Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I thank the Presiding Officer. Earlier this week and last I spoke at length about the need for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to do their job and to move forward with hearings and an up-or-down vote on whomever the President nominates to the Supreme Court. The outcry from the public continues from every corner of our justice system. Let's just recount quickly what happened after the tragic and untimely death of Justice Scalia. Within an hour or so, the Republican leader of the Senate said: Don't bother sending up a nominee. History suggests that we won't do this in the last year of the Presidency. We are not going to do hearings. Don't even bother. Other Republican Senators, sort of like one bird flying off the telephone wire--they all fly off a telephone wire--one Republican Senator after another, first said no hearings. Then, after the majority leader said that he would not even meet with prospective nominees, other Republican Senators said they wouldn't meet with nominees. Just imagine that. We work hard to run for these offices. It is hard to get to the Senate. When we win, within a month and a half or 2 months later, we take an oath of office. We get paid to do our jobs. But they are just not doing their job. The Constitution says the President shall nominate to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and the Constitution says the Senate shall advise and consent--not except in the last year of the President's term, not only if we feel like it. We are just saying to our Senate colleagues-- along with Americans saying to Senate Republicans: Do your job. It is pretty simple. We are not saying you have to vote for the President's nominee. Understandably, you may not want to, but at least meet the nominee, at least hold hearings on the nominee. Then let's bring him or her to the Senate floor and have a debate and vote up or down. Earlier this week I quoted from four former U.S. attorneys from my State of Ohio, from Washington State, California, and Virginia. They wrote: ``It is unfair and unsafe to expect good federal agents, police and prosecutors to spend more than a year guessing whether their actions will hold up in court.'' These are criminal prosecutors, U.S. attorneys, saying how important it is that, ultimately, when something goes to the Supreme Court, there will be a decision made because there is an odd number of justices. The last time there was a 1-year vacancy--which is what the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, is calling for--on the Supreme Court was 150 years ago, and that was because we were at war. It was during the Civil War. It is unprecedented to do what they are doing. On Tuesday, former Ohio Court of Appeals Judge Mark Painter wrote an op-ed in the very conservative, very Republican Cincinnati Inquirer, sharing some of the same concerns. He wrote: It would be irresponsible and unprecedented to let a vacancy on the court extend into 2017. If Congress fails to act, the Supreme Court will go two terms--well over a year-- with a vacancy. The court will hear significant cases in the coming months and issue rulings that will impact our everyday lives. As a judge for 30 years, I learned that it is important for the law to be settled. Settled--not held in abeyance, not deadlocked, but settled--that is why we have an ultimate Supreme Court. Uncertainty is bad for businesses, individuals and for commerce. Two court terms of possible 4-4 votes would be a nightmare. There is no precedent for causing this damaging uncertainty. The only reason is politics. That is the same Republican leader who some years ago said: My No. 1 political goal is to keep Barack Obama from being reelected, not, my No. 1 goal is to help improve the economy or to help wages go up or to preserve our freedom, our families or our economic security from attack. He said: My No. 1 goal is to make sure that Barack Obama isn't reelected. Then this same crowd shut down the government in 2013, after Barack Obama was reelected. They didn't like that--understandably. But they shut the government down--not understandable. Now they want to shut the Supreme Court down by locking it in with an even number where we will see 4-to-4 votes. Judge Painter points out that we elected Barack Obama to a 4-year term: The nomination to fill the seat of Supreme Court Justice Scalia is bigger than party or politics. And there is no doubt that Scalia himself would interpret the Constitution as requiring a nomination and a vote by the Senate. It's that simple. That's why President Obama will do the job that the American people elected him to do. And that's why the Senate should do its job also. Under our Constitution, we elect presidents for four-year terms. Obama has almost a quarter of his term left. Should the process of government stop for a year? Should the process of government stop for a year? It should not. My colleagues, pure and simple, ought to do their jobs. They ought to meet the nominee. They ought to hold hearings. They ought to give an up-or-down vote to whomever the President nominates. Let's do our job.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments from my friend from West Virginia and his work on this issue that has hit West Virginia and, particularly, southeast Ohio kind of first and hardest. But it has spread to so many other places and caused so much heartache and so much family disruption--not just for the young men or women, in the case of young people who are addicted, but the whole family. As one mother of a teenager said to me in Youngstown, OH, or in Warren, OH, one day, this is really a family affair. I am pleased to see bipartisan support for finally tackling the opioid addiction epidemic. It has touched every State and almost every community in our country. In 2014, more people died from drug overdoses than any year on record, with 2,482 in Ohio. That is a record number of prescription drug overdoses and a record 1,177 overdoses related to heroin. People often start with pain medication, sometimes overprescribed prescription medicine that will, in far too many cases, lead to heroin addiction. Heroin is cheaper to buy on the street than for people to get OxyContin or oxycodone or Percocet or any number of legal morphine pain medications. These numbers mean that in 1 year alone, 2,500 Ohioan families lost a loved one to addiction. What those numbers don't account for are the thousands of other families and hundreds of other communities that continue to struggle with opioid abuse. It should not be easier for Americans to get their hands on opioids than it is for them to get help to treat their addiction. It should not be easier for Americans to get their hands on opioids than it is to get help to treat their addiction. Addiction is not an individual problem. It surely is not a character flaw, as many people half a generation ago liked to say when it was people who didn't look like them. But the fact is it was not a character flaw then and it is not a character flaw now. It is a chronic disease. When left untreated, it places a massive burden on our health care system and a terrible, terrible cost on families who have an addicted family member. When we think about this epidemic, we have in our minds a young worker who turned to painkillers after a back injury or a car accident, someone who started with oxycodone--maybe as a party drug-- and then turned to heroin. This problem is bigger than that. Our national conversation forgets the hundreds of thousands of seniors who often are given unsafe and duplicative prescriptions for opioids. It is not uncommon for seniors to be treated by multiple specialists and physicians. Doctors may not know they are prescribing duplicative painkillers, meaning this doctor prescribed a painkiller-- maybe oxycodone or OxyContin or Vicodin or another--and this other doctor may have done the same thing. They weren't communicating, and didn't know. Seniors find it difficult to manage all of their different prescriptions far too often. Take, for example, Ohioan Dennis Michelson. I met him at the Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging in Cleveland last August. He is one of the estimated 170,000 Medicare beneficiaries who recently battled an addiction to pain medication. He was prescribed pain medication by his doctor to manage chronic migraines. When his primary care doctor sought to wean him off the medication, he went to other doctors and pharmacists to obtain those opioids. He was eventually arrested and charged with felonies for tampering with prescriptions. He has since recovered. He is now an advocate for reform to address the prescription drug epidemic. After hearing his story, it strikes me that if a patient with legitimate and sometimes complex medical needs winds up getting pain medication from several different doctors--you could see how that would happen; none of those doctors know about one another--the system has failed the patient. It is why I worked with Senator Toomey from Pennsylvania to introduce the Stopping Medication Abuse and Protecting Seniors Act. I was proud to see this body support it as an amendment today. We already have a proven tool to address the problem of patients getting duplicative opioids from multiple doctors and pharmacists. It is called Patient Review & Restriction Programs. But despite their success in State Medicaid programs and commercial plans, these programs aren't available in Medicare prescriptions under current law. That is the purpose of the Toomey-Brown amendment and what we are trying to fix. The amendment will ensure that a small number of seniors who receive high doses of addictive opioids from multiple doctors get those painkillers from one doctor and one pharmacist. It is what we did on so-called Medicaid lock-in--for people who were abusing the system on purpose or more likely those who sort of fell into this trap and went from doctor to doctor, pharmacist to pharmacist, in some sense doctor shopping or pharmacy shopping--so that practice would end. We have done the same sort of thing now with so-called Medicare lock-in. It would save taxpayers $100 million over the next decade. It will reduce overprescribing, and it will crack down on fraud. I am pleased we have bipartisan support for this commonsense measure, but this amendment and this bill are a step. We need a comprehensive approach that addresses the entire spectrum of addiction from crisis to recovery. I have introduced the Heroin and Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention and Reduction Act. It will boost prevention efforts, it will improve tools for crisis response, it will expand access to treatment, and it will provide support for lifelong recovery. Addiction is chronic. It doesn't mean that when somebody overcomes their addiction and seems to defeat it, it won't come back later in life. If we are serious about fighting this epidemic, we have to make sure we provide a serious investment that will deliver results long term. My colleagues, Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire and Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island, introduced an amendment that would have provided $600 million to fight this epidemic. It would have gone directly to public health workers, directly to law enforcement officials who are working on the frontlines of this battle every day. It would have shown constituents we are serious about addressing this crisis. I was disappointed this body was unwilling and unable to find the money necessary to address these problems. This legislation is a good bill. Without the money, it is a good bill, but it is really only half a good bill because my colleagues are simply unwilling--maybe it is the tea party influence, maybe they are afraid of a Republican rightwing primary, whatever it is--to ante up the dollars that would fully help us deal with this epidemic. We can't do this without an investment. I met with a number of tuberculosis experts in my office today. We have been successful in this country with eliminating smallpox, eliminating polio, and keeping Ebola from being contracted in the United States and killing any Americans. We have done all of that because we invested in a public health system. We can't address this opioid epidemic without dollars. Yet my colleagues will simply always back off and say: Well, we can't afford to do this. They can afford tax cuts for wealthy people, and they can afford continuing to pump money into expensive weapons systems, but they will not spend money to address probably the most serious public health crisis we have seen in this country in years. Once again, I say that it should not be easier for Americans to get their hands on opioids than it is to get help to treat their addiction. This Senate should get serious about this. We should pass this bill, to be sure, but there is so much else. I am distressed my colleagues chose not to step up to the plate and do what deep down they know we should do. vote explanation

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for his leadership. Various doctors may not realize they are prescribing duplicative opioid painkillers. We have done the lock-in with Medicaid. In many States, it has worked. This is a commonsense solution to help a relatively small number of people but a growing number of seniors whom a Medicare lock-in could assist. I urge support for the Toomey-Brown amendment.

Mr. BROWN. 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, this week the Supreme Court--which is lacking a ninth Justice for the foreseeable future for reasons that most of the American public doesn't understand since my fellow Senators--my Republican colleagues--simply refuse to do their job--will hear arguments on yet another case that threatens women's right to health care. The case the Supreme Court will hear on Wednesday--Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt--originated in Texas, but, as all Supreme Court cases do, this case has implications for the entire country. It is part of a sustained, coordinated attack on women's right to make personal, private health care decisions for themselves. It is Big Government reaching into women's homes and bedrooms, getting between the women and their health care providers, between the women and their religious counselors; it is reaching into women's homes, telling women that they no longer have the right to make personal, private health care decisions for themselves and to access safe and affordable care. If the Court rules in favor of the Texas law, which has closed health clinics across the State--imagine that. You are a legislator taking an oath of office in Austin, TX, to do the best you can for your State, and you pass legislation that closes health clinics not for financial reasons but for ideological reasons. So if the Court rules in favor of this Texas law, which, as I said, closes health clinics across the State, it will set a dangerous precedent that could lead to more clinic closures across this country. My interest is especially Ohio. Ohio will be weakened by this too. These clinics are often the only place women and men have to turn for their basic health services. Most of the health care women are getting at these clinics has nothing to do with abortions, but it is the kind of care that women need in these clinics. Millions of women rely on Planned Parenthood and other clinics like it for lifesaving screenings, for testing, for preventive care, and for treatment. In Ohio, Planned Parenthood centers provide health care services to 100,000 men and women each year. Many of them have nowhere else to turn. Many of them are moderate-income women. Many of them are women working two jobs. Many of them go to Planned Parenthood because, first, it gives good care; second, it takes care of them in kind, decent, empathetic ways; and third, it is what they can afford. They either cannot afford health care elsewhere or they live too far away to have access to health care. A new law in Ohio threatens that access. The bill was passed by the Ohio Legislature and signed by Governor Kasich--that is Governor Kasich of Presidential primary fame, Presidential Republican debate fame. The bill, which was signed by Governor Kasich a week ago, will strip Federal funding not only from Planned Parenthood--why they would want to do that is all about ideology and playing to their far-right political base--will strip Federal funding not only from Planned Parenthood but any health care facility that could be perceived as ``promoting'' safe and legal abortion. But these health care clinics are mostly not about abortion; they are about providing health care to women--mostly to women. This includes health clinics that simply work with other providers to refer women to other facilities so that women can make decisions that should be between them and their doctors. Now, I repeat, so many of my colleagues love to talk about Big Government, but when Big Government--mostly a bunch of privileged--if I may, privileged, White men on the other side of the aisle, mostly--when they want to inject themselves between women and their doctors, between women and their families, between women and their religious counselors, it strikes me as--let's just say hypocritical. We are talking about a rule that is far, far more sweeping than just defunding--that is what they like to say, ``defunding''--Planned Parenthood. If you are watching the Republican debates week after week, even when they sound like food fights, which it did last week--when you are watching these debates, you can see that whenever one of these White, privileged men--candidates running for President and one other privileged African-American man running for President on the Republican side--whenever they say ``defund Planned Parenthood,'' the crowd goes wild. They play to that base to defund Planned Parenthood, that base that for whatever reason, with their ideological agenda, doesn't seem to care much about women's health. Let's be clear. This isn't about defunding abortion. The Federal Government doesn't provide funding for abortion, period. I will say that again. The Federal Government does not provide funding for abortion, period. Health officials in Ohio--health officials that play it straight, which is 99-point-something percent of providers--real doctors, real health providers, real health care officials are scared that the new law could take funding away from local health departments, if we can imagine that. The director of public health policy in Columbus--the State's capital--told the Columbus Dispatch that the law would have a ``significant impact'' on their department's ability to coordinate with hospitals and insurance companies. So stand back for a second and see what they are doing. A bunch of rightwing, privileged, mostly White men in the legislature have decided that their political agenda trumps everything else, and they are willing to follow their--so that they can play to their far-right base, they are willing to jeopardize women's health. They are willing to go right up against what the Columbus Dispatch says--few papers in America are more conservative--when they talk about a significant impact on the department's ability to coordinate with hospitals and insurance companies. Why would they do that? They do it because they are playing to this far-right base who votes overwhelmingly in primaries. The director said that because the bill is so broadly written, ``we wouldn't be able to work with any hospital in our jurisdiction.'' This Ohio law explicitly targets critical health and health education services for women. Don't take my word for it; all you have to do is read the bill. This chart shows that it prohibits Ohio clinics and hospitals from using Federal dollars--and I am quoting directly from the bill--for any of the programs established by the Violence Against Women Act, the Minority HIV/AIDS Initiative, the Infertility Prevention Project, the Personal Responsibility Education Program, and the Breast and Cervical Cancer Mortality Prevention Act. Think about that--the Mortality Prevention Act. This bill prohibits Ohio clinics and hospitals from using Federal dollars to implement these laws. It means no Federal dollars for the program administered by the Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services to educate adolescents on abstinence and contraception for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. So this legislation that Governor Kasich signed that these privileged, mostly White men in the State legislature--politically far to the right, the majority of the State legislature--the bill they passed and Governor Kasich signed would mean that we wouldn't be able to use the Federal dollars we have to educate adolescents on abstinence and contraception for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. So what are they doing? The extremists on the other side are saying no Federal dollars for abortion. There aren't Federal dollars for abortion. But they are saying no Federal dollars to preach abstinence and to educate young people about abstinence and sexually transmitted diseases. So what are they doing and why are they doing this to the women in Ohio? This law bars women from accessing cancer screenings, fertility services, AIDS prevention, and help coping with abuse and violence. Do these far-right members of the legislature know no low-income or moderate-income young women? Do they know no teenagers, no female teenagers and young male teenagers, too, who maybe could benefit from some of these programs, including abstinence education, learning about contraceptives, and learning about how sexually transmitted diseases are in fact transmitted? I support a woman's right to make personal, private health care decisions for herself with her doctor. But no matter your personal feelings about abortion, surely we can agree--although the legislature can't in my State--surely we can agree that cancer screenings and programs that have helped bring Ohio's teen pregnancy and STD rates down are a good thing. I would say that Ohio right now--and this is embarrassing for me to say on the Senate floor in front of colleagues--my State is 50th for Black babies and infant mortality and 47th overall in infant mortality. We are 47th overall, 50th for Black infant mortality. The legislature underfunds public health, and they then undercut-- because of this legislature's action with Governor Kasich's signature-- they undercut the Violence Against Women Act, they undercut minority HIV and AIDS education, they undercut the personal responsibility education program, they undercut breast and cervical cancer mortality prevention, and they undercut infertility prevention projects. I just don't get it.

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. BROWN. A woman in New Carlisle wrote to me saying: There was a time when I could not find full-time employment, I did not have health insurance, and I also was not eligible for any assistance from the government. My husband and I were newly married and trying to build a responsible life together. I was 21. I had a family history of breast cancer and ovarian cancer, so access to healthcare was crucial for me. Planned Parenthood was the only place that would help me look after my health and plan my own family and lifestyle in a way that I could afford. Another woman went on to say: ``Planned Parenthood made an impoverished young woman feel safe and comfortable and valued.'' Another woman in Boardman, OH, wrote: ``Along with many other women, I was treated at Planned Parenthood, and I received a referral to a specialist, which saved my reproduction.'' Another woman wrote saying that she had a child at 13 and gave up the child for adoption. After that she made the choice to get educated about family planning and birth control. She couldn't afford to go to a family doctor, so Planned Parenthood was where she turned to make sure she never had to go through that experience again. A young woman from Columbus told the Canton Repository newspaper that while she was speaking at the statehouse. Half of the lawmakers looked like they were about to fall asleep. Many were looking at their cell phones. They didn't want to listen to a young, low-income woman talk about her personal life and what Planned Parenthood meant to her. What is happening is not all that different in Ohio than across the country. There is an organized attack on women's rights to make health care decisions for themselves. It is not about health or safety. Look at these examples. It is about politicians thinking they know better than women and their doctors. It is happening as we speak. These so- called TRAP laws in Ohio and in dozens of other States have created gaps in care that threaten women's ability to see the providers of their choice. Health clinics in Texas have shut their doors. If the Supreme Court upholds the Texas law being challenged, the remaining clinics in the State may be forced to turn their patients away for good.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, in the last 2 minutes I would like to say a few more words about the Supreme Court vacancy. Four former U.S. attorneys from Ohio, Washington State, California, and Virginia published an op-ed that went around the country urging the Senate to promptly consider a Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Scalia. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the writings of the former U.S. attorneys.

Mr. BROWN. I close just begging, urging, imploring, and beseeching my colleagues on the Republican side to move forward on the Supreme Court nominee. We have not had a Supreme Court vacancy for as long as a year since the Civil War because we were at war in the 1860s. The average nomination process for confirming a Supreme Court nominee when there are 8 members of the Supreme Court is only about 6 weeks. The longest, Justice Thomas, took 99 days. The President of the United States is elected for 4 years--not a 3-year term. A 4-year term has 300-plus days in the term. This Senator is disappointed--I will leave it at that--to hear that my colleagues have said there will not be hearings. Then they said that not only will there not be hearings for the President's nomination, they will not even meet with a nominee. This Senator finds it rather shameful for an institution with this kind of heritage and this kind of reputation that we don't do better than that. I urge my colleagues to do our jobs, do what we were elected to do, what we were sworn in to do, and do what we are paid to do to bring this nominee--vote against them if you like but bring up this nominee for real Senate consideration. I yield the floor, and I thank Senator Grassley for allowing me more time.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, the sudden passing and tragic death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Scalia leaves us with a vacancy to fill on our country's highest Court, but it shouldn't lead us to a yearlong political standoff. Article II, section 2, of the Constitution is clear: The President shall nominate a Supreme Court Justice with the advice and consent of the Senate. It doesn't say ``may.'' It doesn't say ``maybe.'' It isn't followed by a clause which says that Senators don't have to do their jobs in an election year. It doesn't say anything about that. And that is the tradition of our country, that Senators--we run for office willingly, enthusiastically. We work hard to get here. We take an oath of office. Every couple of weeks, we get a paycheck. And some are saying we simply shouldn't do our job and move forward with this nomination. Complete refusal to consider any nominee from this President is outrageous. It is indefensible, and it is unprecedented in spite of what some of my colleagues would like to say. Don't take my word for it. Senator Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said as recently as 2008 that ``the reality is that the Senate has never stopped confirming judicial nominees during the last few months of a President's term.'' The country didn't elect Barack Obama--whether you voted for him or against him--for a 3-year term or three-fifths of a term; the country elected him for a 4-year term. Since the Civil War, no Supreme Court vacancy has been left open for a year. For the past century, the Senate has taken action on every single pending Supreme Court nominee. I talk to people in Ohio all the time, Republicans and Democrats alike. I talked to a Republican today who supports Senator Rubio for President and probably votes for Republicans for President in every election. He said: I just can't believe what Mitch McConnell did. I can't believe my party--the people I vote for in Senate races and House races--would possibly say that we are not going to have a hearing on this nominee. We are not even going to meet with this nominee. I mean, a number of Senate Republicans said: We won't even shake hands. We aren't even willing to meet with a Supreme Court nominee whom the President of the United States, under the Constitution, shall appoint, whom the President of the United States submits to the U.S. Senate. Let's look at what has happened in the past. In 1988, which was President Reagan's final year in office, a Democratic majority unanimously confirmed Justice Anthony Kennedy. That was in 1988. Again, President Reagan submitted his name in 1988. He was confirmed by a Democratic Senate. In fact, the Senate has been confirming Justices in Presidential elections since our Nation's founding. Two of President Washington's nominees were confirmed during his last years in office. Since 1916, every pending Supreme Court nominee has either received a hearing or been confirmed quickly before a hearing even took place. Think about that. A pending Supreme Court nominee has never been denied a hearing in the history of the United States. The only exception is the nominees who were confirmed without a hearing. Yet, within hours--I think only minutes, actually--within less than an hour, I believe, of the announcement of Justice Scalia's passing, the Republican leader of the Senate, the majority leader of the Senate pretty much said: We are not going to do our job. We are not even going to have a hearing on whomever the President of the United States nominates. We are not only not going to have a hearing, he then said later, I am not even going to meet with that person. Imagine that. So that nomination--whomever President Obama nominates--that vacancy will be more than a year for sure if the Senate does nothing on this confirmation. Again, the last time there was a vacancy for as long as 1 year was during the Civil War. It was 150 years ago. That is because there was a Civil War and the Congress wasn't very functional in those days. Members were leaving the Court, leaving the Senate and House after secession in 1861 and all the other things that happened. We have nearly a year left in President Obama's term, about a quarter of the term the American people elected him to serve. That is plenty of time for the Senate to carefully consider and review a nominee. President Obama--and just to make it clear, he was not just elected, he was elected decisively. I believe he is only the second Democrat in American history--surely the second Democrat since the Civil War--he is only the second Democrat since the Civil War to at least twice win a majority of the popular vote. Only President Obama, who got more than 50 percent of the vote twice, and President Roosevelt, who got more than 50 percent of the vote, I believe, four times--they were the only Democrats in 150 years who got a majority of the vote twice. President Clinton was elected twice with a plurality. President Wilson was elected twice with a plurality. President Obama and President Roosevelt were decisive wins. This wasn't an accidental win. This wasn't a candidate put into office by a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. This was a legitimate election and a decisive win. Let's look at some of those nominees. The longest nomination on record was Justice Brandeis, who I believe was the first Jewish American to be appointed to the Supreme Court. His took 125 days. President Obama has more than 300 days left in his term. If we fail to confirm a nominee, if Senate Republicans fail to do their job--they were elected. They were sworn in. They get paid. All of us do. We are just asking them to do their job. But if Senate Republicans don't do their job, two Supreme Court terms will pass before a new Justice is appointed. Yesterday I spoke with Professor Peter Shane, a constitutional law professor at Ohio State's Moritz College of Law in Columbus. Professor Shane said that a vacancy of this unprecedented length on the Supreme Court ``will compromise its ability to perform its proper constitutional function'' and it will create ``prolonged uncertainty.'' I have heard so many Republicans in the Senate say that we do all these things and create uncertainty--uncertainty in the economy, uncertainty in regulation, uncertainty in the consumer bureau, whatever. This is the worst kind of uncertainty. It is self-afflicted, and it affects entirely one-third of the government, one of the three branches of government. Without a full bench, justice could be further delayed for Americans who fought for years to have their cases heard. Split decisions--4 to 4 would leave legal questions unanswered and leave Americans in different parts of the country subject to different laws. How do we prevent that? Do your job, I say to my colleagues in the Senate. In the past, Senator McConnell himself has agreed with a normal, deliberative approach for Supreme Court nominees. He said in 2005: ``Our job is to react to that nomination in a respectful and dignified way, and at the end of the process, to give that person an up-or-down vote as all nominees who have majority support have gotten throughout the history of the country.'' That is what he said a decade ago. Now he is saying the Senate will not even do our jobs. Again, we run for these offices, we get sworn in to these offices when we win elections, we get paid every two weeks; we should be doing our job. I am not saying every Republican has to vote for the President's nominee. What we are saying is meet with them. The President will do the nomination. We should begin hearings. We should meet with these nominees individually. For every Supreme Court nomination since I have been in the Senate, I have had an hour-long meeting with each nominee, and we then make our decisions based on that. We have not said we are not going to do our work, we are not going to do our jobs. How would that make sense? The only difference now is that we have a different President. Time and again the Democrats in the Senate have given Republican Supreme Court nominees a fair hearing and the up-or-down vote they deserve. During the 7 years the Vice President chaired the Judiciary Committee, when he was a Senator here, he did his job. He oversaw the confirmation of three Justices who were nominated by Republican Presidents. In the case of Clarence Thomas, he even allowed Justice Thomas to have an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor, even though the committee failed to report his nomination with a favorable recommendation. So what does that mean? That means that when Clarence Thomas was in front of the Judiciary Committee, a majority of members said no, they didn't want to confirm him, yet they still moved his nomination to the floor. They didn't filibuster. They didn't require 60 votes. They just said: A majority vote wins. Thomas won. Even though Democratic leadership voted against him, Thomas won 52-48. Nobody blocked him, which they could have easily done. And the Senate did its job, the same thing we are asking the Senate to do today. Both Justice Thomas and Justice Alito were confirmed by the Senate with fewer than 60 votes. That means, again, they could have blocked them with a filibuster. They didn't. They allowed both of them to come forward. Even though they had lots of opposition, they still allowed an up-or-down vote. Yet this time Senate Republicans are refusing to hold hearings and are, in many cases, even refusing to meet with the nominee. Do your job. You were sworn in. You ran for these offices and then you were sworn in. Do your job. You get paid to do these jobs. Show up for work and do your job. Can we imagine how Republicans would have reacted if Democrats had shown Ronald Reagan this same disrespect when we considered Justice Kennedy's nomination? I wasn't here then, but we certainly understand the history of the story. The consistent attempt to delegitimize a democratically elected President is politics at its worst. In 2013, the Republicans didn't like the results of the 2012 election, so they shut down the government. Three years later they still don't like the results of the 2012 election, so they are saying: Well, forget the 2012 election, this is all about the 2016 election. What it is really about is that the President of the United States was elected in 2012 with the majority of the vote and in an electoral college landslide. He was elected for a 4-year term--not a 3-year and 1-month term, not three-fifths of a term--a 4-year term. American history, in spite of what my colleagues like to say with their revisionist history--in spite of what they like to say about revisionist history, the fact is we have done this in the fourth year or the eighth year of many Presidents. Now they are trying to--as they shut down the government in response to the 2012 election of which they didn't like the outcome, now they are trying to shut down the Supreme Court process with a year left in this President's term. You don't shut the whole system down when you don't get your way. It is a dangerous precedent that undermines our democracy. Our friends on the other side of the aisle justified this saying: We need to let the people make the choice. Well, they did. They made their choice in 2012 by selecting a President for a 4-year term. This is the fourth year of his term. There is no reason this President shouldn't have the obligation and the right to nominate a candidate and send a name to the Senate, and there is no reason that Senators shouldn't do their jobs--have hearings, meet with the nominee, bring him to the floor for a vote with a 50-vote threshold--a majority vote--and see what happens. They may vote no. If they vote no, that is a legitimate exercise, but if they are not willing to go through the process and see what might happen--see what the public judges as the right decision in whether to confirm or not--they are not doing their jobs. It may be asking too much when I have seen the partisanship and the head-in-the-sand attitudes and the fight-this-president-at-all-costs views of so many on the other side, but I expect this Senate to put politics aside and give a fair hearing and an up-or-down vote to any qualified nominee because that is our job. Simply put, we need to do our job. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

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

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

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, the crisis in Flint, MI, is a tragedy that was entirely preventable. This week we have a chance to do something about it. Senator Stabenow and Senator Peters from Michigan have submitted an amendment that I hope, when we go back on the bill, we will consider. As we do so, it is important to remember that Flint is far from the only town in this country where families face exposure to dangerous levels of lead. In Sebring, in northeast Ohio, near Youngstown, we know there are troubling amounts of lead in the water. Families are scared that their drinking water isn't safe. They are afraid they are facing another Flint. No parent should have to worry that the water coming out of their faucets might in fact be poisoning their children. Pregnant women shouldn't have to fear their tap water. In Sebring, just as in Flint, families were left in the dark about the safety of their water. For months, local officials failed to notify residents about the lead, and the State EPA failed to step in. I spoke with the mayor. I spoke recently--just this week--to State Representative Boccieri and State Senator Schiavoni, who represent Sebring and that part of the county, about what our response should be. The amendment before us this week will help put a stop to the failure--in Michigan, the failure of the Governor, and in Columbus, it appears to be the failure of the State EPA. It requires the Federal Environmental Protection Agency to notify the public directly if there is a danger from lead in the water system if a State fails to do so within 15 days. No more arguing about whose responsibility it is while families continue drinking water that we know is not safe. No more finger-pointing after the fact. This amendment says that when there is a problem with the water, people have a right to know and that it is the EPA's job to make sure they do. The sooner we know about lead contamination, the sooner we can get to work to fix it. That is why notification is critical. But notification is just the beginning. The amendment before us this week will be just the beginning of our work to protect Americans from unsafe levels of lead. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that at least 4 million American households--4 million American households with children--are exposed to high levels of lead. We know what that does to their brain development. We know the impact it has for the rest of their lives. Four million households in this country have children who are exposed to high levels of lead even though we know it isn't safe. This problem stretches far beyond Flint, MI, and far beyond just our water systems. Corroded lead pipes are a major health hazard, but they are far from the only source of lead poisoning. We know that too many of our children are exposed to lead through paint--mostly in older homes and mostly in lower income homes--and even the dirt in their backyards. Imagine that. The devastating effects of lead poisoning fall disproportionately on low-income children and on children of color. They are more likely to live in older homes closer to the city center and in rental housing that is poorly maintained. I have seen it firsthand in Ohio. The Cleveland Plain Dealer conducted an investigation last fall. They found that some 40,000 Cuyahoga County children have tested positive for lead poisoning in the last 10 years. Think about that--40,000 children in that community alone have been tested for lead poisoning over the past 10 years and have tested positive. Paint chips shed from molding and windowsills in older homes turn into dust that is easily ingested. Sometimes babies pick up lead chips and chew on them because they are colorful. The danger hasn't subsided. More than 187,000 homes in Cuyahoga County are putting their occupants at risk of lead poisoning. That is why our efforts can't stop with Michigan and can't stop with lead in our water. The good news is, we can combat this. I know we can because we have done it before. In 2012 a number of my colleagues--Senators Franken from Minnesota, Casey from Pennsylvania, and Merkley from Oregon--wrote to the EPA about the danger posed by former lead smelter sites in urban residential communities. I was in one of those neighborhoods and talked to people who had seen far too much lead in the dirt where their children play in front or behind their houses. Because of our efforts and some diligent reporting by reporters at USA TODAY, the EPA has acted to reexamine hundreds of former lead factory sites, helping communities address and deal with this problem. Think about this: You move into a home. You didn't know that 40 years ago this neighborhood had a lead smelting plant. Your children play in it. You have no idea that soil is contaminated from that lead smelter that closed decades ago. We also worked to combat the threat of lead in our children's toys. In 2007 Ashland University professor Jeff Weidenhamer found that more than one in seven Halloween toys he purchased and tested through his classes contained dangerous levels of lead, most of them made in China, most of them painted by companies contracting with U.S. toy companies. Who is responsible for that? Surely the Chinese companies' subcontractors that put the lead paint on the toys but certainly the U.S. toy companies that contracted with them and didn't care enough or know enough to check the quality of these toys. Following that shocking discovery, we worked with Professor Weidenhamer and other experts to pass the bipartisan Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act in 2008. When Professor Weidenhamer conducted the same test on toys in 2011, none of them tested positive for dangerous levels of lead. In spite of the fact that many people sitting in this body won their elections by saying that the government can never do anything good, that the government can never have an impact on our lives, and that the government is too big, that is what the government did--we passed a consumer protection bill in 2008. Two years later we found that comparable toys don't have lead paint in them. So we know we can make progress when we work together and strengthen consumer protections to ensure that agencies tasked with protecting children have the resources they need. We need to take the lead in our water, in our communities, and in our homes just as seriously as lead in toys. It is not enough to just respond to the crisis at hand. We should do that in Flint, we should do that in Sebring, and we should do that in smaller communities in Ohio in older homes--all of those things. But it is not enough just to respond. Once children have been exposed, the effects can't be erased. We have to do more to help protect families from being exposed to lead in the first place. We did the right thing in December when we funded critical programs at the CDC and at Housing and Urban Development that helped prevent lead poisoning and monitor lead levels in children, but we can't stop there. We are seeing in Flint, we are seeing in Sebring, OH, and we are seeing in cities across our country that current efforts are not enough. Senator Stabenow and Senator Peters' amendment is a first good step. I hope we will use this opportunity to examine what more we can do to protect our children, especially those young enough that their brain is developing. Lead poisoning arrests much of their brain development and affects the rest of their lives. We have to do whatever we can to protect our children from the terrible effects of lead poisoning.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Baldwin, especially for her terrific work on higher education. She knows the value of higher education to the residents of Wisconsin, Louisiana, and Ohio. I ask unanimous consent that after my remarks, the next speaker be Senator Reed of Rhode Island.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, tomorrow is Earned Income Tax Credit Awareness Day--a day, as we approach the tax season, for getting the word out about this tax credit that is a lifeline for working families. The EITC provides an incentive to work. It puts thousands of dollars back into the pockets of low-wage and moderate-wage workers every year. President Reagan called it ``the best anti-poverty measure to come out of Congress.'' The work that Senator Reed and others and I did on the earned-income tax credit this year to permanently expand it was called by some organizations the most important anti-poverty initiative, except for the Affordable Care Act, in the last 20 years that Congress has done. Last year 27 million American households--950,000 households just in my State alone, in Ohio--claimed the EITC and received an average refund of $2,400. So for somebody making $15,000 or $20,000 or $30,000 a year, when they file their taxes in February or March, they literally can get a check from the Federal Government, on average--I am not promising everybody specific amounts because each situation is different--on average, they will get a check for $2,400. One of the best things this body did last year was to permanently expand the earned-income tax credit, but there is still more we need to do. There is one glaring hole in the program we need to fix. Under current law--back up a little bit. The earned-income tax credit was aimed primarily at families with children but not entirely. Under current law, workers without children, somebody making $15,000 a year or somebody making $11 an hour, making $22,000, $23,000 a year but having no children--no spouse, no children--those workers making minimum wage barely receive any earned- income tax credit. Childless workers under 25 don't qualify for these credits at all. That means that a young worker--somebody making $9 or $10 an hour without children--can actually be taxed deeper into poverty. Why is that? Well, if a worker is making $9 an hour working full time--doing their best, not getting paid much--they are paying the payroll tax, the Social Security tax. The taxes they pay actually push them down below the poverty line. Why would we possibly in this country--we say in this body we value work. We say we care about people who are working hard and playing by the rules and we want them to get ahead, but then we fail to provide that earned-income tax credit and we tax them back below the poverty line. Why would we do that? Part of the reason is that last year when we were successful in expanding the earned-income tax credit permanently, there was resistance from some sort of ultraconservatives in this body--some tea party Republicans-- there was resistance to expanding it to these workers who are working hard but don't have children. How are they going to plan families or plan for the future if they are always struggling paycheck to paycheck and get no help? We need to do more to ensure that families who are currently eligible know about the EITC. Right now, even with the discussion--I appreciate the Presiding Officer from Louisiana and his interest in this. I know people in Louisiana, like people in Ohio--not everybody knows about it. One-fifth of families in this country who are eligible, who can claim the earned-income tax credit when they file their taxes, 20 percent of them don't know and don't file for it. That means those 20 percent are leaving about $2,000 on the table that they could use to fix their car or pay off a payday loan, buy their kids shoes or maybe occasionally go out to a restaurant once a month and get a nice dinner. With Federal tax filing season opening last week, we need to make sure that every American gets as much of her hard-earned money back into her pocket as possible; that every American gets as much of his hard-earned money back in his pocket as possible. We need to get the word out about tax credits that working families can claim and the services available to help them get their maximum refund. Filing taxes is complicated, and it can be particularly challenging for families claiming the earned-income tax credit, but getting help doesn't need to be expensive. Here is how. One tool that is available is the IRS Free File Program. If you go to the irs.gov Web site or, if you live in Ohio, go to the brown.senate.gov Web site and type in your ZIP Code, the commercial partners of the IRS offer free brand-name software to individuals and to families with incomes of $62,000 or less. For families claiming the EITC, they can visit what is called the Voluntary Income Tax Assistance--the VITA site--the Voluntary Income Tax Assistance site. Go into brown.senate.gov if you live in Ohio or go to irs.gov, type in your ZIP Code, and you can see what VITA sites are available. Someone just told me yesterday they entered their ZIP Code and found out that a VITA site--the Voluntary Income Tax Assistance site--was within walking distance from her home. Ohioans, as I said, can go to my Web site, brown.senate.gov, type in their ZIP Code, and they will find a map and the nearest site. VITA sites are not only free, they are more reliable. The majority of EITC errors result from returns filed by paid tax preparers. All VITA volunteers are trained by an organization partnering with the IRS. So if you make less than $60,000 a year, you can go to one of these VITA sites, the Voluntary Income Tax Assistance sites, and you will find out--they will do your taxes with you for free, and they will find out if you are eligible for the earned-income tax credit. If you are eligible for the earned-income tax credit this year and you didn't file, it is possible you can claim your tax credit from calendar year or tax year 2014 also. So you may get a $3,000 credit this year--a check. You may get another $2,000 for last year. It is money you earned. It is money you earned because you worked hard, you did your best, you maybe only made $25,000 a year, but you are eligible for this tax credit. Millionaires and billionaires and Members of Congress and people who are doing pretty well financially in life, most people like that have an army of lawyers and accountants and people who do their taxes for them, and they claim every possible tax credit, every possible tax deduction, every possible tax advantage they can get. People who fill out their own earned-income tax credit--their own taxes, if they are making $20,000 or $30,000 a year, don't have that sophistication and don't have the money to hire those lawyers and accountants, so oftentimes they are not getting every tax credit or every tax deduction they can get. That is why it is so important for people to visit these VITA sites and it is why it is so important that people have that opportunity. We need to ensure that working families know about the resources available to help them claim their refunds, including the earned-income tax credit and the child tax credit--refunds that, I repeat, they have earned. We reward work. We give people a little help when they are working hard for low wages. We should raise the minimum wage. We should do some other things. We should push the Department of Labor to move a little faster on its overtime rule so people who are working more than 40 hours are getting time and a half that they have earned. As much as wages have been stagnant in this country, I want to see people who are working hard be able to get ahead and get every advantage they possibly can. This body took a strong stand in December in support of an expanded permanent earned-income tax credit and a permanent child tax credit. I hope on EITC Awareness Day we will recommit ourselves to doing the same thing this year.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, earlier today I attended two hearings. One was held by the Senate Finance Committee on Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans, or CO-OPs, created by the Affordable Care Act. The other was held by the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, where Secretary McDonald, a son of Ohio, detailed his plan to modernize the Veterans' Administration. Both of these hearings are a strong reminder of the importance of government in supporting public health and access to health care and services. We know the Veterans' Administration, with all its problems today, has provided extraordinary health care for millions of veterans all across our country for decades. It doesn't mean we sit back and don't make very important improvements that are necessary at the VA. When we learned that shocking wait times at the VA were delaying veterans from getting the care they have earned, we took action and passed a new law to invest in better care and provide more health care choices to veterans, but we can't simply act in times of crisis and then turn our backs on those who served in our Nation's military. It is our responsibility to make sure VA facilities in Ohio, Connecticut, the Presiding Officer's State of Iowa, and all over--it is important that these facilities across the country have what they need to provide state-of-the-art medical care for our veterans. I have been struck by my time on the Veterans' Affairs Committee--I am the only Ohio Senator to ever sit on that committee for a full term. I am struck by how there are a whole lot of Members of Congress who are always happy to appropriate billions of dollars to send our men and women to war, but then when it comes time to take care of them when they come home, these same Members of Congress are not nearly as generous as let's say they were in sending them off to combat. That needs to change. The same is true for health insurance CO-OPs or CO-OPs that face challenges. Twelve of these programs have failed. We can't sit back and let the remaining 11 CO-OPs meet the same fate. That is why I will continue to work with my colleagues to make sure CMS understands the importance and that they have the support and solvency they need to succeed. When it comes to providing quality health care, the Ohio CO-OP is a success story worth telling. InHealth Mutual in Ohio covers approximately 25,000 people, 25,000 lives. It has enrolled individuals in each of Ohio's 88 counties. InHealth is doing some wonderful work, and it has taken it upon itself to be a major player in the community and in enhancing public health in Ohio. One issue InHealth has chosen to highlight is health equity. InHealth is working to eliminate health disparities and is focusing on reducing barriers to care through its InHealth Cares Program. To that end, InHealth started a faith-based initiative called Project REACH to address health disparities. Three years ago at a Martin Luther King celebration, a Martin Luther King breakfast in Cleveland, a minister told us something we perhaps already knew, but he said it so poignantly. He said: Your life expectancy is connected to your ZIP Code. Think about that. If you are born in Appalachia in Southeast Ohio or if you are born in East Cleveland versus if you are born in the more affluent suburbs of Shaker Heights or Bexley or Upper Arlington, your life expectancy can literally be a difference of 20 years. Imagine there are places in Cuyahoga County--one only 8 or 9 miles apart from the other--where a baby born has a life expectancy of literally 24 years less than a baby born in the more affluent suburb. But one of the things these CO-OPs can do is--by involving trusted members of the faith community and focusing on issues such as infant mortality, asthma, and diabetes, InHealth is successfully utilizing key community players to strategically improve access to care in minority communities across Ohio, but despite InHealth's current success, they continue to experience significant challenges. Earlier today, the Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services testified in front of our committee about the challenges facing CO-OPs. At the hearing, many of my colleagues expressed significant concerns about the closure of the 12 CO-OPs that have pulled out of the market as well as the viability of the others that remain. I share those concerns, and I urge the Acting Administrator of CMS, Andy Slavitt, to work with Congress and the remaining CO-OPs, such as InHealth, to ensure their future viability. I commend him on his performance at this morning's hearing. I hope the committee will take the appropriate steps to confirm him so he is no longer an Acting Administrator but has the real job. Congress and CMS must work together to find creative ways to ensure these CO-OPs that are negatively affected by the lower than expected risk corridor payments can find alternative ways to ensure financial stability. We should work together to improve the current risk adjustment calculation, which is currently designed to favor the larger, more established health insurance carriers over new and significantly smaller health insurance plans, such as the CO-OPS, and improve provider cost transparency in the market. They must work together to support the alternative ways for CO-OP small businesses like InHealth to raise capital. CO-OPs like InHealth in Ohio are putting customer service before profits in making a positive difference in patients' health and their pocketbooks. CO-OPs boost competition, they drive down prices for customers, and because they are locally run and operated by their own members, CO-OPs are invested in providing the best possible care for the communities they serve. CO-OPs like InHealth are working. We need to make sure they have the support they need to continue providing quality, affordable local insurance to thousands of people in my State of Ohio and across the country. I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Finance Committee, on the floor, and with CMS on these important issues so the existing CO-OPs--like InHealth--can continue to pursue innovative approaches to affordable comprehensive health insurance. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I reserve the right to object.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, does Senator Paul--how much time do we have?

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I only need 5 minutes, so I am willing to cede whatever remains so he can have enough time, but I would like to reserve 5 minutes, and I lift my objection.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the audit the Fed bill. One of the things that we learned around here as new Members of the House and Senate--and I served with the Presiding Officer almost my entire time in the House, and we learned this--is that if you can name the bills here, you have a tremendous advantage. You call the estate tax the death tax, even though about 1 percent of Americans pay it, and you may have won the debate. Calling this bill audit the Fed--and how can you be against auditing the Fed--may win the debate, but this time I don't think so. I am concerned in this way. It won't make the Fed stronger. It won't make the Fed more effective. It won't make the Fed more accountable. It will impair the Fed's functions. It will give conservative Members of Congress more tools to second-guess the Fed's decisionmaking. It will make the system ultimately less sound, flexible, and responsive. Think about what happened in 2009. President Obama took office. We were losing 800,000 jobs a month. Congress passed the Recovery Act, passed the auto rescue, which mattered so much to the Presiding Officer's State, to my State, and, frankly, to the Senator from Kentucky and his State too, but then, with the changing time and the elections of 2010, this Congress engaged in austerity, and we saw what that meant. It took a Bush-appointed Federal Reserve Chair, Ben Bernanke, who engaged in enough pump priming, if you will, through low interest rates and then QE to get the economy going. I think we asked ourselves, would we have wanted a Federal Reserve then where Congress had its tentacles in monetary policy? Congress failed on fiscal policy. Chairman Bernanke and now Chair Yellen have had to move on monetary policy in that way. I don't want to straitjacket this Congress and straitjacket the Federal Reserve by doing that with Congress. I know some of you have supported audit bills in the past. Many supported the Dodd-Sanders amendment during Wall Street reform. But this one is different. It doesn't include provisions to review the Independent Foreclosure Review Program process, and it doesn't include protections on some of the sensitive information that GAO could review, such as transcripts. What this is about, in addition to Congress meddling in monetary policy, is ultimately this: We know the Fed is charged with a dual mandate--to deal with the tension between combatting inflation and combatting unemployment. We know that in past years the Fed has leaned far more toward the bondholders and Wall Street in combatting inflation than it has toward Main Street in employment and combatting unemployment. We also know that with the pressures in this town, when President Obama signed Wall Street reform, the chief lobbyist for the financial services industry said it is now half time, meaning that conservative Members of this Congress, people in this Congress influenced by Wall Street, would immediately go and try to weaken these rules going directly to the agencies. We will see the same thing here. We will see many Members of Congress pushing the Fed to side with the bondholders and Wall Street on combatting inflation rather than siding with Main Street and small businesses and workers in dealing with unemployment. That is fundamentally the biggest problem with the Paul proposal. I ask my colleagues to defeat it. I yield back my time.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in opposition to S. 2232, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act. I am concerned that, out of all the issues before the Senate and out of all the issues we need to work on--in terms of growth, in terms of ISIS, in terms of wage inequality, in terms of transportation, and so many other issues--this is the first bill the Senate considers at the beginning of the year. I will talk for a moment about the direction in which we should go, but I want to talk about this issue. There are so many issues we are not talking about--national security, job creation, college affordability, student debt, and immigration. In my time in Ohio over the past several weeks, people talked to me about all kinds of different issues that Congress should be addressing. But it, frankly, comes as no surprise to anybody watching or any of my colleagues that not one person came up to me and said: ``Congress needs a greater say in monetary policy.'' There is no demand for that, except from those who want to score political points. There is no reason for this. There is no legitimate public function that we should even do this legislation, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act. And don't be fooled by the name of the bill because it really isn't about transparency. It is about the Federal Reserve but not about transparency. But let me move on. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen recently wrote to Senate leaders, copying all of us in the Senate, and spoke to the central problem with this legislation: This bill risks undoing the steady progress that has been made on the economic recovery over recent years in an environment with low and stable inflation expectations; progress that was made in part because the Federal Reserve is able to make independent decisions in the longer-term economic interest of the American people. ``Audit the Fed'' legislation, if enacted, would undermine the independence of the Federal Reserve and likely lead to an increase in inflation fears and market interest rates, a diminished status of the dollar in global financial markets, increased debt service costs for the federal government, and reduced economic and financial stability. Janet Yellen is exactly right. This legislation is about 535 Members of Congress getting involved in Federal monetary policy. I can't imagine that the American people want a Federal Reserve where Congress is so involved that it is disruptive and where it becomes so political. That is really what this is all about. It is about a handful of Members of the House and Senate who want to govern monetary policy in a way so that it ultimately won't work in the public interest. It is about their political talking points. It is about all of that. Let's go back. When President Obama took office--you will hear about this in tonight's speech, I assume, down the hall in the House of Representatives--our country was losing about 800,000 jobs a month when he took office. In February 2010, we did the Recovery Act and the auto rescue. Since February 2010, we have seen job growth for about 69, 70, 71 straight months since the auto rescue. I know what the auto rescue meant in my State. I know we see an auto industry that is doing very well and we see a lot more people back to work. Supporters of auditing the Fed claim they want to make the Fed's operations and activities more transparent. We know that is not what this is about. In a statement in July, the Senate banking committee chairman--the Republican chair of the committee, Richard Shelby, hit the nail on the head. Here is what he said: A lot of people called for an audit of the Fed for years, but they already audit the Fed for years . . . I don't believe they're just talking about an audit, like you'd audit the books of somebody--they're talking about monetary policy. They're talking about . . . 435 members of the House and 100 Senators getting into the day-to-day business of the monetary policy of the Fed. We created the Fed, Congress did, to get politics as far as we could out of it. I don't believe we need politics back in it. Chairman Shelby is right. We don't need 535 Members of Congress on the Federal Open Market Committee. One of the most important components we need for sound monetary decisionmaking policy is political independence. Senator Paul--the sponsor of this--argues that we need to understand the ``extent of the Fed's balance sheet.'' Congress already requires the Federal Reserve to have its financial statements audited every year by an external auditor, someone who is outside, independent of all matters relating to the Fed. The Fed releases a quarterly report presenting detailed information on the Fed's balance sheet and information on the combined financial position and results of operations of the Federal Reserve Banks. That report is released to Congress. The report is available to the public on the Fed's Web site. Anyone can go to federalreserve.gov right now and read it. Each week the Fed publishes its balance sheet and charts of recent balance sheet trends. There are legitimate criticisms of the Federal Reserve. There always have been. There probably always will be because of its reach and complexity, but since the crisis the Fed has gotten better. It has gotten better in part because of the last two Chairs of the Federal Reserve--Ben Bernanke, a Bush appointee and then an Obama nominee the second time, and with Janet Yellen, an Obama nominee. Since the crisis, the Government Accountability Office has conducted over 100 audits of the Federal Reserve's activities. Many of these audits relate to the financial crisis, including the Fed's emergency lending activities. There is more and there should be more. The Fed is transparent and accountable in the following ways. Let me list them again. This is not an out-and-out defense of the Fed. They should be open to criticism. There is still much to criticize about them, but this legislation solves nothing, except to politicize the Fed. These are the ways the Fed is transparent and accountable: The Chair of the Federal Reserve is required to testify before the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee twice a year on monetary policy. In practice, she will testify at additional hearings and other topics. The Governors of the Federal Reserve and senior staff--that is, others of the nine members of the Federal Reserve--testify dozens more times every year. The Fed releases a statement after each Federal Open Market Committee meeting to describe the FOMC's decisions and the reasoning behind those decisions. The Chair holds press conferences four times a year after FOMC meetings. Minutes of FOMC meetings are released 3 weeks after each meeting and are available on the Federal Reserve's Web site. Transcripts of FOMC meetings are released earlier than before--5 years after each meeting and are available on the Fed's Web site. That is much earlier than most other central banks release transcripts, for obvious reasons. Summaries of the economic forecasts of FOMC participants, including their projections for the most likely path of the Federal funds rate, are released quarterly. The Board's Office of the Inspector General audits and investigates all of the Fed's Board and Reserve bank programs, operations, and functions. These completed audits, assessments, and reviews are listed in the Federal Reserve Board's annual report. The Fed releases detailed transaction-level data on the discount window lending and open market operations. This is relatively new. This was required by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law. Clearly, Congress knew the Fed was not as responsible and open as it should be. One of the things we did in Dodd-Frank was this reform. All securities that the Fed holds are published on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Web site. The New York Fed, the most important district regional Federal Reserve--there are 12 of them, including one in the city I live in, Cleveland. The New York Fed is the most important for a number of reasons. It publishes an annual report of the system open market account that includes a detailed summary of open market operations over the year, and it includes balance sheet and income projections. I would add, this Chair of the Federal Reserve is more open to the public. This Chair of the Federal Reserve is out and about the country, as was her predecessor, Chairman Bernanke, and Chair Yellen even more so. She was in Cleveland not too long ago last summer making a speech to the City Club of Cleveland. Afterward she and I went to visit a large Cleveland national manufacturer with a large site in Cleveland so she could see the real economy, talk to workers, and see how important manufacturing is, especially in the middle of the country, to all things Federal Reserve. I wonder how many of those claiming the Fed is not transparent have actually taken the time to read some of these reports I mentioned-- whether it is the annual report, whether it is some of the audits, whether it is some of the transcripts of FOMC, and I wonder if they have listened to very many of these hours of testimony from Chair Yellen or from Governor Tarullo, Governor Powell or others on the Federal Reserve. The Fed is far from perfect. I have been one of its major critics in this body, as the ranking Democrat on banking, but I argued, for instance, that it should be a stronger regulator of the Nation's large bank holding companies. I appreciate what it is doing with living wills. I think that is very important. I especially appreciate what the Fed has done for stronger capital standards. To me, that is the most important thing we can do. It is more important than reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, more important than my amendment of 5 years ago to break up the largest banks, making sure banks have significant enough capital to make the system safer and sounder, but it is hard to dispute that this Fed is one of the most transparent central banks in the world. What is this truly all about? I know some of people are unhappy about decisions the Federal Reserve made during the financial crisis, including holding interest rates near zero for 7 years. They want to show their anger at the Fed by taking away independence, but without the Fed's extraordinary monetary policy actions, which might not have been possible if its actions were micromanaged by Congress, our economy would likely be in a far worse situation today. Several months ago I was asked by C-SPAN to interview Chairman Bernanke on one of its shows called ``After Words.'' We sat for an hour at a studio in Washington and discussed the memoir that Chairman Bernanke began to write on the day he left the Federal Reserve a couple of years ago. It was clear then that because Congress had pursued, in terms of fiscal policy, such austerity, he saw the economic growth that had started with the auto rescue and the Recovery Act, he saw that economic growth--immobilized is perhaps not the right word, but he saw that economic growth stall. He knew, because Congress was starting to squeeze the economy at that point with the wrong kind of fiscal policy, that he had to make up for it by low interest rates and ultimately by quantitative easing, which is what he did. So understanding that he knew he would offend some Members of Congress with that action, he also understood that because he was independent, he could do the kinds of things, as Chair Yellen has been able to do, to get this economy growing. Hence, in large part because of the auto rescue but in large part because of QE that the Federal Reserve has done through the last two Chairs of the Federal Reserve--one a Republican appointee and one a Democratic appointee--the Fed has been independent enough to do the right thing. Inflation remains low. We have something called a dual mandate, where the Federal Reserve is responsible for working to keep inflation at no more than 2 percent and unemployment at no more than 5 percent. The Fed has balanced that well. Inflation remains low, despite the doomsday prediction by many of this bill's proponents. We know our economy still has a way to go and that too many Americans are struggling, but it is clear that an increase in interest rates before last month would have been premature and would have been harmful to working Americans. If Congress were involved in that, in the way that the sponsor of this bill seems to want, our economy would be in much worse shape. I don't think there is much question about that. Audit the Fed legislation, there is also a backdoor, piecemeal way of instituting something called the Taylor rule, which is an attempt to impose a monetary policy role on the Fed. To me, this is the heart of this legislation that when they look at the dual mandate, they think way more about inflation, which is what the bondholders of Wall Street want them to do, and way less about fiscal policy and way less about low interest rates and way less about employment. The dual mandate is inflation and employment. If you lean far too much toward inflation, which is what Wall Street wants, then people on Main Street are left out. Frankly, that has been the story of the Fed for far too many years. That is why what Chairman Bernanke did and what Chairwoman Yellen have done is so important, but if the audit the Fed sponsors have their way, we will see some kind of Taylor rule. In November, House Republicans passed a Federal Reserve reform bill that imposes the Taylor rule. The enforcement mechanism? GAO reviews, audits, and reports. Is there any doubt that this is where the audit the Fed effort is headed next? I urge my colleagues to vote no this afternoon. This vote will take place in a couple of hours. It is in the interests of all of us to understand the role, the operations, and the activities of the Federal Reserve. We can do that better in this body. This is not the way to do it. We can do it better. It is also in the interest of the American economy for Congress to keep its political hands, if you will, out of monetary policy decisionmaking. If Republicans were serious about making the Fed work better, they would confirm the two pending nominees to the Board of Governors--a Republican community banker named Al Landon, who has been waiting for a nomination hearing for a year, and Kathryn Dominquez, a Democratic nominee, who has been waiting for nearly 6 months. Yet, instead of working to improve the Fed's operations, we are considering this bill to undermine it. It is a big mistake that most people I know who have any expertise in the Federal Reserve reject. I ask my colleagues to vote no.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, after months of delay, last fall we finally were able to see the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, text that corporate lobbyists had access to long before the American people and Members of Congress and their staffs did. After examining the provisions in this deal, it is clear that far too many of these provisions sell out American workers and American jobs. In the months leading up to the release of this deal, I warned that too often our trade agreements as far back as NAFTA and the Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China--not a trade agreement per se, but it had the same effect in many ways--the Central American Free Trade Agreement, the South Korea Free Trade Agreement--these trade agreements amounted to corporate handouts and worker sellouts. I warned our negotiators that they needed to do more to ensure that the deal created a truly level playing field for American workers and American businesses. Unfortunately, that is not what happened, particularly when it comes to standing up for the American auto industry. We hear often about the supposed opportunities that trade agreements will create: opportunities for more jobs, opportunities for small business, opportunities for more exports, and for economic growth. But when I look at the Trans-Pacific Partnership, I don't see these actual--let's call them offensive opportunities--and by ``offensive opportunities'' I mean opportunities for American products to break into new markets. This is not just playing defense, but playing offense so that we can export into these new markets. Cheerleaders for this agreement--whether it is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, most Republicans in the Senate, or whether it is Republican leadership in the House, whether it is corporate CEOs or whether it is the White House--say that new markets will be opened for American cars, but we have heard these empty promises before. Under TPP, many of these new markets will not be opened day one--as in the case of Malaysia and Vietnam. They won't be open in day two or year one or year two. It will be more than a decade until American automakers have full access to these closed markets. The TPP will do nothing to level the playing field with our top competitor, Japan, or to change Japan's distinction as the most closed auto market in the world. We know it has been that in the past. We know it is that today. There is nothing in here that would change or open Japan's market, to sell into the Japanese auto market. Carmakers in Ohio and carmakers across the country will compete with huge numbers of Japanese imports. We don't have it today, and under TPP we won't have the same opportunity to export to Japan. That is because for decades Japan has used barriers other than tariffs to keep their markets closed. Tariffs are one way. They charge huge tariffs, causing the price of the product that you import--let's say into Japan--to be too high for the Japanese to afford, but that is not what Japan does. Their tariffs are already at zero, so an agreement on tariffs will do nothing to create a level playing field. Japan keeps our products out in much more creative ways than tariffs. We have seen this in the wake of the Korean Free Trade Agreement. Even after our trading partners promised to remove these barriers to allow American cars into their market, they often don't. Opening up Japan's market didn't work in the 1980s, it didn't work in the 1990s, and it didn't seem that it will be any different under the Trans- Pacific Partnership. If there aren't new offensives--offensives in the sense of selling into those countries--then I would expect our negotiations at least make sure this trade agreement protected American carmakers and workers from a flood of cheap foreign competition. I would hope they made sure the benefits of the agreement would only go toward its members who have been part of the negotiating process and made concessions, but it is not. It is not just the TPP countries. That is now how I read the text, particularly when it comes to something called the rules of origin for autos. These rules of origin provide provisions to determine how much of a car is made in the TPP region, and TPP rules are weaker than NAFTA's. That means how much of the car is actually made in the TPP countries, how much of the car must be made in the TPP countries to count as a TPP product. That means 62.5 percent of a vehicle must be made in the NAFTA region in order for it to qualify for the benefits of the NAFTA agreement. But only 45 percent--much less than NAFTA and in some cases even less than that--of a car has to be made in the TPP region to qualify for the benefits of the agreement. Think about that. Under TPP, less than half a car has to be made in TPP countries, which include Canada, Mexico, and the United States, to receive the benefits of TPP. So what does that mean? That means more than half of the components in the car--more than half of the car--can be made in China. So China can backdoor much of its supply chain into the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Then these cars, mostly made in China, will get the benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, even though they aren't in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. As more countries join TPP, that 45- percent rule will become an even weaker standard, and fewer and fewer of our cars will come from the U.S. auto supply chain. I never thought I would be able to say this, but this agreement makes NAFTA--an agreement I fought hard to defeat 20 years ago--look good. TPP's auto rules were written for Japanese automakers to the benefit of China and at the expense of American auto jobs. TPP will jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans, including up to 600,000 Ohioans, whose jobs depend on the U.S. auto supply chain. These aren't just statistics. We are talking about real workers in real plants in real companies in real communities, in Ohio and across the country, with bills to pay and families to feed. They fought hard to bring the American auto industry back to life. Their hard work made the auto rescue a success. Last year, 2015, was a record year for automakers. We can't pull the rug out from under them now with a trade deal that sells out American auto jobs. Think of what we have done. In 2010, only--maybe fewer than this--10 million vehicles were made in the United States. Today that number is close to 17 million. Chrysler posted 7 percent gains in sales last year. GM and Ford were not far behind with 5 percent. I am proud to say the best-selling American vehicle for 34 years running, the Ford-150, runs on engines produced in Lima, OH. Five years ago the American President, President Obama, did the right thing when he personally committed to saving the American auto industry. If you ask people in Ohio, in Toledo, in Avon Lake, in Cleveland, in Warren, in Lordstown, they know how important the auto rescue was. We were losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month at the beginning of President Obama's term. Since the auto rescue, the next year--we have seen job growth in this country for 70 months in a row, 70 consecutive months of job growth starting with the auto rescue. Now I hope the President will do the right thing again and go back to the drawing board on the aspects of this trade deal that we know will cost American auto jobs. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I came from an informal hearing--not an official Senate hearing but a hearing downstairs called by Congressman Levin, who is the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee. A number of other Members were there, including my colleague from Ohio, Representative Kaptur, and a number of people the Presiding Officer served with in the House--Congressmen Sarbanes, Rangel, Pascrell, Doggett, and Schiff. We discussed the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I spoke earlier on this today. I know Senator McConnell has said that he will not bring it up this year, I think in large part because of the opposition from the country. Senator Lott, the Republican leader, a decade or so ago said that you can't pass a trade agreement in an even- numbered year. He was a strong supporter of these trade agreements. I believe he and most in his party supported NAFTA and CAFTA. He wasn't here for CAFTA but he was for some of those other trade agreements. But he said that because he knows that politicians want to vote for these trade agreements in large part because of corporate lobbying. But the public doesn't want us to vote for these trade agreements. My first year in Congress, I spent much of the year working in opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. I have seen a number of these: NAFTA, PNTR with China, CAFTA, the trade agreement with Korea, big promises about jobs, big claims about jobs, and exaggerated commitments about jobs. Every time we lose jobs from these trade agreements. Our trade deficit is up to a couple billion dollars a day now. But if you buy a billion dollars of products from another country rather than making them yourselves here, rather than American companies making them, we know that costs us jobs. When you think it is $2 billion--almost $2 billion every single day, well over a billion, but the numbers are not precise--in trade deficit, where we buy from other countries more than we export and sell to other countries, we know it is costing us jobs. One of the other things that came out of this discussion with a number of Ways and Means Committee members, small business, a former trade negotiator, and a union representative there was how we have seen increasingly companies in Little Rock, in Dayton or in Toledo shut down production here and move it overseas and then sell those products back into the United States. The auto industry has not done much of that. When the auto industry sets up in Asia and are manufacturing cars, they typically sell them in that part of the world. Unfortunately, GM just announced that they are going to be making an SUV plant in China and selling those products back into the United States. That is a terrible trend. The reason I stopped on the floor before the vote in a couple of minutes is to say this: The Trans-Pacific Partnership has set us up in way that will make that worse. Under NAFTA, Canada, the United States, and Mexico--I strongly oppose NAFTA. But under that trade agreement, products in automobiles--almost two-thirds of all of the components in an automobile--had to be made in one of these three countries in order to get the tariff benefits from NAFTA for those companies, those products. Now there are 12 countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and fewer than half the components have to be made in one of these 12 countries. What does that mean? It means that more than half of an automobile can come from parts made in China but sold in the United States tariff- free under the Trans-Pacific Partnership. How can we possibly think that makes sense as a policy? That is fundamentally why the Trans- Pacific Partnership does not make sense for our country. It doesn't make sense for small businesses in Mansfield, OH, or in Springfield, OH, and it doesn't make sense for the up to 600,000 workers in my State--some 600,000 workers who are in the auto supply chain. We know a lot of them will lose jobs under the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I yield the rest of my time to Senator Leahy.