Rob Portman

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I want to address a critical issue today in Westerville, OH, and, frankly, every community I represent in my State and communities all over the country. Today, I want to talk about the opioid epidemic that is gripping our country. Every State represented in this Chamber has had too many communities devastated, families broken apart, and lives taken by the opioid overdoses. The Centers for Disease Control now tells us more than 63,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016, the last year for which they have records. It also looks like it was worse in 2017. More Americans are dying from drug overdoses than the total number of casualties during the Vietnam war. Every year, more Americans are dying from drug overdoses than the total number of casualties from the Vietnam war. Think about that. It is a staggering statistic. On average, more than 174 Americans died every single day from a drug overdose in 2016. That is up from 143 Americans in 2015 and 105 Americans in 2010. In other words, it is getting worse, and 2016 was the deadliest year on record. Initial estimates for 2017 suggest it is going to be even deadlier, including in my home State of Ohio. Opioids--prescription drugs, heroin, and synthetic forms of heroin-- are increasingly the reason why. Opioids were involved in about two- thirds of all overdose deaths in 2016. Opioid overdose deaths were five times higher in 2016 than they were just back in 1999. In the past 17 years, we have seen a fivefold increase in these overdose deaths. It is a national epidemic. It has unfolded in three different waves. It started with prescription drugs, overprescribing of prescription drugs--pain pills. The pill mills we saw in Southern Ohio and around our State exploded about 15 to 20 years ago. Next, there were the heroin deaths. Heroin moved in and spiked as people moved to less expensive and more accessible alternatives than prescription drugs. Now, I hate to tell you, there is a new danger and a threat, and it is deadlier than ever. It is these synthetic opioids--fentanyl, carfentanil--that have moved into our States, overcoming our law enforcement, and the results have been deadly. By the way, it is a crisis that does not discriminate. Opioid addiction affects everybody, regardless of age, area code, class, or color. In Ohio, drug addiction and acts committed to support it have now become the No. 1 cause of crime in our communities--probably the same in your community. Employers, of course, are increasingly pointing to the inability to find workers who can pass a drug test. They can't fill vacant positions. There is new data out with regard to people who are not showing up on the unemployment rolls but have given up looking for work altogether. There are probably 9 million men between 25 and 55 who are considered to be able-bodied who aren't even looking for work. Some really troubling statistics out there indicate that maybe as many as half--one study says 48 percent--of those individuals are taking opioids on a daily basis. This is affecting all of us. Every aspect of our communities is affected. Everybody has a role to play overcoming this epidemic. There is an urgency coming up with better strategies to turn the tide on addiction. Although I believe progress has been made recently--and it is starting to be made in my State and other States--much more needs to be done and done urgently. Part of that starts with understanding that addiction is a disease, and it is treatable. Too often it is not treated like that. The appropriate response should include much more aggressive prevention and education, absolutely, and more aggressive law enforcement keeping deadly fentanyl out of our communities through the STOP Act and other means, of course, but we also have to get more effective treatment strategies. We have a couple hundred thousand people in Ohio who are addicted. We need to get them into treatment, including more effective detox, medication-assisted treatment, and longer term recovery. We know, coupled with the right kind of therapy, the right kind of support and help, people can get into recovery and get back to their families, get back to work, and get back to being productive citizens. We also know recovery results are a lot better with that kind of continuous support. Closing the gaps that occur is key to overcoming addiction. There is a gap between the crisis response, which is often a first responder--like the two brave officers I talked about earlier-- finding someone who has overdosed. Often it is firefighters as well providing Narcan, this miracle drug that reverses the effect of the overdose. That is incredibly important to saving lives. Narcan alone is not sufficient. The key is to get those people into detox and into treatment and longer term recovery. The gaps we have out there between the crisis response and Narcan, then going to detox, then going to treatment, and then going to recovery are creating a lot of the inability to solve this problem. I have probably met a couple of thousand addicts or recovering addicts in the last few years. What they tell me is: I tried treatment, but it was for 6, 7, 8 weeks, and then there was nothing for me. It didn't work for me. Then there are people who overdosed, not once or twice but several times, and they had never been in detox and treatment. One young man I spoke to last weekend has been an addict for 7 years. Finally, his brother convinced him to seek help. The last time he overdosed, he did go into detox. He did go into treatment, to a facility where those gaps were closed, where there was no waiting time, where he was able to get the help, rather than going back to his old community and his old friends and a situation that was going to lead him back into more use and more addiction. The key, again, is to get those who have overdosed into the treatment they need. Overdose reversal provides a second chance at life. Let's face it. Some of these people who are overdosing come out of this after Narcan is administered. They have seen their life flash before their eyes, and they are ready for something. We have to be ready for them. Just as the overdose reversal provides a second chance at life, it is treatment and longer term recovery that provides that second chance to live addiction-free--again, to get back with your family, get back to work, and get back to a productive life. It takes a comprehensive solution because it is a comprehensive problem. That is what led some of us in this body, including my colleague Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and me, to introduce the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA, back in 2015. We developed that bill over time by relying on experts in the field and those most affected by addiction. Beginning in 2014, when we were in the process of putting together the legislation, we hosted five national forums here in Washington, DC. We brought experts and practitioners in from around the country-- prevention, treatment, law enforcement, and recovery communities. We wanted to get the best practices to find out what was working, what wasn't working, and how we could improve the response. What role could the Federal Government play in all of this? We had forums focused on the science of addiction to understand it better, evidence-based prevention strategies that actually work; treating pregnant women who are addicted and babies at risk of being born drug-dependent. There is nothing more heartbreaking than going into the neonatal units in the hospitals in my home State and seeing these babies who were born dependent and watching them go through the painful withdrawal process as infants Every neonatal unit in our country has seen this. If you go to your own hospital, they will tell you this is an increasing problem. We had veterans come in, and we had experts come in to help veterans make that transition because, sadly, the use of opioids among veterans is also increasing. They sometimes use opioids for injuries, for accidents, for PTSD, and they become addicted. How do you build support around those veterans? We also had people come in and talk about longer term recovery and housing and how, over time, you can get better results if you provide those kinds of services. Our goal was to leverage the expertise and perspectives of everyone involved in this epidemic, to find best practices, and to create an evidence-based education, treatment, and recovery bill that works. With strong bipartisan support, we moved from hearings, to a unanimous committee markup, to Senate passage of this legislation. By the way, it passed with a vote of 92 to 2. That is not typical around here, certainly not for something so comprehensive. Yet everybody has experienced this back home and is desperate to figure out strategies to help. In July of 2016, President Obama signed CARA into law. It was the first comprehensive addiction reform in more than 20 years. It was the first time Congress had ever provided any support or help for this longer term recovery piece. The CARA law targets prevention and education resources to prevent abuse before it even starts--the most effective way. It helps first responders reverse overdoses to save lives. It devotes resources to evidence-based treatment and recovery programs. It expands prescription drug take-back programs to get addictive pain pills off the bathroom shelves. More than $180 million was authorized to assist communities in these efforts to combat this epidemic. Frankly, because of this crisis, the appropriators decided: You know, we need this so badly, we are actually going to appropriate more than the $180 million. Last year, as an example, they appropriated $267 million--almost $100 million beyond our authorization. Again, I think it is beginning to make a difference. I see it back home in Ohio. I see some of these strategies beginning to work. It is going to take some time, and we need to do more. In Ohio, we received about $4 million. When I say ``we,'' I mean groups, people who are in the trenches doing the hard work. We have also made progress in this fight with separate opioid legislation that was part of the 21st Century Cures legislation. That legislation was for substance abuse and mental health. Many of us successfully fought to help secure a 2-year commitment there of $500 million a year, totaling $1 billion. It goes directly to the States. This money goes to States that are hardest hit, and States are allowed to decide how to spend that money. The first installment of funding from that legislation awarded my State of Ohio with $26 million, and we are using every penny of it. I was at a facility over the weekend that gave me hope. It is called the Maryhaven Addiction Stabilization Center, and it is in Columbus, OH. They talked about the gaps, where people who overdose are provided Narcan, and then they go back to their community, and what first responders will tell you is that sometimes in the same week or even on the same day on some occasions, there is another overdose. The revolving door continues without any treatment and without any solution. Maryhaven Stabilization Center is a response to that. They used the Cures money we talked about, they used some CARA funding from the county--the county is a part of the broader strategy of where the CARA money went--and they said: Let's put together an institution where there is an emergency room that focuses on overdoses. I have been to other emergency rooms in Columbus, OH, and I have seen what they do with the people who overdose. They save lives, and that is fantastic, but frankly these emergency rooms are equipped for everything, and they have to be--for gunshot wounds, car accidents, trauma. This emergency room would be focused specifically on overdoses, which makes it more cost-effective but also more effective for those recovering addicts, those addicts who are coming in. But most importantly, in that same facility, there is a detox center. In that same facility, there are 50 treatment beds. Whereas in the typical case when somebody overdoses, they go to the emergency room and end up going back to their community, back home, back to the gang, back to the family, in this case, 103 people who have gone through in the last month--it has only been open a month--80 percent of them have gone into treatment. I had the opportunity to meet someone who had been through that process, and we talked about the difference this makes. You literally walk through the door into treatment, there is strong encouragement to do it, and it is working. These are the kinds of things that are going to make a difference in our communities. It seems to be common sense, but frankly it is not happening in other places. Programs like these are what are going to help us overcome addiction and are examples of how Federal funds can be used more effectively to leverage, in this case, a lot of private dollars, some State dollars. Both of these landmark laws--the CARA Act that we talked about and the Cures Act--are providing increased resources to local communities, but this problem is not getting better, it is getting worse. One of the problems is the availability and the low cost of these highly addictive, even more dangerous drugs coming in. There are synthetic opioids. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin on average. It is coming in through the mail. We need to do more to stop it through law enforcement, but we also need to acknowledge that it has been sprinkled in other drugs and is creating a lot of these addiction overdoses and higher rates of death. The degree of damage this is causing to our communities, our families, our local budgets, and our criminal justice system requires us to take a more aggressive stance, to do more to figure this out. We need to strengthen our resolve. We made progress recently with the bipartisan budget agreement President Trump signed into law just a few weeks ago. We included in there an additional amount of funding--$6 billion over 2 years--to help combat the opioid epidemic. So instead of the $500 million a year and the $260 million a year that I talked about, it would be $3 billion a year and then $3 billion the year after. I believe that the evidence-based programs we set out in the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act provide a good framework as to how to spend that money effectively. That is why I am pleased to stand here today as we introduce the next stage of this--CARA 2.0--to help provide a framework for how these funds to combat opioid addiction can be spent wisely. It is a roadmap for Congress to build on CARA's successes since becoming law. The bipartisan CARA 2.0 act is being introduced by Sheldon Whitehouse and me and also by six other colleagues--Senators Shelley Moore Capito, Amy Klobuchar, Dan Sullivan, Maggie Hassan, Bill Cassidy, and Maria Cantwell--a bipartisan group of four Republicans and four Democrats who are passionate about this issue. It authorizes $1 billion a year for specific evidence-based drug prevention, education, treatment, and recovery programs. It is very important to have this $6 billion of funding over the next couple of years. We need it. But we have to be sure it is spent wisely. It is not a matter of just throwing money at a problem; it is a matter of being sure we are effectively addressing the real issues. As I mentioned earlier, the longer term recovery programs are what really help those gripped by addiction to overcome this disease. That is evidence that we have. I have certainly seen a lot of evidence of that firsthand and countless examples of this, where this longer term recovery and the support networks are what get people back on track, back with their families, back to work. We need to expand access to them to those communities that are in need and give everyone a second chance of living up to their own God-given potential. That is why, in this new CARA 2.0, we increase funding for recovery. In addition to expanding the reach of CARA's evidence-based programs, this bill puts in place new policy reforms to strengthen the government's response in so many ways. We take what some would consider a pretty dramatic step by limiting opioid prescriptions to 3 days for acute pain. Some will push back against that, but this is based on good evidence and good research. When someone goes in for a simple procedure--say, a wisdom tooth extraction--and that young person is given a bottle of opioids when he or she leaves, too often, that leads to addiction. I don't want more parents coming up to me and saying: My kid, when he or she was a teenager, was given these opioids by a doctor or a dentist, so we thought they were safe. Our child then turned to heroin because the pills became too expensive and less accessible and then turned to fentanyl and overdosed and died. I have had two such parents from Ohio come to me and tell me their story. You probably know others. We need to ensure that these prescriptions are limited. For those who have chronic pain and those who have cancer, it wouldn't apply. And after those 3 days, you can go back to that doctor and tell them why you need it and explain it. Experts say that about 80 percent of those who overdose from heroin started on prescription drugs. I am sure the same is true with regard to fentanyl. Four out of five heroin addicts in my State of Ohio who overdosed started on prescription drugs. We do need to deal with this overprescription problem. By the way, the evidence is that after that fourth day, fifth day, sixth day--that is when you get into the bigger risk of becoming addicted to prescription drugs. As I mentioned, this epidemic started with an explosion of pain pill use 15 to 20 years ago. We need to stop the addiction at the source, and for most people that begins with prescription drugs. By ensuring that clinicians prescribe the appropriate strength and supply of pain pills for non-life-threatening injuries, we can keep so many more people from becoming addicted. The bill also includes legislation very similar to that which passed the Senate in 2015 but was dropped out in the House-Senate conference. It is very simple. It requires doctors and pharmacists to use the prescription drug monitoring programs to ensure that we are not overprescribing opioids for certain individuals. That helps us identify where the problems are and to get people into treatment. It also requires States to share data with other States to prevent people from crossing State lines to get prescriptions. One of our big problems in Ohio is people can cross the State lines in West Virginia, Kentucky, or other States and get their prescription filled even though it has already been filled once in Ohio. Across State lines, we need to have prescription drug monitoring programs that work. CARA 2.0 is going to help turn the tide of this epidemic. The bill increases Federal funds for specific evidence-based programs to better protect vulnerable groups--including infants, young adults, pregnant and postpartum women, and veterans--as well as resources for community programs, medication-assisted treatment, and first responders. As the title indicates, it is a comprehensive solution. Every aspect of our communities is affected, so every aspect of our communities needs assistance. The opioid epidemic is one of the most urgent challenges we face as a country. By the way, ultimately, this crisis is not going to be solved here in Washington, DC. It is not going to be solved by legislation we pass here. We get that. It is going to be solved in our communities. It is going to be solved in our families. It is going to be solved in our hearts. But this is a national crisis, and the national government needs to be a much better partner with State government, local government, communities, and nonprofits--those who are out there doing the hard work. The $6 billion commitment over the next 2 years is a real opportunity to help turn the tide--not by just throwing more money at the problem but by being sure that money is well spent on an epidemic that is taking too many lives and devastating too many communities. CARA 2.0 will build on our accomplishments and continue to give communities the resources they need to address this issue. Yes, we have made some progress around here, and that is good, but we need to do much more. CARA 2.0 gives us that opportunity. It represents the next step toward helping our communities address this epidemic and helping our communities heal. Thank you.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I have 5 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Armed Services The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February, 27, 2018, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions The Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February, 27, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Opioid Crisis: The Role of Technology and Data in Preventing and Treating Addiction.'' Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February, 27, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Kevin Edward Moley, of Arizona, to be an Assistant Secretary of State (International Organization Affairs), Josephine Olsen, of Maryland, to be Director of the Peace Corps, Erik Bethel, of Florida, to be United States Alternate Executive Director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Sean Cairncross, of Minnesota, to be Chief Executive Officer, Millennium Challenge Corporation. Committee on Veterans' Affairs The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February, 27, 2018, at 2 p.m., to conduct a joint hearing with the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. Select Committee on Intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February, 27, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a closed hearing.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I come before you today to talk about the historic tax reform legislation that was passed in the U.S. Congress and signed into law by the President at the end of the year and talk about what we learned since then, even in the last week. We created this legislation with two goals in mind. One was to provide middle-class tax relief to families. The other was to provide our businesses and our workers with a more competitive tax code. This is something that became very clear to all of us as we looked at it, that unfortunately we were asking our workers here in America to compete with one arm tied behind their backs because of our Tax Code. It has been a couple of months now since this legislation became law, and both of those two goals we set out are being achieved. It is already happening. In January, the Internal Revenue Service updated its tables for withholding. In other words, they went to employers and said: Because of the tax cuts, you should withhold less money in every paycheck. That is happening. The Treasury Department tells us that 90 percent of American workers are having their withholding changed in a way that is positive for them, meaning that Uncle Sam is taking less out of their paychecks. People are already starting to see that. Tomorrow is Friday--another payday--and you are probably going to see that on your paycheck tomorrow or a week from tomorrow, if you haven't already seen it. That means that people are actually getting relief directly for themselves and their families. This is more take-home pay for folks and enables people to have a better family budget. With higher healthcare costs and other costs for years and years and no salary increase, having a little more in the family budget is really important to folks, and it is making a difference. In Ohio, for a family of four at the median-income level, which is about $70,000 a year, this means about a $2,000-a-year savings. That is significant for people. I have talked to a lot of constituents who were beginning to see this, and they are realizing they have a little more money for retirement, maybe for healthcare, maybe to help their kids or their grandkids. That is good. There is something else that is in the bill that hasn't gotten much attention; that is, the fact that there were 3 million Americans who were paying taxes previously, who had income tax liability, who do not now. Why? Because when you lower the tax rate, some of these people, who are typically the working poor--in other words, they are working, but they are not making much in income--now have the ability to get out from under taxes altogether. This also encourages more people to not be dependent on a government program but to go to work, if there is this lower tax rate at the lower end of the economic scale. So that is good too. That is in this tax legislation. More than 3 million people do not have tax liability anymore. Part of it is because of the lower rates we talked about. Again, the proof is in the paycheck on that one. Part of it is because in this legislation, we double the standard deduction and also double the child credit and make it more refundable than it already is. That is happening, and it is working. That goal has already been achieved--not by this Congress but by the people we represent, the American people and families across this great country. We are happy to see that. The second part of this is that a more competitive business code is benefiting workers very directly. This is something we are hearing about just about every day. Over 300 businesses have made announcements saying: You know what, we are going to give people a bonus because of the tax reform legislation. We are going to give our employees a little higher starting wage. We are going to put more in the 401(k)s or more in the defined benefit pension plan. Maybe we are going to give a little more to charity, or maybe we are going to invest more in equipment and tools so that people can be more productive, because productivity, as we know, is key to getting wages up and improving the economy. We are hearing this across the board all over the country. I have seen this in Ohio. I have been to companies in my hometown of Cincinnati, in Columbus, OH, in Dayton, OH, and in Cleveland just in the last month. I have gone and visited with these companies while they have been making announcements and have talked to the employees in a townhall meeting setting, where they have had the opportunity to have a back-and-forth as to what this tax reform measure means to them. Yes, it means direct tax cuts for them, as it does for about 90 percent of American workers. On top of that, it means that because these businesses now have the ability to be more competitive, it makes them more competitive, and they are already getting some of the benefits from that. Last week, I joined President Trump in Cincinnati at one of these companies. It is called the Sheffer Corporation. This is a small manufacturing business that has decided to make new investments in its plant and equipment. That is going to help make it more competitive and make its workers more productive. It competes globally. It is an incredible company. It makes pneumatic and hydraulic cylinders. It makes them this big, and it makes huge ones. It competes all around the world, and it is doing a great job. Frankly, this tax reform bill really helped them. On top of that investment it is making, it is also making a direct investment in its employees. Every employee--all of the 126 people who work there--received a $1,000 bonus check after the tax legislation was signed into law. So it is helping them. The company's president is a guy named Jeff Norris. Just before the visit we had earlier this week, he said that for some people in Washington, that is crumbs, referring to how some people have called getting this tax relief crumbs. He said: ``But for the Sheffer people, we consider that fine dining.'' Another way to put it is, this makes a difference for people in their lives and for their families. This was all made possible by lowering the tax rate. Of the developed countries around the world, of the countries that are industrialized, we had the highest statutory tax rate of all of the countries. So our 35 percent rate was higher than in places in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and so on. We were getting higher than our competitors-- Canada, Mexico, and so on--and that is one reason people were choosing to shift overseas, to take, literally, the company and move it overseas. That is called an inversion. Last year, we were told that three times as many American companies were bought by foreign companies as the other way around. Think about that. Three times as many American companies were bought by foreign companies, which was largely driven by this Tax Code. We have also heard from Ernst & Young, which is a big accounting firm. It did an analysis, and it said that 4,700 American companies have become foreign companies over the past 10 years or so because of the Tax Code. If we had had the kind of Tax Code that we just put in place with this legislation that was passed here, those companies would still be American companies. Those are 4,700 companies. Those are a lot of people, and that is a lot of investment. We studied this in the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations--a bipartisan investigation--and looked at what happens when these companies go overseas. It is probably no surprise to you that they take their jobs and investments with them. So when a company pulls up stakes here and goes overseas, it is not just about moving one's corporate headquarters; we found it is also about having less employment here directly but also indirectly because companies that supply them-- contractors--have less employment, and they are also making their investments increasingly overseas. As we studied this, we also found that companies were actually taking the money they had made overseas and were keeping it all overseas rather than bringing it back here and repatriating it, even though they were U.S. companies. This is something we studied as part of a bipartisan Finance Committee working group I cochaired with Senator Chuck Schumer. We found that unless you lowered this rate and went to a more competitive international system, you were not going to get that money back. Part of what this will do is what we talked about in terms of improving the lives of workers here in America, but part of what it will also do is repatriate. It will bring back some of that money that has been stuck overseas, the so-called lockout effect. How much is that? Economists think it is somewhere around $3 trillion; some say more. You might have seen recently that Apple announced that it was bringing hundreds of billions back here, repatriating that money back here. They are also going to pay I think about $38 billion in taxes to the U.S. Treasury, but that is worth it to them to bring back that money. We want them to bring that money here. Why? We don't want it invested overseas in a research and development facility there or in a factory there; we want it invested here, right? That is what this tax reform does. That is why, as exciting as it is for these workers and for these companies to make these decisions, and their helping people right now is very important, I think of the bigger investments we are going to hear of down the line. The next time a big American company that has a global business asks, ``Where am I going to put my factory? Where am I going to do my research and development?'' it is going to say, ``We are going to do it here in America.'' That is what is very exciting to me. Let's get back to having wages that are going up consistently rather than the relatively flat wages we have seen really over the past couple of decades, and let's see a renewal of hope and opportunity here. I think this is exciting, and I think we will see more of it. Just in the past week, by the way, we have seen seven more major companies announce higher compensation for their employees: CVS in the last week, Tyson in the last week, Chipotle, Best Buy, Charter Communications, Lowe's, FedEx. This is just in the last week. In total, these companies have 1.3 million employees who are now going to benefit on top of all of the other 300 announcements we talked about earlier. They are going to benefit from increased investments that these businesses will be able to make because of this new tax reform. This is good news, and it is good news for the people I represent. In Ohio, some of our larger employers have already made their announcements. Fifth Third Bank, headquartered in Cincinnati, employs 8,800 Ohioans and announced it will raise its base wage for entry-level people and give $1,000 bonuses to all of its 13,500 employees. Nationwide Insurance, headquartered in Columbus, employs 15,000 Ohioans. It is going to increase 401(k) matches, so the match that it gives to people's 401(k) contributions is going to increase. That is great for one's retirement savings. It is going to do that for 33,000 employees around the country. It is also going to give $1,000 bonuses to 29,000 of its employees. JPMorgan is probably the third biggest employer in Ohio now of all the private sector employers. It employs about 21,000 Ohioans, mainly in the Columbus area. Some of you know that because it is a huge presence in Polaris North Columbus. It has announced it is going to add 4,000 new jobs. Its base wage is going to be raised for 22,000 employees. It is going to increase its charitable donations and its small business lending. It says it is all because of this tax reform legislation. That is good news. Our biggest employer in Ohio is Walmart. It may be in your State too. There are 50,000 Ohioans who work for Walmart. It has announced it is going to raise its base wage for all hourly employees, distribute $1,000 bonuses, expand maternity and parental leave opportunities, and increase funds for employee adoption expenses. It is our largest employer. Other Ohio employers that have announced something include Fiat Chrysler and the Jeep plant, up in Toledo, which we are so proud of, and Home Depot. We talked earlier about Lowe's and AT&T. They have all announced increased investments in their operations and their workers as a result of the tax reform. I am excited about this. It is actually working in a way that many of us had hoped it would and said it would. Really, there have been more announcements even than I think the most optimistic tax reform advocates expected. I think we are going to see a lot more over time because ultimately this is about making the United States a better place to do business. By the way, some of these companies are not American companies; they are foreign companies that choose to invest in America. Foreign direct investment is something we encourage because that brings more jobs here to this country. So if a company like Honda, which is a big auto employer in Ohio, chooses to invest more in Ohio rather than in Japan or China or Germany or elsewhere because of this tax reform legislation, that is also important. We are going to see more and more of that happening, in my view, because they are looking at the lower rates, and they are looking at the ability to expense what they have purchased more quickly in terms of plants and equipment. This immediate expensing is very important in this legislation for companies like that and manufacturers. So this is not just about American companies staying here rather than going overseas; it is also about foreign companies that are choosing to come here and to hire American workers, which is also good for us. I am hoping that a combination of this tax reform and what is being done on the regulatory front to make regulations better--particularly for smaller businesses that were feeling a lot of that burden--and American hard work and ingenuity, as well as rewarding that ingenuity better, is going to help America compete in this global marketplace in ways we haven't done for many years. The historic tax reform is basically putting America back in a position in which people are now going to look to us again and say: America is the kind of model that I want to follow. The American free enterprise system and the system where, if you work hard and play by the rules, you can get ahead, where you can achieve your dream in life, was something some people were beginning to question. Now I think this helps to polish our image, which has become somewhat tarnished as wages had been flat and we were kind of stuck in low economic growth--1\1/2\ to 2 percent growth. Now I think we have the opportunity to break out more and to be that beacon of hope and opportunity for the rest of the world and, most importantly, to give people the opportunity to achieve their American dreams, whatever they are. Mr. President, I want to talk about another topic, and this is not a happy topic. It is also in the news these days, as are the growing economy and the increased jobs and the benefits of the tax reform. But this is news that you will also see on the front pages and on the nightly news of your local TV stations. It is unfortunate news, and that is the fact that we still have this growing epidemic of drug use in this country that is connected to opioids. This is something that has grown over time and kind of started with prescription drug use, which grew pretty dramatically back in the 2000s. Then it became heroin. Probably 3 or 4 years ago, one began to see people shift from heroin to other forms of opioids that are called synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl or carfentanil. Unfortunately, this issue has gripped our country. In my State in particular--and Ohio is one of the States that have been hardest hit-- we have more people addicted, we have more people who are overdosing from these drugs, and we have more people who are dying because of the overdoses than ever before. Last year, in 2017, we had more overdose deaths than we had in 2016. I think we have good ideas to begin to turn the tide. This Congress has started to work on that, and I applaud Congress for that. We are beginning to see some of those programs work, but we have a long way to go. One reason that I think the legislation we are going to vote on later today is so important is that it provides more funding to be able to deal with the opioid crisis. We need it. I wish we didn't. We need it. We need it for better prevention and education to keep people from getting into the funnel of addiction in the first place. We also need it for treatment, and we need it for longer term recovery, which is sometimes quite expensive, but it requires us to look at this issue in different ways. Historically, short-term treatment programs have not been very successful. A lot of people go through these treatment programs and come out the other end. They might be clean for a while, but typically there are a lot of people who go back to their addictions. The recidivism rate is very high. What we want is for people to go through treatment and get clean at the other end and be able to get back on their feet and restore their ties to their families, their work, and their communities. This longer term recovery, in my view, after studying this issue for many years, is a very important part of that. It is providing, yes, the medically assisted drug treatment that is sometimes needed for one to be able to get through the addiction, and to get into a good treatment program often is assisted through medically assisted treatment. Yet what is more important to me as I look at this and talk to a lot of people--I have talked to probably 1,000 addicts and recovering addicts just in the last couple of years in Ohio--is to surround these people with the right kind of counseling and the right kind of support, including peer support--others who have been through addiction and recovery and have gotten on their feet, those who are recovering addicts. There is a cost to that. Some would ask: Well, is this really the Federal Government's role? I would say yes. It is a national epidemic, and it needs to be approached at every level--the national level, the State level, and the local level. Ultimately, it is not going to be solved here in Washington; it is going to be solved in our communities. I will tell you that the degree of damage that this is causing to our communities, our families, our budgets locally, and our criminal justice system requires us to take a more aggressive role at the national level. Take best practices from around the States and local communities and spread those nationally as an example. Provide seed money, combined with local money, so they can actually get treatment programs up and going in areas where people cannot get treatment. Even though they are ready to deal with their addictions, they don't have beds and don't have places to go. The Federal Government also plays a role already. With Medicaid reimbursement, for instance, if you have a treatment center and if you are providing MAT, or medically assisted treatment, and you have more than 16 beds, you cannot get Medicaid reimbursement. That doesn't make any sense. We have some very good treatment centers in Ohio that have 16 beds, but they could have twice that many or even three times that many and provide more help. Yet, because of the way the Federal Government chooses to reimburse, that is not practical. So there are issues with which the government has to be involved. In my home State of Ohio, overdose deaths are the No. 1 cause of death in my State. Nationally, among those who are under 50, it is the No. 1 cause of death. In Ohio, we had more deaths from overdoses from synthetic opioids--the new drugs like fentanyl and carfentanil--than we did anything else. About 58 percent of our deaths were from the synthetic opioids. So it is changing from prescription drugs to heroin and now to these synthetic drugs. We have a real crisis on our hands. It is the No. 1 cause of crime in my community and throughout my State. It probably is in yours too. If you think maybe you are not affected by it because you don't have a family member or friend or coworker who was affected, then you don't see it clearly. I would suggest we are all affected because we are all paying for it in additional healthcare costs, additional costs for prosecutions and incarcerations, additional costs in crime in our communities, in families being torn apart, and more kids in foster care under State supervision, in some way, because we have record numbers now in my home State because of their parents being addicted. This is a huge issue, and I think it is one we need to focus on at every level, including at the national level. With regard to fentanyl, just a very little bit, a few flakes of it, can kill you. It is incredibly powerful. It is considered to be 50 times more powerful than heroin. It is cheap, it is easily accessible, and it can be spread to other drugs, which is increasingly happening. We are told by law enforcement that it is being used now with cocaine and even, in some cases, marijuana. Certainly it is packaged into pills to make it look like a prescription drug when it is really fentanyl- laced. This stuff can be just deadly. This week I had some people come into my office talking about it, and I asked them whether they thought we were turning the tide, and their answer was no because of the fentanyl, this new drug that is inexpensive, this synthetic that is coming into our country, believe it or not, primarily from overseas through the U.S. mail system. Just last week, in Logan County, OH, a 12-year-old girl brought a plastic bag containing fentanyl to her middle school. Thankfully, a teacher found the bag and called the police to safely remove the drug. Think about that. In that middle school, this drug could have killed numerous kids. While police are looking into how this possibly could have ended up in the hands of a 12-year-old, how fentanyl ends up in the United States is no mystery. We now know the answer to that. We have done studies on it. We spent a yearlong investigation looking into this issue, and what we found out was pretty shocking, which is fentanyl, which is this growing drug killing more people in Ohio than any other drug now, doesn't come in the way you might think, maybe overland. It typically comes through the U.S. mail system. Primarily, it comes from China. Does it come from other countries? Yes. Sometimes it is shipped from China to another country and then to the United States. Some other countries may now be making it but law enforcement tells me it is primarily through the mail system and primarily from China. Now, you might ask, why is it coming through the mail system, and why are we letting that happen? Well, it is happening because if you try to send it through one of the private carriers like DHL or FedEx or UPS, you have to provide a lot of information on the package. You probably know this if you are shipping stuff. You have to provide what is in it, where it is from, and where it is going. You have to provide that in advance, and it is provided electronically in advance to law enforcement. In Ohio, the DHS and UPS can go to the facilities and target a package and say: Uh-huh. This is from a certain region. This has a certain suspicious address where it is going, maybe it is an abandoned warehouse and post office box where they know there have been drugs shipped before, maybe the contents don't add up and they can target that package and get that package offline and destroy it. By the way, when they do that, trust me, they are wearing gloves and masks in special rooms now where they can try to avoid being damaged by this drug because they are incredibly dangerous; whereas, in the U.S. mail system, there is not a requirement. Now they are starting to require it more, and this year, thanks to the work of some of us who have been pushing this for a couple of years now, they are doing a better job than last year, but this last year only 38 percent of packages had electronic advanced data on it--only 38 percent--whereas, with these other carriers, it is 100 percent. Of that 38 percent, sadly, 20 percent of the time, when law enforcement said: OK, we hear this information about this package, we want to pull it off, 20 percent of the time the post office couldn't produce the package so it went to the post office box or abandoned warehouse. A package this big can have hundreds of thousands of people affected. Just think about it, just a few grams of this can kill you. So the post office needs to provide that same sort of data. We also found, in our 1-year study of this, the data the post office did provide, origin often was indecipherable by security people because it wasn't information that was helpful, maybe a lot of numbers or characters that did not let people know what was in it, where it was going, where it was from. It is good we are beginning to make progress on this, but I think we should have a requirement in law that says the post office has to do what these other private carriers do, which is require people who want to ship something into our communities to have this information so our law enforcement has a chance to find these packages and to stop this poison from coming into our neighborhoods. Is this the only solution? No. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act that I coauthored that passed this place over a year ago now is beginning to work on prevention, treatment, and recovery. We talked about that earlier. We need to do more to help our first responders, to give them the Narcan they need to reverse the effects of these overdoses and to save lives. We need to get people into these programs rather than the revolving door of people being addicted, having an overdose, being saved, and then having an overdose again. That is all critical. In fact, that is the most important part, but let's at least--at least--stop some of this poison that is coming in through our own U.S. Government Postal Service. By the way, postal employees totally agree. They don't want to be a conduit for this stuff. They certainly don't want to be exposed to it. There are some horrible stories of people who were exposed because with these international packages coming in, sometimes there is some leakage. One story that is probably one that would get the attention of every law enforcement official in America is, there is a guy in Ohio, a law enforcement officer. He pulled over two individuals. He went up to the car. He pulled them over for a traffic violation, but he noticed they spread some white powder around the car to try to hide it. Wisely, he realized this might be something dangerous. He put on his mask and gloves and found it was fentanyl. He arrested these two individuals. They got booked. He went down to the police station. This officer was a big guy, by the way--6 feet 2 inches, over 200 pounds, in good shape. He looked down on his shirt when he was in the police station talking to his fellow officers, and he saw some flecks on his shirt of something. So he reached over and brushed it off with his hands like that. It was fentanyl. Immediately he overdosed. He became unconscious, lying on the floor. Three times Narcan was administered to try to save his life. They had to rush him to the emergency room ultimately to save his life. As his police chief said: If we hadn't been right there, this police officer would not be with us today. Think if he had gone home and hugged his kids. This stuff is dangerous. It is dangerous for our postal employees, it is dangerous for our Customs and Border Protection people who bravely are out there every day trying to stop this stuff. It is dangerous to the postal inspectors and dangerous for the Drug Enforcement Agency individuals. We need to give them every tool we can to let them know where the suspect packages are so they can stop this stuff. At a minimum, what will happen is there will be less supply, and there will be higher prices on the street. That is not a bad thing because the cost of this drug is one reason it has become so popular and so deadly. Our legislation is called the STOP Act. It simply says: Let's do what we should have done many years ago and require this information. After 9/11, this Congress got together and said: We are worried about stuff being shipped into this country, and so we are going to require private carriers to provide this. In 2002, there was legislation passed. That was 15 years ago, almost 16 years ago now. That legislation said at the time: You have to do this if you are the FedExes or UPSes of the world, but for the post office, we recommend you do it. We want you to do a study on it. The thought was, in Congress, that they would need some time but that they would be able to do it as well--again, it has been almost 16 years. Now we have this immediate problem, which is, in my view, a crisis, and it is a public health problem. It falls on us as the Federal Government to deal with it--this Congress to deal with it. I know there are those in the Postal Service who are concerned about whether they can require other countries to provide this data. Do you know what? We provide it for all our packages going to them. Again, most countries in the world are now being asked to do it. The rest of the countries ought to be asked. Certainly, China ought to be required to do it for all their packages. They now say about half of the packages from China have some sort of information. It needs to be better information. We also need China to do more. After our report came out last week, Chinese Government officials responded and said they were concerned. They wanted to do more to cooperate with the United States. That was good. I am glad to hear that, but, frankly, we have been hearing that for a while. I was in China last year on a congressional delegation. I raised this information with Premier Li, the No. 2 ranking official in the government there. Again, we heard the right things. We want to help to be able to stop this at the source. We need more help. We believe there are thousands of chemists or chemical companies in China that are producing this poison. Again, I am not suggesting it is exclusively China, but we are told by law enforcement it is still primarily from China. Let's shut them down. They have made illegal some of the precursors, some of the drugs that go into making this fentanyl. Let's make sure that is being enforced. Let's make it an illegal activity to ship it. Let's do the prosecutions that are necessary and arrest people. There were two individuals who were indicted here in the United States who were Chinese nationals. My understanding is, they have yet to be prosecuted, and they have been indicted for shipping poisons into our communities and killing our people. Yes, there is a lot that has to be done here. We need to be sure we are doing a better job on prevention and education to keep people from falling into the addiction in the first place. We need to do much better on treatment and recovery. We talked about that earlier. At a minimum, let's protect this country. So I encourage my colleagues, if you haven't already cosponsored the STOP Act--Senator Amy Klobuchar and I introduced this legislation together last year. We want your help. We would love to have your cosponsorship. We have about 30 cosponsors now. It is bipartisan. We need to get 100 cosponsors. Everybody in this Chamber should be for this. We should be able to at least tell our own U.S. post office: Help law enforcement to stop this poison. That is part of the answer here, along with so many other things we need to do to keep the fentanyl off the streets, to keep the overdoses and the death toll from rising. Again, I thank my colleagues for including in the legislation we are going to vote on later today additional funding over the next 2 years. I will say, with regard to that funding, which is significant--it is an unprecedented amount--we have increased the funding over this fiscal year from last fiscal year by $1.4 billion. That is through the so- called CURES Act and CARA legislation. Now we have additional funding, $3 billion this year and $3 billion next year. I do think there is a good framework for spending this money and that would be the programs in the CARA legislation, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. There are about a dozen different programs, including recovery programs, including helping pregnant women who are addicted to help them avoid having their addiction passed along to their kids. This is a big issue in our States right now. All of our neonatal units back home in our hospitals are dealing with this. There is legislation to help our first responders with training and with Narcan, certainly to help them deal with this fentanyl danger they face, the risk they face every day. We have the programs in place. There is not adequate funding in some of these programs to respond to the many requests coming in. So this is one place for us to provide some help. The CURES legislation goes directly to the States. That legislation was passed as part of an appropriations process to help the States be able to identify where they had the highest priority. Some of that, frankly, is in training individuals who can be counselors. We talked about the importance of not just providing medicine to help people get over their addiction but to also surround them with the kind of treatment they need, the kind of support they need. In other States, it was a matter of building those treatment facilities. One million dollars of this, or so, was used in Columbus, OH, for an innovative program, where there is now a new emergency room that is dedicated to people who overdose, which is better for the individual who overdoses and better for the taxpayer, rather than taking them to an emergency room that has the capability to handle gunshot wounds and trauma and so on. This is dedicated just to overdoses. Most significantly, in this same facility where the overdoses go, you have a 50-bed treatment center. So often what we find is that people are treated for the overdose, maybe in a detox unit, but then there is no treatment center. There is no treatment bed available, so that person goes back to the community, back to the old neighborhood. During that waiting period, even though they are ready for treatment as they come out of the overdose--because often they have kind of seen their life flash before their eyes--there is not the availability and, sure enough, that person gets back into the use of the drug--heroin, fentanyl, prescription drugs--and ends up overdosing again, sometimes again and again and again. You hear this from your first responders. Go to your firehouse, and you will hear in every firehouse in America, I will guarantee you, about this issue. I will guarantee that in most firehouses--certainly all of them that I have been to in Ohio, and I have been to many--it is the No. 1 thing people are doing. In other words, there are more calls for overdoses than there are calls for fires. There are more calls for overdoses than there are calls for heart attacks. This is an issue that, again, affects every one of us whether we feel it directly or not. So this is an opportunity for us to get these people into the emergency room setting to save their lives, using this miracle drug, Narcan, using the best help of our incredible medical professionals, who are doing an awesome job on the frontlines, but then to get them right into treatment, to say: By the way, here is an opportunity; come right now. We think that is going to close that gap and help to avoid this issue of people not getting the help you want them to get. Probably 8 out of 10 people in Ohio are not getting the treatment they should be getting. So I am encouraging my colleagues to vote for the legislation this afternoon or this evening, whenever we vote on it, in part, because it does have that legislation in it regarding opioids. It does have this new funding--an unprecedented level of funding. It is going to be left to the Appropriations Committees here to deal with how it is spent. Again, I know they have a lot of great ideas, including legislation that we have already passed called the CARA Act, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. We spent 3 years putting together that legislation. We had five conferences here in Washington. We got best practices from around the country. This is all about sending funds out to programs that have been studied and that do have good results. It is not just a matter of throwing money after this problem. We have to be sure that it is done effectively and that, again, it leverages more money at the local level. The million dollars I talked about that went into this treatment center in Columbus, OH--that was matched by county money, it was matched by State money, it was matched by private-sector money and individuals who were giving funds to this because they realized what a problem it is. That is how we should work together. Ultimately, this is not going to be solved here in Washington, DC. It is going to be solved in our communities. It is going to be solved in our families. It is going to be solved in our hearts. This is an issue that ultimately is going to require all of us getting engaged on. Mr. President, I thank the Presiding Officer for the time today. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, today I want to talk about the opioid epidemic that has gripped our country and my State of Ohio and talk a little about a report we issued last week with regard to synthetic opioids coming in through the U.S. mail system. This tragedy has hit Ohio hard. We are not alone, though. Opioids affect every American regardless of age, area code, class, or color. Every State represented here in this body has experienced this--broken families, devastated communities, higher crime rates, friends lost, and, of course, lives taken through opioid overdoses. The Centers for Disease Control recently reported that more than 63,600 Americans died in 2016 from drug overdoses. That is the last year for which they have statistics, but we all believe it was worse in 2017. With 63,600 Americans dying of overdoses, that means, on average, more than 174 Americans die every single day. That is up from approximately 143 Americans who died, on average, every day from drug overdoses a year earlier in 2015 and 105 Americans who died every day in 2010. The problem is getting worse, not better. Drug overdoses, in fact, are now the No. 1 cause of death--not just accidental deaths but the No. 1 cause of death--in America for Americans under the age of 50. The reason for this increase in overdose deaths is the spread of heroin, prescription drugs, and now the synthetic opioids--fentanyl and carfentanil. Opioids were involved in more than 42,000--about two- thirds--of the overall deaths in 2016. Opioid deaths were five times higher in 2016 than they were just a few years ago. This is a national epidemic. It has unfolded in three different waves. The first wave was the prescription drug epidemic--pain pills--15 to 20 years ago. That started to increase dramatically. Next, heroin deaths spiked. Heroin was turned to as a less expensive and more accessible way for people who were addicted to pain pills to continue to receive the high--in this case, from heroin coming mostly from Mexico. Now synthetic forms of heroin are overtaking the illegal opioid market, and the results have been even more deadly. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin, has become the new scourge of the epidemic. Fentanyl is so deadly that 2 milligrams of it--as little as two flakes of it--can be lethal. It is cheap, easily accessible, and can be added to make any number of illegal drugs more potent--cocaine, heroin, pills. In Ohio, fentanyl and its variations, such as carfentanil, were responsible for 60 percent of our State's more than 4,000 overdose deaths in 2016--the most recent year for which we have statistics. That 60 percent is a huge increase from just the previous year, 2015, when fentanyl was responsible for about 37 percent of the deaths. We have had more deaths from overdoses and a lot more deaths linked to fentanyl. Sadly, again, this situation is getting worse, not better. Just last week in Ottawa County, OH, outside of Toledo, we had five overdoses in 1 single day. We had three people die of overdoses in 1 week. The suspected cause, of course, is fentanyl. Earlier this month in Akron, a 57-year-old man--a board member of the Akron Public Schools system--was found unconscious in his car from a drug overdose. First responders were thankfully able to revive the man with Narcan--a miracle drug that reverses the effects of overdoses--and treat him at a local hospital. Again, fentanyl caused that overdose. In July of last year, a 12-year-old Columbus boy encountered fentanyl while he was at his cousin's for a sleepover. He was rushed to the hospital but died days later from a lack of oxygen to his brain as a result of fentanyl. These synthetic drugs have invaded communities across Ohio and across the country. Unbelievably, this deadly poison is primarily shipped into America from China through our U.S. Postal Service. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair along with ranking member Senator Tom Carper, recently held a hearing on this issue. It came on the heels of our yearlong bipartisan investigation that resulted in a 100-page investigative report that examined how these drug traffickers in China exploit vulnerabilities in our international mail system to ship these deadly synthetic drugs into our communities. I encourage people to look at that report on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations website. The results of the report were shocking. We found that it was incredibly easy to buy fentanyl online. By simply searching ``fentanyl for sale'' on Google, our staff identified hundreds of websites, many affiliated with Chinese labs, all openly advertising this deadly drug. Online sellers were quick to respond, unafraid of being caught, and ready to make a deal. They even offered discounts for bulk purchases and tried to upsell us to carfentanil--fentanyl's even more powerful and deadly cousin. This is an email from Chinese traffickers offering ``a hot sale'' for one fentanyl analogue before it is discontinued. Their preferred shipping method is the U.S. Postal Service because, as they told us, the chances of the drugs being seized were so insignificant that delivery was essentially guaranteed. This chart shows a carfentanil advertisement and the online traffickers suggesting ``USPS'' as their preferred shipping method. Why? Because USPS is the way in which the delivery is virtually guaranteed. ``DHL, UPS, FedEx, TNT are quicker, but not safe, and will be detained frequently.'' Instead, they say: ``We suggest USPS only.'' Wow. It is inexcusable that these drugs are as easy to ship as a postcard and that traffickers' preferred shipment method for these deadly poisons is through a Federal agency. Our post office has become a conduit for these deadly drugs. By the way, this is incredibly dangerous for the postal employees, the letter carriers, those who have to handle these packages. I should note that our team never purchased any of these drugs online, but we did use the online sellers' payment information to determine if others were buying. Of course, we found out that they were. We narrowed our search to just six websites. From those six sites, we identified more than 500 payments to those six online sellers by more than 300 Americans in 43 States just in the last couple of years. This map shows where the fentanyl went. As you can see, just from those six websites and those few hundred people, it went all over the country. The largest concentration of buyers was in my home State of Ohio, where you see the red. They were also in Pennsylvania and Florida. But, as I mentioned, it went to all 43 States. We were able to track hundreds of packages related to the online purchases. By analyzing more than 2 million lines of shipment data obtained in our investigation, we located three individuals in the United States who seem to be distributing these drugs. We also identified two other individuals who purchased items to make pills, including pill presses, chemical bonding agents, and empty pill casings. Our report also reinforced the risk associated with these deadly synthetic drugs. We identified seven individuals who died from fentanyl-related overdoses shortly after receiving packages from these online sellers. One of those seven individuals who died was a 49-year- old Ohioan from the Cleveland area who sent about $2,500 to an online seller and received 15 packages through the Postal Service over a 10- month period. His autopsy confirmed he died from ``acute fentanyl intoxication'' just a couple of weeks after receiving a package from this online seller. We are already working with law enforcement authorities to make sure these drug dealers can be brought to justice. We recently released all our documents to the Department of Homeland Security for them to do their own investigation. China has responded to our report. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said last week that China stands ``ready to work with the U.S. to enhance our coordination in this field.'' I welcome China's cooperation and coordination in this fight. But we need more than words. We need action. We need China to ban more of these deadly drugs and do it quicker. We need China to shut down these illegal fentanyl laboratories and arrest those responsible for shipping drugs into our country. I had the opportunity last year to travel to China as part of a congressional delegation, and I was able to speak directly to some of the Chinese authorities, including Premier Li. We talked about these deadly poisons coming into our communities and how we needed more help to be able to shut down these labs and to arrest these individuals. I also made the point that there is evidence that some of this opioid material that is being synthetically produced in China is leaking into their communities and that they have a problem too. We need to work together to shut this down. One way that we can assist law enforcement in this war on synthetic opioids is by simply providing them the tools they need to identify packages coming in that likely contain these drugs. Whether they are from China, whether they are shipped somewhere else, or whether they are from another country that begins to produce these drugs, we have to do a better job finding these packages and stopping them. Because of the roughly 500 million packages that come in by mail every year, interdicting these small packages is very difficult. It can be like finding a needle in a haystack. So law enforcement has asked us to help them be able to get the information they need to target suspect packages. That is why what is called advance electronic data is so very important. This is information that comes in advance--such as what is in the package, where it is from, where it is going--is information for packages entering the United States that can greatly assists our law enforcement. Customs and Border Protection is responsible for this mail coming into our country, and they want to identify these suspicious packages and be able to trace them back to both the U.S. distributor and user but also, of course, to their overseas traffickers. When they have that information, they are able to stop packages but also then initiate investigations, prosecutions, and arrests. As part of our investigation, we found that last year the Postal Service only received this advance electronic data on about 36 percent of the more than 498 million packages coming into our country. That means the United States received more than 318 million packages with no data. That means there was little to no screening at all. We also found that the quality of the data that was provided was often inadequate and unhelpful to law enforcement. Even when the Postal Service conducted a pilot program to screen for these drugs through the use of this data, they only presented 80 percent of these packages targeted by Customs and Border Protection for inspection. In other words, about 20 percent of these suspect packages came into our communities without inspection, despite being suspect packages. With these glaring holes in the screening process, it is no wonder these drug dealers choose the Postal Service as their preferred drug delivery system. It is a massive loophole that is undermining the safety and security of our country. After the September 11, 2001, attacks, collecting the advance electronic data was identified as a national security priority. In 2002 Congress wrote legislation that required private carriers to collect this advance electronic data and authorized and encouraged the Postal Service to do it but left the implementation up to the Postal Service. That was 16 years ago. Because of the 2002 law, private carriers like UPS, FedEx, DHL, and others, require useful data on every package entering the United States, while the Postal Service gets its data for less than 40 percent of the hundreds of millions of packages it receives every year. Again, the Postal Service data is sometimes not usable, and 20 percent of those packages targeted because of the data are never presented to law enforcement to be inspected. Folks, this is just wrong. We can and we must do better. We talked earlier about the number of people dying from fentanyl overdoses and the fact that this is the new scourge. It is coming in our mail system. We have to be able to do better, and we can. This is why I have introduced what is called the Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention Act, or STOP Act. This bipartisan bill will require the Postal Service to get that electronic data on all international packages entering the United States. The coauthor of the STOP Act is Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and we now have 29 Senate cosponsors from both sides of the aisle. The bipartisan House companion bill is now, I believe, cosponsored by a majority of the House of Representatives. Why? Because this is just a commonsense solution that people understand has to be done. I urge all of my Senate colleagues to join us in doing what we can to stop some of this poison from coming into America and to at least raise the price on the street of this synthetic heroin that is cheap and accessible. By holding the Postal Service, a Federal agency, to the same standard we have for private mail carriers, we can give law enforcement the necessary tools they are asking for to identify and stop these deadly poisons from reaching our communities. I understand that this is just one part of the solution to deal with the opioid epidemic. Trust me; I get that. I have been working on this for over 20 years, focused mostly on the prevention side, treatment, and the recovery. Those are all important. We need to continue to do that because our States are gripped by these opioids, and all of us need it. But there is clearly a need for a legislative solution to prevent these drugs from entering our country through our own mail system. The STOP Act is a clear opportunity and responsibility for Congress to help turn the tide of addiction. I urge all of my colleagues to join us in supporting the STOP Act and, by doing so, in saving lives. I yield back. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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, tonight I wish to talk about our responsibility in the U.S. Senate to reopen the government, to get back to work solving real problems, and to fix the system around here so we aren't tempted to play political games with government shutdowns in the future. We are now in the second day of what I think is kind of a senseless shutdown. It is not helping anybody. There is a lot of disruption, dislocation, and dysfunction for no reason. It is a situation which was perhaps best described by Democratic leader Chuck Schumer in 2013 when he said: ``I believe in immigration reform. What if I persuaded my caucus to say I'm going to shut the government down, I'm not going to pay our bills unless I get my way. It's politics of idiocy, of confrontation, of paralysis.'' I think Chuck Schumer was right. I think the lesson of 2013 in that shutdown is, they don't work. I think they are a bad idea. They are unnecessary disruptions. They hurt our economy. They hurt families. They hurt our troops. By the way, they ultimately also cost the taxpayers more money, not less. That has been the history. That is why, for 6 years now, I have been fighting to pass legislation called the End Government Shutdowns Act. It is a very simple piece of legislation. By the way, my efforts in that have spanned Presidents of both parties and majorities in the Senate of both parties. It is not a political issue. We should end government shutdowns. More on that in a minute, but let's take a look at the real-world impact of a shutdown. In my home State of Ohio, nearly 50,000 Federal workers are seeing their paychecks halted through no fault of their own. This includes rangers at parks across the State, like Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It includes 3,000 employees at NASA Glenn. It includes thousands of civilian employees at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and thousands of other employees around the Buckeye State who are going to be hurt. Why? Because of the shutdown here in Washington, DC. By the way, Federal contractors are being told they can't go to work. Yet they are going to get paid after the fact. How does that help taxpayers? How did we get here? Well, spending goes through Congress. The Constitution says Congress alone has the power of the purse, so every dime that is appropriated for spending has to go through this Congress. Unfortunately, since the fiscal year ended on September 30, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have been unable to agree on an overall budget plan that allows us to fund our 12 annual spending bills. Since then, we have passed three of these so-called continuing resolutions. They are also called CRs. They provide short-term funding for the government; basically, a continuation of the spending from last year, just to keep the government from shutting down. That is what CRs do. They don't include any policies, typically, or any spending levels for the next fiscal year. It is just to keep things going and keep government operating. Nobody likes them. I don't like continuing resolutions. Who would? But the alternative is either come to an agreement on these 12 annual spending bills we have talked about or have a government shutdown. That was considered unthinkable over the last 4 months, when these continuing resolutions were passed by big bipartisan majorities of both the House and the Senate. By the way, 8 of these 12 annual spending bills I was talking about actually passed out of committee with big bipartisan votes. So 8 of the 12 actually have been passed. They are ready to come to the Senate floor, but they haven't come to the Senate floor because they require 60 votes out of 100 to be brought up, and Democrats, not having a solution to what the overall spending levels will be, have not cooperated to bring those individual spending bills to the floor. That is obviously the best way to do this; that is, to have the 12 spending bills come to the floor, have the debate, put the best policies in place, and have the right levels of spending for this fiscal year. That hasn't happened so we have these short-term continuing resolutions. One might ask: How can the continuing resolutions pass? Because they don't seem to be very popular. Well, but they are better than a shutdown. By the way, they also require 60 votes, but, again, it is the one thing we have been able to pass over the past 4 months to avoid shutdowns while we negotiate our differences over the level of spending, over the policies that are going to be in place between now and the rest of the fiscal year. They have always passed, again, on a broad bipartisan basis. Some Democrats have voted with us to keep our government open in the past because, as the Democratic leader has said, shutting down the government just doesn't make any sense. In order to pass a CR--a continuing resolution--only 39 Senators can vote no because, again, we have to get 60 votes. On Friday night, 44 Democrats chose to vote down the latest CR, even though almost nothing of substance has changed in the continuing resolution since the last continuing resolution that was voted on, again, by big majorities. The only thing that has changed is, there was added a very popular and urgent extension of a healthcare program called the CHIP program, Children's Health Insurance Program. It is absolutely critical that we pass that because in the next couple of weeks we are told some States will begin to run out of money. CHIP actually expired back in September, and it has had short-term fixes since then, in this continuing resolution, the same as the last continuing resolutions, basically. Nobody really objects to what is in the continuing resolution, but the addition has been this really important program; CHIP is reauthorized. By the way, it is reauthorized for its longest reauthorization ever in the history of the program--a 6-year reauthorization. I strongly support it, and I think my colleagues do across the board. If we don't deal with CHIP, again, this is urgent enough that some States are actually going to run out of money. Some are choosing to shut down the government, even though they can't point to anything in the short-term continuing resolution they disagree with and even though it endangers the healthcare of children and families around the country. That is where we are. The main reason we have heard from Democrats who oppose an otherwise acceptable continuing resolution--and we just heard here tonight from my colleagues on the other side, including colleagues I work with a lot on other issues, and I respect them, but they said this is about something else. It is not the spending bill, but it is about how we deal with DACA and broader immigration reform. I want to resolve DACA, too, and I believe most of the Members of this body sincerely want to resolve DACA. It is an administrative program that is appropriate to being legislated. The President gave us until March to deal with it, and we must and should deal with it. There is an ongoing, good-faith effort to resolve the DACA issue as well as broader immigration issues, like border security, and to do all that before DACA expires on March 5, which is 6 weeks away. There has been a lot of finger-pointing--and there is always plenty of room for that around here, let's face it--but the situation is clear: We are in day 2 of a shutdown because my Democratic colleagues are holding hostage the entire Federal Government and children in need of healthcare through CHIP for a nonspending issue that is being worked on. We all know it expires on March 5, and we need to deal with it. Without a spending bill or a continuing resolution to keep the government open short term, while we come to an agreement on larger issues, there are a bunch of Federal workers who are going to wake up tomorrow morning and find themselves furloughed. Many will not be able to go to work because their offices are closed. Some will, I am told, have to report to work, but they are not going to get paid, at least until the government reopens. Again, the taxpayer always ends up getting the short end of the stick on this. I just think it is crazy that we are allowing this to happen. It doesn't make any sense. I don't get it. Yes, there are some larger issues we have to come together on and solve in a bipartisan way, but we should agree to a short-term funding deal to just get the government up and running and then work to solve those problems. We are not working on them now, I can tell you, because everybody is distracted by this issue--a government shutdown. My understanding is, we are going to vote on a new proposal tonight to reopen the government. It is shorter term. Why? Because a number of Democrats have said they think the previous continuing resolution, which was for 4 weeks, was too long, so this one will be just 2\1/2\ weeks, until February 8. That is fine with me. I think that gives us enough time to resolve these issues and enough time to actually put the changes into legislation--2\1/2\ weeks. That would be pretty fast by congressional time. I understand the new CR proposal will also be coupled with these important CHIP funding proposals; in other words, the long-term extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program, which is important, and a commitment to continue the negotiations to address all of the outstanding issues, including DACA, including defense spending, including disaster relief. Let's support it. Let's get this behind us. Let's be sure people don't wake up on Monday morning to find they are furloughed, and then let's get back to these hard issues we were hired to resolve. I know it is a lot harder dealing with those substantive issues than dealing with those political issues. It is easy to shut down government. That doesn't take any ingenuity or imagination. That is easy. It is harder to deal with these tough issues, but that is what we have to do. Shutdowns aren't the answer. The situation tonight is a reminder that we should end government shutdowns for good. Again, that is why I have introduced the bipartisan legislation I mentioned earlier called the End Government Shutdowns Act, to avoid these types of unnecessary disruptions that are unproductive and unfair to our constituents. The bill would simply continue spending from the previous year for 120 days if any appropriations bill or any CR is not agreed to by the established deadline. Then it would gradually decline that funding by 1 percent, and then 1 percent, to give lawmakers the incentive that is needed around here to actually come together on a funding agreement. I think it is sensible. I think it is common sense. It has always been bipartisan in the past, so we can get it done. By the way, I first introduced this bill in 2012 with my Democratic colleague Jon Tester from Montana, when a Democratic President, President Obama, was in the White House and Democrats controlled the Senate. So this is a commonsense solution that benefits the country, not one political party over another. It is what is best for our country. If this bill were law, we wouldn't be in this situation. Instead, we would be talking about the substantive issues--how we resolve DACA, how we resolve defense spending. We have had 18 shutdowns in our country's history, and none of them would have happened if this was law. There would be no last-minute political brinkmanship over issues unrelated to funding our government. Our constituents, including Federal employees, would not have their lives disrupted, taxpayers wouldn't get fleeced by shutdowns and the backpay that happens and the inefficiencies. Our legislation is bipartisan, but frankly we need a lot more Members to support it and help us put in place a long-term solution to make sure these shutdowns don't continue to happen. I urge my colleagues tonight, and any staff who might be watching, please sign on to this legislation. We need your help. It is common sense. It is a time in which I hope we all realize these shutdowns don't make sense, and we have an alternative. A shutdown isn't helping anyone. It isn't helping Americans who need access to vital government services. It isn't helping Federal employees who instead should be working and not being furloughed, and it sure isn't helping the 9 million children who are facing losing needed healthcare services under CHIP. There are bipartisan discussions going on right now. I have spoken to colleagues on both sides of the aisle this afternoon and this evening. I think those discussions have been productive. Let's hope they are successful. Let's hope we can resolve this tonight. Let's hope we can have a vote to give the American people the certainty and predictability they are looking for. Let's reopen government, and let's get back to work. I hope all of my colleagues will join me in doing that tonight. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H. Con. Res. 98, which was received from the House.

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion 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. PORTMAN. Madam President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 165, S. 1519.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I want to talk about another vulnerable group of Americans. This is an issue that doesn't relate to the looming government shutdown or the spending bill that will avoid that shutdown, but it relates to another issue that Congress has the opportunity to address this month. January is Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Last Thursday was National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. We had a lot of people here in town talking about that issue. I think everybody in this Chamber would agree with me that we live in a great country. We are blessed to be Americans. In this age of rapid scientific, medical, and technological innovation, we have been able to change the world in positive ways. That is good. But something else is happening that is discouraging; that is, in this country, in the 21st century, we are actually seeing an increase in a part of human trafficking, and that is heartbreaking. This is sex trafficking that is occurring in our country. Often it involves children, underage, who are being sold much like property. Experts tell us that this increase is happening primarily for one reason and one reason alone, and that is because of the internet. It is sort of the dark side of the internet. It is a ruthlessly efficient way to conduct this trafficking business. This is a stain on our national character. It is something we should all be involved with, Republican and Democrat alike, all of us as Americans, to say: Let's push back. Let's not allow our country, during this period of so many positive technological changes, to use this technology--in this case, online websites selling people--in a way that devastates these families and creates so many dislocations in our communities. Traffickers are using the internet because of the fact that Congress--the House and the Senate--passed legislation 21 years ago that they are able to hide behind. They have immunity under the Federal law called the Communications Decency Act. Ironically, it was actually put in place to push back against child pornography--in other words, to protect children from viewing pornography. It is being used now to say: Well, we don't have responsibilities as websites even if we knowingly are selling children online. Can you imagine that? Our legislation to deal with that is something we have been working on for a couple of years. We had a 2-year investigation on this online trafficking. It focused a lot on one website--an evil website that sells people online and knowingly has been providing ads out there for underage girls and boys--backpage.com. As we looked into it and did more research, it became clear that even though they were doing this and even though there were people suing them because of it, none of the lawsuits were successful--whether from prosecutors or victims, whether criminal suits or civil suits--because of this immunity they were claiming under Federal law. We found out that backpage.com--this one website--was responsible for about 75 percent of all child trafficking reports that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was receiving. In other words, the great majority of this was happening on this one website. We found out there has been a dramatic increase in trafficking because of this ruthless online efficiency. When we got through our investigation, we also found out that this website actually knew that some of these ads were related to children and yet published them anyway. They went so far as to try to, as they called it, ``clean'' the ads for illegal transactions. Someone would place an ad, pay for the ad, and then backpage would say: You need to change this ad a little bit because you are using words like ``schoolgirl'' or ``cheerleader,'' which indicates they are underage. In other words, they knew these kids were underage. Yet they edited the ads and placed the ads anyway and took the profit. That is what we are up against. The cost to these families, the human suffering that results from this, is incalculable. I met with victims all around the State of Ohio and some from other States who have come here, as they did last week for this rally. Can you imagine being in that situation as a parent? Kubiiki Pride, who was here last week, had her 14-year-old daughter go missing. She was a teenager. Her mom was stricken with grief and concern over her. After 10 weeks, she couldn't find her anywhere. Finally, somebody said: You ought to look on this website called backpage because they are selling girls online. God forbid, they were right, and she found her daughter. She found several photographs of her daughter--not photographs she wanted to see, but on the other hand, there was her daughter alive. She said: My first reaction was relief that she was alive. Then, of course, I called backpage, and I said: I found my daughter. She is on your site. She is 14 years old. Please take her ad down. Backpage said: Did you pay for the ad? She said: No, I didn't pay for the ad. That is my daughter. She is 14 years old. They said: No, we can't take down the ad. You didn't pay for it. Can you imagine? She was eventually reunited with her daughter. And there is a film called ``I am Jane Doe'' in which she and other women, mothers and young women, are featured. You can see more about her story and what a brave woman she is because she is now standing up to it. She filed a lawsuit, but the lawsuit was not successful because the judge said there is this immunity. By the way, the courts that have ruled that these websites are protected by this Federal law have said that Congress ought to do something about that. Most recently, last August, a Sacramento judge dropped charges against backpage, stating: ``If and until Congress sees fit to amend the immunity law, the broad reach of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act even applies to those alleged to support the exploitation of others by human trafficking.'' To me that is an invitation for Congress to act, saying: We get it; they are exploiting human beings online, but this Federal law gives them immunity. This immunity was put in place 21 years ago in an effort to try to ensure that we could have a free internet, and that is very important, but it was never intended to provide immunity to illegal activity like this--certainly not to keep people in the business of sex trafficking. That injustice is why we introduced our legislation. It is called the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA. I introduced it with Senators Blumenthal, McCain, McCaskill, Cornyn, Heitkamp, and others. Senators Thune and Nelson took this bill through the Commerce Committee late last year. We had a spirited debate in that committee, and it ended up coming out of the committee with a unanimous vote. Why? Because after hearing from the victims, after hearing from the experts on both sides, the Senators said: Whoa. This doesn't make any sense. As Senators, it is our responsibility to change this law. It provides justice for victims of online sex trafficking because they will have the opportunity to sue. It holds these websites accountable that knowingly facilitate crimes. It also helps in terms of prosecutions because the State prosecutors now--the AGs, the local prosecutors at the State level--will be able to have access now to the courts to be able to take on these websites and, again, hold them accountable. The prosecutions, again, have been thwarted because of this immunity. These are very narrow changes. They don't affect the freedom of the internet at all. In fact, I would argue it helps to ensure a free internet. To take care of these bad actors and by holding these folks accountable, it is going to provide the justice the victims deserve. It is a fair and commonsense approach, and that is why it has the support not just of the Members I have mentioned but actually, now, 66 or 67 Members of the U.S. Senate. That is out of 100 Members. That is a rare thing to have that kind of support. It has the majority of the Republicans on board. It has the majority of the Democrats on board. It is a fair and commonsense approach that is going to make a real difference in the lives of the people we represent. It will be effective at curbing this increase in trafficking that we see online. Every day we don't act, there are more women and more children who are being trafficked unnecessarily. It also has the support of an extraordinary coalition of law enforcement organizations, anti-trafficking advocates, survivors, faith-based groups, civil rights communities, major businesses, and even some members of the tech community that initially pushed back against this legislation. Looking at it, I think many of them realized this is not a defensible position to say we shouldn't amend this Federal law that is providing immunity to these bad actors. Members of the U.S. Senate who have cosponsored the bill, including colleagues of mine who are in the Senate Chamber this afternoon, are saying: I want to be part of the solution. They are showing some courage, and I appreciate that. People who have really shown courage are these survivors--these children and these women who have been trafficked--and they need our help. We need 60 votes to pass most things around here. In this case, we will have some objections, apparently, and so having 66 or 67 supporters of this legislation is a key number. It enables us to ensure that we can get this onto the floor and passed on the floor. So why are we waiting? We shouldn't wait. We should move this month, during Human Trafficking Awareness Month, Human Trafficking Prevention Month. We should move because it is the right thing to do for these victims and those who might be victims between now and when we act. It is the right thing to do because it will create a safer and a better and a more just society. Elected officials like us are elected to do just that. There were hundreds of sex trafficking survivors on Capitol Hill last week, and I met with them. The stories will break your heart. Some were the parents, some were trafficking victims themselves. They have shown great courage by sharing their stories, bringing their tragedy public, and now we owe them the opportunity to get this legislation passed, to ensure that we can protect some of the most vulnerable among us. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield back my time.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I have 9 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: committee on armed services The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, January 18, 2018, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Michael D. Griffin, of Alabama, to be Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, Phyllis L. Bayer, of Mississippi, to be an Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and John Henderson, of South Dakota, and William Roper, of Georgia, each to be an Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, all of the Department of Defense. committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, January 18, 2018, at 9:45 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``CFIUS Reform: Examining the essential elements.'' committee on commerce, science, and transportation The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, January 18, 2018, at 11 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Leon A. Westmoreland, of Georgia, to be a Director of the Amtrak Board of Directors, Barry Lee Myers, of Pennsylvania, to be Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, of Maryland, to be an Assistant Secretary of Transportation, Brendan Carr, of Virginia, to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission, James Bridenstine, of Oklahoma, to be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Ann Marie Buerkle, of New York, to be a Commissioner, and to be Chairman, and Dana Baiocco, of Ohio, to be a Commissioner, both of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. committee on foreign relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, January 18, 2018, at 2 p.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Samuel Dale Brownback, of Kansas, to be Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, Richard Grenell, of California, to be Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, Yleem D. S. Poblete, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary (Verification and Compliance), James Randolph Evans, of Georgia, to be Ambassador to Luxembourg, Joel Danies, of Maryland, to be Ambassador to the Gabonese Republic, and to serve concurrently and without additional compensation as Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Carlos Trujillo, of Florida, to be Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the Organization of American States, with the rank of Ambassador, and routine lists in the Foreign Service, all of the Department of State. committee on energy and natural resources The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, January 18, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Melissa F. Burnison, of Kentucky, to be an Assistant Secretary (Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs), and Anne Marie White, of Michigan, to be an Assistant Secretary (Environmental Management), both of the Department of Energy. committee on health, education, labor, and pension The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pension is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, January 18, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Financial Aid Simplification and Transparency.'' committee on health, education, labor, and pension The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pension is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, January 18, 2018, at 12:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing subcommittee assignments and on the following nominations: Mitchell Zais, of South Carolina, to be Deputy Secretary, Kenneth L. Marcus, of Virginia, to be Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, and James Blew, of California, to be Assistant Secretary for Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, all of the Department of Education, Patrick Pizzella, of Virginia, to be Deputy Secretary, Scott A. Mugno, of Pennsylvania, to be an Assistant Secretary, Cheryl Marie Stanton, of South Carolina, to be Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, and William Beach, of Kansas, to be Commissioner of Labor Statistics, all of the Department of Labor, Brett Giroir, of Texas, to be Medical Director in the Regular Corps of the Public Health Service, and to be an Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, Barbara Stewart, of Illinois, to be Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and other pending nominations.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each until 7 p.m., with the time equally divided, and that all quorum calls during that time also be equally divided.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, constituents of mine are hearing today that there is a looming government shutdown--Friday at midnight; that if Congress hasn't passed a spending bill, it is possible the government could shut down. That would be a big mistake. Government shutdowns do not make sense. We have legislation called End Government Shutdowns, by the way, which says that when Congress doesn't do their appropriations bills on time--which is never or rarely--that there should not be a shutdown; rather, continue the spending from the previous year, but ratchet it down over time to give the Appropriations Committee and Congress and the Senate an incentive to get the job done. But let's not shut down the government. When we do that, it doesn't help anybody. It doesn't help us as taxpayers because we end up coming back and paying people, and the inefficiencies of it create more costs. So I hope we are not even talking about that. In the so-called continuing resolution, which is a short-term spending bill--which, again, is not the best way to govern, but that is what our choice is--in that continuing resolution to keep the government from shutting down, there is also, as I understand it, going to be something that is very good for our country. So, one, shutting down doesn't make sense, but two, let's be sure that the short-term spending bill that we do pass includes something very important-- important to about 219,000 children in my home State of Ohio and millions of families around the country who depend on a program called the Children's Health Insurance Program, CHIP. CHIP has traditionally been a bipartisan program. It is supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. In fact, the reauthorization of the Children's Health Insurance Program, CHIP, came out of the Finance Committee with a vote that was unanimous--Republicans and Democrats alike. Again, that doesn't happen often. It happened because people believe it is important to have that safety net program for our kids and for those families. Right now, that program is really on life support. We are told that if we do not extend that program, some States will begin running out of money even in the next few weeks. One of those States could be Ohio, we are told. The numbers are not exactly accurate, I don't think, because nobody knows. That makes it very unpredictable and uncertain for those families and children. We know there are States running out of money right now. By the way, the program ended in September, and since September 30, it has been given these short-term authorizations. That doesn't make sense. My understanding is that the House of Representatives is going to actually put into the continuing resolution that they are going to send over here a longer term extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program--in fact, a 6-year extension, which would be the longest extension ever. I think that is very important. I heard from some families last week in Ohio who are wondering: Are you guys going to actually provide us with the certainty that our kids can continue to receive the treatment they are getting? These are children who have serious health problems and who need that kind of care and rely on CHIP to provide it. For all the disagreements we have in this Chamber--and there are plenty of them--there will be healthy and spirited debate on lots of issues later today, I am sure. This is one on which we can come together and agree that children should have that basic healthcare. I came to the Senate floor last month--back in December--to strongly urge my colleagues and the leadership on both sides of the aisle to take the politics out of this and get CHIP done, get the long-term authorization done, in the last spending bill. That was not done. In fact, it was just a short-term extension of CHIP that basically coincides with the spending bills. That was disappointing. I said so at the time. It was not done last time. That was a mistake. Now we have the opportunity to do it. Let's take that opportunity. I am here to once again say, let's act to provide that long-term stability in the program. Again, I am encouraged by what I hear--that the House of Representatives is likely to include that stability to ensure that children everywhere can receive adequate and affordable healthcare. The House 6-year extension would also return CHIP to a traditional Federal- State partnership, which has been a bipartisan effort, and provide additional protections for low-income children and more flexibility for the States. There are some changes to the program and some reforms to the program that have been bipartisan through committee, and I am hopeful that will be part of it as well. The House bill that includes this CHIP extension--it would be the longest extension since the creation of the program more than 20 years ago. Instead of these short-term ones, we are going to have a long-term extension, if we can pass this. By doing it long term, the Congressional Budget Office says we will actually save taxpayers $1 billion. Having that predictability and certainty--not having the start-and-stop nature of CHIP--saves taxpayers money. Is this CR perfect in terms of healthcare? No. There are other things we should do as well. We can do that with regard to the longer term spending bill we will probably be doing a couple of weeks from now or a few weeks from now or whenever we come to the end of whatever the continuing resolution is tomorrow. We do need to find long-term funding solutions for community health centers, for instance. Again, that has been bipartisan in the past. These centers have been very effective in dealing with issues that relate to our communities, health issues, such as opioid addiction. Community health centers have been very helpful in providing treatment to people, particularly in rural areas that don't have access to other healthcare treatment centers. We should provide them with that long- term funding and certainty. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will vote to extend these important health insurance programs for our children. Again, CHIP stands for Children's Health Insurance Program. It should not be a bargaining chip for other political purposes. Let's get that done. This is a chance for everybody to ensure that we have that certainty for our children and help them to live up to their God-given potential in life.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I have 3 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, January 11, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``U.S. Policy in Syria Post-ISIS''. Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, January 11, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on S. 2152 the ``Amy, Vicky, and Any Child Pornography Victim Assistance Act'' and on the following nominations: Stuart Kyle Duncan, of Louisiana, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit, David Ryan Stras, of Minnesota, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit, Fernando Rodriguez, Jr., to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Texas. Select Committee on Intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, January 11, 2018, at 2 p.m. to conduct a hearing a closed roundtable.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. I thank the Senator. I have to get the last word, though, because this is about the Senator. Senator Hatch said he loves this place and he loves its Members. There is a lot of love for him in this place on both sides of the aisle, and it is well deserved and earned. Russia Mr. President, I heard Senator Cardin earlier speaking about the threat that Russia poses not just to us--and the meddling that has been occurring here in our elections over the years--but also the threat that they pose to other democracies around the world, particularly in Eastern Europe. I appreciate his report. I appreciate the fact that he has worked with a number of us, including Senator Murphy, on the other side of the aisle, to put forward legislation to try to push back against this disinformation. In fact, we have required that the State Department increase their efforts through what is called the Global Engagement Center. I am meeting with the Deputy Secretary of State here after this speech, and I am going to speak more about that with him, but we really want to be sure that the United States is taking more aggressive action against the kind of disinformation that can destabilize democracies. We heard some of the examples of what his report was able to uncover in terms of some of the Russian activity, particularly, again, in Europe and in Eastern Europe. This is an issue. It is a foreign policy issue that we have been, in my view, slow to respond to. It didn't start with the last Presidential election, and it will not end with this last Presidential election unless we take a more aggressive stance and step up. So I appreciate that it has been a bipartisan effort that we should acknowledge as Americans that it is in our interests to push back against the disinformation and the propaganda and the destabilization of democracies. Tax Reform Today, Mr. President, I wish to speak about some good news; that is, that here in Congress we actually did something with the tax relief and tax reform legislation that is actually creating a better economy and more hope for people. There was news announced today, just a few minutes ago, that is in addition to the news we have heard over the last few weeks. This historic tax reform was created, we will remember, with two goals in mind. One was to cut taxes for middle-class families--so individual tax cuts. The second part of it was to make America a better place to do business. Let's ensure that there will be more jobs created here rather than elsewhere. Let's level the playing field so our workers aren't competing with one hand tied behind their back. As I have said through the process and as we developed this bill, we had a bipartisan agreement that our Tax Code was broken, but we couldn't seem to come up with an agreement of how to fix it. Some Democrats said: Well, that is great that you guys have done this bill, but it is not going to help. I said at the time: The proof will be what happens, what happens to jobs, what happens to wages, what happens to the economy in general, and what happens to your paycheck. I am here to announce today that the results have been pretty darn impressive, and they have been across the board--all of those things I talked about. We have already seen as a result of this tax legislation that America has become a better place to do business. All over the country there are companies and businesses, small and large, that have stepped forward to talk about that. I now have a list of 150 businesses--and I am sure there are many, many more--that have decided to do something. Either they announced a pay increase, a bonus, an increased 401(k) contribution, an increased pension contribution, or maybe a new investment in equipment and in technology to make workers more competitive. All of this is specifically because of the tax relief and reform bill. That is what is happening. For those who haven't followed it, even today another company, Walmart--the largest employer in my State--announced that they are indeed going to increase pay and provide bonuses to over 1 million workers. Some companies have actually announced a combination of things, not just a pay increase but maybe a pay increase as well as an increased contribution to a 401(K) or an increased contribution to a charity. So I think we are already seeing the direct effects--the direct and very positive beneficial effects--of this tax reform legislation, as many have hoped that we would see, given the fact that we wrote it to create these incentives for more jobs and better jobs. But today we are going to begin to see the direct effects of the other part of the bill; that is, the tax relief directly to individuals. The IRS just announced about an hour ago that they are publishing updates to the tax withholding tables for employers. Now, what does this mean? This means that Uncle Sam is going to take a little less of your paycheck, and you are going to see it on your paycheck. So the withholding--the amount that is withheld from your paycheck with taxes--is going to be changed. The Treasury Department says that for 90 percent of Americans--90 percent--there will be a change in withholding that will be positive for them. In other words, they will have less money coming out of their paycheck. Most people whom I represent in my home State of Ohio live paycheck to paycheck. This is really important. We talked earlier about how much this is going to be: $2,000 a family on average. That is the median income for a family in Ohio. Whatever the amount is, this is significant, and it is something that people are going to be pretty surprised about because so many people have misrepresented what this legislation is about. They are now seeing that it is about jobs, it is about wages, it is about bonuses, and so on. But they are also going to see in their own paycheck that it is about more take-home pay. It is about having a little healthier family budget. So, again, as we went through this process, when we would have these debates I would say: I encourage people to look online, to look at the professionals, to look at a tax calculator. I said: The proof is in your paycheck. I think the proof will be in their paychecks--more hard- earned money staying in their pocket rather than going to Washington is something that my constituents will like, particularly if we see this economy start to pick up because of this tax reform bill, which, by the way, will result in a stronger economy. Therefore, there will be more revenue through growth. So the Federal Government will have more revenue coming in. Every 1-percent increase in GDP--a 1-percent increase in growth in this country--means about $2.7 trillion in increased revenue coming into the Federal coffers. So that is more revenue coming in, not from a tax increase but from growth. That is the kind of revenue we want to have to be able to deal with many issues we face on the fiscal side, including our large deficits and debt, and that we will also begin to see as we see a better economy grow and develop because of this tax reform legislation. That is my strong belief and, again, I think the evidence is pretty clear that we are headed that way. I want to commend the IRS for moving so quickly because this is pretty quick for us to turn it around. We just passed the legislation at the end of the year. It became effective on January 1. Here we are on January 11, and we are already seeing them changing the withholding that is going to go to the employers so that employers will withhold less from people's paychecks. I also want to personally commend the Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, because I know he has a passion to make sure that our hard- working taxpayers get this tax relief as soon as possible. My sense is that he is the one who has promoted our moving quickly on this, in a professional and careful way so that the withholding tables are accurate but ensuring that we do allow people to begin to have a little more in their paychecks to be able to help make ends meet. Again, with most people I represent living paycheck to paycheck this is a big deal. Steve Mnuchin has been, I think, essential to getting this done as quickly as it has been done, as he was essential in the tax reform legislation, along with Gary Cohn of the White House, and others. So this law is going to help middle-class families in three main ways. First, it cuts taxes across the board. As I noted, the IRS announcement means that about 90 percent of taxpayers will see more money in their paychecks. They do this in a number of ways in the tax reform legislation, and I am talking about the reform notice here. It is Notice 1036. For those who want to go online and look at it, just go on the IRS website, irs.gov, and you can see it, the new withholding tables. They lay all of this out. Depending on how much your paycheck is, whether you are paid weekly, biweekly, semimonthly, or monthly, you see what your benefits are going to be. But it happens because there is a doubling of the standard deduction, and most people already take the standard deduction in my State of Ohio. Now more people will take it because there is a doubling and essentially a zero tax bracket. So it goes from about $12,000 a family to about $24,000 a family. It also has a lowering of the rate of tax. So your tax rate is going to be lower relative to what it was before this. Also, if you have kids, you get a doubling of the child tax credit, including part of that being an increase in the refundability of that if you don't have income tax liability. But if you still have expenses, if you still have payroll taxes, you get your benefit there. So these are the kinds of things that, combined, end up with this notice going out saying: You are going to have a little more in your paycheck. Second, the result of these tax cuts is going to take about 3 million Americans off the tax rolls altogether. I say ``about'' because the Joint Committee on Taxation doesn't have the final number yet but they have told me that it is at least 3 million Americans who now pay income taxes who will no longer have income tax liability. Now, they may have payroll tax liabilities, and they may have State and local taxes, but the point is that this was about Federal income reform and relief, and they are going to be out from under the IRS and again be able to help make ends meet. That is as a result of this legislation. I said earlier that about $2,000 per family is the average tax savings for a median family income in Ohio, $2,000 a year in tax relief is about the average. This is important because as expenses have gone up over the last couple of decades--particularly, healthcare expenses in the last decade--wages have not. So wages have been relatively flat. In fact, on average, if you take inflation into account, they have been flat over the last couple of decades. We are beginning to see some increase in wages now. This is terrific, but with wages being flat and expenses up, people have had a real squeeze, and that middle-class squeeze is real in my home State. So this is extra money that families--many people living paycheck to paycheck--can use for expenses like healthcare, maybe make a car payment, save for retirement, or maybe help their kids. The second goal of this tax reform, boosting the American economy, is also beginning to happen, as I said earlier. When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act became law, immediately we saw a number of companies and businesses, small and large, around the country say: We are going to do something about this. I remember being home over the holidays and, actually, the day after Christmas, December 26, I was talking with friends, and a guy who owns a small manufacturing business, the brother of a friend of mine, said: Would you be willing to come out to our little company to talk about the tax bill? I said: Sure, if we can figure it out schedulewise. He said: Because I want to give my employees a bonus. I am looking at this tax bill, how it is going to affect our little business, and what it is going to do for us to be able to invest more in the company, and I want to give my employees a $1,000 bonus--everybody, 137 employees-- and I also want to do something in terms of investing in my equipment because I want to make my people more competitive. This is a small manufacturer in Cincinnati, OH, that makes a high- quality product, a precision product, and he wants to make sure that his people have the best equipment to be competitive. In his case, he has competition from overseas, as do a lot of American businesses, either directly or indirectly these days in an increasingly global economy, and he wants to be sure he is competitive. So I went there. I went to the company, Sheffer Corporation, and I had the opportunity to talk about the tax reform bill and what it does across the board. He made the announcement, and I can tell you that people were very happy because these are folks who work hard and play by the rules. They aren't looking for any kind of a handout, but what they do want is to be able to know that if they work hard and do the right thing, they will be able to see a little better future for themselves and their kids and their grandkids and not have that middle-class squeeze we talked about, where wages are flat and expenses are up. When the economy is not growing at a fast rate, which we have seen over the last decade, it is really a challenge. When we have an economy growing at 2 percent or less, it is tough to see that kind of open opportunity. Now, with this tax reform bill, I think we have a much better chance of seeing that. In fact, looking at some of the projections for next year, it looks like most people think the economy is going to grow at better than 2 percent--maybe 3 percent or maybe a little higher. We don't know. The point is that people are going to have more hope and opportunity. It is not just Sheffer, though. In my hometown of Cincinnati, the Fifth Third Bank announced a companywide wage increase. So wages are going to go up for entry-level jobs and push all wages, as well as bonuses, for 13,000 employees in Cincinnati. Across the country we have seen this. Tomorrow I will be at a plant in Cleveland, OH, that is putting more money into their pension plan. I think it is going to be about $15 million into a pension plan, which isn't in terrible shape, but it could be a lot healthier. That is going to help those employees directly. Last Friday I was at a plant in Columbus, OH, a small manufacturer, Wolf Metals. They do an awesome job there competing with people all around the globe, and they are going to make more investments in equipment. In fact, I like this comparison to the tax bill because one of the pieces of equipment--a $1 million piece of equipment they are going to replace with the tax bill savings--is 32 years old. The Tax Code that we reformed was 31 years old. So it is time, don't you think, every few decades to actually reform our Tax Code, to bring it up to speed and make it more competitive to give our workers the edge, just as it is time to replace that machine to give his employees, what they need to compete globally. Nationwide Insurance in Columbus, OH, is going to reinvest in their workers. Western & Southern Financial Group, Boeing, Comcast, and AT&T are some of the big companies we have heard about. They have all announced increased investments in their workers and new investments in their operations as a result of this law. With regard to Walmart, they employ about 1.5 million Americans now. As I said, it is the largest employer in Ohio, with over 50,000 employees. They are going to raise wages, provide bonuses, and expand benefits for the workers as a result of this tax reform legislation. So these are the results. This isn't a hypothetical. This is not something we are just saying might happen; it is something that is actually happening. I think every single American is going to see a benefit from this because a stronger economy helps everyone. The 90 percent of people who see their withholdings change so that they have more tax relief are obviously going to see it. The people who work in the businesses we have talked are going to see it. But all of us benefit. President John F. Kennedy once said something I think makes a lot of sense. He talked about a rising tide. He said, ``A rising tide lifts all . . . [ships].'' In other words, it helps to have a growing economy. These results are going to help with regard to our competitiveness too. Right now, we have a situation where, because of our Tax Code, jobs and investments are going overseas. Now, we may not hear as much about this, but what we are going to see is fewer foreign companies buying U.S. companies and, therefore, less investment in jobs going overseas. In 2016, the last year for which we have numbers, three times as many American companies were bought by foreign companies as the other way around. Ernst & Young has done a study saying that over the past 13 years, 4,700 American companies were purchased by a foreign company that otherwise would still be American if we had in place this tax bill that we have now. Part of the result of this tax reform and tax cut legislation we are talking about today is obvious. We will see better jobs, higher wages, more investment in companies, more investment in retirement--all the things we all want to see, Republican and Democrat alike. Part of it is the tax cuts. Today, with the IRS announcement, people will see this in their paychecks. If not this next pay period, they will see it before February 15 because that is what the Treasury Department is requiring companies to do. So it is coming soon. The other part we may not see, but is very real, is that the decline we have seen in American competitiveness--the result being that jobs and investment go overseas--is going to start to reverse, and it is none too soon. We needed to do this years ago. Many of us have been talking about it for years. Finally, we are putting American workers in a position where they can compete and they can win. Isn't that what it is all about? I don't want these 4,700 companies going overseas. I don't want three times as many American companies bought by foreign companies instead of the other way around. We don't want that. What we want is people to say: I am going to invest in America and American workers. I believe we have so many advantages in this country, and we are so blessed to be Americans. We have great universities. We have the opportunity here, through our workforce, to be as productive as anybody in the world. But when we have a tax code that is holding us back, it is unfair. It is our responsibility as Members of Congress to fix it, and that is what we have done. We should have done this sooner, but now that we have done it, I think we will see continued good results, as we have talked about today. We are going to see the opportunity for more investments in American workers, in American jobs, in American families, and in American businesses, and that investment will pay off for all of us. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I want to assure the Senator from Utah, who just spoke, who is also the President pro tempore of this entire body, that he is well regarded on both sides of the aisle. I don't think any Senator has had a more distinguished or consequential career--four decades of legislating. I want to assure the Senator that nobody thinks he is going to slow down. In fact, as he just said, he has plenty on his agenda for the next year, and we look forward to working with him during that time period. We also wish him well on his retirement. I have talked to him a little about this. He has a wonderful family, and he has big plans for the future with some important work he wants to do in public policy through his foundation. I have so much respect for Senator Hatch. I thank him so much for what he did most recently to help guide us through this latest tax reform and tax cut bill that actually is making a difference for the people I represent and he represents.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I want to thank my friend and colleague, Senator Blumenthal, for his commitment to this issue. We started this caucus to end trafficking 6 years ago, and during that time period there has been some significant progress made here in the Senate and the House. We have been able to pass legislation to help crack down on trafficking. Unbelievably, in this century in this country, sex trafficking is increasing, not decreasing, despite our good efforts. We have increased the penalties on those who purchase sex from underage children. We have changed the dynamic of how the Federal Government and HHS look at this issue and these girls who get engaged in trafficking and get trapped into the system and to treat them like the victims they are rather than as criminals. We have done more to increase awareness of this issue. We have required for missing kids, which are probably the most vulnerable of all, that there be a photograph or another identifier, which, unbelievably, for the most part there was not prior to that. We have made some progress. Senator Blumenthal and I have written legislation with regard to Government contractors who overseas engage in human trafficking--and our tax dollars go for that. So we have made some progress, but it is still increasing. Why? Senator Blumenthal talked about it. The experts are unified on this. The main reason we see an uptick is because of the dark side of the internet. The Senator quoted the statistic earlier about an 850- percent increase in reports of sex trafficking over the last several years prior to 2015. The reason that was true was because we saw the emergence of these companies like backpage.com, which probably has about 75 percent of the commercial sex traffic on one site, and the ruthless efficiency of the internet getting engaged on this issue. So we have to address this issue. Here is the tragic part of this. Not only are more and more lives being ruined and there are more and more heartbreaking stories, but it is because of a Federal law that provides immunity to these websites. So it comes right back here, right to these desks, right to this Congress, right to us as legislators to fix this problem, not to try to smooth it over but to actually fix the problem, which is that some of these online trafficking sites are immune from prosecution because of a Federal law. It was a well-intended law that was written 21 years ago, I think. It is the Communications Decency Act. Ironically, it was put in place to make it a crime to send pornography to kids online, but it has been twisted and used by these trafficking sites to provide them the ability to say: You can't touch us; you can't go after us. That is so because part of what the law says in trying to promote the internet is that if you post somebody else's material on your site, you are not liable. All we are saying is that if you know this involved trafficking--and Senator Blumenthal talked about his experience as a prosecutor; this is a high bar, a known standard--then you can't get away with this. The standard we use, by the way, for Federal trafficking is the Federal law. So we allow victims to have their day in court, but they can't get it now. The stories are really sad. Let me tell you one. We spent 18 months investigating this in the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and what we learned was truly tragic. You had girls who were trafficked on these sites. In one case a mom testified that her daughter had gone missing for about 10 weeks, as I recall--missing. This is a 14-year-old girl. What would you do as a parent if your daughter was missing for 10 weeks? You would go crazy. She tried everything, and someone finally told her: There is this website called backpage.com; you might want to check it out. She did, and she was aghast at what she saw, but she was relieved by one thing. She saw a photograph of her daughter, knowing, then, that she was still alive. So she picked up the phone and called backpage.com and said: I just saw my daughter. She has been missing for 10 weeks. I saw her on your website. Thank you for taking down that ad that is trying to sell my daughter for sex online. This is my daughter. She is underage. Do you know what the backpage operator said at the other end of the line, according to this mom? They said: Did you pay for the ad, ma'am? She said: No, I didn't pay for the ad. This is my daughter. They said: Well, we can't take down the ad. We can't take down the ad. What kind of evil is behind that kind of a business practice? Well, what we learned, as we increasingly dug into this issue, is that it is all about profit, and you can imagine this is a very profitable business. Profits came first, to the point that people would place ads with backpage that indicated that it was for an underage girl, and backpage would then get to the purchaser of the ad and say: You know what, we need to change your ad a little bit. You need to edit out this word ``schoolgirl'' or ``cheerleader'' or ``Lolita,'' referring to a novel about an underage girl. So they knew these ads were being run by people who were advertising underage girls, and they not only ran the ads but they sanitized the ads first. That just shouldn't happen in this country. It shouldn't happen anywhere in the world, but certainly not with a Federal law providing protections for organizations like that. That is all we are saying. We want Congress to pass a law that says that if you engage knowingly in facilitating this kind of activity, you are subject to liability. You have to be held to account. Is that too much to ask? Senator Blumenthal talked about it as a former prosecutor. We allow State prosecutors to go after these sites, which they cannot now. They have to use the Federal standard. So we are not trying to create a whole new area of law. It is a Federal standard that has been passed by this body. When these victims go to court, they are rebuffed: Sorry, ma'am. In one court last August, a Sacramento judge basically invited our legislation. He said to Congress: The way that law reads, even somebody who exploits women and children online has immunity. Congress, this is your job. So that is all this legislation does. Senator Blumenthal talked about the House legislation. There was strong House legislation that was introduced that still bears that same H.R. number. Then it was changed in the Judiciary Committee. Look, I am glad that there is more awareness and consciousness about this issue and that both the House and Senate want to act, but let's not water this legislation down. Let's not take away this core element of our legislation that simply says that under the Communications Decency Act, we should have the opportunity to allow people to sue and allow prosecutors to go after these evil websites. We can set up new causes of action. That is fine. We can do more things as we have done in this body. As I said, over the last 5 or 6 years, we passed a number of important bills to try to raise the consciousness and to try to help on this issue, but if we don't deal with this internet part, we will continue to see an increase, which is a stain on our national character--that at this time in our Nation's history, we are seeing an increase in people being sold for sex online, often underage. Another story came not from testimony before the permanent subcommittee where we spent 18 months studying this, but it came before the Commerce Committee, and Senator Blumenthal was there for part of this. This woman came forward. By the way, you could have heard a pin drop in that room when she talked about her 16-year-old daughter who was sold on backpage.com and was sold to a man who murdered her on Christmas Eve of 2016. This is what this mom said: My daughter never should have been on that site; that should never be allowed. She is right. It should never be allowed. How can we allow that to happen? So Senator Blumenthal and I introduced this legislation. We had 24 cosponsors almost right away, and it was bipartisan from the start. This is not a political or partisan issue. As of yesterday, I think we had 64 cosponsors. These are thoughtful Members, including the Presiding Officer today, who looked at this legislation. They have heard the arguments from both sides. The other side of the argument is from the tech community, some of whom are supporting our legislation, some of whom are not. But for the people in technology who are concerned about this, I just have to state: I don't get it. This is very narrowly crafted for this issue. We are not trying to affect the freedom of the internet--just the opposite. If you don't start cracking down on this obvious crime against humanity, which is what I believe trafficking is, I think we are going to see much broader legislation to deal with the internet. This just says: If you are violating a Federal law on trafficking and you are doing it knowingly, you are facilitating it, you are assisting it, then you have to be held liable and held to account. In fact, we keep in the law a Good Samaritan provision that says if a website wants to clean up its site, it is protected. The good guys should be protected. We want them to clean up their site. We want to be sure that we continue to have freedom of the internet, but we don't want to allow--nor do I think it was ever intended in this law to allow--criminal activity to occur that affects our children and our constituents over the internet without any sense of accountability or responsibility. It is narrowly crafted. It is focused on a real issue that affects real people. On Friday I was back home in Ohio, and I was at a drug treatment center. I had an opportunity to meet some of those who are recovering addicts. As often happens when I am in those kinds of settings, it turns to what kind of treatment options are out there for trauma. Why? Because there is a link between opioids--particularly heroin and fentanyl--and trafficking. This is what has been told to me many times by some of these women, sometimes underage: Senator, trafficking has moved from the street corner to the iPhone, from the street corner to the cell phone. That is a reality. I met a woman on Friday who was going through treatment, and part of it is to treat the trauma that is associated with this. Drug treatment is one thing, but the trauma associated with sex trafficking, repeated rapes is a course that is a deeper and even more difficult road to recovery. I believe she will recover. She has a great attitude. She gets it. She is going to have to focus on it and dedicate herself to it. I will just tell you that this is a real issue in our communities today. It is affecting every single State in this body, and we cannot continue to ignore the reality that while the internet has brought a lot of good things to us and the internet has helped our economy to grow, there is a dark side and this dark side of the internet is why we think it is so important for us to address this issue and address it now so that the next mom who is out there right now wondering, ``Where is my daughter? She has gone missing,'' will not find that she has been advertised online to multiple men, that her life is forever changed, and that she will never achieve her God-given potential in life because of the trauma she has experienced. That is happening right now today. We have to pass this legislation. It will help. I am convinced it will help. It will help to avoid the reality today, which is that these websites in your communities don't care and they are not going to care until we make them accountable. This month is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month--January. President Trump just wrote a beautiful proclamation about it. It was a call to action. President Obama did previously. Thursday is the day in which a lot of the advocates will be here in town talking about this issue. I just urge my colleagues and their staff, if they are listening today, please sign up on this legislation if you haven't already. To our leadership, let's get this to the floor for a vote. This should not be an issue that we drag out. Let's deal with it. We spent years studying this. We know what the issue is. We know what the problem is. Then, to my House colleagues, let's work together to actually solve this problem. For those in the tech community who continue to oppose this legislation, I ask you to look into your hearts and think about the impact this is having on families all across the country. Yes, we all want a better world, and that is part of what many of these internet companies are professing to want, and many of them, by the way, have spent considerable resources in fighting trafficking. But if you don't get at this issue--it has moved from the street corner to the smartphone. If you don't get at this issue, I don't believe we will see the progress that all of us desire. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. In a recent proclamation, President Trump continued what President Obama had begun in making this the ninth annual year where we designate our first month of the year to awareness and prevention of trafficking, awareness and prevention of this crime against humanity. President Trump issued a call to action. The proclamation said, in part: Human trafficking is a modern form of the oldest and most barbaric type of exploitation. It has no place in our world. This month, we do not simply reflect on this appalling reality. We also pledge to do all in our power to end the horrific practice of human trafficking that plagues innocent victims around the world. Amen. I commend the President for his strong stance, and I commend the U.S. Senate for the work we have done over the past several years, in a bipartisan way, to help combat trafficking. We made some progress. About 6 years ago, Senator Blumenthal--who will speak about this topic later on the floor--and I cofounded the Senate Caucus to End Human Trafficking and legislation since that time to increase penalties on people buying sex from children; stop international trafficking by U.S. Government contractors overseas; find missing children more quickly--the most vulnerable among us--by ensuring that their photographs and other identifiers are available; improve data on trafficking to find out what the problem is, where it is going; and, of course, change the paradigm--treat children who are exploited as victims rather than, as they have been treated over the years, as criminals. We have made some progress in these areas, but I have to tell you, despite these efforts and despite the increasing awareness of the fact that trafficking occurs right here in this country, in all of our States, we now know that one form, at least, of sex trafficking is actually increasing in our country. Think about that. It is increasing in this country, in this century. What experts say when you ask them about it is that is primarily because of one reason; that is, the fact that the internet is being used to sell sex. By the way, doing it on the internet, it turns out, occurs with ruthless efficiency. Victims I have visited across Ohio tell me, including one this past Friday in Ohio: Rob, it has moved from the street corner to the iPhone, from the street corner to the cell phone, from the street corner to the internet. There was discussion earlier from my colleague from New York about the role opioids play in causing harm in our society. Of course, the internet combined with opioids is deadly. The young woman I met with on Friday was one of those who had become addicted to opioids--in her case, fentanyl, which is an incredibly powerful, dangerous drug--and depended on her trafficker to be able to provide that. That is one form of dependency you see in sex trafficking. And again, online is where people are increasingly being bought and sold. This increase in sex trafficking is a stain on our national character. It is only Congress that has the power to stop it. There is one website--backpage.com--that is the leader in online sex trafficking. They have knowingly sold underage girls online. I say that because we have done an investigation, and we determined that. We now know from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that backpage.com is involved in nearly 75 percent of all child trafficking reports the organization receives from the public. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, along with then-ranking member Claire McCaskill and now-ranking member Tom Carper, has conducted an extensive, 18-month investigation into online sex trafficking and specifically backpage.com. We found that backpage.com knowingly facilitated criminal sex trafficking of vulnerable women and young children. It coached the traffickers on how to edit adult classified ads to post so-called clean ads for illegal transactions, and then it covered up evidence of these crimes in order to increase its profits. All this was done at the cost of human suffering--and sometimes human life--with the sole purpose of increasing the company's profits. In the fall, I testified on this issue in front of the Senate Commerce Committee--about our legislation. With me at the witness table was Yvonne Ambrose, a mother whose 16-year-old daughter, Desiree, was found murdered on Christmas Eve 2016 after being sold for sex on backpage. Desiree's death should never have happened--and neither should online sex trafficking of minors happen at all--but this tragic trend is compounded by the fact that backpage has evaded justice for its role in these tragic crimes. Courts across the country have consistently ruled that a Federal law--and this is why Congress has such a key role to play here--called the Communications Decency Act actually protects backpage and others from the liability they should have in sex trafficking. The Communications Decency Act is a well-intentioned law originally enacted back in 1996, when the internet was in its infancy, and it was meant to protect third-party websites from being held liable for crimes that users might commit on those websites. Ironically, part of the original intention of the Communications Decency Act was to protect children from indecent material on the internet by holding liable users who send explicit material to children. Now this same law is being used as a shield by cynical sex traffickers who promote and engage in online underage sex trafficking with immunity, thanks to this Federal law. Congress didn't intend for this broad immunity in the law--I am convinced of that--but numerous courts across the country have made it clear that their hands are tied because of the legal precedent that has been formed. As the lawmaking branch of the Federal Government, it is up to Congress to fix this injustice. No one else can do it. In the most blatant call for congressional action I have seen yet, in August of last year, a Sacramento judge cited the broad immunity provided by the Communications Decency Act in dismissing pimping charges against backpage.com. The court opinion stated: If and until Congress sees fit to amend the immunity law, the broad reach of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act even applies to those alleged to support the exploitations of others by human trafficking. That is an invitation to Congress to act. It is clearly up to Congress to act. It is past time we update this 21-year-old law for the 21st century and allow victims who have had their most basic human rights violated to get justice against those who facilitate these crimes. We have an opportunity this month during National Human Trafficking Prevention Month to fix this. We can and we must. The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA, is a bill I introduced with my bipartisan colleagues--Senator Blumenthal, who will speak later this afternoon, and Senators John McCain, Claire McCaskill, John Cornyn, Heidi Heitkamp, Amy Klobuchar, and 18 other colleagues. As of this morning, that legislation has 64 cosponsors. It is totally bipartisan, supported by both sides of the aisle. It is popular: 64 out of 100 have already cosponsored it because it will fix this injustice with two very narrowly crafted changes to the Communications Decency Act. First, it will allow victims to get the justice they deserve by removing the Communications Decency Act's broad liability protections the judge discussed, specifically for websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking crimes. Second, it will allow State attorneys general to prosecute these websites that violate Federal sex trafficking laws. These changes will hold bad actors like backpage accountable while doing nothing to impair the free internet. In fact, they will protect websites that do not actively and knowingly engage in online sex trafficking. The ``knowing'' standard is a high bar to meet. The California attorney general, Xavier Becerra, testified at the Senate Commerce Committee about that this fall. He said: We have to prove criminal intent. We can't win a prosecution unless we can show the individuals we're prosecuting, like Backpage, had the intent--the knowledge--to do what they're doing. The legislation we have before you is very narrowly tailored. It goes only after sex trafficking. The Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act passed the Senate Commerce Committee by a vote that was unanimous. It was bipartisan. It was unanimous, and the legislation has the support of an extraordinary coalition of law enforcement organizations, anti-trafficking advocates, trafficking victims, survivors, faith-based groups, and even some major tech players, although some in the tech community continue to be concerned. This includes the Internet Association, which now represents companies such as Facebook, reddit, Amazon, and others. It was endorsed by businesses, including Oracle, 21st Century Fox, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and the Walt Disney Company. Other companies such as IBM and others have stepped up to support it. Last year, 50 attorneys general across this country wrote a letter calling on Congress to amend the Communications Decency Act in the exact way we are proposing in this bill--50. Again, in the Senate, a bipartisan group of 64 Senators has now cosponsored the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. Those 60-plus cosponsors are significant because 60 is how many votes we need in the U.S. Senate if there are objections to the legislation to be able to get it passed. We already have that many Senators who have now put their names down. They said they want to be part of the solution to this tragic problem. They want to stop this increase in sex trafficking that unconscionably is happening in this country in this century. So we shouldn't wait any longer to pass this bill in the Senate. Every day we do, those who sell women and children will be allowed to continue that, continue to profit, and victims will continue to be denied justice. It is not an issue of politics or partisanship. It is about preventing exploitation and providing justice. I am hoping we can have a vote on this bill in the Senate this month, during National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. This Thursday is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. I urge the leadership to have the bill on the floor as soon as possible. We have every reason to act and no reason not to. These victims deserve justice, and Congress should help provide it. Passing the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act is an opportunity. Thank you. I yield back my time.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I also wish to talk about something tonight that was not accomplished. It was not accomplished in this vote we just had, which was the continuing resolution that keeps the government funded until January. Some of us pushed hard to include various things in this legislation. I understand that some of these items are controversial, and it was hard to get it done because you needed 60 votes tonight. You needed a bipartisan consensus on how to move forward and not shut down the government. I am not a fan of government shutdowns. They don't work. They are inefficient. They cost the taxpayer more at the end of the day, and they cause a lot of pain in the process. We had the opportunity to pass certain things tonight that were not controversial. I don't understand why we didn't do it. Some issues, I understand on the spending front, were more controversial. I understand some issues were more controversial in terms of how you deal with the immigration issue. The DACA issue is one that I support resolving. I think we should codify it and resolve that. There were different points of view. People wanted to add different things there. Let me tell you about one where I don't think there was any disagreement. If we could have passed it tonight, it would have provided a lot of certainty and predictability to families in Ohio and around the country. It is one that passed my committee, the Finance Committee, by a strong vote--not a bipartisan vote but a unanimous vote. That is the Children's Health Insurance Program, or the CHIP program. We passed it with a unanimous vote out of committee. People say: Well, we need to find pay-fors for it. It is about $8 billion to do what we did, which is a 5-year extension of the program, providing certainty and predictability to families who tonight are wondering what is going to happen to this program. Are my kids going to have the kind of quality healthcare they can access through the Children's Health Program, or the CHIP program? There are some pay-fors out there that are, again, bipartisan. A big one, which would cover nearly half of that cost, is one where you simply ensure that the Medicaid Program has more integrity. So if a third-party payer is paying, the Medicaid Program doesn't pay for it. It is a bipartisan issue, and there is an initiative we looked at for this program and could have used. I don't get this notion that we couldn't pass it because we couldn't find the pay-fors. The pay-fors were there. I don't get it that this was controversial, because it is not. I believe that on both sides of the aisle, we wanted to resolve the Children's Health Insurance Program. Again, with all the other issues, I understand. It is tough when you have to get to 60 votes and get this passed in order to keep the government operating, which is not a situation we should be in, but we are in. I must tell you, I am very disappointed we were not able to deal with this one issue tonight that has not been controversial and that came out of the committee with a unanimous vote--not bipartisan but unanimous. CHIP now helps 219,000 Ohio children get the health coverage they need and 9 million children nationwide. Ohio has the tenth largest program, and CHIP has been a leading cause in driving the insurance rate down for Ohio kids. In the case of my home State, we have seen our CHIP funding being questioned because the program was authorized until the end of September. Now it is no longer authorized. We are not sure exactly how much money we have left. We think we have enough to get into February in Ohio. Some States are worried about even getting into January. Tonight, there was a short-term extension that, as I understand it, will take the program into February, but again, it doesn't provide that long-term certainty that families are looking for. I must tell you that I am disappointed from what I hear about the reasons, because I asked on both sides of the aisle, and one reason I got--- again, this was leadership on both sides of the aisle--is that we can't do it unless we do other things with it. It is called CHIP-- Children's Health Insurance Program--but it shouldn't be a political chip. It should be taken out of politics. It should be something that we deal with separately. I will just tell you that using it as leverage for other programs is not the way I am going to look at it and not the way we should look at it. We should have passed it tonight. We should have passed it to help protect some of the most vulnerable members of our society. Funding should be a top priority, regardless of your partisan position and regardless of the political climate. It should be out of the political fray. I urge my colleagues, when we come back after the first of the year, let's make that a priority. Let's bring it to the floor. Let's have a vote. Let's keep it bipartisan. Maybe, it could even be unanimous. Let's give those families in Ohio--the 219,000 kids who depend on it-- and the millions of families around this country the peace of mind to know that we are extending this program. Let's do that 5-year extension, that 5-year authorization we already passed in committee. Let's take it out of this political process and put it where it belongs, which is an issue that every single Member of this body should want to address for the kids they represent. I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight on the tax reform and tax cut legislation. I do think it will provide the opportunity for everybody I represent to have a better future and a brighter future. I appreciate the opportunity to talk on the Children's Health Insurance Program.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I yield back my time. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the junior Senator from Louisiana be authorized to sign duly enrolled bills during today's session of the Senate.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, first, I congratulate the Nebraska women's volleyball team and say I was proud to be here on the floor to be one of those who did not object to this wonderful resolution just offered by my colleagues from Nebraska.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am standing here tonight to talk about a couple of things, and first is the tax legislation that was passed this week in Congress. This is going to help everybody I represent because it is going to help our entire country. It is going to lift up our country in ways we are already beginning to see. There have been a lot of people to thank, and today I was at the signing ceremony where Speaker Ryan and President pro tempore Orrin Hatch signed the official legislation that is now on its way to the President for his signature. I start by thanking them--Speaker Ryan, Chairman Hatch, and also Chairman Brady of the Ways and Means Committee, with whom I worked closely on this. He was a gentleman. He was, as always, someone who was looking for ways to solve problems and to get to yes, and I commend him for that. I also want to thank some of the colleagues on the Finance Committee whom I worked closely with. This Core 4 group includes Senator John Thune, Senator Pat Toomey, Senator Tim Scott. Maybe, most importantly, is the staff. We had an enormous undertaking here, and it was ambitious to try to meet the goals that were set out early on of real, middle-class tax cuts, also energizing the economy through helping small businesses, and then changing the whole international system so we could level the playing field. It was a lot to do, and it took a lot of expertise and a lot of time and effort. So to Mark Prater, Jay Khosla, and Brendan Dunn, who led that effort, we all owe you our thanks. Then, of course, there are a slew of other staff, including Zach Rudisill of my staff, who just spent hours and hours and put his heart and soul into this. Thank you--all of you--for helping us get to this point. For years, Democrats and Republicans alike have called for middle- class tax cuts. We talk about it in campaigns. I am proud to say that this week we delivered on it. I know some of my Democratic colleagues have been critical of the legislation, and some have said: Well, these are not real, middle-class tax cuts because they expire. Yes, they expire after 8 years. We wished they didn't. Those are the budget rules here, but that is the same thing that happened with the 2001 tax cuts, the 2003 tax cuts, and Congress worked to extend those using the same budget rules for about 95 percent of those taxpayers. I am strongly hoping we will do the same thing, and I believe we will. This is real tax relief. For families in Ohio of median income, the average will be just over $2,000 every year. That helps the family budget. That is a little money you can put aside for retirement. Maybe that is money to use for a vacation you didn't have. If you are living paycheck to paycheck, which is true with a lot of people I represent, that is a big help. It is a big help. That is from doubling the child credit, that is from doubling the standard deduction, essentially creating $14,000 of a zero income bracket. By the way, doing those sorts of things in this bill means that about 3 million Americans or more are going to be leaving the tax rolls all together. These are people who have tax liability now and, under the new bill, starting in a couple of weeks, they will not have an income tax liability. They will be out from under the IRS. They will be able, as they move many of them from welfare to work or from a Federal program into gainful employment, to not worry about the taxman. That is really important too. I am proud of the legislation because I think it is going to really help the people I represent in an immediate way. People will see it in their paychecks. The proof is in the paychecks because they will see it, and probably starting in February, the withholding will change. The IRS has to go through a process on that. I wrote a letter to them yesterday encouraging them to move on that quickly because people want to see that in their paychecks. So the tax relief starts in a couple of weeks, January 1. It will be in the paychecks when the withholding changes--hopefully sometime in late January, February--and people will see less money being withheld from their paycheck because of the tax cuts that enable them to have a healthier family budget. I have to tell you I believe this is going to go well beyond that for the people I represent. As important as those middle-class tax cuts are, equally as important is what we are doing to stimulate more investment in this economy, and that is through the changes for small businesses that will now be able to put more money into the business rather than paying more taxes. Many of these businesses--so-called passthrough companies, which are most of the businesses in America--pay taxes as individuals. They don't pay the business tax rate; they pay the individual tax rate. Many of them do take a dividend. They take money out of the company every year for one purpose, and that is to pay their taxes. To the extent they are not taking the money out as much to pay those taxes because of the changes we made here for small businesses, they are going to be able to invest more in their people, more in their equipment, more in their plants--and I am hearing this from small business people around the State of Ohio. Last weekend, I was with a number of them, and they are excited about this because they want to be able to invest more in their business, they want to be able to invest more in their people, and they want to be able to give people who work for them the opportunity to have a higher wage. Right now, wages are flat, and they really have been for the past couple of decades when you take inflation into account. This has the incredible opportunity for us not just to provide middle-class tax cuts, which are important not just to help businesses invest, but actually to help get wages up so people will see that if they work hard and play by the rules, they are going to see higher wages, the ability to get ahead, and have more hope for themselves and for their kids and their grandkids. Everyone, regardless of economic status, region, or party is going to see the benefits of this tax reform bill. By the way, some workers are already seeing the benefit, as we talked today, because there are a bunch of companies that announced today that because of the tax reform and tax cuts legislation, they are already taking steps to increase the pay of their employees, increase benefits, or invest more money in building plants, equipment, or adding more jobs to investment or both. These companies include some big companies you have heard of like Comcast. It includes other companies like Wells Fargo and Boeing and AT&T. They have made these announcements today. One company that announced it today is in my hometown. It is the Fifth Third Bank. It is kind of an unusual name, Fifth Third, but that makes them distinctive, right? They said today, you know what, we are going to start paying our people a higher entry level pay--instead of 13-something an hour, it is going to be $15 an hour--and we are going to provide bonuses to other employees who are not affected by that. They are going to do it right now, and they are doing it because of the tax relief legislation. So to those who say: Gosh. What about me? I would just say: Look at your paycheck. If you work for one of these businesses that has already made an announcement, of course, you are feeling good about it, but even if you work for another company that maybe is a little quieter about what they are doing--maybe they are not going to make a big announcement--trust me, it is going to be in their interest now, in a competitive market out there, to invest in those companies, to invest in their people, to invest in training, to invest in better equipment, better technology. Those are the sorts of things that, over time, are going to make the biggest difference, I think, in this tax bill. If you look at what is happening in our economy today, the reason wages are flat--by the way, expenses are not flat. Expenses are up and wages are flat. That is called the middle-class squeeze, and that is very real. What is the biggest expense? For most people, it is healthcare. The way to deal with that is to get this economy moving and, specifically, to increase the productivity. That is what the economists say; that our productivity is low right now. When you have low productivity, you have low economic growth, and that is what we have had, under 2 percent economic growth. That is not the America I grew up in, and that is not the America I want my kids to grow up in. By making these investments in better technology, in better equipment, in better training, what happens? You get better productivity, you get higher efficiency, you get the opportunity to increase your business, and therefore hire more people. That is something, I think, over time, will play out and will create the opportunity to lift up everybody. John F. Kennedy was a Democrat, but he had a lot of things to say that sounded more like what Republicans are talking about today. One thing he said was that ``a rising tide lifts all boats.'' In the 1960s, he did cut capital gains, by the way, and that tax cut actually generated more economic activity. Ronald Reagan, in 1986, actually put in place tax reform, with a bipartisan group here in the Congress, that ended up with strong economic growth in the 1980s and the 1990s, but that was 31 years ago. That is the last time we made these kinds of substantive comprehensive changes in the Tax Code. It is past time to do it again. The final thing I will say about the tax reform proposal is that when you talk to businesses that are competing globally, which is more and more companies, including a lot of smaller companies now, the global economy is upon us. Some people said: Gosh, I wonder when the economy is going to affect me globally? Well, it does. It affects all of us. In your town, wherever it is, and in your business, wherever you work, you are probably competing directly or indirectly on a global basis. I will give you an example. There is a little company in my hometown called Standard Textiles. It is a great company. They make linens. It is a company that competes every day globally. In fact, a lot of the companies they compete with, as you can imagine, are companies that make these linens somewhere else--say, in Asia, where traditionally people have been able to find lower costs. Guess what they are looking at now with this tax reform bill: the ability to invest more here in America--American workers, American-made linens. They tell me, as do other companies, that this is going to give them a better competitive situation because no longer are you going to have a tax code that has the highest business rate in the entire industrialized world and an international system that says: If you keep your money overseas rather than bringing it back, when you earn money, you can save on your taxes. That is what resulted in $2.5 to $3 trillion being locked out of America and kept overseas. This tax reform proposal unlocks that. It allows us to bring that money back. People call it repatriation. I guess that is accurate-- repatriation. I wish it had never been ``unpatriated'' in the first place. If you are a patriot, you should want that money to be spent here in America. That is what is going to happen with this tax reform proposal. It is about the tax cuts for working families--hard-working families who deserve it, who are now stuck in a situation where it is tough to get ahead. This will help immediately. It is about helping small businesses and other companies here in America to be able to invest more, to be able to write off equipment right away when they buy it, and, as an example, having a lower rate. It is also about leveling that playing field and saying that America, once again, is going to reposition itself as the leader in the world. Once again, it will be that beacon of opportunity that other countries look to and say: We would like to be like that--a free market economy where people who work hard and play by the rules can get ahead. You can't say that now with our current Tax Code because workers literally are competing on an unlevel playing field with one hand tied behind their back because of our Tax Code. Three times as many American companies were purchased by foreign companies last year as the other way around. Because of our Tax Code, 4,700 U.S. companies became foreign companies over the last decade or so. That is based on an Ernst & Young study that came out recently that said, if this tax reform proposal we have now passed had been in place, those 4,700 companies would still be American companies. All of us are patriots here in this body. All of us should want to bring back those jobs to America, repatriate those profits here to America, and give American workers the ability to compete on a level playing field. I know there were some differences in this legislation. We heard a lot of it from the other side of the aisle, but on this issue, it has been bipartisan in the past. I hope it will be bipartisan going forward to hold these reforms in place so we can show that we have confidence and faith in American workers and that we have confidence that if we give them the right tools--in this case, the right Tax Code to work with--they can compete and they can win. I think we are going to see that. I think, again, with the hopeful signs we are seeing, even today, of companies providing better pay or benefits or making additional commitments on investments. Even well beyond that, we are going to see, maybe quietly, that it will spread out all over the country in ways that will not be as obvious--in decisions that are going to be made, business budgets that are going to change as a result of this tax reform bill. I am hearing it from small businesses. I am hearing it from the bigger companies that compete directly globally, and I am certainly hearing it from families who are happy to see a little tax break to be able to help them as we go into the holidays. That is all good news, and I think passing that legislation is really going to help the people I represent.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I want to recognize the upcoming 90th birthday of Albert Ratner on December 26. Albert has led a distinguished life that has touched and benefited countless people in Ohio and around the world. I consider Albert a dear friend and a wise adviser, and Jane and I have enjoyed the friendship of him and his wife, Audrey, over the years. Whether it is a discussion over dinner or catching up during a Cavs game, we treasure our time with Albert and Audrey. Albert grew up in Cleveland during the Great Depression, where his family, who were immigrants from Poland, turned a small company into a thriving business through hard work and dedication. Well known for his civic involvement in Cleveland and as a leader in the Jewish community, Albert is a life trustee of the Cleveland Jewish Community Federation and a member of the International Council of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The Ratner family was instrumental in establishing the Cleveland Jewish Archives at the Western Reserve Historical Society in 1976. Albert is currently engaged in a series of poverty-related initiatives in his hometown of Cleveland and throughout the State in partnership with the Governor and local leaders. Beyond his influence in Ohio, he has helped those in need across the country by supporting innovative educational initiatives that have given promising youth access to an education that has opened doors for each of them. Albert is a loving husband and father. He has been married to Audrey for 36 years. His first wife, Faye, who he met in high school, was tragically killed in an automobile accident, after which he continued raising his daughter Deborah and son Brian to follow in his footsteps as fully engaged members of their community. He has lived a life of kindness, cheerfulness, and compassion for all of our fellow citizens. Albert's life has been guided by a love for his Jewish traditions. He often talks about the Jewish tradition of tikkun olam, to repair the world, and how even when the obligation seems too great, we must not desist from it. That is how he lives. He is truly a great American. Happy birthday to Albert Ratner.