Mike Braun

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I rise this evening to recognize the 50- year anniversary of Vincennes University Jasper Campus. Vincennes University was founded in 1801 as part of the Northwest Territory back then that would later become the State of Indiana. For over 200 years, Vincennes University has been a premier institution of higher learning for those seeking knowledge in manufacturing, logistics, aviation, and other important fields of study. In 1970, when I was a mere junior in high school, this university expanded and established a new campus in my hometown. With open enrollment and concentrating on jobs with fields where there were employee shortages, Vincennes University Jasper Campus is providing opportunities for all Hoosiers to add new skills to their resume that will ultimately lead to good-paying jobs, mostly right there in Indiana. Notably, with their partnership with Purdue University, this campus provides low-income students or those in need of remedial coursework with a stepping stone to one of the Nation's top engineering schools. I have to admit, VU Jasper Campus holds a special place in my heart. At the company I founded in the early eighties, we use this as an excellent source of recruiting people into our own company who generally come there fully skilled, ready to go, and generally end up sticking with the job, which is great. As a Jasper native, I have seen firsthand what an asset this campus has been to our community and the economic benefit it has added to Dubois and surrounding counties. We are lucky to have VU in Jasper, and I am happy to be here on the floor of the U.S. Senate to celebrate with them on their golden anniversary. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Just 5 months ago, we had the hottest economy in 37 years. Running a business--starting it from Main Street as a little company-- it was lucky enough to grow over those 37 years. Three of my four kids run it now. The reason I ran for the Senate was to make sure we had that kind of atmosphere in place for the productive economy, the enterprising, the hard-working Americans who work at companies on Main Street. Since COVID arrived, of course, it shocked us all. We know it is a tricky foe. It has peculiarities. Yet the one thing that is certain is that we need to get back to the economy that was raising wages for those most in need, was doing it in a real way, and not through government. Yes, government needs to get involved now and then, and this was the case. Like the Senator from Wisconsin stated, we moved quickly, and we did something. What I see on the other side of the aisle, with this monstrosity of $3.5 trillion, is an effort beyond just addressing the displacement from COVID-19. I see it as an effort to try to replace Main Street and the productive economy. It doesn't work through here, and we should have never, back in late March, had something that would have incentivized not working. Of course, we tried to fix it, but friends on the other side of the aisle did not agree with us. If we want to get back to some form of a new normal--sooner or later, when we whip this foe, COVID-19--and back to what it was before, we can't do it through government. When you look at not only this bill they have but at the other stuff that we need to keep in mind in leading up to the election, we cannot afford it, and it doesn't make sense. It is replacing enterprisers, Main Street--everything that makes this country great--with a bloated Federal Government. When I heard that this bill was out there--coming from a quick-footed entrepreneur now here in the Senate--I didn't hesitate at all to get on it. We need to do this because we need to cut to the chase. We have hard-working Americans who are still unemployed. They have gotten displaced out of that great economy. This takes care of that without putting into place something that is so broad, so expansive, and that does not address the essence of what is at issue here. It makes sure there is a pathway so that we can get back to that Trump economy--that economy which was working more for everyone than at any time ever before. Don't ask people who have been here in the business of government. Why don't you ask people who have been running businesses, who have been on Main Street, who have been doing it? That is why we need to get this across the finish line. It addresses the key thing that we need to do transitionally so that we may get back to where Main Street and the real economy are running things and where there is not an attempt by the other side to replace what has been making the economy work. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, Senator Grassley and I share a passion that I think most Americans do in that it is time that we end this stranglehold that the healthcare industry has on all of us because they pose as free enterprisers, but there is nothing free about the way they actually operate. ``Free enterprise'' means you embrace competition. You are not putting up barriers to entry. You engage the consumer so that they can see what you are charging them. That does not occur. The alternative will be as clear on the other side of the aisle; they want to make government the business partner of healthcare. If the industry doesn't get with it and start doing what all the rest of us do when we go to the marketplace--embrace competition, be willing to compete, don't ask for barriers to entry, and, yes, we tell the customer what we charge them before they buy it. That doesn't happen in healthcare. The market is opaque and complex. There is nothing free about it, except that drugmakers are free to charge whatever they want. The market is dependent on government-sanctioned rebates and monopolies by the FDA exclusivities and patent abuse. It is time to fix this. PBM may not mean much to the public, but it stands for pharmacy benefit managers. This is a structure of middleman that is not present in other industries. Normally, with transparency, prices cascade down through the system in a way that everybody can see it, and the successful survivors in that industry have performed because they give good value to their customers; they keep their overhead low; and they earn the business. PBMs use techniques like spread pricing. Normally, there is a spread--you buy it for this and sell it for that--but not where people can't see it. It is time that we get away from this complexity and the opaqueness of it because the day of reckoning will come, and the day of reckoning is not too far away. I recently came from the business world. No one likes the healthcare industry other than the CEOs and owners of these businesses. All of us who have to deal with them are just asking for that one simple thing: Show us what things cost. Quit hiding it. Insurance companies have these secret deals with hospitals, with pharma, and it is starting to cost too much. It shows up in the fact that it is nearly 20 percent of our GDP in the United States, and it costs almost half of that in most other developed countries. The sad thing is, the results aren't any better. In many cases, the results are better at a price that is half the cost. Both Chairman Grassley and I have talked with President Trump. President Trump has been the most vocal individual in DC about trying to get the industry to work like the rest of us entrepreneurs do. Every time he has an Executive order, they take him to court. That is ending because just recently the hospitals tried that, and the district court overturned it. They will probably appeal it, and, hopefully, the appellate court will overturn it. I have a transparency bill which is as simple as: Show us what you are charging us before we engage your service. Mr. Grassley has the same thing basically on drug pricing. Let me tell you how that works. This is a real live experiment that I put into place 12 years ago. I was so sick and tired of the insurance agents coming in and telling me how lucky I was that it was only going up 5 to 10 percent this year. I didn't think I was very lucky. My company wasn't large enough to spend a lot of time on it. When we got to be 300 employees, that starts to add up. Now we have 1,000 employees. Thank goodness my kids have to deal with that with a good, young executive team, but I put something in place 12 years ago that I am proud of. I said enough was enough. What do we have that is really going to change the dynamic? You have to remember, this is 12 years ago--talk about trying to find transparency then. We were lucky that we were large enough to self-insure. By doing that, we probably saved close to 25 percent, and by engaging our employees in their own well-being and incentivizing them to shop around to enable their ability to find better prices, it was even there if you looked for it hard back then. Long story short, we have not had a premium increase at my company in 12 years. I am proud of that. We covered preexisting conditions with no caps on coverage because we took a radical change to how healthcare should be bought by the consumer, the employer, and forced the transparency out of a system that wasn't giving much of it then. Now there is more transparency, but it is just on the fringes. If you get that to happen, prices will cascade down through the system. President Trump had another Executive order for pharma--all these expensive drugs you see advertised--to put the price along with the advertisement. A lot of times it is deceptive--you can get it for as little as $5 a month. Well, somebody is paying for that $60,000 or $70,000 drug. Generally, it is the employer, and the employee some of it, but it is, again, due to the fact that we can't see anything. Americans are blindfolded from prices, only to receive medical bills, often, that arrive 2 months later. They have no idea, and they open up the envelope with trepidation. Oh my goodness. It wasn't what I thought it would be. More often than not, it is: Oh, my gosh. This is terrible. It has got to end. It would be different if we were asking for something that is radical. What we are asking for is tell us what you are charging us before we have to engage your services. That is why it is so important. The White House is behind it. Hopefully, the other side of the aisle will get behind it. Support Chairman Grassley's bill, the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act, and support my bill, the Healthcare Price Transparency Act. The story I told you about my own company would happen across the country, and we wouldn't be complaining about these surprise billings. We wouldn't be holding our breath. We would simply be doing what all educated consumers do when they go to buy from a truly free enterprise. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I am a Main Street entrepreneur. I have spent my career building a little business into a large one over many years in my hometown. My wife, as well, has operated a home accessory and gift store on Main Street, literally. I am elated to see the American economy starting to get off to a smart restart. I addressed, in a couple of floor speeches before we left in March, the question of how to reopen our economy. I believe businesses are disciplined and ready to pay attention to the rules--the new normal--to make sure their employees and their customers stay safe. Business owners will follow the rules. It is in their own best interests to do so. They have much to lose from a new spike in the coronavirus. Businesses are always more adept, more agile than government, and I am heartened to see the innovative approaches many businesses are taking across our country to address this challenge. The virus does not affect all populations, industries, and areas of our country in the same way. So, naturally, the reopening in Indianapolis will be different from that on Main Street in Jasper, IN. We should remember that although this presents challenges, a one- size-fits-all is rarely the best policy course of action, and decisions that affect citizens are best made by the level of government closest to them--mayors, town councils, and State governments. We cannot use the blanket approach the government took in shutting down the economy to reopen it. Instead, we need to provide the tools to empower local leaders and businesses who know their communities best to reopen safely so that our country can function again. I believe that through the perseverance and innovation that American business has always exhibited, we can get our economy back on the path to recent heights without yielding back any territory to the virus. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, this may be a rare moment of some collegiality on the idea in general. I think the American public and, especially, I, who is one who has watched this place operate for so many years in my leading up to the point when I ran for the Senate, accept the kind of guidance that there may need to be more fleshed out, and the Senator objected to it. Yet I think the American public deserves action out of this place, and so often it seems we dawdle and do not get to the point. Look at how long it took the body to come to an agreement on criminal justice reform. One of the first questions I asked when I got here was, How long have you been working on it? The answer--10 to 12 years. When you look at what we do get accomplished here, I think we need to figure out how we become more effective, how we get things done more quickly, and how we pay for it in the long run. So I am going to savor the moment we have here. We are at least talking about it. Hopefully, we will be able to work with my neighbor from Illinois to still push the idea that this is a critical time and that we need to get something done. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, I object, but my colleague from Illinois is not wrong. I think after I get through explaining my objection, hopefully, there will be something we can work out. The United States should be engaging more in global efforts to find treatments and vaccines for coronavirus. Governments, academic institutions, scientists, researchers across the world are racing to do it. The United States must work at home and with international partners to develop treatments and vaccines. There is no reason we can't be doing something on our own and working with others across the world. This is a joint venture, if there ever has been one. However, the nonbinding resolution that my colleague has offered is not an actual solution. I come from the world--and one of the frustrations for being here for just a year and a half is that we don't get more stuff across the finish line. I have a real solution to ensure Americans benefit from the vaccine and treatment development efforts happening across the world. My bill, the ADAPT Act, S. 658, as amended, would create an expedited, almost automatic approval process at the FDA for vaccines and treatments that might occur across the world. We do not have the market cornered on good ideas. These countries have all developed regulatory systems that are compatible and that should make us feel comfortable. But instead of just talking about it, which we do so much of here, this bill would actually establish the approval reciprocity for treatments and vaccines between the FDA and other trusted counterparts. If one of them approves a vaccine or treatment, they are quickly, almost automatically, approved here in the United States with my bill. We cannot afford miscommunication or bureaucratic foot-dragging with something so important. My bill ensures that regulators will work proactively to get Americans a vaccine as soon as possible. Look at the early testing missteps we did have with the CDC. I mentioned that in the briefing last Tuesday. Their overly proscriptive approach delayed our testing capability for the first 40 days. The result has been a one-size-fits-all approach of locking down the economy, which I think we will see some of the disadvantages of that over the next few months. When my staff talked with the FDA about working with international partners on treatment and vaccine development, the FDA assured them that they have everything under control and are speaking with their international counterparts. The FDA assured my staff that they have covered the issues that might come into play when you are having a partnership with somebody else. The FDA is promoting the idea and having the doors open for developers to submit data and to seek approval for treatments and vaccines Until we have a vaccine, reopening will be gradual. We need herd immunity and vaccines to be the final solution to this saga we are going through, but we cannot afford bureaucratic obstacles slowing down regulatory approvals for a successful vaccine. As we have seen, certain steps of vaccine development can be achieved at warp speed to cut down on development time, but regulatory approvals will not be one of them unless we take legislative action. The ADAPT Act is real action, not just talk, specifically designed for times like this when scientists across the world are racing to develop treatments and vaccines. Therefore, with my prior objection, I do not want to leave my friend from Illinois emptyhanded. Madam President, in hoping my colleague from Illinois will not object, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of S. 658 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the Braun substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Ernst for that beautiful testimony to Senator Tom Coburn. While I was running for Senate, I was often asked who my heroes were in the U.S. Senate. The first name that always came to mind was Dr. Tom Coburn. As a legislator, Dr. Coburn was a force of nature. As a conservative stalwart who stood by his principles--no matter the pressure--and with whomever would stand with him, regardless of party, Dr. Coburn's entire career was a profile in courage. He believed so strongly that America's best wisdom wasn't held on Wall Street or Pennsylvania Avenue but on Main Street, among the small business owners, doctors, families, and workers who really keep our country going. Dr. Coburn blasted a path for conservative outsiders to take on Washington orthodoxy on everything from national debt to term limits, to our broken healthcare system, and his career was an inspiration for me to leave my business and run for the Senate. His bedside manner was often brusque, but on the tough issues, like any good doctor, Tom Coburn told people what they needed to hear, not what they wanted to hear. To Dr. Tom Coburn, our towering national debt was not just a thorn in America's side; it was a supreme moral failing. As one of the few true fiscal hawks in recent decades, Senator Coburn wore the nickname ``Dr. No'' as a badge of courage, understanding that there is nothing commendable about spending our grandchildren's money just because we will not be at the table when the bill comes due. If there is one thing that could fix Washington more than any other, it is strict term limits and more accountability for Congress. Inspired by Dr. Coburn, I made my pledge to only serve two terms a fixture of my campaign and am following his example by refusing to accept a congressional pension when I leave. Last year, my bill to make pensions for Congress optional passed the Senate, putting us one step closer to getting rid of this outdated, taxpayer-funded perk altogether. No Budget, No Pay, a bill Dr. Coburn championed in the Senate, was the first bill I introduced after taking office. It is a simple measure: Congress doesn't need a paycheck until they pass a budget. I am proud to say it has now cleared committee thanks to the work from fellow conservative outsiders like Senator Rick Scott and David Perdue. As a family physician who continued to see patients even as he served in Congress, Dr. Coburn always had a special passion for fixing our broken healthcare system. He understood better than anyone that our healthcare woes began at a fundamentally broken system in need of transparency, more choice for patients, and market-driven reforms to put decision-making back into the hands of Americans and their care providers. My bills to lower prescription drug prices and ensure every patient knows what they have to pay before they pay it were introduced with invaluable input from Dr. Coburn. As we all should, he recognized that, no matter how vast the distance between our positions seems to be, healthcare is and always should be a bipartisan issue where compromise is necessary to help patients. In the summer of 2018, I was honored that Dr. Coburn came to Indiana to campaign with me. I will never forget what he said to a young man from the crowd at one of our events. ``What can I do now if I want to be a Senator someday?'' Dr. Coburn didn't tell him to go to law school. He didn't tell him to run for office or intern in a congressional office. ``Go work really hard at something for 40 years so you have something to say when you get there.'' I loved it. Dr. Coburn ushered in the era of the outsider in Washington, the effects of which are only just now beginning to be realized. I think we could get a much better product out of DC with more people like him whose beliefs come from a deep well of real-world experience. He was more than just an inspiration for me and other conservatives to leave the private sector and shake up business as usual in DC. He was one of the greatest Senators, most effective problem-solvers, and most important conservative voices of our time--the great outsider. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, in reserving the right to object, in my mind, the argument that the White House and the task force have not been transparent is a faux argument by the minority leader. He is really trying to let career regulators at agencies like the CDC bog down the economy again with bureaucratic hurdles. I probably know that as well as any Senator here because, 12 years ago, I fought to reform healthcare and its related agencies that bogged the system down--a system that has given us healthcare costs that are double that of any other across the country. We will get back to that, but 80 Senators on both sides of the aisle weighed in on that before the coronavirus raised its ugly head. The White House and the task force have been beyond transparent in the midst of this outbreak, indeed, in its holding an unprecedented number of daily press briefings and in its allowing for a free flow of information that has been central to the White House's reopening efforts. This is not about transparency, and the White House is always going to be in favor of transparency. The President comes from a world of entrepreneurs, one in which we embrace competition. This is about the minority leader's trying to use the bureaucracy at the CDC to bog down the economy. From this point forward, we have to make sure that we adhere to everything the healthcare experts have told us, but we have to be able to do a couple of things at once, which means having a smart restart to the economy. The CDC and other health agencies were targets of the White House's deregulation efforts from day one, and they were the most challenging regulatory agencies to rein in. The Democrats and the bureaucrats, who are content with the status quo, have been blocking efforts to deregulate since President Trump took office. How can we do that when decades have brought us to the point at which the healthcare system, in general, doesn't make sense to a mainstream entrepreneur like me, who has found that a different dynamic works? The CDC, for example, was in the driver's seat during the initial stages of the outbreak. Its missteps on testing forced us to take a one-size- fits-all approach, which didn't make sense to many of us. We could have handled this in a way so as not to have now put us on the precipice of there being an even greater calamity. The inability to conduct early and wide testing in the United States, caused by the CDC's and FDA's overly prescriptive stodginess, prolonged the testing process in the early stages when it should have been expedited. The result has been one-size-fits-all, which we are contending with currently. Thanks to the White House's efforts to fight off the regulatory swamp at the CDC and its efforts to fix the testing problems caused by regulators, we now lead the world in testing. Yesterday, I submitted for the Record, from that over 2-hour briefing with the healthcare experts, that timeline referred to. It happened from late January through early March. Senator Schumer wants to release the CDC's version of the reopening guidance, but the White House and senior health officials rejected the initial CDC recommendations in that version because the recommendations were overly proscriptive, infringed upon religious rights, and risked further damaging the economy. Are we really going to let the CDC shutter the economy for a second time, like it did with testing, by its dictating overly proscriptive guidelines? President Trump's deregulatory agenda has proven to be an immediate success because we have gone from being initially mired in bureaucratic hurdles to our leading the world in testing and successfully flattening the curve and fighting the virus. I spoke to a CEO of a pharmaceutical company, which is headquartered in Indiana, who said the very same thing. It was stymied from the get- go. It, among other pharmaceutical companies, has put together an entrepreneurial effort to tackle this. It is not going to be done by trying to tie its hands. It is close to getting testing where it is going to work for all of us. I have a business that three of my four kids run. We want to make sure we have testing to make sure that we can bring employees into a healthy environment and take care of customers. All businesses share that concern. The minority leader and Democrats do not want to reopen the economy because, I think, frankly, we had the best one I have ever seen, in the 37 years I was the CEO of a Main Street company, that went from a little company like the minority leader always talks about. We share that interest. I was disappointed when the PPP did come out that they weren't helped first. We got that fixed. Let's stay focused on that. We keep moving the goalposts for reopening. If we do that, we risk, in economic terms, what is called demand and supply destruction, and there would not be enough Federal dollars to remedy that. The White House proactively gave us the appropriate roadmap to get the economy back on track. We should not leave something as important as reopening the country to career regulators at the CDC, an agency that set back our response efforts due to their overly prescriptive approach. U.S. testing exploded once the White House's efforts to increase testing and fight off the regulatory bureaucrats won out. The same thing will happen with reopening the economy, using the reopening guidance as a roadmap under the President's leadership. I object.

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 and recognize the life and contributions of Mr. Jim Cummings to the countless Hoosiers whose lives he touched over nine decades. Jim was a giant in Indiana. His long and rich life left many indelible marks on our State. We look to people like Jim Cummings as an example of a life well lived in service to others. His role in founding the Indiana Black Expo in 1970 made him a leader to all Hoosiers during a time of great change in our State and our Nation. As a lifelong servant to those in his State and community, his dedication to conservative principles guided his thoughts and actions for many years. His life of service extended beyond his work with the Indiana Black Expo. It included serving his community in public office on a number of boards in Indianapolis and working as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Ronald Reagan. Indiana has lost one of its most distinguished Hoosiers of this generation. The Cummings family has lost a father, a grandfather, and a great- grandfather. I join them in mourning the loss of Jim Cummings. In closing, I personally thank the Cummings family for the vast contributions he made to Indianapolis and the Hoosier State. Both are better because of him. On behalf of me and Maureen, my wife, we extend our sincere condolences to all of his family and friends at this time.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BRAUN

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

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I have been here a little over a year. I keep mentioning that often because what a year it has been. In that stretch, there has not been a period of time when I think there has been so much urgency for us as a Senate and for the other Chamber to do our job to deliver for the American people. We are in the midst of a crisis. In building a business over 37, 38 years, you constantly have hurdles to jump. You never really know the clear outcome. You try to have a great strategy with good implementation and good tactics that will be your salvation through thick or thin. When it comes to the coronavirus, it is not as though we haven't had other recent issues but nothing quite like this. It started in another country. It has gone across the world, and it now looks like that vector in our country--we may be dealing with it on a broader scale. I am a guy who believes in free enterprise. I don't like it when government has to step in, but I don't know what we would have done otherwise in this case. Until we tamp the disease down, until we get that curve flattened, no one is going to be at ease. We have invested 3, 4 weeks of actual guidelines. We knew it was coming way before that. I am hopeful that we have been doing a lot of the right things even before we were required to do them. We can't relent on that course. On the other hand, never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined an economy could be affected as it has. I get stories from my home State of Indiana all the time, and not only from the places like hotels, restaurants, bars, and airlines. I think our senior Senator, who actually either went home or came out here, might have been the only person on the plane. That is a graphic example of how this is impacting commerce. The hotel owner I talked to had 2 percent occupancy in the week before. So, we have come together. This past weekend, we worked through it. I think that is the first time since I have been here that on a legislative matter we have done that. We had Democrats and Republicans at the grassroots level working to deliver what I think is a good package. It focuses on, No. 1, who needs it the most--workers who have been displaced and small business owners. It also has stuff in it for the broader part of the economy. Urgency is the key. We are working through, right now, some short-term corrections, and I hope that doesn't thwart the process. We should have had this across the finish line Sunday evening to where it could have been delivered on Monday morning, and we wouldn't still have the Nation on high alert about what we are going to do here. And it can only come from here in this case. I am going to segue into--we need to get that done today, and I am going to be for it. Each State, each Senator, and each Representative is going to have to deliver to the small business owners, the individuals who have been displaced by this. I have a team back in Indiana that is taking on a big spectrum of casework. I invite you, when this legislation gets across the finish line, to make sure you reach out to our office. Many of our cases, regrettably, have been along the lines of helping folks interface with the VA. Sadly, I wish there were fewer of them, but we have had really good luck. We interfaced when a cruise ship had Hoosiers stranded, and we were able to follow up on the process to make sure they came back. We are currently dealing with cases where people are stranded overseas. Whatever it is, come to our Senate office. We have a great team, and they have helped out a lot of Hoosiers already. I want to end on a positive note. I think this has the country down because everything you see is in the context of negativity. I like the fact that, aspirationally, many are already talking about what we are going to do when we come out of it, and through prayers and through all the stuff Americans and Hoosiers have done, I think we are going to see that curve start to flatten I like the approach we have taken to put the emphasis on the disease, because, until those numbers go down, no one is going to be at ease. So, as we look to the future--Monday was that first threshold, 15 days--we need to recess, take all the information we have gained and gathered, and make the right decisions going forward. I trust our Governors and our local governments across the country to do the same thing. We will come out ahead. We are going to flatten the curve and make sure that we are taking care of the most important thing first, and I think that is going to be here, hopefully, sooner rather than later. And then we also need to be aspirational about what is going to really get this country back to business as usual, and that is when we can have Main Street going back to the way it was a month or two ago so that we can recapture the best economy we have probably ever had in history. I know Hoosiers will do their job. They will be aspirational, and Americans across the country will do the same. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, I have been here a little over a year and have dealt with several issues that tell me how this place works. I never thought we would come to the point at which we have actually choked down the real economy with the valid effort of trying to get rid of a disease, and the American public--caught in the crossfire--is already suffering. The ones who had to shutter their businesses early were hoping that, when they woke up today, they were going to see something. You can see that it is not going to happen. Many others here have kind of gone after the other side, and I think that it is a valid argument. Yet what I am going to talk about here this evening are two things. If we do not get something done through unanimous consent and have to wait until Wednesday, we will all be held accountable, and we will have done what this place normally does--it doesn't work for the people who sent us here to do the business. A hotel owner in Indianapolis called me earlier in the week. Last week, he had 2-percent occupancy. A number of small businesses across the country, not only in Indiana, have had employees leave, and they have had to shutter their businesses by government edict. The toll and the carnage is going to be great. I want to stress what we might get done. I had four or five Democratic Senators tell me this, and I want to throw the gauntlet out and do it publicly. Obviously, a list like this does not make sense, and how you would even bring that up at a time like this boggles my mind. Four or five different Democratic Senators said that, if we would come together on three areas, they would have enough people to get it across the finish line even through unanimous consent. No. 1--and I think most of the folks on my side of the aisle would agree--is shoring up what State and local governments need to effectively handle this crisis. That is Main Street. That sounds OK with me. Next is helping the frontline industry that is responsible for fighting the disease--hospitals and providers. We are really close. We are not far away. The one that we hear the most about would be the transparency associated with what could be the most important part of the package. It is the Emergency Stabilization Fund, which would help all of those businesses that need liquidity in order to keep employees on their payrolls. I am going to be for full transparency. As for the airlines and their practices and what they did at the time that ate up all of their cash, I think there needs to be accountability. Senator Manchin said earlier that it needs stronger language to prohibit stock buybacks--check. Most of us would be for that. Secretary Mnuchin could not have full latitude on where to direct the funds. I am a Main Street guy. I would go for that too. We don't have enough restraints on the assistance in firing employees at a later time, as employers might do. Any of us who care about our employees would be for that as well. There are a couple other things. So I throw the gauntlet out to the leadership, who I think trotted out a lot of this other stuff, confused the process, and now we are here to where we have to do it with unanimous consent. I feel good that our side comes along on three key areas: helping State and local governments, helping the frontline of defense, hospitals, and holding the big companies accountable that are going to get the benefit of government assistance. And we need to keep in mind: This isn't 2008, where you are looking at bailing out and helping some of the people who caused the problem. Even these larger businesses have been impacted by government edict to flatten the curve, and what we have to make sure is that we get this out the door so that, in the process of flattening the curve, we do not flatten the economy. We owe it to every wage earner, to every small business, and to Americans in general. Let's take those three areas that many Democrats told me today if we just get them freed up, we will get it across the finish line. That is the gauntlet I throw at the leadership on the other side. Let's get it done. The American public expects us to. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, first of all, I would like to thank you for sparing me not having to be in the seat indefinitely, and I promise I will keep this short. What a day we have come through. Senator Cramer and I have been here a little bit over a year, and I can't imagine in a little over a year being more filled with making this responsibility as a U.S. Senator worth every effort it took to get here. It finds us in an interesting place. I am from Main Street America. I spent 37 years building my own company, a company that three of my four kids--along with a great, young executive team--run now, and here we are. We are confronted with coronavirus. Now, in a sequence of H1N1, SARS, MERS, even a threat from Ebola, this looks like it is the one that we have heard about for a long time that could really test the mettle of our country while we are going through it. We have listened to the experts, and I think that idea of hitting this as hard as we can makes sense. You hear about flattening the curve. Yes, we need to do that. In the process, everything we are doing has now been thrown in front of probably the strongest economy that you could ever imagine. Look how frail it can be when something comes along that you don't understand and that you fear. Over the next 2 to 3 days, we are going to be wrestling with something that probably is going to be as tough as anything we have confronted as a country. I thought, at first, well, we would get through this, especially if it wasn't going to be a real tough thing to get rid of. That is not the case. This is going to take everything we have. What we are doing this weekend ought to be based upon the commonality that all of us believe we should take care of the hard- working individuals who have been displaced by this and small businesses. We have that nucleus to start from. Of course, it begs the question: What do you do about other parts of the economy? Well, my feeling is what we do tomorrow is not going to be the last thing we do to make sure we take this on with a full head of steam. I am getting input from middle America, from my home State, from people whom I really trust their judgment. They are saying, yes, we want to make sure we do everything and throw the kitchen sink at it. We want to make sure that we protect the most vulnerable--the people who have a preexisting condition, mostly elderly--impacted in the State of Washington and other places. I am increasingly asked the question: Do we want to keep plowing forward, regardless of what the results are? If the economy is starting to show what it is showing, which has so much fear and anxiety built into it, how long can we put up with it? What we are going to do this weekend is the first major effort at restoring confidence in the economy. I am sure we will come back again soon because, like I said earlier, it is not the end of it. At some point, we need to carefully measure the progress we are making against the cause of it in the first place and make sure that that is working the way we intended it to work, which is to make sure that we take care of the most vulnerable and protect them from the ravages of the coronavirus. So 10 days, 2 weeks down the road, I think we are going to be at a pivotal point. We are going to see if the early effort has worked. We all pray that it does. We are going to see what our efforts are going to yield and generate here this weekend, and then I want to make sure that, at that pivot point, when we need to look at this again, do we keep doing what we are doing, or do we do what seems to make sense, maybe make some adjustments, maybe focus on a different approach that does not systematically take the patient down: a healthy economy. I think we all want to accomplish the same thing. We are going to start this weekend. Please, both sides of the aisle, don't quibble and don't bicker about some of the details because this is urgent. The American public expects us to do something. Then, here in another 10 days to 2 weeks, we need to look at it again and make sure we make the right decisions that really are in the long-term interest of tamping down the coronavirus and not killing a very healthy patient--our economy--that now looks like it is hurting. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

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

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, the discovery of thousands of fetal remains in Indiana at an abortionist's home last year horrified us all and highlighted a disturbing trend that Indiana has taken the lead in rectifying. This bill is our chance to fix the problem nationally. I believe all human life deserves a dignified burial, and fetal remains deserve to be treated with respect, not as medical waste. Sadly, irreverence toward fetal remains, like Dr. Klopfer's grotesque collection, in our case, is not an isolated incident. For example, in 2015, a Minnesota hospital threw out the body of a stillborn baby with dirty laundry. Indiana has led the way. Governor Mike Pence signed a law in 2016 protecting the dignity of fetal remains, upheld by the Supreme Court last year in Box v. Planned Parenthood. This legislation, the Dignity for Aborted Children Act, builds on Indiana's success and provides guidelines for handling fetal remains and penalties for failing to respect the sanctity of human life, and it ensures that crimes like Dr. Klopfer's have consequences. The bill would require abortion providers to dispose of the remains of unborn children just as any other human remains or to release the remains to the family, should the family wish to receive them. This bill does not tell anyone what to do with their body. It only holds human fetuses to a higher standard of dignity than medical waste. Last week, this body could not agree to ban abortions after science tells us fetuses are capable of feeling pain. This body could not agree to ensure that babies born alive after botched abortions should receive the same standard of care as a baby born in a hospital. At the very least, we should be able to agree to treat the remains of unborn children with the reverence befitting a human life rather than as medical waste. Given this, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of S. 2590 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. Madam President, I think if we continue to make the argument with women's healthcare that it is mutually exclusive to consider that, and you define what we are talking about here--banning abortions where there is pain-felt capability or not trying to preserve the life of a baby born through a botched abortion--adding this as well: not treating the fetal remains with the dignity that they deserve--I think it is increasingly difficult to make the argument that we constantly hear about women's healthcare. They are not mutually exclusive. This is something that shouldn't be put into the category that it would impact any of that by putting this into effect. I yield floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, a little over a month ago--or a year ago--I was here with Senator Sasse and asked for a unanimous consent vote. I was here, mostly curious to see who might object to a bill that wants born alive--where you do everything you can to keep that child alive. I was appalled then, and here again, we are talking about the same thing, but I think we have got room for optimism. We have got two bills that have gotten, I think, more support at this stage of the game than in a long time. First on the Pain Capable bill, last month, two researchers, with broadly different views on abortion, published research in the Journal of Medical Ethics, stating conclusively that ``the neuroscience cannot definitely rule out fetal pain before 24 weeks.'' As we continue to learn more about the science of when unborn children can feel pain in the womb, the moral imperative to provide a cutoff point for abortions grows stronger and stronger. I hope that my colleagues, especially on the other side of the aisle, will not deny science by allowing abortions to be performed on unborn children capable of feeling pain. The Born Alive bill--again, we are closer than ever. On a procedural vote, we have 53 votes, bipartisan, almost there, with 3 Republicans not able to vote. So, theoretically, 56 votes possibly. I stepped up here a year ago, and I do it again because I also sense, across the country, things are starting to change. Millennials are now leaning towards what the solemnity and sanctity of life is about, and I think, if we just take guidance from that younger generation, it ought to be able to move four Senators to get in line and do what seems to be so clear from a moral point of view. Some will say that a bill to ensure medical care for babies born after failed abortions is unnecessary because it doesn't happen that often. That is not a good reason. It doesn't matter how common it is. It matters if it is right or wrong. Even if my colleagues do not agree with me that every baby conceived has the right to be born, we should at least agree that every baby that is born has a right to live. If you go back a few years ago, 2015, there were 38 votes for the same bill. In 2017, there were 36. A little over a year ago, there were 53, or 56, however you want to look at it. I plead to citizens across this country, just as I did a little over a year ago, to get ahold of your Senators. In States where the sanctity of life--the solemnity of life--is important, get ahold of your Senators and tell them that we need their votes. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. Chief Justice.

Mr. BRAUN. I ask to send a question to the desk on my behalf and Senator Barrasso's for the President's counsel.

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. Chief Justice, I, along with Senator Lee, send to the desk a question for the President's counsel.

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 ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, it has been almost a year since I was sworn in. I thought it was a good time to kind of reminisce a little bit about the first year of being a U.S. Senator from Indiana. I want to cite that, when you come from a place like Indiana, it is where America really works. Think about it. We still believe in balanced budgets. We have rainy day funds. We take on big issues and talk about how we are going to pay for it, not borrow the money, throw it on the backs of our kids and grandkids. So, in being here now nearly a year, I want to reminisce back to what motivated me to stick my neck out and do it in the first place. I saw in November of 2016 that it looked like we might have a different dynamic here in our U.S. Government. I look back and see, in December of 2017, a Main Street entrepreneur, someone who has always lived by those rules of stick your neck out, take a risk. You don't really exceed mediocrity unless you do things that push the envelope a little bit now and then, but do it in the context of where it is sustainable. I noticed, in December of 2017, we finally got some legislation across the finish line that rewards enterprisers, rewards Main Street USA. That was in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act passed then. I did not know how it was going to unfold. Of course, even our CBO said it was going to end up costing the government, not rewarding it through more enterprise, greater revenues. Well, we have now got some evidence from it. We have got the hottest economy that we have had in modern history, and, yes, we are raising record revenues, despite having lower tax rates. Well, that sounds like the math wouldn't work out. Well, there is a point, especially in small business on Main Street, that you will not keep enterprising, you will not work hard if you end up having to send too much to a place like this that over the years did not, to me, look like it was delivering good value. So we have been vindicated; it is working.