Bob Casey

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Then you take the category of $75,000 to $100,000, and almost 17 percent of Americans in that income category will see a tax cut of less than $9 a month. In the grand total between $50,000 and $100,000, 7.7 million Americans will either see a tax increase or a tax cut of $100 or less. I don't call that tax cuts for the middle class. I yield the floor.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Rachel McKinnon of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of the 115th Congress.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak about this motion to commit. The amendment I am offering is very simple. It states that if companies are giving executives a raise and giving more money to shareholders through dividends or stock buybacks because of this tax windfall, then workers who help make these profits possible in the first place, and who also need a break, would see their wages go up. It is as simple as that. I hope every Member of the Senate will support this sensible amendment. By one estimate, over the last 16 years, there seems to be little to no correlation between rising corporate profits and increased wages. We have seen record corporate profits over years, and in fact profits as a percentage of the economy have nearly doubled over the past 20 years. The New York Times tells us: In the United States, the richest 1 percent have seen their share of national income roughly double since 1980, to 20 percent in 2014 from 11 percent. No other nation in the 35- member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is as unequal among those with comparable tax data, and none have experienced such a sharp rise in inequality. Let me review that again. From 1980 to 2014, the richest 1 percent has had its share of national income roughly double to 20 percent from 11 percent. So, since 1980, the top 1 percent has had a bonanza. It has done quite well. What has been the case with workers? At the same time, wage growth has stagnated. Many have seen the reports over the last couple of years, one by the Economic Policy Institute, which indicated that, if you compare wage growth after World War II, from 1948 to about 1973, wage growth was 91 percent. Then from 1973 forward, to about 2014 or 2015, wage growth was only a total of 11 percent growth. So there was 91 percent wage growth after World War II and only 11 since then, and in many years, it was not even 11. It was stagnating. People can go to the Economic Policy Institute's website and read that series of reports about wages and about workers, which I thought was the focus--the prime focus, I had hoped--of both parties when it came to this bill. Apparently, it is not with regard to what the majority is presenting. Those at the top are not only getting richer; they have been getting richer in a big way since 1980. That increasing rate of benefits to the wealthy continues at a fast pace in this bill and continues year after year. The Republican tax plan gives hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of net tax cuts to major corporations. By one estimate, the total corporate tax cut exceeds $1.3 trillion. That is trillion with a ``t.'' Some estimate that the number is even higher than that, but I will go with that lower number. There is no requirement with that corporate tax cut that any benefits go to workers' wages and no requirement that companies invest in the United States of America--no requirement at all. So what should we do about that? We can pass an amendment like mine to make sure that, if the executives benefit and if the shareholders benefit, the workers benefit. The workers have a lot to do with the profits. The workers have a lot to do with the productivity of the corporation. In fact, many large corporations have told shareholders exactly what they are going to do with the money they get, with the benefits that are derived from this corporate tax cut. Here is the conclusion, unfortunately: All they are going to do is to increase dividends. Here is a report from Bloomberg. This report is dated November 29, 2017, with the headline: ``Trump's Tax Promises Undercut by CEO Plans to Reward Investors.'' Here is the opening paragraph of the story: ``Major companies including Cisco Systems Inc., Pfizer Inc., and Coca-Cola Co. say they'll turn over most gains from proposed corporate tax cuts to their shareholders.'' This undercuts President Donald Trump's promise that his plan will create jobs and boost wages for the middle class. That is what that report that I am quoting from says. I will quote from it more a little bit later. That is what they tell us in that report. What about the workers? What about the workers and their wages, which have not gone up very much over decades and, in some measure, have stagnated? The Republicans have promised over and over that this corporate tax cut would lead to higher wages. In fact, they even put a number on it. They said $4,000, and then they said that it might go higher than $4,000 if you give this corporate tax cut. So they were not just making a broad, unspecific promise. They were making a very specific promise about what would flow from this corporate tax cut, which I would call a corporate tax giveaway. Workers are the reason that those profits exist when a corporation is profitable, and they should see the benefit of the gains from their labor. I will go back to this Bloomberg report. It quotes Jack Bogle, the founder of the Vanguard Group, which is a major company in Pennsylvania. Jack Bogle, the founder of the Vanguard Group, spoke in New York on this very topic this week. He is quoted in this Bloomberg story from November 29. I will just read you part of what he said: The tax proposals being debated in Washington are a ``moral abomination''--those are his words, not mine--because they favor corporations at the expense of workers--my words not his. Here is what Jack Bogle goes on to say: Just think about this: Corporate profits after taxes last year were the highest they've ever been in the history of GDP going back to 1929 . . . and we are thinking of giving relief to the corporations at the highest levels ever. Individual wages are at the lowest level in about 15 years as a percent of GDP. That is what Jack Bogle said. He goes on to say: So we are helping people who are doing very well and doing nothing for the people doing very badly. One of the flaws is that corporations are putting their shareholders ahead of the people that built the corporation, the people who put their heart and soul on the line and are committed to the company. It is just the unfairness. That is Jack Bogle of the Vanguard Group, not some Democratic source. He finishes with these words: But the worst part of it is that corporations are making so much money now that they don't know what to do with it. They aren't investing in new equipment, in innovation. They're buying back their own stock, which helps the stock price. He goes on to say the following: I'm all for capitalism . . . I'm a capitalist myself. But there is such a thing as too much. That is what Jack Bogle said about this bill and about the effects of the corporate tax break. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that corporate leaders are saying the tax cut proceeds will go to shareholders, as I said, which is the exact concern that many people have about this bill, among many other concerns. Republicans say that this tax cut is to help competitiveness and wage growth. This amendment would simply put some teeth into that promise. If because of a tax cut a company spends, say, $50 million more on executives' raises and increased dividends and stock buybacks, then it ought to have to spend $50 million, as well, to increase workers' wages. That is the effect of the amendment. If you are truly reinvesting in your company, your complying with this amendment shouldn't be an issue, but if your only goal is to put more money at the top, then without this amendment, this tax bill is grossly unfair to workers. If you don't want to take my word for it, talk to Jack Bogle I yield the floor.

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, this motion is pretty simple. If corporations get a windfall because of a corporate tax break, the workers should benefit as well. Worker wages should go up. Let me read directly from the motion itself. We want to ensure that ``any tax windfall to profitable corporations . . . goes to . . . worker wages.'' Aggregate worker wages would increase by an amount equal to the increases in executive compensation, stock buy backs, and dividends to shareholders. It is that simple. I urge a ``yes'' vote. I wish to thank my colleagues for their support: Senators Stabenow, Whitehouse, Van Hollen, Udall, and Baldwin. I yield the floor.

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I have a motion to commit at the desk.

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute before the vote.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, on December 1, we mark World AIDS Day, reflect on the more than 35 million people who have died of HIV or AIDS, and recommit to leading the way to an AIDS-free generation. For more than a decade, the United States has been a leader in the global fight against HIV/AIDS, and this investment has shown real returns. The progress in treatment of both adults and children living with HIV/AIDS has been dramatic. According to the World Health Organization, in 2005, only 14 percent of women received services for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission. By 2016, that number had grown to 76 percent. Since 2001, the number of children born HIV- positive has decreased by more than half. We should not interpret these metrics of progress to mean that our work is done or that we can afford to pull back from our commitment to eradicate this epidemic. Children, in particular, remain especially vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. The Elizabeth Glazer Pediatric AIDS Foundation notes that there are still 2.1 million children living with HIV, and these children are receiving treatment at rates far below that of adults. The failure to support effective and acceptable HIV services for adolescents has resulted in a 50 percent increase in reported AIDS- related deaths in this group compared with the 30 percent decline seen in the general population from 2005 to 2012, according to the World Health Organization. We must do better. The challenge of protecting children from HIV/AIDS is not just about access to treatment. We must also continue to work to prevent mother- to-child transmission, which is the leading cause of HIV infection in children, by improving services to pregnant mothers. We do this by strengthening healthcare systems in the most affected countries and by continuing to support the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, and local nongovernmental organizations in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The bipartisan commitment to addressing the complex challenges of the HIV/AIDS epidemic remains strong. However, this year, the Trump administration proposed cutting roughly 30 percent of the international affairs budget. This is risky, short-sighted, wrong, and will dramatically impact our leadership on global health issues. The international affairs budget supports programs that have been both instrumental in preventing and treating pediatric AIDS and in encouraging other donor countries and organizations to match our participation. Drastic cuts will impact not only our reputation and our partnerships in the international community, but will have long-term consequences we cannot clearly predict today. The international effort to combat pediatric AIDS exemplifies the ways in which countries, local NGOs, and the private sector can come together to protect the most vulnerable among us. Last month, I was proud to work with Senator Rubio to introduce S. Res. 310, a resolution to recognize the importance of a continued commitment to ending pediatric AIDS worldwide. I want to acknowledge the leadership of Congresswomen Ros-Lehtinen and Lee on a companion resolution in the House of Representatives and thank my colleagues who have joined as cosponsors of S. Res. 310 thus far: Senators Blumenthal, Booker, Boozman, Coons, Durbin, Feinstein, Franken, Hatch, Isakson, King, Klobuchar, Markey, Nelson, Rubio, and Van Hollen. This bipartisan effort represents one of many steps to reinforce U.S. leadership in combating HIV and AIDS and in protecting children around the world. On World AIDS Day, I call on my colleagues to redouble our support of U.S. Government programs that fight HIV/AIDS and build healthcare capacity towards an AIDS-free generation.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I wish to go back to a point I made earlier when I was describing--both in terms of the substance of the bill and the process that has been undertaken to pass the bill--why, the week before Thanksgiving, I used the expression that the bill was, in fact, ``a thief in the night'' and what I meant by that. In the same bill, we have these inequities that I just described where the wealthiest are getting $34 billion in a tax cut--a giveaway, really, just in the first year, and then that continues--and 90 million Americans get less than half of that. That is, in my judgment, robbing those families of an opportunity to get a bigger tax cut and to have the wealthiest among us sacrifice a little bit for the middle class and for those trying to get to the middle class. It gets worse from there because, in addition to that, repealing of the individual mandate has a healthcare consequence. We know that the Congressional Budget Office told us that because of what would happen as a result of the repeal of the individual mandate, 4 million people would lose their healthcare in the first year and 13 million over the course of 10 years. So it is entirely possible--we don't know the exact number, but it is entirely possible--that lots of Americans would, in the same year or certainly over time, have two adverse consequences. One, they would either not get much of a tax cut or their tax cut or any tax change would turn into a tax increase, and they would lose their healthcare because of the effects of one part of the bill. So, at the same time, in the same bill, some will lose their healthcare because of the bill and others will see their taxes go up, or worse, maybe the same thing will happen to the same individual, the same family. All that is happening in a bill that is speeding through this Chamber. Here is how defective the process has been. The Senate bill was introduced on a Thursday, and then voted out of the Finance Committee the following Thursday, and now the majority is trying to pass the bill this Thursday. So from Thursday to Thursday to Thursday is the entire consideration of a bill that has not had one hearing--not a single hearing. Oh, yes, we had time in the committee the week before Thanksgiving to pose questions to the Joint Committee on Taxation--tax experts--or to staff, and that is part of the process. But a tax bill like this, which comes around every three decades and will have an impact, by one estimate, of $9 trillion to $10 trillion, doesn't have a single hearing and doesn't have the kind of due consideration that would allow people to examine it and allow taxpayers to examine the detail of this bill and the consequences that would flow from that--the adverse consequences--and be able to say: Hey, wait a minute. Maybe I am one of those people. Maybe I am one of those individuals whose taxes will go up or I don't get much of a tax cut and, on top of that, I lose my healthcare. I think any American who would be so adversely affected should have the time and the opportunity to examine this legislation, either themselves or through the debate that is undertaken by Senators or through reading news accounts. The only good news here is that newspapers across the country, especially, and think tanks who are analyzing this bill are providing the American people information. But the debate is so limited that very little of the debate here in the Senate will land on the kitchen tables of Americans who will be affected. So when I say that this is a thief in the night, I mean it by way of the substance of the bill where people are robbed of healthcare, potentially, and certainly robbed of an opportunity to either get a substantial middle-class tax cut or, in some cases, they get no tax cut at all because their taxes go up and, at the same time, they are losing healthcare. This whole process has been cloaked in darkness and has been infused with secrecy. I got a letter the other day from a taxpayer who said to me: I am worried about the impact on--it was from a mom talking about her family--on my family and my children. She said: I don't know enough about this. I can sympathize with her because Democratic Senators were in a committee 2 weeks ago when this bill was presented to us, with not a single hearing on the bill. My colleagues may recall what happened in 1985 and 1986. President Reagan came up with a proposal that was almost 500 pages in length. There was a lot of detail about his administration's priorities on tax reform. His proposal got 27 hearings in the Finance Committee. Later, when the House passed a bill in--I guess it was in the beginning of 1986--they passed a tax reform bill that went to the Senate, and that House bill in 1986 got six hearings in the Finance Committee. So if you add the review of the detailed Reagan proposal--almost 500 pages--to the actual hearings on a specific bill, we are talking about 33 hearings. That is the kind of review one would expect. I would settle for 10 or 15 hearings on something this substantial. So we are basically saying that we are supposed to accept a bill that has gotten very little review and no hearing, and then wait for 20 years from now or 30 years from now to have another opportunity. This is a joke. This is an insult to the American people, when we have a bill that will have such an impact on every American and is getting very little in the way of scrutiny. I know the hour is late. I will just make a few more points, especially when it comes to our children. There has been a lot of talk about what this bill could do to help children. A lot of Americans know about the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. Those two provisions alone in our law have lifted more children out of poverty than almost anything we have ever done in the Congress in decades, literally. It has had that kind of an impact. So shouldn't we use these two vehicles that have lifted millions of children and families out of poverty--the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit--and strengthen them? Shouldn't we make them more robust so that more children could be lifted out of poverty? The answer is yes. We have an opportunity here. Senator Brown and Senator Bennet introduced a bill that then became an amendment in the debate, which I and so many other Democratic Senators joined them on, to strengthen the child tax credit, as well as the earned income tax credit. Here is the basic information about where we are with the child tax credit. The proposal by some Republican Senators to strengthen the child tax credit in the bill is also woefully deficient and woefully short of what families should expect from a big tax reform bill that is supposed to help folks with the child tax credit. The Senate Republican plan increases the maximum child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child. It sounds pretty good so far--$1,000 up to $2,000. It sounds pretty good so far, but because the bill limits refundability, a mom working full time at minimum wage will only see an additional $75 in the child tax credit, while a married couple earning $500,000 would become newly eligible. So in the Republican bill, wealthy families earning up to $500,000 of income are newly eligible for help, with the child tax credit, for the maximum credit of $2,000 per child. The working mom who has a low income gets a child tax credit of $75, which is not much help, but the family making $500,000 would be getting a $2,000 child tax credit. Anyone knows that is woefully short. We can do better than that. We are a great country. We have the greatest economy in the world, we have the strongest military in the world, and we have a lot of good tax policies that have helped lift families out of poverty. Both parties have helped support those provisions over the years. This isn't just a Democratic priority; a lot of Republicans make this a priority as well. This is the moment to do it. This is a big tax bill. We could make the child tax credit so generous and so substantial that you could turbocharge--use any word you want--you could turbocharge the effort to get young children out of poverty. But the Republicans won't do it because they are stingy on the child tax credit changes, just as they are stingy on the middle-class tax cut. The source I cited earlier for the November 27 report, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities--you can go to their website. It is easy. Just type in four letters--CBPP--and you can find these reports. What do they say about the child tax credit provisions? The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says that 10 million children live in families who would get $6.25 or less per month in additional child tax credit help--less than 1 hour of work at the minimum wage. So for 10 million children, this brandnew proposal on the child tax credit adds up to $6.25 or less per month. Even in a very low-income family, $6.25 a month doesn't get you much in terms of help for your children. We have a lot to do in a short timeframe to let the American people know what is in this bill. Whether it is very limited tax relief for a lot of middle-class families or whether it is the outrage that so many Americans' taxes will go up--over time, especially--or whether it is the giveaways to the richest among us, there are so many outrages and so many insults in one bill, it is difficult to catalog all of them. I hope that if we have a vote on the Senate floor, this bill will be defeated. Guess what can happen then. We can get to a different chapter on tax reform, just like we started to get to on healthcare. After the healthcare bill was voted down in July, everyone said that somehow there would be no engagement on healthcare after that, that the two sides would go into their corners and there would be no discussion. Within hours, if not days, of that happening, Democrats and Republicans came together on healthcare. On that topic on which there is supposed to be very little, if any, consensus or cooperation or bipartisanship, they came together and then had hearings in early September. People forget this, but it happened. In the first 2 weeks of September, we listened to Governors from both parties, insurance commissioners, and healthcare policy experts. Guess what we got. We got a bipartisan bill to help stabilize the market, to make sure we were coming together to try to solve at least one substantial problem in our healthcare system--not to cure every problem but to come together in a bipartisan way to fix the problem. We could undertake a similar process on tax reform. We could start in December or January--whenever the majority wants to start--have lots of hearings, examine these issues, and figure out whether there is a bipartisan way to make the child tax credit more generous. We have a moment here. We have a big bill. We could lift a lot more children out of poverty. Isn't there a way to make the middle-class tax relief much more robust and substantial? Instead of giving a $300 or $400 tax cut, maybe we could say: Let's come together on a bipartisan bill and give a tax cut that is worth $1,000--or maybe several thousand dollars--to the middle class and to middle-class families. We could do that. Democrats and Republicans could come together. We could even come together on providing corporate relief. No one on our side doesn't believe that corporations should get a break, but when you reduce a corporate tax rate from 35 to 20--just do the math. It is $100 billion per point, so that is $1.5 trillion. That forecloses the option of making middle-class tax cuts even more generous. It limits the options to help families who are struggling to get into the middle class, who are going to work every day, sometimes working two jobs, making the minimum wage or higher than minimum wage, and they need a little bit of help with the child tax credit or other provisions. We have an opportunity here to do tax reform the right way--not in the dark of night, not a one-party fiat or a one-party bill that gets rushed through and then we are supposed to accept this as good tax policy for the next 10, 20, 30 years. That is not the way to do tax reform. That is not the way it was done when Ronald Reagan was here, working with Democrats and Republicans. That is not the way we should do it. We will have more to say later in the week. At this time, I yield the floor.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise this evening to talk about the tax bill, which will come to the floor very soon. We have started debate, and we will be debating it the next couple of days. There is a lot to talk about, a lot of numbers, and a lot of data. I will try to limit the numbers as best I can, but it is important to review some of the numbers. For tonight's purposes, I start with just two numbers. The first number is 59,456, and the second number is 7. What do I mean when I say 59,456? It is in dollars. The average annual tax cut for those making over $1 million a year in 2019 is $59,456. As many people know who have been following the debate, the Senate bill delayed a corporate tax cut by 1 year so most of the analysis starts in the year 2019 not 2018. So there is $59,456 of a tax cut for those making over $1 million in the first year of the bill, 2019. What does 7 mean? Seven is also a dollar number. Seven dollars is the average monthly tax cut for Americans making between $20,000 and $30,000 a year in that same year, 2019. If you wanted to compare the annual number of $59,456 to the annual average tax cut for that income category for the same year, it would be about $84. No matter which way you look at it, there is a basic unfairness there. Even when you apply percentages, it is very clear that folks in those lower income brackets don't get the benefit the richest among us--the superrich people making more than $1 million-- get. Even if you drop down the number to over one-half million dollars and up, those folks are getting sometimes double, even triple, the tax cuts for people in the broad middle. The one I just cited might be the most egregious example, people making $20,000 to $30,000 a year getting just $7 a month in a tax cut. One of the reasons the bill is so stingy and so unfair when it comes to folks in the lower income brackets or even the middle-income brackets is because so much has been given in the bill to big corporations. Right? There is only a certain amount of revenue you can move around in a bill like this. Because the corporate--and I should say the permanent corporate tax cut. The tax cuts for families is not permanent, but the permanent corporate tax cut is $1.5 trillion, and by one estimate it is $1.414 trillion over 10 years. When you allocate that much to big corporations and make it permanent, obviously, it limits your ability to help the middle class in a robust or substantial way. I think most Americans will ask: Why don't we limit any kind of corporate tax break and apply, potentially, hundreds of billions--with a ``b''--of dollars to a bigger middle-class tax cut? But the majority so far, starting with the Finance Committee, has decided not to do that. I just leave that for people to consider. Is it fair, when you are doing a tax bill, so-called tax reform, for the first time in three decades, that people making over $1 million who don't need $59,456-- does it make sense to give them that and give the store away to corporations in a permanent fashion and give folks making $20,000 to $30,000 just 7 bucks a month or 84 bucks over the course of a year, on average? It gets worse. The numbers get even more egregious, even more insulting. That same year, in 2019, 572,000 of our country's richest households would get $34 billion worth of tax cuts. You heard that right. In 1 year, a rather small group of Americans--572,000 of the richest households--get $34 billion of a tax cut in just that 1 year. That $34 billion in that 1 year for the richest among us gets even higher if you add in other provisions, other tax cuts, but I will be conservative and just limit it to the $34 billion. Some people might ask: Well, what about the rest of the country or most of the country? What is left? Well, if you compare that $34 billion for a relatively small group of the wealthiest, if you compare that to 90 million--my arms don't stretch out far enough to compare 572 taxpayers with 90 million. What happens to 90 million taxpayers who happen to make under $50,000? A couple of minutes ago I talked about $20,000 to $30,000. Now we are talking about everyone below $50,000 in a year. That is about 90 million people. What happens to them? Well, they get a grand total of $14 billion, and some even see a tax increase. So let's leave the tax increase for people making less than $50,000 off the table for now because some will get a tax increase, and some will get a benefit. So it is hard to comprehend that 90 million people divvy up $14 billion, but a tiny fraction of that--572,000 people--get $34 billion just in 2019. Then you have 2020 and 2021, and they keep getting those dollar amounts. Some people might say: Well, you know, everyone should get a tax cut in a bill like this, and even if the wealthy get a tax cut, that is the way Washington works. I have described this bill this way over and over again, and I will keep describing it this way. It is a giveaway. It is a giveaway to the superrich. It is certainly a giveaway to big corporations. They get $1.5 trillion, and it is permanent. There have been a lot of analyses done of this bill, and there are lots of stories to point to. I just point to one that came out just yesterday. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities came out with a report that is a little more than seven pages' worth. They do reports like this on a regular basis, sometimes more than one report in a week. I know folks can't read it from a distance, but here is what the headline says: ``JCT Estimates''--Joint Committee on Taxation, that is the acronym--Joint Committee on Taxation estimates ``Amended Senate Tax Bill Skewed to Top, Hurts Many Low- and Middle-Income Americans.'' That is what the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said yesterday. So what they are analyzing is not the original proposal folks in the Senate Republican caucus offered. This is the amended Senate bill. Here is what they say, in pertinent part. I will just read maybe two sentences. Under the amended bill, in 2025 (when most of its provisions would be in place), high-income households would get the largest tax cuts as a share of after-tax income, on average, while households with incomes below $30,000 would on average face a tax increase. By 2027, when many of its provisions would have expired, those at the top would still get large tax cuts, but every income group below-- I will read that again. --every income group below $75,000 would face tax increases, on average. You heard that right--tax increases on average. So whether you look at it in the year 2019 for people making $20,000 to $30,000 or 2019 for people making under $50,000 and compare that to the wealthiest among us or whether you look at it in terms of what happens just a few years later in 2025, you can see the basic unfairness of this. Just at a time when we have this great opportunity to do a number of things which would not only turbocharge the economy and potentially lift families out of poverty--and certainly lift children out of poverty--just when we have the opportunity to simplify the code, to help middle-class families in a substantial and robust way, not the stingy way the bill does it, to the point where some might get a tax break one year that is very limited and then that goes away and their taxes go up and others are losing healthcare because of the repeal of the individual mandate--what is most egregious here is maybe not even the giveaways. That is egregious enough. What is outrageous is, the giveaways happen, and the debt is run up to do that. Then, on top of all that, we miss an opportunity, as Washington often does. There is an old expression that Washington never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. This is an opportunity to give the middle class maybe a record tax cut, but the majority has chosen not to do that. This is also an opportunity to lift a lot more children out of poverty with a much more generous child tax credit, a much more substantial commitment to lifting kids out of poverty, because we have a bill that allows us to do that, a big tax bill that only comes around once every couple of decades, potentially. The last time this was done was 31 years ago. So this is a critically important moment for the middle class, a critically important moment for children--middle-income children but also children from low-income families who don't get a lot of help under current policy. Now, some people might ask: Well, how have the rich done over the last number of years? Maybe some might want to make the argument--the ridiculous argument, but they might want to make it--that somehow the rich need a little help. Well, let's see what has happened since 1980. Since 1980, the richest 1 percent have seen their share of national income almost double--double--from 11 percent to 20 percent in 2014, the last time this was measured. So the richest 1 percent, in about 35 years, have seen their share of all national income almost double. So the richest 1 percent have been doing pretty well over the decades since 1980. Do they really need yet another tax cut? Do they really need tens of billions of dollars split or divvied up among a very small number of Americans? I don't think so, and I think most Americans would agree with me. According to the New York Times, no other nation in the 35-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development--the so-called OECD countries, 35 countries, and we are one of them--no other country has seen this widening of the gap between the richest and everyone else. You could see it in the other example. The richest small number in America get $34 billion, and then 90 million people have to split a number that is less than half that. That is really an insult to who we are as Americans. That same JCT--the Joint Committee on Taxation--their estimate of the Republican bill shows that households earning over $1 million would get an average tax cut about 73 times larger than households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 in 2019, that same year, the first year. We can go on and on with these comparisons, but I want to go back to the number I started with, that $59,000 number. If you keep the dollar sign on it, and use it for another purpose, you have just arrived at roughly the median household income for the United States of America. So the median household income is about $59,000. That is the median household income all across the country. That number happens to be roughly the same number as the $59,456, the average annual tax cut for those making over $1 million in 2019. There are lots of other ways to describe the bill. The bill raises $134 billion on the backs of hard-working Americans by changing how the Tax Code measures inflation. Not many people are paying attention to this, but the measurement is going to change if the bill passes. This number only grows over time. For someone who is just starting out in their professional life, they would see this change haunt their paychecks for the next 50 years. So they are going to change how the Tax Code measures inflation. Not many people know that, and I think they are starting to find out. If all of that wasn't enough, this bill would do a number of other things which are particularly destructive. It will reward companies that have outsourced jobs, it will increase healthcare premiums by an average of an additional 10 percent a year, and it is going to give, at the same time, obscene tax cuts to the superrich by, at the same time, increasing taxes on the middle class. So when I described this bill last week in the Finance Committee as a thief in the night, I didn't choose those words casually; I meant every word of it. It is a thief in the night because of what the adverse impact on middle-class families and lower income families trying to get to the middle class would be, compared to what happens to the wealthiest among us. So it is robbing people of an opportunity to get a better tax cut for the middle class and giving away the store to the rich. I will have more to say about this, but I see the majority leader is on the floor. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. CASEY

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

Mr. CASEY. I also ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, 40 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that nonunion public workers who benefit from the work conducted by a union to negotiate contracts that they benefit from should have to pay a fee to cover costs associated with this work. If all workers benefit, it is only right that everyone contributes a fair-share fee. However, in recent years, there has been a well-funded effort by special interest groups backed by corporate billionaires to dismantle unions and silence the voice of workers. There have been a number of attempts to overturn the 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. Other efforts have targeted State legislatures where they have had success in many States. In other States like Pennsylvania, these efforts were blocked. Workers already have the right to decide whether to join a union. They have the right to decide. It is common sense that if these workers benefit from the higher wages and better working conditions that result from contract negotiations undertaken by the union, that those workers should have to chip in for the cost of these negotiations. That is just fair. These negotiations get results and they benefit workers. They benefit workers who are in the union and benefit workers who are not in the union. The right to bargain collectively has been an integral part of raising income and growing the middle class over the course of the last century. Being able to organize and bargain collectively allows workers to demand higher wages and salaries and of course boost their incomes. These workers have more money to provide for their families, to increase consumption, which in turn increases both production and employment. Putting more money in the hands of workers is good for workers and for the country. Over the last several decades, we have seen the balance of power across our Nation tilt more and more in favor of the wealthy and the largest corporate interests at the expense of working Americans. The Supreme Court has not been immune from this trend. Under Chief Justice Roberts, the Court has become an ever more reliable ally for big corporations. A major study published in the Minnesota Law Review in 2013 found that the four conservative Justices currently sitting on the Court--Justices Alito, Roberts, Thomas, and Kennedy--are among the six most business-friendly Supreme Court Justices since 1946. So four of the six most business-friendly are serving on the Court at the same time. A review by the Constitutional Accountability Center--which is an ongoing review and is updated with every case the Supreme Court decides--shows the consequences of the Court's corporate tilt, finding that the chamber of commerce has had a success rate of 70 percent in cases before the Roberts' Court--a significant increase over previous courts. These are all critical cases. These are cases of critical importance to everyday Americans. These are cases involving, for example, rules for consumer contracts, challenges to regulations ensuring fair pay and labor standards, attempts by consumers to hold companies accountable for product safety, and much more. Well-funded corporate special interests do not have the best interests of working families at heart. They are pushing these efforts to reduce their bottom line by reducing the incomes of working families. That is why we are standing today to make sure that the voice of working Pennsylvanians and Americans are heard. To increase incomes and strengthen the middle class, we need to stop the assault on workers and labor unions, whether it happens in Congress or in State legislatures or, indeed, in the U.S. Supreme Court. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise this evening to talk about our system of justice. If we were to walk out from the Senate, out the front door, and across the front of the Capitol directly, we would find ourselves across the street from the U.S. Supreme Court. As everyone knows, inscribed across the front of the U.S. Supreme Court are these words: ``Equal justice under law''--a pretty simple statement about our system of justice, but of course that has a profound meaning in our system. Hundreds of years ago, Saint Augustine said the following about justice: Without justice what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers. So we have always had this focus on what justice means. It came into sharper focus, of course, when our Nation was born. We set up three branches of government--or, I should say, our Founders set up three branches of government--one of them being the judiciary and, of course, that was followed, after the Constitution was ratified, by the Judiciary Act of 1789. We have had that system of justice in one form other another all these years. In so many ways, our system of justice sets us apart from the world. Our system of justice, though it is often strained and stretched and sometimes undermined, is still the envy of the world. It does set us apart. We know that throughout our history--and even more recently-- there are several examples of one judge being able to stop the executive, one judge being able to reverse policy or, at least, force the executive to make amendments to an Executive order, as has happened over the last couple of months. I think we always have to ask ourselves whether or not our system of justice is getting it right, whether or not the balance is there. There are lots of ways to express the tension between one side and another in our system of justice. One way to express it--not the only way, but one way, when you consider the awesome appropriate power in a nation like ours--is, Will we have a system that allows everyone to get a fair shot at justice, to literally fulfill the obligation or the goal of equal justice under the law? Or will we have a system of justice that rewards, supports, or seems to find in favor of corporate interests or have a court, whether it is the Supreme Court or a Federal court of one kind or another, that is beholden to corporate interests? So one way to suggest the tension and sometimes the conflict is to have a fair shot for everyone versus a corporate tilt or a corporate court or a corporate justice system. I would have to say that when you look at some of the evidence most recently, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roberts has been an ever more reliable ally to both big corporations and those with great power, those with great wealth. A major study published by the Minnesota Law Review in 2013 found that the four conservative Justices currently sitting on the Court--Justices Alito, Roberts, Thomas, and Kennedy--are among the six most business friendly Supreme Court Justices since 1946. So found the major study in the Minnesota Law Review just 4 years ago. So four Justices on the Court now were found among the six most business friendly. That is one indicator. Another review by the Constitutional Accountability Center, which, of course, is ongoing as decisions are handed down, shows the consequences of the Court's corporate tilt, finding that the Chamber of Commerce has had a success rate of 70 percent--7-0, a success rate of 70 percent--in cases before the Roberts Court, a significant increase over previous Courts. So these are two major indicators of the corporate tilt of this Supreme Court. Now, these cases are important to every person--cases involving, for example, rules for consumer contracts, challenges to regulations ensuring fair pay and labor standards, attempts by consumers to hold companies accountable for product safety and much, much more. Because the Supreme Court's decisions set precedents followed by every Federal district court across the Nation--hundreds of district courts--these rulings have an impact beyond just the particular case and the particular parties or the litigants in that case, in that district, or in that Supreme Court case. The tilt toward corporate interests at the expense of everyday Americans is not confined to the Supreme Court. I have had serious concerns about many of the judicial nominees put forward by the Trump administration, particularly those nominated to sit on the circuit courts, the highest appellate court in the land other than the Supreme Court. In essence, these circuit courts, which sometimes cover more than one State, are effectively the highest court in the land for the vast majority of cases that are not heard by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court may take only a few cases a year, sometimes a very low percentage, or less than 5 percent in most years. The President has plucked many of these nominees for the circuit courts from a list compiled by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, two substantial conservative organizations. I don't want the Supreme Court chosen by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. I certainly don't want circuit court judges chosen, handpicked, and designated ahead of time who only have been selected from this list. That is apparently what happened in the midst of the campaign. They gave the Republican nominee a list and said: That is your list. You choose from them only. It wasn't a suggested list. It was a directive. I think I am joined by a lot of people across the country in my concern when groups like that have veto power over who sits on the Supreme Court or who has veto power over those who sit on Federal courts. Like several of the conservative Justices on the Supreme Court, many of these nominees on this list from the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation have a corporate philosophy, a philosophy that ignores the realities faced by many Americans, the realities faced by many workers across our country. The records of these nominees indicate that this problem will only be exacerbated and workers and their families will continue to have the deck stacked against them in the real world, not the world of briefs and the world of Supreme Court juris prudence and the world of arguments in front of the Supreme Court. But in the real world, the decks will be stacked against them--in the real world of making ends meet in a family, in the struggles that people have every day, and in the real world of working every day for long hours and sometimes in not the best working conditions and up against very powerful forces. The fundamental promise of our court system is this principle of justice I talked about earlier--the principle that everyone should have a fair shot at justice, all the time, in every case, without exception, in every court, in every year, in every era. That is what equal justice under the law means, and when that doesn't happen, when someone is denied equal justice under the law even one time, of course, our system hasn't worked well. When you see the numbers that I cited earlier, that the Chamber of Commerce has a success rate of 70 percent, I am not sure we can say that equal justice under the law--that principle--has been adhered to. When that happens, of course, what Saint Augustine reminded us hundreds of year ago--that without justice, what are kingdoms but a great band of robbers--people are robbed of justice in maybe one case. Unfortunately we know from the record that it is a lot more than one case. But one is too many if you believe in equal justice under law. So I have serious concerns that this basic promise--the ultimate promise of justice that was enshrined in our Constitution by our Founders and was brought forward by the Judiciary Act of 1789 and which has continued to this present day--of equal justice under law could be in jeopardy. Some would say that it is in jeopardy already as this administration puts its stamp on the judiciary. We must demand that the judiciary live up to the principles of equal justice under the law for all the people in all the cases all the time. I yield the floor.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I wish to extend my support for the Baha'i community in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Baha'i Faith. Baha'u'llah preached a message of justice, unity, and peace. The religion that he founded has spread across the world, including to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. While the Baha'i people have and continue to face persecution for their beliefs, they persevere by promoting a message of peace and equality and with a commitment to service. I congratulate the Baha'i community of Pennsylvania who have contributed so much to the spirit of the Commonwealth on this momentous anniversary.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, as you know, the Children's Health Insurance Program expired on September 30, in large part because we spent much of this year and the days leading up to that date debating the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, instead of focusing on bipartisan priorities like the Children's Health Insurance Program. As a result, the program known as CHIP expired and the health of 9 million children, including some 340,000 Pennsylvania children, are now at risk. CHIP is not just a bipartisan program but a successful program with a Pennsylvania history. It was modeled after a State program in Pennsylvania that was signed into law by my father when he served as Governor in the early 1990s. The program provides affordable health insurance to children whose family incomes mean they don't qualify for Medicaid but still struggle to find affordable health insurance options. It is a program that working families rely upon and that provides peace of mind to parents. Many families turn to CHIP during times of economic hardship, such as when a parent loses his or her job. At such a stressful time, I have heard from parents over and over how they have peace of mind knowing that their children will get the healthcare they need. Some parents who rely upon CHIP for their children are, in fact, students, working and going to school so they can make that leap into stable, middle-class life. They may not have a job with health insurance or they may not be able to afford the insurance, but they know their children will get the healthcare they need. Regardless of what drives families to the CHIP program, it is thanks in large part to CHIP that the United States of America has the highest rate of insured children in our Nation's history. According to the Census Bureau, 95.5 percent of children had health insurance in 2016. CHIP is also a popular program, as repeated studies have demonstrated. Parents think CHIP is a valuable program, and they are satisfied with the coverage and with the care their children receive. Unless the Senate acts and acts very soon, we will have betrayed all of those children and all of those families. There is no reason for CHIP to have expired and no reason why we shouldn't pass the bill right now, if not in the next couple of days--certainly, in the next 2 or 3 weeks--to ensure that not one single child loses his or her health insurance. We have taken important steps to extend the program. The Finance Committee marked up the bipartisan Keep Kids' Insurance Dependable and Secure Act of 2017, known by the acronym K-I-D-S, or KIDS. The KIDS Act came out of the Finance Committee, which reauthorizes CHIP for 5 years, and that happened some 3 weeks ago. I am proud to be a cosponsor of that bill. So it is time to act. We have a commonsense, bipartisan, successful bill in the Senate that is ready to go. It is out of the Finance Committee. So I would urge my colleagues to join me and to join others who have come to the floor today and on earlier days to take swift action to pass the KIDS Act. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Vermont for his leadership on this amendment and his words today. I will have more to say about the amendment in a moment. Mr. President, as Senator Sanders mentioned, his amendment that we are working together on, amendment No. 1119, will do the following, and it is right in the text of the purpose section of the amendment, to provide additional resources to restore the $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid paid for by reducing the Republican tax breaks for the wealthy. That is the quick summary of what we are working on. I think it is also important to put this amendment in the context of discussions we are having in the Senate and, I am sure, throughout the country; that is, the tax proposal put forth by the administration as well as the Republican leadership, the so-called unified tax proposal. This is a Republican proposal that comes before the country. I think it is essential to read both the tax proposal along with the budget we are debating on the floor together. There are a lot of ways to describe what the tax proposal is all about. I will describe it very bluntly, in my own words. This tax proposal is, for sure, a giveaway to the wealthy. The superrich do quite well. Big corporations do very well. The middle class does not do well at all at the end of the day. Why do I say that? Because there have been a number of analyses done of the proposal. Even the proposal, as it stands now, will have more analyses done when the bill is actually introduced, but in terms of what is on paper now, you have, for example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities stating that by the year 2027--at the end of the 10 years--80 percent of the tax cut goes to the top 1 percent. There is another analysis that is even more pointed in terms of the year. You don't have to wait until 2027 to figure out what is happening to the top 1 percent. Here is what the Tax Policy Center says with regard to the tax benefit that accrues to the top 1 percent and also what would accrue to the top 0.1 percent. The top 1 percent is roughly those making above $730,000. The top 0.1 percent, of course, is even higher. Here is what the Tax Policy Center said in September based upon the proposals so far. Table 2 in the report says the following: Starting in 2018--the assumption here is that the tax proposal as currently crafted would happen this year. If it were to pass this year, in 2018--the 2018 tax year--the top 1 percent would get a tax cut of $146,470. That is the first year of the tax cut for the top 1 percent, $146,000. How about the top 0.1 percent, a very small number of extraordinarily wealthy Americans? They get $747,580--roughly, $747,000 in a tax cut. That is just in year one. We could provide more examples year after year, but you get the picture that a lot of the tax cuts, if there are any, will be shifted to the top 1 percent and the 0.1 percent. When they do that, when they have a proposal that points in that direction in terms of the tax bill, what happens in the budget bill that is related to that? It is very simple. The budget bill will cut Medicaid, as Senator Sanders referred to, by over $1 trillion. The exact number is $1.056 trillion over 10 years. Let's call it a $1 trillion cut to Medicaid over 10 years. That is, basically, what it is. With regard to Medicare, the cut is $473 billion in the budget. Now, the difference between the two bills--or the two proposals, really--is that the budget proposal is a bill. So we know the exact details there. The tax proposal has some specificity, and some areas are not as specific, but the benefits to the wealthy are rather specific. The Republican plan is to use the proposed $1.5 trillion in cuts to those two programs--when you add the $1 trillion cut to Medicaid to the $473 billion cut to Medicare--to pay for the $1.5 trillion tax cut to corporations. I think it is obscene to cut those programs and then use those dollars for a corporate tax cut. Notice that nothing about that is connected to the middle class and that nothing about that is focused on folks who are trying to get into the middle class. It is really a corporate tax cut that is paid for by cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. I will limit my remarks today to Medicaid because that is what this amendment is about. This amendment seeks to restore at least the Medicaid cut of $1 trillion. So that is what we are focused on. What is Medicaid? There are a lot of ways to describe it, but Medicaid covers 40 percent of all of the children in the country. If you are in Medicaid and you have the opportunity to take your child to the doctor and get checkups and all of the benefits that you get from Medicaid, you get to benefit from what is called early periodic screening, diagnosis, and testing. So a child who might be from a low- income family--and is, in the case of Medicaid--not only gets coverage but benefits from the early screening, early diagnosis, and early testing. All of those benefits go to that child, and 40 percent of the Nation's children are covered by Medicaid. The other number to know, which is rather startling, is that 60 percent of all of the children in the country who have disabilities are covered by Medicaid. Of course, that is not limited to children from families who have lower incomes. You could have a family who has a rather high income--a middle-class income or much higher than that--who might have healthcare through the family's employer, but if the child has a disability, especially a profound disability, the family relies on Medicaid. So that is the program that we are talking about. We know, as well, that Medicaid covers half of all of the births in the country. There are millions of births every year that are covered by Medicaid. How about nursing homes? Medicaid pays for nursing home care for our parents, our grandparents, and our family members. If that were not the case, on average, you would see something on the order of $75,000 in terms of annual expenses, which would force countless middle-class families out of their homes and deplete their hard-earned savings. That would be a big expense if it were not for the benefit of having Medicaid in the context of one's long-term care in a nursing home. In addition to paying for 45 percent of all of the births, the other 45 percent is that of school districts in the country that use Medicaid funds to pay for medical and therapy services for kids in school who are receiving special education. We could go on and on. Let me make one other point. I mentioned that 60 percent of children with disabilities are covered. The Medicaid Program also makes it possible for millions of people with disabilities, including adults, to live in their own homes--to have the dignity, even having a disability, of staying in their own homes. Medicaid also makes it possible for those with disabilities to get to work and to be an active part of the workforce. The program also helps to fund schools to be able to provide the physical, occupational, and speech therapy services to students with disabilities. For all of these reasons and more, what we seek to do with this amendment is to restore the more than $1 trillion cut to Medicaid. We all have the opportunity in the Senate to receive letters from constituents--sometimes handwritten, sometimes typewritten, sometimes by way of email, or otherwise--who communicate to us about the issues of the day. One of the most compelling letters that I have ever received in the context of healthcare and, particularly, in the context of Medicaid is from Pam Simpson. She is from Southeastern Pennsylvania. Pam wrote to me and described in rather specific detail about the challenges her son, Rowan, faces as a child with autism spectrum disorder and what his life was like before Medicaid and what his life was like after Medicaid. I will not dwell on the ``before.'' I will focus on how his life has changed with Medicaid. Pam tells me that in late January of 2016 she applied for medical assistance for her son Rowan. She goes on to write about the wraparound services that came from Medicaid after her son Rowan was enrolled, which included a behavioral specialist consultant and a therapeutic staff support worker to help her son Rowan. It reads that the behavioral specialist evaluated Rowan while he was at daycare and ``put a treatment plan together to help guide the therapeutic support, who was then able to provide support to Rowan while he was at daycare. The wrap-around services have been a Godsend.'' That is what we were told in the letter from Pam Simpson. I will conclude because I know that we are short on time. Pam Simpson described the before and after. Then, in the letter, she was pleading with me to make sure that I do not take any steps that will cut Medicaid. She wrote about the adverse impact on her family and, obviously, the adverse impact on her son Rowan, who is the recipient of Medicaid. In addition to reminding me about his circumstances and hers, she concluded the letter in this way: Please think of my 9 month old daughter, Luna, who smiles and laughs at her brother daily; she will have to care for Rowan later in her life after we are gone. Overall, we are desperately in need of Rowan's Medicaid assistance and would be devastated if we lost these benefits. She is one mother from one family who is talking about the adverse impact of there being cuts to Medicaid. I would urge my colleagues to support this amendment to make sure that the $1 trillion that has been taken away from the Medicaid Program is restored in this budget bill that we are debating today. I yield the floor.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Michelle Rozo of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's proceedings.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I wish to recognize and honor Chester Asher Candy Co., Inc., ``Asher's Chocolates,'' as it celebrates the 125th anniversary of its founding in Pennsylvania. In 1892, Chester A. Asher founded Asher's Chocolates in the city of Philadelphia, near Independence Hall. A farm boy from Scotland, who had previously lived in Canada, Chester had a ``passion for chocolates'' and a ``knack for getting to the heart of a sugar craving.'' In 1899, he moved the company to the historical area of Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia. Chester worked tirelessly to perfect his candies and chocolates and was constantly searching for innovative ways to please his customers. Following World War II, Chester's four sons took over the business, and they subsequently passed the company on to their sons in their retirement. After their father's passing in 1968, the third generation of Ashers, brothers John ``Jack'' and Bob Asher, assumed leadership of the company. Asher's Chocolates quickly grew from the brothers producing each piece of candy individually with just two candy-making machines to building a warehouse and being regarded throughout the East Coast as a well-known candy company. While both of the third-generation brothers were vital to the company's increasing success, it was Jack who became lovingly referred to as, ``the Candy Man.'' Jack was very engaged in hands-on management of the company. When he wasn't on the ground overseeing production, Jack served as a volunteer firefighter with the Wissahickon and Flourtown fire companies. Jack also became a prominent member of the community by serving on the boards of the First Presbyterian Church in Germantown and the historic Cliveden, where he sponsored the Battle of Germantown reenactment for 40 years. Jack's proactive involvement and dedication to the community did not go unrecognized. In 1988, the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce awarded Jack the Small Business Person of the Year award, and in 2006, he was inducted into the National Confectionary Sales Association's Candy Hall of Fame. Though it is with great sadness that Jack Asher passed away in September of 2017, his legacy will undoubtedly continue through the life of Asher's Chocolates. While over a century has passed since its founding, Asher's Chocolates still remains family owned. Currently, Jeff, a fourth- generation Asher, serves as the CEO of Asher's Chocolates and believes it is his family's ``stubborn, common commitment to providing excellent chocolate at an affordable price'' that has allowed Asher's Chocolates to remain in business for so long. Today Asher's Chocolates has expanded its business, selling over 3.3 million pounds of candy each year, employing over 100 people, and supplying delicious treats on a national and worldwide level to Canada, Mexico, Japan, China, South America, and Europe. As Asher's Chocolates has reached global success, I am honored it calls Pennsylvania home. Founded by a Scottish man who emigrated from Canada and was devoted to operating a family-run business, Asher's Chocolates is rich in both diversity and tradition. While their impact is great and long-standing, Asher's Chocolates hasn't lost sight of what is important: family and ``one of life's sweetest pleasures . . . [is] a simple box of chocolate.'' Asher's Chocolates serves as a symbol of success, history, and family, and I commend the Asher family and the company's employees on the 125th anniversary of its founding.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I want to speak today with regard to a month we set aside--or I should say the equivalent of a month that spans two different months--as National Hispanic Heritage Month. As many know, the United States is home to more than 56 million people of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, comprising over 17 percent of the Nation's total population. We set aside September 15 to October 15 to mark National Hispanic Heritage Month. This month is a reminder of the vibrant culture and substantial contributions that people of the Hispanic community have made to our Nation. Although we have only a 30- day time period as a designation, we recognize the contributions made by Latinos in this country every day, not just between September 15 and October 15. I have held a number of meetings with Latinos and Latino leaders this past year in Pennsylvania and here in Washington and recently just a couple weeks ago, as well, to discuss issues of concern to Hispanic Americans and Latinos. The resounding theme I heard from Pennsylvanians is the strong economic drive that Latinos and Hispanic Americans share. As the second fastest growing minority in the United States, the Hispanic community's economic power continues to grow. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy both in Pennsylvania and across the Nation. Latinos are 1.4 times more likely than the general population to become entrepreneurs. In fact, Latinos own some 3.3 million businesses in the United States, accounting for more than 40 percent of all minority-owned businesses. Together, these businesses generate almost $500 billion in economic activity. Overall, the Latino community accounts for a combined $1.3 trillion in economic activity. Their contributions are projected to top $1.7 trillion by 2020--from $1.3 to $1.7 trillion in just a few years. Last month, I was proud to join many of my Senate colleagues in designating the week beginning September 18 as National Hispanic- Serving Institutions Week. This resolution recognizes the achievements and goals of the 472 Hispanic-serving institutions, known by the acronym HSI. These HSIs are throughout the Nation, and they improve their local communities and play a vital role in expanding access to college for students across the country. These HSIs represent 13 percent of nonprofit colleges and universities. Yet they enroll 63 percent of all Latino students. These Hispanic-serving institutions are located in 18 States and Puerto Rico. I am proud to be a cosponsor of the resolution which recognizes the important work these institutions play in expanding access to higher education for everyone. This year, Hispanic Heritage Month has become a month of advocacy and action. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Dream Act. This issue has been on the forefront in recent discussions, not only among the Latino community, the Hispanic-American community but with many of my constituents across the board, and I am sure that is true in every Senate office. Dreamers shared with me the hard work and struggles they have endured to be successful in this country. Ending DACA, in my judgment, is wrong. First of all, it is wrong to break a sacred promise to hundreds of thousands of people living in our country, young people who were promised by their government, if they came forward, they would be protected. Ending DACA would be breaking that sacred promise. In Pennsylvania alone, estimates say that ending DACA would cost the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania nearly $357 million per year in GDP losses to our State, and that is according to the Center for American Progress. Ending DACA would result in the loss of $460.3 billion--not million but billion--from the Nation's GDP over the next decade, again according to the Center for American Progress. So it would be a betrayal to violate this covenant with hundreds of thousands of young people, and it is really a bad move for the economy of my State of Pennsylvania and the economy of our Nation. I was proud to vote for the DREAM Act in both 2007 and 2010, and I hope the Senate will have a clean vote on the Dream Act soon. We should be focused on humane and commonsense solutions that keep our Nation safe as well as allowing it to thrive. Hispanic Americans are a vital part of the fabric of American society. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I come to the floor today for the second time this week to highlight the tragic human cost of gun violence. I will speak today about just one victim, but of course we are thinking as well about the 58 victims in Las Vegas. Not counting the killer in that total, the last count was 58 victims and well over 500 injured. We have some sense of the gravity of the violence that played out in Las Vegas. I am not sure any of us can fully understand it, and some of us will never quite understand what happened there, but I think we have to dedicate ourselves to taking action. I will get to that in a moment.

Mr. CASEY

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

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I commend the words and the determination for action that were expressed by the Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from Illinois. Like them, and like so many people across the country, I start with condolences and prayers and commendations. I offer condolences to the families--the names and the families we don't know yet--of this most recent tragedy, but we do know they are not only worthy of our expressions of condolence but will be in need of our prayers. Then, I offer commendations, of course, to the first responders and the law enforcement officials who responded as they always do, running toward the danger, running to help. We can't say enough about the work they do. If we stop at expressing condolences and offering prayers and commending those who take action, like first responders and law enforcement--if we stop there, I don't think that is an adequate response to this tragedy, just like it wasn't an adequate response in connection with the Pulse Night Club or the tragedy in December of 2012 in Newtown, CT. It is nowhere near an adequate response when we consider the enormity of this problem. I believe we have to take action. I will talk about that in a moment. Action must start with what happens on this floor. It is difficult to take action necessarily if there isn't time for debate, time for collaboration on legislation, and ultimately consideration of legislation on the floor of the Senate and I would hope in the U.S. House of Representatives. The enormity of this tragedy is almost hard to comprehend when we think about it, not just in terms of the number, which at last count was 58 killed and over 500--over 500--injured. Those numbers are almost too large to comprehend; that one person with one weapon or maybe several weapons was able to inflict that kind of carnage in one place at one time. I don't know how long it took, but he wasn't shooting for many hours to kill that many people. He did it in a short timeframe. When we consider those numbers, I have to ask--I don't know if we went back and compared a similar day or a similar timeframe, comparing the loss of life in the context of war, but I am sure there were plenty of days of conflict where Americans were on foreign soil in a battle, in a war, where we would have lost even less lives on a particular day or a portion of a particular day. The scale of this is almost unimaginable. Then, we need to consider what has been happening on our streets. Every State, every community has their own numbers. I can point to Pennsylvania. Just since 2014, thousands of shootings--by one estimate I think over 7,700--but then, of course, the more ominous number is the number of people killed as a result of those shootings. In Pennsylvania, since 2014, some 2,072 people have died as a result of that larger number of shootings. I think for the Nation, and I think, certainly, undoubtedly for me, maybe the most important or the most seminal day in this debate was in December of 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. The distinguished Senator from Connecticut, who joins us on the floor and started tonight with his remarks, remembers it better than probably any other Member of the Senate, other than his colleague in Connecticut and others who lived through it. One of the questions I asked myself at the end of that weekend, after watching hours and hours of television coverage and reading a lot about it and then watching a news report on Sunday evening which tracked the pathway of the killer going to one classroom and killing 20 children-- 6-year-olds, 7-year-olds, first graders--after he had done that, he was on his way to another classroom. So I concluded from that, if he had more time, in addition to the 20 killed in one classroom and the adults who were killed, we would have been reading about potentially hundreds of children killed in one school in even less--a lot less than a day, maybe an hour or two or three, but that didn't happen. He took his own life. So I began to ask myself not only what should we do in response to this--and I had concluded at that point to support legislation--but a larger question kept coming to mind. If one person, with one weapon or a few weapons and unlimited ammunition--if one person cannot only kill 20 children in Connecticut, I guess almost 50 people in Florida, and now we know from Las Vegas at least 58, and I am sure some who were injured will die--but if one person can do that, we have to ask ourselves, Is there nothing we can do? Because that becomes part of the debate, right? One side says: Let's take action by way of legislation or take some action that would reduce the likelihood that we have more tragedies like this, more mass shootings, but the response immediately comes back that the other side says: We agree it is tragic, we agree we want to prevent it, we agree we want to reduce the likelihood, but there is nothing we can do legislatively to reduce the likelihood or to prevent it. I don't think anyone would argue that a law that passes in the aftermath of this Las Vegas tragedy or a law that passes even in the aftermath of Sandy Hook Elementary School--if the law, the proposals, the bills, really, that were voted on in the Senate in 2013, if they had passed, no one can argue with certitude or with scientific precision that if you pass this law, this many lives will be saved. After Newtown and after this tragedy, I come back to the same question: Is there nothing we can do legislatively? We are the most powerful country in the world. We led the world in winning World War II, a war that was not on its way to winning until we got involved, until we were forced to respond because we were attacked. We are the country that has cured disease and built the strongest Republic in the history of the human race; that has the strongest military, without a doubt; that has the strongest economy, without a doubt; that has so much in ways that we can point to of American exceptionalism and strength and achievement-- achievements that are unmatched anywhere in the world in almost any part of American life that one can point to. Is that same country completely disabled from taking an action that would reduce the likelihood--and we would hope substantially reduce the likelihood--that we will not have another Las Vegas or another Orlando or another Newtown, and go on and on from there, all of these tragedies in all of these places? Is that really what our answer is going to be? We take action when we are attacked, to fight back and to prevent it from happening again. We take action when there is an epidemic. We take action when there is a crisis. We take action when there is a natural disaster. We are seeing some of that most recently. We take action as a government. The Congress takes action. The executive takes action. Yet, in this circumstance, what can only be described as an epidemic--that might be an understatement--where we are losing more than 30,000 people a year, are we saying that there is nothing we can do legislatively to reduce that likelihood? I don't think any American, if they think about it, would conclude there is nothing we can do. So when I considered that in the context of Sandy Hook, I had to ask myself: Are you saying to yourself that you are going to vote no on what became three bills, vote no on them because you believe there is nothing you can do? That is what your vote is going to be? That is going to be your response? As a legislator with the opportunity to cast a vote in a body of 100 people, you are going to say no three times, as it turned out in 2013, to legislation because you believe there is nothing your vote and nothing this legislative body can do? Well, I decided to vote yes, at least, but even that is not enough. We haven't had votes in years on these issues. Here we are, almost 5 years later--in December it will be 5 years, half a decade--since Newtown, CT, since the massacre at Sandy Hook. I have a page from the Wall Street Journal that was printed within a couple days of that tragedy. It had very small color pictures and very small biographies of those very small people, those 6-year-olds and 7- year-olds. It has been on my desk all of these years, and it is a very yellowed copy of a newspaper article. I often think about what those families have gone through all of these years. The great recording artist Bruce Springsteen had a song after September 11. The name of the song is ``You're Missing.'' The refrain in that song, of course, is ``You're missing,'' talking about someone, of course, who lost a loved one on 9/11. He says: ``You're missing when I turn out the lights, you're missing when I close my eyes, and you're missing when I see the sun rise.'' The same could be said of those Newtown families, the same could be said of those families in Orlando, and now, unfortunately and tragically, the families in the Las Vegas area--and maybe well beyond Las Vegas--who were there for that concert. I hope this will be an occasion not just for speeches and expressions of condolence and commendation for those who showed such bravery in this tragedy, or prayers and solidarity, but that this will be a time for action, meaning action in the context of debate and action in the context of legislation. I think there are a number of steps we can take--I will not outline them all now--a number of commonsense steps we can take that are entirely consistent with the Second Amendment but would reduce the likelihood over time of having more and more of these tragedies or maybe, just maybe, taking action that will reduce the number of deaths. Even that would be substantial progress. I just cannot accept the idea that there is absolutely nothing we can do legislatively to reduce the likelihood--and I would hope substantially reduce the likelihood--of these tragedies so that we can prevent or at least reduce the number of tragedies. I yield the floor.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, today I rise to celebrate the 55th anniversary of AccuWeather, the worldwide weather service headquartered in State College, PA. AccuWeather was founded by Dr. Joel Myers, who received his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University and is currently a fellow of the American Meteorological Association. Dr. Myers got his start weather forecasting for gas and utility companies in Pennsylvania. In the 1960s and 1970s, Dr. Myers taught at Penn State and continued to expand his weather forecasting business to include highway departments, utility companies, construction companies, and ski resorts. The name ``AccuWeather'' was first used in 1971 to service the WARM- AM radio station in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton region. In 1972, AccuWeather serviced its first television station, WPVI-TV in Philadelphia. Many of AccuWeather's first customers are still customers today. In the 1980s, AccuWeather developed the USA TODAY weather page and became the official weather forecaster at the World Fair in Kentucky. The company also produced the weather maps for the Associated Press. AccuWeather has been a global name since the 1970s. Having first established an international presence serving customers in Canada, AccuWeather has expanded to providing services all around the world for customers in locations such as South Asia, the Middle East and South America. Some of these global services include providing forecasts to help with crop rotation and forecasts for major ports, television stations, and newspapers. AccuWeather currently serves over 43,000 Zip Codes and over 1.5 billion people. Dr. Myers and AccuWeather have been recognized on the State and national level, receiving the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters Pride in Pennsylvania Business Award, an Outstanding Job Generator Award from the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County, PA, and five Telly Awards. This year, AccuWeather received an award as the No. 1 most accurate forecaster by ForecastWatch, an industry tracker. Dr. Myers was honored as one of the 528 greatest entrepreneurs in American history with his biographical inclusion in Entrepreneur Magazine's Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurs. In Centre County, PA, AccuWeather employs over 400 people in a facility that houses 23 radio booths and a TV studio with state-of-the- art equipment. AccuWeather is also a family business, with Dr. Myers' brothers serving as officers--Barry Lee Myers is the CEO and Evan Myers is the COO and senior vice president. I wish AccuWeather the best and look forward to its continued success serving Pennsylvania and many others around the world.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I would like to take this moment for the Senate to recognize and honor the work of the PJM Interconnection and its 600 employees in Valley Forge, PA. This month, the company celebrates the 90th anniversary of its founding, as well as the 20th anniversary of its formation as an independent grid operator. PJM is a world-class institution that oversees the largest power grid in North America. PJM performs the critical function of keeping the lights on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for more than 65 million people in all or portions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and the District of Columbia. PJM began in 1927 when three utilities realized the benefits and efficiencies possible by interconnecting to share their generating resources and formed the world's first continuing power pool. Since then, PJM's work has been dedicated to ensuring that reliable electricity is available at a reasonable price. In 1997, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved PJM as the Nation's first fully functioning independent system operator. ISOs operate but do not own transmission systems in order to provide open access to the grid for nonutility users. Since that beginning of three utilities, PJM has grown to more than 1,000 members. Those members represent transmission owners, generation owners, consumers, and residential and commercial customers in each of its 13-state region. PJM has three simple goals: keeping the lights on, administering the buying and selling of electricity through wholesale electricity markets, and assessing and planning for the future needs of the electric grid. PJM has devoted itself to those goals as an industry technology innovator, operating similar to a stock exchange and developing electricity rates through a bidding process that aligns supply with demand. That PJM model is one that has been emulated not just across the country, but around the world. As the work of PJM has reached a global scale, I am especially proud that this company continues to call Pennsylvania home and remains an integral part of our economy and electric grid infrastructure. For the last 90 years, PJM has worked to develop groundbreaking changes in electricity and technology to improve the lives of all Americans. Together with a grateful Commonwealth and a grateful nation, I take this opportunity to thank them for their last nine decades of innovation and wish them well for another 90 years of excellence and beyond.