Rob Portman

Mr. PORTMAN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am on the floor today to urge the U.S. Congress to do the right thing, and that is to allow a vote on this new agreement between Mexico and Canada and the United States. Unbelievably, this agreement was negotiated a year ago--they signed it at the end of November last year--and yet for a year now, Congress has refused to take it up. It has got to go to the House of Representatives first, and Speaker Pelosi and the House Democrats who control that body have not been willing to at least take it to the floor for a vote. The agreement is such a big improvement over the status quo. The status quo is the NAFTA agreement, which is 25 years old. The new agreement, which was negotiated a year ago, gives something that Canada wants, Mexico wants, and the United States wants. We want it because it is really important to us. It is particularly important to my home State of Ohio. I will tell you our No. 1 trading partner by far is Canada. We send about 40 percent of our exports to one country: Canada. So to have a better agreement with our biggest trading partner--and our second biggest trading partner, which is Mexico--is really important. Alongside Mexico, our trade with Canada accounts for about $28 billion a year. I am hearing a lot about it. I am hearing from Ohio farmers. They have had a tough time. A combination of bad weather, a combination of shrinking markets for them in China, and a combination of low commodity prices going in to the bad weather period last year has made it really tough for farmers. A lot of them are having a very difficult time making ends meet this year. They see the USMCA for what it is, an expansion of their market. They can sell more stuff to Canada and to Mexico, and that will help them improve their prices and help them to be able to get through this tough period, so for them, it is a light at the end of the tunnel. If we can get this new trade agreement passed, it means expanded markets for dairy products, for pork, for corn and soybeans, and other commodities. Get those prices up, and give our farmers a chance to compete on a level playing field. This is a good thing. That is why they are all for it. Businesses really want the USMCA passed. By the way, I hear mostly from small businesses about this because they increasingly have looked to markets overseas--particularly Canada and Mexico in the State of Ohio--and they are concerned that if we do not put this agreement forward, we are going to have a lot of uncertainty out there, and they are going to sell less stuff, rather than more stuff, to these countries. So a lot of small manufacturers in particular sell a lot from Ohio to Canada and to Mexico, and they tell me they want this agreement passed--and passed now--because it will really help them. My colleagues here in the Senate have to be hearing the same thing. When they go home, they have to be hearing from these same people because all around the country, when people look at this agreement, they say: Of course, this is better than the status quo for my business. Workers, farmers, service providers will all benefit. Taken together, our neighbors in Canada and Mexico now make up the biggest foreign market for U.S. goods anywhere, so these two countries together combined are the biggest market anywhere in the world. One- third of all American exports in 2019 have gone to Canada or Mexico, way ahead of all foreign markets. It is about 12 million jobs, so 12 million jobs nationally depend on trade with Canada and Mexico. I am a former trade lawyer myself--a recovering trade lawyer--and I do not practice it today, but I did at one time. I am also a former member of the trade committee in the House of Representatives, called the Ways and Means Committee, and today, I am a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which is the trade committee over here. In the interim, I was U.S. Trade Representative for President George W. Bush. I will tell you, from all the experiences that I have had in trade, I have learned one lesson, which is, yes, it is complicated, trade has a lot of nuances, it is politically difficult, but it is really important to our economy. Why? Because we have got about 5 percent of the world's population and about 25 percent of the economy here, so it is in our interest to access that other 95 percent of consumers outside of America in order to keep America as a prosperous country. That is what these trade agreements tend to do. The problem with the NAFTA agreement, the current one, is that it is 25 years old, and it needs to be updated. You know, it is one of the oldest trade agreements we have, and it is one that is fraught with problems right now, some of which are fixed in this USMCA. The USMCA, the successor to it, is a lot better. It creates a more balanced and more healthy trade relationship with Mexico and Canada for us. Again, for the workers and farmers and service providers that I represent and other people that this body represents, the level playing field is important because, while trade works if it is done properly and fairly, it does not work well when you have big trade deficits, when other countries cheat, when they do not play by the rules. Everything in this agreement helps to level that playing field. As an example, right now, our trade agreement with Canada and Mexico does not have a lot of things you would expect in a modern agreement, like provisions relating to the digital economy. So much of our economy now operates on the Internet, yet there is nothing in the NAFTA agreement that protects data from tariffs, for example. Another one would be labor and environmental standards which are weak and unenforceable under the current NAFTA. All of our new trade agreements have labor and environmental agreements, and they are enforceable. Well, guess what, USMCA does too. It includes a lot of the modern provisions that we have in our more recent trade agreements. I have got a handy chart here to talk about some of the specific changes between USMCA and NAFTA. First, the USMCA means more jobs. The independent International Trade Commission said it will add 176,000 new jobs. New jobs? USMCA, yes; NAFTA, no. By the way, from my home State of Ohio, which is a big auto State, thousands of those jobs are going to be created in the auto industry, which is a great opportunity for us in America to help to bolster our manufacturing--176,000 new jobs is significant, 20,000 in the auto industry. In fact, it is going to grow our economy by double the gross domestic product of that which was projected in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. That was the agreement that was done with countries in the Pacific region, Asia, and Latin America. It is an agreement that many Democrats have praised and a few years back criticized the administration for not going into the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But as much as they thought that the Trans-Pacific Partnership was going to be good for our economy, this is even better for our economy. Again, it more than doubles the GDP growth, the economic growth, as compared to the Trans- Pacific Partnership. Second, the agreement does level the playing field we were talking about. It has enforceable labor and environmental standards--USMCA, yes; NAFTA, no--so another big difference. By the way, these standards are one reason why we have lost so many jobs to Mexico over the years. Third, the USMCA, like I said, it has new rules for the Internet economy. Those new rules of the road are really important, particularly to small businesses in Ohio and around the country that rely on Internet sales for their businesses. Unlike all our modern trade agreements, right now, there is no chapter in NAFTA--none at all--as it relates to the digital economy. Fortunately for Ohio online businesses, the USMCA has these protections. As an example, small businesses that rely on access to Canada and Mexico are going to have an easing of their customs burden for small values of their products, so both countries have agreed to raise their cap. I frankly wish they had agreed to raise it even more. But this is important both for small businesses that are in the Internet economy to save some money from customs and tariffs, but also it simplifies their business, which is fair because the United States has a higher cap. The USMCA also prohibits requirements that data be localized in Mexico and Canada. This is a big concern around the world. The country says: Okay, you can do it, but you have to localize your data here. In other words, you have to have your servers and your data here in our country. That is not required now. Under USMCA, that can be huge for our small businesses, and USMCA helps. If I may, it does prohibit tariffs on data, which NAFTA does not do. So these are key provisions to keep the modern economy moving. And voting against USMCA--or not allowing it to come up, which is what is happening right now--really means that you believe these burdens and uncertainties should continue for our small businesses. Fourth, USMCA goes further than any agreement we have toward leveling the playing field on steel. Steel production in this country is an incredibly important manufacturing sector. In Ohio, we are big steel producers. We are proud of that. It is one of the core industries we need to keep in this country. USMCA requires that 70 percent of the steel in vehicles that are produced under NAFTA in North America has to be steel from North America--so USMCA, 70 percent requirement; NAFTA, nothing, nothing. Fifth, there is also an unprecedented requirement in the USMCA that is not in any other agreement in the world and that helps to level the playing field considerably by saying that between 40 and 45 percent of vehicles have to be made in NAFTA countries by workers earning at least $16 an hour. We have heard a lot about, well, it is not fair in our dealings with Mexico in particular because they have lower wage rates. Well, this is being addressed very directly in a way that it has never been addressed in any previous agreement. Democrats have been talking about this for years. They should hail this as a great breakthrough and allow the NAFTA agreement to end and the USMCA to take its place because this is better. Voting for USMCA will also help to level the playing field on labor costs between the United States and Mexico because this new agreement requires that USMCA-compliant autos and auto parts have a higher percentage of U.S. and American content. Under the NAFTA agreement, that requirement for content is 62.5 percent. So if you want a car within the NAFTA agreement that gets the advantages of NAFTA and that gets to come into the United States at a lower tariff from Canada or Mexico, 62.5 percent of it has to be from NAFTA countries. Under USMCA, we raised that 62.5 percent up to 75 percent. This means more autos and more auto parts are going to be made here in the United States and you have fewer imports and fewer jobs in other countries, like China or Japan or Germany. So this is good for us. By the way, that 75 percent is the highest content requirement of any trade agreement we have. That is in USMCA. All of these things are going to ensure that we have more manufacturing jobs in Ohio and across the country. Frankly, the Trump administration, and particularly U.S. Trade Representative Bob Lighthizer, has listened to Democrats' concerns-- listened very carefully--and then incorporated these concerns into this agreement. Some of the concerns have also been raised by Republicans over the years, but, frankly, when I was U.S. Trade Representative, it was Democrats who mostly raised these concerns about the labor standards being enforceable and ensuring that you had something like the minimum wage that is now in this agreement. These are provisions that Democrats have demanded for years. Yet now we can't get a vote. They will not even let it be voted on. How does that make sense? How do you explain it? I don't believe any Democrat thinks the status quo, NAFTA, is better than the USMCA. If they do, I would challenge them to explain to the American people why they think the status quo, NAFTA, is better than USMCA. Blocking this trade agreement hurts so many sectors of our economy, as I have talked about. It hurts our auto industry and the hard-working men and women who are on the assembly lines. It hurts our farmers. They aren't going to be able to gain new access to markets in Canada and Mexico. That is why nearly 1,000 farm groups from our country have now come out strongly to support USMCA. Blocking USMCA means blocking our farmers out of these markets. With all of these new requirements and all of these new improvements, it should be clear to everyone that this is not an effort to rebrand NAFTA. This is new. It is different. It is not your father's Oldsmobile. They are big and meaningful changes that will benefit all of us. In short, USMCA is good for jobs. It is good for small businesses. It is good for our farmers. It is good for workers, and it is good for the economy. This is a rare opportunity, my colleagues, to do something that is good for America and to do it in a bipartisan way. It can have such a positive impact at a time when our country needs to have us come together and do something that is good for everybody. To Speaker Pelosi and the House Democrats: The ball is in your court. We realize that. Under the rules up here in Congress as to how you deal with trade agreements, this has to start in the House of Representatives. If it were to come to the floor here in the Senate, I believe it would pass and pass with a good bipartisan margin because it just makes so much sense. But it has to go through the House first. If that agreement did come to the House floor, I believe logic would prevail, and it would pass there, as well, because I believe Members would say: Here is my choice, and it is a binary choice: Do I go with the status quo, NAFTA, that I have been complaining about for years, or do I go with the new and improved USMCA? I think that is a pretty easy vote for a lot of Members who look at this objectively and with the interests of their constituents in mind. A vote for USMCA, quite simply, is a vote for improved market access, more U.S. manufacturing, and a more level playing field for American workers, farmers, and service providers. A vote against USMCA and blocking it from coming to the floor is a vote to keep NAFTA. It is as simple as that. A vote against USMCA is a vote for the status quo, which is NAFTA. Supporting NAFTA today means supporting unenforceable labor and environmental standards, nonexistent digital economy provisions, and outdated rules of origin provisions that allow more automobiles and auto parts to be manufactured overseas rather than in America. We have a chance to fix all of this by passing USMCA. I am confident that this new agreement will pass if we can get it up for a vote because the American people will demand it. There is plenty of time for politics between now and the 2020 election. Right now, let's focus on what is best for the American people. Let's work together and put them first, and, by doing so, let's pass USMCA. I yield back my time.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, we have too many people on the floor here to pay tribute to Johnny Isakson, and we all have to go quick. I will be back again, talking about my buddy from Georgia. Let me make a couple of points. One is--and this is a little straight talk because I heard so many great things about him--we ought to know something else about him, which is, yes, he is a gentleman; yes, he is a nice guy; but he has the velvet hammer, as I have said. That velvet hammer has driven a lot of nails in around here and ended up with a lot of great bipartisan legislation. It is not just because he is a nice guy. It is because he is intense, and he is committed and determined for the people of Georgia as an independent voice for his constituents and for the great country that he loves so much. Let me give you one example. We are working on energy efficiency legislation right now. I work with Johnny on a number of different legislative projects. In this particular case, he is the author of something called the SAVE Act. The SAVE Act makes good sense policywise. It helps people reduce their energy costs and saves them money on mortgages, but it is not supported by everybody around here. There are some powerful groups against it. Once again, you will see in the Portman-Shaheen energy efficiency package, the SAVE Act is in there, and it is in there for one reason and one reason only, and that is because of the persistence of Johnny Isakson, a real estate guy who gets it. To my friend, I have heard so many great things about you over the last several hours. I agree with just about all of them--almost. To Dianne, who is by far the better half here and such a dear friend of Jane's and mine, we love you. We are going to miss you. We will stay in touch, but we are going to watch you in your retirement as that velvet hammer continues to nail things that are good for your beloved Georgia and for the United States of America. Thank you, Johnny.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I would like to talk about a couple of topics. First, I thank my colleagues on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee for very recently approving legislation to rename the NASA Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, OH, after Ohio's own and a true American hero--the late Neil Armstrong. I now, of course, urge that this legislation be taken up by the full Senate and that we get it passed. There is an identical bill in the House. We hope to join both bills so that it may be sent to the President for his signature very soon. The NASA Plum Brook Station is a state-of-the-art testing facility. It is near Sandusky, OH, and is a terrific facility that is doing a lot of the testing right now for both NASA and some private sector companies. It is part of the NASA Glenn complex that is headquartered in Cleveland, OH. It is an impressive operation for a lot of reasons, but the one that is most exciting right now is their work on the Artemis Project. This is, of course, NASA's plan to put astronauts back on the Moon by 2024, including having the first woman go to the Moon. This mission will also lay the groundwork for future expeditions to the next great leap in spaceflight--that, of course, being a manned mission to Mars. It is exciting stuff. At Plum Brook, they are already testing critical components of the rocket engines that are scheduled to carry Artemis astronauts into space starting next year. Very soon, they are going to be testing the spacecraft itself. We hope it will arrive at Plum Brook within the next few weeks where it will undergo about 4 months of testing. This past summer, I and my colleague, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, introduced this legislation to rename the facility after Neil Armstrong, and we did so on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, from which, of course, Neil Armstrong became world famous for being the first person to walk on the surface of the Moon. Ultimately, Neil Armstrong was a test pilot. We think of him as an astronaut. Some know that he was also a fighter pilot and that he was a veteran of the Korean conflict. He was just an amazing individual-- humble, smart. He was a very patriotic individual. How appropriate and perfect that as a test pilot, which he was during his whole post- fighter pilot career until his time as an astronaut, Plum Brook be named after him. By the way, Neil's family agrees with that, as does NASA, and as do others we have talked to. So we are hoping that this will be a fitting way to honor a man who, for all of his accomplishments, saw himself, first and foremost, as a patriot who pushed the boundaries of flight. Therefore, the test facility is very dear to them. I talked to him about this test facility. After one of my visits there, I went to see him at his home and told him about the progress they were making. At that time, they were trying to revamp some of the facilities there. He was really excited about it. He was a very modest man and did not want things named after him. He viewed his service to his country as the reward. That is all he ever wanted in life. That makes it all the more fitting that we, in fact, do name this after him. It is a great model for young people and, certainly, for those who are interested in avionics and spacecraft and in being astronauts. His example is one we should all look up to. When this comes to the Senate floor for a vote, I hope all of my colleagues will support it, and I hope that it will happen very soon. Thousand Talents Plan Mr. President, there was a very troubling report that was issued this week by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. This is a tough subject. In this report, it details for the very first time how taxpayers' dollars have been used, really, over the past 20 years to fund scientific research that has then been misappropriated by one of our global competitors--China--to fuel its own economy and its own military growth. What do I mean by that? What happened? Every year, Federal grant-making agencies, like the National Institutes of Health--the NIH--or the Department of Energy's National Labs or the National Science Foundation, give out taxpayers' dollars for research--actually, about $150 billion a year. This is a good thing for us as a country. It leads to new breakthroughs in science and technology, healthcare, weapons systems, and so on. Through research grants, this money goes primarily to universities and to other research institutions across the United States. This investment has been very helpful in making the United States the world leader in scientific innovation. Again, it has resulted in some amazing breakthroughs. Our U.S. research is built on some principles here in this country. One is transparency. Another is collaboration. Others are integrity, peer review, and a merit-based system. In fact, the open and collaborative nature of the research that is done here in the United States is one of the reasons we attract some of the best and brightest scientists and researchers from all around the world. That is a good thing. Yet, without proper protections, this research is vulnerable to theft by other countries, and that is exactly what has happened. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, along with Ranking Member Tom Carper, conducted an 8-month investigation into how American taxpayer-funded research has been taken by China-- effectively stolen--to assist its own economy and its own military. China has been very open about its goals to surpass the United States as the world leader in science and technology by the middle of this century. An important part of this effort is what China calls its talent recruitment programs. Through talent recruitment programs, China has strategically and systematically acquired knowledge and intellectual property from researchers and scientists in the United States in both the public and private sectors. In the course of our investigation, the FBI shared with us that China plans to spend more than $2 trillion between 2008 and 2020 toward improving its human capital, which includes recruiting and developing researchers and scientists. The Thousand Talents Plan, which was the focus of our investigation, is now in its 11th year of operation, and it is probably China's most prominent talent recruitment program. However, there are about 200 or more other talent recruitment programs as well. Launched in 2008, China designed the Thousand Talents Plan to recruit 2,000 high-quality, overseas experts and to get their knowledge and their expertise and their research. By 2017, China had exceeded that initial goal by recruiting more than 7,000 of what they call ``high-end professionals,'' including many from American research institutions. Some of the U.S.-based researchers, of course, also receive taxpayer- funded Federal grant money we talked about earlier to do the same research right here in the United States. In exchange for spending part of every year working in Chinese institutions, the Thousand Talents Plan recruits are rewarded with generous salaries and research budgets, sometimes even exceeding their pay at the American research institutions where, in practice, they are working. These researchers also often get access to what is called a shadow lab in science. In other words, they provide them not just with funding, but they also say: We will provide you lab space in China. At our hearing yesterday, the Department of Energy witness testified that China offered some of his researchers hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars to join a talent recruitment program. For a researcher here, the Thousand Talents Plan might seem like a good opportunity, but it certainly is not a good opportunity for the United States, especially because embedded in the language of some of these contracts these researchers sign are very troubling provisions that prevent these recruits from disclosing their participation in the Thousand Talents Plan even though disclosing foreign payments is required by U.S. regulations. Not only is this dishonest, but it is also a clear violation of the American regulations that require researchers who apply for these grants we are talking about--this $150 billion of taxpayer money--to disclose any funding they are receiving from a foreign source. In effect, what is happening with the Thousand Talents Plan is that it is incentivizing these program members to lie on grant applications to U.S. grant-funding agencies to avoid disclosing their funding from Chinese institutions. What is worse, in many of these contracts, researchers are often required to transfer to China the technological breakthroughs--the research--that are being developed in American labs with American grant money. There are a lot of examples we found in our 8-month study. Let me talk about a couple quickly. In one, we learned that a Thousand Talents Plan recruit at the Department of Energy's National Labs used the intellectual property created during his work in a National Lab to file for a U.S. patent under the name of a Chinese company, effectively stealing the federally funded research and claiming it for China. Another Thousand Talents Plan member illegally downloaded more than 30,000 files from a National Lab--this is connected with Department of Energy funding--without authorization right before returning to China. Once China has it, some of this research could be used to threaten the national security of the United States. As an example, the State Department witness testified at our hearing yesterday that ``the Chinese Communist Party has declared the Chinese university system to be on the front line of military-civilian fusion efforts for technological acquisition for weapons research and the expansion of key scientific and engineering talent to drive Chinese innovation.'' That is pretty obvious. That is what all of our witnesses, in essence, said. This is not a new problem. We found out through our investigation that the Federal Government should have known about this issue for almost two decades but has yet to do anything substantial to stop it. It is unacceptable that we have allowed this to go on as long as we have. These talent programs are a win-win for China and a lose-lose for the United States. First, the Chinese Government and their research entities are getting research that is paid for by us. Second, it is not used by us. That research is used in China to improve their own economic and military status. So why is it taking so long for us to do anything about this problem? I think there are a couple of reasons. First, a lot of the U.S. research community didn't fully understand the Thousand Talents Plan and the threat it poses. Even though this one program is more than a decade old at this point, it wasn't until last year that the FBI began organizing a unified Federal response to the threat it has been posing to our universities and research institutions. We have been slow to focus on this issue, and therefore it has continued. I appreciated the FBI's candor at the hearing yesterday, by the way, when the FBI Assistant Director testified that he wished the FBI had ``taken more rapid and comprehensive action in the past.'' I do too. Second, I think one reason this hasn't been stopped is that the coordination between the grant-making agencies is almost as bad as the coordination with the Federal law enforcement folks, meaning that they aren't talking to each other about problems they have had, about particular instances regarding some of the research that has been taken. As I said, we are talking about more than $150 billion of taxpayer money every year that goes to these agencies, but once these funds are in the agencies' hands, we found no evidence of a unified and coordinated tracking and monitoring process to ensure that the money did not go toward the Thousand Talents Plan participants or other programs. The National Science Foundation, for instance, doesn't seem to have anyone who handles grant oversight in this regard. These research entities need to share information on these issues. But other organizations are at fault too. We found that the State Department is on the frontlines due to its responsibilities to vet visa applications for visiting students and scholars, but it very rarely denies visas under that process. Quite frankly, the research community here in the United States bears some responsibility too. There has been a collective failure by our universities and our research institutions to vet researchers for these conflicts of interest with other countries. Again, this is made worse by the fact that many of these researchers are receiving taxpayer funds to conduct their research here. It is going to take a comprehensive strategy across the Federal Government to better protect our research against this threat. Our report makes a number of recommendations that, combined, will go a long way toward strengthening the security of our research networks, while preserving the shared culture of transparency and fairness. Of course we want to continue to be the top place in the world for research, and that means that we have to be able to share and have transparency and openness, but it also means that we need to do a much better job of protecting this information from being misused. We, of course, need to do better at getting the word out to universities, research institutions, and the general public about this threat being posed by the Thousand Talents Plan and other foreign talent recruitment plans. This means better coordination between law enforcement, the intelligence community, and grant-making agencies so that the government is on the same page on this threat. We also need to change the research culture to preserve its openness and innovative spirit while making sure foreign researchers are properly vetted by the sponsoring organizations. NIH, NSF, and other grant-making institutions need to standardize how they find conflicts of interest in grant applications. They don't do that now. Members of the research community need to develop best practices for American researchers to follow so that they can determine whether receiving funds from a foreign country would compromise our principles of research integrity and threaten our national security. Finally, we need to help the State Department do a better job in its visa vetting process for foreign researchers. We need to do a better job of determining potential conflicts of interest before individuals who may not have the best interests of the United States at heart start working at our research institutions and using our taxpayer dollars. In the coming months, I will introduce bipartisan legislation that will help address some of these challenges. I look forward to working with Senator Carper, the ranking member on the subcommittee, and other colleagues to get those initiatives to the President's desk. Let me conclude by saying that we don't want to exclude China from contributing to scientific innovation--not at all. Advancements in the fields of robotics, medicine, energy, weapons systems, and more are things that are very important, and many of these can benefit the entire globe. But we want to have fair and transparent processes in place as we conduct this research, and our taxpayers don't want to be the ones to pick up the tab as China misappropriates our research to build up its own economy and a military designed to rival ours. My hope is that this report is the start of a productive dialogue with China and here in Congress on how we can better build a more secure research system that continues to reward those who come to our shores to discover new breakthroughs in science, while keeping China and other nation state competitors from taking that research for their own purposes. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, Monday was Veterans Day, and it gave us all the opportunity to come together as Republicans and Democrats and Independents alike to express our immense gratitude to our veterans for putting on the uniform of the United States on behalf of our great country and on behalf of all of us. I just listened to my colleague from Colorado talk about our cherished veterans and their service. He is a champion for our veterans. He is absolutely right--our veterans need to be at the front of the line for healthcare and getting access to the best care possible. That hasn't always been the case. We have made some improvements in the last few years, and those are now being implemented. They are not perfect, but thankfully it is much better. I heard that over Veterans Day. He also talked about our families. The families of veterans also make sacrifices, and sometimes we forget that. In the last several years, as the up-tempo has been a little higher and families have had to sacrifice even more, we are particularly grateful for those families. The Presiding Officer today is one of our veterans in the Chamber. As a marine, he has served our country with distinction, and we appreciate him and all the other veterans here in the Senate. In my home State of Ohio, we have 850,000 veterans, roughly. It makes us a State that is particularly proud. We are a State that has produced some of the great American fighting men and women heroes, from Ulysses S. Grant to Neil Armstrong. When I go to veterans' events, I am just inspired and overwhelmed by the families and the veterans I get to meet. On Veterans Day, I was in Blue Ash, OH, at a memorial that has been set aside for our veterans. It was a wonderful day in Blue Ash, but every day of the year this memorial park is there, and it is beautiful. It commemorates veterans from every single war. There are 11 soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who are representing each of the conflicts America has been engaged in, all the way from the American Revolution to the heroes of the Global War on Terror. Behind a description of each of those conflicts is a separate statue of a fighting man or woman. Most importantly to me, on Monday, on the other side of those statues, were the veterans. They were there from every conflict--from World War II and right up to those soldiers who have recently come back from Afghanistan. Today, as we are here on the floor talking about our great veterans, there are soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen on Active Duty in places all around the world, including in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. After this event in Blue Ash, OH, I then went to Columbus, OH, and had the opportunity to go to the National Veterans Memorial and Museum. This is a new, spectacular museum outside of Columbus, OH. It is something we are very proud of in Ohio. I took the lead in the Senate to try to be sure that we had the national designation. We have that now. It is the National Veterans Memorial and Museum. It was funded almost entirely with private sector dollars. Over $75 million was raised just from the private sector in the Columbus-Central Ohio area. President Trump signed the legislation into law last year to designate it as the national memorial. It is a beautiful way to pay tribute to our veterans, mostly by stories. You walk in, and there are story boards about different veterans' experiences. The facility itself is inspiring--one of the finest architectural designs, we are told, in the country the year it was built. When I went around and thanked veterans at this memorial, I heard the same thing I heard in Blue Ash and that I hear every time I thank a veteran, which is more or less this: Thank you for your service. The response being: I was just doing my job. I was just doing my duty. Duty. I am the son of a World War II veteran and the grandson of a World War I veteran. ``Duty'' is a word I heard a lot growing up and ``service'' and ``honor.'' For our country today, those words are very important to remember. Our veterans have played a key role in ensuring we have the freedoms we too often take for granted, but also there is a culture around veterans that we need to hear more and more of today, and we need to be sure more of our young people are hearing, which is this notion that service beyond self is important; that duty, honor, and sacrifice are part of the fundamental values of our country. The fact that we have had such support for our veterans, to me, ought also to be translated into support for those who are on Active Duty, because when I talk to our veterans about their concerns--yes, they talk about healthcare or disability and other issues that my office helps veterans with every day, and we are proud to do that--what they also tell me is that they want to be sure we are taking care of the troops. They want to be sure we are honoring our veterans by ensuring that the men and women in uniform today, who are out on the frontlines for all of us, are getting the support they need from the U.S. Congress. Unfortunately, we are letting them down right now, whether it is with the National Defense Authorization Act--which is still in conference, which normally is a bipartisan bill that gets done quickly and that establishes the framework for how we provide readiness and how we provide the right weapons, being sure our soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors have the very best--but, secondly, we are not even providing the funding bill this year. We have tried. We have brought it to the floor of the Senate, and we have asked for a vote on it. We have not been able to get that vote. So right now we are operating on what is called a continuing resolution, which is not good for the military. I was at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station last week, which is a reserve unit in Ohio that provides airlift capability and a spray mission for our military. They have about 1,500 airmen support people and pilots there. They are very worried about the continuing resolution and its impact. They can't plan for training exercises. They can't plan for upgrades in their equipment to keep the cutting-edge technology they want to have for the safety of their pilots and the crews. I also heard, of course, a lot about the possibility of a government shutdown and how devastating that would be for our military. Wright- Patterson Air Force Base is in Ohio. That is their top concern. Unfortunately, I will tell you that although our highest priority here in the Senate ought to be ensuring that at a minimum our troops have what they need, we haven't done that this year. I would urge my colleagues on both sides: Lets's figure out how to do what we typically do here, which is, if we can't agree on everything in the spending bills, let's at least agree on providing this funding for our troops. By the way, it is particularly important this year because in that funding is a pay raise for the troops that they need badly. It is very important for Ohio. I said earlier that we are one of those States that is proud of all the veterans who live there and all of the people from Ohio who have stood up and served their country, but we are also proud of our military facilities. Defense spending now accounts for 66,000 direct jobs in Ohio, more than $4 billion in salaries, and more than $14 billion of positive economic impact spread out over our 88 counties in Ohio. We have some great facilities. I mentioned Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the Youngstown Air Reserve Station. We also have the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center in Lima, OH, which is the place where we make our tanks. During the Obama administration, that facility was nearly shut down. A bunch of us led the fight, and I led the fight here in the Senate to keep it open. Thank goodness we did. Today, we need it. We need to be producing these tanks. We need to push back against the threats that we see. Our Army wants these vehicles--armored vehicles--including Strykers and tanks. We are very proud of that facility in Ohio. We want to be sure that we have the funding for it so we can move forward. In this appropriations bill there is funding for new tanks and new Stryker vehicles. At the spray facility I talked about at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station, they need new airplanes. They need to have upgrades. Right now they need to be sure that the funding we have in this appropriations bill goes through because it actually enables them to construct a gate for the facility that is safe. The homeland security folks have told them that their current gate does not protect the base properly. So we have funding in this legislation to be able to do that. I remain concerned that we are not coming together, as we do for our veterans, for our Active Duty. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have repeatedly blocked these procedural motions to move the bill forward, but their disagreements seem to be more with broader issues--how we are going to fund other issues, maybe including the wall on the southwest border-- from what they say. Let's deal with that bill separately, but let's not take it out on our troops. Let's not make our troops a pawn in these political fights. The funding bill we have was drafted on a bipartisan basis. It also is bicameral, in the sense that the House bill for Defense appropriations this year is very similar to the Senate bill. The United States and the defense framework we have built over the years with our allies is under siege in places like Iran, China, North Korea, Turkey, and Russia. While we fight over funding our defense this year, their arsenals--those countries' arsenals--continue to grow. I have heard from every branch of the military on this. Again, they all say the same thing: Failing to pass this funding agreement and defaulting to a continuing resolution--God forbid we go to a government shutdown, but even a continuing resolution where the funding wouldn't increase--negatively affects their ability to carry out their missions. For the Army, by the way, that means delaying procurement of critical equipment, like their Next Generation Combat Vehicle and land-based hypersonic missiles. But it also means more than 4,000 military family and single-soldier dwellings would not be awarded to servicemembers, and that nearly 300 military housing units in desperate need of repair will not get the upkeep they need. For the Navy, they tell me failing to pass the appropriations bill will mean delaying the start of 3 dozen new critical military construction projects, and it creates a nearly $2 billion shortfall for research and development, among other things. By the way, that includes holding research into artificial intelligence development, or AI development, which is critical right now. China is making great strides in that area. We have to be sure we are more than keeping up. For the Air Force, they tell me this funding is necessary to field the new F-15EX fighter plane, to maintain and improve, of course, the F-35 fleet, and to help recruit and train new pilots to operate these state-of-the-art aircraft. In Ohio, a CR would negatively impact our operations at Wright- Patterson and the critical work we do for our Nation at NASIC, which is a counterintelligence operation, among other things. Again, failing to pass the agreement will also keep us from moving forward with the across-the-board 3.1-percent pay increase for our troops, which is key to ensuring they are fairly compensated for their hard work and the sacrifices we have talked about today. It would be the largest pay raise in a decade, and they shouldn't be prevented from getting it because of our political differences here on other issues. Anyone who has read the Constitution will tell you that the very first stated purpose of the Federal Government is to ``provide for the common defense.'' That is our fundamental responsibility here. If we can't put aside these partisan disagreements and reach an agreement to fund our Armed Forces, we are failing to carry out those duties. I hope it doesn't come to that. I hope politics can be put aside, and we can agree soon to give our men and women in uniform the comprehensive support they need, because when you meet veterans, as I did on Veterans Day across our State, you can't help but wonder where they would be if they didn't have the funding they needed when they were out there putting their lives on the line for all of us. Again, to honor our veterans, we also have to honor our Active Duty. It is critical to our men and women in uniform, and it is critical to our national security. I yield back.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I thank my colleague. I agree with him. As both my colleagues here know and as my friends across the aisle know, I strongly support the underlying legislation. I think the legislation is needed right now. Unbelievably, if you are in a small business, less than 50 percent of the workers have access to retirement plans. Two-thirds of Americans think they will be in trouble in retirement because they will not have enough money to take care of their retirements. Do you know what? They are right to be worried, for we have a huge problem in this country, and that is what the underlying bill addresses. It helps small businesses in their ability to offer plans, which is where most of the problem is in terms of there being a lack of retirement savings and the peace of mind in retirement that all of our constituents want. The problem is that the legislation that came over from the House was never considered here on the Senate floor. In fact, if you go back to 2016, when it was last considered, it was by the Committee on Finance. So I think it is reasonable to say, yes, this underlying bill is good, and I strongly support it, but let's have a little debate here on the floor. We shouldn't be afraid of that. Let me make a point. I support what my colleague from Pennsylvania talked about in terms of the qualified improvement property, and I support what my colleague from Texas said in terms of the 529 plans. Yet we are not asking our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to support these amendments. I don't have an amendment in the mix, and we are not asking them to support any of these amendments. All we are asking is for them to allow for a process by which we can have a vote on their amendments, whatever they are, that relate to retirement and to tax policy--because this is a vehicle through which we can talk about tax policy--and to vote on our provisions that my colleague from Pennsylvania has laid out. Then let's see what happens. That is how we are supposed to operate around here. This is supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body, and sometimes we find ourselves so tied up in knots that we can't deliberate. We are just asking for deliberation. My hope is that this will work today--that we will actually open up this process and allow for a vote on the SECURE Act, which is so important. It came out of the House with a vote of 417 to 3. What an incredibly bipartisan vote that was. Let's have a little discussion on the floor about retirement policy and about tax policy. Let's vote and let the chips fall where they may. Then let's actually send a bill to the President that will help the people whom we all represent.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to talk about something positive that is happening in Ohio with the help of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps is involved with some civic-minded community volunteers in something that will help preserve our history in Ohio. It wouldn't be happening but for the vision of the head of the Army Corps, Mr. R.D. James, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works. It is a good-news project regarding the preservation of an important piece of the history of the Northwest Territory and my home State of Ohio. It is called the Barker House. It is a historic home that dates back almost 200 years. It was built by the owner's father, who was a Revolutionary War officer and a famous early settler and pioneer architect in Ohio. A number of historic homes of his were built along the Ohio River, and this is one of them that is still left standing. Colonel Joseph Barker, Sr., was his name, and he is one of our most famous early pioneers in Ohio. The House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 for its historic significance. In fact, Joseph Barker, Sr., and the houses he built play an important role in a new, award-winning book by the great historian David McCullough, ``The Pioneers,'' and it tells the story of the Northwest Territory and the founding of Ohio in the wake of the Revolutionary War. In ``The Pioneers'' book, Colonel Barker's stately homes were an anomaly out on the frontier. His own home was described as ``a large, brick house in the Federal style, with a handsome front door, flanked by recessed side windows and an elliptical fanlight overhead. . . . [O]nce completed the whole house was painted white, and soon became, as intended, a `distinguished seat of hospitality.''' This also describes the historic Barker House we are trying to preserve. These houses brought a level of architectural refinement that stood in sharp contrast to the log cabins on the rugged landscape where these pioneers were settling. The Barker House is currently owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It is owned by them because it sits right next to the Willow Island Locks and Dam on the Ohio River. The house was used as office space by the Corps back in the 1960s, and today, the house is still standing. It is vacant, in bad shape, and unsafe to enter, but it is savable. I visited this historic Barker House back in September of 2018. I learned then that the Corps was proposing to demolish the Barker House. They then considered a proposal to move it brick by brick to a new location off of Army Corps' land. Neither made sense. That is when I met Jack Haessly, who led a group--along with Wesley Clarke, Bill Reynolds, Bob Ferguson, and others--a local Barker House friends group who said they would be willing to raise the money to restore this home on its historic site overlooking the Ohio River. They wanted to make sure it would be accessible to visitors there and made into a museum. I immediately called the Secretary, Mr. R.D. James of the Army Corps, and asked if he would reconsider the decision to demolish this historic home. After hearing the story of the house and the details of the group's plan to preserve it and after getting an assessment from the Army Corps, Mr. James agreed to reverse the Corps' decision and to work with us on preserving the home. He deserves great credit for that. Congressman Bill Johnson, who represents the area, has also been an excellent partner in pursuing these sensible solutions. Right now, we are working on developing legislation that I hope to introduce soon to convey the house and the surrounding land to the friends group. We have made a lot of progress so far. Just last week, the Corps completed drawings of the specific parcel proposed to be conveyed, which also includes the creation of an access road so that the house can be visited and enjoyed by the public. We appreciate the Ohio Department of Transportation and Director Jack Marchbanks for working with us on the road access. The road access issue was critical, and ODOT was very helpful. The Ohio State Historic Preservation Office has also jumped in and played a constructive role. This is an example of a true public-private partnership, made possible by Secretary James. I want to thank him, the Army Corps, his team, the Barker House friends group, the Ohio Historic Preservation Office, and ODOT. All of them are partnering with us to ensure that this historic structure remains standing so it can tell the story of our rich history for generations to come.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleague from Iowa for her comments and also for her organizing this event this afternoon. This is an opportunity for us to talk not only about some of the things we have done in the U.S. Congress that are positive in terms of addressing the largest drug crisis we have ever faced in our country but also about what we need to do going forward and how we need to keep our eye on the ball to be sure that we don't see more addiction coming, that we don't see some of these new dangers--like crystal meth and other drugs--coming up. Again, I thank my colleague from Iowa. Iowa has been hard-hit; so has Ohio. In fact, in 2017, our opioid overdose rate was about three times the national average. We have, unfortunately, been in the top five in terms of overdose deaths for most of the last 10 years. We have had nearly a dozen Ohioans dying from these dangerous drugs every single day. This has now surpassed car accidents as the No. 1 cause of death in my home State of Ohio. What has happened is, since 2017, with a lot of work from a lot of people on the ground, with some help from Washington--about $4 billion in new funding that this body has approved and taken the lead on--we have begun to make progress. Last year, in 2018, Ohio had a 22-percent reduction in overdose deaths. This leads the country in reductions, and we are proud of that because of the lives that have been saved. But we also realize that we came from such a high mark, high watermark, that it is important for us to keep the pressure on to continue to make progress. What has happened in Ohio is what is happening around the country, which is the SUPPORT Act, which was signed into law by the President just about 1 year ago, and other legislation, like the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act--the CARA legislation--and also the State Opioid Response grants, have started to work. I see the Senator from Missouri is on the floor today. What they have done in the Appropriations Committee to fund these projects is making a huge difference back home. I have spent a lot of my time working with the community organizations, talking to addicts and recovering addicts. I have talked to a couple thousand in the last couple of years alone. I will tell you, it is working. What is working are more innovative programs back home to close some of these gaps. Recently, I had the opportunity to go out with the RREACT team in Columbus, OH. They are being funded with a grant of about $800,000 from the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, the CARA legislation. Again, this has been funded by the Appropriations Committee, actually, at above its authorized level. It is working. They are closing an obvious gap, which was that people were overdosing, getting Narcan. Our brave first responders were saving their lives, and then those people were going back to the community they were from--back to the same family or the same group of friends-- and, unfortunately, with the addiction not having been addressed, they were overdosing again and, sometimes, again and again and again. Often, these first responders--the firefighters back home--will tell you: We were saving the same person time and again. Some of that is still happening, but what the RREACT team does when there is an overdose and when Narcan is supplied--this miracle drug to reverse the effects of the overdose--then there is followup. Of course, we should have done it years ago, but we are now doing it. I am proud to say, in my home town of Cincinnati, OH, Colerain Township, much of this was started, but now it is spreading around the country. The Columbus RREACT team is one of the best. They go out with firefighters, EMS personnel, with law enforcement, plainclothes, with social workers, with treatment providers, to the family, to the home-- and I have gone out with them; I have gone to the homes and met with these addicts--and they say: Look, we are here to help. We are not here to arrest you, but we are here to say that you need to get into treatment. Unbelievably--and a lot of people are skeptical of this. Here is an addict; why would they come forward? But in about 80 percent of the cases, in terms of the RREACT team, these individuals say: Do you know what? OK, I will try it. That is the first step. That is the critical first step--to get into treatment and then longer term recovery and begin to turn that person's life around, as well as that person's family and that person's community because it has devastated all of the above. This is what is happening with the Federal legislation funding innovative projects back home to close these gaps and to make a difference. I am very appreciative of what our team has done here-- Republicans and Democrats alike. In the more recent legislation that was just passed, the SUPPORT Act, we also included something that focuses exclusively on fentanyl. This is really important. It is called the STOP Act. In my subcommittee, we did an 18-month investigation of this. We spent a lot of time on it. We worked hard to make it bipartisan but also to be sure it was something that would actually work. We found out that fentanyl, which is the worst of the drugs and the most dangerous, is killing more people than any other drug. Even today, with our success on opioids, this synthetic opioid is coming almost exclusively from China, and at the time we passed the legislation a couple of years ago, it was almost exclusively coming through our U.S. mail system--our U.S. mail system. This deadly drug was coming into post office boxes and to people's homes. What we said to the post office was: You have to put some screening in place, much like FedEx does or DHS does or DHL or other private sector entities. Guess what. They are starting to do that, and it is making a big difference. They are now requiring advance electronic data from these packages, showing where they are from, where they are going, what is in them. This allows law enforcement to target those packages and to stop some of this fentanyl coming in. Unfortunately, the post office is not doing all it should do. Under the legislation, they are supposed to have 100 percent of packages from China, as an example, being flagged, being screened, and they are not. Right now, we think they are identifying from China about 88 percent of the packages. It is not 100 percent yet. Let's get to 100 percent. We have also found that the Postal Service, based on a 2019 audit this year by the inspector general, identified and pulled about 88 percent of the packages from China that were flagged. That leaves, of course, many packages that are not being flagged. So over 10 percent of these packages, the post office can't even find. Let's do better. We can do better. It is critical that we continue to hold the post office accountable because this is poison coming into our communities. That is in this legislation. One kilogram of this fentanyl is powerful enough to kill about one- half million people. That is how powerful this is. It is a true life- and-death issue. We have introduced new legislation in Congress called the FIGHT Fentanyl Act in the last week. Why? Because, otherwise, fentanyl, which is currently listed as a substance on schedule I--a schedule I drug and therefore illegal--is going to come off that list in February of next year. We can't let that happen, of course. Let's not do a short-term extension. Let's put fentanyl on as a scheduled drug permanently. I see more of my colleagues have come to talk about this issue. My point, I guess, is very simple. We have done some great things in this body to help our governments back home at our State and local levels and the nonprofits and people in the trenches who are doing the hard work. Let's keep it up. Let's be a better partner. Let's continue to provide support through the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, through the Opioid Response grants, through the STOP Act, and through other things to be able to give folks back home the tools they need to push back against this scourge, against this addiction that is devastating our families, our communities. Now we see, with the opioid progress having been made, other drugs coming in--particularly, crystal meth--directly from Mexico. So it is not just about this; it is about being flexible enough to be able to approach that as well. We have new legislation on meth that we should also be working on to provide that flexibility. In the meantime, again, the Appropriations Committee is doing its work, sending the funding that is making a difference to save lives in our communities. I yield back my time.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague from South Dakota's talking about this issue before us this week, which is these 1332 waivers, and he is absolutely right. Millions of Americans are getting less expensive healthcare. Isn't that the whole idea here, that healthcare needs to be affordable and that we need to have good, quality healthcare? There is nothing in these waivers--by the way, many of which are going to States that have Democratic Governors--that prohibits people from getting coverage for preexisting conditions. In fact, that is the law of the land, so that these 1332 waivers cannot take away people's rights to healthcare should they have preexisting conditions. I think this is the sort of thing we ought to be supporting in this Chamber, there being more affordable healthcare and healthcare for people who otherwise couldn't afford it. Appropriations Mr. President, my colleague from Maine, Senator Collins, is on the floor. We discussed earlier that we are actually legislating today. I think that it is great because we are passing spending bills. The Senate will pass four different spending bills, and she will manage all four of them. These are bipartisan bills that will end up getting passed here in this Chamber this week that will then go over to the House where they will be conferenced with the five bills they have passed. The bills aren't that far apart in terms of the total amount of money each bill has in the so-called 302(b) category, but there are some differences. We will work those out, and we will, hopefully, get those to the President for his signature. That is how this place should operate.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments from my colleague from Tennessee about the importance of this agreement in her State, and I can tell you it is also important to a State a little further north called Ohio. Our No. 1 trading partner, by far, is Canada and No. 2 is Mexico, and we want this agreement. I hear about it all the time I am out talking to our farmers. They are concerned about the weather. They are concerned about what is going on with the China market. They are concerned about low prices. They see this as an opportunity. They see this as kind of the light at the end of the tunnel. If we can get the USMCA done, that expands markets for us and, therefore, increases our prices and gives us a chance. It is the same situation with a lot of manufacturers. It is amazing how many of them depend on Mexico and Canada to be able to sell their products. This is a big deal in Ohio and a big deal for our country. So I am here today to try to urge the House of Representatives to go ahead and move on this and then to urge the Senate to take it up right away. The Trump administration negotiated a good agreement. It deserves a vote. I am a former trade lawyer--a recovering one--and I am also a former member of the Ways and Means Committee and a former U.S. Trade Representative, and now I am on the Finance Committee, where we deal with trade. The bottom line is that, in all of those years working with trade, it is a complicated area. It is a politically difficult area. But the bottom line is that we are about 5 percent of the world's population in America, and yet we have 25 percent of the economy. The way we do well is to sell more of our stuff to the 95 percent of the people who are outside of our borders. It should be fair. We should have a level playing field. That is the kind of context in which I look at the USMCA. Does it meet these criteria, where we can sell more of our stuff and we have a more level playing field? Yes, it does. That is exactly what this agreement does. It is a good agreement, and it deserves to have a vote. If it has a vote, it will pass because logic, I think, will prevail. As crazy as this town is these days and as partisan as things are, the logic of this is inescapable, which is that you have the USMCA, a good agreement, and then you have the status quo, which is NAFTA, which is not as good in any respect. If you vote no on USMCA, you are effectively voting yes for the status quo. I don't think that will happen. I think it will pass if we can get it to the floor for a vote. Taken together, our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, make up the most important foreign markets for U.S. products, and not just for Ohio. In fact, according to the recent data we have, one-third of all American exports in 2019 this year have already gone to Mexico or Canada, well ahead of any other foreign markets. So trade with Mexico and Canada is now responsible for 12 million jobs nationally. Every single State represented here has jobs related to this. In Ohio, again, our No. 1 and No. 2 trade partners are Canada and Mexico, with 39 percent of our exports going to Canada alone. That is twice the national average, by the way. So we are particularly focused on Canada and Mexico, which represent $28 billion in trade total. What I am hearing from farmers, manufacturers, and service providers is that this is really important for us. So we have to be sure that, because this relationship is so important, it is built on a solid foundation. The NAFTA agreement which it is built on is now 25 years old. It is outdated. It has not kept up with the times, and it has to be improved upon. That is what USMCA does. It basically says that we are in the 21st century, and we have to make changes to this agreement. NAFTA doesn't have things in it that one would expect in a 21st century agreement. Start with the digital economy. So much of our economy now operates over the internet. Yet there is nothing in the current agreement, NAFTA, that protects this trade like our modern agreements do. Another aspect is labor and environmental standards, which are weak and not enforceable in the NAFTA agreement but are in the USMCA. That is a big change in and of itself. This is not just a name change. This is a fundamental change in the way in which we relate to our neighbors to the south and north. This handy-dandy chart I put together shows us some of the differences between the two agreements. The first one has to do with economic impact. The independent International Trade Commission has done a study on this. They are required by law to do it. They say that the new USMCA is going to create 176,000 new jobs. That is the green check under USMCA. That is a big difference right there. If we want to create more jobs, by the way, here are 176,000 new jobs, and 20,000 of those jobs are in the auto industry. That is very important to our country and particularly important to States like mine. Second, businesses in Ohio and around the country rely on internet sales that we talked about earlier. Internet sales and rules for the internet are unchanged in NAFTA. Frankly, there is no chapter in NAFTA that deals with commerce over the internet. It is unbelievable. It turns out that the USMCA does, and that is important because small businesses that rely on access to Canada and Mexico through internet sales are going to have an easing of their customs burdens for small- value products. They will have data localization protections. They will have a prohibition on Mexico and Canada requiring that there be localization of the data in those countries. Finally, this prohibits tariffs on data, which we don't have now. These are all important key elements in the agreement to keep our internet economy moving. So under the rules for the internet economy, there is a green check for the USMCA, and NAFTA doesn't have it. Let's talk about the next subject, which is enforceable labor and environmental standards. In the agreement we have now, the NAFTA agreement, there are no labor or environmental standards that are enforceable--none. Whereas, in the new USMCA, standards are actually enforceable. There are consequences if they don't abide by them. This is part of the leveling of the playing field. Think about it. In Mexico, one of their great advantages has been lower labor costs and labor conditions--the inability to organize and so on. This changes that now that we have labor standards. By the way, Mexico has already made changes to their labor laws because of the agreement we have with them under the USMCA, which, by the way, was negotiated with these two countries and submitted back on September 30 of last year. It has been over a year. So it is about time to move it. Again, the USMCA has enforceable environmental and labor standards, and NAFTA does not. There are some other provisions that are interesting that lead to why this is good for the economy. The International Trade Commission, or the ITC, also says that this agreement will increase the GDP of our country, which is the economic growth of our country, and, significantly, in fact, more than the Trans-Pacific Partnership did. Remember that the TPP is an agreement that a lot of Democrats have spoken very favorably of because of its impact on the economy. The USMCA actually increases our economy more than the Trans-Pacific Partnership would have. Another issue that is unusual but is in this agreement and is helpful to our manufacturing in Ohio and around the country is that 70 percent of the steel used in manufacturing vehicles has to be made in the United States, Canada, or Mexico. So this is a new standard that does not exist in NAFTA at all. This means more steel jobs in America and more heavy manufacturing jobs in this country. So we have a check on USMCA, yes, with 70 percent of the steel. In NAFTA, there is nothing with regard to how much steel has to be coming from North America. It also states that, with regard to the wages in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, there would be a minimum wage of $16 per hour for about 40 to 45 percent of this manufacturing we are talking about. So any vehicle made in Mexico or anywhere else in America has to be produced by workers making 16 bucks an hour or more. This is again about leveling the playing field, and, frankly, this is the kind of provision that we would see in a provision negotiated by a Democratic administration, not a Republican administration. My Democrat friends have been calling for this for years. It is in the USMCA agreement, and it is good for us because it will result in more jobs coming to the United States of America, where we have not just higher labor standards but higher wages. So 40 to 45 percent of the vehicles must be made by workers earning $16 an hour. Check the box for yes in USMCA and no in NAFTA. It is another example of how this agreement is one that addresses a lot of the concerns the Democrats have raised over the years. When I was U.S. Trade Representative, we talked a lot about these issues. We talked a lot about them in the Finance Committee. They are in this agreement. My hope would be that Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats in the House would take this into account and at least allow this agreement to be voted on by the full House. If that happens, I can't believe that logic wouldn't prevail, that NAFTA versus USMCA wouldn't result in our passing USMCA. All of these things are going to help. The one element that I think has gotten the most attention in farm country is the fact that the dairy protections in Canada have been changed so we have a chance to send our dairy products to Canada from Ohio and other dairy States. It is more than that. It also affects commodities--wheat, soybeans, and corn--and our proteins: beef, poultry, and pork. This is really going to help our farmers. That is why 1,000 farm groups around the country have supported this agreement. Again, with what is going on with China, with the smaller markets, with the difficult weather we have had, and the fact of low prices for commodity crops--all are real problems--this is a godsend. It is really needed for our farmers. A lot of Democrats are telling me: Rob, this is just like the NAFTA agreement in so many respects. It is really not. It is a different agreement. The truth of the matter is that this agreement is going to catch us up to the 21st century with regard to our important trade relationship with our two neighbors to the north and south. It is about improved market access for manufacturing and a level playing field for workers and farmers. It is about being sure that we have the ability in the modern digital economy to get a fair shake. Put these two agreements side-by-side, and this is a much-needed upgrade. It has to get a vote, and, if it does, I think it will pass. With all the improvements we talked about today, this is not just an exercise in rebranding NAFTA. This is about a new agreement that is really a big difference, and it is a binary choice. Are you for this new agreement, which is better in every respect, or are you for the status quo, which is NAFTA? My hope is that the House will take this to the floor, and, if they do, I think it will pass. It will then come to the Senate, and I am confident that in the Senate we will have the support to pass this on a bipartisan basis. What I am most confident in is the fact that American workers, farmers, and service providers are going to have the chance to improve their economic opportunities because this agreement is going to be good for all of them. There is a lot of politics going on right now, and I get that. But, folks, this is not even an election year. Let's finish it up this year before we get into the 2020 election year. Let's be sure that before Thanksgiving, we have the agreement passed in the House and sent to the Senate to take a look at it. It is too important. We need to keep the American people first and put politics second and get this done.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the Area Progress Council of Warren, County, Ohio, in honor of their 50th anniversary. The Area Progress Council, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, was formally incorporated 50 years ago on September 30, 1969. The mission was and continues to be to plan and promote positive growth and development of Warren County, OH. It works with local, State, and Federal governments to promote representation of community interests, facilitates programs to promote current and future leaders, and supports initiatives to promote a positive and proactive climate for economic growth. For example, Project Excellence Endowment, established in 1987, seeks to annually identify, recognize, and reward excellent public educators in Warren County. In addition, Leadership Warren County was developed in 2000 to create a dynamic network of informed decision-makers whose increased awareness and commitment to serve will energize its citizens to shape the county's future. APC has supported and collaborated with many organizations, including: Little Miami Conservatory (1967); Warren County Park District (1970); United Way of Warren County (1970); County Planner (1972); Warren County Career Center (1976); Ralph J. Stolle Countryside YMCA (1976); Warren County Big Brothers Big Sisters (1978); Well-head and Aquifer Protection (1992-1994); Widening (1994-1999); Warren County College Task Force (2001-2003); establishment of Sinclair Mason Campus (2007); and Rachel A Hutzel Observatory project located at Camp Joy (2011). Ongoing efforts include organizing the Annual Warren County Economic Outlook Breakfast, since 1983; hosting the State of the County, since 1990; and organizing the Columbus Excursion, since 2000, where a group of educators and business men and women travel to Columbus to meet with the directors of the Ohio Department of Education in the morning and State legislators in the afternoon. I congratulate the Area Progress Council of Warren County on their 50th anniversary and thank them for the work they do for Ohioans.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize Dr. Andrew Rehfeld, who will be inaugurated as the 10th President of Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion on Sunday, October 27, 2019. Founded in Cincinnati, OH in 1875, Hebrew Union College--Jewish Institute of Religion, or HUC-JIR, is today a premier institution of higher Jewish learning and the center of academic, spiritual, and professional leadership development for Reform Judaism. Over the past 144 years, HUC-JIR has grown into one of this Nation's most distinguished Jewish seminaries, and literally thousands of its rabbinical and cantorial alumni have been leading a Jewish renaissance in North America, Israel, and around the globe. HUC-JIR is also internationally recognized for teaching and mentoring students to serve as Jewish educators and communal leaders in synagogues, schools, Hillel's, hospitals, camps, the U.S. military, and Jewish organizations worldwide. For more than 70 years, HUC-JIR's Pines School of Graduate Studies has been conferring Ph.D. degrees on scholars of all religious traditions who have gone on to teach in colleges, universities, and seminaries around the world. Today, HUC-JIR has campuses in Cincinnati, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and New York, all of which are vital centers for educational and cultural outreach to those of all faiths and backgrounds. Dr. Andrew Rehfeld, the new president of HUC-JIR, is a leading political scientist and distinguished Jewish communal leader. Dr. Rehfeld's career has bridged both the academic and professional worlds as associate professor of political science at Washington University and as president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis. Elected on December 18, 2018 by the HUC-JIR Board of Governors after a national search, he began his tenure on April 1, 2019, succeeding the late Rabbi Aaron Panken. Dr. Rehfeld is married to Dr. Miggie Greenberg, a board-certified psychiatrist and director of outpatient psychiatry at St. Louis University. They have two children: Emma, who is the music and T'filah coordinator at Larchmont Temple in Larchmont, NY, and Hoben, who is an artist currently working in St. Louis. I salute HUC-JIR on this milestone occasion, and I congratulate Dr. Rehfeld and wish him all the best.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following leader remarks on Thursday, September 26, the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.R. 4378; that the only amendment in order be the Paul amendment No. 942; that the time until 12:15 p.m. be equally divided in the usual form; that at 12:15 p.m., the Senate vote in relation to the Paul amendment; and that following disposition of the amendment, the bill, as amended, if amended, be read a third time and the Senate vote on passage of the bill, as amended, if amended, with 60 affirmative votes required for passage. Finally, I ask unanimous consent that following disposition of H.R. 4378, the Senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the Hyten nomination, with the time until 1:30 p.m. equally divided between the leaders or their designees; that at 1:30 p.m., the postcloture time on the Hyten and Scalia nominations be considered expired and the Senate vote on the nominations in the order listed; and that if confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., Thursday, September 26; further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.R. 4378 under the previous order.

Mr. PORTMAN

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

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am on the floor tonight to talk about retirement security, which is something everybody cares about. Who doesn't want peace of mind in retirement? When I am back home, I hear about it all of the time, partly because a lot of people are worried about the costs they are going to have in retirement, including long-term care costs. A lot of people are seeing their parents and their grandparents living longer, healthier lives; yet they do not have their retirement nest eggs in order to keep up. So we need to do something to help on that. Social Security is there as the safety net. It used to always be there, but that is what it is, just a base amount: $1,200 a month. It is not very much, but it is the average for some folks in my home State of Ohio. You have to have a private retirement savings that adds to that, and that can mean the savings you have in your bank account. The best way to do it is through a 401(k) account at your work where the employer, hopefully, puts a match in. So it is a good deal for you because you put money in, and your employer puts money in, and you get to have a tax deduction for it. Even if you are not at work, you can take an individual IRA. With the IRA, it is the same thing wherein you get a tax deduction. That is good. Some companies have the defined benefit plan. That is the old pension plan. That is great if you have one. Not as many workers do anymore, but we want to preserve those that are left. For those who are Federal Government employees, they do have the Federal employees' pension plan, which works for them. All of this together is incredibly important right now for the people I represent, and people are worried about it. Some of the statistics are actually pretty scary of a lot of people who work for small businesses who don't have access to plans altogether. They just don't have any opportunity to get retirement savings plans. As an example, about 50 percent of the workers in these small businesses are in that category. Over time, we have tried to address some of these issues. Right now, fortunately, the U.S. Senate has a few bills that it could take up that would actually help in that. I have been working on this issue for a number of years--actually, about 20 years--going back to my days in the House with now-Senator Ben Cardin. We passed legislation to expand how much you can put into a retirement account--a 401(k), an IRA. We increased the amount. There are the catchup contributions that some people are familiar with. There is also what is called auto enrollment, whereby companies automatically enroll you unless you choose not to enroll, which helps to get the participation rate way up, from about 75 percent up to 95 percent. We have done some things that have helped, and because of that, I know that, if you provide more incentives for retirement, it works because it worked back in 2001. In fact, if you look at what has happened since then, total retirement savings have increased from about $11 trillion to about $29 trillion since 2001. By the way, this means there are more resources available in our economy because there are more savings, and savings are good things for investment. There is a higher GDP--higher economic growth--greater access to capital for small businesses and so on. So this has worked. By the way, these retirement nest eggs have increased among every income quintile since 2001 when you adjust it for inflation. It is not just the people at the higher end or even in the middle; it is people who are of low income, middle low, middle income, and higher income who have all benefited from this. As I said, we have a lot more to do because, even with that Social Security, which is a safety net, it is really tough to live on that. People are not saving enough through their private savings and their retirement plans. We need to finish the work that we started. We also need to fix some outdated regulations that just don't make sense in today's world. I am chair of what is called the subcommittee on retirement within the Committee on Finance. We are working on these proposals on a bipartisan basis, and we are making some progress. I am going to tell you about some of those bills now. One bill is before the Senate right now in the sense that it has already passed the House. It is called the SECURE Act. One is a larger bill that does more than the SECURE Act that has been introduced by Senator Cardin and me. Then there is a small provision I want to mention tonight that has been introduced separately, which is also in the SECURE Act. It is an urgent thing to pass because there are a bunch of people who are going to lose their retirement benefits unless we pass it very soon. Let me back up and give you some of the troubling facts about why we need to do something here. First of all, fewer than half of the employees who are, again, at small businesses--businesses with fewer than 50 workers--have access to plans. The problem is really in our smaller businesses, and we know that. Larger business all tend to have 401(k)s. Many have defined contribution plans like a 401(k), and others have defined benefit plans like pensions. They tend to have retirement options for workers, but many of the small businesses do not. Even when workers have access to plans, there are still only 34 percent who participate. Amongst small businesses, there are fewer plans than there should be, but there are also fewer people participating. Only 22 percent of part- time workers are in plans. Now, increasingly in our economy, people have part-time jobs or may have a few part-time jobs, but they don't have retirement plans in any of them. By the way, when you look at this in terms of the folks who are not participating, low-income Americans are also not participating as you would want. Only 22 percent of low-income families are participating in retirement plans. Many of them don't have the disposable income to be able to contribute, and we will talk about that in a second as to how to address that problem. The final problem I want to mention does not have to do with the small businesses or part-time workers or low-income workers. It has to do with what we talked about at the beginning, which is people who outlive their retirements. Let's face it. We are living longer and healthier lives as Americans, and that is a good thing, but a lot of people didn't or couldn't plan for that. They may have thought, I have a nice, little nest egg here, and I have a 401(k), and I am going to retire at age 65. Yet, when they are in their late eighties or nineties, they realize there just wasn't enough set aside. Here is an opportunity for us to address that as well. Earlier this year, Senator Cardin and I introduced legislation called the Retirement Security and Savings Act, and it addresses all of these problems that I mentioned. It has more than 50 reforms, actually, to help Americans achieve this goal of safe, secure retirements--peace of mind--after their working for years and letting people retire with dignity. It has a few important provisions that I want to mention tonight. I won't go into all 50, but I will mention some of them. First, to increase this low 22-percent coverage among low-income workers, it expands what is called the saver's credit. This has worked well, but it is not refundable now, which means, for a lot of people who are of low income, they can't take advantage of it because they don't have the income tax liability, particularly with the new tax bill, frankly. For a lot of people, it has actually lowered taxes so that they don't have the ability to take a deduction, but they can use a credit. We changed the saver's credit to expand it so that it is more usable, and we make it refundable. We don't make it refundable to individuals but, rather, refundable to a retirement account because you don't want to just provide more funding out there that is not going to be used for this correct purpose of retirement. It has to go into your retirement account. In addition, it increases the credit amount so as to be available to a lot of low-income savers. This is really going to help get people to be able to save for retirement, again, who are working but who are not saving. The bill also addresses the problem of only 22 percent of part-time workers being in plans. It requires employers to allow part-time workers who have completed 2 years of service to participate in 401(k) plans. This is a big deal to the AARP, as an example, and it is one reason it is strongly supporting this bill. By the way, this is also being supported by a whole group of businesses, nonprofits, and others. People love this bill because it is going to help people to save for retirement. What is not to like there? Particularly with regard to part-time workers, our saying, ``if you have completed 2 years of service, you need to have access to a 401(k) plan,'' it is going to help. It also allows employers to make matching contributions to the 401(k) accounts of employees who are paying off student loans who otherwise wouldn't receive a full match. Why? It is that they have to choose between paying down the student loan debt they have and saving for retirement. I really like this idea. It is an innovative one. It was first proposed by Senator Ron Wyden, by the way, who is the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Finance. I think this will really help the people who are, again, going into the workforce. They have these student loans. They have to pay off that debt, but they can't afford to put money into 401(k)s. This enables them to put that money into the match, and it helps to get them started on retirement. On average, the student loan debt now for someone who comes out of one of our 4-year colleges or universities is $27,000. That makes it tough for a lot of people to get started in life. To get at this problem, we talked about a few small businesses having plans. Portman-Cardin increases the tax credit that small businesses receive for one's starting a retirement plan. It is $500 now, and we take it up to $5,000. That is a tenfold increase that will really help small businesses, we are told. This is why they support the bill. It also provides an innovative tax credit idea. Small businesses will get a tax credit if they automatically enroll their employees in the plans at least every 3 years. What does this mean? We talked about auto enrollment earlier and that, if you have auto enrollment in your company, your participation rate goes up to 95 percent from about 75 percent. Why? It is that people come into the workforce and might not sign up for a 401(k), but if they are automatically signed up, they are not going to say no, right? This way, they will start to get a little of the payroll taxes and a little of their paychecks going toward retirement. They will find out that this works. They will start their nest eggs, and they will like them, so they will stick with them. It is the same thing here. If at least every 3 years you have to automatically enroll your employees, what will happen? You will get people into these plans, and they will stay in these plans. This is going to be a big deal in small businesses, and we think it is worth giving them a tax credit for it. It is kind of an innovative idea. For small businesses, our bill also reduces some of the burdensome and duplicative regulations that are associated with administering the plan because, for a lot of small businesses, they don't have lawyers or general counsel; they don't have professionals who can help on this. Yet the HR people would sure like to have the ease of the administration of these plans. So we do that, which is important in order to get more of these small businesses to offer these plans. We also address the problem we have talked about with Americans living longer and healthier lives and being in danger of outliving their retirements. For those who are following this closely because they are getting close to retirement, they should pay attention here because this could be helpful. To help the folks who have accumulated retirement savings preserve those nest eggs--to help to preserve your hard-earned nest eggs--the bill actually changes what is called the required minimum distribution rules. If you are in your late sixties or maybe turning 70, you may be shocked to have just found out that--guess what--you have to start distributing money out of the 401(k) that you have or the IRA that you have under what is call the required minimum distribution rules. My dad was a little surprised by that because he was still working at age 70\1/2\ when you have to start doing that. By the way, a lot of people back home are still working at age 70\1/ 2\, and they want to keep their retirement nest egg there. They want to keep building it up because they hope they are going to live a long life, and they want make sure they have something in there, but instead, no, when you are 70\1/2\, you have to start taking it out and paying taxes on it. So we changed that from 70\1/2\ to 75. We do it over a few years because it is an expensive provision, frankly, in this bill, but we pay for it through other means. The idea is you want to let people keep that money in their nest egg. By the way, if your nest egg is $100,000 or less, there is no minimum required distribution anymore under our bill. So for people who, again, are 70\1/2\ and are wondering, ``Why do I have to start taking this money out? I have 65,000 bucks I have saved up all these years, and I am still working,'' or ``I don't need to take it out for retirement,'' let them keep it in that plan. If there is under 100,000 bucks in your account, keep it in going forward forever. If you have more than 100,000 bucks in there, then for that additional amount, you don't have to start taking it out until you are 75, under our bill. So this is going to really help the people to ensure that they can set aside money for retirement, and they know it is going to be there when they need it. Our new Portman-Cardin retirement legislation has the potential to fundamentally reshape for the better how large numbers of Americans approach their retirement planning, and that is a good thing. I look forward to getting it passed through the Finance Committee and sent to the Senate floor for a vote. As I said earlier, even before we can get this broader package done, we have a smaller bill that is sitting here in the Senate. It has already passed the House. It is called the SECURE Act. It actually passed the House almost unanimously--417 to 3. That rarely happens, and that shows you the kind of bipartisan support it has. It is not as comprehensive as the bill I just talked about, but it does have some good provisions. It has that increase in the small employer tax credit, for instance, we talked about. It also raises this minimum required distribution to age 72--from 70\1/2\ to 72--which is good. It doesn't go to 75, and it doesn't have the $100,000 improvement we have, but it does help. It also helps long-term part-time workers contribute to 401(k)s, which is good. So we go further in our bill, but this SECURE Act is a good step in the right direction. I support it. I support bringing it up and passing it. It already passed the House. I do think we ought to allow a couple of amendments on each side because this SECURE Act that passed the House has not been voted on, on this floor before. It came out of our committee back in 2016, I believe, so it has been a while. There hasn't been any debate on it or deliberation. Why not allow a few amendments on it on each side? Democrats probably have a few amendments they would like to offer. Republicans have a few they would like to offer. The point is, let's get that bill up and get it passed. Then there is this final bill I was talking about. It is part of the SECURE Act, which is on the floor right now ready to go. It has also been introduced separately, and this is to address an urgent problem right now that is affecting over 450,000 Americans. Now, it gets a little complicated here, as retirement plans do sometimes. These are people who are in these defined benefit plans, pension plans, and they are in businesses that have shifted from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution like a 401(k). These are businesses that have said: We are not going to have an additional pension anymore. We are going to go to a 401(k) where individuals contribute and individuals control their account. Now, what happened in some of these businesses is they said: But if you are already in a defined benefit plan, you can stay in. We are going to freeze your plan going forward so new employees can't go into it, but you can stay in your plan, and I think that is fair. Let people who are in the plan who have paid in all these years continue to stay in that defined benefit plan as they retire. The problem is, inadvertently, the rules with regard to pensions are tripping these people up because there is something called the nondiscrimination income testing. In other words, you can't have too many of the benefits go, in a defined benefit plan, to people who are more on the high end of income. It has to be spread out. Well, think about it. The people who are left in these plans are people who are older because the new employees have had to go to the defined contribution plan. So it is an older group of employees and, therefore, more highly compensated because they have been given raises over time, so they trigger this nondiscrimination income testing, and they lose their benefits. They can't continue to accrue benefits. That is just wrong. These are people who have played by the rules, done everything right. Through no fault of their own but through this quirky regulation, which was never meant to address this kind of an issue, they are facing the very real possibility--450,000-plus people-- that they are going to lose their benefits through no fault of their own. They should be able to continue to accrue benefits and get this retirement plan they have worked so hard to be able to enjoy. Nobody really disagrees. Again, it is in the SECURE Act. We have introduced it separately. Around here you run what is called a hotline with your fellow Senators to see if anybody objects to this if it is a noncontroversial piece of legislation. So we did that with this, and, guess what, this legislation was approved by everybody on the Republican side. Nobody had a problem with it. Again, it is just a question of being sure these flawed rules aren't inadvertently hurting these 450,000 Americans. Then we ran the hotline on the Democratic side, and it was also very popular over there, but at least one person objected--maybe more but at least one. So we are trying to work on this together to try to get it done. We found out the objection is not based on the legislation at all. No one has any problem with the legislation. It is based on their interest in not allowing anything that is in the SECURE Act to be done separately because they want to be sure the SECURE Act gets done. I want to be sure the SECURE Act gets done too. It is an important bill. It is the first step in the right direction, as we said, but let's not take it out on these employees. If we don't fix it, then by this yearend, like in the next couple of months here, these people are going to lose their benefits. So my hope is, now that we have tested the waters and found out it is not controversial among my colleagues, let's just bring it up under unanimous consent, get it done, and then let's move on and do the SECURE Act too. So my hope is we will be able to do that. It has been introduced, again, as a standalone bill. So it is not like it is the other parts of the SECURE Act that are only in the SECURE Act. It is standalone so it shouldn't violate anybody's sense of fairness to say: Let's deal with this separately and get it done. I thank Chairman Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Wyden for helping on this because they have been supportive of the SECURE Act, they have been supportive of dealing with this quirk in the law that deals with these 450,000 people who are going to lose their benefits, and they have been supportive of us doing this broader retirement savings package as well. I hope we can get them done. Let's do it in order. No. 1, let's get the Retirement Security Preservation Act done. That is the 450,000 people, and let's just do that by unanimous consent. Everybody agrees to it. Let's move to the SECURE Act, get that done. Again, that was passed in the House almost unanimously, and then let's move on to this broader Portman-Cardin legislation we talked about tonight. It really deals with these issues of small business coverage. It deals with the issue of low-income workers needing to save more. It deals with the issue of part-time workers having to save more. It deals with this issue of being sure that people aren't outliving their retirement savings. Again, of the 50-plus provisions in there, there is a lot that really helps the people I represent back in Ohio and folks all around the country. They deserve us in Congress to be focused on these kinds of issues. This is exactly what people expect us to do here, help them ensure they have peace of mind in their retirement. We are doing all we can to provide the incentives to make that happen. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am on the floor to talk about a problem that is far too common here in Washington; that is, Federal Government shutdowns. They don't make any sense. If we don't do something in 12 days, Congress, once again, will face an unnecessary and costly government shutdown. We have to avoid that. I have been through five different government shutdowns since my time working in the George H. W. Bush White House back in 1990, and three shutdowns just over the last 5 years. None of them worked. I don't know anyone who likes them now because we found out that when you shut down the government, taxpayers actually pay more, not less. It might seem like if you shut down the government, that is good for taxpayers, but it is actually bad for taxpayers. They foot the bill for the backpay of Federal workers for the days they weren't allowed to go to work, and they pay for other things, too, that they wouldn't have to pay for if Congress did its job, got its spending bills done, and didn't shut down the government. Delayed projects, late payment fees, lost productivity, deferred maintenance--it all adds up. Shutdowns also disrupt government services, of course. By the way, it is not just the poor government programs and services at the time--that continues. So even now, 9 months since the last government shutdown, you have the Agencies and Departments saying: Well, we would like to be able to process your tax return or we would like to be able to, as I found out last week, process your 501(c)(3)-- which is a charity return to give you a nonprofit status, you can get contributions that are deductible--but because of the shutdown, we are still backed up. They are delayed and late. That hurts everybody. Federal contractors, of course, are hurt. A lot of those are our constituents, private sector individuals. Federal employees, themselves, of course, get hurt, especially those who are considered essential. They have to go to work even though they are not getting paid. A lot of people, whether it is TSA personnel at the airports or our Border Patrol down at the border, are doing their best to protect us. Yet they are told they can't get paid, so they can't make their car payment, their mortgage payment, or their rent. It puts them in a tough situation. Again, it also hurts taxpayers and families and communities all across the country. No shutdown was more frustrating for me than the one we had most recently. It was the longest shutdown ever. It was 35 days this past winter, in December. During that month, we all heard firsthand from our constituents how they were affected by the shutdown. I heard from NASA engineers in Cleveland, OH, as an example. We have the NASA Glenn Research Center there. I also heard from TSA employees every time I flew. I asked them: How are you doing? They would tell me, and it was tough--missed paychecks, mounting mortgage payments that I talked about. In some cases, medical bills were piling up. Morale was down. Families were hurting. Again, even after the government opened and backpay was sent to the furloughed workers, a lot of that damage had already been done. What we have learned is, it wasn't just Federal workers and their families who felt the effects of the shutdown. The economy as a whole suffered too. The Congressional Budget Office has done some estimates of this. After the shutdown, they estimated it had reduced economic growth by a combined $11 billion for the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019. Not only that, but CBO--the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan group that looks at these issues--later projected that the rate of economic growth would have been 0.4 percent higher in the first quarter of 2019 than it was if not for the government shutdown. That sounds like a small number, 0.4 percent, but that is a big deal. That means economic growth in the first quarter of this year would have been 3.5 percent, not 3.1 percent. That is a big deal. That is billions of dollars in lost growth, not just because people weren't working who should have been working but because there was lost productivity in our economy and billions of dollars in lost growth just because we couldn't figure out how to keep the lights on here in Washington, DC. All of this is indicative not just of the loss of purchasing power for Federal employees but also a serious ripple effect to Federal contractors, small businesses, and others who serve the Federal Government. Shutdowns have another effect. Each time our government fails to fund itself, the public's faith in our institutions, including, of course, in this body, the Senate, the House, the Presidency, falls even further, not just here but around the world. It just seems crazy that the Federal Government can't stay open. People can't get that, and I understand why they don't get it. Now, with the threat of another government shutdown looming just a few weeks away, let's not repeat the mistakes of the past. The reason our Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations looked at this issue over the past 9 months was to learn the lessons and to get the actual numbers to determine what the real impact was of the shutdown. This week, the Permanent Subcommittee, of which I chair, released a bipartisan report signed by me and the ranking member, Tom Carper, the result of which is what we are reporting today. We learned that the total cost of the three government shutdowns that have occurred in the last 5 years alone have combined for a total of 54 days of partial or full government closure. During those three periods of shutdown, the pricetag to the American taxpayer was $4 billion. So the three government shutdowns that have happened in the last 5 years, taxpayers had to eat $4 billion--three shutdowns, $4 billion. We also learned that a lot of that number comes from the loss of productivity. Furloughed Federal workers who were prohibited from going to work during that shutdown were owed $3.7 billion in backpay, which they got even though they weren't working because they couldn't work. Compounding that was at least another $338 million in other costs, including extra administrative costs, lost revenue, late fees on interest payments, and other costs. On top of everything else, the workers who weren't able to come in to work represented a combined lost productivity of about 57,000 years of lost productivity. Think about that--almost 57,000 years of productivity loss. Again, this is from folks who are Federal employees who weren't allowed to work because the government was shut down but who later got paid. These figures, the $4 billion in costs to the taxpayers and the 56,938 years in lost productivity, are relatively low numbers. It is actually higher than that. Do you know why? It is because although we got figures from 26 different Agencies and Departments--and over the 9 months we did this research, we sent this questionnaire around to all the Agencies and Departments--a bunch of them, comprising less than half but close to half of the workforce, refused to respond to us. Why? Because they said they didn't know how many of their workers were furloughed. They didn't know how many of their workers were essential employees. They didn't know what the lost productivity was. That is equally disturbing. That included the Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Justice, the Commerce Department, and the EPA. They wouldn't give us complete information about employee furloughs and backpay because they said they just didn't have the information. The cost is even higher than indicated here. We don't know how much higher, but we know it is at least this high. We are sending letters to the Agencies that were unable to provide the complete financial information related to employee furloughs and backpay to find out why and to ask them how they plan to address those issues going forward. Over the 9 months we did this research, our Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is not done with its work because, in the process, we uncovered another problem, which is Agencies not even knowing the basic information about their workforce and what happens during the shutdown. Our report also documents examples of how the shutdown negatively affected the Federal Government's ability to conduct important operations on a wide range of issues. I encourage people to take a look at the report. While we shut down the government over fighting about border security--remember, that was the issue at the time, whether we are going to have a wall or not and what kind of funds were going to go to border security--the Department of Homeland Security had to delay important facility maintenance, which had a serious impact on law enforcement officer operations and safety, including at the border. The lack of these critical maintenance and repair services actually made it more risky, even endangered the lives of some law enforcement officers, and made it harder to defend the border. The shutdown certainly didn't work in that regard. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice was forced to cancel about 60,000 immigration hearings for nondetained aliens who were scheduled during the 35 days of the shutdown. During the 35 days, you couldn't have immigration hearings. There were 60,000 immigration hearings canceled. We already had a big backlog in these hearings, as some of you have heard about, to the point that often it takes a couple of years to have your case heard by an immigration judge. Now it is even worse. Again, we still haven't resolved that issue. That is a problem that is compounded so that today you have so many of these hearings that are still outstanding. A lot of my constituents back in Ohio were affected too. Let me give you an example. We have a poor neighborhood in Cleveland, OH. A guy wanted to start a deli there, which was a great idea. It is kind of a food desert there. This deli was ready to go, ready to be put into operation, but they couldn't get the approval by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to use the machines to accept the SNAP benefits--the food stamp benefits--so they had a really hard time launching. They couldn't make much money because a lot of people in the area were SNAP recipients. The USDA couldn't certify the machines to have it work because of the shutdown. That one was really frustrating for me. At the Piketon, OH, uranium enrichment plant, a lot of employees were unsure if their healthcare premiums would be paid, despite potentially being exposed to levels of radiation that could be dangerous to them. At a vineyard in Lorain, OH--Lorain County is a place where there is more wine being grown. It is exciting--this vineyard submitted six label approval requests to the Alcohol and Tobacco and Tax and Trade Bureau. The Alcohol and Tobacco and Tax and Trade Bureau has to approve these labels. The owners of the vineyard were left in limbo throughout the entire shutdown as they waited for approval. They lost sales because in that business, it is all about the new thing. You want to have your new label out there, your new product out there. That was frustrating to me too. These are small business owners--again, entrepreneurs who are taking a chance, trying something exciting that has been a growth to business in our State, but they couldn't get approval. The National Transportation Safety Board stopped an investigation of a plane crash in Wayne County, OH, that took the lives of two individuals in January because of the government shutdown. It doesn't just affect the border or TSA or others I have talked about; it affects a lot of our constituents. Ohioans applying for Customs and Border Protection Trusted Traveler Programs had their applications suspended during the shutdown and then faced long delays in getting their applications approved once the government reopened because of the backlog. Home loans across the State were unable to get processed because of the backlogs at the IRS, where employees were still working overtime and weekends to catch up on work as caseloads doubled. Even last week, I talked about this nonprofit that couldn't get its 501(c)(3) status because of the backlog, the IRS said, even though it happened 9 months ago. There are only a few examples here I have been able to give you. Again, I would encourage you to look at the report. Go onto our website for the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and take a look at it. There are so many issues and vulnerabilities that happen in all of our States. It is clear we need to find a way to prevent this from happening again. Part of the problem we face here is that this constant threat of shutdowns has become kind of the norm. People are already talking about it--12 days from now. Are we going to shut down or not? It has kind of a chilling effect on our economy just to talk about it. For the past two decades, the government has routinely operated on temporary funding because we don't get our spending bills done. Congress is supposed to pass 12 appropriations bills, which comprise all the Agencies and Departments. Last year, we did a pretty good job of getting close to the 12. You have to go back to 1997 to find a year when we completed all 12 of the spending bills. If we don't complete a spending bill and have it signed off by the House and the Senate and signed into law by the President, we do these temporary spending bills. They are called continuing resolutions. You just kind of continue the spending from the previous year. They are always short term. So there is discussion right now of, in 12 days, having a continuing resolution. That is a lot better than a shutdown. It is not what we should be doing, because at the end of that CR, we will have another impasse, likely, and that is when you get another threat of a shutdown. It is much better to pass the actual appropriations bills. Since 1997, we have had a total of 117 continuing resolutions to fund the government. It used to be very rare. Now it is not just common; it is the norm. So moving forward, I hope one thing we can all agree on is that we should do the appropriations process, do the individual bills, and have the debate. We are going to have differences, and that is fine. At the end of the day, we have a vote on the floor. Today, we tried to go to the so-called minibus, a group of four different appropriations bills. It shouldn't be that hard. We should be able to get these things done. I hope we can agree that no matter what, we should not have government shutdowns. One recommendation our report makes--again, this is a bipartisan report coming out of our subcommittee--our report says that the Congress should enact an automatic continuing resolution to permanently prevent the Federal Government from shutting down, so forever not to have shutdowns by just saying: If you don't get your spending bills done, you will simply have a continuing resolution that is automatic. During the shutdown in January, I once again introduced our legislation called the End Government Shutdowns Act. It is legislation that now has 33 cosponsors here in the Senate. That is about a third of the Senate. It is legislation that has mostly Republicans--almost two- thirds are Republicans. In the past, it has been bipartisan. This year, it has not been. I hope it will become that. I have introduced this legislation every Congress since 2010. My hope is that we will never have to publish this kind of a report again that talks about how many days we had a shutdown, what the cost was to taxpayers--$4 billion in this case--over the last 5 years alone, and the 57,000 hours of lost work productivity. We shouldn't have to have these kinds of reports because we shouldn't have shutdowns. We do need to put legislation on the floor and have a vote on it to be able to stop it. Our legislation is pretty simple. It says that you continue the spending from the previous year if you can't come to an agreement, and then after 120 days, you reduce the spending by 1 percent across the board. Why? To give the Appropriations Committees--the people who write these spending bills--the incentive to get to work, because none of them, Republican or Democrat, like across-the-board 1 percent spending cuts. They want to make their decision as to where the funding goes, and they don't want the funding to be reduced. Then, every 90 days, it reduces it another 1 percent. Again, it is to give them the incentive to get their work done. There is other legislation out there, one of which passed the HSGAC Committee--the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee-- about a month and a half ago. It had some other elements to it--that during a shutdown, we would be restrained from doing certain things on the floor. The government couldn't travel, including the executive branch. I think some of those bells and whistles that were put on it are not great policy, but I think it is so important that we end government shutdowns, we have to figure out a way to come together as Republicans and Democrats to get this done. I think we are at the point now where, if Democrats won't support the 1-percent cut, which is what they are saying despite supporting it previously--some of them--and the House sets a bipartisan bill, then let's look at just an auto CR, just automatically avoiding the shutdown and continuing the spending from the previous year. The point is, we need to figure out a way to keep the lights on and not have these shutdowns. We need to stop missing our deadlines. We need to stop putting our taxpayers in a bad situation where you do a shutdown at enormous cost to them. We need to put our Federal employees in a better position, where they are not being furloughed and they are not being told: You have to go to work, or we are not going to pay you. That is not fair either. So let's pass legislation to provide for a continuation of government spending, and let's do all we can to try to get our spending bills done to avoid getting in that situation. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will not allow us to fall back into this 12 days from now, and I hope instead we will redouble our efforts to pass spending bills on time into the future and immediately look at legislation that says: Let's end government shutdowns forever to avoid this problem going forward. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate what the Democratic leader just said about the flavored e-cigarettes, and I, too, commended the Trump administration yesterday for taking this action. It is a big deal in our high schools in Ohio and in other venues as well, and this will help to keep a lot of young people from engaging in this, which is bad for their health. Certainly, just like cigarette smoke, it also leads to addictions. I commend him for that. The Democratic leader also talked about the fact that President Trump has been tougher on China than any previous President in modern times, certainly, and that is also true. Let's all hope the Chinese Government comes to the table in the next few weeks, as they get back to their discussions, ready to actually address some of these issues, particularly, the issue of their subsidies, which are contrary to our laws, but also the international rules, the technology transfer, and the taking of our intellectual property. These are changes in the structure of our trade relationship that are required for us to get to that level playing field that all of us should want. I also agree about the notion that we should have more reciprocity. If they are keeping our stuff out, we should be able to respond in kind. Ultimately, we all want a resolution to this issue. We want the tariffs to be eliminated, but we want to do it on a basis where there is actually fair trade between our two countries. With regard to the appropriations process, I, too, am hopeful we can get something done here on a bipartisan basis. The Democratic leader suggested we might end up with a government shutdown. We should never end up with a government shutdown. It is terrible policy. It hurts government workers. It is bad for taxpayers. We will be issuing a report from the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations tomorrow in this regard to show how the last three government shutdowns have resulted in tremendous pain, not just to those who get furloughed and those who work without pay but also to the taxpayer, and they are fairly inefficient. Let's not even talk about a government shutdown. Why are we going down this road?

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 125, S. 1689.

Mr. PORTMAN. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time.

Mr. PORTMAN. I know of no further debate on the bill.

Mr. PORTMAN. I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, today six police officers from the Dayton Police Department were awarded our Nation's highest honor for law enforcement. These were the six individuals who stood tall at 1 a.m. on August 4, in Dayton, OH, standing up to a shooter, engaging him within 30 seconds of the tragedy beginning. Nine people had already died. Another 27 were injured. By standing up to him and doing it so quickly and responding so effectively, they saved so many lives. They put their lives in danger because they were standing between the shooter and innocent civilians who were out that evening, having a celebration, enjoying themselves, not imagining this horror could be committed. These six individuals were well trained. As Chief Rick Biehl of the Dayton Police Department has told me--and he is a friend of mine--the training worked, and he is right. It was more than just training. It was instinct. It was heart. It was their willingness to step up as soon as they saw the danger and run into the danger, literally. President Trump today awarded the highest honor to these individuals. When he did so, he said: ``The light from these intrepid souls defies the darkness and confronted the most sinister danger.'' Well said. Sergeant William Knight and Officers Vincent Carter, David Denlinger, Ryan Nabel, Brian Rolfes, and Jeremy Campbell deserve the gratitude of all of us for stepping into the breach. Tonight I will have the opportunity to be with them on this floor. They are going to come see the world's greatest deliberative body. I know that everyone in the Senate joins me in expressing our gratitude to them for the work they do every single day to protect all of us and for their extraordinary bravery that horrible night. We thank them, and we say God bless them for what they do.