Chuck Grassley

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Yes, there is.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, for the leader, is there a message at the desk in reference to S.J. Res. 7?

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, for the leader, is the veto message with the papers attached at the desk?

Mr. GRASSLEY. For the leader, I ask unanimous consent that the veto message on S.J. Res. 7 be considered as having been read and that it be printed in the Record and spread in full upon the Journal.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, for 1 minute, I will speak to a piece of history of the Senate. I call to the Senate's attention this fact: When the Senate first convened in 1789 at Federal Hall in New York City, one of the Senate's first orders of business was to appoint a committee to recommend a candidate for Chaplain. On April 25, 1789, the Senate elected the Right Reverend Samuel Provost, Episcopal bishop of New York, as its first Chaplain. That means 230 years ago this week, the Senate elected its first Chaplain, and since then the Senate has had 62 people serve in the position as Chaplain of the Senate. Healthcare

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, additionally for 1 minute, I would like to speak to the issue of healthcare. Some elected officials are proposing radical changes to our healthcare system. These proposals include Medicare for All, Medicare buy-in, Medicaid for All, and expansion of the Affordable Healthcare Act. All of these are versions of completely government-run healthcare. Americans don't support a government-run healthcare system when they are told about the tradeoffs. Medicare for All would eliminate private health insurance companies. Medicare for All would require middle-class Americans to pay much more in taxes. Medicare for All would threaten the benefits that current Medicare beneficiaries receive, and those people who have paid into the system for a lifetime should not have Medicare, which has been part of the social fabric of America, put in jeopardy by loading more people into it. Government-run healthcare is a slogan, not an answer. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I want to call my colleagues' attention to an issue that has affected many families in Iowa and throughout the country, and that issue is the cost of prescription drugs. The cost of prescription drugs is an issue that comes up at almost every Q and A I hold with Iowans at my annual 99-county meetings. During the last Easter break, which was just completed, I did 20 of those 99 counties. In the last 2 months, I started a bipartisan investigation with my colleague, Ranking Member Wyden of the Finance Committee, into the pricing of insulin. That investigation extends to insulin manufacturers and pharmacy benefit managers. We need to find out how manufacturers price their insulin products, and we need to find out if pharmacy benefit managers are negotiating the lowest drug price possible from manufacturers on behalf of insurance plans. This isn't my first drug pricing investigation. In recent years, I have investigated Gilead's pricing of hepatitis C drugs. The names of those drugs are Sovaldi and Harvoni. I have been investigating Mylan's EpiPen price increase. Let me tell you, oversight by Congress in doing our constitutional job does accomplish things. I have said it before and I will say it again because you can't say it too often: Congress has a constitutional responsibility to engage in robust and aggressive oversight of the Federal Government and its programs. My EpiPen investigation is a perfect example. Several years ago, I began to receive letters, phone calls, and emails from my constituents about the rapidly increasing, high price of the EpiPen. In 2007, a pack of two EpiPens cost $100. By 2016, it had skyrocketed to over $600. Of course, anybody paying it or even anybody hearing about it knows that to be a substantial price increase. I wanted to find out what was happening and what could be done to fix this problem of dramatically increasing prices and maybe unwarranted prices. My investigative and policy focus soon turned to the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The Medicaid Drug Rebate Program is a contributing factor that has played a part in how much money the government and the taxpayers pay for some drugs, and, as you will find out, the waste of some taxpayers' money. Now, as a condition for participating in the program, drug companies have to pay a rebate to the Federal Government and the States for the drugs they offer. Generally speaking, the rebate dollar amount is contingent on whether the drug is considered a brand name drug or generic drug. A brand name drug pays a rebate of the greater of 23.1 percent of the average manufacturer price or the difference between that and the drug's best price. In the rebate program, the dollar amount is raised if the average manufacturer price has increased faster than the rate of inflation. A generic drug's rebate is 13 percent of the average manufacturer's price. Unfortunately, the rebate program has not worked as it was designed to work. Drug companies have been able to game the system by paying smaller rebates than they are supposed to, and, of course, the taxpayer foots the bill. EpiPen is a perfect example of this gaming of the system. This is how the scheme works. Mylan classified the EpiPen as a generic under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program rather than as a brand name drug. After I asked those at CMS about that classification, they told me the EpiPen should not have been classified as a generic. Of course, because of this incorrect classification, Mylan only had to pay a 13-percent rebate instead of the 23.1-percent rebate. That means less money was returned by the company to the Federal taxpayers and to the States' taxpayers. According to CMS, from 2011 to 2015, total Medicaid spending on the EpiPen was $960 million. After rebates, net Medicaid spending was still approximately $797 million. As opposed to Medicaid spending, Medicare spending on the EpiPen in those same years was $335 million. Taxpayers and the States' taxpayers were also on the hook for these exorbitant overpayments for the better part of 10 years. When I saw what was happening, I asked the Health and Human Services' inspector general to look into these practices. Based on data already on file, the inspector general was able to calculate the potential lost rebate value dating back to 2006. The inspector general found that the taxpayers may have overpaid for the EpiPen by as much as $1.27 billion over a 10-year period of time because of the incorrect classification. Eventually, Mylan settled a False Claims Act case with the Obama administration's Justice Department for $465 million. Now, that $465 million is a far cry from how much Mylan got from the taxpayers while it was pulling off this charade--in other words, $800 million less. Upon learning of the settlement, I expressed my extreme disappointment to the Justice Department. It just didn't seem that the taxpayers had been made whole. Obviously, they had not been. According to Attorney General Miller of my State of Iowa, my home State received $1.5 million from the settlement. However, after my having made repeated requests to justify how much that amount has made Iowa whole, I have not received an answer yet. So, not only did Mylan's steep price hike for one of the most widely needed drugs in this country hit families hard, but it also hit the taxpayers' bottom line. We shouldn't have to depend on lawyers and lawsuits to get the taxpayers' money back. Government Agencies should be responsibly overseeing any program that they are in charge of. During the course of my investigation, it became clear that CMS didn't believe that it had the legal authority to require drug companies to reclassify drugs and impose civil monetary penalties for incorrectly classifying drugs. Except for a few emails sent from CMS to Mylan's representatives that questioned EpiPen's classification, for years CMS did nothing. In other words, CMS was not doing its job, and Mylan was taking advantage of it. The inspector general has also stated that he lacked the legal authority to affirmatively pursue penalties for the submission of inaccurate drug classification data. As a result, Mylan was able to escape accountability for a long time, which cost taxpayers billions of dollars. This is just one case. Other drug manufacturers are gaming the system as well. In a December 2017 report, the inspector general found that 885 drugs may have been potentially misclassified. Specifically, the inspector general found that from 2012 to 2016, Medicaid may have lost $1.3 billion in rebates for just 10 potentially misclassified drugs with the highest total of reimbursement. It is clear that the law needed to change to provide much needed clarity on who had what authorities and in order to hold the government, as well as the private sector, accountable. As a result of the findings in my EpiPen investigation, I, along with my colleague Senator Wyden, drafted--and Congress later passed--the Right Rebate Act. That all happened just a short period of time ago. The act, which passed with strong bipartisan support, fixes the problems that I identified through my investigation. It closes the loophole that has allowed pharmaceutical manufacturers to misclassify their drugs and overcharge the taxpayers by billions of dollars. The bill provides the HHS Secretary the authority to require drug manufacturers to reclassify their drugs and impose civil monetary penalties when drugs are knowingly misclassified. It provides HHS with additional authorities to monitor drug manufacturers that participate in the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program, and the legislation provides the States the ability to recover incorrect rebate amounts. Finally, the bill imposes reporting and transparency requirements on HHS. An example of additional reporting requires the Secretary to submit a report to Congress on an annual basis that describes four things: one, the covered drugs that have been misclassified; two, the steps that have been taken to reclassify the drugs; three, the actions the Secretary has taken to ensure the payment of any rebate amounts which were unpaid; four, an accounting of how funds have been used for the oversight and enforcement of this new law. All of these fixes and updates are now in place because my constituents contacted me about the real-world problems they were paying for and that were affecting their health as well as their wallets. I instructed my oversight staff to investigate the problem. They acquired the evidence, uncovered the facts, and, obviously, exposed the holes in the existing law. Then, I instructed my policy staff to take those findings to plug the holes and solve the problem with new legislation, which is now law. This is exactly the purpose of oversight. This is exactly how oversight is done. Pretty simply, this isn't like reinventing the wheel every time. This is oversight 101. Oversight means to bring transparency, and transparency is meant to bring accountability. Oversight works, plain and simple, and the Right Rebate Act that Senator Wyden and I brought to passage is proof that oversight is working. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 2 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, some officials are proposing radical changes to our healthcare system. These proposals include Medicare for All, Medicare Buy-in, Medicaid for All, and expansion of the Affordable Care Act. All of these are versions of government-run healthcare. These are, of course, better campaign slogans than serious solutions to the problems facing Americans. On a certain level, I have found that most people would rather have control over their own healthcare than have the government make those decisions for them. A single-payer healthcare system would be devastating for our seniors, people with disabilities, and people with preexisting conditions. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, Members of the Senate, if you look at the poster I just put up, you know what I am going to talk about--the devastating floods in Iowa and the Midwest. In Western Iowa, we still have areas underwater from flooding on the Missouri river and its tributaries. In the east, we are dealing with the Mississippi River and tributary flooding. Unfortunately, the weather isn't cooperating with additional storms and rain throughout the Upper Midwest, as I speak, that could exacerbate flooding and hinder cleanup and repairs. This flooding is still a very active event, but as we move to recovery, we know the original damage estimates in Iowa are increasing. I can say that for Nebraska as well. Many roads are still closed; levy damage is extensive; towns are devastated; and many individuals lost their homes and businesses. In just 6 of our 99 counties in Iowa, 416,000 acres of cropland was flooded. Much of that cropland is still underwater. These farmers are facing the challenge of not being able to plant this year. Unfortunately, many of these farmers' fields were just recovering from previous years of major flooding. In this area of Iowa, that would have been in 2011. This is compounded by many losing their previous harvest through having their on-the-farm storage bins destroyed, as you can see here. Throughout the Midwest area that had severe flooding, 832 on-farm storage bins have been identified as being like these, destroyed. We don't have a complete estimate of that, but I think 832 on-the-farm storage bins would be at least a figure up to a certain date. These bins hold an estimated 5 to 10 million bushels of corn or soybeans, so, collectively, that would be a loss of worth between $17 million and $34 million. There is an existing program that goes by the acronym WHIP in the Department of Agriculture that is designed to address agricultural losses not covered by crop insurance and other programs. I reached out to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to see if this program could be used for losses such as those seen here, particularly in Iowa and Nebraska, for corn and soybeans. I was told because the WHIP program was designed for other commodities affected by hurricanes and wildfires, they needed a few words added to the law to extend the same help to these problems we now have in the Midwest. I asked what those words were, and I spoke to Senator Shelby, who manages this bill on the floor of the Senate, and to Senator Perdue, who has a great deal of interest in the bill because of agricultural losses in Georgia. These two Senators agreed to work with me. These two Senators agreed to work with me. So I filed a shorter amendment of a disaster bill along with Senator Ernst and several of my colleagues from the Midwest to make sure that devastation like this is covered. I am optimistic that this simple fix, which will mean so much to farmers facing such unusual catastrophic losses, can be included as the disaster bill moves forward through the Senate. Yesterday, as another way of helping more than just this type of farmer but, generally, other disaster victims, I joined Senators Fischer, Ernst, and Sasse in introducing a tax bill that goes by the title of the Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2019. This bill includes a series of disaster tax relief provisions that will help American families and businesses recover from the terrible disasters that have occurred so far in 2019, including the Midwest flooding. On February 28 I introduced a bipartisan bill with Senator Wyden that included the same tax relief provisions that would assist the victims of disasters that occurred in 2018. So I view the Fischer bill and the Grassley-Wyden bill as complementary, providing disaster tax relief with respect to the disasters that occurred last year, as well as this year. The bill that I introduced in February also includes extensions of a series of tax provisions that almost every Member of this Senate would like to see passed. These are the tax provisions that expired in 2017 and 2018. We labeled all 25 or 26 of these as tax extenders. These are things that, over the last two decades, have been extended almost automatically after they have sunset, and we need to get those provisions enacted, just like the disaster tax relief provisions. I encourage the House Democrats to send the Senate a bill that addresses both tax extenders and disaster tax relief provisions. When I say House Democrats, people listening are going to say: He is being partisan. No, I am being constitutional. The Constitution says that all tax bills have to start in the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives is controlled by the Democrat majority. So that is why I am saying to the House Democrats: Get these bills over here to us so we can help not only the people that benefit from what we call tax extenders but, more importantly, those who with the urgency of the disaster that we are facing. The importance of passing these bills is because Americans need certainty as they file their taxes in 2018, and they need the tax relief as they recover from these natural disasters. They really need the House Democrats, under the Constitution, to pass a tax bill because we can't act on these tax bills before. The custom around here is that the Constitution says that all tax bills have to start in the House of Representatives. If we pass even a simple tax bill--let's say we pass it as part of an appropriations bill--and we send it over to the House, they don't accept it. That has been the tradition around here for centuries. That is why I am calling on the House Democrats to move that bill. The disaster relief provisions included in the bill that we have introduced reduce penalties and make it easier to access retirement funds so individuals and families can get back up on their feet and rebuild their lives. In other words, these are retirement funds that people have set aback and that the law doesn't allow them to access for disasters. It is just a simple thing. If somebody is hurt by this disaster and wants to go to their retirement fund and borrow on it for a certain period of time to help them get relief, it is a pretty simple thing. Maybe, momentarily you could say it costs the Federal Government something, but they are still going to owe these taxes regardless of whenever they start drawing for retirement. These bills also make it easier for disaster victims to claim personal casualty losses, and they suspend certain limitations on charitable contributions to encourage more donations for this disaster relief. For businesses affected by these disasters, this tax relief is available to help them retain employees while businesses get back up and running. Let's continue the bipartisan tradition of helping our fellow Americans with disasters. When these disasters strike, we ought to do it by enacting this tax relief for both 2018 and 2019, so that disaster victims don't have to wait any longer to access this important assistance and continue to get back on their feet. It may sound like I am talking about something new. I don't know whether this just started with Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or before, but I remember being chairman of the Finance Committee then. We passed similar legislation to help the victims of hurricanes. So this is really nothing new. Since it is nothing new and we have done it before, what is wrong with doing it now? The Democrats in the House of Representatives can get this bill over to us so we can get it enacted over here and get it to the President. We want to provide the certainty that taxpayers deserve by enacting extensions of not only those disasters but also the expired tax provisions. I encourage the House Democrats to move swiftly. The Senate and the American people are waiting. On another point about flooding, generally, not just dealing with this flood, this flood brings to attention something we have to deal with, with the Army Corps of Engineers. Next week the Environment and Public Works Committee is holding a field hearing in Southwest Iowa to provide oversight on the Army Corps of Engineers management of the 2019 Missouri River flooding. Senator Ernst, my colleague from Iowa, will be chairing this hearing, and I am going to be participating. Flood control should be the No. 1 priority of the Corps in its management of the Missouri River. I hope that tomorrow, when I get to travel with Vice President Pence as he views the same area that I viewed 2 weeks ago--the same area covered here--we have the Army Corps of Engineers there so that we can talk to them about the issue of the Missouri River Master Manual authorizing eight purposes as they control the water up and down the Missouri River. They do that through the dams on the Missouri River. It happens that seven of these can be at cross purposes with the eighth one--flood control. I hope flood control is No. 1 and not No. 8. We need to discuss with them how to prevent massive flooding and how to act to ensure that folks in Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas are not faced with devastation every few years. Eventually, this water ends up in the Gulf of Mexico. So States below Missouri are going to eventually be affected by it. I appreciate the stamina and determination of Iowans whom I have seen out there, not only in this flood of 2019 but in the flood of 2011. The one of 2019 was much more devastating. I think we have great resiliency. We will come back and pull together to get the job done, but there is a very long recovery ahead of all of these Iowans affected by it and Nebraskans and, maybe to some extent, Kansas and quite a bit in Missouri. I will continue to do everything I can at the Federal level to help the State of Iowa, Iowa communities, and, more importantly, in fact, as individual Iowans are affected, I am going to help them to recover and to rebuild. Thank you. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

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

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. On Monday, I spoke about the Clinton investigation, and I want to reiterate one very serious issue. The FBI apparently had highly classified information potentially relevant to the Clinton investigation in its possession. The FBI drafted a memo in May of 2016 to get access to the information. That memo said review of the information was necessary to complete the investigation. Sadly, that memo was never sent. How could the FBI finish the investigation of the Clintons if they never got access to all of the potentially relevant information? Congress needs to know what happened in that instance. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, today marks the 30th anniversary of a very important law--the Whistleblower Protection Act. It is very important because people in government ought to listen to whistleblowers. They are very patriotic people. The law is a critical foundation for the whistleblower protections we have in place today. The Whistleblower Protection Act has helped to usher in a new era at our Federal Agencies. Government employees who are aware of waste, fraud, and abuse can now step forward and do the right thing, and they can do it with the law on their side. As one of the original cosponsors of the Whistleblower Protection Act, I remember what things were like before that law was passed. I will give some examples, and these examples aren't pretty. Back in the 1980s, I used to say that the whistleblower's only hope was like the desperate Charge of the Light Brigade. There were rarely any survivors. At the time, the executive branch saw whistleblowers not as patriots but as threats. Agencies wouldn't even verbally acknowledge the importance of whistleblowers in making government accountable to the people. Our whistleblower laws had no teeth, so there was nothing to stop it from happening and nothing to provide any relief at all to the patriotic whistleblowers who were then experiencing retaliation. To give an idea of just how bad things were, let's start in 1984. A study conducted by the Merit Systems Protection Board found that nearly 70 percent of government employees who knew of fraud and impropriety wouldn't even report it and wouldn't say what they knew about it. They believed that no corrections would result if they did, and their No. 1 reason for nonreporting was fear of reprisal. The sitting special counsel from 1982 to 1986 said that if he were an attorney advising whistleblowers, he would tell them this: ``Don't put your head up, because it will get blown off.'' At the time, the Office of Special Counsel was part of a bigger organization that we refer to as the Merit Systems Protection Board. Instead of protecting whistleblowers, it protected the merit system--not individual employees, and, let me emphasize, certainly not whistleblowers. The special counsel's office would pursue only those cases it thought it could win. If a whistleblower came to it with a retaliation case that was difficult to prove, the whistleblower was simply out of luck. So the Whistleblower Protection Act, 30 years old, addressed all of these problems and then some. That law made the Office of Special Counsel into a separate body, and it firmly established that the Office of Special Counsel was there solely to protect employees, especially whistleblowers. In doing so, it gave whistleblowers a new and important ally. The law also established that the Office of Special Counsel should act, not just when it had an open and shut case but whenever it was likely that a prohibited personnel practice had occurred against a whistleblower. It made the Office of Special Counsel a chief defender of employees subject to prohibited personnel practices. The law addressed other problems as well. I remember back in the 1980s, the Office of Special Counsel had developed a disturbing practice of providing information on whistleblowers to Federal Agencies conducting personnel inquiries; as an example, people like Elaine Mittleman. Elaine worked at the Treasury Department. She went to the Office of Special Counsel alleging reprisal against her whistleblowing. When her case was rejected, she learned that the Office of Special Counsel had leaked negative information about her to the Office of Personnel Management to do her damage. The old Office of Special Counsel effectively ensured that Elaine was blacklisted from any other Federal employment. Thankfully, the Whistleblower Protection Act stopped that practice and stopped it cold. The act prohibited the Office of Special Counsel from responding to Agency personnel inquiries about Federal employees except in the most limited of circumstances. It also expanded the definition of a protected disclosure and made it easier for employees to show reprisal. Of course, the 1989 law wasn't perfect, and in the time since it was passed, Congress expanded it and strengthened the Whistleblower Protection Act in very important ways. In 2012, I was proud to serve as one of the original cosponsors of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. That legislation plugged several holes in the original law and made it clear that the executive branch can't use nondisclosure agreements to prevent whistleblowers from making protected disclosures. If Federal employees are required to sign a nondisclosure agreement, specific language has to be included in that agreement making it clear that whistleblowers can still report waste, fraud, and abuse. Wouldn't the taxpayers expect a Federal employee who knows about waste, fraud, and abuse to report that as a responsibility to their office and then not to be reprised against because they did? It is safe to say that, taken together, the Whistleblower Protection Act and the 2012 amendments have had a transformative effect on our Federal Agencies. Things are still hard for our whistleblowers in too many instances, and we still have a long way to go, but we have come a very long way since I first started working on these issues. By the numbers, more whistleblowers now report waste, fraud, and abuse, and they have the ability to fight retaliation. I hate to say this, but too often whistleblowers are retaliated against, even with respect or even in consideration of the Whistleblower Protection Act. In fiscal year 2017, to show progress and to show that the bill has made a difference, the Office of Special Counsel obtained 323 favorable actions, including stays, corrective actions, disciplinary actions, and systemic changes to Agency practices. That is an Agency record and a 16-percent increase over the previous year. Of those, 241 involved instances of whistleblower retaliation, and 44 involved stays with Agencies to protect employees from premature or improper personnel actions against them. One of those retaliation cases involved a Federal worker who reported an Agency official to her management and to the Office of Inspector General for suspected theft. In exchange for disclosure, the official who was reported demoted the worker to the lowest possible position she could. That is just one example to show you how patriotic people in the Federal employment who are whistleblowers--who just want government to do what the law requires or spend the money accordingly--get shafted as a result of just doing what you ought to do as a Federal employee: report waste, fraud, and abuse and stealing. This person had some help because, as I said, she was demoted to the lowest possible position that she could; that is, until the worker filed a complaint and the Office of Special Counsel investigated. Following the investigation of the Office of Special Counsel, the complainant was not only reinstated but given backpay and compensatory damages. Faced with punitive actions, including temporary suspension and a reassignment, the Agency official who had engaged in the retaliation decided to resign. That is just one example of how the Whistleblower Protection Act has made a difference. I could, of course, list many others. The Whistleblower Protection Act and its amendments have also had an important effect on congressional oversight. Whistleblowers are the eyes and ears inside the executive branch. In fact, when people come to my office explaining why they ought to be confirmed by the Senate, there are a couple of things I always tell them: No. 1, either you run your Department or it runs you; No. 2, you ought to listen to the whistleblower. Whether you are a little Agency with a couple of thousand employees or whether you are the Veterans' Administration with 350,000-some employees, you can't know what is going on down underneath you. When people tell you something is wrong, you ought to listen. Like I said, I have found it very helpful with congressional oversight. My own oversight efforts would not be possible without the courageous action taken by whistleblowers. For example, whistleblowers contacted my office during the Obama administration about criminals who should be ineligible for DACA but, due to an oversight by the Department, were still receiving benefits like work authorization. Scrutiny of the program led to more thorough recurrent vetting of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I worked with a number of whistleblowers at the Department of Veterans Affairs who had the courage--and it takes courage--to stand up and do what is right. More recently, my office worked with Brandon Coleman after he was put on administrative leave for more than a year and kept from running an addiction treatment program for veterans. It happens that Brandon's only ``mistake'' was to point out poor treatment of suicidal veterans. Eventually, after a concerted effort by my office, Senator Johnson's office, and the Office of Special Counsel, Brandon was provided a new position within the VA's Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection. That is how it should be done. Without the protections established by the Whistleblower Protection Act, Brandon's story might have turned out very differently. Without these protections, who knows how many other instances of waste, fraud, and abuse that we have been able to find and repair thanks to whistleblowers would be continuing now unabated? Now, make no mistake, we still have a ways to go to ensure that whistleblowers are valued as they should be valued and supported as they should be supported. I still hear from far too many whistleblowers who have done the right thing only to experience retaliation from their Agencies as a result. We in Congress, including this Senator, shouldn't be hearing those things at all. That is why continued oversight by Congress is so very important. Whistleblowers depend on us--you and me. All of our colleagues in this body ought to be listening to them. We ought to be supporting them and honoring them by following up on their concerns and taking action to fix serious problems when they bring them to our attention. I thank the whistleblowers who worked with my office over the years. They are truly patriots willing to put their job on the line, willing to put their profession on the line. We have come a long way since the Whistleblower Protection Act first passed in 1989. We owe it to them to build on the progress we made and to continue to improve upon our whistleblower laws for years to come. You can rest assured that I will be part of those ongoing efforts on this important anniversary of the Whistleblower Protection Act. I encourage my colleagues to reflect on the important role whistleblowers play in our government and to renew their commitment to the same. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, for 1 minute before I speak about what I came for a longer period of time to the floor to speak about, I want to address a trade issue. Congress needs to pass the United States-Mexico- Canada agreement this year to give farmers and businesses the certainty that they need and the certainty they deserve. The past year has brought rising costs, lost markets, and uncertainty for the farmers and businesses. We need to focus on creating opportunities instead of erecting barriers. I would like to see a resolution with Canada and Mexico on steel and aluminum tariffs, one that would acknowledge that we need our allies to help us deal with the source of the overcapacity problems, and that source of the problem is China. I urge President Trump to lift the 232 tariffs so that we can forge ahead with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement and eliminate the uncertainty that is present in the American market.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, first, I ask unanimous consent that Charles Pankenier, a detailee on my Senate Finance Committee staff, be given floor privileges for the remainder of the 116th Congress

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, before I speak, I ask unanimous consent that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action on the Calabria and Altman nominations.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, yesterday the Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to the IRS requesting the President's tax returns. Last night, I had a chance to read that letter, and I have to say that if you take it at its face value, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Consider the reasons that are stated in that letter from the Ways and Means Committee for requesting the President's tax returns. It states that the committee is conducting oversight of the audit process that the IRS uses to evaluate Presidential tax returns. Currently, the IRS examines the President's tax returns as a matter of policy--simple policy--but a review isn't required by law. Democrats of the Ways and Means Committee have said they are now looking into whether the current IRS policies of auditing the President is enough or if congressional action may be needed. Democrats have even been talking about making IRS audits of the President's returns mandatory every year, even though--now, I understand that--even though the IRS does that every year, and they have been doing it for a long period of time. In a press release, a Democratic member of the Ways and Means Committee said he has a duty to examine whether congressional action is needed to require Presidential audits and to oversee that they are done correctly. Ask yourself why that member would be saying that. I, for one, haven't seen any evidence that the IRS has suddenly changed its policy under this President, meaning President Trump, or that it is conducting a less thorough review of President Trump's taxes than it did of previous Presidents or that it hasn't conducted a review at all. So why are the Democrats considering these changes to the Tax Code now? Why didn't they raise the issue under President Obama or President Bush or President Clinton? The answer of course is that nothing has changed. There is no reason to believe the IRS is doing any less due diligence in its review of President Trump's taxes than it has for any other President in our memory. The letter also states the committee needs to know the scope of the audit that the IRS conducts when it looks at a President's tax returns; that it needs to know whether there is a review of underlying business activities reported by the President. If Democrats are truly interested in finding out the level of scrutiny given to a President's tax returns, why not simply just ask the IRS to describe its audit procedure? That is a very straightforward question, and I am sure Commissioner Rettig would be happy to oblige with a straightforward answer. Why is there a need to seek President Trump's tax returns in order to get an answer to those questions? I want to give you a hint: There isn't one. The letter also states that the committee is looking into how the IRS is doing its job of enforcing tax laws in a fair and impartial manner. In a statement yesterday, the Ways and Means Committee said it especially wants to know whether or not audits of Presidential tax returns are fully and appropriately being conducted. Along those lines, in addition to asking for President Trump's tax returns and those of his businesses for the last 6 years, the Democrats have asked for information on the status of all audits of those tax returns that have been conducted. It sounds like they are planning to conduct their own review of the President's tax returns to see whether the IRS has been doing its job. Now, there is a problem with that. The IRS audits more than 1 million tax returns every year. While audits of the President and Vice President might happen automatically, the audit process that is followed for them ought to be the same as it is for everyone else. Every member of the Ways and Means Committee knows that as well. In members' remarks yesterday, they said the committee has a responsibility to conduct oversight of the tax system to determine how Americans, including those in elected office, are complying with the law. In other words, the President and the Vice President ought to be held to the same high standards as every other American--not a different standard but the same standard. There is no reason to believe this isn't already happening. Democrats haven't offered a shred of evidence to suggest the IRS hasn't done its job auditing President Trump, his taxes, or anybody else's for that matter. By the way, if Democrats are really so concerned about enforcement, then why not ask the Treasury inspector general to conduct a review of the IRS audit process? Well, I want to tell you why they might not do that. It is because they are not concerned about oversight of the IRS enforcement process at all. What they are interested in is using their oversight responsibilities to collect as much information about this President's finances as they can get their hands on, and that is really the bottom line, isn't it? This letter from the House Democrats doesn't make sense when taken at face value because you can't take it at face value. Democrats say they are interested in the tax returns of all Presidents when they are really just interested in one--President Trump's. If the effort to get the President's tax returns isn't part of a grand reform effort, as they would have us believe, then what is it motivated by? I want to tell you what it is motivated by. It is motivated by the Democrats' intense dislike of this President. It is motivated by their frustration over losing an election they thought they would easily win. It is motivated by their desire to use all of the resources at their disposal to find something--anything--to bring this President down. Just take a look at how this whole effort to request the President's tax return has unfolded. That will tell you a real story. Democrats started making calls for President Trump to release his tax returns while he was still a candidate during the 2016 election. At the time, Democratic calls for the release of his tax returns were clearly just a political attack, not a policy issue as they now want us to believe. Secretary Clinton said: ``There must be something really terrible in those tax returns.'' Her communications director used the issue to chide then-candidate Trump for ``hiding behind fake excuses and backtracking on . . . previous promises.'' In his speech before the Democratic National Convention, Mrs. Clinton's running mate questioned then whether then-Candidate Trump had been paying his fair share, at once calling for him to release his tax returns and asking: ``Donald, what are you hiding?'' Since the election, these calls have continued, as you see yesterday. Democrats have just come up with more inventive excuses for making these calls, although I suspect the underlying political reasons are the same today as they were in 2016. Consider how those reasons have changed over time. Not long after the election, at the beginning of the last Congress, 93 House Democrats signed a resolution of inquiry directing the Secretary of Treasury to turn over the President's tax returns. That request to turn over his tax returns was to be provided to the full House of Representatives and not to the Committee on Ways and Means. The House Democrats' portion of that resolution committee report, signed by the ranking member and current chairman, is filled with complaints about the President's refusal to release his tax returns, none of which ever mentioned reviewing IRS audits or even inquiring about IRS audit procedures. In that report, Democrats say that the President has ``rebuked over 40 years of tradition'' by refusing to release his tax returns. They say that the President's tax returns should be released because he has a vast domestic and international business empire. They say they should be released because he is ``not the average American.'' They say they should be released because he is President of the United States and has the power to sign bills into law, and that is supposed to serve as some kind of justification for demanding and releasing his tax returns. I can tell you that the law does not support that argument. Under section 6103 of the Federal Tax Code, the tax returns of all Americans, including even the President of the United States, are considered to be private information. Without an individual's permission, tax information can't be released except under the most limited circumstances. Let's not forget that our Tax Code reads that way for a very good reason. Congress reformed the modern IRS privacy law in 1976, not long after President Nixon left office. Nixon had used his power over the IRS to target his political enemies. By passing that law in 1976, Congress wanted to make sure that never happened again. Congress was determined to put protections in place that would prevent any kind of abuse of that IRS power in the future. Congress wanted to ensure private tax information was never used for political purposes again. But if you strip away all of the pretense and trace this current effort back to its roots, that sounds an awful like what is happening right now with the efforts of the members of the Ways and Means Committee. I stopped listing them, but Democrats have had plenty of other reasons in the past for claiming to need President Trump's tax returns. In 2017, Democrats also said the President's taxes should be released because he stood to benefit from the tax reform that Congress passed and the President then signed into law. Apparently, because the President is wealthy and successful, they figured he must have had a self-interest in supporting that reform. A more recent effort to get the President's returns is contained in a bill the House Democrats recently sent to the Senate, known as H.R. 1. That bill contains a provision requiring that candidates for President and Vice President, as well as the sitting President and Vice President, release their last 10 years of individual tax returns. Assuming the proposal lives on, even if the bill doesn't, I wonder if that is one of the items they were hoping to evaluate through their current oversight efforts. Maybe they want to see the President's tax returns in order to evaluate their proposal to see the President's tax returns. That sounds like a lot of circular logic to me. Democrats have also made a big deal out of the fact that under section 6103, the Secretary of the Treasury ``shall'' turn over relevant tax records to the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee if he requests it. That is exactly right, as long as the committee has a legitimate legislative purpose in asking for them, as opposed to this perceived political reason for why they want to do it. For decades, the courts have been clear that congressional requests for information, like those tax returns or anything else we are trying to do, must have a legitimate legislative purpose. That is where the Democrats come up very, very short. See, they don't have a purpose. All they have are a lot of excuses. Let me tell you something. Introducing legislation that would essentially require the President to release his tax returns and then using that to somehow justify requesting the President's tax returns is one of the worst excuses I have ever heard of. You would think, considering the amount of time and practice they have had trying to rationalize all of this and make it sound so very good, they would be able to come up with something a little bit better than that. Apparently not, and that really speaks volumes, doesn't it? The fact is, the reasons the Democrats have offered for wanting President Trump's tax returns back in 2016 and 2017 don't pass muster any better than the ones they are trying to peddle right now. That is because they are not requesting the tax returns in order to investigate a problem in need of oversight at all. All they really care about is finding a pretext to bring this President down. As a Member of Congress who knows firsthand the importance of good oversight, that is what concerns me the most about this whole campaign that is going on in the other body. I happen to know a thing or two about oversight. Over my career, I have conducted oversight of the last seven Presidential administrations--Democrat and Republican. I have called out both parties for doing things they shouldn't be doing. In that spirit, I have always said that every single Member of Congress is dutybound to conduct oversight of the Federal Government. In fact, I remind every new Member that I run into in this body--and the Presiding Officer has heard me tell him this--that if you want to get a bill passed, you have to have 51 votes to get it passed, but if you want to do oversight, you have to have one vote--your own decision to do that oversight. The responsibility to conduct oversight is and ought to be regarded by each and every one of us as sacrosanct. The power to conduct oversight flows directly from the Constitution. As Members of Congress, we owe it to the people we represent to preserve and protect its use as a tool for carrying out our legitimate constitutional responsibilities. I don't believe for a minute that when the Framers created article I--the power of Congress to legislate--what they had in mind was Members using these powers to collect personal information on their political opponents in an effort to destroy those political opponents. In all my years of conducting oversight, I have never started with an end result and then worked backward in search of a reason for making it happen. That is not how oversight is done. Oversight is about advocating for transparency, and with transparency comes accountability in order to fix problems and to improve government. It is not about searching for ways to sow division and tear down your political opponents. What Democrats are doing now looks a lot more like the latter than the former. If that is what they are up to, it is not oversight at all. When you strip away all of their pretexts and when you strip out their circular logic, all you have are Democrats who want to go after the President in any way they can. They dislike him with a passion, and they want his tax returns to destroy him. That is all this whole process is about, and it is Nixonian to the core. I yield. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Since I made that unanimous consent motion, and I am going to be speaking for longer than 10 minutes, I ask unanimous consent to speak for whatever time I may consume, which will probably be in the neighborhood of 20 minutes.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, earlier this week I introduced the bipartisan Retirement Enhancement and Savings Act of 2019, and the acronym for that is RESA, or R-E-S-A. I am pleased to be joined by my colleague, Ranking Member Wyden of the Finance Committee, in introducing this very important piece of legislation. The workplace retirement system provides an effective way for employees to save for retirement. Not all workers have access to retirement plans, and some workers who have access to a plan don't always participate. The committee felt that we needed to do more to encourage and facilitate retirement savings. That is why we are providing new incentives for employers to adopt retirement plans. The bill also helps to reduce costs of operating these plans and creates new provisions to encourage workers to plan and to save for retirement. This bill has been a long time in the making. Work on it actually began shortly after the passage of the Pension Protection Act of 2006. So when I say a long time, if it actually started back there at that time, that is 13 years ago. Over several Congresses, the Finance Committee has held hearings on the retirement system and reviewed a number of proposals to improve the system. Many ideas were put forward. We examined each of them carefully, including through the work of the Finance Committee's Tax Reform Working Group on Savings and Investment, which did most of its work during the year 2015. The resulting proposals were brought together to form this bill that we call RESA. It was unanimously approved by the Finance Committee in 2016. In the last Congress, many of us worked closely with former Senator Hatch, and chairman at that time, to advance this package. We came very close to an agreement last December, but, as a lot of times happens at the end of the year, it fell short due to politics and the process at that time. Passage of this important bill remains a top priority for me. I have continued working closely with Senator Wyden, the ranking Democrat, other committee members, and even colleagues in the House to maintain the momentum from the end of last year so that improvements in this bill can be signed into law without further delay. The RESA bill would reform our retirement savings laws in several important areas. For example, it would improve on an existing type of plan called a multiple employer plan, or as we say in finance, MEP. The bill would expand these plans so that employers can join together to sponsor a single retirement plan for their workers. These open MEPs would make it far more feasible for businesses of all sizes, and especially small businesses, to offer retirement plans by harnessing economies of scale and reducing unnecessary administrative burdens on employers. More importantly, these open MEPs would open the door for millions of Americans to save for retirement. Speaking of small businesses, the bill includes provisions designed to make it easier and more cost- effective for smaller employers to sponsor a retirement plan. Small businesses, farms, and ranches, are, of course, vital to our economy. We need to encourage a level playing field so that workers and small businesses throughout our country have equal access to retirement plans as workers at Fortune 500 companies have. RESA also would create a new fiduciary safe harbor for employers that allow employees to invest in lifetime-income arrangements like annuities. In addition, the bill would expand the portability of retirement plan assets, including those annuities. That would allow workers, then, to keep their retirement savings when they change jobs throughout their career. This bill encourages employers to provide the kinds of tools and flexibility that employees need to plan for a financially secure retirement. RESA also would help employees to add to their retirement savings each year through automatic increases in contributions to 401(k) plans. Also, to help workers plan better for retirement, the legislation would require employers to provide an estimate of how much the employee's account would provide during retirement if the employee invested the balance in an annuity. All of this is intended to help individuals get on the path of saving for a secure retirement during their working years, but it is also with an eye toward making sure that their savings will last once they retire. I should also note that this bill is paid for. This is the pay-for. The main offsetting provision involves an option under current law for a person to pass along his or her IRA or 401(k) account to a family member or other beneficiary. Under current law, the recipient of that account can keep the inherited funds in the tax- deferred account and save for their own retirement if they take out a required minimum amount each year. That is often referred to as a ``stretch IRA.'' The bill maintains this savings option for people who inherit an IRA or retirement account, but it places a limit on how large an account can be inherited on a tax-protected basis. This is a commonsense approach to encourage the next generation to save for retirement while ensuring that the changes in this bill are fiscally responsible. Retirement security is a very important topic that is already getting a great deal of attention this year. The House Ways and Means Committee considered a retirement savings bill yesterday that is built on the provisions included in RESA, and I look forward to working with Chairman Neal of the House Ways and Means Committee to reconcile our bills and to get a final package to the President's desk. So, in closing, I want to sum by stressing that increasing long-term savings in America is critically important. We know that there are ways that we can improve our private retirement system to make it easier for Americans to save. The reforms in this bill represent a very important step forward in improving Americans' retirement security. I know that there are other Members with additional ideas for improving retirement security. I want those Members to know that regardless of this bill's passing, we are ready to consider those proposals and advancing those that will build on RESA and will help to attain the goal of ensuring that all Americans achieve a security retirement. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I would like to speak for 1 minute. Senate Democrats yesterday blocked a bill that provides much needed funds for Puerto Rico's nutrition program, also, aid for the 2018 hurricanes and wildfires and, thirdly, assistance to Midwest States in the midst of a flood crisis. That includes, at least, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and maybe other States. Now, the people who voted against it say it was because they care about Puerto Rico. The bill they blocked takes care of the urgent funding shortfalls there in that Commonwealth. Playing politics with disaster aid does a disservice to the people of Puerto Rico and the people of States like Iowa who are suffering right now from these floods. Why would these Senators want to come to campaign in Iowa when they don't show sympathy for Iowans suffering from the floods with the vote they cast last night? I yield the floor. Recognition of the Majority Leader

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, over the past 2 years, some in this body have decided that they will oppose any nominee suggested by President Trump. There isn't a Senator who serves their State's interest when qualified, noncontroversial nominees are prevented from being confirmed; however, some Members continue to do just that by slow- walking the President's nominees for partisan purposes. This concern about the speed of confirming nominees is not anything new. For the benefit of those who were not here at the time, I would like to take this opportunity to review some of the history on this subject and how we got where we are today with all this stalling. Since the rejection of the Robert Bork nomination for the Supreme Court in 1987, Republicans have felt like we are living under two sets of rules. Republican Supreme Court nominees could be rejected by Democrats on ideological grounds if they didn't pass their litmus test, but Republicans continued to vote to confirm otherwise qualified Democrat nominees who had what we might consider very radical views about interpreting the Constitution to mean things that the Constitution plainly does not say. Then all of a sudden in 2003, to contrast with what the practice had been from 1789, Democrats entered the Senate as a minority party under a Republican President. Prior to 2003, there was simply no history of systematically opposing cloture to prevent judicial nominees from ever getting a final vote. However, coaxed on by leftwing activists, Senate Democrats embarked in 2003 on an unprecedented campaign of obstruction by filibustering several of President Bush's judicial nominees to keep them from being confirmed. When Senate Democrats began to use the cloture rule to block George W. Bush's circuit court nominees, we made it very clear that we Republicans were done living by two sets of rules. We warned Democrats that, if they continued down that path, we would follow their precedent when the tables were turned, but the Democrat obstruction continued anyway. Not long after--and as they often so do in this Chamber--the tables were turned. President Obama entered office with a Democrat majority in the Senate. True to Republican promises to not live by two sets of rules, we began to follow the precedent established by the Democrats and blocked a proportional number of President Obama's judicial nominees. Despite the fact that Republicans were holding Democrats to the same standard that the Democrats established, Senate Democrats made a big show of being outraged at that time and being indignant about this equal treatment. Senate Democrats began threatening to invoke the nuclear option to ram through President Obama's nominees on a simple majority vote. However, the minority and majority parties reached an agreement--yes, we actually reached an agreement--and this was at the beginning of the 113th Congress where Senate Republicans agreed to institute a temporary standing order to limit postcloture debate for sub-Cabinet and U.S. district court nominees. This agreement was made explicitly as a bipartisan compromise, and that bipartisan compromise was there to avert the use of what we call a nuclear option. Then-Majority Leader Harry Reid stated on January 24, 2013: I know that there is a strong interest in rules changes among many of my caucus. In fact, I would support many of these changes through regular order. But I agree that the proper way to change Senate rules is through the procedures established in those rules, and I will oppose any effort in this Congress or the next to change the Senate rules other than through regular order. That is the end of Senator Reid's, who was then majority leader, quote. Despite this statement by Senator Reid and despite the bipartisan agreement, the Democrat leader decided to pursue the nuclear option just a few months later. At the same time, Senate Democrats thought that Secretary Clinton would be President and that forcing this rules change would benefit their agenda for the foreseeable future. Our side saw this for what it really was, a power grab that sought to steamroll the minority party. At that time, the minority party was my party. Before Senator Reid invoked the nuclear option, we actually urged the Democrats to take a longer view. We were trying to get them to think in terms of what can happen in the future if you do something now. So we again warned that we were not about to play by two sets of rules and that they, the Democrats, would regret their decision when the tables were turned. I was on the Senate floor on the day that Majority Leader Reid broke the rules to change the rules--let me emphasize it--broke the Senate rules to change the rules and made the following comment. This is this Senator speaking in 2013: If there is one thing that will always be true, it is this: Majorities are fickle. Majorities are fleeting. Here today; gone tomorrow. So the majority has chosen to take us down this path. The silver lining is that there will come a day when the roles are reversed. When that happens, our side will likely nominate and confirm lower court judges and Supreme Court nominees with 51 votes, regardless of whether the Democrats actually buy into this fanciful notion that they can demolish the filibuster on lower court nominees and still preserve it for Supreme Court nominees. That is the end of my quote from about 6 years ago when Senator Reid was doing the nuclear option. It so happens that very day did come, and the American people elected President Trump with a Republican majority in the Senate and the House in November 2016. Senate Democrats have since engaged in a unprecedented campaign to prevent a whole range of government positions from being filled by President Trump. It used to be understood that it was in the American people's interest to have a functioning government, even if your candidate didn't win the Presidency. The norm around here for hundreds of years used to be that a new President's Cabinet positions were filled as soon as possible. I know that the 2016 election aroused strong feelings and that many people were deeply disappointed when the candidate they expected to win did not win to the point of not being able to accept the outcome under our Constitution of who was elected and elected constitutionally. A similar attitude arose when President Obama was elected with some people latching on to the birther conspiracy theory that President Obama was secretly born in Kenya and that this somehow made his Presidency illegitimate. However, this was always a fringe movement that Republicans in Congress did not take seriously and many refuted it. The arms race of partisan grievance has now escalated where U.S. Senators pander to the ``resistance'' by preventing President Trump from filling out his administration more than halfway through the first term. Senate Democrats insist on going through the lengthy motion to end debate even for nominees which there is little or no opposition. This means that, after being vetted by the White House, vetted by the Office of Government Ethics, answering a detailed questionnaire probing every aspect of the nominee's life, meeting with Senators in person, going through a nomination hearing, and being voted out of committee, nominees must wait and wait--sometimes for months and years--before there is time in the Senate schedule to file a cloture motion as the first step to getting to finish approving or disapproving that nominee. The Senate must then allow for a intervening day to pass before it can vote to end the debate, which often passes overwhelmingly. Yes. You filibuster something. You have to file a motion, and yet a lot of times, there is no disagreement that that nominee should be approved. After all that, the cloture rule allows for an additional 30 hours of postcloture debate. I strongly support the Senate exercising its constitutional power, and that power is about advice and consent. If there are any concerns about any nominee's ability or willingness to do his job and whether that nominee is willing to follow the law, Members should come to the floor to hash through the merits of the nominee. However, Members on the other side of the aisle have obstructed the confirmation of a large number of actually noncontroversial sub-Cabinet nominees and even lower court judges who were not controversial. In a great many cases, the demand for a cloture vote appears to be solely about delaying and about obstructing, not anything about the specific nominee or his qualifications. As chairman of the Committee on Finance this session, I want to highlight the experience of some of the nominees considered by the Finance Committee. So far this Congress, the Finance Committee has reported seven nominees that were originally reported last Congress but were not confirmed last Congress because of the obstruction. I want to make clear that the Finance Committee has a very thorough as well as bipartisan vetting process. Any nominee that has been reported by the Finance Committee can verify that we do not rubberstamp nominees. However, with the exception of one of the seven nominees that were rereported, all of them have been reported unanimously or with a maximum of two no votes. Only one of those seven, however, has been confirmed. The U.S. Tax Court is a place where taxpayers are able to challenge an assessment of tax before actually paying the amount that they are challenging. It is important that we keep the full roster of 19 Tax Court judges as full as possible. I don't think any member of my committee or this Senate would disagree with what I just said. I also am not aware of any criticism of the nominee currently on the Executive Calendar for the Tax Court. That nominee has been reported unanimously from the Finance Committee twice now, last Congress and this Congress; yet there is no certainty about when that nominee will be able to consider--or when the Senate will be able to consider that nomination. This is very unfair to nominees who submit to an extensive vetting process and put their professional lives on hold so that they can serve. And it is also unfair to the American taxpayer who needs these people to be working. It is also unfair to the American taxpayers who need these people to be working. After all, government is a service. In 2013, the liberal Brennan Center for Justice issued dire warnings about a judicial vacancy crisis. At that time, there were 65 unfilled seats on the U.S. district courts, and this was crippling the ability of those courts to dispense justice and to protect the rights of the American people. Senate Democrats picked up on these talking points and forcefully made their case. There are now 129 vacancies on the district courts--129. The concern from Democrats has somehow disappeared. Last Congress, I was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. By the end of last year, I had moved more than 30 highly qualified district court judges to the floor. Most of them had languished there for months. A few had been in the confirmation process since 2017. This is all because Democrats insist on 30 hours of debate for every nominee even though they often end up voting for them. Some of these who had been filibustered were passed almost unanimously by the Senate. In the Judiciary Committee, when I was chairman, we had several more judges ready to be reported out of committee, but they were likely to face similar obstruction. I haven't been Judiciary chairman for 3 months. We are in a new Congress, and I assumed a different chairmanship. Do you know how many of those district court nominees have been confirmed in the new Congress, meaning the same ones we had voted out last Congress? Zero. The vacancy crisis, by the Brennan Center's definition, has nearly doubled because of this obstruction. Clearly, it is a waste of this body's time to use all 30 hours of debate after the cloture vote for almost every nominee who comes before the Senate. The Senate was intended to be a deliberative body. If Senators want to engage in debate on a nominee, then by all means have that debate; however, don't make the Senate go through the motions if you have no intention of actually engaging in debate. There is now before the Senate a proposal to limit postcloture debate on sub-Cabinet-level nominees. This proposal was very similar to one that passed the 113th Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. A number of Senators from the other side of the aisle supported that measure at that time. If they can't support it this time around, what is their justification? Again, we cannot have a different set of rules depending on which party is in the majority. We need to agree on a common set of rules and a common set of norms that apply regardless of which party has the White House and/or the majority in the Senate. I note that there are quite a number of Senators who see themselves in the White House in 2020. They are coming to Iowa every week. Do they really want to live under the precedent they are setting now? If a Senator who votes against virtually every Trump nominee gets into the White House, how should this Senator proceed? If one of the current Senate Democrats running for President gets elected in 2020, I, of course, will be disappointed, and I surely won't agree with most of their policies. So then should I vote against all of their nominees? I would ask each of these Presidential candidates: Do you expect this Senate to behave differently than you are right now if in the future the shoe is on the other foot? I don't want to be part of a resistance against a future Democratic President. I don't want to live by two sets of rules. The solution is to end now this partisan total war where the other side must be stopped at all costs. We need to come to a bipartisan agreement to end this tit-for-tat, cut-off-our-nose-to-spite-the-face environment. That is the environment we find ourselves in today. Senator Lankford's resolution builds on the bipartisan agreement from 2013, but it is not perfect. If Democrats have legitimate concerns, let's work together on something better. I have heard that the only change the Democratic leadership has proposed is to delay the effective date of the standing order until the start of the next Presidential term. Presumably, that is due to the same hubris that led them to invoke the nuclear option without imagining that they would soon regret it, as now they do regret it. We had two Supreme Court nominees to prove that they regret it. We actually approved those two Supreme Court nominees. It is impossible to defend their position on principle. Surely there are some Members on the other side of the aisle willing to work in good faith with Republicans to resolve this impasse in a way that takes into account the legitimate concerns of Senators on both sides of the aisle. I don't believe it is too late to bring the Senate back to the deliberative body the Framers of the Constitution intended the Senate to be. It is in all of our interests to have a more functional Senate. I hope my colleagues will join me in working toward that goal. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 3 minutes for three different short remarks.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, the Senate will soon vote on the disaster spending bill. That bill contains funds for the 2018 hurricanes and wildfires and renews the extra funds for nutrition assistance in Puerto Rico, which is about to expire. The Senate amendment also expands eligibility to include ongoing Midwest floods like we presently have in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, but other States will have it as well. At a time when some families in Iowa have everything that they own underwater and the people of Puerto Rico are facing a funding cliff, now is not the time to play politics with the disaster relief bill. To my colleagues across the aisle who have been spending a lot of time in Iowa lately as Presidential candidates, if you vote against moving forward with the Shelby amendment, how are you going to look Iowans in the eye and justify a vote against moving this disaster relief bill ahead? Tariffs Mr. President, now I will talk about trade. I am calling on the administration, specifically on President Trump, to promptly remove section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada and Mexico. This will help to clear the path for the USMCA agreement and have it ratified not just in the Congress of the United States but in all three countries. These tariffs and the retaliations are having a negative impact on Americans. The agreement for Mexico, Canada, and the United States is supposed to be a free trade agreement, but we don't have free trade with these tariffs in place. As Finance Committee chairman, I look forward to helping the President with this important task. I had a chance to be at the White House with several other Senators on that very same issue. I said to the President something like this: You said you put the tariffs on because Mexico and Canada weren't going to negotiate. They have negotiated. Mr. President, you say that you have a good agreement, and I agree that you do have a good agreement. They negotiated in good faith. Then, wouldn't you think that the right thing to do would be to remove the tariffs so we can move ahead? Now, one of the important things about this is the situation in Canada more than in the United States. Their House of Commons will adjourn in June for their elections in October. This must be done in the next 2 months. Well, I guess now you would say in the next 3 months, if this is going to be done this year, and I would think the President would want to get it done this year. Holds Disclosure Requirements Mr. President, this is my last 1-minute comment. All Senators now have a copy of my letter sent with Senator Wyden's signature explaining the holds on nominations and bills and the disclosure of those holds and the requirements that come with such holds. After many years of working on the issue, the two of us, meaning Senator Grassley and Senator Wyden, worked in good faith with the leadership of both parties to craft a measure everyone could accept, and it passed the Senate overwhelmingly in 2011. The last I checked--and this is sad to say--Senator Wyden and I are the only ones that have holds listed in the calendar. Surely, we aren't the only ones who are holding up nominations or legislation. I urge all Senators to comply with the holds disclosure requirements. I also want to remind our leaders, meaning my colleague from Kentucky and my colleague from New York, that anyone with a hold, meaning any of the 100 Senators with a hold, must give permission to object in their name. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.