Lamar Alexander

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.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senate majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, will become the longest serving Senate Republican leader in history, surpassing former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. This is according to the Senate historical office. Today is Senator McConnell's 4,179th day as Senate Republican leader--a position he assumed on January 3, 2007, after Republicans lost control of both Chambers of Congress. I would like to take a few minutes to put Senator McConnell's leadership in perspective. That perspective begins in the year 1969. I was 29 years old and working in the Nixon White House. Senator Howard Baker, Jr., of Tennessee, said to me: ``You might want to get to know that smart, young legislative assistant for Marlow Cook.'' Marlow Cook was Kentucky's newly elected Republican Senator. That smart, young legislative assistant was 27-year-old Mitch McConnell. If one has known him for a long time, the evolution of Mitch McConnell's Senate leadership isn't hard to trace. To begin with, when he was 2 years old, the doctor said: ``Mitch has polio.'' It is hard to imagine today how terrifying those words were for parents then. McConnell remembers: It was 1944. There was a serious epidemic that year all over the country. And the disease was very unpredictable. First, you'd think you had the flu, and a couple of weeks later, some people would be completely normal and some of them would be in an iron lung or dead. He continued: In my case, it affected my left quadriceps, the muscle between the knee and your thigh. And in one of the great good fortunes of my life, my mother was living with her sister in this little crossroads of Five Points, Alabama, where there was not even a stoplight--while my dad was overseas fighting the Germans--and it happened to be 60 miles from Warm Springs, where President Roosevelt had gone [to treat his own polio]. My mother took me to Warm Springs. They taught her a physical therapy regimen, and said to do it four times a day and to keep me off my feet. She watched me every minute and prevented me from really walking. My first memory in life is when they told my mother I was going to be okay, that I'd be able to walk without a limp, and we stopped at a shoe store in LaGrange, Georgia, on the way back to Alabama to get a pair of low top shoes, which were a kind of symbol I was going to have a normal childhood. If one knows about the determination of Mitch McConnell's mother, it is not hard to imagine how her son determined as a college student to be a U.S. Senator, and did; determined to be his party's Senate leader, and did; and then determined to hold that leadership position longer than anyone in U.S. history, and has. This was an arduous, two-decade leadership journey: chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, counselor to Majority Leader Trent Lott, majority whip, minority leader, and finally, majority leader. As for his mother's example, this is what Mitch McConnell said: ``It sure had to have an effect on me, which was that if you stick to something, you keep working at it and giving it your best, the chances are you may actually overcome whatever problem you're currently confronting.'' A second leadership quality that Mitch McConnell learned early--in a fistfight--was to not be pushed around. According to McConnell, ``I was about 7. We lived in Athens, Alabama, and I had a friend across the street named Dicky McGrew who was a year older than I was and considerably bigger. He was also a bully and he kept kind of pushing me around. And my dad called me over and said, `Son, I've been watching the way he's been pushing you around and I want you to go over there and I want you beat him up.' '' So, McConnell says, ``I went across the street and started swinging and I beat him up and bent his glasses, and it was an incredible lesson in standing up to bullies and I've thought about that throughout my life at critical moments when people are trying to push you around.'' As a junior Senator on the Foreign Relations Committee, Mitch McConnell surprised colleagues when he sponsored sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa, and then in 1986, he voted to override President Reagan's veto of those sanctions, but these colleagues would not have been surprised had they known McConnell 25 years earlier when he was a student at the University of Louisville. He remembers: The civil rights movement was the defining issue of our generation. Working as an intern in Congress during the summer of 1963, I got to see [Martin Luther King, Jr.'s] ``I Have a Dream'' speech. Then, in 1964, I was an intern in [Kentucky Senator] John Sherman Cooper's office. Two important things happened in 1964. Cooper was in the middle of breaking the southern Senators' filibuster on civil rights and we nominated Barry Goldwater, one of the few people who voted against the Civil Rights bill. Honestly, I was mad as hell about it. And I was so irritated about Goldwater voting against the Civil Rights bill and defining the Republican Party in a way that I thought would be unfortunate that I voted for Lyndon Johnson, which in retrospect was a huge mistake. But it was a protest vote. That willingness as a college student to buck his own political party resurfaced 40 years later in his leadership on First Amendment free speech issues. In 2006, he cast the deciding vote against the adoption of a constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning when most of his Republican colleagues and almost all of his constituents had a different point of view. He argued that the First Amendment protects even personally offensive messages, and McConnell became the Senate's leading voice against restrictions on political speech under the guise of ``campaign reform.'' Again, some in his own party disagreed, including President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain, but he persisted and on multiple occasions, the Supreme Court has agreed with McConnell's view of protecting political speech under the First Amendment. Two of the three U.S. Senate office buildings in Washington, DC, are named for Philip A. Hart of Michigan and Richard B. Russell, Jr., of Georgia, two Senators who were never elected to formal leadership positions by their colleagues. In this book, Senator McConnell discusses ``leaders without portfolio'' in some of his writings, describing occasions when a Senator assumes a major policy role outside of the confines of formal party or committee leadership. His favorite was Senator Cooper, whom Mitch has described as ``my role model as a young man, a man of great conviction, very smart.'' In his autobiography ``The Long Game,'' Senator McConnell tells of when Cooper took him to the signing of the Civil Rights Act and, later on, of watching Cooper's principled questioning of the Vietnam war. Senator Cooper's example must have influenced his young intern's one- man crusade 20 years later against a repressive junta in faraway Burma. According to the New York Times, on September 15, 2016, Senator McConnell ``has been a lead sponsor of every major sanctions measure against the Burmese government over the last 20 years and has worked quietly and tirelessly with several administrations to try to bring democracy to the country.'' ``Unlike South African apartheid, it was a totally unknown cause,'' his foreign policy adviser, Robin Cleveland, told the Times. He championed the cause of Burma's pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who for years was under house arrest. In 2012, when San Suu Kyi came to Washington, DC, as the new head of government, she traveled to Kentucky ``to thank [McConnell] for everything he did for us over, well, two decades. That's a long time,'' she said. Of course, in order to be the Senate leader, one first has to be elected to the Senate. In Mitch McConnell's early career, one can find multiple clues that point to his fascination with political campaigns and the pugnacious style with which he wins them. Of course, an early signal was the fistfight with Dicky McGrew. Another: ``I was the only 14-year-old in America watching political conventions from gavel to gavel [and] I began to practice the craft and see if I could get good at it.'' When he was elected president of his high school student body, he remembers, ``I was hooked.'' At the University of Louisville, he campaigned for president of student council both in college and in law school, participated in civil rights marches on the State capitol, and as president of the College Republicans, persuaded Barry Goldwater to come to campus to speak. He did learn the craft of the politics, and he did get good at it. He is undefeated in his own political campaigns, winning six Senate races in Kentucky, more than any other Commonwealth Senator. He has been elected Republican leader more than any other U.S. Senator, each time unanimously, and he has been proficient in not just his own races. In 2010 and 2012, the Senate Conservative Fund helped nominate Republican candidates in five States who lost the general election when more mainstream conservative nominees might have won. So, in 2014 and 2016, McConnell organized an effort to defend incumbent Republican Senators who were challenged in primaries. He was successful in every case, including his own primary. This is what he said: We were not going to allow [what happened in 2010 and 2012] to happen anymore. And so we got the most electable people nominated who basically took them on, because if you're dealing with a group of people who think compromise is a dirty word and who always want to make a point but never want to make a difference, the only thing to do if you want to win the election is to beat them. Mostly, Mitch McConnell's political skills were born of necessity. In July 1984, he was 34 points behind in his challenge to incumbent Democrat Senator Dee Huddleston. McConnell discovered that his opponent had been making speeches for money--now, that was legal then--but Dee Huddleston had been missing Senate votes to make those speeches. So McConnell ran an ad featuring a Kentucky hunter with bloodhounds looking for Senator Huddleston to get him back to work. In another ad, the dog treed the Senator right at the end of what became known as ``the bloodhound campaign.'' McConnell defeated Huddleston by fourth- tenths of 1 percent of the vote. I have searched in vain for early clues to one more aspect of Mitch McConnell's leadership style: his parsimonious use of words. Sometimes he reverts to absolute silence. In his autobiography, he admits he only speaks to the press when it is to his advantage. He also tells of when Microsoft founder Bill Gates visited him and the two of them just sat there waiting for one to speak, making others in the room uncomfortable. At another time, someone once told President George W. Bush that Mitch McConnell was excited over a certain vote, and President Bush replied: ``Really, how can you tell?'' Why so few words? McConnell's answer is, ``I learn a lot more by listening. And so frequently I start out by listening and think about what I want to say before I say it. You don't get in trouble for what you don't say. There's nothing wrong with being cautious about your comments. I certainly don't mind talking but I usually like to know what I'm talking about before I venture down that path.'' He is not the first Senate leader to be frugal with words. According to columnist Bob Novak, former majority leader Mike Mansfield was the most difficult interview on ``Meet the Press'' because ``I would ask Mansfield a question and he says `Yep,' and then I would ask him another one and he'd say, `Nope' and I'd run out of questions.'' Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in his constitutional capacity as President of the Senate, would attend weekly luncheons of Republican Senators, rarely saying a word. This made certain that, when Cheney did rise to speak, Senators listened. And silence, after all, was one of Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues and a tactic Franklin often employed in his leadership style. In July 2014, when he was minority leader, Senator McConnell spoke on the Senate floor about what kind of majority leader he would be if Republicans won the majority in the November elections. His model, he said, would be Mike Mansfield, the Democrat who was majority leader 45 years earlier when McConnell and I were Senate aides. ``What I meant by that,'' he said, ``was . . . first of all, you have to open the Senate up. The last year of the previous [Democrat] majority (2014) there were only 15 roll call votes on amendments the entire year. In the first year of our majority, in 2015, we had over 200. Open the Senate up, let people vote. Number two, we needed regular order, which means the bill is actually worked on together in committee, comes out to the floor, with bipartisan support, and has a better chance of success. The best example I can think of was the bill to rewrite `No Child Left Behind.' The law had proved to be unworkable and unpopular. And by the time it came out of committee, you had the Democrats and the Republicans lined up, it went to the floor, it was relatively open for amendments, not that absolutely everybody got everything they wanted, and in the end, it passed with a very large majority. President Obama called it a `Christmas Miracle' and the Wall Street Journal said it was `the largest devolution of federal control to the states in a quarter-century.''' McConnell is quick to list a series of bipartisan accomplishments during his time as majority leader which he regards as ``concrete legislative results for the American people.'' In addition to the first significant education reform since 2002, these accomplishments include the first significant reforms to Social Security since 1983, the first trade promotion authority bill since 2002, the first long-term highway bill since 2005, and the first major legislation to confront the Nation's opioid crisis. And don't forget, he says, measures to protect victims of human trafficking, to address Puerto Rico's fiscal crisis, to sanction North Korea, to strengthen the Nation's cybersecurity defenses, to reform Medicaid and to provide permanent tax relief for families and small businesses. These are serious accomplishments for a legislative body many had written off as irredeemably broken. ``Now, what do all these things that we have done time after time under our majority have in common?'' he asks. ``In a time of divided government, we're focusing on the things that we can agree on, and do those. Because when people elect divided government, I think what they're saying is, I know you have big differences, but why don't you look for the things you agree on and do those. And that's how this majority is totally different from the previous one.'' To gather other clues for what kind of majority leader McConnell would be, one only had to look to previous Congresses when he was minority leader and was at the center of four major, bipartisan legislative efforts that helped to keep the American economy from being seriously damaged. At the end of 2010, the country was facing a tax ``cliff.'' Republicans controlled neither the White House nor Congress. With an economy still reeling from the Great Recession, the expiration of tax relief threatened to further imperil the economy; yet Senator McConnell led a bipartisan effort to ensure that taxes were not raised on any Americans. The next year, the United States was on the verge of defaulting on its debt payments for the first time in history. With the clock ticking on the full faith and credit of the United States and calamitous economic consequences staring policymakers in the face, Senator McConnell negotiated an eleventh hour deal with Vice President Joe Biden. This measure avoided the devastating economic consequences of default and resulted in the most significant spending reductions in recent memory. In late 2012, the United States risked prolonging the Great Recession and increasing unemployment due to a series of expiring tax policies and indiscriminate spending cuts scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2013. Once again, Senator McConnell crafted a bipartisan compromise with Vice President Biden to avert this fiscal crisis by preventing a tax increase on a majority of Americans and making the spending cuts in a more prudent manner. Finally, in 2013, a standoff involving Federal spending and the debt limit led to the second longest Federal shutdown since 1980, threatening thousands of public and private sector jobs, and putting the economic health of the country in jeopardy. Despite these challenges, Senator McConnell orchestrated an agreement with then- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that reopened the government and raised the debt ceiling, allowing the United States to continue making payments on its debt. The humorist Roy Blount, Jr., who grew up in Georgia has written, ``You start getting in trouble when you stop sounding like where you grew up.'' The political corollary is you start getting in trouble when you stop coming home. This is advice McConnell has not forgotten. He and his wife, Elaine, go home to Kentucky almost every weekend. He has kept his eye on Kentucky matters, both large and small, including disposal of chemical weapons that have long been stored in the middle of Kentucky, enacting a tobacco buyout to help local farmers, support for the State's public universities, and his advocacy for workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Kentucky anglers and tourists appreciate his helping to enact a law to require the Army Corps of Engineers to allow fishing below the dams on the Cumberland River. Twenty years ago, he created the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, attracting a bipartisan parade of national leaders to visit with 10 scholars chosen each year from each undergraduate class. Each year, Mitch McConnell buys 12 season tickets to the University of Louisville football games. He said: I have some regulars. We go to every home game and occasionally an away game. We make a day of it. We go out early. One of my friends has an RV in the parking lot and we will talk about what will happen in the game and then go to the game and then we talk about what did happen after the game and it's a complete, lengthy exercise. And one of the great joys of life. Mitch McConnell's University of Louisville honors thesis on Henry Clay tempted him to pursue a Ph.D. in American history and a career as a professor, but those of us who know him doubt that he would have been satisfied interpreting the action rather than being in the middle of the action, but his devotion to American history and his understanding of the importance of the U.S. Senate as a unique institution in American life have contributed a valuable extra dimension to his Senate leadership. In a 2016 C-SPAN interview, he was asked: ``What would you like for high school American history teachers to tell their students about the United States Senate?'' He replied: That the Senate has been the indispensable legislative body. Because that's the place where things are sorted out, the place where only rarely does the majority get things exactly their own way, the place where stability can occur. And at a time when many Americans are not optimistic about our country's future, he was asked: ``What would you want those teachers to tell students about their future in this country?'' Mitch McConnell replied: Because of our woeful ignorance of American history we always think the current period we're in is tougher than others. We've had nothing like the Civil War period. We haven't had a single incident where a Congressman from South Carolina came over and almost beat to death a Senator from Massachusetts. America's had plenty of tough challenges. World Wars. Depressions. This is a great country. We're going to deal with whatever our current problems are, and move on to another level. And I'm just as optimistic as I ever was that this generation is going to leave behind a better America than our parents left behind for us. I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor.

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.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for as long as I may require.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, sometimes when I am traveling across Tennessee, someone will come up to me and say: Why don't you guys in the U.S. Senate ever do anything? So I have taken to carrying around a little card that I keep in my pocket. I hand it to them and I say: Well, I can read this to you in about 30 seconds, and this is what has happened in the last 18 months: the best economy in 18 years; lower taxes; biggest reforms in 31 years; biggest increase in financial support for the military in 15 years; biggest pay raise in 8 years for the military; more repeal of regulations than anyone can remember; a Supreme Court Justice; 21 conservative appeals court judges; Alaska energy, which took 38 years, and the Presiding Officer knows all about that; a new National Labor Relations Board, which could be the most important change of all; repealed the ObamaCare individual mandate; the Dodd-Frank mortgage rules are gone; Veterans Choice, which the President signed yesterday; Iran, Russia, and North Korea sanctions. All of that would not have happened without a Republican President, and it would not have happened without Republican majorities in the U.S. Congress. It took both. The person who asks me ``When are you guys ever going to do anything?'' will often say ``Well, I didn't know that; I hadn't realized that.'' So I am very proud of that record; that is in 18 months. I think if you like a conservative government, a center-right government, you would have to agree that those are the most accomplishments in at least 30 years in this country. The President should be justly proud of that, and so should the Congress.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today the Senate is finally voting to confirm a well-qualified nominee, BG Mitchell Zais, to serve as Deputy Secretary at the Department of Education. I worked to get a time agreement for this vote because General Zais did not deserve to be subject to the Democrats' unreasonable and unnecessary obstructions and delays. For example, General Zais was nominated on October 5, 2017, 223 days ago, and the HELP Committee approved his nomination for the first time on December 13, 2017, 154 days ago. Because the Democrats forced his nomination to be returned to the President at the end of the session in December, the HELP Committee had to approve his nomination again on January 18, 2018, after he was renominated. It is time to confirm General Zais and give Secretary DeVos a Deputy Secretary. He has extensive experience working in education and in government. From January 2011 to January 2015, General Zais served as South Carolina's elected State Superintendent of Education. Before that, he was president of Newberry College in South Carolina for 10 years. He also served as a commissioner on South Carolina's Commission on Higher Education for 6 years. Further, after 31 years in the U.S. Army, he retired as a brigadier general. He graduated from West Point, has a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, as well as an honorary doctorate of education from the Citadel. As Deputy Secretary, his job will be to help the Secretary manage the Department of Education, which includes implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act. I am glad we are having this vote today. I support his nomination, and I urge my colleagues to support him as well.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask that my remarks to the International Franchise Association be printed in the Record. The material follows: International Franchise Association Mr. ALEXANDER. What I have discovered is that those who like a center-right administration, which I do, have a hard time accepting success. I could probably do the accomplishments and achievements over the last 15 or 16 months in a 60 second version, which would be a better economy, lower taxes, fewer regulations, more conservative judges, repeal of the part of Dodd Frank that hamstrung small financial institutions in mortgage lending, Alaskan energy, a new NLRB, the local control of schools--that actually happened before President Trump came in because of a Republican majority in the Senate--and the repeal of the individual mandate. That's a pretty good list. In fact, if you only did economy, taxes, regulations and judges, at the end of four years, most administrations would be pretty happy with the different direction. So if you cut through all the tweets and the chaos and confusion and the noise and the cable television in Washington, D.C. and look at the direction of the country, I think it's significantly different. I'll give a couple of examples of that: rolling back regulations--only once before this administration and this Republican majority in Congress, we've used a provision in the law that allows us to overturn a regulation with 51 votes. We've done it 15 times in the last 15 months, including the blacklisting rule, including the OSHA record keeping rule. Most of you know about all these things in detail so I won't go into detail, but those are important. They're unusual and they're a completely different direction. We passed the first major tax reform for 31 years. In Tennessee, I hear a lot about that, not just from individuals whose taxes are lower but I hear it from corporations who are now paying 21 percent on their income tax. But I'm hearing especially about being able to deduct capital investments in the first year, and I think we can see the results in the economy. We have been able to confirm experienced and qualified nominees in a whole range of areas and I would suggest that in no area has the shift in policy been more marked than in the Labor area. For example, there's a new labor secretary, Acosta. A new deputy labor secretary, Pizzella. There's a new NLRB chairman Ring, NLRB member Kaplan, NLRB member Emanuel, NLRB general counsel. Those are big changes in the policy direction of this country. Then we've been examining, or these new appointees have been examining policies that are harmful that you work on a regular basis. Let's start with joint employer guidance. At least Secretary Acosta was able to pull back that guidance as it bled over from the NLRB to the department. The problem with the joint-employer decision for me is that we live in a time when it's harder to find a good middle class job close to home. People are always flying here, flying there in what I would call the Internet economy. The hundreds of thousands of franchisees we have in America are an opportunity for mom or mom and dad or a family to work 12 hours a day, work several days a week, build their own business in their own home, contribute to their own community and be a part of the American middle class. And the joint employer decision during the last administration was a direct assault on that route for the middle class. And I'm glad to see this administration heading in a different direction on that as well as the Micro Union decision, as well as beginning to review the Ambush Election Rule. These are all major, major decisions. Where are we likely to go on joint employer? Well, the House has done its job, but in the Senate to get legislative results, you need 60 votes, and that's going to be hard to do--impossible to do-- without Democratic support. We don't have any Democratic support in the Senate right now. Your association has been working hard to try and develop that. I hear Democrats privately talking about it, but when it comes to co-sponsor a bill or vote for a bill, they don't want to do that. So I think I would suggest to keep pushing, but a more likely solution is when the NLRB revisits the rule, because that's after all how it was changed in the first place, and by a new administration with new appointees from a center-right administration and a center-right Senate that keeps things headed in that direction. Last thing I want to mention to you has to do with what I believe is a prominent Labor Department proposed rule involving health insurance called association health plans. I worked for the last seven months to try to at least temporarily fix the individual market. President Trump asked me to do it. He did a very good job of working with us. In the end, we had a proposal which he called Senator McConnell and Speaker Ryan and asked him to put it in the omnibus spending bill a month ago. They agreed to do it but the Democrats blocked it because Democrats didn't want to vote for the so called Hyde compromise language that they'd been voting for on elective abortion since 1976 and that they voted for in a hundred other provisions in the same bill. The shame of that is that we have millions of Americans who don't get any government subsidy. A contractor, for example, may be earning $60,000 and paying 15 or $20,000 for their insurance. We had a proposal and Oliver Wyman--the experts in health consulting--said over these next three years would reduce those premiums up to 40 percent. If you're paying $20,000 for your health insurance and you get an $8,000 reduction, those are real bucks. So we have to turn to the administration to get changes in the Affordable Care Act. One of the most promising potential administrative changes is Secretary Acosta's proposed rule, and I hope you've followed it. It basically would allow uninsured people who are self-employed and more small business people to enjoy some of the same health insurance benefits that people who work for large companies do. Most Americans get a subsidy of some sort from the government for their health insurance. More than half of Americans get their insurance on the job, they get in effect about a $5,000 subsidy because of the way the tax code interacts with the employer deductions and the income that goes to the employee on large group insurance. So, if you're a small business person, you get the same kind of insurance that somebody who works for IBM might have. It would be cheaper. I just mentioned the amount of the deduction, and it wouldn't have the same protections that the large group plans have where you couldn't be charged because of a pre-existing condition, you couldn't be denied insurance or be denied coverage. You'd have to have coverage offered for your kids up to the age 26. You couldn't have lifetime limits and you would have of course, the lower costs. That could affect 9,000,000 Americans like the contractor I described who are getting hammered by Obamacare because they get no subsidies when they buy their insurance, and could affect the 11,000,000 other people who are self-employed or work for small businesses that don't provide health insurance. So that rule is not yet final. It's been published by the Department of Labor for everybody to consider. I expect it to soon become final. And I expect that when it is, it's likely to be the single greatest development in the near term for individuals who are either uninsured or who worked for small businesses and who can't afford the insurance that is offered. So thanks for all that you do. We'll keep our eye on joint employer. At the very least, our committee can continue to focus on it. My hope is that the NLRB revisits the issue soon. And I hope you remember when you think about this administration and you look through the chaos and the tweets and all that goes on here, that if you stripped that all away, there's a picture of a country heading in a significantly different direction with a better economy, lower taxes, fewer regulations, more conservative judges, a repeal of a significant part of Dodd Frank, an energy bill in Alaska that we've been trying for 40 years to do, a different NLRB, more local control of schools and a repeal the individual mandate. In a big democratic, messy government, that's a significant shift of direction. I hope we can add joint employer to it before very long.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, for the sixth consecutive year, ObamaCare insurance rates are going up, and Democrats are already running around pointing fingers, trying to find someone else to blame. About 10 days ago, the distinguished Democratic leader came to the floor and warned that, very soon, health insurance companies will be announcing rates for 2019 in each State across the country. He said that many health insurance companies will propose rate increases. Today, several Democratic Senators held a press conference saying that insurance rates are going to go up in 2019. Well, they are exactly right. Insurance premiums are going to go up in 2019, just as they have for the 5 previous years of ObamaCare. But they are exactly wrong about who to blame. The Democrats wrote the bill. They wrote ObamaCare, and they voted for ObamaCare--every single one of them. Not a single one of us voted for ObamaCare. They wrote the bill. If they are looking for someone to blame, they should look in the mirror. Running around, pointing fingers, and trying to find someone else to blame is a little like selling somebody a house with a leaky roof and then blaming the new owner for the leaky roof. Democrats built the house with the leaky roof. They built these insurance markets--the individual markets, where no one can find insurance. They wrote the sloppy law. They failed to make the markets competitive, and they erased the ability of consumers to have choices. They didn't follow the law when they paid out cost-sharing payments that were designed to help low-income Americans pay for their out-of-pocket expenses, and--this is the very worst--when Republicans were prepared 1 month ago to stabilize these markets and, according to the Oliver Wyman healthcare experts, to lower rates by up to 40 percent over 3 years, the Democrats said no. President Trump asked Speaker Ryan and he asked Senator McConnell to put that bipartisan proposal in the omnibus spending bill that passed. The Republicans said yes, and the Democrats said no. So the rates are going up because Democrats wrote the law, and they said no to lowering the rates. What Democrats don't say--but every American should know very well-- is that health insurance rates didn't start increasing when President Trump took office 15 or 16 months ago. Insurance rates have been increasing since ObamaCare took effect more than 5 years ago. In 2010, there was a big discussion at the Blair House. I was invited to make the Republican case for President Obama, who stayed there all day and listened. I said: Respectfully, Mr. President, the Affordable Care Act will not work. I said directly to him that ObamaCare would send an unfunded Medicaid mandate to States. It did. I said: It will cut Medicare by one-half trillion dollars. It did. I said: There will be new taxes in it. There were. I said: It will mean that for millions of Americans, premiums will go up because when people pay those new taxes, premiums go up, and they will also go up because of the government mandates--and they have, for 5 years. Now the Democrats are pointing out that their law, which they passed, will cause rates to go up for the sixth consecutive year. Back in 2010, I said: Our country is too big, too complicated, too decentralized for Washington, DC--just a few of us here--to write a few rules about remaking 17 percent of the economy all at once. That is the size of the healthcare economy. That sort of thinking works in the classroom, but it doesn't work very well in the big, complicated country which is the United States of America. Since the ObamaCare exchanges opened in 2014, history has proved this--what I said--to be right. The Affordable Care Act has not worked the way Democrats promised. It certainly hasn't worked that way for Marty, a farmer in Tennessee who stopped me at a Chick-fil-A last December. She wanted to tell me that before ObamaCare her rates were $300 a month. She is in the individual market. She doesn't get a subsidy. She pays these rates herself. This year, it is $1,300. Next year, it will be more. Rates in Tennessee for people like Marty went up 58 percent this past year. That is a lot of money. People can't afford it. She is one of thousands of others in Tennessee who have seen their premiums increase 176 percent since 2013, the year before the ObamaCare marketplaces opened. The Affordable Care Act hasn't worked for the 9 million Americans, like Marty, who purchased their health insurance in the individual market and received no government subsidy. They have been hammered by skyrocketing insurance premiums, and Democrats come to the floor and say: Well, they are going up for the sixth straight year. If I were them, I would want to keep it quiet. But, no, they are looking for somebody to blame. They don't want to look in the mirror. They wrote the bill. They are the reason the rates are going up. They have rejected any reasonable attempt to change the law. They will not even support changes that they are for--that they know aren't working. The Affordable Care Act does not work because it is too Washington, DC, focused. It has made insurance too expensive, and it is hurting the American people. So last year, Republicans tried to repeal the law to help make health insurance work again for people like Marty, the farmer I met at Chick-fil-A. We came up short. While I hope that Senators Graham and Cassidy can build a coalition to try again, there is still the urgent problem of skyrocketing ObamaCare premiums. It did not have to be this way. The Senator from Washington, Mrs. Murray--the lead Democrat on the Senate HELP Committee--and I last year announced that we would hold hearings to see if there were steps Congress could take to stabilize and strengthen the individual health insurance markets so that Americans could buy insurance at affordable prices in 2019. President Trump called me in August of last year, and he asked me to work with Senator Murray to try to come up with a temporary solution so people who were hurt by the skyrocketing ObamaCare prices would not be hurt while Congress concluded what to do in the long term. In September, our committee hosted four bipartisan hearings. We invited all of the Senators to come to meetings before the hearings. We had about half of the Members of the Senate involved in those meetings and hearings. Out of those meetings and hearings, we came up with three proposals that Congress could pass that would temporarily lower rates over the next 3 years, according to Oliver Wyman, one of the most well- respected healthcare experts in the country, by up to 40 percent over those 3 years. No. 1, our proposal had 3 years of reinsurance grants at $10 billion a year so States could create funds to insure the needs of the very sick. You take the very sick out of the pool, care for them, and then you can lower the rates for everyone in the individual market. That is 3 years and $10 billion a year. That was the first proposal. No. 2 is 3 years of cost-sharing reduction subsidies to help low- income Americans pay out-of-pocket expenses. It is counterintuitive, but when you pay those expenses, you actually lower the deficit. You lower the cost to taxpayers because it lowers the premiums, and that lowers the subsidies. You actually save taxpayer money when you pay those 3 years of cost-sharing subsidies. No. 3, we took a provision that is in the Affordable Care Act called the innovation waiver--it was already there, and it wasn't working--and we agreed to streamline it so that it would work and the State might make an application and say we have a better idea. We said: You can't change the essential health benefits and you can't change the prohibition on lifetime limits. You still have to give people an offer of insurance if they have a preexisting condition. All of those provisions and protections were still in our bill, but that new flexibility would have allowed Iowa and other States to increase their choices and lower premiums. It would have allowed New York, Minnesota, and New Hampshire to do things their Democratic Senators said they badly wanted to do and their Governors said they badly wanted to do. There was new authority for a catastrophic insurance policy with lower premiums and higher deductibles that people could choose. That was in there too. This is the package that the Oliver Wyman expert said if you are a contractor and you are making $60,000 and your insurance is $20,000, it could reduce your premium from $20,000 to $12,000 over 3 years. That was the package. Almost all Democrats liked those three ideas. The truth is, a lot of Republicans and conservative groups were skeptical about them because they said it would ``shore up ObamaCare.'' But the Congressional Budget Office said that if the scoring reflects the cost-sharing payments being paid, our proposal would actually save taxpayer dollars by lowering premiums and, therefore, lowering subsidies. So this would sound like a very good proposal; wouldn't it? It is something that at one point Democratic leaders said every Democrat could vote for, something that more than half of the Senate participated in--reinsurance, cost-sharing subsidies, and more flexibility without changing the basic guarantees of the Affordable Care Act. That sounds very much like a proposal that might come from the other side of the aisle, not the Republican side of the aisle. Yet, on the Saturday before we passed the omnibus spending bill, President Trump called Speaker Ryan and Senator McConnell and said: Will you please put that provision in the omnibus spending bill? They said yes. The Democrats said no. The Democrats have written this ObamaCare bill, which for 6 years has raised rates. Then, we come up with a proposal that every Democrat should like, and they say no. They will not even support changing one sentence of a law, even if it changes parts that don't work and that they are for. What was their reason? Here is their reason. They would not apply to our proposal the traditional Hyde compromise language regarding Federal funding for elective abortions. What that basically says is that there may be no Federal funding for elective abortions, but States may do what they want. That has been the compromise since 1976. Since 1976, in every omnibus appropriations bill, Democrats have voted for that. In fact, all those weren't omnibus bills. Some of them were different appropriations bills. Since 1976, in every appropriations bill, Democrats have voted for the Hyde amendment. In the omnibus appropriations bill that we passed a month ago, Democrats voted for the Hyde amendment more than 100 times in other proposals, but they would not vote to lower health insurance rates by 40 percent over 3 years. I will say that again. Even though they voted for the Hyde language every year since 1976 and voted for it 100 times in the omnibus bill, they would not vote for it. They would not vote for our proposal to lower rates even though it was bipartisan because they didn't want to apply that same compromise Hyde amendment to health insurance. Howard Baker, the Senate majority leader, once said that the essence of Senate leadership is becoming an eloquent listener. That means hearing and understanding what people have to say because what they are saying is not always what they mean. My conclusion is that, by their words and by their actions, what Democrats really were saying is this: We will not change one sentence of ObamaCare, even the parts that obviously are not working and even when most of the Democrats would support the policy and the changes. Given the Democrats' attitude, I know of nothing that Republicans and Democrats can agree on to stabilize the individual health insurance market. I know of nothing. No one regrets Congress's failure to reach an agreement on this more than I do. I ran for the U.S. Senate because I wanted to achieve bipartisan results on important issues. I have often been able to do that, but I literally struck out here. When Democrats blocked these proposals from being included in the omnibus in March, I said: ``Now let's look down the road . . . insurance companies will announce their rates for 2019 . . . and rates will continue going up instead of going down.'' They are right about that. Already in the last few days, it has been announced that rates will go up in 2019. Millions of Americans will be hearing more about that. The Democrats could have worked with us to lower premiums by up to 40 percent. They instead chose to cling to an unworkable law, to skyrocketing rates, and to reject any change that would have temporarily reduced rates, even though the President and the Republican leaders were willing to support ideas that the Democrats, as a matter of policy, almost unanimously support. For relief, we will have to turn to the Trump administration and to the States. I am encouraged by Labor Secretary Acosta's proposed rule on association health plans. It would help some self-employed Americans, like Marty, the farmer, and employees of small companies to buy the same kind of insurance with the same lower cost and the same protections that roughly 160 million Americans who work for large employers have today. In other words, if you work for IBM, you in effect get about a $5,000 average tax break because of the way the tax law applies to employer insurance. We would like to give the same opportunity to the self-employed and to people in small businesses. The Trump administration has also proposed a rule that would reaffirm the role of States in regulating short-term health insurance and that could provide a coverage option for Americans who are uninsured because plans in the Affordable Care Act markets are too expensive. Neither of these changes require the approval of Congress. I am talking with Secretary Azar and Seema Verma, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, about other administrative actions they can take to give States more flexibility within the current law to help lower health insurance premiums, especially for the 9 million working Americans who do not receive a Federal subsidy in the individual market. Those are the ones who are getting hammered. Those are the one whose rates we could have reduced by up to 40 percent over the next 3 years, but the Democrats said no. I will be encouraging Governors and State insurance commissioners to do everything they can to repair the damage caused by the Affordable Care Act, but my own efforts as chairman of the HELP Committee will turn to other pressing healthcare issues, including the opioid crisis, overall healthcare costs, electronic healthcare records, prescription drug prices, and the 340B program. Contrary to the Democratic leader's speech, this is not a crisis of Republicans' making. Democrats should look in the mirror. The last 5 years and the upcoming 6 years of premium increases are the fault of a law designed, drafted, and voted on exclusively by Democrats. Last year, Republicans freed Americans from the individual mandate requirement, which was a tax on the poor that forced many Americans to buy insurance they couldn't afford or didn't meet their needs. We tried to provide even more freedom from this unworkable law, but, as I have detailed, Democrats said no. If you have an insurance premium that is going up 40 percent next year, on top of the more than 105 percent increases since 2013, you can thank the Democrats. If you would like greater choice and an opportunity for lower premiums, you should support Republicans. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have 5 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Armed Services The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 8, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a closed hearing. Committee on Energy and Natural Resources The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 8, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing. Special Committee on Aging The Special Committee on Aging is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 8, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Insulin Access and Affordability: The Rising Cost of Treatment.'' Select Committee on Intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 8, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a closed hearing. Subcommittee on Aviation, Operations, Safety, and Security The Subcommittee on Aviation, Operations, Safety, and Security of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 8, 2018, at 10:15 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Keeping Pace with Innovation-- Updating on the Safe Integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems into Airspace.''

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, as a fellow Commodore, I would like to congratulate the Vanderbilt University women's bowling team on winning the National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA, championship, the second national championship for the women's bowling program and the fourth national championship in Commodore athletic history. John Williamson, the head coach of this program for 14 years, has done an excellent job of training and guiding these exceptional student-athletes. He has worked hard to build this program from its inception in 2004 into one that annually contends for championships. Vanderbilt is a very special university, one that produces student- athletes of exceptional character and integrity. These are student- athletes that have pride in themselves and their school, in both academics and athletics. In fact, Kristin Quah of the bowling team earned the NCAA's Elite 90 Award for having the highest grade point average at the championships, a 3.953, while double majoring in biomedical and electrical engineering. Seven members of the team were recently named to the spring sports All SEC Academic Honor Roll. I am filled with pride for my alma mater, and I wish the bowling team and all of Vanderbilt University the best. This achievement would not have been possible without the hard work, talent, and teamwork of the following outstanding student-athletes: Kelsey Abrahamsen, Maria Bulanova, Samantha Gainor, Bryanna Leyen, Jordan Newham, Ariana Perez, Lauren Potechin, Kristin Quah, Emily Rigney, Katie Stark, and Adel Wahner. These student-athletes were coached and mentored by a dedicated team of coaches and athletic department staff, including: head coach John Williamson; assistant coach and former All-American Josie Earnest Barnes; associate athletic director and sport administrator Kevin Colon; strength and conditioning coach Darren Edgington; facility manager Kenny Moore; academic counselor Candice Johnson; athletic trainer Alda Burston; and volunteer sports information director Rod Williamson. I would also like to acknowledge chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos; vice chancellor and athletics director David Williams II; deputy athletics director Candice Storey Lee; and senior associate athletics directors Lori Alexander; and Martin Salamone for their vision and leadership. Anchor Down, Commodores. We are proud of you.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today I would like to express my support for S. 140, an act to amend the White Mountain Apache Tribe Water Rights Quantification Act of 2010 to clarify the use of amounts in the WMAT Settlement Fund. The Senate initially passed this legislation on May 8, 2017, by unanimous consent. The House of Representatives passed this legislation on January 10, 2018, with an amendment. That amendment adds an important provision safeguarding the sovereignty of Native American tribes. This new provision was the Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act, introduced by Senator Moran. The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs voted to favorably report the Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act by voice vote, with only three committee members requesting to be recorded as voting against the bill, on February 17, 2017. Private sector labor relations in the United States are regulated by the National Labor Relations Act, NLRA. Created in 1935, the National Labor Relations Board, NLRB, administers the NLRA. The five members of the NLRB have 5-year, staggered terms. I am pleased the Senate recently confirmed Mr. John Ring, a well-qualified nominee, to a position on the NLRB. The NLRA seeks to mitigate and eliminate labor-related impediments to the free flow of commerce. The law exempts ``the United States or any Federal Reserve Bank, or any State or political subdivision thereof . . .'' from NLRB jurisdiction. However, the NLRA is silent about the application of the law to Native American Tribes. In its 1976 Fort Apache Timber Co. case, the NLRB held ``individual Indians and Indian tribal governments, at least on reservation lands, are generally free from state or even in most instances Federal intervention, unless Congress specifically provided to the contrary.'' However, in a 2004 decision, San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino, the NLRB reversed Fort Apache Timber Co. The NLRB held that the NLRA could be applied to commercial activity on tribal lands. Under San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino, the NLRB applies a subjective test to determine whether it will assert jurisdiction. If the activity is commercial, it asserts jurisdiction; if the NLRB determines the activity is a traditional tribal or government function, the board does not assert jurisdiction. Native American Tribes are sovereign and, as such, should be treated the same as State and local governments under the NLRA. S. 140, as amended by the House of Representatives, would amend the NLRA to include ``any Indian tribe, or any enterprise or institution owned and operated by an Indian tribe and located on its Indian lands,'' to the list of other exempted entities, such as State and local governments. Under the bill, an ``Indian tribe'' would be defined as ``any Indian tribe, band, nation, pueblo, or other organized group or community which is recognized as eligible for the special programs and services provided by the United States to Indians because of their status as Indians.'' I commend Senator Moran for his leadership on Tribal labor sovereignty, and I hope the Senate will pass the legislation so it can be signed into law.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, yesterday, our country lost a bright, caring, independent lady, and my wife, Honey, and I lost a good friend. Barbara Bush set a wonderful example as mom, wife, First Lady, and advocate for adult literacy. We express to the Bush family our sympathy and great respect for the life of Barbara Bush. Jon Meacham wrote the biography of George H.W. Bush, Barbara Bush's husband, to great acclaim. He had access to the diaries of President Bush and Barbara Bush that was almost unparalleled in any Presidential biographer's experience. So it was a plain and unvarnished biography that told us a lot about those two individuals. I thought a better name for Jon Meacham's book--it was named ``Destiny and Power,'' and it must have been properly named because it sold a lot--would be ``The Last Gentleman.'' If I were to make a really accurate suggestion about the title for the book, I would call it ``The Last Gentleman and His Lady'' or maybe ``The Last Gentleman and His Very Independent Lady'' because Barbara Bush was a very independent lady. I remember it was 1991. It was a sunny day, and we were walking on the south lawn of the White House. I was the Education Secretary, and I was walking with the President and Mrs. Bush to the announcement of his GI Bill for Kids, which was a school choice program for low-income children. As we walked along, Barbara Bush turned to President Bush and said, ``George, you've got on the wrong pants.'' He had a suit coat on from one suit, and he had pants on from another suit. So she said to the President ``You go on back in and change clothes, and Lamar and I will wait here for you,'' which we did and he did. On another occasion, President Bush invited my wife and me to join Barbara and the President at Ford's theater. Of course, the President traveled with great security in a big car. As the protocol goes, he got out first, and as she was about to get out, she said, ``I'll get the door, George.'' On still another occasion, I was sitting next to Barbara and George Bush, and the President was called on to make some remarks. He leaned over to his wife and said, ``Barbara, what should I talk about?'' And she whispered very loudly, ``About five minutes, George.'' Barbara Bush was quite a woman. She said what she thought. When the second one of her sons decided to run for President, she was reported to have said, ``We've had enough Bushes.'' When I ran for President in 1999 against her other son, I made what I thought--certainly by today's standards--some very mild comments disagreeing about something, and I heard from Barbara Bush about what I had said about her son, George W. Bush. Not many of us think how difficult it must be to be the spouse of a President of the United States with all that one goes through, but think how much harder it must also be to be the mother of a President of the United States and the mother of another distinguished son who was Governor of a large State and who ran for President of the United States. Barbara Bush was the anchor of her family, and a very successful and remarkable family it was. I was Education Secretary for President Bush in 1991 when the National Literacy Act was enacted. Let's use Barbara's own words to define the event. She wrote in her memoir, ``I must say I got more credit than I deserve.'' I don't agree with that, but she continued: I heard that George was going to give the pen to me, but before he could, Senator Simon spoke up and said, ``That pen ought to go to Barbara.'' I donated it to the George Bush Presidential Library Center. In the end, however it's not pens and pictures that count; it's the National Literacy Act that really counts. It was the first piece of legislation-- and to date, the only one--ever enacted specifically for literacy with the goal of ensuring that every American adult acquires the basic literacy skills necessary to achieve the greatest possible satisfaction professionally and personally. But even more than that, the act seeks to strengthen our nation by giving us more productive workers and informed citizens. In his biography of President George H.W. Bush, John Meacham wrote of a ``generational controversy,'' in his words, that Barbara Bush endured in May of 1990. She was invited to Wellesley College to speak at graduation and receive an honorary degree, but she was being criticized by Wellesley's young women, as President Bush put in his own diary-- these are President Bush's words--``because she hasn't made it on her own--she's where she is because she's her husband's wife. What's wrong with the fact that she's a good mother,'' President Bush wrote in his diary, ``a good wife, great volunteer, great leader for literacy and other fine causes? Nothing. But to listen to these elitist kids there is.'' Meacham writes: Mrs. Bush invited [Mrs.] Gorbachev along with her to Wellesley. There, [she] confronted the issues of work versus family and the role of women head-on, delivering a well- received commencement address. She put the audience at ease early on by saying: One day, I am sure that someone in this audience will grow up to become a spouse of the President of the United States, and I wish him well. Meacham continues: ``Maybe we should adjust faster, maybe we should adjust slower,'' she told the graduates. ``But whatever the era, whatever the times, one thing will never change: Fathers and mothers, if you have children--they must come first. You must read to your children, and you must hug your children, and you must love your children. Your success as a family, our success as a society depends not on what happens in the White House, but on what happens inside your house.'' Barbara Bush said that to the Wellesley graduates in 1990. The country is expressing to the Bush family, as I am trying to today, our great respect for Barbara Bush's life. President Bush, George H.W. Bush, has sent a response to those of us who sent our condolences, and I would like to close with the President's own words about his wife Barbara. This is what George H.W. Bush said: I always knew Barbara was the most beloved woman in the world, and in fact I used to tease her that I had a complex about that fact. But the truth is the outpouring of love and friendship being directed at The Enforcer is lifting us all up. We have faith she is in heaven, and we know life will go on--as she would have it. So cross the Bushes off your worry list. I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, later this afternoon, the Senate will finally vote to confirm Carlos Muniz--a well-qualified nominee--to be general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education. I came to the floor last week to ask for this vote because I believe Mr. Muniz has been subject to unreasonable delays. For example, Mr. Muniz was nominated by the President on June 6th of last year--316 days ago. He has been pending on the floor since we reported him out of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on October 18, 2017-- 182 days ago. In other words, he has been waiting for 6 months, following his approval by the relevant committee, for the Senate to consider this nomination. So it is time to confirm him. It is time to give Secretary DeVos an attorney and a general counsel. Mr. Muniz has extensive experience as an attorney and in government. From January 2014 to February 2018, he was a partner at the law firm of McGuireWoods in Florida. Prior to that, from January 2011 to 2014, he was Deputy Attorney General for the State of Florida and Chief of Staff to Attorney General Pam Bondi. There, he managed a 400-lawyer agency and oversaw all functions, including litigation, policy development, legislative affairs, and communications. He was also General Counsel for Florida's Department of Financial Services and Deputy General Counsel for Governor Jeb Bush. Mr. Muniz graduated from the University of Virginia with high honors. He earned his law degree from Yale, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school, he served as a law clerk to two Federal judges, one on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the other for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In other words, he is exactly the kind of person that we hope would serve in public life. I am delighted that he chose to accept the President's nomination and that we will have a chance this afternoon to confirm him. As general counsel, he will have the important job of providing legal assistance to the Secretary concerning the programs and policies of the Department and making sure that these policies follow the law, which given his background, he has the experience to do. He testified in his confirmation hearing that he is committed to advising the Secretary to follow the law as Congress wrote it. I am glad we are having this vote today. I support his nomination. I urge my colleagues to do the same. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for his courtesy in allowing me to speak before him.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on the confirmation of Patrick Pizzella to be the Deputy Secretary of the United States Department of Labor, DOL. The Department of Labor is charged with enforcing laws to keep workers safe on the job, ensuring workers are paid the wages they are owed, helping to develop our workforce, and keeping critical data on our employment market. Patrick Pizzella brings a wealth of relevant experience in both Democratic and Republican administrations. President Trump designated Mr. Pizzella as acting Chairman of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, FLRA, in January 2017, a position which he held through December 2017. President Obama appointed Mr. Pizzella to the FLRA in August 2013, after which he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by voice vote on October 16, 2013. Mr. Pizzella served under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009, as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Administration and Management at the Department of Labor. Mr. Pizzella was nominated by President Bush in April 2001--approved in May without a hearing by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, HELP, under Senator Ted Kennedy--and confirmed by the full Senate 2 days later. Mr. Pizzella also served at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the U.S. Small Business Administration, and the U.S. General Services Administration. This day is long overdue. President Trump initially nominated Mr. Pizzella to be the Deputy Secretary of Labor on June 20, 2017. The Senate HELP Committee received Mr. Pizzella's HELP Committee application on June 29, 2017. On June 23, 2017, the committee received Mr. Pizzella's Office of Government Ethics, OGE, paperwork, including his public financial disclosure and ethics agreement. Based on these documents, OGE determined that Mr. Pizzella ``is in compliance with applicable laws and regulations governing conflicts of interest.'' Mr. Pizzella completed all paperwork in accordance with the HELP Committee's rules, practices, and procedures. The HELP Committee held Mr. Pizzella's hearing on July 13, 2017, and reported his nomination favorably on October 18, 2017. Pursuant to Senate rules, Mr. Pizzella's nomination was returned to the President at the end of the first session of the 115th Congress. In fact, Mr. Pizzella was one of nearly 100 of President Trump's nominees who were returned to the President. It is unfortunate the Department of Labor has had to operate without its second most senior official for more than 9 months since Mr. Pizzella's initial nomination. President Trump again nominated Mr. Pizzella to be the Deputy Secretary of Labor on January 8, 2018. The HELP Committee again favorably reported Mr. Pizzella's nomination on January 18, 2018. The Department will greatly benefit from Mr. Pizzella's leadership and experience, and I look forward to supporting his confirmation.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on the confirmation of John Ring to be a member of the National Labor Relations Board, NLRB. I am glad that we are voting on this nomination because, once Mr. Ring is confirmed, we will once again have a full five-member National Labor Relations Board. Created in 1935, the NLRB administers the National Labor Relations Act, which seeks to mitigate and eliminate labor-related impediments to the free flow of commerce. The 5 board members have 5-year, staggered terms, and the general counsel has a 4-year term. The NLRB should be a neutral umpire in labor disputes. While Board partisanship did not start under President Obama, it became worse under him. An overly partisan Board creates instability in our Nation's workplaces and does not serve the intent of the law, which is to create stable labor relations and the free flow of commerce. The NLRB under President Obama took two particularly harmful actions that are still in place today. First, the joint employer decision threatens the American dream for owners of the Nation's 780,000 franchise locations. Under that decision, companies could find it much more practical to own all their stores and restaurants and daycare centers themselves, rather than encourage more franchisee-owned small businesses. Second is the ambush election rule, which can force a union election before employers and employees have a chance to figure out what is going on. The rule also forces employers to provide union organizers with a list of employees' work locations, shifts, job classifications, personal email addresses, and home and cellular telephone numbers. This information is highly personal, and employees may not want it shared, but workers do not have a choice. I am pleased the Board is accepting comments on whether this rule should be revised. A fully staffed board is vital to both employees and employers, and I am not the only one who thinks that is important. At a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, HELP, hearing in September 2014, then-Chairman Harkin said, ``Keeping the NLRB fully staffed and able to do its work will send a strong message to the American people that yes, Washington can work, and our government can function.'' While attending the Catholic University Columbus School of Law in the evening, Mr. Ring worked for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. After law school, he joined the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he has worked since 1988. Mr. Ring flourished at the firm, where he worked his way up from summer associate to coleader of the firm's labor and management relations practice. Mr. Ring was nominated to be a member of the NLRB on January 18, 2018. The HELP Committee held Mr. Ring's hearing on March 1, 2018, and he completed all paperwork in accordance with the committee's rules, practices, and procedures. We received Mr. Ring's HELP Committee paperwork and his Office of Government Ethics paperwork on January 24, 2018, 36 days before his hearing. Mr. Ring offered to meet with all HELP Committee members and met with five of them, including two Democrats. Following his hearing, Mr. Ring responded to 97 questions for the record, or 158, if you include subquestions. These responses were provided to Senators prior to the markup, and the HELP Committee favorably reported Mr. Ring's nomination on March 14, 2018. I look forward to voting for John Ring, and I trust that he will serve with distinction.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic leader, the Senate proceed to executive session for the consideration of the following nomination: Executive Calendar No. 376. I ask consent that there then be 10 hours of debate, equally divided in the usual form; that following the use or yielding back of time, the Senate vote on the nomination with no intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that no further motions be in order; and that any statements relating to the nomination be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from Washington knows the deep respect I have for her, and we have worked together on some important legislation on our committee when we have had differences of opinion, including on the 21st Century Cures legislation and No Child Left Behind. Yet I have to say, with all due respect, the last 7 months of working with the Senator and the Democrats on trying to fix the Affordable Care Act, as they have asked us to do, has been the most frustrating time in my 16 years in the Senate. For example, she made three points. One is that the Democrats were unhappy that we had reduced taxes and repealed the individual mandate. We know they are unhappy about that, and we know it raised individual rates somewhat, maybe as much as 10 percent. OK. That was last year. So what are we supposed to do--not work to reduce rates? We continue to work to reduce rates. According to the Oliver Wyman experts, the proposal Senator Collins and I have put on the floor, which is basically a combination of bipartisan proposals, would reduce rates by up to 40 percent, taking into account what we did in the tax bill. The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, said it would reduce rates by up to 20 percent. That is the first point. I understand the Democrats don't like to cut taxes, and they don't like to get rid of the individual mandate, which is a tax on a lot of poor people, but they have to get over that at some point. If you think it raised rates, let's cut rates. We have a proposal to cut rates on plumbers and songwriters who pay for their own insurance by 40 percent. So that is not a very good excuse for blocking this rate decrease. The second thing is, the distinguished Senator from Washington said the Collins-Alexander proposal interferes with preexisting condition. It does not. Only someone who hasn't read the bill carefully could think about that for a moment. I mean, we deliberately made sure the proposal we would present would not disturb the essential health benefits, which most of us would like to do, and most of them would not. It does not change the preexisting condition requirement. It does codify the proposals the President made on short-term insurance, at the suggestion of the Democrats, who were afraid the President might be able to do some things. What we were trying to do was limit what he could do, to say the States have the responsibility, and to make sure the consumers knew what they were buying. After all, the short-term plans, which the Democrats don't like, can only be done if States choose to do them. They were afraid the President might do them, so we made sure he could not. So that is not an issue. The third thing is in terms of the Hyde amendment. Now, the Hyde amendment is a very simple amendment. Usually, when you oppose something, you just stand up and say: Look, this is the reason I am opposing it. You may disagree with me or you may not, but this is my reason. This is the only reason the Democrats are blocking this 40-percent rate reduction. They have said so publicly and privately. That is it. That is the only reason. They don't like applying the Hyde amendment to health insurance in this bill. If they don't, fine. That is their prerogative. I respect that. I don't question their motive, and I don't question their right to do it. I would just like for them to stand up and say that is what they are doing. Then they can explain to the American people what sense that makes. We have been working for 7 months to develop this proposal that includes two parts. One is fundamentally the Alexander-Murray proposal that Senator Schumer said every single Democrat would vote for, and the other part is 3 years of reinsurance at $10 billion a year. That is it. Those are bipartisan ideas. The only issue is, shall we also apply Hyde to it? What we have planned to do for the last several months is to put it in this bill that we are voting on today, the omnibus bill, to which the Hyde language has applied since 1976. What that means is, the Hyde language is a compromise. It says you may not use Federal funds for elective abortion, but it makes clear that States, individuals, churches, and nonprofits may pay for elective abortions. That is the compromise. We counted them up. The Hyde language applies to more than 100 Federal programs that the Democrats will be voting on today. The Democrats will be voting today on applying the Hyde language to the National Institutes of Health, but Senator Murray is saying they can't apply it to a 40-percent health insurance rate reduction. They will be voting to apply the Hyde language to community health centers, but she is saying, no, they can't apply it to a 40-percent health insurance rate reduction. They are going to be voting to apply it to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program--that is for all of us who get insurance, all the Federal employees--but that they can't apply it to a health insurance rate reduction. We are going to apply it to Federal family planning grants under title X, but for some reason, we can't apply the same law to a health insurance rate reduction. I can go down that list, as I did earlier, but I will not read the whole thing. There is the VA, global health programs, the Ryan White school-based health centers. The Democrats have voted for Hyde protection hundreds of time. What the Democrats are arguing is, when they had 60 Senators here and President Obama and a Speaker of the House named Pelosi, they passed the Affordable Care Act, and they watered down Hyde for the purposes of the Affordable Care Act. They want that language. No Republican has ever voted for that language in the Senate. The Democrats have voted hundreds of time for Hyde. How can we continue, how can we expect to make any progress in fixing the Affordable Care Act if the Democrats will not apply the Hyde language to any funding under it? I don't see any prospect for it. I don't like the insinuation that I have walked away from anything. Most of the Republicans are usually willing to work with the Democrats, and I have spent hundreds of hours. I walked over to the Senator on the night we failed on repeal and replace and said: Let's do something. We had long discussions. We had hearings to which half the Senate came. Everybody was just cheering. It was like going to summer camp. Why don't we do more of this? So we did it, and we came up with something the Democratic leader said everybody could vote for over there. Then they got mad about the tax cut. OK. They can be mad but not forever, maybe. So we came up with a cure for that. We got a 40-percent rate reduction despite what we did in the tax bill. All we want to do is to apply to this health program the same health program that every Democrat who votes for this bill will be applying to every other health program today. If they will not do that, how can they stand up and say they expect to make progress on fixing the Affordable Care Act? I don't know any way to do it. I am as willing as anybody to try to work things out here, but I am no magician. I greatly respect the Senator from Washington and enjoy working with her, but on this issue, I think we have reached an impasse. They have yet to give us any language at all that applies to the Hyde language. All of their suggestions are saying: We want to do what we did when we had 60 Senators, a President of the United States, and Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. Well, they may want to, but that is the one time that ever happened, and here we are today--with no one objecting on the Democratic side. I mean, should I offer an amendment to take the Hyde language out of applying to the National Institutes of Health? Why don't they offer to take it out of family planning grants under title X? That should be just as offensive as applying the Hyde language to health insurance. I don't understand this. They have been scrambling around all day. The staff has been putting out memos. They are making up things. They are misleading, and they are misreading. They are making excuses. There is only one reason. They are blocking a 40-percent health insurance rate decrease for the plumber who is making $60,000 and paying $20,000 for his insurance. We could cut that $20,000 insurance to $12,000 over the next 3 years. That person is hurting, and the Democrats are blocking that. They will say: We will apply Hyde to everything else but not to the rate decrease for that plumber. I don't understand it, and I don't see any way to make any progress on it as long as they take that position.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the Oliver Wyman analysis entitled ``A Proposal to Lower ACA Premiums by More than 40% and Cover 3.2 Million More'' Americans.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Congressional Budget Office estimate looks at this proposal two different ways, but it says that if we base it on real spending--that is, as if Congress actually passed this bill--the Alexander-Murray-Collins-Nelson proposal that reduces insurance rates 40 percent saves the Federal taxpayer money. In other words, it doesn't cost anything. As a U.S. Senator who came here to get results, who enjoys more than anything working across party lines to cause that to happen--because it takes 60 to get a result--who admires Senators like Senator Collins, who spends her time doing that, I am very disappointed, not just for me, not just for Senator Collins, who has spent hundreds of hours on this, not just for the Senate as an institution, but I think of people who come up to me like Marty at the Chick-fil-A, who said: I was paying $300 a month, and now I am paying $1,300 a month. I can't afford it; I am a farmer. I said: I have a Christmas present for you. And then I thought, well, I have a Valentine's present for you, and then I thought maybe I could say I have an Easter present for you, and now I can say I can't do it because the Democratic Party voted to put the Hyde protection on more than 100 programs today--as it has done every year since 1976--but it refused to put the Hyde protection on a 40-percent rate decrease that was developed across party lines, in long hearings that were attended by more than half the Senators--all of them coming in and saying: Oh, this is a wonderful thing. They came up to me and said: Chairman Alexander, this is so good. We wish the Senate would act like this more. We like the fact that you are having open hearings. Democrats are coming. You are letting us all come without being a member of the committee. Why are we not doing more of this? This is why we don't do more of it. We come to a result. We come up to a partisan end that hurts people. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I rise to say a word about my friend Thad Cochran, who is retiring from the U.S. Senate. In 1968, I had the job of recruiting State chairman for Citizens for Nixon-Agnew. I was a very young, wet-behind-the-ears former legislative assistant to Senator Howard Baker. We were working in the Willard Hotel in the fall of 1968. The idea was to try to find outstanding citizens who weren't necessarily Republicans because in the southern part of our country, there weren't a lot of Republicans, especially in the State of Mississippi. So I called around the State of Mississippi to find out who might be willing to head up this Nixon-Agnew campaign. Everybody I called said: Well, there are two young men here who are just the most outstanding young men, both are cheerleaders at Ole Miss, or had been, and both are going to grow up to be the Governor of Mississippi, which was, at that time, I guess, the nicest thing one could say about some aspiring young man because nobody thought the two U.S. Senators, Eastland and Stennis, would ever retire. So growing up to be the Governor of Mississippi was really a great compliment to a young man in Mississippi at the time. One of those young men was named Trent Lott, and one of those young men was named Thad Cochran. I telephoned Thad Cochran, and I invited him to become chairman of the Citizens for Nixon-Agnew. He was a Democrat, but he agreed to do that. We met in October of that year in Indianapolis. The mayor of Indianapolis then was Richard Lugar, a young mayor at that time and later a Member of this body. That was the beginning of Thad Cochran's Republican Party activity. He and that other young man--who were so promising--both ran for U.S. Congress in 1972, and to the surprise of a great many people, they were elected, the first Republicans since Reconstruction, I suppose, from Mississippi--Thad Cochran and Trent Lott. In 1978, Thad Cochran did something nobody had done from his State since the Reconstruction; he became a Republican who was elected to the U.S. Senate, and he has been here ever since. The reason he was able to be successful is not surprising. Thad was and is an engaging, pleasant person. His parents were educators. He learned to play the piano. He was a terrific baseball player--good enough to play professional baseball. He joined the Navy. He was, in every respect, an outstanding young man, just as he has been a distinguished public servant throughout his life. He has been widely respected here by his colleagues, elected to be chairman of the Republican conference, and most recently he has been chairman of the Appropriations Committee, which is as important as any position in this body. In an era where not everybody seems to think it is important to act like a gentleman, Thad Cochran is a gentleman, and we respect that and the example he has set. So he has been a pioneer for the Republican Party, he has been a good example for young people, and for all of us, really, in terms of what we should expect and try to emulate in public life, and, to me, he has been a great friend. So my wife Honey and I would like to say to him and to Kay, his wife, that we respect him, we look forward to the next chapter in his life, and we honor his service to this country.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from Maine will arrive in just a moment, and I ask unanimous consent for up to an hour for us and Senator Graham and Senator Rounds to address the Senate within that hour--the four of us, and others who wish--to speak on the health insurance issue within that hour.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am here today to talk about the plumber making $60,000 whose health insurance is $20,000 and he pays for all of it and about the fact that the bill we are about to vote on today could have had in it bipartisan legislation--supported by the President of the United States, the majority leader, and the Speaker of the House--that would have reduced that plumber's health insurance bill from $12,000 to $8,000, according to the Oliver Wyman health consulting experts, who have evaluated the bipartisan legislation that we have proposed. The only reason it doesn't have that in there is because Democrats have objected to putting on this bill we are voting on today the traditional Hyde amendment that governs how dollars are spent when an abortion is involved. The traditional Hyde amendment is a compromise that has been on every appropriations bill--and this is an appropriations bill--since 1976 and that Democrats have voted for hundreds of times and Republicans have voted for hundreds of times. On this very bill that we are voting on today, more than 100 times the Hyde language applies to other programs. So Democrats are scrambling and embarrassed, coming up with excuse after excuse, trying to explain to the self-employed businessperson-- the farmer, the songwriter, the plumber--who might be making $60,000 or $70,000 and paying $20,000 for their insurance, and paying it all, with no government subsidy--why they are blocking a 40-percent reduction in their health insurance and why they will not apply the Hyde language to the health insurance rate reduction and they will apply it to 100 other programs. Not just in past voting but today, every single Democrat today who votes for the omnibus bill will be voting to apply the Hyde language restricting abortion to at least 100 other programs. For example, how will they explain this to the plumber, the farmer, and the self-employed businesswoman: I will apply the Hyde language and restrict Federal funding for abortions to the National Institutes of Health but not to reduce your health insurance rates by 40 percent. I will apply the Hyde language to community health centers today, but I am going to block the bipartisan proposal to reduce your health insurance by 40 percent that is supported by the President, the majority leader, and the Speaker of the House. I will vote today to apply the Hyde language to the Federal Employment Health Benefits Program, which provides health insurance to 3 million or so employees, but I will not vote for a health insurance program to reduce your rates by 40 percent because I will not apply the Hyde language to it? How are they going to explain today and next October, when the insurance rates are announced for 2019, 2020, and 2021, that they had an opportunity in March of this year to reduce rates in 2019, 2020, and 2021 by 40 percent and they refused to do it because they said: We will not apply the traditional Hyde language to health insurance, even though we are going to apply it to the Indian health programs, to the VA, to women's medical care, to global health programs, to the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program--to 100 programs that Democrats will be voting on today to apply the Hyde language to. They will do that, but they are going to block bipartisan legislation--supported by the President, the majority leader, and the Speaker--that will reduce the health insurance rates of the plumber making $60,000 from $20,000 to $12,000? I want to speak about that plumber. I want to speak ahead to October 1, when the rates for 2019 are announced. I want to talk about Marty, the farmer in Tennessee who I met at the Chick-fil-A, who came up to me and said: I was paying $300 a month for my health insurance, and over the last 5 years it has gone up to $1,300, and I can't afford it. I said: I have a Christmas present for you. Then, I thought I had a Valentine card for it. Then, I thought I had an Easter present for it, because we got bipartisan legislation, supported by the President, the majority leader, and the Speaker. I said: We can put that in the omnibus bill, we can pass it by the end of March, and we can reduce your rates. There are 9 million Americans who don't get insurance on the job. They don't get insurance from the government. They buy it themselves. They are hardworking Americans. They are the plumber, the farmer, the small businessperson. They are making $60,000, $70,000, $80,000, $90,000 a year. Their insurance bills are $15,000, $20,000, $25,000 a year. They are rapidly approaching a point, if they haven't already, that they have to go without insurance because they can't afford it, and we have a way to do something about that. It is happening in my State of Tennessee. Rates went up another 57 percent last year for those people. That is thousands of dollars. Yet we could have today reduced their rates by thousands of dollars. Here is how: We have developed two bipartisan bills, beginning in the fall. Our committee--the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee--held four hearings. We had roundtables to which we invited all the Senators. Senator Murray, the ranking Democrat, and I presided over this. We talked about all of the issues and tried to see what we could do, and we came up with what we call the Alexander-Murray bill. It had two parts to it. The first part was regulatory reform. We took something already in the Affordable Care Act--the 1332 innovation waivers--and we made it possible for States to streamline it and use it. We also added a few other things. We changed the law so that Minnesota and New York could use the basic health plan and could tap into the subsidies in the way that those States wanted to do it. That is $130 million a year in Minnesota and $1 billion in New York. Democrats are blocking that today--$130 million in Minnesota and $1 billion in New York, and Democrats are saying no to that today. Why? Because they will not apply the Hyde language to the health insurance rate decrease, even though they are going to vote to apply it to 100 other pieces of legislation in this very bill. We did the regulatory reform, and then we did something many Republicans didn't want to do and the President didn't want to do to start with. We extended the cost-sharing subsidy payments for 3 more years. These are payments to reduce rates for low-income people on their copays and deductibles. We agreed to do that. Then, Senator Collins and Senator Nelson, a Republican and a Democrat, came up with a plan--the House did, too, with Representative Costello--to add reinsurance. Reinsurance is something about which, in our hearings and in our meetings, virtually every Senator in both parties said: We really need to do that, because the reason the individual market is in such trouble is that it has so many of the sickest Americans in it and they are soaking up all the money. The reinsurance program that we suggested and have in Senator Collins and Senator Nelson's bill--3 years, $10 billion a year--would give States funds as well as planning money to set up those invisible risk pools, those reinsurance programs, that were meant for the sickest Americans to have their needs taken care of, and you lower the rates for everybody else. So we have regulatory reform, 3 years of cost-sharing subsidies, 3 years of reinsurance, $10 billion a year. The Congressional Budget Office says: If you score it based on real spending, it actually saves the government money by reducing the premiums that taxpayers have to pay for--a $1 billion advantage for New York for each of the next 3 years, $130 million for Minnesota for each of the next 3 years. We fix the problem in New Hampshire, to allow both Democratic Senators and the Republican Governor to say: Please do this; we want to be able to mix our ObamaCare and Medicaid savings. We said: Yes, you can do that, and so can every State. Within the Affordable Care Act, we did what Democrats have been saying to do ever since we couldn't repeal and replace it last August and said: We will work with you to fix it. The part that needs fixing is the part causing the plumber who makes $60,000 to pay $20,000 for his health insurance, and we have a way to fix it--to reduce it by 40 percent, according to Oliver Wyman consulting; by 20 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Yet the Democrats are blocking it today because they will not apply the traditional Hyde language that they voted for every single year since 1976 in the omnibus bill and that they will be voting on today for 100-plus times. How do you explain that to the plumber? How do you explain that to the farmer? How do you explain that to the 9 million Americans who see their health insurance rates going through the roof? Let's not make any mistake about who is doing this. We are big boys and girls in the Senate. When we take a stand, we ought to admit it. What the Democrats are doing is they are blocking a 40-percent rate decrease for one single reason--one single reason. The President of the United States supports it, the Speaker supports it, the majority leader supports it, and we are ready to put it in the bill, and they say no. Let's look down the road to October. All of the insurance companies will announce their rates for 2019, and we will be looking ahead to 2020 and 2021. Rates will be going up instead of going down. The farmer, the self-employed person, the songwriter are going to be saying: How am I going to be able to afford this? Nothing is more important to Americans than healthcare. Nothing is more frightening to Americans than the prospect of not being able to afford to buy healthcare. That is what we are doing here. I am disappointed by this. I have spent hundreds of hours on this since September. We had a piece of legislation introduced on this floor by 12 Republicans and 12 Democrats that the Democratic leader said every single Democrat would vote for and the national Democratic chairman said was great bipartisan legislation. That is two-thirds of our bill. What is the other third? The other third is the Collins-Nelson bill, which adds $10 billion a year for reinsurance. The Governors like this. The State insurance commissioners like this. The plumber and the songwriter like it. Who doesn't like it? A few Democrats who are saying that the Hyde language, which says--let's be specific about what it says--you can't use Federal funds for elective abortions, but you may use any other funds. That is exactly the law that we have in our bill. The Hyde language is in the bill we are going to be voting on later today. It was put there in 1976. It is adopted year after year. It is on page 1036, if anybody wants to look it up. Then, there is language in the bill that we are going to be voting on today restricting Federal employee health benefits with Hyde-like language, which is on page 588. You will be voting for it today. Then, there is the title X family planning legislation. That is in the bill you are going to be voting for, as well, today. That is Hyde language. Then, there is the Mexico City legislation. You are going to vote for that today. But you are going to tell the farmer, the songwriter, and the employer that they are not allowed to have a 40-percent health insurance decrease. They are going to have to not be able to afford health insurance for their family. As to Federal funding for the DC government, you are going to vote for that today. Using funds for elective abortions is restricted in the bill that we are voting on today. Senator Collins from Maine is here, and the Senator from South Carolina is here. They have worked hard on this. We are a group of Senators who I think are fairly, usually seen as trying to get results around here. We are greatly disappointed by this--not just for this institution but for the people we serve because the hard, simple fact is that we have legislation that could be in this bill that will reduce your health insurance rates by 40 percent starting in 2019 and continuing for the next 2 years, until it gets up to 40. We have the support of the President. We have the support of the Speaker. We have the support of the majority leader. But the Democratic leader says: You can't have it in the bill. We are going to vote 100 times to apply the Hyde language to everything from the National Institutes of Health to community health centers, but we are not going to let you reduce healthcare rates. That is why Democrats are scrambling, coming up with excuse after excuse. They are going to have to really come up with scrambling and excuse after excuse on October 1, when the rates are announced. I yield the floor.