Al Franken

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise to talk about a path forward on healthcare. Last week, Republicans in the House failed to pass the American Health Care Act--a deeply flawed policy that amounted to little more than a massive tax break for the wealthy at the expense of working people. The failure of that bill means that, as Speaker Ryan put it, the ACA is the law of the land for the foreseeable future. So today I would like to invite my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to leave repeal efforts behind and instead roll up their sleeves and work with me and other Democrats to improve the system we already have, which is the law of the land for the foreseeable future. It is time to pass commonsense reforms that build on the successes of the ACA and lower healthcare costs. In a recent HELP Committee hearing, Chairman Alexander said that he wanted to work on a bipartisan basis to stabilize the individual market. Great. Let's do that. We should reinstate and strengthen programs that help insurance companies stay in the marketplace and continue to serve even the sickest patients. We should pass a public option to make sure there is competition in every market. We should provide more tax credits to more people. While we work on those things, there is something else we should do, something that, together with a group of my colleagues, I introduced a bill about yesterday. It is time to bring down healthcare costs for everyone by reducing the price of prescription drugs. It is time to pass the Improving Access to Affordable Prescription Drugs Act. I think all of us would agree that no one should have to choose between affording a lifesaving drug and putting food on the table for one's family, but right now that is happening. Companies are setting prices that are beyond the reach of consumers and that are driving up costs for insurers and taxpayers. One in five Americans says he has not filled a prescription simply because he could not afford it. Others are rationing care due to high prices. A study published just last month found that about 10 percent of cancer patients skipped their medication and about 13 percent delayed filling their prescriptions. We have all been shocked by the stories of EpiPen's prices shooting up nearly 500 percent. The price of insulin has more than doubled in the last 5 years. Drug companies can essentially set whatever prices they want. As a result, in recent years, drug companies have secured some of the highest profit margins of any industry. Drug prices are too high. That is why my colleagues and I are introducing comprehensive legislation to tackle prescription drug prices. We want to make sure companies cannot exploit the sick and dying to make a profit. The bill includes 17 policy changes that will improve transparency, promote affordability, spur innovation, and enhance competition. Today, I would like to highlight just three of those provisions. First, transparency. This legislation requires drug companies to disclose how much they spend on research, manufacturing, and marketing, as well as research grants from the Federal Government, to help all of us understand why prices for lifesaving drugs are so high. It is especially galling that so many drugs that are developed with taxpayer dollars are unaffordable for so many Americans. Getting this information would help all of us hold drug companies accountable, and that can be an important step toward bringing prices down. Second--something that President Trump called for on the campaign trail--the bill will allow Medicare to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs. It is just common sense that the biggest buyer of pharmaceutical products in America should be able to use its negotiating clout to bring prices down. Third, the bill would end the practice of so-called pay-for-delay. Right now, drug companies that make the expensive brand-name drugs will pay other companies that make generic alternatives to keep their products off the market. This is called pay-for-delay. It is outrageous, and it is increasingly common. This bill will stop these agreements once and for all. There is a lot more that this bill does. It penalizes companies that price-gouge for lifesaving medicine, and I think we can all agree on that. It puts a cap on out-of-pocket drug costs in insurance plans. It speeds up generic competition. It funds new innovation and includes a number of other provisions. Tackling the high cost of prescription drugs is an issue many of my colleagues care deeply about. This bill reflects many of their ideas and proposals, and I am grateful for their work with me. Moreover, it is obvious that the public is ready for action on this issue. Overwhelming majorities of Americans in both parties support government action to curb out-of-control drug prices. I am eager to hear from colleagues on both sides of the aisle and from the administration about how we can work together to pass the reforms into law. This is an area of health policy that Democrats are eager to work on, and we hope the President will stand by his promise to stand up to drug companies and reduce costs for American families. It is morally wrong that some people are denied access to lifesaving drugs because they cannot afford them, and it is something we can fix. I am in the Senate so that I can fight for policies that improve people's lives. That is why I am here. With this bill, I am trying to do exactly that. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join me in helping to bring down the cost of prescription drugs. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the effort by my Republican colleagues to gut critical consumer privacy protections. Last week, the Senate voted 50 to 48 to allow internet service providers such as Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T to freely collect, share, and sell its customers' private information. Later today, the House will vote on the same measure. Let's be clear what we are talking about here. From web browsing histories to app usage information, broadband providers have easy access to a whole lot of Americans' personal information. Comcast knows exactly what ails you when you visit WebMD's Symptom Checker or that you have recently experienced a major life event when you are browsing maternity clothes on target.com. They would like the ability to use or sell this information to target advertising toward you, and they would really like to use or sell this information without first having to ask your permission. Now, for me, the interests of consumers in Minnesota, Texas, and across our country have always come before those of big corporations. That is why I have long championed an internet that is open, accessible, and protects Americans' fundamental rights to privacy. For most Americans, I don't think those are controversial ideas. For example, I suggest that most if not all of us in the Senate believe in the importance of ensuring that Americans have access to affordable high-speed internet. It is one of those great issues on which Members on both sides of the aisle can agree. See, we all know that Americans' cable and broadband bills are too high. The Consumer Federation of America recently reported that the average American household spends about $2,700 a year for phone, TV, and Internet services. That is why it is so disappointing that instead of acting to make broadband more affordable and more accessible for Americans, my Republican colleagues have actually paved the way for multibillion- dollar companies to make even more money off of their consumers by monetizing some of the most intimate details of their lives. Make no mistake about it, this is purely and simply a corporate handout at the expense of Americans' privacy. When the FCC voted to pass the broadband privacy rules, the broadband industry was quick to oppose and oppose loudly. In recent months, internet service providers have used their vast resources to lobby the FCC and my fellow lawmakers. If House Republicans heed their call, as my colleagues in the Senate have done, companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T will be free to sell their customers' personal information to the highest bidder, and importantly, they will do so without the oversight or regulation of either the Federal Communications Commission or the Federal Trade Commission. For my part, I have long held that Americans have a fundamental right to privacy. We deserve both transparency and accountability from companies that have the capacity to trade on their private information. Should some people choose to leave their personal information in the hands of those companies, they certainly deserve to know that their information is being safeguarded to the greatest degree possible. I am going to keep fighting on behalf of consumers in Minnesota and across the country to secure these rights because I work for them and not the broadband industry. Thank you, Mr. President. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about President Trump's selection of David Friedman to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Our relationship with Israel is of tremendous importance. We are strong allies, and we have a strong military, diplomatic, economic, and cultural relationship with the State of Israel. As a Jew, the importance of that relationship is something that I feel in my bones, and as a Senator, working to make our relationship with Israel stronger is a major priority. I strongly believe that part of strengthening that relationship is doing everything we can to help make progress toward a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Helping to resolve that conflict has consistently been one of the top diplomatic priorities of the United States. There are very important implications in this selection for the Israeli people, the Palestinian people, the Middle East region, and even beyond. We need an Ambassador who can rise to the challenge, someone who can bring the parties together for negotiations and be regarded as legitimate in the eyes of all parties. Mr. Friedman is not that man. Mr. Friedman's past conduct demonstrates that he lacks the tools one needs to be a good diplomat. For starters, diplomacy is about choosing your words carefully. It is about reasoning with those with whom you disagree. Diplomacy means not resorting to insults and to name-calling when you have a disagreement, which is something that Mr. Friedman has done time and time and time again. In an op-ed he penned for the newspaper Arutz Sheva, Mr. Friedman called supporters of the American Jewish Organization J Street ``far worse than kapos.'' Now, for those who don't share the history, I was born in 1951, and I grew up with the holocaust and the stories of the holocaust pounded into my head, and I know what ``kapos'' are. It is the term that refers to Jews who collaborated with the Nazis--with the Gestapo, the guards at the concentration camps during the holocaust. When asked to repudiate his statement on J Street, Mr. Friedman refused, and in fact doubled down, stating ``They're not Jewish, and they are not pro- Israel.'' For those who don't know, J Street is a pro-Israel organization dedicated to the two-state solution--a goal that is shared by successive U.S. administrations, both Democratic and Republican. The two-state solution is the only way to keep Israel a Jewish State and a democracy. Mr. Friedman's smearing of our fellow Jews--my fellow Jews, many of whom are members of J Street, this is a calumny. This should be a disqualifier for someone seeking to represent the United States in the State of Israel. Mr. Friedman's statement shows that he lacks understanding of history--of our history, the history of the Jewish people--it shows he is intolerant of opposing views, and he is profoundly insensitive. That is probably why so many of my fellow Jews have reached out to me, have urged me to reject his nomination. Mr. Friedman's offensive remarks don't stop there. He regularly insults those with whom he disagrees. He even called me a clown and a moron after I pointed out the anti-Semitic stereotypes evoked in the Trump campaign's final ad. As I told Mr. Friedman when we met in my office, I have been called a moron before--that kind of thing happens in campaigns all the time--but as I also reminded him, part of being a diplomat is being diplomatic. Now, while I have serious concerns with Mr. Friedman's temperament, my biggest issue with this nominee is his lack of commitment to the peace process. For example, right after being nominated to serve as Ambassador, Mr. Friedman stated that he ``looked forward to doing this from the U.S. embassy in Israel's eternal capital, Jerusalem.'' It has been a longstanding policy of the United States to recognize Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel. This policy has been viewed by successive administrations as important for helping maintain regional stability and peace with Israel and its neighbors. An abrupt change in this tradition would make it more difficult for the United States to play the role of arbiter, to achieve peace and security between the Israelis and the Palestinians. At a time when we need to reduce tensions in the region, Mr. Friedman was sending the exact wrong message. What I find even more troubling is Mr. Friedman's support for settlement building. Successive U.S. administrations have recognized that new settlements are barriers to peace. Mr. Friedman has served as president and has been actively fundraising for the American Friends of Beit El, the nonprofit that supports the expansion of that settlement-- expansion which is illegal under international law, an expansion deep inside of Palestinian territory. How can we possibly help advance peace between the two parties with a man who believes there ought to be more settlements--one of the very things that observers on both sides of this conflict recognize as a significant obstacle to peace. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has remained intractable for far too long, proving a hardship--a tragedy-- for Israelis and Palestinians both and impacting regional and even global security. I believe--I am convinced that a just and lasting agreement between the two parties on a two-state solution, though very difficult, can and must be achieved. Confirming David Friedman as Ambassador of the United States to Israel will only serve to make that job more difficult, if not impossible, and in my mind would be a tragedy. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the Friedman nomination. I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to a resolution that will roll back nearly 45 years of OSHA workplace safety enforcement precedents. We would be reversing a precedent that helps ensure every American worker heads homes safely at the end of their shift. This resolution is an effort by my Republican colleagues to overturn a rule issued by OSHA on December 16, 2016, entitled, ``Clarification of Employer's Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness.'' As the title says, this rule provides employers with clarification on the requirements to timely report and record workplace injury and illnesses. This rule adds no new employer requirements that differ from 45 years of policy. The rule supports a practice that law-abiding businesses comply with and have operated under since passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. Passing this resolution and repealing this rule only creates a safe harbor for businesses that have broken the law in the last 5 years or don't intend to follow longstanding rules created to protect the safety and health of workers. For nearly the last 45 years, OSHA has required employers, with the exception of small employers, to timely report workplace injury and illnesses to the Department of Labor and maintain a record of such incidents going back at least 5 years. If an employer failed to do either, they could be cited and penalized. OSHA's rule issued last December simply maintains this longstanding practice. This resolution aims to change that record keeping requirement, or lookback period, from 5 years to 6 months. So if an unscrupulous employer fails to report a worker injury or illness and OSHA doesn't discover the underreporting and cite the employer in the first 6 months after the incident occurred, the employer is able to get away with it and the data used to identify dangerous industries or worksites is lost. Accurate injury and illness records are critical for the protection of workers and for OSHA to direct the most efficient use of their limited resources, and the more data they have, the better. With their current resources, OSHA is only able to inspect a workplace, on average, once every 140 years. That is clearly not sufficient, especially when over 4,800 workers were killed in 2015 and almost 3 million more suffered a serious workplace injury or illnesses. The OSHA reporting rule is critical for OSHA to conduct a thorough investigation, enforce accurate recordkeeping requirements, and focus limited resources on industries and bad actors that pose the greatest risk to worker safety. Take, for instance, the Exel Corporation, a Pennsylvania warehouse and trucking company, which hired hundreds of foreign students on temporary visas, and was cited for numerous unrecorded injuries after some students were seriously injured on the job. Only after students fought for fair pay and safer working conditions and OSHA was able to conduct an investigation was it revealed that, for years, the company had withheld wages and willfully failed to record about half the serious injuries to student workers as well as other serious health and safety violations. By the time DOL had completed their lengthy investigation, the Wage and Hour division recovered over $200,000 in wages withheld from 1,028 foreign student workers. OSHA cited the company for dozens of unrecorded injuries, all of which occurred over the 6-month period before OSHA issued the violations, and a penalty of $283,000. About two-thirds of the $283,000 penalty was for unrecorded violations that occurred outside the 6-month statute of limitations window this CRA is proposing to codify. In response, the Exel Corporation accepted all the penalties, agreed to pay half the total fine, and instituted a new corporate-wide program to fix their recordkeeping practices which added safety protections for roughly 40,000 workers at over 500 facilities nationwide. None of those violations and the associated fine would have been allowed if a narrower 6-month statute of limitations was in place as this resolution proposes to do. I think it is safe to say that Exel's new corporate-wide program that added protections for 40,000 workers in 500 facilities nationwide would not have been implemented either. Efforts to repeal the OSHA reporting rule and 45 years of OSHA enforcement precedent, without even a hearing or vigorous debate, is reckless and runs contrary to any proworker vision. The change in longstanding OSHA precedent was prompted by a DC Circuit Court ruling in the 2012 Volks Constructors v. Secretary of Labor case. After that decision, OSHA revised its recordkeeping regulation to conform with guidance provided in a concurring opinion. If there is a legal disagreement regarding the authority of OSHA to cite employers for continuing violations, we should let the legal process conclude before any congressional or legislative action is taken. The OSHA reporting rule is a fair occupational safety standard, and that is why every administration in the last 45 years, Democratic and Republican, has enforced the requirement this rule clarifies. Opponents of the OSHA reporting rule and supporters of this CRA resolution claim that the OSHA rule would extend the statute of limitations on recordkeeping paperwork violations and that this CRA resolution is necessary to protect jobs, eliminate burdensome regulations and protect small business. None of that is accurate. The OSHA reporting rule does not kill jobs; it creates no new employer obligations that are different from what they were required to uphold for nearly 45 years. And the rule does not cover small businesses. What the rule does do is save employers from killing and maiming workers. It gives OSHA the tools it needs to identify dangerous industries, reckless employers, as well as punish those who break the law at the expense of worker health and safety and businessowners who obey the law. No law-abiding business, which values the safety of its workers and the information used to make the workplace even safer, should be at a competitive disadvantage facing a competitor that underreports injuries and cuts corners at the expense of workers' safety. The safety of the American worker and a level playing field for law abiding employers should not be a partisan issue. I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me, working Americans, and the millions of law-abiding businesses that strive to create a safe workplace and oppose this resolution. Vote no on H.J. Res. 83.

Mr. FRANKEN

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

Mr. FRANKEN. Wow, I kind of hit it right on the nail. Am I out of order now saying that? No? Good. That means I have another minute and a half. I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the effort by my Republican colleagues, including the President, to dismantle the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive order and roll back protections for workers. For too long, many workers in this country have been subject to dangerous working conditions, wage theft, discrimination, and harassment. While most companies follow the law and play by the rules, a few have cut corners at the expense of workers' rights and safety and have factored in paying penalties as just another cost of doing business. That is not fair for workers, and it is not fair for the businesses that play by the rules. It is time we put a stop to it. We certainly should not be spending taxpayers' dollars to pay Federal contractors who violate--and sometimes repeatedly violate--Federal labor laws. Repeated violations by Federal contractors is a serious problem. According to a 2013 HELP Committee staff report, 49 government contractors accounted for 1,776 Federal labor law violations. We are talking about things like an unsafe workplace, discriminating against workers, or failing to pay workers what they earned. Understand when I talk about unsafe workplaces, I am talking about fatalities. But despite these widespread violations, these companies continue to receive taxpayer-funded Federal contracts worth $81 billion a year. My colleagues may have seen a recent Politico Magazine report on VT Halter. VT Halter is a major Navy shipbuilder, but its safety track record is deeply concerning. In 2009, two workers were killed and five others injured--some severely--when an explosion occurred at a VT Halter shipyard. A month later, they received an $87 million Federal contract. About 6 months after the explosion, VT Halter settled charges relating to the explosion, admitting that they had willfully violated at least 12 Occupational Safety and Health Administration--or OSHA-- workplace safety rules to prevent incidents like this from occurring-- an incident in which two workers died. They willfully violated-- willfully; that is willfully violated. That explosion wasn't VT Halter's only incident. In 2009, a worker fell to his death at another VT Halter shipyard where there were no handrails or fall protections. In 2012, the company was fined by OSHA after a worker at a VT Halter shipyard was killed when the lid on a pressurized pot exploded. They were fined again in 2014 for violating crane safety rules after two cranes tipped over, injuring five workers, including one 63-year-old worker who now has the mental capacity of a child. It doesn't make sense to keep rewarding companies like this with lucrative contracts when they repeatedly--and, again, willfully-- disregard basic safety protections. To address this problem, in 2014 President Obama issued an Executive order that essentially says that if you have repeatedly broken our labor laws, the Federal Government will need to examine a company's compliance record on labor law violations before awarding large taxpayer-funded government contracts. Companies with poor track records will need to prove they are taking action to make sure that these types of egregious labor law violations don't happen again. In addition to cracking down on repeat violators who bid for Federal contracts, the President's Executive order also includes two other important provisions that I support: a requirement that companies give workers a pay stub each pay period and a provision to make sure workers are able to access justice if they have been wronged. As the Presiding Officer may know, employers are required, under the Fair Labor Standards Act, to accurately report the number of hours an employee works and their pay. But, surprisingly, employers are not always required to give this information to an employee on a pay stub each pay period. This matters. This matters because when a bad actor cheats its employees by undercounting hours or underpaying wages, it is a lot harder for an employee to recover damages if they don't get a pay stub. It is often low-income workers who work variable shifts who are most easily exploited in these cases. For example, last year, a group of janitors in the Twin Cities won hundreds of thousands of dollars of back pay because their employer had miscounted their hours. And because most of them weren't given pay stubs, it took them much longer to discover that they had been underpaid. One of their key demands, in addition to being paid fairly, was that they start getting pay stubs to ensure they don't get cheated again. This seems to me like a sensible thing to ask. Let's be clear. Most employers already give their employees pay stubs, so this requirement isn't a big change for them, but it makes a big difference for the workers who are most vulnerable to wage theft. And because this provision has already been implemented, repealing it will have real and obvious consequences for working families. The fair pay and safe workplaces rule also took an important step toward protecting workers' fundamental rights by banning the use of forced arbitration in cases of discrimination or sexual assault and harassment. As we have seen in a multitude of contexts in recent years, corporate America is increasingly preventing its employees or customers from accessing the court, relying instead on forced arbitration to avoid accountability when people seek justice for being cheated or mistreated. And some of the most egregious cases we have heard are from workers whose rights have been viciously violated and whose cases were forced into the dark. I have made it a priority during my time in the Senate to combat the widespread and harmful use of forced arbitration. In fact, the forced arbitration regulations within the fair pay and safe workplaces rule build on an effort that I successfully championed 8 years ago. I first became interested in the issue after learning that major Department of Defense contractors charged with performing vital national security functions were using arbitration to sweep cases of sexual assault and harassment under the rug. I heard stories of women who were assaulted or subjected to hostile working conditions while employed by a DOD contractor. And when those women sought justice for the actions--or inactions--of their employers, they were forced into secret arbitration where none of the traditional safeguards of a public court of law apply. As a result, countless other victims were left in the dark about the women's cases, and the contractors were shielded from accountability, both from the courts and from the public eye. So in 2009, I introduced an amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act that prevented certain DOD contractors from forcing their employees to arbitrate claims of discrimination or sexual assault and harassment. The amendment passed with bipartisan support. In the years since, it continues to be passed on a bipartisan basis as a part of the Defense appropriations process each year, most recently in December of 2014. Now, it is unclear to me what has changed in the years since we passed my amendment that would make my Republican colleagues shift course. But what is clear is that now is not the time to roll back these critical protections for our workers. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, at least 25 percent of American women say they have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. And recent high profile revelations about abuse--for example, former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes' abuse of his employees, as well as the allegations of sex bias at Kay and Sterling Jewelers-- demonstrate that we are far from addressing this issue on a broader scale. So I urge my Republican colleagues to reconsider their support for this resolution. I urge them to not force vulnerable women who have been wronged into the dark and into forced arbitration. Blocking the fair pay and safe workplaces rule is just wrongheaded. A vote to repeal this rule is a vote to support giving taxpayer dollars to companies that break the law, it is a vote to help employers who cheat their employees out of fair pay, and it is a vote to take away workers' fundamental rights to access to the court. I urge a ``no'' vote, and I thank the Presiding Officer for the generous window of 10 to 15 minutes. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes or 15 minutes.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Thank you. I had no intention of actually filing a rule XIX objection. My point is--and the reason is because I didn't want to delay things. But we have a nominee here who has sued the EPA 18 times. The reason we are doing this is because we don't think this nominee is qualified. It has nothing to do with us not recognizing the results of the election, and I actually take offense to that. I don't know why the Presiding Officer ruled the way he did because I think it is obvious that it is imputing motives unbecoming to Senators, by saying that we don't recognize the legitimacy of the election and we are pretending that Hillary Clinton won the election. I am just raising this as a point, which is that Senators do this routinely, and if every time we raised a rule XIX on something like that, we would delay--if you want to accuse people of delaying the Senate--

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, may I ask the Chair for permission to speak for a minute.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, can I have a minute?

Mr. FRANKEN. Can I get some explanation?

Mr. FRANKEN. I made a parliamentary inquiry, and I would appreciate an answer.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, it seems to me that that is imputing to Democrats' actions and motives not becoming of a U.S. Senator.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I have a parliamentary inquiry for the Parliamentarian.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, would my friend, the Senator from Wyoming, read back the part that he said earlier in the speech about Democrats doing this, the reasons we are delaying? Would he do me that favor? The reason I am raising this is that we had a parliamentary question back when Elizabeth Warren was speaking on the Sessions nomination which, I guess, the majority leader questioned whether she was, in that case, questioning the motives or actions of a fellow Senator. It seems to me that the Senator from Wyoming, whom I respect, was doing the same about Democrats in the Senate.

Mr. FRANKEN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. FRANKEN. I appreciate it. I thank very much the Presiding Officer and I thank the Senator from Wyoming. I am just making a point here.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the nomination of Scott Pruitt to serve as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, is tasked with protecting human health and the environment, including our precious air, land, and water. This is clearly one of the most critical missions in the Federal Government. Americans believe that a great country deserves safe drinking water, clean air, and to know that the products we use are safe. And Americans care about continuing this legacy for future generations, believing that we should leave the environment in good shape or better than we found it, and that is where the EPA comes in. Before the Agency was created in 1970, a hodgepodge of inconsistent State and city regulations proved to be inadequate for protecting the right of Americans to have a clean, safe environment. Before the EPA, in some cities in this country, the air was so polluted that during the day, drivers could barely see the car in front of them. Studies indicate that the air in the 1950s in Los Angeles, as measured by particulate matter and ozone pollution, was worse than it is in Beijing today. Our rivers, including the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, caught fire. Schools were built on toxic chemical dumps. I know the thought of public health risks like these sound preposterous today, but this was all the case back before the EPA. It took parents and regular citizens standing up and demanding better to finally force action. In 1970, President Richard Nixon and a Democratic Congress worked in a bipartisan manner to create the EPA. Let me be clear. The EPA is not perfect. There are many instances when I have stood up to the Agency because I felt its actions were not in the best interests of Minnesotans. That said, since the creation of the Agency, the EPA has significantly improved our public health and our environment by cleaning up our air and cleaning up our water. We still have a lot of work left to do. Yet we are now faced with a President and an EPA nominee who want to gut the Agency and reverse the progress we have made. President Trump has repeatedly attacked environmental protections and the EPA. He has called to ``get rid of'' the Agency. And during an interview with FOX News, Candidate Trump said of the EPA: ``What they do is a disgrace.'' And now he is in a position to try to implement his stated goal of gutting the EPA--gutting the EPA, that is right. He wants to slash critical public health and environmental safeguards, and to do this, he handpicked Mr. Pruitt. Mr. Pruitt intends to prevent the EPA from protecting public health and the environment by reducing the budget by two-thirds. Trump transition team member Myron Ebell made these plans clear. Mr. Pruitt will cut and then cut some more and then cut some more, until the Agency we trust to keep us safe is no bigger than it was when Richard Nixon was President. So what exactly should we cut? Which aspect of public health and our environment is in need of less protection and research? Well, let me tell you about some of the things the EPA has accomplished since its creation. The EPA helps protect us from toxins. From 1948 to 1988, 30 million homes were treated for termite infestation with two related, very longlasting chemicals: heptachlor and chlordane. These chemicals are among the 12 worst known persistent organic pollutants--a rogues' gallery called the dirty dozen. A long-term study found that millions of Americans have these chemicals in their blood and in their fat and that the higher the levels, the more likely a person is to suffer from dementia, type 2 diabetes, prostate cancer, testicular cancer, breast cancer, or lymphoma. The problems arising from heptachlor and chlordane are still with us, but at least they are not getting worse. Why? Because hard work by EPA scientists helped expose the risks of these chemicals and led them to be banned in the United States in 1988. The world didn't catch up to the protection offered to the American people by our EPA until an international ban came into effect in 2001. The Agency also determined that lead in our paint and lead in our gas caused terrible public health problems, and they got the lead out. In the 1970s, 88 percent of American children had elevated levels of lead in their blood. Now the number is less than 1 percent. However, we know that the battle against old toxins is far from over, as the disastrous lead poisoning in Flint, MI, tragically reminds us. We also know that new risks appear every year. That is why Congress recently passed bipartisan legislation to allow the EPA to take action on the most concerning toxic chemicals, including asbestos. Slashing the EPA budget endangers future progress and will not make us better off, will not make us safer, will not make our children safer. The EPA has also made our air cleaner. Thanks to the EPA, we have reduced air pollution--like smog and ozone and particulate matter--by more than 70 percent since 1970, thus preventing millions of asthma attacks, hospital visits, lost workdays, and more than 100,000 premature deaths every year. At the same time, the American economy has grown 240 percent. The Agency was also instrumental in the phaseout of harmful substances responsible for depleting the ozone layer. The ozone layer shields us from harmful ultraviolet radiation that leads to sunburns or, worse, skin cancer. Thanks to the work of the EPA and other Federal agencies in cooperation with the international community, ozone depletion has now stopped and the layer has begun to regenerate. The EPA has also made our water cleaner. The Agency invests billions in drinking and wastewater infrastructure every year through the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds. These funds are particularly important to rural communities. What is more, the EPA is actually saving consumers money. Take the fuel efficiency standards that require car companies to manufacture vehicles that go farther on a gallon of gas. These standards both reduce air pollution and save people money. Thanks in part to the EPA, from 1975 to 2013, the average fuel economy of a car sold in the United States more than doubled. Further increases in fuel economy standards under the Obama administration mean that if you buy a new car, you can expect to save an average of $7,300 on gas during the lifetime of that vehicle. As a whole, Americans will save $1.7 trillion at the pump. This is just a small subset of what the EPA has accomplished over the years to protect public health and the environment. And I didn't even mention cleaning up toxic waste sites or testing foreign products for lead and mercury. But if Mr. Pruitt is confirmed to lead the EPA, all this progress and continued work is at risk. As the attorney general of Oklahoma, Mr. Pruitt put the will of his corporate donors above the public interest time and time again, suing the Agency 18 times--suing the EPA 18 times--to block clean air and clean water protections. Now Mr. Pruitt wants to run the EPA, but he refuses to say that he will permanently recuse himself from those lawsuits that are still pending. Thus, he would be both the defendant and plaintiff in those cases. This is a bizarre world nomination. We cannot allow this type of conflict of interest at the EPA. As attorney general, he failed to take environmental protections seriously. He dismantled the environmental protection unit within the AG's office, and in particular Mr. Pruitt's record shows a disdain for protecting the air we breathe. He filed three lawsuits to block EPA health standards for smog, soot, mercury, arsenic, lead, and other air pollutants. His actions directly threaten those who suffer from asthma and other lung conditions. We can't go back to the air we had in the 1970s. We can't afford the air Beijing has today. Mr. Pruitt is so ideologically driven to protect the interests of oil, gas, and other polluters that he even gets in the way of clean energy projects that would create jobs. Take for example the Plains & Eastern Clean Line, a high-voltage transmission project that President Trump has identified as an infrastructure priority. It will bring clean wind power from the heartland to power-hungry cities. As Oklahoma attorney general, Mr. Pruitt did everything he could to kill that very same project. Even more concerning to me is Mr. Pruitt's years of opposition to the renewable fuel standard, the RFS. This program is vital in our fight against dirty air, and it also greatly benefits Minnesota's rural economy. It is certainly better to drive our cars on biofuels from the Midwest than on oil from the Middle East. I know that Mr. Pruitt pledged during his hearing to honor the RFS, but this same law provides him with an important loophole: The RFS permits the head of the EPA to reduce the congressionally mandated levels of biofuel production. I, for one, do not trust an avid opponent of the RFS to now be responsible for its implementation. During the confirmation hearings, my Democratic colleagues pushed Mr. Pruitt on climate change. His answers were not reassuring. Unlike our new President, Mr. Pruitt did not call climate change a ``hoax.'' Instead, he was more subtle, repeatedly saying: ``The climate is changing, and human activity impacts are changing climate in some manner.'' Those words are intentionally deceptive. They are meant to sound reasonable but also to excuse inaction. If we look at Mr. Pruitt's record, it shows that he has been steadfastly against action on climate change, including a suit to block the first requirements for powerplants to reduce their carbon emissions. Let me remind you that these requirements are based on Supreme Court rulings from a conservative majority Court at that. In a 2007 decision, Massachusetts v. the EPA, the Supreme Court found that the EPA had authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. It also directed the EPA to assess whether climate change endangers public health, which the Agency correctly determined it does. The Court further ruled that because of this hazard, the EPA is obligated to regulate greenhouse gases. During his hearing, Mr. Pruitt made clear that all he wants to do is transfer more environmental protection duties to the States, but there are two major problems with that. First, 50 States each implementing different requirements is both inefficient and likely to lead to a race to the bottom. There are many States that will be tempted to trade away the long-term public health of their citizens for the quick financial rewards that will come if they are able to lure businesses from other States with the promise of lax environmental regulations. All Americans deserve a clean environment. If States want to innovate, free them to do better than our national standards, but there needs to be an EPA that can make sure they don't do worse than our national standards. While my State of Minnesota has been a leader in environmental protection, the second problem with the State-by-State approach is that pollution doesn't respect State boundaries. The people of my State should not suffer ill effects of pollution from States upwind. Mr. Pruitt also implied during his hearing that the EPA's regulations are killing jobs, suggesting we must either choose employment and economic prosperity or public health and environmental protection, but this is a false choice. We know we can and must in fact have both. Addressing environmental challenges like climate change will not only help prevent unprecedented damage to our economy but will also spur economic growth and innovation. My home State of Minnesota has shown how we can do this. In 2007, under a Republican Governor, we established a renewable energy standard that produced 25 percent of our power from renewable sources by 2025. We established an energy efficiency resource standard requiring utilities to become a little more efficient every year. We established an aggressive target to reduce greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050, and we are national leaders in biodiesel blending requirements. These policies have not led to economic ruin in Minnesota. They have led to economic development--rural economic development--as we harvest the wind and Sun and convert our biomass into energy. We are investing in clean energy technology not only because it cleans up the air but because it creates thousands of jobs. In fact, a clean energy economy now employs more than 50,000 people in Minnesota, and it will continue to grow. In 2005, 6 percent of Minnesota's electricity came from renewable sources. Today it is almost 25 percent, and we continue to go higher. In addition to good jobs for Minnesotans, this transition brought a 17- percent decline in power sector greenhouse gas emissions during a decade when the population of Minnesota increased 7 percent. It is clear that an EPA led by Mr. Pruitt will not move us in the direction Minnesota is going. Americans expect and deserve clean water, clean air, and a hospitable environment. Although EPA is far from perfect, the Agency has shown that a cleaner environment is compatible with economic growth. In fact, cleaning the environment helps drive economic growth. We cannot afford to entrust the EPA to Mr. Pruitt or anyone else who has a history of putting polluters' interests above the public's and above the economy as a whole. We cannot afford to entrust this Agency to someone the President has handpicked to slash its budget and to prevent it from carrying out its mission. Mr. Pruitt represents a step backward, not a step forward. He is maybe the last person who should be the next leader of the EPA. I will oppose this nomination, and I call on my colleagues to do the same. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my postcloture debate time to Senator Schumer. But first, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. This article cites his votes against mental health parity--think about what that means in terms of treatment during this opioid crisis--against funding for AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, against the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, against tobacco regulation, against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, and more. Price has also been a champion of efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that if the ACA is repealed, nearly 20 million Americans will lose their health care coverage immediately, with the number growing to 32 million over the next 10 years, and 300,000 of those individuals live in my State of Minnesota. Let me tell you about at least two of them. Leanna has a 3-year-old son named Henry. Henry has been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and his treatment will last at least until April of 2018. Henry often needs around-the-clock care to manage his nausea, vomiting, pain, and sleepless nights. This is a 3-year-old boy. Henry's immune system is so compromised that he is not supposed to go to daycare. So Leanna left her job to take care of him. Leanna's family is supported by her spouse, but they couldn't pay for Henry's treatment on one salary. Leanna says: It is because of the ACA that Henry gets proper health care. Henry can get therapy and the things he needs to maintain his health and work toward beating cancer. Henry is still with us because of the ACA. Let me say that again: ``Henry is still with us because of the ACA.'' I have asked Republicans repeatedly to show me the plan they have to make sure Leanna and her son Henry and the hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans who have gained coverage don't lose the care they need. I have yet to see their plan. What I have seen Congressman Price advocate for so far is pretty awful. His proposals would strip away coverage for people with preexisting conditions, strip away preventive health benefits, strip away protections from annual and lifetime limits, strip away coverage for young adults. Moreover, Congressman Price views Medicaid and Medicare as government expenditures to be cut, rather than lifelines to millions of seniors, disabled populations, children and families. As chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Price introduced proposals to cut funding for Medicaid by more than $2 trillion. In my State, Medicaid provides health insurance to 14 percent of the residents. That includes two out of five low-income individuals, one in four children, one in two people with disabilities, and one in two nursing home residents. Think about that. One in two people in nursing homes are covered by Medicaid in my State. What is going to happen to these people--our parents, our children, our spouses, our families--if Congressman Price and his colleagues succeed in slashing Medicaid's budget? I can guarantee you, it will not be kind and it will not be just and Americans are going to lose out. Congressman Price's assault on our health care system doesn't end there. He wants to slash Medicare's budget by hundreds of billions of dollars, undermining our basic guarantee of coverage to our Nation's seniors, and no wonder. Let me remind you, this is the same person who wrote: ``I can attest that nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the Federal government's intrusion into medicine through Medicare.'' Do we really want the person who wrote this to be running Medicare? Price's determination to gut Medicaid and Medicare is directly opposed by the vast majority of Americans and in direct opposition to President Trump's campaign promise never to cut Medicaid or Medicare. When Tom Daschle withdrew from consideration for HHS Secretary, he talked about the challenges of health care reform and said: This work will require a leader who can operate with the full faith of Congress and the American people, and without distraction. Right now, I am not that leader, and will not be a distraction. So I say to Congressman Price, you do not have the full faith of the Congress, and you do not have the full faith of the American people. You are not the leader this country needs, and you should not be a distraction. Since you have not withdrawn your nomination, I urge my colleagues to do the right thing and oppose this controversial nomination. I yield the floor to my colleague from Hawaii.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I have to start this over fresh. I don't know if the Congressional Record needs to have this first half paragraph twice, but so be it. On February 3, 2009, Tom Daschle, President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, withdrew his nomination because he hadn't paid his taxes on his car service. On January 9, 2001, Linda Chavez, President George W. Bush's nominee for the Department of Labor, withdrew her nomination after questions were raised about her decision to shelter an undocumented immigrant. Most recently, Vincent Viola, President Trump's nominee to be the Secretary of the Army, withdrew his nomination after it proved too difficult for him to distance himself from his business ties. Congressman Price's conflicted financial investments and his affiliation with conspiracy-theory-peddling extremists should be enough to disqualify his nomination. On top of that, Congressman Price's policy agenda squarely contradicts what the majority of the American people want and the key promises President Trump made during his campaign. It is, frankly, hard to believe that we are seriously considering someone who has advanced policies that would privatize Medicare, gut Medicaid, and rip coverage away from millions of Americans. For all of these reasons, I strongly oppose Congressman Price's nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Let's take these issues one by one. First, Congressman Price's stock trades. Public documents show that between 1993 and 2012, Congressman Price owned shares in tobacco companies worth tens of thousands of dollars. At the same time, Congressman Price voted against landmark legislation in 2009 that gave the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco and bring down the death toll inflicted by tobacco products. That means Congressman Price, a physician who swore to uphold the Hippocratic oath of ``do no harm,'' voted against public health and for Big Tobacco. This is the person who is slated to become the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, someone who personally profited from increased sales of deadly, addictive products. When asked about this during his hearing in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Congressman Price's best defense was that his broker made the stock trades on behalf without his knowledge. Here is the problem with that defense: First, Congressman Price annually reported his financial holdings, signing off on documents acknowledging his investments in tobacco companies, meaning that he would have knowledge of the fact that his vote to block tobacco regulation could have a direct financial benefit to him. Second, these were not investments in diversified funds; these were individual stocks that he owned for nearly 20 years and that he reported paid him dividends. Let me repeat that. Congressman Price, medical doctor, owned individual tobacco company stocks that paid him dividends. Owning tens of thousands of dollars of tobacco stocks while voting to help tobacco companies was not Congressman Price's only questionable investment. In late December, the Wall Street Journal reported that over the past 4 years, Congressman Price has traded stocks worth more than $300,000 in about 40 health-related companies while at the same time serving on the House Ways and Means Committee, where he drafted and cosponsored legislation that could affect his investments. Let's talk about one example that is particularly troubling. Congressman Price made his largest ever stock purchase in a company called Innate Immunotherapeutics, a small biotech company based in Australia. This is a company that has only one experimental therapy in the early stages of testing, has never generated revenues from drug sales. It is not exactly a household name. How did Congressman Price get in on this sweetheart deal? He was told about Innate by Congressman Chris Collins, who, in addition to being a Member of the House of Representatives, serves on the board of directors for Innate Immunotherapeutics and is the company's largest shareholder. The Wall Street Journal reported that Congressman Price was part of a small group of fewer than 20 U.S. investors who participated in the private stock sale. The New York Times and the Buffalo News reported that many of those people had close ties to Congressman Collins, including Collins' chief of staff, a prominent DC lobbyist, and several of Congressman Collins' campaign contributors. On August 31, Congressman Price reported that as part of this special private stock sale, he bought about 400,000 shares of Innate stock for as little as 18 cents a share. That same day, the stock was trading on the Australian Stock Exchange for the equivalent of 31 cents per share. That is a 42-percent difference--42 percent below the market price--and Congressman Price now stands to make a profit of more than $200,000. That is quite a stock tip. Richard Painter, George W. Bush's chief ethics lawyer, describes Price's stock trades as ``crazy. . . . We wouldn't have put up with anybody in the Bush administration buying and selling health care stocks.'' Painter went on to explain that ``if you, as a member of Congress, buy and sell health care stocks at the same time you are possessing non-public information about that legislation, you are taking the risk of being charged with criminal insider trading.'' Let me repeat that. Mr. Painter, who was George W. Bush's chief ethics official, suggested that Mr. Price's actions risk a criminal insider trading charge. Congressman Price could have directed his broker to stay away from tobacco stocks. He could have directed his broker to stay away from health care stocks or individual stocks altogether given that health care was one of his legislative priorities. But he did not. Why would Congressman Price take this risk? My colleagues and I have sent Congressman Price a number of letters asking for more information about his stock trades and investments. If this is all aboveboard, then Congressman Price should have nothing to hide. I also submitted questions for the record as a member of the HELP Committee. In response to all of these questions, I have received nothing. It makes no sense that his nomination has been brought to the floor despite his refusal to respond to committee questions. Congressman Price has demonstrated a lack of judgment with his stock trades and now is stonewalling the committee, refusing to answer our inquiries, but Congressman Price's questionable stock trades aren't the only area raising red flags. My second set of concerns stems from Congressman Price's longstanding association with conspiracy-peddling, anti-science extremists. For more than 25 years, Congressman Price has been a dues-paying member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. He has spoken at the organization's conferences and even described the organization's executive director as one of his personal heroes. This organization is way out of the mainstream. It promotes anti-vaccine pseudoscience and denies the scientific fact that HIV causes AIDS. It is an organization that blames ``swarms'' of immigrant children for disease and has published scientifically discredited theories linking abortion to breast cancer. At one point, it even accused President Barack Obama of hypnotizing voters with ``neuro-linguistic programming.'' Let me repeat that. It accused President Barack Obama of hypnotizing voters with ``neuro-linguistic programming.'' That is not all. The statement of principles for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons has an entire section devoted to urging doctors to refuse to participate in Medicare, in which it says the effect of such government-run programs is ``evil, and participation in carrying out his provisions is, in our opinion, immoral.'' Congressman Price--the person poised to become the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, the person responsible for leading Medicare--has been an active, engaged member of this organization for 25 years. Just in case you don't think he has bought into these ideas, let me read you what Congressman Price wrote in 2009 in an op-ed: ``I can attest that nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the federal government's intrusion into medicine through Medicare.'' Since Congressman Price will not answer my questions, I will pose this to one of my Republican colleagues: How are the American people supposed to trust Congressman Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services given that he has belonged to an organization for over 25 years that has such blatant disregard for science and a propensity for putting partisanship and ideology above evidence? Lastly and most importantly, the policy reforms that Congressman Price has put forward are so extreme that they should be disqualifying in and of themselves. As an editorial recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine stated, ``As compared with his predecessors' actions, Price's record demonstrates less concern for the sick, the poor, and the health of the public and much greater concern for the economic well-being of their physician caregivers.'' That is from the New England Journal of Medicine. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the article printed in the Record.

Mr. FRANKEN. Thank you, Mr. Leader.

Mr. FRANKEN. Well, I am going to yield to our leader in just a moment, when he manages to get there, and it will be the esteemed Senator from New York, Charles Schumer. I will narrate as he is stepping over there, walking now to the podium--the leader, whom I will yield to.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, my understanding was that the Democratic leader wanted to come and speak for 5 minutes between Senator Stabenow and myself. But he is not here, so I am going to speak. Before I start my remarks that I have prepared, I want to say something specifically to the Presiding Officer because he is a new Senator from Indiana. I read a front-page article in the New York Times just a few weeks ago. It featured Indiana University Hospital and the health physicians there. It was an article about the savings and the delivery reform that have been driven by the Affordable Care Act, things that will be staying with us even if this is repealed, which I hope it isn't. But this is a quote I would like to read for the Presiding Officer from Dr. Gregory Kira, cochief of primary care, Indiana University Health Physicians. I would ask the Presiding Officer for his attention for a second. This is what it says: `` `I've been a registered Republican my whole life, but I support the Affordable Care Act,' said Dr. Gregory C. Kiray, co-chief of primary care for IU Health Physicians, `because it allows patients to be taken care of.' '' I admit, I didn't have 49 others for every State, but I had remembered reading this. On February 3, 2009, Tom Daschle, President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, withdrew his nomination because he hadn't paid his taxes on his car service. On January 9, 2001, Linda Chavez, President George W. Bush's nominee for the Department of Labor, withdrew her nomination after questions were raised about her decision to shelter an undocumented immigrant. Most recently, Vincent Viola, President Trump's nominee to be-- Would the leader like me to yield to him for a few minutes?