Mike Braun

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, ObamaCare has failed because it is the classic example of Big Government getting in cahoots with a healthcare industry that is broken. It was doomed to fail because when has Big Government and Big Business ever resulted in something that is going to cost less and be more effective? Under ObamaCare, decisions are made by the healthcare industry executives and the Federal Government bureaucrats--not patients, not consumers. This program is authorizing millions of dollars we don't have to prop up a system that is not working. If ObamaCare was working, it would sell itself, but it doesn't work. Costs continue to rise, and Americans continue to be stuck with the bill. I believe there are things that ObamaCare does that we should keep. I actually incorporated it into my own business's plan back before the law required you to do it. I covered preexisting conditions and no cap on coverage. The pillars of ObamaCare--we should all accept that. When they added keeping kids on there until they are 26, that is fine too. Those ships have sailed. But the Affordable Care Act is not remotely affordable, and it is only going to get worse. I applaud the Trump administration for doing their due diligence on how healthcare policy changes are going to affect average Americans. They are taking the approach to not go deeper in the hole with something like ObamaCare but to reform the industry by making it competitive, transparent, eliminate the barriers to entry and, yes, encourage the healthcare consumer to get involved in his or her own well-being. I do believe President Trump is right. The Republicans can be the party of healthcare without involving more government, but we need to do that by putting more power back into the hands of the American people, not ceding total power to government bureaucrats and big healthcare executives. I have a better idea. The truth in pricing act--my bill I am countering with--encapsulates some of the ideas behind the proposed and final rules announced by the White House last week, which I fully support. The complex, opaque nature of healthcare pricing makes it difficult for consumers to anticipate, measure, and compare healthcare costs and coverage options. Hospitals have a chargemaster that nobody can understand, which actually inflates retail prices billable to a patient or an insurance provider, but insurers usually negotiate steep discounts to these inflated prices that consumers and the employers who pay all the bills never see. It is done behind closed doors. More pricing transparency would address this market failure. Increased competition gives more decision making to the people who are supposed to use it. This is why I introduced the truth in pricing act, which requires health insurers to disclose negotiated rates, including any cost- sharing obligations for consumers for healthcare services covered under their health plans. It is difficult for insured consumers to shop for healthcare services in our current, opaque, and broken market within which ObamaCare works, especially if they don't know actual prices. Insurers have the unique ability to provide this information to consumers. Why subsidize insurance companies to pay for navigators and insurance agents when we can instead make the market work better and be more consumer-driven and transparent? This is the way we break the stranglehold that government in big healthcare has on healthcare delivery. I ask unanimous consent that the Senator modify her request and instead, as in legislative session, the Committee on HELP be discharged from further consideration of S. 913, the True Price Act, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, we have made progress here this evening in the sense that my colleague has brought up another topic--transparency for prescriptions. Across the board, when it comes to hospitals and exposing their charge practices, drug companies becoming transparent and competing, health insurance companies getting rid of the secret agreements behind the scenes, and even practitioners, publish your prices in print or on the web so we as employers and consumers of healthcare can try to make the right decisions and bring costs down. I do object to the original request.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, I rise today to celebrate and recognize the Hulman-George family for their accomplishments and success in business and their stewardship of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the last 75 years. On November 4, 2019, principals of Hulman & Company announced the sale of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, among other assets of the Hulman-George family, to a newly formed entity to be led by industry legend Roger Penske. This announcement marks the end of one glorious era, and the start of another for so many Hoosiers and racing fans around the world who recognize Indianapolis Motor Speedway as the racing capital of the world. Beloved as the famous track at 16th and Georgetown in Indianapolis is today, it is nearly impossible to imagine our capital city without it, which was nearly the case. Shortly after World War II, an era in which the track sat dormant from 1941 through 1945 and fell almost into complete disrepair, a businessman from Terre Haute stepped up to purchase the facility with the goal of continuing and building upon the legacy of the already famous Indianapolis 500. That businessman, Anton ``Tony'' Hulman, Jr., saved the speedway from either becoming a housing development or a private automobile testing facility. For the last 75 years, Indianapolis Motor Speedway has been controlled by Hulman & Company, an entity with a deep portfolio but nothing as visible and recognizable worldwide as the famed racecourse. From the initial days of owning the facility and preparing it to run the 1946 race to the celebration of centennial era and beyond, the Hulman-George family has been the steadfast caretaker and promoter of this iconic venue. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway has served as the front door to Indianapolis, the State of Indiana, and the entire Midwest for those across the world who travel each year to personally watch the world's largest single day sporting event, the Indianapolis 500, which attracts approximately 350,000 spectators, the NASCAR Brickyard 400, and the IndyCar Grand Prix of Indianapolis. The Speedway has also recently hosted the Formula One United States Grand Prix, Red Bull Air Races, and even a Rolling Stones concert. The economic impact of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to central Indiana in the 75 years that the Hulman-George family has owned the property is incalculable. The personal impact the speedway has had on tens of thousands of families who use the facility as an anchor for what becomes weekend-long reunions is inspiring, as one need not search far on Memorial Day weekend in May to find a family who has been attending the Indy 500 as a group for as long as can be remembered. The facility which started as a testing ground for Indiana's growing automotive industry in 1909 became a testing ground of speed, endurance, strength, and the will to win over the last 110 years. Without the Hulman-George family, that story would have likely ended in the 1940s. Madam President, I want to personally thank the Hulman-George family for their amazing commitment and contributions to the State of Indiana and the Unites States of America. Both are better because of this family.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, today I voted against amendment No. 1141. I would like to take an opportunity to explain my position. In September 2019, the Treasury Department reported, in accordance with Federal laws, that the highway trust fund's mass transit account had an unfunded authorization of $27 billion but only estimated $26 billion in revenue to be collected over the next 4 years. In other words, the account was expected to take on more than $1 billion in obligations than it would be able to collect in revenue. Instead of correcting the problem, the Jones amendment ignored it, preventing Treasury from implementing the law to bring the mass transit account back into balance. Since I joined this body in January, I have repeatedly noted my concern for our nearly $1 trillion annual budget deficit and our more than $22 trillion Federal debt. Washington is broken. We do not have the money to finance even the most basic functions of our government: infrastructure and our national defense. Today's vote was an example of the consequences we may face when Congress lets these serious financial issues languish. We cannot continue to ignore these problems. We cannot continue to pretend our fiscal problems are solved by waving away protections placed by prior Congresses. I believe that Congress must fix this problem and bring our trust funds into long-term solvency. When the Environment and Public Works Committee approved our highway bill in July, I ensured the bill contained language stating our intent to do just that. Today, Congress was lucky--we could push our spending problem off to another day. One day soon, we will not be so lucky.

Mr. BRAUN

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

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, we are going to vote on a CRA later this afternoon, and this has been the issue dominating D.C. and did in my campaign: the cost of healthcare. I am going to vote against the CRA, and I am not going to go into the particularities of it. I just want to tell you how it works on Main Street USA and kind of my perspective of how we really solve healthcare in a way that is going to be affordable and last for a long time. I just finished visiting all 92 counties in Indiana talking to Hoosiers, young and old, small businesses to farms. Everyone is concerned about where is healthcare cost going in the future. We don't seem to, here, have a real good plan for it. As a Main Street entrepreneur that took it on myself a few years ago to create a sustainable, affordable plan, most people think it absolutely can't happen using free market principles. I will go into a few details of how that works in my own business. ObamaCare was addressing an issue that has been boiling up for a long time. I took on the insurance companies to fix it in my own company back in 2008--covered preexisting conditions, no caps on coverage. But ObamaCare was a solution that was never going to work. It was Big Healthcare in cahoots with Big Government. Never have I seen that result in something less expensive and more effective. I believe in free markets driving the solutions, and the healthcare industry is who I blame for being in this pickle. That sounds unusual coming from a free market guy that doesn't believe in government. But not all markets are free. One of the most disappointing things is when my own Republican colleagues mistake the healthcare industry for being one that is free and transparent. It has evolved over the years to where it has become as bloated and dysfunctional as the Federal Government that runs trillion-dollar deficits. ObamaCare decisions are made by healthcare industry executives and Federal Government bureaucrats, instead of by patients, employees, and mostly employers who are the only ones that really have skin in the game when it comes to our healthcare system. I believe the underlying principles of ObamaCare were right on. No one should go broke because they get sick or have a bad accident. I believe that you cover preexisting conditions with no caps on coverage. Kids staying on the plan until they are 26? Fine. But it didn't work from the beginning, and it won't be an affordable--it was the Affordable Care Act. It turned into the un-Affordable Care Act, and it is not a solution in the long run. The solution will be to get the industry out of the doldrums and to realize that when 80 Senators weigh in with an idea of how to fix your business, the cat is out of the bag. You have a problem. Sadly, in a place like this, which you can see can get sidetracked in so many different ways and then never really craft solutions that last in the long run, that is kind of what we are up against now. The bills that have come through from three different committees-- primarily Finance and the one I am on, Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions--do some good things. Senator Grassley and I did an op-ed this week about negotiating drug prices in a way that is going to bring them down. These bills have real things that will work. I am disappointed that they are not aggressive enough, but we need to start somewhere. The drug companies have been notoriously involved in--after they do such a good job coming up with a solution, a remedy, then hand it over to a broken distribution system that ends up--and I will tell a little story. When I was uninsured, after I had to get off my great company's insurance that was based upon wellness, not remediation, and my employees and patients were encouraged on dollar one to shop around and find solutions--that worked. Here, the industry does everything it can to not make it work. This should have been a simple thing to do. Luckily, I don't have many prescriptions. I knew it was a generic that should cost 15 to 20 bucks. I had six or seven places to choose from in my hometown. I went to the first one that would have been the most convenient and fumbled around for 2, 3, 4 minutes. They kept asking me what my insurance plan number was. I said: I have none. I am uninsured. I want your best deal. It came back $34.50. I made another call to a place that I know has been on the leading edge. It took them 10 seconds, $10, and they said: By the way, we can have it ready in 10 minutes. That is the way things worked in the real world. Any of us that run businesses where you have transparency, competition--take LASIK surgery for instance. It is the only part of healthcare that actually works. Do you know why? Insurance companies aren't involved. Providers deal with patients, consumers. Ten, 12 years ago, $2,000 to $2,500 an eye, done with a scalpel. Now the technology is better, and you can get it done for $250 to $500 an eye. That is the way things should work. The solution is not more of what we tried that has failed. It certainly isn't Medicaid for All. How can that work when, if you are honest about how much it is going to cost, it would nearly double the size of our Federal Government. Plus, why would you turn something like that over when we can't even get it right in the Veterans' Administration, where about 10 million patients are covered, not 330 million? That would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. It would be a disaster. We can't afford it. Of course, no one around here ever asks the question about how you pay for anything. We are going to completely exhaust the Medicare trust fund in 6 to 7 years. Employers and employees have been paying into that since the 1960s. That will probably be the first reality check this place has-- maybe along with the fact that foreign countries and everyone else are not going to keep lending us money to finance trillion-dollar deficits--which, by the way, will hit $1.5 trillion in 6 to 7 years, when the interest on the debt is going to be more than we are paying for defense. In conclusion, our healthcare system needs radical change, but it needs to be changed in a way that takes the power from the industry and government and gives it back to the patient/consumer, like it works in the real world. I will use this example: I know that in my hometown, if you are buying a big-screen TV--which, by the way, costs about one-fourth to one-third of what it did 10 years ago, kind of like LASIK surgery--I know people in my hometown would probably drive 50, 60 miles to save 50 bucks on a thousand-dollar purchase. We don't do that. The healthcare consumer has atrophied. They talk about they love employer-provided insurance. Well, that is because the consumer pays for very little of it. I will give a few details of what can happen when you are innovative, when you incorporate the concepts of skin-in-the-game, doing more than asking others to pay for it. In our own plan, people enter their deductible less than they did 11 years ago because the incentives were put in place. But I found a way to do it uniquely, where most CEOs didn't want to take the risk. I believe in insurance for everyone. I believe in access. You heard me earlier. In this day and age, preexisting conditions--that ship has sailed. I backed that up with actions in my own business. But I don't believe that you can take more of what is proven never to work and try to get it to be where it is twice the size of our current government. Republicans can lead on healthcare but only if we stop acting as apologists for a healthcare industry that is dysfunctional and broken to the core, and then you set yourself up, for politicians here--and a public that generally falls for it--that that is going to be the solution. On our first foray into surrendering that right to the government through ObamaCare, it yielded what it was predicted to--higher costs and fewer options. The only prescription for our ailing healthcare system is consumer- driven, transparent competition. I look forward to unveiling more of those ideas, and that is why I will vote against the CRA this afternoon. I put the challenge and the onus on the back of the healthcare industry to get with it before you have a business partner that you are not going to like--the Federal Government. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. I rise to speak today because I just finished up visiting all 92 counties in our home State, and every one of them, especially at the tail end, have backed what we have been doing here, especially following the lead of President Trump. When it comes to the particular issue of Syria, I think it begs the question when people say it green-lighted what occurred there. What would the reaction have been had we not gotten out of harm's way? I am guessing it would have been a bigger fiasco in many different dimensions. The minority leader indicated that Mr. Paul's idea was horrible. I want to make the point that, collectively, over the last 40 to 50 years, we have been engaged all the way back to the Vietnam war, where we have been adventuresome and have done it where we have not paid for it, and we are now in a pickle. That is why I was for what the President decided to do. You cannot continue being engaged like this when running trillion-dollar deficits--$22 trillion in debt. Hoosiers understand that, and most Americans do as well. So I am going to support Rand Paul's amendment, and I am glad that the President finally had the guts to do what most Americans have been for, and I am disappointed that the other side in any other situation would have been for that exact action. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, on rollcall vote No. 311, I voted yea. It was my intention to vote nay. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote since it will not affect the outcome.

Mr. BRAUN

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

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I rise to honor those who lost their lives tragically 18 years ago and to make sure that we never forget what happened then. I vividly remember that morning. I was in my own office in Jasper, IN. I didn't have a TV. Somebody there brought it up on the internet. The second plane flew into the building. I will never forget that image because we didn't know what had happened with the first one. We knew what had happened with the second. Over the summer break, Senator Rick Scott and I took a trip to Israel and saw all of that which goes into its preparedness against the evil that lurks around the world. I saw it again up close, and it always makes me wonder: How can they live like that? How can they be prepared when they know there are always individuals and countries out there just like in 1941 and just like in 2001? Imagine living in a country in which your entire border is surrounded by a fence or a wall in order to keep people out--where, in the tough places, there is another barrier and where, in the really tough places, there is a dirt berm. That drove home again how important it is to be prepared and to always be strong when it comes to defending this country and the liberty and freedoms we all enjoy every day. I never thought it could happen in 1941, and I didn't think it could happen in 2001. It can happen again because that is the world we live in. When I came here as a U.S. Senator, I always knew the most important thing this body should do was foster the defense and the security of this country. When you see it has slipped so precariously over the last few years--and thank goodness that we have built it back up to a level that makes sense--it is because we always need to be prepared. If we are going to truly honor all of the lives that were lost in 1941 and 2001 and will be inevitably lost down the road, we need to be strong; we need to be prepared. We always need to be aware of the fact that we are blessed just as the State of Israel is blessed--despite all of that--with a thriving economy. They live with that danger every day, and they find a way to get through it. Let us never let our guard down or drop our defenses here. Our freedom and our liberty depend upon it. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, whistleblowers play a key role in holding the Federal Government accountable for waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, and illegal activity. It is therefore appropriate that even though Whistleblower Appreciation Day was yesterday, we take a moment to pause and thank the brave men and women who have the courage to speak up when they see ways to better or improve our government. I want to thank them for their efforts to ensure that our government never loses sight of why we are here--to serve the American people and to be good stewards of their resources and trust. I was also proud to introduce legislation with Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire. Our bill ensures adequate protections for subgrantees--the folks on the firing line who are most important to revealing when something is not right. That needs to be protected in a way that is ensured so that they always feel comfortable coming forward. In 1989, Congress approved the Whistleblower Protection Act, thereby expanding whistleblower protections for Federal employees and later expanding protections for individuals in certain private sector employment. From time to time, it has been necessary for Congress to refine Federal whistleblower laws. We always want them to be working. In one such instance, Congress enhanced whistleblower protections as part of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 for Federal contractor, subcontractor, and grantee employees on a pilot program basis. The program worked well, and, in 2016, Congress saw fit to make the pilot permanent. It makes sense. This is how the process should work. Congress saw a problem, addressed it on a test basis, evaluated it to make sure it was working as it should, and moved to make the program permanent. However, the subsequent amendments in 2016, to make sure the program was working, failed to guarantee subgrantees were recognized in the legislative text, as necessary, to make sure it would work on a technical basis. While 2016 amendments explicitly included Federal subgrantee employees, coordinated changes were not made in the statute's related sections. I am proud to introduce this legislation with Senator Hassan to close this gap because it needs to work in all cases. S. 2315, the Whistleblower Act, clarifies the scope of the protection statute specifically as to employees of Federal subgrantees who provide protected disclosures. Subgrantees are often in the best position to provide information regarding wrongdoing as to Federal subgrant funds. I am, therefore, pleased to play a small role in cleaning up our laws so they operate as they were intended--to protect whistleblowers. Finally, we take whistleblowers seriously in my office. If anybody would like to assist, contact me through our whistleblower assistance line. One can email me at whistleblower@braun.senate.gov. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate Chairman Barrasso and Ranking Member Carper on their introduction of the EPW Committee's 5-year infrastructure bill, the America's highway infrastructure act. Back in Indiana, as a member of the State Legislature, in 2017 we did what some States are doing and many haven't yet. We actually did a long-term road funding and bridge infrastructure bill. As a Main Street entrepreneur there in just my third year in the State Legislature, we accomplished things that nobody said could get done, because we made the case that for the crossroads of America, we needed to make sure our roads and bridges were going to be there in safe shape for future generations. No matter where I go, I hear almost everyone unanimously wanting better roads and bridges. Ironically, even in a State like the Hoosier State, 70 percent of constituents wanted better roads but didn't want their taxes to go up. We had to make the case--and it wasn't hard for me to do as a fiscal conservative--that if you are in a State like Indiana and your comparative advantage is the crossroads of America, why wouldn't you want a tangible asset to be in good shape that everyone can enjoy? We also did it from a position of strength. We run a balanced budget, generally with a surplus every year, and we passed a balance budget amendment. So it was not difficult to talk about investing in the future when you were doing it from a position of strength. In fact, this last year, we had almost a $400 million surplus and a cash balance of over $2 billion. Wouldn't it be nice if this place worked like that? The bill introduced provides $287 billion to fix the Nation's aging roads and bridges--more than any bill in history. It includes new safety programs to incentivize States to lower fatalities of drivers and pedestrians. It codifies key elements of President Trump's ``One Federal Decision'' to cut redtape and to reduce the time that road projects spend in the permitting line. It instructs Federal highways to address resiliency, making sure that when a road is damaged by a natural disaster, we rebuild it with modern technology that will prevent similar damage in the future. Most importantly, it contains incentives to urge States to put more skin in the game, just like we did in Indiana, taking ownership of their own infrastructure and making sure that in States where balance sheets are clean and economies are healthy, they don't look to the Federal Government to lead on it and they lead themselves. This bill contains a proposal I introduced last week called the Crossroads of America Act, to provide $150 million that will be competitively awarded to States that will bid for the highest State match for Federal dollars. This concept worked for us in Indiana. We called it the Community Crossings Program, and within 1 or 2 years, even after there was much complaining by cities and counties, it is oversubscribed. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, Indiana communities started to bid up their matches and asking for less State money through the program. Wouldn't it be nice if we had something like that here to stretch the Federal dollar? It means that the State could approve a greater number of projects, which we have done now into the third year. More projects are being built. More concrete is being poured. More steel is being framed. And more Hoosiers are on the job. This is why this program is so important. Combined, the America's highway infrastructure act will allow more projects to break ground, like our I-69 bridge over the Ohio River, linking northern Kentucky to southern Indiana. The EPW bill will speed up the permitting process and provide funding opportunities to a project that has been in the works for more than 15 years. Over the next several weeks, we will continue our robust committee work, starting with a markup of the chairman's bill tomorrow in EPW. In committee, I will stress the importance of fully paying for this 5-year bill--again, unlike we do most things here--and putting the highway trust fund on a pathway to long-term solvency. We are also going to be considering a budget bill, and for all the reasons that we know, the Federal Government should be there for its own citizens, its stakeholders, including infrastructure. We need to make sure, regardless of what happens to this budget bill, that in the long run we start balancing our own budget and that we quit borrowing from future generations and kicking this stuff down the road. Hopefully, this infrastructure bill will be the beginning of it. Over 37 years of building a business in my hometown, one principle I have always lived by is this: When times are good, you create a rainy day fund, you pay back what you might have borrowed, and you sacrifice in the short run for long-term prosperity. Until we get back into that mentality here--whether its infrastructure, shoring up entitlements, or whatever people depend on the Federal Government to do--we are not going to be there for our own citizens. Today, that changes with the introduction of America's highway infrastructure act. We are beginning to put our Nation's highway system on a path of long-term solvency. The alternative, I am afraid, is another unfunded short-term reauthorization of the highway trust fund. Such a path would be irresponsible, especially after the highway bill comes out of committee this week. We must continue investing in our Nation's infrastructure. We must incentivize States to get more involved, and we must fully offset our spending and put the highway trust fund on a responsible path to long- term solvency. That is one of the critical obligations facing this Congress. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I have the good fortune every Thursday of sitting here anywhere from 3 to 6, depending on what the workload is. Since I have gotten here, as a Senator from Indiana, as a Main Street entrepreneur, almost everything I talk about is stuff that I have learned back in the real world. Now and then, there will be a speaker here that breaks up the monotony of sitting there for that amount of time. My friend and fellow Senator, Mr. Lee, couldn't have said it more eloquently. You have a beautiful graph here to show the issue. I am going to take just a few minutes to reinforce what he said. When I ran for Senate, I did it out of the frustration that it seems like only here in DC do we hear the same things year after year and nothing ever seems to change. I know the responsibility of leadership and trying to navigate through the system. But sooner or later, we have to simply say enough is enough. This year, the President, I really think, wanted to shake the system up, I was hoping, like back in March of 2018, when there was a continuing resolution agreed to, to re-enable defense, which, in my opinion, is probably the most important thing the Federal Government should do. That might be the last time. As Senator Lee said: Look at the chart. There was always a good reason in the past, and it was generally along the lines of defending our country. But the ethic back then should be what the ethic is now--like it is for every household, every State government, every school board, and especially every business-- that you borrow money not to consume. That is called putting it on a credit card. In almost everything we do in the Federal Government, there is not a tangible asset to show for it. We are actually spending it and consuming it. When you borrow money in any business, there is a difference between expenses and supplies and capital expenditures. We do not even talk about that. I am going to accept the reality of the system today. I don't like it. I am going to vote against the bill as well. I have talked to my fellow Members that we need to, sooner or later, quit saying the same things. We need to, sooner or later, reform the system, to actually do things that are going to be different from everything we have done in the past that has led us to this. How is it going to happen? We are going to need to have more Senators like Senator Lee, like myself, who get involved and make the case. But the only way this is really going to happen is if Hoosiers and Americans know you could never get by with this in your own household. I know I could have never built a national business by doing this over 37 years. It is like in business. People always ask you: How did you get there? I will tell you how I got there: patience, perseverance, hard work, reinvesting every penny I made, borrowing money only when it made sense. And it wasn't for a nicer corporate headquarters. My office was in a mobile home for 17 years. I appreciated low overhead. When you do things like that, great opportunities come your way. To all the people who come here from Indiana every week somehow connected with the Federal Government wanting more, my advice to them is hedge your bets. If you are dependent on an institution like this that just is so stubborn and will not correct itself, this trajectory will lead to a bad day somewhere down the road that our kids and grandkids will deal with. I think the other side of the aisle does drive a lot of this mentality that the Federal Government should do more regardless of what it costs. The income tax occurred about right back in here. That became a source of revenue for the Federal Government that we pretty well disciplined ourselves with, until we got to right here, when entitlements and the mandated spending took over the dynamic of our Federal Government. We have everything on auto pilot here where you can't even discuss it. From Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and interest on our debt to about another 10 to 15 percent that we have moved from discretionary to mandatory--another gimmick here--it is only 30 percent of the budget that we can deal with. Senator Lee talked about it. All of that we know, and all I am asking leadership and the President, when we do win in 2020--because I think we will, because anybody that is proposing ideas like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free college tuition, and getting rid of college debt is only going to add fuel to the fire--is that we as fiscal conservatives are going to have to be heard, and leadership and the President are going to have to hear us. Even though it is not going to happen this time, we shouldn't be afraid to talk about it, because everyone else in our country-- households, school boards, businesses, and State governments--does. That is because they have the common sense to live within their means, not loot the bank in the present and shovel all these troubles onto future generations. I yield the floor. (At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, it is true. I am a mainstream entrepreneur, and I have been involved with business my entire life, including the farm markets. I started a turkey farm back in 1979 from scratch, and I was involved in it for 32 years. I sold my share of it to my partner's kids and grandkids. My wife has had a business in downtown Jasper, my hometown, for years. I have been an entrepreneur. I have dealt with how hard the marketplace is even when things are going well. I stand to make the point on behalf of Hoosier farmers and businesses and to express my strong opinion that we need to get the USMCA across the finish line. This agreement is vital to secure our hard-fought market access for American agriculture. At a time when agriculture could never have more challenges, from chronically low prices to the increasing concentration among farmer-suppliers with big corporations, this is one piece of uncertainty we need to eliminate. In stressing the importance of the USMCA, I would state that despite the fact NAFTA had its faults, it was quite successful in securing markets for farmers. The USMCA is better. It provides stronger access to Canadian markets for U.S. milk, wheat, poultry, and egg products. It ensures that Hoosier wine and spirit makers are treated fairly on Canadian shelves. And it secures the Mexican market for Indiana pork, cheese, and grain. The USMCA improves on NAFTA in other areas of the economy as well. It adds modern rules for digital trade and stronger protections for American intellectual property. We know how important that is with regard to dealing with the Chinese. It contains new rules of origin that ensure more manufacturing is conducted in North America and has brand-new rules to bring more of that production back to the United States. When President Trump ran for office, he ran on a few simple things, and negotiating a NAFTA improvement was one of his core promises to the American public. At the time, Congress had two requests: Follow the guidelines from the trade promotion authority and move quickly--move quickly--to minimize uncertainty. President Trump upheld his end of the bargain. He has delivered an agreement that is better than the original NAFTA in nearly every respect. This week Congress is ready to vote, and yet we can't. Why? Because House Democrats will not bring it to the floor. Don't believe me? Look at this letter, dated July 8, from several House Democrats. They say in plain English: Do not send this agreement to the Congress. Do not send this agreement to the Congress. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter dated July 8, 2019, to Robert Lighthizer.

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, this is an outrage. We are ready to pass the USMCA. Today you will hear from Senators who support this deal. In the Senate we have more than enough votes to pass the USMCA. There is no reason to wait. The Democrats have known the contents of this deal for over 2 years. They knew the provisions offered by the United States and saw the text as it developed. Once the final text was released, the Democrats were stunned. They couldn't figure out how to oppose the USMCA. First, they argued that Mexico needed to pass its labor reforms. Mexico did so in April. Then, they moved the goalpost, arguing that labor and environmental provisions in the deal were not strong enough, even though the provisions in USMCA are substantially stronger than those in the NAFTA, an agreement that some of them supported. They still want to move the goalpost. In fact, the USMCA is the first-ever trade agreement to contain provisions requiring a minimum wage for Mexican auto workers. The Democrats still aren't happy. This time they are asking for enforcement. In response, the Mexican President issued assurances that Mexico would enforce the new labor law Democrats had demanded. But Nancy Pelosi is keeping those goalposts moving. The fact of the matter is that the Democrats are blocking USMCA because they do not want to give President Trump a win--the worst of all reasons and what makes this place so objectionable to so many people. In the meantime, NAFTA remains the law of the land. While they play their political games American workers are still competing under the old NAFTA rules. It is time for Nancy Pelosi to end these political games. We need to pass the USMCA. In closing, I simply would remind my colleagues that this trade debate is unlike any other this Chamber has ever made. The USMCA is the first-ever renegotiation of a major trade agreement. We are not talking about whether we should have an agreement with our Mexican and Canadian partners, because we already do. Instead this debate is about the future of that relationship. Do the American people want the rules in the original NAFTA or do they want the modern protections included in the USMCA? The USMCA is a substantially better agreement than NAFTA, and the American economy--Hoosiers--need these new rules so that we can move forward into the 21st century with a stronger American economy in the North American region. It is time to pass the USMCA now. I yield my time.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, Senator Grassley and I attended the rollout of President Trump's Executive order to get the healthcare industry on the move. The chairman of the Finance Committee, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and Senators like me--I am a mainstream entrepreneur--came to the Senate to discuss issues just like this. I have probably been on the floor more than any other Senator, and every time I do it, I tell the industry: Wake up. I took you on 10, 11 years ago, in my own business, to give good healthcare coverage to my employees. Year after year, it was a litany of, you are lucky your premiums are only going up 5 to 10 percent this year. You have all heard it before. It took risk, and it took some novel thinking, but it can be done. Most entrepreneurs aren't going to put the time I put into it to make it work for my own employees. When you hear Democrats, Republicans, three or four committees, and the President of the United States talking about a healthcare system that is broken, you should get it through your thick head that there need to be changes made. It shouldn't be coming from Congress, even though it will keep coming. I think the message is out loud and clear: Wake up and start fixing these things, or you are going to have a business partner whose name is Bernie Sanders and another idea of Medicare for All that we would regret once we got it. But, like most things here, like most big problems in this country, we wait too long to solve the issue. To give you a few things on what led me to be passionate about it, when I had to give up my own company's good health insurance, I had a very generic prescription that I needed to get renewed. There were eight pharmacies in the little town of Jasper, roughly, so I knew I would be able to get quotes. I had no health insurance. I was in between being a CEO of a company and a Senator. I said, I am going to try to see what this is going to be like. I knew it should cost 20 or 25 bucks, maybe a little less. The first place I called, they stumbled around and couldn't even give me a quote on a common prescription. Finally, after about 3 to 4 minutes, they said $34.50. I called another place that I thought would be a little quicker on its feet. It took 10 seconds, I got a quote for $10, and they said: By the way, you can pick it up in 10 minutes. That is more the way the rest of the economy works, but healthcare consumers have gotten used to not doing any of that heavy-lifting themselves. And believe me, the industry has evolved from Big Pharma, to big hospital chains, to the health insurance industry, which is in the middle of all of it. There are pharmacy benefit managers, and the drug companies give them $150 billion worth of rebates, and through their costs and profits, less than half of that makes it to the consumer or to the pharmacy. The case is out there. We, as Senators and Congressmen on the other side, shouldn't need to be going to the floors of our Chambers to tell you the obvious: If you don't do these things, I don't believe we here--at the speed at which we normally operate--can do it quickly enough for you to save yourselves from that other business plan, which is Medicare for All. So what do we do to prevent that? No. 1, the industry should be out there doing what all other companies do--be transparent. In any other part of our economy, where do you not ask for and have plenty of information to work with. What does it cost, and what is the quality? I know that where I live, people would drive 60 miles to save 50 bucks on a big-screen TV that costs a thousand bucks. When I instituted a plan in my own business that encouraged my employees to do that, to have skin in the game, amazing things happened. Every time you pick up the phone or get on the web and look for that comparison, it is kind of hard to find, but it is there. The industry just needs to give more of it and not hide behind a system that has benefitted them. When we created that in my own business, people shopped around for prescriptions and routinely saved 30 to 70 percent, as they do on MRIs, CAT scans, and most other procedures. I put the time and effort into it. Most CEOs--and you always hear about how employees are happy with their employer-provided insurance. That is because the employers are generally paying for anywhere from 85 to 100 percent of it. So folks working somewhere don't really have skin in the game. Consumers of healthcare need to do what they do in all other industries and in all other things that they buy--take the time to ask how much it costs, what is the quality, and then the industry get with it so that we can fix the system before the other option actually takes place. There aren't enough CEOs and there aren't enough legislators to, I think, get the industry in shape, and the industry itself knows what these problems are. Get with it before you have a different business partner whom you won't like. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

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

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I sit here every Thursday from 3 o'clock to 6 o'clock and hear several speeches that are made. I happen to sit on the Budget Committee with Chairman Enzi. I hope everyone listened carefully to what he just said. The Comptroller General was in yesterday. One of the reasons I ran for Senate is that being a Main Street entrepreneur from Indiana, you never could have gotten by with the way this place runs its business. The Federal Government is somewhere around six to seven times the size of Walmart and runs its business by the seat of its pants, in the sense that we have not done a budget that we have appropriated in nearly 20 years. If you listened closely, you know we have some hard deadlines. The chairman referred to it as cliffs. Well, sometimes that is so figurative that you don't believe it is going to happen or that it is going to be real. These are things we are going to have to contend with. When the Medicare fund is depleted fully in 2026, benefits get cut immediately. Social Security is farther down the trail, and there are going to be all kinds of issues. We are lucky, currently, that other countries and our own citizens will lend us money when we run trillion- dollar deficits routinely. He mentioned the ``Penny Plan.'' In any business, if you were charged with fixing your company's problems by cutting back by either freezing expenses by a 1-percent cut or a 2-percent cut, that would be done easily because you have hard accountability. If you would perform in a business or a State government like we do here, I can guarantee you there wouldn't be a lender that would let you perpetuate and keep doing it. The fact that we have a credit card that we can put it on year after year eliminates the accountability that you have anywhere else. I was on a school board for 10 years. I was in State government in Indiana, where we always have a cash balance and operate in the black and have a balanced budget. Even though we do that so routinely there, we passed a balanced budget amendment to our State constitution simply because government, even in a place like Indiana, oftentimes views how they spend the people's money different, and this place does it worse than any other place in the country. So do we want to get to the point where we deplete the Medicare trust fund and where we run out of funds to pay pensioners or do we want to make the hard decisions? It is funny. When I got here, I looked at the budget process. Budgets, even though they are not adhered to, might be a resolution, and it is not the law. Always, even if they do incorporate savings, you never see it until year 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. Well, again, in the real world, if you are running at a 20-percent loss on your P&L, you do not have the luxury to wait 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 years to fix it. I ask the American public to hold their Senators accountable and their congressmen, because this time, unlike in 2008, which we all know was bad enough, the main people holding the bag will be retirees and the elderly who depend on the government for healthcare, and individuals who depend on healthcare who are not well to do, through Medicaid, will be left holding the bag. Only 22 Republicans--it should have been all 53 of us who were on the Penny Plan bill that Senator Paul put out just a few weeks ago, but only 22 of our own conference, which talks about fiscal conservatism-- got on that bill. I would hope that the American public holds their representatives accountable so that we don't hit the cliff and go over it and pay the consequences, which will be dear. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, my hometown of Jasper, IN, sits in the county with the most veterans per capita in the State. My father was a tail gunner on a B-17 himself, and I will never forget the lesson he and my community impressed upon me of honoring those who have served so effortlessly and selflessly. Providing for the health and well-being of the men and women who have sacrificed so much for our country is the least we can do, and it ought to be one of the things we can all agree on in this Chamber. When the Trump administration took over, the VA had been in dire straits for many years. The passage of the MISSION Act represented a great stride toward improving access to quality healthcare services for our vets and, especially, a great step for Hoosier veterans. A few of the valuable provisions for Hoosier veterans in the MISSION Act include these: replacing the mileage requirement with a drive time requirement; greatly expanding access to care for Hoosier veterans who report to VA hospitals in bigger cities like Chicago, Indianapolis, Louisville, and Cincinnati; reducing the maximum wait times and reducing the strain on smaller VA facilities that may not have the resources or specialties available to serve patients in a timely manner; implementing a new urgent care benefit so veterans can now utilize urgent care and walk-in facilities from providers in the VA network without prior authorization; and a big win for access to care for Hoosier vets, allowing veterans to seek out community care if the VA medical service line is unable to meet quality standards. Before this legislation, Hoosier veterans not receiving proper care would have nowhere else to turn. The MISSION Act offers Hoosier veterans better choices, better access, and better care. As we reflect on the sacrifice of our servicemen and servicewomen this upcoming Fourth of July season, we must also remember our commitment to them once they return from the field of battle. We have made great strides in improving access and quality for veteran care in the last 2 years, and the MISSION Act is a big win for Hoosiers and all American veterans. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I rise today to celebrate the talent and steadfast dedication of Purdue University's All-American Marching Band, which will be performing for the 100th time at the 103rd Running of the Indy 500. Every year, the ``Greatest Spectacle in Racing'' attracts hundreds of thousands of fans to our State's capital. Throughout the last century, Purdue University's marching band has become an indispensable part of the annual festivities with their highly anticipated performance of traditional Indy 500 songs and other popular hits. I commend the efforts and hard work put forth by the band's nearly 300 members. Their dedication in rehearsal is sure to pay off when they take to the famed Indy Motor Speedway this Sunday, welcoming spectators from around the world with familiar favorites, including the now customary performance of the classic ``Back Home Again in Indiana.'' I especially commend the Purdue University marching band directors, past and present, whose work make this tradition possible. This year, the band will be led by the acclaimed Hoosier, Jay Gephart, professor of music, and Al Wright, chair director of bands and orchestras at Purdue University. I am sure that under his direction, the All-American band will do Indiana proud. I also recognize Purdue University's first marching band director, the late Paul Spotts Emrick, who initially forged the relationship between the University and the speedway. He directed Purdue's first performance at the famed 500-mile race in 1919, 100 years ago. I applaud Purdue University's marching band for each year dedicating themselves to sharing our Hoosier traditions and heritage with millions of viewers around the world. I extend my thanks to all who ensure that the tradition endures, and I look forward to another great performance this weekend from the Boilermakers. Go Boilers. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, I was asked to bat cleanup on National Small Business Week for our conference. I have been a Main Street entrepreneur my entire life. My wife and I moved back to our hometown in 1978. She will celebrate her 41st anniversary this September with her only job--a business in our downtown selling home accessories and gifts. I am very proud of you, Maureen. Three years later, I had my opportunity to stake out my attempt at being an entrepreneur. As Senator Scott mentioned, it is fraught with pitfalls. There is no guarantee, when you stick your neck out and want to do some enterprise--no guarantee it is going to turn out. What a thrill it is, though, when it does, and it is what drives our great country. Enterprise in this country, from its foundation, was built upon small businesses. We have over 500,000 of them in Indiana. Those businesses created over 38,000 new jobs in the last year, but things aren't as good as they could be because as much as the tax reform did for securing the future of small business, it is not permanent. We need to make sure that is done sometime before 2025. Manufacturing--the biggest business in Indiana since the Trump economy has created the hottest context for business, small, medium or large. Six times more jobs in President Trump's 2 years have been created in manufacturing than the last 2 years of the prior administration. Sometimes a little business can get lucky and become a medium-size business and a large business. Mine followed that pathway. I will give you a little detail on that in a moment. McDonald's started with one location. This summer they will add, in the State of Indiana, 11,000 summer jobs. International companies even come to the State of Indiana because our door is open and what a great place to have a small, medium, or large business. Saab will add a $25 million investment in West Lafayette that will create 200 great-paying jobs. Now back to my story. We raised a family, and I had the chance to start my business. In 17 years, it never got beyond 15 employees. That is the number of employees I started with in 1981 and that is what I had in 1998. Perseverance, patience, reinvesting, keeping a low overhead so you can get through the scrapes that inevitably will come in an economy, and someday your day of opportunity will arise. In the darkest hours of the great recession, when our industry shrunk by over 50 percent literally overnight, every asset I owned was a piece of commercial real estate--a warehouse. Everything I sold was an unnecessary want, not a need--auto and truck accessories. I wondered, what did the future hold? Well, the future held the greatest opportunity I could have ever imagined because I lived my life in a way that set the stage for opportunity. I make that point because we are not doing it in this institution. We have set ourselves up to ruin a lot of the good things that are occurring from decades and decades ago to the present if we don't get our house in order. The institution of the Federal Government should be the pride of our country. Running $850 billion deficits and $22 trillion in debt, that doesn't bode well for any of us. But the good news is, if we keep this economy going, I think it can go decades into the future, where we keep creating jobs and raising wages like have never been done before. But I mentioned earlier that some of us turn them into medium-size businesses and larger businesses, and so often, what got you there, you forget about. I tell folks all the time: It doesn't matter what size business you have, if you are successful, share those benefits with your employees. Raise benefits through your 401(k) plan. Lower healthcare costs if you can, and certainly raise wages. Make sure people look to the real world for what means the most and not to government. If you look to government, especially the Federal Government, you are going to be disappointed. The action in our country is on Main Streets in towns and cities across the country in our States. My parting comments: The biggest companies in this country sometimes, in my opinion, behave most poorly. I am going to talk about two--Big Ag and Big Healthcare. I took on the healthcare issue 10 years ago in my own company. Nobody should go broke because they get sick or have a bad accident. All small businesses want to offer good healthcare to their employees but can't. Why? Because the industry has gotten concentrated with huge corporations, from pharma to hospitals across the board and health insurance companies, which I had to tangle with. I ask you to get with it, be transparent, and be competitive so you don't have a business partner that may only be the Federal Government down the road. Big Agriculture--I want to end with this because in Joni's State, a high percentage of small businesses are farmers. Farmers take on the most difficult task of any business in our country--the weather, a high amount of assets for the income they generate. They have regulations like waters of the United States--great intentions but overbearing. There are farmers who now worry about ditch maintenance because ditches that don't have water in them most of the year are now considered waters of the United States. We have to get a better balance to where we have good regulations and not overbearing regulations. I am asking folks in this Chamber, in this Congress, to look to get this house in order, and I am asking Big Industry--big companies in the agricultural arena and in the healthcare arena--to get their act in order so the doctors who participate within healthcare and the farmers who participate within agriculture can make an honest living. They are all small businesses, and small businesses drive this country. Thank you.

Mr. BRAUN

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

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Ernst for allowing me the opportunity to talk about opportunity zones. So much has happened since President Trump has been elected that I think has brought opportunity. The economy is obviously booming. In the State of Indiana, for instance, we have 156 opportunity zones in 83 different cities and 58 counties. That is a lot in one State. This is investment into these areas that need jobs. Capital investment is hard to measure. Thank goodness it has come along and has been an opportunity that we in the Hoosier State have taken advantage of. We are one of the lowest unemployment States in the Union. I am from Dubois County, from the town of Jasper, which supports the lowest unemployment rates in our State--a State of enterprise, a State of commerce. Workforce development is probably the most critical issue that faces our State, but we do a lot of other things well. We live within our means. We addressed infrastructure back in 2017 by repairing roads and bridges and by doing a lot of things well. We have 80,000 jobs in our State that need one simple thing, and that is proper training. When I went to school back in the seventies--it dates me a little bit--I took industrial arts. You had a shop class. You had a welding class. You had practical training that led you into good-paying jobs. Somewhere along the way, we kind of almost stigmatized that pathway called career and technical education. We have schools like Ivy Tech. When I was a State legislator, there were 19 different programs, and we were spending nearly $1 billion a year, but we were not providing proper training for high-demand, high-wage jobs. In our State, we are shipping out twice as many 4-year degrees as we use. Something is not right. I just spoke with an online college, which is another issue I want to mention. The cost of these 4-year degrees has gotten way out of hand. Many graduates spend $80,000, $90,000, $100,000. They take on that debt and have jobs that are not marketable. We need to pay attention to the simple things that most States need by reorienting the focus of education and providing proper training for jobs that in many cases pay more than 4-year degrees, those that start in the neighborhood of $40,000 to $60,000 and have good benefits and potential wages of over $100,000 a year. In our State and in most States across the country, those are the jobs that need to be filled. In my own company, 80 jobs can't be filled because, really, there needs to be a better curriculum at the high school level, one from which you get basic skills taught rather than the misguided approach of overemphasizing 4-year degrees. There is nothing wrong with that, and everyone should aspire to that, but the market doesn't necessarily need it. It will pay more for a lot less education, and you will not be walking away with the debt that so many students do in this day and age. Tax reform then came along. As a business owner, I can clearly say that there has been nothing in the 38 years of building a little Main Street business into a national company that has catapulted our ability to do more for our employees than what has happened with tax reform. An opportunity zone is a great idea. We need to have more of it, and we need to make sure this institution starts to set an example across this country whereby we live within our means and not create $850 billion deficits annually on top of $22 trillion of debt. We all know that is going to lead us nowhere other than into despair down the road. Again, I am here to tout what tax relief and the JOBS Act did, as well as opportunity zones, which we have run with in the Hoosier State. We also need to fix a few things, like matching training and education with high-demand, high-wage jobs. If we do that across the country, I think we will be into decades of prosperity that will prevent us from maybe going down that trail of some of the things we have heard about recently, like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and a lot of things that we know we can't afford and that will not work. Thank you.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, you just heard the story from Senator Young. He had the benefit of knowing Richard Lugar more recently. My story is a little different. I am going to have to think back to 45 years ago. I was between my sophomore and junior years at Wabash College. I never knew I had an interest in politics, let alone that someday I would be serving in the Lugar seat. How life drives you in certain directions. I remember that Richard Lugar took on Senator Birch Bayh, who I think had served several terms--he recently passed away himself, another icon of Hoosier politics--and I said that I wanted to get involved. When you have a man like Richard Lugar, who took a risk, stuck his neck out to run for mayor after he had been on a school board--ironically, I was on a school board for 10 years when I decided to stick my neck out to run for State legislator--you think back about how life drives you in certain directions. With Richard Lugar, most notably, during his entire life, he lived with character and integrity. I think back to when I first met him. I was dressed in a white turtleneck with a blue blazer and plaid pants. Wow, I can't believe we even dressed that way back in the seventies. I found those pictures stored away in a box about 4 or 5 years ago. I pulled them out, and my high school sweetheart, my wife now--she and I were looking at Dick as he was preparing to run for Senate. The look on our faces, looking into the face of someone with his stature, really stood out. When you get this far down the trail, I get asked: Who were your mentors who got you to run for school board, State rep, and then the Senate? Mostly, it would have been my parents and my community. I say that often. But if there was one politician I would have looked up to, even when I wasn't certain I ever wanted to get involved in politics at all, I would look back to that year, back in the midseventies, when I decided to do it. He was in the Senate for a long time. During the entirety of his terms, he always did it to where, as a Hoosier and as an American, you were proud of him. The thing he did as well as anyone is that he was able to look across the aisle in times when we were less polarized. Now, I think that trait, more than ever, would be something we need to pay attention to. When you close the chapter on one individual's life, one whose life was as exemplary as Richard Lugar's, it should mostly be inspiration for others to follow in his footsteps. I know in the State of Indiana--in an op-ed that was just put out by an individual, it cites Richard Lugar as the most important public servant ever to come from our State. Gosh, I think you would have to say there was a lot of credibility to push that point of view. All I can tell you is that for the time I am here in the Lugar seat, I intend to do what he did. On things he knew a little something about, he stuck his neck out, made a statement, and he led. In the entirety of his career here in the Senate, he was impeccable in his integrity and character. Gosh, we could sure use a good dose of that in this day and age. It is an honor for me to be serving in his seat, and I hope to do even half as good a job in my stint here as he did over many, many years. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following letter be printed in the Congressional Record.