Chuck Grassley

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, last night former Vice President Biden refused to rule out packing the Court if the President and the Senate proceed to fulfilling their constitutional duties and filling the High Court vacancy. I understand there are differences of opinion on the direction of the Court, but threatening to expand the Court and pack it with favorable Justices just because the other side won fair and square and simply followed the Constitution does not meet the commonsense test. This is dangerous territory and leads to an erosion of public faith in the judiciary. Where would such a path lead us? Thirteen Justices? Maybe 21 Justices? At what point does it stop? I thought we settled this under FDR, way back in 1937-1938. It is telling that Democrats are not trying to justify their discussion of Court packing by saying there is some practical reason why it is needed. In fact, the Supreme Court is hearing fewer cases than ever. Any Democratic Court-packing plan would be nothing more than a naked power grab, an effort by Democrats to subvert the will of the people when they couldn't get the results they wanted at the ballot box that would have let their party pick and confirm judges. Let's try to remain focused on the political independence of the judiciary and leave politicking to this branch of government--the legislative branch. I yield the floor.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, it is typical during an election season to hear Democrats try to scare people into believing that Republicans want to destroy programs that Americans rely on for their health and security. We have recently heard this on Medicare and Social Security. Now there is a new subject to add: health insurance. The programs are different, but the scenarios are the same. The Democrats concoct a story, attribute it to the President and to Republican Members of Congress, and then turn to their allies to amplify this false narrative. What really stands out this election season is how those all-too-familiar scare tactics directly contradict the message coming from the Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. Vice President Biden says he is for hope, not fear. His actions and those of his party show just the opposite. So let's start with the Democrats' efforts to pin Medicare's financial struggles on Republicans. The facts tell a much different story. Republicans have fought for decades, often in the face of Democratic resistance, to keep Medicare strong not only for current enrollees but for their children and grandchildren. For instance, in 1995, President Clinton vetoed Republican efforts to keep Medicare on sound financial footing. Faced with the prospect that the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund was going broke in just a few years, back then, Republicans still pressed on. It was the work of a Republican House of Representatives and a Republican Senate that ultimately convinced President Clinton to sign the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. That act of 1997 extended the life of the health insurance trust fund, but it was not a silver bullet to solve the Medicare Program's long-term financial challenges. For many years, spanning both Democratic and Republican administrations, the Medicare trustees have cautioned that the program's financial shortfalls require further legislative action. The trustees reported repeatedly--advised Congress to enact such legislation sooner rather than later to minimize the impact on beneficiaries, healthcare providers, and taxpayers. Republicans know how important Medicare is to the over 60 million Americans who rely on the program for their healthcare, but we also realize that Medicare is on an unsustainable course. I have already said that we need to work in a bipartisan way to protect Medicare, particularly here in the U.S. Senate, where it takes 60 votes to get anything done. That work requires an honest assessment and a very serious discussion. Sadly, it seems that Democrats are only willing to take their heads out of the sand long enough to point fingers. So let's set the record straight. Earlier this year, the trustees of Medicare projected that that program would be bankrupt in 2026. Then, of course, we have this unprecedented public health emergency to deal with, the pandemic, as we always call it, which dealt a crippling blow to our Nation. The sacrifices and efforts made to stop the spread of the coronavirus effectively shut down the U.S. economy and altered life as we all know it. Congress stepped in to provide Federal relief. The COVID response bills were passed on an overwhelming bipartisan majority, specifically the CARES Act--better known as the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act--passed the House by a vote of 419 to 6, and the U.S. Senate, 96 to 0. CARES gives extra Medicare funding to hospitals and other healthcare providers to keep them in business in the face of an unexpected drop in demand for medical services. Additionally, because of Medicare Part A, as financed by payroll taxes that are split between employers and employees, unemployment caused by the pandemic has resulted in less money coming into the trust fund. So it, then, is not surprising that the Congressional Budget Office estimated earlier this month that the Medicare trust fund could run out of money in 2024, 2 years earlier than the Medicare trustees had projected, without taking into account the impact of COVID because they didn't know about it and couldn't take that into consideration. It is important to note that during the Trump Presidency and prior to the pandemic, the projected insolvency date of the Medicare health insurance trust fund remained pretty steady. No one could have anticipated this current crisis. Instead of taking it as a reminder of the need to shore up Medicare for the long haul, Democrats have opted to create a false narrative that the current administration is the problem. Every recent President, Republican and Democratic, has offered Medicare reform ideas in budget requests submitted to the Congress. Many of those budgets contained identical policy ideas, whether from a Republican President or a Democratic President. Putting aside that Congress, and not the President, makes laws, the notion that proposals aimed at making Medicare more efficient is equivalent to sabotaging the program is absurd. Yet, whenever a Republican occupies the White House, we repeatedly hear from Democrats that proposals for program integrity represent cuts or efforts to weaken or destroy Medicare, even when some of those same proposals were put forward by Democratic administrations. Because Medicare is on a path to bankruptcy, the greatest threat, then, is what often happens around here--inaction. Over the past decade, Democrats not only stood firmly in the way of meaningful Medicare reform, but they actually made the problem worse. Rather than confront the looming crisis in 2009, President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Washington Democrats raided more than $700 billion from the Medicare Program. They didn't do it to save Medicare; they cut money from a financially strapped Medicare Program and then spent that money on a brandnew entitlement program called ObamaCare. It was the Democrats who pushed ObamaCare through Congress without a single Republican vote. And what do Democrats want to do if they find their way back into power? They want to enact something called Medicare for All. Moving the 180 million Americans with private, employer-based insurance to the Medicare rolls would cause Federal spending to balloon to unthinkable levels. An analysis conducted by the Mercatus Center in 2018 found that Medicare for All would increase Federal spending by $32 trillion over the next 10-year period. This Democratic plan would also give the Federal Government more control over healthcare, impose massive tax increases on the middle class, and disrupt access to services. That is why Democrats would rather mischaracterize the unavoidable impact of COVID and demonize Medicare budget proposals that are often bipartisan in nature. Democrats used the very same dirty tricks related to Social Security, as I just talked about with Medicare. Some across the aisle recently concocted a hypothetical proposal that eliminates the funding source for Social Security and asked the program's Chief Actuary to assess its impact. This was an obvious attempt to alarm seniors and disabled Americans with the ultimate intent of smearing Republicans and feeding false talking points to a Democratic candidate for President. Even when their schemes and false talking points earned four Pinocchios from even the Washington Post, Democrats still proceed full speed ahead with their misinformation campaign. And even though Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Brady and I got the Social Security Actuary to affirm the Democrat's recent scheme was just a bunch of malarkey, the Democrats and Candidate Biden continue with this misinformation. Again, Democrats use scare tactics in the runup to an election. While they accuse Republicans of wanting to destroy Social Security, Senate Democrats do little or nothing to work in a bipartisan way to help this program. Remember, in 2015, when the disability insurance trust fund was going to run dry, Senate Democrats demanded that the only thing that you could possibly do was to take from the retirement trust fund and then just simply kick the can down the road. Senate Democrats had no interest in working with us to at least try to make the disability insurance program better for beneficiaries. Instead, Senate Republicans worked with the House and Obama administration to prevent disability security trust fund exhaustion and even to improve the program. There was no privatization of anything, and the only thing that could be construed as a benefit cut came directly from President Obama. You will not hear anything about that from these Senate Democrats. Instead, they just bring out their stale talking points and, of course, scare tactics about Republicans trying to destroy the program. Now they are applying the same wornout, baseless scare tactics to this Supreme Court confirmation process. Democrats want to make the President's nomination to fill the vacancy all about ObamaCare and the case the Court will consider this fall. Going to the minority leader's own words when it comes to Judge Barrett's confirmation hearing, he said: ``We must focus like a laser on health care.'' The left is misrepresenting an article by then- Professor Barrett in hopes of finding something--almost anything--to gum up this confirmation process. It seems to me they are just frustrated this nominee had the audacity to suggest judges interpret law as written. There is an old saying in the legal profession: If the law isn't on your side, pound the facts. If the facts aren't on your side, pound the law. If neither fact or law is on your side, just pound the table. That is what we see yet again from our Democratic colleagues. It is ludicrous to pick one pending case and predict how every member of the Court, including one just starting the confirmation process, would vote on that case, especially when entirely different legal issues are at stake. Frankly, it is a disservice to the American people. The Democrats know this, but that will not stop them. It will not stop them from trying to mislead hard-working Americans into believing that their healthcare coverage could disappear tomorrow. It is also just the latest example of how many Democrats in Congress view the Supreme Court--just somehow another policy end that they can't accomplish through this branch of government, where we are now. That is not the role of the Court. I am sure Judge Barrett will reiterate that point before the Judiciary Committee. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case mid-November, and there are countless scenarios on a potential outcome. So is it is useless, then, to speculate. But that will not stop the Democrats from speculating during this process of Judge Barrett's nomination. The bottom line is, no matter the decision, no one will lose healthcare coverage on the day the Supreme Court issues its ruling. In the meantime, Republicans will continue to protect individuals with preexisting conditions and fight to give Americans more affordable healthcare options. The President reaffirmed that very thing in his commitment in an Executive order that he signed last week. That Executive order states that it has been, and will continue to be, the policy of the United States to assure that Americans with preexisting conditions can obtain insurance of their choice at an affordable price. The Democrats don't want to stop at ObamaCare. What they really want to do is impose their government-run Medicare for All Program and take away people's private insurance plans that they like--because 160 million people have it. As I mentioned earlier, this one-size-fits-all approach would take away people's private insurance, result in worse care, and bankrupt the country. Republicans want to strengthen Medicare, preserve Social Security, and ensure affordable private coverage options now as well as in the future. Democrats want to mislead now in hopes of future political gains. Americans deserve better. We can do better. Vice President Biden and his party should stop their shameful election-year scare tactics. They should end the malarkey. It is time to have the courage to engage in an honest, civil conversation about bipartisan ideas to improve these health and security programs for millions of people who depend on them.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess until 2:15 p.m.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, small businesses are a very important part of the U.S. economy, so we want to recognize this week, marking the 57th anniversary of what we call National Small Business Week-- proper recognition for a big part of the economy. According to the most up-to-date government statistics, Iowa had 270,484 small businesses and 651,635 employees. They account for 99-3/ 10th percent of businesses and 48-1/10th percent of the private workforce. Small businesses create jobs and export products around the world. Small businesses are the backbone of our communities, and I know this pandemic has really hit small businesses very, very hard. I honor these hard-working Iowa entrepreneurs and, of course, their employees in celebrating the week of September 20th as National Small Business Week. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute in morning business.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, quite often in our newspapers, you can read about a lot of city and State pension funds that are in trouble. There is one at the national level we have to deal with, so today I speak about the multiemployer pension system problems and the need for reform. According to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation's annual projections--and those reports were released last week--there is a very big need for reform. That is as important as ever and getting more important every day. The report estimates that the Multiemployer Insurance Program will become insolvent in 2026. That is a year later than predicted last year, so people might feel a little more comfort, but that is only because we gave relief last year to the mineworkers' plan. What is worse is that insolvency will come at the same time that the Central States Pension Fund will become insolvent, then creating an even bigger strain on the PBGC's insurance fund. Reaching a bipartisan reform agreement continues to be critically important. I am very encouraged by recent indications from my Democratic colleagues that they are interested in working with us to find a solution--a solution that will strengthen this important part of our retirement system while ensuring that taxpayers aren't left holding the bag again in the future. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute in morning business, please.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, last week, former Vice President Biden released his Presidential tax plan. I wish he would release the list of people he is going to put on the Supreme Court, like he said he was going to do in June. He hasn't done that, and, I think, yesterday, he said he wasn't going to do it, but we do have his high-tax plan. He has vowed to raise taxes immediately on U.S. businesses even though our country is recovering from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Usually, when you are in that economic condition, you don't raise taxes, and the very last thing struggling Americans need, and particularly the businesses that create the jobs, is a massive tax increase at this time. Of course, Mr. Biden's tax plan shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. His party seems to think the answer to every problem in America is to raise taxes and spend more money. When he was Vice President, the U.S. corporate tax rate was the highest in the industrialized world. It isn't now because of President Trump's tax proposals and the tax reform legislation we passed December 2017. Prior to tax reform, U.S. companies were not competitive with their foreign counterparts. And there were constant headlines about companies that were moving their headquarters overseas, largely because of our outdated tax system. In fact, a number of Mr. Biden's proposals make me think that he is reliving his time as Vice President. His plan to increase the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 would very quickly take us back to those days. Once again, this country would be saddled with the highest business tax rates in the industrialized world, taking into account Federal and State taxes in this country. U.S. companies, both large and small, would see higher taxes than their foreign competitors in France, Germany, the UK, and other major trading partners. In some cases, those taxes would be as much as 15 percentage points higher. Mr. Biden says our tax system encourages offshoring, profit shifting, and inversions. Back when he was Vice President, those things actually happened: offshoring, profit shifting, and inversions. When Mr. Biden was Vice President, the U.S. tax law allowed companies to defer their foreign earnings until they were brought back to the United States. Why would you bring them back when we had the highest tax rate in the industrialized world? That system allowed many companies to delay paying taxes on their foreign earnings, and in some cases, that could be indefinitely. As part of tax reform, we specifically sought to end the parking of profits overseas. We wanted that money to come home so that money would be invested in this country and would create jobs. That is why we enacted the tax on global intangible low-tax income-- or GILTI, as it is referred to--which imposes a minimum tax on foreign earnings in low-tax countries. And when Biden was Vice President, there were plenty of opportunities for what we call base erosion. That is why we created the base erosion anti-abuse tax--or the BEAT, as it is called--which targets deductible payments made to foreign affiliates. We also imposed limits on the deductibility of interest. Together, these policies addressed loopholes so companies can't erode the U.S. tax base and avoid taxes. While tax reform cracked down on notable abuses, it also had the positive effect of making the United States a far more attractive place to invest--not only for profits of U.S. companies coming home but for foreign investment in America as well. We created the foreign-derived intangible income rules to incentivize companies to keep intellectual property in this country, not abroad. We also allowed immediate expensing of investments to encourage companies to put their facilities and jobs here on U.S. soil. And President Trump has gone way beyond the new tax law to provide incentives to get industry back to this country. Now, Mr. Biden may be harkening back to 2014, but let's all remember that companies then were announcing left and right their plans to invert or move their headquarters overseas, but since our 2017 Trump tax reform, I haven't heard of any companies with inversion plans. Quite the opposite, companies have called off inversions and even brought back operations to this country, and they are citing our tax reform as the main reason for doing it. So why would Mr. Biden want to undo that? Even more curious is that Mr. Biden's own talking points suggest that he supports a number of our tax reform policies in that 2017 bill. Kimberly Clausing, who reportedly advises Mr. Biden on tax policy, has said the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act ``should be commended for providing some limits on tax avoidance through the GILTI and the BEAT.'' What is more, Ms. Clausing has estimated the new rules under the 2017 tax bill will result in a 20-percent decrease in shifting profits overseas. That is consistent with the Joint Committee on Taxation's macroeconomic estimate in 2017 that found that tax reform would reduce profit shifting and increase the U.S. tax base. Nevertheless, Mr. Biden wants to double down on increasing taxes on U.S. businesses and, in fact, undo the progress that we have seen since tax reform in 2017. In addition to higher taxes on domestic earnings, he also wants to increase the rate on U.S. companies' foreign earnings to 21 percent. That is almost double the 12.5-percent rate that the OECD is targeting for its global minimum tax. I guess the former Vice President wants to ensure that no country can top the United States when it comes to the highest tax rates possible. And that is not all. Mr. Biden proposes an additional 10-percent penalty on goods and services imported by U.S. companies from foreign affiliates. Now, even the Washington Post editorial board noted earlier this month that Vice President Biden's policy simply ignores the reality of global supply chains. Do we, in fact, really want to encourage foreign countries to tax goods and services imported from the United States? That could be a slippery slope. The truth is, Mr. Biden is trying to fix problems from the last administration. Republicans already met that challenge, and tax reform of 2017 is working. Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis clearly shows that tax reform stemmed the flood of offshoring, while encouraging U.S. companies to invest right here in the United States. In fact, among U.S. multinationals, employment investment, research, and production in the United States has increased at a faster rate in 2018 than the average rate over the past 20 years--faster than the growth rate of U.S. multinational companies that are abroad. Of course, there is more work to be done. But tax reform has made this country a more attractive place for businesses to headquarter, invest, and create jobs. Now, if the former Vice President succeeds in his plans, it will not just be our businesses that will bear the brunt. The Joint Committee on Taxation and Congressional Budget Office have both concluded that 25 percent of the corporate tax is borne by workers. So workers will be hurt. They will feel the burden of the Biden plan thorough fewer jobs, through reduced wages, and through less benefits. Above all, the Biden tax plan ignores the reality of today. We are trying to see our way out of the global pandemic. Undoing the progress that we have made through tax reform, especially now, is certainly not a prescription for economic recovery and growth. What is more, the Vice President's plan will do nothing to speed the progress that we made reducing unemployment since the height of the pandemic. Instead, it will do just the opposite, work against it. The Biden tax increases wouldn't be good policy in the best of conditions, but they are certainly bad policy right now because of the economic hardship caused by the pandemic. If Mr. Biden really wants to keep living in the Obama era, he should recall President Obama's sound advice on tax policy during a crisis, the financial crisis of 2009 and 2010, when President Obama said this: ``The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession.'' That is something we should all be able to agree upon. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, those on the other side of the aisle who openly say they will end the filibuster if they get the majority should have to explain why they continue to vote to filibuster important issues like police reform and COVID relief. Do they somehow believe the filibuster is wrong in principle, or do they admit that they think there should be two sets of rules depending on which political party has the majority in the Senate? If you think at a minimum that the filibuster should be used sparingly and judiciously, how do you justify voting to block even moving, even discussing, let's say, for instance, Senator Scott's police reform bill when you have been promised amendments by the majority leader and when you can always filibuster final passage if you still aren't satisfied after the bill has been discussed for a long period of time and a lot of amendments have been adopted? It is clear their position on filibuster is pure partisanship at its worst. If there is any way you are going to promote the bipartisanship that the people are demanding, it is only in this institution of the Senate, where it requires 60 votes to get to finality on a bill and where you have pressure to do things in a bipartisan way or nothing gets done. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute in morning business.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, first of all, I thank the chaplain for the happy birthday that was part of the prayer. So they heard it in Heaven, as well as throughout the United States. Before the 2016 election, Democrats speculated very feverishly: Would Donald Trump accept the results of the election of 2016? Then he won, and it is the Democrats who have refused to accept the result. They sought to delegitimize the election, citing Russia's meddling or questioning our Presidential election system. On Inauguration Day, you know the famous Washington Post headline said it all: ``The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.'' He was President about 1 hour at that time. In fact, we now know that efforts to fabricate a Russia collusion narrative were already under way well before the President was inaugurated. The same people are again fretting that President Trump might not somehow accept the election results if he loses. And, of course, under our Constitution, no President has any option but to accept those results because the term ends on January 20. But can't we also ask the alternative? What if President Trump does win? Well, this was the advice from Hillary Clinton to former Vice President Biden: that Biden ``should not concede under any circumstances.'' So will the Democrats respect the election results this time? I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute in morning business.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I imagine the people of the United States have been able to follow the demonstrations in Belarus in opposition to the President declaring victory there. Since Aleksandr Lukashenko came to power in Belarus in 1994, he has consolidated power, and, in the process, suppressed democratic opposition. So the fact that the Belarus August Presidential election was a sham, as we all know, and he was once again declared to be the winner by a highly implausible margin, should not surprise anyone. However, this time, the Belarusian people have had enough. This time, brutal crackdowns by security forces have not crushed grassroots demands for democracy. The quest for liberty is embedded in the DNA of the American Republic, so the Americans naturally watch with interest as the people of Belarus continue to demand their God-given rights. The American people stand with the people of Belarus. I also appreciate very much the strong stance taken by European governments supporting the Belarusian people as the American people have. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, we have recently seen yet another manufactured crisis by the Democrats for the benefit of the upcoming election. This is in regard to scaring the people about some notion that only Republicans would think about taking away Social Security and Medicare. It is not true that any Member of this Congress will do that, but it always comes up as TV advertising against the Republicans; you are going to scare old people into thinking Social Security is going to be gone if you vote Republican. So this is another election season. If there are not any real issues regarding Social Security, the Democrats make one up, and they do it, of course, to scare the people into believing that some people want to destroy the program, not realizing that it is such a part of the social fabric of the American population that nobody would think of doing it. We saw it in the last Presidential election when Secretary Clinton didn't have a basis to attack then-Candidate Trump on Social Security because Trump campaigned on the basis that he wasn't going to cut Social Security, but that didn't stop them from making things up. With their lacking any real ammunition, Clinton's allies here in the U.S. Senate decided to manufacture a crisis. Now, why does something that happened in 2016 come up now? It is an example that this is an ongoing situation, and it is happening in 2020. Back in 2016, three prominent Democratic Senators conjured up false claims about a nominee for the position of public trustee of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. That nominee happened to be a Republican who was nominated--can you imagine this?--by a Democratic President. He was already on there as having been nominated for another term. The false claims published in the Huffington Post were that this nominee, promoted by President Obama, was a Koch brothers-funded individual because he worked at an educational institution that received grants from the Koch Foundation. I don't know whether they even made an attempt to connect this individual to the Koch funds, but it is irrelevant at this point. The Democrats claimed that this single individual somehow duped all of the other trustees, including all of the other Obama administration officials, into buying off on assumptions that would lead to an overstatement of the financial crisis facing Social Security. According to the three Democratic Senators, this was so bad that the Chief Actuary of Social Security felt compelled to write special notes to trustee reports and identify how shocking the assumptions were. Of course, that would have meant that one single public trustee who happened to be a Republican duped outstanding Democrats who were also trustees: Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, and then the additional Democratic public trustee. If you had bought into the Democrats' allegations at the time, it would have meant that all of those Obama officials had been duped and had been too inept to see what had been going on and that only the Chief Actuary could have seen the light. Well, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance at that time investigated those allegations and showed that they were flatout lies. Even the Washington Post identified the lies in an op-ed titled: ``The showdown Democrats don't need to have.'' The Post concluded that the ultimate victims of what they called ``petty politicization'' would be ``the perceived nonpartisanship and objectivity of key government reports--that is, the very values Senate Democrats claim to be upholding.'' The Democrats used their misinformation campaign to run a smear job on a very qualified and well-respected nominee. They also used it to run ads against anyone who voted in favor of that nominee, including ads against me in my most recent reelection. Unfortunately, even though Social Security's Chief Actuary was clearly implicated in the Democratic lies, he remained silent as then- Chairman Hatch and even the Washington Post identified how ridiculous and false the Democrats' claims were. The Chief Actuary's position, apparently, is that, even if his office is being implicated as supporting clearly false and very public claims during an election season, he will just sit quietly and let them go by rather than admit to or apologize for being used once it is pointed out to him that he is being used. All of that was 4 years ago. It is 2020 now, and it is all happening again. Here we are in another Presidential election season, and, of course, like clockwork, we are getting another round of misinformation from the Democratic candidate and his supporters in the Senate. The Washington Post Fact Checker labels the current scheme in a headline that reads: ``Biden campaign attacks a Trump Social Security `plan' that does not exist.'' Now, that was a Washington Post article. Not often does the Washington Post talk about things that might defend Republican positions against the Democrats. This time around, the misinformation stems from a letter written to Social Security's Chief Actuary by four Democratic Senators, including the minority leader, the ranking member of the Committee on Finance, and Senator Sanders, who has been counseling former Vice President Biden. In a letter, these Democrat Senators asked the Chief Actuary to analyze hypothetical legislation--now, those words ``hypothetical legislation'' have to be emphasized--what they say, even they wouldn't support eliminating payroll taxes. Of course, those Senators could easily find the information that they were seeking by looking at the latest Social Security trustees' report. Instead, for purely political reasons, they wanted to draw in the Chief Actuary once again The same Actuary of 4 years ago is being used here once again, and the Chief Actuary at Social Security seems to gladly have played along and written a response. He wrote that his office was not aware that anyone had proposed the hypothetical legislation. Nonetheless, he identified that, without payroll tax revenue and no replacement from the general fund, the trust funds would run out of money pretty quickly. Of course, this is obvious to anyone who has even slight knowledge of these programs, but information was not the aim of the Democratic Senators' letter. Instead, it was to put forward a silly hypothetical case that doesn't correspond to anything that anyone has or is proposing. Of course, they attributed it to the President of the United States. I know you all now see the purpose of this replay--because it is an election year. They used the Chief Actuary's response to claim that authoritative sources have shown that President Trump has a plan to essentially defund Social Security, and in due course they engaged in the cottage industry of groups which exist here in Washington, DC, that regularly scare seniors and the disabled, especially before an election, about some sort of backdoor plan or Trojan horse plan to destroy Social Security, and the Democratic Senators used the Chief Actuary's response to feed the Biden campaign with a false talking point about Social Security. So you see the motives of these Senators in their using the Chief Actuary as their tool. You see it pretty clearly. The Biden campaign has run ads, stating, among other mistruths, ``If Trump gets his way, Social Security benefits will run out in just 3 years from now.'' Let's go back to the Washington Post. Even the Post's Fact Checker gave those ads four Pinocchios, meaning that they contained a whopper of a lie. The Fact Checker also concluded: ``To make a long story short, Democrats ginned up a letter from the chief actuary to describe a plan that does not currently exist.'' In a followup letter that Ranking Member Kevin Brady of the House Ways and Means Committee and I wrote to Social Security's Chief Actuary, we expressed our concerns about the Democrats having, once again, used his office for political purposes, and, once again, it refers back to the 2016 era that I have already talked about. From his response, we learned a few things. First, we got confirmation that no one has a plan to defund Social Security, including the President of the United States. That confirms that the Democrats' letter was just pretty silly, but not oddly, pure politics. Second, we got confirmation that the Democratic Senators, during the 2016 election, published lies in the Huffington Post article, invoking the Chief Actuary in an effort to smear a trustee nominee. Third, we learned that Social Security's Chief Actuary feels compelled to respond to any hypothetical posed to him by any Senator, independent of how silly or blatantly political it would be. Of course the Chief Actuary shouldn't be so compelled. With that latter lesson, it would be easy for a Republican Senator to ask the Chief Actuary to analyze hypotheticals corresponding to the allegations made by Senator Sanders, one of the authors of the letter, concerning the ``hypothetical legislation'' about Vice President Biden's history on Social Security. Senator Sanders, during the primary, has run political ads characterizing Biden's record on Social Security, saying that Biden's claim that he has always protected Social Security are ``patently false.'' It wouldn't be hard to send a hypothetical in for analysis by the Social Security Chief Actuary to get an answer to reinforce Senator Sanders' views that former Vice President Biden has not acted to protect Social Security. It wouldn't be hard to send a letter to the Chief Actuary asking about how Senator Sanders' plans to reform Social Security--which Senator Harris has cosponsored--would harm the middle class by raising payroll taxes, with no corresponding benefits for people with incomes below Biden's $400,000 threshold for defining who is rich and who is not. It certainly wouldn't be hard to construct politically charged hypothetical legislation and ask the Chief Actuary about it in order to make political points and use the Actuary's position for political purposes. It happens that the Chief Actuary doesn't exist for the purpose of political interference. In my view, though, none of those would be a proper use of Social Security taxpayer resources, in the same way that the Democrats are wasting resources using the Chief Actuary for political purposes. So Democrats should stop wasting Social Security's resources trying to construct false and misleading political points to use in elections to feed their political base and dark money groups who then use the points in social media and attack ads against Republicans. But that is how they wasted the taxpayers' money--by writing the letter and eating up the time of the Chief Actuary for nothing other than pure partisan politics. They should also stop politicizing Social Security's actuaries and the Social Security trustee's position in their transparent attempt to mislead the public and try to score political points about Social Security. The American public should--especially during even years, in the runup to elections--turn a deaf ear to scare tactics that Democrats continue to use on Social Security beneficiaries. But when senior citizens who aren't sophisticated in the operation of the Federal Government or the uses of politics to scare people--they might believe this stuff. So you are doing a disservice to a lot of people who shouldn't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. As well, I think journalists should be more responsible when reporting on these political shenanigans, although I will note that even the most recent ploy was at least called out by fact checkers and given four Pinocchios. Rather than acting like demagogues on Social Security, we should do what we can to improve these programs. Social Security trustees across administrations have continually and consistently recommended addressing the projected trust fund shortfalls since protected benefits will continue to outpace revenues. Some sort of reform is inevitable, but outside of broad reform, there are many programmatic improvements that can help make the programs work better for beneficiaries and today's workers. While not as encompassing as broad reforms, there are plenty of areas that we and Social Security Commissioner Saul continue to monitor and work to reduce backlogs and improve services. Just recently, for example, the Senate passed by unanimous consent a bill that we entitled ``Improving Social Security's Service to Victims of Identity Theft Act.'' That was sponsored by this Senator and Senator Sinema. This bipartisan effort will help people who fall victim to identity theft by providing improved services from Social Security with a single point of contact. In my view, more bipartisan work to improve the programs is the way we should go. Partisan attacks to scare beneficiaries into believing that people are out to destroy people's retirement and disability benefits do nothing to help working, disabled, and retired Americans. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, earlier today, my colleagues, Senator Schumer and Senator Wyden violated the Senate rules by attempting to offer a resolution disparaging oversight work being done by me and Senator Johnson. My colleague, Ranking Member Wyden, said that the investigation Senator Johnson and I are engaged in is advancing a Russian disinformation campaign. To be clear, that investigation is focused on potential conflicts of interest and other wrongdoing regarding the time Vice President Biden was lead on the Obama administration's Ukraine policy. At that same time, his son, Hunter Biden, was on the board of a corrupt Ukrainian gas firm called Burisma. This investigation is a good-government investigation to better understand the effect these potential conflicts had on policy execution. This investigation is based on Federal Government records from the Obama administration and records from a Democratic lobby shop, Blue Star Strategies. If those records are Russian disinformation, then that says more about the Obama administration than the purpose of this investigation. I have also addressed the claim that this investigation is somehow connected to Andriy Derkach. I have said publicly on many occasions that I have never received information or material fom him. I have never solicited information from him. The same is true for my staff. In fact, the only two times that I am aware of that my staff have come in contact with his information are, No. 1, when the Democrats introduced his records into a transcribed interview, and No. 2, when Minority Leader Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, Senator Warner, and Representative Schiff used it in their July 13, 2020, letter. They also attempted to link Andriy Telizhenko to Andriy Derkach, apparently to cast him as a nefarious foreign agent, but they neglected to mention his many connections to the Obama-Biden administration, including White House meetings and outings with White House staff. They also omitted his work for Blue Star Strategies, which was working on behalf of the corrupt Ukrainian firm that hired Hunter Biden while his father was the face of U.S. policy toward Ukraine. Democratic connections to Mr. Telizhenko are many and well documented. If they are so concerned that he is a conduit for disinformation, why did they work with him for so long? Maybe the Democrats should take a pause and realize that they are the only ones pushing Russian disinformation. Let's not forget about the Steele Dossier. Thanks to now-declassified information, we know the dossier was filled with Russian disinformation. The Democrats bought- and-paid-for crown jewel ironically was an example of the very disinformation and collusion that it falsely accused the Trump campaign of. The Democrats pushed it for years. Now that it is a failed document, they have tried to run the same baseless smear tactic on this investigation. The facts simply aren't on their side. If my colleagues on the other side are as concerned about foreign disinformation as they claim to be, they would stop relying on it to falsely attack us. Let's stop playing these games and get back to business for the American people.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute in morning business.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, the signing of the Abraham Accords today at the White House represents a very historic breakthrough for peace in the Middle East. I am not saying that this accord alone will bring peace to that troubled region, but this is the first tangible progress toward peace in that area in a quarter century. I met Anwar Sadat at the time of the Camp David Accords in 1978, when he was present in the Ways and Means Committee room over in the House of Representatives, and I had an opportunity also to witness, at the White House, the handshake between Rabin and Arafat in 1993. Both events seemed to herald a new peace in the Middle East that, quite frankly, never materialized, and yet we still have peace between Israel and Egypt and between Israel and Jordan. Israel has been a country for over 72 years. It is the only democracy in the region. It is a major economic, military, and political power, and, of course, it is our greatest ally in the Middle East. It is overdue for other states, then, and those states that are in that area especially to recognize Israel and pursue normal relations. The outdated notion that recognition of Israel's existence should be withheld until somehow Israelis and Palestinians agree on the details of a two-state solution has not worked. The two-state solution hasn't made an agreement more likely, but it has prevented diplomatic interactions that could be a stabilizing force in an unstable region. In a polarized time, today's historic accord between Israel and the UAE and Israel and Bahrain is good news that anyone can celebrate. We ought to give President Trump great credit for his leadership in this area. He has delivered in a lot of areas where both Republican and Democratic Presidents could not deliver in the past. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute in morning business.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which happened last month, was a very disgusting thing to hear about. Such action in Russia or by Russia is not unprecedented. In 2015, the leading democracy advocate in Russia, Boris Nemtsov, was gunned down within the sight of the Kremlin. The square in front of the Russian Embassy in Washington is now named in his honor, echoing the effort that I led to name the street in front of the old Russian Embassy after the dissident Andrei Sakharov. Nemtsov's protege in the Russian opposition, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was then poisoned--poisoned twice but miraculously survived and continues to work for Russian democracy. The good news is that Mr. Navalny is reportedly conscious. Now, a silver lining may also be that Putin's latest attempted assassination is bringing our allies toward a consensus to treat Putin as a pariah. There are reports of senior German politicians reconsidering their support for Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which divides our European allies. This pipeline is opposed by countries like Poland and the Baltics that truly understand that Putin will use it as a strategic influence tool, as well as by the Trump administration and bipartisan majorities in Congress. I hope all of these happenings are a start of a new era of cooperation with our Russian allies to counter Russian influence. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute in morning business.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Today, the Senate will vote on moving forward with relief for Americans. That relief is necessary because of COVID-19. The bill contains new funds for testing and contact tracing, aid for schools and colleges to keep our kids safe, and it also includes childcare assistance. It has more money for developing the coronavirus vaccine and treatments, funding for the Postal Service, and help for farmers. It allows for small businesses to access more Paycheck Protection Program funds with more flexibility and provides for enhanced unemployment benefits. Now, surely these are items we can all agree on and ought to agree on right now. We know how to work together to produce results for Americans. We saw that in March when we successfully passed the CARES Act. That is a good model to follow now. Back in March, Republicans in the Senate proposed a framework, then worked across party lines through the relevant committees to produce a consensus product that received overwhelming support in the Senate. I was glad to lead the bipartisan negotiations on the part of the Senate Finance Committee for that CARES package and have been standing ready to repeat the process if Democratic leaders would just agree to agree. Why can't we repeat the same process now? Democrats seem to think that they can hold out until Republicans either agree to their partisan wishes or Republicans take the blame for the lack of relief. If the Democrats are right, it would be a partisan win for their party, but at the same time, it would be a tremendous loss for the American people. Let's agree to move forward like we did last March. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute in morning business.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, this year has been one of the most challenging years for Iowa farmers during my 40 years in the Senate. Farmers have had to confront coronavirus supply chain disruptions, widespread drought, and a record windstorm that moved across our State. During my 99 county meetings, I saw Iowa fields that were completely destroyed--150 miles long and 40 miles wide. The images of mature crops lying flat on the ground were heartbreaking. Iowans are a very resilient people, but the hurt the farmers have endured this year will be felt in our State for a few years to come. Senator Ernst and I will keep fighting to strengthen Iowa's farm economy despite this year's very challenging situations. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute in morning business.