Sherrod Brown

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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, there was an article in the paper today telling us something that surprises nobody in this Chamber, really, on either side, surveying the tax packages, the proposals from Democrats and Republicans, and making the contrast, and it said the Democratic tax packages are significantly better for the middle class than the Republican tax package. We know what happened 2-plus years ago when the Finance Committee, in the middle of the night, kept writing new language and biasing it towards the wealthiest people in the county. We know that the Trump tax bill, voted for by the majority, opposed by all of us because over 75 percent of the benefits, over time, went to the richest 1 percent. Contrast that with our Working Families Tax Relief Act, which focuses on middle-class and working-class taxpayers, focuses on the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit under the theory that, if you cut taxes for the rich, which Republicans always do, that the money trickles down, but it doesn't trickle down. They say it is going to trickle down and help the middle class. Well, it really never does. I heard President Trump promise a group of us in the White House that everybody would get a $4,000 raise and several thousand dollars in tax cuts for middle-class families--it just didn't happen. The way you grow the economy is you focus on the middle class, you cut taxes for the middle class, put money in their pocket, they spend it in local communities. You cut taxes for the rich, it goes to a Swiss bank account or wherever it goes. So the newspaper today said what everybody already knows, that the best way to grow the economy, the best way to help this country, the best way to help the middle class is--surprise--cut taxes for the middle class. That is what the Working Families Tax Relief Act does. It helps working class kids. The Trump tax bill pretended to cut taxes through the child tax credit. For the child tax credit, it actually left 26 million children out. Our legislation focuses on those 26 million children. They are not children of the rich. They are children of the middle class. They are working families. They are low-income kids. So it is clear that that is the way this body should go. I understand who has the votes. I understand that the President of the United States--where the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives--the President of the United States can always jam another tax cut for billionaires through this body. But let's do the right thing and actually put our focus on working families. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, this month I join Senator Grassley of Iowa and a bipartisan group of my colleagues to recognize May as National Foster Care Month. It is an opportunity to acknowledge the millions of foster parents and children in foster care around the country. More importantly, it is a call to action. We simply leave too many children behind. Poverty should never be the reason children are separated from their parents. There is no dignity in removing children from their mothers or fathers because they don't have adequate housing or affordable childcare or jobs that allow them to take time off when their children get sick. Right now, child welfare agencies are overwhelmed by the number of children who enter the system, and the addiction crisis just makes it worse. In Ohio, parents' substance abuse is listed as one of the causes for one-third of all children who enter the system. Children who are already in the system stay there longer, especially teenagers. We have to do better than that. Last year, we passed and the President signed the bipartisan Family First Prevention Services Act, which is an important first step. It has the potential to change our child welfare system over time. Yet the changes the Family First Prevention Services Act requires ultimately have to be made at the State level. We have to make sure that States have the support they need and that they actually do what the law requires. That is why, this month, I introduced the Family First Transition and Support Act--to help all States transition to the family first era. It would provide funding for States to recruit and retain quality foster parents who meet the needs of children. Our bill would expand funding for kinship support services, which would help family members who raise children pay for essential needs and services, like childcare, transportation, and other things. This is especially important with the rise in having other family members raise the children because of the addiction crisis. In Ohio, Arizona, and all over this country, we have seen a big increase in there being grandparents who raise grandchildren, in large part, because the children's parents have had addiction issues or have actually died of overdoses. The grandparents with the grandchildren face unique challenges and don't often qualify for the same support as foster parents. It means that they are going back to work. It may mean that a 68-year-old grandmother who lives on a pension and thought she was retired has to go back to work in order to raise this child to make enough money or has to take money out of her retirement savings. Relatives' care is vital to keeping kids safe at home and in their communities. Our bill would provide real funding to get these grandparents and other family members more support. There is no formula here, but most of the time, it is better if grandparents can raise these children rather than send them to foster parents, who are strangers. The grandparents, obviously, know and love the children. It doesn't mean foster parents can't, of course, but so often the grandparents are financially challenged. I get letters all the time from Ohioans who tell their stories and ask us to support these family members. A man from Richland County, where I grew up, wrote to me saying: I ask that family members be given the same financial aid as foster parents. Most of the family members are grandparents or great-grandparents on fixed income with little or no money. Another woman from the county just south, Knox County, south of Mansfield wrote: I am a grandmother raising my grandson. He is 15 years old, a great kid, and has been living with me almost all his life. I lost my beautiful daughter to an overdose. She was raised in a good home, but was affected by this disease for the past 9 years. We loved her and miss her every day. This letter goes on: Grandparents that lovingly accept their grandchildren, under sometimes awful [conditions]-- Just think of that. She is raising a grandson when her daughter died of an overdose. Grandparents that lovingly accept their grandchildren, under sometimes awful circumstances, often don't know what to do. Thank you so much for getting this program and money to support it on board. Grandparents do so much, without much help. Last year we were able to break through the partisanship and get the Family First Act signed into law. This bill is the commonsense next step. This Foster Care Month, I hope that my colleagues will live up to their talking points about supporting children and families. We hear every day here how much we support children and families. Well, do something about it. Work with us to pass this bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor a member of my staff, Seth Pringle, who has dedicated his life to serving his country and the people of Ohio. Not only does Seth serve the people of Ohio each day on our staff, helping Ohio servicemembers and veterans, but he also serves in uniform himself as a member of the Army National Guard. This past week was his last in our office for a year. He is heading out soon to deploy with his unit to defend our country overseas. Seth earned both a master's and a bachelor's degree from Kent State University. He didn't stop there. He is currently pursuing a master's in national security from the University of Akron while also working for our State and serving his country. Seth has worked in our office since 2015. He joined our team as an intern in the Cleveland office. He impressed all of us. He was hired first part time and then as a full-time staff member, serving as a constituent advocate on veterans and military issues. Seth has helped hundreds of Ohio servicemembers and veterans navigate the military and the VA's bureaucracy so that they can receive the medals and timely medical care and benefits they earn. About a year and a half ago, I joined Seth and members in the community in Cleveland to present long-overdue medals to George Burress, a Vietnam veteran who served as an Army infantryman and earned the Combat Infantryman Badge, as well as five other well-deserved honors. Mr. Burress had never received those medals due to a paperwork error. Because of Seth's work, we were finally able to present this Ohio veteran with the honors he had earned for serving our country. There are so many stories like that one of American heroes finally receiving the honors and the Federal benefits they have earned. So many of those stories are because of Seth's hard work. Seth Pringle does so much for the people of Ohio, and at the end of the week, when others might look forward to a relaxing weekend with friends and family, Seth often is headed out for drill with his unit. Now Seth's unit is deploying. While we will miss his expertise, his dedication, and his unique perspective in the office this year, we are so grateful for his service to our country. On behalf of everyone in my office and on behalf of Ohio's 12 million citizens, we wish Seth Pringle well in his tour overseas--and all of his unit, of course. We thank him for his sacrifice and his service. 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. BROWN. Madam President, each year during National Police Week we honor our law enforcement officers and the families who support them and sacrifice alongside them. It is so important to remember that, as much as the sacrifice of the officer or the man or woman overseas fighting for our country, the sacrifice of the family is in many ways just as great. They all give so much in service to their communities. Too many make the ultimate sacrifice to keep us safe. This year we add the names of four Ohioans to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. Ohioans who laid down their lives last year were Officer Eric Joering of Westerville, a Columbus suburb; Officer Anthony Morelli, also of Westerville; Officer Vu Nguyen of Cleveland; and Officer Matthew Mazany, of Mentor, a community east of Cleveland along Lake Erie. Each of these losses is a tragedy for a family, for a community, for their fellow officers. Sadly, we already know the names of two people who will be added to the memorial next year: Detective William Brewer of the Clermont County Sheriff's Office east of Cincinnati and Officer Dale Woods of the Colerain Township Police Department near Cincinnati. Both were killed in the line of duty in 2019. We can't begin to repay the debt we owe them and their families, but we can work harder, frankly, to support their families and their fellow officers as they work to keep our communities safe. It is why I am working with my colleague Senator Portman on our bipartisan POWER Act to get officers the tools they need to screen for dangerous opioids in their communities. This bill builds on my INTERDICT Act, which the President signed into law last year. That law is getting new, portable, handheld screening devices to Customs and Border Protection agents to detect fentanyl and carfentanil at the U.S. border and stop them before they reach Ohio streets. The POWER Act will give our local and State law enforcement access to the same high-tech tools. All of our law enforcement officers know how big of an issue illegal fentanyl has become. They deal with it, it seems, almost every day. This week I am joining Senator Inhofe to introduce the bipartisan Law Enforcement Training for Mental Health Crisis Response Act. We have seen too many officers hurt. We have seen far too many police officers and sheriff's deputies and Federal agents killed responding to people in their communities suffering a mental health crisis. This bill would invest in training to help officers resolve those situations safely for themselves and for the communities they serve. This National Police Week, let's offer more than gratitude to the people who put their lives on the line to keep us safe. Let's support these women and men by getting them the tools they need to do their jobs for themselves and for our communities.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, over the past couple of months, we have seen State legislatures around the country taking drastic, unconstitutional steps to insert themselves into personal, private healthcare decisions that should be--and have been in the past--between a woman and her doctor. Ohio and Georgia, two States that wouldn't seem on the surface to have that much in common, have both passed laws that would fundamentally eliminate a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions. Who made these laws? It is always the same. It is predominantly men who don't even understand how women's bodies and how preventive care like birth control work. We have one Ohio legislator, a man, who sponsored a bill banning insurance companies from covering certain types of birth control, and then he admitted he didn't really know how birth control actually works. When asked about the different kinds of medications and birth control devices, he said: ``I don't know because I'm not smart enough to know.'' But he thinks he should make decisions for women. You would think he is smart enough to know better. You would think that millions of Ohio women know best how to take care of their own bodies. He was also making up medical procedures. He actually wrote into a version of the Ohio bill an exception allowing insurance companies to cover a made-up medical procedure where a doctor would reimplant an egg from an ectopic pregnancy. This is a total fantasy. No such medical procedure exists, yet that is what he did. He is 1 of 99 votes in the Ohio legislature, and he happens to be in the majority, and he happens to be one of the authors of these bills, and he happens to be a supporter of whatever it takes to put Planned Parenthood out of business. It is not only idiotic to suggest that those medical procedures exist, it is actively harmful to spread information, not to mention insensitive or cruel--that might be the better word--to the women and families coping with the very real struggles involved in an ectopic pregnancy. That inaccuracy in the law could create serious confusion about how and when doctors could treat women for ectopic pregnancies and put women's health at risk. After he was asked over and over again what in the world he was talking about, he said: ``That's clearly not my area of expertise.'' Yet he was going to legislate in an area where, self-admittedly, he didn't have expertise. He was going to tell women what they had to do-- fantasy or not--with birth control. He was going to try to tell women what to do with their own bodies. He thought it was a good idea to legislate on it and to insert himself in the medical decisions of millions of women in my State. Unfortunately, this administration is only making things worse. President Trump and the men he has put in charge, the judges he has appointed--look at the Supreme Court--put their thumb on the scale of justice, always choosing corporations over workers, always choosing Wall Street over consumers, always choosing insurance companies over sick people and, frankly, increasingly over women's bodies and women's decisions. President Trump and the men he has put in charge are encouraging these male lawmakers in States like Ohio and Georgia and Alabama, where it may be worst of all--they are taking the country backward when it comes to women's health. Rather than making it easier for women to get care, they make it harder. This administration put out a new rule 2 weeks ago that would allow healthcare providers to refuse to provide needed care for a woman if the treatment supposedly violates their personal beliefs. In other words, if a woman had a miscarriage and she came in needing emergency care, the doctor could refuse to treat her simply based on his own personal issues and biases. How does that follow the physician mantra of ``do no harm''? It is not just medical professionals who could refuse care; it is hospitals, and it is insurance companies too. I don't know how anyone could suggest a for-profit insurance company has a conscience, yet, apparently under these kinds of laws, it does. Under this rule, an insurance company can consider the coverage of some services--and we know these are always services related to women, and they are always services related to LGBTQ people, all Americans-- against that corporation's supposed conscience. So if the corporation doesn't believe in human rights, doesn't believe in equality of gay people, of LGBTQ people, doesn't believe women should have control over their bodies, that corporation, licensed under the law--they have a conscience, and they can refuse care. That is what these legislatures are doing, and that is what this President wants to do. That conscience clause that these corporations and these insurance companies say they believe--I wish that conscience clause would kick in when they are raising premiums, when they deny people coverage for their medication. When they take away an exclusion for a preexisting condition, where they cancel someone's insurance or never insure them because of a preexisting condition, that is not a conscience thing because they are a corporation, but when it comes to women's health, it is. One woman from Butler County in Southwest Ohio wrote, and she said: I'd like to know why insurance companies are allowed to pick and choose the drugs they will and will not cover. Since when did they become doctors? This is just the latest in a long line of rules that hurt women. They have rolled back title X protections, instituting a new gag rule that would ban many clinics from talking about birth control and family planning options with their patients, limiting their patients' access to accurate medical information. I just don't understand. Some of these people don't like abortion. I understand that. They want to take away women's healthcare decisions, but they will not help women get contraceptives, and they will not explain the options women have when they come in and want to talk to the doctor about those kinds of things. I just don't get that. I get letters from women in Ohio who also don't get that, who are scared about what these changes mean. One woman from Mahoning County wrote to me: I am a 24 year old woman living with PCOS, a hormonal disorder. Complications of PCOS include Type 2 Diabetes, high risks of miscarriage and infertility, and even cancer. It is not curable, but it can be treated with birth control. This domestic gag order will put millions of women at risk across this country. Let me read again what she said: I am a 24 year old woman living with PCOS, a hormonal disorder. Complications include Type 2 Diabetes, high risk of miscarriage and infertility, even cancer. It is not curable, but can be treated with birth control. This domestic gag order will put millions of women at risk across the country. Who said these people can practice medicine when they are without a license and do these kinds of things? I hope my colleagues will think about these women. I hope my colleagues, especially my male colleagues, will spend a little more time trying to help women get the healthcare they need instead of trying to meddle in decisions that always, always, always should be between a woman and her doctor. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 minutes to address the Senate.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, the Senate is finally holding long overdue votes on nominees to the Export-Import Bank of the United States. To me, this is about Ohio businesses; this is about American workers; and this is about the dignity of work. All three of these nominees are qualified. For nearly 4 years, the Export-Import Bank has been forced to stop most of the work supporting American jobs. A small group of opponents, supported by special interests in this town, tried to kill this bank altogether. Ex-Im has been paralyzed because of leadership in this body and because of the President and the Vice President of the United States. The Bank is technically open but can't approve any transaction greater than $10 million. The Senate's inaction, the President's inaction, and the Vice President's inaction have hurt Ohio manufacturers. In the past, Ohio companies exported more than $400 million a year in products using Export-Import Bank credit assistance. That amount has been cut nearly in half. That means jobs. It means good-paying industrial jobs. If the President and Republicans in Congress were serious about helping American manufacturers after years and years of obstruction, which they have done, they would approve these nominees and work with us to authorize the Bank this summer. My colleagues have a choice: Do they care about these businesses; do they care about manufacturing; do they care about workers; do they care about the dignity of workers; or do they care more about their extreme special interest politics? I stand with our workers. I will vote to reopen the Export-Import Bank. Thank you.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I will be brief. I see my colleague from Tennessee is here. Earlier this afternoon, the President's designee, Stephen Moore--not quite yet his nominee, but the President put his name out there to be a Governor of the Federal Reserve--withdrew his name from consideration, in large part because so many Republicans in this body were unhappy with his selection. This is the second Trump failure for the Federal Reserve just in the last month. He was about to nominate Herman Cain. There was a lot of outcry about his lack of qualifications. I am not sure why the President came up with him. Then he withdrew, and Stephen Moore's name had been put out there, too, and there were the same kinds of complaints about Moore--not just about what he wrote and said over the years, but really about his reputation as a thinker, as an economist, and as a strategist on economic issues. The President has tried twice. I don't know when we have ever seen this before, where the President hasn't been able to find somebody who understands the independence of the Fed and is qualified to take on that awesome responsibility to be on the Federal Reserve. It is as influential as any economic position in this government, I think. Now the President has two new chances again. I am hopeful that he will think about not appointing somebody whose whole mantra is trickle- down economics--to give tax cuts to the richest people in the country and hope it trickles down and we get a better economy. That never works. I am hopeful that the President better understands that you focus on the middle--my earned income tax credit bill, for instance--and you focus on tax breaks for the people making $20,000, $30,000, $50,000, and up to $100,000 a year. They will spend those dollars they get in tax breaks and build the economy, whether in Terre Haute, in Nashville, or in Cleveland. We know how important that is. I hope the President will look at the next Governor of the Federal Reserve--these two appointments--and think about the dignity of work and think about someone who respects and honors work. You may remember that Stephen Moore made some really caustic and nasty comments about two great cities in my State--Cleveland and Cincinnati. As much as that was offensive, what is really offensive is how he just doesn't seem to respect the dignity of work and respect these workers. Whether they are physical therapists at hospitals, whether they clean bathrooms at hotels, whether they are construction workers, whether they are midlevel managers, or whether they are salespeople on the road, it is important that we honor and respect work and understand the dignity of work. I am hopeful the President will see that the next two nominees for the Federal Reserve will think about the American workforce. One of my most fun moments and most productive moments and days in my time in the Senate was when I asked Janet Yellen, the Chair of the Federal Reserve, to come out and visit a major aluminum stamping plant for helicopter blades in Cleveland, which is not far from where I live. It gave her a perspective of seeing what Americans do for a living sometimes in manufacturing, sometimes in sales, sometimes in service-- whatever it is. I am hopeful that this is who the President will look at--somebody who will respect the dignity of work, someone who will want to go out, as Abraham Lincoln said, and get ``my public opinion baths'' and get outside the hallowed halls of the Federal Reserve, see America, and translate that into a policy that really does help working families. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the career of my longtime chief of staff, staff director of the Democratic staff on the Senate Banking Committee, former staff director for Republicans on the HELP Committee, and my good friend Mark Powden. Mark is the model of a public servant and of a Senate staffer. He spent decades serving in these Halls, first for Senator Jeffords, and then, in 2007, he joined my office, becoming my chief of staff less than 2 years later. I was a brandnew Senator. I still had a lot to learn. There were few better teachers in this institution and this city than Mark Powden. He helped steer our office in its early days, setting up a well-oiled machine, I would like to think, that would serve Ohioans at home and advocate for them in Washington. Under Mark's leadership, we delivered results for the 12 million people in Ohio. When the country wanted to write off the American auto industry, we said no. We weren't going to abandon this industry and millions of American workers--literally hundreds of thousands in Ohio. Mark was passionate about making sure we got the best deal possible for Ohio workers. It wasn't just auto workers. Mark took over the job as chief of staff in my office during the depths of the recession around the time President Obama took office, after the economy was tanking with a loss of 800,000 jobs a month at the end of the Bush administration. Ohio had lost 423,000 jobs over a 2-year period--nearly 8 percent of the jobs in the State. Under Mark's leadership, we worked to create the Hardest Hit Fund, which targeted resources to communities in places like Ohio that had been devastated by the financial crisis. Mark and so many others have heard me say that the ZIP Code where my wife Connie and I live in Cleveland, OH--ZIP Code 44105--at that point, in the first half of 2007, there were more foreclosures in that ZIP Code than in any other ZIP Code in the United States of America. Mark always made sure that investing in Ohio was a priority. We helped secure $100 million to expand cancer research and treatment at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and James Cancer Hospital. Through all of these accomplishments, Mark remained true to his Vermont roots. It is where he grew up. His first major job in Washington was with a Republican in those days, a Senator from Vermont. He tried his hardest always to bring Vermont's bucolic vales to the Nation's Capital, and he maintained the utmost respect for the institution of the Senate. He had an incredible wealth of knowledge on the history of this place and on legislative procedure and tradition, and he passed it on to other staffers--from my new chief of staff, when Mark moved over to lead the Senate Banking Committee, to the LCs new to the Senate, hoping to learn. We will miss all that about Mark Powden. I will miss Mark's counsel. I will miss his hard work. I will miss his sense of humor. I will miss his modesty. I will particularly miss his farmer jokes that he tells so well after growing up in rural Vermont. It is not surprising that Mark would not want to be here today as I honor him because he just doesn't want to show up to be honored. But after decades in public service, he has earned a long retirement with his wife Wendy; his two sons, Joseph and Russell; and his entire family. Mark, thank you for what you did for me, thank you for what you did for our State, and thank you for what you do for our country. I would add to this that one of the people Mark helped to teach is with me on the floor today. She is about to join a Presidential campaign. Her name is Hannah Fine. I want to recognize her service. This is the first time, I believe, she has been on the Senate floor for a moment like this. So, Hannah, thank you.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, over the past few weeks, we have learned more and more about the President's pick, Stephen Moore, for the Federal Reserve. We now know he has made all kinds of offensive, disparaging comments about women, even about women who play sports. He has even questioned women who are in broadcast booths. We know he is against child labor laws. He thinks we should have 11-year-olds working. He has said that he wants people to start working at 11, at 12. He has said he is a radical in this. Think about this. The President is about to nominate for the Federal Reserve a gentleman who says he is an economist but who really isn't. He didn't get his degree and didn't get a Ph.D. in economics, as Federal Reserve people often do. Yet put that aside. He said: I am a radical in child labor. I mean, who thinks that way in the year 2019? Other things we know, he was banned from the op-ed page of the Kansas City Star after publishing an editorial with all kinds of factual errors. See, the editor knew he was a conservative. The editor may have been a conservative. I don't know. That is not the point. The point is it was filled with factual errors, and the editor said: Those kinds of factual errors are just unacceptable. We are finished with him--not that the editor doesn't agree with certain viewpoints, but she just said: We are not running him anymore because he doesn't tell the truth. We have him on videotape showing breathtaking contempt for people in the middle of the country, from places like Arkansas and Kentucky and Tennessee and my State of Ohio. Here is what Mr. Moore said, and it is on tape and many people have seen it: If you want to live in the Midwest, where else do you want to live besides Chicago? You don't want to live in Cincinnati-- The home of Senator Portman-- or Cleveland. My home. He said: You don't want to live in Cincinnati or Cleveland or these armpits of America. That is what he said. President Trump is showing his disregard for Cincinnati and Cleveland and Kentucky and Arkansas and Tennessee and the middle of the country by nominating someone who is so out of touch and has such contempt for the middle of this country. ``The armpits of America'' is what he called two of my State's great cities. Make no mistake, he wasn't just insulting Cleveland and Cincinnati; he was insulting Little Rock; he was insulting Nashville; he was insulting people who get up every day and work hard. He was dismissing millions of Americans. He was undermining the dignity of work by dismissing them, people who have been ignored by Washington and have been preyed upon by Wall Street. Across the industrial heartland, tens of millions of Americans raise families; they serve in our military; they power our companies; they contribute to our country. Mr. Moore, how dare you demean them and diminish them with those kinds of comments? How dare you insult them and their hometowns? You can't fight for these Americans when you don't know the first thing about the places they live. You don't understand that all work has dignity. You don't understand the dignity of work. You don't understand honoring and respecting work. It is particularly ironic where Mr. Moore made these comments. He was speaking at an event sponsored by a think tank called the Heartland Institute, located, I believe, in Chicago. Can you believe that? Take a look at who is really behind this group, the Heartland group. I mean, people can name themselves whatever they want. They call themselves the Heartland Institute, but they are funded by ExxonMobil, the biggest oil company, I believe, in the world. They are funded by Philip Morris, one of the tobacco giants--Big Tobacco--that poisons our children. Four hundred eighty thousand people die every year from tobacco in this country--480,000 people. You know what that means? It means Philip Morris has to find 1,300 new customers every day just to make up for the people tobacco has killed. So the Heartland Institute is funded by ExxonMobil; it is funded by Philip Morris; it is funded by the Koch brothers--or at least we used to know they were funded by these groups. Today, unfortunately, they don't disclose who their individual donors are, which is pretty shocking. The Heartland Institute didn't want people in the actual heartland to realize they are nothing but a corporate front--a corporate, special interest-funded front. What have they done with those donations? Well, you can expect them to do the bidding of ExxonMobil; you can expect them to do the bidding of Philip Morris; you can expect them to do the bidding of the Koch brothers, and those interest groups have certainly gotten their money's worth. The Heartland Institute has pushed junk science on behalf of tobacco companies to try to block and stop and neuter anti-smoking public health laws. As recently as the late 1990s, their president wrote an op-ed. I mean, this isn't really funny at all. I don't know why I laughed, but it is so ridiculous. The president of that group wrote an op-ed claiming that moderate smoking--moderate smoking--doesn't raise your risk of lung cancer. You know, getting those 15-years-olds to start smoking only a little bit, I guess that is OK because that doesn't increase their chance of lung cancer. That is their notable achievement. So, of course, we shouldn't be surprised that the men in the room-- and it was almost all men. You could tell from the video and the audio that the men in the room, when Mr. Moore talked about my city, Cleveland, Senator Portman's city, Cincinnati, talked about them being armpits of the Nation, the men in the room howled with laughter because look who comes to the Heartland Institute. It is a bunch of lobbyists, a bunch of drug company people, a bunch of oil company men, a bunch of tobacco men, a bunch of gun lobby people. All these people who come to the Heartland Institute, of course, they were laughing at those people in the industrial Midwest, in Cleveland, in Mansfield, in Toledo, in Zanesville, and all over our country. That is what these phony, rightwing, tobacco-funded think tanks really think of America's heartland. President Trump likes to pretend he cares about people in places like Cincinnati and Cleveland. He likes to make big promises to the people in the heartland, but look at whom he puts in charge--these conservative elites. Make no mistake, they are far-right conservatives, and they are elites. They all think they are better than the rest of the country. These conservative elites, whether they are on Wall Street, whether they are in Trump Tower, whether they are at the White House, where the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives, whether these conservative elites are going in and out of the office doors of the Senate majority leader with their requests for tax cuts in hand, these are people who have contempt for the people they are supposed to serve. Stephen Moore says he doesn't want to be judged on all the extreme and offensive articles he has written; he wants to be judged by his economic record. So let's do that. Let's look at his economic record. It is just as bad. It is in line with views of all these rightwing elites. It stems directly from contempt for ordinary people. You see it in their policies: Make it easier for Wall Street to pay these huge--$1 million, $2 million, $5 million, $10 million--bonuses that Wall Street elites get, so often at the expense of workers. I was at my high school reunion in Mansfield, OH, some time ago. I sat across the table from a woman who had worked at one of America's largest banks. When I grew up and I used to put my family farm paycheck into this bank, it was called Farmers Bank in those days. It has been bought and sold and bought by other bigger banks. The point is, she had worked as a teller in this bank for 30 years. She was making $30,000 a year. Yet Wall Street continues giving million-dollar bonuses, massive tax cuts for corporations, for billionaires and pennies for working families. Look at what happened in Kansas, where Stephen Moore was banned from writing in the newspaper because he lied so much. He helped design the tax cut boondoggle that bankrupted the State. It was the plan that eliminated taxes entirely for LLCs and passthrough corporations. The people who paid the price were millions of ordinary Kansans. There was no money for teachers. There was no money for healthcare. There was no money for higher ed. When Republicans in the State finally rebelled and repealed that Stephen Moore far-right tax plan, Kansas had fallen behind the rest of the country. They were actually losing jobs in Kansas, a once prosperous State, while almost every other State was adding them. One advocate in Kansas who saw his work up close said: ``I wouldn't let Stephen Moore within 100 yards of my enemy's piggy bank, let alone put him on the Federal Reserve.'' So why on Earth would we want to hire that guy to help run our national economy? It is pretty clear that creating jobs for workers in the heartland doesn't really matter to Stephen Moore and his crowd. After all, they don't even want to set foot there. It comes back to the dignity of work. We need people in office who understand, who respect work. Whether you punch a clock or swipe a badge, whether you work on a salary, whether you work for tips, whether you are raising children, whether you are taking care of an aging parent, it comes down to honoring and respecting work--something apparently Stephen Moore and his far-right elitist crowd know nothing about. The last thing we need is another conservative elitist looking down his nose at American workers, at Ohio workers, at workers in Arkansas, at workers all across this country.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the career of Diana Milete. Diana has spent her life in public service and has made a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of Ohioans. Diana came to my congressional office when I was very first elected to the House and has been with us ever since, through all my time in the House and my entire 12 years in the Senate. When she retires at the end of this month, she will have spent more than three decades in Federal service. Helping Ohioans is one of the most important things our office does, and as the head of our constituent services program, her work has touched the lives of more than 59,000 Ohioans. These were seniors trying to navigate Federal Agencies to get the Medicare and Social Security benefits they earned over a lifetime of work. They were veterans and their families trying to secure medals and VA benefits. They were Ohio workers trying to claim the tax credits they earned. Diana went above and beyond the call of duty for so many Ohioans. I remember 2\1/2\ years ago, right before the Fourth of July, our office received a request for assistance from a man in Cleveland named Danny Salazar, who was trying to arrange visas for his family to visit him from the Dominican Republic. You may recognize the name Danny Salazar--he was the Cleveland Indians' star pitcher, and the reason he wanted his family to come visit was because he had been selected to play in the MLB All-Star Game in San Diego. Diana got right on the case, and, working with other members of our team, she was able to make sure Danny's family got visa appointments in time for the game. Danny's mother got to come watch the game with her son, and he sent our office a picture of him and his family at Petco Park--a picture that hung on Diana's wall. Of course Diana's efforts weren't restricted to Major League Baseball players. Our office helps any Ohioan who needs it, and we have received piles of letters over the years from Ohioans writing to thank Diana for all her hard work for them. After Diana helped her with her Social Security claim, a woman from Elyria wrote: ``Diana, you are an angel in disguise. You literally saved my life and ended my despair.'' Another woman from Avon wrote to Diana, ``Many thanks for doing the near impossible!'' Diana didn't stop with helping individual Ohioans. Over the years she worked on several cases related to ALS patients, who faced a mandatory waiting period of two years before they could receive disability benefits. Tragically, ALS is a fast-progressing disease, and many patients pass away before the 2-year waiting period is over. Diana brought the issue to our office's attention, and our legislative staff went to work. I joined my colleagues in the House and Senate to introduce legislation to fix this, and we eventually got it done. We reduced the 2-year waiting period to 5 months. This year, as Diana's time with our office comes to a close, I have joined a bipartisan group of colleagues to introduce legislation to eliminate the waiting period for ALS patients all together. That is how our office works best--we talk to Ohioans, dedicated workers in Ohio like Diana listen to their stories and bring their issues to the attention of our office, and our legislative staff works on a solution. We are all going to miss Diana when she retires at the end of this month, but she has earned a long and happy retirement spent with her family in Lorain. Diana's impact on this office will be felt long after she is gone. She has built one of the best casework operations in the country, and I know her team is going to carry on Diana's legacy, serving Ohioans with compassion and dedication for years to come. Diana, thank you for your service to the people of Ohio.

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, today on the other side of this building, the CEOs of the biggest Wall Street banks face tough questions about the way their banks have scammed and broken laws and gotten away with it, as every American knows. Our Banking Committee staff analyzed the data, and it is pretty clear that these banks are breaking the laws over and over and over. Watchdogs will take enforcement actions against a bank only to find out the same bank is breaking the rules in an entirely different way in a different part of the bank at the same time. We need to hold these banks and the corporate executives who run them accountable for their actions, which we have simply not done. Trump regulators haven't done it, and the Senate majority hasn't done it. We simply haven't done it. Hard-working Americans face real consequences when they break the law, and so should Wall Street banks. The chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Maxine Waters, is doing the right thing in the House calling in these CEOs. We need to be doing the same thing in the Senate. I have called on my counterpart on the Banking Committee, Chairman Crapo, to hold a hearing so we can question big bank executives about their law-breaking. There are plenty of actions the President and his administration could take on their own to punish these banks when they break the rules, but instead this administration and this majority leader do exactly the opposite. Last year, Congress passed and President Trump signed legislation rolling back laws protecting working families from Wall Street greed. The big banks, of course, ask for weaker rules. They have forgotten what happened. Well, they haven't forgotten, but they hope the public has. Certainly, the Senate Republicans have forgotten what happened 10 years ago to this country. So Congress passed and the President signed legislation rolling back laws protecting working families from Wall Street greed. As I said, the big banks wanted weaker rules and they got them, even though that puts millions of families at risk of losing their jobs and losing their homes again. President Trump said: OK, let's do what the big banks want. We know that the White House looks like a retreat half the time for Wall Street executives, and we know the President of the United States does the bidding of Wall Street over and over. The year before weakening these rules, Congress passed and President Trump signed a $1.5 trillion--that is 1,000 billion, $1.5 trillion--tax cut for corporations, big banks, and the richest Americans. Since the Republican tax bill passed, corporations have bought back $900 billion of their own stock. I was in the White House one day with a group of Senators, meeting with the President of the United States, and he said that this tax bill they were about to pass--that he hoped would pass--would mean that the corporations would invest all these dollars into higher wages for workers and new factories and growing the economy. Well, what happened with a lot of this money was they used this money for stock buybacks. Of the eight companies with the most stock buybacks--with billion dollars of stock buybacks--half of them were Wall Street banks. We know Wall Street can never get enough--never enough power, never enough money. They always want more. One bank lobbyist said: We don't want a seat at the table; we want the whole table. And this Congress and this President think that is just fine. The tax giveaways, letting banks haggle over their stress test results, and taking away customers' rights to have their day in court when the banks scam them, apparently, just wasn't enough for Wall Street. Two days ago, the Fed announced that they are going to roll back more rules on foreign megabanks. These are not just U.S. banks with U.S. employees. These are foreign megabanks. We are talking about banks that have broken U.S. law over and over and over. I am not going to document all of those. But there are many, many cases of these foreign megabanks breaking U.S. law--banks like Santander, which illegally repossess servicemen's cars. So when men and women are overseas protecting our country, Santander, a Spanish-owned bank doing business in the United States, actually repossessed these servicemembers' cars. Deutsche Bank has laundered money. We know Deutsche Bank is about the only big bank in the world that will finance the President because he has a history and a habit of cheating banks and not paying back loans. So because of the relationship that Deutsche Bank and President Trump have, Deutsche Bank is doing just fine. We also know that Deutsche Bank laundered money, breaking U.S. law. Not even counting the President's insidious activities with them, Deutsche Bank broke U.S. law by laundering money. But do you know what? The Fed gives them rollback rules because we don't want to be too tough on the foreign megabanks. Last year, when the President signed his big bank bill, I warned that it would mean looser rules on those big, foreign banks. They all said: No, that is not going to happen. Federal Reserve Chairman J. Powell himself said it wouldn't happen; they are not going to weaken the rules on the foreign banks. Well, either they were naive at the time--I think J. Powell is an honest man. I guess I didn't know he was this naive. But he and others would say: They are not going to weaken foreign bank rules. Well, now they have. When the Fed made the announcement of its plan to go easy on foreign banks, they said--I am not kidding; this is a quote: ``This proposal should look familiar because it shares the same basic framework as the domestic proposal.'' It is as if that is a good thing, as if they are bragging that we are treating the foreign banks the same way as domestic banks, but these foreign banks happen to break the law over and over--Deutsche Bank, Santander, and other banks. That is not even the only good news for megabanks this week. We got word that the Fed and President Trump's appointees are going to let the biggest Wall Street banks off the hook on another rule, but one that requires something called living wills. Now, living wills doesn't sound like much. It doesn't mean much to Members of this Senate and to the general public, unless they are in the Banking Committee and they spend a lot of time on this. Living wills are blueprints from banks that are supposed to prove they will not wreck the economy and cost taxpayers billions of dollars if they go bankrupt. Now, pretty much the way it works is like this. The Federal Reserve goes to these banks and they require these banks to show what would happen if there were a significant downturn in the economy like there was a decade-plus ago. When the economy went south in 2007, 2008, and 2009, for these banks--because they weren't strong enough, because they hadn't had these stress tests, and because they hadn't gone through these rules because it wasn't Federal law at the time--it wasn't clear that these banks would be able to withstand that kind of plummeting of the economy when demand shrinks and all the things that happen in a recession. They weren't. So that is why government bailed them out. That is why the lobbyists lined up in Leader McConnell's office--then, I guess, it was Leader Fritz's office or Leader Lott's office--and got so much of what they wanted from Senate Republicans in those days. The whole point of these living wills is that banks can show, through a series of complicated tests, that even if the economy goes bad, these banks aren't going to tank, these banks aren't going to go out of business, and these banks aren't going to need a Federal bailout. That is the whole purpose--a big part of the purpose--of Dodd-Frank, the Wall Street reform bill. Again, these living wills are blueprints from banks that would prove they will not wreck the economy and cost taxpayers billions if they go bankrupt. Under the bill that passed a decade ago to fix this, they had to go through a stress test every year. Well, this bill the President signed said that, well, they will not have to go through it quite every year. The debate was--I said I didn't think we should do it. My Republican colleagues said: Well, it will probably be every other year. Maybe that is not so bad. I said: Well, probably it is. It ought to be every year. Now the Federal Reserve has said it is just going to be once for every Presidential 4-year term--once every 4 years. Nobody saw that coming. I guess the banks saw it coming because the banks had a lot of influence with them. So the Wall Street reform law required them to file these plans every year, and now they require them only every 4 years. It is said that if those plans didn't look credible and if the banks failed their stress tests--in other words, they weren't strong enough to withstand a recession--then, the Federal Reserve and others would have the power to go in and make these problem banks simpler and smaller. In other words, if the banks couldn't withstand a bad economy and if these banks were too fragile and caused too much damage to the economy if they didn't pass the stress tests, these banks, then, could be broken up into smaller units, making them stronger. But now financial watchdogs only have to check into those plans just once a Presidential term, every 4 years. A lot can change and a lot can go wrong in 4 years. Just ask any family or anyone how their income or rent or savings change. They may not be the same month-to-month let alone every 4 years. The people in this town, especially Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee, have this collective amnesia. They may have forgotten what the financial crisis and the housing crisis meant. The families who lost their homes, lost their jobs, lost their retirement savings and their college funds haven't forgotten. They haven't recovered from the financial crisis. They haven't recovered from decades of bad trade policy and bad tax policy that make it harder and harder for their work to pay off. I don't think Members of this body--there is a wonderful quote from President Lincoln when he said to his staff: I need to go out and get my public opinion back. I need to go out and listen to what people are saying and look at how they are living and talk about their lives. It is not something people around here do much of, especially when it is people who might be vulnerable to losing their homes. I live in Cleveland, OH, Connie and I. We live in ZIP Code 44105. There were more foreclosures in my ZIP Code than in any ZIP Code in the United States of America. You can still see the urban blight and the residue in what is left--the remains of those foreclosures. Think about what it means to a family personally. The first thing they have to do is get rid of their pet. Their pet costs too much money, no matter how close their son or daughter or they themselves may be to their dog or cat. Then they have to make all kinds of decisions: We are going to have to move. We are going to have to go to a new school district--all the kinds of heartache when your life has been turned upside down because you are foreclosed on. I am not an alarmist or predicting anything in the next few months, but if we keep going down this path, weakening Federal banking law, doing the bidding of Wall Street, if the lobbyists continue to go in and out of the office of Senator McConnell, the Republican leader's office, and the bank lobbyists who go in and out of there and get their way--if that happens and continues to happen, who knows what will happen again in the next 2, 3, 5, 10 years. The more we roll back these rules on Wall Street, the more we give breaks to foreign megabanks, the greedier the big banks get, the more risk they take on, and the higher the chance that one of their big risks doesn't pay off. Mr. President, you know who is paying the price when Wall Street bets don't pay off. It is you, it is the workers, families, and taxpayers. It is your money, the American people's money they are gambling with. So instead of making it easier for Wall Street to make big bets and break the law without reaping consequences, why don't we make it easier for families to afford healthcare? Why don't we make it easier for working parents to afford childcare? Why don't we make it easier for workers to save for retirement? Why don't we make it easier for students to pay for college? Why don't we honor the dignity of work and make sure hard work pays off for everyone, whether you swipe a badge or punch a clock or work for tips or work for a salary or whether you are taking care of children or an aging parent? Why don't we make it easier for them with a tax code and trade policy that works? Instead, all our efforts and all of the administration's efforts--as I said, the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives. So much of their efforts are to make it easier for corporations and to make it easier for the big banks. It is time we listened a little more to the Americans we serve, a little less to the biggest Wall Street banks that have gotten enough handouts already. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, we lost an American hero today--the last in the line of heroes that will I explain in a moment. He was Ohio native Lt. Col. Richard Cole, and he was the last of the fabled Doolittle Raiders. In the spring of 1942, the Nation was reeling from Pearl Harbor, and 80 Americans embarked on a mission that many thought to be impossible. They knew the dangers. They knew many of them would not come home. The Raiders showed America and the world that the United States and the Allied Forces could win the war. It was considered a turning point in the news coverage and in people's minds. Like my dad, the Doolittle Raiders came from a generation that spoke proudly of their service to their country. They rarely drew attention or talked much about their own courage. They sought no recognition but, oh, how they earned it. It was an honor to help award the Congressional Gold Medal to the Doolittle Raiders in Washington 4 years ago--a long time in coming and so deserved. I believe, at that time, there were five Doolittle Raiders left, and after the death of Mr. Cole, there are none today. I am so glad that Dick Cole was able to live to receive that medal, as were a handful of others. These men are no longer with us, so it is all the more important that we continue to tell their story. My heart goes out to the families and friends of Lieutenant Colonel Cole and to those of all the Raiders. I thank the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders Association for keeping that memory alive.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. President. I rise in opposition to the nomination of Mark Calabria. He is the wrong man for this job. Sometimes I kind of can't believe this place. I see these people. I see the President of the United States, who never really experienced any of these challenges that homeowners in Cleveland, OH, or in Muncie, IN, face. He can't even get a loan from a local bank; he has to go to Germany to go to Deutsche Bank. That is really beside the point. I just don't understand, when we have these academicians or people who work in government for a while, and then they go out and they do these writings, and over time--I look at someone like Mark Calabria. He seems like a genuinely nice fellow and an honorable guy, but some of the things he said and has written in his career--let me start with this. He questions the need for the 30-year mortgage. A lot of Members of Congress, a lot of people voting on this nomination, and a lot of people in the White House--the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives. The majority leader's office down the hall has a stream of lobbyists going in and out from the banks and the oil companies and the gun lobbyists and all that. Mr. Calabria has said he questions the need for a 30-year mortgage. Many of my colleagues here and in the White House don't really have to worry about paying their mortgage. They don't have to think about saving for retirement and planning for retirement and thinking: I have 7 years until I want to retire; I have 14 years to save money for my children to go on to college, to go to Lorain Community College, or to go to Dennis Center, or to Ohio State, or to go to Bloomington, or to go the University of Indiana. Mr. Calabria's questioning of 30-year mortgages--most people can't afford to buy a house if they don't have a long-term 25- or 30-year mortgage. They can't put 50 percent down, like it was before Franklin Roosevelt, and then pay it off in 5 years. That is how we did homeownership in this country 70, 80, or 90 years ago. That is why there wasn't much homeownership then, and then we figured out how to do it. Mark Calabria just wants to blow all that up and say: I don't really like the idea of a 30-year mortgage. He is not being nominated for the Secretary of the Interior. He is not being nominated for the EPA. He is being nominated for the Federal Housing Finance Agency. It is a critical job. We know we have a housing affordability crisis in this country. Think about this. One-fourth of all renters pay at least half of their income in housing costs. That is one-fourth of people who rent. I assume it may be higher in Indiana, as it is in Appalachia, OH, or it may be higher in East Cleveland or in Gary than it is in some other places, but whatever the number, overall, one-quarter of renters in this country pay 50 percent of their income in housing. Do you know what that means? It means that if your car breaks down, you have to borrow money from a payday lender so you can go to work so you can keep making $12 or $14 an hour. It eventually means you may get evicted because you can't meet your monthly rent. The homeownership rate among African Americans is at the same dismal level it was before Congress put those open housing, anti- discrimination laws in place, and now this administration is not even enforcing those laws. Mr. Calabria doesn't think we need the current affordable housing goals. He thinks we should eliminate the GSEs, and--my favorite--he called homeowners who are underwater in their mortgages deadbeats. I don't know if he has ever actually been to Ohio. He might have. He might have ties there, for all I know. I don't know that he does, but 8 years ago in Ohio, one out of five homeowners was underwater. You know what that means. It means they owed more for their house than their home was worth. It wasn't their fault. It is not their fault that in their community the worth of their home was dropping. It is not because they didn't keep it up, but it is because people were foreclosed on or homes were abandoned or they were evicted from those homes, and the value kept dropping so they actually owed more than their home was worth. He calls those people deadbeats. Somebody who loses their job and can't pay their mortgage, does that make them a deadbeat? Somebody who gets hurt on a construction project, he or she is a carpenter or a boilermaker, and they can't work--he calls them deadbeats? This is the person we want in charge of housing? He questioned the need for the Hardest Hit Fund. I know, in the Presiding Officer's State and in my State, that the Hardest Hit Fund really has mattered in helping clean up some neighborhoods and trying to get a floor under prices so they start going up again. He said: Just let prices fall. It is easy for him to say to just let prices fall. How about the people who are affected by this? My colleagues who support his nomination today shouldn't act surprised when he raises costs for borrowers, when he makes it more difficult to develop affordable housing, and when he cuts off access to homeownership for American families, especially people of color. That is what he has advocated his entire career. We should reject Dr. Calabria's nomination. We should tell the President of the United States to send us a new nominee who will take this job seriously and a nominee who will make it easier, not harder, for Americans to afford housing. I ask for a ``no'' vote for the nomination of Mark Calabria to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, as you know and as we know, our Nation is facing an affordable housing crisis. Right now, we are considering the nomination of someone who will have the power to do something about it--Mark Calabria, the President's nominee to spend the next half decade heading the Federal Housing Finance Agency. He would be responsible for overseeing a $6.5 trillion housing market that provides homes for millions of American families, and $6.5 trillion is $6.5 thousand billion; that is how big a trillion is. He would oversee a $6.5 trillion housing market that provides homes for millions of families. Far too many Americans are left behind in our housing policy. Think about this. One-third of all households spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. A number that is even more frightening is that one-quarter of American renters spend at least half their income on housing. One-quarter of American renters spend half of their income on housing. What does that mean? That is not something people around here, frankly, think about very much. If you are a Senator, if you are a Congressman, if you are some of the highly paid staff people, and many aren't, but if you are the chief of staff or legislative director or if you are a staff director, you don't think about those things. If you do what Lincoln used to do and say ``I need to go out and get my public-opinion baths'' and if you see how people live and you see that somebody is paying half their income in rent, and their car breaks down and they don't have $600 to fix their car, what happens is they can't pay their rent. Then, if something else happens and they get evicted, their whole life turns upside down. They have to give away their pet, no matter what their kids think. They have to move out of that apartment. They have to send their children to a different school. They often have to live in the basement of a neighbor's or a cousin's home. They end up putting their things in storage and losing them. I don't think we understand what the housing crisis means to, literally, tens of millions of Americans. It is not just in the city, as the Presiding Officer knows. It is in rural areas. His State is pretty rural. Big parts of my State are pretty rural. It is not just East Cleveland or Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati. It is Appalachia, small towns, and small cities like Zanesville, OH, and Mansfield, OH--places where you can't pay the rent or you get your home foreclosed and you lose your home; you get thrown out of your home, and your whole life turns upside down. That is why this is so important. We are not only talking about renting but also about homeownership too. The homeownership rate among African Americans is at the same dismal level it was before we had laws in place to protect against discrimination. Those laws are barely being enforced. The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development seems to have little interest in enforcing housing discrimination laws. The Senate Banking Committee majority seems to have little interest in enforcing anti-discrimination laws. Hispanic households are hardly better off than African-American households. These are serious issues we have to solve. As we face this crisis, Mark Calabria, the President's nominee for FHFA will be on the frontlines. He will set policies that determine how many families can afford to buy a home and how much they pay. He will have the power to promote or discourage building affordable apartments to serve the lowest income renters. It is not just that people's wages are stagnant in the Trump economy. Wages are flat. It is not just that. As prices go up, there simply isn't enough housing, so rental units are getting more and more expensive. If your wages are flat, no matter how hard you work--you might have two jobs, a job making $9 and a job making $14, but it is not enough if your rent keeps going up, as it does in far too many cases. The record shows that Dr. Calabria is exactly the wrong person for this job. He actually questioned the need for the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. Think about that. That is the primary tool families use to afford homes and build wealth. I am guessing that almost every one of my colleagues, except those born extraordinarily rich--I am guessing that for most of us in this body, most people watching this, most of our staffs, and most Americans who own homes, especially the first home they bought had a 25- or 30-year fixed mortgage. Before people owned homes much in this country, a century ago, they had to pay off their home in 3 or 4 or 5 years, typically. Almost nobody can do that. That is why we have the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. Dr. Calabria wonders whether we need the 30-year mortgage at all. President Trump clearly doesn't know. President Trump knows how to build big apartment buildings and borrow money from Deutsche Bank because no reputable bank in the United States will lend to him. But he doesn't know what it is like to pay off a mortgage and for people who think in terms of, ``How am I going to pay off my mortgage?'' He doesn't understand what the importance of a 30-year mortgage is. Presumably, that is why President Trump picked somebody like Dr. Calabria to be in charge of housing. Dr. Calabria has called for repealing the affordable housing goals. One-third of households are spending more than one-third of their income on housing, and it is worse for renters. You would think making housing affordable would be one of Dr. Calabria's top priorities, but he doesn't think we need the current affordable housing goals. He told Congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which he would be in charge of, should be eliminated. He would be the one overseeing a housing finance system that has helped more than 28 million American families become homeowners. He has questioned the need for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. He has called for the end of the entities he would oversee that contribute to this housing market. It is pretty clear--over his years of writing--whose side he is on. During the financial crisis, when Wall Street wrecked the economy and American communities were left to clean up the mess, Dr. Calabria blamed homeowners for this. He called homeowners who were underwater on their mortgage ``deadbeats.'' Think about that. The guy who is going to oversee the whole housing agency market for the U.S. Government said that the people who were underwater--what does underwater mean? Underwater means that you have been paying your mortgage, but because of a drop in the economy or in your community, what you owe is more than what the house is worth. The house becomes devalued because of the neighborhood, because of other foreclosures, because of other people being evicted, and your home is worth less than what you owe the bank for your mortgage. That is called underwater. Dr. Calabria called those people deadbeats. Those people probably work every bit as hard as Dr. Calabria does--not to make it personal--or as hard as most of us in the Senate work. These are people working hard to try to get ahead. Because of circumstances in this global economy where wages are flat, where the rich are getting richer, where most of America is treading water, Dr. Calabria calls these people deadbeats for something they didn't even do. Anybody who doesn't think families will do everything they possibly can to stay in their homes has clearly never met those who have actually had their homes foreclosed on. I have met those families. My wife, Connie, and I live in ZIP Code 44105 in Cleveland, OH. That means nothing to anybody who is listening, but the ZIP Code in which we lived in the first half of 2007 had more foreclosures than had any ZIP Code in the United States. We live in a development of about 200 homes that are priced at $100,000 to $200,000 to $250,000, but not far away, in the rest of this ZIP Code, there is home, after home, after home, after home that has been foreclosed on. These homes are generally old. They are generally not in good shape. They generally have very toxic levels of lead that poison children in their central nervous systems. He is saying that these people are deadbeats--those who are working hard. They lost their jobs. That is the main reason most of them couldn't keep up with their mortgages. These families aren't deadbeats. They work hard. They work a lot harder than the Wall Street traders-- that is t-r-a-d-e-r-s, perhaps--who are taking big risks with other people's money. Some of Ohio's families were laid off, and they tried to find new jobs. They were making $22 an hour, and they found new jobs at $14 an hour. They work just as hard, maybe harder, but the new jobs don't pay as much. Some couldn't find new jobs because the economy was in a free fall. In 2010, one in five homeowners in Ohio was underwater in his mortgage. Yet he calls them deadbeats? One out of five people is a deadbeat because the worth of his home dropped, and he couldn't keep up with his mortgage? At that time, Ohio had lost 375,000 jobs. In that year, Dr. Calabria criticized one of the most important tools that States like Ohio had in trying to help homeowners--the Hardest Hit Fund. The Hardest Hit Fund helps States like Ohio and Indiana and Arizona and Florida. It helps us weather a crisis. The housing markets and the workers in those States were devastated. The Hardest Hit Fund helped more than 25,000 struggling homeowners. It was not enough because the effort from the Senate was not enough, but it helped in the tearing down of thousands of plighted homes; it helped to make neighborhoods safer; and it helped them to recover. Dr. Calabria said the Hardest Hit Fund was just subsidizing States because their housing markets were getting more affordable. What kind of person thinks this way? What kind of person says these things? What kind of person is so hardhearted that he or she would possibly take these positions if he or she knows any of these people? Maybe he needs to go out and get to know some of these people. We asked about his solution. He said we should just let prices fall. He would sit back and let homeowners suffer and communities suffer because of Wall Street's greed. This is the man the President of the United States and, apparently, the majority leader in the Senate--down the hall--want to lead in the overseeing of the housing finance in this country. In more than 100 blog posts, articles, and papers, Dr. Calabria made his views clear. He said the goal of housing reform should actually be to shrink our mortgage market, that we should eliminate the GSEs and the Federal Housing Administration. My colleagues who plan to support his nomination today or tomorrow or whenever the vote comes should not act surprised if he raises costs for borrowers, if he makes it more difficult to develop affordable housing, or if he cuts off access to homeownership for American families. That is exactly what he has advocated for in his entire career. This is a critical job. It is why nominees like him should be debated. Americans should have the chance to make their voices heard on a nominee like him, who can make it harder for them to buy homes. My colleague down the hall is Senator McConnell. He has the office 100 feet or so down the hall in which you see high-powered, expensive, suited, well-compensated lobbyists going in and out all day, streaming in and out. They are writing tax bills, fighting for the oil companies, enriching the pharmaceutical companies, and all of the kinds of things that lobbyists down the hall do who, I was going to say, work for Senator McConnell. They don't actually work for Senator McConnell, but they help Senator McConnell with part of what his political organization is. As a result, Senator McConnell, in order to help these special interests, is changing the Senate rules. It is not enough that Senator McConnell blocked a Supreme Court Justice for over a year. It is not enough that Senator McConnell supports all of the dark money in politics or that billionaires can put money into political campaigns and nobody knows exactly where the money comes from. It is not enough that the Supreme Court is now controlled by the corporate elite in this country. It is not enough that the Senate is controlled by the corporate elite. It is not enough that the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives except on the day it looks like a retreat for oil company executives, except on the day it looks like a retreat for big drug companies. That is not enough for Senator McConnell. So what is he going to do? He is going to change the rules. He is going to give less time to debate nominees who will have immense power over people's lives. We talk about judges who serve lifetime appointments. We talk about the heads of Agencies, like of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who have the power to hold corporations accountable if they use that power. Of course, we are talking about Dr. Calabria, who is supposed to make the housing market work for all Americans, yet who isn't sure we need the 30-year mortgage. Think about that. We shouldn't be rushing these people through. We need time for the people we serve to make their voices heard. I would hope my colleagues would agree that these nominees deserve thoughtful consideration; they deserve debates; they deserve somebody who will defend them to come to the Senate floor. Let my fellow Republicans from the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee--people with whom I get along well and personally like--make the case for Dr. Calabria. Let them answer why he is not for the 30-year fixed mortgage, why he calls people who are underwater in their mortgages deadbeats. Why is that? I would hope my colleagues would come to this floor and debate. I would hope that Senator McConnell would allow enough time for us to debate. I would hope my colleagues would reject Dr. Calabria's nomination and tell the President to send us a new nominee who will take the job at the FHFA seriously and make it easier, not harder, for Americans to afford housing. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, last week the dedicated journalists at the Cincinnati Enquirer published the first in a series of reports on the Ohioans left behind by the economic recovery. This is a big project that seven reporters, three editors, photographers, and videographers are all working on. They are doing what reporters do best--going behind the headlines about stock market performance and actually talking to people from all walks of life in southwest Ohio, in their circulation area. When you look beyond the numbers, you see a pretty different story from what this President and his Wall Street Cabinet like to brag about. These reporters traveled the 80-mile road that stretches from Middletown to Cincinnati and beyond. They talked to teachers and factory workers. They talked to pastors and truckdrivers, people of all ages, and people of all races. Over and over they found the same things. These Ohioans have simply not recovered from the Wall Street recession of a decade ago. They haven't recovered from decades of trade and tax policies that funneled wealth to the richest CEOs and the biggest multinational corporations. These reporters wrote: [These workers] may find jobs, but they don't earn the salaries and benefits they once did. They may pay their bills on time, but they're one illness or broken-down car from financial crisis. Their savings accounts are stretched. Their health and retirement benefits inadequate. They need more than they have. In other words, their hard work isn't paying off. Listen to some of the stories these reporters tell. They talked to a subcontractor for AK Steel. His employer is renegotiating its contract with the factory. The authors wrote: If the contract vanishes, someone will still do the work he does, but that's about the only thing he knows for sure. A new company might fire everyone and hire new drivers or decide to cut his pay. More and more companies use subcontractors and independent contractors as a way to--as they always put it--``cut labor costs.'' What they really mean is to pay people less. Listen to the story of a Mexican immigrant in West Chester Township in Butler County. He is here legally. He has a work permit. He works 60 hours a week to support his family. Do you know what he told reporters? It's real tight with four kids. . . . I'm not here to take anybody else's jobs or money or benefits. . . . I'm here to work. Another woman, a cancer survivor, talked to reporters about her crippling medical debt. She had to leave her job because of her condition, and she owes thousands of dollars because of her cancer treatment. They wrote that ``the debt took her car first, then her home of 12 years.'' Think about that. The debt took her car first because she got sick and because we don't protect people with preexisting conditions because of the President's comments and antics and all. They took her car first, and then they took her home of 12 years. Listen to a story of a man in Middletown. He is trying to get a job, but he can't yet afford a computer or a car. He is applying for a job in an auto parts plant. He has to fill out forms online, and he has to have a drug test. That means trying to figure out how to get to a job counseling center to use a computer. It means trying to get a friend to drive him another 7 miles to the drug testing center. The competition for a decent-paying job like that is so stiff that he is afraid if he doesn't get the application in very soon, the job will be gone. Think about the many layers of these stories. The reporting makes clear, as they say, that these are not outliers. These are not unusual cases. ``Household income is lower today than before the recession in almost half the counties in Greater Cincinnati.'' Greater Cincinnati is partly in Kentucky, represented by Senator McConnell and Senator Paul, partly in Indiana, represented by Senator Young and our new colleague from Indiana, and much in Ohio, represented by Senator Portman and me. Poverty is worse in one-third of those counties. Wages for the poorest workers have barely budged since the recovery began. And we know it isn't just southwest Ohio. It is the whole State. It is the whole country. It is the same story we see repeated over and over and over in this country. Wall Street recovers, corporations recover, and the wealthiest CEOs recover and then some. They all do better than ever. Corporations spent more than $800 billion with a ``b''--800,000 million--in stock buybacks last year. Remember the President's tax bill? I heard him say in his Cabinet Room, every American would get at least a $4,000 raise. Some Americans would get a $9,000 raise. He told a group of Senators face-to-face. There would be many more good-paying jobs created. He went to Youngstown, OH, only 1 year ago and said: Don't sell your homes. Stay here. The jobs are going to come back. We are going to build new factories. We are going to repopulate these factories. Well, on his watch, three shifts of 1,500 people each at Lordstown--a GM plant--and Youngstown have been laid off, it appears, permanently. The President's tax bill? That money didn't end up in the pockets of the company's workers. Stock buybacks go straight to the pockets of CEOs and other corporate managers who make the decisions about what to do with corporate stock buybacks. So do you remember I said $800 billion in stock buybacks last year? For the first time in a decade, corporations spent more on buying back their own stock, meaning taking the money and putting it in their pockets. They spent more money buying back their own stock then they did in long-term capital expenditures and investing in their workers' pay. They took more money for themselves--as if the President didn't know that of his tax cut, between 70 percent and 80 percent went to the richest 1-percent of the people in the country over time. He knew that. I think he knew that. He also knew that in this tax bill there was a 50-percent-off coupon. If you produce in the United States, you pay a 21-percent corporate tax rate. If you move to Mexico you pay a 10.5-percent corporate tax rate. So what the President did and what the Senate did is to give a 50- percent-off coupon as a reward for shutting down your production in Lordstown, OH, and moving to Mexico. Corporations spent more on their stock than investing in long-term capital expenditures and workers, but ordinary Americans--what happened to the people in this story? As for this story that the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote about and all of the people they interviewed--White, Black, Latino, Asian American, young and old, middle class and people falling out of the middle class, and low-income people who work hard and aspire to the middle class-- what happened to them? They got left behind. We need to change how we think about our economy. It is time for people in this Congress and in the White House to stop measuring the economy in quarterly earnings reports and stock prices. Who thinks that way? People don't structure their lives thinking about quarterly financial reports. They don't structure their lives thinking of stock prices. People don't think in terms of 3-month earnings quarters. They think in terms of school years. They think in terms of 30-year mortgages. They think in terms of ``the number of years left that I have to work before my retirement, and am I going to have enough?'' That is the way that people think, but that is who we are here to serve, in South Dakota, Ohio, or anywhere else. We are here to serve workers and here to serve families. We are not here on the Senate Banking Committee to serve Wall Street. We are not here on the Senate Finance Committee or on the floor of the Senate to serve the biggest companies in the country that typically reward us by moving jobs overseas. We need policies that restructure our economy to recognize that all work has dignity. When work has dignity, everyone can afford healthcare and everyone can afford housing. They have power over their schedules. They have the economic security to start a family, to pay for daycare or college or both, to take time off to care for themselves or their families when they are sick, and they save for their retirement. The dignity of work fundamentally is about wages. It is about benefits. It is about having power over your own schedule. It is about daycare. It is about saving for retirement. It is about being able to take off to care for a loved one, whether you are raising children or taking care of an aging parent. When work has dignity, our country has a strong middle class and a prosperous future.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, last month, the courts once again stepped in and allowed politicians to meddle in women's healthcare. Last month the courts once again stepped in. Unelected judges--unelected, conservative, mostly male judges--stepped in and allowed politicians to meddle in women's healthcare. These unelected judges ruled that Ohio can defund Planned Parenthood, limiting healthcare options for tens of thousands of Ohioans. Planned Parenthood centers just in my State alone provide 70,000 free STD and HIV tests, cancer screenings, domestic violence education, and prenatal care. These clinics--and I have been to a number of them--are often the only places that many women and some men have to turn. Think again about the services they provide. They provide STD and HIV tests. They provide cancer screenings. They provide prenatal care. They provide domestic violence education. What happens if they can't go to Planned Parenthood because of a political movement? Because of the politicizing of women's health, we see elected officials in Ohio taking away that care. They can't afford care somewhere else or they live too far away from other healthcare providers to have any real options. They turned to Planned Parenthood. This decision by these judges is devastating for Ohioans. I get letters all the time from Ohioans who rely on Planned Parenthood. One woman in Cincinnati wrote: [Planned Parenthood] performed several of my yearly screenings, one of which detected an abnormality that was taken care of early and didn't develop into a major problem. Also, I was able to buy highly effective birth control at a reasonable price and avoid harder choices down the road. Why would a legislature and a judge want to take that away? A woman from West Liberty, a conservative community in our State, wrote: If Planned Parenthood was not available to me as a young woman, I would've had nowhere to turn. I was comfortable with seeking the help of the kind women and staff at Planned Parenthood. I was young and naive, but at least I knew there was somewhere safe to turn to. A Columbus woman who wrote from the State's largest city: At the age of 18, I became a young new mother. Throughout my years as a new mom, struggling to manage financial responsibilities on top of everything else, I used Planned Parenthood for most of my OB needs. Planned Parenthood not only provided a well-rounded education in which I had received none previously-- That happens so often-- but they also provided services that I would not have had access to otherwise. Another woman from Cincinnati wrote: I am 42 years old, but when I was a young woman in college I went to a Planned Parenthood clinic to receive my yearly check-ups. It was cheap, near my college, and easy to access. During one of my appointments they shared with me that they had found an irregular pap-smear and that I needed immediate medical attention. [The doctor] suggested a surgery for an issue she found that may later cause issues with having children. The doctor was amazing, supportive, and provided me the guidance as a young woman of what to do to ensure I was safe and getting the proper next steps. Planned Parenthood saved my life. The animosity coming out of the majority leader's office, the animosity toward Planned Parenthood coming from so many of my colleagues, and so much of the animosity coming out of the White House toward Planned Parenthood just amazes me because this woman said: ``Planned Parenthood saved my life.'' Think about that. It is time for old White men in Washington and in courtrooms--and that is usually who they are. They are very affluent, they are generally older men judges, they are generally White, and they are making decisions in courtrooms and dictating decisions that should be made between a woman and her doctor. That is what this is. This, along with heartbeat bills and all the other bills making their way through the State legislature in my State of Ohio and around the country--they spread lies. They spread disinformation. They are all about the same thing--intimidating women, intimidating doctors, and making it harder for women to get comprehensive healthcare. It is immoral, and it is despicable. I join so many of my colleagues in pledging never to stop fighting to protect women's freedom to make their own healthcare decisions. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I join my friend and colleague, Senator Portman, in rising to recognize the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of the giants of American religious life, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise. Rabbi Wise adopted Ohio as his home and is recognized as the father of American Reform Judaism. His ideas and teachings and the many great institutions he founded have had a profound effect on American Judaism and on people of faith throughout our country and around the world. Rabbi Wise believed in liberty, in life, and in faith; he wanted to ensure that his ancient religious tradition, which had sustained people for millennia, remained relevant in a new and fast-changing nation. He pioneered ideas like men and women sitting together during services and choral singing and gave so many a new way to understand and practice their faith. The groundbreaking institutions he founded left an indelible mark on Judaism and remain an integral part of our country's religious life to this day: the Central Conference of American Rabbis--CCAR--the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, today known as the Union for Reform Judaism, and Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Rabbi Wise made Cincinnati his home, and in large part because of the institutions he created, Cincinnati became central to the fabric of American Judaism. HUC is a center of Jewish thought, and this year, the CCAR will celebrate its 130th anniversary in the Queen City. The weekly newspaper Rabbi Wise founded, the Israelite, was based in Cincinnati, and that paper helped shape Reform Judaism. Senator Portman and I join the people of Ohio in remembering this great Ohioan on the bicentennial of his birth. Rabbi Wise and his legacy are a great source of pride for so many Ohioans; we are honored to recognize his incredible contributions to Judaism, to Ohio, and to our country.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I concur with the comments of my friend from Montana. I know what this President wants to potentially do to the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and to the air bases in Springfield, in my hometown of Mansfield, in Youngstown, and in Toledo in my State and so much more. Last week, we got yet another clear illustration of whose side President Trump is on. All week, we got news of favor after favor from the Trump administration in what it is doing for Wall Street. The White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives except on the days it looks like a retreat for drug company executives. Wall Street banks have complained to the President about the Volcker rule. That is the rule that stops the big banks from taking big risks with American families' money. Wall Street didn't like it, but it had passed this Congress a decade ago. The rules were being written far too slowly because of Wall Street's influence even during the Obama years, but because Wall Street didn't like it, the Trump administration agreed to rewrite them. The Wall Street banks complained that even the rewrite was not weak enough, so the administration reportedly is going to water it down even further. Secretary Mnuchin, the Secretary of the Treasury--another Wall Street guy who was appointed by this President--announced he is going to go easier on shadow banks, and the Fed announced it would make it easier for big banks to pass the annual stress test. It is like this body and Senator McConnell, who is down the hall, have forgotten what happened 10 years ago. It is this collective amnesia that has worked its virus through this body and through the administration so that people forget what happened 10 years ago with regard to our economy. My wife and I live in Cleveland, OH--ZIP Code 44105. In the first half of 2007, that ZIP Code had more foreclosures than any ZIP Code in the United States. I see what happens when people lose their homes. I think about what happens to families who have to explain it to their children, who have to give away their pets, who have to move to new school districts--all the things that happen to families when their homes are foreclosed on or when they are evicted from their apartments. Yet none of these executives seem to mind. None of these executives have to have those conversations. Nobody in the Trump administration has to have those conversations with one's kids. The Trump administration is weakening the stress test. It is weakening some of the capital. It is simply doing Wall Street's bidding over and over--and that was just last week. Of course, we know that comes after 2 years of this President's and this Congress's doing Wall Street's bidding. To me, the one what was even more personal was how this administration decided to weaken the overtime rule. Here is how it works. If somebody is making $40,000 a year and is working as a night manager at a restaurant, say, or at any kind of job in which one may manage a few people and is making $35,000 or $40,000 or $45,000 a year, if the top people of the company give this gentleman or gentlewoman who is doing this job the title of management, then they don't have to pay him or her overtime. They can work them 45, they can work them 50, they can work them 60 hours a week and pay them not a dime of overtime--nothing. They get a salary for 40 hours. So you take a worker, you pay that worker $45,000 a year, $40,000 a year, the owners of the company classify them as management, and they can refuse to pay them for the extra 10 or 15 hours. That is 10 or 15 hours without pay or it is 10 or 15 hours away from family, away from raising your kids, and the administration, of course, sided with the companies. Of course, they sided with Wall Street. Of course, they betrayed workers. They never ever side with workers. Look at Youngstown, OH, right now. This President stood by while General Motors closed the Chevy Cruze plant. It had been there 53 years--Lordstown, OH, a valley of about 400,000 people. This is 5,000 jobs. There are probably another 4,000 to 5,000 jobs for people who worked in the supply chain and made components that go into the Chevy Cruze. I asked the President personally--first, he didn't even know about the plant closing when I talked to him, even though by that time they had laid off about half of the workers. Then I asked him face-to- face, and I asked him on the phone to actually call the CEO of GM to make an appeal to say: Instead of using your huge tax cut that you got from the White House to build more jobs overseas and to do stock buybacks so the executives are getting richer, how about investing in this General Motors plant, how about retooling, which this company has done many times in the past? I remember one of the best days, other than the birth of six of my grandchildren during my last term in the Senate, during that several years--I remember the best day of that last term was when President Obama, Secretary of Labor Perez, and I stood together in Columbus, OH, at Jeni's ice cream, and we announced that the Obama administration was going to update that salary threshold on the overtime rule. If you work extra hours, you get extra pay, you get time and a half under the law-- under the law the way that President Obama did it. The Obama rule would have meant that more than 4 million Americans-- 130,000 people just in my State, 130,000 people, if they work 10 hours, they get hundreds of dollars in overtime pay. If they are working 50 hours instead of 40, they literally would get--depending on their wage, of course--at least another $100 in their pay. Now, because of Trump and the Secretary of Labor in this administration--first because of some judges and now the President-- those workers never got that raise. Attorneys general around the country, Republican, far-right attorneys general, including one in the Presiding Officer's State, are always glad to do the bidding of their corporate sponsors. They are always glad to do the bidding of billionaires. They are always glad to do the bidding of the richest 1 percent in this country. They blocked it. Now President Trump has come up with a new rule that leaves most of those workers behind. Again, these aren't rich executives who are working. I am sure the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Texas, most of us work well over 40 hours in these jobs. We get paid a salary; it is a good salary. We shouldn't get paid overtime; neither should a corporate lawyer who is working more than 40 hours overtime, and neither should an executive nor should a doctor who works more than 40 hours get overtime. But these are workers who are making $30,000 and $35,000 and $40,000 a year, and you classify them as management, so you refuse to pay them overtime. That is what this rule is about. It means that millions of ordinary workers are not getting the pay they have earned. As if the richest 1 percent aren't doing well enough without this rule, President Trump again--President Trump again--betrayed workers. Again he stood with the billionaires. Again he stood with the largest corporations that ship jobs overseas. It comes down to whose side you are on. Are you on Wall Street's side? Are you on the side of Senator McConnell, who responds to every special interest in this country that wants something from this Senate? Are you on their side or are you going to be on the side of the American workers? This President came to Youngstown. He promised to fight for American workers. He breaks that promise damn near every single day. He breaks it over and over and over. If you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work. I wish President Trump would understand that. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, today I wish to honor a great Ohioan, Courtney Noble, for her heroic actions this past December. Ms. Noble works as a direct support professional for New Avenues To Independence, Inc.--NATI--in Mentor, OH. NATI is a social service organization that provides support and aid for people with disabilities and special needs in the greater Cleveland area. On the morning of December 20, 2018, Ms. Noble was the only one on duty while tending to three male residents in the Heisley group home. As she was helping the residents get ready for their day, she heard popping and crackling and sounds coming from the garage. When she opened the garage door, she discovered that a fire had started and was rapidly growing out of control. Without hesitation, Ms. Noble sprang into action. She immediately evacuated all three residents from the house, one of whom was in a wheelchair. Throughout the whole situation, Ms. Noble's biggest concern was the safety and well-being of her residents. Even as her car was engulfed in flames, she calmly escorted the three men to safety at a nearby child daycare center and called 911. Thank you, Courtney Noble, for your courageous actions and for all the work you do as a caregiver. It is because of your quick thinking and fearlessness that three Ohioans are alive today. I am sure that my Senate colleagues will join me in honoring Ms. Courtney Noble for her exemplary acts.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, judges are making decisions around the country right now on voting rights, on civil rights, on LGBT rights, on women's rights, on healthcare, on sentencing, and on corporate power. Several times over the last couple of years, this body has said no even though almost every Republican in this body--all with good, government- paid health insurance, all with good salaries, all well-dressed, all of the above--has tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act or take away Medicaid or take away consumer protections so that people who have preexisting conditions would have their insurance canceled. They all stood on that. Do you know what? Because millions and millions were affected, enough people in this country said no and pushed back and stopped the Republican majority from taking away the protections for preexisting conditions, and they stopped insurance companies from canceling people's insurance who got too sick and too expensive and who could never get insurance in the first place. So do you know what those in the Republican majority did? They went through the courts. They voted for and supported Supreme Court Justices and district judges and circuit judges who have put their thumbs on the scales of justice and have picked corporations over workers, chosen Wall Street over consumers, and chosen insurance companies over sick people. Over and over again, this body tried to do it, but democracy rose up and said: No, you aren't going to take our health insurance. No, you aren't going to let the insurance companies run everything. No, you aren't going to let Wall Street run everything. No, you aren't going to do it. Do you know what? Because they couldn't do it through Democratic participation and because they couldn't do it by going down to Mitch McConnell's office, who is the Republican leader--they couldn't walk down the hall, all of their lobbyists, and stop that from happening-- they decided to try doing it through the Federal judiciary. Remember what I said. They have put their thumbs on the scales of justice. They have chosen Wall Street over consumers. They have chosen insurance companies over sick people. That is what this vote is about. That is what this judge is all about today. This body confirmed a judge yesterday who would limit rights for a generation. These are judges who are almost all inexperienced. These are lawyers who are in their thirties or early forties. They are not who we used to pick. President Obama used to do this; President Bush often did this; and President Bush, Sr., used to do this. They would pick sort of--``prudent'' would be the word that President Bush, Sr., would use--wise, prudent lawyers who believed in public service and didn't believe in some far-right agenda whereby they would put their thumbs on the scales of justice and hurt workers and hurt consumers. They picked middle-of-the-road, thoughtful, prudent judges who actually believed in civil rights--shocking--who actually believed gay people should have a chance in this country, and who actually believed workers should get a fair shot. Do you know what? Because they have picked judges who have put their thumbs on the scales of justice, we see the rich are getting richer and richer, and we see the middle class in New Hampshire and in Ohio and in Nebraska getting squeezed over and over and over again. We see what has happened to this country. We see lobbyists going down the hall to Senator McConnell's office, who is the Republican leader, writing tax bills. Do you know what that tax law does that President Trump signed? Do you know what it does? It says, if a company shuts down in Lordstown, OH, which General Motors has done this week--4,500 people have lost their jobs--General Motors will pay a tax rate of 21 percent. Do you know what? Under the Trump tax law, they can move south of the border and pay a tax rate of 10\1/2\ percent. In other words, they get a 50-percent off coupon. Companies that shut down production in Omaha or in Manchester or in Cleveland and move overseas get a 50-percent off coupon on their taxes. That is what these fights are about. These fights are about the special interests that run this Senate, the companies that outsource, and the drug companies and Wall Street. Heck, the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street.