Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my friend from Texas. I only heard part of them, but I appreciate his interest and what we need to do to deal with this coronavirus. I hear so often in this body that it is about the economic issues, which to be sure it is, as you know in Utah and Senator Cornyn knows. But when I hear the President's response on what to do--first, I know that people are angry in Ohio and I think elsewhere that the President has waited so long to act. I know people are angry when they find out that the President made major cuts to the Centers for Disease Control, which the Presiding Officer knows is the best public health agency probably in the history of the world, combined with our public health departments at NIH and the FDA and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Cincinnati--all of this incredible public health infrastructure safety net we have built in this country bipartisanly through decades and decades and decades. I know people are unhappy when they learn about the President eliminating the position at the White House of the admiral physician who ran our effort to always be trying to anticipate a public health outbreak, a pandemic of sorts. I don't know whether or not we are in one. I don't think we know that. I am not an alarmist or panicky in any way, but I know people realize we had such a late start on this because of the President's actions over the last 3 years. The issue is not to bail out more corporations. The issue is not to give money to the cruise ship companies, for gosh sakes, which is one part of the President's rhetoric tweet proposals. The cruise ship industry is almost exclusively foreign-owned. Why take tax dollars and shovel them into the cruise industry? Instead of focusing on large corporations, which is something the President always does--I understand that is what he comes from, who he is, and who his supporters are--instead of focusing there, we should be focusing on individuals, and that means starting with a sick leave policy and sick days. Think about how hard it is for all of us in this body--think about somebody making $12 an hour and living alone or living with a child or living with a spouse, whoever, making $12 an hour with no benefits and they get sick. They think, let's see, do I go to work--if I go to work sick, I may get worse, and I may infect my colleagues and other employees--or do I stay home and give up that $100 of a $12-an-hour job? I am paying $700 a month in rent. Can I give up that $100 or $200 or $300 over 2 or 3 days? There are so many Americans who are sick who wrestle with that decision every single day. This is an opportunity. Senator Murray worked on a bill. I worked on this bill with her for a good while. I just spoke with Congresswoman DeLauro from Connecticut about working on legislation to provide emergency relief right now. We can do this today. I know the Presiding Officer has been open-minded about things like this. We can make this bipartisan. We can have immediate 14-day help as part of our package that we already voted on and then have a long-term, 7-day sick day policy where you earn those benefits. As you work, you earn that--up to 7-day sick day policy. Every other industrialized, wealthy country in the world has it. It makes safer, healthier workplaces and safer, healthier workers. It will mean good help and stronger families--all the kinds of things a sick day policy would mean to our country. I am hopeful that rather than shovel money to corporations, we will spend that money on individuals, on people, on workers and their workplace. It could make all the difference in the world, not just in addressing this coronavirus public health crisis today but in preventing these kinds of crises in the future. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I want to thank my colleague, Senator Durbin, for leading efforts this week to undo Betsy DeVos's harmful rollback protections for millions of Americans with student loans ripped off by for-profit colleges. This is an example where the Senate stood up to the President, stood up to the billionaire Secretary of Education whose mission in that job is to privatize public education and turn profits for her and her friends and her allies. This bipartisan Senate stood up to her and stood up to the President, stood up to the majority leader, and did the right thing. We have seen these for-profit colleges in Ohio. Schools like Corinthian and ITT, which make big promises with fake--and this time the word ``fake'' is accurate--they make big promises with fake or deceptive job placement rates. They spend millions on marketing, and they trick students into taking out huge loans, only to close up shop and leave them with meaningless degrees or, worse yet, just credits but always mountains of debt. These are people trying to get an education to improve their job prospects to build a better life for themselves and their families. Too often these predatory schools target Black students, Latino students, immigrants, low-income students, and first-generation college students. Many of them are veterans returning from serving our country and looking to start a new career. These for-profit colleges are willing to exploit people who have taken out loans to go there who are veterans. Sometimes they go to school. They served their country and then they go to school, and these for-profit colleges are willing to take advantage of them. These for- profit schools are all about lining the pockets of their CEOs. We need to stand with the defrauded student borrowers and hold these for-profit schools accountable. Of course, we have learned not to hold our breath when it comes to the Trump administration holding anyone accountable--at least anyone rich accountable. Instead of figuring out how to provide relief for students, Secretary Betsy DeVos went to work figuring out how to let the schools that scammed them off the hook. Three hundred thousand people had submitted borrower defense claims as of last December. More than 200,000 of those requests are still pending. More than 7,700 Ohioans--7,700 people in my State--are waiting for relief. In 2016, the Obama administration announced a rule to help these students get their loans canceled, but the DeVos Department of Education--the Trump Department of Education--dragged its feet on processing borrower defense claims. They rewrote the rule to make it damn near impossible for defrauded students to get the relief they were promised. They are throwing up hurdle after hurdle: narrow time limits, making students gather all kinds of unnecessary paperwork, and banning students from appealing a decision. DeVos's rule opens up the doors for schools to once again use mandatory arbitration. I am not a lawyer, but I know from seeing this done to far too many of my constituents. Its legal fine print that for- profit schools sneak into their enrollment agreements deny students their day in court. Students don't know they are part of these agreements. They are, and they lose their day in court. I hear from Ohioans all the time who have been scammed by these schools. Tasha Berkhalter came to Washington last month to bring attention to this important issue. She is an Army veteran. She served our country with honor. She is a mother of four. She returned home. She wanted to do forensics with the FBI, so she enrolled in ITT's criminal justice program. She didn't think of it as a for-profit school. She didn't know she was about to get scammed. She had served our country. She wanted to serve our country. She went to this for-profit school. ITT told her that her GI benefits would cover the full tuition and that they would help her get a job after graduation. But when she began to suspect the program wasn't the high- quality education that it claimed and tried to transfer, she found out that no other schools--no other legitimate schools--would accept her ITT credits. The supposedly high-tech school was using outdated books. Faced with a choice of continuing at ITT or starting completely over, she finished her degree. She ended up $100,000 in debt. Remember, ITT told her the GI bill would cover everything--well, except for $100,000. She ended up $100,000 in debt with a degree that, unfortunately, employers didn't take seriously. Those are the people whom Secretary DeVos and those are the people whom President Trump, with his own Trump University, want to take over our higher education system. Now she has lost her shot at using the GI benefit she earned, and she is drowning in debt. Ms. Berkhalter and other student veterans defrauded by shady schools deserve better than the treatment they are getting under Betsy DeVos. Not only is Betsy DeVos refusing to help, her new borrower defense rule will let other for-profit colleges continue to run the same scams on other students and student veterans. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is supposed to crack down on these schools and on loan-servicing companies that handle people's student loans. That is why we created the CFPB--to look out for people like Ms. Berkhalter. But under President Trump, under Betsy DeVos, they refuse to let the CFPB look into loan services that are scamming students. I asked the CFPB Director today about this. We have been asking her for a year to take this over and make it work. She continues to yield to her billionaire friend in the Cabinet, Secretary DeVos, who is a billionaire friend of the billionaire President and has no interest in making him accountable. President Trump's CFPB Director is rolling over, refusing to do her job protecting the tens of millions of Americans with student loans. It comes back always to whose side you are on. Are you going to stand with student veterans, or are you going to stand with these for-profit CEOs, these CEOs of for-profit schools who are making literally millions of dollars a year? Are you going to fight for defrauded Americans saddled with student loans or the shady schools ripping them off? It is pretty clear with whom President Trump and Betsy DeVos are standing. Over and over and over, President Trump and his administration betray the people he promised to fight for. I am glad my colleagues stood up today. It was a bipartisan victory. It said to President Trump and Betsy DeVos and Majority Leader McConnell that that kind of fraud, that kind of exploitation of our veterans and our students who are defrauded by these for-profit colleges is something we will no longer accept. Remembering Nathaniel Jones

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I rise to honor a leader in the fight for justice, a great Ohioan whom we lost last month, Judge Nathaniel Jones. At a ceremony dedicating the Federal courthouse in honor of Judge Jones in 2003, former Congressman Louis Stokes said that the courthouse served as a testament to the outstanding public service by ``a local who made good.'' Judge Jones certainly was that. Born in Youngstown in 1926, he served a country that did not yet recognize his full legal equality. He served his country in World War II. He went on to become a respected lawyer. He went on first to be a journalist who worked for the Youngstown and Pittsburgh News. He worked for the Youngstown newspaper. He covered Jackie Robinson when Jackie Robinson played in AAA and became a friend of his. He went on to become a respected lawyer, a Federal judge, and an international civil and human rights advocate. He was a local who made good, but more importantly, he was a man who did good. He committed his life to the pursuit of justice and equality. We are all the better for it. He led efforts to end employment discrimination as the Executive Director of the Fair Employment Practices Commission. He was the first African-American U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. He served as Assistant General Counsel for President Johnson's Kerner Commission. That Commission issued a landmark report warning that racism and poverty were the root causes of violence in our Nation's cities during the 1960s. As general counsel for the NAACP, Judge Jones directed efforts to fight discrimination faced by African-American soldiers and worked to desegregate public schools in the North, stepping in personally to argue several cases. Nominated by President Carter, he was confirmed in 1979 to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals--one of only 39 African Americans to ever serve on the Federal Circuit. As a judge, he felt it was his duty to be an instrument of change in a system that too often denied justice to people of color. In many of the cases that came before the court, he so often sided with those taking on powerful interests and fighting for their rights--something we see far too little of in this body and in this government. As South Africa began to move beyond the dark days of apartheid and chart a new future of inclusion and equality, Judge Jones was called to help draft the country's new Constitution. In Cincinnati, which he called home for some 45 years, the footprints of his good work can be seen across the city. Some of my favorite times were sitting in Judge Jones's office and listening to him tell about his days as a reporter knowing Jackie Robinson, talking about his days at the NAACP, and talking about his belief in justice and his passion for fair play. He was one of the early supporters of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. He mentored numerous young lawyers who served as his law clerks. He offered his assistance to local leaders seeking to address the lingering stigma of racism still far too present in our society. Judge Jones was a brilliant legal thinker. He was a dogged advocate for civil rights. Judge Jones was a wonderful husband and father. I am privileged to know well Stephanie, his daughter, who worked in the House of Representatives some years ago. He was a good friend, and he was a mentor to so many. He was also a relentless optimist who never--never-- ceased to believe in the promise of our great country. The legacy of Judge Nathaniel Jones will live on through his far- reaching work for justice and through the many, many lives he touched. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, the U.S. Senate used to be called the greatest deliberative body in the world. It is the Senate where, at this desk, Hugo Black wrote labor law reform. Essentially, he and another Senator in the U.S. Senate and President Roosevelt created collective bargaining. It is the desk in the Senate Chamber where Senator McGovern from South Dakota passed legislation with Senator Dole across the aisle for feeding programs for hungry people in the United States. I just met with a number of people from the Cleveland Food Bank, the Middle Ohio Food Bank, and Second Harvest Food Bank. The McGovern-Dole legislation also fed hungry kids around the world. This is the body that used to do those kinds of things--the greatest deliberative body in the world. But under Leader McConnell, whose office is down the hall, we see something different. The focus of this body has pretty much been one job, and that is confirming young, 38-, 40-, 42-, and 45-year-old judges--extreme judges--who always put their thumbs on the scale to support corporations over workers, to support Wall Street over consumers, and who put their thumbs on the scale to support insurance companies over patients and drug companies over patients. Even by the low standards--and, my gosh, they are low--we have come to expect from Senator McConnell and the majority in always, always supporting the rich, always fighting for the largest corporations, always fighting for the people who have privilege against struggling families, against workers--40 percent of people in this country don't have $400 to their name if they have an emergency to meet. Instead of dealing with that issue, it is more tax cuts for the rich. It is more cuts to Medicaid or to food stamps or to the SNAP program or any of these things. Even by the low standards we have come to expect from Leader McConnell and President Trump, this nomination I am going to talk about today, Stephen Schwartz, is appalling. In one sentence, he wants to abolish Social Security--not scale back the cost of living, not throw a few people off Social Security disability, not eliminate survivors' benefits; he wants to abolish Social Security. You heard that right. President Trump, on the stump--he came to Ohio many times, my State, and around the country--promised he would protect Social Security, but now he puts Stephen Schwartz on the bench, a judge who wants to abolish it. Stephen Schwartz wrote that Social Security benefits were intended to prevent ``outright starvation.'' He wasn't sitting at this desk, to be sure, in the 1930s when Social Security was started. Obviously, he didn't understand that Social Security was one of three legs of the stool: Social Security, private pension--we don't have too many of those anymore--and then savings that workers were able to accrue. He says that Social Security was there to prevent ``outright starvation,'' that Social Security has ``become a standard component of most retirement programs.'' That is kind of the point, to make sure that every single American who works her whole life and pays into the system can have a decent retirement. But for this man, Stephen Schwartz, the man President Trump and Leader McConnell want to put on a Federal court with jurisdiction--this isn't one of those lifetime judges who are in one district that can do a little bit of damage in the Northern District of Ohio or in the Southern District of Alabama-- they can do plenty of damage. But this is a man whom President Trump and Leader McConnell want to put on a Federal court with jurisdiction over the whole country. As long as people aren't literally starving to death in retirement, that is enough, he seems to think. I would like Mr. Schwartz to come to Ohio. I would like him to come to Garfield Heights. My wife and I live in the city of Cleveland. Garfield Heights borders the city of Cleveland. I would like him to come to Garfield Heights and go to Carlo's Barber Shop with me someday and just listen to people talk. Carlo cuts the hair of a whole lot of retired people. I would love to hear him listen to the retired machinist or the retired teacher and say to them that this gentleman wants to serve in the Federal Government, appointed by the President of the United States, and thinks that Social Security should be eliminated. I want him to talk to the nurses and the barbers and the teachers. I want him to talk to Americans who have paid into Social Security for their whole lives. Social Security is called social insurance. It is like unemployment benefits. It is like Medicare. Social Security--you pay in every paycheck unless you are really rich. Then you only pay in for a few months. But you pay into it every paycheck, understanding that it is insurance, it is social insurance. You pay in, and then when you retire or if you get disabled--or if you die, your children get the survivors' benefits. You pay in, paycheck after paycheck after paycheck, and then when you need it--that is the whole point of insurance--for disability, when you need it for survivors' benefits, if someone in the family--if the breadwinner in the family dies or you need it for retirement, then you get it. It is one more broken promise to workers by President Trump, one more betrayal. Remember, at the beginning of the year, President Trump went to Davos, that sort of hoity-toity place in Switzerland. While he was hobnobbing with the global elite, he let slip his plan. He changed his mind the next day, but it is clear what he wanted. After his tax handouts to billionaires and corporations blew up the deficit, President Trump said he wants to pay for those tax cuts--remember, 70 percent of the Trump tax cuts went to the richest 1 percent. That is why a year and a half ago you saw the lobbyists going in and out of Mitch McConnell's office, the leader's office, all saying: I want this tax cut for this company and this tax cut for that company. He wants to pay for all that--the President said he wants to pay for it by cutting Social Security and Medicare. Think about that. All these people pay into Social Security and pay into Medicare every day of their working lives--people starting at 16 or 15 or 17--they pay that throughout their working lives, and then the President says he wants to cut Medicare and Social Security in order to pay for tax cuts for rich people. He sold his giveaway to the wealthy as a tax cut for the working people. It wasn't. He sold his tax cut to the wealthy by saying it would raise wages. It didn't. People see Trump's tax scam for what it really was: a giveaway to corporations and the wealthiest tiny sliver, the 1 percent of this country. He said over and over that it would mean raises for workers. He promised that somehow these massive corporate tax cuts, these giveaways to companies, would end up in workers' pockets. I heard him pledge to a group of Senators at the White House in the relatively small Cabinet Room--I heard him say that everybody is going to get a $4,000 raise. Well, not. They obviously didn't. He told workers last year, the month after he signed the law: You are going to start seeing a lot more money in your paycheck. One lie after another. He did say, though, after signing the bill, when he went to Mar-a-Lago and hung around with his millionaire and billionaire friends: I made you a lot richer today when I signed that tax cut. He did live up to that promise when he made them richer. It just didn't trickle down, shall we say, to people making $30,000, $50,000, and $80,000 a year. Instead of investing in workers, these corporations bought back trillions of dollars of their own stock to line investors' pockets. Meanwhile, the deficit exploded. We know what the corporate crowd's plan always is to deal with deficits. You come into office, you cut taxes on rich people. The deficit goes up to over $1 trillion. So what do you do? Oh, my gosh, the deficit is up. We have to cut spending. Go after Medicare. Go after Social Security. Go after Medicaid. Go after SNAP. Go after, in my State, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, the MEP, which helps local businesses create jobs. He cut that to zero. He has cut programs and all kinds of things that matter to working- class, middle-class, and small-business Americans, all to pay for that tax cut. So much of what he does now is to pay for that tax cut that blew a hole in the deficit. It all comes back to whose side you are on. Do you stand with corporations, or do you stand with workers? Do you fight for Wall Street, or do you care about the dignity of work and live the dignity of work? We know for whom Stephen Schwartz fights. He spent his whole career trying to block protections for workers and students. He tried to stop people from voting in North Carolina. He has argued against the retirement securities that workers paid into their whole lives. And this is his reward. He has fought voting rights. He has worked to put Social Security out of business. He has always stood with the most privileged and the richest, and this is his reward from the President of the United States and his reward from Senator McConnell, who sits in the front of this room. That is why he doesn't belong on the Federal bench. If you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work. President Trump promised to fight for American workers, but this President betrayed American workers again and again and again. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I applaud the work of Senator Murkowski, who is perhaps uniquely qualified here to find ways of doing bipartisan work. I applaud her for her efforts on this bill and other things. Housing Mr. President, for too many people, hard work isn't paying off. Even people with supposedly middle-class jobs don't feel stable. Wages are flat, the cost of everything is up: healthcare, childcare, college, prescription drugs, and especially housing. When you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work. You fight for dignity of work, but you can't talk about dignity of work without tackling the biggest item in most family's budget: housing. Dignity of work means living with dignity, whether you write a rent check or pay a mortgage, whether you are saving for a down payment or just looking for a safe place to lay down your head at night, whether you live in a city or a suburb, in Hamilton County where my colleague, Senator Portman, who is in the Chamber, lives, in Richland County, where I grew up, a medium-sized city or a rural community. Fundamentally, we all pretty much want the same thing: a place that is safe in a community where we care about, where we can get to work and our children have a chance to have a good school with room for our family, whether that is three kids, an aging parent, or beloved pet--in our case, our dogs Franklin and Walter. You should get to define what home looks like for you. You should be able to find it. You should be able to afford it without crippling stress every single month when the rent check is due or when your mortgage payment is due. People feel like that is out of reach, even when they work hard and do everything right. Right now, a quarter of renters, one out of four renters, spend more than half their income on housing. Think of that. One out of four renters pay more than half of their income on housing. If one thing goes wrong in their life--their car breaks down, their child gets sick, they get laid off from work for 1 week, they need to repair the roof--one thing goes wrong and their life turns upside down. Seven out of the ten fastest growing jobs in this country don't pay enough for a two-bedroom apartment. We know housing is central to every aspect of family's lives. Matthew Desmond is the author of ``Evicted,'' a book I have spoken about on this floor in the past and to people all over my State and around the country. Matthew Desmond's book is ``Evicted.'' I asked him to come in. I bought his book and brought in a number of Senators to listen to him. When inscribing his book, he wrote: ``Home equals life.'' If you don't have a decent, safe, clean, affordable place to live, your life is so often turned upside down. The housing crisis affects different families in different ways, but it touches pretty much everyone. A safe, stable home is the foundation for opportunity. It determines where your kids go to school. It determines how far you have to travel to get to work. It determines where you go shopping. It determines whether you feel safe walking around at night. We know where you live, maybe most importantly, affects the quality of your healthcare. It affects your education, your job opportunities-- where you live affects your life expectancy. Housing stress affects people with all kinds of jobs in all parts of the country. That is why I have been holding roundtables all over my State, beginning over the past 2 weeks, to talk with Ohioans about their struggle with housing and what we can do to make it easier for everyone to find and afford a home. So far, I have done roundtables in Toledo and Youngstown, Western Ohio, and Eastern Ohio. I heard from Ohioans about the challenges that too many people face. We heard about how interconnected housing is with other issues in people's lives. We heard about wages that don't keep up with the cost of living, how housing instability can affect your stress levels and your health, and how hard it can be to get financing to buy a house or start a business in neighborhoods that have been left behind. In Youngstown and Toledo, we heard about the power shady landlords have on tenants and predatory lease-to-own land contracts. People also talked about how up-front costs aren't just an issue about the down payment you make on buying a home to get a mortgage, but if you rent, you often have to have the first month's rent, last month's rent, and a security deposit. That could be a huge obstacle to so many moderate and low-income families. Forty percent--this number is stunning--40 percent of Americans say they can't come up with $400 in an emergency. Forty percent of Americans can't come up with $400 in emergency. When it is that hard for so many people to save, a deposit could seem just impossible. We can't untangle many of these issues from the legacy of redlining and decades of bad public policy decisions by Members, I would acknowledge, from both parties, at all levels of government that have systemically denied people of color the ability to choose where they live and build wealth for homeownership. More than half of African Americans and Latino renters are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing. More than half of people of color spend 30 percent or more on their housing, making them much more likely to have a high housing cost burdens than White seniors have had. That means Black and Latino families have less to spend on healthcare, less to spent on food, less to spend on transportation. It is not just about differences in income, which are all very real. More than 50 years after we passed the Fair Housing Act to prohibit discrimination in housing, African Americans make up 13 percent of the population, and 21 percent of the people experiencing poverty in this country are African American, but 40 percent of the people experiencing homelessness are African American. Think about that. There are 21 percent of people who are experiencing poverty, but there are 40 percent of people who are experiencing homelessness. That tells you this isn't just about income. We have talked to people who are homeless, but none of us gets out as much as we should, as President Lincoln said, to get our public opinion bath. We don't talk to people like that enough, but when we do, we learn that so many people who are homeless have jobs. The jobs don't pay much, and they may be part time. People may also cobble together two jobs, but they are still homeless. We see the same thing when we look at homeownership. The African- American homeownership rate is 30 percent below the White homeownership rate. Analysts have tried to explain this with income and education, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Something more troubling is going on. With everything else being equal, similarly situated African Americans are less likely to own homes than their similarly situated White counterparts. That is a legacy of redlining, and that is a legacy of racial exclusion at work. It may be in Arkansas, and it may be in Ohio. It is all over this country. From 1934 through 1962--get this--98 percent of all FHA mortgages went to White homeowners. We were a country that was, probably, 85-87 percent White, but 90 percent of all FHA mortgages went to White homeowners. That is not just a problem of the past. Housing is how people build wealth for generations. Yet, with there being millions of families struggling to afford housing, with the massive disparities and access to housing, this administration is turning its back on families, communities, and communities of color. For 3 years, President Trump has been trying to undermine the Fair Housing Act of 1968. I spoke about this on the floor last week with Mitt Romney, the Senator from Utah. Senator Romney's father was President Nixon's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and he worked very hard to implement the Fair Housing Act. He made a lot of progress in 1969 and 1970, but so much of that progress is now being scaled back. That landmark civil rights law made discrimination of the sale, rental, and financing of housing illegal for the first time. It was supposed to set us on the path of being a country in which everyone could find a safe, stable home--regardless of one's gender and regardless of one's race--and have access to opportunity. Yet, instead of getting us closer, the Trump administration is making things worse. It is trying to make it harder to root out policies and practices that have a hidden discriminatory effect on people by its cutting the decades-old disparate impact standard. The administration is rolling back the 2015 HUD rule that would have finally implemented the Fair Housing Act's requirement that we affirmatively further fair housing throughout our communities. President Trump's budget will only make the affordable housing crisis worse for families who are struggling in every community in this country. The administration would eliminate the funds that communities use to create and preserve affordable housing and that make homeownership possible for working families. The Community Development Block Grant is an example, as is the HOME Investment Partnership Program. The administration wants to cut the already insufficient Federal rental assistance we have. It wants to get rid of the funding for the housing trust fund and capital magnet fund--even though this funding comes from the GSEs, the government-sponsored enterprises, and not the Federal budget--to make it still harder to build homes and apartments that people can actually afford. To add insult to injury, the Trump administration proposes to make mortgages more expensive for working families in order to reduce the deficit that it created. We know we have trillion-dollar deficits now, even in times of growth with the economy, because of the tax cut that went overwhelmingly to the rich. The administration made these mortgages more expensive for working families in order to reduce the deficit it created and to supposedly level the playing field for Wall Street, as if Wall Street doesn't have enough advantages without our continuing to shovel money to it. We need to fight back. Any economic policy that doesn't put housing front and center ignores a family's biggest expense and biggest need. We see housing problems in Appalachian Ohio or in Toledo or in big coastal cities or in small towns. It is clear this is a national problem that needs a national response. I will keep hosting roundtables around Ohio so as to hear directly from Ohioans about the struggles they face. I invite Ohioans to go to my website, Brown.senate.gov, to share their stories about housing. They can do it with their names attached, or they can do it anonymously, but we value these stories. We have already gotten hundreds just out of these two roundtables, and with the attention around the roundtables, we have gotten hundreds of many heartbreaking stories and instructive stories and ideas for changes. We need to hear your struggles, and we need to hear your ideas. Congress cannot ignore these challenges. Whether people are in small towns or big cities, we cannot just let the administration take away the tools that we have and that we have used for years to try to make this better and to make people's lives better. If we want to make this country work better for everyone, we cannot shrink from these challenges. When work has dignity and when people live their lives with dignity, everyone can find and afford a safe place to call home. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, over and over, we see the President and Republicans in Congress trying to take healthcare away from people, particularly women. We see it with the President's lawsuits, trying to take away the consumer protections for preexisting conditions. We see the vote in the Senate--defeated by one vote, but a vote in the Senate--which would have scaled back the bipartisan Medicaid expansion in Ohio that my Republican Governor--I am a Democrat--and we did bipartisanly in Ohio. We have seen attempts by Republicans to take away healthcare then, and now we--especially just this week--see that with women's healthcare. That is what the bills we voted down this week were all about. They are about politicians putting themselves in the middle of the sacred doctor-patient relationship. It intimidates women, and it intimidates medical professionals. Doctors aren't sure what might happen to them in some cases. It takes away the freedom of women to make their own decisions. We defeated them earlier this week, but they are not letting up. They tried again to pass yet another bill that has only one purpose: stigmatizing women's healthcare. Supporters of these bills, including the President of the United States, have spread lies and misinformation. It is despicable. That is why doctors and medical experts alike oppose these bills. Think about these groups: the American College of Nurse-Midwives, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Medical Women's Association, the American Public Health Association--on whom we rely so much now on the coronavirus--the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, and the Association of Physician Assistants in Obstetrics and Gynecology. All of these organizations oppose this bill because they see it for what it is: a compromise of women's health. It is politicians, it is elected officials in this body, it is Leader McConnell from his office down the hall always playing to his interest groups, always playing politics. It is Senator McConnell and his allies getting between the patient--the woman--and her doctor, as if mostly male politicians should be making these decisions about women's lives and about the relationship between a woman and her doctor. All of these groups that I mentioned, again, the American College of Nurse-Midwives, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Women's Association, American Public Health Association--all of these groups have written in to oppose politicians interfering in the patient-provider relationship and the criminalizing of patient care. Do we want a bunch of male politicians, do we want people like President Trump and Vice President Pence from the Presiding Officer's home State, and do we want a bunch of politicians like Mitch McConnell--do we want them to be able to criminalize a doctor, get in the middle of a patient-doctor relationship and criminalize that? There is no question that is what this is about. They act as though they know better than you--a woman--and your doctor. It is nothing new. We have seen it over and over. We have seen Washington politicians, we see Columbus politicians in my State, most of them men, obsessed with trying to assert themselves into women's healthcare decisions. They can't help themselves. They just keep doing it. Those decisions should be and are between a woman and her doctor, period. It is time, if I can say this, that old men in Washington and in courtrooms and in State legislatures stop trying to take away women's healthcare, particularly when we have so much work to do in healthcare. We could be working instead of a bunch of votes--I mean, I understand; we know Senator McConnell is in his office down the hall, and we know what he does. We know he brings forward legislation to get his base excited, to make sure the most conservative voters in the country come out to vote. We know he does legislation all the time to help his big financial contributors--to help the drug companies, to help the insurance companies, to help the gun lobby. We know that is what Mitch McConnell does. Instead of trying to compromise women's health, take healthcare away, instead of eliminating consumer protections for preexisting conditions, he could actually do something about drug prices. We could be working to protect the millions of Americans with preexisting conditions. In this country, 10 years ago, we passed a bill which said that if you are sick--you are really sick--and you spend a lot of money on healthcare, your health insurance company in the past would just cut your insurance off and you were out of luck. You would then choose between going to the doctor or not and all that can happen or you go bankrupt. We changed that. The Affordable Care Act said: No, you can't. Just because you are sick and you are expensive, an insurance company can't take your insurance away. They can't cancel it. President Trump has tried for 3 years now to change that and take away those consumer protections. He has gotten support from Mitch McConnell and from virtually almost every--except for John McCain and a couple of other Senators from their side--almost every Republican in this Senate to say that it is OK to take away consumer protections for preexisting conditions. Instead of doing that, we could work to keep drug prices down. We could give tax credits to help people afford insurance. We could protect the ability to stay on your parents' healthcare. If you are 25 years old, you could be on your parents' health insurance. They are trying to take that away. They are trying to take Medicaid expansion away. They are trying to make limits on how much you pay out of pocket each year. Those are the kinds of things we should be agreeing on. Free preventive screening services--if you are a senior, if you are on Medicare, you can get free screening for osteoporosis, free screening for diabetes. The President and this Congress tried to take those services away. Five million Ohioans under 65 have preexisting conditions. Basically, if you are over 50 in this country, the chances are overwhelming that you have a preexisting condition. Do you want to lose those consumer protections? Of course not. Instead of making it harder for Ohio women to get the care they need, instead of tearing down the Affordable Care Act, let's make it stronger. Let's get drug prices under control. Let's tell American women we trust them; we trust them to make their own decisions. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, today I rise to honor Kimberly Hazelgrove for her service and sacrifices for our country and her successful efforts to advocate for families like her own who lost loved ones serving our Nation. Kimberly Hazelgrove is a former sergeant first class in the U.S. Army. In 2004, her husband, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Brian Hazelgrove was killed in a helicopter crash near Mosul, Iraq. That loss was devastating enough, but after his death, Ms. Hazelgrove also lost the military benefits her family earned serving the United States and that she needed to support her family. They lost those benefits because of a 1970s-era law that causes Gold Star families to lose out on financial benefits that their spouses paid into and earned. For 16 years, Ms. Hazelgrove advocated on Capitol Hill for the repeal of that law, the Survivor Benefit Plan-Disability and Indemnity Compensation offset, while raising her family as a single mother. She said, ``I was angry . . . Very angry for the inequities that I was seeing, not only for myself, but for a lot of my friends going through it and it just lit a fire, and I found a stronger voice than I had before.'' My office and I met with Ms. Hazelgrove and took up her cause. Gold Star families like hers have sacrificed so much for this country and nothing should get in the way of providing them with benefits that they have paid into and earned. We worked together with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to write legislation that will fix this, and this past December, because she never gave up, we got it done. We passed a fix in the Senate, and the President signed it into law. Because of Ms. Hazelgrove's perseverance and strong advocacy, 67,000 military spouses will now get the benefits they have earned to support themselves and their families. Thank you, Kimberly, for raising your voice and for all the work you do to fight for fellow Gold Star families. I am sure my Senate colleagues will join me in honoring Ms. Kimberly Hazelgrove for her exemplary efforts.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I rise to express my appreciation for the work of Securities and Exchange Commission: Robert J. Jackson, Jr. Commissioner Jackson stepped down earlier this month from the SEC, having served with distinction since December 2017. He returns to teaching, having made many valuable contributions to policy debates at the SEC and beyond. Mr. Jackson is no stranger to public service. Prior to his work at the SEC, he served in the Treasury Department as the Nation emerged from the financial crisis. Mr. Jackson has led by example, working diligently to ensure the SEC fulfills its three-part mission, particularly the protection of investors in an increasingly complex marketplace. As an outspoken voice on behalf of investors, Mr. Jackson stressed the importance of clear and sensible rules that put investors first, combined with a pragmatic understanding of how markets work. Mr. Jackson brought a law professor's analytical approach to his responsibilities as a Commissioner. His careful and thoughtful work digging through data, developing original research, and presenting it in a clear and insightful manner provided the SEC and other policymakers with critical information and a valuable perspective with which to consider some of the most difficult questions in securities laws. Over the years, Commissioner Jackson has been a leader on the issue of corporate political spending disclosure. He has helped to focus the conversation on how to think about reasonable and material disclosure as our political system has become awash in dark money. Similarly, Mr. Jackson's study of trends in stock buybacks and the potential for abuse by corporate executives raised many issues that merit additional consideration by regulators and lawmakers. I would like to lead my colleagues in wishing Mr. Jackson the best of luck as he returns to academia. I expect that he will continue his insightful research and scholarship to benefit investors and make markets more efficient. The SEC benefited from Commissioner Jackson's tenure, and we know his students will benefit, too.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from South Dakota. At the conclusion of President Trump's impeachment trial, I heard some of my Republican colleagues, most of whom I consider my friends, say that the President would be chastened by impeachment. Some of you told me you knew what he did was wrong. A number of Republicans told me they admit that he lies a lot. They would acknowledge extorting an ally for help in the 2020 Presidential campaign wasn't bad enough to rise to the level of warranting removal from office--even though Richard Nixon never did that; even though, just on the face of it, thinking of soliciting a bribe from a foreign country to help you in your reelection as President of the United States is worse than untoward. But you told me--many of you on the Republican side--that holding the trial was enough to check his bad behavior. You said things like this-- and these are quotes, but I will not mention who they were because they were private conversations. You said: ``I think he has learned he has to be maybe a little more judicious and careful.'' Some of you said these publicly too. A reporter asked another of you whether Trump might see acquittal as a license to do it again, and you responded: I don't think so. One of my colleagues said: ``I think he knows now that, if he is trying to do certain things . . . he needs to go through the proper channels.'' Another colleague said: ``The President has been impeached. That's a pretty big lesson. . . . I believe that he will be more cautious in the future.'' Well, the President learned a pretty big lesson. The lesson he learned--because everybody, every single person, from the majority leader down the hall to every Republican sitting at this desk and this desk and this desk--every Republican except for Mitt Romney voted to acquit. Every single Republican voted to acquit, so the lesson is he can do whatever he wants; he can abuse his office because he will never, ever be held accountable. One Republican had the courage to stand up and do it. Every other Republican sitting at these desks said to the President of the United States: Yeah, it is OK. You have learned your lesson. Yeah, your lesson is that you can do whatever you want and this body will never, ever hold you accountable. So do you know what? And I thank the Presiding Officer, by the way. Do you know what? The President went on what we call a PR tour--a personal retribution tour--starting at the prayer breakfast--the prayer breakfast--the next day when he attacked and he attacked and he attacked all kinds of people, continuing through to his speech in the East Room where many of my colleagues were in the audience clapping for the President when the President made these attacks on people. They say he will never do it again; even if we vote to acquit, he will never do it again. But then they clap for him when he starts his personal retribution tour. He removed Colonel Vindman, a patriot, a Purple Heart recipient who spent his life serving our country. He was an immigrant. He left the Soviet Union. He wanted freedom. He served in our country's military. The President, when he attacked Colonel Vindman, mocked his accent. He grew up speaking Ukrainian, and his English was damn near perfect when I have listened to him, but he had a bit of a Ukrainian accent. He mocked his accent. And then he suggested he could be subject to military prosecution. He removed Ambassador Sondland, who was a Trump appointee, after he testified to the quid pro quo. Yesterday, President Trump continued this PR tour--his personal retribution tour--interfering at the Department of Justice. I am not a lawyer. I know the Presiding Officer is. Most of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle are. But they know a President doesn't interfere with the Department of Justice. As part of his personal retribution tour, he is interfering there. He is strong-arming appointees to overrule the decision of career prosecutors. Do you know what? These career prosecutors withdrew in protest. One of them resigned from the Department--more on that later. Late last night, when the country's eyes were on the primary in New Hampshire, the President of the United States was on part of this retribution tour, and my colleagues had said: Oh, no, he has learned from impeachment. Well, he hasn't. He has learned he can get away with stuff. He yanked his own Treasury nominee, who was working on terrorist financing and financial crimes, former U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu, who had worked as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and had worked on, among other things, oversight of prosecutions from Special Counsel Mueller's investigations. The Treasury Department has offered zero explanation. I am going to get a chance in a few minutes to ask the Treasury Secretary, coming in front of my committee, why they are withdrawing her nomination 48 hours before her confirmation hearing. We can take a guess at why President Trump pulled down her nomination. She oversaw the U.S. attorneys prosecuting President Trump's criminal associates, his political operatives, like Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone. This is so obvious. There were people out there who displeased the President. One of them was doing his public duty. He is career military and had fled the Soviet Union. He was speaking under oath about what the President had done because he knew it was wrong to solicit a bribe from a foreign country. Another was a lawyer that oversaw the prosecution of some of the President's political operatives and political hacks--criminals, as it turned out. They oversaw the prosecution. The President is attacking them. The President is using his power to attack him. My colleagues--who sit at this desk, and this desk, and this desk, and this desk on the Senate floor--think it is OK to acquit him and then tell me that he is going to quit acting the way he acts. No sentient human being, including the Presiding Officer, would possibly think that way. Ms. Liu was scheduled to testify under oath before members of both parties at our hearing in the Banking Committee tomorrow morning. We need answers as to what she would have said. Were there discussions and decisions she was part of as U.S. attorney involving the President's associates that he didn't like? Was he afraid more would come out about the actions of some of the President's associates, the criminal actions? Was she aware of efforts by the President and his political appointees to interfere in the operation of our justice system? We need a swift and thorough DOJ inspector general investigation of these prosecutorial decisions. With every passing day, we don't see a humbled President. We see a President unleashed. Again, he didn't learn a lesson from impeachment. Actually, he learned a lesson from his acquittal. The lesson he learned is that he can do whatever he wants. He is a President unleashed. He is bent on turning the arms of a government that is supposed to serve the American people into his own personal vengeance operation--his own personal vengeance operation. I implore my colleagues: We can't let that stand. The Department of Justice is supposed to be impartial and immune from political influence, but it has become no more than a personal weapon, or it is becoming--it is not there yet, but it started to be--a personal weapon the President can unleash on his political enemies. As I said, I am not a lawyer, but I know enough to know the Department of Justice and the executive branch are not there to serve the President of the United States. The Department of Justice and the executive branch are there to serve the same people we do--the people of Ohio, the people of the Presiding Officer's State of Utah, the people of Maine, Iowa, Tennessee, and every State across this country. No one--no one--should be above the law. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the career and service of John Ferriola, who will retire at the end of this year after serving Nucor Steel for nearly three decades. Mr. Ferriola has served as CEO since 2013, and under his leadership, the company has grown and created thousands of good-paying manufacturing jobs here in the U.S. He worked to upgrade Nucor's facility in Marion, OH, with a new rolling mill that began operating this year. John has been a passionate advocate for American manufacturing and for a fairer trade policy that works for American workers and businesses. We worked together to pass the Leveling the Playing Field Act in 2015, the first strengthening of our trade remedy laws in more than two decades. That law has helped us win key trade cases for Ohio steel companies over the past 4 years. When John started at Nucor in 1991, it was a small steel company with just two mills. Last year, Nucor was the largest steel producer in the United States. John understands that workers in Ohio and around the U.S. are the engine behind that success. I look forward to continuing to our fight together for a fair trade policy that puts American workers first, and I wish John Ferriola all the best in his retirement.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, thank you, and I thank the Republican leader. Last month, while this body was trying, as we know--and failing--to hold the President accountable for betraying the American people, President Trump went to Davos, and he doubled down on another betrayal of the American people. While he was hobnobbing with the global elite in Switzerland, he let slip his plan, after his tax handouts to billionaires and corporations blew up the deficit--we know deficits now. Thanks to Republican governing, thanks to this President's tax cut and my Republican colleagues going along with this tax cut that went overwhelmingly to the wealthiest people in this country, the budget deficit has just skyrocketed. We know all that. President Trump now wants to pay for it by cutting Social Security and Medicare. He wants to pay for it by cutting Social Security and Medicare. Today we got President Trump's budget. This document makes it clear how he wants to pay for his tax scam--on the backs of working families and seniors. I want to start with one that is of special interest in Ohio. We all know that just in the last 2 or 3 years--well, starting soon after President Trump was elected and then over about a year-and-a-half period, the Lordstown auto plant--about 4,500 jobs--shut down. President Trump had promised those workers--he said to Mahoning Valley: Don't sell your homes. These jobs are coming back. This is going to work for us. And then the President Trump did absolutely nothing. The third shift was laid off. The second shift laid was off. The first shift was laid off. The plant closed, and there were 4,500 lost jobs. I have been working with Senator Portman--my Republican colleague-- and others on getting somebody to come into that plant. It will not just be the 4,500 good UAW jobs, but it could be, potentially, a good many jobs. There was a loan program that we and this company were going to use to make sure they could, if you will, reindustrialize part of the Lordstown complex. Well, the President's budget axed that plan, that loan program. We were counting on that as a way to replace some of those jobs that the President of the United States promised would come back, and now we can't even count on that. There is that. Then, in addition to the cuts to Medicare and Social Security, he is taking a sledgehammer to Medicaid, to food stamps, to investments in infrastructure, and support for rural communities and small towns. He wants to make it harder to clean up our drinking water and stop polluters. At a time when one in four renters spends more than half of their income in housing, he wants to make it harder to help families find and afford loans for a home. Pretty much the only ones who escaped unscathed, the only ones the President's budget acts didn't hit: corporations and their wealthy, unaccountable CEOs. To fund their tax cuts--again, the tax cuts 2 years ago--70 percent of the tax cuts went to the wealthiest 1 percent of people in this country. To pay for those tax cuts that have exploded the Federal budget deficit--you don't have to be an accountant like my friend from Wyoming to understand what has happened to this deficit--President Trump wants to ask more from families struggling to make ends meet, the families he promised to fight for, the families he has betrayed. He wants to ask more of seniors and people with disabilities and students and kids who need healthcare, all to pay for this tax scam. President Trump sold us a tax cut for working people, but the jig is up. We know people aren't seeing more money in their paychecks. People see Trump's tax scam for what it really was: a giveaway to corporations and the wealthiest, tiny sliver of the population. Remember the promises the President made that his tax law would mean raises for workers? He said it over and over. I was in the President's Cabinet room with the President and a handful of Senators from both parties. He promised, before it passed, With this tax bill, everybody will get a $4,000 raise, he said--well, not exactly true. He told workers last year, the month after he signed the law, You are going to start seeing a lot more money in your paycheck. One lie after another lie after another lie. Instead of investing in workers, corporations bought back trillions--literally, trillions--of dollars of their own stock to line investors' pockets. Meanwhile, the deficit exploded. We know what the corporate crowd's plan always is to deal with the deficit, every single time: cut taxes, blow a hole in the deficit, and then go back and pay for it by cuts to Social Security and Medicare. How do we know that is what they are going to do? Because they told us that is what they are going to do. In spring 2017, right after President Trump was elected, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by economist Martin Feldstein, who has built his career pushing tax cuts for his rich friends. Guess how he wanted President Trump to pay for his corporate giveaway? In those days, the President said, We will have so much economic growth that it will pay for itself. Well, the economic growth has been less in these 3 years of Trump than in the last 3 years of Obama, but that is not the point. The point is he said it would pay for itself. Well, Martin Feldstein didn't believe that. He knew. He said in this article that it will not pay for itself; it will pay a little bit. But he said the best way to do it is raise the Social Security retirement age. It looks like President Trump was listening to Martin Feldstein. It always comes back to whose side are you on. You stand with workers, or you stand with corporations. You stand with insurance companies, or you stand with patients. You stand with Wall Street, or you stand with consumers. Do you fight for Wall Street wealth? Or do you fight for the dignity of work? If you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work. The President promised to fight for American workers and their families. This budget he released today is the latest in a long line of broken promises and betrayals. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, over the past 3 weeks, we have heard from the House managers and the President's counsel regarding the facts of the case against President Donald Trump. Much like trials in Lorain and Lima and Lordstown, OH, or in Marietta, in Massillon, and in Marion, OH, we have seen the prosecution--in this case, the House managers--and the defense--in this case, the President's lawyers--present their cases. All 100 of us-- every one of us--are the jury. We took an oath to be impartial jurors. We all took an oath to be impartial jurors just like juries in Ohio and across America. But to some of my colleagues, that just appeared to be a joke. The great journalist Bill Moyers summed up the past 3 weeks: ``What we've just seen is the dictator of the Senate manipulating the impeachment process to save the demagogue in the White House whose political party has become the gravedigger of democracy.'' Let me say that again. ``What we have just seen is the dictator of the Senate manipulating the impeachment process to save the demagogue in the White House whose political party has become the gravedigger of democracy.'' Even before this trial began, Leader McConnell admitted out loud that he was coordinating the trial process with the White House. The leader of the Senate was coordinating with the White House on impeachment. I challenge him to show me one trial in my State of Ohio or his State of Kentucky where the jury coordinated with the defense lawyers. In a fair trial, the defense and prosecution would have been able to introduce evidence, to call witnesses, and to listen to testimony. Every other impeachment proceeding in the Senate for 250 years had witnesses. Some of them had dozens. We had zero. Leader McConnell rushed this trial through. He turned off cameras in this body so that the American public couldn't see the whole process. He restricted reporter access. We know reporters roam the halls to talk to Members of the House and Senate. He restricted access there. He twisted arms to make sure every Republican voted with him to block witnesses. He didn't get a couple of them, but he had enough to protect himself. The public already sees through it. This is a sham trial. I said from the beginning that I would keep an open mind. If there are witnesses who would exonerate the President, the American people need to hear from them. Over the course of this trial we heard mounting, overwhelming evidence that President Trump did something that not even Richard Nixon ever did: He extorted a foreign leader. He fired a career foreign service officer for rooting out corruption. He put his own Presidential campaign above our collective national security. The President said this is just hearsay, but he and the Republican leader, together with 51 of 53 Republican Senators, blocked every single potential witness we wanted to call. The President says it was hearsay. We knew there were witnesses who were in the room with President Trump. We didn't get to hear from them. We didn't hear from Ambassador Bolton. We didn't hear from interim Chief of Staff Mulvaney. We didn't hear from Secretary Pompeo. The Republican leader denied the American people the chance to hear all of them testify under oath. We have seen more information come to light each day, which builds on the pattern of facts laid out in great detail by the House managers. We have now heard tape recordings of the President of the United States telling associates to ``get rid of'' U.S. Ambassador Yovanovitch, a public servant who devoted her life to fighting corruption and promoting American ideals and foreign policy throughout her long, distinguished career at the State Department. With her removed from the post, it appears the President thought he would be able to compel our ally Ukraine to investigate President Trump's political opponent. Reporters have now revealed that Ambassador Bolton--again, a firsthand witness--outlined that the President did exactly what the Impeachment Articles allege: He withheld security assistance to an ally at war with Russia in exchange for a political favor. The Justice Department admits there are 24 emails showing the President's thinking on Ukraine assistance. But you know what? Senator McConnell, down the hall, will not allow us to see any of these 24 emails. Make no mistake, the full truth is going to come out. The Presiding Officer, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, they are all going to be embarrassed because they covered this up. It wasn't just the President and the Vice President and Secretary Pompeo and Chief of Staff Mulvaney; it was 51 Republican U.S. Senators, including the Presiding Officer, who is a new Member of this body, who covered up this evidence. It will come out this week. It will come out this month, this year, the year after that, for decades to come. And when the full truth comes out, we will be judged by our children and grandchildren. Without additional witnesses, we must judge based on the facts presented. The House managers made a clear, compelling case. In the middle of a war with Russia, the President froze $400 million in security assistance to Ukraine. He wanted an investigation into his 2020 political opponent. He refused a critical meeting with President Zelensky in the Oval Office. These actions don't promote our national security or the rule of law; they promote Donald Trump personally and his campaign. We know the President extorted President Zelensky. He asked the leader of a foreign government to help him. That is the definition of an abuse of power. That is why we have no choice--no choice--but to convict this President of abusing his office. All of us know this. To acquit would set a clear, dangerous precedent: If you abuse your office, it is OK. Congress will look the other way. This trial and these votes we are about to cast are about way more than just President Trump. They are about the future of democracy. It will send a message to this President--or whomever we elect in November--and to all future Presidents. It will be heard around the world--our verdict--by our allies and enemies alike, especially the Russians. Are we going to roll out the welcome mat to our adversaries to interfere in our elections? Are we going to give a green light to the President of the United States to base our country's foreign policy not on our collective, agreed-upon national security or that of our allies, like Ukraine, but on the President's personal political campaign? These are the issues at stake. If we don't hold this President accountable for abuse of office, if no one in his own party, if no one on this side of the aisle--no one--has the backbone to stand up and say ``stop,'' there is no question it will get worse. How do I know that? I have heard it from a number of my Republican colleagues when, privately, they will tell me, yes, we are concerned about what the President is going to do if he is exonerated. I was particularly appalled by the words of Mr. Dershowitz. He said: ``If a President does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.'' Think about that for a moment. If the President thinks it is OK, he thinks it is going to help his election, and he thinks his election is in the public interest, then it is OK; the President can break any law, can funnel taxpayer money toward his reelection, can turn the arm of the State against his political enemies and not be held accountable. That is what this claim comes down to. Remember the words of Richard Nixon: ``When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.'' Our country rejected that argument during Watergate. We had a Republican Party with principle in those days and Senators with backbone, and they told that President to resign because nobody is above the State; nobody is above the law. If we have a President who can turn the Office of the Presidency and the entire executive branch into his own political campaign operation, God help us. My colleagues think I am exaggerating. We don't have the option to vote in favor of some arguments made during the trial and not others. Mr. Dershowitz's words will live forever in the historical record. If they are allowed to stand beside a ``not guilty'' verdict--make no mistake--they will be used as precedent by future aspiring autocrats. In the words of House Manager Schiff, ``that way madness lies.'' I know some of my colleagues agree this sets a dangerous precedent. Some of you have admitted to me that you are troubled by the President's behavior. You know he is reckless. You know he lies. You know what he did was wrong. I have heard Republican after Republican after Republican Senator tell me that privately. If you acknowledge that, if you have said it to me, if you said it to your family, if you said it to your staff, if you just said it to yourself, I implore you, we have no choice but to vote to convict. What are my colleagues afraid of? I think about the words of Adam Schiff in this Chamber on Tuesday: ``If you find that the House has proved its case and still vote to acquit''--if you still vote to acquit--``your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel and for all of history.'' ``[Y]our name will be tied to his with a cord of steel and for all of history.'' So I ask my colleagues again: What are you afraid of? One of our American fundamental values is that we have no Kings, no nobility, no oligarchs. No matter how rich, no matter how powerful, no matter how much money you give to Mitch McConnell's super PAC, everyone can and should be held accountable. I hope my colleagues remember that. I hope they will choose courage over fear. I hope they will choose country over party. I hope they will join me in holding this President accountable to the American people we all took an oath to serve. We know this: Americans are watching. They will not forget. I will close with quoting, again, Bill Moyers, a longtime journalist: ``What we have just seen is the dictator of the Senate manipulating the impeachment process to save the demagogue in the White House whose political party has become the gravedigger of democracy.'' I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle know better. I hope they vote what they really know.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. Chief Justice, on behalf of Senator Wyden and myself, I send a question to the desk for the House managers.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. Chief Justice, I send a question to the desk on behalf of Senators Casey, Klobuchar, Warren, and Wyden for the House managers.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, tomorrow I will do something I have never done in my time in the House and Senate. I will vote for a trade agreement for the first time in my career. I am voting for that trade agreement because of the work my colleague from Oregon Senator Wyden and I did to fix President Trump's deal and secure new protections for American workers for the first time ever, in spite of the President's intransigence, in spite of the President's lining up, as he always does, with corporate interests. Our trade agreement, for the first time ever--ever--put workers at the center of this agreement. Every trade agreement I have seen in my time in Congress--the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Central America Free Trade Agreement, the trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea, and Panama, the permanent normal trade relation with China--one after another, every one of these trade agreements, every one of these trade actions were written fundamentally in secret by corporate interests to serve corporate interests. Workers were never at the center of these trade agreements. One of my proudest votes in the House was against the North American Free Trade Agreement. I have voted no ever since. Again, it is because all of these trade agreements were written by corporations to maximize profits and compensation for executives and to enrich stockholders, always at the expense of workers and at the expense of communities like Mansfield, Portsmouth, Toledo, and Youngstown, OH. I was talking to a friend of mine in Trumbull County, former Senator Cafaro. She knows what has happened with these trade agreements. We all know how they undermine communities and hurt workers, always, again, because these trade agreements were written by corporations in secret. We have watched the spread of the corporate business model because of NAFTA and these trade agreements and because of the Trump tax policies, where you pay a lower tax rate if you move overseas than you pay in the United States, and in spite of, in those days, Ranking Member Wyden's efforts to stop those kinds of tax breaks that go to the richest people in the country. With those business models, you shut down production in Lima or in Zanesville or in Cleveland, OH. You get a tax break, you move overseas, and then you sell your products back in the United States. That has been the business model based on our trade policy for years. Candidate Trump promised something different. He promised to renegotiate NAFTA. The problem is, when he put his agreement in front of us, it was the same old, same old. They were the same old economic policies that, again, put corporate interests in the center of this trade agreement. It was a trade policy that was like all of our trade policies in the past. Over and over again, this President has betrayed workers, from tax giveaways to corporations, to his judges who put their thumbs on the scale, always supporting corporate interests and putting corporations over workers and always supporting Wall Street over consumers. As we know, down the hall, where Senator McConnell's office is-- almost every day he walks down here to try to confirm far-right extremist judges, always young judges who do that same thing: put their thumb on the scales of justice, always supporting corporations over workers. As I said, last year, we got an initial draft of President Trump's agreement. It was another betrayal. His first NAFTA draft was nowhere near the good deal that the President promised. He had negotiated, pure and simple, another corporate trade deal. It meant nothing for workers, and it was a sellout to drug companies. In fact, the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives, except on Tuesdays and Fridays, when the White House looks like a retreat for drug company executives. It took us--Senator Wyden and Speaker Pelosi and unions--months and months and months working together to improve this deal. The President resisted and resisted and resisted, but we finally approved a deal to put workers at the center of our trade policy. We have a provision that Senator Wyden and I will talk about that says violence against workers is a violation of the agreement. It might sound obvious, but it has never been in a trade deal before. For the first time ever, we spell out workers' right to strike. Again, it should be obvious, but it was never included before. If the workers don't have that right to strike--not something workers want to do very often, if ever. My wife, whose dad was a utility worker in the union for 35 years, talks about growing up. They went on strike twice when she was a kid. Workers never really recover from a strike, but sometimes they have to. It needs to be in trade agreements to make sure workers' rights are protected. We have improved some of the legalese that, since the beginning, has been included in our trade agreements to make it nearly impossible to win a case when a country violates its labor commitments. Most importantly, we secured our Brown-Wyden provision that amounts to the strongest ever labor enforcement--ever--in a U.S. trade deal. The provision Senator Wyden and I wrote and fought for is the first improvement to enforcing the labor standards in our trade agreements since we have been negotiating them. We know why companies close factories in Ohio, in Oregon, and open them in Mexico. They pay lower wages, and they take advantage of workers who don't have rights. They have weaker and nonexistent environmental laws. American workers can't compete when companies move overseas and exploit low-wage workers. We essentially get a race to the bottom on wages. The only way to stop this is by raising labor standards in every country we buy and sell to and in every country with which we trade and export and import, raising labor standards, making sure those standards are actually enforced. If corporations are forced to pay workers a living wage and treat them with dignity and really honor the dignity of work no matter where those workers are located, then we take away the incentives to move jobs overseas. Think about this. The missions of companies in the United States state--it is sort of the business practice of shutting down production in Niles, OH, and moving it overseas. They will be less likely to do that if the workers overseas are paid decent wages. Then those workers will be able to buy our products because they are more likely to be in the middle class. That is what Brown-Wyden is all about. It is a completely new way of holding corporations accountable. A worker in Mexico will be able to report if a company violated their rights. Within months, we can determine whether workers' rights have been violated, and we take action against that company. We apply punitive damages when companies cheat, break the law, stop workers from organizing, and if they keep doing it, the final strong enforcement is we stop their goods from coming into the United States. In essence, we say: OK. You are cheating. You are breaking the law. You are violating your workers' rights. You are not going to have access to the U.S. market. That is enforcement. When Mexican workers have the power to form real unions and negotiate for higher wages, it helps our workers. Mexican workers right now can be paid as little as $6.50 a day. The minimum wage per hour in our country--in Tennessee, Oregon, and Ohio--is higher than that. This is $6.50 a day. We have been asking American workers to compete with that. We have already heard some critics say Brown-Wyden will force Mexican wages to rise. I know a lot of CEOs who make $7 million, $8 million year who want to keep wages low in other countries. They accuse us of forcing Mexican wages to rise. That is kind of the point. That is what we want to do because it takes away incentives for those CEOs--those $7 million, $8 million, $9 million-a-year CEOs in America--from looking abroad to hire cheap labor and to exploit workers and make more money for themselves. I want to especially thank Senator Wyden and his staff. Without his endorsing the proposal and without his pushing aggressively, we would not be here. I want to be clear, though. We will be straight with American workers. It is not a perfect agreement. One trade deal that the Democrats fixed, over the President's opposition, is not going to bring back auto plants like the President promises. I have real concerns that the auto rules of origin are much weaker than the administration says they are. We know the administration always exaggerates its successes and doesn't tell the truth about many of the things it does. We know that this trade agreement was a corporate trade agreement and not a worker trade agreement. Now workers are at the center. We will be watching the President. He needs to ensure companies actually comply with these rules. I will demand we strengthen them if we need to. One trade deal the Democrats fixed also will not undo the rest of President Trump's economic policies. It is a policy that, as I said, put corporations over workers. We haven't raised the minimum wage because the President is opposed. The President took overtime pay away from 50,000 Ohioans by changing the rule on how overtime is paid. This deal is not going to fix all that. This USMCA is not going to stop outsourcing when we have President Trump's tax plan that gives companies a tax break to send jobs overseas. I am going to keep fighting President Trump's corporate trade policies and tax policy, just as we did with this agreement. We have more work to do to make our trade agreements more pro-worker. I will vote yes. As I said at the outset, I will vote yes for the first time ever on a trade agreement because, by including Brown-Wyden, Democrats have taken another corporate trade deal brought to us by President Trump and Democrats have made this agreement much more pro- worker. As the Senator from Oregon knows, we have set an important precedent that Brown-Wyden will be included--must be included--in every future trade agreement.

Mr. BROWN. I thank Senator Wyden. I thank him for his help in putting this all together. Not even close. We have seen trade agreement after trade agreement that simply is not--even when labor standards look fairly strong, they are not ever really enforceable. Part of what we recognized--we went back and looked at what happened after NAFTA was passed, and not just what people promised but what happened with NAFTA and what happened with CAFTA. We have seen that, with any attempts at labor enforcement, the companies or the governments that don't want to enforce labor laws find a way, as lawyers are very good at doing, of just taking forever. They slow-walk. So whenever you push them to do something, they end up staying in court. There was a Central American case in Guatemala, I believe, that went on for 7 or 8 years. You know the old saying: Justice delayed is justice denied. You can't really get enforcement if the people who have done the violation, who have committed the violation, take forever. So speed is one of the things. Mr. Wyden mentioned at the outset how important that is. Another part of it is and one of the things we knew would speed it up, No. 1, and would mean that enforcement would work was that the workers would have an ability to kick off the investigation, to literally call a toll-free number. They can register that they have seen child labor violations; that they have seen workers attacked, violence aimed against workers; that they have seen wages denied for all kinds of illegal reasons. So workers can speak out and band together and go to a panel and get quick action. If a company keeps doing it--we found cases where a company would get a little slap on the wrist. They would do it again and get a slap on the wrist and then do it again. So what we did was we increased the penalties. The first time, they get fined. The fine is proportional to the violation, so it is not a huge penalty. The second time, it is more. The third time, we can deny that company NAFTA benefits if they sell in the United States. Essentially, if you break the law, if you attack workers, if you keep out the union illegally, if you deny pay to workers who have earned it, you are going to see your market dry up in the United States. That is the best incentive to stop. We literally keep the product out of the market, out of the United States, if you are a serial cheater and a company that does that to its workers.

Mr. BROWN. Yes. Whether it is a call center or an auto factory, if the violations occur and there is evidence that there are violations-- and in many cases, we know about them because workers have spoken out-- then inspectors can go into those factories. One of the outcomes of this: We know corporations don't want that kind of punishment. We know corporations don't want to see inspectors there looking at their businesses because there have been legitimate, reasonable accusations of lawbreaking. So that is going to mean that corporations will probably quit breaking the law. Those corporations that have decided to move to Mexico because it is easy to evade labor laws and they can pay low wages, when they see we mean business, when they see the USMCA--Senator Wyden and I took an agreement that was another corporate trade agreement handed down by President Trump and fixed it, so it has these strong labor provisions. When they see that we mean business, that we are going to enforce these labor laws, and that we are going to pass an agreement that works for workers, some companies are going to think twice about shutting down production in Youngstown, Marietta, Toledo, or Dayton and moving overseas. That is part of the goal of this enforcement too.

Mr. BROWN. First let me talk for a second about a sector that is very important in my part of the country: the auto sector. If a company cheats in an auto facility in a Mexican community and we find labor violations and we take action against that company, the action is not against just that company's facility in that community. If a company cheats its workers and has broken the law on any number of labor violations, that applies to any product that company ultimately sends in from any one of its factories in Mexico. It addresses sort of the Whac-A-Mole kind of attempts companies might have: Well, they cheat there, but they bring in products from somewhere else. We look at that in a pretty broad way. Fundamentally, it works this way: If we find a violation, first, there is a fine, and the fine is essentially proportionate to the violation, meaning that it is not as punitive. The first offense is not especially punitive. The second and the third offense get more serious. For the second offense, the fine is much greater--beyond proportionality, if you will. The third offense is when we step in and deny them NAFTA benefits, deny them access to our markets, and deny them the breaks they get under NAFTA at the border on the tariffs. So if it is a violation of labor law, by the third violation, the enforcement and the penalties are such that the companies are going to quit doing it. I mean, that is the whole point. I don't want to levy these fines. I want companies to obey the labor law that the Mexican Government has passed in their new labor law and that are under the NAFTA agreement.

Mr. BROWN. Correct, from that factory and also from other factories owned by the same automaker, so that you can't cheat one place and expect to get all your autos into the United States without tariffs. We thought a lot about this. Over the last 20 years, we looked at what has happened. We looked back over the last couple of decades, working with the very good Democratic staff of the Finance Committee and with our office, and found every possible example we could on how violations occur and how you stop those violations. So we built in a process. It is pretty complicated, and it took a while. As I said, the President handed down another corporate trade agreement that helps corporations at the expense of workers, and we weren't going to let that happen this time. That is why the Trump USMCA took a long time to pass--because for a whole year, they were resistant to good labor enforcement. They wanted to help their corporate buddies. Senator Wyden will remember that there was a provision in there to help the drug companies, a big giveaway to the drug companies. We said no to that. Speaker Pelosi said no to that. We stripped that out of the agreement. We wanted this agreement to center on workers--not to help the drug companies, not to help Wall Street, not to help and encourage those companies that outsource jobs.

Mr. BROWN. I saw this when Senator Wyden and I announced the success of getting Brown-Wyden into the bill. I heard from a lot of--shall we say--pro-Trump, pro-corporate lawmakers in this body, mostly on that side of the aisle but all over. They were pretty angry because they thought this was going to be another trade agreement--USMCA was going to be another trade agreement written by corporations, mostly written in secret, that will serve corporate interests, that will pad the bottom line, that will help million-dollar-a-year executives make multimillion dollars a year, that will help their major stockholders and will ignore workers. They were fine with that because that is too often what this body does. They found that--oh, my gosh--this trade agreement actually puts workers at the center. That was, I know, your goal and my goal. That is why people at your town meetings in Eugene and Portland and Bend and all over Oregon are going to hear from you about how this will help the middle class, fundamentally. I appreciate the time.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to honor a dedicated public servant whom we tragically lost last week, Chris Allen. Chris served in the Senate for nearly a decade, most recently on Senator Grassley's staff. I appreciate that Senator Grassley happens to be presiding right now as the President pro tem of the Senate. Chris was a leader in our efforts to solve the pension crisis that threatens the retirement security of more than a million Americans, including a number of people in the Galleries today. My staff and I got to know him well while working together to find a bipartisan solution. He was part of what we consider to be a sort of pensions family in the Senate. We didn't always agree, but Chris always understood the stakes. He took this crisis seriously. He knew it affected people's lives in the most central way. He understood what collective bargaining was about--meaning, you give money up today in wages to protect your future. He was committed to finding a solution. Most importantly, as Senator Grassley knows, he always treated the retirees with dignity, and he respected their work. He understood what this retirement crisis meant to those families and the pressures they were under. In 2018, when we worked together with him and Senator Grassley's staff and Chairman Hatch and Senator Portman on our bipartisan pensions committee, we held a field hearing in Columbus in order to hear directly from current workers, retirees, and small businesses. Chris came to Ohio for the entire field hearing. He didn't have to, and a lot of staff members didn't. Yet he understood how important it was to talk to the people whose livelihoods were at stake in this crisis. Workers and retirees came from all over Ohio. Companies that had often been in business for 100 years came from all over the region for that hearing. We had a 25,000-person rally outside the Ohio State Capitol. I would add again that a number of people in the Galleries today were at that rally. Our staff was a little nervous about how Chris might react when he saw that, for his boss had had some disagreements with these folks in the best way to find a solution. Yet Chris just looked at that sea of people and said: ``That's cool.'' That empathy was a part of who he was. He was responsive. He was kind and thoughtful. He embodied the decorum of what the Senate should be. He wasn't interested in partisan warfare. At a time when too many people retreat to their partisan corners, that was not Chris Allen. That spirit of cooperation and of mutual respect will be missed more than ever. He was dedicated to his work. He was dedicated to the people whom our work affects. He would meet for hours and do whatever it took to work toward a solution. The only thing he stopped for was his family. Chris was a devoted father to his two daughters, Lucie and Sophie. Connie's and my hearts go out to them and to Lynda, Chris' wife. I know nothing we can say could erase the pain of the sudden death of a father and a husband so young. I hope they take some comfort in knowing how many lives, starting with Senator Grassley's, Chris touched. We miss him. We will continue to fight for a bipartisan solution that honors Chris' memory and protects the pensions that American workers have earned over a lifetime of work.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, last week, the Senate Finance Committee voted on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. It is called USMCA. I did something I have never done. I voted for it. I have never voted for a trade agreement in my time in the House of Representatives and my time in the Senate. In fact, I helped to lead the opposition to the original NAFTA among freshmen Members of Congress because I recognized that every single one of these trade agreements basically had the template of corporate interests at the center of them. In other words, these trade agreements--whether it was NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, whether a half generation later it was the Central America Free Trade Agreement, whether it was the free trade agreement with South Korea, or whether it was the Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China--all of them were written by corporate interests serving the profitability of the executives and the major stockholders of these companies. They all tended to precipitate this under these trade agreements in this Congress, under Presidents of both parties, I might add. I disagreed with the first President Bush, then President Clinton, then the second President Bush, and then President Obama. All of them would submit trade agreements that were written for corporate interests, I believe, at the expense of workers. What happened, typically, was that companies that lobbied Congress to pass these trade agreements would shut down production in Provo, UT, in the Presiding Officer's State, or Cleveland or Dayton, in my State. They would shut down production there, move their production overseas, get their tax breaks, and get their low-wage labor, often worked on by--almost always--nonunion workers, sometimes underage workers who were very inexpensive. The products would be manufactured and then sold back into the United States. That became the business model for company after company after company since the North American Free Trade Agreement, where corporations outsourced jobs in order to save money, always at the expense of communities, particularly in the industrial Midwest, always at the expense of workers, and always at the expense of the middle class. It was welcome news to me when Candidate Trump, with whom I agree with on almost nothing, said he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. So I tried to work with him. I told him that I supported his renegotiation. I worked with Ambassador Lighthizer, the Trade Representative, the Ambassador for President Trump--the so-called U.S. Trade Representative. I said to them that we want workers to be the centerpiece of this trade agreement. Well, what happened? A year into his Presidency, President Trump proposed the same kind of trade agreement that we had seen all along--a trade agreement where corporations were at the center of the agreement and workers were betrayed. This is a President who has betrayed workers day after day after day. He refused to raise the minimum wage. He cut overtime pay for 50,000 Ohio workers. He put people in the courts who put a thumb on the scales of justice, choosing corporations over workers and choosing Wall Street over consumers. It is a White House that looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives except on Tuesdays and Fridays, when it looks like a retreat for a drug company executive. That is what the President proposed. Speaker Pelosi, Senator Wyden and I, and worker representatives--the AFL-CIO, the UAW, the CWA, the machinists, and the steelworkers--all said: No, we are not going to support another trade agreement that sends jobs overseas. We want a trade agreement written for workers. We said to the President and the President's Trade Representative: We are not going to support this unless you include strong labor enforcement standards for workers. They basically ignored us. We had tried to work with them. They basically ignored us. They insisted we pass their bill. Finally, after a year--more than a year--the administration came along kicking and screaming and agreed with us only because they knew they couldn't pass a trade agreement without it. It took the language that Senator Wyden and I submitted for workers. It works in this way: For the first time, a worker is empowered to challenge the violation of labor law. So a Mexican worker, where the company has broken the law by paying them a sub-minimum wage, where the company has broken the law by refusing them to organize or to allow unions to attempt to organize, where a company breaks the law on worker safety--a worker at that company, anonymously, at that worksite, can file a complaint and set off the clock of the process so we can actually challenge when they break the law. We know why companies close factories in Ohio and in the State of my friend from Rhode Island, in Cranston, RI. They close factories and open them in Mexico because they can pay lower wages, and they can take advantage of workers who don't have rights. American workers can't compete with that. We know that, and we get a race to the bottom on wages. What this agreement does is that it puts workers at the center. It allows for real labor enforcement, real enforcement of labor standards. So I voted for this agreement. It passed with only three ``no'' votes in the Senate committee. It will likely pass on the floor either this week or next week. But I want to be straight with American workers. This isn't a perfect agreement. It is one trade deal that Democrats fixed. Democrats and labor fixed it. Republicans opposed the fix but are now voting for it because they still want USMCA, but it will not fix the rest of President Trump's economic policies that put corporations over workers. Let me give you an example. If you are a company in Dayton, OH, you pay a 21-percent corporate tax rate. If you move to Mexico or you move to France or you move to China, you pay only a 10.5-percent corporate tax rate. So our government continues this because of President Trump's tax bill, the tax bill that caused us now to have a trillion-dollar-a- year deficit--the largest deficit we have had, except in times of recession. That tax bill still will make it attractive for companies to shut down and move overseas. This helps with that. As I said, I voted yes for the first time on a trade agreement because by including Brown-Wyden, Democrats have made this agreement, for the first time, pro-worker. We set an important precedent that, from now on, every trade agreement we negotiate--and, I believe, negotiated by Presidents in either party--will include language like Brown-Wyden, making sure that workers are at the table and that trade agreements look out for workers, unlike trade agreements in the past. I yield the floor.