Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am a bit incredulous. I like the Senator from North Carolina. We sit across from each other in the Veterans' Affairs Committee. We have done at least 2 or 3 bills that reached the President's desk and were signed into law together. But I think my Republican friends are kind of missing the point here--to give the majority leader credit for fixing this when, No. 1, he wouldn't do it, he wouldn't do it, he wouldn't do it, he wouldn't do it. Senator Manchin has asked him for weeks and months and months to take care of the pension and the health insurance, and the majority leader refused month after month after month. The majority leader said: I need you to do several things. We need you to follow regular order. We did. We went through the Finance Committee, 18 to 8. Senator Hatch, the chairman, helped us. Senator Wyden, the ranking member, was one of the strongest supporters, joined by Senators Casey and Warner, Finance Committee members who represent a lot of mine workers. The Senate majority leader then said: You have to find a way to pay for it. We did it. We found a way to pay for it. It comes from the abandoned mine fund. There are no tax dollars involved in this. The majority leader still wouldn't do anything. So finally, Senator Manchin comes to the floor, I come to the floor, Senator Casey comes to the floor, and Senator Warner comes to the floor over and over, and we say we are not going to agree to anything until you take care of these pensioners, until you take care of these miners' widows. Then, out of the goodness of the majority leader's heart, he gives these miners--these retired miners and widows--4 months. What does 4 months mean? It means that these widows and miners--these retired miners and widows got a notice in the last couple of weeks saying their insurance will expire December 31. If we agree to the majority leader's bountiful offer, then they will get another notice in January or February saying: Oh, it is going to run out again in 4 months. What is really interesting around here is, I hear Republican Senators day after day after day--whether it is the Affordable Care Act, whether it is Dodd-Frank--say: All we want is predictability. We want to be able to plan. Businesses can't produce jobs, can't create jobs, unless we have a path forward, unless we can predict what will happen, unless we can have some certainty. That is all right for corporate America. They want certainty. Corporate America wants to be able to plan. But it is not all right for mine workers' widows? It is OK to jack them around--pardon my language--it is OK for them to stumble around every 4 months and we renew their pensions, we renew their health care? Really. This is so easy. Give us a year, and then we will be back next year and we will work on this. But, as Senator Manchin said, for us to go home for Christmas--whether or not you celebrate Christmas--and be with our families, which I really want to do--I have five grandchildren. I can't wait to get to spend time with them in the next 3 weeks. But we have to do our job. If we don't do it tonight, then we are going to be here tomorrow. If we don't do it tomorrow, we are going to be here the next day. If we don't do it at the end of this week, we are going to be here next week because we are not leaving. We are going to stay here as long as we need to, even if it means a session on Christmas Day, in order to get these retirees and their widows the pensions and the health care that they earned, not a little 4-month bump. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President--Senator Tillis, I heard the tail end of it. I was in the cloakroom trying to find out exactly what the parliamentary procedure was going be on this. I would be willing to say yes to a lot of these once we take care of the mine workers. This is a wide-open forum. Let's take care of the mine workers, and then we can consider each of these other bills. But none of these bills has the immediacy of thousands of mine workers, retirees, and their widows in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana. None of them have the immediacy of these mine workers' health care being cut off December 31. These are important public initiatives. I can't think of anything that we are considering--I mean, I really want to get ``Buy American'' in the WRDA bill. We had it in the Senate bill. It was bipartisan. Speaker Ryan--even though we tweeted the President-elect of the United States asking him to weigh in on ``Buy American,'' saving thousands of dollars in Coshocton, OH, in Wheeling, and in other places all over this country, we couldn't get any response to that. I want to see us do that. I would like to stay and do that, but the immediate question is, How do we protect these miners and retirees and how do we protect these widows and widowers, for that matter, make sure their health care is protected? That is the fundamental question. I am willing to do a whole lot of other things. Do this first, and then the floor is open to do other things.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I reserve the right to object. We can keep doing this. I think it is very clear what Senator Manchin and I are asking for. We are not asking for anything unusual; we are asking for the Senate to honor the pledge made by President Truman more or less seven decades ago to take care of the health care that mine workers earned. Don't ever forget, we all work around here. We wear coats and ties, and our work might be stressful, sort of, but we are not likely risking our lives, we are not likely picking up occupational diseases from the work we do. But we are saying to these widows and mine workers and retired mine workers that I guess you don't matter very much because we are going to have our Christmas vacation and you are going to have to worry about your health care. Their health care runs out December 31. Senator McConnell, finally, after great pressure from constituents and mine workers and us, finally said he would give us 4 months. You can't run your life not knowing your health insurance is going to run out in 4 months or 8 months or 3 months. So we shouldn't keep repeating ourselves, but Senator Tillis keeps bringing up one issue after another. We are going to keep saying no until we get in this bill much more time for this health care for these retired mine workers and their families and their widows. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. BROWN. I object.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I was incredulous at the beginning of the night, not quite believing that Senator McConnell--I don't know what he is doing now--was sending his people to the floor and finding ways to push back against the mine workers in West Virginia and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Indiana and Virginia, not willing to help those pensioners and widows. Now we have this incredible coincidence that the last two resolutions--we are talking about mine workers--retired mine workers' health care; we are talking about widows of mine workers who have either died on the job or died perhaps from an illness that mine workers so often have--brown lung or some kind of heart disease. Instead, my friend from North Carolina has offered two resolutions, one to honor people who died in a fire--a tragedy--and one to mark the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, both reasonable things. But they are not resolutions to provide college to the children of the people who died in the fire, and they are not to increase benefits for the grandchildren of people who died in Pearl Harbor; they are resolutions that don't mean anything except they are nice. I am for these resolutions. I love to support anything we do to say something nice and pat somebody on the back. But we have these two resolutions saying aren't they nice, aren't we nice, compared to taking care of widows who are going to see their health care expire on December 31. I don't understand the equivalency. I suppose we could go all night if Senator McConnell were perhaps in his office or perhaps out to dinner or perhaps he went home. But it is ordering or asking or however we do things around here--Senators come to the floor and delay and delay and delay and try to change the subject so that people forget about these mine workers. Well, we are not going to let the Presiding Officer or Senator Tillis or Senator McConnell or Senator Cornyn or anybody else--we are not going to let you forget the mine workers. We are going to keep talking about this. I don't mind working late tonight. I don't mind working late tomorrow. I would rather not work until December 24, but Senator Manchin said he will, and I will. My wife is not thrilled about it, and my children and my grandkids aren't thrilled about it. But these are thousands of people who are going to lose their health insurance on December 31, and all that Senator McConnell can do, after huge pressure from mine workers around the country and his constituents in Kentucky and from us--all Senator McConnell can do is say, well, we can give you maybe 4 months, and that is supposed to satisfy us. It doesn't matter if it satisfies us; it matters that we take care of these retired mine workers and their widows. For all of those reasons, I object.

Mr. BROWN. I object.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Reserving the right to object, but I withdraw my reservation.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Manchin for driving this issue. It was done better with him than without him. I thank him for making a world of difference and Senator Casey for his impassioned pleas and reading the letters from mine workers, retired mine workers, widows, retired mine workers in Western Pennsylvania and all over West Virginia and Southeast Ohio. We are all getting letters in our offices that are heartfelt and just make me wonder, why aren't we doing something? I want to share a letter from a lady in Gallipolis, OH, a village. I was just there in the community of Rio Grande earlier this week. She wrote a letter to Mitch McConnell, who is, frankly, the single person standing in the way of doing this. Dear Leader Mitch McConnell: Just to inform you as a member of UMWA that it is vitally important that we keep our insurance. My Husband (Larry) worked 35 years as a miner. He has had bypass surgery this last Aug 8, 2016, also has black lung-- COPD--chronic idiopathic gout, acute bron- chitis . . . And other things. I have history of cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure. . . . We need members of all Congress to consider all that the Coal Miners has contribution to the welfare of this country. Now we ask that they remember commitments made to the Coal Miners. Please keep that promise made to the Coal Miners. Over and over: Please keep that promise made to the coal miners. But instead we hear all kinds of excuses. Again, one man--the majority leader of the Senate, the Republican Senator from Kentucky--one man standing in the way. Senator Manchin just said that if this came to a vote right now on the Senate floor, it would easily have enough votes to pass, but one man has blocked this in the continuing resolution. He has kind of distributed--dropped a few crumbs to a few miners for a few weeks on health care but not pensions. But it is one man standing in the way. When I look at the other Senators--the two Senators from Pennsylvania, one Democrat, one Republican; two Senators from West Virginia, one Democrat, one Republican; two Senators from Ohio, one Democrat, one Republican; two Senators from Virginia, both Democrats-- all of them want to move on this, but we keep hearing excuses from one man, the majority leader of the Senate, from Kentucky. We were told by the majority leader we need bipartisan support. Well, we got it, the bill cosponsored by Republicans and Democrats. As Senator Manchin said, if it were brought up to a vote, we could pass it tonight. Then we were told the bill needs to go through regular order, which is a way, in Washington-speak, of simply saying: Send it to a committee, examine it, debate it, bring a couple witnesses in, bring in experts, talk about it. We did that. Senators Warner and Casey and I also, on the Finance Committee, helped get this bill through with a bipartisan vote of 18 to 8--not even close. Again, the Republican Senators from Pennsylvania and Ohio joined the Democratic Senators from those two States. Eighteen to eight. Then we were told by the majority leader--the one man who is stopping this--find a pay-for. Find a way to pay for it. We did. The bill is fully offset. As Senator Manchin said, as Senator Casey said, as a number have said, this does not cost taxpayers a dime. This isn't a bank bailout that cost real dollars. This isn't even the auto rescue, which was so important to my State. That cost real dollars, although the money was paid back. This won't cost taxpayers anything. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it would reduce the Federal deficit by $67 million over 10 years because they would get the right kind of health care rather than having to rely on other kinds of government programs. These miners--again, we keep saying this over and over. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Almost seven decades ago, President Truman made this commitment. We have lived up to this commitment through Presidents of both parties, including this President, Barack Obama, but one person--again, one person--has stood in the way. The miners in my State can't afford to have this reduced to political gamesmanship. They are hard-working people. They spent their careers doing dignified work. I remember when we spoke at the rally on a really hot day earlier this year. There were thousands of miners there. I remember Cecil Roberts, the president of the United Mine Workers, stood up and said: Put your hand up if you are a veteran. Hundreds of hands went up. He said: Put your hand up if your father or mother was a veteran. Again, hundreds more hands went up. These are people who served their country. And those who weren't off to war were producing the coal to produce the electricity to power the war machine, whether it was World War II or Korea or Vietnam or anything since. Not taking up the mine workers protection act is violating the promise made by President Truman, violating the promise we all made. The bill should ride on the continuing resolution. The majority party has the ability to make that happen right now. I was talking a moment ago quietly, privately, with Senator Casey. We were talking about--unlike the spouses of insurance agents or realtors or teachers or Senators or bankers, mine workers are much more likely to die at a younger age. When you talk about so many, by any cross section, by any analysis of who is most in need of this kind of help, mine workers--there are a lot more mine worker widows than there are in other professions because of the danger of the work. There is a much greater likelihood of dying on the job, much greater likelihood of getting hurt on the job, much greater likelihood in later years of developing brown lung and developing various kinds of heart ailments and bronchial ailments because they worked in the mines. That makes it an even more fundamental moral question, that we do something about this. How many mine workers are sick and need health care? How many need these pensions? How many mine workers die and their widows need this help? And we sit here doing nothing. I just say again to Leader McConnell: Get out of the way. Just let this come to an up-or-down--however you want to do this, however you want to schedule this, however you want to move this through the Senate, we should be doing it now. We shouldn't go home for our Christmas break until we take care of these miners. It is the right, moral thing to do. It is the right thing for our country. It is a promise we made, a pledge we made. We should honor it, starting this evening. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, it strikes me as pretty unbelievable that we are in the process of voting--debating a continuing resolution, and yet nobody has read it and nobody understands what is in it. We hear news reports, but nobody who I know here--at least on our side--has been in the negotiations even though we have a Democratic President and the Senate is 45, 46 percent Democrats, even though more people voted for Democratic Senators than Republican Senators in this election and most of the last several elections. Even with all that, that shouldn't matter, but Senator McConnell and the Republican leadership are asking us to vote on something this complicated with this many add-on amendments that we have not even read yet. What kind of way to run the Senate is that? We do know, though, from the reports I can get, what they have told us is that Majority Leader McConnell's response to the mine workers has been pretty pathetic. Today I met with Senator Hatch in his office. Today I met with Senator Wyden in his office. One of the things we did in the Finance Committee on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis, joined by my Republican colleague from Ohio, Senator Portman, and other coal State Democrats and Republicans--Senator Capito, Senator Manchin, Senator Warner, Senator Kaine, Senator Casey, Senator Toomey--all of us in this committee supported a bipartisan fix for mine worker pensions and health care. Yet the continuing resolution at best--at best, we understand; again, we haven't read it yet because they won't show it to us yet even though they want us to vote on it--at best, it has some 4 months of health care and nothing for pensions. This is not a taxpayer bailout; this is moving money--unused money-- from the abandoned mine fund in to fund the pensions and health care for mine workers and mine worker widows. Keep in mind--I know the Presiding Officer doesn't represent coal States. She may not know a lot of miners, as I and some of my colleagues do, but she knows about mining. Understand, there are more miner widows than there are likely to be insurance salesmen widows or realtor widowers or whatever. Mine- working is a dangerous job. Mine workers too often get injured and killed on the job. Their lives are shortened from injury. Their lives are shortened from illnesses, black lung and other illnesses. So mine workers who marry at 20 or 25 are likely--their spouses are likely to outlive them by a number of years. That is the other reason we should do this. The third reason we should do this is that almost 70 years ago, President Truman made a commitment that we have lived up to until now. The reason we aren't living up to it now is because the majority leader of the Senate said no. I don't know exactly why he said no. I know he is not a big fan of the United Mine Workers union. I support the United Mine Workers union. I care about unions. I know unions helped create the middle class in this country. But that is not the point. My caring about this is--there are 12,000 mine workers in my part of the country, more than 1,000 in Ohio, for which this will be a very, very bad Christmas because they have already gotten notice, as Senator Manchin said, that their health care is going to be cut off. If we do a 4-month fix, then they will get another notice in January that their health care is going to get cut off. How do you treat people that way? I mean, we dress well. We are all well paid. We have good health care. We have good pensions. We are telling these mine workers: Yeah, you may have earned this under the old rules, but, sorry, we can't take care of you. My friends over there could bail out the banks--that is OK--and then banker compensation keeps going up and up, but they can't take care of mine workers with a relatively small pension and health care. They can't take care of them. We passed a bipartisan mine worker pension and health care bill. We passed it out of committee. We did it the way Senator McConnell, the majority leader, wanted us to. We went through the process. Now he is not willing to honor that. It is pretty outrageous. At the same time, they are doing something special in this bill for Wyoming. Nothing against Wyoming. I like Senator Enzi. I like Senator Barrasso. I want to help them help their State. But this is a part of the country. It is Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia. These are States that have thousands of mine workers, and this Senate is betraying them. If my colleagues think we should go home for Christmas starting next week without doing this, that is morally reprehensible. Senator Manchin and I were talking today and Senator Casey and Senator Kaine and Senator Warren and I were talking today about how we are willing to stay until Christmas, we are willing to stay until December 25--literally, to Christmas--to get this done because it is morally reprehensible and it is outrageous that we would leave here without taking care of these mine workers. I know some of them. I know Norm Skinner. I know Dave Dilley. I have known Babe Erdos for 35 years. These are people who worked very hard in the mines under dangerous conditions. They are the reason we are able to have so much manufacturing in Ohio. The coal they mine helps to produce the electricity that makes our standard of living so much higher than it would be without it. I spoke at the rally. Thousands of mine workers were here late this summer--I think in July. I am not sure what month it was; maybe in September they were here. It was a very hot day. I remember the president of the International Mine Workers, Cecil Roberts, asked the question: How many of you are veterans? A huge number of people waved their hands. They were all standing at this rally. How many of you had fathers or mothers who were veterans? It seemed as if it was the whole crowd. These are people who served their country, they make our communities work, and we are going to betray them, we are going to forget them because one Senator, who happens to be the majority leader, for whatever reason doesn't like the United Mine Workers. That is fundamentally what it is. I don't ever want to embarrass anybody, I don't want to call people out, but there are 12,000 mine workers who are going to have a bad Christmas. Their lives will be shortened if we don't take care of them. The stress they are under--they have already gotten one notification. If we do this for another 4 months, they will get another notification in January saying: Sorry, I know we gave you health care again for a while, but we are cutting it off again because Congress can't get its act together. The President wants to do this. Even the House of Representatives wants to do it--the House of Representatives that took out of a bill this week ``Buy American'' provisions for steel and aluminum. That is a whole other issue; I don't understand why they would do that. The fact is, the House did it, the President wants to do it, and a strong majority of the Finance Committee wants to do it. If we brought this to a vote on the Senate floor, there is no question it would pass. It doesn't cost the taxpayer money. It is not a bailout. It is honoring a pledge that Harry Truman made, that we made in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s and 1980s and 1990s and 2000, and all of a sudden we are not honoring that pledge. It is outrageous. We can fix this. We know how the Senate should do it. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, this legislation sounds pretty good. It is bipartisan, but I also know that in my State there are more than 1,000 retired mine workers and their widows. We know that people who have worked in the mines for 30, 35, or 40 years are more likely to be sick and die younger. These 1,000-plus mine workers have been denied their pensions. Their pensions and health care have been threatened. Many of them are widows of mine workers. Yet, we have bipartisan support. It passed out of the Finance Committee 16 to 8, and Senator McConnell--one person in this body--has blocked the mine workers pension and health care legislation for weeks and weeks and months and months. I would be very happy to support and help Senator Gardner in this legislation, the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act. I hope he will speak to the Republican leader and ask him to do the right thing to help these pensioners, widows, and mine workers whose pensions are threatened and whose health care is about to be cut off. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I can't exactly speak for my colleagues, but I know a number of Senators on this side of the aisle will be pleased to work with the Senator on this legislation, and I am hopeful we can do both in the days ahead.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I appreciate those words. I also recognize that we have not seen a continuing resolution yet. There is a rumor that it has 4 months of health care but it doesn't have any pension assistance, and there is nothing about fully funding their pension and continuing with their health care. They have already gotten a notice saying their health care will be terminated. If we continue this for 4 months, they will get another notice in January. That is all hearsay because we still have not seen the bill. I know we are working on separate calendars. I understand that, and maybe the House is going to take the ball and go home, showing a real maturity in its leadership. The fact is we need to stay here. I don't know why we need to get out and go home for Christmas tomorrow or even Friday. I think we should stay here until we finish. We have been here until December 24 before. I am fine with that. I want to be home. I have a wife whom I love and kids and grandchildren, and I want to see them all, but I want to take care of these miners. Show us a bill. Let's talk about it, negotiate this, and follow regular order. I believe we had an 18-to-8 vote on taking care of this health care for miners. We can honor what Senator Gardner, the Senator from Colorado, wants to do. I am fine with doing that, but we are not going to do any of those things until we take care of the miners. We have an obligation to them that President Truman had begun with a pledge. It is morally reprehensible to betray that commitment to 12,000 retired miners and their widows in the country. I want to do all of that, and I know Senator Gardner does too. It is up to my colleagues to push the majority leader, who, for whatever reason, is blocking this and is continuing to block our ability to do this. We should stay here until it is finished. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, continued implementation of the Iran nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA, is our best shot at stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. And so far at least, that agreement has been working. The Iranians are fulfilling their JCPOA commitments. And so we must also maintain our commitment both to the letter and to the spirit of this historic agreement. Assuming Iran continues to comply, the agreement can and should last for many years. I know many have noted President-Elect Trump's negative comments about renegotiating its terms or even scrapping it outright. I suspect--at least I hope--that once he learns more about the actual national security consequences of scrapping the agreement--of which we were all reminded yesterday by CIA Director John Brennan--he may reconsider. We know Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism, that it destabilizes the region and violates the human rights of its people. That is why Western policymakers agreed to separate out and try to secure agreement on this one discrete issue. They knew an Iran with a nuclear weapon would be especially dangerous--to us, to Israel, and to the region. In fact, it is important to keep in mind that this whole process began in the Bush administration, with a Republican President who was-- in the wake of the Iraq War--willing to engage Iran diplomatically. The Bush administration laid the foundation for what eventually became the Iran Nuclear Agreement--sanctions relief in return for strict limits on Iran's nuclear program. In June 2008, President Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice signed a memorandum with the P5+1, which said that, in return for Iran doing key things to limit its nuclear program, the U.S. was ready to recognize Iran's right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes; treat Iran's nuclear program like any nonnuclear weapons state party to the nonproliferation treaty, if international confidence in the peaceful nature of its program could be restored; provide technical and financial aid for peaceful nuclear energy; and work with Iran on confidence-building measures, begin to normalize trade and economic relations, and allow for civil aviation cooperation. All of this should sound familiar because it was effectively the early outline of the Iran Nuclear Agreement. As you know, the scope of the sanctions relief provided to Iran under the JCPOA is explicitly limited to nuclear-related sanctions. The United States continues to enforce vigorously a variety of nonnuclear sanctions against Iran, including for ballistic missile violations, human rights abuses, and acts of state-supported terrorism. Our primary trade embargo against Iran remains largely intact. Thus, our ability to maintain sanctions pressure on Iran has been preserved, even as we secured an agreement to prevent a state sponsor of terrorism from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Today we are debating a simple 10-year extension of the Iran Sanctions Act. Strictly speaking, extension of the act is not legally necessary to continue to enforce our existing sanctions against Iran. As administration officials have testified before the Banking Committee and elsewhere, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and other authorities provide all of the tools that we would need in order to keep the pressure on Iran--or even to ratchet up the pressure incrementally, if warranted. But I believe that extending it today is important for two reasons. First, it is a signal of our resolve to keep the heat on Iran and its leaders and to ensure that, if they stray from the agreement through any significant violations, together with our partners in Europe, we would respond forcefully--including if necessary by immediately snapback sanctions on Iran. And second, today's action will make even clearer that we will continue to enforce the nonnuclear sanctions on Iran related to terrorism and ballistic missiles and human rights violations. As we consider extension of the Iran Sanctions Act today, I hope that we will keep in mind what is truly necessary in order to maintain our current sanctions architecture. The JCPOA was a groundbreaking agreement designed to prevent Iran from obtaining a weapon of mass destruction--but it is also a relatively new and somewhat fragile agreement. We should be very careful, going forward, not to violate the terms of the JCPOA by simply imposing under another guise the old sanctions that were waived or suspended under the nuclear agreement. If that were to happen, our success in preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon could be unwound in a matter of weeks--or even days. And then we would be isolated internationally, instead of Iran being isolated as the outlier by the international community, as it was under the JCPOA. Our debate today sends an important signal to Iran: We resolve to continue our fight against terrorism worldwide, to counter Iran's moves to further destabilize the Middle East region, and to impose consequences for the grave human rights abuses that, sadly, continue in Iran to this day. Of course, in addition to renewing these sanctions and maintaining tough JCPOA oversight, Congress must also continue to support robust military and other aid to regional partners like Israel. We should focus both on ensuring strict implementation of the agreement and on the most effective ways to pressure Iran's leaders to change their destabilizing behaviors in the region. There is no question of our willingness to maintain our current Iran sanctions architecture. We can and we will continue to vigorously enforce nonnuclear sanctions against Iran. And I believe we presently have all of the tools we need to do so. I urge my colleagues to support this measure.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President I thank my colleague from Virginia, who is always speaking up for our men and women in uniform and for our Nation's veterans.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, right now our Nation's retired coal miners--and I know Senator Kaine and Senator Warren care about this, too--are on the brink of losing the health care and retirement benefits that they have earned over a lifetime of hard work. It is within the power of this Congress to stop this, to help the mine workers, and to do right by these hard-working Americans. Many of them are veterans. Most of them wore their bodies out to give their families a better life. There is no more fitting action that we can take during this holiday season than to honor this promise that the American Government has made to our Nation's mine workers since Harry Truman made that promise. The workers held up their end of the bargain. It is despicable that we are not holding up ours and that we are preparing to leave town without lifting a finger to help these workers. United Mine Workers of America's health care and pension plan covers some 100,000 mine workers; 6,800 live in Ohio. If Congress fails to act, thousands of retired miners could lose their health care this year. I emphasize that it is retirement security they worked for, security they fought for, and security they sacrificed raises and their own health for. Understand this: Too many people that dress in suits, work here, draw good salaries, and draw good benefits don't understand what happens at the bargaining table for workers in our country. They often give up raises today to defer that money so that they have retirements and pensions in the future. Say that again: People at the bargaining table give up dollars today. Rather than take a little higher pay today, they are willing to defer that so they will have better pensions and health care. This Congress, this Senate leadership is blocking us from doing that. These are workers who worked for decades in the mines--hard, backbreaking work but work that had dignity. I live in a place that some national media people, including President-Elect Trump, have referred to as the ``rust belt.'' When they say ``rust belt,'' that is a direct attack on the dignity of work. It demeans their work. It diminishes who they are. It is saying that those people, such as miners, steelworkers, and others who make things, are in the past. For these mine workers, every year in their work in the mines, they have earned and contributed to a health plan and pension plan. I have met with some of these workers--Ohioans like Norm Skinner, Dave Dilly, and Babe Erdos. I have heard their stories. They knew they were signing up for tough, dangerous work. They worked in the mines, after all. They knew that. But they also know their work had dignity. That work was part of a covenant we used to have in this country--a covenant that said: If you work hard, if you put in the hours, if you contribute to retirement, if you provide for your own health care in the future, you will be able to support yourself and your family. It is what built our country. It is what created the middle class. Today, the value of that work is eroding. Too often, too many major corporations in this country are choosing profits over people. We haven't lifted a finger, frankly. The political agenda here--some people who run this Senate simply don't have respect for the mine workers, for the union. They seem to have some anti-union sensibilities about this. Whatever it is, they are not lifting a finger to help these workers who put in the effort and who are in trouble through no fault of their own. There is no reason to leave town. We shouldn't be going home for the holidays without taking care of the 6,800 mine workers in Ohio, a number of mine workers in West Virginia, thousands of mine workers in Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, and Southwest Pennsylvania. This is a bipartisan solution. It will not cost taxpayers a dime. If this bipartisan mine workers legislation were brought to the floor today, it would pass with majorities in each party. We shouldn't be taking up other legislation. Until we do this, it should be part of the Cures Act that we will be voting on later. The Cures Act has important components to it, good steps on mental health, on hospital reimbursement. It has my National Pediatric Research Network Act in it. But it is a 900-page bill negotiated entirely in the House. It has major flaws. It does include funding for NIH, funds to fight the opioid epidemic. We know how important that is. But the funding isn't mandatory. It will be subject to the whims of future Congresses. This is pretty good happy talk, and we are saying the right things. We are putting language in this bill, but it doesn't guarantee the money will be there. It is so important to my State. A new report released this week showed Ohio had the most drug overdoses that resulted in death in the country in 2014, not the most per capita. We had more drug overdose deaths than California, three times our population; Texas, twice our population; more than Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Florida--all States with more people than we have. More Ohioans died from drug overdoses from OxyContin or oxycodone or heroin or the new synthetic drugs we are seeing more and more. We have to do more. The billion dollars in grants in this bill are critically important, but it needs to be mandatory funding. It can't be that down the road some powerful Member of the House or Senate stands in the way of actually getting these communities the money. We can't fight year after year to get these dollars appropriated. The Cures Act gives significant concessions to Big Pharma, which is the big drug industry, the drug giants in this country, but it does absolutely nothing to combat drug prices. We give concessions to the big drug companies, but we do nothing to fight the high cost of drugs in this bill. We shouldn't be spending time on this flawed bill until we keep our promises to the 12,000 mine workers I mentioned. These miners worked in some of the most dangerous conditions of any jobs in this country. They deserve the full pension and health benefits they were promised. They have worked a lifetime to earn these benefits. They kept faith with us. We must keep faith with them. It is simply irresponsible and immoral for us to leave town and not take care of the mine workers. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, today I congratulate the Planned Parenthood Federation of America on a century's commitment to protecting women's health and making that health care a right, not a privilege. I have been proud to stand with Planned Parenthood against a tide of relentless political attacks, and I look forward to supporting this organization as it continues to empower all Americans to take control of their health for years to come. When advocates opened the first birth control health clinic in the United States in 1916, they had a simple but bold goal: to ensure that all women, regardless of where they were born or where they live, have access to the information and resources they need to lead strong and healthy lives. Over the next hundred years, Planned Parenthood worked to cement the idea that preventive and reproductive health care is not a privilege afforded to the few but a key to leading a full, healthy life that should be available to every American. In Ohio, our 28 Planned Parenthood clinics educate and provide care to tens of thousands of men and women each year, many of whom have nowhere else to turn. The lives and struggles of those patients are what motivate the dedicated staff and volunteers at these health clinics. And they do this critical work in the face of constant threats and attacks from all levels of government. Just this year, the State of Ohio passed an ill-conceived law that, had it not been overturned by a Federal district court, would have jeopardized access to preventive care and ceased operation of a prominent infant mortality prevention program. I get letters all the time from constituents who rely on Planned Parenthood. One Ohioan wrote to me saying, ``I was so amazed by the support for women that Planned Parenthood provided that I volunteered for them for years,'' while another wrote, ``Planned Parenthood not only provided a well-rounded education, in which I had received none previously, but they also provided services that I would not have had access to otherwise.'' I have even heard that Planned Parenthood ``saved the life of my best friend when she found a lump in her breast and she had no health insurance.'' We need to listen to the voices of these women and remember that Planned Parenthood remains a vital health provider for so many. It is a strong advocate for its patients, and further attempts to defund or destabilize this organization will result in more undiagnosed cancers, more untreated illnesses, and more unintended pregnancies. We have seen the incredible progress our country can make when women make their own health care decisions and follow their dreams, and we know what an important role Planned Parenthood plays in making that possible. Congratulations to Planned Parenthood Federation of America on its 100th anniversary and for the important work its members do in Ohio's communities and across the country every day.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I just came from a discussion on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the damage it will do to our country. We have had 25 years of trade policy that has cost jobs in places like Lorain, OH, Cleveland, OH, and Dayton, OH. We know these trade agreements pull down worker safety standards, environmental rules and protections, and food safety laws and rules. We know they cost us jobs. I know what has happened in my State. I see what has happened in places like Omaha, the Presiding Officer's State, and all over our country. I appreciate Senator McConnell and Speaker Ryan saying they don't plan to bring the Trans-Pacific Partnership up for a vote in the lameduck session of Congress. I believe it would be a bit underhanded to do that when the public is speaking pretty loudly that these trade agreements don't work. One part that in particular affects my State is something called rules of origin in the auto industry, where in order to qualify for a tariff reduction or tariff elimination to sell products, to sell a car, under NAFTA--NAFTA was a very flawed agreement. I helped lead the opposition. We almost defeated it down the hall in the House of Representatives. To qualify for NAFTA tariff reduction, removal, elimination, the car had to be mostly made--60 percent, more or less-- in one of the three countries, the United States, Mexico or Canada. Under the TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, there are 12 countries, very disparate countries--Peru, the United States, Mexico, Canada, wealthy countries, Vietnam, poor countries. Under the rules of origin and TPP, a car can be more than half made elsewhere, like China, and then still be sold into the United States or sold into Canada or Mexico. Fundamentally, what this means is, it has created a loophole you can drive my Jeep Cherokee, made by union workers 150 miles from my home in Toledo, OH--you can drive a Jeep Cherokee through this loophole. This will undermine the auto industry, it will undermine the supply chain, it will mean loss of jobs from auto assembly in Youngstown and Toledo and Sharonville, to other kinds--whether it is glass, tires, the steel in the cars. All this will undermine those jobs. I again thank Senator McConnell and Speaker Ryan as they have promised not to bring up this agreement. I hope they are men of their word. It is a disaster for our country. It is bad for our country. I appreciate that both Presidential candidates--one more knowledgeable than the other, perhaps, about trade policy--have opposed the Trans- Pacific Partnership. I close with this. I see candidates make all kinds of claims about their position on trade. I see all kinds of candidates in their own private businesses doing certain things, but I know we can make products in the United States of America. The shoes I have were made by workers in Maine and Massachusetts. The suit I wear was made by union workers in a company 11 miles from my home in Cleveland. American workers just want a level playing field. They just want the opportunity to compete. They want the opportunity to make things. We know how to do that in this country. Our trade policy should reflect that. Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, too often this body talks about supporting our veterans while doing far too little to pass critical legislation that would actually help them. The Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, of which I am a member-- and I am joined by my colleague on that committee, Senator Tillis, with whom I have worked on a number of issues in our time together in the Senate. Chairman Isakson and Ranking Member Blumenthal have had in this committee perhaps the best cooperation of any standing committee in the Senate. And we continue to work to address challenges facing veterans and the Veterans' Administration. Through hearings and legislative markups, we have listened and learned from veterans. As a result, we have worked together across the aisle to produce legislation that reflects the needs of those who served our country. It is a minimum we ought to be doing, and I think we are generally doing that pretty well. One result of our efforts has been the bipartisan Veterans First Act. It is a good bill that comprehensively addresses a host of issues facing veterans, including education benefits, homelessness, health care, and VA accountability. As we see too often, even commonsense legislation like Vets First can't make its way to the floor. Our inability to act on this doesn't mean we shouldn't try to address specific issues that have bipartisan support. One of those issues which I hope we can agree on is the need to provide relief to veterans who, through no fault of their own, were-- there is no other way to say it--bilked by the for-profit school ITT. Veterans and other students were betrayed and bilked, and taxpayers were fleeced. Veterans who were attending ITT at the time of its closure lost the GI bill or VA benefits used to pay for their education. Meanwhile, all other students who were enrolled at ITT were eligible to have their Federal student loans discharged. So if you are not a veteran and you had Federal student loans, you could get those loans discharged. If you are a veteran under the GI bill or VA benefits, you couldn't. It wasn't anybody's intent to do that, but that is what the law says. I know Senator Isakson, the chairman--and we are joined by Senator Carper on the floor as well--he is interested in this. I also know that Senator Tillis has cosponsored my bill to actually fix this. This is something we need to do. We are not the only ones who believe action needs to be taken. Governor Mike Pence, the Governor of the State next door to mine, Indiana, who is the Republican nominee for Vice President, supports this. The closure of ITT was the fault of the management of that school, who spent a lot of money on marketing and a lot of money on helping students get financing but not much money on education and even less on job placement for their students. The closure of ITT was not the fault of the veterans, for sure, not the fault of the students, but now veterans are worried about being able to pay their rent and pursue their education, which is what this legislation is going to allow them to do. In my State of Ohio, 520 veterans have been impacted by ITT's closure. There are some questions of finding a way to pay for this legislation, but I believe finding a pay-for is a red herring. We are simply giving the VA the authority to provide relief to veterans. No one is running around trying to find a pay-for for the Federal student loans that are going to be discharged. So we are saying we are just going to do the discharge on the nonveteran students, and we have to find a little legislative sleight-of-hand pay-for to take care of the veterans. That just doesn't make sense. Why should veterans be treated differently or worse than nonveteran students? All we are looking to do is to make sure veterans are treated like all other students who attended an institution like ITT or Corinthian, another scam institution that shut down. Veterans were promised GI benefits when they signed up to serve our country. ITT has cheated them out of the quality education they earned. If we fail to act today before leaving town, we abandon the responsibility to our Nation's heroes. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 2253 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Tillis, and I understand his view on this issue. I appreciate the position of Senator Tillis, my colleague on the Veterans' Affairs Committee. I just fundamentally say that, first of all, we shouldn't leave town. We should finish our work. We should confirm the Supreme Court nominee or at least have hearings. We should finish our work that we haven't done this year. We have been in session less this year than any Senate in the last 60 years. I know Senator McConnell wants to send his Members home so they can campaign for reelection and spend their Koch brothers money that they have benefited from. More than that, what I don't get here is--we are only giving the VA the authority to provide relief for these veterans. We are treating veterans worse than other students at ITT or Corinthian. So if you were at ITT and you found out 3 weeks ago that that school was closing--2, 3 weeks ago, something like that--and you are a veteran and you have a friend who is a nonveteran, the nonveteran gets their loans discharged, and you as the veteran don't with your GI benefits, because they had Federal student loans and you had GI benefits. It is just not fair to them. I don't think we should ever leave this place having treated a veteran worse than a nonveteran in the exact same situation. So I don't really understand the opposition. I hope we can reengage and figure this out and take care of these 500 or so Ohioans who served their country well. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, it has now been 4 months since the U.S. Treasury did the right thing and rejected the Central States Teamsters pension fund plan to cut the premiums they had earned through a lifetime of hard work. That was a win for all of us who urged Treasury to reject these cuts. Most importantly, it was a win for the thousands of retirees who worked so hard to protect what they had earned. However, that win did not solve the underlying issue. It was not even close to the end of this fight. It was the first necessary step. The Central States Pension Fund is still in the red and on a path where in a few short years it will be unable to pay out the benefits it owes to our retirees. If a pension fund is in bad shape, it is our job to fix it, not to break promises to Americans who have worked their whole lives to earn those pensions. This is retirement security these Teamsters have worked for, fought for, and sacrificed raises for. I remind my colleagues--especially those who spend much of their effort here fighting organized drives for unions, oppose any effort to strengthen unions, and attempt to pass legislation to weaken unions-- that at the negotiating table time and time again since the Wagner Act passed 75 years ago, workers have given up wages in order to fund pensions and health care in their later years. That is good for them, it is good for their families, it is good for their communities, and it is good for our society because it means they are prepared in their older years and won't rely on the State to keep them going. Of course, they still get Social Security and all of that, but they are prepared because they have given up wages today for benefits in the future. We should applaud them instead of criticizing the UAW, the Teamsters, and the steelworkers for their ``legacy costs.'' These are pensions that they gave up health care packages for and were promised they would earn over a lifetime of hard work. Just ask Rita Lewis. She is a friend of mine from Westchester, OH, in southwest Ohio. She knows a thing or two about hard work. Her husband Butch worked as a trucker for 40 years with the promise that the pension he earned would be there to care for his family after he retired. When the pension came under threat, he worked to protect it for himself, his beloved Rita, and hundreds of thousands of other Teamsters. Rita has been left to continue Butch's fight alone. He passed away on New Year's Eve due to a stroke, which some have attributed, at least in part, to the stress he faced in fighting for his Teamster brothers and sisters in support of their pensions. Butch told us that the cuts being forced on retirees amount to a war against the middle class and the American dream, and he was right. That war has already claimed enough victims. We used to have a compact in this country that promised that if you work hard, play by the rules, and do what people expect you to do, you will be able to spend time with your grandchildren and not worry about how to make ends meet. Workers have more than held up their end of the bargain. It is time for both parties to come together and hold up our end before we leave town. This Senate, as we have heard repeatedly, has not done its job. Under Leader McConnell, this Senate has been in session less than any Senate in the last 60-plus years. It is simply not doing its job. We are not doing what we should on Zika. We are not doing what we should on the coal miners' pension. We are not doing what we should on Central States. We are not doing what we should to confirm a Supreme Court Justice. It will be the longest time since the Civil War that a Supreme Court spot has been vacant. We owe it to our constituents on this one and on others not to leave town but to support a bipartisan, long-term solution to protect the benefits they earned and they were promised. This fix needs to be sustainable from now into the future, not the piecemeal plan that addresses problems with current policy but does nothing to solve the underlying issues. Our Teamsters and their families need the peace of mind to know this nightmare is finally behind them. We need a plan that is bipartisan so we can get this done. I was encouraged this morning when we held a markup on a plan to deal with the mine workers' pension, which is also under threat. We have had some good bipartisan work to find possible solutions to this crisis. We need the same spirit of cooperation on behalf of our Teamsters. My wife and I live in Cleveland, OH, in ZIP Code 44105. The ZIP Code where my wife and I live, in 2007, had more foreclosures in the first half in 2007 than any ZIP Code in the United States. I drive through this neighborhood and there are still far too many homes boarded up, still far too many families dislocated, still far too many children just pulled from one school district to another. The pages sitting here--I assume most of them have pretty stable lives, where they are able to go to school year after year with the same friends, same classrooms, same schools, same teachers, but think about it. What we all do on this floor we are all paid well for. We have good benefits. For some reason, we don't think other Americans should have the same health care benefits we do, and that is a whole other issue. We don't think enough about people who struggle, who might have their house foreclosed on, who might have been evicted. We don't think about those kids who go from one school district to another. We don't think about these Teamsters families. You are 65 years old and you are retiring. You have planned your life in a way that your Social Security--$1,100, $1,200 $1,300 a month--your retirement pension from the Teamsters, from Central State, you have calculated that. You know you are not going to be rich, but you are going to be comfortable enough, and you start having sleepless nights thinking about what is going to happen to your pension. Lincoln used to say he wanted to get out of the White House. Staff said: Stay here. Win the war. Free the slaves. Lincoln said: No, I have to get out of the White House and get my public opinion baths. Pope Francis exhorted his parish priests to go out and smell like the flock, with all the Biblical connotations of that. In this body, we don't think very much. We don't go enough to a labor hall or to a church basement or to a veterans hall and just sit there and listen to people's problems. The person who sat at this desk right before I did was Jay Rockefeller, the Senator from West Virginia. He used to go out by himself with no media and spend 2\1/2\ hours speaking to the miners in West Virginia. He said: I learned to listen to them with soft nods and soft eyes, to really listen and look in their eyes and pay attention to what their lives were like. He was a Rockefeller and had no financial struggles, but he recognized he needed to talk to people who did. That is whom I want my colleagues to think about, not to go to another fundraiser at a fancy restaurant or spend their time at a country club in Dallas or wherever they live but instead start thinking about what these Teamsters' lives are like, when they expected this pension and are not getting it. Think about these widows of mine workers, understanding that mine workers are more likely to die younger from illness or from dangerous work or from injury than most workers in this country and certainly younger than Senators. Think about those mine workers' widows who might lose their pensions because the Republican leader in this body doesn't like unions and he doesn't like the mine workers and he has blocked us from doing this. This is not personal. I was just on the stage with Senator McConnell. He is a nice man. I like him, but he is not doing his job. The Senate is not doing its job to take care of these workers who have huge numbers of veterans among the Teamsters, a lot more than there are veterans in the U.S. Senate. We have a lot of work to do, and we shouldn't be leaving here without doing our jobs. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for up to 15 minutes.