Mazie Hirono

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President I join my colleagues, Senator Murray and others, and I thank Senator Murray for her leadership on this important issue. Right now, 13 of our male colleagues are sequestered away somewhere, plotting--and I use that word, and that is an accurate word because that is what it feels like to those of us who are shut out of the process of putting together the Senate bill. These 13 men are plotting how to deprive millions of women across our country access to essential healthcare--women all over our country. That is half of our population. Frankly, it is sad that we are having this debate about the need for openness and transparency that impacts half of our population and that is one-sixth of our economy. Sadly, it isn't surprising. Republicans in Congress have fought to deny women access to healthcare for decades. Now they have a willing and complicit ally in this crusade--Donald Trump. In their zeal to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the President and his allies in Congress don't appear to be concerned about the collateral damage they leave behind. For women, this means facing a return to a time when our gender--our very gender--was considered a preexisting condition. Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies could discriminate against women of child-bearing age. They could charge outrageous rates for birth control and contraceptives. Under the ACA, women have secure access to care before, during, and after their pregnancies. They can no longer be charged outrageous rates simply for having a child or be denied access to mental health services if they suffer from postpartum depression. Women can now receive free contraceptive care, like birth control pills and IUDs. But now the President and Republicans in Congress are determined to drag us backward, all in the name of giving the richest Americans a huge tax cut. Let's be really clear on this. The poorest, oldest, and the most sick people in our country are going to suffer so that the richest people in our country can get a huge tax cut under this bill. We need to do everything we can to fight against all these misguided efforts. Although we haven't seen the likely monstrosity currently being hatched in secret, we have a pretty good idea of what is going to be in this bill. In the House version of TrumpCare, States have the ability to opt out of the Affordable Care Act's essential health benefits, which include access to birth control, pregnancy, and mental health coverage. One Republican Congressman even had the audacity to say he shouldn't have to subsidize pregnancy care because he can't get pregnant. How the heck do you think he even arrived on this Earth? I really think this is outrageous. This is an outrageous statement that speaks for itself. The bill also makes good on a longstanding Republican promise to defund Planned Parenthood, regardless of the cost in lives. Over the past few years, Republicans in Congress have tried everything they could think of to defund Planned Parenthood--passing stand-alone bills, attaching poison pills to must-pass bills, threatening a government shutdown, and passing TrumpCare in the House. In March, the majority leader held the floor open for over an hour to allow the Vice President time to travel to the Capitol to break a tie to repeal a regulation on title X funding meant to preserve access to Federal family planning services. I understand that many of my friends on the other side of the aisle have strong feelings about abortion, but I have never been able to understand how this translates into attacking an organization that uses no Federal funds to provide abortions. In fact, Planned Parenthood uses its Federal funding to provide low-cost healthcare to the people in our country who need it most but who can't afford it. In 2014 alone, Planned Parenthood provided over 600,000 cancer screenings and over 4 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections. These are real facts, not alternative facts. I have heard from hundreds of my constituents over the past 6 months about how important Planned Parenthood is to them, and I would like to share a few of their stories. Tiffany from Honolulu made her first visit to Planned Parenthood when she was 21, under unexpected circumstances during a pregnancy scare. She felt that having a child at that time in her life would be extremely difficult and would have negatively impacted her ability to finish school. During her visit to the clinic, Tiffany took a pregnancy test and discovered she wasn't pregnant. Her caregivers were then able to counsel Tiffany about her sexual health without judgment. They walked her through the different options she had and administered an STD test. She left the clinic with a prescription for birth control. Kim, a young attorney from my State, recently wrote to my office to tell her story about turning to Planned Parenthood when she faced an unexpected pregnancy. After having a safe and open conversation with the staff at her local Planned Parenthood, Kim decided she was not ready to have a baby and ended her pregnancy. Planned Parenthood gave her the space and opportunity to make the best decision for her. As she recounted to us, ``You don't have to like someone's choice, but you don't get to take away their freedom to make it.'' The fight against TrumpCare continues, but I am going to do everything I can to protect women's health and their right to control their bodies--to control our bodies. I urge my colleagues to oppose any measure in TrumpCare that takes women back to the days when our very gender was considered a preexisting condition. I yield the floor.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Madam President, today the Secretary of Homeland Security has the opportunity to prevent an injustice and keep a family together. At 9 a.m. Hawaii time, Andres Magana-Ortiz was scheduled to report to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Honolulu to be deported from his home of nearly 30 years. Andres was brought to America when he was only 15 years old. In the years since, he has raised three children who are U.S. citizens, is married to a U.S. citizen, has built a business, and has distinguished himself as a hard worker and a pillar of the South Kona community in Hawaii. Andres' immigrant story is one familiar to so many American families. After working for more than a decade as a laborer on coffee farms across the Big Island, Andres saved enough money to buy his own farm. In the years since, Andres has taken on management of 15 other area coffee farms. Suzanne Shriner, president of the Kona Coffee Farmers Association, put it best in her letter of support for him when she said: Mr. Ortiz is a true example of the American Dream. Rising from a farm worker to a farm owner, he has created a successful business through hard work. He has sent his children to college. And he has given back to his community, by working with other farms and farmers to control an invasive pest. His story is why we need to find a path to citizenship for these vital members of our farming community. Andres has three children. Victoria, age 20, is a junior at the University of Hawaii. Paola, age 14, and Hector, age 12, are still in middle school. Their lives will be shattered without their father. Andres remains on very good terms with his first wife, Veronica Ledesma Magana. In a letter she wrote to me, Veronica shared how much Andres cares for his children and how devastated they would be if he is forced to leave. She said: Andres is a wonderful father to our children. They depend on him for so much and need him during these years that are so important to their development as human beings and citizens of the United States. Paola and Hector are children with special education needs. This has been very hard for us as parents, but together we have worked to help her through school and life. I am not able to support this family by myself. Andres is an amazing role model to my children. He is a patient, loving, and supportive father to them in whatever they need. Victoria, Paola, and Hector love Andres very much and would go through extreme emotional hardship if he is deported. She continues: My oldest daughter will need to halt her college career to help me support Paola and Hector, especially because this deportation would bar him from returning to the [United States] for 10 years. My children deserve a father to care for them, they deserve the educational opportunities he can offer them, and the love he shares with them every day. I couldn't agree more. In September 2014, Andres received a stay of removal in order to pursue various paths to achieving legal status. In fact, he has a pending application to receive such legal status. Last November, he applied for an additional stay. Without warning or explanation, the government changed its position in March 2017 and ordered that he be removed. At that point, Andres filed for relief in Federal court. His case ultimately reached the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where his request for an emergency stay was denied. Although the Ninth Circuit found it could not stay his removal, the chief judge of that court, Judge Reinhardt, issued a powerful, concurring opinion that clarifies the injustice in this case and made a powerful moral argument against President Trump's immigration policy. Judge Reinhardt wrote: It was fully within the government's power to once more grant his reasonable request. Instead, it has ordered him deported immediately. In doing so, the government forces us to participate in ripping apart a family. Three United States citizen children will now have to choose between their father and their country. If they leave their homeland with their father, the children would be forced to move to a nation with which they have no connection. All three children were born in the United States. None has ever lived in Mexico or learned Spanish. Moving with their father would uproot their lives, interrupt their education, and deprive them of the opportunities afforded by growing up in this country. If they remain in the United States, however, the children would not only lose a parent, but might also be deprived of their home, their opportunity for higher education, and their financial support. Subjecting vulnerable children to a choice between expulsion to a foreign land or losing the care and support of their father is not how this nation should treat its citizens. President Trump has claimed that his immigration policies would target the ``bad hombres.'' The government's decision to remove Magana Ortiz shows that even the good hombres are not safe. Mr. Ortiz is by all accounts a pillar of his community and a devoted father and husband. The court went on to say: It is difficult to see how the government's decision to expel him is consistent with the President's promise of an immigration system with ``a lot of heart.'' I find no such compassion in the government's choice to deport Magana Ortiz. We are unable to prevent Magana Ortiz's removal, yet it is contrary to the values of this Nation and its legal system. Indeed, the government's decision to remove Magana Ortiz diminishes not only our country but our courts, which are supposedly dedicated to the pursuit of justice. Magana Ortiz and his family are in truth not the only victims. Among others are judges who, forced to participate in such inhumane acts, suffer a loss of dignity and humanity as well. I concur as a judge, but as a citizen I do not. Judge Reinhardt made an important point, and I agree. The government has the power to prevent this family from being torn apart. Even now, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly can issue an administrative stay to let Andres stay in this country while the government processes his application to receive legal status. Earlier this week, I spoke to Secretary Kelly on the phone to discuss Andres' case and to urge him to issue a stay that would allow him to stay in this country. Hawaii's congressional delegation has also written him a letter and provided a variety of other letters of support that Andres' friends, family, and neighbors have written on his behalf. Secretary Kelly, I renew our call once more: Let Andres stay in our country. Let his children have a father present and active in their lives. It is not too late to keep this family together. This entire ordeal speaks to the fear and anxiety spreading through immigrant communities across our country. Even the good hombres, as Judge Reinhardt called them, are at risk of being torn away from their families. In an email, a spokesperson for ICE said: ``While criminal aliens and those who pose a threat to public safety will continue to be a focus, DHS will NOT''--and the word ``not'' is in all caps--``exempt classes of removable aliens from potential enforcement.'' This is chilling. It means that 11 million people in our country will live in fear that they could be deported at a moment's notice. We must pass comprehensive immigration reform that provides a pathway to citizenship and which prioritizes the unity of families. Andres' case is a tragedy, if not averted. There will be more cases like his in Hawaii and across the country. We must continue to fight on behalf of the good hombres and not stop until we succeed. I would like to conclude by reading part of a letter I received from Gerald Personius, one of Andres' friends and a fellow coffee farmer from Captain Cook. He said: Andres is a courageous, honest, caring, and dedicated person. So I ask you as a citizen of our beloved country to do the best you can to help this man continue to pursue his citizenship. He will not let America down. We cannot let Mr. Ortiz down. I yield the floor. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Madam President, these are not ordinary times. It is not ordinary for a winning Presidential campaign to be under investigation for collusion with a foreign adversary to influence our 2016 election and undermine our democracy. It isn't ordinary for a President to fire the man responsible for conducting this very investigation. It isn't ordinary for a President whose campaign is under investigation for having ties to Russia to hold an Oval Office meeting with that country's Foreign Minister and only invite the Russian press. This meeting came only a day after firing the person in charge of the Russia-Trump investigation. Yet, here we are. The question is, What should we do next? The events of the past 48 hours have been shocking and concerning. Firing FBI Director James Comey in this manner, under this pretext, and at this time is a total disservice to the American people. President Trump hopes the American people will believe he fired Director Comey because of how he treated Hillary Clinton during the Presidential campaign. President Trump hopes, as his Deputy Press Secretary said on Tuesday night, that the American people think it is ``time to move on.'' President Trump hopes his attempts to distract us from the importance of getting to the bottom of the Russia-Trump matter will succeed. President Trump's hopes are misplaced. If anything, President Trump's firing of Director Comey has resulted in an increased concern about the Trump team's connections to Russian interference with our 2016 Presidential election. The country is asking, Mr. President, what do you have to hide? We are learning practically on an hourly basis about how the President made this decision to fire Director Comey and why. This information does not square with the official line coming from the White House, which also changes. Most recently, the Washington Post reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein threatened to resign after the White House misrepresented his role in the decision to fire Director Comey. CNN reported that President Trump fired Director Comey because he would not provide ``assurance of personal loyalty.'' Both CNN and the Wall Street Journal reported that the decision to fire Director Comey came after the FBI's investigation was accelerating. All of this information has emerged in the last 48 hours or so. This kind of Presidential interference, through the firing of the FBI Director during an ongoing investigation, is unprecedented, suspicious, and deeply concerning. These revelations and those that are sure to come further argue in favor of appointing a special prosecutor to fully investigate the Russia-Trump matter. A special prosecutor with full autonomy can follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute as appropriate. I call upon Republicans of conscience to stand up and join the call for a special prosecutor. Over the past few days, a number of my Republican colleagues have spoken out against the way the President had fired James Comey. In particular, I would like to acknowledge Senators McCain, Sasse, Flake, Burr, Kennedy, Boozman, and Corker for speaking out. I hope, as more information about President Trump's decision to fire Director Comey emerges, our Republican colleagues will join in the call for a special prosecutor. Leader McConnell argued yesterday that appointing a special prosecutor would disrupt the ongoing work of the Senate committees that are conducting their own investigations. I disagree. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Judiciary Committee have important oversight responsibilities regarding the Russia-Trump matter, but neither committee has the power to convene a grand jury or prosecute any crimes that may have been committed. Therefore, I reiterate the need for a special prosecutor with the mandate and authority to follow the facts wherever they lead--free of political considerations. In the coming weeks, President Trump will nominate a new Director for the FBI. This person must be above reproach and be someone whose independent judgment can earn the country's confidence. I have been disturbed by some of the names being floated as potential replacements, names like Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani. We cannot allow President Trump to appoint one of his buddies to oversee the Russia-Trump investigation or to lead the FBI. The investigation into the Russia-Trump matter cannot and should not be a partisan issue. We should all care that a foreign government has sought to interfere with our elections and with our democracy. This is not just about the election. This is really about protecting our democracy. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. HIRONO

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

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, today I wish to honor our former colleague, Senator Daniel K. Akaka, for his lifetime of distinguished leadership, service, and contributions to our Nation's veteran and Native Hawaiian communities. Daniel Kahikina Akaka dedicated his life to serving the people of Hawaii. He served as a Member of the U.S. Senate for 22 years. Prior to that, he served Hawaii's 2nd Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives for 14 years. However, his story of leadership and service begins well before his tenure on Capitol Hill. On December 7, 1941, a young Senator Akaka witnessed Japanese fighter planes attacking Pearl Harbor from his dorm room at the Kamehameha Schools. The events of that morning were life-altering for him and many young men his age, and he joined the war effort. Following his service in World War II with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Senator Akaka earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Hawaii. He later attained a master's degree as well. As he has relayed in the past, had it not been for the benefits received under the G.I. Bill, Senator Akaka's future in public service would not have been more than a dream. A believer in the power of education, Senator Akaka made it a career. Before entering politics, he served as a teacher, principal, and educational administrator, making a difference in the lives of many students for over 15 years. As a veteran himself, Senator Akaka dedicated his service in Congress to helping servicemembers, veterans, and their families. His commitment to these issues led to his service as chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs from 2007 to 2011. As chairman, he worked to expand VA services. He also authored and passed the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, which is making a difference to new generations of veterans as the original G.I. Bill did for his generation. Not only was Senator Akaka a champion for education and veterans, he was also a champion for Native Hawaiians. He is the first person of Native Hawaiian ancestry to serve in the U.S. Senate, and he grew up in an era where the Hawaiian language and culture were heavily looked down upon. To help change this perception, he committed to protecting the language, culture, and traditions of indigenous peoples. Senator Akaka advanced these priorities as chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs from 2011 to 2013. He also played a key role in ensuring the passage of legislation that enhanced Native Hawaiian education programs and authored a joint resolution that acknowledged the U.S. Government's role in the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893, while recognizing the special trust relationship held with the Native Hawaiian community. He also fought tirelessly for self-determination for Native Hawaiians. During his time in Washington, DC, he served the people of Hawaii well and with distinction. Although he retired in 2012, Senator Akaka has continued down a path of leadership and service, speaking to students and mentoring some of Hawaii's up-and-coming leaders. We all appreciate his continued service. Mahalo nui loa, my dear friend, for being a true champion of aloha.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, these are not usual times. Representing the State of Hawaii, of course, we care about clean water. So with all due respect to my colleague from Montana, we understand the importance of this issue to the people of his State. However, as I said, these are very unusual times, and, on the President's decision to fire Director James Comey in this manner, under this pretext, and at this time, it is also a total disservice to the American people. This attempt, intended to derail and disrupt the FBI's ongoing investigation into Russia's attempt to disrupt or interfere with our democracy and the Trump team's ties to those attempts, should be a matter of national concern, not a Republican or Democratic concern. We need a bipartisan call for a special prosecutor who will conduct an impartial, thorough investigation, untainted by political consideration. Therefore, I object.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, of course we acknowledge the importance of the matters raised by my colleague from North Dakota and, representing my State, the State of Hawaii, yes, there is support for education of Native people, of Native children, which I hope will include Native Hawaiian children. That is important as well as recognizing various Indian Tribes and the other matters that were raised by my friend from North Dakota. However, as I mentioned, these are not business-as-usual times. The untoward firing of the FBI Director, who was conducting an ongoing investigation into Russian attempts to interfere with our Democracy and the Trump team's ties to those attempts, should be a matter of national concern, should be a matter of concern to every single Member of the Senate. This is not a Republican or a Democratic concern. This is a threat to our democracy. We know Russia did this. We know we need to get to the bottom of this. We need to get to the bottom of the Trump team's ties to these efforts, and this thinly veiled attempt by President Trump to derail or disrupt these investigations cannot be sustained or supported. We continue to ask for a bipartisan call for a special prosecutor who will conduct an impartial, thorough investigation, untainted by political considerations into the Russia-Trump matter. Therefore, Mr. President, I object.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, today I wish to congratulate retiring University of Hawaii women's volleyball coach Dave Shoji on an outstanding 42-year career. In 1975, at just 28 years old, Dave Shoji tallied his first win as head coach of the Rainbow Wahine volleyball team. Since then, he has gone on to compile one of the most decorated resumes in collegiate volleyball history. In fact, there has been no such thing as a losing season during Dave's tenure with the Rainbow Wahine. In 2013, he earned the title of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's alltime winningest coach. In 2016, he became just the second coach in NCAA history to win 1,200 matches. He departs the university with an astonishing record of 1,202 wins, 204 losses, and 1 tie, including 4 national titles, 25 conference championships, and more than 30 postseason national tournament appearances. Coach Shoji leaves the confines of the Stan Sheriff Center with a legacy much larger than the numbers. It is fitting that Coach Shoji's tenure began just a few short years after the enactment of title IX, a law now named for Hawaii Congresswoman Patsy Mink who championed its passage. Title IX seeks to ensure equal opportunity and prohibit sex discrimination in higher education. It is most widely known for expanding opportunities for women in collegiate athletics. Coach Shoji's tenure at the helm of Rainbow Wahine volleyball has clearly demonstrated the value of opportunity for young people--not just young women--in Hawaii. His teams have been examples of what can be achieved through hard work, professionalism, and teamwork. That example has led many local players to aspire to 1 day don the green and white Wahine jersey, play in front of sold-out crowds, and look to Coach Shoji in the center of the huddle during a nail-biting set. Parents were always hopeful, too, that they would witness their daughter's transition from girl to woman in the care of Coach Shoji and company. During his tenure, Coach Shoji's has coached 86 All-American selections, 35 conference players of the year and, 175 all-conference picks. His players' successes extended beyond the court. More than 100 players have earned all-academic conference recognitions under his guidance. Over the past 42 years, Coach Shoji has built a reputation for excellence built on hard work, integrity, and love for the game. He has helped shape countless student athletes and brought pride to their families and legions of fans. Coach Shoji has set the standard for those who follow. Hawaii extends our warmest aloha and mahalo nui loa to Coach Shoji for his passion and commitment to not only the sport of volleyball but the State of Hawaii. ``Let's go 'Bows!''

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, when Senate Republicans executed their unprecedented block of President Obama's nominee Merrick Garland, the well-credentialed, well-respected, moderate chief judge of the DC Circuit, they knew what they were doing. They were willing to set aside the history and practice of the Senate to make sure no nominee of President Obama's would fill the vacancy created by Justice Scalia's death. As fate would have it, a Republican won the Presidency and then, the majority leader's path was clear. This is exactly what happened: President Trump selected Neil Gorsuch from a list put together for him by the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society. These organizations selected Judge Gorsuch because they want to preserve the conservative 5-to-4 majority of the Roberts Court. This majority has done terrible damage to many laws Congress has passed to protect ordinary Americans, and has made it more difficult for us to pass new laws. My colleagues and I have shined a spotlight on these rightwing organizations and the $10 million campaign they have run on Judge Gorsuch's behalf because they believe his view of the law matches theirs. And therein lies our concern. These organizations have spent so much money and worked so hard on Judge Gorsuch's behalf because they could trust, perhaps not 100 percent of the time, but enough of the time, that Judge Gorsuch would decide cases in ways they would agree with and support. Judge Gorsuch is an Ivy League educated lawyer with 10 years on the Federal bench. He is not naive. Even if he refused to acknowledge the fact that these groups are supporting him, Judge Gorsuch knows as well as we all do that politics have a real impact on the kinds of nominees selected to serve on the Supreme Court. We know he understands this because he said so in his 2005 National Review Online article, which was entitled ``Liberals'N'Lawsuits.'' In that article, he wrote that because Republicans had won elections for the Presidency and for control of the Senate, the Republicans were in charge of the judicial appointment process. As a result, he said, ``the level of sympathy liberals pushing constitutional litigation can expect in the courts may wither over time, leaving the Left truly out in the cold.'' This article demonstrates that Judge Gorsuch understands that judges appointed and confirmed by Republicans will have less sympathy for, as he put it, ``liberals pushing constitutional litigation.'' Clearly, judges do not make decisions divorced from their personal and philosophical leanings. However often or however loudly they might protest, conservatives understand that their arguments about the narrow role of judges--their claims that Justices are there only to modestly apply the law and adhere to the Constitution--are bunk. And Judge Gorsuch must know this too. Nowhere is this brand of conservative judicial activism clearer than in the actions of the Roberts Court to reach into our elections to tilt the political landscape--with a significant impact on whose votes are heard in our political process and who is able to take part in our elections. Based on his writings, Judge Gorsuch clearly understands the relationship between politics and the courts. I am convinced that adding Judge Gorsuch to the Roberts Court will only continue the Court's intervention into politics. The actions of the Roberts Court are clear. This Court has issued a series of decisions that have made it easier for conservative organizations to spend unlimited and unregulated dark money on elections, and that may have made it harder for people to vote, harder for people to participate and have those voices heard in the political process. These decisions have changed who is able to participate in the democratic process, who gets elected, and, in turn, who gets nominated to the Supreme Court. Justice Felix Frankfurter's famous admonition that ``Courts ought not to enter this political thicket'' captures the challenges for courts treading into politics. Of course there are times when the courts must do so--to ensure one person, one vote, for example. But courts must also be careful when wading into politics because the legitimacy of the court is itself put at risk. The most memorable example, of course, came when the Court effectively decided the 2000 Presidential election in Bush v. Gore. In the Citizens United and Shelby County decisions, we have seen the tremendous damage the Court can do to democracy when it tilts the electoral process so heavily against ordinary Americans. In the 2010 Citizens United decision, the Roberts Court struck down bipartisan laws limiting campaign contributions that went back more than a century. This decision opened an unrestrained flow of money and potential corruption that has dominated our politics and drowned out the voices of ordinary Americans ever since. The Court's decision in this case was not an accident. Chief Justice Roberts engineered the decision in that case by steering it away from the narrow question before the Court about how to apply a particular law and into a broad constitutional question. His efforts demonstrate that the Supreme Court has broad power and latitude to push and shape the law. This kind of conservative judicial activism directly contradicts what Justice Roberts famously said during his confirmation hearing. He said the job of a Justice is to simply call balls and strikes. Jeffrey Toobin, in a 2012 article in the New Yorker entitled, ``Money Unlimited: How Chief Justice John Roberts orchestrated the Citizens United decision,'' and in his recent book, ``The Oath,'' recounts very clearly how Chief Justice Roberts engineered this campaign spending decision. The question originally presented to the Supreme Court in Citizens United, according to Toobin's account, was a narrow one. It involved whether one of the provisions of the bipartisan McCain-Feingold campaign finance law applied to a documentary criticizing a candidate and not just to television commercials. In fact, Ted Olson, the well- known conservative lawyer representing Citizens United, the organization that wanted to run the documentary, made a narrow argument that the McCain-Feingold law was not meant to apply to that kind of documentary. This was an argument based not on the Constitution, but on deciding the case before the Court in the narrowest possible way. Such a decision would have been restrained. It became clear during oral arguments that the conservatives on the Court had the opportunity not just to apply the law, but to change it entirely. Chief Justice Roberts and the other conservative Justices on the Court began to do this by aggressively questioning the government's lawyer on issues not then directly before the Court. As Toobin describes, ``Through artful questioning, Alito, Kennedy, and Roberts had turned a fairly obscure case about campaign-finance reform into a battle over governmental censorship.'' Now that it was clear to Chief Justice Roberts that there was a majority on the court for making a broader constitutional decision, he ordered that the case be reargued, rather than simply deciding the narrow question argued by both Olsen and the government's attorney. Chief Justice Roberts wanted the Court to take head-on a question that was not in fact before it and which the Court had decided the opposite way only 6 years before. When the Roberts Court decided Citizens United the following year, after reargument, it did so on the broadest possible ground--unconstitutional grounds--and found that corporations, like people, have First Amendment rights. It found that these rights could be violated by limits on campaign contributions. Again, this outcome did not happen by accident; Chief Justice Roberts engineered the result. According to Toobin's account, Chief Justice Roberts chose to assign the opinion for the majority to Justice Kennedy, who was known to be very skeptical of campaign finance laws and believed that limits on campaign spending violate free speech. By doing so, Chief Justice Roberts ensured that the Citizens United decision would be a broad one, and it was. The way the Court chose to reach out and change the law was wholly unnecessary to decide the case at hand. And it certainly was not judicial restraint; it was judicial activism. The Court in Citizens United reached out to overturn precedent and upend laws dating back more than a century to find new rights for corporations to funnel untold millions into our political system. This decision also severely limited the ways in which Congress could take action to continue to pursue the aims of campaign finance laws to limit political corruption. In his article, Mr. Toobin said: [Citizens United] reflects the aggressive conservative judicial activism of the Roberts Court. It was once liberals who are associated with using the courts to overturn the work of the democratically elected branches of government, but the current Court has matched contempt for Congress with a disdain for many of the Court's own precedents. When the Court announced its final ruling on Citizens United, on January 21, 2010, the vote was five to four and the majority opinion was written by Anthony Kennedy. Above all, though, the result represented a triumph for Chief Justice Roberts. Even without writing the opinion, Roberts, more than anyone, shaped what the Court did. But the Roberts Court was not done with its activism to radically change the landscape of our elections. In another narrow 5-to-4 decision in Shelby County in 2013, the Court substituted its conclusions for that of Congress and gutted core protections of the Voting Rights Act--protections which were essential for the right to vote for millions of Americans. Again, this was not a decision the Court needed to or should have reached. And again, it was a decision engineered by Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Back in 1982, Chief Justice Roberts--then a special assistant to the Attorney General--was the point person for the Reagan administration's opposition to strengthening the Voting Rights Act. At that time, Congress acted to fix a hole in the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court had opened in a 1980 decision. John Roberts was opposed to these efforts to make clear that election practices or procedures that result in discrimination, not only those with the intent to discriminate, violate the Voting Rights Act. In 1982, Congress successfully passed their fix over the objections of John Roberts and the Reagan administration. If you look at John Roberts' memos and articles from that period of time--in which he was a strong advocate within the administration for the position it took--his view of the Voting Rights Act was clear. It was a view he would apply years later as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court when he led a 5-to-4 majority to gut section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The preclearance provisions of section 5 mandated that any changes to voting laws in States with a long history of discrimination have to be approved in advance--or precleared--by the Justice Department or by the DC district court. These provisions, passed a century after the conclusion of the Civil War, for the first time effectively guaranteed the rights protected by the 14th and 15th Amendments in many parts of the country. Section 5 changed the landscape of our democracy and opened the door for millions of people to exercise their right to vote. These provisions of the Voting Rights Act were reauthorized nearly unanimously by Congress in 2006. Before reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act, the Senate Judiciary Committee alone held nine hearings on it. The thousands of pages of material the Senate reviewed, together with the record developed in a dozen hearings in the House, clearly established why it was so important to maintain preclearance in order to protect the right to vote in jurisdictions with a long history of voting discrimination. Yet, in Shelby County, the Roberts Court ignored this evidence and the Court's long precedent. The Court made its own determination about the value of the extensive evidence reviewed by Congress and struck down these core provisions. The Court refused to defer to the extensive findings and determination of Congress even though Congress is expressly charged by the 14th and 15th Amendments to enforce the guarantees of those Amendments--the guarantee of the right to vote. The Court did what John Roberts fought to do years before and weakened the Voting Rights Act. So much for judicial restraint. So much for just calling balls and strikes. A Justice and a Court devoted to judicial restraint, with an understanding of the separation of powers, never would have ignored Congress acting at the height of its constitutional powers and its factfinding capacity. Yet Chief Justice Roberts and the narrow conservative majority on the Court chose to act--to reach out and to gut one of the core protections of the fundamental right to vote. We now know that Congress got it right and the Supreme Court got it wrong in its judgment about the continuing need for section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Immediately after the Shelby County decision, numerous States previously covered by section 5 immediately passed onerous voter ID laws and other barriers that affected the right to vote of millions of people. Some of these laws were even enacted with discriminatory intent, not just discriminatory effect--in other words, they were blatantly meant to discriminate in voting. These newly raised barriers had a clear impact in last year's elections. For the first time in two generations, thanks to the actions of the Roberts Court, we risk unraveling the progress my friend John Lewis fought for alongside so many others during the civil rights movement. During his confirmation hearing, I asked Judge Gorsuch about the Shelby County decision, since he often explained the constraints on his approach to judicial decision making in terms of the separation of powers. He said several times that judges make terrible legislators, that courts lack the staff, capacity, and training to do the kind of factfinding that is an essential part of the legislative process. Yet, when I asked him whether the Court's decision in Shelby County raised the kinds of concerns he had noted about the limits of judges as policymakers and legislators, he declined to answer. But this is about more than Judge Gorsuch's refusal to answer. It is about more than the narrow view he expressed of the role of a judge or, particularly, a Justice--a narrow view that is not a reflection of the real world. Both the process and the outcome in Shelby County and in Citizens United raised exactly the kinds of concerns that make it so important for the Senate to understand Judge Gorsuch's judicial philosophy before putting him on the Supreme Court. Judge Gorsuch would become part of a newly empowered 5-to-4 conservative majority on the Roberts Court, which has been anything but restrained in moving the law for the benefit of corporations and against individual rights. Taken together, these two decisions, Citizens United and Shelby County, have made it harder for millions of Americans to have their voices heard in our election process and their votes counted at the ballot box. Since Citizens United, the floodgates have opened to unfettered corporate money in our elections. Since Shelby County, 13 States have enacted laws placing limitations on voting. Many of these are in States that would have been prevented from doing so in the first place before the Court gutted section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. After Shelby County, these States could pass such laws, and they did, disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters in the process. My Democratic colleagues and I asked Judge Gorsuch many questions to try to understand his pattern of narrowly interpreting laws meant to protect individual rights or worker safety in ways at odds with the law's purpose. For example, the narrow interpretation Judge Gorsuch took on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA, would have left Luke Perkins and thousands of special needs children like Luke without a chance to make educational progress. His interpretation was so at odds with the purpose of the IDEA law that the Supreme Court unanimously rejected and criticized Judge Gorsuch's narrow standard in a case they decided just a few weeks ago. Time and again, Judge Gorsuch threw up his hands and told us that if we disagreed with this narrow reading of the relevant law, that Congress should do better. In his view, the problem was not the Court-- which he seemed to cast as an innocent bystander--but, rather, the way Congress had written the law. By tilting the political playing field so heavily toward corporations and unfettered dark money and against individuals, the Roberts Court has impacted the composition of who is in Congress. The Court has made it even harder for Congress to take meaningful action to, say, pass laws to protect workers' safety or the access of students with special needs to an education. In turn, these decisions have had a real-world impact by changing who gets to participate in the political process and therefore who gets elected and who has input on the kinds of laws that are passed--and, of course, who gets nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. The actions of the Roberts Court in Citizens United and Shelby County make clear the stakes of the Gorsuch nomination. They make clear what the Senate Republicans had in mind in their unprecedented and arrogant refusal to consider President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. They wanted, instead, a Justice like Judge Gorsuch who would continue the rightward march of the 5-to-4 conservative majority on the Roberts Court. And the United States Senate should not allow this brazen gambit to succeed. I urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination. I yield the floor.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Murray, our assistant Democratic leader, for her continuing, longstanding leadership on behalf of women and families in our country. Over the past hour, my colleagues and I have laid out a fair case against confirming Judge Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. As we approach a vote on his confirmation, I encourage my colleagues to scrutinize Judge Gorsuch's judicial philosophy, even as he refused to outline for us or describe for us what that philosophy is. But we have come to certain conclusions based on 4 days of hearings. During his hearing, Judge Gorsuch refused, as they say, time and again to answer our questions on his judicial philosophy or his approach to the law. He insisted that he was merely a judge, as if the use of the word ended any discussion or scrutiny of his record. Judge Gorsuch painted a picture for us of the Court that is really straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. He said during his hearing: ``One of the beautiful things about our system of justice is that any person can file a lawsuit about anything against anyone at any time . . . and a judge, a neutral and fair judge, will hear it.'' Norman Rockwell painting--it is a wonderful idea that anybody can file a claim to protect their rights or interests. It is also a wonderful idea to assume that those claims will be heard and ruled upon by neutral judges, apparently uninfluenced by their own strongly held and frequently expressed personal views and judicial philosophy. Many of my Republican colleagues have echoed this view and argued that Judge Gorsuch's credentials should be enough--Columbia, Harvard. They argue that it is wrong or even unfair to question how Judge Gorsuch might approach the kinds of difficult issues that come before the Supreme Court. Of course, if judicial philosophy did not matter, then the Republicans would not have engaged in the unprecedented act of blocking President Obama's nominee--as I mentioned, Merrick Garland, a well- credentialed, well-respected moderate nominee--from even having a hearing. In fact, many of the Republican Senators did not even extend the courtesy of meeting with Judge Garland. They would not have held the seat open to be filled by the appointee of a Republican President, one selected for him by rightwing organizations. When my colleagues and I asked Judge Gorsuch about his judicial philosophy, he said that his words, his views, his writings, and his clearly expressed personal views had no relevance to what he would do as a Justice. He told us to look at his whole record, so I examined his whole record. I saw in that record too little regard for the real-world impact of his decisions. I saw a refusal to look beyond the words to the meaning and intent of the law, even when his decisions lacked common sense, as in the frozen truck driver case, and far too often, to the benefit of big corporations and against the side of the little guy. The decisions of judges have real-world impacts for millions of people beyond the parties in a particular case. This is especially true of the Supreme Court, which issues decisions that don't just reach those in the case in front of them--the frozen trucker, the women who work at Hobby Lobby faced with a lack of critical healthcare, the special needs child entitled to educational opportunities under the IDEA. The Supreme Court does not just interpret laws; the Supreme Court shapes our society. Will we be just? Will we be fair? Will America be a land of exclusivity for the few or land of opportunity for the many? Will we be the compassionate and tolerant America that embraced my mother, my brothers, and me so many decades ago when we immigrated to this country? These values seem too often absent from Judge Gorsuch's record and from his view of the law and the Court. The central question for me in looking at Judge Gorsuch and his record and listening carefully through 4 days of hearings was whether he would be a Justice for all of us, not just one for some of us. I came to the conclusion that he would not be a Justice for all of us, so I oppose his nomination. I yield the floor.

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Massachusetts for her impassioned, well-reasoned, persuasive remarks. All too often, Judge Gorsuch fixates on what we call the plain meaning of a word in the law and decides on his own meaning that he would give to that word. Sometimes he will resort to the Dictionary Act or Webster's dictionary to ascertain what he would consider the plain meaning of the law, but what he doesn't do time and again in very important cases that impact lots of lives is that he doesn't look to the context or the purpose of the law, to the point where sometimes his decisions are just bizarre and lack common sense. There was a reference made to the TransAm Trucking case where the truckdriver was in freezing weather. The brakes on his truck were not working properly, so he faced the choice of freezing to death or doing something about it but then risking being fired. So he did something about it. He got fired. Judge Gorsuch, in his reading--a very, very narrow reading of a word in the applicable provisions--deemed that his firing was correct. He was asked by Senator Franken at the hearing: What would you have done if you had been in that situation? There you are, you are about to freeze to death, and you have a truck that is not operable in a safe way unless you unhook the attachment to it. What would you have done? Judge Gorsuch basically said: I don't know what I would have done. I was not in his shoes. What any of us would have said--of course we would have done what the truck driver did. But in his very narrow reading of the words of the applicable provision, he came to the decision he did. That is why he could not respond to Senator Franken. It is particularly important that Judge Gorsuch explain to us how he would approach these kinds of cases. It is particularly important in what I would describe as remedial legislation, such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, better known as IDEA. This is remedial legislation that protects the educational rights of special needs children. That is the population for which this law was enacted. Judge Gorsuch had a case before him, and it was referred to by my colleague from California. A young boy was not getting the kind of educational opportunities that he should have gotten under IDEA, but Judge Gorsuch read that remedial legislation, which should be broadly interpreted to protect the class and the group that the law was passed to help--he read it very, very narrowly. He said that the school needed only to provide ``merely de minimus'' education for this child. He put in the words ``merely de minimus'' effort on the part of the school to provide this young boy with educational opportunities. That was bad enough, but Judge Gorsuch added the word ``merely.'' So during the time of his hearing, the Supreme Court, in a related--basically the same law, IDEA, was at issue--and the Supreme Court, while we were having the hearing on Judge Gorsuch's nomination, unanimously overturned Judge Gorsuch's standard of ``merely de minimus.'' Even the Roberts Court found Judge Gorsuch's standard of review too limiting and too narrow. So the young boy in question--his father testified at the confirmation hearing. I asked him what he was thinking as the decision of Judge Gorsuch came down. He said he knew that this decision would negatively affect hundreds and hundreds of special needs children all across our country. This is why I sought assurance from Judge Gorsuch that he would be the kind of Justice who understands, as he told me when I met with him, that the purpose of title III, which are the Federal courts, is to protect the rights of minorities. So I wanted reassurance from Judge Gorsuch during his hearing. I tried time and again to get a sense of his heart, what his judicial philosophy was. I was looking for the reassurance that he was the kind of judge who understands the importance of assuring that victims of discrimination cannot only ask for but can also receive protections from the courts and who demonstrates a commitment to the Constitutional principles that protect the rights of women to make the intimate and personal decisions of what to do with their own bodies. Mr. President, I note that I am joined by my colleague from Washington State, Senator Murray. I yield to her.

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from California, Senator Harris, for her eloquent and persuasive remarks. I am now joined by my colleague, the Senator from Massachusetts. I yield to her.

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I am joined by my colleague from California, Senator Harris.

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, over the next hour, a number of my colleagues and I will join together to speak in opposition to the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to be an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. We are joining together today because this nomination is not just about the future of the Supreme Court. It is about the future of our country. There is no question about Judge Gorsuch's credentials or about his intellect. He is a graduate of Columbia and Harvard and has been a judge on the Tenth Circuit Court for more than a decade. In fact, his credentials are in stark contrast to so many of the dangerously unqualified individuals President Trump appointed to his Cabinet. Judge Gorsuch should not get a pass simply because we are relieved that President Trump didn't nominate a member of his family or a reality television personality for this job. Credentials cannot and should not be the only points we consider when evaluating a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. In fact, we should expect that anyone nominated to the Supreme Court will at least have impressive credentials. By many accounts, Judge Gorsuch would be the most conservative Justice on the Court--even more conservative than Justice Thomas or Justice Scalia. Rightwing advocacy groups cheered his nomination and have spent over $10 million to support his nomination. They spent this money because they have high confidence that he will rule in their favor on so many of the tough cases that will come before the Supreme Court. These groups, including the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, selected Judge Gorsuch because he meets their litmus test for how they think a Justice should rule. They selected him because they understood Judge Gorsuch clearly met the litmus test the President outlined during his campaign. To paraphrase, Donald Trump wanted a judge who would prioritize the religious freedom of a corporation over the rights of its employees, uphold an expansive view of the Second Amendment, making it much tougher to enact sensible gun legislation to protect our communities, and who would overturn Roe v. Wade--as Donald Trump put it-- automatically. Judge Gorsuch's credentials are just a starting point. For the people who need justice most urgently, Judge Gorsuch's view of the law and his judicial philosophy will make a world of difference. The working families, women, differently abled, people of color, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, students, seniors, and our Native peoples are the people who will be impacted by the decisions a Justice Gorsuch would make. Today, April 4, is Equal Pay Day, which means that it took women until today to make the same amount that men made in 2016. Women have had to work more than 3 months longer to catch up, on average, to men. This significant pay disparity has existed for centuries, but it has been illegal in the United States since the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963. Proving illegal pay disparity under this law has been challenging, as we all know. Nationally, women are paid only 79 cents for every dollar a man is paid. In Hawaii, women are paid only 82 cents for every dollar a man makes. That is a little better than the rest of the country, but it is in no way good enough. At the median salary, that 82 cents translates into about $8,000 less per year in wages for a woman in Hawaii. That is a lot of money in my State, where the high cost of living makes it even more difficult for working families to get ahead--not to mention that many working families in Hawaii, as well as in other States, are headed by women. My immigrant family was headed by my mother. As we mark Equal Pay Day, I am well aware of the tremendous impact a single Justice can have on the lives and rights of millions of Americans. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court has issued numerous 5-to-4 decisions that have favored corporate interests over the rights of individuals--cases like Shelby County, Citizens United, and Hobby Lobby. One of the most deeply flawed of these 5-to-4 decisions was in a 2007 case called Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. That decision had the effect of denying justice to a woman who had suffered pay discrimination for more than a decade. The Court said, in effect, that because Lilly Ledbetter didn't learn of the pay discrimination until it was too late, our justice system could not help her. Put another way, under the ruling, employers could discriminate against women so long as the employers made sure the women didn't find out about it. This will not be hard to do, as employers are not likely to announce that they are providing discriminatory pay to their female employees. This is what happened to Lilly Ledbetter. She didn't know. This decision was deeply wrong and surprised many Court watchers. It undid years of judicial precedent. I remember learning of this decision in Hawaii. I was serving on the House Education and Labor Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives at that time. The Supreme Court decision interpreted a Federal law that fell within the jurisdiction of the committee on which I sat. George Miller, then chair of the committee, immediately announced that we would change the law to be interpreted the way it had been before the Court applied their own narrow and wrong interpretation. We passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act with a Democratic Congress in 2009. Frankly, I doubt a Republican-controlled House and Senate would have done the same. It was the first bill President Obama signed into law. I was there for that bill signing. Though we could not retroactively help Mrs. Ledbetter, this law reversed the Supreme Court's decision and assured that the injustice she endured did not happen to other women or to anyone else. Clearly, the composition of the Court and the identity of the fifth Justice matters a great deal in the real world--the real world of 5-to-4 decisions. Yet, during this hearing, Judge Gorsuch refused to even acknowledge the role that judicial philosophy plays in the role of a Justice, and he downplayed the impact the law could have on people's lives, repeatedly saying he merely applied the law. If Justices merely applied the law and the law was so clear, we wouldn't have so many 5-to-4 decisions in the most critical cases. Judge Gorsuch told me during our meeting in February that the purpose of title III courts--these are the Federal courts--is to protect minority rights. But I found through examining his writings and decisions that Judge Gorsuch's view of the law lacks an understanding of people, their lives, and how the courts' decisions would impact them. This was particularly true in examining his ruling in the Hobby Lobby decision, where Judge Gorsuch demonstrated a cavalier attitude about how his decision would impact the thousands of women working at the Hobby Lobby company. In that case, Judge Gorsuch decided that a corporation with tens of thousands of employees--many of them women--has rights to the exercise of religion protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and that it could use those rights to deny to the thousands of women in its employ access to contraceptive coverage. During the hearing, I pressed Judge Gorsuch on whether he considered what would happen to the thousands of women who worked at Hobby Lobby, many of them working paycheck to paycheck who would now be denied access to contraceptive coverage. He responded by saying: ``I gave every aspect of that case very close consideration.'' I fail to see what consideration Judge Gorsuch gave to those female employees. It is certainly not evident in the record. Justice Ginsburg's dissent, when this case reached the Supreme Court in Hobby Lobby, which Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer joined, did assess the real world impact this decision would have on women. Justice Ginsburg wrote: ``The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would . . . deny legions of women who do not hold their employers' beliefs access to contraceptive coverage.'' In the Tenth Circuit's opinion, which Judge Gorsuch joined, and in his own concurrence, Judge Gorsuch showed grave concern with the potential ``complicity'' of the Hobby Lobby's owners--these are the corporate owners--in violating their beliefs, but he gave little or no consideration to the compelling interest of these women and the thousands of female employees in having access to contraceptive care. Judge Gorsuch failed to address our concerns during this hearing. Rather than recognizing the impact of his decision on thousands of women who work at Hobby Lobby and millions more who work at companies all across the country, Judge Gorsuch repeatedly said that if we didn't like what the Court was doing, or what he was doing, then Congress could change the law--as though that is such a simple thing. This is not an academic exercise. This is about the real world impact, not just of the Hobby Lobby decision but of decisions a Justice Gorsuch would make for the next 25 years, from which there is no appeal. Judge Gorsuch's nomination raises so many serious concerns for women across the country that I look forward to addressing over the next hour. During his hearing, Judge Gorsuch told us time and again to focus on his whole record as a judge and not on certain cases or things he wrote in books, articles, or emails. In fact, my Republican colleagues have suggested that we are being unfair when we try to look at the things he has said and written in order to discern how Judge Gorsuch would approach cases if confirmed. We wanted to get at his heart. We wanted to get at his judicial philosophy. Some of my colleagues have even gone so far as to suggest that by raising legitimate questions about Judge Gorsuch's record as part of our advice and consent responsibility, we are attacking judges in the same way President Trump has done during his 2\1/2\ months in office. This is fundamentally wrong and deeply misleading. It is like comparing apples and oranges. That comparison doesn't begin to describe the difference. Two weeks ago, in the middle of Judge Gorsuch's confirmation hearing, President Trump renewed his vicious and unwarranted attack on Judge Watson of Hawaii for blocking the President's unconstitutional Muslim ban. Although I wasn't then in the Senate, I recall that during Justice Sotomayor's confirmation hearing, Republican after Republican ignored almost the entirety of her 25 years on the Federal bench. Instead, they focused, in question after question at her confirmation hearing, on a gross misreading of one speech--one speech--she gave to a group of young women about the value of diversity on the bench. Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and in the Senate twisted her phrase ``wise Latina.'' That is a term she used in her speech. They twisted her use of the phrase ``wise Latina'' well beyond meaning. Looking at that speech, it is clear she meant to instill confidence in young women and a sense that they, too, needed to participate in a life of the law; that the law was not--is not--a place that excludes them. Senate Republicans turned these words into a baseless attack to undermine Justice Sotomayor's well-earned reputation of fairly applying the law in thousands of cases that had appeared before her. She had been on the bench for 25 years, but they focused on two words in one speech she gave during that time. Many Republicans then cited that speech to justify their opposition to her nomination. So when I hear my Republican colleagues touting their fairness toward President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, I recall not just their omitting any mention of Justice Merrick Garland--the well-credentialed, well-respected moderate whom they blocked from even having a hearing--I also remember Justice Sotomayor. I remember my Republican colleagues ignored her unanimously ``well qualified'' rating from the American Bar Association, her long record, and the tremendous chorus from the right and the left supporting her historic nomination. If confirmed, Judge Gorsuch's decisions will have a profound impact on the country, not just during his time on the Court but for generations to come. This is particularly true for women whose constitutional right to an abortion will be threatened by a Justice Gorsuch. During the Presidential campaign, Donald Trump laid out his litmus test for nominating a Justice. He said, for example, that overturning Roe v. Wade ``will happen automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the court.'' That was Candidate Trump's well-articulated litmus test, which he followed through on in his nomination of Judge Gorsuch. During his hearing, my colleagues and I tried to get a better sense of how and whether Judge Gorsuch would follow the President and uphold this constitutionally protected right. Based on his lack of response, I am skeptical that a Justice Gorsuch would uphold this critical right that generations of women fought to preserve. In 1992, in Casey, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the core holding of Roe that the right to an abortion is constitutionally protected. The Court held that these decisions are protected because they are among ``the most intimate and personal choices a person makes in a lifetime.'' In his 2006 book on the future of assisted suicide, Judge Gorsuch argued that Casey should be read more as a decision based merely on respect for precedent rather than based on the recognition of constitutional protections for ``personal autonomy'' or for ``intimate or personal'' decisions. When I asked Judge Gorsuch about this, although he recognized that Roe and Casey are precedents of the Supreme Court, he did not go further and acknowledge that the Constitution itself protects the right to make intimate and personal decisions. In the time since Casey, the Court has relied on the protection for intimate and personal choices to decide many nonabortion cases, such as the Obergefell case, which recognized the right to marriage equality. We need a Justice who understands and respects the importance of this right--that it is the Constitution that provides protections for intimate and personal decisions. Otherwise, I am concerned he will join the Court and chip away at those protections. Judge Gorsuch said that the judicial robe changes a person. This was another way of telling us to ignore his own strongly held and frequently expressed personal views and, indeed, his judicial philosophy, which he continued to not discuss. Of course, if judicial philosophy didn't matter, Senate Republicans would not have engaged in the unprecedented act of blocking President Obama's nominee Merrick Garland, a well-credentialed, well-respected, moderate nominee, from even having a hearing. They held the seat open to be filled by the next President, preferably, a Republican one. In Neil Gorsuch, the Republicans got a nominee selected by rightwing organizations that are counting on Judge Gorsuch to rule in accordance with their very conservative views, which put corporate interests over individual rights. That is why, to put it simply, who wears the judicial robe matters. Just as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation want Judge Gorsuch to wear the robe, the people who come before the bench--the millions of hard-working Americans whose lives will be affected by the Court's decisions--want a Justice who will protect their rights. They want a Justice who will wear the robe that protects their rights. I note that I am joined by Senator Duckworth of Illinois, and I yield time to her.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, resolution we are debating today is the latest attack in the unrelenting Republican crusade against funding--or defunding--Planned Parenthood. They have tried everything: passing stand-alone bills, attaching poison pills to must-pass bills, threatening a government shutdown, struggling and failing to pass TrumpCare. Today, we are debating whether to repeal an administrative action that protects abortion providers, like Planned Parenthood, that receive title X funding. Just a little while ago, Vice President Pence was here to break a tie because Republicans in Congress couldn't get enough men to tell women what to do with their bodies. For nearly 50 years, title X funding has helped low-income Americans access vital health services like birth control and cervical and breast cancer screenings. Title X funding has been a healthcare lifeline for millions of women in all parts of the country. But if this Congressional Review Act resolution is passed, Planned Parenthood clinics across our country can be prohibited from receiving title X funding, even though it is currently illegal to use Federal dollars to fund abortion services. Let me repeat: No Federal dollars can be used to fund abortion services, period. I understand the strong anti-abortion belief held by some of my colleagues, but I don't understand why this translates into relentless attacks on an organization that uses no Federal funds for abortion. Planned Parenthood uses Federal funds to provide vital healthcare services to millions of people, mainly women. Yes, I acknowledge there are men who go to Planned Parenthood also. In 2014, Planned Parenthood provided over 600,000 cancer screenings and over 4 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections. But this is a factual argument, and we have learned over the years that many of my Republican colleagues simply will not listen to facts when it comes to Planned Parenthood. Let me share a few stories from my constituents about the transformational impact Planned Parenthood has had in their lives. Perhaps after hearing these stories, we will think twice about attacking the vital services Planned Parenthood provides all across our country. Hawaii is home to a large military community. Taylor from Honolulu is a military spouse who wrote to me that she and other military dependents turn to Planned Parenthood because of long wait times and confidentiality concerns within the military healthcare system. Taylor wrote: My friend was experiencing severe cramping and pelvic pain to the point where she had to utilize a sick day. When she visited the medical services provider through the military, they scheduled her for an appointment for four days out. She was sent home with no pelvic exam or ultrasound. The pain was so severe that she went to Planned Parenthood because she could not wait to see her primary care physician. They immediately performed a pelvic exam, an ultrasound, and an STD screening. She was diagnosed with pelvic inflammatory disease. Annually, 100,000 women become infertile as a result of PID, so receiving quick treatment for this condition is critical. Taylor continued: Defunding Planned Parenthood means that individuals who experience common reproductive healthcare issues like this would have lessened chances of receiving quick, necessary and comprehensive medical care. Had it not been for Planned Parenthood, she could have lost her ability to have children in the future. Do my Republican colleagues want to deprive military spouses of vital healthcare services? I also heard from Tiffany, a student at the University of Hawaii, who went to a Planned Parenthood clinic after a pregnancy scare. She wrote: I was afraid because I knew that having a child was beyond my means. I was just starting out my university years at 21; and I have extremely conservative parents who would have surely not approved of my actions. I knew how difficult having a child was for someone in my situation, especially while going to school, and risking sacrificing my future, my key to stepping out of poverty, was not an option. I was unemployed and had Medicaid at the time as well, and Planned Parenthood accommodated my financial situation. Thankfully, I discovered I was not pregnant, and Planned Parenthood took the extra time to sit me through my options without any judgment whatsoever. I was also prescribed birth control, offered an STD test, and was given Plan B in the event I ever missed my birth control. The sense of relief, reassurance, and care I felt walking out of the clinic left me with a very strong impression, especially after so many days of anxiety. Do my Republican colleagues want to take away resources that help thousands of young women like Tiffany fulfill their full potential? These stories aren't rhetoric. They aren't hyperbole. They aren't spin. They are powerful reminders that each day, women turn to Planned Parenthood in a time of need. Some of my colleagues have argued that all these thousands of women who go to Planned Parenthood clinics can go to community health centers if Planned Parenthood clinics have to close because of defunding. This morning, I met with over a dozen leaders from Hawaii's community health centers. So I asked them, could you take in all of Planned Parenthood's patients? Their answer was an unequivocal no. Our communities cannot afford to lose Planned Parenthood clinics. A vote for this CRA is a vote to deprive women like Taylor and Tiffany and millions more throughout our country of these important healthcare services. Let's stop these attacks on women's healthcare. I urge my colleagues to vote no. I yield the floor.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to both of the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, resolutions related to retirement that we will be considering this week. These CRA resolutions before us would kill Federal regulations that give cities and States the opportunity to expand retirement options for individuals. Our Nation faces a retirement crisis. In Hawaii, about 50 percent of private sector workers have jobs that don't provide retirement benefits. According to a recent survey by AARP Hawaii, 56 percent of working age people feel anxious about having enough money saved for retirement. For generations, Americans relied on the ``three-legged stool'' of retirement: Social Security, private savings, and a pension from their employer. Those days are gone. More and more seniors are relying on Social Security for a bigger share of their income in old age. In Hawaii, the average monthly Social Security benefit is $1,408. Given the cost of housing, medical insurance, and other necessities in Hawaii, that is not nearly enough. Seniors should be able to count on us to keep Social Security strong. That is a bedrock position we should honor. Given the retirement crisis, taking away tools that States and local governments can use to help bolster retirement savings makes absolutely no sense, yet this is what we are about to do if we pass these CRA resolutions. Last week, the Hawaii State Senate held a hearing on legislation that would establish a Hawaii retirement savings working group. The proposed legislation would bring together public and private stakeholders to look at ways to improve retirement savings for workers. A number of stakeholder groups, retirees, and other citizens testified on the bill. Let me tell you one of their stories. His name is Donald. He is a 61- year-old gay man who has lost three husbands to HIV/AIDS. Donald has worked for 35 years and even set aside money for retirement using 401(k)s--401(k)s that he cashed out to help cover medical costs for his loved ones. He said: ``I did what I had to do out of love and devotion, especially when each of my guys' families took a step back in the face of adversity.'' Donald now lives paycheck to paycheck in senior affordable housing. He plans to work until he is at least 65. Personal tragedy isn't the only reason it is difficult for him to save. He wants to save, but he noted that ``I am trying to muster some form of IRA through local financial institutions to no avail. No one returns the calls.'' For too many working people, saving for retirement isn't automatic or easy. It seems out of reach, but we can't let that stand. The Obama administration recognized the retirement crisis in our country and the need for new thinking to help people save. In fact, that is the point of the regulations the Senate is poised to kill. These regulations simply provide a framework that States and cities can use to expand access to retirement savings. There are no Big Government mandates or industry takeovers. States and cities would simply have the opportunity to be creative and help families save for retirement. The fact Republicans want to kill these rules has a certain ``Alice in Wonderland'' quality to it, where up is down and down is up. For the last few weeks, Republicans touted how TrumpCare was giving States more flexibility to provide healthcare, while the reality was that for a State like Hawaii and many others, TrumpCare would have saddled them not with more flexibility but more costs. At that point, States' rights was one of the selling points for that disastrous legislation. This week Republicans have taken a U-turn. Now they are trying to kill regulations that would actually give States more flexibility to provide retirement security. Why we should take away this tool from States is beyond me. Cynics would say Republicans are doing this to help some private entities sell more retirement plans to people. However, the reality is that millions of families are not being served. Killing these rules is the latest Republican attack on working people. We should be fighting to give people like Donald more hope and opportunity. Voting against these resolutions is a vote to help people like Donald. I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing what I can only characterize as lousy anti-working people resolutions. I yield the floor.

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Whitehouse speak after me, followed by Senator Cotton, if he is on the floor.

Ms. HIRONO

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

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, during last week's hearing on Donald Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, I raised serious concerns about what is at stake for the future of our country. It is a mistake to think that the confirmation process for a lifetime appointment to our Nation's highest Court is only about the nominee. It isn't. The real focus and the real heart of this decision lies in the struggles that working families, women, people of color, the differently abled, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, students, seniors, and our Native people face every single day. These are the everyday Americans who will be impacted by the decisions Justice Gorsuch would make. These are the people who would have been hurt by Donald Trump and the Congressional Republicans in their failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress fought for a plan that would callously throw Americans by the tens of millions out in the cold without health insurance and would make the lives and health of millions more precarious. It was only through the voices of Americans who were loud and steadfast in confronting TrumpCare that TrumpCare failed. These are the people for whom the need for justice is often most urgent. An understanding of these people, their lives, and how they would be impacted by the Court is what I found to be missing from Judge Gorsuch's view of the law. It is these same voices I am listening to now. Judge Gorsuch should have been more open with the Judiciary Committee about how he would approach the difficult and important cases that come before the Supreme Court. But time and again, Judge Gorsuch avoided answering questions, telling us his judicial philosophy and his view of the law were irrelevant to our consideration of his nomination. The well-funded campaign to put Judge Gorsuch on the Supreme Court fueled by millions of dollars of money from unnamed donors has attempted to create a narrative about Judge Gorsuch and the stakes of this nomination. This is a narrative woven with Ivy League credentials and endorsements but not revealing at all about Judge Gorsuch's judicial philosophy--the heart he would bring to his view of the law. During the hearing, many of my Republican colleagues echoed the view that credentials are enough and that our real questions about Judge Gorsuch's record and philosophy are somehow irrelevant or even inappropriate. Certainly, Judge Gorsuch did his part, telling us time and again in his words, his views, his writings, and his clearly expressed personal views that these writings had no relevance to what he would do as a judge. I disagree. In my view, there is a great deal of difference between how Judge Gorsuch, as Justice Gorsuch, would approach the kinds of tough cases that reach the Supreme Court and how, say, a Justice Merrick Garland would approach these cases. We know that Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburg, both legendary jurists and close friends, would reach dramatically different results in cases that matter deeply in the lives of millions--cases like Shelby County, like Lilly Ledbetter, like Hobby Lobby, like Roe v. Wade. Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburg differ in how they view important cases that came before them. That is why a Justice's judicial philosophy is important in our considerations. Donald Trump knew this, too, when he set forth his clear litmus test for his Supreme Court pick. To paraphrase the President, he wanted a Justice who would adhere to a broad view of the Second Amendment, who believes corporations are entitled to ``religious freedom'' at the expense of the rights of their employees, and who would overturn Roe v. Wade, to quote the President, ``automatically.'' In Judge Gorsuch, Donald Trump selected a nominee who passed his litmus test. When we asked Judge Gorsuch about his opinions in specific cases like that involving the terrible choice facing Alfonse Maddin between freezing to death or being fired, the judge told us we should look instead at his whole record. When I examined his whole record, I saw too little regard for the real-world impact of his decisions and a refusal to look beyond the words to the meaning and intent of the law, even when his decisions lacked commonsense. When we asked about decisions where Judge Gorsuch seemed to adopt strained interpretations that narrow laws meant to protect worker safety, he said simply that he was a judge and he didn't take sides. Yet too many times, his narrow interpretations led to decisions that were on the side of big corporations and against the side of the little guy. When asked to respond, he said that if we didn't like the result, if we didn't like his decisions, it was because a statute was too limited or unclear, and that Members of Congress should do better. We asked Judge Gorsuch about his decision in Hobby Lobby, which found an expansive new right to religious liberty for a corporation that employed thousands of people. He did not explain how he assessed the terrible impact this decision had for thousands of working women at the company who would now be denied access to contraceptive coverage. When I met with Judge Gorsuch, he told me he had a heart. After 4 days of hearings, I still don't know what is in his heart. I would have liked Judge Gorsuch to have been more open so we could have had a real conversation about what the law is and who the courts protect. What we got instead were platitudes about the work of the courts that came straight from a Norman Rockwell painting. I did agree with the judge that article III courts are there to protect minority rights. Article III of the Constitution protects the independence of the Supreme Court and the lower Federal courts and gives enormous authority to judges and Justices to determine how to apply the law to the cases before them to protect minority rights. It is critical that before we decide to grant Judge Gorsuch a lifetime appointment to the Nation's highest Court, the Senate is able to gain an understanding of his approach to the law. At our judiciary committee hearing, I asked Jeff Perkins, the father of a young boy with autism, about the impact of Judge Gorsuch's decision on his son's education progress at and outside of his new school. The case involved the protections of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which Judge Gorsuch's decision narrowed to point that these comments under the law were deemed virtually meaningless. The new school that Luke Perkins attended made little effort to ensure that the skills he developed in school were translating at home. As a result, Luke severely regressed. Experts in autism, psychology, and occupational therapy testified on Luke's behalf that the school was seriously neglecting his needs. An impartial hearing officer, an administrative law judge, and Federal district court all agreed Luke's regression showed that the school was not providing him with a ``free appropriate public education'' as required by the IDEA. Judge Gorsuch disagreed and decided the school had ``merely more than de minimis'' responsibility to do better for Luke. Jeff Perkins, Luke's father, said that he knew Judge Gorsuch's decision would negatively impact thousands of families with special needs children like Luke. It broke his heart. Judge Gorsuch's extraordinarily narrow interpretation of the IDEA was rejected unanimously by the U.S. Supreme Court last week. In his opinion for the unanimous Court, Chief Justice Roberts concluded that the minimal standard determined by Judge Gorsuch was clearly at odds with the purpose of the law for children who are not progressing along with their peers. Justice Roberts wrote: The goals may differ, but every child should have the chance to meet challenging objectives. . . . When all is said and done, a student offered an educational program providing ``merely more than de minimis'' progress from year to year can hardly be said to have been offered an education at all. When asked by my colleague, Senator Durbin of Illinois, why the judge wanted to ``lower the bar so low'' in his decision, Judge Gorsuch, referring to Luke's case, responded: If anyone is suggesting that I like a result where an autistic child happens to lose, that's a heartbreaking accusation to me. Heartbreaking. But the fact of the matter is what is bound by certain precedent. Heartbreaking or not, Judge Gorsuch still found against the autistic child. Thankfully, the Supreme Court disagreed with Judge Gorsuch's wrong decision. It was wrong because remedial legislation such as IDEA should be broadly interpreted in favor of the group being protected. And it was wrong because the courts are not innocent bystanders. Their decisions have real-world impacts for thousands or even millions of people beyond the parties in a particular case before the Court. This is especially true of the Supreme Court, which issues decisions that don't just reach those cases in front of them--the frozen trucker, women who work at Hobby Lobby faced with lack of critical healthcare. They also reach millions of others impacted by interpretations of the law made by the Court in those decisions. The Supreme Court does not just interpret our laws. The Supreme Court is an affirmation of our country's values. The Supreme Court shapes our society. When we began the hearings on Judge Gorsuch's nomination, I said the Supreme Court vacancy isn't just another position we must fill in our Federal judiciary. A Supreme Court vacancy is a solemn obligation we must fulfill for the future of our country and for our future generations. The central question for me, in looking at Judge Gorsuch and his record and listening carefully through 3 days of hearings, is whether he would be a Justice for all or Justice for some. Regrettably, I do not believe Judge Gorsuch would be a Justice for all of us. I will oppose his nomination, and I urge my colleagues to do the same. This vacancy is simply too important for the future of America and our values to do otherwise. I yield back.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, today I wish to honor the life and dedicated service to our country of my friend and colleague, Eni F. H. Faleomavaega of American Samoa. I had the honor of serving with him in the U.S. House and was deeply saddened to hear of his passing on Wednesday, February 22, 2017. Eni served 13 terms as the Delegate from American Samoa, and we worked together because of his close ties to Hawaii. Eni's strong ties and service to Hawaii makes him a ``keiki o ka aina.'' He was a graduate of Kahuku High School and the Church College, the forerunner to Brigham Young University in Laie, HI. Eni was a passionate advocate for indigenous peoples including native Hawaiians. Whether it was Federal recognition or health and housing programs for native Hawaiians, Hawaii could always count on Eni's outspoken support and assistance. One of the stories Eni enjoyed sharing was about his experience sailing on the voyaging canoe Hokulea in 1987, and in August 2014, he welcomed the arrival of the Hokulea and Hikianalia arrival in American Samoa and offered his best wishes to Malama Honua Worldwide Voyage. I always appreciated his warm presence at the annual Kamehameha Day Lei Draping Ceremony at the capitol where he would often perform traditional Samoan chant and dance. Of course, he also served his American Samoa constituents in Congress with distinction for two decades. During his service in the House, he rose to become the first Asian-Pacific American to serve as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs' Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. He brought his unique perspective as a Pacific Islander to this post and constructively worked to raise the concerns of the region in Congress. Eni was also a veteran of the Vietnam war and a selfless advocate for his fellow veterans in American Samoa and across the Nation. Thanks to Eni's efforts, American Samoa veterans can now receive their healthcare from a Department of Veterans Affairs clinic built in Pago Pago with funds he helped secure. It is therefore most appropriate that the House and Senate recently passed H.R. 1362, a bill to name this clinic after him. I join my colleagues in extending my deepest sympathies to his wife, Hinanui Hunkin, their 10 children, and their 15 grandchildren. Eni will be dearly missed by his extended ohana in Hawaii and all whose lives were touched by his leadership and service.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, it seems appropriate that we are debating the nomination of Seema Verma to head the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services the same week Republicans in Congress introduce a plan to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Over the past 8 years, President Obama and the Democratic Party have been fighting to make sure that everyone in this country has access to affordable, quality health insurance. President Trump and his allies in Congress do not share this commitment. Instead of debating how best to expand access, they are fighting with each other to see just how many people they can kick off insurance rolls--all in a crusade, apparently, to save some people money. This is not a crusade to improve the lives of as many Americans as possible. It is a crusade to serve their radical antigovernment ideology. In fact, ``ideology over people'' is a useful shorthand to describe the first 2 months of the Trump administration. The problem with their ideological debates is that people are left out of the debate. Do we really know what it is like to be without health insurance? Under the plan to repeal the ACA, 20 million people in our country will be without health insurance, without healthcare. What if you were one of those people? This question is not an academic one for me. I know what it is like to live without health insurance. When my mom brought my brothers and me to this country--I am an immigrant--her job did not provide health benefits. My greatest fear growing up as a little girl in this country was that my mom would not be able to go to work if she got sick. If she wasn't able to go to work, where would money for food and rent come from? That is not the kind of fear we want to impose on millions of children in our country, but we will be doing just that to the 20 million people and their families who gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act--many, for the first time in their lives. They did not have to be worried every single day that their child or their parents would be sick and would not be able to afford the care that they needed. This is not an academic exercise for any of them. They will be hurt by what we are being asked to do. It is not an academic exercise for the millions more who will lose their insurance coverage under TrumpCare. But no one should be surprised. This administration and their allies in Congress continue to demonstrate a commitment to alternative facts. If you believe their alternative facts, TrumpCare would improve healthcare access for working families, seniors and women, and Americans would have, as the President said, ``much better healthcare for much less money.'' But in reality, TrumpCare will do the opposite. TrumpCare would end by 2020 the ACA's Medicaid expansion that millions of people in our country depend on every day. The expansion not only provided health coverage to millions of people for the first time, but it also helped to keep hospitals in rural and underserved communities from closing down. These rural hospitals exist all across the country. In its place, TrumpCare would change how States receive Medicaid funding, and it would do so in a way that ensures that these programs cannot keep pace with the rising cost of health insurance in their counties and in our country. Under this new system, States would have less money to spend on Medicaid recipients and face the prospect of tightening eligibility and slashing benefits. This would be particularly devastating in Hawaii, where we saw the number of people enrolled in Medicaid grow by nearly 20 percent under the ACA. Medicaid has had a transformative impact on tens of thousands of lives in Hawaii and millions of others across the country. Anne from Oahu walked into the Kokua Kalihi Valley Clinic 3 years ago. She had no health insurance, and she was pregnant at the age of 15. The doctors at the clinic helped Anne apply for Medicaid, which helped her afford prenatal care, gave her support to stay healthy and, very importantly, to stay in school. Medicaid helped Anne and her husband Dan, age 17, welcome a healthy baby boy named Joseph. Today, Anne is a graduate of Farrington High School, works part time, and has plans to become a pediatric nurse practitioner. Anne, Dan, and Joseph now have insurance through Dan's employer. Reducing access to this critical program is wrong. Trying to convince the American people they would be better off with the results of these kinds of drastic negative changes to Medicare and Medicaid is yet another alternative fact. I am encouraged that four of my Republican colleagues spoke out forcefully against any bill that would eliminate the ACA's Medicaid expansion. We need more Republicans of conscience to make their voices heard on this important issue. TrumpCare would also be devastating for seniors in Hawaii and across the country. Under TrumpCare, insurance companies would be able to charge older Americans up to five times more for an equivalent health plan than they would be able to charge a younger person. For a President and a party that professes to hate taxes so much, they don't seem to have a problem with what amounts to an age tax. TrumpCare's changes to Medicaid would also have devastating consequences for States like Hawaii, where our rapidly aging population depends on Medicaid to pay for nursing home and other care. The President made the American people a promise--that his healthcare plan would not touch Medicare. But the cumulative effect of TrumpCare's assault on our seniors--our kupuna--would force the Medicare trust fund to go broke 4 years sooner than expected. For reference, the ACA extended the life of the Medicare trust fund by 10 years. This would have a devastating impact for seniors like Anne and Lanny Bruder from Kauai. Lanny is 80 years old and working three jobs to make ends meet. He has had two knee replacements and a heart attack. Anne has glaucoma and pays a lot of money out of pocket for her prescription eye drops. They can't afford to pay more for their health insurance, which is exactly what is going to happen under TrumpCare. TrumpCare would also have a profoundly negative impact on women across the country. The President's plan would completely zero out funding for Planned Parenthood. This lifegiving, lifesaving organization would no longer be eligible for Medicaid reimbursements or Federal family planning, which would leave a $500 million hole in their budget. Republicans continue to claim falsely that community health centers would fill the gap in service left by the demise of support for Planned Parenthood--not true. Most of these community centers, whose resources are already stretched thin, do not provide women's healthcare or family planning services. In other words, they would not be able to replicate the services that Planned Parenthood provides all across the country to millions of women and families. Planned Parenthood operates two clinics in Hawaii, one on Oahu and one on Maui. They are the forefront of innovation in increasing access to family planning services across the State. They launched an innovative new mobile application that would allow doctors to provide digital consultations to women on neighbor islands for the purpose of prescribing birth control. Recently, Planned Parenthood made their first delivery to the island of Molokai, a largely rural island with little permanent medical infrastructure. This is the kind of innovation we should be encouraging, and it is precisely the type of program that could get cut if Planned Parenthood loses its Federal funding. I often say that there are people in this country getting screwed every second, minute, and hour of the day. Instead of reducing that number, which should be our goal, TrumpCare would increase the number of people who get hurt in our country. The wealthiest of the wealthy in our country would benefit because--not only would all these things happen under TrumpCare that would be devastating to families, to women, to our seniors--TrumpCare would also give a big tax break, a big tax cut to the wealthiest people in our country. They don't need that kind of tax cut. Do people making over $2 million a year really deserve another $150,000 a year in tax cuts? I don't think so. TrumpCare would be a disaster for the middle class, I am going to do everything in my power to stop it from being the law of the land. We have come too far in the past 8 years to go backward. The first way we can fight back against this plan is by rejecting the nomination of Seema Verma, who would be in charge of implementing TrumpCare as the head of CMS. Ms. Verma is unqualified for the job she has been nominated to do. She has absolutely no experience running a major Federal department and has virtually no budgeting experience. This is deeply disconcerting because as the Administrator of CMS, she would oversee a $1 trillion budget, which is twice as large as that of the Pentagon. Ms. Verma would also continue the President's assault on women's healthcare. During her confirmation hearing, Ms. Verma said she opposed the ACA's requirement that all health plans cover pregnancy care. It is because of this attitude that millions of women across the country are participating in a Day Without Women today. In solidarity with them, I will fight tooth and nail against TrumpCare and encourage my colleagues to oppose Seema Verma's nomination to serve as the Administrator of the very agency that is supposed to be protecting healthcare for all Americans. I yield the floor.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Madam President, as recently as 2006, Hawaii relied on imported fuel for 92 percent of our energy needs. This was bad for our economy and bad for our environment, and it needed to change. Today, Hawaii has the most ambitious renewable energy goals in the country, and we are working toward becoming 100 percent energy self-sufficient for electricity by 2045. In order to meet this ambitious goal, we are investing in a renewable energy future. It means cleaner air and water to enjoy, and it is driving a lot of local innovation. Let me give you a few examples. Last Friday, I attended a blessing for a new biofuel project in Maui's central valley. Pacific Biodiesel, run by Bob and Kelly King, is repurposing 115 acres of land previously used for commercial sugar cultivation in order to test the energy potential of different sunflower varieties for biofuels. If they are successful, this project could grow to provide hundreds of jobs on the island and help Hawaii on its path to energy self-sufficiency. Bob and Kelly got their start in repurposing used cooking oil. They have grown their company to run the Nation's first commercially viable biodiesel distillery on Hawaii Island, and they employ 80 people. Along the way, they have received support and funding through the Hawaii Military Biofuels Crop Program, which has allowed them to experiment, learn from their mistakes, and, ultimately, succeed. Yesterday, I met with Naveen Sikka, the founder and CEO of TerViva, which is a startup that grows pongamia trees that produce an oil seed that can be used for biofuels. In working with Hawaii's Energy Excelerator, TerViva is already growing pongamia trees on 200 acres on Oahu and is looking to expand its operations across the State. TerViva and Pacific Biodiesel are working together to explore how to help Hawaii achieve its renewable energy goals. In 2015, I met with Global Algae Innovations, a company that is pioneering the production of algae for use in biofuels on Kauai. Funding from the Department of Energy, or DOE, has been instrumental in its research. Support from the Department is vital in helping them and other algae biofuel companies finish scaling up commercial production at competitive prices. These stories provide a compelling counternarrative to the President's belief that we should prioritize fossil fuel extraction over renewable energy development. These stories also demonstrate the role government can play in encouraging energy innovation. During the Obama administration, our country made significant progress in confronting the challenge of climate change, investing in clean energy research and development, and growing our renewable energy economy. Unfortunately, by nominating Rick Perry to serve as Secretary of Energy, the President is sending a clear signal. Instead of continuing the progress we have made, he wants to take us backward. During his confirmation hearing, Governor Perry insisted that he believed in an ``all of the above'' energy strategy. So far, it does not seem that the President shares his commitment. During the transition, a disturbing report leaked in the media that outlined the President's plans to make dramatic funding cuts at the Department of Energy. This extreme plan included eliminating the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, which focuses on the transition to American energy generation that is clean, affordable, and secure, not to mention sustainable. The plan would eliminate the DOE's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, which ensures the Nation's energy delivery system is secure, resilient, and reliable. This office works to strengthen the resiliency of the electric grid. The plan would also eliminate the DOE's Office of Fossil Energy, which focuses on technology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It is hard to see how it would be possible to pursue an ``all of the above'' energy strategy if so much of the Department's ``all of the above'' capabilities are eliminated. I asked Governor Perry, during his confirmation hearing, whether he supported those proposed cuts and program eliminations within the Department that he was nominated to head. His response was telling. Governor Perry said: ``Well, Senator, maybe they'll [meaning the Trump administration] have the same experience I had and forget that they said that.'' Remember, Governor Perry had originally said that the Department of Energy should be eliminated. Governor Perry's ``oops'' answer got a laugh at the hearing, but it failed to convince me that he has the willingness and fortitude to stand up to the Trump White House on its energy policies. I also asked Governor Perry if Hawaii could count on his support in our efforts to become energy independent and a leader in the clean energy economy. Again, Governor Perry said yes, but in the same transition memo, the Trump White House proposed eliminating the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy entirely, as I mentioned before. It is unclear how Governor Perry could keep his commitment to the State of Hawaii and to me if the entire office that is responsible for renewable energy is eliminated. Many of my constituents share my concerns about Governor Perry. Charlotte from Wailuku wrote to me: Please do not confirm Rick Perry for US Secretary of Energy. He is not a visionary leader. In Hawaii, we have committed to being 100% carbon emission free by 2045. Rick Perry is not the person who can help provide innovation, funding or the tools needed to make this happen. I share Charlotte's concerns. We have made so much progress over the past 8 years in embracing a clean and renewable energy future, and Governor Perry and the Trump administration will work to reverse this progress and take us backward. I urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination. I yield the floor.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, last November, I was in Maui celebrating the 100th anniversary of Haleakala National Park. The weather at the summit of the volcano was terrible. It was raining in sheets, with 40- mile-per-hour wind driving the rain sideways, but I was there with over 40 schoolchildren to plant Haleakala silverswords--a special, threatened plant that only grows in the harsh climate at the summit of Haleakala volcano. The silversword can live for almost 100 years before it flowers, spreads its seeds into the wind, and dies. Silverswords have dotted the landscape of Haleakala's summit for millennia, but invasive species, human activity, and climate change have pushed the plant to near extinction. In the early 1900s, scientists estimated that as few as 50 plants remained on the volcano, but this changed after Haleakala became a national park in 1916. In the 100 years since, park rangers and visitors have made a concerted effort to protect the silverswords from feral goats and sheep and to make sure hikers don't go off the trail and trample their shallow root systems. After the passage of the Endangered Species Act, the silversword became listed as a threatened species. Through the law, conservationists have provided resources to help restore the silversword population on Haleakala for the hundreds of thousands of people who visit the park every year. Groups of students, including those whom I joined on that cold November day, have planted over 1,000 silverswords to supplement the population of silverswords. They were there to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Haleakala National Park. I share this story because it demonstrates many of the reasons the Department of Interior is so important in the role it plays in preserving our public lands. Business is booming at our national parks. In 2015, our national parks hosted 305 million visitors--a new record--and these visitors generated $17 billion in economic activity in nearby communities. Our national parks are suffering from an overwhelming deferred maintenance backlog of $12 billion. Our national parks are also understaffed. Because of sequestration and a variety of other factors, 10 percent fewer people work in our national parks today than 5 years ago. This is at a time when visitors to our parks are ever growing. This means fewer rangers and support staff dedicated to maintaining parks like Haleakala and protecting species like the silversword. To add to this, the administration has put a 90-day hiring freeze in place that threatens nearly 2,000 permanent vacancies that are critical to helping our national parks function. We need an Interior Secretary capable of standing up to the President to make preserving our public lands a priority. But during my meeting with Nominee Zinke and his confirmation hearing before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, on which I sit--and his record as a Member of Congress--I did not receive the assurances and commitments I needed to support his confirmation as Interior Secretary. Although he expressed some support for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, or the LWCF--an important program that funds land purchases to add to protective areas like our national parks--he said the program could benefit from some ``changes.'' The only change I wish to see is to permanently reauthorize and fully fund the LWCF, which has suffered from chronic underfunding throughout its history, and I will continue to work with my colleagues, like Senator Maria Cantwell, who is ranking member of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in the Senate, to accomplish this goal. We also need an Interior Secretary committed to preserving our public lands, not exploiting them for fossil fuel production. Congressman Zinke and the Trump administration are too wedded to the fossil fuel industry and fail this test as well. Supporting alternative and renewable energy development is an issue people in Hawaii and, I would say, a lot of people in the rest of our country care about. Earlier this year, I received a letter from Michael from Pahoa, who said that Representative Zinke ``has consistently voted for carbon heavy energy sources. His anti-environmental record shows a leaning that could well move exploration and extraction to areas formerly closed to exploitation. With interests in oil pipelines, he has a conflict of interest in moving away from fossil fuels and into alternative and renewable resources. We have destroyed enough of the country for the enrichment of the 1% with little to no benefit to the rest of our citizens. He is a destroyer, not a fixer. Not someone for the environment or the people.'' Congressman Zinke also does not share a commitment to protecting endangered and threatened species like the silversword. While in the House, Congressman Zinke voted to block funding for any listed endangered species on which the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to conduct a 5-year review. It didn't seem to matter to Congressman Zinke that the reason these reviews did not take place was because Republicans in Congress failed to appropriate the necessary funding to conduct these reviews. Cutting funding in this way would devastate conservation and recovery efforts for as many as 850 species across the Nation, 137 of which are in Hawaii and 1 of which is the Haleakala silversword. During the confirmation process, I asked Congressman Zinke if as Secretary he would work with Congress to ensure that the Fish and Wildlife Service would receive sufficient funding to conduct these reviews and recover our Nation's endangered species. He responded by saying that he would ``work closely with Congress to ensure recovery programs are appropriately funded.'' I don't know what he means by ``appropriate,'' but I do have a feeling that my view of sufficient funding, which is the question I asked him, and his answer that he would support appropriate funding are probably very different. In fact, I wonder if, under Secretary Zinke, there would have been the funding necessary to help Maui students plant their 1,000 silverswords on Haleakala's summit. This is wrong. Congressman Zinke also does not share a commitment to combating climate change or supporting research that will help in that effort. Washington, DC--do you notice how warm it is? It is February. It is 60 degrees. Washington, DC, is on track to have experienced the warmest February on record. We have a new administration stocked full of climate deniers. As Secretary of the Interior, Congressman Zinke will be leading the U.S. Geological Survey, the USGS, an agency that lists climate change as one of its top mission areas. During his confirmation process, I asked Congressman Zinke if he would try to limit the USGS's work on climate change in any way. Unfortunately, Congressman Zinke did not provide a definitive answer-- only saying that he would need to learn about the USGS's role in climate change research. His answer did not reassure me that he will allow USGS and other agencies in his Department to continue to make climate change research a priority or to protect the right of these scientists to pursue their research without interference. This is particularly concerning in light of the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to silence our Federal workers, including those within the National Park Service, who are speaking out about the threat of climate change. We need a Secretary of the Interior who will protect our public lands, make investments to conserve our endangered and threatened species, and who will continue to confront climate change. His record of past statements demonstrates that Congressman Zinke is not the right person to lead the Department of Interior at this juncture, at this critical stage. I urge my colleagues to oppose his nomination. I yield the floor.