Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to honor six brave Ohioans--Sergeant William C. Knight, Officers Brian Rolfes, David Denlinger, Vincent Carter, Ryan Nabel, and Jeremy Campbell. Last month, on Sunday, August 4, the people in my State woke up to devastating news: A shooter had opened fire overnight--at about 1 o'clock that Sunday morning--in Dayton. In 31 seconds, a shooter had fired 40 bullets. He had taken the lives of 9 Ohioans and had injured 27 more. This was another senseless tragedy caused by gun violence. As awful as it was, it could have been even worse had it not been for the bravery and skill of the officers I just mentioned. While others ran from danger, these men ran toward it. They stopped the shooter within 31 or 32 seconds after the first shot was fired. They saved, certainly, dozens of lives as the shooter was about to go into a very crowded nightclub. Had they not gotten to him in less than a minute, the shooter would have entered the doorway he was headed toward of the Dayton institution Ned Peppers, which was filled with Ohioans who were out on a Saturday night. Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl said: ``Had this individual made it through the doorway of Ned Peppers with that level of weaponry, there would have been catastrophic injuries and loss of life.'' That didn't happen because these dedicated public servants did the job they signed up to do--to protect the people they serve. Over the past month, as we have mourned those Ohioans we have lost, we have also seen the incredible strength and solidarity of the Dayton community. People from all over the city have come together to support the families of the victims and to support the law enforcement officers and officials who threw themselves in harm's way to protect their friends and neighbors. Chief Biehl reported that the Dayton Police Department has received hundreds of emails, social media messages, and thank you cards--all from people thanking them for what they have done for this city. Dayton has faced so many challenges this year. Each time, these officers and the entire department have risen to the occasion. They kept the public safe when a KKK group held a hate rally, and they helped residents after devastating tornados hit this summer. Now they are dealing with this awful gun violence and all kinds of tragedies that have fallen on this community. I thank my friend Mayor Whaley, who is here in Washington today to help honor these officers and who has truly held this community together. I think she put it best when she said that Dayton has had, ``as I like to term it, one hell of a summer, and you all have been on the front lines of it.'' I met these officers at the Miami Valley Hospital 3 days after the shooting. The President of the United States was there to honor these officers and to see the victims and some of the injured Daytonians who were victims of the shooting and to see their families. I said to the President that the best way he can honor these police officers is to bring the Senate back into session and pass universal background checks as 93 percent of the American public supports it and as Congress has already passed it overwhelmingly. We could do it in a day. I thank Sergeant Knight, Officer Rolfes, Officer Denlinger, Officer Carter, Officer Nabel, Officer Campbell, and all of the Dayton law enforcement for responding far beyond the call of duty in saving the lives of so many people in the Miami Valley. I thank their families, many of whom are here today. We know how families sacrifice alongside law enforcement and servicemembers. Yet so often families don't get the recognition they deserve. To the officers and their families, we are forever grateful. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I just listened with interest to the remarks of the majority leader and his accounting of history--his very defensive remarks, based on an attack from, I guess, some journalist. The majority leader, I would say, was liberally using words like ``McCarthy'' and ``McCarthyism'' and ``liar'' and how he proudly stood up to the Soviet Union in the wake of Brezhnev and Chernenko and Andropov. They are fascinating words, but you don't need x-ray vision to notice a few things about the discussion the majority leader launched. First of all, this weekend, the Director of National Security resigned in frustration that his boss, the President of the United States, has chosen to believe Russia instead of his own intelligence officials. One of most embarrassing moments in my lifetime was when the President of the United States stood next to the dictator of Russia and said that he believed Putin and not his own intelligence officials and the consensus of his intelligence officials when it comes to influencing our 2016 elections. So I hear that the majority leader always has an acute sense of history and his place in it. I am hopeful the majority leader, using his knowledge of history, understands the influence Russia continues to have in our country and on our elections and that this body will actually address that instead of denying the obvious. Opioids Mr. President, America is in the middle of a public health crisis. In my State, 14 people die, on average, every single day of a drug overdose. The numbers are not much better in most of the other 49 States. We have known for a long time that addiction so often starts in the family medicine cabinet and that drug companies were all too eager to push these addictive drugs on the American people, but the evidence we have seen in the past couple of weeks is staggering. New data from the DEA released this month reveals that drug companies flooded the country with 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills from 2006 to 2012--76 billion pills in a nation of slightly more than 323 million people. Seventy-six billion pills is enough to supply every person in the United States with 36 pills every one of those years from 2006 to 2012. This evidence makes clear these companies, these corporations knew exactly what they were doing. One wholesale drug distributor in Ohio wrote an email that the opioid pills were ``flyin' out of there. It is like people are addicted to these things or something. Oh wait, people are.'' Can you believe that? He acknowledged they are addicted, and he joked about it. If that is not bad enough, then the drug company representative responded: ``Just like Doritos, [people] keep eating. We'll make more.'' They certainly did make more. That is what Big Pharma does. They push their drugs on the American people to line their own pockets and the cost in empty bank accounts and ruined lives be damned. If that isn't bad enough, these corporations can actually write off the cost of advertising these drugs on their taxes. In other words, all of us as taxpayers subsidize this drug company advertising. All those years that Big Pharma was pushing more and more opioids on the country, selling them ad after ad, they were getting a tax break to do it. Yet does this body do anything about that? Of course not. For years, I tried to track down drug company ads. It is why I introduced an amendment at our Finance Committee markup last week based on my legislation with Senator Shaheen to end taxpayer subsidies for Big Pharma's drug ads. We shouldn't be giving tax breaks to Big Pharma to sell its drugs, period. There are a lot of other ideas many of us have to crack down on these companies and limit their power to push potentially addictive drugs on people. Senator Hassan filed an amendment during that same committee drug pricing markup to increase transparency on these drug companies. Big Pharma has a history of creating false grassroots organizations to do their lobbying for them. Groups supposedly made up of ordinary citizens but in reality are bought and paid for by drug companies. People have the right to know if the groups pushing drugs on them are actually bought and paid for by those pharmaceutical companies. The opioid addiction crisis is one of the greatest public health emergencies of our lifetime, and it is crystal clear Big Pharma purposefully and deliberately helped to cause it, and the Federal Government gave them tax breaks and continues to give them tax breaks to do it. We need to hold these corporations accountable, and we need to make sure they never again have the unchecked power to push addictive drugs or any other drugs on the American people just to line their executives' pockets. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Will the Senator from Pennsylvania yield?

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I appreciate Senator Casey's advocacy for disabled Americans and for children especially. I just want to make a brief comment, for I know he has some other comments to make, on his support for Medicaid and on the efforts that we have made together on the Finance Committee in fighting against President Trump's attacks on Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. I know, in my State, the expansion of Medicaid and what came out of that meant that 900,000 more people had insurance, including a whole lot of people who were disabled. I know that Pennsylvania is the same way. So I thank Senator Casey.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the career and service of David P. Blom, who will retire later this month after serving as the president and CEO of OhioHealth since 2002. Under David's leadership, OhioHealth has grown its legacy of providing high- quality care to patients across central Ohio, including residents of my hometown, Mansfield. In the 17 years since David became CEO, OhioHealth has tripled in size. David spearheaded initiatives like the OhioHealth Research & Innovation Institute, which makes significant contributions to the field of research around new drugs, medical devices, and procedures. His focus on installing new technology has helped to drastically reduce errors in medication and patient identification across the OhioHealth system. During David's tenure as CEO, OhioHealth has been named one of the top 100 places to work by Fortune Magazine for 12 consecutive years. In 2016, David was honored with the Columbus Award, and in 2009, he was inducted into the Central Ohio Business Hall of Fame. He currently serves on the boards of the Columbus Foundation, Columbus Downtown Development Commission, Columbus Partnership, Vizient, and Healthy Roster. But beyond all that, it is David's commitment to the communities OhioHealth serves that truly sets him apart as a leader. David was instrumental in establishing Wellness on Wheels Women's Health, a mobile health clinic which provides prenatal care to women in high-risk communities. This program has been invaluable in saving the lives of the most vulnerable among us. In 2015, David was selected as one of 15 members to serve on the Veterans Affairs Commission on Care, a task force that developed critical reforms to veterans' healthcare. Out of this came the VA MISSION Act, which aims to improve veterans' access to effective and timely health care. These reforms would not have been possible without David's expertise and sense of service. We are fortunate to be able to count David among the ranks of great Ohioans. His innovative leadership has touched lives in my State and across the Nation. I wish David all the best in his retirement and thank him for his years of service in central Ohio.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, just another day on Wall Street and just another news story. The New York Times' headline today was ``Big Banks Are Earning Billions of Dollars. Trump's Tax Cuts Are A Big Reason.'' So Congress can continue to do tax cuts for Wall Street. Congress can continue to weaken rules on Wall Street. Congress has forgotten. They have this collective amnesia about what happened 10 years ago when this country's economy almost imploded because of Wall Street greed. So now Congress--because of the tax cut and because of continued relaxation of Wall Street financial stability safety rules, Wall Street is doing really well again. However, Congress can't pass an overtime bill--I mean, sorry. Congress can't pass a minimum wage bill. The last minimum wage increase in this Congress was signed by President Bush in 2007. President Obama never did it, and President Trump continues to oppose a minimum wage increase. President Trump has rolled back an overtime rule, which in the State of Indiana--the Presiding Officer's State--almost 100,000 workers were going to get a raise because of the overtime rule we passed a couple years ago. So people, if they work more than 40 hours, they ought to get paid for more than 40 hours--President Trump rolled that back--and 130,000 workers in my State alone would have gotten a big bump in their wages because they were working 45, 50, or 60 hours a week. This Congress will not pass an infrastructure bill. Look at the conditions of the roads in Cleveland, Toledo, Mansfield, Findlay, Akron, Youngstown, Gallipolis, Chillicothe, and Portsmouth, in my State, and all kinds of communities in Indiana, which the Presiding Officer represents. Congress can always find the time and can always find the money to help the richest 1 percent and help the big banks, but we can't turn around and do what we ought to do on the minimum wage, what we ought to do on the overtime rule, and what we ought to do to expand the earned income tax credit. I do appreciate the Presiding Officer's interest, especially in the earned income tax credit--what he has tried to do there. We just simply can't find the time to do that. We always help the people who have much in this society, and we just never get around, in this Congress, to helping the people who need a break. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I thank Senator Casey for his work on behalf of workers during his whole 13 years in the Senate and his work especially for mine workers and teamsters with the Butch Lewis Act and with pension and healthcare. That is so important. Senator Kaine has been stalwart for these retirees and particularly in southwest Virginia, where he has worked as Governor, and also Senator Manchin who was speaking earlier. We need to remind this body that 86,000 miners are facing a looming threat of massive cuts to the pension they have earned. What people in this body don't often understand is these miners and their widows aren't getting rich from these pensions. These pensions are $500 or $600 a month. Also 1,200 miners and their families can lose their healthcare by the end of the year because of the Westmoreland and Mission Coal bankruptcies. The bankruptcy court can allow these corporations to shed their liabilities. That sounds familiar. So often big companies go to court, and these lawyers and judges don't really understand what collective bargaining is and don't understand the sacrifices these workers made to earn these pensions. Shedding their liabilities is a fancy way of saying walk away from paying miners the healthcare benefits they earned. Two years ago, we worked to save the miners' healthcare. We have to do it again. We can't leave these workers behind just because of the date their company filed for bankruptcy. We have to make sure they don't lose retirement security on top of that. All 86,000 UMW union mine workers are facing crippling pension cuts. They aren't alone. The retirement security of hundreds of thousands of teamsters in Virginia and Ohio and Pennsylvania and ironworkers in Cleveland and carpenters in Dayton and Cincinnati--so many retirees and so many workers' pensions are at risk. Congress tried to ignore these retirees, but they fought back. Workers rallied. They called, they wrote letters, and they rallied outside the Capitol on 90-degree days in July. They rallied outside the Capitol in 15-degree days in February. We have seen those Camo UMW T-shirts around the Capitol. They are persistent. They don't give up. Many of them are veterans. They left the mines to serve their country. They went back into the mines. Now, as they fought for us, we need to fight for them. It comes back to the dignity of work. When work has dignity, we honor the retirement and security people earn. We honor work. We respect work. The dignity of work is about their wages, about their retirement, about their healthcare. It is about safety in the workplace. This is why I wear this pin. It is a depiction of a canary in a birdcage. The mineworker took the canary into the mines. The mineworker did not always have a government that stood with them to protect their safety. That is what the union did so many times. People in this town too often don't understand the collective bargaining process. This town is overrun with lobbyists up and down the hall and in Senator McConnell's office. Lobbyists line up and get favors from the Republican leader. Never ever does organized labor, never do workers get these same kinds of favors when it comes to support like this. With regard to collective bargaining, what people don't understand is that the people give up their wages today to put money aside for their future pensions. We made progress with the bipartisan pensions committee. I thank Senators Portman and Manchin and all the Members-- Senator Kaine and Casey--all the Members of both parties who put in months of work in good faith on this. I am committed to these miners. I know my friend Tim Kaine is committed to these miners, to these workers, to these small businesses. For their success and their livelihood, they depend on getting these pensions they have earned. We will continue to work for a bipartisan solution. If you love this country, you will fight for the people who make it work--people like these mineworkers. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, yesterday the Banking Committee heard from one of Facebook's executives about, if we can believe this--it almost doesn't seem possible--how Facebook wants to create its own monopoly money. That is right, after scandal after scandal with Facebook, where they betrayed the public trust, with the damage they have done to journalism and the damage they have done to democracy, the compromising and betrayal of people's privacy. Again, believe it or not, even the United Nations said what Facebook did to contribute to the humanitarian disaster in what we know as Burma, Myanmar, where literally hundreds of people died--the United Nations said Facebook contributed to the genocide. That almost doesn't sound believable, but they contributed to the genocide, a U.N. report said, in that part of the world. Now, after scandal after scandal, Facebook expects Americans to trust them with their hard-earned paychecks. It is pretty breathtaking. When you think about it, in this body, you know what happens when corporations want something. They always get it. With the leadership in this body and with the White House looking like a retreat for Wall Street executives and the big banks, they always get what they want. When have big corporations ever been held accountable? Look how the majority leader and President Trump treated Wall Street banks. Of course Facebook thinks they can make mess after mess, they can refuse to clean it up, and they face no consequences. We know that big banks scam customers and break laws. Not only do they get away with it, they get rewarded. Last year, as we know, this Congress passed and President Trump signed legislation rolling back laws protecting working families from Wall Street greed, as if Wall Street weren't doing well enough. They had record profit and record executive compensation. Remembering 10 years ago and what happened with Wall Street--there is a collective amnesia in this body. My colleagues seem to forget what Wall Street did to our country 10 years ago. I have said this on the floor before, and I will say it again: My ZIP Code in Cleveland where Connie and I live is 44105. That ZIP Code had more foreclosures in 2007 than any other ZIP Code in the United States of America. I still see the remnants of those foreclosures--high levels of lead-based paint, homes abandoned, property values going down. Yet this Congress and President Trump want to do more for Wall Street. The big banks ask for weaker rules, even though it put millions of families at risk--job losses, the evisceration of retirement plans, people losing their jobs, people losing their homes. President Trump said: OK. Let's do what the banks want. The year before that, Congress passed and President Trump signed a $1.5 trillion tax cut for corporations, big banks, and the richest Americans. Since the Republican tax bill passed, corporations have moved jobs overseas. They spent hundreds of billions of dollars on stock buybacks because the executives apparently weren't making enough money with their record compensation. Corporations have spent $1 trillion in these stock buybacks. Of the eight companies with the most stock buybacks last year, half of them were on Wall Street. The big banks and the big investment houses have done very well with this Trump economy. They have done very well because of the goodies this body continues to bestow on them. One thing we also know is that Wall Street can never get enough handouts. They always want one more. Not too long ago, a bank lobbyist said: ``We don't want just a seat at the table, we want the whole table.'' That is so brazen and arrogant. Unfortunately, this Congress and this President seem to want to give it to them. They let banks haggle over their stress test results. We require these banks to take a stress test, but before they take the test-- imagine getting to do this in high school or college. Before you take the test, we will tell you a little more about what will be on the test. They take away consumers' right to have their day in court when banks scam them. They go easy on foreign megabanks. You could name them. So many of the foreign banks have gotten their way so often in this body and done damage to our economy. We gave them breaks in the rulings that the Federal Reserve made. Last month, we saw the Fed once again go easy on Wall Street banks during their annual stress test. They basically gave them extra credit for even submitting to these tests at all. What does that mean for the giant banks? The Fed will let them do even more stock buybacks. The Fed ought to understand that megabank CEOs are not playing T-ball, where everyone gets a participation trophy just for showing up; they are playing with family's lives. We know all over the country what happened to people's retirement, what happened to their jobs, what happened to their homes. People in this town may have collective amnesia and have forgotten the financial crisis and housing crisis, but families who lost their homes and jobs and retirement savings and their college funds haven't forgotten what happened. This town has forgotten what happened 10 years ago, and it could happen again. The more we roll back these rules and look the other way when corporations want to take big risks--not with their money but with other people's money--the higher the chance one of these big risks doesn't pay off. You know who pays the price. You remember who paid the price 10 years ago when the economy tanked because of Wall Street greed and Wall Street overreach. When Wall Street bets don't pay off, it is workers, families, taxpayers, and people in my neighborhood who pay the price. It is your money they are gambling with. Hard-working Americans face real consequences when they break the law, and so should Wall Street executives.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor a great Ohioan and transformational civil rights leader, Marian Spencer. Born in Gallipolis, OH, as the granddaughter of a slave, Spencer honored her grandfather by dedicating her life to fighting for a more equal and inclusive country. Spencer became a member of the NAACP at the young age of 13 and is best known for leading the fight to integrate Coney Island and its swimming pools in the 1950s. After graduating from high school, Spencer attended the University of Cincinnati, where she made Cincinnati her adopted home and campaigned to integrate the university's Whites-only college prom. From there, she chaired the education committee of her local NAACP branch and helped raise $30,000 to desegregate Cincinnati Public Schools, before becoming the chapter's first female president in 1981. Spencer believed in the power of activism as a means of social change, and her efforts led her to becoming the first African-American woman elected to Cincinnati City Council. Spencer gave a voice to the disenfranchised and underrepresented, and she will be remembered as trailblazer for civil rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, and the environment. We lost Marian Spencer this July, but her legacy will live on for generations. Her leadership and progressive ideas had a profound effect on our city, our State, and our Nation, and her work will remain a source of great pride for Ohioans. I am proud to honor Marian Spencer for her contributions to making our country a little freer and a little more just.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I both concur and applaud the senior Senator from Washington State for her comments. We saw Senator Manchin here. I know Senator Kaine was here. Senator Murphy was here. Senator Blumenthal was here. I know there are probably a dozen others, all of whom know people and have talked to people, who get out and, as Lincoln said, listen to people and get their public opinion baths. They meet people like Susan Halpern from Columbus, whom I will talk about in a few minutes. They talk to them. They meet. They see that what we do here actually matters to people's lives. They can play games with the Affordable Care Act. They have been doing that for a decade now, literally almost a decade, putting people's healthcare at risk, scaring people, and alarming people, trying to take their healthcare away. These are real people, as these pictures show and as these stories show. Let me back up for a minute. A Federal judge is hearing arguments in a case that would literally yank health coverage away from millions of Americans. I know what that means in my State. There are 900,000 people in Ohio who have insurance today because of the Affordable Care Act. There are 100,000 Ohio seniors who have gotten major savings on their prescription drugs through the Affordable Care Act. One million Ohio seniors have had osteoporosis screenings, diabetes screenings, physicals with no copay and no deductible, and preventive care so they don't get sick, saving the healthcare system money, saving taxpayers' dollars, and making their lives better. Yet my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, all of whom have good insurance paid for by taxpayers, want to take it away from them. Almost any day you could look down the hall--you can open this door and walk down the hall, look down the hall, and you will see the healthcare lobbyists, the drug company lobbyists, the tobacco lobbyists, and the gun lobbyists. You will see one after another going to the Republican leader's office, Senator McConnell. Every one of those lobbyists causes us to spend more dollars on health insurance. The health insurance lobby, the gun lobby, the tobacco lobby, the alcohol lobby, the spirits lobby coming out of Kentucky--all of them cost taxpayers more because it means people's health gets worse because they don't stand up to these interest groups. We know what is happening in Texas. A partisan judge, an absolutely partisan hack of a judge, ruled in December to strike down the Ohio healthcare law. I know Justice Roberts said we don't talk about Obama judges or Bush judges or Clinton judges or Trump judges. Yes, that is what they say, and that is what Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts says, but we know what has happened here. We know how Senator McConnell is looking for the most extreme and young judges possible to put on the court to go after labor rights, to go after voting rights, to go after healthcare, costing our citizens their health and costing citizens billions of dollars. We know the President wants to get rid of the entire Affordable Care Act. If President Trump gets his way, if the court decides to wipe it off the books, to take away the entire healthcare law, here is what happens: tax credits to help you afford your health insurance--gone; protections for preexisting conditions--gone. Right now, 5 million Ohioans have a preexisting condition. Most of the rest of us will have a preexisting condition at some time in our lives. It is called aging, when people are more likely to develop illnesses and get sick. So consumer protections built in by Obama, built in by the Affordable Care Act so insurance companies can't deny you coverage, and they can't say: ``Sorry, we are not going to insure you'' or ``You already have insurance''--and they will take the insurance away if you just happen to get too sick and you cost the private insurance companies too much money--gone. Republicans in this body and President Trump want to take those protections away. The ability to stay on your parents' health insurance until you are 26--gone. We know what that has meant to so many families. If my colleagues would leave this building, leave their foreign travel, leave their nice homes that most of us have in our States and get out and listen to people, they will hear people say: Well, this is really important to my 26-year-old sister or my 26-year-old daughter or my 24- year-old son. Ohio's entire Medicaid expansion that Republican Governor Kasich did-- gone. Limits on how much you pay out-of-pocket each year--gone. Many more affordable prescription drugs for seniors through closing the doughnut hole under the Affordable Care Act, if they get their way-- gone. Free preventive services, like mammograms and bone density screenings for Medicare beneficiaries--millions of them in my State and tens of millions of them in the country--gone. The list goes on. There are 5 million Ohioans under 65 who have preexisting conditions. That is half the population of our State. I am not being an alarmist. We know this is what so many of you who were in the House earlier voted on time and again to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act. You had no replacement. You said you did, but there was no replacement for the Affordable Care Act. It was the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, taking away all of these benefits that tens and tens of million Americans benefit from. These Ohioans have been able to rest a little easier knowing they can't be turned down for healthcare coverage or have their rates skyrocket because a child has asthma, because a husband has diabetes, or because a wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, but this case intentionally puts all of that at risk. President Trump has thrown the whole power and all of the attorneys-- the battery of lawyers--in the Justice Department into this case to try to take the away the Affordable Care Act. That is what he promised in his campaign; that is what all these Republican Members of the Senate promised; and that is what all the Republican Members of the House promised. Do you know what? A lot of them lost last year because they want to take their insurance away. They are not doing it through Congress because that might be politically risky. They don't want to do that. They are trying to do it through the court system and then blame who knows what for this. In Columbus, I met Susan Halpern. Ms. Halpern is a cancer survivor. She is pictured here. She told me this: As a breast cancer survivor and self-employed small business owner in Ohio-- Creating jobs-- I depend on the ACA for my healthcare. I am aware that without the ACA, I would not be able to purchase health insurance for any price. Even though my cancer has been in complete remission for 12 years, I would still be uninsurable. These stories from Michigan that Senator Stabenow tells, from Washington State that Senator Murray just told, that Senator Kaine told, that Senator Murphy has told, and that Senator Blumenthal has told go on and on. These are all cases where people have insurance, and a bunch of people in this body--all of whom get insurance paid for by taxpayers--are trying to take it away from them. All of these benefits are gone, thanks to the lobbyists lining up in Senator McConnell's office from the gun lobby, the tobacco lobby, the insurance lobby, the spirits lobby, and all the rest. Last week, in Cleveland, I met Maya Brown-Zimmerman, who pointed out to me that I had met her many years before when she was a student in high school. She went to high school with my daughter. I met her at a school event once. She has a rare genetic disorder that one of her four children also inherited. Here is what she said: I cried the day the ACA was passed because it meant a safety net for my family. No lifetime caps on medical coverage, and the guarantee of being able to get health insurance even if something were to happen to my husband's job. She went on: Whether or not my family loses these protections literally keeps me awake at night. Think about that. Think about the selfishness of my Republican colleagues, of President Trump, and of the people in this administration--all the Justice Department lawyers and all these judges. Think about their selfishness. They have a political agenda, and they are keeping Ms. Brown-Zimmerman awake at night because she worries about her insurance. Think about the selfishness. Think about the morality of that. She said: I want our elected officials to remember we can't predict when we will need to access the healthcare system and so access to healthcare is an issue that is going to affect us all. There are not too many people who are not able to sleep in this body. There were not too many people who were not able to sleep in the House as they were all voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That doesn't seem to cross their mind, but it crosses the minds of millions of people in Detroit, in Ann Harbor, in Cleveland, and in Mansfield. Today, tomorrow, and the day after, 14 Ohioans will die of an overdose. Medicaid is the No. 1 tool we have to get people into treatment. Ohio is in the throes of an addiction crisis, like much of the rest of the country but only worse in many cases. We know Medicaid expansion has been a lifeline to so many Ohioans. Sometime ago, I was at Albert House in Cincinnati, one of the best addiction treatment centers in the country. I sat with a man and his daughter. He put his hand gently on his daughter's arm. He looked at me, and he said: ``Senator, my daughter would be dead if it were not for Medicaid.'' He said: ``My daughter would be dead if it were not for Medicaid.'' Yet Federal judges--Trump-appointed judges and Bush-appointed judges--and Republican Senators, all of whom get health insurance from the Federal Government, from taxpayers, are apparently willing to have that on their conscience. They are willing to work to repeal the Affordable Care Act with no real replacement. That matters in the life of Ms. Halpern. That matters in the life of Ms. Brown-Zimmerman, whom I just talked about. That matters in the life of the gentleman in Cincinnati who talked to me about his daughter. The President wants to make it harder for Ohioans to get that care. I don't know how Members of this Congress and this President--all with good insurance that is paid for by taxpayers--can support dismantling this lifeline that so many Americans rely on. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, at the end of June, we received news that sickened so many of us. The Youngstown Vindicator, one of Ohio's greatest local newspapers, is closing after 150 years in business. It is devastating news for a community that is already reeling from General Motors' abandonment of Lordstown--and ``abandonment'' is the right word. General Motors made the decision to shut down production, losing 4,500 jobs in Lordstown, OH. They moved some of their production to Mexico. They took part of their tax cuts and their profits and used that money to buy stock options for their top executives. The Vindicator was reporting the story about GM's abandonment of Lordstown before the national media came to town. When GM laid off one shift of workers back in late 2016, after the Presidential election, then a second shift several months later, the Vindicator was there covering what those job losses meant to this community. We know the end of the Vindicator's coverage is another huge blow to Mahoning Valley. Our hearts break for the dedicated journalists and support staff losing their jobs. This was a family-owned paper for 132 years. This will not just be a loss for those who worked there. When local newspapers close, everyone suffers. Local reporters know their communities better than anyone. David Skolnick, Mark Sweetwood, and the entire Vindicator team have held local officials accountable. They told the stories of how national issues affect real Ohioans, how our trade policy hurts Ohio workers, and how the opioid crisis has devastated the valley. Craig Graziosi and many others have done vital work covering Lordstown. These journalists care about the cities and towns they serve. They hold those in power accountable, whether it is local government or city business leaders. NPR reported on what happens when local papers shut down. First of all, investigative reporting suffers. Long investigations are expensive. Usually, when there are no local newspapers to do these stories, no one steps in to fill the void. The investigations don't happen. Corruption increases, the city's financial health suffers, and citizens get hurt. Three researchers looked at local newspaper closures over a 19-year period. From 1996 to 2015, 300 papers across the country closed in that time. They found that where papers closed, city borrowing costs went up. Without local journalists, city watchdogs, the city's finances took a hit. It became more costly for taxpayers to fund local schools and other projects. It is just more evidence that journalists are vital to our communities and are necessary for our democracy. Too many people in this country already undermine the work that journalists do--or worse. We see reporters restricted, vilified, and even threatened--all for getting up every day and doing their jobs honorably. On the anniversary of the shooting at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, MD, where several reporters were murdered in cold blood, the President of the United States joked about getting rid of journalists. That is pretty sick. He is the same President who says journalists are the enemy of the people. Meanwhile, Wall Street hedge funds gobble up local papers around the country. Just this spring, the Cincinnati Enquirer and other papers around the country that are owned by Gannett fought off a hostile takeover by a New York hedge fund. These guys--and they are mostly guys in the hedge funds--buy up local newspapers and turn around and dismantle them. They fire reporters, and they sell company assets. That is their business model--to put tens of millions of dollars in their pockets. There is no public benefit to that; there are only benefits to the hedge fund operators. It is the last thing we need as the news business gets tougher and tougher. We have lost veteran reporters at Cleveland.com and at the Columbus Dispatch. The Dispatch's parent company, GateHouse Media, laid off more than 100 journalists this spring, including its longtime Washington bureau chief, Jack Torry, and now The Vindicator is closing its doors for good. It is time for us in the White House and in this Congress to stand up for the free press, to stand up for community newspapers, and to stand up for local journalists, who are vital to the fabric of cities and towns like Youngstown and all across this country.

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 want to first of all thank Senator Hirono for introducing one of the most important bills this session. It is all about collective bargaining rights. It is all about workers' voices being heard and all about the dignity of work. Just last week I was with Senator Hirono with a number of her constituents from her State, and they talked about her support for manufacturing or especially her support for workers. I was particularly pleased when she mentioned the Communications Workers of America. I have staff with me on the floor--some of my Ohio staff, including my State director, who came out of the CWA. I know how important workers' rights are. So I thank Senator Hirono for introducing this bill. If we did nothing this session but pass that legislation, it would be a huge victory for workers. Unfortunately, we have a Supreme Court that puts its thumb on the scales of justice in every case, choosing corporations over workers, choosing Wall Street over consumers, choosing, in far too many cases, health insurance companies over sick people. And today's Supreme Court case is aimed and targeted directly at States like mine, Ohio, a State that is a swing State and has 12 Republican House Members, 4 Democratic House Members and has had that same configuration of 12 and 4 for 4 State elections because of redistricting. But it is no surprise, with the Supreme Court deciding that they were going to put their thumb on the scale of justice again, against voting rights, against civil rights. That is what has happened in support of corporate money. So dark money has affected the special-interest Supreme Court. We have never seen a Supreme Court in my lifetime that is this beholden to corporate interests, that is this beholden to billionaire contributors, that is this beholden to special interests. We have never seen a Court like this. What does this mean? It means that instead of citizens choosing their elected officials, it is politicians choosing whom they represent. That is why you get these districts that will stay 12-to-4 Republican, where voters have no real say in these elections because of the way it is lined up. We have a Supreme Court that is hostile to voting rights, hostile to worker rights, hostile to women's rights, hostile to LGBTQ rights. That is what this Supreme Court has given us, as Senator McConnell, in his office down the hall, continues to push judges like this who don't look toward the public interest. They are always looking toward rewarding their billionaire contributors. Again, I thank Senator Hirono for her work. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following members of my staff from Ohio and Washington be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the day: Diana Baron, Mary Topolinski, Shilesha Bamberg, Alea Brown, John Patterson, Joe Gilligan, Ann Longsworth Orr, and John Ryan.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, this month, we surpassed the record for the longest period in American history without an increase in the minimum wage. It has been nearly a decade since minimum wage workers last got a raise--literally a decade. Because of inflation, the salary of a minimum wage worker today is worth $3,000 less than it was in 2009. Think about that. It is not like minimum wage workers are making a lot of money. A minimum wage worker's salary today is equivalent to $3,000 less than it was a decade ago because of inflation. President Trump and Republicans in Congress don't have a plan and don't even propose to have a plan. In fact, they block any plans the rest of us have. They don't have a plan to give millions of workers a raise. Why? Because the corporate lobbyists going in and out of the office of the Senate majority leader don't want them to. We know it is not just minimum wage workers who are losing out on money in their pockets because the President and the Members of this body always stand on the side of corporate interests, always put their thumb on the scale supporting corporations over workers. Look at the priorities Democrats fight for every day in this body, and then look at what this administration does. It is pretty clear who is on the side of American workers. Democrats have plans to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. President Trump is against it. He wants to do nothing to raise wages. Democrats have a plan to strengthen collective bargaining rights to give workers more power in the workplace--the PRO Act. President Trump nominates judge after judge who puts their thumb on the scale for Wall Street over consumers and workers. Democrats have a plan to put more money back in the pockets of 114 million American workers--the Working Families Tax Relief Act. It means if you are making $25,000 or $30,000 and if you have children or if you don't have children, through the earned-income tax credit, you get more money in your pocket. Again, President Trump and the special interest Republicans in this town show their hostility to workers by opposing it. President Trump, though, did sign a tax cut for corporations that led to record stock buybacks. The tax cut that President Trump pushed through this Senate, with the majority leader doing his groundwork for him--the bill he pushed, the tax cut he pushed through the Senate, over time, more than 75 percent of that tax cut will go to the richest 1 percent of the people. Think about that. There was $1\1/2\ trillion in tax cuts. Who benefits? Seventy-five percent of the benefits go to the richest 1 percent of the people in this country. Democrats also have a plan to give American workers more control over their lives and their schedules--the Schedules that Work Act, which we will be introducing soon. We have a plan to protect workers from companies that steal their hard-earned money by refusing to pay them for the hours they have worked--the Wage Theft Protection Act. Think about how that works. You work at a salary. Say you are making $35,000 a year. You are a night manager at a fast-food restaurant. The company decides to list you as a manager, so you are making a $35,000-a-year salary. The company can work you 42, 45, 50 hours a week and pay you not a cent for the hours above 40 because you earn that salary and because the company declared you manager. I call it wage theft. We used to have laws in this country that we enacted many years ago, updated with President Ford, President Nixon, and then President Obama, but President Trump has said no and scaled that back. His administration rolled back rule after rule that protects workers from companies that cheat them out of the wages they have earned. Again, whose side are you on when you have a President who is hostile to workers and who betrays workers while talking a good game but is clearly on the side of corporate interests every single time? Democrats are united in demanding that any new North America Free Trade Agreement--any new NAFTA have strong labor standards so we don't end up with another race to the bottom on workers' rights and benefits. So far, President Trump hasn't produced a deal that protects workers from corporations that want to move to Mexico so they can pay the workers less. In fact, the Trump tax cut bill that Senator McConnell-- down the hall--fought for and rammed through this Senate by only a couple of votes gave corporations a 21-percent tax rate. You shut down the Lordstown GM plant in Youngstown, OH. You are paying a 21-percent tax rate. When you move to Mexico, you pay half that tax rate. You pay 10.5 percent. That is what has happened as the President has failed to renegotiate NAFTA to help workers. Let me give you an example. Let me give a real quick story. After NAFTA passed, 5 months later, I went to the Mexican border with a friend. I went across the border and visited a Mexican auto plant. That auto plant looked just like an auto plant in Cleveland or just like an auto plant in Cincinnati and just like the Jeep plant in Toledo. There was one difference. The workers were working hard. The floors were clean. The technology was up-to-date. There was one difference between the auto plant in Mexico and the auto plant in Toledo. The difference was the Mexican auto plant didn't have a parking lot because the workers who work there can't afford to buy the cars they make. Yet President Trump's renegotiation of NAFTA left those workers' wages out so the workers will continue to be far, far underpaid in Mexico, will have weaker environmental laws--especially with the Trump tax plan--encouraging more American companies to move to Mexico. On another issue so important to so many in this country, especially elderly people, Democrats have a plan to lower the price of prescription drugs. One news outlet said it combines just about every policy idea that drug lobbyists hate. Yet President Trump and Members of this Senate, all with good healthcare paid for by taxpayers--don't ever forget that. All of us who represent people in this country have good healthcare paid for by taxpayers. They are all trying to take away the protections for Americans with preexisting conditions. Let me go back to the overtime issue for a minute. Three years ago, I stood in Columbus to announce the Obama administration was going to raise the salary threshold to earn overtime pay and make millions of more workers eligible. That would have meant 4 million Americans and 130,000 Ohioans were going to get a raise. As I explained earlier, when you make $35,000 or $40,000 and are paid a salary, they call you management. So when you work more than 40 hours, you don't get paid a nickel for any time you work over 40 hours. So what President Obama's rule did was give a raise to 130,000 Ohioans, 4 million workers, but workers didn't get that raise because attorneys general--far-right and extremely conservative attorneys general--around the country first sued to stop it, and then when President Trump won the election, he came up with a new rule that leaves most of those workers behind. We are talking about people making $38,000 or $40,000 a year--middle managers at banks, restaurants, and grocery stores. They are often required to work 60 to 70 hours a week without getting a cent of overtime. It is an American value and what we stand for as a nation. It is how we should govern, through the eyes of workers, through the dignity of work. If people work 50 or 60 hours--obviously, Senators and bank presidents and CEO's and doctors and lawyers shouldn't get paid overtime, but people making $35,000 or $40,000, if you work more than 40 hours a week, you should get overtime. That is what we used to do in this country, but we don't do it all the time now because of President Trump's opposition. Democrats have a bill to fix this, the Restoring Overtime Pay Act, that would allow 4.6 million Americans to be newly eligible for overtime pay. The President clearly doesn't understand how somebody living on $35,000 or $40,000 a year--what that person's challenges are. The President thinks it is fine to leave those workers behind. So much for fighting for American workers. That was his campaign promise. He would put them back to work. He would have good manufacturing wages for them. He would pay them. He would make sure they made good wages. It is all part of Donald Trump's phony populism. He divides to distract from the fact that his administration looks like a Wall Street retreat. True populism is never racist; it is never anti-Semitic. True populists don't pass tax cuts for rich people and leave out workers with children. Populists don't choose Wall Street over consumers. Populists don't choose corporations over workers. Populists don't choose health insurance companies over sick people. It all comes down to whose side you are on. Are you going to fight for the dignity of work or are you going to fight for the privilege of the wealthy? The President promised to fight for American workers. He breaks that promise every day. He has broken that promise for more than 2 years. If you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work. I wish President Trump would remember that. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from the chairman and the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee regarding the referral of S. 1879 be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Fifty years ago this Saturday, in Cleveland, OH, about 7 miles from where my wife and I now live, sparks from a railcar traveling over the Cuyahoga River near Lake Erie ignited debris in the water below, lighting our river on fire for what would be the last time. It wasn't the first time the river had burned. It wasn't the biggest fire ever on the river, but it surely had the most impact. Soon after that fire, Time magazine published a story calling the Cuyahoga River one of the worst rivers in the country. It was hard even for us who live in Ohio to argue otherwise. I remember how polluted the river was and the lake was when I was growing up. Even to a child, it was obvious that most of what was in the river didn't belong in that river. Industry used the river as an open sewer, and oil coated the Cuyahoga River. We knew that for generations Ohio's industry powered our country, making the steel that won our wars, built our skyscrapers, and went into the cars and trucks that carried our products and workers around the country. But our river--the Cuyahoga River--paid the price. The city's own wastewater system was outdated and ill-equipped for what was then America's tenth largest city. Americans were horrified by the scenes of that burning river. It was a wake-up call to people all over our great country that industrial pollution had real costs. People were becoming more and more aware of the scope of our environmental problems--polluted air, dirty rivers and lakes, oil spills off our coasts. Citizens woke up. Citizens demanded that their government take action. Our mayor in Cleveland, Carl Stokes, helped to lead the charge, pressing this Congress for Federal help. Congress passed the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency. The country celebrated the first Earth Day, and we made real progress. The city of Cleveland, the State of Ohio, and citizen activists transformed the Cuyahoga River Valley. Representatives Ralph Regula, a Republican, and John Seiberling, a Democrat, led efforts to create the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, which later became the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Think of that. There aren't that many national parks east of the Mississippi River--a national park in the Cuyahoga River Valley. Today our river is home to more than 60 species of fish. Families canoe and kayak and fish. The industrial river valley in downtown Cleveland, what we call the Flats, has been transformed into a center for recreation entertainment. NPR this week said that the cleanup ``has been such a success that environmental officials travel from around the world to take notes.'' All the cleanup we have done has not hurt our economy--far from it. We know the talking points. We hear from lobbyists in this building. We know the talking points we hear from corporations. They say that environmental protections hurt businesses and kill jobs. The Cuyahoga proves them 180 degrees wrong. The river transports millions of tons of materials to and from local industries and supports 15,000 jobs. It produces $1.7 billion in economic activity. For all that progress, more needs to be done. Last week, I was on the shores of Lake Erie and held a roundtable with Ohioans who love this lake. They told me they are worried that after 50 years of progress on the Cuyahoga and across Lake Erie, the shallowest and most vulnerable of the Great Lakes, we are at risk of going backward. The lake is threatened by harmful algal blooms and by climate change. I thank Senator Whitehouse for being the most important Member of this Senate talking about that issue every day, every day, every day. The lake is threatened by invasive species, and it is threatened by emerging contaminants that are in our drinking water. Unfortunately, we have a President and an administration that deny climate science and that yesterday, again, with their announcement, want to give polluters free rein. The President has tried every year to gut the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which keeps our five Great Lakes clean. Every single year the President has tried to do that. His EPA proposes leaving thousands of miles of waterways unprotected. They have abandoned the Paris Agreement--the best blueprint we have to combat climate change. Having watched for 50 years, first as a young child, then, having seen what has happened, having watched for 50 years the cleanup of this great lake and the waterways in my State, which is still an industrial State and still an agriculture State, I know we can't go back. We can't let our country return to the days when our rivers flowed with trash, sewage, and industrial waste, and our air and water made our children sick. We can't ignore climate change, one of the great moral issues of our time. Let's honor this 50th anniversary by committing ourselves to trusting our scientists, protecting our lakes and rivers, taking action to preserve our country for our children and our grandchildren before it is too late.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I want to join my friend Senator Casey today to talk about the importance of Medicaid. I want to echo his comments and Senator Wyden's comments, particularly given the attacks from the White House and State legislatures and, frankly, too many in this body. I am still incredulous when I think about what happened in this body and has happened many times. In my State, 900,000 people have insurance because of the Affordable Care Act. The expansion of Medicaid meant hundreds of thousands of families can rest easier knowing they will have health insurance when they need it. I have sat in this body a number of times and watched my colleagues-- mostly on that said of the aisle, well-dressed, well-paid, health insurance paid for by taxpayers--who are willing to cast a vote to take insurance away from hundreds of thousands in their States. Again, these are elected officials who have taken an oath of office, who have insurance paid for by taxpayers, and they are willing to take insurance away from others. I will illustrate with one story. Fourteen people in Ohio die every day from an overdose--more than any State in the country. I know it is a serious problem in Montana and a serious problem all over the country but more in Ohio than most places. Our State legislature wants to make it harder for Ohioans to get that care and so does President Trump. President Trump continues to try to take insurance away. These aren't people sitting at home. Most of these people under Medicaid expansion were workers making $10, $12, and $15 an hour, working every bit as hard as Senators do, but they don't have jobs that provide insurance so they depended on the expansion of Medicaid. These are people working hard. This President wants to take their insurance from them. Senator McConnell, down the hall, wants to take their insurance from them. They cast votes. This isn't hyperbole or me making this up. Let me tell you a story real quick. One of the best treatment centers in Ohio is called Talbert House. I was at Talbert House one day in Cincinnati. I sat with a man and his daughter. He turned to me, put his hand on his daughter's arm, and said: Without Medicaid, my daughter would be dead. How dare Members of this body--elected officials who are supposed to represent the public interest--take away insurance from people like his daughter. Every day I just can't believe it.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, there are a lots of things we know about American workers today; that is, that workers understand that they are working harder than ever and have less to show for it. Productivity is up. Stock prices are soaring. Executive compensation has gone through the roof. Profits are up, but wages are largely flat. It is not a coincidence, not an accident of the market. It is not an inevitable result of capitalism that compensation for executives just vaults skyward, that profits are up, and that stock prices are up and wages are flat. Capitalism doesn't have to be that way. It is just the way it is now. Wall Street's laser focus on accumulated wealth for people who already have great wealth is by their explicit design. It comes at the direct expense of American workers. That is why I am laying out the case for how Wall Street undermines workers and some of the changes we need to make in this country to grow our middle class and make hard work pay off. Each installment of this series, what we are calling ``Wall Street's War on Workers,'' is posted on my media page. You can follow along at www.medium.com/@SenatorBrown. I have talked about how Wall Street's business model encourages companies to pay workers low wages and to lay off workers. It is the cost of doing business to minimize the expense of workers. Today I want to talk about how corporations use stock buybacks to withhold profits from workers who create them. The workers create this value, these profits and, instead, Wall Street and these corporations keep more and more profits for their CEOs and for Wall Street investors. Corporations focus on the short-term performance on the stock market, not the long-term success of their company and its workers. Their main goal becomes increasing stock prices quarter-to-quarter. That is how CEO's performances are evaluated. They are not thinking 10 years down the road. They are certainly not thinking of their country or community or even long-term of their company. They are thinking about stock prices quarter-to-quarter. That is how their performance is evaluated. They are compensated, in large part, with company shares. Increasingly, corporations juice those stock prices by repurchasing their own stock--what we call a stock buyback. Because there are a finite number of company shares at any given time, purchasing shares will decrease the number of shares available to investors and therefore drive up the value of the remaining shares. Existing stockholders will see their stock value increase. Lo and behold, who are those existing shareholders? Many of them owning great numbers of shares are-- shocking--the executives of the companies. They offer an even more attractive option to executives than dividends because buybacks are more flexible, and they aren't taxed until the shares are sold. Stock buybacks have been a way for companies to return cash to shareholders rather than investing in workers, rather than investing in new products since at least the 1980s, but since the past decade or so, the amount corporations are spending on buybacks has dramatically increased. Between 2010 and 2017, corporations spent more than $3 trillion on stock buybacks. How much is that? Three trillion is 3,000 billion. You all remember last year down this hall, as I pointed out before, where Senator McConnell works, the majority leader's office, lobbyists were going in and out of there writing the tax bill a year and a half ago. We had that discussion a number of times. Last year, following President Trump's tax giveaway to corporations, that tax bill that was written down the hall in the leader's office, 75 percent of the benefits of that tax bill went to the richest 1 percent. Last year, following President Trump's tax giveaway to corporations, companies spent $1.5 million every minute of every day on stock buybacks. Since that bill passed--that giveaway to the richest people in this country--companies have spent $1.5 million every minute of every day on stock buybacks. A couple of years ago, Home Depot spent 99 percent of its net-net income on stock buybacks; IBM spent 92 percent. Think about that--99 percent and 92 percent of its income spent on stock buybacks. That is not money going to a $14-an-hour worker at that company. That is not money going to reinvest in equipment or building the company or research. Ninety-nine cents on the dollar is going to stock buybacks to enrich the biggest--not the small-time investors, to enrich the biggest investors. Companies are spending close to 100 percent of their profits on that--not on wages, not on other things. Do you know what? When all this was going on back when this tax bill was written--and I remember opening this door and pointing down the hall to Senator McConnell's office--around that time, President Trump invited some Senators of both parties to the White House. He promised us that every American would get at least a $4,000 raise; some would get a $9,000 raise. Do you know what happened? I know the President figured out he wasn't really telling the truth. He was doing his typical exaggeration. When he said every American would get a $4,000 pay increase, at least, that money didn't go to wage increases. In those two companies, more than 90 percent of it went to stock buybacks. It went to increases in salaries and wages but only to the top executives. Don't even try to tell us that these tax cuts for the rich trickle down to middle-income workers or trickle down to middle-income Americans. They simply don't. Buybacks jumped even more after President Trump signed that bill. More money was spent on stock buybacks in 2018 than on debt payment, capital expenditures, research and development, on dividends. Virtually almost every Republican voted for that tax bill. Don't try to come here, my friends on the other side of the aisle, and say we are going to vote for this huge tax cut for rich people--this bill written down the hall in Senator McConnell's office--we are going to vote for a bill to give big tax cuts to rich people, and that money is going to work its way down to help the middle class. Don't even bother trying to lie to us and tell us that. That never happens. Proponents of stock buybacks argue that companies purchase their own shares only after considering other value-creating investment options. There is not a lot of consideration of other options when more than 90 cents on the dollar is spent on stock buybacks. They expect us to believe America is truly out of ideas. Are all our factories as updated as they can be? Are all workers earning a fair wage they can live on? Of course not. Talk to any family in Cleveland, where I live now; or Lorraine, where I lived before; Mansfield, where I grew up; or Chillicothe; or Marietta. Talk to anyone outside of Wall Street or the richest enclaves of this country. Ask these families if they can think of a better investment for the trillions of dollars in wealth American workers have created. It doesn't have to be this way. The Tax Code is one of the best tools we have to influence businesses. Tax reform should have been an opportunity for companies to encourage people to invest more in workers. When I went to the White House in that meeting with President Trump, I gave him a couple of ideas. I actually handed him legislation. I handed him the Patriot Corporation Act. Do you know what that bill does? It doesn't just give tax breaks to the big corporate lobbyists who come in and out of Senator McConnell's office. The Patriot Corporation Act says that if your company pays good wages, if your company provides decent benefits for health and retirement, if your company makes your product in the United States of America, you get a lower tax rate. A comparable bill, the freeloader fee bill, says that if you, on the other hand, are a company where a huge number of your workers receive Medicaid because you don't provide health insurance, a huge number of your workers get food stamps because you don't pay high enough wages, and a huge number of your workers get section 8 housing tax credits, you pay a corporate freeloader fee. That corporation is penalized. If the company does the right thing, they should have a lower tax break. If a company depends on American taxpayers to subsidize their low-wage employees, that company should be penalized. It is as simple as that. The President said he liked these ideas, but then the special interests came funneling into Senator McConnell's office, lining up out in the hall as far as you can see. They were going into the office petitioning, asking, begging, pleading for the majority leader to take care of them, and he did. If we started corporate tax reform with the Patriot Corporation Act, we would have seen rising wages. Instead, we see exploding stock buybacks. Again, we know why. Depending on the size of the companies, stocks can account for as much as half of an executive's compensation. An executives' personal interest influences decision making. One study of 2,500 companies found that the greater the percentage stock options in executive compensation packages, the more likely a company was to do stock buybacks. No kidding. If I am a CEO, and I see that my compensation depends on stock buybacks, I am going to maybe cash in and do stock buybacks. That is at least what we have seen. We shouldn't be surprised that when the President and Leader McConnell handed them a windfall, those executives turned around, plowed their money right back into stock buybacks and into their own pockets. A good example of that is really close to home for me. It is what happened to General Motors. General Motors pays almost no taxes anyway. It is a profitable corporation. Ten years ago, in this Senate, I was proud of what I did. I worked with Senator Voinovich, Republican from Ohio; I worked with President Bush, the second; and worked with President Obama in saving those two plant companies, Chrysler and GM. It meant that a lot of Ohioans and a lot of people around the country continued to have decent jobs. What happened 10 years later? They closed their plants. They do major stock buybacks. The executives get richer, and because of this Trump tax law, more production goes to Mexico. How do we stop this never-ending cycle of corporate greed and make sure the workers share the profits they created? It may not seem like it, but there are already regulations in place to prevent stock price manipulation. The problem is, the SEC rule put in place in 1982 has big loopholes. We need to strengthen the SEC rules to ban buybacks and provide more transparency. Some have suggested we ban buybacks altogether. That might sound good, but it will not do anything to put that money in the pockets of workers where it belongs. The goal is not to tax the rich. The goal is to quit giving them tax breaks, and the goal is to plow money into the middle class, to help American workers get their fair share, to help American workers share in the wealth they create for corporate America. My proposal is simple. If corporations want to transfer wealth to Wall Street, workers simply get a proportionate share of the pie. For every $1 million passed on to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks or dividends, corporations will have to pass on $1 to every worker in that company. I am calling it a worker dividend, and all public corporations would be required to pay it. I will be introducing legislation to strengthen SEC rules and to establish the worker dividend in the coming weeks. It simply comes back to the dignity of work. We should honor work. We should respect work. It means better wages. It means retirement benefits. It means healthcare. It means more control over your work schedule. It means a safe workplace. It means childcare. It means all the values that we appreciate as Americans. With the dignity of work and respecting and honoring work, we would see a worker dividend. Wall Street so often doesn't recognize that all work has dignity. Whether you swipe a badge or punch a clock, whether you work for tips, whether you work on salary, whether you are caring for an aging parent, whether you are raising your children, all work has dignity. Dr. King said there is no job that is menial if it has adequate compensation. Wall Street considers shareholders' equity in a company to be all that matters. Workers have equity in a company too. It is called sweat equity. For the first time in years in this country, it is time that workers are rewarded for their work. I yield the floor.

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, this weekend another community was torn apart by gun violence. Once again, politicians do what so many politicians in this body do. They offer thoughts and prayers to the people of Virginia Beach, and then they move on. It is tragic, and it is obscene how routine this has become in our country and how routine that reaction from far too many politicians--from the White House on down--has become. This month we mark Gun Violence Awareness Month, but in our country every month, every week, and every day we endure senseless gun violence. Congress has ignored for too long the millions of Americans who want reasonable gun safety measures instead of doing the bidding of the gun lobby. We cannot say we are doing what it takes to keep our country safe until we are finally willing to pass commonsense laws to protect all Americans from gun violence. Many of us have tried. I supported the original Federal assault weapons ban in 1994. I joined with many of my colleagues to vote to renew it after Sandy Hook. Weapons of war and assault weapons do not belong on our streets. We have tried to pass legislation to close loopholes in our background check system so that people who buy guns on the internet or at gun shows have to go through the same background checks as law- abiding gun owners who buy their guns at stores in Ohio. After the tragedy at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, we tried to pass legislation to prevent people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns. If you are too dangerous to get on an airplane--if the government says you can't ride in the plane because you are on the terrorist watch list--it should be too dangerous for you to buy a deadly weapon. But this body is so, so in the pocket of the NRA that they will not even pass legislation like that. The gun lobby, again, stood in the way. We know what happened each and every time. They stood in the way, despite the fact that the laws we are talking about would not undermine the rights of law-abiding gun owners. I respect the rights of hunters, of collectors, and of responsible law-abiding gun owners. No one is trying to take away their guns. When our students aren't safe in our schools, it is clear that something has to be done. When workers aren't safe on the job, it is clear that we have to do something. When too many Americans don't feel safe going about their daily lives in their communities, we can't sit here and do nothing. We will not give up on making our country safer. We will keep working until we get weapons of war out of our schools, out of our workplaces, out of our neighborhoods, and out of our places of worship. Creating change in our country isn't easy. It requires going up against powerful special interests. Few are as powerful as the NRA. Change never starts in Washington. We make progress because of grassroots movements of Americans all across our country demanding action. From Marches for Our Lives to the Women's March, to the activism around the Affordable Care Act, Americans proved again and again and again the power of activism. Mothers and fathers, students and teachers all across this country who stood up and marched for gun safety are the people we sent here to serve, not the special interest gun lobby. I hope my colleagues will not so easily forget what happened in Virginia Beach and at the Poway synagogue and in Pittsburgh and in Parkland and in Orlando and at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis and in Las Vegas and in Sandy Hook and in our neighborhoods around this country every month, every week, and every day.

Mr. BROWN

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