Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, last winter, this body passed a $1.5 trillion deficit-financed tax cut for millionaires, for billionaires especially, and for corporations that ship jobs overseas. More than 80 percent of the benefits will go to the top 1 percent of the wealthiest people by the end of this decade. Two weeks ago, Congress passed another big giveaway to Wall Street, loosening taxpayer protections on big banks that had received a combined $239 billion in taxpayer bailouts. We know Wall Street can never get enough handouts. Too many people in this body, too many people down the hall in the House of Representatives, too many people in the Oval Office, too many people in Washington never get tired of giving these handouts away. From the day President Obama, almost a decade ago, signed Wall Street reform into law, a top Wall Street lobbyist said that it was halftime, meaning the game was not over, and they were going to keep fighting back. Before the ink was dry on his signature, those lobbyists went to work trying to undo the rules we put in place to protect taxpayers and consumers. We are seeing the result of that lobbying in Congress, and we are seeing it at the agencies that are supposed to be policing our financial industry. Last week, the Federal Reserve announced proposed changes to what is known as the Volcker rule. We put this rule in place after the crisis to stop big banks from taking big risks with Americans' money. Those complicated, risky bets were a big reason for the financial crisis that devastated our economy, cost millions of Americans their jobs, cost millions of Americans much of their savings, and left taxpayers on the hook to clean up Wall Street's mess. Lehman Brothers invested heavily in toxic mortgage-backed securities, eventually leading to $32 billion in trade losses and the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history. They took bank deposits, putting the U.S. taxpayer on the hook for those losses. Hedge funds sponsored by Bear Stearns, which also took Americans' individual deposits, suffered massive losses on complex bets based on exotic subprime mortgages. During the crisis, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup also lost big on bets backed by subprime mortgages, and Goldman Sachs had to bail out a hedge fund. Congress instructed the Federal Reserve to write strict rules to prevent that from ever happening again--to make sure that banks use the taxpayer safety nets to serve their customers, not bet against them. Banks should be in the business of making investments in the real economy, not casino-style trades using families' checking and savings accounts. It took agencies more than 3 years to finalize the Volcker rule, which was completed in 2013 after the consideration of thousands upon thousands of public comments. Now they want to undo it all? The rollbacks announced last week would gut core components of the Volcker rule. They would make it easier for banks to take speculative bets. The New York Times stated that the balance of power will tip immediately to traders from regulators. It will shift the power from watchdogs to the big banks themselves, from public servants who are looking to protect the public's interests to executives who are making tens of millions--occasionally, hundreds of millions--of dollars in their trading. Instead of establishing strict limits on banks, the proposed rule changes will ask us to trust the banks to guard against risky trades. It says: Go ahead and police yourselves. Yet we know how well that turned out the last time. The rule changes will allow banks to more easily place bets under the guise of so-called hedging. This increases the chances of yet another scandal like the London Whale episodes of 2012 when JPMorgan lost $6 billion in one bad bet. Do we want to make it easier for them to do it again with Americans' savings accounts? Why weaken the rules now? It is not as if the banks are suffering under this rule. Think about how the banks are doing now. The FDIC released new data last month that banks increased their profits by 13 percent last year, and that is before accounting for the windfall from the tax bill. When you add in the tax bill, banks' profits went up 28 percent last year on top of the double-digit percent almost every year from 2010 and 2011 and 2012 and 2013 and 2014 and 2015 and 2016 and 2017. The banking sector bought back $77 billion worth of stock last year. Last year, the CEOs of the six largest banks got an average raise of 22 percent. These were CEOs who were already making millions and millions of dollars. Keep in mind that the average bank teller in this country makes about $12.50 an hour. Yet the CEOs of these banks--some of them already making $10 million and $20 million a year--got a 22-percent increase. This is not some dying industry that is crying out for help. If anything, it is an industry that needs a more watchful eye. The largest banks paid $240 billion worth of fines 10 years ago after the collapse. Wells Fargo can't go more than a few months without having a scandal. Deutsche Bank is struggling with poor risk management and inadequate capital. So why put taxpayers and bank customers at risk? We have a pretty good idea why. Just take a look who this administration has put in charge. The White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives. We have former OneWest banker Joseph Otting running the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. As if the Volcker rule rollback were not bad enough, he announced last week that he wants to get banks into the business of financing payday loans. Otting has other plans to gut the Community Reinvestment Act--a 40-year-old law that ensures that banks serve their communities. Fed Vice Chair Randal Quarles recently gave a speech, saying that, just as we predicted, the Federal Reserve wants to loosen rules on foreign megabanks--these banks that are in this country, like Deutsche Bank and Santander and some of these big banks--that have, clearly, from time to time, abused the public trust. We are going to loosen the rules that regulate foreign banks in this country? He said last week's changes to the Volcker rule were just the start. He said it was the first effort to weaken the rule. People like Randal Quarles--people who didn't spot the crisis the last time they were watchdogs, when they were in government 15 years ago, people who profited off the very crisis they failed to prevent-- may have forgotten what these risky bets did to so many families in this country. Maybe they have succumbed to the collective amnesia that affects more and more people in this town. Families in my State haven't forgotten. Workers' savings were wiped out. They watched college accounts and retirement savings shrink and shrink. Hopes and dreams were dashed. Americans can't afford to go back to the days when Wall Street gambled with their hard-earned money. The crisis has cast a long shadow over these families. Today, 4 out of 10 adults can't afford an emergency expense of $400. If your car breaks down and it costs $500 or $600, you don't have the money to do that if you are much of the American public. You go to a payday lender who charges you exorbitant interest rates. You go back and go back because you can't get ahead. One in four renters pays more than 50 percent in income to keep a roof overhead. One in four renters pays 50 percent in income or more to keep a roof overhead. One bad thing happens in their lives--a child gets sick; they miss work for a few days; they can't make payments because they have had broken-down cars. All kinds of things can happen. They can be evicted, and many of them are. More and more workers have irregular schedules and incomes that vary up and down from month to month. It is those Americans we are sent here to serve. It also comes back to whose side you are on. Are you going to stand with hard-working Americans or with risky Wall Street traders? We need to go home and listen a little more to the people we serve and a little less to special interests. That is how we create an economy that values work and that serves the common good, not by falling all over ourselves in this body to serve Wall Street.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, last week, Pope Francis released an unprecedented document detailing what is wrong with our financial system. That the Pope thought it was that important to weigh in tells you a lot about where we are as a nation. We have an economy, the Pope noted, that defines success by corporate profits and measures time in quarterly earnings reports. That is not how families think. Washington may think that way, corporate CEOs may think that way, but families mark time in school years, in 30-year mortgages, and in years left to save for retirement. That is why the Pope called our current financial system ``an inadequate framework that excludes the common good.'' Right now, working families are struggling in this country. The economic statistics may look rosy, but they mask serious problems that hold too many workers back and prevent entire communities from sharing in that growth. The Pope warned last week that ``work itself, together with its dignity, is increasingly at risk of losing its value.'' Work is increasingly at risk of losing its value. Our economy simply doesn't value work the way it should. Over the past 40 years, the link between productivity and wage increases has eroded. Profits have gone up, CEO compensation has gone up, worker productivity has gone up, but wages have been stagnant. Workers simply don't get the help they should in compensation. Workers simply don't share in the wealth they create for stockholders and the wealth they create for executives and the wealth they create for CEOs. Wages have ticked up a tiny bit recently, but, looking at the long run, they have been largely flat. Think about this: If there are 100 people in the Galleries, if they are average--maybe they are, maybe they aren't. If there are 100 people in the Galleries, 44 of them can't afford an emergency expense of $400. Think about that. If they are a $15-an-hour worker and their car breaks down and it costs $600, what do they do? They go to get a payday loan, and we know what happens when they do that. Forty-four percent of American adults can't afford an emergency expense of $400. This is even more troubling: One in four renters in this country spends at least half their income on housing. If one thing goes wrong in their lives--if their child gets sick--they are unlikely to have sick leave or vacation days. So if their child gets sick, they either send their child to school sick or they stay home with their daughter or son and lose a day's pay. And if they are spending 50 percent of their income on housing, what happens? They are likely to be evicted, likely to be foreclosed on if they own their home and then their lives really spiral down. In light of all that, this Congress thought the best thing to do was pass another giveaway to the big banks because Wall Street hasn't done enough. This body can't help itself. They fall all over themselves. The lobbyists going in and out of Leader McConnell's office, and the Wall Street lobbyists--the White House increasingly looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives. This body just falls all over itself. We always have to help Wall Street. Over the next 7 or 8 years, 80 percent of the tax-cut bill that was passed last year will go to the richest 1 percent of the country, as if they need the help. The giveaway to the big banks the President is going to sign tomorrow comes on the heels of a $1.5 trillion--how much is a trillion? A trillion is 1,000 billion. How much is a billion? A billion is 1,000 million. It was a $1.5 trillion deficit-financed tax cut for millionaires and more likely billionaires who control one political party in this body. It was tax cuts for billionaires and corporations that ship jobs overseas. Apparently that is just not enough, so this week, the House passed a bill loosening taxpayer protections on big banks that received a combined $239 billion in taxpayer bailouts. Think about that. It weakens stress tests for all large banks. It opens the door to less oversight of foreign megabanks. This bill also eliminates data-gathering that guards against mortgage discrimination. We are bringing back redlining. There has been no racial discrimination in housing in this country, apparently, so let the banks and let the government that sometimes goes along with the banks get that red pencil--it is done with computers now--and draw around those neighborhoods so that those families--often people of color but not always--can't get equal access to home mortgages. The Congressional Budget Office, which is the independent, nonpartisan scorekeeper, confirmed that this bill that just passed would increase the likelihood of a big bank failure and a financial crisis and would add $670 million to the deficit. What problem exactly is this Congress trying to solve? One of my favorite quotes is from Abraham Lincoln. He was in the White House, and his staff wanted him to stay there and win the war and free the slaves and preserve the Union. He said: No. I have to go out and get my ``public opinion baths.'' When I go back to Cleveland, where I live, or when I see my grandkids in Columbus or when I go anywhere else in the State, I go out and listen to people, and I try to get these public opinion baths. Never once have I heard somebody say: You know, Senator, with the problems we have, the first thing we have to do is weaken regulations to help Wall Street. I never hear that. The only people who say that are bankers and a bunch of politicians who are all well compensated, who have very good healthcare paid for by taxpayers, and who do what the banks want them to do. The FDIC--the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation--released new data this week. Banks increased their profits by 13 percent over the last year. Of those 100 people in the Galleries, how many of them got a 13-percent raise last year? Well, banks increased their already strong profits by another 13 percent. It has happened almost every year this decade, since Congress bailed out the banks 8 years ago. That 13 percent is not even counting the windfall profits they got from the windfall tax bill. When they take the tax bill into account, banks profits went up not 13, not 15, not 20, but 28 percent. The banking sector bought back $77 billion worth of stock last year. Do you know what that means? That is all about raising compensation for the biggest stockholders and the CEO. The average bank teller in this country makes $26,000 a year. Bank profits are up. CEO compensation is up. They are all doing very well. They got a big tax cut. The average teller makes $26,000. At my high school reunion in Mansfield a couple of years ago, I sat across the table from a woman with whom I graduated. She has worked as a teller in a large, well-known bank for 30 years, and she makes $30,000 a year. She has worked there for 30 years. But the bank CEOs are doing very well-- millions and millions of dollars in compensation. If these banks fail again, it will be those tellers, it will be the middle manager, it will be the millions of other American taxpayers who will be called on to bail them out. That is why we did Wall Street reform--Dodd-Frank--several years ago. We passed a law that created important protections for the financial system, for taxpayers, for homeowners, to hold banks and watchdogs accountable and prevent another crisis. Do you know what? The day that bill was signed, the chief Financial Services--do you know what the chief bank lobbyist in this city did? The day it was signed, he said: ``You know, it is halftime.'' What does that mean? ``It is halftime'' means that you might have passed this law that we didn't like--we, Wall Street--but we are going to fight like hell to weaken the rules to implement the law. And once we get a Republican majority and we have a majority leader and, further down the hall, a Speaker of the House who does whatever Wall Street asks them to do, then it will be time to come back and weaken the laws. That is what happened with the election of this President and the election of the majority leader and the Speaker of the House. It is time to go back to Wall Street and say: How can we help you, sir? It is almost always a sir. Another bank lobbyist, when he talked about these negotiations, said: We don't want a seat at the table; we want the whole table. Wall Street greed knows no bounds. That is why it is a huge concern that the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives. Special interests are getting the whole table. The President is signing the big bank giveaway into law. Here is the last point I want to spend a little time on. They are trying to install yet another Wall Street nominee with the troubling record of dismissing the harm Wall Street inflicted on Main Street-- Jelena McWilliams, who is listed as Ms. McWilliams of Ohio, my State. I would like to support a fellow Ohioan. She hasn't really lived in Ohio very long. I know she has moved back. But I would still like to support a fellow Ohioan. She has been nominated to be the Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, but she has never supported the need for strong rules and tough supervision for the banking system. At her nomination hearing, she declined to acknowledge the role that excessive bank borrowing played in causing the 2008 collapse. What are we going to do? On whom are we going to blame the bank collapse, the economy going into the toilet, the fact that millions of Americans lost jobs, millions of Americans had their homes foreclosed on, and billions and billions of dollars were lost from seniors' retirement accounts? We are going to blame that on them? Wall Street, of course, had nothing to do with it. Right now, the Fed is considering a proposal to weaken protections and give a $120 billion windfall to the eight largest banks. Even former Chairs and Vice Chairs of the FDIC appointed by Republicans, two people I admire--Sheila Bair, who used to be chief of staff for Bob Dole, appointed to the FDIC by President Bush and kept by President Obama; and Thomas Hoenig, another Republican from the Kansas City Fed and a Republican regulator--they have opposed this proposal. But Mrs. McWilliams refused to do so. On issue after issue--payday lending at banks, cost-benefit analysis, the Volcker rule--she has shown no independence from this White House that looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives. The FDIC was designed to be independent and nonpartisan. We don't need another rubberstamp from Wall Street's agenda on the FDIC board, particularly when we have no commitment to move the nominations for Democratic seats. We need independent thinkers at these agencies who are willing to push back against a big-bank agenda. Last week, Fed Vice Chair Randall Quarles gave a speech saying--just as we predicted--the Federal Reserve wants to loosen rules on foreign megabanks. So it is not just that we are doing favors for Wall Street, but we are doing favors for these multi-decabillion or hundreds of billions of dollars foreign banks. We decided to make it easier on them. Yesterday, former OneWest banker Joseph Otting announced that he wants banks to get into the business of payday loans. They have always said they have nothing to do with these payday loans. Well, they do. Otting has other plans to gut the Community Reinvestment Act--a 40-year old law that ensures that banks serve their communities. And we could spend hours detailing what Mick Mulvaney is doing to the Consumer Protection Bureau In closing, I will go back to the Pope's message. He noted that ``while most of [the financial industry's] operators are singularly animated by good and right intentions, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the financial industry . . . is a place where selfishness and the abuse of power have an enormous potential to harm the community.'' A little selfishness, a little abuse can have massive consequences when it comes to the financial system. Families in Ohio can't afford that risk. It is our job to protect those families. The Pope said: ``Those entrusted with political authority find it difficult to fulfill to their original vocation as servants of the common good.'' We should listen a little more to the people we serve, and we should listen a little less to Wall Street. We should break the addiction to Wall Street money. We should break our allegiance to Wall Street interests. That is how we create an economy that values work and create an economy that serves the common good and not corporate special interests. I ask my colleagues to vote against the nomination of Ms. McWilliams. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, first, I want to add my comments to those by my friend from Florida, Senator Rubio, about China. I remember years ago, when I was helping to lead the opposition to China's admission into the World Trade Organization, when American CEOs came to this body and said one after another to Members of Congress that they wanted access to billions of Chinese consumers when what they really wanted was access to hundreds of millions of Chinese workers. U.S. companies, as part of a business plan, consistently shut down production, whether it was in the Florida Panhandle or whether it was in Northeast Ohio, and moved those productions overseas. They enriched that Communist government and gave China the wherewithal that Senator Rubio talks about now. That is the importance of the CFIUS legislation we did yesterday in the Banking Committee that Senator Crapo, Senator Van Hollen, and I worked on. It is the importance of many of the issues that Senator Rubio raised, so I thank my colleague from Florida. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the nomination of Brian Montgomery. He has been nominated by the President to serve in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as an Assistant Secretary of Housing and as the Federal Housing Commissioner. If confirmed, Mr. Montgomery would oversee the Federal Housing Administration, the FHA, which insures loans for homeowners, multifamily rental buildings, and healthcare facilities originated by HUD-approved mortgage lenders; oversees HUD's Housing Counseling Program; and provides rental assistance for over 1.2 million low-income seniors, individuals with disabilities, and families. We are considering this nomination at a time when the Nation faces all kinds of housing challenges. Thanks to a deep shortage of affordable rental housing--think about this--a quarter of all renters, of all households, are paying more than half of their incomes for housing. That means, if anything goes bad in their lives--if their cars break down on the way to work or if their children are sick, and they have to decide to send their children to school anyway or to stay home and lose a day's pay and get behind on their rent--then everything will go bad for them. Far too many creditworthy borrowers still struggle to access sustainable credit in the mortgage market, particularly in communities of color. In February, the Center for Investigative Reporting released data showing that people of color were far more likely--in some cases, more than five times as likely--to be denied conventional mortgages. They found this data in 61 metropolitan areas around the country. It is not limited to only a few places. Mr. Montgomery, in his having served previously in the position for which he has been nominated, would bring both valuable experience and an appreciation for the importance of the programs he would lead if he is confirmed. He has spoken about the value of the FHA as both a responsible engine of homeownership and a countercyclical tool to ensure that mortgage credit remains available. He has also supported the Office of Housing's affordable housing program. That is the good news. The bad news is that I am concerned that Mr. Montgomery, in the interest of making the FHA a better partner to the mortgage industry after having served in the industry as a board member or adviser, will lose sight of the interests that FHA and consumers have. Following his previous tenure at HUD, Mr. Montgomery cofounded a consulting firm that provided a range of services to financial services companies, services that included helping FHA participants minimize penalties from HUD enforcement actions. He also sits on the boards of companies whose businesses could be affected by FHA and Federal housing policies. Perhaps more troubling is that Mr. Montgomery has stated concerns about ``excessive'' Federal enforcement efforts against mortgage lenders in the years following the mortgage crisis, including pursuing claims under the False Claims Act. In late last year, the Trump administration's Department of Justice noted ``the False Claims Act serves as the government's primary civil remedy to redress false claims for government funds and property'' and further noted that recoveries under the act are ``a message to those who do business with the government that fraud and dishonesty will not be tolerated.'' The False Claims Act was cited in several post-crisis Federal enforcement actions, including a $1.2 billion settlement with Wells Fargo in 2016 and in a 2014 settlement with JPMorgan Chase for ``knowingly originating and underwriting noncompliant mortgage loans submitted for insurance coverage and guarantees'' at the FHA. Obviously, fraud has no place in FHA programs. However, without a strong signal that fraud and dishonesty will not be tolerated, some lenders who don't play by the rules will, once again, push the envelope with damaging effects to families and taxpayers. I hope that Mr. Montgomery proves me wrong and that under his leadership, HUD will emerge as a strong advocate for consumers and affordable housing and assisted families. It is hard for me to believe that, though, when you look down the street at the White House, and the White House, frankly, looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives and those connected to those financial interests. Consumers and families need an advocate at HUD. So far, the administration's response to our rental housing shortage, unbelievably enough, has been to propose the slashing of billions from housing programs and the raising of rent on low-income, HUD-assisted families, seniors, and people with disabilities. After all, as the HUD Secretary said--after giving this tax cut where 80 percent of the tax cut, of the $1-plus trillion, went to the richest 1 percent of people in this country--they had to make cuts to the cleanup of Lake Erie, which Senator Klobuchar and I care so much about; they had to make cuts in Head Start; and they had to propose raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare. They had to make these cuts. That was part of the deal of a tax cut for the rich. So it is just a little hard for us to buy in to some of their reasoning. The administration has been dismantling consumer protections and eroding fair housing enforcement at HUD and the CFPB. Just yesterday, Congress passed legislation making it harder to detect and protect against violations of fair housing laws, particularly reverse redlining, as if we didn't deal with that issue decades ago. We all should come to agreement that redlining is wrong. It devastated borrowers and communities during the crisis, and it hasn't gotten a whole lot better. I hope Mr. Montgomery, when he is confirmed, will use his office to advocate for housing solutions that work for our families and our communities. These matters are far too important for too many Americans to do otherwise. I oppose his nomination. I hope I am wrong. I hope he actually does the things that someone in that position at HUD should do. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank the journalists of this country, who are not enemies of the people and who do their jobs every day, explaining complicated issues and fighting every day to do things as straightforwardly and honestly as they can. So I start with that.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, when we look at what this body has done over the past year and a half, when we look at what the U.S. Senate stands for and what the 100 Members of the Senate have done in the last 18 months, unfortunately, one thing is really clear: Corporations get handout after handout while ordinary Americans get the shaft. Corporations are doing really, really, really well, especially those companies that shut down production in places like Mansfield, Toledo, Lima, and Gainesville and moved production overseas; those companies are rewarded. They are rewarded because down the hall, often in the dead of night, lobbyists gather in the majority leader's office and write tax legislation, write healthcare legislation, and write consumer legislation that always helps the richest and the biggest and the most profitable in our country and leaves out the middle class, working families, and low-income Americans. We saw it with the tax bill. Eighty percent of the benefits over the course of this bill--80 percent of the benefits, $4 out of every $5--go to the top 1 percent of earners in this country. Reports show that corporations have funneled their tax savings to executives and investors over workers by a three-to-one margin. The people who wrote this tax bill promised us that the money saved by large corporations--their tax rates were cut from 35 to 22 percent and other kinds of tax goodies were bestowed on the largest corporations in this country. They promised the tax savings would go to higher wages for workers and investments in communities that produce more jobs. Do my colleagues know what happened not too many weeks ago? General Motors near Youngstown, OH, announced they were laying off 1,500 workers. General Motors saved billions of dollars under the tax bill, but that money didn't go to Youngstown or Ohio or the workers, and it didn't go to investments in communities; it went to the executives in higher compensation. Right before the tax break, the five top-earning executives at General Motors brought home $100 million last year. That was before the tax cut, before taxes were raised on all of you in the middle class. Taxes are raised on working families over time, and the tax breaks go to the richest people in this country. We saw it with the tax bill. We saw it with the rollback in protections for consumers. It is easier for big banks and payday lenders to take advantage of their customers and deny those customers their day in court when they are cheated. We see it in healthcare legislation when Members of this body--well- paid U.S. Senators, well-paid, get good benefits, good healthcare coverage--were willing to vote time and again to take that healthcare coverage away from consumers. In Ohio alone, 500,000 people right now-- over the course of the last few years--have gotten opioid treatment for their addiction because they had insurance under the Affordable Care Act. These Members of the Senate have tried to take it away from them. Now the question is: Are we going to see it again? Are we going to see the bias in this body for the wealthiest, largest corporations on a tax bill, on a bank bill, on a healthcare bill--are we going to see it again with net neutrality? Are my colleagues going to allow corporate special interests to shut down the free and open internet or, for once--for once--is this body going to stand for the people we serve? Net neutrality rules keep the internet free from corporate interference. Protecting those rules is vital to protecting free speech and consumer choice and access to public information. But last December, the FCC--the Federal Communications Commission--on a party-line vote, where there is a majority of Republicans on this Commission, voted to repeal those rules by one vote, allowing internet providers to slow down internet speeds and offer better connectivity to the highest bidder. I don't know any individual in Dayton or Cincinnati or Gallipolis or Bellaire, OH, who has said to me: I don't want net neutrality; I want corporations to be able to charge different rates and stick it to people with low incomes and offer something better to those people who are wealthy. I have never heard anybody say that. I know companies that benefit from changing the net neutrality rules; I don't know any individuals who want to do that. But it is not individuals and the middle class that control this body or control the Federal Communications Commission. It is the people who represent the largest corporate interests. We know that without net neutrality rules, broadband providers can charge customers more for faster speeds, squeezing out startups, squeezing out nonprofits and rural consumers--consumers who can't afford to pay an extra fee. They could be forced to pay for internet packages the way we do cable packages--paying more for popular sites and to have pages load faster. Anyone who has ever been on the phone negotiating packages with their cable company knows how frustrating it can be and knows where this could be headed. High-speed internet is expensive enough as it is. Customers already have too few choices. In some cases in Ohio, for instance, people in my State have no choice at all. I will never forget that not too many years ago I was talking to a high school sophomore who told me she lives in very hilly Appalachia, Southeast Ohio, and she told me that she can't really study at home because she doesn't have access to the internet, to any kind of high-speed internet, because she lives in a valley. She goes to her grandmother's up on a hill to study so she can do her school work the way she needs to. If we don't stand up to the Federal Communications Commission, if we don't stand up to these big telecommunications companies, if we don't stand up and do the right thing here, that will continue to be a problem and increasingly be a problem for far too many Ohioans. A free and open internet that levels the playing field for entrepreneurs and startups to compete with big corporations is what we need to have. So many of my colleagues love to talk about their support for business, but the question is which businesses. It is small businesses that drive job creation. It is small businesses that create two-thirds of all net new jobs. These are the companies that will be hurt the most if the biggest corporations--again, in this Senate--are allowed to gouge them for internet fees. This shouldn't be partisan. Nobody separates themselves as Republicans and Democrats out in my State on these kinds of issues, but here it is partisan. Here it is partisan because, first of all, the administration looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives, with this huge--this very decided bias toward the wealthiest people in this country. We know that on issue after issue, this body always sides with the largest corporations, but small businesses will be the ones that are hurt the most, as I said. It shouldn't be partisan. We know the internet is vital to modern life and modern businesses. Today I spoke to a woman from Cleveland, OH, a small business owner named Helen Quinn. She and her husband, Jesse Mason, started Mason's Ice Cream as a food truck that would go to local farmers markets. Using tools from Google and others, they were able to grow a following for their business. In 2014 they had reached a point where they had been successful enough that they were able to buy an old, iconic walkup ice cream shop in Ohio City, a neighborhood west of downtown Cleveland, not far from where I live. They are now operating full time. They employ local Clevelanders. They partner with other small businesses in the neighborhood. This Friday, Helen and Jesse will join me in Cleveland for the Grow with Google summit to talk to other small businesses and entrepreneurs and job seekers about the best techniques for using the internet to grow businesses and find jobs. I would bet any amount that there will not be one person there--not one entrepreneur, not one job seeker, not one business owner--who says: Oh, I want to relax these net neutrality rules. I want to side with the big corporations instead of allowing free and equal access to the internet. Why would we want to make that harder and more expensive? Rolling back these net neutrality rules will hurt the very people all of us claim we want to help--small businesses, startups, students, Americans looking for jobs. Those are the people who will get hurt. Many large corporations will do well under this bill. That typically is the motive and mission for people who come out of the majority leader's office, these lobbyists who are always working on these issues to help corporate America. But rolling back these rules will hurt those very people we claim to want to help--again, small businesses and startups and entrepreneurs and students and Americans looking for jobs. That is why today we are filing a petition to get moving on a bill to overturn this disastrous decision and reinstate net neutrality rules. It is another question fundamentally, as pretty much every debate here is, of whose side you are on. Are my colleagues going to stand, again, with the biggest telecom corporations as they stood with the big corporations that outsourced jobs, as they stand with Wall Street, as they stand with Big Tobacco, as they stand with the Koch brothers, as they stand with the big healthcare companies that deny insurance and deny healthcare to working families? Are they going to stand with them--with big telecom companies that slow down the internet, slow down the economy to pad their own bottom lines? Are we going to stand with the people we serve--with hard-working Americans and small businesses and students and entrepreneurs who need access to the internet? The internet doesn't belong to a wealthy few. This Senate too often belongs to a wealthy few. It shouldn't. A lot have opposed those efforts. We know, though, that the internet should not belong to a wealthy few. The internet belongs to the people we were sent here to represent. I hope my colleagues will join me and sign this petition to protect a free and open internet. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be granted to Rachael Hartford of my staff for the remainder of the day.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, everyone in this Chamber knows how bad the opioid epidemic is. In my State, we have the second highest number of opioid deaths per capita in the country next to West Virginia. In my State, we also have more people die of opioid overdoses than any other State in the country. On average, 11 people died yesterday, 11 will die today, 11 will die tomorrow, and 11 will die on Thursday of opioid overdoses. Last month at the Cleveland City Club, I called for a comprehensive, coordinated, and sustained public health campaign to fight addiction through education, prevention, treatment, and recovery. We know from history that we cannot arrest or execute our way out of this crisis, whether in Montana or in Ohio. I met with law enforcement officers in every corner of my State. They shoulder a huge burden. They all tell me the same thing: They need resources to fight this. That is why I joined Senator Portman and a bipartisan group of our colleagues on the POWER Act--to get State and local law enforcement the high-tech tools they need to effectively screen for dangerous opioids, such as fentanyl. We also know from history that those enforcement tools are just one piece of this fight. We need a comprehensive approach, and that means recognizing how important treatment and rehabilitation are. We don't write off thousands of Ohioans struggling with addiction. We simply don't write off entire communities. That is where drug courts come in. These courts are partnerships between law enforcement and treatment providers. They are spearheaded by judges who see the same people back in their courtrooms over and over again for drug offenses. These judges realized that traditional court proceedings simply were not working. They weren't curing people's addictions. Fines and jail time don't cure a medical condition. So judges set up these special courts where participants agree to enter treatment programs and are strictly supervised by law enforcement. If they successfully complete the program, instead of going to prison, they have a graduation ceremony. We have seen this model work successfully for veterans. There are hundreds of these courts across the country, which are built around counseling and treatment. Veterans who get into trouble with the law often face unique issues, such as PTSD. My office recently visited the first Federal Veterans Court in the Southern District of Ohio, in Dayton. We saw the difference it made in the lives of men and women who served this country. The court was created by my friend, Judge Michael Newman, with the support of Chief Judge Edmund Sargus. It works with the VA to help address the issues veterans are struggling with. My staff met with Page Layman, a veterans justice outreach coordinator who helps the participants in the program. He talked about how one of the participants in the court had limited transportation options and lived in a rural area, so Mr. Layman drove to meet him at the local library. Judge Newman reports that 49 veterans have graduated from the program with their charges dropped and are now leading healthier lives. We have the same opportunity with drug courts. The Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services studies these courts. They found that drug courts enhance treatment, increase collaboration in the community, and save taxpayers money. My staff and I met with judges across Ohio who are helping people break the cycle of drug use and crime. Earlier this year, we talked with Hocking County Municipal Court Judge Fred Moses while he was in town as a State of the Union guest of Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio. He started an innovative drug court program just outside Chillicothe, OH, in 2012. As a judge, he saw the opioid epidemic coming years before most folks in Washington saw it. He started the first medication-assisted drug court program certified in my State. Five years later, his programs are reuniting families, cutting down on repeat offenses, and helping participants get jobs. He and his staff are improving the lives of people in Southeast Ohio and serving as a model for other drug courts around the State and country. Since the program began, more than 30 other judges have visited Hocking County to learn about its success. Now we are seeing similar success all over Ohio. Tuscarawas County has two drug courts--COBRA, in the Common Pleas Court, and the New Philadelphia Municipal Recovery Court. Judge Elizabeth Lehigh Thomakos runs the COBRA court, which held its 125th graduation. One graduate said: When I couldn't get clean, you helped me get clean. You guys believed in me when I couldn't believe in myself. Another: My daughter has her mamma back. A healthy mom, hard- working, motivated, goal-oriented mom, who smiles again and is grateful in all she does. By this program shaping my future, it has also shaped hers. The Recovery Court in New Philadelphia is run by Judge Nanette DeGarmo VonAllman. She hears so many stories like that one. She told the Times Reporter--the newspaper in Tuscarawas County--``We try to give them and their families hope: that treatment works and people do recover.'' Programs all over Ohio and all over the country are offering families that hope. In Cleveland, the Cuyahoga County Drug Court, under Judge David Matia, has graduated more than 300 people. Both that court and the Cleveland Municipal Drug Court operate under the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Greater Drug Court umbrella, named for my former colleague. In Marion, OH, Common Pleas Court Judge Jim Slagle, a longtime friend of mine, held a graduation ceremony for eight graduates at the end of last month. Jennifer, one of the women who spoke, talked about her granddaughter. She said: The most challenging part was admitting I needed this. When she found out her granddaughter was going to be placed in foster care: I knew I had to do something. I needed to get myself together. I had to do it for her. She has now been clean for 2 years. She has custody over her 18- month-old granddaughter. These are the kinds of success stories we hear all over the State and all over the country. If we are successful in this fight, hundreds of thousands of fewer Americans will use opioids, but we will also have hundreds of thousands more who have used opioids but whose lives are not lost or ruined. They are going to be living with and managing their addiction. That is why we need to expand and build on these approaches. I am also working with my Republican colleague, Senator Capito of West Virginia, on bipartisan legislation--the CARE Act--to combine existing resources from the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services to fund combined addiction treatment and workforce training efforts. I hear the same thing from mayors from New Philadelphia, Middletown, Chillicothe, and Piqua: Employers can't fill openings because workers can't pass drug tests. Ohioans struggling with addiction--even those who have completed successful programs like these drug courts--can't find jobs. Our bill will help those Americans continue their recovery with good jobs that provide stability. The government is spending money on drug treatment, mostly through Medicaid, and the government, through the Department of Labor, is spending money on job retraining. Why not put them together so that people, while they get clean and get whole, are ready to go to work because they have had that job training? I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting the CARE Act and finding ways to support successful drug court programs around the country.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, tomorrow the Senate will vote to move forward with the President's nominee to join the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. It is a new low that sets a dangerous standard for judges who have the power to make critical decisions that impact the everyday lives of the people we serve. Take a look at Judge Michael Brennan's record. At his hearing, he refused to acknowledge the ways our criminal justice system is biased against Americans of color. He made statements condoning judicial activisim. He argued that judges are justified in not following precedent if they feel it was incorrectly decided. Think about that for a minute. I am not a lawyer, but I understand this about our courts: A judge who feels no obligation to follow precedent laid out by higher courts is not a judge; that is someone who has ceased to be bound by any standards guiding a judge. Precedent is the backbone of our legal system. Saying that judges can disregard it if they feel it is incorrect would be a radical departure. Think about how this could work. In a Brennan court, it could be OK for a judge not to follow a Supreme Court decision like Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated schools, as long as that judge--in this case, I guess, Judge Brennan--believes the case was incorrect. If you disregard precedent, decades of legal progress could be rolled back. The well- established rights of so many Americans would be at risk. During his hearing, Brennan claimed he was only talking about precedent from the same circuit, but the article where he originally made these arguments made no such distinction then, and Brennan even admitted that at the hearing. We cannot entrust the people we serve to a judge who can't be trusted to follow settled law. Brennan would also be the first judge in more than 35 years to be confirmed over the objection of a Senator from his home State. Think about that. That doesn't even account for the backstory that I am going to mention. He would be the first judge in 35 years to be confirmed over the objections of a Senator from his home State. Senator Baldwin from Wisconsin has not returned her blue slip on Brennan. In departure from Senate tradition, Republicans had a hearing and are now allowing a vote on Brennan's nomination despite not having a blue slip from Senator Baldwin. The seat Brennan is nominated for has been vacant since 2010. Why? Because Senator Johnson, now the senior Senator from Wisconsin, did not return a blue slip on President Obama's first nominee to fill this seat. This body honored Senator Johnson's blue slip and was not going to confirm that nominee because the blue slip had not been returned. That was following the precedent of this Senate--decades of precedent. The nominee therefore did not receive a hearing, let alone a vote. Now Republicans are refusing to show Senator Baldwin the same level of courtesy and respect. We have a blue-slip procedure in place not out of courtesy to Senators personally but to the Americans we serve. Senator Baldwin represents the people who will be most affected by Judge Brennan's decisions. She opposes his nomination. Her blue slip should be respected. The people served by the Seventh Circuit and Americans all over the country need judges who will follow the law. To be sure, Judge Brennan is not that judge. We can do better. We should do better. I ask my colleagues to oppose his nomination. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Montana for the unanimous consent request.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank both Senator Thune and Senator Cantwell for their exchange back and forth. I especially appreciate Senator Cantwell's work. I grew up an hour and a half away from Lake Erie and saw, in the 1960s, what that lake looked like. For 10 years, I lived in a home near Lake Erie, and I saw the improvements we made. This bill, unfortunately, with that amendment sets us back. We need to keep invasive species out of Lake Erie, and we need to pass a Coast Guard bill. There is no reason we can't do both. I want to speak to that in a moment. First, I want to speak on how vital Lake Erie is to my State. Fifty percent of the fish in all the Great Lakes consider Lake Erie their habitat. The water is critical to farming, clean energy development, industry, and regional economic competitiveness. From tourism in Catawba and Put-in-Bay, to fishing in Marblehead, to vacations and family reunions at Maumee Bay State Park, Lake Erie benefits our communities and creates jobs in Ohio. For more than half a century--I am going back to when I was a kid in the 1960s and saw what Lake Erie looked like--keeping our lake healthy has been a constant struggle. Where I lived on Lake Erie, the lake was about 50 to 60 feet deep. Moving west toward Toledo, the lake is about 30 feet deep. Contrast that with Lake Superior, which is 600 feet deep, and you can see the challenge of keeping Lake Erie clean, and you can see the vulnerability of that lake. That is the reason for the algal blooms. That is the reason that Lake Erie has had the most difficult issues facing its aquatic life. Runoff that causes harmful algal blooms and invasive species are threats we battle every year. That is why Senator Portman and I came to this floor and fought back against the President's budget 2 years in a row when the President was going to cut close to $300 million from the Great Lakes Initiative. Two years in a row, Senator Portman and I fought back against it because we know that cleaning up Lake Erie is something we did in the sixties, but keeping Lake Erie clean is something we do in the seventies, eighties, nineties, into this century, and into this millennium. The Great Lakes are home to more than 185 non-native species. By some estimates, invasive species cause $5 billion in damages to the Great Lakes every single year. A provision that would make our fight against invasive species harder has been added to the bill to reauthorize our Coast Guard. That is why I voted no earlier today. As much as I want Coast Guard reauthorization, my first responsibility, other than looking out for working families in Ohio every day, is to keep the greatest natural resource in the country clean--my part of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie, the part that borders Ohio. This provision would make it easier for invasive species to enter our lakes, harm our drinking water, and threaten local jobs that depend on boating and fishing. Every year, I meet with the Lake Erie sea captains, boat captains. They talk about the beauty of the lake and the importance of the lake to their businesses and to all of us in Northern Ohio. This provision doesn't belong in the Coast Guard bill. The Senate did the right thing by blocking it. Again I say I strongly support the Coast Guard reauthorization. I want to see it passed. I agree with Senator Thune. I want it to be law. That is why it is critical that this provision be removed from the bill so Congress can move forward with supporting our Coast Guard without threatening the Great Lakes. Members of the Coast Guard surely think the same thing. This provision would eliminate the ability of Great Lakes States, such as Ohio, to set separate water quality standards to keep out invasive species. Tankers and cargo ships carry something called ballast water with them to help with stability and smooth sailing. When they load on more cargo, they let out some of the water, and it flows out into whatever body of water they happen to be in at that time. Think about these ships. In some sense, they are luxury liners for invasive species. They might be picked up off the coast of Japan. They might be picked up in the Indian Ocean. They might be picked up in the South Atlantic Ocean. They end up coming down the Saint Lawrence Seaway carrying this water with invasive species from around the world, and they release them into Lake Erie or into Lake Ontario or Lake Michigan or Lake Superior or Lake Huron. It may not sound like a big deal if a ship takes on water with zebra mussels in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Russia and lets them out in Lake Erie, but those little mussels do major damage to our lakes and our economy. Local governments and taxpayers end up paying the price. This affects the beauty of Lake Erie and the cleanliness of its water. That is so important. It affects the economy because it costs local taxpayers money to clean up from these invasive species. They clog up water intake pipes. They spike costs for local ratepayers. They make toxic algal blooms worse. When drinking water gets contaminated, the local water utility has to clean it up, and they pass on the cost. The fishing and tourism industries rely on Lake Erie and feel that pain. As I said, I remember how polluted Lake Erie looked when I was growing up. The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative has made a real difference. We have made real progress cleaning up the lake's tributaries, from the Black River, to the Cuyahoga River, to the Ashtabula River, to the Grand River, to the Maumee River, the largest tributary feeding into any of the Great Lakes, draining 4 million acres west and south of Toledo. It has been a bipartisan success story. The Great Lakes region contains 84 percent of North America's surface freshwater and provides drinking water to tens of millions of Americans. It generates billions in economic activity. Why would we risk that? Why would we risk that by voting for this bill? That is why Senator Cantwell was right. We need to pass a Coast Guard bill. We need to keep invasive species out of Lake Erie. We can do both by stripping this provision from the bill right away and move it forward and pass it. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for his leadership and his outspokenness--how he has shown the importance of the Senate actually doing its job on both climate change and campaign finance and how much they are related to each other because of the stranglehold the oil industry has on the Republican Party and the hundreds of millions of dollars they spend. Senator Whitehouse has been on this floor well over 100 times to talk about that. The country certainly listens, and the country is, certainly, in the same place he is and a lot of us are. Unfortunately, the special interest groups in this town continue to control this Senate.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I am disappointed that we can't confirm the Ex-Im nominees today. I know many other Senators want to resolve this situation. I will continue to push to reopen the Ex-Im Bank. We were willing--the majority of the Banking Committee was willing to flip and put Mr. Garrett as one of the members, one of the four members, and make Mr. Bachus, another former House Member, who is qualified and is a supporter of the Ex-Im Bank Chairman. We were willing to have Scott Garrett on this Board but not as Chairman because the Chairman sets the agenda. Mr. Garrett would not, when questioned by Senator Heitkamp, who asked him tough questions, would not commit to the committee that he wasn't out to destroy and undermine the Bank. We were willing to put Mr. Garrett there, just not in the Chairman's position. It is clear Mr. Garrett, on behalf of the Vice President and a small number of Members of this body, want to undermine and destroy the Ex-Im Bank. There is no question about that.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I reserve the right to object. Mr. President, how does it make sense to confirm an inspector general for an agency that really isn't an agency that is actually in operation doing its best? So we are not going to appoint the members of the Board. We will have zero Board members. They will not be able to conduct the quality and the quantity of business that they used to, and that they could if we had no objection to the motion earlier, and then we are going to have an inspector general to watch over them? That simply doesn't make sense. I object.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the motion. This is my second day in a row being on the opposite side of my friend Senator Moran and Senator Crapo, too, for that matter, but you have to do what you have to do. Over the last year and a half, as we have seen time after time after time, Republicans in this Congress have made it pretty clear to the American people whose side they are on. They have used the Congressional Review Act--something nobody at home really knows about and something most of us didn't know anything about until we began to see at the White House these executive retreats every weekend for Wall Street executives. They have used the Congressional Review Act more than any other Congress in history to give handouts to big corporations at the expense of ordinary Americans. It is not enough for Republican legislators to go to Senator McConnell's office down the hall and cut deals giving tax cuts to the richest people in the country and giving tax breaks to General Motors, which promised that if tax cuts were given to the largest corporations in America, they were going to raise wages and hire more people. Well, GM just announced--to its everlasting discredit--hundreds of layoffs at its Lordstown plant near Youngstown, OH. Hundreds and hundreds of people were laid off, perhaps permanently. We don't know, but the signs aren't good. At the same time, General Motors in Toledo, because they make the transmissions for the Chevy Cruze in Youngstown, are laying people off. And then the Ohio Turnpike from Toledo to Youngstown, this long Ohio turnpike--one of the centers of the American auto industry-- we will probably see layoffs in the supply chain. Even though they got a huge tax cut, written in the office down the hall, in Majority Leader McConnell's office--they got a huge tax cut and lots of money in their pockets. What do they do? They mostly do corporate buybacks and stock buybacks. They share this money with their biggest stockholders. So that is what happened with the tax cut. Now they are giving another handout to a big corporation at the expense of Americans. It is bad enough that we are considering this Congressional Review Act piece of legislation. We are considering a bill that would tell Wall Street banks and shady lenders that it is OK to discriminate against borrowers. Somebody who looks like me can go to a car dealership and get a loan when they decide they are going to buy a Chevy Cruze. My wife and I have each bought a Chevy Cruze. I am going to go finance a Chevy Cruze, and I get a certain interest rate. We have seen data that shows that if somebody looks a little different from me--if they are African American, Latina, Asian American, or Pacific Islanders--they pay a higher interest rate. We know that is what the data says. But this body--from the last vote, it is pretty clear--they say that is all right, that if the dealer wants to charge higher interest rates to people of color, that is OK. So it is bad enough that we are saying today and this body is giving its stamp of approval saying that it is OK to discriminate and to charge higher interest rates to people of color. I have said this in the Banking Committee before, and Senator Crapo has heard me say this many times: The ZIP Code where my wife and I live in Cleveland, OH, had more foreclosures than any ZIP Code in the United States of America. There are reasons for that. Part of the reasons for that is who lives in my ZIP Code, mostly. But it is not just that which today's legislation would do. It threatens thousands more protections for workers and families that are vulnerable to repeal by Congress. Republicans have used the Congressional Review Act to repeal important rules that would have given low-wage workers access to retirement plans. So here in the Senate, we talk about caring about workers, we talk about the dignity of work, and we talk about helping people save for the future, but one of the provisions of the Congressional Review Act would have given low-wage workers access to retirement plans, and this legislation takes it away. One of the other rules that were rolled back ensured that Federal contract employers had protections for their workers regardless of race, regardless of gender, regardless of sexual orientation. It ensured that women had the right to choose their own healthcare provider regardless of their form of insurance. The Congressional Review Act repeals all of those rules. They repealed the rule that would have guaranteed customers the right to a day in court when they were ripped off by a bank like Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo has a whole rap sheet of ripping off their customers. But we in this body said: Well, you shouldn't have done that, Mr. and Mrs. Wells Fargo, but we are going to let you do that on individual contracts. So if you are wronged by Wells Fargo or any of these other big financial institutions, you don't get a day in court, sorry. That is what this body did. It is the same with Equifax. We know what Equifax did. Equifax violated the privacy of pretty much half the people in North Dakota or Idaho or Ohio or in this whole country, but we said: That is OK, Equifax; just try not to do it again; and we let them off the hook. Fortunately, too much time has passed for Congress to use the Congressional Review Act to roll back other protections the last administration put in place, but they now want to open up a whole new idea. They want to use a legal loophole to interfere with potentially thousands more Federal decisions, potentially going back as far as 20 years. In order to clarify how laws work, Federal agencies--this is really in the weeds, but you know we have some pretty smart people here who figure out how to go in the weeds and find loopholes and exploit people and, frankly, hurt the little guy. Whether she works in construction or punches a time clock or works as a waitress in a diner in Garfield Heights, they find ways to screw the little guy. So here is how it works. Federal agencies issue guidance to help people understand how the law protects them and to help businesses understand how to follow the law. Just last week, some of these smart people--my Republican colleagues--at a hearing decried the practice of enforcing the law without providing guidance in advance. This week, though--this week--some of those same smart Republicans want to start nullifying agency guidance, which would completely up-end the Federal programs that families depend on. And this is an anti-business decision, too, on their part. The businesses want the predictability, they want the certainty so they can follow the rules. Under this crazy new plan, some of these very smart Republicans--and at least one of them is on the Banking Committee--under this new plan, they can ban Federal agencies from explaining how States administer Federal health insurance programs, programs like the Children's Health Insurance Program. They can undermine requirements to make sure that federally funded projects pay the local prevailing wages. Today I went to breakfast with a number of iron workers and glaziers and laborers and electricians and pipe fitters and others who work with their hands and make a damn good living, with good benefits and good retirement for their families. You know what. They can use this newfound rule that these very smart Republican legislators figured out how to exploit to undermine pay and beat back local prevailing wage laws. Republicans have used the Congressional Review Act to attack access to healthcare and worker and environmental protections. So it is no stretch. They have done it before. It is no stretch that they would do it again, only now there would be no limits on the types of agency actions they can target because they found this loophole and they can go back 20 years. The one we are working on today was handed down--this agency guidance was handed down in 2013. So one of the first things Republicans want to do with this--they are just so excited with this new loophole--they found that they can go after people who don't have good lobbyists in Washington. They can go after people who won't contribute to their campaign. They can go after people who, frankly, struggle every day just to make a living in this country. What is the first thing they do? They make car loans--it is clear what happens. They make car loans more expensive for women and for people of color. The bill sends a message to lenders across the country that if you are legally discriminating, go ahead, we are not going to stop you. We created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to police Wall Street banks and other shady lenders who ripped off working families. Under its last Director, the Bureau returned $12 billion to 29 million Americans who had been ripped off by payday lenders and credit card companies and for-profit colleges. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau used to be a cop on the beat to protect consumers. We want a consumer bureau because we have the banks--$1 trillion, $2 trillion; Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo--these banks are trillion-dollar banks, some of them $2 trillion. So we have the banks here, and we have a lot of consumers who don't have a union or any protection, and they sign these contracts for a loan or something, and they don't really know what the fine print says. So that is why we have a consumer bureau--to protect those people. Twenty-nine million Americans have benefited from it just since its creation less than a decade ago, and they have saved $12 billion. It used to be a cop on the beat. It used to issue reports warning consumers about industries that weren't following the law. It brought tough enforcement actions. It identified discriminatory lending practices in auto loans and home mortgages. We know discrimination is still a major problem for people of color who make the biggest investment of their lives: their house and their car--their house and their car, their two biggest investments, and you can legally discriminate in this country because of the way somebody looks. You can discriminate against them because of race, and now we are saying it is OK. Look at what has happened in this country because they said that. Just a few months ago, the Center for Investigative Reporting released a report showing that redlining is still a problem in big American cities to this day. The National Fair Housing Alliance conducted tests and demonstrated that people of color were systematically offered worse loan terms for cars than White borrowers with the exact same credit seeking to purchase the exact same vehicle. But instead of working to root out this discrimination--you would think that is what we would all do, Republicans and Democrats alike. Instead, we are making it easier for banks to turn customers away or to take advantage of them based on the color of their skin. This is 2018, for gosh sakes. Why would we still be doing that? This repeal could permanently weaken Federal anti-discrimination laws. These laws have been the law of the land for decades. These are the laws that brave Americans fought for during the civil rights movement. Do you remember when Congress passed the fair housing bill? The fair housing bill was passed a week after Dr. King's assassination, 50 years ago last week. You would think we would want to strengthen it, not weaken it. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record letters from the scores of civil rights and consumer and environmental and other organizations that vehemently oppose this legislation.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, Americans for Financial Reform called this resolution ``a deeply troubling piece of legislation that will leave millions of people of color at the mercy of auto-dealers and lenders with a long history of racial discrimination.'' I know a lot of auto dealers, and I am sure my friend from Idaho, Senator Crapo, does as well. We all do. Most of them don't do this, but some of them do, and why are we allowing the some of them who do to continue to do this? If Republicans are willing to use this loophole that a few very smart Republicans uncovered--this loophole that they went down in the weeds and figured out how to exploit--if they are willing to use this loophole to attack our basic right to equality, there may be no end to the other consumer protections they can repeal. Big corporations could be free to take advantage of customers with little to rein them in, with fewer consumer protections and with fewer environmental protections. Think of the progress we have made in this country because of consumer protection, because of strong safe drinking water laws, and because of strong clean air laws. I live 10 miles from Lake Erie. I know about the progress, in part because we passed strong laws for environmental protection. I know what we have done to clean up Lake Erie. The Great Lakes are 20 percent of all the ground and surface freshwater in the world. I look at what we have done as a society. Do we want to go back on this as the President cuts funding to clean up the Great Lakes? The EPA issues guidelines today to ensure that corporate polluters aren't putting communities in danger by contaminating the air they breathe or the water they drink. States rely on Federal guidance--the key word--so they can work with the Federal Government to provide healthcare to families and children. Workers rely on guidance from the Department of Labor to make sure they are getting fair pay in a safe workplace. But under the legislation before us today, those protections could be stripped away in the future, one by one by one. Every time somebody here wants to do a favor for their favorite special interest group, they can go down to Senator McConnell's office, probably pick up a ticket--because there is probably going to be a line, with all the lobbyists going in and out--they will pick up a ticket to say, which special interest group can I do a favor for today, and they will find another one. For the millions who lost their jobs, for the millions who lost their homes in the financial crisis a decade ago, for the millions who are struggling to build their retirement with wages that haven't been growing for more than 20 years, it is already hard enough to get ahead. We should be making it easier for them, not harder. I ask for a ``no'' vote. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I strongly encourage my colleagues to reject this anti-worker bill masquerading as an issue of Tribal sovereignty. I strongly support Tribal sovereignty. I can't speak for everyone in this body, but I am virtually certain that every single Democratic Member of this body supports Tribal sovereignty, and I am pretty certain that most Republican Members of this body support Tribal sovereignty, but that is not what this bill is about. This is just the latest battle in the decades-long war that so many in this town have been waging to undermine the rights of American workers. This bill strips away the rights of 600,000 employees at Tribal casinos, so 600,000 employees at casinos on Tribal lands will lose their right to collective bargaining. We know what that means to their wages and their benefits. Seventy-five percent of these 600,000 employees are not members of a Tribe. So when these casinos all over the country, on reservations, these casinos on Indian lands--most of the 600,000 employees at the Tribal casinos have the right to collectively bargain, to form unions if they choose, to collectively bargain if they choose, and to get better wages and benefits if that is what brings them to it. Again, 75 percent of these workers are not members of any of these Tribes. There are other Federal laws that apply to workplaces on Tribal lands. The Fair Labor Standards Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Employment Retirement Income Security Act--so-called ERISA--and title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act all apply on Tribal lands, but this bill only goes after collective bargaining rights, only goes after those workers. There is no reason Congress should single out and attack the rights of these workers to organize and advocate for themselves in the workplace. We can protect Tribal sovereignty. I want to do that. I am leading the charge against this bill. I want to protect Tribal sovereignty, but you can also protect workers' rights at the same time. You don't have to jettison workers' rights. You don't have to hurt these workers. We don't have to take rights away from these workers--the right to organize and bargain collectively--in order to protect Tribal sovereignty. Our laws do that right now. Some of my colleagues will say they want to make sure that Tribes have the same rights as States, whose workers are carved out of the National Labor Relations Act, but Tribal government employees are already exempted from the National Labor Relations Act. This bill eliminates the Federal labor rights of workers at for-profit businesses, like casinos. So who is behind this? The national chamber of commerce wants to go after unions every chance they get and take away collective bargaining rights. Do you know what that means when companies do that? It means higher profits. It means they can pay less to workers. It means they can strip workers of their healthcare and their retirement. Of course these companies want to take away collective bargaining rights and put unions out of business. That is the whole point of this bill. Again, Tribal government employees are already exempted from the NLRA. This bill eliminates the Federal labor rights of workers at for- profit businesses, like casinos. You don't think these casinos are making lots of money? Of course they are. They will make more money if you take away the collective bargaining rights of employees. Employees will make less. Employees will, in some cases, lose their health insurance. Employees will get fewer dollars for retirement, but profits will go up for these casinos. These casinos are often run by companies that have nothing to do with these Tribes. That is not establishing parity. States can't carve out home State, for-profit businesses from the NLRA. Nevada can't say that it has decided its casinos on the Vegas Strip are exempt from Federal labor laws. So why would we treat these private, for-profit casinos any differently? Supporters of the bill will say it is necessary to prevent overreach by the National Labor Relations Board. That argument doesn't hold up either. The Board is methodically evaluated when they do and don't assert jurisdiction on Federal lands. They use a very careful test to ensure that the Board's jurisdiction does not infringe on Tribal rights or interfere in the Tribes' exclusive right to self-government. All of us in this body--at least all of us on this side of the aisle; I think all of us in the body--of course we want to make sure that Tribal rights are enforced and that we don't interfere in the Tribes' exclusive right to self-governance. These, though, are for-profit businesses on these reservations. In a June 2015 decision, the Board used the test and did not assert jurisdiction in a labor dispute on Tribal lands. As I said, I think all of us here support Tribal sovereignty. I wish all of us here supported American workers' right to organize just as strongly. My friends on this side of the aisle have spent day after day, week after week, month after month, doing all they can to stop workers in my State, in the State of Kansas, and all over this country from organizing. This bill is an attempt to take advantage of Tribe support in Congress to attack workers. There is another provision slipped in. At a time when Congress is engaged in a long-overdue discussion about sexual harassment in the workplace, this bill repeals all Federal protections against harassment for the 600,000 workers. So it strips collective bargaining rights from 600,000 people. It also repeals all Federal protection against sexual harassment for those same 600,000 workers. Right now, these workers cannot bring Federal harassment claims. Their only Federal protection against harassment is the NLRA. Under that law, workers have the right to collectively protest harassment. They can file grievances under union contracts to enforce their rights. If this bill passes, that Federal protection will disappear. All of the collective bargaining agreements in these workplaces would expire at the end of their terms, and the union-won protections against harassment would simply disappear along with all of them. We are going in the wrong direction. Today more than ever, workers need a voice in the workplace. Think about this: Over the last 40 years, gross domestic product has gone up and up and up. Corporate profits have gone up and up and up; worker productivity has gone up and up and up; executive salaries have gone up and up and up--all because of the productivity of American workers. But workers haven't shared in the wealth that they have created for their bosses. Workers haven't shared in the growth of those companies. Wages are flat. So think about that again. Profits go up, productivity goes up, executive salaries go up, productivity of American workers, as I said, goes up, but wages are flat. A big part of that is because of this attack from this body and the House of Representatives--the attack on workers trying to organize and bargain collectively. So if this bill passes, we are going to make sure that 600,000 fewer Americans have the right to organize and bargain collectively. Again, it means profits will go up at these casinos, executive salaries will go up at the casinos, and wages will be flat and go down even as these companies do better and better. Workers don't share in the growth they create. Hard work just doesn't pay off the way it used to. The dignity of work has been undermined by this Senate, by the House of Representatives, and by the White House. If work isn't valued, then Americans can't earn their way to a better life for their families no matter how hard they work. This bill will make it harder for these workers to ensure that their work is valued. This bill undermines the dignity of work in this country. We ought to be lifting up workers. We shouldn't be undermining their right to advocate for themselves. These are workers banding together to advocate for themselves. Their voices are stronger when they are together, and that is when management has to listen to them. That is why they get better wages. That is why they get better healthcare. That is why they get better retirement. But we know what this bill does. It doesn't protect Tribal sovereignty. That is just what they say it does, just like they said--80 percent of the tax cut went to the richest 1 percent of Americans, and they called that a tax cut for the middle class. Surely it wasn't that. Just like the bank bill that rolls back some tough rules on Wall Street--they like to say that was a bill for the small banks. No, it wasn't. It was much about Wall Street. Just like this bill is not for Tribal sovereignty--it is to help put labor unions out of business and depress wages. That is why I oppose this bill. I urge my colleagues to vote no. Nomination of Ronny Jackson Mr. President, over the next few weeks, the Senate will consider the President's nominee to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Ronny Jackson. I will be meeting with Dr. Jackson tomorrow, and I look forward to that meeting. I am eager to hear what his plans are and how he will make the VA system work better for the women and men who serve our country. I will have some tough questions for him. I know my friend, the Senator from Kansas and the current Presiding Officer, who also sits on the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, has the same concerns that I have. One of my top priorities will be finding out his views on the misguided idea that some are pushing of privatizing the Veterans' Administration. Privatizing the VA would mean putting profits ahead of veterans. It would mean depriving the women and men who served our country the best possible care just to line the pockets of healthcare executives. We have seen what happens when we introduce corporate profit motives into organizations that should be set up to serve the American people. Just look how private, for-profit charter schools have failed children in my State. The owners of the private, for-profit charter schools have done well, while taxpayers have been fleeced and students have been betrayed. We know that privatization of the prison system or privatization of Social Security or privatization of Medicare or privatization of the Veterans' Administration all works the same way. The people who are to be served find they have less quality care or service. The people who own the newly privatized agencies or companies do very well. Study after study in my State shows these for-profit charter schools don't give Ohio students an adequate education and cost taxpayers more. According to a report from Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes, students at Ohio's charter schools lose 43 days of math instruction and 14 days of reading instruction, compared with traditional public schools in the State. We allowed for-profit school operators to inject profits into Ohio's public education, and they treated taxpayers like ATM machines and shortchanged students. We can't allow the same thing to happen to veterans. I will fight any effort to use America's veterans to pad the profits of wealthy corporations. Dr. Jackson will have to commit to oppose any VA privatization efforts to earn my vote. We know the VA system isn't perfect, and we know it can improve. We have work to do to rebuild and strengthen it. Dr. Shulkin was trying to do that and made some inroads in doing it, but it will be hard. It is the largest healthcare system in the country. It serves 9 million veterans every year and provides care at more than 1,200 facilities across the country, including about three dozen in my State. Some of those serve veterans very well, while others need significant investment to improve their services. Too many veterans still face obstacles to get the highest quality care through the VA system. I know veterans service organizations, some of the best groups and civic organizations in our country--to name a few, knowing I will leave some out: the Disabled American Veterans, the American Legion, the AMVETS, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Paralyzed Veterans of America, the Polish American Veterans--all these organizations have said: We don't want to privatize the VA. We want improvements in the Veterans' Administration, but we want to keep it a public organization that serves veterans who fought for this country. Just because the task to fix the VA is hard doesn't mean we abandon our responsibility to the men and women who served this country. We need to redouble our efforts to strengthen the VA, not tear it down and not privatize it. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, 50 years ago today, Congress enacted the Fair Housing Act, exactly 1 week after the assassination of Martin Luther King as he fought for economic justice for sanitation workers in Memphis. It also came just weeks after the Kerner Commission issued its report on the origins of urban unrest in the 1960s. This report contained the now famous warning that ``our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal.'' In the wake of these events, the Fair Housing Act made discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing illegal for the first time. For generations, redlining, restrictive covenants, and outright discrimination kept families of color locked out of entire neighborhoods, often far from where jobs were, and they created segregated communities that linger to this day. They denied these families the opportunity to build wealth through home ownership. Many of these exclusionary practices were carried out by private entities and local governments. But as Richard Rothstein reminds us in his new book, ``The Color of Law''--and I recommend to everybody listening that they read that book--Federal policies also played a significant role in reinforcing segregation. From 1934 through 1962--30 years, three decades--98 percent of all FHA mortgages went to White homeowners. In a country that in those days was about 10 percent African American, 98 percent of mortgages went to White homeowners. The Fair Housing Act made this despicable discrimination illegal. It required that Federal housing and urban development grants be administered in a way that would ``affirmatively further'' fair housing--not in a reactive way but in a way that would affirmatively further fair housing. State and local governments and public housing authorities were required to use their Federal funds in ways that would reverse, rather than accelerate or reinforce, segregation in their communities. April 11, 1968, however, was not the end of our work to ensure fair housing and equal opportunities. Fifty years later, we haven't had the progress we should have had, and so much more needs to be done. A new report this year from the Center for Investigative Reporting analyzed tens of millions of mortgage records and found that all across the country people of color are far more likely--even holding constant for economic situations--to be turned down for a loan, taking into account factors like their income and the size of the loan. We know that the 2008 housing crisis hit communities of color particularly hard. In the run-up to the crisis, faulty mortgages were targeted to people of color. Even those who qualified for a no-frills, no-surprises prime mortgage were often instead steered into a subprime, much riskier loan. Even African-American and Hispanic borrowers with higher incomes than other borrowers found themselves in risky, subprime, designed-to-fail products. These practices of discrimination stripped a generation's worth of equity from communities that had fought hard for equal access to home ownership. I know in my community in Cleveland, on the southeast side of Cleveland in the Broadway, Harvard area of that community, so much wealth has been lost. As people finally began to gain in home ownership and in wealth accumulation, what happened in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 devastated these communities. As a number of my colleagues have heard me say, in my ZIP Code of 44105, in Cleveland, OH, in the first half of 2007, there were more foreclosures than any ZIP Code in the United States of America. The household wealth of communities of color still hasn't recovered. My neighborhood hasn't, my community hasn't, and my State hasn't. Middle-class Black and Hispanic families lost half their wealth from 2007 to 2013--half their wealth. Middle-income Black household wealth was $63,000 in 2007. A decade later, it was $38,000. The numbers are similar for Hispanic households--$85,000 down to $46,000. Borrowers with these higher cost loans were foreclosed on at about triple the rate of borrowers with standard, 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages. Over a recent 8-year period, 9.3 million homeowners lost their homes through foreclosure, distress sales, or surrendering their home to the lender. After the crisis, we took steps to fight this discrimination. We created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to look after bank customers and to help root out discrimination. We required lenders to report more detailed data so that we can more easily spot modern-day redlining. In 2015, HUD also issued the affirmatively furthering fair housing rule. This rule would have given clearer guidelines to communities to help them assess their own fair housing needs and provided them with the data they needed to inform their decisions. It would have allowed them to set their own goals and timelines. Some of the questions communities would ask during these assessments would demand they think in new ways about how to create housing and economic opportunities for all of their residents--no matter their color, no matter family size, no matter their disability if they have one. These are the types of questions this body told the country to ask when it enacted the fair housing bill five decades ago. But instead of recommitting ourselves to the promise we made 50 years ago, too many Washington politicians are trying to take us backward. Earlier this year, HUD suspended implementing the affirmatively furthering fair housing rule. That will not reverse the requirements of the Fair Housing Act. Instead, it hurts communities, which will once again be left to comply with the law without the technical assistance they need. Remember that new data that banks were going to report to make it easier to spot lenders who discriminate? The bill the Senate passed last month right here would exempt 85 percent of banks from reporting the data they are collecting and reporting today. So we are not even going to know what happened. This body has scaled back the amount of data we are trying to gather to stop discrimination. Without it, we can't monitor trends in mortgage lending. It will be harder to see who has access to affordable mortgage credit and, importantly, who does not have access. HUD is even thinking about changing its mission statement in ways that diminish the importance of combating housing discrimination. The administration's actions over the past year make it clear they are already wavering in that commitment. For example, in 2017, HUD withdrew guidance requiring equal access for transgender people in homeless shelters. Let's pick on them even more. According to a report in the New York Times, Dr. Carson's HUD has suspended several anti- discrimination investigations, including an investigation of discriminatory housing advertisements on Facebook. The administration proposed a 14-percent cut to the HUD budget, including affordable housing and community development programs aimed at creating housing and opportunity for low-income communities. We know that one-fourth of renters in this country spend at least 50 percent of their income on housing. If one thing goes wrong in their lives, they are evicted or they lose their homes. One-fourth of people in this country who rent are paying at least half their income in housing costs. In Cuyahoga County, the second most populous county in Ohio, one-fourth of all family units, one-fourth of all residents, homeowners or renters, spend one-half of their income on housing, so it is not just renters, but it is often homeowners too. We are deciding in this body because the President wants to--the far right in this body wants to cut spending on housing even more. We have enough money to do a huge tax cut for the richest people in the country. The richest 1 percent will get 81 percent of that tax cut. I was talking to an accountant the other day in Elyria, OH. It is tax season, of course, and he is busy. He said: When people come and see me, they ask inevitably when I am doing their taxes ``Well, how does this tax bill affect me?'' He asks: Are you a billionaire? They laugh and say: Of course not. He then says: Well, only if you are a billionaire will it affect you, and then you will save millions of dollars on your taxes. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but that is what that tax bill is all about. So if you are a billionaire, if you are a decamillionaire, if you made a million dollars last year, you are going to save a whole lot on your taxes this year. But if you are living in working-class housing, if you can't afford much more than the very basic kind of housing or even worse than that, you are going to see your budget cut. You are going to see fewer vouchers. You are going to see less funding for housing. What kind of government is this, this mean-spiritedness? There are more tax cuts for the richest in this country, but let's stick it to people who are barely making it. These are people who make $10 to $12 an hour. They make $10 to $12 an hour, and we are going to cut their Medicaid. They are making $10 to $12 an hour, and we are going to scale back their SNAP benefits. They are making $10 to $12 an hour, and we are going to undermine their housing subsidies. What is all of that about in this new government that we are living in now? The last thing we ought to do at a time when a quarter of all renter households--400,000 families in my State of almost 12 million, 400,000 families pay half of their income in housing costs. Again, if one thing goes wrong, if their car breaks down going to work, could they come up with $500 to fix their car? Probably not. Then what happens? Then they are evicted, and then everything goes upside down because they can't pay their rent, so they get evicted. The kid has to go to a new school district. They lose most of the things they have. They have to find a place to live. They probably don't have the money for the downpayment that a landlord charges. A few years ago, I hosted a discussion with some of my colleagues and invited Matthew Desmond, the author of the book ``Evicted.'' In the front of the book, he scribbled the phrase ``Home = Life.'' If you don't have decent housing, it is pretty hard to put a stable life together for you and your family. One of the things he said in that book is that when you get your paycheck every 2 weeks or once a month, the rent eats first. You have to pay your rent. If you can't afford to pay your rent or you can barely afford to pay your rent, you can't do much else. That simple statement captures so much--a safe, stable home is the foundation for opportunities. This government is going to give tax cuts to the richest people in the country, and we are pulling the rug out from under people who are working every bit as hard as we do in this body--and many of them work harder than we do--just trying to get along on $8 or $10 or $12 an hour. We are denying people the opportunity of living in a safe, stable home. That is why we must redouble our commitment to fair housing. That is why we must take real, proactive steps. My colleagues and I have legislation, the Fair and Equal Housing Act of 2017, that would add gender identity and sexual orientation to those protected from discrimination under the Fair Housing Act. Rather than take us backward, we must take these sorts of actions to give more Americans the opportunity to have a safe, stable home and to build wealth through home ownership. We must constantly work toward Dr. King's vision--killed 50 years ago this month--of equality and equal opportunity for all. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, thank you. I thank the Senator from Rhode Island, who has been a great advocate for moving this country forward on everything from campaign finance rules to labor, to justice, and to keeping our planet as clean as possible. During his campaign, Candidate Trump made a lot of big promises to workers in Ohio and across the country. He told them he would put American workers first, but too often the people he has put in charge have a record of doing exactly the opposite. That is certainly true of the two nominees to the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board whom we will consider this week, Patrick Pizzella and John Ring. Think about this. They have spent their careers working to strip workers of their rights, defending corporations that are accused of mistreating workers, and trying to undermine collective bargaining rights. Mr. Pizzella worked for disgraced former lobbyist and convicted felon, Jack Abramoff. They worked on the same lobbying team at the law firm of Preston Gates, trying to keep workers from being protected by Federal labor laws. These are the candidates the President of the United States, who talked about empowering workers and being on the side of workers, has nominated, one for the Department of Labor and one for the National Labor Relations Board. They have been busy through their professional careers--and very well paid doing it--trying to keep workers from being protected by Federal labor laws. I know everyone is entitled to representation, but when you devote your life to keeping workers from having collective bargaining, keeping workers from working in a safe workplace, and defending companies who are accused of mistreating workers, it makes you wonder. Mr. Pizzella also previously served at the Department of Labor, but his record there gives us no reason to rehire him at the Department of Labor. He worked at the Wage and Hour Division. He was supposed to look out for workers being cheated by their bosses out of the paychecks they had earned. All over my State, from Cleveland to Cincinnati, from Ashtabula to Lima, from Marietta to Bryan and Toledo, I hear stories of workers who simply couldn't fight back when their employers would occasionally cheat them out of a paycheck or overtime or misclassify them. We know most employers don't do that, but we know it happens with some regularity in communities all over my State and all over our country. That is why it is so important to have someone at the Department of Labor who looks out for the worker who doesn't often have a strong voice, as opposed to always siding with the employer on every issue. Instead, an independent review by the Government Accountability Office found that when he was in his Department, the Wage and Hour Division was ineffective and actually discouraged workers from lodging complaints to get their hard-earned money back. So when a worker felt that he or she was cheated in the workplace, when Mr. Pizzella was in the Wage and Hour Division, those workers were reluctant to lodge complaints to get their money back because the Department of Labor was not on their side in those days. This is the man who wants to be Deputy Secretary of Labor. He would be the second highest ranking official in charge of looking out for working men and women. His record indicates he would be more interested in looking out for corporations that want to take advantage of their workers. Isn't there enough of that in this country without the government siding with the richest, most privileged people in the country, the large corporations in the country against workers who simply don't have much of a voice? We are going to put government on the side of those corporations against those workers. John Ring's nomination to the NLRB may be even worse. He has been nominated to be on the National Labor Relations Board. He is supposed to be a neutral arbiter between workers and management. He has spent his career representing employers. He has attacked the agency he is seeking to join. So much is at stake with this nomination. It will likely result in a 3-to-2 anti-worker and anti-labor majority on a board that has enormous influence over American workers. It will mean big advances in the decades-long campaign to chip away at workers' power in the workplace. We need someone in both of these jobs--Mr. Pizzella at the Department of Labor and Mr. Ring at the NLRB--who wakes up every day thinking: How do I help American workers? How do I help American workers have a safer workplace? How do I help American workers get paid fairly? How do we make sure companies do the right thing as they treat their workers? That is what they should wake up every day thinking. Instead, President Trump has nominated and is hiring two people who have spent their careers trying to push those workers down. What these folks don't seem to understand is that it is not corporations that drive the economy; it is workers. There is a problem in this institution. The leaders in this institution--the majority leader down the hall, Senator McConnell-- think you grow the economy from the top down. They think you give the richest people in the country tax cuts, you give the largest corporations in the country tax breaks, and it will trickle down and help workers. No, that is not how you grow the economy. You grow the economy from the middle out. That is why we had greater job growth with President Obama after the auto rescue in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016. More jobs were created in almost every one of those years than in 2017--President Trump's first year in office. If work isn't valued, if corporations shortchange workers with the help of lawyers like Mr. Ring and Mr. Pizzella, then Americans can't earn their way to a better life for their families, no matter how hard they work. In my hometown of Mansfield or where Connie and I live in Cleveland or in Cranston, RI--Senator Whitehouse's hometown, where my daughter and son-in-law and two grandchildren live--how many times do I hear people in these communities say: You know, I am working harder than ever, and I have less to show for it. President Trump is going to put two lawyers in key places in the Federal Government who are going to stack the deck even more against those workers. The last thing we need is more people serving in Washington who don't value work and who don't respect the Americans who do it. I urge my colleagues to listen a little more to the Americans we serve. As President Lincoln said: Go out and get your public opinion bath. Listen to workers--not just employers, not just lawyers, not just to country clubs. Go to where workers hang out. Listen a little more to the workers we serve and a little less to big corporations, which it seems these days are trying to squeeze every last penny out of their workers. Mr. President, reject these nominations.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, this weekend, Americans around the country and at, at least, a dozen places in my State of Ohio will hold peaceful marches in their communities to demand that we in this body--the people who represent them--actually do something to protect them from gun violence, not just state that my thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the families but to actually do something. That sort of activism is so important to our democracy. Change never starts in Washington. We make progress because of the grassroots movements of Americans across our country who demand action. For too long, Congress has ignored millions of Americans who want reasonable gun safety measures. Instead, this Congress continues to do the bidding of the gun lobbyists. We already see activism making a difference. It is a minor step, but this week, in the bipartisan budget deal, we will vote to loosen government regulations that severely limit research on gun safety. It is an important first step, but we have a long way to go. We can't say we are doing what it takes to keep our country safe until we are finally willing to pass commonsense laws that protect all Americans from gun violence. Many of us have tried. I supported the original Federal assault weapons ban in 1994 during my first term in Congress. I joined with many of my colleagues to vote to renew it after the shooting at Sandy Hook. Weapons of war don't belong on our streets or in our classrooms. We have tried to pass legislation to close loopholes in our background check system so the people who buy guns on the internet or at gun shows have to go through the same background checks as law- abiding gun owners who buy their guns at stores in Ohio. After the tragedy at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, we tried to pass legislation to prevent people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns. People can't believe the law in this country; that if you are on the government's terrorist watch list, you can't go to the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in Cleveland, to the John Glenn Columbus International Airport in Columbus, or to the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington and get on an airplane, which is the right thing, but that you can go out and buy a gun. We know what happened each and every time. The gun lobby stood in the way. It stands in the way, despite the fact that the laws we are talking about will not undermine the rules and rights of law-abiding gun owners. I have always respected the rights of hunters and collectors and other law-abiding gun owners. No one is trying to take away their guns. Yet, when our students aren't safe in school, it is clear something has to be done. We will not give up on making our country safer. We will keep fighting until we get weapons of war out of our schools and off our streets. Creating change in our country is not easy. It requires often going up against powerful special interests. It is how things happen in this country. It is how women got the right to vote. It is how we passed civil rights. It is how we passed workers' compensation. It is how we passed Medicare. It is how we got Social Security. People banded together--activists--around the country. They pushed their country and pushed their government at the State level, at the county level, at the courthouse, at the Capitol in Washington. They stood against powerful special interests and won on behalf of the public. From the Women's March to airport rallies, to the activism around the Affordable Care Act, last year, Americans proved over and over the power of activism. The people I will be with on Saturday--my daughters, my wife, and probably three of our grandchildren--will join hundreds of thousands all over this country in fighting for these issues. The people who will be marching on Saturday are the ones we were elected to serve. We were not elected to serve special interest gun lobbyists. These activists give me hope for the future. I hope my colleagues in this body will listen to the activists, not to the lobbyists. I suggest the absence of a quorum.