Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I am so encouraged by the words of our dear friend and fellow Senator, Mr. John McCain. First of all, I am so encouraged by seeing that fighting spirit of John McCain and so glad to see him back. In the midst of everything he is facing, that he would come and insert himself to give us some considerable words of wisdom--it was such an enormous, emotional experience when John walked in. Then, to have all of us seated here because of the vote that was occurring--and not a Senator left after the vote was concluded because we wanted to hear from John and did so willingly. His eloquent words about how we all need to come together and stop being driven apart by partisan reasons were timely, and they were well received. Mr. President, this Senator never thought we would see a vote to advance a bill which, to so many, feels as though it is going to harm so many of our fellow Americans. Obviously, we can disagree on specifics, but we have seen that particular expression of opinion of harm over and over. We have seen it in the coverage of the townhall meetings, where people stand up and say: If I didn't have this healthcare, I would be dead. This Senator has seen it in Florida over and over, as I have had people come up to me wherever I am--in a meeting, on the street corner, in the airport, wherever--and say: Senator, please don't let them take my healthcare away from me. Indeed, when people explained their particular circumstances, four different families--one family, if they did not have the waiver on Medicaid, indeed, that fellow would not only not be alive, but even if he were alive, he would be in an institution instead of being able to be cared for or three other families who brought forth testimonies about how the Affordable Care Act has given them insurance they had never been able to get before. It was at a price they could afford and involved coverage they never could have had. In other cases, people had preexisting conditions. This Senator, as a former elected insurance commissioner of Florida, has seen insurance companies refuse to insure people because they had a preexisting condition. If you had asthma, that was a preexisting condition; if you had a bad rash, that was a preexisting condition, and they were not going to insure you. Also, insurance policies never had the guarantee of lifetime coverage but instead the policy said you had lifetime caps. There was a dollar figure which, if you exceeded it, the insurance policy was not going to cover any more. If we are really serious about wanting to fix the situation, if our brothers and sisters on the other side of the aisle are not successful in proceeding with what the majority leader is going to be coming forth with, if that is voted down, and if we are serious about it, take what is left, which is the existing law--the Affordable Care Act--and fix it. Senator Collins, a former insurance commissioner, appointed in the State of Maine, and this Senator, a former elected insurance commissioner in the State of Florida, are already working on a reinsurance fund which would insure the insurance companies against catastrophe. I asked for this to be costed out in the State of Florida. This fix would lower premiums 13 percent in the State of Florida. In the words of Senator McCain, if we really want to get together and fix the problems, we can. Yet, in the midst of hearing from constituents all around the country who have shared their personal stories about how the existing law has helped, we are in the parliamentary position we are in, where we will proceed on trying to repeal what is the existing law. For some people, they don't care about the politics. As a matter of fact, for a lot of people, they don't care about the politics. They just want access to healthcare. They want what is genuinely described as health insurance--whether it is a Medicaid type of insurance or whether it is an actual policy through a private insurance company offered on the health exchanges in the States or whether it is the guarantees of the coverage in an individual policy that they might buy, they just want healthcare. That is the reason you have health insurance in the first place. Now, I have heard some fixes say: Oh, let's cut back on Medicaid, which, remember, is spread over millions and millions of people, just like Medicare is spread over millions and millions of people. The difference there is age. If you are 65, you are eligible for Medicare. There are some people we overlook in the system who depend on Medicaid. How about veterans? Veterans' healthcare has been taken care of while on Active Duty in the U.S. military. Then their healthcare is transferred to the Veterans' Administration, but there are a lot of veterans who are not getting their healthcare through the VA. They get their healthcare through Medicaid. If you start cutting back on Medicaid, which are the versions of the so-called replace bills we have seen--if you start cutting back on Medicaid and make a capped program or a block grant program, we already know the figures. It has been costed out by the CBO. The figures tell us it is close to an $800 billion cut over a decade. When you start doing that, the people who rely on Medicaid at the edges, like some poor people or like seniors in nursing homes--by the way, in my State, 65 to 70 percent of the seniors in nursing homes are on Medicaid, and some of those veterans I told you about are not on VA healthcare but Medicaid. How about some of the children's programs on Medicaid? If you start cutting that back to the tune of about $800 billion over a decade, you are going to knock out a lot of these people. That is not something we want to do. That is why, when explained, you have such low numbers who support what is being attempted as a replacement if you repeal the Affordable Care Act. We should be focused on working together to improve the Affordable Care Act, not to make it worse. I pretty much have said it all. The bills we have seen coming forth as replacements change the age ratio from the existing law, the Affordable Care Act, of 3 to 1 in the healthcare exchanges so you can charge an older person three times as much as a young, healthy individual--not in the replacement bills we see coming up. It is 5 to 1. What does that mean? That means for those older Americans, before they turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare, they are going to be paying more for their insurance premiums. Is that what we want to do? I don't think so. You cannot ignore these facts. I ask those who come forth with these replacements, why in the world do you do this? Why do you support a bill that will hurt so many Americans, which has been demonstrated over and over? Why do you support a bill that will hurt so many of your constituents that your constituents cry out to you, please, don't do this? And they give personal testimonies. I urge our colleagues, after the emotional appeal of Senator McCain, to do things in a bipartisan way. Take a moment, reflect on what your constituents have said--not just some of your constituents. Listen to all of your constituents and ask yourself, are you doing the right thing? Let's improve our Nation's healthcare system. Let's not make it worse. Let's do it in the spirit of the uplifting words of Senator McCain and what he said: Let's do it together in a bipartisan way. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I want to discuss this nomination. I am here to add my voice to those of my colleagues who oppose the nomination of David Bernhardt to be Deputy Secretary of the Interior. There are a host of reasons--from his history of censoring scientists to his denial of climate change--but I am going to limit my remarks to his allegiance to the oil industry and, specifically, his disregard for the importance of a moratorium on any drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. During his confirmation process, he gave some very troubling responses to questions about the moratorium from the ranking member, Senator Cantwell. She asked: ``Do you support the current moratorium in relation to offshore drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico?'' He responded: I am aware that, in response to the President's recent Executive Order on the Outer Continental Shelf, Secretary Zinke issued a Secretarial Order 3350 directing the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to review and develop a new five-year plan. I support the President's and the Secretary's actions to examine new leasing opportunities within the OCS in order to advance the Administration's energy agenda. Then Senator Cantwell asked him: ``Do you support extending this moratorium?'' He responded: ``I support the President's and the Secretary's actions aimed at increasing offshore production while balancing conservation objectives.'' First of all, when it comes to the eastern gulf, there is no good way to increase offshore production while balancing environmental concerns. The gulf--the eastern gulf is still recovering from the horrific 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, which fouled the gulf all the way east into most of the Panhandle of Florida. Secondly, as I have explained time and again, it makes no sense to drill in an area that is critically important to the U.S. military and is the largest testing and training area for the U.S. military in the world, where we are testing our most sophisticated weapons systems and where we are sending our fighter pilots who need the open space to train. That is why they have the F-22 training at Tyndall Air Force Base. That is why they have training for pilots on the F-35 at Eglin Air Force Base. That is also why the Chief of Staff of the Air Force wrote in a letter just recently, ``The moratorium is essential for developing and sustaining the Air Force's future combat capabilities.'' I ask unanimous consent to have the two letters printed in the Record.

Mr. NELSON. The letters--one from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the other from General Goldfein, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force--state they are needing to put a major investment of telemetry into the eastern gulf range for all of these sophisticated weapons systems, and they don't want this investment of the infrastructure with the moratorium ending in the year 2022. They want to extend the moratorium for another 5 years, to 2027. That is a reasonable request by the Department of Defense and the Department of the Air Force. For example, a test can start way down in the South, off of Key West, and a cruise missile could go all the way, 300 miles, because of the size of this test range, and then it could have a land impact on Eglin Air Force Base. That is part of our testing regime. One could ask, Why couldn't the cruise missile weave around oil rig activities? Well, look at the new miniature cruise missiles that are out there. It is not one, but a swarm, which takes up a big footprint that we are testing. This is just one example of a weapons system that needs a lot of open space. This is a national asset. We don't want to give it up. That is why the top brass in the Pentagon is asking that we extend this moratorium so that those expensive investments in telemetry can be made. We should not put someone in charge at the Department of the Interior if he has an open objection to what is obviously needed for national security and if he has demonstrated a history of siding just with special interests. It would be a bad decision when it comes to the national security of this country. I am going to oppose the nomination, but that is just one reason, one item, on an ever-growing list of concerns that this Senator has with the Department of the Interior these days. On June 29, Secretary Zinke announced that the Department was seeking public comment on a new 5-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing. In case anyone has forgotten, the current 5-year plan was just finalized 6 months ago and is supposed to run through 2022. Why would the Department spend more taxpayer money to go through the whole process all over again? The only reason this Senator can see is that the oil industry wants more acreage. They are going after the eastern Gulf of Mexico, despite the fact that the Department of Defense is asking for exactly the opposite. By the way, they ought to take from the very productive sections of the Gulf of Mexico off of Louisiana. There are acres and acres under lease, but of all those acres under lease, how many are actually drilled and/or in production? It is a small percentage of the acreage under lease that is actually drilled. So why don't we take advantage of the existing leases, particularly in the central gulf, which is where the oil is? That is where all the sediments over millions of years came down the Mississippi River, settled in what is today the gulf, into the Earth's crust, compacted it, and made it into oil. That is where the oil is. Now, remember, also out there in the eastern gulf, this is the area that is off limits. This is the Eglin Gulf Test and Training Range. The Air Force wants to extend that moratorium from 2022 by 5 years--out to 2027--in order to protect it for all of these reasons we have been discussing. It is all of that open space, and we ought not give it up. I will give you another example of the short memories over at the Department of the Interior. After the 2010 BP oilspill, it became clear that the relationship between regulators and the oil industry was a problem so the Minerals Management Service was divided into two separate agencies in the Department of the Interior--the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which regulates lease sales, and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which is supposed to ensure that safety standards are followed. Less than a decade later, people seem to have forgotten all of that, and they want to put the two back together again. It is another example of what is going on. Not only that, but the administration is trying to roll back the safety rules, like the well control rule that was finalized in November of last year. This long- overdue rule seeks to prevent what went so tragically wrong on the Deepwater Horizon rig from ever happening again. Every day, it seems like the administration is coming up with a new way to put the gulf at risk and Florida's coastline and tourism-driven economy at risk. It is now putting at risk the national security of the country by messing up the largest testing and training range for the U.S. military and the world. It is utilized by all branches of service. As a matter of fact, when they stopped the Atlantic fleet of the Navy from doing all of its training off of Puerto Rico on the Island of Vieques, all of that training came to the gulf. The Navy squadrons come down for 2 weeks at a time to the Naval Air Station Key West, with the airport actually being on Boca Chica Key, and when they lift off on the runway, within 2 minutes, those F/A-18s are over restricted airspace so they do not have to spend a lot of time and fuel in getting to their training area. I have heard from business owners, and I have heard from residents across the entire State of Florida. They do not want drilling in the eastern gulf. They have seen what can happen when the inevitable spill happens. We lose an entire season of tourism, and all of that revenue goes away, along with that loss. Why do they know that? The BP oilspill was off of Louisiana, but the winds started carrying the oil slicks to the east. It got as far east as Pensacola Beach, and the white, sugary sands of Pensacola were covered in black oil. That was the photograph that went around the world. The winds continued to push it, and tar mats came over and got onto the beach at Destin. We were desperately trying to keep the oil from going into the Choctawhatchee Bay at Destin like it had already gone into the Pensacola Bay at Pensacola. The winds kept pushing it to the east, and the tarballs ended up all over the tourism beaches of Panama City. Then the winds did us a favor--they reversed, and they started taking it back to the west. So there was oil on some of the beaches, but what happened for an entire year of the tourist season? The tourists did not come to the gulf beaches, not only in Northwest Florida but all down the peninsula, all the way down to Marco Island, and they lost an entire tourist season. That is why people are so upset about any messing around. This Senator brings this to us as I have spoken of what has happened and have stood up for over the last four decades in order to fight to prevent those kinds of spills from happening again off the coast of the State of Florida. Yet now we have, right here, an issue in front of us, something that could threaten the Department of Defense's mission for being ready to protect this Nation. In that case, my recommendation to the Senate is not to vote for this nomination for Deputy Secretary of the Interior because of his history and because of how he responded to Senator Cantwell in the committee. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I came to speak on a different subject and will not speak at length about the healthcare bill because this Senator has spoken on a number of occasions about the healthcare bill. Suffice it to say, in light of what the majority whip has just said; that if we really did want to seek a bipartisan solution to the healthcare situation in expanding healthcare for as many people as we possibly can, then what we do, in a bipartisan way, is start saying: We have a current law. Let's fix what needs fixing. This Senator can say there are a number of discussions going on between Democratic Senators and Republican Senators about doing just that--about such items as a reinsurance fund to ensure companies against catastrophe, the likes of which, in a proposal this Senator has filed, has been costed out. In my State of Florida, it would reduce insurance premiums for health insurance 13 percent. Ideas like that--in a bipartisan way--will solve and bring stability to the marketplace. That is why insurance companies, in fact, are being vigorous in their opposition to the Senator Cruz part of the bill that basically destabilizes the market by taking all of the older and sicker people and putting them in one pot and putting the younger and healthier people in another pot, which is exactly the opposite of what the principle of insurance is. The principle of insurance is, you spread the risk over as many people as you can and thereby can bring down the per-unit cost. If we really wanted to fix it in a bipartisan way, we would be able to, but still, as you can see, there is not the appetite for that in this highly polarized, highly ideological, and highly partisan atmosphere we find ourselves in on this particular topic.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I want to speak on behalf of a group of Floridians I have met with who would be tremendously hard-hit by the healthcare bill, whether it be the one that has already been published by the majority leader or some of the iterations that are being discussed. I want to talk on behalf of and be the spokesperson for these people who have cried out to me. I want to say that people are crying out. It is not just the group of four families I assembled in my Tampa office last week, but it also includes walking down the street, being in an airport, or going into a public building. Constantly, folks are walking up to me and saying: Please, don't let them take away my healthcare. Just this past week, I was in--it shall remain nameless--a Republican Senator's State. It happened in the airport there as my colleague, the Republican Senator in that State other than mine--the travelers, the constituents of that Senator in the airport as we were waiting for the airplane walked up to that Republican Senator and begged: Please don't take away my healthcare. What we have seen in this Republican bill is that it takes health insurance away from millions of Americans. That is not my conclusion; that is the conclusion of the Congressional Budget Office. According to CBO, it also cuts back some $800 billion out of Medicaid over a decade, and it allows insurance companies to hike rates for older Americans. Under the bill, 22 million people would lose their insurance by 2026. Over 2 million of these folks are in Florida. In fact, the bill would increase the uninsured rate in Florida by 62 percent. That is not what I want inflicted on the folks in Florida. This bill lets insurance companies go back to the days when they had annual and lifetime limits on coverage and refused to cover basic health benefits, such as prescription drugs, mental health services, and even maternity care. This Republican healthcare bill, which has been so much the subject in the news and the center of the debate here for the past innumerable weeks, really does cut Medicaid. According to CBO--again, not my words; CBO's words--funding will be 26 percent lower in Medicaid by the year 2026 than under the existing law. My home State of Florida is projected to lose $5.7 billion in Federal Medicaid funding from 2020 to 2026 under the bill that is proposed by the majority leader. If that is not enough, the Senate bill would dramatically increase healthcare costs for Americans between the ages of 50 to 64 before they turn that magic age of 65 when they are eligible for Medicare. It dramatically increases those costs. That dramatic rise in cost is due in large part to a provision that would allow insurance companies to charge older Americans up to five times what younger people are charged. The current law, the Affordable Care Act, has a differential of 3 to 1. This bill as proposed has a differential of 5 to 1. So if you are not on Medicare because you haven't turned 65 and you are an older American in those ages--which increasingly seem very young to me--up to age 64 when the differential from what the insurance company charges the young person is five times, not three times, as is the current law, this would especially be felt among those older individuals making between $42,000 and $48,000 a year who, after that point, no longer qualify for the tax credits under the Republican bill to make coverage more affordable. Remember, in the current law, up to 400 percent of poverty level, you are entitled to get tax credits according to what your income is to help you buy private health insurance from insurance companies on the marketplaces in each State. Even that is going to be reduced. This bill also includes a backdoor provision that undermines the protections that currently exist for people with preexisting conditions. In defending the bill, people will argue that it doesn't do that, but look what the bill says. It says that it can be left up to the States to determine that. What is a way that the State can lessen the cost of insurance premiums? Take away the guarantee that someone can get insurance if they have a preexisting condition. I have given a number of speeches. I have had some experience in this as the former elected insurance commissioner of Florida, when it was an elected position. It was also a constitutional position of the State treasury. I held that position for 6 years, and I have dealt with insurance companies. I have seen some insurance companies say: You have a preexisting condition. We are not going to insure you because you have asthma. I have even seen an insurance company cite: We are not going to insure you because you have a preexisting condition; you had a rash. Under the current law, an insurance company cannot deny you insurance because of whatever your preexisting condition is. Your preexisting condition may be that you have a weak heart, and you, of all people, would want health insurance. Before, you couldn't get it. Now, under the current law, you can. I don't want you to hear this plea over and over again from me. I want the pleas from several Floridians to reach out across the State lines and get to the Senators who are going to be voting on this. I want them to hear from some of my constituents. When I met with them last week in Tampa, I had many who said that they would be devastated if Medicaid were cut. I want to share with you how this has personally affected them and how apprehensive and plain scared they are right now that the healthcare they are getting will cease if this bill proposed by the majority leader is to become law. Take, for example, Michael Phillips. He is 36 years old, and he has spinal muscular atrophy. It is a genetic disorder that affects control of his muscle movement. He relies on a tracheotomy, a breathing tube, and uses assistive computer technology to be able to talk. The computer talks for him. Michael was supposed to join us on that day, but he wasn't feeling well, and, of course, there is always the added exposure to germs in his weakened immune condition. Instead came his two caregivers, his single mother Karen and his brother Brian. Michael relies on Medicaid, which allows him to live at home with his mom and have a personal care assistant. He benefits from the Medicaid home and community-based waivers. If the waivers are eliminated because of the whacking of billions and billions of dollars from Medicaid, he would ultimately end up in a nursing home, away from his mother and his family, being forced to compromise his level of care and quality of life. You may have seen this fellow and his mom interviewed by the national news networks. He is one and the same, Michael Phillips. The Senate healthcare bill ends Medicaid as we know it. Whether it is a cap on the amount of money going to the State or it is called a block grant, the effect is the same. It will put people like Michael at risk of losing critical services, and it will certainly take away his independence and his quality of life. I have already said that the bill certainly takes away the guarantee of coverage with a preexisting condition. Let me tell you about another Floridian who was in that meeting. Elizabeth Isom is from St. Petersburg, and she told me that the Affordable Care Act saved her life and allowed her to purchase insurance for the very first time. If it is taken away, she doesn't know how she is going to be able to afford coverage because of lifetime caps. An insurance company cannot put those lifetime caps on what they pay out. For example, in the old days, before the existing law, an insurance company would say: I'll pay you as long as it doesn't exceed, say, $25,000 or $50,000. That was all figured into their insurance payment and their premiums. In the current law there are essential health benefits. There are about a dozen of them. Elizabeth was a social worker before she developed a sinus tumor. She went without insurance for 3 years, during which time her health was deteriorating. Because she did not have health insurance, she could not afford to have that tumor operated on. What I do not know is if she knew this at the time--because she hadn't had the operation--or if she thought it was cancerous. As it turned out, later, when she was able under the Affordable Care Act to get health insurance and to have the operation, thank the good Lord it was benign. But her health had deteriorated to the point that as this thing started to grow into her sinus passages and into her brain cavity, she actually thought she was approaching death. She ended up having vital organ damage and reached the point of complete disability. The mass in her sinus had extended into her skull. After the ACA became the law of the land, she purchased insurance through healthcare.gov. She says that it is the best insurance she has ever had because it covered essential health benefits like preventive services. It certainly provided for her to go on and get the operation, and it saved her life. If this Senate bill passes, services that Elizabeth relies on may no longer be covered, and she likely will never be able to afford a decent health insurance package again. She obviously has a preexisting condition. She would be one of the 22 million people whom the Congressional Budget Office estimates would lose their health insurance if the bill proposed by the majority leader, Senator McConnell, were to become law. Let me tell you about another Floridian. Regina Hebert is from Tampa. She is a small business owner. She was diagnosed with stage IIB breast cancer at the age of 57. She, too, told me that the ACA saved her life. Without the ACA, she would not have received health insurance because her cancer is considered a preexisting condition--57 years old, preexisting condition, stage II breast cancer. She obtained health insurance through the ACA. She had two surgeons, months of chemo and radiation, and she told me that if her cancer comes back and she doesn't have insurance, then she is going to have to choose between going bankrupt--not through what she is doing now with her small business. She is paying taxes. She is contributing to society. What is her other choice? Her other choice is to give up. Take away her insurance and those are her choices: bankruptcy or giving up. I don't think we want to put Americans in that position. The Senate healthcare bill allows States to waive the essential health benefits-- the dozen I talked about that are listed, like those needed if they have a preexisting condition. There was another lady I met named Olivia Babis. She is from outside of Tampa, a place called Lutz. She also has a preexisting condition. She told me that she uses the essential health benefits guaranteed by the existing law. She is scared that insurance companies would take away the coverage of treatments for her disability and also reinstate annual and lifetime limits on coverage. Let me tell you about this young lady. She is just amazing. She was born without arms. She uses her feet and her toes to be able to function in the place of hands and fingers. She had to have a total knee replacement in one leg by the time she turned 30. She works as a community organizer. She doesn't qualify for Medicaid in Florida because her income is considered too high. She actually has an income. Olivia purchased health insurance through healthcare.gov with the help of tax credits to help her afford health insurance. This young lady, now in her midthirties, is just amazing. With no arms, she uses her feet and her toes, and she is capable of getting around in her wheelchair. She is capable of driving a car. She has a business. She has an income, and she is paying taxes. She is able to function because she has health insurance. Now, thanks to the ACA, people like Olivia benefit because there are bans on lifetime limits in insurance policies, and, thanks to the ACA, she lives an active life. She goes snorkeling, hiking, and even skydiving. Her legs are good, except for the knee replacement that she had so that she can walk. Then, when she has to do the normal functions with hands and arms, she sits down, and she uses her legs, her feet, and her toes. She told me that, without the ACA, she is trapped. I told you about this unnamed Republican Senator who was in an airport in another State--that of the Republican Senator's. What happened to that Republican Senator happens to me back in Florida with people coming up and begging me: Please do not take away my healthcare. We should not continue to waste our time with this healthcare bill that only takes away healthcare and charges more for less coverage. We have said--so many of us out here on this floor--that we should be looking for ways to improve the existing law, the Affordable Care Act, not to undo all of the good that it has done. We have Floridians and folks across the country who are grateful for it. They want us to fix it, not repeal it, and they say that over and over: Why can't you guys get together in a bipartisan way and fix it? These are the personal stories of Olivia, Michael, Regina, and Elizabeth, along with the hundreds of people who have come up to me in the street or in the airport and have begged me: Do not take it away. They do not want us to get rid of this. As you have heard, several of them claim that they would not be alive today without the ACA. Alternatively, they would be bankrupt if it were not for Medicaid in the ACA. In order to truly improve our healthcare system, why don't we work together to make it better? We need to look at real solutions. I am happy to say that this Senator has been talking to Republican Senators, and we have talked about specific things. I told some of these Senators about my experiences as the formerly elected insurance commissioner of Florida. When I had a problem after the monster Hurricane Andrew in the early 1990s and we had a paralyzed marketplace in which you could not get homeowner's insurance in Florida from insurance companies because they were scared to death that the next big one was coming and that the losses were going to be so great that they would have to price the premiums so high, what did we do? We created a reinsurance fund called the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund, which builds up the reserves that would reinsure the companies if they were to have a catastrophic loss. The same principle with hurricanes can apply to health insurance, which is that of creating a reinsurance fund that will insure the health insurance companies against catastrophic loss, which, occasionally, they will have. Do you know something? I costed that out in Florida, and it would reduce the premiums from the marketplace in Florida by 13 percent. Now, that is a real savings, and that is just one solution for a fix. We ought to be looking at approaches like this. I welcome all of our colleagues on this side and on that side--and I have been talking to some on that side--to join together and do something productive, like getting behind ideas just like the one that I suggested. I heard our colleague this morning. One of our favorite colleagues out here is Joe Manchin from West Virginia, and I heard him being interviewed on one of the morning shows. He was terrific. He said: We need to be working together. We should not be divided by party over this, and we should not be divided ideologically on this. We ought to be openly trying to work together to figure out how to drive down healthcare costs and increase coverage for more Americans. That is what those folks in Tampa, FL, told me last week with whom I met. That is what those hundreds of folks are telling me who come up to me in the airport, on the airplane, on the street corner, in the public buildings, in the hospitals--wherever I am: Please, get together, and work it out. They are asking us to fix what needs fixing. That is what the American people are asking us today, and that is what I beg of the Senate. As the good Lord says: Come. Let us reason together. Let us use some of our common sense. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

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

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, before the Senator, our leader, yields the floor, will he yield for a quick question?

Mr. NELSON. The Senator told about the comments that have been made during the July 4th recess--comments about the healthcare bill--to various Senators. Would the Senator believe that this Senator had innumerable people come up to him all over Florida, whatever venue that I was in--and I was in public venues quite a bit--and say: Please don't let them take away my healthcare. Would the Senator further believe that, in visiting the State of an unnamed Republican Senator where that Senator and I ended up in an airport together in that Senator's State, lo and behold, this Senator observed innumerable constituents of that Republican Senator in the airport coming up and saying: Please don't take my healthcare away. Would the Senator believe that?

Mr. NELSON. I would say just quickly, and further, that this Senator gathered up a group of constituents who had written to our office. In this particular case it was the Tampa office, and three of them have been helped enormously by being on the Federal exchange, since the State of Florida has not adopted an exchange. One person who is on Medicaid said that they would not be alive had they not had the sanctity and the integrity of the existing Medicaid system, which covers some 70 million people in the country. Would the Senator tell me, is it accurate that the Senate Republican bill would eviscerate Medicaid by taking some $800 million out of Medicaid over a decade?

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I want to talk about a heavy financial burden that too many of our fellow Americans are being forced to deal with. What I am talking about is student loans. You may be surprised to know that the second largest amount of debt in America, next to home mortgage debt, is student loan debt. Student loan debt is $1.3 trillion more than all the credit card debt combined in America. Graduates from the class of 2016 have more than $37,000 in student loan debt, on average, when they graduate. To make matters worse, the Federal Government last week announced that it was increasing interest rates on Federal student loans for this coming school year, which starts in September. For undergraduate students, rates are increased from last year at 3.76 percent to 4.45 percent, almost three-quarters of a percent. That started on July 1. Well, our economy is built on the ingenuity and creativity of young entrepreneurs who have taken a risk on something new, but today, instead of sending our graduates off to be creative and conquer the world, we are sending them off with a tremendous amount of debt that they are struggling to afford. While I was in Florida last week over the July 4th recess, I met with a group of recent graduates, and we wanted to discuss their student loans. They were not shy about telling me about it. Many of them had high interest rates. They wondered how they were going to pay off that debt, how they were going to be able to be unshackled from that financial burden so they could get on about the business of building their career and starting a family. Let me give you some examples of the students I met with. One young lady graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2015 with $50,000 in student loan debt. The interest rate on her debt was 4.85 percent. She knows that her parents, who have helped her before--they are small business owners--are not going to be able to continue to help her financially. Even so, she was the first person in her family to graduate from college. That student is currently attending George Washington University for graduate school, after which she is estimating her total debt will be $90,000 in student loans. She told me about what every student longs to do: Purchase a home, start a family, and get on with their career. But that is increasingly becoming a pipe dream for millennials because of the burden of student loan debt. I met another student from Deltona, FL, who works as a social worker for the homeless. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in social work and a master's degree in the same from Florida State. She has dedicated her life to public service and helping the most vulnerable among us, yet she is facing $75,000 in student loan debt while carrying interest rates that range from 5.4 percent to 6.8 percent. In Florida alone, students graduating with a 4-year degree are leaving with an average of more than $23,000 in student loan debt. The thought of trying to start a career with that much debt is discouraging when some students, even after attending college in the first place, are still struggling. They want to go on to grad school or they are still in school wanting to finish their degree, but then they have that constant fear of having more and more debt when they graduate. That is not in anyone's interest--not the student's, not the family's, not the community's, and it is certainly not in the country's best interest. If we really want to build a strong middle class, we have to make higher education more affordable. That is why today I am introducing legislation to lower the cap on student loan interest and the so-called lender origination fees and to allow those with existing loans to refinance at a lower rate; namely, 4 percent. Remember I told you about that one student I met who had loans that went anywhere from 5.5 up to 6.8 percent? That was the interest rate in that particular year of their education. I think they ought to be able to refinance all of that at a maximum of 4 percent. The bill that I am filing today, which we are calling the Student Loan Relief Act, would cap student loan interest rates for undergraduates at 4 percent, graduates at 5 percent, and parents at a cap of 6 percent. It would also help students borrow less by ending the loan origination fees the government charges students to process their loan. For example, if it is a $10,000 loan, they will take out a loan origination fee of $400, so the actual loan the student gets is $9,600. These fees are taken out before the student receives the loan. The bill we are filing would eliminate those fees all together. One other thing the bill would allow for any borrower with an existing Federal student loan is to refinance their loans one time to a lower rate. Once the Federal Government sets the student loan interest rates for the year, they are fixed now under current law for the lifetime of that loan and they can't be refinanced, even if the rates go lower. That is certainly not in the interest of the student. For example, borrowers who took out loans between July of 2006 and July of 2013 likely have a fixed rate of 6.8 percent. Despite the significant drop in interest rates since 2013, currently those borrowers are barred from refinancing their existing loans. That is not common sense. Between 2006 and 2013, the interest rate on student loan debt got as high as 6.8 percent. Students who took out loans during that time are now stuck with those rates. They can't refinance that debt as you could with a home loan. This bill would fix that by letting those borrowers refinance their debt with the new loans that have the lower interest rates. Capping interest rates, ending loan origination fees, and allowing borrowers to refinance existing loans would certainly help make education more affordable for our students. It would help to ease the financial stress that is weighing down our economy and keeping some graduates from making the types of investments that traditionally lead to stronger middle-class membership like, for example, home ownership. Sometimes, in all of the partisan back-and-forth, some folks begin to forget why we are here: to serve the people. I urge our colleagues to take a serious look at this bill and join with me in helping those we represent. We can't continue to leave our graduates saddled with so much student debt and no way out. We have to do something to ease the burden, and I believe this is a good way to start. I would just conclude by recalling what I said at the outset: You may be surprised to learn that student loan debt is the second largest debt carried in America next to home mortgage debt. You can take all the credit card debt in America and combine it all and it is not as much as the $1.3 trillion of student loan debt that is carried today. We need to help those students, and thereby we are helping our country.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I want to talk about a heavy financial burden that too many of our fellow Americans are being forced to deal with. What I am talking about is student loans. You may be surprised to know that the second largest amount of debt in America, next to home mortgage debt, is student loan debt. Student loan debt is $1.3 trillion more than all the credit card debt combined in America. Graduates from the class of 2016 have more than $37,000 in student loan debt, on average, when they graduate. To make matters worse, the Federal Government last week announced that it was increasing interest rates on Federal student loans for this coming school year, which starts in September. For undergraduate students, rates are increased from last year at 3.76 percent to 4.45 percent, almost three-quarters of a percent. That started on July 1. Well, our economy is built on the ingenuity and creativity of young entrepreneurs who have taken a risk on something new, but today, instead of sending our graduates off to be creative and conquer the world, we are sending them off with a tremendous amount of debt that they are struggling to afford. While I was in Florida last week over the July 4th recess, I met with a group of recent graduates, and we wanted to discuss their student loans. They were not shy about telling me about it. Many of them had high interest rates. They wondered how they were going to pay off that debt, how they were going to be able to be unshackled from that financial burden so they could get on about the business of building their career and starting a family. Let me give you some examples of the students I met with. One young lady graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2015 with $50,000 in student loan debt. The interest rate on her debt was 4.85 percent. She knows that her parents, who have helped her before--they are small business owners--are not going to be able to continue to help her financially. Even so, she was the first person in her family to graduate from college. That student is currently attending George Washington University for graduate school, after which she is estimating her total debt will be $90,000 in student loans. She told me about what every student longs to do: Purchase a home, start a family, and get on with their career. But that is increasingly becoming a pipe dream for millennials because of the burden of student loan debt. I met another student from Deltona, FL, who works as a social worker for the homeless. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in social work and a master's degree in the same from Florida State. She has dedicated her life to public service and helping the most vulnerable among us, yet she is facing $75,000 in student loan debt while carrying interest rates that range from 5.4 percent to 6.8 percent. In Florida alone, students graduating with a 4-year degree are leaving with an average of more than $23,000 in student loan debt. The thought of trying to start a career with that much debt is discouraging when some students, even after attending college in the first place, are still struggling. They want to go on to grad school or they are still in school wanting to finish their degree, but then they have that constant fear of having more and more debt when they graduate. That is not in anyone's interest--not the student's, not the family's, not the community's, and it is certainly not in the country's best interest. If we really want to build a strong middle class, we have to make higher education more affordable. That is why today I am introducing legislation to lower the cap on student loan interest and the so-called lender origination fees and to allow those with existing loans to refinance at a lower rate; namely, 4 percent. Remember I told you about that one student I met who had loans that went anywhere from 5.5 up to 6.8 percent? That was the interest rate in that particular year of their education. I think they ought to be able to refinance all of that at a maximum of 4 percent. The bill that I am filing today, which we are calling the Student Loan Relief Act, would cap student loan interest rates for undergraduates at 4 percent, graduates at 5 percent, and parents at a cap of 6 percent. It would also help students borrow less by ending the loan origination fees the government charges students to process their loan. For example, if it is a $10,000 loan, they will take out a loan origination fee of $400, so the actual loan the student gets is $9,600. These fees are taken out before the student receives the loan. The bill we are filing would eliminate those fees all together. One other thing the bill would allow for any borrower with an existing Federal student loan is to refinance their loans one time to a lower rate. Once the Federal Government sets the student loan interest rates for the year, they are fixed now under current law for the lifetime of that loan and they can't be refinanced, even if the rates go lower. That is certainly not in the interest of the student. For example, borrowers who took out loans between July of 2006 and July of 2013 likely have a fixed rate of 6.8 percent. Despite the significant drop in interest rates since 2013, currently those borrowers are barred from refinancing their existing loans. That is not common sense. Between 2006 and 2013, the interest rate on student loan debt got as high as 6.8 percent. Students who took out loans during that time are now stuck with those rates. They can't refinance that debt as you could with a home loan. This bill would fix that by letting those borrowers refinance their debt with the new loans that have the lower interest rates. Capping interest rates, ending loan origination fees, and allowing borrowers to refinance existing loans would certainly help make education more affordable for our students. It would help to ease the financial stress that is weighing down our economy and keeping some graduates from making the types of investments that traditionally lead to stronger middle-class membership like, for example, home ownership. Sometimes, in all of the partisan back-and-forth, some folks begin to forget why we are here: to serve the people. I urge our colleagues to take a serious look at this bill and join with me in helping those we represent. We can't continue to leave our graduates saddled with so much student debt and no way out. We have to do something to ease the burden, and I believe this is a good way to start. I would just conclude by recalling what I said at the outset: You may be surprised to learn that student loan debt is the second largest debt carried in America next to home mortgage debt. You can take all the credit card debt in America and combine it all and it is not as much as the $1.3 trillion of student loan debt that is carried today. We need to help those students, and thereby we are helping our country.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, all of the Florida people walk up to me and say: Bill, what is going on? Why can't Congress get together? Why can't we work together? We do in our committees. We usually work together. We certainly do with Senator Thune, who is the chairman of the Commerce Committee. This Senator is the ranking member. We get a lot of things out. We are going to mark up the FAA bill tomorrow. There are a lot of controversial issues. We are going to get that out. Why can't we do it with healthcare? So, last night, I had a telephone townhall meeting in my State of Florida and 6,000 people joined. They asked questions for an hour. Often, they would get through asking their question and they would say: I wish you guys could work together. So that is what we have been hearing in all of these speeches. Well, let me give one suggestion that would lower premiums in the existing law, the Affordable Care Act, 13 percent. I had it costed out in Florida. Every now and then, you are going to have a catastrophic loss. It is kind of like when I was the elected insurance commissioner of Florida, and I inherited the mess after the monster hurricane. Hurricane Andrew was such a monster hurricane that it took down a number of insurance companies because the losses were so big. So we had to try to get insurance companies to come back into Florida. We created a reinsurance fund. We called it the Florida Hurricane Catastrophic Fund, which would reinsure, or insure, the insurance companies against catastrophic loss. That is what we can do right here. We could be like my poor constituent, Megan, who fought cancer for 2 years, with two transplants, and ultimately lost the battle, but the bill was $8 million. That is hard for any insurance company to swallow, but those are going to be limited, isolated cases. Why don't we create a reinsurance fund for the marketplace in the Affordable Care Act to help the insurance companies with catastrophic loss? I asked: If we did that in Florida, with the Florida marketplace, what would it mean? It would reduce the insurance premiums under the marketplace in Florida by 13 percent. That is just one suggestion. Every one of us has a suggestion. Put all of these suggestions together, and we are talking about really fixing the current law, instead of this roadway we see our friends on the other side of the aisle going down--a solution that is going to take coverage away from 22 million people and is going to cut $800 billion out of Medicaid and eviscerate Medicaid or that is going to charge older Americans over younger Americans five times as much as the younger. We don't have to do that. Let's come up with a creative idea to fix the existing law. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, last week, I spoke with a very brave mother. She had endured what not one of us ever wants to have to endure while she watched her child go through cancer, over and over and over again. That mother is Elaine Geller from my State of Florida. I want to show you her daughter. This is her daughter Megan. She was working as a kindergarten teacher when she was diagnosed with leukemia in 2013 at the age of 26. At the time Megan was admitted to the hospital, her blood count was four. She had pneumonia, and she had water on her heart. She ultimately checked into one of the very good cancer centers at the University of Miami, and she stayed there for 7 months. She went through the regimen of chemo. She spent months in the hospital, receiving multiple rounds of chemo, biopsies, and various other treatments. Eventually, Megan's doctor told her she had to have a transplant, which required a $150,000 upfront payment. I think you see where I am going with this story. Very few families would be able to afford a 150-grand payment, especially a single mother. I heard this story last week from Megan's mother. She said that thanks to the Affordable Care Act, she didn't have to write a check for the transplant. In fact, she didn't have that money. Because that transplant was provided for under the Affordable Care Act coverage, she knew that was one worry that could be taken off of her mind. She had enough to worry about as a mother, what she should be doing in such a situation, and of course she wanted to give all of her attention to her daughter. The cancer went into remission after the transplant; however, after leaving the hospital, 63 days later, the cancer came back. This time, they went to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. I asked the mom why she wanted to do that. She said: ``When your child is dying, there's nothing that you won't do.'' I think all of us as parents can identify with that, but we are so very fortunate that we haven't had to go through it. Maybe, as we get ready to vote on this healthcare bill, on the Republican alternative--which, by the way, just came out of CBO today-- the Congressional Budget Office--and they said that if the Senate bill were enacted, 22 million people would lose health insurance coverage. Remember, that is not too much different from what CBO said when the House bill was passed a couple of months ago, the bill to which there has been such a negative reaction. CBO said that 23 million people in this country would lose their coverage as a result of the House bill. We just got the score from CBO minutes ago. Twenty-two million people. Is that the direction we want to be going in? Megan is still going through treatment, and the cancer was only in remission for 32 days before it came back again. Megan received multiple blood transfusions. Remember, this is a single mom trying to keep her daughter, a schoolteacher in her twenties, alive. This time, all of the blood transfusions started to take another toll on Megan. She became so weak. When trying to walk, she faltered, she fell, she hit her head, and at age 28, she passed away. Let's get to the bottom line of this discussion, other than that our hearts go out to all the Megans all across America. The bottom line is, that whole treatment over 2 years cost $8 million. There was not a cap on the total amount of money that could be paid under the existing law, the Affordable Care Act. An insurance company cannot put a cap on the amount of your medical bills that can be reimbursed. Suppose before the ACA that cap was $50,000. This single mom could not even have come up with money for the initial transplant, which looked as though it worked and did work for several months. In fact, $8 million over time--2 years--how in the world could any one of us afford that? A lot of people say: Well, the ACA isn't doing it. Well, why don't we all get together in a bipartisan way and fix it? And one of the fixes would be, because certain healthcare problems, like Megan's, cause the insurance company to pay out a lot of money--do you know what we can do about it? We can create a reinsurance fund, which is a bill that I had filed, and it is to reinsure against that catastrophic healthcare problem like Megan's of $8 million, to reinsure the insurance company. Do you know what that would do in the State of Florida, if we passed this as a fix to the ACA? It would lower the premiums in the ACA in Florida 13 percent. That is reinsurance. It is not unlike what we have done for hurricanes. A catastrophic hurricane could cost so much more than the insurance company has assets for, and therefore they buy insurance from a company like Lloyd's of London or other reinsurance companies. They buy insurance in case of a catastrophe--the insurance company does that. If an insurance company did not have to pay out this $8 million because it had insured against that kind of catastrophic loss, everybody else's premiums are going to come down. Otherwise, they have to make premiums actuarially sound, and they have to raise them in order to take care of the cases that are prohibitively expensive. All of this sounds down in the weeds, but the bottom line is this: If we want to fix the ACA, we can fix it, but we can't do it one party against the other. We have to have the will to come together in a bipartisan agreement to fix it. Of course, if the mom of this girl had been faced with this without insurance coverage, she would be bankrupt. She wouldn't have been able to even afford the first transplant, much less the 2 years of extra life her daughter had while fighting for her life. Anybody who goes through something like Elaine and her daughter Megan did knows that every second counts. That is what this healthcare debate is about--giving people peace of mind, giving them that financial security, that certainty, putting people's health ahead of other things, such as company profits. You can do it all and solve everybody's problem, including the insurance company's, which obviously is in business to make a profit. You can do it. Elaine said her daughter would be proud to know that we are telling that story today. It matters. It matters to her, albeit deceased. It certainly matters to her mom. It matters to their Senator. It matters to a lot of other people. The ACA, the existing law--the one there was such a fractious fight over 5 to 7 years ago--is working. Here is a good example. Then we see that the aim of our friends on that side of the aisle is--they want to repeal it. They don't want anything that has the taint of ObamaCare, and so they concoct something in the House. You see what kind of greeting that has gotten in the country. I think it was in the upper teens--a poll that showed it was viewed favorably. In other words, it is viewed very unfavorably. In order for the Senate majority leader to come up with something that he can repeal ObamaCare with, in the dead of night, in secret-- even the Republican Senators didn't know what it was until they hatched it in the public last Friday. This bill is just as bad as the House bill. They will claim, in trying to stand up this bill--by the way, it is going to wither, the more it is examined in the glare of the spotlight. They claim that it maintains the ACA's protections for those with preexisting conditions. Can anybody really say that with a straight face? It leaves it up to the States. Before I came to Washington and the Senate service, I was the elected insurance commissioner, State treasurer of Florida. It was my job to regulate the insurance companies--all kinds of insurance companies, including health insurance companies. I can tell you that I have seen some insurance companies use asthma as a preexisting condition, and therefore that was the reason they would not allow the person who needed insurance to be covered. They said: If you have a preexisting condition, we are not going to insure you. I have even seen insurance companies use as an excuse a rash as a preexisting condition, and that means they are not going to insure you. Under the existing law, the ACA, they can't do that. You are going to have the security of knowing you are going to have coverage. Do you know something else you are going to have the security of knowing? You are not going to deal with some of those insurance companies that I regulated. Of your premium dollar for health insurance, they would spend 40 percent of that dollar not on your healthcare, but they would take 40 cents of that premium dollar that you paid and that was going to executive salaries. It was going to administrative expenses. It was going to plush trips. Don't tell me that is not a true story. I saw it over and over in the 1990s as the elected insurance commissioner of Florida. You know what the existing law says? It says that of every premium dollar you pay, 80 cents of that premium dollar has to go into healthcare. It can't be commissions. It can't be executive salaries. It can't be the executive jets for the corporate executives. Eighty cents of that premium dollar has to go into healthcare so you get what you pay for in that premium dollar. At some point there is going to be an attempt to undo that. If you start leaving things up to the States, watch out. When Megan was in the ICU, she had a respiratory failure that cost thousands of dollars more, and thanks to the ACA, her insurance carrier covered it. But under the Republican bill that has been now released, States could let their insurance companies pocket more of those premium dollars to pay for those things I just shared, which I had seen back in the decade of the 1990s as the insurance commissioner. Well, we shouldn't be padding their pockets. The premium dollar for health insurance ought to go to healthcare. The Senate bill cuts billions in Medicaid. We haven't even talked about that. Who gets Medicaid? Millions of people in this country do. It is not only the poor. It is not only the disabled. It is 65 to 70 percent of all seniors in nursing homes who are on Medicaid, and it is also some children's programs. Let me just give you one example. I went to the neonatal unit at Shands Hospital in Jacksonville, a hospital affiliated with the University of Florida, but in Jacksonville. The doctors and nurses were showing me how miracles occur for premature babies; they keep them alive. Then what they wanted to show me was--with the opioid epidemic, which has hit my State just like all the other States, they wanted me to see and understand that when a pregnant mom is addicted to opioids, she passes that on in her womb to her unborn child. When born, that baby is opioid-dependent. The doctors showed me the characteristics--that high, shrill cry, the constant scratching, the awkward movements. Do you know what they use to wean those little babies off opioids over the course of a month? They use doses of morphine. Do you want to devastate Medicaid? Do you want to take over $800 billion over 10 years out of Medicaid? What about those single moms? The only healthcare they get is Medicaid. And what about those babies I just described, who are also on Medicaid? If you start capping the amount of money that goes to the States on a Federal-State program for healthcare--Medicaid--you are going to throw a lot of people off any kind of healthcare, including senior citizens in nursing homes. A Medicaid block grant, or a cap, would end the healthcare guarantee for millions of children, people with disabilities, pregnant women, and seniors on long-term care. There are 37 million children in this country who rely on Medicaid for care. The seniors, the poor, the disabled, the children--they are all vulnerable to the cuts that would occur. If that is not enough to vote against this bill that is coming to the floor this week, the Senate bill actually imposes an age tax for older Americans, allowing insurance companies to charge older Americans up to five times more for coverage than a young person. You say: Well, older people have more illnesses and ailments; older people ought to cost more. If that is your argument, well, that is true. The age rating in the existing law, the ACA, is three to one. This changes it to five to one, and five to one means one thing: higher premiums for senior citizens--I am talking about all insurance policies--until they reach that magic age of 65 and can be on Medicare. Do you want an age tax on older Americans as a result of this bill? I don't think so. But that is what is in there. Fixing our Nation's healthcare system shouldn't be a partisan issue. That is why I have joined--bipartisan--with colleagues to introduce a bill that I described a moment ago, which would lower healthcare premiums by 13 percent. That bill would stabilize the ACA's insurance marketplace through the creation of a permanent reinsurance fund. I have seen the policies work, as I described, with catastrophic hurricane insurance. There is nothing magic about my idea. It is just an obvious fix to the existing law, and ideas like that can bubble forth in a bipartisan way to make the existing law that we have sustainable. What we ought to be doing is trying to look for ways to help people like that single mom Elaine and her daughter Megan. We should be working together to make the ACA work better. We shouldn't be plotting behind closed doors in the dead of night with a secret document--a secret document that we now know will make it worse. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, before the Senator from Arizona leaves the floor, he and I are very much in syncopation on the question of what he has just eloquently addressed about the Russian attempts to interfere in other countries as well as in our country with regard to the elections. I just wanted to pose a question to the Senator. Is the Senator aware, as he obviously is--but it is my rhetorical question--that the Russians have already intervened in the elections of other countries and indeed tried and it boomeranged against them against France and are probably in the midst of trying to interfere with the German election?

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, one further question. Has the Senator been--well, he obviously is aware, and he has obviously been briefed-- but can he help convey the gravity of the situation of Russia's interference in the upcoming elections in 2018 and 2020, where not only is it a question of whether they would change the vote count by getting in and hacking, but they could change the registration records so that a voter could show up to vote on election day and suddenly the registrar says: But you are not registered.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, this Senator certainly looks forward to that hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee. I thank the chairman for his leadership in constantly bringing up and reminding the American people of the threat that is coming through cyber attacks into this Nation and others.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I thank Senator Gardner. Indeed, this is an example of the Senate working together. There is, simply, a problem in the bill that was passed. It is a technical problem, but it goes to the heart of our military- civilian space program. It goes to the heart of the cooperation that we have had with Russia that goes back to the Soviet Union days when, in fact, in 1975, in the middle of the Cold War, a crew from America rendezvoused and docked with the crew from the Soviet Union. Ever since that crew, which was led by Lt. Gen. Tom Stafford, of the United States, and General Alexey Leonov, of the Soviet Union, we have had cooperation in space, and that program continues today on the International Space Station. Before I get into talking about the details of the amendment, as Senator Gardner has discussed so well already, I hope that the Senate will treat it as technical in nature because it corrects what was not intended. Unless corrected, it will be disastrous not only for NASA but for all of the burgeoning commercial space industry, which we are bringing back to America. What has happened over the last four decades, in the meantime, is that a lot of that commercial space industry has flown the coop to other launchers from other nations. But it is coming back to America. prayers for the Victims of the Congressional Baseball Practice Shooting Mr. President, before I get into the substance, I just want to speak with regard to the terrible tragedy that occurred yesterday and of my feelings about this violence that has occurred. I don't know whether it has occurred because of the excessive rhetoric and the sharpness and the fact that politics has become a blood sport, but we are so divided. This is what I want to say. We are Americans first, regardless of party. In times of threat, we come together. We are all on the same team. This Senator has prayed, as I know others have, for the complete recovery of all of those who were wounded yesterday, two of whom were apparently grievously wounded. We pray for their full recovery. It was a heinous attack. Let's come together in bipartisanship. Amendment No. 250, as Modified Mr. President, right here is an example of coming together. Recognizing there is a technical problem, we are coming together to fix that problem. Let's do this in the spirit of what Americans do. We are Americans first. I am obviously here, as I demonstrated in my vote yesterday, for the Iran sanctions bill, as well as the Russia sanctions amendment, which we adopted yesterday. Both were bipartisan efforts. I wish to thank our colleagues, especially the members of the Banking and Foreign Relations Committees. This Senator is a cosponsor of the sanctions bill which addresses Iran's support for terrorism, ballistic missile activity, and human rights violations--these destabilizing activities--and this bill strengthens the hand of the United States in countering Iran. These are destabilizing activities separate and apart from the Iran nuclear agreement, and to date, the United States has the evidence that they have complied with the Iran nuclear agreement. At the same time, we are facing an aggressive Vladimir Putin. The Russia bill which we debated yesterday and which will come to final passage shortly strengthens our hand against Putin's Russia. The U.S. intelligence community has already made clear that Putin attempted to interfere in our election. Let me tell my colleagues, that didn't stop with the past election. It is continuing. And we better be ready for it next year in the 2018 elections because Putin and the GRU have done all the groundwork. But that is nothing new because he had done it in elections before in Europe, and he has been doing it in elections right now, as we saw in France. It boomeranged on him, thank goodness. We will see an attempt on the upcoming German elections. The intelligence community has made it very clear--the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee is here--that Putin and the GRU are likely to do this again. That is why I say beware. They have laid the groundwork for next year's elections to try to interfere. Putin's influence campaign struck at the very core of our democracy and simply must not be permitted to do it again. Now is not the time to cozy up to Russia; rather, the United States must redouble our cyber defenses and our cyber offenses to deter him, to make him feel enough pain so that he won't do it again. The sanctions we will adopt today are tough. We need this, but we need more. Shortly, we are going to vote on the amendment Senator Gardner has explained. Interestingly, in all of this angst and conflict with Russia, we get along with Russia in the civilian and commercial space program. We have had peaceful cooperation in outer space ever since what I told my colleagues about; that is, since 1975, in the middle of the Cold War, the rendezvous and docking and living together in space for 9 days, a Soviet crew and an American crew. That has been the central theme of our space program since that time. The shining example of that now is the cooperation in the International Space Station, the football field-sized--it is 120 yards long; think one goalpost to another. People don't have any idea of how big it is on orbit. It circles the Earth every 90 minutes. We have been working in space together with many nations but especially our partner the Russians for over 16 years. So the peaceful cooperation in space has been good for business. It has been good for jobs in America. And we are working to grow our share of an over $300 billion global space economy. That is what this amendment is about. It is about fixing the question on the purchase of those RD-180 engines, the Russian engine that is used in the Atlas V, that is used not only for defense launches but for commercial launches and will be one of the two rockets launching American astronauts within a year and a half to and from the International Space Station. So this amendment is for the benefit of our economy, as well as the betterment of our civilization. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I will not be addressing the matter before us because I have just come from Orlando, where so many are feeling such deep, deep sorrow today. It has been 1 year since the tragic attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. The horror of that early morning still remains fresh for so many, especially those hundreds and hundreds of people who gathered at the Pulse nightclub this morning on the occasion of 1 year since the tragedy. There was quite a ceremony to remember the 49 innocent souls we lost. It was a massacre of huge proportions by a terrorist. What terrorists want to do is to divide people. They want to terrorize them. They inject fear. Interestingly, the terrorist, whose name was Omar Mateen--although he changed the lives of so many, he took the lives of 49 people. He changed a lot of other lives of those who were wounded, and, of course, the families of the 49 victims are still suffering. Interestingly, a terrorist wants to divide and inject fear, but this has had the opposite effect in Orlando. It has unified people. It has unified the community as I have never seen before. It has unified our State; indeed, it has unified our Nation. So quite the opposite effect has happened from what the terrorist intended--other than the slaughter of 49 innocent lives. Sadly, these are the 49, and they are all being honored today. It was a very moving ceremony. One of the causes that came out of the unification of Orlando is that--instead of creating a number of victims' funds--they put it all into one fund. Tens of millions of dollars have now gone into that fund, and it is helping to finance some of the victims who survived and their medical expenses, some of the families and the loved ones of those who were lost. Interestingly, being there, suddenly those moments came rushing back. I heard about it early on a Sunday morning when the news broke about the massacre the night before, which had occurred in the early morning hours. As I raced from my home to downtown Orlando on South Orange Avenue, I was able to get on the telephone the No. 3 at the FBI, and he gave me authorization to tell what they originally were anticipating had happened. Once I got to the scene, I was able to share that. Of course, they had a representative of the FBI on the scene. They had set up a command post. Mayor Buddy Dyer had taken charge. It was quite a scene. The tales of heroism are nonstop. The Orlando Police Department SWAT team, which went inside--before they could get the SWAT team there, members of the Police Department and the Sheriff's Department were there. One block away was a fire station that became a triage point. First responders got there and were trying to save people's lives. It was because of the massive number of casualties--49--that while the gunman Mateen was holed up in one of the bathrooms with hostages, some whom he had already shot had bled to death. While he was in the bathroom, police and paramedics were going in and pulling people out in those dark hours of the early morning. Of course, they were using whatever vehicle--if there was a pickup truck, they would put the victims on the truck. Fortunately, Orlando Regional Medical Center is only about six to eight blocks away, and, of course, it is a trauma center hospital. About a week later, I went to see the trauma surgeons. A resident who had been getting his residency there as a trauma surgeon was so moved by that experience that he put on his Facebook page what he was feeling and showed a picture of his bloody shoes that he didn't even recognize because he was so busy. It was not until the next day that he looked at those shoes. He put a picture of that on his Facebook page, and he wrote: To be a trauma surgeon and have waves of people coming in, I didn't know if they were Black or White; I didn't know if they were gay or straight. All I knew was I was doing everything I could to save lives. In some cases, they would make an initial prep; then they would get the victim, who was still living, up to the operating room where other surgeons were taking over. In some cases, they did not have time. They had to do the operation right there in the trauma center. Fortunately, the one trauma center in all of Central Florida is right there at Orlando Regional Medical Center. So a terrorist, perhaps aided and abetted by his wife--this is an open question, and that determination has not been made. A terrorist tried to divide us as a nation, just as they had before on 9/11 and at San Bernardino and in so many other cases where they had been foiled. There are others whom you can't label as terrorists, but they are in their own ways--all the killings that have occurred at schools. If you lump all of that together, they try to divide us. Yet Orlando came together, united. They have a catch phrase for it. It is called Orlando Strong. America is a nation of compassion, generosity, kindness, and respect. Those are precisely the qualities we saw from the people of Orlando when they came together a year ago, and this Senator saw that again in vivid detail this morning. We are forever grateful for the bravery and heroism of the police, the first responders, the sheriff's department, the FBI, the families, and victims helping other victims. We are forever grateful for the trauma surgeons and the operating room nurses and doctors, as they saved lives. We are forever grateful for the hospital and how it completely accommodated all of this mass confusion and how it forgave all of the medical expenses for those who had been victims, both the living and the dead. We are forever grateful for those who rushed to the scene that night in the face of uncertainty, in the pitch darkness of that nightclub, not knowing where the shooter was. We are forever grateful for the skills of the negotiators as they tried to talk the shooter down. Ultimately, when he came out with the automatic weapons blazing, they had to take him down. To all of those heroes, we say thank you. To all of those heroes who are also the families of these victims, we say thank you. To the victims' families and loved ones, we want to say that even though you lost those loved ones, they did not die in vain. Out of evil, what we have seen is good. Thanks to all of Orlando, not only for what you did that night, but thank you for what you do every day. A year later, I can report to the Senate that we are Orlando Strong. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON

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

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

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, it is fitting that today, June 6, the anniversary of D-day in Europe and the Battle of Midway in the Pacific, we are talking about our country's veterans in the debate that is going on in the Senate. The brave men and women who have served our country deserve the very best care our Nation can give them. That is why I rise today in support of the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, which I believe will pass by a voice vote in the Senate later this afternoon. This bipartisan bill will help improve the quality of care our veterans receive by reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs and making it easier for the Secretary of the VA to fire poorly performing employees. The legislation will allow the VA to hold its employees more accountable. It will also create new protections for whistleblowers-- those who report wrongdoing. And it would ensure that any employee who is terminated has an adequate opportunity to appeal their dismissal. For years, the VA has been plagued by reports of inefficiency and long wait times. I might say that often we find those reports are true, but that is completely separate from the quality of medical care that is given through the VA healthcare system. If you talk to almost any veteran, they are very pleased with the quality of that medical care. It is the administrative stuff getting in the way, and that is what there has been such an outrage about. Well, this VA bill is going to help the VA get rid of the bad actors while protecting the good ones. I want to make it clear that the vast majority of VA employees perform their work admirably in an often thankless environment. These dedicated public servants work hard to provide the day-to-day care our veterans deserve, and they should be protected. That is why, while I believe it is important to hold poorly performing employees accountable, I also believe that it is important to protect the rights of the employees who may have been wrongly terminated, especially at the lower levels, by giving them the opportunity to appeal a supervisor's decision to fire them. This bill we are going pass does that. It is supported by dozens of veterans service organizations, the Office of Special Counsel, the Secretary himself. So I urge our colleagues to join me and join so many of us in voting in favor of the bill. I would also say that on this very famous day, this anniversary, June 6, I have been to the beaches of Normandy, I have been to Omaha Beach. As a matter of fact, while there, it is impossible to walk into that cemetery on the cliff overlooking the beach--it is impossible to walk into that beautiful, beautiful American cemetery and not become very, very emotional, realizing what happened in 1944. I felt so strongly about this that at one point I wanted to put on my jogging shoes and run the 4 miles of that Omaha Beach. I wanted to reach back into time, having been there where so many sacrificed so much. Then, of course, the Battle of Midway, the time which turned the battle in the Pacific, where a young admiral showed his courage and his superiority in planning. As a result, that battle turned around the course of the war in the Pacific with Japan. What a day to remember, June 6. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask consent that LCDR Michael Chesnut, U.S. Navy, a defense legislative fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the duration of his fellowship.

Mr. NELSON

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

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I want to talk about a subject that is near and dear to the Presiding Officer's heart, as well as to this Senator, because we both have had the privilege of serving on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. Congress finds itself facing a year of deadlines, and the two most talked about are the debt ceiling and continued funding for the government. But if that were not enough, a very important deadline is looming that affects the safety of the traveling public. By the end of September, Congress must reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration or risk the shutdown of the agency's core safety mission. This Senator has the privilege of being the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, and I have the privilege of working with the chairman, Senator Thune, on a comprehensive and long-term FAA reauthorization bill. Unfortunately, what prevented the long-term bill from passing Congress last year is threatening to do the same again this year. This morning, the White House formally announced its intention to privatize the air traffic control function of the FAA, a move the White House claims will be self-sustaining. This so-called plan for ATC privatization includes an entity that would be run in large part by-- you guessed it--the major airlines, and that entity would receive, free of charge, government-owned FAA assets, and that entity would collect user fees to finance its operations. Well, this is how many of us interpret this proposal: Let's hand over to the airlines all the people and the equipment essential to the safe operation of our Nation's air traffic control system and trust them--the airlines--to manage our skies and the increasing air traffic. On top of that, here on the other side, they say: Well, let's finance the airlines' control of our skies through user fees paid for by the general aviation community. We know that several airlines in the past year have had to cancel thousands of flights and strand passengers at airports for hours because they couldn't effectively manage their IT systems. How can we trust airlines to govern an entity that manages our skies when they can't even manage their own basic IT systems? The FAA, our government's Federal Aviation Administration, safely and effectively manages the largest and most complex airspace in the world. Supporters of air traffic control privatization can cite other countries all they want that have privatized, but none of those privatized systems hold a candle to the complicated and densely populated air traffic system the FAA has accomplished. Rather than helping the FAA continue its progress toward modernizing our air traffic control system through NextGen--that is being implemented as we speak, and in 3 years, the process of handing off most of the air traffic to satellites instead of ground-based radar-- that is in just 3 years. On the other hand, the transition to a privatized air traffic control entity is only going to disrupt and delay the FAA's modernization efforts. One has to ask, if it isn't broken, what exactly is the administration trying to fix? We actually have real issues that need to be addressed in this FAA bill, such as continuing to safely integrate drones into our Nation's airspace, reforming the process for aircraft certification, and, very importantly, helping the FAA hire more air traffic controllers. We need to work to ensure that consumers, the flying public, have real protections in place that protect them when things go wrong. I wish the administration would focus on those issues, which received nearly unanimous support in the Senate last year, rather than try to up-end the world's safest air traffic control system. Let's not get sidetracked by proposals that have neither bipartisan consensus in Congress nor agreement among aviation stakeholders. Last year we came very close to enacting a bipartisan and comprehensive FAA bill. It passed the Senate 95 to 3, although it didn't have air traffic control privatization. I know we can do it again, and I look forward to working with Senator Thune and the members of the committee, who will have the first crack at this when we bring up the FAA bill. Hopefully we can go with a consensus bill that will give us an authorization for the FAA for many years--5 to 7 years into the future--so that we can have the certainty of the authorization with which to continue to build a safe airline and air safety record and implement the next generation of air traffic control. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.