Bob Casey

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to speak in opposition to the nomination of the Oklahoma attorney general, Scott Pruitt, to be the next Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency which we all know as the EPA. My concern--I have a number of them, but the principal concern of Mr. Pruitt's nomination is rooted in his record, which I believe is totally inconsistent with the mission of the EPA. That mission is to protect human health and the environment. We know the EPA achieves this core goal through the development and enforcement of standards to protect children and families from exposure to dangerous pollutants in our air and water. Protection of human health means ensuring that our children have clean air and clean water, tackling climate change, which leads to the kind of food insecurity that causes malnutrition in children throughout the world. I have to say that as a Pennsylvanian, I think I have an obligation to not only speak about these issues but to fight on behalf of policies that will advance the knowledge and mission of the EPA but will be consistent with the directive I am obligated to follow in my State's constitution. In Pennsylvania, if you go back to the founding of Pennsylvania forward, we had many generations, especially through the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, throughout most of the 1800s and into the 1900s, until about the midcentury point, where we didn't do a very good job of protecting our air and water and human health because we let one or another industry pretty much do whatever they wanted until the modern era. Fortunately, since that time, Pennsylvania has made a lot of progress. One of the measures of that progress and something I am bound by is a provision of the State's constitution, article I, section 27, that says people shall ``have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic, and esthetic values of the environment.'' That constitutional provision goes on to talk about each of us as citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania being trustees of the environment--especially and ever more so if you are a part of State government, and I would argue the Federal Government as well. To say I feel an obligation is a major understatement. I think I am bound by that, and that enters into my determination and analysis of Mr. Pruitt's record. We know in recent years the EPA, acting under the authority it is granted through laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, has developed a number of important standards to advance these priorities-- rules like the mercury and air toxics standards, the cross-state air pollution rule, the ozone rule, the new source performance standards for the oil and natural gas industry, the Clean Power Plan, which is meant to obviously focus our policy on climate change, and other policies to reduce exposure to pollutants like methane, volatile organic compounds, mercury, and carbon pollution itself. According to the American Lung Association's ``State of the Air 2016'' report, these rules reduce the likelihood of premature death, asthma attacks, lung cancer, and heart disease. I would hope that if you have a series of measures in place that reduce the likelihood of asthma attacks, lung cancer, heart disease, and premature death--I would hope we would not only advance those policies but make sure they are not destroyed, undermined, or compromised. It is just common sense to make sure we regulate pollutants like lead, mercury, arsenic, and acid gases, just by way of example. Yet Mr. Pruitt, who is the attorney general of Oklahoma, filed 14 lawsuits against the EPA to halt the regulation of these pollutants that threaten our children's health. Mr. Pruitt has stood up for the interests of oil and gas companies but has failed to defend, in my judgment, the most vulnerable members of our society, or at least not defend them to the extent that I would hope he would, not only as attorney general of Oklahoma but as the EPA Administrator were he to be confirmed. When asked during his confirmation to name one clean air or clean water regulation he supported, he couldn't name one. I believe his record is clear. He fought to dismantle the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, anti-pollution programs to target ozone and mercury in the air, the agreement to clean up the Chesapeake Bay--which I will get to in a moment--and has even denied the science of climate change. Suffice it to say, I have a number of basic concerns about his record and what he would do were he to be confirmed. One example of the concerns I have involve the Chesapeake Bay with regard to impact in Pennsylvania. Although Pennsylvania doesn't border the Chesapeake, the Pennsylvania Susquehanna River is the bay's largest source of freshwater. Improving the health of the Chesapeake Bay requires a sustained, coordinated commitment from all of the States in the watershed. I have repeatedly written to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for increased funding and technical assistance for farmers in Pennsylvania so Pennsylvania can continue to improve the health of the Susquehanna River and the bay. Pennsylvania has made great strides in addressing the issue of nutrient and sediment runoff into the Chesapeake Bay, but there is more to be done, and Pennsylvania is far from meeting its 2005 Chesapeake Bay pollution reduction goals. Ensuring that all States in the watershed are coordinated and meeting their commitments is exactly the type of role the EPA should be filling. Mr. Pruitt called the EPA's Chesapeake Bay TMDL standard ``the culmination of the EPA's decade-long attempt to control exactly how States achieve federal water quality requirements under the Clean Water Act, and marks the beginning of the end of meaningful state participation in water pollution regulation.'' Well, I disagree. We don't have time to outline all the reasons, but I strongly disagree with that assessment of the EPA's actions with regard to the Chesapeake Bay, but we do have a long way to go to make sure that we keep it clean. So on clean water, I think we have to insist that neither the EPA Administrator nor anyone in Congress does anything compromising when it comes to clean water. Climate change. This fall I had an opportunity to spend time in Pennsylvania with Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island, one of the leaders in the Senate on the issue of climate change. We did a tour, and one of the places we went was the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge. It is America's first urban refuge named after one of my predecessors, Senator Heinz, who tragically died in 1991, but his work on the environment is remembered in places like this wildlife refuge. This is a public space that allows us to enjoy wildlife, outdoor recreation, and environmental education opportunities right outside of a major city--in this case, Philadelphia. And this refuge also plays a vital role in climate change resiliency. Marshes help to filter pollutants from water and can absorb water during heavy rain events, thus helping to reduce the magnitude of flooding. However, the refuge is facing a number of environmental stressors. Sea level rise could have serious consequences for this fresh water marsh. Not only would rising sea levels lead to the loss of undeveloped dry land and habitat for wildlife, but increased salinity could change the plant makeup of this marsh at the wildlife refuge. According to EPA, Pennsylvania's climate has warmed more than half a degree Fahrenheit in just the last century. Sea level has also risen nearly 1 foot over the past century, according to NOAA, measured by the tidal gauge in Philadelphia. That means that significant portions of the city of Philadelphia could be underwater, including the Philadelphia International Airport, if we fail to act. We know that 2016 was the warmest year on record for a third year in a row. Also, climate change is not some distant possibility in Pennsylvania or throughout the Nation; it is real, and we are already feeling the effects of climate change. I will close with one story from one mother who talks about air quality, or the impact of bad air quality and the issue of climate change itself. Jacqueline Smith-Spade, a mother from Philadelphia, recently wrote to me about her 6-year-old son Jonas's struggle with asthma and the emotional and financial toll it takes on her family: Every time there is an extreme or irregular climate shift, I can pretty much predict that my son is going to end up in the emergency room due to the effect of air quality. She goes on to say later in the letter: I routinely check the air quality to help predict what type of day my son and my family might have: With or without nebulizer? The physical toll on Jonas also creates a financial burden on my family. The emergency visits cost $100 each time we go; $30 copays for each specialist visit; $15 copays for each pediatrician visit. She goes on to say: This is not cheap; however, my insurance greatly helps to reduce the costs. She worries, of course, about what might happen on healthcare, but I will not read all of those portions. She concludes this part of the letter this way: A reduction in air pollution and climate change will make life for my 7-year-old son, Jonas, much easier. His reactions to those changes will be reduced. It will also save my family countless dollars, stress, and panic attacks. So said one mom about her son Jonas. What we must do, and especially what Mr. Pruitt must do, were he to be confirmed, is to answer her questions--to answer her questions, Jacqueline's questions, and the concerns she has about her son Jonas. She is not only a taxpayer, but she is someone who will be impacted directly by the actions and the policies that come from this administration as well as the EPA itself. So I believe that Mr. Pruitt, if he were to be confirmed, must meet the expectations of Jonas and his mother. He works for them, or will work for them, were he to be confirmed. I know I am out of time. I will just conclude with this: There are a long series of reasons, some of which I wasn't able to get to today, that undergird and form the foundation of my decision not to support the nomination of Scott Pruitt as the next EPA Administrator. With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to pay tribute to a Pennsylvanian who passed away this past week, Al Boscov. Al was known not only in Pennsylvania, but beyond, as the owner of Boscov's Department Stores, a very, very successful retail department store chain. I rise not just to pay tribute to his life, his work, and his success but, most importantly, what he meant to the people of Pennsylvania--all that he did above and beyond in addition to his great business success. I want to extend condolences to the Boscov family--to his wife Eunice, their children and grandchildren, and, of course, to the people of Reading and Berks County, and, by extension, our entire Commonwealth because of what Al meant to his community and the larger community in eastern Pennsylvania but also all the way up to my home area of northeastern Pennsylvania. I live in Scranton. One of his stores was, and still is, in the downtown business district in Scranton. So this is personal to me as well. Al leaves two generations who will carry on his legacy in so many ways: his three daughters, Ruth, Ellen, and Meg, and his five grandchildren. Al was born on September 22, 1929. He was the youngest son of Solomon and Ethel Boscov. He first made a name for himself as an expert flycatcher in his father's neighborhood store at Ninth and Pike. In those days, when he was just learning skills that would help him later in the business world, obviously people could see a great future for this young man. He was a graduate of Reading Senior High School. He also graduated with a business degree from Drexel University, where he started his first business--a delivery service for hero sandwiches--which would presage a great career in business. Al received an honorary doctor of humanities degree from Albright College in Reading, a doctor of arts and letters degree from King's College in Wilkes-Barre, PA, and, finally, a doctor of public service from Kutztown University. So three distinguished Pennsylvania universities paid tribute to him by way of a doctorate degree. He served in the Navy during the Korean war. After service, Al returned home to join the family business and, in 1962, opened Boscov's first full-service department store, Boscov's West, in suburban Reading. Since that time, the Boscov chain has become the largest family-owned department store chain in the Nation, with 45 stores in 7 States, employing some 7,500 coworkers. Here is what Al said about his store, which shows the attitude he conveyed as a businessperson and a member of the community. When he talked about people visiting his stores, he said: We like to give people a reason for coming to Boscov's even when they don't want to buy anything. They enjoy themselves and hopefully we make a friend. What a great attitude for any business leader, especially one who opened his business in the town in which he grew up. Al's family remains especially proud of his continual efforts to fight prejudice and promote cultural understanding. For example, at times of growing racial tension in Reading years ago, Al used his three Reading stores to present a heritage festival, providing the opportunity for the African-American community to share various aspects of Black culture, whether food, art, writing, or entertainment. Similarly, Al Boscov presented a Puerto Rican heritage festival in both his Reading and Lebanon stores--Lebanon being in the middle of Pennsylvania--again, bringing together the Hispanic, White, and Black communities with a theme of ``Knowing is Understanding.'' His belief that we all must take time to know each other and to take care of each other remains as one of the most important and, his family hopes, lasting legacies. As the chairman of Boscov's, Al set new standards for successful retailing, community involvement, and civic duty. He founded and led the nonprofit Our City Reading, Inc., to assist Reading in restoring abandoned homes and to bring about a resurgence in downtown Reading. Under his leadership, more than 600 families had the opportunity to own and live in a new home. He led the efforts to equip a senior citizens center in downtown Reading. The Horizon Center provides seniors with hot meals and activities. I could go on and on, but I will not this afternoon. It is clear from his life that he was very successful. It is also clear from his life that he gave and gave, not only to his home community of Reading, but well beyond. I know from my own personal experience what he did for northeastern Pennsylvania, for Lackawanna County, Luzerne County, and a lot of other counties as well. So we are thinking of Al Boscov today, remembering his generosity, remembering his legacy, and remembering the many contributions he made to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. CASEY

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

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to speak about the nomination of Steve Mnuchin to be Secretary of the Treasury and the concerns I have about his nomination. I want to start with a Pennsylvania story. It is a story we wish we didn't have to highlight, but it is relevant to the discussion and debate on this nomination. I am looking at a document that is a written summary of a television investigative news report from January of this year. It is from the Pittsburgh television station WTAE, and it is dated January 16, 2017. The headline on the document is ``Trump Pick for Treasury Secretary Foreclosed on Hundreds of Homeowners in Western Pennsylvania.'' The article says in pertinent part about this one Pennsylvanian: Nellie Mlinek lost her husband to cancer. She lost her son to an overdose. And then she lost her home to OneWest Bank. It goes on to describe the interaction between this individual and the bank, and of course this is the bank of which Steve Mnuchin was a part owner. I also want to read what she said about the circumstance she was in. She was hoping that because of the circumstances with regard to her home, that she would be able to work with the bank instead of having foreclosure. That was not to be. The article goes on to talk about others in the region who had foreclosures as well. A house in White Oak, PA, was foreclosed in 2014; a house in North Versailles was foreclosed in 2013; a house in Penn Hills in 2012; a Pittsburgh house was foreclosed in 2011. These are all communities in Allegheny County, Southwestern Pennsylvania, and Nellie was from Westmoreland County, which is just to the east of Allegheny County. So that is what the article summarizes--foreclosures throughout a corner of Southwestern Pennsylvania, as the headline says, hundreds of foreclosures. The article starts with this line: ``Critics say President-elect Donald Trump's pick for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, ran a foreclosure machine at a major bank,'' and it goes on from there. That is one in Pennsylvania, and then references to foreclosures that I read from are summaries of what happened to some others. Then we go to the other end of the State. This is in Southeastern Pennsylvania, the region within which Philadelphia sits. In this case, the individual is Ruth Guerriero. Ruth is from South Philadelphia, and she remembers the day she got the letter that ``scared me to death.'' The letter threatened a foreclosure because of a reverse mortgage that she didn't know existed. The headline of this article is ``Reverse- mortgage nightmare can start after borrower dies.'' In this case, Ruth lost her husband. The article says that this particular piece of mail in October 2013 was from OneWest Bank, informing Ruth that it was foreclosing on the house in the 2800 block of South Hutchinson Street that she and her late husband had bought in 2006 for $200,000. Without her knowledge, Ruth Guerriero said, her husband, 23 years her senior, had taken out a reverse mortgage in September 2007. It goes on from there. So anyone who has had that experience of losing a home or becoming the victim of a reverse mortgage when you didn't have prior knowledge can relate to what has happened to these individuals. This is part of the debate. These are not the only considerations we weigh, but when you have, in this case, a nominee for Treasury Secretary who comes into the nomination process not having held public office or not having held appointed government office, this is part of the record you are to review. It is really the only record--the record in this case as a banker or a businessperson, and in his case, his work on Wall Street. I had the opportunity, of course, as a member of the Finance Committee, to meet Mr. Mnuchin in my office and to question him more than once in the question period for the Finance Committee. In our meeting, I asked him, for example--and these are other relevant questions in terms of presenting accurate information, presenting information that will fully answer questions--I asked him how many times his financial institution chose to modify mortgages as opposed to foreclosing, and he told me that there were about 100,000 mortgage modifications. Yet we know the documented evidence tells a different story; it is about one- third that number, closer to 35,000 modifications. I realize that someone could not remember the exact number, but I was surprised at how far off he was in something so substantial in someone's life, whether it was a person like Nellie or other individuals. A mortgage foreclosure, as opposed to a modification, which is a better result for an individual or family--that is a substantial difference in their lives. And I would hope that when you are in any way involved in a foreclosure, as a banker or as a part of an entity that is foreclosing, that you would carefully weigh the consequences before you choose to pursue foreclosure or pursue a different path, the path of modification, which, of course, everyone would prefer in that circumstance. I asked Steve Mnuchin how many Americans his bank had foreclosed on during the financial crisis, and he has yet to provide an answer to that question. I know others may have asked a similar question, and I wonder if they got an answer. We will see what the public record shows. Mr. Mnuchin was also asked to provide a copy of a letter he said he sent to the Department of Housing and Urban Development raising concerns about the impact of the company's reverse mortgage guidance. It was almost a month ago that we asked for that information to be produced, that letter, and we still haven't seen it. So I wonder about the statement he made with regard to information from HUD. I also asked Mr. Mnuchin whether his financial institution engaged in the predatory practice of so-called robo-signing, and this is a question which was asked by a couple of Senators. I asked him for that information, and he said that wasn't the case. But now we know from the documented evidence in an answer that he later changed that there was robo-signing taking place at the time we alleged that it did. So when you ask a question in a hearing and you get an answer that was wrong or incomplete or misleading or otherwise, that is one thing. You could sometimes have a circumstance where someone didn't intentionally want to mislead or tell a lie, or they may have answered a question imprecisely or without a lot of information. But I think it is a little different when you ask a question in writing, where the individual had the time to analyze a question and provide an answer in writing with some time to reflect, some time to consult some other sources of information before they draft their answer and then submit it to you as part of the nomination process. In this case, Mr. Mnuchin had a different answer than the facts showed, and I will go through that a little bit later. At some level, there is a question of accuracy, maybe even rising to the level of trust, and that is something we have to consider when we are making a determination about a nominee, because almost any Cabinet agency has to transmit information, very specific, detailed information. People have to be able to rely upon the information, the accuracy of it and the completeness of it. And if he has had problems in his nomination process, that causes us to raise some real questions. I wanted to start with OneWest Bank--another entity called Financial Freedom. I don't know how far we will get into this in the limited time we have. In 2009, Mr. Mnuchin and his business partners bought OneWest Bank at the height of the financial crisis for $1.6 billion, paying about 5 cents on the dollar for the bank's assets. Mr. Mnuchin was able to buy the bank at such a significant discount in part because he was entrusted to modify as many home mortgages as possible so homeowners could stay in their homes. He foreclosed on more than--I should say OneWest Bank foreclosed on more than 40,000 Americans, so we are told. We don't know how many foreclosures they engaged in in Pennsylvania, but, as I read a couple moments ago from an investigative report from WTAE, it is at least hundreds in one region of the State. We have 67 counties. Depending on where you draw the line, Southwestern Pennsylvania is 10 counties, 12 counties, somewhere in that range, maybe as high as 15 if you went as far north as Erie. Let's say it is 15 counties. Hundreds of foreclosures in that region is substantial. Later, after all of those thousands of foreclosures across the country, Mr. Mnuchin sold OneWest Bank for $3.4 billion in 2015. The sale itself yielded the group of individuals, including Mr. Mnuchin, billions of dollars--that would be Mr. Mnuchin and also investors. I mentioned the foreclosures before and the individuals involved. I wanted to go a little deeper into the particular circumstances. I mentioned and highlighted Nellie's story. Here is what took place in that circumstance--or what she had hoped would take place. Nellie was hoping that she would be able to work something out with the bank, so she asked OneWest to help her keep the house by adjusting her payment. That often happens when a bank initiates a foreclosure. It begins a process but works something out with a homeowner, and that would be called a modification. In this case, Nellie asked OneWest to help her keep her house by adjusting her payment, but she said the bank refused and then foreclosed on her. She said: ``They should have worked with me to meet a payment that I could make.'' She filed for bankruptcy, but even that did not save her house. She said it cost her ``a lot of depression.'' That is what Nellie said about her own circumstances, and I mentioned the other communities in Western Pennsylvania. That is the reality foreclosure brings to bear on the life of one individual who is struggling, who, in Nellie's case, has had a series of setbacks, deeply personal, tragic circumstances compounded by the foreclosure. The same is true of Ruth in South Philadelphia, in terms of the impact of that decision. We have a lot of ways to summarize information like this, and I will just highlight maybe one or two. For example, according to the National Consumer Law Center, in March of 2012, a Philadelphia senior citizen with a reverse mortgage from a wing of Mr. Mnuchin's bank--in this case, the name of the entity was Financial Freedom--sought assistance because he had been served with a preforeclosure notice. The reverse mortgage company owned by Mr. Mnuchin gave this individual 30 days to pay almost $5,000. What was the bill for? Well, without his knowing it, Financial Freedom charged him over $2,000 for forced-placed insurance coverage from 2010 to 2012. Financial Freedom threatened to go forward with the foreclosure unless this senior citizen made immediate monthly payments equal to almost 35 percent of his monthly income. With legal assistance, those payments were reduced. I would hope you would not need to hire a lawyer to get those payments reduced, but sometimes when you are up against a powerful financial institution, that is the only way to proceed. Instead of immediately informing this senior citizen of his lapsed coverage, Financial Freedom charged excessive amounts for forced-placed coverage. Financial Freedom then waited 2 years to begin collection, but it expected this senior, who was living on a fixed income, to pay within 30 days. Financial Freedom also did not tell this senior citizen he could apply for a longer repayment plan due to his low income. According to the National Consumer Law Center, in 2015, Financial Freedom notified a Pennsylvania reverse mortgage holder's heirs that the only way to avoid foreclosure on the family home was by repaying the loan balance or selling the property for at least 95 percent of its appraised value. They said the appraised value for the Pennsylvania home was $170,000, even though their own appraisal of the property just one month earlier was $67,000. There is a big difference between $170,000 and $67,000. It seems that $170,000 was the appraised value at loan origination, way back in 2007. Now, of course, it is years later, and that was, of course, before the market collapsed. So for the purposes of preforeclosure notice, Financial Freedom used an appraisal over $100,000 more than the actual value of the home. They were trying to force the heirs to pay more than $100,000 above the home's value to prevent foreclosure of the family home. So these are a couple of Pennsylvania stories--Ruth and Nellie and then some others, whose names aren't in the text of my remarks, but give similar stories about some of the foreclosure practices that Mr. Mnuchin was part of when he had these individual banks. Here is the question on robo-signing that I mentioned earlier. I submitted a question for the record in writing and gave it to him, and here is what his response was to the question. The question was this: One of the most significant scandals during the financial crisis was the practice of ``robo-signing'' whereby bank employees rapidly approved foreclosure documents without thorough review. Many were wrongfully foreclosed upon on account of these practices. Did OneWest Bank ``robo sign'' documents relating to foreclosures and evictions? His response was pretty shocking: OneWest Bank did not robo-sign documents, and as the only bank to successfully complete the independent foreclosure review required by Federal banking regulators to investigate allegations of robo-signing, I am proud of our institution's extremely low error rate. The reason I say that it was a shocking answer is because he had signed his name to a 2011 document that found that OneWest Bank did, in fact, robo-sign. The findings from the Office of Thrift Supervision does not explicitly state robo-signing--that is not a legal term of art--but it does set forth a fact pattern for robo-signing, which involves an employee signing foreclosure documents without reviewing them. Instead of reviewing the details of each, robo-signers assume the paperwork is correct and sign it automatically. Almost anyone who lived through the financial crisis of 2008 knows what robo-signing is, and many were victims of this practice. So that is a problem, obviously, when you answer a question in a manner that is totally inconsistent with the facts. I know I am low on time, and I want to wrap up. What I will do for the record--or if we have time to come back later--is to get into some other issues. But one of the real concerns I have about his nomination is not just his record as a banker, as a person working on Wall Street and working in that world. It is one thing to say you did something in your prior life, but once you put on the mantle of public service and the heavy responsibilities of Treasury Secretary, you set aside that other work you did or that other position you had, maybe, on some issues. But, apparently, some of his work--or at least some of his points of view--will continue in the Treasury Department, because I think it is pretty clear, based upon some reporting back at the end of November, that Mr. Mnuchin believes that one of his prime responsibilities is to begin to dismantle, or substantially alter, what we know as the Dodd-Frank legislation. We know what happened prior to that. We know what happened to the economy. We know that the United States lost about $19 trillion in household wealth. That is $19 trillion, with a ``t.'' More than 8 million jobs--by one estimate, 8.7 million jobs--were lost. So I would hope that as Treasury Secretary, were he to be confirmed, he would make sure that we never go down that path again--that before you dismantle Dodd-Frank, you better think about the consequences to real people's lives. So I will wrap up because I know we have to go, but I will put more information in the Record. Let me conclude with one thought before we move on. One of the concerns I have about his nomination, also, is not something you can point to in a document. It is just a gut instinct or a judgment that I have made, and it is a judgment that can be summarized this way: I have a real concern about his commitment to public service. Why do I say that? It seemed that, in this whole process of disclosing financial information--turning over documents, answering questions, answering follow-up questions--Mr. Mnuchin was kind of resistant to scrutiny or seemed to be burdened by this, and that somehow he was disclosing too much. His demeanor, when you would ask him some questions, appeared to me to be a demeanor that was not consistent with what public service must be about. When you are in public service, whether you are elected or appointed, you are, in fact, a servant. You don't work for a bank, you don't work for a financial institution, and you don't work for a company. You don't even work for a President. You work for the people. I was taught a long time ago that the closer you can get to this ideal--which is inscribed on a building in our State capitol in Harrisburg: ``All public service is a trust, given in faith and accepted in honor''--the way you accept your public duties is not only to disclose what you should disclose, to answer questions which you must answer, but to do it in a manner where you are doing it with a belief that you are a public servant and with the spirit of public service. If you are labored and if you are chafing under that or resisting, you should probably do something else with your life. I hope I am wrong about that. I hope once he is in office--and it appears that he may be confirmed--and if he is confirmed, we see a different approach to the duties of public service and the burdens of public service. I hope I am wrong about him, but my instincts tell me otherwise. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, before I recommence my remarks, I see the senior Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Inhofe. I want to make sure that if he is prepared to take the floor, I will yield.

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

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to speak about the nomination of Tom Price to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. I wish to start this afternoon with a couple of names--just five, and I will use just first names--five Pennsylvanians whom I will refer to in my remarks. I am certain I will get to the first two, and I hope to get to all five. First is Anthony; second is Rowan; third is Rebecca; and fourth and fifth are Hannah and Madeline, two sisters whose story inspired me and continues to inspire me today. I will start with Anthony because I think his circumstance and that of his family are good reminders of how important the Medicaid program is to families across the country. Anthony's mom wrote us a letter. I will read pertinent parts of it to summarize his circumstance. His mom writes in the opening part of the letter: My son, Anthony, was born at 25 weeks and he weighed one tiny pound. We were overcome with medical bills which Medicaid thankfully paid for us. Since his birth he has had multiple health crisis, seizures, sleep disorders just to name a few. Most recently, Anthony was diagnosed with Autism spectrum disorder, Tourette's syndrome, severe obsessive compulsive disorder, and Dyspraxia. All of those in the life of one young boy-- She says: Last spring, we were faced with the decision of putting him in a residential treatment program. If not for his Medical Assistance-- The name of the program for Medicaid in Pennsylvania-- this would have never been an option for us. In other words, they wouldn't be able to get him into a residential treatment program. Ultimately, Anthony's family chose to get him intensive outpatient treatment, which Medical Assistance also covered. Anthony's mom Corey ultimately decided to stay home and care for Anthony, so she had to leave the job at which she had worked for 20 years. She said: If we lost coverage, we would not be able to provide the support he needs. We are sure of that. Toward the end of the letter, she says: My son Anthony is currently attending school almost regularly and functioning the best he has for a very long time thanks to the services he received from his medical assistance. It gives me hope and encouragement that he will someday grow up to be a contributing member of our next generation. That is Anthony's story of all of the benefits he and his family have derived from Medicaid or, as we call it in Pennsylvania, the Medical Assistance program. The second Pennsylvanian I will talk about is Rowan. I spoke about Rowan on the floor just a number of days ago. I am quoting from Rowan's mom's letter. Pamela wrote: Rowan was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder in March of 2015. He was extremely hyperactive and since he refused to nap, he was a severe distraction. I cannot stress enough that we had zero other options for our family. For months, I would receive calls about Rowan being aggressive to other children. This broke my heart. No parent wants to hear that their child is hurting other children. Late January 2016, I applied for Medicaid [Medical Assistance]. After Rowan was awarded MA, we were able to obtain wrap-around services. Then she talks about a behavioral specialist consultant, a therapeutic staff support worker, and all the help that came with those individuals. Specifically she helped to alleviate his aggression and combat his over-stimulation. The wrap-around services have been a Godsend. Ultimately, Rowan benefited from a social skills program. This program is a social skills program specifically for Autistic children ages 3-21. I enrolled Rowan in November. Rowan has benefited immensely from [this program]. Thankfully it is covered in full by MA. Then she concludes, in part: Our family would be bankrupt or my son would go without therapies he sincerely needs. Overall, we are desperately in need of Rowan's Medical Assistance and would be devastated if we lost these benefits. So we have two young boys in Pennsylvania. Their stories are told by their moms, and they are telling us: Don't cut Medicaid. Don't destroy Medicaid, as some proposals have been not just debated here in Washington, not just theorized about; these are policies that Members of Congress have voted in favor of. But now it is a little different. Now it is not just voting in favor of so-called block-granting--a very benign term, ``block-granting.'' I would rather use the word ``destroy,'' but we can debate that. This is a live issue now because we have people who are still proposing block- granting, and we have a President who--at least one member of his administration said he would sign such legislation or at least support it. That gets to the point of my basic disagreement with what Representative Price has not only supported but led the fight on in the House of Representatives. I disagree totally with his budget proposals to block-grant Medicaid for the reasons that I just outlined--because of Rowan and Anthony and lots of children in Pennsylvania like them, children with disabilities, children who happen to come from low-income families, seniors who want to get into nursing homes. All of those concerns are uppermost when I consider his nomination. What I was hoping he would say to me in our meeting in my office--a very cordial meeting where we debated a little bit--and then after my questions to him both in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and the Finance Committee, the committee from which his nomination originated--I was hoping he would say: I was for block- granting Medicaid and changing Medicare and making all those proposals as a House Member, as a leader in the debate about the budget. But I am going to be in different place now, and I am not going to push those ideas. I am going to have a different position, and we are not going to go in the direction of doing that any longer, so I want to separate from what I was proposing as a Member of the House. I have no assurances that his advocacy or position on these issues will be any different. Now we have the administration embracing the very issues that in the campaign the candidate said he was against. The Presidential candidate said that he wouldn't touch Medicare; he wouldn't touch Medicaid. You know the statements I am referring to. When we talk about Medicaid and why it is such an important issue in this confirmation process, what are we talking about? In addition to Rowan and Anthony and children like that, we are also talking about the fact that 45 percent of all the births in the United States of America are paid for by Medicaid. A lot of people don't know that, but that is the truth. One in five seniors receives Medicare assistance through Medicaid. That is one of the reasons so many seniors are concerned about not just what happens to Medicare, but what happens to Medicaid. Another reason for seniors to be concerned: Two-thirds of nursing home residents are covered by Medicaid. So when we talk about block- granting, which leads to massive cuts to Medicaid, we had better be concerned about it because it means nursing home residents are adversely affected. Medicaid covers 40 percent of all the children in the country with health care--40 percent. For poor children, 75 percent get their health care through Medicaid, and 60 percent of all children with disabilities are covered by Medicaid--60 percent. How about if you live in a rural area? Let me give a sense of what the circumstance is for Pennsylvania. We have 67 counties, 48 of them are rural, and a lot of people in those communities are covered by Medicaid. By one recent estimate, more than 278,000 rural Pennsylvanians are covered by Medicaid. We know that hospitals in rural areas depend upon Medicaid. In 15 rural Pennsylvania counties, hospitals were the top employer. Guess what program supports those programs, keeps the doors open: Medicaid. On and on, we could talk about job loss that results from cutting Medicaid. So if we are serious about helping children with disabilities and protecting seniors, we should think long and hard before voting for the block-granting of Medicaid. One final point just with regard to Pennsylvania Medicaid. If Medicaid were to be block-granted, as many legislators have supported and voted for, if that happens and if the Affordable Care Act were repealed without a replacement, Pennsylvania alone--one State-- would lose $80 billion over 10 years. This is a 38-percent reduction in funding for Pennsylvania. I am going to fight anyone who tries to take $80 billion away from Pennsylvania for health care. I would hope that if Representative Price were confirmed, he would abandon those reckless, extreme ideas to block-grant Medicaid because of the consequences for seniors, for children, and for individuals with disabilities. I don't have a chance to get too far into Medicare today. If I can, I will a little later. I will try to come back to some of the stories people have written to us about the impact of the Affordable Care Act on their lives. Let me quickly go through some points about Medicare. We know that in a State like ours, one of the oldest States in the country, about 2\1/ 2\ million Pennsylvanians rely on Medicare to help them pay for health care costs. Thank goodness we have Medicare in place. What we would not want to have happen in Pennsylvania is the enactment--and as I said before with regard to Medicaid, now this is a live issue. You have Senators and House Members in both Chambers who have already voted for budgets that would do the following: change Medicare into a premium support program or a voucher program, which means basically you give seniors a fixed amount of money to buy their insurance and then say: Good luck buying your own insurance, buying your Medicare insurance. I don't think there are very many people in my home State who think that is a good idea. Of course, none of this has been on the table because these budget votes go by and people vote for the budget, and then it doesn't go any further, so no one feels the urgency to oppose it. Now we have, apparently, people in both Houses in agreement with President Trump to have him sign legislation which would change both Medicare and Medicaid. I think these are among the many reasons why I would vote against Representative Price in his confirmation vote. After a lot of review of his record, after a lot of review on what his proposals would mean if they were to become law--and now we are at a point in our history where these issues are no longer theoretical; they are live issues. These are matters that could be the subject not just of debate but the subject of enactment into law. I will try to return later to go through some other issues with regard to the nomination. At this time, I will yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following fellows on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the first session of the 115th Congress: Luis Arzaluz, Sherronda Sheppard, Brenda Ayon Verduzco, Anne Ordaway, and Aliza Auces.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, let me pick up from where I left off earlier in my discussion of some of the issues that Representative Price, the nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, advocated for as a Member of the House, as a leader on the Budget Committee. These are issues I continue to be concerned about with regard to his nomination. With regard to Medicare--I left off with a few comments about Medicare. Here are some of the concerns that have been stressed by major senior organizations with regard to some of the Medicare proposals in Washington. In a letter to President Trump, AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins said: The average senior, with an annual income of under $25,000 and already spending one out of every six dollars on health care, counts on Social Security for the majority of their income and on Medicare for access to affordable health coverage. Unfortunately, some congressional leaders have discussed plans to use the health care debate to fundamentally change the Medicare program and undermine the contract made with generations of Americans. Proposals creating a defined contribution premium-support program; restricting access by raising the age of eligibility; or allowing hospitals and providers to arbitrarily charge customers higher prices than Medicare; all betray the promise made to older Americans who have paid into Medicare their entire working lives. She goes on to say: Indeed, these proposals do little to actually lower the cost of health care. Rather, they simply shift costs from Medicare onto individuals--many of whom cannot afford to pay more for their care. So says the leader of AARP. So that is one of the reasons why the proposals that Representative Price has supported become front-and-center concerns in his nomination. I will move next to a consideration of Representative Price's record on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. If you go back to 2009, before we passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, over 50 million Americans were uninsured in 2009. People with any sort of medical condition were routinely denied health insurance or they were charged exorbitant rates because of their health history. Women were routinely charged more than men for their health insurance. Third, sick individuals were routinely dropped from their health care coverage because they had reached arbitrary caps on the amount of care an insurer would pay for in a given year. Of course, in 2010, the Affordable Care Act was passed. Now we can say that 20 million Americans have health care coverage, and that includes 1 million more Pennsylvanians who have health care coverage because of that legislation. And 105 million Americans are protected from discrimination due to preexisting conditions. Over 9 million Americans are receiving tax credits to help them cover health insurance premiums, and 11 million seniors have saved over $23 billion from closing the Medicare Part D prescription drug plan doughnut hole. Pennsylvania hospitals, because of the Affordable Care Act, have saved over $680 million due to reductions in uncompensated care. I would add to this that all those Americans, by one estimate as many as 156 million Americans--there is another estimate that is even higher than that; but at least 156 million Americans--with employer-sponsored coverage have a long list of protections against being denied coverage for a preexisting condition, against annual or lifetime limits, against discrimination against women because they happen to be women. All of those protections are in place now for more than 156 million Americans because of the Affordable Care Act. Yet, despite all of those gains that have been realized in only a few short years, Representative Tom Price opposes the law. In fact, he wants to repeal it. Rather than working with us to improve it, he has proposed a replacement that would strip away many of those critical protections. Again, they are not only protections for people who are newly insured but protections that are in place now that were not there for more than 156 million Americans with employer- sponsored coverage. So I get letters from constituents concerned about his record or concerned about the direction that he would take the Department of Health and Human Services or the direction that the Trump administration would go. Now apparently, after the election, after inauguration day, the administration is supporting block-granting of Medicaid and supporting changing Medicare as we know it. That is why we get letters from individuals across our State. I mentioned before that we have 48 rural counties in Pennsylvania. There are a lot of people--literally, several million people; 3.5 million by one estimate--living in rural counties in Pennsylvania, in rural communities. I have a letter from Rebecca. That was one of the names I outlined at the beginning of my remarks earlier today. Here is what Rebecca said: The Affordable Care Act allowed my husband to join me on the dairy farm where I worked for 8 years and am co-owner of the herd. Over the past 3 years, we have straightened out our finances and have gotten our student loan debt under control. Third, we have opened an IRA to plan for our retirement. We live in a small trailer. We own one car. We shop at discount grocery stores and local Mennonite food stands. We have worked hard for financial stability. Over the past year we have begun discussions about having a child and starting our own business. Threats to the ACA are threats to our future, Senator, and to the future of small businesses, agriculture, and families. She goes on from there to tell her story. So that is Rebecca, who has some experience, not just in rural Pennsylvania but experience as a dairy farmer, trying to start a family, and trying to start even more of a business career. So that is another example of what we are hearing from people across Pennsylvania. I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks Hannah and Madeline. Hannah and Madeline are the daughters of Stacie Ritter. She is from Manheim, PA. She is the mom of four children, including Hannah and Madeline. They happen to be twins. I met them way back, I guess, in 2009. At the time Hannah and Madeline were diagnosed with a rare and dangerous type of leukemia when they were just 4 years old. Stacie and her husband went bankrupt trying to pay their daughters' medical bills. She wrote to me at that time--just around 2009--saying that, without health care reform ``my girls will be unable to afford care, that is if they are eligible, for care that is critically necessary to maintain this chronic condition. Punished and rejected because they had the misfortune of developing cancer as a child.'' So said Stacie Ritter about her daughters, pleading with me at the time, as the Senator who would vote on the Affordable Care Act. I just met with Stacie again. She is very glad that we passed the Affordable Care Act so that her daughters could have the health care that they need. Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. Hannah and Madeline are healthy young women now. They are freshmen at Arcadia University, and they are doing well. The Affordable Care Act protects them by ensuring they will have access to affordable coverage, whether on their parent's plan or on a plan on the individual market. So when we talk about that legislation, when we talk about Medicaid, when we talk about Medicare--all of those issues--one of my basic points is that Representative Price, were he to be Health and Human Services Secretary Price, has to have an answer for those Pennsylvanians. He can ignore the questions of Members of Congress, and sometimes he has done that. We don't have time to get into that today, but he has done that in the confirmation process. But he has to have an answer for Stacie Ritter. He has to have an answer for her daughters Madeline and Hannah. He cannot ignore them and their health care needs. He has to have an answer for Rebecca, who is worried about what will happen to her, whether she will still be able to have a dairy farm, whether she will be able to have a family. He has to have an answer for Rebecca in Pennsylvania. He also has to have an answer for the two families whom I cited at the beginning--for Anthony and Rowan's family, two young boys on the autism spectrum who need the services of Medicaid. So this is not theory any longer. This is not some idea that is floating around Washington. These are real lives that will be destroyed by some of these proposals. So if you block-grant Medicaid, you are going to destroy a lot of lives. If you change Medicare as we know it, and turn it into a voucher program, ripping away the guaranteed benefit of Medicare, you are going to hurt a lot of people. If you choose to vote for a repeal of the Affordable Care Act and you have no plan to replace it--after 7 years of complaining about it, criticizing it, and finger-pointing, and you don't have a replacement for it--you are going to hurt a lot of lives. So this is not some debate that is not connected directly to people's lives. This is real life for those families. I have real concerns about them if Representative Price's view of the world or his proposals that he advocated for vigorously in the House of Representatives were to become law. Apparently, now his ideas have been embraced totally by the Trump administration. Let me finish with this one point about Representative Price. There are questions that remain surrounding Representative Price's stock deals. He told both the Finance and HELP Committees that the discounted shares of Innate Immunotherapeutics that he was able to purchase were available to every individual who was an investor. But the Wall Street Journal reported not too long ago the following. I will just read one line from the story. The headline says: Rep. Tom Price Got Privileged, Discounted Offer on Biomedical Stock, Company Says. Here is what it says in the third paragraph: In fact, the cabinet nominee was one of fewer than 20 U.S. investors who were invited last year to buy discounted shares of the company--an opportunity that, for Mr. Price, arose from an invitation from a company director and a fellow Congressman. So says the Wall Street Journal story of earlier this month. So that is on the public record, based upon what the Wall Street Journal reported. I, at the time, joined other Democrats on the Finance Committee to try and get this clarified. That request was denied. When we talk about the constitutional obligations to advise and consent--the Senate advising and consenting with regard to Cabinet nominations--we are not talking about a rubberstamp. We are not talking about some kind of automatic approval. We are talking about scrutiny, review, and getting answers to questions and having a long debate about someone's qualifications. When you don't get clarified issues that have been raised and validated by news organization like the Wall Street Journal, I think we have more questions to have answered. It is a constitutional requirement--advise and consent--that needs to be honored. For these and many reasons, I remain opposed to the nomination of Representative Price to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. CASEY

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

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak this afternoon about the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education. I know we will have had some time later today and even tonight, but I wanted to review some of the concerns I have about her nomination in the allotted time that I will have--I guess about 15 minutes. The first concern I have is a broad concern that I think is shared by a number of Senators on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. The ranking member, Senator Murray, is here with us on the floor, and I am grateful for her leadership on this nomination debate, as well as many other issues. I guess the broad concern I have is Betsy DeVos's commitment to public education. I come from a State where we have had a tradition of public education since about the 1830s. I am fairly certain--I will stand corrected--but Pennsylvania might have been the first State to have public education as far back as the 1830s. It is part of the bedrock of the foundation of our State. Still, today, 92 percent of Pennsylvania students attend a traditional public school. We have charter schools. We have roughly 175 or so, but all of those charter schools in Pennsylvania have to be, by statute, public nonprofit entities. Public charter schools are what we have in Pennsylvania. We don't have for-profit private sector charter schools. It is not allowed by law. There are some limited circumstances when one entity could affiliate with a for-profit entity, but we have nothing like what Mrs. DeVos has supported in Michigan and across the country. For a Senator from Pennsylvania to be questioning a nominee for Secretary of Education about for-profit charter schools is unusual because we don't have that entity in Pennsylvania. My concern is substantial--and I will develop this later--about her commitment to public education. In fact, in my meeting with Mrs. DeVos, because of my concerns, I said something very simple, but I said it for a reason, to remind her about her obligation if she were to be confirmed. I said: You will not be the Secretary of private education; you are going to be the Secretary of Education, and for most of the country, that means traditional public schools, and I hope you understand that. That is a broad concern that I have, and I will talk more about it. My line of questioning the day of our hearing--I should say the evening of our hearing--focused on campus sexual assault; and that, of course, is an area of urgent concern for a lot of people here, a lot of members of the United States. It is also of greater concern now because of her nomination. What do I mean by that? Let me walk through how I got to my questions with her. We know the Department of Justice tells us that college women are twice as likely to be sexually assaulted than robbed in the time they are in college. This is a number that comes from the Centers for Disease Control. We also know that one in five college students experience attempted or completed sexual assault while they are in college. This is a direct threat to young women all across the country, and I think we have only begun as a country--as a nation, I should say--to begin to take steps to combat sexual assault, to insist that colleges and universities do more to insist that everyone in the education field, every person on a college campus assumes some level of responsibility. One of the reasons we can start down that path and begin to be certain that we are at least beginning to wrestle with this problem and give young women on our campuses more protection is because of recent legislation. We are not done. We have a lot more to do, but I will highlight one bill that I led the fight on--the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act, known as Campus SaVE. That became law in 2013, when we were reauthorizing--a fancy Washington word for doing it again or improving the law--the Violence Against Women Act. I was glad we were able to take a substantial step to tackle this horrific problem of sexual assault on campus. That legislation was followed by regulations. If I could summarize them, that law and the regulations that followed made sure that colleges and universities have clear guidelines, that victims know what their rights are, that victims know where to turn in the event of an assault, that we do a lot more on prevention, that bystanders can no longer be inactive, that they have to be trained and prepared to help, and that the entire college campus is focused on preventing sexual assault and then making sure, in the aftermath of an assault, it is dealt with appropriately. This legislation has helped campus communities respond to not only sexual assault but domestic assault, dating violence, as well as stalking. It does give students and employees the opportunity to do more than has been done on college campuses. When I was questioning Mrs. DeVos, I asked her if she would commit to upholding title IX, the nondiscrimination statute that includes important protections against sexual assault. I asked her very specifically about the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which had issued guidance in 2011 that advises institutions of higher education to use the so-called preponderance of the evidence standard for campus conduct proceedings. Some may be familiar with that standard. It is a standard that we have used in our jurisprudence for civil cases across the country. You don't have to prove, nor should a victim of sexual assault on campus have to prove by the higher standard; say clear and convincing is a higher standard or beyond a reasonable doubt is a criminal standard. What the Department of Education said to the university campuses across the country is, the standard you should use is preponderance of the evidence. They based that determination after consulting with experts and advocates across the country. That is the state of law currently, the guidance from the Department of Education about that evidentiary standard, my legislation Campus SaVE, and that is where we are now. I simply asked Mrs. DeVos whether or not she would commit to enforcing current law and abiding by the 2011 Department of Education guidance. Her response was that it would be premature--I am using her word ``premature''--to make that kind of commitment. I was stunned by that answer. Why would it be premature to say you are going to enforce current law? Why would it be premature to say that you can't make a commitment to insisting upon an evidentiary standard that is in place right now? That made no sense to me, and I don't think it made any sense to people across the country who have been working on this problem and trying to get the attention of the Senate and the House and any administration for years, if not for decades. We finally arrived at a place where we are at long last dealing with sexual assault in a very aggressive and appropriate and fair manner. Now we have a nominee who says she is not sure whether she can commit to that. That gave me great pause and is one of the reasons I don't support her nomination. I have several reasons. I know I am running low on time, but I will wrap up this portion in a moment. Another area of concern is the answers to questions she gave with regard to specific questions about students with disabilities. This was a set of questions asked by a number of Senators, but I will try to summarize it this way. She seemed to have a lack of knowledge, an apparent and I think obvious lack of knowledge, about basic Federal law, a law that was passed decades ago, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. She didn't seem to know that was a Federal statute. She seemed to assert that somehow States could decide whether to enforce the policy that undergirded that Federal law. That, of course, is not the case. It is Federal law, and we have to make sure individuals--in this case, students with disabilities--get the rights they are accorded by virtue of that law. Her lack of knowledge in this area was of concern, but maybe even greater concern was a lack of--or seeming lack of, in my judgment--determination to once again enforce this law, to make sure that on her watch the law that would protect students with disabilities would be enforced to the full extent of the law and nothing less. She didn't seem to be willing to commit to that or didn't seem to have the kind of commitment I would expect from a Secretary of Education. What we would all expect, Democrats and Republicans, I would hope, is a Secretary of Education who is a champion for public schools, is a champion for those children in public schools, will fight battles and urge States to make the investments in public education, would urge the Congress to make investments in public education, in early learning, and all of the concerns we have about lack of funding in public education. I would hope both parties would want a Secretary of Education who is a champion for students with disabilities, who would be a champion for those who are victims of sexual assault on our college campuses. Unfortunately, because of a series of questions posed both at the hearing and in written questions that were submitted for the record--to which Mrs. DeVos gave written answers--I see that basic commitment lacking. For that and many reasons which we will develop a little later tonight, I will be voting no on her confirmation vote. I appreciate this opportunity to share some of my thoughts and hope to be back later this evening. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise this now-early morning, on a new day, to talk about this nomination, which has been the subject of so much debate, so much contention and, I believe, so much concern across the country and in my home State of Pennsylvania. I spoke earlier today of some of the basic history of my State that principally involves public education. In the 1830s--the early 1830s, to be exact--a debate started in Pennsylvania about public education, the culmination of which led to the enactment under State law of the Free School Act in 1834 in Pennsylvania. We have had a bedrock foundation of free public education all these generations. It is part of who we are as a State. In our Commonwealth, even today with all of the changes in education and all of the change in policy over time, we are still a State where 92 percent of our schoolchildren are educated in public schools. That is the State we are. We don't have any for-profit charter schools, and that has been the subject of debate in this nomination. We have, by law, public nonprofit entities as charter schools. It is a significant point of difference between what is law in Pennsylvania and what is part of our education traditions and what the nominee has stood for in her time as a private citizen. We will get to that a little bit later. I wanted to start tonight with a basic assessment, and then I will go through a series of issues. The basic assessment and determination that I have made is that I should vote against the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be the next U.S. Secretary of Education. The principle reason for that is her views on public education--what I believe to be a lack of total commitment to public education and what that would mean for the country. I have heard from people across my State--urban and rural, suburban, Democrats, Republicans, all kinds of people--who have spoken with one voice against this nomination. That is one of the factors that I have to consider when making a decision, but even I could not have imagined the scope of that response from people across Pennsylvania. I know we still have a number of hours left before the vote, but, to date, if you count all of the contacts that have been made with my office--or I should say offices in Pennsylvania and here in Washington--it is over 100,000 contacts, whether made by telephone or email or by letter or otherwise. I have been in the U.S. Senate for more than 10 years now. This is my 11th year. No nomination has even approached that number of contacts from individuals who felt that they had to speak up and speak out, literally, in the context of a nomination. I wanted to start with one particular issue and develop it rather fully; that is, the issue of sexual assault on our campuses. This is the line of questioning that I pursued with Mrs. DeVos when she came before the HELP Committee--the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee--just a couple of days ago. I want to start with the stark reality of sexual assault on college and university campuses across the country. Here is what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tell us: One in five women on college campuses experience attempted or completed sexual assault--one in five. That is an abomination. That is a stain on our country. That is something we should not allow to continue. In the last couple of years, we have just begun to tackle that horrific problem, that insult, that outrage for young women and their families all across the country. We passed legislation that I will talk about in a moment, but this is a matter, I believe, of basic justice. Hundreds of years ago, St. Augustine said: ``Without justice, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers?'' If we don't get serious about this problem--the problem of sexual assault and what happens to young women on our college campuses--we are robbing them of basic justice. We are robbing them of an opportunity to get a higher education. In many instances, because of that assault, that young woman's life is destroyed or largely compromised or harmed in some fashion. Sometimes she cannot finish her higher education, so she is robbed of that opportunity because the rest of us didn't do enough to prevent that assault. When we remember those words of Augustine about a basic definition of justice, we should remember and decide whether we are doing enough to prevent her from being robbed of her dignity, robbed of her safety, robbed of the ability to move forward with public education, and, of course, robbed from her basic pursuit of happiness as a young person on a college campus who should have a reasonable expectation of safety and security. Too often, the college or the university has failed her. Often--too often, I should say--our society has failed her. This is a serious issue. As I said, some young women never recover, and others struggle for the rest of their lives. Let me say this about the young men who engage in this kind of conduct: Any young man who engages in this kind of conduct on a college campus is a coward, and we should call them on it. They are cowards. They should be brought to justice--swift and certain justice--when they engage in this kind of a crime. It is happening too often on our college campuses. As we seek to hold these young men fully accountable for sexual assault on college campuses, we better have a Secretary of Education who is fully committed--fully committed--to making sure that we are holding these students accountable. That is the least we can expect from a Secretary of Education and from a President and an executive branch and a Congress of both parties and both Houses that are committed to protecting young women on our campuses. What have we done about it? First of all, we haven't done enough. That is the basic foundation of what I will say, but we have made some progress the last couple of years. I introduced legislation a couple of years ago, the Campus SaVE Act, known more fully as the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act. That became law in 2013 as part of the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. As the process works around here, you pass a law in 2013 and the regulatory process starts. The regulations didn't go into effect until the summer of 2015. We are into our second college school year of those regulations being part of our law. Here is what they do, and I will summarize my legislation in short order. Basically, what Campus SaVE does is two or three things: One is make sure that we are taking steps--and colleges and universities are required to take steps pursuant to this law--to bring about strategies of prevention so that we are doing everything we can on that campus to prevent these kinds of assaults. Second, we want to make sure that more and more students and faculty and administration are aware of the problem. It is everyone's problem. It is not just the problem of that victim, not just the problem for young women. It is everybody's problem. If you are a young man on the campus, you can't just be a bystander. You have to be a bystander who does something about this problem. If you are in the college administration or otherwise, you have to be part of the solution. We passed legislation, got the regulations in effect, and now colleges and universities have to abide by them. This act is now helping improve how campus communities at large respond to sexual assault, to domestic violence in those circumstances, to dating violence. That is a third category. The fourth category is stalking. All of those circumstances are covered. All of that behavior by a college student is covered. We want to make sure that institutions have clearly defined policies, and they let the victim know way ahead of time that she has not just rights but she also has opportunities to pursue justice in more ways than one. She can leave that campus and seek the help of local law enforcement if she wants to. She has to be informed of her right to do that. If she wants to go to a court and seek a protective order, not only must the college tell her about that right, but the college or university has to help her do it. Also, of course, there are the procedures for conducting hearings in a fair and appropriate manner. We have a long way to go to hold perpetrators accountable. There is still more work to do on that. Too many young men over many generations have been protected in one way or another. Some institution, some individual on the campus or off the campus has protected them and swept these issues and these crimes under the rug. We are going to continue to work on this issue, but that leads me to the nominee for Secretary of Education. I asked Betsy DeVos in the hearing if she would commit to upholding title IX, which is a nondiscrimination statute that includes important protections against sexual assault. Specifically, I asked her to uphold the guidance from 2011 of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which advises institutions of higher education to use the preponderance of the evidence standard for campus conduct proceedings. Some people know the difference between one level of evidentiary standards versus others. They made a determination that preponderance of the evidence was the right standard. I asked her a very specific question as to whether she would uphold that basic evidentiary standard, and she said it was ``premature to make such a commitment.'' I also asked her whether she would enforce the law as it relates to sexual assault, and she didn't seem to believe that she had to answer that question in a manner that would be give us confidence that she would uphold the law. To say that it is premature to answer questions like that, instead of saying ``Yes, it is my duty as Secretary of Education to uphold the law, to enforce the law, to hold perpetrators accountable, to protect victims''--if she had said that, and then said ``Well, but I will have to review some of these policies,'' that would be different. She just said that it was premature to make a commitment. She has a duty--not a duty that she can escape if she were to be Secretary of Education--to uphold the law to protect victims. I believe that the Secretary of Education not only must comply with the law, but the Secretary of Education as it relates to those victims on college campuses or potential victims has to be, in my judgment, not just an advocate but an unyielding advocate, a determined advocate, a champion for those students to substantially reduce the likelihood that we are going to continue to see one in five women being victims of sexual assault on our college campuses. To say that her answer alarmed both survivors and the great advocates who have been in the trenches helping those survivors for years is an understatement. I will just read two reactions. One survivor, Jess Davidson, wrote an open letter to Mrs. DeVos as part of a ``Dear Betsy'' campaign. She said: I haven't always felt that I had the space or safety to tell my story and stand up for survivors. However, I was lucky enough to attend college under a government administration that fought for survivors of sexual assault. It was only because committed government leaders believed that it was important to uphold Title IX and address campus sexual violence that I was able to overcome what happened to me. Later in her letter, Jess Davidson said: Ms. DeVos, certainly my education, if not my life, was saved by committed leaders standing up and fighting for the rights of survivors of sexual assault. So today I am writing you to ask, that if confirmed, you do the same. Jess goes on from there. She says: Because if survivors do not feel their government is fighting for them, they won't speak up. I almost didn't. That is one survivor telling us how difficult it was for her to speak out or to speak up about this issue because of the pain and the horror that she lived through. Mrs. DeVos may not have to answer my questions fully, as much as I pursue an answer, but she does have to answer the questions of those survivors like Jess and so many others because if she is confirmed as Secretary of Education, she is not some independent operator. She is a servant of the people. The people are her boss. Jess is her boss. If she is confirmed, she better understand that she is a public servant. The private sector would be in the rear-view mirror. You can't treat people the way that she might have treated people up to this point in time. She is a servant of the people if she is confirmed, and she better have an answer for Jess every day that she is on the job if she is confirmed. Another survivor, Sofie, works for an organization called End Rape on Campus. She wrote: Our country has finally begun to shatter the silence on sexual violence, and survivors nationwide are refusing to go back to how things were before. Students, parents, and survivors nationwide deserve to know whether Betsy DeVos is truly committed to keeping all students safe in school. Betsy, we are counting on you. Betsy DeVos, if she is confirmed as Secretary of Education, has to answer those questions that Jess posed, that Sofie posed, and so many others. She may try to avoid questions posed to her by Senators or by the media, but she has a sacred duty that she cannot escape to give answers to these survivors and to the advocates who so bravely support them day in and day out, year in and year out. It is about time the Congress of the United States did a lot more to support these victims as well. Maintaining protections for victims of campus sexual assault is not part of some negotiation. This has to be mandatory work that we do together. In reference to her answer to my question about it being premature to commit to enforcing a law on sexual assault and fully embracing the guidance that the Department put forth in 2011--and by the way, the same guidance put forth in the Bush administration--if she is going to change that guidance on the evidentiary standard, thereby making it harder for victims and better for the perpetrator, by the way, when you raise the standard of evidence, she better have a good explanation for that. She will have to have a good explanation for the victims and the survivors as to why she changed a policy that has been in place for two administrations, not just one, two--a Republican administration and a Democratic administration. I would apply the same test to the entire administration. Now the Trump administration has an obligation, as well, not just Mrs. DeVos if she were to be confirmed. They must commit as an administration to keep strong campus sexual assault protections in place and not go back to the dark days when this scourge was not a priority--not a priority here in Washington and not a priority on college and university campuses across the country. If they want to fight on this, I am ready to fight for a long time against anyone who is going to try to weaken these protections. We are not going to allow this administration or any Secretary of Education to turn back the clock and allow young men to continue to prey upon young women with impunity and without consequence as they often have been able to do over the years. Let me move to a second issue--students with disabilities. It is often overlooked in our debates about education. We have debates about funding, debates about philosophy, debates about who has the best idea, and sometimes we forget students with disabilities, who have a right under Federal law to have the opportunity for a full education, an appropriate education. Ensuring that all students receive high-quality education is absolutely critical, and it is something that is particularly important for students with disabilities and their families. In my judgment, Mrs. DeVos displayed a total lack of knowledge regarding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. That is a 1975 law. The so-called IDEA is four decades old, and its predecessor was the so-entitled Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the old version of it many years ago. Together they have been the bedrock civil rights and education laws that guarantee that students with disabilities receive the same educational opportunities as their peers who do not have a disability. According to the Department of Education, prior to 1975--prior to IDEA--U.S. schools educated only one in five children with disabilities and many States have laws excluding students, including those who are deaf, blind, and emotionally disturbed or intellectually impaired. Since the passage 40 years ago of IDEA, the vast majority of children with disabilities are now educated in public schools with their peers. We know that high school graduation rates are higher today than they have ever been. Students with disabilities are going on to higher education in greater numbers. In the last two decades, reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have increased substantially. We have seen this from the beginnings of the debate in Pennsylvania. Way back in 1971, the PARC vs. Pennsylvania case--PARC standing for the acronym P-A-R-C, one of the cases that helped establish the right of all children to have an appropriate public education. We know that in the hearing, Senator Kaine from Virginia asked Mrs. DeVos whether all schools that have received Federal funding should have to meet the requirements of IDEA. She said: ``I think that's a matter that is best left to the States.'' That is obviously the wrong answer when you are talking about a Federal statute. States don't have an option of not complying with Federal law. Given the opportunity to clarify her answer, Mrs. DeVos continued to insist that States should be able to determine whether they provide services to students with disabilities. Let me say it plainly. That is dead wrong. That is unambiguously, definitively wrong. States can't decide not to comply with the IDEA-- the law that 4 years ago enshrined that basic right for students with disabilities to get an appropriate education. I hope by now, on the eve of her confirmation vote, that she has done some studying and learned that IDEA is the law of the land. If she wants to change it, she better line up votes in the House and the Senate to overturn the law that made sure that students with disabilities have those basic guarantees. Once again, the best words are from people who write to us and contact us about these issues. Kristin, who is from Southeastern Pennsylvania, wrote the following with regard to her son: Being parents of a high-functioning autistic child, we value and cherish our public school system. In fact, our public school experience has been life changing for our son. He's getting a great education, and has made remarkable strides. He not only benefits from the resources, caring attention provided by teachers, administrators, assistants and school staff and an Individualized Education Plan-- accommodations afforded by IDEA that private schools can simply ignore, and charter schools do a poor job of meeting-- but he has also had the opportunity to meet all sorts of kids. I am proud and thrilled that his small group of friends include kids whose parents were born in other countries or who practice other religions. This is the benefit of a quality, well-funded, public school education; an informed citizenry and an introduction to the cultures and perspectives beyond our own neighborhoods. No one has said it better, in my judgment, than Kristin, about the value of public education; the value of that public school to her son who has autism, but he is a high-functioning autistic child. The vistas of opportunities for learning that have been opened to that child because of that school and because of the IDEA that helps that child with a disability--any kind of disability--to get an appropriate education under our system--and a lot of that started way back in the 1830s in Pennsylvania when the Free Schools Act was passed. So, again, I say very directly to Mrs. DeVos as a nominee and if she is confirmed as the Secretary of Education, that Mrs. DeVos must guarantee Kristin and her son that she will support public schools and children with disabilities without exceptions, not with equivocation, not with some bizarre, erroneous argument about what States might want to do but full commitment, full compliance with the IDEA, full compliance with the law as it relates to any child with a disability. She has an obligation once she takes the oath of office, a sworn duty as a servant of taxpayers, as a servant of those parents like Kristin, to make sure she meets Kristin's expectations, not the expectations of a President and not the expectations of insiders here in Washington. She has to answer to the expectations of Kristin and taxpayers like her and her son. So she has a heavy burden of proof based upon her testimony to date. Mr. President, I am going to move to another topic, a topic that has been the subject of much attention lately, but frankly not enough attention over many years. It is an issue that affects all kinds of children in our schools at various ages and at various circumstances. I am talking about bullying, something that sometimes people in my generation somehow conclude has always been a problem and is just a continuing problem from one generation to the next. They are wrong on the facts. It is a much worse problem today than it has ever been, and that is largely caused by the failure to deal with it. It is also caused by the ability of the bully to follow the bullied student home and to torment them and sometimes to aggravate other bullies around them to torment them all day long in school and at home all through the night, day after day, week after week. In addition to ensuring equal protection of students with disabilities as we just talked about, I am also concerned that Mrs. DeVos will not be fully committed to enforcing civil rights protections for students, including those who identify as LGBTQ. This is obviously connected as well to the issue of bullying, because often the most likely victims of bullying, we know, are LGBT students and students with disabilities. It affects all students. There is no question about that. But there are too many stories and too many newspaper stories, in particular, about someone who was bullied persistently over time. That has led to suicides and lead to some terribly tragic outcomes for students and their families. Bullying, when you think about it--or I should say, when we consider the tolerance we have built up, I guess, over years to allow bullying to continue--in many ways is the ultimate betrayal of our kids. We say to our kids: Go to school. You have to go to school and stay in class and pay attention and do your homework and study hard for quizzes and tests. If you do that, you are going to progress and you are going to be a person who has opportunities in the world. But you have to stay in school and you have to concentrate on your work. It is the ultimate betrayal for us as parents, as a society, to tell that to a child, and then we put them in schools where the efforts against bullying are not a priority. So it is a real betrayal of our children to send them to schools and then not protect so many of them from bullying. So in so many ways, as adults, we fail our kids when we allow that to happen. For many LGBTQ students, schools are anything but safe. The Centers for Disease Control in 2016 put out a report called the ``Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance'' annual report, which looks at the health and well-being of our 9th through 12th grade students. Students who identify as gay are almost twice as likely to have been threatened or injured by a knife or a weapon on school property--twice as likely. Students who identify as gay are almost three times more likely to stay home from school because of safety concerns. Sixty percent of students identifying as gay had felt so sad and hopeless almost every day for 2 or more weeks in a row that they had stopped doing usual activities. Finally, the most sobering of all, the rate of suicide attempts is four times greater. Let me say that again. Suicide attempts are four times greater for young people who happen to be gay, and two times greater for young people that are questioning than that of a straight young person. With the advent of text messaging and social media and social networking, many children find they cannot escape the harassment even as they go home at night. It follows them from the moment they wake until the moment they go to sleep. I will give you one example from Pennsylvania, right in the heartland of our State, Snyder County. You can't get much more small town and emblematic of the rural and smalltown communities in our State than a county like Snyder County. The story of Brandon Bitner, a teenager from that part of the State, in central Pennsylvania, is a chilling reminder of the horror--the absolute horror--of bullying. This is what one news account wrote: Brandon Bitner, 14 years old, of Mount Pleasant Mills, PA, walked 13 miles from his home early Friday morning in November of 2010 to a business intersection and threw himself in front of an oncoming tractor-trailer, after leaving a suicide note at his home. There seems to be little doubt in students' mind why Brandon did what he did. ``It was because of bullying,'' this friend wrote to the Daily Item, a paper in central Pennsylvania. It was because of bullying. ``It was not about race or gender, but they bullied him for his sexual preferences, the way he dressed. Which,'' she said, ``they wrongly accused him of.'' We know that Brandon's suicide note reportedly explained that he was constantly bullied at Midd-West High School in Middleburg, which is also Snyder County, where he was a freshman. Bullies allegedly called Brandon names. He stated in the note that a humiliating event in school this past week was ``the straw that broke the camel's back.'' Brandon was an accomplished violinist, having been a member of the Susquehanna Youth Orchestra in 2009. That is smalltown Pennsylvania, Snyder County, right in the middle of our State. So you have a 14-year-old who is driven to suicide because of bullying--persistent, pernicious, violent, evil bullying--that drove him to throw himself in front of a tractor-trailer 13 miles from his home. Now, we know that laws cannot wipe out human behavior or the darkness of human nature sometimes. While we do have Federal laws that promote school safety, there is currently nothing in place to comprehensively address issues of bullying and harassment. It is critical that anti- bullying and harassment laws and policies enumerate or list characteristics that are most frequently the subject of bullying and harassment, such as race, color, natural origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability and religion-- sometimes known in the law as protected classes. It is important that in any bullying policies, those categories are so enumerated. This is the most effective strategy for preventing and prohibiting both bullying and harassment. Research shows the effectiveness of these policies, and even the American Bar Association agreed, passing a resolution unanimously in 2011 supporting enumerated protections, not vague references to protecting young people from bullying but very specific enumerated policies. Now, we have made progress in developing legislation, but we have not gotten the support we need to get it passed. We tried this during the debate on the Every Student Succeeds Act, which, as many of you know, is the reauthorization and the many changes made to the No Child Left Behind legislation. But we did not get this policy as part of that. So we have a ways to go. Now, I had hoped that the next Secretary of Education would be interested in tackling these issues. While Mrs. DeVos has expressed a desire to work on preventing bullying, her record and financial giving seem to suggest otherwise, especially as it relates to LGBTQ students. Mrs. DeVos and her family's foundations have given millions of dollars to organizations that are expressly opposed to this work--much of the funding coming from the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, which is one of her family foundations. So, in other words, she is supporting groups that do not want to pass anti-bullying legislation that enumerates the protected groups of students. I think that is a big mistake. I think it is wrong. We will continue to fight them. But I hope that those donations that the family foundations have made will not prohibit her from taking strong action against bullying as Secretary of Education. Once again, I will say it: When she becomes Secretary of Education--if she is confirmed--she is no longer a private citizen engaged in fights about ideology or fights about policy or fights about politics. She is a servant of the people if she is going to be Secretary of Education. So I would hope she would rethink that original predisposition to be against those policies. I will move on because I know we are limited in our time. Now, I wanted to conclude with a couple of remarks about questions regarding ethics and potential conflicts of interest, because that seems to be a persistent theme with regard to a number of the nominations. We know that a lot of questions have been asked lately of Mrs. DeVos. I wanted to review some of those. There are at least potential conflicts of interest if she became Secretary of Education. We know that we have a tradition not only here in Washington in the Federal Government, but it was very much a part of State government in Pennsylvania when I served there. It is part of the tradition in our State that we opt on the side of more transparency for candidates and for public officials about disclosure of information, especially information that could compromise an individual in public office--tax returns, for example, when people run for office. Providing Mrs. DeVos's tax returns would be a small price to pay to become Secretary of Education as part of that transparency. It would also go a long way to ease the public's discomfort around some of the potential conflicts of interest in the assets and family trusts that DeVos will be retaining if she were to be confirmed. The letter of agreement between Betsy DeVos and the Office of Government Ethics is necessary but not sufficient to alleviate her and her family's financial conflicts of interest. The HELP Committee has always used its own requirements for vetting a nominee, which are and always have been a step beyond those gathered by the Office of Government Ethics. The committee requires full disclosure of all assets over $1,000 in the two- part committee questionnaire required by the committee rules. So there is a lot more to do. I know we are running out of time. There is a lot more to do, I believe, in terms of her fully disclosing information about her family's or her own financial transactions, what stakes they will maintain in some of these entities if she were to be confirmed. This is not about probing someone who has a lot of personal assets and is wealthy. This is about the taxpayers' right to know what their Secretary of Education, or even a nominee for this job, has in her portfolio and her family. So I will conclude with this. Our children and our families and our taxpayers deserve a Secretary of Education who is fully committed to being a champion for public schools and public education. I will harken back to what Kristin said in part of the letter I read: Their public school experience has been ``life-changing.'' They ``value and cherish our public school system.'' I hope that Betsy DeVos, if she were to be confirmed, would value and cherish public education and make it a live-changing experience for every student in those public schools. For the many reasons I have outlined, I will vote against her nomination tomorrow. I yield the floor.

Mr. CASEY

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

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I want to outline a number of concerns that I have this morning about Senator Sessions' nomination to be the next Attorney General. I will try to keep it to a short list. I have limited time this morning. But I wanted to start with the voting rights issue. In our State of Pennsylvania, we have a long history of litigation and battles about the right to vote. And when the Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder was issued a couple of years ago, folks in the Senate took one, two, or three different positions. The position that I took was one of disagreement with the basic holding of Shelby v. Holder, which in my judgment gutted the Voting Rights Act's requirements that certain States and certain jurisdictions with histories of discrimination seek what is called preclearance from the Federal government before changing voting rules. That was a substantial change from the policies that had been in place for years. Since the Shelby decision, more than half of the so-called preclearance States have implemented restrictive voting laws--some as soon as the very next day after the decision was handed down. And over 800 polling places in preclearance States alone have been closed since the decision. So on this issue, it is a basic difference of opinion. I think Shelby was decided the wrong way, and Senator Sessions believes it was decided the right way. That is a fundamental disagreement. I have real concerns about an Attorney General who would have that position or that point of view on that case. I don't know for sure what he would do as Attorney General. I can't predict that, but I can certainly raise concerns about that decision. When you think about what led to decisions like that over time, it is hard to encapsulate when you are speaking on the Senate floor all of the misery, all of the suffering, all of the trauma to individuals, all of the trauma that our country endured first to get the right to vote for every American and then to enforce the law and to make it real. There is no way--if I had 9 hours on the floor, I probably couldn't encapsulate or do justice to all of that work. So it is a fundamental divide, a fundamental debate about voting rights. As someone who represents Pennsylvania, we have a particular interest in the issue of voter ID laws. They are the kinds of laws that follow the Shelby decision. Some of them predated Shelby. But we had a major debate in Pennsylvania back in 2012, where the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed--meaning the House and Senate passed--and the Governor signed into law a voter ID law. Then litigation commenced and went all the way through the court system in Pennsylvania. The final decision was that the law was struck down. The voter ID law was struck down, so it is a major point of contention in Pennsylvania. Over time, some have asserted that there is widespread voter fraud. We have heard that even more recently. I am still waiting for the evidence of that, but that is certainly an issue that we will continue to debate here in Washington. I think the last thing we need in the United States of America is more restrictive voter ID laws. We should be hoping we can expand the opportunity for people to vote. Where there are barriers erected, knock them down. Where there are impediments to the right to vote, push through them or put in place strategies to overcome them. Again, I think that is just the basic difference between Senator Sessions and me, in terms of our approach to voter ID laws. We had a searing experience in Pennsylvania, which left a lasting impression on the people of our State. Another issue, which I think is of critical importance in every administration at every time, but maybe ever more so today with regard to this new administration: The administration now is in a major litigation battle regarding what has been described as a travel ban. It is probably shorthand, but that is my best description of it. It has been a matter that has been litigated in several U.S. Federal district courts, and now it is in front of an appellate court. Who knows, the next step after this may be the U.S. Supreme Court. I raise that not to debate the substance of it; we can do that for a long while, I guess, but I raise it on the question of independence. There are certain jobs in government--I had one of them in State government. I was elected as a State auditor general in Pennsylvania. I served two terms. In that job, for example, at the State level, the most important quality or metric by which you are judged is your independence. You are either independent or not. And if you are independent, you can do auditing investigations that demonstrate that independence. Then you are doing what the people expect. At the Federal level, even though the Attorney General is appointed by a President, I also believe the Attorney General has to demonstrate independence every day, in every decision, in every interaction with our government or with citizens across the country. I hope that Jeff Sessions can do that, were he to be confirmed. I have some doubts, not only based upon the recent campaign statements made, but I also have some significant concerns in light of what has happened recently. I would hope, and I think every American has a reasonable expectation, that any Attorney General will be totally independent when it comes to basic questions of law and justice, even if they agree with the President on a number of issues. I have some doubts in the case of this nominee. So independence is a significant concern across the country. We have had a long debate in this country. Part of it, I think, came to closure a couple of years ago in the Supreme Court with regard to marriage equality. That worked its way through the courts, as well. I was in support of, and happy about, the decision the Supreme Court made on marriage equality. It is another basic difference that I have with the nominee for Attorney General. Once again, I think that is one of those basic issues that divides the parties. It doesn't mean you can't work together. It doesn't mean you can't have a good relationship. But I would hope that the Attorney General of the United States, of either party, would make sure that decision as it relates to marriage equality would be enforced and that it would be the subject of some praise or at least some rhetorical support for the outcome in that case. I think the country took a step in the right direction, where every American, whether they are gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender, was finally accorded the full measure of respect, the full measure of inclusion, when it came to the issue of marriage. That is another basic disagreement that we have. We don't know what the outcome of this confirmation vote will be. I think we have some sense of it, but regardless of the final outcome, these differences will remain. We have to be honest about basic, fundamental differences, and that is one of the reasons we have a confirmation process. That is why we have advice and consent. That is why we have hearings and hundreds, if not thousands, of questions because each of these nominees is granted enormous power. In some instances--unlike Senator Sessions--but in some instances, they are appointed to positions where they will have substantial impact on people's lives for years. Tens of millions of Americans' lives will be impacted by their decisions, so they should have to go through a thorough vetting process and a very rigorous ultimate confirmation process because they are being accorded great power, and they are servants of the people. They have to remember that is what their job is: to be servants. I know some want to shorten or truncate or make easier this path to confirmation for all of these Cabinet nomination positions. I think the people expect a thorough vetting, and we are still in the midst of that with regard to several of these positions. So I just wanted to outline my objections--or I should say disagreements with--Senator Sessions. I will be voting no on his nomination. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Zach Ormsby of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of the consideration of the DeVos nomination.

Mr. CASEY

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

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Here is one of the headlines of that article, one of the basic inclusions by a respected organization that tracks this information. I will just read that headline: ``The block grant would cut federal Medicaid funding by $1 trillion from 2017-2026.'' So if you are saying you are going to protect children and you are going to protect seniors and you are going to make sure that those with disabilities don't have any problems going forward, it is pretty difficult to do that if you take a trillion dollars out of the Medicaid Program over the course of a decade. There was an op-ed in the New York Times on Christmas Day. It was interesting that it actually was printed on that holy day. There was an op-ed by Gene Sperling. Gene is someone who many people in Washington know. But for those who don't, Gene served two Presidents; he served both President Clinton and President Obama as the Director of the National Economic Council. Here is one of the conclusions that Gene reached, based upon his research and his vast experience. I will quote him directly from the December 25 op-ed in the New York Times entitled ``The Quiet War on Medicaid'': ``Together, full repeal''--and there he means full repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--``and block granting would cut Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program funding by about $2.1 trillion over the next 10 years--a 40 percent cut.'' So whether you look at it in terms of block granting's impact on Medicaid or the combination of that block-granting policy, which the administration has now embraced fully, and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the result of that is that you adversely impact two programs--the Children's Health Insurance Program and the Medicaid Program. Let me bring this back to real people. I just want to highlight a couple of excerpts from a letter I received recently, and then I will conclude. This is a letter from Coatesville, PA, the southeastern corner of our State, a letter sent to me by Pamela E. Simpson. I will just call her Pam, even though I don't know her personally. She wrote me a letter about her son. Pam Simpson's son is Rowan. She said that Rowan, who I guess is now 5 years old, back in 2015 was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. She went on to say how much Rowan has benefitted from the Medicaid Program. We call it Medical Assistance in Pennsylvania. She said that among the services he received was the behavioral specialist consultant helping him and a therapeutic staff support worker. They received direct help, direct intervention so that Rowan could grow and benefit from those direct services. She said that the agency that administers these kinds of wraparound services for Rowan and children like him--in this case, the Child Guidance Resource Centers--started a particular program focused on social skills, especially for children with autism. But here is how she concluded her letter, and this is why I want to cite it in the context of this critically important debate we are going to have about Medicaid and the question of block granting, which sounds kind of benign; doesn't it? When you say it, it doesn't sound that bad. But in my judgment, it would be devastating to these families. She said to me in the letter: Please think of my dear Rowan and his happy face, his big blue eyes, and his lovely strawberry blonde hair. You can see him in these pictures that I should have mentioned earlier. Rowan is in these two different pictures, and there he is dressed as a firefighter. She continued: Please think of me and my husband, working every day to support our family, and please think of my 9-month-old daughter Luna who smiles at her brother daily. There is Luna in the picture, being held by Rowan. She says that she is worried that that little girl, when she is much older, will have to take care of Rowan later in life when Pam and her husband are gone. She ends the letter this way: Overall, we are desperately in need of Rowan's Medical Assistance and would be devastated if we lost these benefits. What she is referring to there, of course, is Medicaid. I have real trouble believing that if the Trump administration's proposal on block granting Medicaid marches forward, now that they have embraced the proposal that Republicans in Washington have embraced for years--they had voted for block granting over and over and over again. Now it is a live issue. Now it is no longer just voting. Now it is an issue that could be enacted into law, and I think that would be a terrible step in the wrong direction. So I think we have to remember that when we consider these budget debates, when we consider the debate about health care, and especially when we consider real families like Pam's and real children like Rowan. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the Medicaid Program, a program that I am sure a lot of folks in Washington and around the country hear about a lot. We talk about it a lot, but I am not sure that people around here have a real sense of what it means to folks back at home. Medicaid is a program that is more than 50 years old now. In some ways, the name doesn't convey the scope of it. In some ways, I wish it had a different name because it would remind people who benefits from it. Instead of referring to it as the Medicaid Program, if you called it the ``kids, seniors, and folks with disabilities program,'' or something like that, you would be accurately describing the scope and the reach of the program because it has a profound impact on the lives of children, on the lives of older citizens trying to get long-term care in nursing homes, and, of course, it has a huge impact on individuals with disabilities. We know that in the campaign, President Trump made a statement. I am not quoting him exactly, but it was a brief statement during his campaign, and it was in writing that he would not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. I think a lot of people had forgotten about that third one. One of the tasks that we have in the Senate is to make sure that, when a statement like that is made, any President is held accountable to that promise. The examples I could cite are many about the impact of Medicaid. Just a couple are significant. Not by way of exclusion, but I will just mention a few. I am holding here a March of Dimes document. It is an issue brief by the March of Dimes, and it is entitled ``The Value of Medicaid.'' I won't read it all, but here is just one fact that I am not sure a lot of people know. ``Medicaid covers 45% of all births''--and they have a footnote for that. I am not sure there are many in Washington who know that. But that is why I referred to it earlier in a more informal way as ``the baby program,'' because all of those children come into the world paid for by Medicaid. Medicaid has a substantial impact on rural families, rural America, and rural hospitals. By one estimate a couple of years ago, First Focus, one of the advocacy groups here in Washington that tracks issues that relate to children, estimated that as of 2012--and I doubt that it has changed much since then--more than 45 percent of rural children got their health care through Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program. So almost half of rural children were benefitting from one program or the other. Here are just a couple more. One in five seniors receives Medicare assistance through Medicaid, and that includes premium assistance, cost sharing, long-term care, dental care, and vision care. Another important number is that two-thirds of nursing home residents are covered by Medicaid. I mentioned children before and the profound impact it has on their lives. Medicaid covers 40 percent of all children in the country. I mentioned CHIP and Medicaid combined covering almost half of rural children. Just Medicaid alone covers 40 percent of all children--rural, urban, and everywhere in between. If you just consider low-income kids, or children who come from low-income families, Medicaid covers some 75 percent of those children. So there is a lot to talk about. But one issue that we are in the process of engaging on as an issue is: What will happen to Medicaid? Despite what the President said when he was campaigning--and I am talking specifically about Medicaid--just this weekend, the administration announced--without much attention drawn to it at the time, but I hope increasingly more attention--that the administration would support block-granting Medicaid. That is at variance with what the President said. In my judgment, it is a total contradiction of what he said, and now, apparently, his administration has embraced the House Republican approach to Medicaid, which is block-granting. There are a lot of ways to measure the impact of block-granting. One that I will just cite for the record is a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities dated March 15, 2016, entitled ``Medicaid Block Grant Would Add Millions to Uninsured and Underinsured,'' which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.

Mr. CASEY

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

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise to offer my words of gratitude to President Obama as his service to our Nation comes to a close. I want to commend him for his 8 years of dedicated public service. From the first time we met in 2005, I was struck by his integrity, his intellect and his decency. His achievements as President are too numerous to list, but 3 are significant. Over 15 million jobs created since the end of the great recession, 20 million more Americans with health care, and a $1 trillion reduction in the deficit. President Obama was a strong fighter for the middle class and the vulnerable. Our Nation and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are in a stronger position today than when President Obama took the oath of office in January 2009. As a nation, we have made progress, but we still face substantial challenges in order to grow incomes, provide a quality education for more children, and keep our nation safe. We will miss President Obama's principled leadership and enduring commitment to strengthening America. Mr. President, I ask unaimous consent that a CNN article about President Obama be printed in the Record.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, this amendment deals with three basic issues. The first is the issue of preexisting conditions, the second is the issue with regard to discrimination as it relates to health status, and the third issue is with regard to caps on coverage. The first issue is we want to make sure no action is taken in the Senate that would have the effect of limiting access to care for those individuals with preexisting conditions. That is No. 1. No. 2, we want to make sure we don't place any lifetime caps on health insurance coverage for individuals with a disability or with a chronic condition. No. 3, we want to make sure health plans will not discriminate on the basis of either the individual's physical health, their mental health, or their disability status. This is the right thing to do for health care, and I urge an affirmative vote on this amendment.