Rob Portman

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 506, submitted earlier today.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. PORTMAN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise to talk about an extremely qualified person who has been nominated to be the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. I just left a meeting with Gina Haspel, who is a woman who has spent her entire career at the Central Intelligence Agency protecting our country. Over the decades, she has been in the field a number of times and has been in a number of dangerous situations. She has been an analyst. She has been in leadership. She is currently the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. By the way, she is the first woman who has ever been the Deputy Director of this Agency. Of course, she would be the first woman Director if she is to be confirmed. I had an opportunity to talk to her about a lot of issues, including the morale at the CIA and how people feel about her being the Director. As you can imagine, folks over there are extremely excited about this-- one of their own, someone they know and trust. They understand she has their interests at heart. I think it would be terrific for that Agency to have someone with her capability. She would be only the second Director in the history of that Agency who came up through the ranks. I also went down to what is called the SCIF, which is a place where you can look at classified information. This week, I had the opportunity to review her background, not just what is available publicly but also what is in a classified form. Suffice it to say, I was very impressed. I spent my time looking at her record, looking at her background, talking to her personally, talking to other people in the intelligence community to understand the impact she would have on the men and women of that Agency. I can state that I truly believe she is not only qualified, but she may be the most qualified person you could think of to run this Agency, and she will be good for the Agency. I have the opportunity, when I go around the world to make visits on behalf of the Foreign Relations Committee--I am a member of the Foreign Relations Committee--to meet with CIA personnel. I was in Ukraine, in the Czech Republic, in Germany over the Easter break, with our troops on Easter, and had the opportunity to meet with some of the CIA employees overseas. I can just state, you would be so proud if you had the opportunity, as I have had, to meet with some of these people and talk to them about what they are doing every day to help protect us and the risks they take every day to help protect us on behalf of our national security. Who better to provide the President of the United States with the sort of intelligence analysis needed to deal with so many challenges we face around the world than someone who has been in the trenches, who has been one of those people out in the field like the folks I met with as recently as last month? She is someone who has a deep understanding of intelligence operations. By the way, she is not political at all--not a Republican, not a Democrat. She is a career professional. What better Agency than the Central Intelligence Agency to have someone who is a consummate professional? I believe that is one reason she has such strong support from former CIA Directors. You probably have seen this, but former Secretaries of State and former CIA Directors have come forward to support her, including Republicans and Democrats. The list includes Leon Panetta, John Brennan, and James Clapper, who were all intelligence leaders in the Obama administration. They have come out in support of Gina Haspel. It is easy to see why she is so widely supported. Let me share one quick account I have read about. She is probably too modest to talk about it. One of her assignments was in a difficult part of the world, a dangerous part of the world. She was a station chief there. She got news that there were two senior al-Qaida associates linked to the Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. You may remember those horrible bombings. They were on their way to the country where she was stationed. With that little bit of information, she went to work. As a result of her swift actions and her dedication and intensity, she actually went full time, 24/7--they say she slept on the office floor to the extent she slept at all--and she was able to determine that these terrorists had gone to a particular hotel. Intelligence tracked them there, and after a firefight, they were apprehended. These two evil men who had killed so many people in Africa through terrorist attacks were stopped, but just as important, their computers were seized, and their computers revealed the next terror plot they were planning. Lives were saved, and Gina Haspel was awarded by George H.W. Bush the Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism. So she has received a lot of honors like that throughout her career. I tell you that story just to give you a sense of who this woman is because I think when we hear debate in this Chamber and talking back and forth, sometimes we forget the fact that these people do work in dangerous situations to protect us. She has been in situations where gunshots have been fired upon her vehicle, as an example. She is one of those people who all of these years has been out there serving us, and now for us not to support her, I think would be the wrong thing to do. I look forward to the confirmation. It will be another first for her, the first woman Deputy Director, the first woman Director, but that is not why she is doing it. She is doing it, as she told me today, because she is a patriot. She is from Kentucky, right across the river from where I live in Cincinnati, OH. She grew up as a kid who believed in patriotism and service and protecting our country, and she has devoted her life to this. One final point I hope some of my colleagues who might be listening or who are undecided might think about. This is an incredibly dangerous world we live in right now. Unfortunately, we face a lot of dangers. I just had the chance to talk to Gina Haspel about what is happening with regard to Iran, Syria, and the latest news with regard to the conflict between Israel and Syria. We had a chance to talk at some length about what is happening with regard to the Russian influence in Eastern Europe and particularly what is going on on the eastern border of Ukraine--the line of contact where I was a month ago, learning some of the challenges we now have with getting good intelligence with regard to what is happening in that part of the world. We talked about issues relating to North Korea and the recent return of the three hostages. I can just state, without going into detail, this woman knows the world. There would be no on-the-job training. She has been Deputy Director for 18 months, but long before that she had a grasp of what is going on around the world. She knows the people around the world, and she knows her senior leadership team as well. She is a woman who is prepared to step forward at a time when we cannot afford mistakes, when we need to have somebody who has that experience. I would just say to the families we all represent, we are charged with voting up here, but ultimately we are charged with representing millions of Americans, each of us in our respective States. Think about their safety and think about whom you would want--whom you would want in that position. I would challenge my colleagues to think of somebody who is better qualified. I know there are some concerns that have been raised by some of my colleagues about actions that were taken by the CIA immediately after 9/11. One, we have to put ourselves in that mindset after 9/11 and the great dangers we faced. Certain decisions were made that were considered absolutely legal. In fact, the congressional leadership, the so-called Big Eight, including the Intelligence Committee, Democrats and Republicans, were all read into it and knew what was going on and were approving of it. In fact, some would say that some Members of Congress even pushed the CIA to do even more in terms of interrogating people and getting more information to reveal thoughts that were being planned to save lives. I understand there is new thinking about that, and Gina Haspel herself said in her testimony yesterday that she has evolved her thinking about that, but I would ask those same Members who were talking about what happened in the early 1990s to think about what is happening today and to wonder who could be more qualified. By the way, if she is not qualified, that means a number of other people, such as anybody in a senior leadership role at the CIA who happened to have been there at that time, would not be qualified, including John Brennan would not be qualified, who got a large bipartisan vote in this body to be the Director of the CIA, even though he was in a higher leadership role at that time at the CIA. So, again, I hope she will be confirmed. I think she will be confirmed, but I do hope that any colleagues who are wondering which way to go will think about where we are today. It is a dangerous and volatile world. We do need somebody who has that experience, knowledge, background, and wisdom that comes with years of experience borne of actual experience in the field. And to have this smart, decent, well- qualified woman not be confirmed would be not just bad for the CIA but bad for our country and indeed bad for what all of us hope for, which is a more peaceful world and one where we do have the kind of intelligence we need to be able to keep that peace. Thank you, Mr. President. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PORTMAN

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

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, 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 ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, first, I want to talk about our growing economy. I listened to my colleague's comments, the Senator from Wyoming, about the importance of the tax legislation. I couldn't agree with him more. I think it is stimulating not just economic growth but higher wages and more jobs. I also want to talk about the need for us to connect to those jobs the Americans who are not currently employed. Then I want to talk about some very shocking, new information we have about why people are outside of the workforce. We just had a good jobs report from April. It showed a steadily growing economy. It showed unemployment at 3.9 percent. That is the official number, but that is the lowest the official number has been since the year 2000. In my home State of Ohio, there was a recent survey done by PNC Bank--it has been doing this for 9 years--that asked small- and mid- sized companies: What is your level of optimism about the future? They said their business optimism has been at record levels for the past 9 years. So there is something going on that is very good in the economy. If you talk to the small business community, the National Federation of Independent Business survey shows the same thing, not just optimism but also a sense that companies are getting ready to invest even more. So there are some good things going on in our economy. This week, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce issued its own report, and it shows something interesting, which is that three out of four businesses in Ohio are saying they want to add people--three out of four. More than half of them said they want to add more than 25 people. I was just home and had a lot of interaction with small business people over the last week. I can't go to a business in Ohio where I don't hear people talking about the need for a qualified workforce. They tell me, yes, the tax bill is helping--no question about it. It is helping middle- class families throughout my State. Ninety percent of Americans are getting paychecks that read Uncle Sam is going to withhold less money-- on average, $2,000 for a median-income family in Ohio just from the tax cuts this year alone. Again, small businesses are investing more. Companies are doing everything from investing in people, with bonuses and higher pay and better 401(k) matches, to investing in equipment and technology and, therefore, in the productivity of those workers, which will lead to better economic performance. So those things are happening. On the regulatory front, I also think that much of what we have done in Congress is beginning to help. This includes 16 different times when Congress has said we shouldn't have this new regulation that was put on by the Obama administration at the end of his term. Rather, we ought to free up the economy more--over $60 billion, by the way, of relief to our economy. That is helping. I think it is also very helpful, as Senator Barrasso said, that with regard to the administration, there is a new attitude, which is, yes, we need rules and regulations, and let's make sure they make sense, and let's make sure we partner with businesses and try to help them comply with those rules and regulations rather than have an attitude of saying: Let's try to find out how we can punish businesses for not complying. I think that difference alone may be even larger than what we have done in Congress, in terms of passing this legislation to eliminate regulations, because that attitude change has helped, particularly, small businesses in my State feel like, OK, they have an opportunity now to be able to take a risk--to take a chance--to invest in work. They are not thinking the Federal Government is out there to get them. I see that, and I am really happy to see it because it is not, again, just about growing the economy. Over the past few months, if you have looked at the numbers, for the first time in really a decade and a half, we have seen wages starting to go up in my home State and around the country. That is what we should all want. Let me talk about something that concerns me greatly about the direction in which we are going--again, positive. The economy is picking up. Things are going well. Workers whom I talk to are happy with the tax bill because it is helping them both directly with their families and through the benefits they are getting at work. Yet what I am hearing is, the workforce is really the challenge. When you look at that, you come up with a shocking situation, in which the reason there aren't people showing up for work is, we have a record number of men and probably close to a record number of men and women--you would probably have to go back to the 1970s to find these kinds of numbers-- who are out of the workforce altogether. Now, what does that mean? This means they are not working, and they are not looking for work so they are not showing up in the unemployment numbers. The number of 3.9 percent--again, the best since 2000--is all good news, but that is not the real number. I say that with respect because the Bureau of Labor Statistics does the best it can, but it can't include the people who aren't trying to find work. Those people are outside of the workforce. What the economists call this is a low labor force participation rate-- in other words, the low percentage of Americans who are even showing up. That concerns me a lot because, one, obviously, it is hurting the economy. You have this huge pool of workers out there. There are 8.5 million men between the ages of 25 and 55--able-bodied men--who are in this category. They are unemployed, yes, but they are not even looking for work so they are not showing up in these numbers. When you add women and men together, it is millions of Americans. So we need them in the economy now because it is important for these small businesses I am talking to in Ohio who are looking for people. Even more concerning to me is what is happening to these people and to these families, because they are not getting the dignity and self- respect that comes from work. They are not able to achieve whatever their goal is in life, their piece of the American dream. They are missing out. They are on the sidelines. The 3.9 percent unemployment rate, by the way, is not a real number. Why do I say that? Because if you go back to the normal labor force participation rate--we are talking about people actually working in our workforce in more normal levels--the unemployment number would be far higher. How high would it be? Go back to the year before the great recession when we had a more traditional workforce participation rate. With that labor force participation rate attached to today's economy, the unemployment number would not be 3.9 percent. It would be 8.6 percent. If we were to talk about an 8.6 percent unemployment rate, we would all be very concerned; wouldn't we? We should be very concerned because that is the real number. We need a more concerted effort to get all of those Americans back to work for all the right reasons. So who are they? It is a complicated question. No. 1, there are people who don't have the skills that meet the needs out there. So today, in Ohio, if you go on OhioMeansJobs, our website, you will see 140,000 jobs being offered, and yet there are 250,000 people out of work. You will see that a number of these jobs require a certain level of skill. People are looking for welders. People are looking for technology expertise, including coding. They are looking for people in the biosciences or the healthcare professions, where you have to have a certain level of skill. What workers are finding in Ohio is that if they don't have those skills, it is hard to get those jobs. So there is a skills gap--there is no question about it--and we should be addressing that. In Congress we have a great opportunity to do that through some relatively commonsense legislation. One measure is called the JOBS Act--a great name. The JOBS Act says quite simply that if you are able to get a Pell grant for college, shouldn't you also be able to get a Pell grant for a short-term training program? This is because what employers will tell you is that they don't need a 2-year training program or somebody with a 4-year college degree. What they need is someone willing to go through a training program to get the ability to learn how to weld or the ability to learn how to code or even to go through a commercial driver's license program. All these programs can be accomplished in less than 15 weeks, and you can get people to work. But guess what. You can't get a Pell grant for a course that is less than 15 weeks. So our goal with the JOBS Act is very simple. Let's level the playing field. Let's give an opportunity to those young people who may not choose to go to college, at least now, but who understand that those jobs are out there. We are talking about good-paying jobs, making $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a year. They are waiting out there right now. These jobs are open. Let's give them the ability--because they are low- income families, and they can't afford these training programs--to take advantage of Pell grants as they would if they chose to go to a 4-year college or university or a 2-year college for a number of years. Senator Kaine and I have introduced this legislation with a bipartisan group. We think it is something we ought to do right away. Who are these people? People with a skills gap. That is one specific idea--just one of many that would get people the skills they need. No. 2, there is something I would call the dependency trap. These are people who are on a government dependency program and they are not working. When they look at going to work they see two things. One, they see a reduction in their benefits. That is pretty obvious. But second, they see an increase in their taxes. Now the tax bill actually helps here, because it actually reduces taxes for those at the bottom of the economic ladder. Specifically, I will state--because I asked the Joint Committee on Taxation about this, and they gave me an official response--that 3 million Americans who currently have income tax liability based on last year's Tax Code--in other words, the code that was changed at the end of last year--no longer have any income tax liability. That is good because it will help with this transition from welfare to work, because although people may be losing those benefits, some people will not see that cliff where they have a relatively high tax to pay. That is good, but we could do more to assure that people who are willing to make that step out of welfare and into work are not penalized by this tax cliff. I think the dependency trap is also part of the issue for this unprecedented level of people who are outside of the workforce altogether, and we need to address it. I think there should be more work requirement programs for able- bodied Americans who are on these dependency programs. I think that would help partly to give them the work experience to get the dignity and self-respect that comes with work as they step into welfare-to-work transition. So that certainly is another issue. So it is the skills training and the dependency trap. Another issue that I think is very clearly out there is that we have a lot of people in America who are getting out of prison or jail. Some of them have a record that makes it hard for them to get a job. Let's be honest. We have record numbers of people behind bars. It started in the 1980s, when we wanted to lock people up for lots of good reasons because of the violence or serious crimes they were committing. But 95 percent of the people in prison are someday going to get out of prison. When they do get out, we need to provide a better transition for them to get to work. Why? Because right now more than half of those people are back in the system within a couple of years. That makes no sense for anybody, particularly for those who are subject to the crimes that might be committed and to the taxpayers who are paying $35,000, $40,000, or $45,000 a year, when you include incarceration, the prosecution, and the additional costs that are associated with that. So should we do more there? Yes. There is legislation supporting that. I think it is called the Fair Chance Act. It says that when somebody applies for a job with the Federal Government, for example, they have to be allowed to go through the process even though they may have a felony record. Why? Because you want to give them a fair shake, not just take the resume and put it in the circular file and toss it because you see a felony record. We have to give some of those folks a chance. I was at a great program in Ohio last week. It is called the Flying HIGH welding school and the GROW Urban Farm. Their job is to teach ex- offenders a skill. They teach people how to work. A lot of them have not had a job before. Specifically, they teach them a welding skill that is badly needed in Northeast Ohio right now. Their placement record is unbelievable, and their recidivism rate is so low. They are not only placing people into jobs, but they are working with businesses in what is called a junior apprenticeship program, where the workplace is actually working with the welding shop to give people work experience. They are keeping people from going back into the prison system. They have a great record doing it. They got a loan and grant money from the Federal Government, including the Department of Labor. It is a program that is working very well to give people the ability to get a job and to get out of the trap. In this case, a lot of them have felony records, and they are able to take care of their families and be productive citizens. There are very encouraging stories there. There is the skills training, which we talked about, and the dependency trap, which we talked about. For the people who are coming out of prison at very high numbers now and who have this background, we need to be sure that those people are getting engaged and getting into work. Let me tell you what I think is the No. 1 reason we have these historic levels of people who are on the sidelines outside of work. It will not surprise some of you because you are involved with this, like my colleagues here in the Chamber, including the chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, who has now arrived and has been very involved in this. It is the opioid crisis. The numbers are shocking of those people who are out of work altogether. They are on the sidelines, not even trying to get into work. They are people who would lead our unemployment numbers to be really more like over 8.5 percent rather than 3.9 percent. They are millions of Americans, over 8.5 million men between the ages of 25 and 55--able-bodied men. Of those people, based on two recent studies, about half of them are taking pain medication on a daily basis. When asked in one of the studies, it was found that two-thirds of them said it was prescription medication. What does that mean? That means that we have a huge problem in our country of opioid addiction, and that is keeping people out of the workforce altogether, tearing apart those families and causing crime in our communities. The No. 1 cause of crime in my State of Ohio is the opioid epidemic. People are involved in things they would never dream of except for the fact that they have this addiction. It is shoplifting, thievery, and fraud. It is an issue that affects every part of our community. The point I wish to make more strongly is that it is affecting our labor market in a huge way. One study by the Brookings Institution says that 47 percent of men are taking pain medication on a daily basis. That is not being over- reported--I will guarantee that--because of the stigma attached and the legal consequences for some of these individuals. So I think that 47 percent has to be viewed as a relatively low number. But isn't that shocking if it were 47 percent? Another study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the Department of Labor, stated that 44 percent had taken pain medication the previous day. Now these numbers should be a wake-up call for us here in this Chamber, and it should be a wake-up call to everybody, including the business community. As I go around my State, I am seeing firsthand what the Ohio Chamber of Commerce reported this week: Three out of four businesses want to add workers. Half of them want to add up to 25 workers, and they can't find workers. You have millions of people at historic levels who are outside the workforce altogether, leading to an unemployment number that should be 8.5 percent, instead of 3.9 percent. How do you get them back in? I think those three things we talked about today are important, but, unfortunately, given the opioid epidemic in my State of Ohio and spreading around the country, I think this is probably the single largest problem that we face. What are the solutions? We have made major strides in the past year in this Chamber. We passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. We passed the Cures legislation. We are now working on additional legislation called Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act 2.0. We are doing things we have never done before in terms of funding, recovery, treatment, prevention, and education, and we need to do more. We have begun the process of turning the tide, I believe, by some of this legislation. We need to do more on the law enforcement side. We have legislation called the STOP Act, which simply says that with regard to the most difficult problem we now face in Ohio and around the country, which is synthetic opioids--think fentanyl or carfentanil--let's at least stop the Post Office for being a conduit for its coming into the country, because that is what is happening. All the studies show--including the study we just did in our committee, spending a year studying this--that fentanyl is coming through the Postal Service--mostly from China, by the way--and poisoning our communities. In Ohio, two-thirds of our deaths in Franklin County last year were from fentanyl. Sixty percent of the deaths in the State of Ohio as a whole the year before were from fentanyl. That is the biggest problem we have right now. Just as we were making progress on prescription drugs, then, heroin comes along. Just as we were making progress on heroin, then, synthetic heroin comes along. It is cheap and incredibly powerful. Three flakes can kill you. It is being spread on other drugs, such as cocaine, crystal meth, and marijuana, which last week law enforcement in Ohio just confirmed. Can we do more? This is a big issue, but, yes, we are starting to take some steps. Where we perhaps have an opportunity that we are not taking advantage of is to get the private sector and the business community to get involved in this effort, because Washington can and should do more, but the problem is not going to be solved in Washington. It is going to be solved at the local level, in our communities, in our families, and, ultimately, in our hearts. We can get the business community more engaged, as an example, by pointing out statistics: If you are looking for more workers, you are going to have to deal with this issue. Many workers are not able to pass the drug test. So that is something the business community does understand. In fact, I just left a group of employers from Ohio about an hour and a half ago in my office, and I asked them the same question I asked of employers in our State: How many people can pass the drug test who show up? The answer was that about 30 percent can pass. Another said: 50 percent are not passing. These are different kinds of businesses. The second is a more heavily manufacturing business. So there are people with lower incomes or lower wages and, therefore, lower income individuals. But the point is that it is a huge problem passing the drug test. What I say to them, which is what I will say today, is that it is bigger than that. There are millions of Americans not even showing up to take the drug test. They are sidelined, and we have to deal with this opioid epidemic. So what should the business community do? I have three ideas. One idea is to roll up your sleeves and get involved in your community on projects that do work. There is one in Columbus, OH, called the Maryhaven Addiction Stabilization Center. The business community got engaged. They took $1 million from the CARA Act. They leveraged that for foundation money. They have a place where they have a great success rate getting people from overdosing and the application of this miracle drug Narcan, which can reverse the effects of the overdose, and then go into treatment. Unfortunately, in most parts of the country, of the people who are revived by Narcan, the vast majority go back into the same environment. Here they have been able to figure out a way to have those who are overdosing get to a central location where, right there, where the detox center is, there is a door you walk through with 50 beds to get people into treatment. They claim an 80-to-90-percent success rate in getting people into treatment. Do they stay in treatment? Not all of them. But that is the first big gap I see in the system. People fall out of the system. Narcan is applied by the first responders. They do the best they can, but it is not their job to get them into treatment. People go back to their community and overdose again and again. Talk to your EMS personnel and police officers. I assume they will tell you the same thing they tell me. The business community was involved in that thinking. Let's look at this as a business process. How can we help to change this obvious problem we have in the current way that people who overdose are treated and taken care of? Every business ought to roll up its sleeves and get involved in a creative, innovative project like that. Second, over the years, back in the 1980s and into the 1990s, there was significant private sector participation in a prevention and education program. Now, locally in my State of Ohio, some businesses are starting to think about how they can do this more effectively, I believe, nationwide. Columbus is coming up with some very good ideas. We need significant investment from the private sector in a national messaging program, a prevention and education program. Back then, it was TV ads. You may remember the ``Just Say No'' program and other programs on prevention under President Reagan. Some of those ads were very effective. Some of you may remember the ad ``This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs,'' with fried eggs being cooked in a pan, which is your brain on drugs. It is not going to be TV ads today. There will be some TV. I hope it will be broadcast media in various ways. But there will be a lot of online communication because that is where most people are getting their information, particularly younger people. It should be a concerted effort that is based on good research, good science. What is the prevention message that works out there? Part of the prevention message that works with some young people I talked to is the fact that all these street drugs are subject to the possibility of fentanyl being included in them. Some people are taking drugs they would never think were dangerous and yet becoming addicted through fentanyl. So there is now a danger out there, with any street drug, of ruining your life. But there is a broader prevention message that we need private sector help. This place, again, has authorized more money for this. There is $10 million in CARA 2.0 for a prevention and education program. That is good, but it is going to take more than that. The business community and the private sector have a strong interest in this for so many reasons. One, as we have talked about today, is to have the workforce they say they desperately need. There are other opportunities for the business community to get involved. Walgreens recently took a step that I thought was very important to limit the number of days on prescription drugs. Every single business that has a healthcare program has an opportunity to be involved in this and say: Let's limit prescriptions. Probably 8 out of 10 people who overdose from heroin or fentanyl today started with prescription drugs in terms of the opioid that got them started with their opioid addiction. There still is overprescribing with regard to prescription drugs. Have we made some progress? Yes. Our new legislation, by the way, CARA 2.0, has a 3-day limit on prescription drugs for acute pain--not chronic pain but acute pain from an accident, an injury, or a procedure that you might have. We have that in there because the Centers for Disease Control has new guidance out that shows that after the third day, the chances of addiction rise significantly. For the vast majority of pain associated with acute procedures, 3 days is plenty. In fact, for many acute episodes, no opioids at all are needed as long as you use other pain medication. That is something every business that provides healthcare can do. Every business that has a pharmacy can say: Let's limit those prescriptions ourselves. They don't need a government program to do that. There doesn't need to be a government edict or mandate to do that. They can just do it. I know this issue of the workforce is frustrating to a lot of employers out there. I know that the benefits of a great tax bill are creating more economic opportunities. A better regulatory environment is providing real relief and is growing the economy in such positive ways. Wages are starting to go up. We see economic growth numbers that are very encouraging, showing that, in fact, this legislation is creating more economic growth and therefore more revenue, higher wages--the things we all hoped would happen. The investment is happening. We are not going to be able to take advantage of all of that if we don't have the workforce out there. When we have millions of Americans--8.5 million men between 25 and 55, able-bodied, as an example--who are on the sidelines, not even showing up to look for work, we are not going to be able to fulfill our potential in this country for our economy and for them and for their families to achieve their God-given purpose in life, to have the dignity and self-respect that come from work. We listed four very specific issues today, how we need to address this issue of people who are sidelined, who are not in the workforce, but the one that I think probably has the most impact is the final one, and that is dealing with this opioid crisis. Unless and until we do that, we will continue to see people fall between the cracks, and we will see ourselves as a country not meet our potential. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I wish to honor 591 high school seniors in 12 northeast Ohio counties for their decision to enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces. Of these 591 seniors, 163 will enter the Army, 134 will enter the Marine Corps, 107 will enter the Navy, 19 will enter the Air Force, 7 will enter the Coast Guard, 153 will enter our Ohio Army National Guard, and 8 will enter the Ohio Air National Guard. In the presence of their parents-guardians, high school counselors, military leaders, and city and business leaders, all 591 will be recognized on May 9, 2018, at the Northeast Ohio Foundation for Patriotism ``Our Community Salutes'' event. In a few short weeks, these young men and women will join with many of their classmates in celebration of their high school graduation. At a time when many of their peers are looking forward to pursuing vocational training or college degrees or are uncertain about their futures, these young men and women instead have chosen to dedicate themselves to military service in defense of our rights, our freedoms, and our country. They should know that they have full support of this Senate Chamber and the American people who are with them in whatever challenges may lie ahead. These 591 young men and women are the cornerstone of our liberties. It is thanks to their dedication and the dedication of an untold number of patriots just like them that we are able to meet here today in the U.S. Senate and openly debate the best solutions to the many diverse problems that confront our country. It is thanks to their sacrifices that the United States of America remains a beacon of hope and freedom in a dangerous world. We are grateful to them, and we are grateful to their parents and their communities for instilling in them not only the mental and physical abilities our Armed Forces require, but also the character, the values, and the discipline that leads someone to put service to our Nation over self. I would like to personally thank these 591 graduating seniors for volunteering to risk their lives in defense of our Nation. We owe them, along with all those who serve our country, a deep debt of gratitude. I ask to have printed in the Record the names of the 591 high school seniors. The material follows: United States Army--163 Aguerrero--Jefferson; Allen--North Canton; Allen-- Wellsville; Ambiz--Ashtabula; Ashley--Fairlawn; Banegas Valladares--Barberton; Bansek-- Lorain; Beckley--Youngstown; Benco--North Ridgeville; Besosa Cortes--Brooklyn; Black--New Waterford; Bluford-Brown-- Lorain; Bost--East Liverpool; Bowser--East Palestine; Bradford-- Oakwood Village; Branch--Cleveland; Brandenburg--Broadview Heights; Breeds--Lorain; Brown-- Wooster; Bush--Columbia Station; Bush--Uniontown; Calhoun--Medina; Campbell--Kent; Cardarelli--Youngstown; Carducci--Ashtabula; Casenhiser--New Franklin; Chaplin-- Euclid; Cheung--Cleveland; Ciha--Kent; Clark--Parma; Coker--Cleveland; Combs--Parma; Crawford-- Avon Lake; Crecraft--Hubbard; Cross--Youngstown; Daley--Salem; Deka--North Royalton; Dillinger--Ashtabula; Downing--Garrettsville; Driggs--Canton; Duncan--Cleveland Heights; Ellis--Cleveland; Facemyer--Elyria; Fanara--Stow; Garrow--Columbia Station; Gillespie--Conneaut; Gilman--Lakewood; Grace--Struthers; Greer--Parma Heights; Gregg--Lorain; Griffith--Hartville; Griffith--Girard; Groat--Medina; Gross--Brunswick; Hall-- Ashtabula; Hall--Mayfield Heights; Hanson--Westlake; Harris--Youngstown; Heestand--Alliance; Hendren--Akron; Hively--Canfield; Holdridge--Medina; Holocker--Parma; Hunker--Oberlin; Ice-- Lorain; Jacobs--Cleveland; Jacobs--Parma; Jakes--Cleveland Heights; Johnson III--Cleveland; Johnston--Cuyahoga Falls; Jones--Euclid; Jones--LaGrange; Kauffman--Millersburg; Kessler--Wadsworth; Konjovic--Norton; Lar--Akron; Laubacher--Louisville; Lednik--Elyria; Lennerth--LaGrange; Lessears--Akron; Likes--Litchfield; Linden--Elyria; Lohr--Avon Lake; Loosemore--Youngstown; Lopez--Deerfield; Malone--Cleveland; Medina--North Ridgeville; Miller--New Franklin; Miller--Canton; Minarchick--Brunswick; Morales--Wickliffe; Morris--Beloit; Morrison--Smithville; Multunas--Brunswick; Murphy--Salem; Ochenkowski--Lorain; Palmer--Canton; Parker--Beach City; Parks--Avon Lake; Patterson--Medina; Perez--Wooster; Pestka--Doylestown; Peters--Vermilion; Peters--Youngstown; Poling--Niles; Potase--Masury; Prell-- Parma; Proctor--Ashtabula; Rambo--Columbiana; Ramsay--Wadsworth; Reis--North Olmsted; Reyes--Cleveland; Reynolds--Elyria; Rhodes--Amherst; Robinson--Cleveland; Robinson--Macedonia; Rollingson--Bellevue; Saikaly--New Franklin; Samela-- Cuyahoga Falls; Santos--Elyria; Schell--Conneaut; Sharier--Barberton; Shelton--Wellington; Shrout--Eastlake; Singer--Elyria; Smith--Columbia Station; Smith--Akron; Smith--Lake Milton; Smith--East Liverpool; Smithers--Cuyahoga Falls, Spagling--Akron; Spoon--Orwell; Stewart--North Canton; Stipanovich--Youngstown; Stockwell--Akron; Stokes-- Barberton; Summers--Cleveland; Swiger--Campbell; Tanner--Medina; Tindel--Akron; Townsley-- Elyria; Traster--Lorain; Tun--Akron; Upperman--North Canton; Vandoren--Orrville; Vinson--Barberton; Wallbrown--New Franklin; Wesner--Medina; Weston--Canton; White--Cleveland; White--Elyria; Williams--Strongsville; Williams--Canal Fulton; Williams-- Youngstown; Wilson--Mentor; Witherow--Columbiana; Wolf--Malvern; Wood--Parma; Wray-- Akron; Wright--Cleveland; Wyley--Cleveland; Yarian--Alliance; Zeisler--Youngstown; United States Marine Corps--134 Aronov--Solon; Aviles--Cleveland; Bailey--Akron; Baileyperschka--Conneaut; Bartek--Ravenna; Bates--Barberton; Benson--Medina; Berry--Tallmadge; Berryhill--Aurora; Bish--Madison; Bjornholm--Painesville; Block--Akron; Bolton--Akron; Britton--Conneaut; Brockett--Atwater; Bryan--Perry; Burge--Cleveland Heights; Burianek-- Brunswick; Burton--Painesville; Byler--Jefferson; Casey--Ashtabula; Chandler--Medina; Cilluffo--Geneva; Clapp--Wooster; Cochran--Lakewood; Cotter--Copley; Dages--Kirtland; Deguzmancacho--Cleveland; DeMarco--Medina; Douglas--Mantua; Dunn--Creston; Durbak-- Ravenna; Elmore--Medina; Elswick--Chardon; Fedor--Aurora; Friedmann--Strongsville; Galarce--Parma; Gill--LaGrange; Goulbourne--Bedford Heights; Griffin--Cleveland; Guttliep-- Parma; Hamm--Solon; Harris--Maple Heights; Harris--Stow; Harris--Bedford; Harris--Akron; Hartman--Newbury; Hatchell--Garfield Heights; Hayes--Fairview Park; Haywood-- Bedford; Heathfield--Cleveland; Helsel--Brookpark; Helton--Medina; Helton--Rittman; Hemmi-- Jefferson; Henry--Cleveland; Hernandez Cedeno--Cleveland; Hickman--Akron; Hiott--Mentor- on-the-Lake; Hodgdon--Orrville; Hotz--North Olmsted; Howe--Akron; Huff--Painesville; Jacobs--Dorset; Jones--Bedford; Jones--Barberton; Juist--Madison; Kamel--Brookpark; Kay-- Macedonia; Kerr--Madison; Knight--Akron; Koziol--Burton; Lee--Cleveland Heights; Leipold--Cuyahoga Falls; Lindsay--Akron; Lively--Cleveland; Lor--Atwater; Lynhamsimoes--Austinburg; Mabee--Akron; Mack--Akron; Mancuso--Akron; Mannarino--Ashtabula; Marallo--Lyndhurst; Marshall--Copley; Martinesquinones--Cleveland; Mayo--Kirtland; Mckee-- Jefferson; Michalske--Middleburg Heights; Miller--Akron; Miller--Willoughby; Mitchem--East Cleveland; Munaretto--Mentor; Niemi--Jefferson; Orantescruz--Akron; Otis--Cleveland; Palmer--Chagrin Falls; Pamer--Mogadore; Papp--Brookpark; Parker--Madison; Patterson--Cleveland; Pemberton--Chagrin Falls; Perdue--Medina; Plaza--Westlake; Price--Copley; Proctor--Akron; Reeves--Akron; Richmond--Conneaut; Rodriguez--Columbia Station; Scales--Shaker Heights; Schafer--Madison; Scott--Rock Creek; Sears--Cuyahoga Falls; Severns--Akron; Shelton--Akron; Shipton--Akron; Skye-- Mogadore; Spencer--Barberton; Stewart--Smithville; Sutton-- Atwater; Taylor--Painesville; Thomas--Strongsville; Tisdale-- Conneaut; Toth--Ashtabula; Troyer--Apple Creek; Vanbrunt--Orrville; Wagner--North Olmsted; Wiley--Warrensville Heights; Wilson--Orrville; Wilson--Chardon; Withers--Akron; Wooster--North Olmsted; Wright--Bedford; Zdanczewski--Windham; Zmauc--Cleveland; United States Navy--107 Adkins--North Olmsted; Baker--Warren; Berry--Willoughby; Bhagmath--Lorain; Blews--Girard; Bolha--Austintown; Bolton--Middlefield; Boyd--Farmdale; Burns--Ashtabula; Buzzelli--Austintown; Byczek--Lakewood; Cantrell-- Jefferson; Cantu--Wellington; Caraballo--Lorain; Cate--Parma; Chase--North Royalton; Clark--Middlefield; D'Amico--Mineral Ridge; Davis--Painesville; Dawes--Geneva; Derry--Newton Falls; Dudra--Fairview Park; Dyling--Warren; Eltringham--Geneva; Enos--Ashtabula; Evanitcka--Sebring; Farahay--Parma; Ferguson--Youngstown; Fisher--Cleveland Heights; Fitzpatrick--North Jackson; Fuerst--Chardon; Garrido-- Ashtabula; Glagola--Parma; Gustovich--Girard; Hanson--Burton; Harper--Cleveland; Harris-Michetti--Fowler; Henderson--Lakewood; Hernandez--Elyria; Holderman--Warren; Hove--Mentor; Huffman--Elyria; Hunchuck--Geneva; Ingram--Niles; Jakupca-- Mentor; Johnson--Cleveland; Johnson--Elyria; Josselson--Parma; Kamsing--Madison; Karp-- Avon Lake; Kenreich--Girard; Keyes--Ashtabula; Kidd--Wellington; Koharik--Broadview Heights; Kowalski--Mentor; Kristof--Rocky River; Krouse-- Norwalk; Ladiha--Mentor; Long--LaGrange; Lozinak--Parma; Lugo--Cleveland; Maldonado--Geneva; McMinn--Mentor; McNally--Boardman; Meeker--Niles; Merriman--Mentor; Mickus--Painesville; Morgan--Lorain; Myres III--Fowler; Nebe--Mentor; Needham--Youngstown; O'Neill--North Olmsted; Pastor-- Mentor; Price--Westlake; Prochko--Parma; Rado--Parma; Ragland--East Cleveland; Rangel--Aguirre-- Perry; Reilly--Westlake; Reynolds--Hubbard; Rodriguez--Parma; Ross--Painesville; Rutledge--Boardman; Scheuer--Painesville; Schivitz--Mentor; Sexton--Youngstown; Sharp Jr.--Lyndhurst; Shoaff--Parma; Shultz--Salem; Slifko--Hubbard; Smith--Parma; Snowbrick-- Bay Village; Sverko--Kirtland; Thistlewaite--Columbiana; Tripodi--Huron; Vandenberg-- Chardon; Velez--Lakewood; Voll--Parma Heights; Walker--Andover; Wear--Brecksville; Weber--Huron; Wells--Lyndhurst; Williams--Cleveland Heights; Wilson--Canfield; Windelspecht--Brecksville; Zborowski--Madison; United States Air Force--19 Barnes--Wickliffe; Casto--Cuyahoga Falls; Duesing-- Painesville; Fisher--Uniontown; Kaiser--Akron; McEldowney-- Akron; Polosky--Uniontown; Robinson--Cuyahoga Falls; Rojas-- South Euclid; Romine--Akron; Scheidler--Stow; Schleis--Akron; Shafer-- Akron; Shaver-- Munroe Falls; Slater--Euclid; Spencer--Silver Lake; Staley--Rittman; Washko--Stow; Yovanovich--Barberton; United States Coast Guard--7 Crawford--North Ridgeville; Langer--Concord; Nelson--Clyde; Robles--Berlin Heights; Slagle--Salem; Smith--North Ridgeville; Tryon--Eastlake; Ohio Army National Guard--153 Anderson--Lakewood; Anthony--Andover; Arnold--Lorain ; Aumann--Mentor; Barrios--Lorain; Baxter--Maple Heights; Berndt--Bristolville; Black-- Massillon; Bouchonville--Oberlin; Bradford--Brook Park; Bradford--Brook Park; Brady-- Massillon; Brown--Cleveland; Carlton--Fairview Park; Carper--Akron; Chase--Youngstown; Chen--Cleveland; Church--Euclid; Cook--Cuyahoga Falls; Coonrod--Avon; Copley--Barberton; Coreno--Cleveland; Corriere--Akron; Cox--Youngstown; Cozens--Madison; Cromer--West Salem; Culbertson--Rock Creek; Dahler--Berlin Center; Dalessandro--Wooster; Dalton-- Andover; Dampier--Elyria; Danielly--Hudson; Davidson--Cleveland; Deleon--Amherst; Deleon--Alliance; Delsanter--Richmond Heights; Depasquale--Canton; Dibo-- Boardman; Dieffenbaugher--Hartville; Dragos--Niles; Dreher--Minerva; Dunay--Chardon; Ehrlich-- Strongsville; 1. Estrada--Cleveland; N. Estrada--Cleveland; Fein--Elyria; Ferguson--Euclid; Freeman--Canfield; Fuentes--Broadview Heights; Gallagher--Brook Park; Gassama--Cleveland; Gehret--Alliance; George--Hubbard; Gipson--Elyria; Glover--Bay Village; Goins--Tallmadge; Gonzalez Sanabria--Lorain; Goodson--Euclid; Grubbs--North Olmsted; Gunter--Elyria; Gwinn--Barberton; Hadley--Cleveland; Henderson--Kent; Hladun--Berlin Center; Hoyle--Akron; Huff--Shaker Heights; Huff--Alliance; Huffman--Wooster; Hughes--Alliance; Irizarry--Lorain; Isaac--Solon; Jones--Rock Creek; Kamuda--Akron; Kinne-- Tallmadge; Kline--Akron; Kubalski--Stow; Kurpil--Alliance; Lane--Fredericksburg; Lara--Olmsted Falls; Lewis--Broadview Heights; Lin--Cleveland; Loar--Lorain; Lucky-Baker--Elyria; Mahaney--North Ridgeville; Martin--Elyria; Martinez-- Brooklyn; Martinez--Cleveland; McCrory--Kirtland; McCullough--LaGrange; McEachern--Lorain; McGonagle--Cleveland; Meder--Brook Park; Meyers--Clinton; Mondry--Cleveland; Monk--Alliance; Monn--Parma; Morrow--Avon Lake; Morton--Warrensville; Murrell-- Cleveland; Napier--Alliance; Occhionero--Pepper Pike; Osorio--Ashtabula; Owen--Elyria; Pacheco--Columbia Station; Palmer--Lakewood; Pawcio--Warren; Perryman--Elyria; Pilch-- Brook Park; Rader--Elyria; Reaves--Lakewood; Rendon--Youngstown; Rhea--Creston; Richards--Cleveland; Ritenour--Warren; Robbins--Ashtabula; Robertson--Kirtland; Robinson--Northfield; Robison--Warren; Rose--Leavittsburg; Rosenlund--Euclid; Rossi--Stow; Rowe--Bay Village; Russo--Boardman; Sandell--Conneaut; Scahel--Brunswick; Scott--Maple Heights; Scott--Deerfield; Shaffstall--Wellington; Sheese-- Louisville; Shreve--Jefferson; Shupp--Andover; Skipper--Grafton; Slot--Ashtabula; Smith--Akron; Stanley-- Ravenna; Strifler--Massillon; Sunyak--Akron; Teeple--Newton Falls; Thomas--Massillon; Thompson--Windham; Tolbert--Cleveland; Torres--North Olmsted; Trzebuckowski-- Brook Park; Udell--Andover; Valdez-Torrez--Alliance; Vanest--Uniontown; Ward--Euclid; Watson--Elyria; Wheeler--Akron; Whitecar--Strongsville; Wilson--Cleveland; Wood--Amherst; Young--Warren; Ohio Air National Guard--8 Bushwaigeer--Stow; Eash--Massillon; Fissel--Middlefield; Heards--Alliance; Miles--Canton; Ransom--Amherst; Tector-- Medina; Torres--North Olmsted.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I join my colleague from Alaska in commending the U.S. Senate for confirming Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. I think he is the right person at the right time, and we need somebody there. There is too much going on around the world to have that job vacant, and there is an important meeting of Foreign Ministers of the major countries in the world that is going on tomorrow that he needs to attend. Whether it is North Korea and what is happening there--where he has been very involved--or whether it is the continuing concerns we have with regard to the nuclear agreement with Iran or whether it is what is happening in Syria and certainly what is happening on the eastern border of Ukraine, where I was recently, there are lots of hot spots around the world right now, and there is the need to have somebody in place who understands the importance of addressing those issues and addressing some of the bigger and longer term challenges we have with countries like Russia and China to be sure we can have more constructive relationships. It is good to have somebody in that job. When John Kerry came up for confirmation in the Senate, not everybody agreed with him on the policies. When Hillary Clinton came up for a vote, not everybody agreed with her on the policies. They agreed they were qualified, as Mike Pompeo clearly is, and they agreed that a President should have the ability to have his or her person in that job, particularly as the Secretary of State. Therefore, in both of those cases, the vote was 94 Senators in favor. Again, I am just glad the Senate chose to confirm him, but I do wish we had had more of a bipartisan approach to it because I think it is important for us to show around the world that we, indeed, do have momentum behind this nominee and his ability to lead our country in the area of soft power diplomacy all around the world. I think he will do a good job, and I think he will earn the trust of those of us who voted for him today. I also think he will be able to change the views of, perhaps, some of my colleagues who voted no today. Congratulations to Mike Pompeo, and I am happy for our country that he is in place. Opioid Epidemic Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about an issue that has gripped my State and every State represented in this Chamber, and that is the opioid epidemic. This is prescription drugs and heroin and fentanyl-carfentanil. It is something we have talked about on this floor more in the last couple of years than we have at any time, really, in the history of this body. We have passed some good legislation, but, boy, there is so much more to do. Sadly, this crisis continues to unfold, and at least in my State and I believe in most States in this country it is getting worse, not better. So we started to take some important actions, but it is time to take more. Just last week, a couple in Youngstown, OH, were cited for reckless homicide and endangering children after their 16-month-old daughter overdosed and died. She was exposed to carfentanil, one of these synthetic forms of opioids that unfortunately has come into so many communities in this country and, in fact, is the biggest single concern we have right now in Ohio and many other States. In fact, in Ohio we had an increase of overdoses last year, and 60 percent of those overdoses were from fentanyl or carfentanil--this synthetic form of opioids that was hardly present 5 years ago. So as we made progress on prescription drugs, heroin came in. As we made progress on heroin, fentanyl and carfentanil came in. There is a need for us to push back and push back hard. Opioid deaths are now the No. 1 cause of accidental death in my State of Ohio and the No. 1 cause of accidental death in the United States of America. Think about how many people are being affected by this. It is across the board. It knows no ZIP Code. It is not just in urban areas, not just in rural areas or suburban areas, it is everywhere. It is something on which we can make a difference. I have seen some programs that are actually working well to try to turn the tide and push back. One I will mention is funded, in part, from legislation we passed in this Chamber just 1\1/2\ years ago. It is the Maryhaven Addiction Stabilization Center in Columbus, OH. It is an attempt by Franklin County, which is largely Columbus, OH, to come together and say: We have to do something to get more people who have overdosed into treatment. One of the many challenges we face in the crisis is the gap, and one huge gap is the fact that people who overdose have their lives saved through this miracle drug called Narcan, which reverses the effects of an overdose, but after coming out of their overdose, getting conscious again, they simply go back into the community and the environment that created this potential overdose situation in the first place. Once again, a week later, perhaps, maybe days later, in some cases hours later, the person may overdose again. The answer is not just applying Narcan--as important as it is because we do need to save lives. The important thing is to get that person into a program where they can begin to deal with their addiction, where they can get longer term support through a recovery program to stay away from the old environment and the old gang that got them involved in this issue in the first place. Addiction is a disease. Treatment is required just as it would be for other diseases. I am excited about what is happening at Maryhaven Addiction Stabilization Center because at this center, they are bringing people in who overdosed and then in the same facility there are about 50 beds for treatment. Instead of having the vast majority of people who overdose and come into an emergency room go home or go back to the old environment, 80 percent of the people at Maryhaven are going into treatment. That is a huge change. That is a sea change. That will have an enormous impact in dealing with the 200,000 people or so in my State of Ohio who are currently addicted. It will help them get into a decent program, get through the detox, get into recovery, and have the opportunity to get their lives back together. That program is funded, in large part, from Federal funding that came from this legislation we passed about 1\1/2\ years ago. Maybe $1.2 million has been matched by private funding and State and local funding. We have this new project that I think can be emulated around the State because it seems to be working really well. The CURES Act, which we passed, has provided to Ohio just recently $26 million in new funding, and we need it badly. We need to put it to use in ways that work. This is an example of something that is actually well-thought-out that is going to help close the gap and make a difference. In 2016, we were told we had the deadliest year on record in terms of overdoses. Unfortunately, it looks like, in 2017, the numbers are going to be worse. It certainly will be in Ohio. In the Franklin County corridor, the Columbus, OH, area, the coroner recently came out with their numbers in 2017. They had an overdose death rate that was higher than 2016. We lost 520 of our citizens to overdoses in Franklin County in 2017. That was a 47-percent increase from 2016. So it is not just a little increase; it is a huge increase. A staggering two-thirds of those--66 percent of those deaths--were from this synthetic heroin we talked about, the synthetic opioids fentanyl and carfentanil. That is really the issue now in so many communities around the country. Just last month, Franklin County experienced 18 overdoses in 1 week--1 county, 18 overdoses in 1 week. This was just last month. That is an average of over two deaths per day. Think about that when you are thinking about 1 county out of 88 and the impact this is having. We need to do more at the Federal level to combat this epidemic, and I would like to talk about a couple of pieces of new legislation that would build on the success we had in this body in terms of legislation that would help direct this money in ways that will make a difference, toward evidence-based programs--not just throwing money at the problem but making sure the money is well spent. One of the pieces of legislation is critical to this issue of fentanyl and carfentanil coming into our community. Unbelievably, this poison that we talked about today, two-thirds of the deaths in this county in Ohio last year were because of fentanyl. The 16-month-old baby we talked about was killed through carfentanil and another synthetic. Unbelievably, this stuff is coming in through our U.S. mail system, primarily. It is coming not over the border, primarily, or not in some other way like heroin might or even prescription drugs, but it is literally coming through the mail primarily from China. So evil chemists in China are mixing up this poisonous brew that becomes fentanyl, and then it gets shipped through the mail system into our communities--sometimes to a P.O. Box, sometimes to someone's home, sometimes to a business. Unfortunately, we do not have the ability within the U.S. Postal Service to push back. To me, this is an obvious example where this body ought to come together and say: You know what, let's provide law enforcement with the tools they need to be able to stop some of this poison from coming in. If you were to send this same fentanyl by FedEx, UPS, or DHL, a private carrier, they would have to provide data to law enforcement in advance: what is in the package, where it is coming from, where it is going. With that data, law enforcement can target those packages and pull them off the line and pull some of this poison out of our communities. I have been to these distribution centers where the carriers do exactly that. They have Customs and Border Protection officials there. They have rooms that have the proper venting to be able to open these packages. This fentanyl and carfentanil is so dangerous, our first responders are putting their lives at risk every day just by dealing with it. What they are able to do is stop this poison from coming in, which helps, at a minimum, to raise the cost. Right now, one of the reasons it is expanding is because it is relatively inexpensive, but it is also deadly. It is something that is causing many more overdoses and deaths than ever before. So our legislation is very simple. It is called the STOP Act. It is cosponsored by Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota. The notion is to say to our U.S. Postal Service to provide that same information because law enforcement tells us that unless they have that information, it is like finding a needle in a haystack. With 900 billion packages a year, it is hard to imagine how they are going to be able to stop those packages without having at least the tools of knowing what is in those packages, where it is coming from, where it is going, so they can use their analytics, the big data, to be able to identify those packages and stop them. Last month, a man from Cleveland, OH, was charged after undercover agents found he was selling fentanyl he had just bought online from China. According to the prosecutor, ``The defendant ordered thousands of deadly doses of fentanyl from China, brought it to a residential neighborhood in Euclid and then mailed the dangerous drugs all over Ohio and across the country'' using our own mail system. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in the U.S. Senate, which is a group I chair, did a yearlong investigation into this issue. We completed this several months ago. Unfortunately, what it showed is exactly what you would suspect. The traffickers, when asked: How should we ship these drugs if we are buying them from you online--because we had an undercover person working for us. He was a member of the Homeland Security Department, someone who deals with these issues every day. He actually contacted websites around the country. Unfortunately, the websites all said the same thing: We will sell you this deadly drug, but you have to ship it through the U.S. mail system. We will guarantee delivery if you do that. We were able to find five different websites that were openly selling fentanyl. They all told us where to send it. By using some of the information that we had based on the payment systems they were using, we were able to identify the people who had been shipped drugs through these sites. We found, incidentally, that just in a short period of time, seven people had died of overdoses after getting drugs from these particular websites. We also were able to refer to law enforcement some other people who apparently were dealing these drugs by taking large quantities. Even with this person in Euclid, OH, we talked about, thousands of deadly doses of fentanyl were found. That could be in a package about this size. Three flakes of this stuff can kill you. So, at a minimum, we have to be sure our U.S. Postal Service is giving law enforcement the tools to be able to help stop this deadly poison. The Postal Service has begun over the last year or so to make some progress in this area. Still, they tell us that only 36 percent of the packages transported into this country have any kind of advanced electronic data. As we dug deeper, having researched and gone to some of these sites where the U.S. Postal Service is providing information, we found out it was not 36 percent because 20 percent of the packages that had the required information still went into the community anyway because of lack of communication with law enforcement. Finally, we are finding out that it may be 36 percent of the packages, but much of the information is not helpful. We need to have new rules in place to say to countries: If you want to do business with the United States and send packages here, you have to play ball with us and provide this digital information upfront so our law enforcement can deal with what is clearly a crisis in this country. It is a glaring loophole in the screening process. It undermines the safety and security of our country, not just for drugs but for other issues as well, and it is time we fix it. After 9/11 and the terrible tragedy of that day, this Congress decided to require private carriers to require all of that information--the advanced electronic data--because of the risk of terrorism, frankly. At that time, we said the Post Office needed to do a study on this to give them time to get ready. That was over 15 years ago, and they still haven't done it. They need to provide law enforcement the tools they need by requiring advanced electronic data on all packages entering the United States. Thirty-one of my Senate colleagues--19 Republicans, 12 Democrats, and 1 Independent--have signed on as cosponsors to this legislation. It already has support of one-third of the Senate. It has been endorsed by President Trump's opioid commission because it is a commonsense solution to a growing problem around the country. There is House companion legislation to do this. Stopping this influx of fentanyl is going to happen only if we stop how it is coming, which is through our Postal Service from countries overseas, primarily China. We also need a more comprehensive approach, of course, to the drug issue. It is not just enough to stop the supply if there is a strong demand. Dealing with the demand includes prevention efforts that are included in legislation we passed in this body about 1\1/2\ years ago and still needs to be implemented. We have new legislation to help increase that comprehensive approach. The last bill was called the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act, signed into law at the end of 2016. We now have a new bill, CARA 2.0. It provides more resources for evidence-based prevention, treatment, and recovery programs. It will help people get into longer term treatment so they can truly overcome their addiction. It has helped to overcome the stigma by treating the addiction as a disease, and now it is time to ensure that we are looking at what works and building on it. I introduced this legislation with my colleagues, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and six others: Senators Shelley Moore Capito, Amy Klobuchar, Dan Sullivan, Maggie Hassan, Bill Cassidy, who is the Presiding Officer today, and Maria Cantwell--four Republicans and four Democrats. We kept this bipartisan. Other Members have joined in as well. Again, it picks up where the Cures legislation and the CARA legislation left off, to provide a better framework, because now we can spend the extra resources this Congress has wisely determined to put up against this fight. In the spending bill that was just passed, there was an additional $6 billion over 2 years put against this issue. Let's be sure the money is well spent. Let's be sure we have a roadmap to build on the successes we have had and ensure that that money is going to things that actually can make a difference. We talked about one earlier, the addiction stabilization center. We also know that one way we could spend our money better is to have a better prescription drug monitoring program nationally. So every State now has some sort of prescription drug monitoring program, but often they don't talk to each other. This is something that is required in my State of Ohio. West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are all States where there is also an opioid crisis. We need to be sure that they are talking together, so that when someone goes to get a prescription, the information is logged. If the person goes out of the State to order a prescription across the border--maybe just right across the border--that information is provided just as it would be if it were within that State. That is in our legislation as well. We also target addiction at its source. About 80 percent of the people who die of overdoses today probably started on prescription drugs. That is the latest data we have. Some of that was prescription drugs that were provided to that individual as the result of an accident or an injury, and they became physically addicted because they were prescribed an opioid for pain relief. The stories are heartbreaking. The parents have come to me and say-- and this has happened twice: My son or my daughter went to get a wisdom tooth extracted, and the dentist gave my son or my daughter opioids. In one case, it was 60 pills of Percocet or OxyContin. Sure enough, that young person had a physical addiction develop because of that. Then when the pills were harder to get or more expensive, they turned to something less expensive and more accessible, which was heroin or fentanyl or carfentanil, and then overdosed and died. These are 17- year-old children who were prescribed this medication. There are other cases as well. I have met adults who are well into their thirties or forties and are leading successful lives, well established in their community, well connected in their loving families. They had an accident or injury. Maybe it was a car accident. They were given pain medication--opioids--and they became physically addicted. This addiction is a tough one to climb out of. So many people then turn to another substance that is more available, more accessible, or maybe less expensive and then overdose and then the death. People say how could this have happened? When you go back, it happened because of a prescription drug--something was overprescribed. Others might buy prescription drugs on the street. This Saturday is National Prescription Drug Take Back Day in America, and I hope that everybody who is listening here will think about whether they could go into their own medicine cabinet or maybe their parents' or grandparents' and take out some of these opioids and then have those disposed of properly at a police station or someplace else. I know Kroger is doing this in Ohio and other States. Find out where your drug take-back location is. Take these drugs in and get rid of them because I have just heard too many cases, unbelievably, of people stealing these drugs and using them and then, again, developing that addiction or selling them and someone else develops the addiction. Again, the thought is that probably 8 out of 10 people dying of overdoses started with prescription drugs. So our legislation does deal with that. Our legislation deals with overprescribing because it must be dealt with. It requires doctors and pharmacists to use drug monitoring programs to ensure that we are not overprescribing, and it sets a 3-day limit on prescriptions for acute pain. We except chronic pain. We have exceptions for cancer. But for acute pain--the surgeries we have talked about--we are using the good science from the Centers for Disease Control, or CDC, and others that say two things: One, after the third day of using these opioids, on that fourth day, fifth day, and sixth day is when the opportunity for an addiction grows dramatically, and the chances of your falling into that addiction increases significantly. Second, in terms of pain and dealing with pain, we have also learned that for acute pain for most kinds of procedures, there are other kinds of pain medications available. I have talked to the dentists a lot on this. There is a dentist from Ohio who is a good man, Joe Crowley, who is now President of the American Dental Association. He is working with the dentists to try to ensure that we have new policies in place that discourage the use of opioids altogether for things like a wisdom tooth being removed. But to the extent it is used, after the first, second, and third day, it is much, much less necessary and much less useful, and other pain medication can take its place. So, as a result, we do have in our legislation something that is a dramatic difference from the unfortunate overprescribing that continues to go on in our country in too many instances, and that is a 3-day limit. After 3 days, if you continue to have the kind of pain that can only be dealt with opioids, if you are one of the few individuals for whom that is true, you go back to the doctor and get another prescription, but you have to go through a process to do that. The alternative is that we are going to continue to see more and more people become addicted through prescription drugs as a gateway and then again getting into this terrible cycle of overdoses and eventually overdose and dying in too many cases. So CARA 2.0 has these policy changes, as well as the additional funding for prevention programs, treatment programs, and recovery programs. It also helps our first responders by saying: If you can't afford the cost of Narcan, we will help you out but also give you training in Narcan and also to deal with this gap between the immediate overdose reversal using Narcan and then going into detox--between detox and treatment, between treatment and longer term recovery--to try to ensure that you have continuity. This is something that just makes so much sense and can save so many lives. These legislative efforts we are talking about here are important. So for those who are watching--and maybe some staff members are watching from some of the offices--please check it out. Check out the STOP Act, if you are not already a cosponsor. Check out CARA 2.0, if you are not already a cosponsor. Let's be sure that we are doing everything we possibly can here to make a difference and begin to reverse this tide, begin to save lives again rather than having this discouraging increase in addiction. It is not all about overdoses and deaths, as tragic as that is. It is about the millions of Americans whose lives are getting off track, who may not overdose and may not end up needing Narcan but who are pulling away from their family, who are not working, who are not engaged in their community, who are giving up on their friends and their loved ones. A lot of people in this Chamber are concerned about the fact that so many Americans are out of work today and not showing up even on the unemployment rolls because they have left work altogether. They are not even looking for work. Economists say our labor force participation rate for men is historically low. It is probably the lowest it has ever been in the history of this country. When you combine men and women, you have to go back to the 1970s to see as many people who are out of work altogether. I agree that is a big problem, and I would urge my colleagues to look at the impact of opioids on that problem. There are two recent studies, one by the Department of Labor and one by the Brookings Institution, which indicate in the strongest possible terms that opioids are driving much of this dysfunction in our workforce today. So to employers out there who are saying, ``The economy is growing, the tax cuts are working, regulatory relief is working, but I can't find workers,'' 44 percent of those who are out of the workforce, according to a Department of Labor study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, took a prescription pain medication the day before. The Brookings study shows that 47 percent of able-bodied men between 22 and 55 are taking pain medication on a daily basis. These are frightening numbers. By the way, I can't imagine that is overreported. I imagine it is underreported because of the stigma attached to this issue of opioid addiction and because of the potential legal liability people could be in for admitting it. Even so, almost half of those surveyed say they are not working. They are not even looking for work, but they are taking pain medication on a daily basis. So this affects all of us. Go to your firehouse in your community and ask them if they are doing more overdose runs or more fire runs? I will bet you that they will say the former. They are doing more drug overdose runs than they are fire runs. We are all paying for that. Talk to your sheriff or your local police chief and ask them what the No. 1 driver of crime is in your community. I bet they will say it is opioids. Often it is people who are committing crimes like theft or shoplifting or fraud to be able to pay for the habit--$300 to $400 a day or more. Particularly if you are not working, there is a temptation to commit those crimes and there is a craving for this drug that puts people in positions they never would have imagined they would find themselves in. Think of the families who are broken up. Think of the kids who have lost their parents to this epidemic. In Ohio, we have more kids in foster care or under the care of the State than ever in our history. Go to your neonatal units at your hospital and ask them about this. They will say it is the No. 1 issue affecting them because so many kids are being born to a mother who was addicted, and these kids have to be taken through withdrawal themselves--little babies. You can hold them practically in the palm of your hand. I have gone to these neonatal units in Ohio and have seen these babies, and it is heartbreaking because, just like adults, they have to go through this tough withdrawal process. No baby should have to do that. So this issue is one when Congress has taken steps in the last year and a half, and I congratulate this body and the House for moving forward with some positive steps. There is so much more to be done, and these two bills are a start. These two bills will help. They will help to save lives. They will help to get people back on track and help to ensure that people can live out their God-given purpose rather than get distracted through this epidemic, rather than getting off track with regard to family, work, dignity, and self-respect. These two bills will help, giving law enforcement in our communities the tools they need and helping our communities to be able to have a comprehensive approach here to turn back this assault of addiction in our country. I hope we can move quickly in the Senate to pass this legislation so the President can sign it into law and we can begin to make a bigger difference. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I come to the Senate this evening to talk about the nominees who will be up for a confirmation vote. The first of those is Ric Grenell. Ric is being nominated to serve as our Ambassador to Germany during an important time, not just with the danger and volatility around the world but with our relationship with Germany. Ric is well qualified, and I think it is urgent that we get him confirmed. Ric Grenell was actually nominated last fall. He was reported out of the Foreign Relations Committee with a positive vote on October 26, 2017. So for 6 months, he has been in limbo, even after getting reported out of committee. He has been blocked by just a couple of Democrats--I think maybe just one--and this body has not had a chance to vote on him. That is why I was pleased to see today that the majority leader filed cloture, and that is why we will get a vote this week on Mr. Grenell. I assume that he will get supported by a majority of this body, but I hope it is not just a bare majority because I think he is very qualified for the position. He is someone who has a lot of experience in diplomacy and international issues. In 2001, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as Director of Communications and Public Diplomacy for the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations. In this role, he advised four of our Ambassadors--John Negroponte, John Danforth, John Bolton, and Ambassador Khalilzad--on the formulation and articulation of U.S. policy at the United Nations. He was also appointed by John Danforth to be the Alternative Representative of the United States to the U.N. Security Council with full voting rights and privileges. He served as spokesman there during a turbulent time, an important time. But he also did more than that. He was appointed to be a U.S. delegate to a variety of United Nations conferences over the years, including the Financing for Development Conference, the World Food Summit, the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the Iraq Donor Conference, the Preparatory Committee for the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty Review, the High-Level Meeting on Ending HIV/AIDS, and the Commission on Population and Development, among many others. He has moderated a lot of United Nations panel discussions over the years on subjects ranging from Children and Armed Conflict to post-war construction issues, clean energy solutions that my colleague was talking about a moment ago. He is up to speed on the world's pressing issues, so he is very well qualified to be an Ambassador representing the United States. He has also been an active speaker, speaking on topics around the country that relate to crisis communications, the United Nations, and international issues ranging from Sudan to North Korea and Middle Eastern issues. He has been on a lot of TV programs. This is one reason he has generated some controversy on the other side. Yes, he has spoken his mind on occasion, but he is also someone, again, if you look at his qualifications and experience and his abilities--as he did for President George W. Bush--to be a team player and work with the team to communicate clearly, he is an excellent candidate to be a U.S. Ambassador to just about anywhere but particularly to a country as important as Germany. He received his master's degree in public administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Finally, I would say the timing is really important. One reason it is key that we vote this week is that we need an Ambassador to Germany. Over the Easter break I was in Germany. I was meeting with our troops over there on a factfinding mission. We have a lot of American troops in Germany still. We were looking at some of the weapons systems that have been developed in my home State of Ohio and how they are working. The people I talked to--our U.S. military officers but also German officials and others--were saying that it is important to have American leadership in Germany right now with all that is going on, with what is happening in Ukraine--Germany is a key player in keeping the European Union together--what is happening in the Middle East, where they play an important role, and what is happening in terms of our economy and trade issues. I heard from everyone: Why don't you send an ambassador over here? So it is time we do it. Finally, there is a particular urgency this week, because Chancellor Merkel is actually coming for a visit to Washington later this week. I think she will be here on Friday at the White House in meetings, and wouldn't it be great if we were to confirm this qualified Ambassador to represent our interests in Germany and to begin the process of improving our relationship with Germany and deepening that relationship. I hope we have the opportunity to have this vote in the next couple of days, and I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to take a look at Ric Grenell's background. I don't think you will find one of the Ambassadors who is a noncareer Foreign Service person to be a better person on some of these tough foreign policy issues, and I think he will do an excellent job for us in Germany.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, today I wish to honor the achievements of Richard W. Pogue on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Mr. Pogue is a respected attorney and community leader who continues to this day to work tirelessly to serve greater Cleveland, the State of Ohio, and our country. The impact of his generosity, commitment to the northeast Ohio community where he lives, and tradition of service has touched countless organizations and individuals. I am pleased to recognize Mr. Pogue's over six decades of service today. Mr. Pogue was born on April 26, 1928. He graduated from Cornell University in 1950 and the University of Michigan Law School in 1953. After serving 3 years, from 1954 to 1957, in the office of the Judge Advocate General, U.S. Army, in the Pentagon, he was honorably discharged with the rank of captain and joined the Cleveland law firm of Jones, Day, Cockley & Reavis as an associate in 1957. He became a partner in the firm nearly 60 years ago. In 1984, Pogue became managing partner of the firm, which was at this time known as Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue. During the 9 years he spent as managing partner, he led the firm during a period of unprecedented growth, including taking the firm into international markets. His area of practice has primarily focused on antitrust and corporate takeover work, and he has served as a mediator in a large number of major commercial disputes. Mr. Pogue retired from Jones Day in 1994, only to take on a second career as senior adviser to Dix & Eaton, a Cleveland public relations firm. He returned to Jones Day in 2004 and currently serves as senior adviser to the firm. Mr. Pogue's distinguished professional career as an accomplished lawyer and corporate adviser alone warrants this recognition. However, his caring leadership and dedication to civic engagement is even more impressive and has left a lasting impact on countless organizations throughout our community and State. He has served as chairperson of many organizations, including the Cleveland Foundation, Greater Cleveland Growth Association, Business Volunteers Unlimited, University Hospitals, and the Cleveland Council on World Affairs. He is known for his commitment to helping young people, improving our neighborhoods, many philanthropic endeavors, advising public and private sector leaders, and guiding business organizations through changing times. He chairs the advisory committee for the Regula Institute at Mount Union University and was a founding trustee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. He is a member of the Ohio State Bar Association Committee to preserve the legacy of Ohio Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer, the Access to Justice Task Force appointed by Ohio's Supreme Court Chief Justice, and the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation. He continues to be committed to higher education and has remained an active contributor to the University of Michigan Law School, which honored him as the inaugural recipient of the Michigan Law School Distinguished Alumni Award. He has served as a trustee of Case Western Reserve University, University of Akron, and the Cleveland Institute of Music. As he approaches his 90th birthday, Mr. Pogue is known to rise early each morning, work long days, and engage with community leaders and citizens in a wide variety of endeavors. He is a dedicated and loving husband, father, and grandfather to his wife, Patricia; their three children, Mark, Tracy and David; and their eight grandchildren. He is modest and quietly effective. His kind nature, integrity, professionalism, and dedication to community service has touched the lives of so many and has truly made a difference for greater Cleveland, our State, and Nation. It is my pleasure to recognize Richard W. Pogue and offer my best wishes as his family, friends, and the community he loves gather to celebrate his 90th birthday.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, today I wish to honor North Central State College in recognition of its 50th anniversary of providing quality higher education to the citizens of Ohio. Chartered by the Ohio Board of Regents and certified by the Ohio Secretary of State in May 1969, North Central State College moved to its current Mansfield location in 1970. North Central State is a regional economic and innovation leader where the community as a whole benefits from the increased occupational and investment opportunities of students remaining in Ohio after their graduation. More than 4,300 students enroll each year. North Central State offers more than 70 associate degrees and certificate programs in public services, health sciences, business, and engineering technologies. The mission of North Central State College is to provide individuals with the knowledge, skills, and inspiration to succeed in their chosen path. During this year's commencement ceremony, North Central State will present a degree to its 14,000th graduate. I am here to honor North Central State College and to congratulate everyone who was involved in making its first 50 years a success.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, tonight I want to talk about the passing of an extraordinary woman--a woman who captured the hearts of Americans across every spectrum. Barbara Bush was one of the most popular people in America--and for good reason. One of only two women in the history of our country to be both the First Lady of the United States and also the mother of a President, she consistently used those platforms that, as she would say, God graced her with, for good causes. There are many stories, but one I would like to recount was shortly after President Bush's election. She went to an AIDS hospice here in Washington, DC. This was a time when the AIDS epidemic was a huge crisis. Frankly, there was a stigma attached to it and a lot of nervousness about the disease. Barbara Bush picked up a baby with AIDS and cradled that baby. She hugged and kissed kids with AIDS. The message was very clear: There should be no stigma. We have nothing to fear. It is time for us to embrace these people. Her quote that day was everlasting: ``There is a need for compassion.'' She spoke to the heart. She also used the platform she had to empower people through literacy. This was one of her great causes. She believed the world would be a much better place if everyone could read, write, and comprehend, and the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy continues to do amazing work. She has touched the lives of so many--so many young people, so many adults--and brought them into a new world through literacy. She accomplished a lot more through her distinguished life. She was dignified, straightforward, witty, and well-intentioned. She had a habit of speaking her mind freely, and sometimes that got her in a little bit of trouble, but, frankly, when she did that, almost all of us nodded our heads in agreement. Interestingly, her Secret Service code name was ``Tranquility.'' For anyone who knew her personally, that might have seemed to be an odd code name. Probably she chose that code name herself, by the way. She wasn't always tranquil. In fact, she was sometimes feisty--famously so. One story that I think shows some of her feistiness was when she was having dinner one night with the President of the United States--43, who happened to be her son--and in front of many others, including staff, she commented critically on his table manners, which, of course, she loved, and so did he. The night before she left us, that feistiness was on display when Barbara Bush, instead of asking for pain medication, asked for a glass of bourbon and, with a smile, took a sip. I think the name ``Tranquility'' was also fitting for her. It was fitting for her because she was a calming influence. She made things more tranquil. I saw that firsthand at the White House, where she made life easier for everybody. I had the pleasure of first getting to know her when I was doing volunteer advanced work for her husband, then-Vice President Bush. I traveled overseas with them, traveled around the country some with them, and got to see the calming influence she had on everyone around her. Later, when I was in the counsel's office at the White House, I got to see how she made everybody feel more comfortable--including me, as a young White House staffer--encouraging me, knowing people, saying hello to them, talking to them, ensuring that the morale was good. Tranquility. It was helpful then, and it was helpful through her life, as she was there as the rock, as the adult. My wife Jane and I had recently become married. We had a child when I worked at the White House. Barbara Bush couldn't have been more gracious. She was a dear friend ever since. In fact, a few years later, when I first ran for public office--I ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in Cincinnati, OH, the Second Congressional District of Ohio--she came to campaign for me. This was early in 1993. Recall that, in 1992, George H.W. Bush--41--had lost his reelection. We did a political event in Cincinnati. I took her to Skyline Chili, which is a famous place in my hometown and all around Southwest Ohio. Although Skyline Chili and Cincinnati chili is an acquired taste, she at least acted like she really enjoyed it. She wore the bib, and people loved it. Maybe most importantly for me, while she was there, she cut a radio ad for me. In that radio ad, she said: ``I always enjoy having Skyline Chili with Rob Portman when I'm in Cincinnati.'' She said some other things that were kind. Frankly, as I look back on that race-- there were 10 people in the primary. My name identification was about 6 percent, half of whom thought I was somebody else with a similar name. I think that radio ad played a huge role in my first election, my ability to be here today and to serve the people of Ohio. Barbara Bush was an important reason I won. In that election, by the way, I had stuck with George H.W. Bush, who had just lost his reelection, when others were being critical, because I had so much respect for him and so much respect for her. Frankly, I think her popularity was an important reason I was able to win. In recent years, I made a habit of making a pilgrimage to Maine every summer to see them, sometimes going to Houston during the winter as well, but going to Maine has been a wonderful way to connect with them. I have gone with my daughter. I have gone with my wife Jane a few times. I sit with them. President Bush loves to give advice still, and I love to get it. Barbara Bush loved the political gossip, and we loved to talk about people and things and what was going on in Washington. She was curious, engaged, sharp, and up to speed. She loved George H.W. Bush so deeply. She sometimes called him ``FLFW,'' former leader of the free world. Again, her wit was on display everywhere she was. I remember being with them last summer on the porch. She always insisted on eating lunch outside. The waves were coming in on the Maine coast and the Sun was reflecting on the waves. Family was always around. That is when she was happiest. I will certainly miss those moments we shared, the encouragement, and the very candid advice that she was never hesitant to offer, but as we mourn the loss of this authentic and admired American, we should all find comfort in remembering the way she lived and the incredible legacy she leaves. She never ran for political office herself, but in a way she represented all of us, and I think she represented the best in all of us. I think that is one reason she was so popular. She showed us how to handle the spotlight and responsibility with grace, with dignity, and with the incredible way that she, again, was able to bring tranquility wherever she was. No wife, no mother, no grandmother was more devoted to her family. She had unconditional love for her children, including the 43rd President of the United States, with whom she had a great relationship. Her true partnership with George H.W. Bush, in service to the country, all the way from the time he was an 18-year-old Navy pilot through his career as President and after is an inspiration, that unconditional love and that partnership--an inspiration certainly to me and to Jane as a role model but an inspiration to all of us as Americans. I know I speak for all of my colleagues in the United States Senate as we pay tribute to her and also send our condolences to the entire Bush family. Barbara Bush is now in a better place. I can imagine her smiling, surrounded by family, including her beloved daughter, Robin, whom she lost as a child. She is on a coast somewhere, dignified, witty, and feisty, all at once, and she is earning that code name ``Tranquility.'' I yield the floor.

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 just had a chance to hear my colleague from Nevada talk a little bit about the importance of the tax cuts and tax reform that this Chamber passed at the end of the year and that is now in effect. All I can say to my constituents is, this is the last year you are going to have to file under the old code. You will have the new code next year. Why is that important? Because it is simpler. It doubles the standard deduction, as an example, which is a great simplification for a lot of taxpayers. It also takes about 3 million people off the tax rolls altogether. Think about that. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, over 3 million Americans, who currently have income tax liability, will no longer have it under this new tax reform bill. Why? Because it focuses on lowering the rates, doubling the standard deduction, and doubling the child tax credit. That helps people who are lower income Americans, who right now have tax liabilities and will not in the future. So it will be easier for a lot of people a year from now because they will have no tax-filing debate because they will not have any tax liability, and for others, it is just a simpler form. What is already happening this year is that the paychecks are changing. Why? Because the IRS is saying the employees are going to get more money in their paychecks because the employers are going to withhold less as we go into 2018 because the tax proposals went into effect at the beginning of this year. So even though this is the last time we will have to file under the old code, people are already seeing some of the benefits of tax reform. When I go around Ohio, I talk to people, and they say: You know, Rob, my paycheck has already changed. That is because 90 percent of Americans are now being told they will have less withholding taken out of their paychecks, again, because of the lower tax rate, doubling of the child tax credit, and doubling of the standard deduction. This is really helping. The average person in Ohio will probably see maybe $30, $40, $50 every 2 weeks in their paycheck. That adds up. The average in Ohio for a median income family is about $2,000 a year in tax relief. That is the average. That is a big deal. That is not just crumbs. Most people I represent live paycheck to paycheck. Most people I represent think $2,000 is really helpful. By the way, they tell me they are using it. It might be for a long-planned vacation they couldn't afford. It might be, as a couple of people have told me, to help with healthcare because they couldn't afford to buy healthcare until they had that extra $2,000 in their pocket--or more for some people--to be able to afford healthcare. For others--we heard a great story this morning from my colleague from West Virginia about a woman who said her daughter used to have to do her schoolwork at school or maybe at the library. She couldn't come home to do it because they couldn't afford high-speed internet. Now she can afford high-speed internet with this tax relief that is being provided. So this is something that is actually affecting people right now. As you go to the post office to mail your form today, or as you send it in electronically, just know it is going to get a little bit better, a little bit simpler, with a little bit less tax liability. By the way, the IRS has had some difficulty in accepting electronic filings today--another reason we actually have had to go beyond just tax reform, as important as that is, because we have to ensure we have an IRS that is working for the American taxpayer. The taxpayer service, the number of calls that are being answered, the number of answers which will be given correctly, all of those indicators are concerning right now. So we do need to ensure that the IRS has adequate funding to respond to taxpayers but also that there are reforms at the IRS so their computer systems do work, so the different stovepipe systems are talking to each other. So tax reform and tax relief are very important but also, as we have seen today with this glitch with regard to electronic filing, we have to make sure the IRS is up to the task and providing the taxpayer service that people deserve. The tax relief effort, though, wasn't just for families and individuals. It also focuses on business relief. Why? Because we know American companies were not competitive under the old code. You had investment going overseas and you had jobs going overseas. There is tax relief for small businesses and large businesses alike. We are hearing more about that because we have seen a lot of headlines. There was another one today about yet another major company that is making some investments in this country. I was at the Kroger company yesterday. Kroger is one of the largest employers in the United States. It is a great grocery store chain--the largest in the country, by the way. They happen to be headquartered in Ohio. They made a huge announcement yesterday. They said they are going to take the savings they got from the tax relief and tax reform measure, and they are going to substantially give it back to their employees. The things they talked about were very interesting. One is to increase the 401(k) match. That is important. They already give a 100- percent match. Now they are going to do it at 5 percent, rather than 4 percent, of people's salary. That is nice because people can save more for their own retirement. They talked about helping employees who are having a tough time through the employee assistance program. They are increasing funding for that program. They talked about the employee discount program so the employees can buy more from their own stores, expanding more things they can buy and how much they can buy with discounts. That helps their employees. They also talked about something I thought was really great, which is continuing education--lifelong learning. They said they are going to provide their employees with a $3,500-a-year--$3,500-a-year--stipend to continue their education. Maybe it is getting a GED, or maybe it is getting an MBA and everything in between, but they believe in education. They want to help these employees be able to better themselves. They believe that will also help them to keep people longer term. This is part of how they are using the tax cut. By the way, it is applicable to everybody who has been there for 6 months. You only have to be there for 6 months to apply for this. You can be there part time or full time, and you get this assistance for education. This is all coming from the tax relief this body passed. Is it making a difference in the lives of your constituents? It certainly is in the lives of my mine; I can tell you that. I have now been to 13 different businesses around the State of Ohio, and I have asked them this question directly: What is happening? What are you doing? All of them tell me they are investing either in their people or they are investing in their plants and equipment, helping the technology so people can be more competitive and more effective at doing their jobs. I have also had a half dozen roundtable discussions, where I bring small business owners together, and dozens of businesses have told me what they are doing. Some are providing more healthcare coverage. In a couple of cases--one is a small craft brewer in Ohio, another is an auto parts company--they are providing healthcare for their employees for the first time. In one case, they had it before it got too expensive because of the Affordable Care Act, and now they are able to provide healthcare for their employees. Another one had never provided healthcare because it was a small business just getting started, and now they can provide healthcare for their employees because of the savings from the tax bill. Others are doing much more in terms of the community and charitable giving, again, some with regard to 401(k)s and some with regard to new equipment and machines to make their employees more productive. When economists look at what is going on in our economy, they think: Gosh, the reason wages haven't gone up much in the last decade--and, really, it has been flat in Ohio--is because work productivity has not been high enough. Well, this tax reform effort is providing more investment to our companies. I would much rather have people investing here in America than investing overseas, and that is what was happening. Three times as many American companies were bought by foreign companies last year, instead of the other way around because of our Tax Code. There was a study out by Ernst & Young that said 4,700 of companies went overseas. When they do that, they take their investment with them. They take some of their R&D with them. We have done studies on this to be able to show that 4,700 companies had gone overseas that would have stayed--American companies--just over the last 13 years if we had the kind of tax reform in place we now have. Those companies now have incentive to be here. They have incentive to invest here. Foreign companies now have an incentive to invest here. When they are trying to decide between investing in Japan, China, or Europe, now they look here and say: This is a lower tax rate, and you get immediate expensing. In other words, when you buy something, you can expense it more quickly, deduct it more quickly. That encourages investment here, whether you are a U.S. company or a foreign company. That is why this is exciting. There is some new information out from the Congressional Budget Office that talks about economic growth, and it says that because of the tax reform effort, we are seeing higher growth rates. For this year--the year we are in right now--the Congressional Budget Office had projected 2 percent economic growth--pretty weak. I mean, it is growth, but it is not enough to get wages up. It is not enough to really get people the opportunities they are looking for when they work hard and play by the rules. Guess what they are saying now: 3.3 percent, not 2 percent. So 3.3 percent economic growth is projected for this year. Again, they say this is largely attributable to the pro-growth policies included in the tax reform effort we are talking about--the tax cuts. They also say that for the first time in a long time, we are seeing wages going up. They project wages going up. When we look at last month and the month before, we can see these wages start creeping back up again. This is really exciting to me because, ultimately, we want to see economic growth, yes, but we really want to see working families be able to see a little higher income so that they are not stuck in this squeeze where their income is flat and yet their expenses are up. What is the biggest expense that has been increasing? Healthcare. So, yes, we have to do more on healthcare and, yes, we have to do more to increase economic growth, but wouldn't it be great to have wages going up to be able to compensate for that and to give people again the sense that if they are doing the right things in life, if they are willing to work hard and play by the rules, they can get ahead and their kids and their grandkids can get ahead too. So I am excited to be here today to say that this is the last day we have to file under the old Tax Code but also to say that the new Tax Code is helping to give the families that I represent the opportunity to do a little better, to give businesses that I represent the opportunity be more competitive and to reinvest in their employees and to reinvest in their businesses and their competitiveness and their productivity. That, ultimately, is what is going to make the biggest difference in this tax reform effort. With that, I see that one of my colleagues is here. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I wish to talk tonight about the brave Ohioans who dedicate themselves every day to protecting all of the rest of us; that is, our first responders. This week is Ohio First Responders Week, a week of appreciation, the theme being ``Bringing Help, Bringing Hope.'' Well said. Police officers, firefighters, EMS professionals, and other first responders put themselves in harm's way for us every single day. They risk their own safety to care for others. They wake up every day, put on their uniforms, and carry out their duties with an unwavering commitment to their communities and a pledge to protect those around them. This morning, we had our weekly Buckeye Coffee. We had people from all over Ohio there. Sure enough, a bunch of first responders showed up. It was the EMS chiefs association, and we had an opportunity to talk with them about what they are doing every day. Of course, EMS help with regard to traffic accidents, gunshot wounds, and so on. But one of the new challenges they face that is taking an enormous amount of their time and effort is the opioid crisis. I would bet if you go to your firehouse and ask them, the first responders in our communities are responding more to overdose runs than they are to fires. This is one example of where they are on the frontlines dealing with this issue and are applying Narcan, the miracle drug that reverses the effects of an overdose to save lives. We appreciate them, and the service and commitment of these first responders is needed now more than ever. I urge all Ohioans this week to demonstrate their thanks to first responders. If you live in a community that is having an event, which a number are, I hope you will attend the event. If not, if you cross paths with a first responder, thank him, thank her, and tell them we appreciate what they are doing. I know I speak for the entire Buckeye State when I say that we are grateful for the work our first responders do every single day, and they will continue, as the theme says this year, to bring help and hope to all of us. We thank them.

Mr. PORTMAN

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

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. On another topic, Mr. President, today is a big day in the fight against sex trafficking. I just got back a couple of hours ago from a meeting at the White House where the President of the United States signed legislation that we have been working on for several years to be able to push back against the sex trafficking that is occurring online. It was very emotional. We had a lot of survivors, victims of sex trafficking, who were there. One of them was standing next to the President. When he signed the bill, he asked whether she wanted to say anything. Fighting back tears, Yvonne Ambrose said: I want to tell you about my daughter. She told the President about her 16-year-old daughter who was trafficked on backpage.com, a website that has most of the commercial sex traffic, and how she got a call on Christmas Eve a couple of years ago. Her daughter had been murdered. As she said, no mother should ever have to accept or take that call. She talked about how her daughter got dragged into this issue of trafficking and said that she hopes the legislation we passed will be able to save other daughters, other granddaughters, other Americans who otherwise would become part of the sex trafficking tragedy we have seen unfold in our country. This legislation came out of experiences we have all had when we go back home. We talk to victims and survivors, and we have learned over the past several years that trafficking is actually on the increase in this country, in this century. People think: Well, trafficking is going on, but it happens in Africa or it happens in Asia or it happens in Latin America. It happens here. It probably happens in your community. Unfortunately, it happens in my State of Ohio way too frequently. Through our investigation and studies of this, increasingly, we heard about online trafficking. Survivors have told me: Rob, this has moved from the street corner to the smartphone. Groups, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, showed that from 2005 to 2015 there was an 800-percent increase in reports of trafficking. All of the experts agree that there is an increase in trafficking, and all agree that most of this is attributable directly to one thing--the movement to the ruthless efficiency of online selling of women and children. One website in particular kept coming up--backpage.com, which I mentioned earlier. So we launched an investigation over a 2-year period in the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair. We decided to dig deep and find out what was going on, why it was happening, and what the nature of this was. What we found was shocking. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri is the ranking member of the committee. She and I did this investigation, together with our committee, and we issued the report together. It was bipartisan from the start. I would say it was even nonpartisan, and it is to this day. The investigation involved asking backpage.com for a lot of information that they were unwilling to give. We had to subpoena them, and they still refused to provide the information. We had to come to this Chamber, to the U.S. Senate, and get a vote of the entire Senate-- the first time in 21 years we had to do this--to be able to enforce these subpoenas. Every Member of this body got engaged and involved in this, and by the end of the process, we had a unanimous vote from the Senate to say: Yes, you should be able to force people to provide relevant information to the committees that are doing oversight, like ours. We got permission to enforce it, which meant potential criminal sanctions, and they still wouldn't give us information. They fought us at the district level. They lost there. Then they fought us at the circuit level. We fought and won there. Then they fought us at the Supreme Court of the United States. We had to take it all the way to the Supreme Court. Then, yes, they did provide us with about a million documents. They still refused to testify. They took the Fifth. But they did provide us with the documents because they had to under the threat of penalty of law. Through those documents, we found out something shocking, which was that not only were they selling women and girls online and making a lot of money doing it, but they were purposely selling underage girls and trying to hide the fact that they were doing it. Think about that. They were not only selling girls and women online, but they were taking ads for underage girls, knowing they were underage and running the ads anyway. In fact, they would go to the people who were trying to place the ads and say: You know what, you need to change this word. You can't use the word ``schoolgirl'' because this indicates the girl is underage. You can't use the word ``cheerleader'' because that shows that she is underage. You can't use the word ``Lolita,'' which is a novel about a young girl being trafficked and an older man. You can't use the description of the girl and put her age in there if she is underage, but they want your ad anyway. They edited the ads, so they were complicit in this. You would think a prosecutor would be able to go after these people, right? They are engaged in illegal activity online. If that activity were happening offline, on the street corner in your community, it would be illegal. When the prosecutors went after these people online and when the victims of trafficking, like the woman I talked about earlier whose 16-year-old daughter was murdered while she was being trafficked on backpage--when they went after backpage in that case, they were unsuccessful. Why? Because they said: Yes, Desiree died. Yes, Desiree would have a lawsuit here, as well as other women and families who came to testify before us. Kubiiki Pride is one, and her daughter was there today. But there is a Federal law that says: We, the courts, can't even take up this case because the Federal law provides an immunity, a shield, to these websites. Unbelievable. We had a court in Sacramento last year actually tell Congress, basically: Please change this law. They said: We can't stop this exploitation--this alleged exploitation of women and girls. We can't stop it because Congress has passed a law that protects these websites. No one can go after them. The more we learned, the more we dug, the more we found out what was really going on, we determined that our report, which you can see here--and I encourage you to check out this report. You can find it online. ``Backpage'' is the search, and look on Portman.senate.gov. Go to Portman.senate.gov, and you will see this report, if you are interested in it. The summaries will help. What it says, basically, is that they are trafficking these individuals, and they know they are doing it. Yet they are immune. Once we determined that was our issue, we determined it was time for us to figure out legislation to actually change our Federal law that was permitting it. The culmination of that was today when the President of the United States signed that into law. For a couple of years, we had quite a legislative struggle because there were a lot of individuals who said: Well, you can't touch these internet companies because of this law. The law was passed 21 years ago, at the infancy of the internet. It was well-intentioned, but I do not believe that any Member of this body intended, when they passed that law, to say that you should be able to traffic people online knowingly and not pay some consequence for it, not be accountable for it. We made a very narrow carve-out for trafficking of individuals online. We made sure that it was consistent with the Federal criminal law that was already in place if you were to do it offline. We ensured that there was a Good Samaritan provision so that if a website was in good faith trying to clean up its site and edit its site and get this information off of it, they would not be liable. That Good Samaritan or safe harbor provision was in our legislation. We proceeded to get it passed. We had a lot of pushback, particularly from the tech community--not everybody in the tech community but certain people who believe strongly that this legislation was somehow a threat to internet freedom. I do not believe that to this day. I believe it is targeted, it is responsible, and it certainly is an issue on which you would think everybody would agree. Just because you are online does not mean you are not accountable and responsible for selling people online--again, in the context of more and more trafficking in this country. As you look into it, you determine that is because of this online presence, the ruthless efficiency of the online selling of women and children. We were able to bring it to the floor for a vote after a committee process. We went through the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. We went through the Commerce Committee. At the end of the day, we got a vote in this Chamber of 97 to 2. That rarely happens around here-- rarely, if ever. Again, today, finally, the President signed the bill. It looks like it was easier to do at the end. I will tell you, a couple of years ago, we were told: This will never happen. You can't make this happen. You can't beat us. We have a lot of power. We have a lot lobbyists. We have a lot of abilities to stop you in the committee. Yet, through persuasion and, frankly, through the personal testimony of victims and survivors who were willing to come forward and courageously share their stories, we were able to prevail. Today, it was a victory--not for this body, not for the legislative process, but it was a victory for those victims and those survivors. One mom told me today: This means my granddaughter won't have to worry about this issue. It means that when my kid goes to the mall, I don't have to worry as much about what might happen, who might try to take her into this web of trafficking. My hope is that this legislation will be able to curb the online trafficking in a significant way. We are already seeing the results of that. I was told today, in fact, that websites that trafficked people online are shutting down all over America because they don't want to be sued, because they are losing their immunity. It is not affecting the freedom of the internet, but it is affecting those evil websites that were engaged in criminal activity and hiding behind section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. I am told that as many as 80 percent of those trafficking websites have shut down just in the last several days because they don't want to be subject to these lawsuits. We also had something else that was very interesting happen this week. The Department of Justice went after backpage.com. They actually indicted seven individuals. If you look at the indictment, which I have here--you can find this by going on the Justice Department website, I am sure; it is in the district court in Arizona--you will see that they named seven individuals. These are the same seven individuals we named in our report. They also used the information from our report about the fact that backpage was changing ads, editing ads. In other words, they were knowingly allowing ads about underage girls to be run because they wanted the profits. That is exactly what is talked about in this indictment. The work of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was very important because it enabled us to provide to the Justice Department information they used for these indictments. We provided that information 10 months ago, and the indictments came out in the last several days. My hope is that now, because this law passed, we will see a lot more prosecutions because we have now allowed State prosecutors and attorneys general around the country and local prosecutors, district attorneys, and county prosecutors--who are the ones who ultimately are going to be much more effective and more able to go after this kind of activity--to do so. Backpage has been in existence for 14 years. Until this week, the Federal Justice Department had not made these indictments. It was great that they did it. It is also about time, in my view. Now we have this tool to allow other prosecutors to be more aggressive, to do what should have been done years ago--to save the lives of so many girls, women, and boys whose lives have been taken off track because of the trauma associated with this. We also now have the opportunity for the victims themselves to file lawsuits. This is already having a chilling effect. In other words, it is already taking down these websites that don't want to be sued. They know our legislation--although very narrowly crafted--applies to them because they are knowingly involved in, supporting, assisting sex trafficking. I think this is a victory for the victims, the survivors, and, maybe most importantly, the potential future victims. It is also an opportunity for us to celebrate something that this Chamber accomplished in a bipartisan way, going through the right process, doing the research, coming up with the facts, narrowly crafting legislation that works, which doesn't have a negative impact, but in fact, it helps to change behavior. We are already seeing it. My hope is that we will do more of that around here. We have many other issues to address. Earlier, we talked about the opioid crisis. Congress passed some good legislation, but we need to do more. We have an issue with getting people back to work who are in the shadows of our economy, some of whom have a felony record, some of whom are addicted to opioids, some of whom don't have the skills to engage in a modern economy. That is a huge challenge. To me, it is unbelievable that we have so many people who are in our country but not in our labor force. Our labor force participation rate, as economists call it, is as low as it has ever been for men in the history of our country. There are probably 9 million men between 25 and 55 who are able-bodied and not working today. That is wrong. There are many issues we need to address. If we can do those studies in the same way and come up with sensible solutions based on research, based on good practices, keep it not just bipartisan but nonpartisan, and say: Let's get the politics out of this, and let's try to figure out how to help people--which is our job around here; that is what we were elected to do--maybe we can make progress in a number of different areas. Today, at the signing ceremony for this legislation, the SESTA legislation, I had the opportunity to see a friend of mine, Theresa Flores, who runs a group called Save Our Adolescents From Prostitution, S.O.A.P. the reason she uses the acronym S.O.A.P. is that Theresa, who is a survivor--she was trafficked years ago and now has a passion for this issue. She calls her organization S.O.A.P. because she goes to major events around the country, sporting events, where there tend to be an increase in trafficking. What she does is she goes to the hotels and asks them to put a bar of soap in the bathroom. On that bar of soap, she has listed the national hotline for sex trafficking. A girl can call that number and have someone come rescue her, and she can escape from her trafficker. That simple act of making these bars of soap and getting hotels to place them in these bathrooms has been remarkably effective. Think about it. These girls or women may have no other time where they have privacy, where they don't have the trafficker with them, where they are not feeling under duress. When they have their private moment in the bathroom, they see the number. Many of them have called that number and have been able to escape this life and get back to a productive life, with treatment, with support, with the kind of longer term recovery that is needed to get through the trauma, to get through, in many cases, the drug addiction. Drugs are involved in this, as you can imagine, as a way to make these women, girls, and boys dependent. In fact, in Ohio, unfortunately, that is a common practice, is that drugs are involved. Theresa Flores has done something incredible. She has channeled her frustration and all of the trauma she went through into something very constructive. She was there today, and her comment to me was that, by this act, by passing this law, we are going to save lives, and we are going to enable future generations to not go down the tragic and dark road she had to go down. That should make us feel good in this Chamber. It should make us feel good for those whose lives can be helped through this and for those victims to at least have the opportunity to have their day in court, to be able to seek justice. I thank the President of the United States for signing the legislation today. I thank Ivanka Trump in particular for her support on the legislation all along the way. I hope this legislation will be a model for others to come. I yield back my time.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I thank Senator McCaskill. She is absolutely right. We are grateful to the entire Senate for jumping in on this because we would not have gotten to the bottom of this without our having gotten the Senate to decide for the first time in 21 years this question: Are we going to enforce the subpoena or not? People stepped up. As a result, through the court system and with the sanction of criminal liability as a possibility, we were able to get these folks to come forward and provide this information. They never really testified. They came forward, and they claimed their Fifth Amendment rights, but at least we were able to get 1 million pages of documents--1 million pages. Then we sifted through 1 million pages of documents to discover, lo and behold, that these people actually knew what they were doing. In fact, they were altering ads. They would get an ad from somebody who was selling an underaged girl. The ad would read something like ``schoolgirl'' or ``cheerleader'' or ``young girl.'' They would then edit that ad to take out those words that would indicate what was going on, and they knew it was going on. Then they would place the ad anyway. In other words, they would make the money, make the profit, knowing that they were selling an underaged girl online. They were also destroying the evidence that, later, law enforcement could use in going after these people. This is evil, and this has been happening. We have heard the stories. We have talked about Yvonne Ambrose. We have talked about Kubiiki Pride. We have talked about Nacole S. We have talked about some of these mothers and their daughters who have gone through this horrific situation. You also heard earlier about Desiree. This was the 16-year- old who was being sold on backpage, and on Christmas Eve, she was murdered. Imagine getting that call as a parent. We have talked before about the testimony we received in the committee with regard to the 14-year-old girl who had gone missing. Kubiiki Pride is her mom. Kubiiki Pride said she had been missing for several weeks when someone finally told her: Why don't you check on backpage.com. So she did. She went on backpage.com and found her daughter, who had been missing for weeks. Imagine the mixed emotions there--the relief of finding her daughter but her horror in seeing the explicit sexual photographs of a 14-year-old who was being sold for sex. She did what you would do as a mom. She called backpage immediately and said: I found my daughter on your website. She is 14 years old. Thank you for taking down that ad and helping me to connect with my daughter. The answer from backpage.com was this: You didn't pay for the ad. We will not take it down. Again, talk about evil. Think of the heartbreak. Then, later, when she was reunited with her daughter, she was one of those brave moms and her daughter was one of those brave victims who said: Do you know what, we are going to file a lawsuit and go public with this and talk about our experience--the trauma that this young, 14-year-old girl had gone through in having been repeatedly raped by older men--and we are going to hold these websites accountable. Do you know what happened? The court system said: I am sorry. Under a Federal law that was passed by the Congress--a 21-year-old law--this website is not culpable. It has a shield. It has an immunity. That is why we are here today. Justice cannot always be seen, but its absence is felt, and the absence of justice is exactly what we are trying to address here today. You have heard from my colleagues, and I appreciate all four of them for speaking up and talking about their experiences and how we got to this point. We may hear from a couple of other colleagues later today who were part of helping us put together a sensible approach that targeted this activity. Sure, we have freedom of the internet on the one hand, but on the other hand, this is criminal activity that cannot continue to go on here in America, in this century, at this time. Again, as we have learned, this is where you see the increase in trafficking. You not only hear this from the experts who give us their data that show huge increases in trafficking reports, but you also hear it and feel it from the victims and the survivors whom I have met with in Cleveland, in Cincinnati, in Columbus, in Dayton, in Akron. They have told me the same story, which is: Yes, I was sold online. It is very efficient. One 9-year-old girl was sold online by her father. I first met her when she was almost 20 years old and had finally escaped from the clutches of her own father. Think about that--backpage's going from sporting event to sporting event around the country and, online, one being sold many times on a single night with the efficiency of the internet. This is legislation that is overdue, in my view, and it is required. The courts have told us that. The district attorneys have told us that. The attorneys general have told us that, and 50 of them sent us a letter, writing to make this change. They have all said: Congress, step forward. They have not just invited us to do it; they have welcomed us to pass this legislation to give these families the justice they deserve and to give our prosecutors the ability to go after them. One thing that I hope has been made clear from the other comments we have heard today is that one of the important parts of this legislation is to simply allow these local prosecutors we talked about earlier to take these cases while using the Federal standard rather than just relying on the Department of Justice. Having said that, sifting through those 1 million pages, our report, with all the documents we received, you can go online to see this at the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, PSI. We did provide this to the Justice Department. We did provide this to the prosecutors around the country who were interested. We did provide it to others who are pursuing lawsuits so they have information now that they never had before, but we also need to change the law, and that is what we are about to do today. You heard from my colleagues about the amendments that are likely to be offered. There are two amendments. The first amendment is one that is going to be called a moderating amendment, meaning that if somebody is on their website moderating the website, cleaning up the website, they should be given a good-faith acceptance. Let me just be clear. This amendment is a poison pill and will make it easier for those sites that are involved in sex trafficking to continue to do so. Right now, under current law, there is a good-faith exception. There is a Good Samaritan exception under current law. We actually restate that in our legislation, to be absolutely clear, that if you are one of the good guys--a website online--who wants to be sure your site is not going to have these girls being sold that we talked about earlier, that you should be protected. However, this legislation, having restated the Good Samaritan provision, also says that if you are one of the bad actors, you don't have that protection. The first amendment that is going to be offered includes protections for some of the bad actors. It purposely strips the good-faith element, and I believe it would assist online sex traffickers rather than hold them to account. For instance, if backpage or another website filters for illegal content and, as a result, learns that their site is being used for trafficking but ignores that activity, I think this amendment would say that evidence could not be considered in a case against backpage. To me, that is wrong, and I hope the first amendment is going to be handled appropriately, which is to say, we don't want to weaken this bill or have a poison pill in here. By the way, the law enforcement community represented nationally by their associations agrees with us, as do the victims groups, as do the groups who are concerned about the effect of trafficking on girls, women, and boys online. So we are together on this with all the outside groups. The second amendment is going to be asking for additional Department of Justice resources specifically to combat online trafficking. I support funding to investigate and prosecute traffickers, of course, but we have to appropriate that funding in the proper manner. This amendment would be subject to a budget point of order because it is not going through the right process. The right process is the bill we are taking up the day after tomorrow, which will be the spending bill. In fact, there are three budget points of order that the Committee on Budget in the U.S. Senate has found against this amendment. This amendment is subject to points of order. Every law enforcement group in the country opposes the amendment because as law enforcement said, it is a poison pill that is dead on arrival if sent back to the House. We have to defeat these amendments in order to have this legislation move forward. I hope my colleagues will all stick with us on that as they stuck with us through this process of getting the information, coming up with the right legislation, being sure we have the opportunity to take it to the floor and get it to a clean vote, get it to the President's desk and get it signed, and starting in a couple of weeks to be able to make a difference in the lives of the people we represent, stopping the online trafficking that is occurring and providing justice to those who are victims and survivors and ensuring that, indeed, justice can be served. One of my colleagues has joined us on the floor. Senator Nelson is the ranking Democrat on the Commerce Committee that took up this legislation and clarified some points in the legislation. By the time he was done with it--and, by the way, he was a cosponsor of the legislation long before that--but by the time the Commerce Committee was done clarifying the legislation, listening to the testimony from both sides, he received a unanimous vote in committee. That doesn't happen very often, and I appreciate Senator Nelson being on the floor today. More importantly, I appreciate his leadership on the issue. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent additional material be printed in the Record.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, again, I thank my colleague from South Dakota, who has been at the forefront. Getting this bill through the Commerce Committee with a unanimous vote, frankly, exceeded expectations. Many on the outside thought this might be an opportunity for many who are against the legislation to stop the bill but instead we were able, through testimony, to show that this is a commonsense, targeted approach that will make a huge difference in the lives of the people we represent, without affecting the freedom of the internet. That is the right balance Senator Thune helped us to get. I see that my colleague Senator Blumenthal is here, whom I talked about earlier. He is a coauthor of this legislation and also a former State prosecutor who took on trafficking cases, and so he has a professional background in prosecuting these cases and, therefore, joined me in ensuring that this legislation allows for our State and local prosecutors, who are going to take many of these cases, to be able to sue these websites that are selling people online using the current shield in Federal legislation. But after this legislation, prosecutors will be able to successfully prosecute to stop this criminal activity. Mr. President, I yield the floor to Senator Blumenthal.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy on this legislation with some of my leadership colleagues who are present: first, Senator John Thune, the chair of the Commerce Committee, who has been very involved in this issue; Senator Richard Blumenthal as well, who is the coauthor of the legislation and cochair of the trafficking caucus; Senator Claire McCaskill, who is ranking member of the Subcommittee on Investigations; and Senator Heidi Heitkamp, one of the original cosponsors of this legislation.

Mr. PORTMAN. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to be joined by my colleagues this morning in this Chamber as we begin the process of debating the amendments that are being offered and moving toward a final vote on this important legislation to deal with sex trafficking which, unbelievably, in this century and in this country is actually increasing. All of the experts say it is increasing because of the presence of these organizations online that are using the ruthless efficiency of the internet to sell women and children. It is fitting that this group is bipartisan, because this process has been bipartisan in coming up with this legislation all along. It is really the culmination of 2 years' worth of work--a lot of great work and investigations being done by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, as well as good work being done by the Commerce Committee through regular order. We would not be on the verge of sending this bill to the President's desk without the hard work of every Senator who will be on the floor this morning. I would also like to briefly recognize a sixth member of our group who cannot be here but whose passion about this issue means that although his presence is not here, it is felt; and that is Senator John McCain. Both Senator McCain and his wife Cindy McCain have taken on this issue of human trafficking through the McCain Institute, and Senator McCain, through our work on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, also helped us with this legislation. We wish they could be here for the final vote on this bill. I know John McCain is watching right now and wishing he could be here with us, and we look forward to his return to this Chamber. I thank them on behalf of all of us for their hard work on this issue over the years. We will hear from my colleagues today on a number of things we have done in Congress in this process of putting together the right legislative fix to be able to take away an immunity, unbelievably, that some of these evil websites currently have under Federal law to be able to sell people online. We will hear about the 18-month investigation into online trafficking by backpage.com by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. We will hear stories about online sex trafficking and some of the injustices experienced by some of the victims and survivors who have come to us back home in our States and who have come to testify bravely in the U.S. Congress. We will hear about some of the calls from courts around the country asking us to pass legislation to fix this problem; the prosecutors, the U.S. attorneys, the people back home who are eager to prosecute these cases but can't because of Federal law. We will hear about the work of the Commerce Committee, as I said earlier, helping us come up with a commonsense target bill through the regular order to be sure we would have not just the best legislative product but that we would have buy-in from Members of both sides of the aisle. I commend Senator John Thune for doing that. He chairs the Commerce Committee, which held a hearing on this legislation--SESTA--last September. It actually was reported unanimously out of committee after making a few changes to the legislation which clarified the intent in a positive way. I yield to my colleague John Thune.