer was: Yes, it will. We have been able to get so far because the songwriters and the publishers and the digital music companies and the broadcasters and the record labels and others decided to work together over the last 2 or 3 years on what they agree on instead of on what they disagree. It has taken several years to do this, but I believe it has been worth the effort. What has happened is that the internet has changed the music business in the way it has changed politics, other businesses, and the world. More than half the revenues in the music business now come from music that is played over the internet. The legislation is necessary because the copyright laws of our country haven't kept up with the arrival of the internet. In addition to that, they were way out of date before the internet ever got here. Those copyright laws haven't been modernized since the days of the player piano a century ago. As a result of that, today's songwriters are often not paid royalties for their songs when their songs are played online, and when they are paid, they aren't paid a fair market value. It has become almost impossible for songwriters to make a decent living. Songwriters in Nashville--and we have them all over Tennessee, but Nashville has thousands of them--are typically taxi drivers, teachers, waitresses who are all working to write their first hits. Last Saturday, I was at the Bluebird Cafe, in Nashville, where Senator Hatch has been before. Bob DiPiero was there and was playing some of his songs. He told a story of how, in the 1980s, he was teaching guitar lessons at the Rivergate Mall. That is how he was earning a living. He had moved to Nashville from Ohio and had fallen in love with country music. He said he would take a bus out to the Rivergate Mall--that took about an hour and an hour back--to teach these kids in the afternoons, after school, from 3 to 9 o'clock. During the day, he would write songs. Nothing happened until he wrote a song called ``American Made,'' which almost everybody knows the words to, and that song has done pretty well. To give you an idea of what this bill could mean to most songwriters, let me tell you a story. I mentioned that songwriters can be taxi drivers or teachers or waitresses. They can also be U.S. Senators, like Senator Hatch, who actually has a gold record--maybe two--to his credit, and he has often cowritten with national songwriters. I had an experience too. A few years ago, I was in my hometown of Maryville, TN. I went into the drugstore, and as I was coming out, there was this older couple who was sitting in a pickup truck. I asked: How are y'all doing? The woman in the pickup truck said: We are just falling apart together. It just so happened that over that weekend, my son, who is in the music business, had a group of songwriters at our home, and they were writing songs. So I told that story about the lady saying ``falling apart together'' to one of them whose name was Lee Brice, who is a well-known songwriter and performer. Lee Brice said: Hey, we can do something with that. So he and Billy Montana and John Stone wrote the song ``Falling Apart Together.'' ``Falling Apart Together'' went on Lee Brice's album, and it was played a lot. According to Nashville's custom, I get a one-fourth royalty for the song whenever the song is played. Now, Lee is a pretty well-known singer, and you would think those royalties would add up to give me a nice income in addition to my salary as a U.S. Senator. I checked. In 2016, I reported on my ethics form, which I file each year, that my royalties only added up to $101.75. That was for one-fourth of a record that was played on an album of a pretty well-known singer and writer. If you are a songwriter in Nashville or anywhere else, you can't make a living on that, but the Orrin G. Hatch Music Modernization Act will help to fix that. It will help to make sure songwriters are paid a fair market value when their songs are played and that they are actually paid when their songs are played. First, the legislation will make sure songwriters are paid by creating a new entity. This is really an elegant solution to a complicated problem. This new licensing entity will make it easier for digital music companies like Spotify or Amazon or Pandora to obtain licenses. Let's say they want to play ``Falling Apart Together.'' All they will have to do is go down to the entity and get a license from that entity to make sure the four of us who helped to write that song will be paid whenever the song is played. This can be a big problem for one of the internet companies because they deal in hundreds of thousands--millions--of songs, and songwriters end up everywhere in the world. So finding them is sometimes impossible. That is not good for the songwriter who doesn't get paid. It is not good for the streaming company because it might get sued. As I said earlier, half of the revenues in the music industry come from internet songs. This new entity will collect the royalties each time a song is played. It will look for the songwriter and hold onto the royalties for 3 years until the songwriter can be found. As I mentioned, it will help the digital music companies because it will reduce the number of lawsuits and make it a lot simpler to get a license for a song. Second, the legislation will make sure that songwriters will be paid a fair market value for their songs by doing three things. First, it will revise outdated songwriter royalty standards. As I mentioned earlier, go back a century to the days of the player piano. It will replace those with a standard of willing seller and willing buyer. What would the song be worth in the free market, not as to the statutory rate that is set today? The second thing the legislation will do is to allow ASCAP and BMI-- the two largest performing rights organizations--to present new evidence about the fair market value of a songwriter's work--like what the performer of the song might earn for performing the song--to a Federal rate court judge when there is a dispute about what the royalties are. Finally, the third thing it will do to make sure songwriters are paid a fairer rate is to allow ASCAP and BMI to have Federal judges in the Southern District of New York, which is where these cases are heard, to be randomly assigned to the cases rather than to have all of the proceedings before the same judge. We believe that will produce a fairer outcome for songwriters. This is a big day for songwriters in Nashville and in Memphis and in Knoxville, TN, as well as all over the country. It is the most important piece of legislation in a generation that will help make sure songwriters will be, A, paid when their songs are played and, B, that songwriters will be paid a fair market value. I thank Senator Hatch for his leadership on this. Because he led this effort and because of his prestige in the Senate, we have 82 cosponsors of the legislation. We were able to pass it by voice vote tonight after it went through the Judiciary Committee. I would not want anyone to think that because it passed by such a wide margin that this was a simple exercise. It was a very complicated exercise, and it was in doubt until about an hour and a half ago in terms of whether we would be able to do this tonight. Yet we wouldn't have been able to have done it without Senator Hatch, so I thank him. I think it is fitting, as he retires this year after spending four decades in the Senate, that we name the most important piece of legislation to help songwriters in a generation after the Senate's songwriter, that being the Orrin G. Hatch Music Modernization Act. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah for his remarks. I think we both would feel remiss if we didn't properly acknowledge all of the Senators and especially all of the staff members who have put in such long hours and used such professionalism to help with this. We will come back to the floor next week and do that properly. Lindsay Garcia is here with me, as well as Paul McKernan and David Cleary. I see Senator Hatch's staff is on the floor, some from the Finance Committee. I want to make sure that we do a complete job of acknowledging their highly professional work in this complex and important piece of legislation. As I said, it is the most important piece of legislation in a generation to help make sure that American songwriters are paid fairly for their work. Thank you.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn to then convene for pro forma session only, with no business being conducted, on Thursday, September 20, at 3 p.m. I further ask that when the Senate adjourns on Thursday, September 20, it next convene at 3 p.m., Monday, September 24, and that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; further, that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, until 5:30 p.m., and that then, at 5:30 p.m., the Senate proceed to the consideration of the Wolcott nomination under the previous order; finally, that notwithstanding rule XXII, the cloture motions filed during today's session ripen following disposition of the Wolcott nomination.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this morning, in Nashville, as I got on the plane, the headlines were not about tweets or collusion with Russia or even the Supreme Court nomination. The headline was this: Senate set to OK bill on opioids. Within a few minutes, we are about to vote in the Senate on legislation that Senator McConnell, the majority leader, has called ``landmark legislation.'' It is legislation that 72 of the 100 Members of this body have made a contribution to. They are not just cosponsoring it. They have a piece of this bill. This legislation has come through five different committees of the Senate, and we have been working on it for several months. The reason it is on the front page of the newspapers in Tennessee and the newspapers in Kansas and the newspapers in Wyoming and the newspapers in Maine is because opioids are our most serious public health epidemic, and the Opioid Crisis Response Act that we will be voting on in a few minutes is the Senate's response to this crisis. We will be voting on another important piece of legislation that the Senator from Maine, Ms. Collins, who is here, has talked about, and Senator McCaskill is a cosponsor. It is the Patient Right to Know Act. It basically does something that I think almost every American would think is a good idea. It says that when you go into a drugstore, your pharmacist must be allowed to tell you that if you can buy your prescription for $5 by paying out of your own pocket, you should do that, rather than using your insurance, which might require a $100 copay out of your pocket. Right now, there are contracts between pharmacy benefit organizations and pharmacists that prohibit your pharmacist from telling you. Senator Collins deserves a lot of credit for her leadership in this area, as she does in so many other areas, and I fully support what she is proposing. It passed unanimously out of our Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Let's go back for a moment to the Opioid Crisis Response Act, which we will be voting on within a few minutes. I mentioned that it is on the front pages of the newspapers today, despite a lot of competition for other news. I mentioned that Senator McConnell, the Senate majority leader, had called it ``landmark legislation,'' and I mentioned that it is because the opioid crisis is the most serious public health epidemic in our country. It is ravaging virtually every community. We all have stories that we have heard, that we know, that we have told--stories like the story of Becky Savage, who testified at one of the seven hearings before our HELP Committee that her sons had a graduation party in her basement. She was happy about that. They were not running around town doing other things; they were in the basement. Unfortunately, someone had brought opioid pills to the party that got mixed with alcohol, and she found both her sons dead the next morning. They were not drug addicts. They were not alcoholics. They were good boys, but somehow they made a mistake because they and their friends didn't know the consequences of this opioid epidemic. That is why five different committees in this body have reported bills that have made a contribution to the Opioid Crisis Response Act, which we are about to vote on. That is why 72 different Senators have provisions in this bill. That is why, last June, the House of Representatives passed its own version of the bill, also involving several committees in the House.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for another 5 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, that is why we have had so much support for this amendment. The bill is so large, some people have had trouble seeing the significance of it. Let me quickly mention two aspects of it: One is money, one is moonshot. Some people say: Where is the money? This is not a money bill. This is an authorization bill. The money bills are in the Appropriations Committee, and they have been generous. In March, the Congress addressed $4.7 billion in the omnibus appropriations bill toward opioids. In the bill--which we should approve tomorrow for the next fiscal year--there will be another $3.8 billion. So that is $8 billion within a few months for the opioids crisis. The second is moonshot. Some people say this needs a moonshot. It does need the energy and resources of a moonshot, but, unfortunately, this isn't a crisis that we can assign to a Federal agency in Washington and say: Let's fix it in 10 years. What we can do is everything we can think of to do to create an environment so that doctors, nurses, judges, patients, parents, and everybody in communities that are affected by the opioid crisis can deal with it there, and we do our best to do that. For example, Senator Portman's STOP Act addresses fentanyl and other synthetic, illegal drugs being mailed into this country through our Postal Service from China. Fentanyl is 50 times more powerful than an opioid pill, 50 times more dangerous. There is a 70-percent increase in deaths from overdose by fentanyl in our State of Tennessee. Here is what I think is the Holy Grail of this crisis; that is, finding a non-addictive pain medicine or treatment. One hundred million Americans live with pain; 25 million Americans have chronic pain. They need help. They need something other than an addictive pain medicine-- something that works. Dr. Francis Collins at the National Institutes of Health and Scott Gottlieb at the Food and Drug Administration have advanced research and created fast tracks, and we have provided hundreds of millions of dollars to find that Holy Grail. A third is to reduce the prescriptions of opioids that can be diverted, so you can reduce the chance that you might get a 60-pill bottle of opioids, use 12, take it home, put it in your medicine cabinet; then your teenager picks it up and takes it to a party, and someone is hurt or overdoses. We authorize the Food and Drug Administration to require manufacturers to sell opioid pills in blister packs of, say, three or seven. Already, two dozen States have established their own limits. In Tennessee, it is a limit of three days. What are the next steps for this piece of legislation, the Opioid Crisis Response Act with 72 provisions? We are already working with the House of Representatives. We are working very well with them. I appreciate the leadership of Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer in creating an environment where we can move this bill rapidly. We are working with Congressman Walden and Congressman Brady in the House and with Democrats on both sides of seven committees in the Senate on this phase and several in the House of Representatives. Our goal is to have all of our language in a combined bill ready by Friday of this week, along with Congressional Budget Office numbers, so that the House of Representatives can vote on the bill next week before they go home. Then we can vote on it the following week--or whenever Senator McConnell can put it on the floor--and send it to the President for action. There are too many Senators for me to thank at the moment for their leadership as chairmen and ranking members of committees or for their agreeing to show some restraint in insisting on provisions. Senator Portman had provisions, Senator Rubio did, Senator Paul did, and Senator Lee did, but they all said: Let's go ahead and vote on this today, work out the remaining differences we have over the next few days with the House, and hope that the final version of the bill that comes back from the House is even stronger. I am convinced that this piece of legislation, the Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018, will help deal with the worst public health epidemic we have had. We have a sense of bipartisan urgency about finishing our work in the Senate and combining our efforts with the House. Their bill is a good bill. I think combining it with ours will help make it stronger, and we will get our bill to the President. We may have the same amount of money and the same amount of energy that we had for the moonshot in the 1960s, but the real work is going to be done on the frontlines because the only way to deal with the opioid crisis is community by community by community. I thank the President. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate proceeds to S. 2554, amendment No. 4011 be made pending.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment to S. 2554 be agreed to.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the next vote is on Senator Collins' amendment on the gag rule with Senator McCaskill. Following that, we will vote on the Opioid Crisis Act of 2018, which has the contributions of 72 Senators. I would like to especially thank Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer for creating an environment in which we could get this done. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the votes following the first vote in this series be 10 minutes in length.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, and I ask consent to speak for as long as I may require.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, Boy Scouts shouldn't get a merit badge for telling the truth, and Senators shouldn't get an award for passing an appropriations bill, because that is what we are supposed to do. But it is worth noting that for the first time in at least 10 years, these appropriations bills that we just passed are on time and within the budget Congress has set. With this vote today, we are moving toward restoring the practice of regular order in the Senate from start to finish. This is what the right way means: hearings--we held three. Mark up the bills--all 12 bills are completed before the Fourth of July recess. Consult with other Senators--in the case of the Energy and Water appropriations bills, 87 Senators, we believe, had their wishes reflected in our bill. Floor debate, amendment votes, then a conference committee, and then we had the vote today. I look forward to President Trump signing these appropriations bills into law. They will help to keep our country first in science, technology, and supercomputing, and they will build the ports and waterways that create jobs. This bill supports funding for several important agencies, including the Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Bureau of Reclamation, and regional commissions, including the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Delta Regional Authority. The amount of funding in the bill is also consistent with spending caps agreed to as part of the bipartisan budget agreement. It sets priorities while reducing unnecessary spending. Let me start with the Army Corps of Engineers, which affects the lives of almost every American. Based upon the appropriations request we received, this is the most popular agency in the budget. The Corps maintains our inland waterways; it deepens and keeps our ports open; it looks after our recreational waters and lands; it manages our rivers to prevent flooding; its dams provide emission-free, renewable hydroelectric energy. The bill restores $2.3 billion that was cut from the President's budget request, bringing the Corps' budget up to $6.999 billion--a new record level of funding in a regular appropriations bill. For the fifth consecutive year, the bill makes full use of the Inland Waterways Trust Fund revenues for water infrastructure projects, including up to $117.7 million to continue construction of Chickamauga Lock in Chattanooga and $2.125 million for dredging at Memphis Harbor McKellar Lake. The bill also provides funding that exceeds the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, a spending target established by the Water Resources and Development Act of 2014. This is the fifth consecutive year that the bill has met or exceeded the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund spending targets, which is necessary to adequately fund our Nation's harbors, including Mobile Harbor in Alabama, Savannah Harbor in Georgia, Long Beach Harbor in California, and many others across the country. For the Department of Energy, for the fourth consecutive year, we have included record funding levels in a regular appropriations bill for the following activities: No. 1, for the Department's Office of Science. This is the Nation's largest support of research in the physical sciences. It is funded at $6.5 billion, a new record funding level. The Office of Science provides funding for our 17 national laboratories--I call them our secret weapons--including the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. No other country has anything like them. Let's take supercomputing. The bill provides a total of $1.6 billion for high performance computing, including $935 million within the Office of Science and $723 million within the National Nuclear Security Administration. This includes $6.76 million to deliver at least one exascale machine in 2021 to reassert U.S. leadership in the critical area of supercomputing. This accomplishment is not the result of 1 year of funding, but of 10 years of bipartisan effort through three different administrations, Democrat and Republican, to try to make sure that the United States is first in the world in supercomputing. We continue to do that in this appropriations bill. Nuclear power is our best source of inexpensive, carbon-free baseload power. It is important for national security and competitiveness. Nuclear power provides 20 percent of our Nation's electricity and more than half of our carbon-free electricity. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees our 99 nuclear power reactors, is also funded in this bill. We wanted to make sure it is prepared to review applications for new reactors, particularly small modular reactors and advanced reactors, and to extend the licenses of existing nuclear reactors, if it is the safe thing to do. The bill also provides $47 million for research and development at the Department of Energy to support existing reactors, $27 million for the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors, and $30 million for the Transformational Challenge Reactor. It advances efforts to clean up hazardous materials at Cold War-era sites. The bill provides $7.2 billion to support cleanup efforts, which is $578 million above the President's budget request. A key pillar of our national defense is a strong nuclear deterrent. That is in this appropriations bill, as well, including $11.1 billion for weapons activities within the NNSA, including nearly $2 billion for six life extension programs, which fix or replace components in weapons systems to make sure they are safe and reliable. Congress must maintain a safe and effective nuclear weapons stockpile and keep big construction projects on time and on budget. I want to compliment Senator Feinstein, of California, my partner on the Energy and Water Subcommittee. We worked hard together on all aspects of this bill, but especially on keeping those big construction projects on time and on budget. A principal reason the United States produces 24 percent of all the money in the world for just 5 percent of the people in the world is the extraordinary concentration of brain power in the United States supported by Federal dollars through our National Laboratories, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies. It is important that the American people know that the Republican majority in Congress worked together with Democrats to provide record levels of funding for science, research, and technology. I would state to all of those who might not have noticed this quiet new development that Congress is funding science and research at record levels, and if we continue to do so, we will make America more competitive and help spur innovation and create good-paying jobs. A lot of hard work went into these negotiations over the last several months. Our staff members have worked over weekends and over vacations to make that happen, including the last few days. On my staff were Tyler Owens, Adam DeMella, Meyer Seligman, Jen Armstrong, Molly Marsh, and Rachel Littleton; on Senator Feinstein's staff, Doug Clapp, Chris Hanson, Samantha Nelson; and on Senator Shelby's staff, Shannon Hines, Jonathan Graffeo, and David Adkins. I am deeply grateful to them for their professionalism and their bipartisan work.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, now I would like to say a word about legislation that the majority leader, Senator McConnell, has described as landmark legislation, which I expect the Senate to move to early next week, and that is the legislation dealing with the most serious public health epidemic in America today, the opioid crisis. We will be voting on the Opioid Crisis Response Act. This landmark legislation is the work of five different committees in the Senate. More than 70 Senators--half Republican, half Democrat--have provisions in this bill. A big bill is hard to talk about, so let me just mention 10 key provisions: first, Senator Portman's STOP Act to stop illegal drugs, including fentanyl, at the border coming through the mail; second, new nonaddictive painkillers, research and fast-track. I call this the holy grail of the opioids crisis because 100 million Americans hurt. They have pain; 25 million have chronic pain. They need help, and we need new nonaddictive treatments to help them. Blister packs for opioids, such as a 3 to 5 days' supply--we authorized the FDA to require manufacturers to do that. More medication-assisted treatment, preventing doctor shopping by improving State prescription drug monitoring programs, and more behavioral and mental health providers. No. 7, support for comprehensive opioid recovery centers; No. 8, help for babies born in opioid withdrawal; No. 9, help for mothers with opioid use disorders, addicted to opioids; and No. 10, more early intervention with vulnerable children who have experienced trauma. Those are 10 of the 70 provisions that change the authorizing law, but in addition to that, we have placed unprecedented amounts of Federal dollars toward the opioid crisis. In March, in the omnibus bill, Congress and the President directed $4.7 billion toward the opioid crisis. Tomorrow, the conference committee considering the Labor, Health, and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill will meet. When that appropriations bill is approved, as we expect and hope it will be by the end of the month, that is another $3.7 billion. So that is $8.4 billion in the last few months that will have been directed toward the opioid crisis. We have had seven hearings in our committee on opioids. On June 14, Becky Savage talked to us about two of her sons. She lost both of them after they accidentally overdosed on a combination of alcohol and opioids that they took in their own home after a graduation party. At our hearing, Becky Savage said: How could two boys who have always seemed to make good decisions in life make a choice that would ultimately cost them their lives? [H]ow did someone's prescription end up in the pocket of a teenager at a graduation party? Nick and Jack were just two of the 33,000 Americans who died in 2015 from an opioid overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By 2016, the number had increased to 42,000 Americans. We suspect those numbers are even higher now. Last year, 1,776 Tennesseans died of a drug overdose, according to the Tennessee Department of Health, up from 1,630 the year before. We know that the opioid crisis is ravaging virtually every American community. Becky Savage's story was just one of the heartbreaking stories the Senate HELP Committee heard last year in our seven hearings. Senator Isakson in Georgia told us of waking up to answer a phone call at 3 a.m. in December of 2016. His son John called to tell Senator Isakson that his grandson had passed away from an opioid overdose. We heard Dr. Omar Abubaker, who lost his youngest son, Adam, 21 years old, after he overdosed on a mixture of heroin and benzodiazepines. At our hearing he said, ``Since my son's death 3 years ago, more than 165,000 other parents in this country have experienced the same agony.'' I imagine every Senator has heard heartbreaking stories of how the opioid crisis has impacted patients and children, doctors and nurses, entire communities in our States. But at our hearings, we also heard stories of hope. Jessica Hulsey Nickel knows ``firsthand the devastating impact that addiction can have on families,'' having lost both of her parents to addiction. Jessica has since dedicated her life to helping others battling the same disease. Trish Tanner, the chief pharmacy officer at Ballad Health in Johnson City, TN, lost her nephew Dustin to an opioid overdose. As part of an executive fellowship program, she worked on a project on ways to reduce opioid prescribing, saying that ``as Dustin's aunt and as a pharmacist, I have a duty and a desire to bring about change now.'' To spread awareness and tell the story of losing her two sons, Becky Savage and her husband have created the 525 Foundation in memory of Nick and Jack. When she testified before our committee, Becky told us that ``you could have heard a pin drop in many of the auditoriums I speak in.'' After hearing her story, you could hear a pin drop in our committee room as well. The challenge of solving the opioid crisis has been often been described as needing a moonshot. I wish we could do that. I wish we could appoint a single agency in Washington to solve this problem in every community in America, but what we have found is that will not work. Solving the opioid crisis might require the energy and resources of a moonshot, but ultimately it is not something that can be solved by a single agency here. What the Federal Government can do is create an environment so that everyone--Governors, mayors, judges, counselors, law enforcement, doctors, nurses, and families like the Savages--can succeed in fighting the crisis. This is a package of more than 70 proposals from nearly three- quarters of the Members of the U.S. Senate--72 Members--that includes the work of five committees: the HELP Committee that I chair, the Finance, Judiciary, Commerce, and Banking Committees. Since last October, the Senate HELP Committee, which I chair and Senator Patty Murray of Washington is the ranking member of, has held seven hearings on the opioid crisis. We heard from Governors, from doctors, from addiction experts, family members, and others on how the Federal Government can be the best possible partner as we work to solve the crisis. We took the input we heard at the first six hearings, and we turned it into a draft package of proposals, which Senator Murray and I released on April 5. On April 11, we held our seventh hearing to review the draft proposal. On April 17, we introduced an updated package of 40 proposals, based on the feedback we heard at the seventh hearing. On April 24, the Senate Health Committee voted 23 to 0 to pass this legislation, which included proposals from 38 different Senators. Because this crisis is so widespread, the Finance, Judiciary, Commerce, and Banking Committees also have been working on their contributions to this bill. On May 22, the Commerce Committee passed two provisions; May 24, the Judiciary passed six; June 12, the Finance Committee offered 22 more provisions. We have also included a provision that the Banking Committee has been working on. Senator Murray and I have since worked with Senators Hatch, Grassley, Thune, Wyden, Feinstein, and Nelson to combine all of these proposals, along with other proposals, such as Senator Portman's STOP Act, into one package of legislation--the Opioid Crisis Response Act. We thank all of them. Over 20 Senators contributed to the Finance Committee provisions, 25 to the Judiciary provisions, and 7 to the Commerce Committee's provisions. I think it is a testament to just how far-reaching this crisis is and why we feel a sense of bipartisan urgency in passing this legislation in the Senate and in the Congress. In June the House of Representatives passed its own package of legislation to fight the opioid crisis by a vote of 396 to 14. The Senate and House staff combined our legislation and what the House has passed, and we believe it will produce an even stronger bill to fight the crisis. My hope is that the five Senate committees will work quickly with our House colleagues to reach an agreement by September 21, so the House can pass a final opioids package, the Senate can pass it, and we can send it to the President's desk as quickly as possible. That is the bipartisan sense of urgency I feel so that we can help States and communities fight the opioid crisis. This act builds on the work already done--the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA, passed in 2016, which gave a substantial boost to States on the frontlines, providing grants to expand access to lifesaving opioid overdose reversal medications and to support State efforts to help individuals. Later in 2016, Congress enacted the 21st Century Cures Act, which included $1 billion over 2 years in State grants to fight the crisis. It sought to accelerate research for major discoveries, like new nonaddictive pain medicines, which, as I mentioned, I believe is the Holy Grail of solving the opioid crisis. Then, the omnibus appropriations bill in March provided $4.7 billion of funding, and $1 billion of that is for grants. We believe another $3.7 billion is coming from the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill, which we hope to pass this month. According to Senator Blunt, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, Federal funding to help combat the opioid epidemic has increased nearly 1,300 percent over the past 4 years. The bill we are voting on next week builds on this funding. So we will be passing the STOP Act, new nonaddictive painkillers, blister packs for opioids, more medication-assisted treatment, and efforts to prevent doctor shopping, to provide more behavioral and mental health providers, to support comprehensive opioid recovery centers, and to provide help for babies born in opioid withdrawal, help for mothers with opioid use disorders, and more early intervention with vulnerable children who have experienced trauma. These are just a portion of the more than 70 provisions in the Opioid Crisis Response Act. This is, as the majority leader, Senator McConnell, has said, ``landmark legislation'' that represents the work of nearly three-fourths of the Senate, five committees, and countless staff who have worked to try to help States and communities put an end to this crisis that is ravaging virtually every community in America. The House of Representatives has passed its version. We have our bipartisan urgency to work together. No mother should have to go through what Becky Savage has gone through. It is time to finish our work and help States and communities bring an end to the opioid crisis. This legislation would give us many of the tools we need to do just that. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, I am glad I traveled to Phoenix Thursday for John McCain's funeral. You learn a lot more about a U.S. Senator in his hometown than you do here in Washington, DC. What was clear in Phoenix last Thursday was that John McCain and the State of Arizona were well connected with one another. Frankly, I had wondered about that because it is a long way to Phoenix. It is a 5-hour flight. Sometimes John took a connecting flight. He must have taken hundreds of trips around the world. So I wondered if he really was connected to the State the same as he was to Senate. But I shouldn't have had any doubt about that because you are not going to get elected six times in a primary and then six times in a general election, in a State where both primary and general elections are competitive, without being well connected to your State, and he obviously was. Listening to those who remembered John in Phoenix, it was clear that John McCain kept his feet on the ground in Arizona. Grant Woods, the former attorney general, spoke first. He was very good. He captured John perfectly. He had been his chief of staff. He had been the attorney general of Arizona. In his remarks, he captured John's erratic driving and his mercurial personality. Tommy Espinoza, a friend of Senator McCain, helped us understand, again, how John thought his job was to serve everybody, whether they were Republicans, Democrats, or from whatever walk of life. We all knew John McCain was a sports nut, and I don't guess that any of us were surprised to see Larry Fitzgerald speak, who is entering his 15th year in the National Football League. I was impressed when Larry Fitzgerald talked about having so much respect for John McCain that he--Larry Fitzgerald--flew to Hanoi, went to the lake where McCain crashed his plane, and then went to the cell in Hanoi where he spent nearly 6 years. Joe Biden brought the only touch of Washington, DC, to Phoenix last Thursday, but it really wasn't that big of a touch because what Joe mainly talked about was his friendship with John McCain and their relationships, which all of us know is the heart and soul of the Senate. The service in the big Baptist church, concluding with Frank Sinatra singing ``My Way,'' was a reminder that the service was, well, pure John McCain. Those of us who eulogized John are honest enough to say that he was an equal-opportunity insulter. He took the head off of almost every one of us in the Senate at one time or another. He was filled with passion for every issue he touched, and that often led to explosions. After the explosions and after the inevitable apologies, which usually didn't take very long, he would say: I never expected to be elected Mr. Congeniality. I chalked up those explosions--and I think almost all of us did--to those 6 years of captivity in Hanoi. All of us wondered and admired how someone who suffered that much pain in those circumstances for the rest of his life could lead such a productive life and be so useful to our country. John brought the same passion and generosity of spirit that he had for his issues to his friendships--and I was glad to be included as one of those--and the extent of that generosity of spirit to people he didn't know, whom he had just met in many walks of life. I can remember when he was campaigning in Tennessee with me. He was spending the night with me at our home in East Tennessee. It was late when we got there, 10:30 or 11. My son had a group of national songwriters who were writing what they all hoped to be the next No. 1 hit. Of course, they were eager for John to hear their No. 1 hit. He stopped, and he listened. He spent some time with them. One of them said to me last week how thrilled he still is that he got to meet John McCain. The next morning, Eugene Caylor, who is a craftsman from Townsend, TN, was coming to work, and John was leaving. It turns out that Eugene had been in Vietnam when John had been there. So they talked about that for a few minutes. Eugene told me this past week how much he valued those few minutes with John McCain. John McCain came to the Senate in 1976 or so. John was then a Senate liaison. He got his hair cut by Mario D'Angelo, who is still here cutting hair. I saw Mario the other day. He has been cutting my hair over a long period of time, as well as Orrin Hatch's and many of us. Mario said that about the time Senator McCain was running for President, he was on television, sitting there with his wife Cindy, and some interviewer asked him if he had any friends in the Senate. He thought for a moment, and finally Cindy said: Well, there is Mario. And McCain said: Mario the butcher; he is responsible for all these scars on my face. Last week, after John McCain's death, Mario laughed and said: That is what he always called me, ``the butcher,'' but he was my buddy. When he found out I was going to Phoenix, he said: Say a big good-bye to my buddy John McCain. That is how Mario felt, and that is how many, many of us felt. We have heard so much said about Senator McCain during the last week that one would wonder if there was anything left to say. What I want to say is not something different, but I would like to emphasize something, and that is the commitment Senator John McCain had to the Senate as an institution. His devotion to the Senate as an institution is, by far, not his most newsworthy accomplishment, but it underlay many of his most important decisions. He said he voted against the ObamaCare repeal because it didn't go through the regular order, the kind of order an institution ought to have. The last chapter of one of his books is entitled ``The Regular Order.'' In 2005, when Democrats balked at George W. Bush's judicial nominees--Republicans were seeking to change the very nature of the Senate by turning it into a majoritarian institution--Senator McCain worked with Republicans and Democrats in sort of a gang, as they called it, to try to make sure that didn't happen. He wanted to preserve the Senate as an institution. I worked with him many, many hours in 2011, 2012, and 2013 on the same sort of thing. We saw the difficulty that President Obama at that time had in getting some of his nominations confirmed. So we worked to change the Senate rules so that President Obama and subsequent Presidents could get their nominees approved in a reasonable time. We worked with Senator Carl Levin, for example, who insisted that we needed to be successful or else we would have one of those nuclear explosions that would change the nature of the Senate and make it a majoritarian institution that ran roughshod over the minority. Senator Levin said at the time--with which Senator McCain and I both agreed-- that a Senate in which the majority can change the rules at any time is a Senate without any rules. What Senator Levin might also have said is that the Senate is a weaker institution, deserving less respect. In a speech at Morristown, NJ, a few years ago, the late Justice Scalia said that ``the reason America's basic freedom has endured for 200 years is not the amendments to the Constitution but the Constitution itself.'' Justice Scalia said this: Every tin horn dictator in the world today, every president for life, has a Bill of Rights. That's not what makes us free; if it did, you would rather live in Zimbabwe. But you wouldn't want to live in most countries in the world that have a Bill of Rights. What has made us free is our Constitution. Think of the word ``constitution.'' It means structure. Scalia continued: That's why America's framers debated . . . the structure of the federal government. The genius of the American constitutional system is the dispersal of power. Once power is centralized in one person, or one part [of government], a Bill of Rights is just words on paper. John McCain understood that. He sensed that a nation as fragmented as ours has become in this internet democracy in which we live today especially needs strong institutions. The most important institution designed to reach a consensus, a compromise, an agreement, the kind of agreement most Americans will support and the kind of agreement that will last a long time--the institution most suited to do that is the U.S. Senate. That is our job, just as it is our job to weigh in against the excesses of the popular will and the excesses of the Chief Executive. If we don't do our jobs, as Justice Scalia said, we are risking creating in our country an authoritarian government. The U.S. Senate is a representative body, so some Senators stand out above others. There is usually one Senator who stands out over all the other Senators, and, for the last few years, that has been John McCain. For me, one of the most enduring contributions John McCain made to this institution was his continuous efforts to help strengthen the Senate as an institution, to see to it that we do our jobs, providing checks against the excesses of the popular will, excesses of the Executive, and that we work hard to find the kind of compromise and consensus and agreement that most Americans can support and that can last for a long time. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I join with Senator Murray in recognizing Dr. Marcia Crosse. In recognition of her achievements, she has been honored within GAO through meritorious and distinguished service awards for her technical excellence and dedication to client service, as well as across government as a 2014 finalist for a Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal for Citizen Services. Both within GAO and in Congress, Dr. Crosse is recognized as a consummate professional and an independent and creative thinker who understands the issues, gets to the bottom of problems, and communicates those issues clearly to Members of Congress, our staff, and to the agencies she works with. Thanks to the dedication and expertise of Dr. Crosse, not only are vital parts of our government working better, but Americans are better off as well.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call be waived.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, Boy Scouts shouldn't get a merit badge for telling the truth, and U.S. Senators shouldn't get an award for passing appropriations bills. That is what we are expected to do. That is what we are here for. That is our most basic responsibility. But I think it is worth noticing, especially since the distinguished vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee is still on the floor, that this is the largest number of appropriations bills passed before August since the year 2000. We have already done that with seven bills, and if we are successful this week, as I expect we will be, in passing the third package of appropriations bills, we will have passed in the Senate annual appropriations bills that account for nearly 90 percent of the discretionary Federal Government spending. That is the part of the government spending that is not automatic--we call that the mandatory spending. It is the part of the government spending that is under control. For the last 10 years, this basically 30 percent of the Federal budget that we call discretionary spending that we appropriate every year--that has been going up at about the rate of inflation, and over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it will go up at just a little more than the rate of inflation. So this money we are spending on behalf of our taxpayers, we are spending in a budgeted, responsible way, and we are spending it on time--if we continue the progress we are making--which makes it easier for our military, our National Laboratories, and our agencies to plan and spend money more wisely. Nothing is more wasteful--almost nothing is more wasteful--than the failure of the U.S. Congress to appropriate or decide the amount of money that is to be spent every year before the year begins. Too often over the last several years, it has been the middle of the year before agency managers knew what they could spend that year, and that is a wasteful practice. In a military sense, our leaders in the Department of Defense tell us it is a dangerous practice in terms of what we can count on for our national security. I would like to pause for just a moment and reflect on what the Appropriations Committee is doing, what the U.S. Senate is doing and doing properly--not because we deserve an award or a merit badge for doing our most basic responsibility but because it is worth noting when we do it because it hasn't been done for so long. The following are the seven appropriations bills that have already passed the Senate. One is the Energy and Water Development legislation. I am chairman of that committee and of the conference that is working on that. I am working with Chairman Mike Simpson in the House, Senator Feinstein, and Representative Kaptur. We are working together. We hope to have that bill--which has already passed the Senate and has already passed the House--we hope to come together and have a conference immediately after Labor Day so we can complete the bill and send it to the President for his signature. That is one of the appropriations bills. Others are Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies--we passed that one; the Legislative Branch--we passed that one; and Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, and that passed. In past years, Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies has been very difficult to pass. There are some controversial issues there, but Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy have led us, along with Senator Schumer and Senator McConnell, to say: We are not going to try to solve every controversial issue that we can think of on the appropriations bills, because we have learned in the past that practice will sink them. So we have tabled a few bills--a few amendments that have come before us because they would have kept the appropriations bills from proceeding. We can deal with those more controversial ideas and amendments at another time. Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies has been passed. Financial Services and General Government has also been passed. So there are seven. That is the largest number of appropriations bills the Senate has passed before August since the year 2000--18 years ago. This week, we are debating the third package of appropriations bills, which includes Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies and the Defense appropriations bill. That means that if we are successful in completing our work this week on those two, we will have considered all nine of those appropriations bills under what we call in the Senate the regular order. That means we have an opportunity to offer other amendments when they come to the floor, we debate them, we vote on those amendments, we pass the bills, and then we go to conference with the House. In other words, not just the 31 members of the Appropriations Committee get to work on this; all Members of the Senate get to have their say. This week, we have already voted on some amendments, and we may get to consider more. After we finish these two bills--as I said earlier, hopefully tomorrow--the Senate will have passed the annual appropriations bills that account for nearly 90 percent of the discretionary Federal Government spending. Senator Shelby, the chairman, and the vice chairman, Senator Leahy, as well as the majority leader, Senator McConnell, and Senator Schumer, all deserve credit and our thanks for creating the environment that makes this possible. I appreciate their commitment. I want to especially commend Senator Blunt, Senator Murray, Senator Shelby, and Senator Durbin for their work on the bills that are before us this week. A few weeks ago, one of my friends in Nashville, one of the major contributors to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, came up to me. He said: It is a real shame that you guys in Congress aren't funding biomedical research. So I said to my friend: Well, let me tell you what has happened the last 3 or 4 years, and see if you still believe that. The U.S. Senate is on track for the fourth straight year to provide record funding for biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health in a regular appropriations bill. This year's bill includes $39.1 billion for the National Institutes of Health--a $2 billion increase over last year. Over the last 3 years, Congress has increased NIH funding by about $7 billion. First, Congress increased National Institutes of Health funding by $2 billion in 2015. Then, in 2016, we increased it another $2 billion. Then, in 2017, Congress increased funding at the NIH by $3 billion, including $500 million to work on a non-addictive pain killer, which, in my view, is the Holy Grail of the fight against the opioid crisis--finding some form of painkiller that is not addictive for the 100 million Americans who hurt and the 25 million who have chronic pain. This year's increased funding for biomedical research will mean more medical miracles--new treatments and cures. The reason Congress has given this such a priority was very well described by Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health. He calls it the ``National Institutes of Hope.'' When he testified before our Appropriations Committee, he talked about what we might expect to see during the next 10 years if we properly fund the National Institutes of Health. Some of those predictions by Dr. Collins were these: Being able to identify Alzheimer's disease before symptoms appear; the possibility that we could rebuild a patient's heart with the patient's own cells--in other words, put the transplant surgeons out of business; the creation of a safe and effective artificial pancreas, making life easier and healthier for the millions of Americans with diabetes; development of new vaccines, Dr. Collins said, including for Zika, for HIV/AIDS, and a universal flu vaccine; development of a new, non-addictive painkiller, which I mentioned; significant progress on the Precision Medicine Initiative, which President Obama championed, which aim to map the genomes of 1 million volunteers so that we can better tailor treatments to patients; and new treatment for cancer patients. Those are just some of the new treatments, cures, and miracles we might expect, Dr. Collins said, in the next 10 years. This bill we are talking about also provides $3.7 billion to help those on the frontlines of the opioid crisis and help bring an end to opioid abuse. Senator Murray and I, as well as about 60 Members of this body, have put together a comprehensive opioids authorization bill, which we hope to be able to present to the full Senate at the end of next week, or shortly after Labor Day, that can be put together with the House to address this crisis. But this is the money for the opioids initiative; it is in this bill: $1.5 billion for State Opioid Response Grants, state grants originally authorized by the 21st Century Cures Act; $500 million to develop non-addictive painkillers; funding for more substance abuse and mental health treatment services at Community Health Centers. The other funding bill included in this minibus appropriations bill is the Defense Appropriations bill. The Senator from Illinois is on the floor. He is the ranking Democrat on that committee. He has also been one of the foremost leaders of the effort to increase the biomedical research I just mentioned. Chairman Shelby and Senator Durbin worked together to produce a bill that provides a total of $675 billion to make sure our troops have the resources they need to maintain our national defense. The funding included in this bill will provide the largest pay increase since 2010 for the men and women serving in the military, including those who serve at Fort Campbell in Tennessee and Kentucky. Also, $2.8 billion is provided for basic research at the Department of Defense. This is the largest Defense Department research and development budget in history. It is hard to think of a major technological development since World War II in this country that wasn't supported in some way by federally sponsored research. Funding basic research at the Department of Defense will give the United States an advantage over our adversaries and allow us to maintain the strongest military in the world. I have suggested to President Trump that he make science and research a part of his ``America First'' agenda. We need to do that. Since 2007, over the last 10 years, China has increased its spending on basic science by a factor of four and may surpass the United States in total spending on research and development this year, according to Norm Augustine, who, during the George W. Bush administration, chaired the bipartisan committee that wrote a report called ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm,'' which made recommendations to the Congress on how to retain America's competitive advantage. Our country needs to continue to be first in the world in basic research. The President has already signed into law two consecutive appropriations bills that provide record funding for science, technology, energy, and biomedical research, and the two appropriations bills we are debating this week will provide even more funding for basic research. I urge my colleagues to support these bills because passing these bills means more biomedical research at National Institutes of Health for treatments and cures; more Federal help for States and communities struggling to combat the opioid crisis; the largest Department of Defense research budget in history; and pay raises for the men and women who serve in our military. Let me say again what I said a little earlier. This funding that we are talking about--this record funding for science, technology, basic research, supercomputing in another bill, the need for our national defense--all of this is within the part of the Federal budget that is under control. Over the last 10 years, this discretionary part of the budget--roughly one-third or a little less than one-third of the budget--has grown at about the rate of inflation, and over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it is expected to grow at just a little more than the rate of inflation. So this is not the Federal spending that is causing the big Federal deficit. This is spending for national defense, national parks, the National Institutes of Health, and national laboratories. This is the core of what we need to do in the United States of America. We need resolve and courage in a bipartisan way, and the President needs to join us, in dealing with the part of the budget that is running up a big deficit; that is, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other entitlements. Nobody wants to touch that. That is a separate question. But it is important for people to know that there is no need to beat your chest and pat yourself on the back when you cut funding for the military, when you cut funding for the National Institutes of Health, when you make our national laboratories work less, or when the National Parks can't maintain themselves. We go the opposite direction here: record funding for national laboratories; we are considering more maintenance for National Parks; record funding for supercomputing; record funding for biomedical research, all within the budget limits, all within our priorities. That is what we need to do. As I said when I started, Senators don't deserve a merit badge for passing appropriations bills any more than Boy Scouts deserve a merit badge for telling the truth. That is what we are supposed to do. But when we do it and do it properly, as we are doing this year, it deserves to be noticed. I congratulate Senator Durbin, Senator Leahy, Senator McConnell, and Senator Shelby for their roles and their leadership in this. I thank the President. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, if I may, I thank the Senator for his remarks and his leadership on this amendment. I think it is important to be clear about this. Of course, the Senator has a right to object to the amendment, I suppose, but sooner or later this amendment, or something like it, is going to become law. I support the amendment. President Trump supports the amendment. Senator Durbin has worked with Republicans and Democrats, over the last 3 or 4 weeks, to think of different appropriate ways to require television advertising to state what the price of a drug is. There would be different ways to do it. I asked him to take a few weeks to help us talk that out. He did that. I think he has come to a conclusion that deserves support. I support the bill. I am chairman of the authorizing committee, the Health Committee, in the Senate. This is going to happen one way or the other. I suggest we try to find a way to go ahead and do it now because if the President supports it and you have bipartisan support in the Health Committee and bipartisan support in the Labor and Health Appropriations Subcommittee, it is going to become law. It makes good sense. The cost of healthcare is a major issue we need to address, and we can't do it all at once. Prescription drugs are a part of it. Prescription drugs are 10 percent of the cost of healthcare. They are 17 percent--we have had testimony before our committee--if you include the drugs that are administered in hospitals. There are other factors as well. Complexity is a big factor. Administrative burden is a big factor. Electronic healthcare records and their inadequate operation and lack of inoperability are big factors. Overutilization is a big factor. Through the Chair, I wish to say to the Senator of Illinois, we have had excellent witnesses through our committee from the Institute of Medicine--some of the most distinguished witnesses we could have in the country--who tell us that as much as 30 percent to 50 percent of all that the United States spends on healthcare is unnecessary, wasted. We spend 17 or 18 percent of our entire gross domestic product on healthcare. We are the richest country in the world. We produce about 24 percent of all money in the world, and we spend 18 percent of that on healthcare, much more than similar countries do, and our own experts tell us much of it is unnecessary. We can't deal with it all at once, but one way to deal with it is competition and transparency and letting patients know the cost of what they are buying, whether it is doctors' services or it is a prescription drug. I believe Senator Durbin and Senator Grassley are correct. The President believes they are correct. The Secretary of Health and Human Services supports their bill, and we should pass it. Consumers should know, when they see a television ad about a prescription drug, what the cost of that drug is. My hope for the Senator from Illinois is that he is ultimately successful with his proposal, and if he is not, I hope he counts me as an ally in an effort to continue to see that it gets done.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, the Senate has developed a bad habit. That bad habit is treating Presidential nominees as innocent until nominated. I hope to see better behavior during the next few weeks as the Senate begins hearings on President Trump's nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to be a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead of treating Judge Kavanaugh as someone recently released from San Quentin prison, I hope we treat him with dignity and respect so Americans can better understand his temperament, his intelligence, and his character. That is what we should want to know about a Presidential nominee for the Supreme Court. The current rudeness is a recent phenomenon. Historically, Senators have recognized that bipartisan approval of qualified nominees helps improve the esteem of the Court. It confirms its impartiality. It strengthens it as an institution. For example, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia was confirmed unanimously by this body even though he was perhaps the most conservative Justice on the Court. On the other hand, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed with only three votes against her even though she may arguably be the most liberal Justice on the Court. Both were obviously well qualified, of good character, high intelligence, and good demeanor, and therefore the Senate--unanimously in one case and with only three ``no'' votes in the other case-- confirmed the President's nominees. More recently, half the Democratic Senators voted to confirm President Bush's nominee Chief Justice John Roberts. In 2014, I voted to confirm President Obama's nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, not because I agreed with her but because I thought she was obviously well qualified for the position. Some Senators insist that Judge Kavanaugh should tell them how he might decide a case. That reminds me of a story from Senator Howard Baker, the former majority leader of the U.S. Senate, who was a practicing lawyer in the mountains. He said he was once before a mountain judge who told the lawyers right before the case: ``Boys, just give me a little bit on the law. I had a telephone call last night, and I pretty well know the facts.'' Judges aren't supposed to decide a case in advance. That is why we have judges--to create an impartial judicial system. Justice Ginsburg said during her confirmation that she would give ``no hints, no forecasts, no previews'' of what her legal views might be if she were to be confirmed. This rule is now known as the Ginsburg rule. Justices are supposed to follow the law and decide cases when the cases are presented, not before Justices are confirmed or while they are being confirmed. Of course, a Justice's opinions and decisions can be surprising. That has been true throughout the history of the Supreme Court. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was often surprised by Justice Felix Frankfurter. Justice Scalia once ruled that a government ban on flag-burning violated the First Amendment. Scalia also said that ``the judge who always likes the results he reaches is a bad judge.'' In 2006, I voted for Judge Kavanaugh when he was President George W. Bush's nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Last month, I attended President Trump's nomination of Judge Kavanaugh at the White House. It is said that you only get one chance to make a first impression, and Judge Kavanaugh certainly took advantage of his one opportunity that night. I was again impressed with Judge Kavanaugh when I visited with him in my office a few weeks ago. We discussed federalism, how to strengthen the Supreme Court as an institution, and other matters. Never once did I ask him how he might vote on a particular case. I will not announce how I will vote on his nomination until the hearings are complete. Some Democratic Senators have already announced their opposition to Judge Kavanaugh. I wonder, why have a hearing? Why ask for more records to examine if you have already decided how you are going to vote? During my 8 years as Governor of Tennessee, I appointed probably 50 judges. In doing so, I looked for the same qualities I will look for in considering the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh: intelligence, character, temperament, respect for the law, and respect for those who come before the Court. I did not ask one applicant to be a Tennessee judge, of that entire 50, how he or she might rule on abortion or immigration or taxation. And political party membership was far down my list of considerations when I had the job, as the chief executive of a State, of appointing judges. I hope the Senate will return to the practice of inquiring diligently about the qualifications of a nominee, about intelligence, about character, about temperament, and get away from this bad habit of treating Presidential nominees for the Supreme Court as if they had just been released from San Quentin and as if they were innocent until nominated. I thank the President. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.