Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor Mr. Todd Portune, a dedicated public servant, who has spent his career serving the people of Cincinnati with dedication and enthusiasm. Commissioner Portune is retiring from politics following this term after more than a quarter century of service, and I know how much he will be missed by the people of Southwest Ohio. Commissioner Portune was born in Cincinnati and from an early age was known for his work ethic. Throughout his education, Commissioner Portune remained in Ohio, graduating from Colerain High School, Oberlin College, and serving as the president of the Student Bar Association at the University of Cincinnati Law School. Commissioner Portune's leadership embodies good government in action. He helped lead the way in improving public health, from working to reduce infant mortality to expanding oral and dental care. Through projects to increase housing and job opportunities and secure funding for local first responders, he consistently focused on what he believed to be the fundamental goal of public service: to improve people's lives. His service, from four terms in Cincinnati City Council to six terms as Hamilton County commissioner, inspired many to stand up for what they believe in. Commissioner Portune's fight for human rights will be a lasting part of his legacy. He advocated for LGBTQ rights before it was popular, and he always supported disability inclusion, those battling with addiction, and people without a voice in government. His political triumphs can only be matched this his incredible personal tenacity throughout every obstacle thrown his way. But no matter what, he focused on serving the people in his beloved county. Commissioner Portune will be remembered for his good humor, passion for public service, and strength to endure battles of all kinds. I ask my Senate colleagues to join me in thanking him for his service to our community and our State.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Kaine for his work on this and speaking out on it. It is an issue of justice, an issue of fairness, and an issue that--I mean, how can you be against this? I don't even pretend to understand it. Senator Smith, who is still relatively new to this body, has taken a leadership role on an issue that is as important in terms of human rights as any I can imagine this body has taken up, this fight for Federal contract workers who suffered because of President Trump's disastrous shutdown earlier this year. When you think about this, these are workers making $8, $10, and $12--I know most of my colleagues don't know anybody--well, actually, they know people who make $8, $10, and $12 an hour, they have just never actually asked them their names and talked to them about their lives to find that out. We dress well. We have great healthcare benefits. We have good wages here, and most of the people who serve us: the cafeteria workers here, the people who come in at night when we leave and clean our offices--in this case, many of them are Federal employees, but some of them are contract employees. That simply means-- go to the Cleveland airport and talk to the people who drive the carts taking people to and from their planes or talk to the people who push the wheelchairs of people who have a little trouble getting on and off the planes. Those people don't work for United Airlines. They don't work for Cleveland Hopkins airport or Dulles or National or the airport in whatever it is called--sorry, Senator Smith--in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. They work for contractors so often, and those are the people we are talking about. Those are the people who are ignored. They are making $8, $10, $12 an hour. We don't pay attention to them in this body. We don't know their names. We don't speak for them too often. Senator Smith, Senator Kaine, and I are speaking for them because we know what happened to them. I think Americans don't realize that thousands of janitors and cafeteria workers and security guards spent weeks out of work because of Trump's disastrous shutdown. They are employed by private contractors, not the government, and they are paid too little to begin with, and they have no way of making up those lost hours and lost wages. Missing a paycheck--you know, a lot of people in this country can absorb missing a paycheck if they are in the 1 percent or the 2 percent or the 5 percent or the 10 percent wealthiest people, certainly the billionaire President and his multimillionaire--except for those Cabinet members who are billionaires--Cabinet with their massive investment portfolios. But for most Americans--most Americans--missing a paycheck is a big deal. The President doesn't understand and doesn't seem to care to understand that working people couldn't just send a letter to creditors, saying: Please excuse me this month, Mr. Landlord or Ms. Landlord, from paying rent or paying my mortgage or paying for my medications at the local CVS. They take money out of their savings, if they have any savings. It is awfully hard to have savings at $10, $12, and $14 an hour. They take money out of those savings. Or, more likely, in the case of these contractors who earn $10, $12 and $14 an hour, they turn to family members; they run up their credit cards; they go to payday lenders; and they never get out from under that, as you know. Some of them--many, many of them--are still dealing with the debt. I remember talking to cafeteria workers in Senator Kaine's State in Arlington. Federal contractor workers who serve food in our Smithsonian museums are not Federal workers. Most people who go to the Smithsonian figure people who are serving the food and cleaning the place or cleaning the offices and exhibits are probably government employees, but they are not. One worker told me: I have to pay rent, and I have other bills. I have a college student in his second semester, and he needs help with his books. The president of one SEIU local, which represents janitors and security officers, said that those workers and their families ``will continue to relive the trauma on a daily basis until they are compensated for 35 days of income''--35 days of income they went without. They are already living on the edge, and this body, because of its inaction, because of its head in the sand, because of its--pardon my language--boneheadedness, simply ignores them and just washes their hands. They say, ``I don't know who they are, and I don't know their names, so we are not going to do anything to help them,'' even though it was the Trump shutdown that betrayed these workers. The same President betrays workers by denying the overtime pay they have earned. The same President puts people in the Supreme Court who put their thumb on the scale of justice always to support corporations over workers, always to support Wall Street over consumers, and always to support health insurance companies over patients. Put on top of that the Trump tax cuts--a massive giveaway to the wealthiest 1 percent. I spoke to a group of union members today. They want a transportation bill. They want an infrastructure bill. They know what the bridge looks like connecting my State in Cincinnati over the Ohio River with that of the Republican leader down the hall--Senator McConnell's State. They know the needs there. I have to say, we got no money because of this tax cut that my friends over here voted for, most of which went to the wealthiest 1 percent. Because of the Trump shutdown, these workers we are talking about went without paychecks. He has done nothing to fix it. It comes back to the dignity of work. All work has dignity. Dr. King said that no job is menial if it pays an adequate wage, but it also means getting to go to work every day and earning that pay. For these contract workers, their work has dignity. If the President understood that, he would make sure they would get their paychecks. The House already passed backpay for contractors 4 months ago. I ask my colleagues to join us on Senator Smith's amendment because if you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work. (Mr. CRUZ assumed the Chair). Amendment 1088

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to speak about Amendment 1088, which I introduced with Senator Jones. The amendment is straightforward. It provides $5 million to fund Centers of Excellence at 1890 land-grant universities. This amendment--I want to underscore this--includes an offset. Let me tell you why I introduced this. The authorization for these Centers of Excellence was included in the 2018 farm bill. I offered it as an amendment in the Senate Agriculture Committee. It could be critical for schools like Central State, west of Columbus, in Ohio. The chairman and the ranking member of the Ag Committee supported it. The Senate majority leader supported it, as did the chair of the Ag Appropriations Subcommittee. The entire committee supported it. It passed by a voice vote. Then we passed the farm bill and sent it to the President. We got 87 votes from this body for the farm bill. That is more than ever, I believe, any farm bill has ever passed the Senate. These centers will focus on important challenges facing the agriculture sector and its workforce. I ask unanimous consent that the letter of support from Dr. Kent Smith, president of Langston University in Oklahoma on behalf of the Council of 1890 University Presidents, be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN. Dr. Smith notes that they have been promised these Centers of Excellence for 30 years. The Senate needs to act, and it needs to include my amendment to right this wrong. I remind my colleagues that the 1890 land grants were created because many States, rather than allowing African-American students to attend the 1862 land-grant universities, decided to set up, in the name of segregation in those States, a separate system of colleges and universities. The 1890s schools, as my colleagues know, despite providing a pathway to the middle class for generations of mostly African-American students, have been ignored or, at best, underfunded since their creation. I have tried to figure out why my amendment is not just automatically set. Again, it was authorized by the Agriculture Committee; it passed the Senate unanimously; it was signed by the President. Why isn't this amendment acceptable? The majority can't be opposed because the House funded this program; the majority has cleared amendments that duplicate House money. It can't be because my amendment is too expensive, as the majority, I am told, is willing to clear a Thune-Hoeven amendment that funds Tribal colleges--which is a good thing--at the same level as my amendment. I have worked with the committee to find an offset for my amendment, and even though the authorization is for $10 million a year, at the committee's urging, I have reduced it to $5 million, and still, for whatever reason, they can't see clear to support this. I know if this came up for a floor vote, we would pass it overwhelmingly. I don't know why we need to do that rather than just accept this. I urge my colleagues to include this commonsense, fully paid-for amendment in the appropriations bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 minutes.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I just came from a rally--a meeting--with more or less 100 middle-class workers from Wisconsin, West Virginia, my State of Ohio, and all over the country. There were teamsters and mineworkers dressed in camo shirts. There were also bakery and confectionery workers, carpenters, and electricians. They were here because many of them--maybe all of them--are about to lose 50 percent of their pensions. They are about to lose their pensions because 10 years ago, in the end days of the Bush administration, which was when our economy plummeted and people were losing jobs--800,000 jobs a month in the last months of the Bush administration--and when companies were going out of business, a lot of the employers of these workers went out of business. When you put on top of that the Wall Street greed, you can see why these pensions are in jeopardy. Too often in this town, the White House, frankly, and my Senate colleagues don't understand what collective bargaining is about. Collective bargaining is negotiating at the bargaining table the giving up of wages today so as to put money aside and have pensions and healthcare in the future. That is what these workers did, these teamsters and these confection workers and these ironworkers. That is what they did, but they are paying a price. There is nothing they did to cause this, but they are paying a price. Now, parenthetically, this body fell all over itself to bail out Wall Street and to help the big auto companies, and look how they are paying back their workers. This body, the President--all of them are fine with bailing out the big guys. Yet the President has been absent, and the Senate Republican leadership has been absent. The exception is that Senator Portman has been working with me, as has Senator Hoeven and others, but the leadership has been absent with regard to trying to fix this pension issue. You love your country, and you fight for the people who make it work. You fight for the dignity of work, which means honoring and respecting work. We have to do better. Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2254 Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 2254, the Butch Lewis Act; that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Grassley, and we will be working together on this. I just want to point out that there was, of course, some mismanagement. As does the Senator, I want to fix some of the structural issues, but time is of the essence. I understand this is not happening today, but time is of the essence with regard to these pensions, especially for the mineworkers. Those for the teamsters are next and for the others in the Central States. As Chairman Grassley knows, it will get worse and worse and worse if we don't get this done this year. I do want to emphasize, while there of course is some mismanagement of funds here, the preponderance of the problem is that a bunch of mining companies, construction companies, and transportation companies went out of business with the Bush recession in 2007, 2008, and 2009, taking away the companies paying into these funds. The other part of it was Wall Street greed, generally what happened to the stock market. That is the preponderance of the problem, but I concur with Senator Grassley that we can work on a lot of this together. Senator Portman and I especially have a responsibility to get this done, to make it happen. I thank the chairman. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I thank Senators Manchin and Stabenow for joining us today. Senators Baldwin and Casey will come later to shine a light on the more than 1 million workers and retirees across this country who are on the verge of facing massive cuts to the pensions they have earned. I want to thank the workers and retirees who are in Washington this week. You will see teamsters, sheet metal workers, mine workers, carpenters, ironworkers, bakers and confectioners--retirees, mostly-- who have earned this retirement but because of an action in this body, simply haven't had that retirement promise fulfilled. They are demanding that Congress honor the dignity of their work and honor the promise of those pensions. The crisis affects thousands in my State of Ohio and affects the massive Central States pension plan, the United Mine Workers pension plan, the Ironworkers Local 17 pension plan, the Southwest Ohio carpenters pension plan, the bakers and confectioners pension plan, and others in every State in this country. We are talking about our entire multiemployer pension system. If it collapses, it won't be just the retirees who will feel the pain. Current workers will be stuck paying into pensions they will never receive, and small businesses will be left drowning in pension liability they cannot afford to pay. It will have ripple effects throughout our economy. Let's be clear. If we do nothing, this could trigger a recession perhaps on par with the housing crisis. And we know what Wall Street greed did in the housing crisis, and we know what could happen here if Senator McConnell doesn't move on this. We know who gets hurt the most every single time. Small businesses that have been in the family for generations could face bankruptcy. Workers will lose jobs as businesses are forced to close shop. These businesses and employees did everything right. They contributed to these pensions, in many cases over decades. Too often, people in this town don't understand the whole point of collective bargaining, don't understand the collective bargaining process. People give up dollars today for the promise of a secure retirement with good healthcare and a pension. They give up dollars today with a promise of having a pension and healthcare. These workers' lives and livelihoods will be devastated if Congress doesn't do its job. When I think about the responsibility we have, I think about the words of worker Larry Ward at a hearing at the statehouse in Columbus last year. He said: I don't understand how it is that Congress would even consider asking us to take a cut to my pension, or see it go away entirely, when it had no problems sending billions to the Wall Street crooks who caused this problem in the first place. Don't forget that what happened on Wall Street had an impact on these pensions. He went on to say: They used that to pay themselves bonuses. We use our pensions to pay for medicine and food and heat. It is bad enough that Wall Street squandered workers' money; it is worse that the government that is supposed to look out for these folks ignores the promise that was made to these workers. The President--who essentially stood by and did nothing--would say it is disgraceful. That is why these workers are fighting back. We have kept this on the agenda because of them, because they refuse to give up. Workers rallied, called, and wrote letters. We all have seen the camo UMWA t- shirts. These workers have rallied in the name of Butch Lewis, a great Cincinnatian who helped lead this fight and passed away far too soon while fighting for his fellow workers. His wife, Rita, has continued this fight and has become a leader and an inspiration to me and so many others. She once told me that the workers in this crisis feel like they are invisible. They are not invisible to Senator Manchin, Senator Stabenow, or to me. I know they are not invisible to my colleague Senator Portman, who has put in months of work in good faith on this issue on the committee and continues this year. I know he is committed and I am committed, and my colleagues on the floor today--again, Senators Manchin, Stabenow, Casey, and Baldwin will be joining us. We are committed to these miners, teamsters, these retirees and workers and small businesses. We will not give up. We are continuing to work on a bipartisan solution. It comes back to the dignity of work. When work has dignity, we honor the retirement security that people earned. We respect collective bargaining. We know collective bargaining created the middle class. I urge my colleagues in this body--colleagues with a good pension and good healthcare paid for by taxpayers--I urge my colleagues in this body to think about those retired workers and the stress they are facing. Join us. Let's pass a solution that honors their work and keeps our promise. If you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work. I yield to Senator Manchin.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I have seen 2\1/2\ years of a betrayal of American workers from this White House, this government, this Senate, and the President of the United States. The White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives, except on the days it looks like a retreat for insurance executives, except for the days it looks like a retreat for drug company executives. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but a few weeks ago, when we saw the nomination of Eugene Scalia to be Secretary of Labor, it just underscored again the betrayal of American workers by this government and by this President. Eugene Scalia is the President's nominee to serve as Secretary of Labor. His job as Secretary of Labor is to represent workers, to advocate for workers, and to fight for workers--not to advocate for corporations, not to sell out to special interests, but to side with American workers. Yet all you have to do is look at his job. The President has sent us a corporate lawyer who has fought over and over to stop workplace protections, to undermine worker safety, and to cut and depress workers' wages over and over again. Mr. Scalia, as an elitist, multimillion-dollar corporate lawyer, has repeatedly defended companies against whistleblowers. He defended Walmart against its workers. And he is nominated to be Secretary of Labor? He defended a corporation against 30 women who had been sexually harassed at assembly plants. And he is going to be the Secretary of Labor? He defended other corporations against workers with disabilities after the companies violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. And he is going to be Secretary of Labor? Over and over, he fought to help the most powerful corporations against workers, asking the courts to put their thumb on the scales of justice, to choose corporations over workers, to choose Wall Street over consumers, and to choose health insurance companies over patients. He has always come down on the side of corporate interests, of special interests, and in the end, always betrayed workers. And he is the President's nominee to be Secretary of Labor? He has defended union-busting corporations. Boeing has been rabid in its anti-union coercion. Scalia worked for them, advocated for them in their never-ending quest to stop workers from having a voice in their company. And he is going to be the President's Secretary of Labor? What Mr. Scalia doesn't understand and what President Trump doesn't understand is that you can't say--let me back up for a second. The President loves to say that he supports this, that he is for workers, that workers are his friends, and that he is a friend to workers. He loves saying that, but what he doesn't understand is that you can't support workers individually without supporting workers collectively. You can't support workers individually without supporting workers collectively. You can't support workers if you attack unions. We know what unions have brought to this country. Ever since the generally rapid decline of trade unionism, we have seen wages flatten, we have seen benefits cut, and we have seen retirements taken away from workers. You know, when people can organize and bargain collectively, they have higher wages, they have better healthcare, and they have a retirement system. You can't support workers if you attack unions like Mr. Scalia has done. We need a Secretary of Labor who will actually fight for labor. It is not called the secretary of corporate interests or the secretary of special interests; it is called the Secretary of Labor. You are supposed to honor work and respect work. We need a Secretary of Labor who will fight for labor, not fight for corporate interests. It comes down to whose side you are on. Are you on the corporations' side, or are you on American workers' side? Do you fight for Wall Street wealth, or do you fight for the dignity of work? The President promised to fight for American workers. If you love your country, you fight for workers. Instead, this President has betrayed them over and over again. The nomination of Eugene Scalia to be Secretary of Labor is the biggest betrayal of them all. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, this fall we celebrate the 25th anniversary of AmeriCorps. Since President Kennedy challenged Americans to serve our Nation abroad in the Peace Corps in his famous University of Michigan speech, generations of Americans have recognized that our greatest strength as a nation is our compassion. But it wasn't until AmeriCorps was founded about 30 years later, 1994, that we truly addressed the need for service here at home. When I think about the work AmeriCorps members do, I think about the words of a speaker at a Martin Luther King breakfast in my home city of Cleveland on a cold January morning, and the speaker said: Your life expectancy is connected to your ZIP Code. Think about that. Your life expectancy is connected to your ZIP Code. Whether you grow up in Appalachia or Ohio, Indiana, whether you grow up in a city, an inner-ring city suburb, a small city like I did in Mansfield, or a small town, your ZIP Code often determines whether you have access to quality healthcare or good education and the social support necessary to succeed. Whether it is through City Year or Senior Corps or VISTA--all parts of AmeriCorps--America works to fight that and ensure that so many Americans, regardless of their ZIP Code, have the opportunity not only to succeed but to thrive. I have seen firsthand what a difference AmeriCorps makes in people's lives. My two daughters had amazing, life-changing experiences, teaching for a year through City Year. We all benefit when we invest in organizations that serve communities that are too often left behind and when these organizations are staffed by young Americans who care about those they serve. In Ohio, we have a City Year in Cleveland and Columbus. I have met many of these City Year volunteers and see the work they do. AmeriCorps in my State played a major difference in the Summer Feeding Program. Literally tens and tens of thousands of children are able to eat well in the summer because of the work that AmeriCorps does. Since 1994, more than a million Americans have served in communities across the country, serving tens of millions of Americans. All of their work will have a lasting impact on children and families, and I can't wait to see what these good AmeriCorps members will do over the next quarter century.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise today not very happily, if I can say, as my employee and my friend Jenny Donahue is leaving our office to take a really big job in the U.S. House of Representatives, especially at a challenging, difficult time, and she will serve there, I assume, every bit as well as she served in the U.S. Senate. Jenny is a middle-class kid who grew up in small town Idaho. I have not hired a lot of people in my office from Idaho, but if the next person from Idaho is this good, that will be a great thing. She graduated from the University of Montana. Moving east, she went on to become a leader in the U.S. Senate. She is a leader among communications directors. She is a leader in my office, and she is a leader in this entire body. She has left an indelible mark. Part of being a good leader is being a good mentor. She nurtures young talent. She brings out the best in the people she works with. My wife, Connie Schultz, who is one of Jenny's greatest admirers--and there are many great admirers of Jenny--loves to say that she is one of the most fierce advocates for young women she has ever met in her life. She also says, oftentimes, that Jenny carries as she climbs. As she moves up in life and moves up into a new position, you can bet that so many people are going to benefit from her leadership and her mentorship. She has earned my wife's respect. That speaks such volumes about our friend Jenny. She has earned the respect of many Ohio reporters. She understands how important their work is to Ohio communities and to our democracy. She respects journalism, understanding that journalism is about comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. She knows that without journalism--good journalism--you can't have good democracy. She has been with me through some of the biggest moments over the past 4 years as a friend, as an adviser, and challenging me sometimes and telling me when I am wrong oftentimes but always being there in the right ways. She has been part of the dignity of work rollout. She was part of our trip to the border to bear witness to the humanitarian crisis in part caused by the President of the United States. She was part of the historic 2016 Democratic National Convention. She helped put my vision of dignity of work on the road earlier this year, including a trip to Selma, AL. Jenny has such courage of her convictions. She is not afraid to tell me when I am wrong. She is not afraid to challenge others, always coming from a place of integrity and honesty--always. She never does anything halfway. When she says she will do something, when she sets her mind to doing something, she does it, and she does it fully. She does it well. She does it better than pretty much anyone else could. The day after the 2016 election, my staff was pretty stunned that a human being like Donald Trump would be in the White House; that someone with his lack of character, with his inability to tell the truth, with his treatment of women, would be President of the United States. We were all pretty stunned. I gathered the staff in my office and told them our jobs would become that much more important. Jenny took on this charge. Jenny, who was already good before the 2016 election, took on this charge of how our work mattered, how I was one of the only selected officials in Ohio who would challenge the President's dishonesty, who would challenge the President's illegal behavior, and who would challenge the President's mean-spiritedness at the border, on the overtime rule, cutting food stamps--all the things this billionaire has done. Jenny knew how important that was. She took on this charge with a sense of responsibility and a purpose that made me proud, just like I know her parents and her grandparents are. As she moves on to her next job in the House of Representatives, a leader in the House, as she has been in the Senate, she moves on to continue fighting for justice and the dignity of work in her new role. Jenny, Godspeed. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, right now, HBCUs, like Wilberforce and Central State in my State of Ohio, and other minority-serving institutions are facing a fiscal cliff. If we don't act now, this week, HBCUs and other schools will face crippling funding cuts. These schools are a critical part of our Nation's higher education system. They have a rich legacy and a proven track record of educating students of color and other underrepresented students. Wilberforce was founded in 1856 as the Nation's first private institution of higher education for Black students in this country--an institution that we are so proud of in southwestern Ohio. Central State has a rich legacy of educating students and is an 1890 land-grant institution. Many of us worked in the last farm bill to right a historical wrong and to make sure all 1890 land-grant universities, including Central State, have access to the funding they deserve. They have fostered generations of African-American students. We know that without HBCUs, millions of Black students would have been denied the opportunity to pursue higher education. There simply was no place for them in many places in this country. They would have been left out of careers in law, academia, agriculture, politics, the sciences, and so many other fields. Our country owes an enormous debt to HBCUs. Key funding for HBCUs and minority-serving institutions--MSIs--expires September 30. Without this funding, school budgets will be thrown into chaos. They will likely consider program cuts and layoffs. We need to pass a clean extension. The House has done its job and passed the FUTURE Act. It seems the House is always doing its job. It passes legislation, and then the legislation dies in the Senate graveyard. We have seen it on issue after issue. This is as important as any of them. We must protect the HBCUs. We must extend the mandatory funding for all MSIs for 2 years. It is time for the Senate to do the same. HBCUs and MSIs have to overcome enough hurdles every day to educate their students. The Senate should not be one of those hurdles. We need to pass the FUTURE Act now. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, something happened in the last 48 hours or so that affects 40,000 to 50,000 people in my State and affects, literally, probably 1 million people or more around the country. These are people who are making $30,000, $35,000, $40,000, or $45,000 a year. Essentially, the President of the United States robbed them of their overtime. This isn't histrionics. It is not alarmist. It is fact. This is how it works. If you are managing a fast food restaurant and you are making $40,000 a year, and if the company decides to call you the night shift manager--the management decides to declare you as management--it means they can work you 45, 50, 55, 60 hours a week and pay you not a cent--not pay you time and a half. They don't pay you time and a half. They don't even give you another cent more than your 40 hours. In other words, if you are a moderate-income worker making $35,000 or $40,000 a year--not enough to have a middle-class lifestyle like you could have had in this country 20 or 30 years ago--and management decides they are going to classify you as management, they can work you as many hours as they want without a cent of overtime. Now, that has been a problem for years. Five years ago, we fixed it. The Vice President of the United States with Secretary Tom Perez came out to Columbus, OH. I worked on this issue. We made this announcement at a small manufacturing firm. They supported this agreement, and many businesses did. This would have meant that for anybody making up to about $46,000 a year, if they worked those extra hours and they were called management, from then on they were going to get overtime--time and a half. That is what overtime pay is about. That is what the overtime rule is about. President Trump loves to say that he is on the side of workers, but you can't say you support workers individually if you don't support workers collectively. The President says: I care about these individual workers. If he really cared about these individual workers, he wouldn't have, in essence, robbed 40,000 to 50,000 Ohioans--and I don't know how many million Americans--of their overtime pay. We passed that rule. The Obama administration sent the Secretary of Labor to Columbus, OH, and I was there when we made this announcement. On behalf of 150,000 Ohio workers who were making $30, $40, $45, and up to $46,000 a year, we celebrated that they were going to get time and a half. If they were away from their family, working those extra 10 hours, which meant working 50 hours a week, or an extra 20 hours and working 60 hours a week, they were going to take home thousands of dollars in overtime pay if they did that week after week. This President says he is for workers. Then, he changes this rule. In a sense, he robbed those people. This new rule deprives millions of workers, literally, of the pay they have earned. It is as disturbing as anything I have seen from the President. Like the Republican leader's office down the hall, I know the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives. In the White House, whatever corporate America wants, this White House gives them every single time. If corporate America wants to block the minimum wage, which hasn't been increased in 10 years, the President of the United States blocks the minimum wage. If corporate America wants this overtime rule done away with, compromised, or half-obliterated, saving millions of dollars for corporate America, the President of the United States does their bidding. To do a renegotiation of NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, right to help workers, you enforce worker rules, and you enforce labor rules. The President backed off from his campaign promise and didn't do it. There were lots of tax cuts for the rich. Almost 80 percent of the corporate tax bill that President Trump pushed through Congress goes to the richest 1 percent of the people. It is a betrayal. It is a White House betrayal of workers every single day. For people making $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $80,000, or $90,000 a year, this White House betrays them. It is pretty simple. Think about the dignity of work. Whether you punch a clock or whether you swipe a badge, whether you are raising children, whether you are taking care of aging parents, whether you are working on tips, or whether you are working on a middle-class salary, all work has dignity. Instead, the President has undermined that worker. And we all know something about CEOs. When I was a kid, CEOs made about 30 to 1 in CEO pay versus the average worker. Now it is about 300 to 1. Who gets the tax cuts in this country? The CEOs. Who gets hurt every time? It is moderate wage earners. I hear this talk of populism, that the President is a populist. Well, populism is never racist or never anti-Semitic. It doesn't divide people. It doesn't push some people down to lift people up. That is what we have seen far too much of. To me, this overtime rule was sort of the last straw. You give tax cuts and massive giveaways to the wealthiest 1 percent and encourage more corporations to move overseas. The President's tax bill says this, which is almost not even believable: If you have a company in Mansfield, OH, or Toledo, OH, you pay a corporate tax rate of 21 percent. If you shut down that production in Mansfield and Toledo and move to Guadalajara or Guangzhou, you pay 10.5 percent. What does that do? That means more companies are going to move overseas as wages continue to be depressed in this country. I was in the White House with the President in his Cabinet Room one day during the tax bill. After he signed this tax bill, he said: You're going to start seeing a lot more money in your paycheck. We know that was a lie. Corporations reaped the benefits, and then spent their windfall not on workers' wages or growing the company but on stock buybacks. General Motors received huge tax cuts. They moved more jobs overseas and they shut production in Hamtramck, MI, and in places like Lordstown, OH. He stacked his Cabinet and the National Labor Relations Board with corporate stooges who spent their whole careers undermining workers on behalf of corporations. His new Labor Secretary, Eugene Scalia, is a corporate lawyer who has fought over and over against worker rights. Think about this. The Secretary of Labor--whether it is a pretty conservative Secretary of Labor, whom Republicans over here are likely to support, or a more progressive, pro-worker Secretary of Labor, whom Democrats are more likely to support--is usually somebody who cares about workers and workers' rights. The new Secretary of Labor appointed by President Trump is a corporate lawyer. He spent his entire career attacking workers, attacking workers' rights, trying to put unions out of business, trying to encourage decertification of elections, and trying to come down every time on the side of corporations against workers. I said this before. You can't say you care about workers individually, but then you don't side with workers collectively. What does that mean? It means when that workers have a union, they get better pay, they get better benefits, they have retirement, they have healthcare, and they have more job security and more safety in the workplace. But if you say you care about individual workers but you don't care about workers collectively, then you simply don't care about workers. It comes down to this: Whose side are you on? Are you on the corporations' side or American workers' side? Do you fight for Wall Street or fight for the workers and fight for the dignity of work? Do you honor work? Do you respect work? Do you pass legislation that supports workers and rewards work or do you pass legislation to take, literally, thousands of dollars out of the pockets of workers who should be getting overtime but, because of this new Trump rule, they lost their overtime. The President promised to fight for American workers. He has broken that promise over and over. If you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work. We don't see that over here. We don't see that in the majority leader's office, and we sure don't see that in the White House. 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, right now at this moment, thousands of UAW workers in Ohio--in places like the Chevrolet plant in Parma-Cleveland area, the transmission plant in Toledo, the plant in Defiance, OH, and all over the country--are going without their paychecks and without their health insurance to demand that General Motors respect the work they do to make their companies successful. In a nutshell, workers are fed up. More and more of them are beginning to see that unions are the best way to make their voices heard. For too long, General Motors hasn't listened. Autoworkers are the engine behind GM's success. GM wouldn't be making a dime in profit without the workers who actually make their cars and trucks. Back up for a moment. Think about what has happened to General Motors. The Presiding Officer has autoworkers in the State of Indiana, as I do in Ohio. Back up 10 years, when General Motors and Chrysler went into bankruptcy. The taxpayers and workers--through givebacks-- rescued both companies. For 10 years, GM has gotten more and more profitable. Workers were working hard, but workers were making significantly less money during those 10 years. Then you saw these companies' profits increase. GM started sending more jobs to Mexico to build the Chevy Blazer, for instance. The same day, they announced the layoff of one shift in Lordstown. Then there were the stock buybacks from the Trump tax cuts, where 80 percent of the tax benefits went to the richest 1 percent of people in this country. The stock buybacks with the GM executives meant tens of millions of dollars more in their pocket. Yet they continue to squeeze workers. Now workers are simply saying: We want to be, in essence, paid back for the givebacks we did when we, as taxpayers and workers, rescued that company. Rather than invest in American workers, the company shut down its most productive plant in North America and laid off hundreds of workers--4,500 workers, actually--in Lordstown, OH, while announcing they are going to build a place in Mexico. They could retool the Lordstown plant. They could build the Blazer in Ohio, but instead they throw workers out of a job, and they pay workers way less to make cars in Mexico. Now GM workers are saying: Enough. I stand with them. They are standing up and fighting for increased investments in their local communities. We know if that Lordstown plant would reopen with the Blazer or with an electric vehicle--a couple of electric vehicles or whatever they put there--we know what that would mean for those Lordstown families, those GM families. We know what it would mean to that community. I spoke yesterday with Dave Green, the former President of GM Local 1112. He is now working in another GM plant in the Presiding Officer's home State. He is away from his family. He is away from home. He didn't choose that. Dozens of workers are in that situation all because GM wanted to move its production offshore. Those workers are saying: Enough. In Lordstown, the workers whose jobs GM took are picketing in solidarity with other UAW workers at the empty plant. Reporters asked them why, and they answered: Brotherhood--brother and sister support. Workers who transfer to other plants in Michigan, Missouri, Kentucky, and Indiana are coming back to join them. That is what the labor movement is all about: brotherhood, sisterhood, solidarity. It is about the recognition that workers should have a voice and should have a share in the profits they create for their companies. GM made more than $10 billion in North America in 2018. That is $10,000 million. It is the UAW workers who made that money for the company. What did GM do? They shut down plants. Now they have thrown striking workers off their health insurance. We heard from one worker in Local 14 in Toledo who said his 4-year-old daughter, Chesney, had a doctor's appointment scheduled next week to check on the tubes in her ears that help her hear, but GM canceled that family's insurance so they had to cancel the appointment. That is what has happened. It is despicable. GM needs to agree to a contract that honors the dignity of work--a contract that recognizes the autoworkers, communities, and families who help drive the success of the auto industry in Ohio and across the country. Again, 10 years ago, taxpayers rescued GM out of bankruptcy. Workers agreed to major givebacks to that company, taking much less money in order to save the company. GM profits have soared. GM executive compensations have exploded upward. GM owes that to our communities, and GM owes that to its workers. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Senator Casey, for speaking out on such an important issue. He and I talked yesterday about the number of people who now have insurance in our States. In his State it is over a million; in my State it is over 900,000 because of the Affordable Care Act, because of Medicaid expansion, because of other things. Seniors have more. Seniors are getting more preventive care, and the cost of drugs is less in spite of the fact that this institution and the President do nothing to keep the prices of drugs down. We know the White House looks like a retreat for drug company executives, so this body has not done nearly what it should. The Affordable Care Act is so important. I appreciate Senator Casey always standing up for kids and standing up for Medicaid and standing up for the Affordable Care Act and the impact it has made on our States. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I am also joined by Senator Casey, of Pennsylvania, who has been a leader as Senator Murphy has been. We look to Senator Murphy every day in this body because he has seen this tragedy up close in the most vivid, awful ways. We appreciate how he has represented victims and people who might end up being victims. If we do this right, they won't end up being victims. His leadership has really mattered. On a Sunday morning 6 weeks ago, Connie and I woke up, checked our iPhones, and immediately called out to each other and said: Oh, my gosh. Look what has happened in Dayton. It was the first Saturday night in August. At 1 o'clock that Sunday morning, a local man with an assault weapon walked into the Oregon District in Dayton, as people were out having fun that night, and just opened fired. He killed his sister, and he killed eight others. He wounded more than 20. In the space of 32 seconds, he had fired 41 bullets. It tells you the kind of gun he had. Heroically, six police officers descended on him. They shot him and killed him before he could walk into this nightclub where he would have probably killed 20 other people. I called Mayor Nan Whaley that morning, probably at 8:30. It was pretty incredible. This happened at 1 o'clock in the morning. I called her at 8:30--7\1/2\ hours later. The first thing she said to me was that she had gotten emails and texts and calls--in her words--from several dozen mayors around the country who had either had to deal with this, as many had, or had had situations in which they had had gun violence and had just offered to help her in any way they could. We know what happens. We know that every time there is gun violence-- every time there is a mass shooting--the first thing the Republicans say is: My thoughts and prayers are with the victims. How can you not agree with that? We all think that. Then they say ``Now is not the time to talk about it'' as if they ever want to talk about it. Then they say: You know, we have to do something about mental health in this country. Ask Senator Casey about his efforts on Medicaid and my efforts on Medicaid. The people who sit on this side of the aisle--where the Republicans sit here--are the ones who stood a year ago at every one of these desks, all of the Senators having their health insurance paid for by the government, paid for by taxpayers, and tried to take away health insurance for millions and millions of Americans. Senator Casey told me today that 1.1 million people in Pennsylvania now have health insurance because of the Affordable Care Act. In my State, where my daughter Elizabeth Brown is a councilperson in Columbus, 900,000 people have insurance because of that. On this side of the aisle, every single Senator except for three--one of whom has passed away--voted to take away the insurance, to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Then they have the gall to say we have to do more on mental health. If that had passed--if they had repealed the Affordable Care Act--hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians and Ohioans wouldn't have had the mental health services they are getting now. So spare me that whining. Spare me that ``oh, we want to take care of mental health issues.'' No, they don't. They just want to do the NRA's bidding. Look down this aisle. Look down this hall. Right down this hall is Senator McConnell's office. I am not going to say that gun lobbyists walk down that hall and walk into his office and hand him money. I don't think they do that. Yet I do know that until we break the addiction that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell and most of the Republicans--most of the people in this body--have to gun lobby money, campaign contributions, we will never solve this problem. We heard that. That is what we heard the first day in Dayton. My wife and I drove to Dayton that afternoon. The President came to Dayton 2 days later. I joined President Trump at the bottom of Air Force One. As he got off the plane, I stood with Mayor Whaley. We both looked President Trump in the eye and said: Mr. President, I hope you will call Senator McConnell and ask him to bring the Senate back. This was in early August. The Senate was out of session for 5 weeks. I hope you will ask Senator McConnell to bring the Senate back into session and pass the House bill that sets up something very simple-- universal background checks. As Senator Murphy said, 90 percent of the American public supports background checks. You know, the only people who don't support background checks are professional lobbyists for the NRA and the people who sit over here. Other than that, it is over 90 percent. A majority of gun owners in Ohio support universal background checks. A majority of Republicans support universal background checks. A majority of NRA members in Ohio support universal background checks. The only people who don't are Members of this body and that tiny group of NRA professional lobbyists. It is not NRA members who are stopping background checks from passing. It is that narrow group of millionaire, NRA, highly paid, professional lobbyists. That is why we can't pass it here. That is what we have had happen. Mayor Nan Whaley and I asked President Trump to pass it, and he said: I am going to do big things. We are going to do big things and fix this. Then we saw him later at the hospital. President Trump went around the hospital with the First Lady. They were kind and generous and empathetic, I believe, with the patients who were there who had been injured and with their family members. Then we met the police officers--the six heroic police officers. We thanked them profusely-- all of us--for their courage in saving lives. Then we walked out of the room, the Governor and the other Senator from Ohio and the local Congressman and the mayor, and he said: We are going to have the biggest awards ever. We are going to give them the biggest Presidential medals ever made for these heroes. I said: That is really good, Mr. President, but do you know what they would really like? What they would really like is for us to pass background checks and make their jobs a little easier, so when they walk in, they are not ambushed by people with illegal guns. The President said he was going to do something, then he talked to the NRA, and then he talked to the gun lobby. It is the same story. Again, when I open this door and look down the hall, I don't expect to see--well, it is late in the day, but I don't expect to see gun lobbyists lining up handing Mitch McConnell money. It is illegal. I don't think he does stuff like that, take money in this body. I do know, again, that until we break the addiction, until the voters or the Congress or somehow we break the addiction to gun lobby money that Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump and the majority party have, we can't solve this. This is just too important. For every mass shooting that makes a headline, there are so many other Americans whose lives are taken by gun violence but don't get the same attention. This has to end. No more stigmatizing people with mental illness. We should stop stigmatizing people with mental illness. Congress should stop taking orders from the NRA and start acting to keep people safe. I will close with this before Senator Casey speaks: The shooting was at 1 in the morning on a Sunday. Sunday night, people gathered in the Oregon District--heartbroken people, relatives, friends, community people, just people who were just shellshocked and felt awful about what happened to their city and to those victims--gathered in the Oregon District in Dayton. The Governor was there, and the mayor was up front, and one or two people started yelling: Do something. Do something. Then more and more people joined in, and they started chanting: Do something. Do something. They were chanting it to local officials. They were chanting it so the Governor heard it and maybe even some State legislators in Ohio heard it. They were shouting loud enough that in this body we should hear that shout to do something. It starts by taking the bill that passed the House down the hall, bringing it to the Senate floor, debating it, voting on it, passing strong, reasonable background checks. That is the step we need to take. There is simply no excuse for not doing it. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Tanya Otsuka, a fellow for the minority staff on the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, be granted floor permission until Tuesday, December 31, and also to recognize Drew Martineau, Abigail Duggan, and Shomari Figures.

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, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Today I hope my colleagues will join me in standing in solidarity with thousands of UAW workers in Ohio and around the country. Workers are going without their paychecks today because they are demanding General Motors respect the work they do which has made this company so successful. All workers have the right to stand up for fair pay and benefits, for better working conditions, and for a voice in their company. Let's be clear. The autoworkers, shall we say, are the engine behind GM's success. GM wouldn't be making a dime of profit without the workers who actually make their cars and trucks. Autoworkers stood up and made sacrifices to help GM when times were tough. The Presiding Officer was a Member of the House then, and I was a Member of the Senate. We saw what happened during the rescue of the auto industry and how much those workers gave up to save this industry. We remember the depths of the recession. We remember when President Obama took office as 800,000 were losing their jobs the first month and 700,000 the second month until, with the auto rescue, House Democrats, with President Obama, turned this economy around. We have seen, literally, economic growth each quarter over the last 10 years. This was, in large part, because so many workers, like the UAW workers, were willing to give up something at the bargaining table. In some cases, clearly, some people in this town wanted to abandon that company. Now that times are better, all the workers are asking for is their fair share. So far, GM has not treated these workers as the critical partners they are in our auto industry. Look at what GM has done in my State. Look at what they did in Lordstown, OH. The company shut down its most productive plant in North America, by GM's own measurements. The Lordstown plant near Youngstown, OH, as recently as 2\1/2\ years ago--back during the Obama administration--had 4,500 workers working there. Even though President Trump said: Don't sell your homes; these jobs are coming back, they have been laid off--hundreds of workers, 4,500 over the last couple years. At the same time, GM announced they were going to build the Chevy Blazer in Mexico. GM could retool that Lordstown plant, and they could build the Blazer in Ohio. They could put some of their electric vehicles in the Lordstown plant in Ohio. We know they have plenty of money to work with. They earned higher than expected profits in the first quarter of this year. President Trump's tax cuts for the rich gave huge amounts of tax breaks to General Motors. Much of the money went to General Motors' executives. All these workers are asking for is to share in those profits, have a voice in their company. GM made the decision to close Lordstown and other plants around the country with no input from the workers who earned those profits for that company. Now workers are standing up and fighting for increased investments in their local communities. I spoke this week with Gary Jones, the international president of the United Auto Workers, about Lordstown and bringing these jobs back. That is what they are trying to win at the bargaining table. We know strikes are always a last resort for workers. My wife grew up in Ashtabula, OH. Her dad carried a union card, Utility Workers of America. He did maintenance for that plant for more than 30 years. Twice when she was growing up they went on strike. She knows, as workers know, they never get back what they lose in a strike. So when they strike, it is when their backs are against the wall. The wife of one GM worker posted online this week: ``I can only pray this strike is short.'' These workers want to do their jobs. They want to work. They don't want to be on the picket line. They want to reach a solution that honors their work. GM needs to agree to a contract that honors the dignity of work and recognizes autoworkers, the communities, and the families who are affected by this and who helped drive the success of the auto industry in Ohio and across the country.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I want to recognize the work that Professor Peter B. Edelman, faculty director of the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown University, has done and for his decades-long career fighting for working families. Along with his equally if not more impressive wife, Marian Wright Edelman, it is not an exaggeration to say the two have improved the lives of millions of Americans. A key figure in planning Senator Robert F. Kennedy's memorable tour of the Mississippi Delta, Professor Edelman continues to help expose the crippling poverty that still permeates through our country. His books ``So Rich, So Poor: Why It's so Hard to End Poverty in America'' and ``Not a Crime to Be Poor. The Criminalization of Poverty in America'' have been important in shaping my view on the lack of economic mobility in America. A dedicated public servant who has worked in various administrations and organizations, Professor Edelman has been on the forefront of promoting and implementing social justice policies. While I recognize we live in a time where politicians and special interests groups have tipped the scales in favor of corporations and the wealthy, I am encouraged to know that Professor Edelman is educating the next generation of anti-poverty advocates. As the Coalition on Human Needs honors Professor Edelman as a recipient of its 2019 Human Needs Hero award, I want to express my thanks for his work as an advocate of working families. He has improved countless lives, and his pragmatic yet principled approach serves as a model for those pursuing social change now and for years to come. For these reasons, it is my honor and privilege today to recognize the achievements of Professor Peter B. Edelman.

Mr. BROWN

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