Rob Portman

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I now turn to the issue of opiate addiction. I thank my colleagues again on the Judiciary Committee for reporting on legislation today, on a bipartisan basis--in fact, there wasn't a single ``no'' vote. It was reported out on a voice vote. Everybody in committee agreed to it. That doesn't happen very often. The reason it happened this way is that the legislation before the committee called CARA--the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act--is legislation that has been thoughtfully crafted, with Republicans and Democrats alike, really for the past 3 years. We have had five conferences in Washington, DC, to put together the experts from all over the country. Sheldon Whitehouse and I have lead this effort but also with Senator Ayotte, Senator Klobuchar, and others. What we have said is that we want to come up with legislation that will make a difference in our States and around the country to deal with what is sadly a growing crisis of people who are abusing prescription drugs, heroin, and this addiction problem is leading to not just a lot more people becoming addicted but people actually overdosing and dying. In Ohio we lost over 2,400 fellow Ohioans last year to overdose deaths. It is now the No. 1 cause of death in America, accidental deaths in America. Now more people are dying from overdoses than they are from car accidents. So this is an issue that affects every single one of us. It has no ZIP Code. It is in our rural areas, it is in our suburban areas, and it is in the inner city. It is something that affects so many families. When I am back home talking about this, it is hard for me to find a group I am meeting with that doesn't bring this up. Most recently I was in Ohio this past week talking with women who had been trafficked. They also were women who were given drugs and became addicted, and that dependency led to the kind of sex trafficking that they were involved with and their sense of being coerced and being compelled because of this drug addiction issue. They are now trying to work through that issue, God bless them. They are back with their families. They are back getting their lives back on track, but as they told me, Rob, going through this issue of the addiction and the treatment and the recovery is hard work because the grip of addiction from opioids--meaning prescription drugs and heroin--is very difficult to address. That is why our legislation is so important, because it provides to State governments, to local governments, to nonprofits the tools they need to be able to have better treatment and better recovery programs, longer term recovery, but it also focuses on prevention and education to try to keep people out of the funnel of addiction. It also helps our law enforcement personnel. It gives them the ability to save lives through Narcan and naloxone, which is the drug that is a miracle drug to be applied when someone has an overdose. It is saving lives right and left in my State of Ohio and around the country. Finally, our legislation helps to get the prescription drugs off of the bathroom shelves, to ensure that these prescription drugs which have been overprescribed over the years--there are too many prescription drugs out there--aren't going to be taken by somebody, often young people who get them, it gets them involved in this addiction issue, and then often they turn to heroin as a less expensive and more accessible alternative. Our legislation does that, and it also provides for a monitoring program for the prescription drug prescribing, so we know who is getting prescribed what, including across State lines, which is why it is very important to have Federal legislation in this regard. Until we get at this issue of prescription drugs, it is very hard to stop what is a growing crisis in our communities. Can we turn the tide? Yes. I am absolutely convinced we can because I have seen the treatment programs that work. I have seen the prevention and education programs that work. I started my own anti-drug coalition in my hometown of Cincinnati, OH, about 22 years ago. Using proven techniques, we can make a difference and we have made a difference there. Unfortunately, most communities don't have that kind of a coalition, that kind of effort. Our legislation will help to provide that. In treatment, most Americans who are suffering from addiction do not have access to treatment. This will provide more needed resources, not just money but also being sure that the money is going to evidence-based treatment and recovery that works, that has been proven to work, so we are not just throwing money at a problem, but we are setting up a framework for success. The legislation is supported by many groups because it has been carefully crafted. It has been bipartisan or I would say nonpartisan. Over 120 groups have come in from around the country to support this legislation. Today I am happy to report that we have a new endorsement, and this one comes from the National Fraternal Order of Police. The FOP endorsed our legislation today, which is a tremendous boost to us. Law enforcement around the country has been supportive. The doctors have been supportive. The nurses, first responders, those in recovery themselves, and of course experts from around the country who are involved in providing treatment and providing the prevention that is science-based, evidence-based know that if they have more support from the Federal Government, they can do more. They can leverage that at the local level to make a difference in our communities. I am glad to hear that this legislation got reported out with such broad bipartisan support today and that everyone said this is good legislation and we need to move it forward because the next step is to get it to the floor of the Senate and to get it passed on the Senate floor and then get it over to the House where there is a companion bill. In other words, there are Democrats and Republicans working together in the House as well on this issue, understanding the urgency of addressing this crisis. They are ready go. If we send them the legislation, I believe that legislation can end up on the President's desk in short order, and we can begin to turn things around and change what is unfortunately a growing problem. It is a spreading problem. We can begin to reverse it, and through prevention and education keep people, particularly young people, from making bad choices and going down this route. I have gone across the State holding roundtables on this over the year, but in the last month alone, I have met in Columbus, OH, Marion, OH, and in Cleveland, OH, with people who are directly affected. In Cleveland I toured the Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital. This is one of the great children's hospitals in America. There they have lots of specialists, particularly an issue that sadly is one that is affecting more and more of our hospitals; that is, drug-dependent babies. These are babies who are drug-addicted when they are born because their mothers used. These are consequences of this addiction problem we talked about. They take these babies through withdrawal. These are babies, many of whom are born prematurely and can almost fit in the palm of your hand. These babies, God bless them, are getting the help they need to be able to withdraw from that addiction. We don't know what the longer term health consequences might be, but we do know that many of these babies are now starting their life in a much healthier situation because of this special expertise that is being provided, but these hospitals are telling me this is an increasing problem. Every hospital in America needs to have this expertise now to deal with a situation that is hard to imagine, a baby who is born drug- addicted. I also toured a community alternative sentencing center in Claremont, OH, to see where a court is taking people who have been arrested for possession and instead of throwing them in jail is setting up an alternative program where they can get some of the treatment they need and get some of the life skills they need to get their life back on track. It is an intensive program that is working. These are programs that are also supported by our legislation. Our legislation also deals with people who are in prison who have addiction problems, to be able to get them treatment, so when they get out of prison they don't fall back into a life of crime to support their addiction problem. Most recently I was in Columbus, OH. I met with four women who were recovering addicts who had this addiction foisted upon them as part of human trafficking, sex trafficking. Their traffickers got them addicted to make them dependent. In one case, the woman told me she wasn't paid anything. She was just paid in terms of the drugs. Her trafficker kept her dependent because of that. These women were in a program where they had been given the opportunity to get into treatment, given the opportunity to be able to get their lives back together, but sadly a lot of people do not have that opportunity, not having access to treatment. Our legislation will be very important to do that. The bill targets the very issues we know have to be addressed-- keeping people away from these substances in the first place. Then, once they are addicted, if they become addicted, get them the treatment they need to begin to turn their lives around. For that longer term recovery, which we think is absolutely essential from the experience and the good science that is out there for successful programs, it is important that we have, in some cases, medication treatment as well that supports that. It also says that we have to help our law enforcement more. I think that is one reason the Fraternal Order of Police, the national sheriffs' organizations, and others have supported this legislation with such wonderful statements, as I just talked about earlier, as we got today from the FOP. This is an issue that will continue to be a serious problem in all of our communities unless we take these kinds of actions at the Federal level, the State level, and the local level. We have to work as a team with nonprofits, with people who are in the trenches dealing with this. If we do not, we will continue to see families torn apart. We will continue to see communities that are devastated, including by the crimes and other consequences of this, and we will continue to see Americans who are not able to fulfill their God-given abilities and destinies because of this drug addiction problem. Today I am told that others who support this legislation would like to spend more money in addition to the $80 million that this program provides every year going forward. This is a well-crafted, well- thought-out framework of how to spend that money more effectively to be able to address the problem. I am for spending more money. If there are people who would like to spend more money on this issue of opiate addiction, I am for that. I think it is enough of a crisis that we should be fending more funds on it. I will say something else. Let's get this bill moving. Let's get this bill to the floor. Let's get this bill passed. Let's get the House to pass the companion legislation. Let's get it to the President's desk. This is an urgent problem. We cannot wait. If people are going to offer other ideas, including more funding and funding that is an emergency, rather than in a way that is paid for, that may make it more difficult to move this bill forward because some people in this Chamber will not support that. We now have a consensus on this bill. Let's not play politics with this bill and stop this bill. Let's move this bill forward. Right now we have on the floor of the Senate an energy bill. It includes energy efficiency provisions I have worked on for years. Yet it is being stopped by other issues, important issues. Around here we too often refuse to move forward on legislation where there is a consensus, where we know it is the right thing to do, because other issues come up, and sometimes it is other issues that are very important issues but ones that end up stopping the legislation and not allowing us to make progress for the people we represent. I do support more funding. I support funding in this legislation. Over and above that, I support additional funding. The President's budget has a request for additional funding. I talked about that today in a hearing we had. I told the Secretary of Health and Human Services I would support some of these programs that have additional funding. Let's be sure it is well-spent, as it is in this legislation. Let's be sure we are not throwing money at a problem. Let's make sure we are making a difference in the lives of the people we represent, and let's be sure it doesn't derail this effort to get this legislation passed. We are on a track now. It is bipartisan. It is bicameral. It has the President's general support. He hasn't specifically said he will endorse this bill, but his representatives--including the Secretary of Health and Human Services--today were very supportive of the direction we are moving. It was reported out of a committee today in a total bipartisan way. It was unanimous. Again, that doesn't happen often around here. Let's address this issue now. Let's not sit back and play politics. Let's take the politics out of this, as has been the case for the last few years. Sheldon Whitehouse has been my partner in this. Sheldon Whitehouse and I don't agree on a lot of issues. He is more liberal. I am more conservative on some issues. We agree on this issue because we know the way it affects the communities we represent, the families we represent, and the people we represent. Let's move forward or this legislation. Let's get it to the floor. Let's get a vote. Let's start turning the tide. Let's start changing the dynamic on the ground where instead of us having this creeping problem of addiction and all of its horrible consequences that we begin to allow people to get their lives back together, to give them the opportunity to get their families back together, to be able to achieve the dreams they have for themselves and their families. Mr. President, I yield back my time.

Mr. PORTMAN

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

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to simply say to Chairman Grassley and the Judiciary Committee: Thank you for being willing this week to have a markup and to legislate and report out a bill with regard to the prescription drug and heroin epidemic we now face around our country. The legislation is called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA. It focuses on several areas. One is prevention and education to try to keep people from making the wrong decision and going down the road to addiction, but another is to encourage States and provide incentives to local governments and nonprofits to use evidence-based treatment and recovery that has been proven to work to try to deal with this epidemic. Today we have unfortunately higher levels of death from drug overdoses than we do any other accidental cause of death--more than car accidents, for instance. In my own home State of Ohio, this has been true for the last couple of years. We lost over 2,400 Ohioans last year to drug overdoses. Part of the legislation also addresses this issue directly by providing our law enforcement and other first responders-- firefighters, EMS--with Narcan, also known as naloxone, which is a miracle drug to bring people back if they overdose. Finally, the legislation helps to get prescription drugs out of the hands of the wrong people. There has been overprescribing over the years, and so our legislation encourages getting these drugs off the bathroom shelves so they can't be used and having a drug-monitoring program to tell if someone has been prescribing these drugs. It would be national in scope, so if someone can't get prescription drugs in one location, they don't go across the State line to get them somewhere else. Sadly, these narcotic painkillers have caused a lot of the concern out there because sometimes they are given appropriately--maybe for pain--but they are overprescribed, and then someone uses them to the point that they become addicted and later turn to heroin because heroin is so much less expensive. This is an issue that affects the whole country. In my own State, it looks as if the per capita use in the rural areas is higher than it is anywhere else, including the inner city or our suburban areas. But no ZIP Code is immune from this; we are all affected by it. In Ohio, over the last week, there have been two incidents where people have overdosed while behind the wheel. In one just a couple of days ago, someone overdosed on heroin while his kids were in the backseat, and he had a bad crash. Luckily, the children were not injured badly. This continues to happen again and again. And of course much crime is being committed to pay for the habit. This is an effort at the Federal Government level to work with State and local governments and with nonprofits to address this growing problem, the epidemic of prescription drugs and heroin abuse. I encourage the Judiciary Committee to move swiftly with this legislation. There is a markup scheduled on Thursday so we can move this legislation to the floor of the Senate, get it to the House, and get it to the President for his signature. There seems to be not only bipartisan but nonpartisan support for this legislation. In other words, this is not a political issue but something that affects us as fathers, mothers, brothers, and sons. I hope the Senate will take on this issue. I was in Ohio yesterday meeting with some women who are recovering addicts, and they told me their stories. Many of them started on prescription drugs sometimes because of an accident. They talked to me about how the grip of addiction is so great that it requires real courage and real resilience to be able to come through it. We want those women and others to be able to live out their God-given abilities and not to be afflicted by this addiction, which is really a disease. This legislation we have before us is a step in the right direction. I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support it and to move it to the President so we can begin to help local communities, neighborhoods, and our States be able to address this growing problem. I yield back my time, Mr. President.

Mr. PORTMAN

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

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I thank my colleague from New Hampshire, and I tell her that the third time is the charm. Right? We have had the bill before us twice now. We really think this is the opportunity for us to do something good for our constituents and for our country. This is an opportunity for us to pass energy efficiency legislation. It will help create more jobs, make the environment cleaner, make our businesses more competitive, make us less dependent on foreign sources of oil, and help with the trade deficit because of that. So this is a win-win for everybody, and, because of that, I thank Senator Shaheen for her work on this. We have been working on this for 4 years together. The last vote we had in the energy committee on this legislation was a 20-to-2 vote. As we have worked on this over time, we have received more and more support as people understood what we were doing and why it was so important for their States and for our country. The economic growth in this last quarter was 0.7 percent, meaning less than 1 percent growth. That is discouraging. We have to look around and say: What can we do to help to get this economy moving again? One area is energy. There is no question about it. We believe our legislation will help. It is going to create jobs. We have the number out there, as Senator Shaheen talked about, and just under 200,000 jobs could be created by our legislation. We have an analysis that shows this. But this broader energy bill would also help. That is one reason we need to move forward on this. We are grateful that our legislation is part of this broader bill called the Energy Policy Modernization Act. This legislation is one that Senator Murkowski and Senator Cantwell have been talking about on the floor. I support that broader legislation, also, as does Senator Shaheen, and we like it because it is a broader bill that looks at the energy issue as an ``all the above.'' In other words, we should be using various sources of energy and producing more energy, but we should also be using what we have more efficiently. We are delighted that our legislation--the Portman-Shaheen legislation--is title I of this broader bill. This is an opportunity for us to do something really good for the economy--this broader bill, as well as our specific bill. We think our specific bill is really important with regard to jobs. One thing I hear back home from our manufacturing companies is that they would like to become more competitive so that they can create more jobs in Ohio and in America. We are starting to bring some jobs back because energy prices are relatively low, natural gas and oil in particular. But one of the issues they are facing overseas is that other countries are more energy efficient and their manufacturing companies are more efficient. So they are competing with companies that have a lower cost to produce the same product. So one reason they are excited about this legislation--and why the National Association of Manufacturers is for this legislation and has worked with us from the start--is that this provides them access to new technologies on energy efficiency that will let them compete globally with other companies and create more jobs. This is going to result in more jobs coming to Ohio, more jobs coming to New Hampshire, and more jobs coming to America. We like that about the legislation. It also has more jobs because these energy efficiency retrofits are going to create more jobs and activity here in this country. So as buildings become more efficient, we will need workers to work on that. We have some training programs in our legislation, for instance, to provide for that workforce. So we are going to create more jobs. As to energy independence, the underlying bill lets us actually produce more energy here but use it more efficiently. I like producing more and using less. It is a nice combination, and it lets us say to other countries in the world that we are going to be energy independent and not subject to the dangerous and volatile parts of the world where our energy comes from. We are going to be a net exporter over time. Energy efficiency helps us to be able to do that. Our trade deficit is driven by a couple things. I am a former U.S. Trade Representative, and, yes, countries like China and other countries aren't playing by the rules. That is a problem, and we need to address that. But another one is energy. We still do need to bring in more energy than we are exporting. That is an opportunity for us to help our economy overall with efficiency and to help improve our trade deficit, which improves our environment. Senator Shaheen talked about improving the environment, but the analysis she was using is that 21 million cars being taken off the road is the equivalent savings that is in this legislation for emissions. That is because of the energy efficiency. This is an opportunity for us to be much more energy efficient in terms of our economy and be more competitive but also to clean the environment. This is a good example. By the way, it is not a big regulatory approach, as some other approaches are. It doesn't have any mandates in it, so it is not going to kill jobs. It is actually going to create jobs and yet help the environment. That is a good combination for us. It is one we are excited about because it is a way for us to both help the economy and help the environment. That is important too. We are excited about getting this across the finish line because we know it is the right legislation. It is the right time. We think there is an opportunity for us to actually do something that is bipartisan, something we can get through the House and get to the President's desk for his signature. One reason we are excited about the prospects of getting something done is that we have so much support around the country. There are over 260 trade association groups that have now supported this legislation. By the way, they range from the National Association of Manufacturers-- as I talked about earlier--to the Sierra Club, to the Alliance to Save Energy, to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That is not a group that normally gets together on legislation. So this is an opportunity for us to get a lot of groups involved and focused because it does make good economic sense, good energy sense, and good environmental sense. While helping others in the private sector, the bill does not have mandates. I think that is very important. This is legislation that provides incentives but not mandates. The final piece I want to talk about is one that everybody should be for. It is going to actually help reduce the costs of the Federal Government and therefore help us all as taxpayers; that is, to take on the Federal Government's efficiency challenge. We believe the U.S. Federal Government is the largest energy user in the United States and may well be the largest energy user in the world. This is let's practice what we preach. The Federal Government is talking about green technologies, energy efficiency, and so on, but in our own Federal Government we see huge gaps and huge opportunities. This legislation goes after that and specifically puts in place requirements for the Federal Government to be much more efficient with how it uses energy. That will make a big difference in terms of everything we talked about with regard to the environment and the benefits of efficiency, but it also helps the taxpayer because at the end of the day, we will be spending less on energy for the Federal Government as taxpayers. It is another part of the legislation that I think is important and one where I would hope everybody would be supportive. Overall, we believe this legislation will save consumers $13.7 billion annually in reduced energy costs. This is a big deal. This is something that if we can get it through the Senate this week and get it through the House and get it to the President for his signature, it will make a real difference for the families I represent and whom all of us in this Chamber have the honor to represent. I thank Senator Shaheen for her patience over what has been 4, 5 years working on this together with me and the good work she has done and others have done to give us this opportunity to be able to help those folks whom we represent with an ``all of the above'' energy strategy that is good for jobs, good for the environment, and good for the taxpayer.

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I will be speaking later, as we are expecting Senator Shaheen from New Hampshire. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 2, 2016, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Frontline Response to Terrorism in America.''

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 2, 2016, at 2 p.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``License to Compete: Occupational Licensing and the State Action Doctrine.''

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 2, 2016, at 2:45 p.m.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 2, 2016, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Failures and Future of the EB-5 Regional Center Program: Can it be Fixed.''

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 2, 2016, at 10 a.m.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 2, 2016, at 5 p.m., to conduct a classified briefing entitled ``Russia, the European Union, and American Foreign Policy.''

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise this evening to talk about the Energy bill that is before the Chamber right now. I thank Senator Murkowski and Senator Cantwell for bringing us to this point. This is called the Energy Policy and Modernization Act. It is my understanding that this is the first comprehensive Energy bill to come to the floor of the Senate in 7 or 8 years. It is something we ought to be focused on because it helps to create a better economy, and it helps to ensure that we do have a protected grid and that we can indeed improve our infrastructure around the country in terms of energy and improve the performance of Federal agencies. The bill allows more exports of LNG--liquefied natural gas--which is important to our economy. By focusing on energy and taking commonsense steps to help in terms of making our economy more efficient, we will help to create more independence in this country and make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy as well. I commend them for that, and I am happy to support the broader legislation. Tonight I would like to talk about title I of the bill. As those of you who have looked at the bill know, title I is about energy efficiency. I again thank Senators Murkowski and Cantwell for including the Portman-Shaheen Energy and Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act in as title I of the legislation. This is energy efficiency legislation that has been to the floor a couple of times. We were not able to get it passed because of a disagreement over amendments, but it has come out of the committee with strong votes. In fact, the most recent vote was a few months ago when we reported the energy efficiency legislation out of our energy committee in the Senate by a vote of 20 to 2. That doesn't happen very often around this place. It is bipartisan because it makes sense. Senator Shaheen and I have worked with Members on both sides of the aisle and groups all around the country over the past 4 or 5 years to put this legislation together. It is part of what I think is the right philosophy which I see embodied in this overall legislation, which is that we ought to be producing more energy in this country, but we also ought to be using it more efficiently. Producing more and using less is a good combination. It creates jobs, creates the opportunity for us to be more competitive in global markets, it helps us to be less dependent on foreign oil, and it helps us to improve the environment. This legislation we are looking at in title I is going to get across the finish line this year, I believe, because we do have strong support from not just Republicans and Democrats here in this Chamber but from people around the country who have helped us to put this together. Those on this side of the aisle often talk about the need for an ``all of the above'' energy strategy. I like to talk about that. I think it is the right approach. I think we should be focusing on all of our energy resources. When you talk about ``all of the above,'' though, one of the best sources of energy is the energy you don't use. It is the energy that is really economically viable, and that is energy efficiency. Sometimes we are pretty good at the produced part of the equation on my side of the aisle, but we need to focus more on the efficiency part. This legislation also helps the environment, as I said. It is actually the equivalent of taking about 20 million cars off the road within 15 years. Think about that. Through energy efficiency, it is the equivalent of taking about 20 million cars off the road within 15 years. By the way, it doesn't do it by overregulating, it doesn't do it by killing jobs, and it doesn't do it by the heavy hand of government. It does it without any mandates. It does it by incentivizing less energy use, which will help to reduce emissions in a way that doesn't kill jobs. In fact, our legislation will create more jobs. We have a study of our legislation now showing that it will create 136,000 new jobs while saving consumers about $13.7 billion a year in reduced energy costs within 15 years. The bill is supported by 260 associations, businesses, advocacy groups, including the National Association of Manufacturers, the Sierra Club, the Alliance to Save Energy, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It is supported by groups who don't normally get together to support legislation, but they are all together on this because they understand the importance of it. That is one of the reasons this passed the committee with big bipartisan numbers, and it is also why it actually works--because we got input from everybody. It makes good economic sense, good energy sense, and good environmental sense. In visiting with jobseekers around Ohio and going to businesses talking about this legislation, they are excited about it because it gives them the opportunity to have access to new energy efficiency technology that makes them more competitive. So it allows Ohio workers to be able to compete better with workers in places like Japan or Europe where there is more of a focus on energy efficiency, and it reduces the costs of production. This is why the manufacturing community in my home State of Ohio is really excited about it. They know this is going to help them to be competitive. It also helps with regard to our Federal Government. The Federal Government ought to practice what it preaches. The Federal Government is the largest user of energy in the country--probably the largest user of energy in the world--and, by the way, one of the more inefficient users of energy. So our legislation specifically focuses on the Federal Government and talks about how we need to use less energy at our call centers and how we need to make sure Federal buildings are more energy efficient. Just by doing that alone, we are going to save taxpayers billions of dollars. That makes sense for taxpayers, and it also makes sense for reducing emissions, and it makes sense to have our Federal Government be more efficient. The proposals contained in this bill are really commonsense reforms. There are no mandates on the private sector. They come as a result of direct conversations we have had with people at the local level and businesses to understand how we can actually help, without mandating, to create incentives. Our legislation does focus on manufacturing, and it does focus on the government and the General Services Administration and buildings. It also focuses on buildings to ensure that buildings are more efficient, both residential and commercial buildings, which is where we are going to see a lot of our savings. Again, this is not only going to create more jobs but save consumers a lot of money. It has been nearly 10 years since Congress passed legislation that focused on energy efficiency. A lot has changed and a lot needs to be updated. This legislation allows us to do that--to move forward in a smart way and in a bipartisan way to ensure that, yes, we are producing more energy, becoming less dependent on foreign sources and more independent here in this country, helping our economy but also doing so in a way that helps create a better environment for all of us. This is a true, ``all of the above'' energy strategy. Again, I applaud my colleagues for bringing forward the Energy Policy Modernization Act, and I thank them for including the Shaheen-Portman legislation. I wish to thank my partner, Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire, for her hard work over the years on this legislation. It is time for us to get it done. It is time to provide this incentive and give this economy a shot in the arm to help ensure that we can take advantage of the energy resources in this country, use them more efficiently, and, by doing so, create more economic opportunity for everyone. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee. I appreciate his work and help to ensure these kids are not going to be left in the lurch. There are kids in the State of Ohio who are expecting to get their Perkins loans this January as they go into the next semester, and there were certainly thousands of young people who were hoping in the fall that they were going to be able to take advantage of it, and they were very uncertain. It is a big program in Ohio. We actually have over 25,000 Ohio students who receive financial aid through Perkins. In one school alone, Kent State, 3,000 students. By the way, I got lobbied on this very directly. A young woman named Keri Richmond interned in my office last summer. Keri is a classic example of someone who needs Perkins because it fills in the gaps for her. In her case, she has a Pell. Yet as a young woman who has been in and out of foster homes her entire life--and, by the way, is a wonderful advocate and spokesperson for that program and how it helps foster kids to get on their feet--she does not have the help at home that many students do. So even for the small things, she needs that Perkins loan. She is very grateful today that we are extending this program, of course; but, more importantly, she is grateful for all her other colleagues at Kent State and around the State of Ohio. I was with some Ohio State students a couple weeks ago for a holiday party with the president of Ohio State, who is very pleased this has been finally handled because he was trying to plan. As we know, schools play a big role in Perkins. It is essentially like a revolving loan program. With the interest, they are able to come up with new loans for the next year. So the colleges and universities in Ohio are very involved. We have 1,700 students at Ohio State; overall, we have 60 schools in the Buckeye State--colleges and universities--taking advantage of this. So this is a big deal for us. I appreciate the fact that the chairman has been willing to sit down and work with us on this and come up with a way for us to move forward to give these young people the certainty that they need at a time when it is more expensive to go to college. This is a barrier for a lot of young people to be able to get that degree, to get the experience, to have the ability to be able to go out in this tough job market and be able to find work and find their place in the workforce. I am happy we have come to this point. I will say I am very eager to work with the chairman, Ranking Member Murray, and others over the next period of time while we extend this program to come up with a better way to deal with our student loan program generally. I think the chairman makes a good point about the complexity. I think he is probably right that it is so complex that some parents and students are turned off by it, and we can simplify it. Certainly, we can, but I also want to make it clear that we need to be sure that we are providing maximum flexibility for students who might otherwise get left behind and wouldn't be able to take advantage of the opportunity to go to college and get a degree. We should be doing everything in our power to provide more students in my home State of Ohio and around the country the chance to get the tools they need in order to be able to be successful. I thank Senator Ayotte, Senator Casey, and Senator Baldwin. We have been at this for a while. We have been out here on the floor a few times talking about this. I think this is a result that lets us say to the people we represent back home: We are going to give you that certainty, that confidence to know this is not going to be pulled away. On the other hand, we are going to work hard over the next couple of years to ensure that this program is viable for the longer term--along with other programs--and simplify these programs so they do work better for all the parents and all the students whom we represent. I thank the chairman. This is one of the good results at the end of the year. In a way, going into the Christmas season, it is appropriate that we have this little package that is now wrapped up and has a ribbon on it. But it does expire, so our work is not done, and we will only redouble our efforts to ensure that we can come up with a program that does provide the flexibility and important safety net that Perkins does.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about a couple of areas where I think we can make progress on legislation before the end of the year. This has been a legislative session in which we passed a number of important bills, and I think there is more we can do. Specifically, I am going to talk about some legislative initiatives that will give a leg up to American workers--Ohio workers--and also to help our families and help our students. I will start with students. There is an opportunity over the next couple of weeks for us to ensure that we reauthorize the Perkins Loan Program. Perkins is an incredibly important program, particularly for low-income students. In my view, of all the student loan programs out there, Perkins is by far the most flexible. This is an urgent matter because if we don't pass an extension, new loans will not be rewarded, even in January as students start this next semester. Let's not allow college tuition to become even less affordable for low-income students. Let's ensure that they can get a college degree to pursue their dreams and that we do move forward with this Perkins reauthorization. I spoke about this on the floor a month or so ago. I talked about it as a program that was incredibly important for students in my State. I talked about the fact that there are 60 schools in the Buckeye State, in Ohio, that have received loans from this program. Over the last school year, more than 25,000 Ohio students received financial aid through Perkins--including about 3,000 students at Kent State University and about 1,700 students at the Ohio State University. I was in Columbus last weekend and had a chance to meet with some Ohio State students who care a lot about this. They want to ensure that this Perkins is going to be there for them so they can stay in school. Some of them already have help from other programs, but they know that if they don't have the Perkins Loan Program, they can't afford to make ends meet and to stay in school. It is very important. I have also heard from our college Presidents from around the State-- particularly from Dr. Beverly Warren from Kent, who was here a couple of weeks ago to talk to me about this, and Dr. Michael Drake, whom I saw last week at Ohio State. They want to ensure that their students have this possibility. One of the students I talked to is Keri Richmond. Keri is a junior at Kent State, and she interned at my office this past summer. Keri was an incredible intern. She is a student who is working hard. She is at Kent State, likely to graduate a little bit early. She spent her teenage years going from foster home to foster home. She fought the odds, and she is now excelling in college. She is bright. She is ambitious. Even with her Pell Grant, she has to have that Perkins loan in order to be able to stay in school, in order to make ends meet. This is an important program, but it is not about a program. It is not about numbers. It is about people. It is about Keri Richmond and others like her. The impact goes well beyond Ohio. Over 1,7000 colleges and universities across the country participate in this program. Low- income students everywhere rely on it. If it expires, it is only more difficult to pay for school. Instead, what we should be doing in the Senate is making it easier, not harder, to afford to go to school. Some of these tuitions have gone up and up. We have to be sure every kid has a chance to be able to get ahead by going to college or university. If we don't move, students who previously received a Perkins loan will lose their eligibility if they change institutions or academic programs. It is a big deal for them. If we don't act soon, students who are seeking loans for the winter and spring semesters will be ineligible. In total, it is possible that 150,000 freshmen will lose their eligibility this fall. We can't let that happen. Let's not allow college tuition to become this roadblock for low-income students who are looking for a college degree. Let's give them this chance. Let's give them this opportunity. By the way, let's extend it but at the same time work on ways to improve the program. I know there are some Members on my side of the aisle--and I think on the other side as well but certainly on my side of the aisle--who said they have concerns about some of these student loan programs and would like to reform them to make them work better. That is great. Let's take the time to do that. In the meantime, let's not eliminate this program and have these kids fall between the cracks. I am there on the reforms. I would like to help on that. I think we can do better for all of our student loan programs and help all of our kids be able to have a better chance to succeed. Let's not create this terrible uncertainty for these students in the meantime. Let's extend this program and then work on those reforms. I thank Senator Casey, Senator Baldwin, Senator Collins, and others for their strong leadership on this. I want to ask my colleagues in the Senate to do simply what the House has done and do an extension of this program. The House has already passed this legislation. There is no reason it shouldn't be in the omnibus legislation, and there is no reason we shouldn't move forward with ensuring that these kids have the certainty they need to be able to stay in school. Mr. President, the second issue I want to talk about is that while students get the education they need, we also have to ensure that the communities they are going back to are safe and make sure those communities can thrive and grow. One of the issues we have in Ohio and unfortunately in too many neighborhoods all around this country is that you have a lot of blight, a lot of homes that have been abandoned. Two things happen: One, when homes are abandoned, they become a magnet for crime, for drugs, and for other criminal activity to the point that they are dangerous for the community, but, second, they drive down the cost of the other houses-- sometimes by as much as 80 percent. If you are in a community or you have a beautiful home you are taking care of but your neighbor's house becomes abandoned and becomes a magnet for crime and an eyesore, it drives down all of the property values. In Congress we have spent a lot of money, taxpayer money, on helping people deal with their mortgages when they are underwater--particularly after the financial crisis. In my view we ought to focus more on taking down these abandoned homes and creating safer neighborhoods but also, through market forces, allowing the property values of all of these homes to increase. I think this is an honorable effort, and it is one that a lot of people are focused on now around the country. I don't think we are quite caught up to where our neighborhoods are here in Washington, DC, because when I go home to Ohio I hear about this all the time. We have about 80,000 of these dangerous abandoned homes in Ohio. Again, to address public safety concerns and tumbling home values in these struggling neighborhoods, one of the best alternatives is to demolish these abandoned structures. Sometimes another structure can be rebuilt there. That is what we want. We want more economic development in these communities. In some cases, I have seen where there was an abandoned home, it was torn down and made into a community garden and the community can all participate. The point is to get these homes down so we can have the redevelopment we all want. I have walked the streets with local officials in Cleveland, Warren, Lima, and Toledo, OH, and I have seen these problems firsthand. As I do that, I talk to the residents. I ask them what they think. You can imagine the response I get. First, for them, it is an eyesore. It is a danger for their kids, grandkids. Second, they are worried about their property values. I had one occasion to speak to someone in Toledo, OH, that was particularly concerning to me. This was a woman who had three kids. Her home was right next to an abandoned home, literally feet away--6 or 7 feet away, sort of like a row house. She said: Rob, every night I go to bed worrying that the home next to me, which is abandoned, is going to be torched by arsonists. At that point in time--this was in Toledo, OH--there was about one arson a night, where these abandoned homes were not just targets for crime but they were also being used by arsonists as practice for burning down a home. She was worried about her kids. She was worried she couldn't go to sleep at night because if that home caught fire next to her, her home could be next. This is something we ought to focus on and we can focus on. Land banks in some of our hardest hit areas of Ohio, Michigan, and other States have gotten to work on attacking this problem. They have done a great job. They don't have the resources they need to demolish as many properties as they would like to help some of these struggling neighborhoods. That is why these land banks have come to us and asked: Can you help us a little more? After talking to them, after visiting these neighborhoods, we did take action. We authored legislation called the Neighborhood Safety Act of 2013, which was a bipartisan effort and a bicameral effort. In the House, you had Members like Dave Joyce, Marcy Kaptur, and Marcia Fudge working on this. Our legislation called for what is called the Hardest Hit Fund to be used not just to help people pay down their mortgages but also to help people be able to knock down these abandoned homes. We pushed it aggressively, and this important change was made administratively. It has provided nearly $66 million in Ohio and around the country to deal with these thousands of abandoned homes in our State. Michigan also got funds, as did other States. Now, in many of these States, these Hardest Hit Funds have run out. In other words, there are more abandoned homes than there is money to be able to deal with the problem. Given the success rate we have and the fact that these land banks are doing a great job, we think it is time to provide some more funding. That is what we proposed to do in the Omnibus appropriations bill. I am working with Senator Stabenow, Senator Brown, and others to transfer funds from what is called the Home Affordable Modification Program, which is a program that would be eliminated under our proposal, and shift some of those funds into the Hardest Hit Fund for demolition purposes. I have repeatedly discussed this issue with our leadership, Senator McConnell and others, our leadership here on the committees in the Senate and in the House, and I am very hopeful this can be done before year-end. It is the right thing to do. It is an opportunity for us to be able to shift some of these funds from a program that is not working as well into a program we know works and to make progress in some of our struggling neighborhoods in Ohio and around the country. I give special thanks to these land banks in Ohio that have taken the lead on this issue back home. Particularly, I want to thank the tireless efforts of Jim Rokakis, director of the Thriving Communities Initiative at the Western Reserve Land Conservancy. He has done excellent work in helping to lead this effort and highlight this issue. I hope we can get this done, even in the next week here, to be able to help our communities in Ohio and around the country. Mr. President, finally, when we talk about keeping our communities safe and the need to help our students, we also have to be sure that we are helping our workers. We need to ensure we are protecting jobs in our States that are threatened by unfairly traded imports. I am pleased that we will soon be voting to pass the conference report for the Customs bill. It is my understanding that this may come up as early as Monday or Tuesday next week. I hope we can pass that here in the Senate and send it to the President for his signature. There are a number of aspects of the Customs bill I support, but one aspect of it that I think is really important is legislation that is called the ENFORCE Act, to ensure that we are enforcing our laws properly. This is on the heels of legislation we already passed as part of the trade promotion authority earlier this year. That legislation is called Level the Playing Field Act. Senator Sherrod Brown, my colleague from Ohio, and I offered this legislation, and it is now part of our law and ammunition we can use against unfairly traded imports. It is already working because it has already been signed into law, and it is helping to deal with dumping when people are selling below costs or when they unfairly subsidize imports. It is helping workers in Ohio. It is helping our tire workers, paper workers, and steel workers, and we are proud of that. The problem is that although the legislation that we have already passed, the Level the Playing Field Act, helps with regard to taking on countries that are sending their products here unfairly, sometimes those countries then decide to try to evade the provisions we put in place, the higher tariffs for their dumped products or their higher tariffs for their subsidized products. That is what the ENFORCE Act is about. It is about ensuring that although we have this legislation in place, countries and their companies don't go around those regulations and still try to get products here into the United States by illegally sending it through another country or relabeling the product so that it doesn't fall under the tariffs that might be levied against them. I am really hopeful that we will able to pass this additional legislation. It is incredibly important, as I said, not only for Ohio, but it is also important for the country. Time after time we have seen that once we put these protective orders in place against these unfairly traded imports, these countries continue to illegally enter our country through illegal transshipments to other countries or through relabeling these products. I think we have an opportunity to move forward on something that is really important to help protect workers to ensure that we can closely examine these schemes and stop them. This effort, by the way, is backed by the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Iron and Steel Institute, and the United Steelworkers. They have a common cause because they understand that it is so critical that we ensure that our workers get a fair shake. I got an email last week from workers at Pennex Aluminum in Leetonia, OH, in the Mahoning Valley. They have 78 workers at their facility, and they won an important case against aluminum extrusions from China. The email said that this relief really helped us. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Mr. PORTMAN. These workers said: Senator Portman, ``this relief enabled our company to compete once again on a fair and level playing field.'' That is the relief we helped to provide by enforcing our laws against this product coming in. They then said: As a result, we recently completed an investment of $38 million to expand our facility in Leetonia and create significant new jobs. Our great concern is that this trade relief is now at risk due to the efforts by Chinese producers to avoid paying duties by, among other schemes, manipulating the alloy content of their extruded aluminum products and shipping their products under a different name. In other words, they were getting around the protections that are in place by simply relabeling the product. Again, this also happens by going around to other countries. That is why the ENFORCE Act is so important. Those 78 workers at Pennex Aluminum know it is important, and they know this legislation will help them to be able to get a fair shake. Finally, I wish to thank the members of the conference committee on the customs bill for putting our BDS language into this legislation. It will help to avoid boycotts and divestment in sanctions of Israel. This is a way that some countries around the world are trying to delegitimize Israel. It is something that is important for us to take a stand on as a Congress, and we do that in this Customs legislation. So again, I think there is some good legislation we can pass here in the next week or so in the Senate. I hope we will do it. I thank the Presiding Officer for giving me the time tonight. We need to continue to stand up for our families, our students, and our workers and ensure that, indeed, we do give the people we represent a fair shake. I yield back my time.

Mr. PORTMAN

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

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I want to talk a little about the legislation before us to repeal and replace ObamaCare, otherwise known as the Affordable Care Act. When I travel around my home State of Ohio, I hear about a couple things a lot. One is the tough job market and flat wages, which makes it difficult to get ahead. The other is--and it is related--escalated health care costs. People are seeing in their lives that it is tough to find that job, and if they do have a job, they are finding their wages aren't going up as they would normally expect. Unfortunately, when we look nationally this is true. Wages on average are not just flat; they are slightly down. In other words, they have declined, which is not typical. On the other hand, expenses are up, and the biggest expense: health care. So the middle-class squeeze is very real. It is affecting the people I represent as they see, again, unusually low wages, not the growth that we normally expect on the one hand, and on the other hand higher expenses, with health care taking the lead in those expenses. Today in the Senate and tomorrow, as we debate this and vote on it, we have a chance to move the ball forward and show people that at least a majority in the Congress agree we ought to address this issue--the health care issue, of course--and try to stop the incredibly fast increase in premiums, deductibles, copays. Families, small businesses are getting hit hard. Also, we can help give the economy a shot in the arm by coming up with smarter ways to deal with health care. This vote will show there are some in Congress who are listening and have some answers. Our job is to do what is right, and that is to pass this legislation to repeal and replace ObamaCare, to give us a chance to get rid of some of the most detrimental aspects of it that are eliminating jobs, that are pushing health care costs higher and higher. The legislation--the Affordable Care Act--was sold as actually reducing costs. It was sold under false pretenses. Specifically, the President said it would bring down premiums. He talked about it going down $2,500 on average per family. No; in fact, premiums are going up. We were told Americans would be able to keep their insurance. Of course, millions have lost their health care insurance. We were told that if you have a doctor whom you like, you can keep your doctor. Of course, a lot of people are now being told that under their new plan, they can't keep the doctor they have had. We were told the Affordable Care Act could keep our economy strong, that it would grow jobs, create jobs. Instead, again, it has made things worse. If we look at the economy and what has happened, a lot of the issue is that people have given up looking for work. The so-called labor force participation rate is the lowest it has been since the 1970s--over 30 years. Some of that, again, is because we have this weak economy. Some of that is because a lot of the jobs that are available are part-time jobs, and the Affordable Care Act encourages part-time work, as we will talk about in a second. So the results are in. We have seen it. We have seen that ObamaCare, with its mandates and centralized control, its top-down approach, has made it more difficult to get a job and has increased health care costs for families and small businesses--not the right way to provide quality health care for the people I represent in Ohio. I hear stories every day. Sometimes they come in through our Web site, sometimes people call, sometimes I just run into people, and they tell me their stories. I got one this morning. We have our weekly Buckeye coffee, where we bring in people who are here in Washington from around Ohio to talk to us about their issues. I ran into a small business owner, very typical--a manufacturer in this case. He said: Rob, my margins are between 2 and 3 percent. In other words, that is what my profit is, and yet I am seeing my health care costs go up by double digits every year. It just doesn't work. I can't make ends meet. I am having to pass this along, either to my employees with higher premiums, higher deductibles, higher copays, or to try to pass them on to my customers. But I am in a very competitive market and I can't really do that. That could mean having to lay some people off, downsize the business. Take another small business owner who wrote to me recently who said this is going to hurt his business. He said he is going to have to tell his 35 employees their insurance will be canceled and that the cheapest replacement policies would include a 35-percent increase in premiums as well as a 33-percent increase in deductibles. This is another small business in Ohio. Take the father of five who saw the cost of his family's insurance double under the Affordable Care Act or the man who saw his $100 deductible go to $4,000. Does that sound familiar? There are probably some people listening tonight who had that same experience where their deductible goes up so high, it is almost like you don't have insurance. This guy said he saw his deductible soar to $4,000 while his premiums went up to $1,000 a month. Batavia is in Clermont County, OH, right near my home. Recently, a woman from Batavia wrote to me and said: I am a single mother. I pay for my own health insurance. I am active and fit. I have cycled over 4000 miles this year. I am seldom sick. In the three years that I've paid for my own insurance, I went to the doctor once for illness. My rate was $146 [a] month. In September, I received a letter from Anthem saying my plan does not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act and will be discontinued. I was offered the same coverage for $350 per month. This is a real problem for this single mom, but it is for families all over Ohio. I am concerned about the impact on those families, concerned about the impact on our small businesses. I am also concerned about the indirect impact on employees who work for those small businesses. We talked earlier about the fact that there is more and more part- time work and that jobs are hard to come by in Ohio. More and more small businesses in Ohio are becoming what they call 49ers or 29ers. Forty-niner refers to the fact that employers sometimes feel they have no choice but to freeze their growth, and they are hiring at 49 employees rather than 50 employees because when you hit 50, you come up with new requirements and mandates under ObamaCare. Others have tried to reduce the hours their employees work. If you work less than 30 hours a week, you are not covered by the mandates under ObamaCare. So some employers have reduced hours from 40 hours to 29 hours. Those are the 29ers. That is one reason full-time work is harder to come by. It is no surprise to me that the underemployment figure--those working part time but wanting to return to work full time--has been on the rise. When you see the jobs numbers coming out every month, look at the number of people who are part time rather than full time. It is concerning. Some of this has to be driven by what is happening with the Affordable Care Act. I am certainly hearing about it. I am certainly hearing about it from people on the ground, real-world situations. It is sad. This morning I talked to Todd, the president of a small manufacturing company, and he talked about a double-digit increase in his health care expenses. Mike from Westlake wrote to me and said: I own a small business. Our health insurance rates for single employees under 30 went from $198 per month last year to $560 per month this year. That's a 260% increase thanks to ObamaCare! This bill is going to put small businesses out of business. This one is from Tim in Canton. He said: The ACA fees being charged to us are $3,250 per year for 11 covered employees, which will be passed on to them. We are paying for the insurance premium increase of $15,186 by reducing our year-end bonus program. We also are offering an even higher deductible plan than we have now. (I will take the higher plan to lower the overall cost to soften the blow for my staff). This is an interesting one because it is what I hear around Ohio. They are discontinuing their bonus program because of this. Other companies say we are discontinuing a research project. Others say we are discontinuing our match on our 401(k). Others say we are just plain cutting back; in other words, not hiring as many people as they would have. It is happening out there. I know some economists have debates on this issue, but I hope they are talking to people in the real world who are being affected by this Affordable Care Act, the top-down approach, the mandates, and the inflexibility. Not only are these small businesses affected by these new mandates, but a lot of them are now subject to one of the new taxes included in the Affordable Care Act. I think there are 21 new taxes in the Affordable Care Act. One of them is a tax on medical devices. This is an industry that is very important to Ohio and to our country. We have had a competitive edge in medical devices. We have a lot of great innovators in this country, including my home State of Ohio. We have been able to not only create some great opportunities in this country but we are exporting medical devices around the world. It is hard to overstate the impact the industry has on our State of Ohio and the ripple effect through our communities. Over the past decade, we have added about 370 new bioscience and medical device companies in Ohio alone. It has been a growth area. These companies have brought high-paying jobs. I am told that for every one job, they create another 2.3 additional jobs. I visited a lot of these companies around the State of Ohio. I have been to companies in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus. Recently, I visited Zimmer Surgical, which is a company that employs about 300 workers in Dover, OH. They expressed the same concern I have heard at all these other companies I talk about, which is that this new tax under the Affordable Care Act makes it hard for them to be able to compete. It is a very interesting tax. Normally you would have a tax on profits. If a company makes money, it pays taxes on those earnings and those profits. This is a tax on revenue, whether there is profit or not. It is an excise tax. Since this tax has taken effect, the companies I am talking about have seen a decrease in their operating margins. They are resulting in fewer jobs, they tell me, and less investment in the United States. Again, a lot of them say they are cutting back on research because they cannot afford to do the research they used to do because of the excise tax on their revenue--again, not on their profits, the money they are making, but just their revenue. That means their seed corn, as they call it, is being cut back. I talked about the great innovation and the fact that this has been a cutting-edge industry for us in Ohio and around the country. The seed corn is research. That is what makes America a cutting-edge country in terms of these great medical device companies. A bunch of them are cutting back on research and that concerns me. Some have gone overseas. Some have moved their research overseas, even though they stayed headquartered in the United States. If this tax continues, some have told me that they will be forced to close down manufacturing facilities. At a time when we need, more than ever, more made-in-America products in innovation, the medical technology industry is one where we are a leader on the world stage, and we should not be coming up with this kind of burdensome tax. That is why I am so glad that on this legislation that we will vote on tomorrow or the next day, that we will have the opportunity to repeal the medical device tax. By the way, there is a bipartisan consensus around that, I think. I know a lot of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have talked about the need for us to do that as well. If we do not do that, we are going to find out we have lost ground. Again, this goes to our economy. One thing that concerned me was that the founder of Zimmer Surgical in Dover, OH, told me that had this tax been in place when he started his company, he doesn't think he ever would have made it off the ground. I talked earlier about the number of new startups. This is going to keep some of those startups from taking root in the first place and creating those jobs and opportunities. Repealing a job-killing medical device tax, therefore, is a great step forward to promote policies to get Americans back to work. Even though we need to repeal these top-down mandates we talked about and get rid of some of these taxes that are so onerous on workers and hurt our economy, I don't think we should go back to the pre-Affordable Care Act status quo. I don't think it is enough to say we should repeal this bad law. I think we also should say: Let's come up with a better way to deal with health care costs. Health care costs are going to be a big problem unless we deal with them in a much more sensible way than the Affordable Care Act does. I think real reform is needed. It must be patient-centered. In other words, it must be about the patient giving them the incentive to be able to save costs by focusing on prevention and wellness, focused on their families, focused on what they need for themselves and family rather than these mandates that say you can't have this insurance policy you had for years, as this young woman in Clermont County told me who has seen her premiums go up so dramatically. She had a policy she was very happy with. Let people have the policies they want for themselves and their families. Let's have less government and bureaucracy and more focus on patients. Let's be sure it is responsible in terms of keeping the tax burden down and does not kill jobs as the medical device tax does. ObamaCare should be repealed. It should be repealed and replaced with a system that actually works. The failures to ObamaCare actually point the way as to how we can do that. As I said, patient-centered, costs should be the focus. There are steps we can take--and take them today-- to remove some of the shackles of government regulations from the market and help make health insurance and health care less expensive. We should start by allowing health care to be sold across State lines. Let's be sure we can compete, and the people who live in Cincinnati, OH, can get health care across the river in Kentucky or across the border in Indiana. It makes no sense. Some people live in Indiana and work in Ohio and vice versa or work in Kentucky and live in Ohio and they only get health care in the place where they live. We should be able to look for our health care in New York or California. Whatever works best for our family. Make these companies compete for our business. We should take commonsense steps to rein in the staggering costs of frivolous lawsuits. This could save billions and billions of dollars in our health care system. There is a CBO estimate of the cost to the Federal Government that could be saved alone. It is tens of billions of dollars, but the medical profession will tell you it is more like hundreds of billions of dollars as it applies to all of us. That will help to make health care more affordable. We should cover more Americans by creating a healthy, vibrant individual health care market, giving people a tax incentive to purchase health care insurance comparable by the incentives they receive at their employer-provided plan. Why shouldn't they have that same opportunity in the individual market that is part of the way you cover more people? The sad truth about ObamaCare is that the coverage numbers are very disappointing, even to those who strongly supported the bill. Why? Because what has happened is that some people have gotten coverage, but others have lost coverage. The estimates by the Congressional Budget Office are that still 10 years after this legislation is in place there will be something like 30 million Americans without coverage. We can do it and do it in a more cost-effective way and be sure people do have the opportunity to have access to quality health care. The bill we have before us this week will take that first step at removing the shackles of government regulation and put the country on the path forward to real health care reform. Not only does the legislation remove the mandates ObamaCare placed on individuals and businesses to purchase insurance, but it also rolls back some of the new programs, while giving the new President, the next President, and the new Congress, the next Congress, the time to be able to enact alternative reforms that will ensure all families have access to quality, affordable health care. It has to be a top priority to actually come up with not just repealing what is there but replacing it with something that makes more sense for families in Ohio and around the country. I look forward to this vote and this debate because it gives us an opportunity to send to the President sensible legislation that gets rid of so many of the detrimental impacts of ObamaCare and sets us down the path of debating about what that future ought to be. Some Democrats have said: Why are you doing this--because the President said he will veto it. I would ask them to look at what the majority of the American people are saying, which is that they do not believe the Affordable Care Act is the right way to go. I guess I would look at the fact that the majority in the Senate may feel that way as well. We should represent those folks back home. Because the President doesn't support it doesn't mean we shouldn't act and do what is right. Every President who served in this great country has had the opportunity to veto legislation coming from Congress. It doesn't mean Congress shouldn't send them legislation. I hope the President will not veto it. He probably will. It doesn't mean the Senate shouldn't act. I am glad we are acting. I stand ready to work with my colleagues going forward on both sides of the aisle to enact real reforms that do provide the people I represent and people all around this great country the access to the quality care they deserve. Mr. President, I yield my time.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I look forward to working with my colleague from Pennsylvania on that sound bipartisan policy he is talking about, and I want to talk a little bit about that today. He mentioned Senator Vandenberg, who famously said that partisanship ends at the water's edge. I think he would have been surprised by President Obama's comments beyond the water's edge in Turkey yesterday, where he attacked Republicans who dared to talk about the need for us to ensure that we know who is coming to our shores and specifically with regard to refugees and having a proper vetting process in place. In fact, the House of Representatives--with over 40 votes from Democrats--I understand just voted on legislation today, which is a veto-proof majority, to say we ought to tighten requirements for people who want to come to our shores. So we do need to work together. We do need to ensure that partisanship does not get in the way of working together as Americans to solve these problems. The partisan speech from across the ocean, well beyond our shores, was an example of where we are not meeting the standards Mr. Vandenberg set out. As we all know now, last weekend ISIS terrorists killed over 130 innocent people in a series of very well-coordinated attacks in Paris. I would say these attacks did not occur in isolation. They were one but a series of attacks that occurred within a 24-hour period. Sometimes we forget the context of these attacks. The series of attacks left 43 people dead in Beirut, 18 people dead in Baghdad, countless wounded-- all ISIS attacks. In the preceding month, ISIS took credit for a downed Russian airplane, claiming the lives of 224 innocent civilians. In September, Islamic extremists murdered nearly 50 in Yemen. In fact, if we look back over the period of last year, several hundred civilians have been killed in nearly 30 attacks--incidents spanning the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. It is impossible to deny the growing threat that this extremism poses to our Nation, our allies, and our shared values and global stability. Despite all of its great qualities, technology has bridged the oceans that once separated us from foreign turmoil and brought this threat to our communities and to our homes, the places we feel most safe. These attacks must serve as a wake-up call, not only about the nature of the enemy we face in ISIS but about the chaotic and dangerous state of the world and the dire need for American leadership to address it. The attacks in Paris were not a ``setback,'' as the President said. They were a continuation of terrorist acts. They were a tragedy and a warning--a warning that if we fail to take a leadership role in combatting extremist behavior everywhere it resides, we will confront another tragedy here, on our shores. We cannot develop a successful strategy to defeat ISIS unless we understand its true nature. There has been a lot of talk this week about Syrian refugees and whether they should be properly vetted. Of course they should, but we need to take a broader look at this issue and have a broader discussion about the roots of the problem: Why are these refugees streaming into Europe and coming here? We need to look at not just the roots of the problem but what is the comprehensive strategy to address that problem. We can't develop a successful strategy to defeat ISIS unless we understand its true nature. The President's insistence on downplaying the extremist threat and viewing each act in isolation is a fundamental flaw in his national security policy, in my belief. Referring to ISIS as the ``JV team,'' as it seized nearly one-third of Iraq, publicly stating that ISIS has been ``contained'' just hours before the attack in Paris, and then referring to those attacks as a mere ``setback'' are all symptomatic of this failed policy, in my view. I think this is a time for moral and strategic clarity. I think of Roosevelt and Churchill in World War II. I think of Kennedy and Reagan in the Cold War. Times of crisis require seeing threats as they are and not as we might wish them to be. Nothing would make me happier than if the President of the United States would provide this clarity. We now know that the Paris attacks were planned in Syria, organized in Belgium, and carried out in France. This revelation is yet another confirmation of a key fact many of us have been saying for years: ISIS is a global threat with global reach and ambitions. It is motivated by a radical Islamist ideology that while rejected by the majority of Muslims, nevertheless holds great appeal to too many Muslims around the world. This ideology rejects any form of government that is not based on a radical interpretation of Sunni Islamism and holds that it is the duty of all Muslims to wage jihad against those who do not share their views--including of course the United States, including of course Israel, including of course the apostate regimes, as they call them, like America's Arab allies all through the Middle East. The President continues to insist that the limited scale and scope of the administration's strategy to counter ISIS is working, but ISIS is not just a nuisance to be managed. It is a global threat to be defeated. Rather than containing ISIS to a geographic region, the conflict in Syria and Iraq has served as an incubator for terrorism. The territory ISIS holds provides a safe haven for these terrorists to train, organize, gather resources, and project power. Tens of thousands of foreign fighters from Europe, the United States, and around the world have flocked to the frontlines of the global jihad, and many return home with the training and resources necessary to carry out monstrous attacks. Meanwhile, a flood of refugees fleeing atrocities and persecution in Syria have provided ISIS operatives a community in which they can easily hide. Indeed, it appears at least one of the Paris attackers was someone who disguised himself as a refugee to get into Europe. This enemy is cunning and knows it cannot defeat us on a conventional fight on the battlefield, so it is employing asymmetric warfare to attack our values and degrade the collective security of our nations. They know they have access into every home and are using modern media technologies to exploit a disenfranchised minority. Their audience spans the globe. Think about this: If they only reach 0.0001 percent of the global population, then they have an army of over half a million potential terrorist recruits. More intelligence cooperation between the United States and our allies is absolutely necessary to track suspected ISIS terrorists and prevent them from hiding their presence and launching attacks. The United States should also increase the scale and intensity of military operations against ISIS targets. If we can give the French the intelligence to be able to attack key ISIS targets in Syria, then why haven't we used that intelligence ourselves to degrade the enemy? We must intensify the use of our military. We must intensify U.S. Special Operations forces and local allies. We must defeat ISIS forces on the ground and retake territory. As I have argued for a couple of years now, we cannot ignore the broader conflict in Syria and must lead our allies in pursuing a comprehensive strategy to not just defeat ISIS but to also achieve a negotiated resolution of the Syrian conflict. Over 4 million people have fled Syria. The Government of Syria has murdered over 200,000 of its own citizens. I saw an interview today where someone was asking one of the refugees from Syria what their preference was--to go to Europe or to go to the United States. The refugees said what most refugees said: I want to go home, but I need a safe haven there. We should have a no-fly zone in Syria and provide for people the ability to stay in their own country. Military force alone will not solve this problem. Obviously, we need to do more and engage the Muslim world in this effort, but it can shape the parameters of an acceptable solution. These measures are all important, but they all stem from the recognition of something far more fundamental. In the absence of U.S. leadership, chaos and instability ensues. It takes active American leadership to reassure our allies, to deter our enemies, and to uphold the international order upon which global stability and prosperity depend. We should not be the world's policemen; I agree with that. It is more like being the world's sheriff, where you bring together a posse of like-minded nations. Whether it is the NATO countries with regard to Ukraine or whether it is our Sunni allies with regard to what is happening in the Middle East, we must be the sheriff who pulls the posse together. In the absence of that, in the absence of that leadership, we will not meet this challenge. In the Middle East, the chaos we see is not just contained in Syria, and it is not just confined to ISIS. As the United States prepares to provide billions in sanctions relief agreed to in the Iran nuclear deal, Iran has been very busy. Iran has sent ground troops into Syria as part of a new joint offensive with Assad, Russia, and the terrorist group Hezbollah. Iran has tested a ballistic missile, they have arrested several American citizens living in Iran, and they have threatened to wipe Israel off the map of the Middle East. Ayatollah Khamenei has now banned any further negotiations with the United States of America. Meanwhile, Russian forces are conducting combat operations in the Middle East for the first time since 1941. Russia has launched a sustained air campaign--not really against ISIS, as Putin claims, but almost entirely against U.S.-backed rebel groups and other moderate groups opposed to both ISIS and Assad. There is discussion of them targeting ISIS more. I hope that is true. In Europe, Russian forces continue to occupy portions of eastern Ukraine and continue to occupy Crimea. After a brief lull, violence is once again rising, as Russian efforts to undermine the democratic pro-Western government of Ukraine persist. Russia also continues to wage an unprecedented information war that leverages all elements of national power to confuse, demoralize, and mislead. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing conflict in the Middle East stream into Europe, threatening to overwhelm Europe's ability to vet and process them and create opportunities for terrorists to evade detection and conduct attacks like those we saw in Paris. In the Pacific, China is building artificial islands in international waters to reinforce its claims in the South China Sea. This is the world that unenforced redlines and leading from behind have created. It is a world where the very structure of international order is under siege and where the direction of our collective future is brought into question. Of course, this trend is not irreversible, but the United States must first step out of the shadows. Ronald Reagan spoke memorably about peace through strength. We must be unambiguous in our support of our allies, and we must be clear-eyed and resolute in standing up to our foes. This is the path to peace and security for us and for the world.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise this evening to talk about an issue that is critical to keeping jobs here in America and keeping investment in this country and not driving it overseas. We had another reminder just last week of just how broken our Tax Code is when a huge company, Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company, decided it could no longer compete as a U.S. corporation. Instead it is seeking a merger with an Irish-based drugmaker called Allergan. They want to move their corporate headquarters to Ireland. It is another in a long line of companies that have made this decision because our Tax Code is broken. Unfortunately, these kinds of transactions are called inversions, where a U.S. company buys a smaller company overseas and merges with them to become a foreign company. That is just the tip of the iceberg. It is actually bigger than these inversions. It also has to do with foreign companies buying U.S. companies because they can do so because they have a higher aftertax profit and pay a premium. These kinds of transactions are causing our jobs and investments to go overseas. Yesterday we had another indication of that. It was announced that the Irish drug company Shire is going to buy the Massachusetts-based biotech company Dyax for $6.5 billion. By the way, this isn't the first acquisition Shire has made this year. In January they acquired a New Jersey-based company NPS Pharmaceuticals, and in August they bought a privately held company called Foresight Biotherapeutics. A foreign company coming in and buying U.S. companies and moving the headquarters overseas is an example of why what the Obama administration is doing to counter this is not working, because their solution to this is not to reform the Tax Code but rather to change the way the tax laws are interpreted and put out regulations they called a tax notice that tries to block these so-called inversions. This very company we are talking about, Shire, was the subject of an inversion. It is true that AbbVie, a company in Illinois, was going to merge with them and do one of these inversions. They chose not to because of the administration's new tax notice--these new regulations. What happened instead, Shire said: Fine, we will not merge with this U.S. company through an inversion. We will just buy U.S. companies--and they bought three this year. So this is only going to be solved if we actually reform the Tax Code. Interestingly, we have also seen this with another pharmaceutical company. It is called Salex. Salex wanted to do a merger--one of these inversions--and they were blocked from doing it by the regulations, so then they decided to become a target for a foreign takeover. Sure enough, a Canadian company, Valeant, which had already moved from the United States to Canada in a merger, in an inversion, came to the United States and bought, in this case, Salex, which is a North Carolina company. This is happening just about every week we are hearing about another company that is leaving our shores because of our Tax Code. To the administration's credit they haven't just put out these regulations saying let's slow down on inversions, they have just said we do need to reform the Tax Code. That is the truth. This town is not doing its work. We are not doing what the people have elected us to do, which is to fix problems like this. We are letting this fester. Again, every week we have another example of this. It is no secret why this is happening. At a combined 39-percent tax rate, the United States now has the highest business tax rate of any of the industrialized countries. It is a No. 1 that you don't want to be. Second, we don't let companies that are American companies bring their profits back here without paying that prohibitively high tax, so they have locked up their profits overseas. You probably heard this, but they say there is about $2.5 trillion in earnings that are locked up overseas that could come back to create jobs right here, expanding plants and equipment and adding more employees. Instead, because of our Tax Code, it is not coming back--$2.5 trillion. Importantly, the burden of this falls on American workers--think about it--No. 1, because these companies in America are not as competitive as they should be because of our Tax Code. According to the studies, wages are lower, benefits are lower, U.S. workers are caught. This is one reason among others that we have wage stagnation in this country, because our Tax Code is so out of date. Just by fixing the Tax Code we could give the economy a shot in the arm and help lift up those wages. Instead, so many workers in my home State of Ohio and around this country are working hard, playing by the rules, and doing everything right. Yet their wages are flat--even, on average, declining. This is a new phenomenon for us in this country, but in the last 6 years wages have gone down, on average, not just stayed flat. By the way, expenses are up: health care, thanks to ObamaCare, tuition costs, energy costs, electricity bills, food costs. It is called the middle- class squeeze--flat wages, higher expenses. One way to fix that is to put forward pro-growth policies that can actually make a difference in getting this economy moving. Specifically, we have an example where if we had a better Tax Code based on the economic analysis, it would result not just in more jobs but better jobs. It is a way we can help, not just to bring back the jobs but to bring back better jobs. Almost all of our competitors--think of the UK, Japan--have lowered their rates, and they have also gone to a competitive international tax code where their companies can bring their earnings back to invest in their country. So they are beating us. America is falling behind because of this problem. American companies are much more valuable as foreign headquarters then they are in the hands of U.S. owners. It is the primary reason, by the way, that last year the number of acquisitions of U.S. companies by foreign companies doubled. Let me say that again. Last year there were twice as many foreign takeovers as there was the year before--twice as many. Something is happening here. By the way, this year the $275 billion worth of takeovers we saw last year is likely to go to over $400 billion, we are told. So it is not quite a doubling this year but pretty darn close. Again, there is something happening. My concern is, if we don't do something about this, we are going to look back 4 or 5 years from now and say what happened, all these great U.S. companies have gone overseas. It is not just pharmaceutical companies, it is across the board. It is all kinds of industries. Try to buy an American beer. The largest U.S. beer companies are now Sam Adams, with about 1.4 percent market share, and Yuengling, with about the same market share. All the rest are foreign-owned--all of them-- because of our Tax Code. Anheuser-Busch went overseas. Miller is overseas. Coors is overseas. You go right down the line of American businesses that are affected by this, and it is thousands and thousands of jobs. We did a little investigation of this in the subcommittee that I had, called the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. I cochair it with Claire McCaskill, who is a Democrat from Missouri. We looked into these issues, did some research, and said it was worth having a hearing to bring some of these facts to light. We did this a couple of months ago. This is what we found out. Having reviewed more than a dozen foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies and mergers where the headquarters end up being overseas, we found out that jobs are being lost, investments are being lost--not a surprise. It is not just the headquarters that move, it is the people, the money. One prominent case study we looked at was the acquisition of this Valeant pharmaceutical company that I talked about earlier. Valeant is now a company in Quebec. They merged with a company in Canada. When they went up there they decided: You know what. We are now going to start buying U.S. companies because we have such an advantage. We can pay a premium. They have now managed to acquire more than a dozen U.S. companies worth more than $30 billion. We reviewed some of the key deal documents to understand how the tax advantages affected these acquisitions, specifically. How did it affect them? We were able to look at the 2013 sale of the New York-based eye care firm, Bausch & Lomb. Anybody who wears contact lenses has probably heard of them. We looked at the 2015 sale of this North Carolina company called Salex that I talked about a moment ago. In those two acquisitions alone, Valeant determined they could shave more than $3 billion off the tax bill just by integrating these companies into their Canadian-based operations. Think about that. What do these deals mean to the American worker? Well, the three recent Valeant acquisitions we studied resulted in the loss of about 2,300 U.S. jobs, plus a loss of about $16 million per year of contract manufacturing that was moved from the United States to Canada-- additional jobs being lost. Again, this is happening as we talk tonight. There are companies considering leaving our shores because our Tax Code is so outdated and so antiquated. We talked about the beer industry. The subcommittee took testimony from a guy named Jim Cook. Jim Cook is the founder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company. You might know him as the maker of Sam Adams. The market share is about 1.4 percent. Mr. Cook testified that if we fail to reform our Tax Code, his company could be next. He explained that he regularly gets offers from investment bankers to facilitate a sale. He comes back to his office after being away for a week and what does he find in his inbox, a bunch of proposals from investment banking firms saying: Why don't you go overseas? We will show you how do it. We will save you all kinds of money. Become a foreign corporation. This is happening all over the country. Mr. Cook, to his credit, is a real patriot. He doesn't want to become a foreign company. He has declined all these offers, but he also informed us that when he is gone he believes that company will be driven by financial pressure to become an overseas company. He owns a majority of the company's voting shares. He is fortunate. Not all CEOs are in that position, of course. They can't afford--because they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders--to be able to withstand this pressure to go overseas. So in our subcommittee hearing and in some of the dialogue on the floor and elsewhere, we heard a lot of criticism of these companies that have gone overseas. I will say the plain truth, which is, if there is any villain in this story, it is not those companies. I wish they would stay here, but it is not those companies. It is our Tax Code and it is Washington. Just another example, along with regulatory relief, as we talked about earlier tonight, along with expanding exporting and being sure imports are fairly traded, along with dealing with our education system and our worker retraining system at the Federal level that is not working--all of these things need to be changed. Our energy approach to have a one-size-fits-all policy, that is Washington that can and should do that. There are so many issues that we are not addressing in terms of the debt and the deficit, economic issues. This is another one and this one is just so obvious. Mr. Cook is famous today, the founder and chairman of Boston Beer Company Sam Adams, because he was in a Wall Street Journal editorial. I commend that editorial to you. It talks about exactly what I mentioned earlier, which is because the aftertax profit is greater for a foreign company, they can pay a premium. It talks about the fact that as compared to being able to bring a dollar back from overseas as a U.S. company and having 39 percent of it taxed, with a foreign entity--for instance, what could happen with Pfizer--they can go overseas, become an Irish company, and only pay 12 percent. They can bring 88 cents of that dollar back to this country. What an irony. They can invest more in America by being a foreign company. We would like them to be able to be an American company, bring that money back that is overseas, and build investments, jobs, plants, equipment, and people. The Wall Street Journal editorial was wrong in one regard; that is, they said Jim Cook is a bearded brewer. He doesn't have a beard, but he is a brewer. They also said this is an issue that divides Democrats and Republicans. I would say with respect, as a Republican on this side of the aisle, it is not that simple. There are Democrats who actually think we should be reforming the Tax Code. There are a lot of Republicans who think that too. In the Presidential debate you can see a lot of Republicans talking about it. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, doesn't seem much interested in it. She wants to punish these companies that go overseas. That is not going to help. That will cause more companies to go overseas. They will vote with their feet, but I don't believe this is a partisan issue. I actually believe there are people of good will on both sides of the aisle who get this. Senator Schumer and I did a report after a working group that we were asked to chair by our leadership where we came up with the conclusion that we had to fix this system. Senator Schumer is a Democrat and I am a Republican. We don't agree on a lot of things. But we agreed on this because after hearing testimony from people, including CEOs of companies that were struggling with this decision, we realized we had to deal with it. We have to deal with it. I believe ultimately that what we have to do is to overhaul our entire Tax Code. We should deal with the individual side of the code, we should lower that rate and broaden the base, in other words, get rid of a lot of the preferences and loopholes. On the corporate side, we should do the same thing and get the corporate rate so it is competitive. A 25-percent rate rather than a 35-percent rate would make a big difference. The overhaul is necessary for us to be able to give the economy the real shot in the arm it deserves. But in the short term, we have a President who refuses to reform the taxes on the individual side without raising significant new revenues--in other words, increasing taxes dramatically, a couple of trillion dollars in his budget. We are not going to do that because that would hurt the economy too much. But even with a President who believes that on the individual side, there does seem to be more consensus on this business issue--what to do with the business tax code--particularly as it relates to the international tax code we talked about. So my feeling is, let's take a first step. Let's do what we can do on a bipartisan basis. Let's build on that consensus that we have reached--that we have to fix this problem now or we are going to see more and more companies and jobs and investment go overseas. Let's come up with something that addresses that specific problem. In July, in this report that Senator Schumer and I released, we suggested three things where we can find a consensus. One, let's move to that international tax system where we can allow people to bring their earnings home. Let's not lock those earnings up overseas. Let's have what you would call a permanent repatriation and allow that money to come back. By the way, that money could be used for all kinds of things, including infrastructure. So it could be tied to the highway bill. But it is important for me that we change the system to allow those funds to come back here and create jobs and opportunity in America. There is $2.5 trillion locked up overseas. Second, we said we ought to have incentives to be able to keep intellectual property, which is highly mobile, here in America, because a lot of countries around the world now are setting up what they call patent boxes or innovation boxes, and they are attracting our best and brightest. They are creating now a nexus between the lower rate you get if you move that intellectual property overseas and the researchers. In other words, they will give you a low tax rate, but you have to move the expertise there too. Again, we are going to look back a few years from now if we don't deal with this and say: What happened? Some of our best researchers, some of our best colleges and universities here are now not doing the work anymore because it is being done overseas, because they are providing the inventive and we are not. Third, we agree we do need to have some sensible base erosion protections that would discourage companies from shifting their income to low-tax jurisdictions, to tax havens, just for that purpose. By the way, the businesses that we talked to around the country agree with that. They would like to see a lower tax rate also. That is incredibly important. That is the obvious next step. But I do think there is an opportunity for us to act and to act now to be able to help give the economy a shot in the arm, to bring back the trillions of dollars from overseas, and to help us stop this exodus of jobs and investment in U.S. companies overseas. I also believe we could act this year on this. We know what to do. There have been plenty of reports and studies. There is actually a tax proposal introduced by Dave Camp, who was the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee prior to Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan, who is now Speaker of the House, is very interested in this. He has done a lot of good work on this. The Ways and Means Committee and the Finance Committee have held literally dozens of hearings. We know what to do. It is a question of political will to get it done. As we do that, we should also be sure to address the annual tax extenders. These are provisions for the Tax Code that are only in place for a short period of time. Right now they have already expired. The idea is that at the end of the year we might once again retroactively extend these tax provisions. Think of the R&D tax credit, for instance, or the research and development tax credit. That is very important. We think we should make those extenders that are good policy permanent. If we did that and we did this tax reform we talked about earlier, which by the way would be revenue neutral, this is the one area where the President of the United States and other Democrats are willing to say: Let's not try to wring more taxes out of the system; let's try to do this on a revenue-neutral basis. By the way, it is going to be so pro-growth that it will result in more revenue coming in, not because you raise taxes, but because it is the right thing to do to encourage jobs, investment, and opportunity. But if you did these tax extenders along with it, you would be making the policies permanent, which would provide a huge boost to the economy. The Joint Committee on Taxation found that the short-term extenders that were passed by the Senate Finance Committee last month-- this is just a short-term one for a 2-year extension, would create $10.4 billion in new tax revenue over the next 10 years. Think about that. That is just a short-term extension. Imagine the growth if those were made permanent. So we do have the opportunity here to do something good for our country, for our companies, and, most importantly, for American workers, and one that is going to result in growth in the economy and, therefore, in revenue through growth, not through higher taxes but in fact by getting the tax rates down and having a competitive international tax system. The last thing we want to do is to look back a few years from now and say: We had this opportunity. In this area, at least, we have a President willing to work with us. We have some Democrats and Republicans willing to join hands and get something done. We missed the opportunity. Now we are seeing this unfortunate movement of more and more of our great American companies overseas. We are seeing the American tax base being eroded. We are seeing something that would take away the opportunity for us to help get this economy back on track for everybody, for the shared prosperity that we all seek. If that happens, we will have no one to blame but ourselves here in this town. So I would encourage my colleagues again: Look at what is happening. Look at what happened with Pfizer last week, with Shire this week, and with yet another company I am sure next week. We need to wake up and realize that if we don't act--and we alone can act because this requires a change in tax policy. It cannot happen through more regulations. It has to happen by changing the law. If we don't act, we are not doing our duty to those who sent us here to represent them. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. 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.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 639 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., Tuesday, October 27; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following leader remarks, the Senate resume consideration of S. 754, with the time until 11 a.m. equally divided between the two leaders or their designees; finally, that notwithstanding the provisions of rule XXII, there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided prior to each vote, and that all votes after the first vote in each series be 10 minutes each.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 313 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.