Debbie Stabenow

Ms. STABENOW

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I want to talk again about the complete disaster, the catastrophe that has befallen a community in Michigan called Flint, MI, through no fault of their own. We assume that when we turn on the faucet, we can make coffee, take a shower, make breakfast, take care of our children or our grandchildren, and that we are going to have safe, clean water. That has been a basic right in America. If you own a business, a restaurant, you assume you are going to be able to turn on the water and make the food and serve your customers. If you are a barber, you can turn on the faucet and clean water comes out. That is basic in our country. For 100,000 people in Flint, MI, the dignity of being able to turn on a faucet and have clean water has been ripped away. It started 20 months ago. They were lied to. They were told the water was safe. Finally, we are told it was not safe. People told them that somehow this brown water that smelled was safe--clearly not. We now know that about 9,000 children under the age of 6 have been exposed in some cases to astronomical lead levels. There was one story about a home that was tested where the lead levels were higher than a nuclear waste dump. How would you feel if that were your house and somebody told you your children had been exposed to that? I can only imagine. I know how I would feel. A little while ago I met with some pastors from Flint who are here desperately trying to get beyond this. They don't want partisanship; they don't want political fighting; they just want some help. They said: We are not interested in the back-and-forth of all this; we just want clean water, and we want to be able to provide good nutrition for these children who are already impacted. The scary thing about this lead is that it stays in your body forever. I am learning more about lead than I ever wanted to know, and one of the things we know is that it does not leave. There is no magic pill. It is nutrition, so you have to give them more iron and milk and calcium and vitamins. There is a whole range of things I am working on now. I am grateful for the support from the Department of Agriculture to help us do that. We have too many children--if anyone saw Time magazine--we have children with rashes, babies, people losing their hair. I met with pastors, and after that I met with another group of citizens from Flint: moms who are trying to figure out a way to avoid mixing this water with their baby formula. I had been told by the Michigan State department of WIC that they were giving ready-to-feed formula, and I just met with a group of moms who said that was not true. We are talking about children whose brains are being developed and right now whose futures are being snatched away from them. They didn't cause it. Their moms didn't cause it. Their dads didn't cause it. Others caused it, and we can debate who that is. I am happy to have that discussion. Right now I just want to help those people. I want people to see the people of Flint. They have not been seen or heard on this issue for almost 2 years. The folks who were supposed to care, who were supposed to see them, didn't. We have a chance to say to them: We see you. We hear you. We know that you as Americans have a right, if there is a catastrophe in Flint, to have the same sense of urgency, of support that we give to other things, such as a fertilizer explosion in West Texas, where we brought in millions of dollars, or hurricanes in Texas and South Carolina--emergency spending, I understand. We all know that something can happen beyond the control of citizens, and they look to us. I know we all have other issues around aging pipes. We all have infrastructure issues, and frankly, we should be addressing those. There are very positive bipartisan proposals to address water and sewer infrastructure, and I support those. I want to do what we can, and hopefully this will serve as an impetus for that, but nowhere in America do we have an entire city's drinking water system shut down from usage. We have other situations in other parts of Michigan. I am not asking--although I would love to provide help in all the cities in Michigan, I understand that is a broader issue we have to address together. But this is about a catastrophe, a crisis, something that we do emergency spending on when there is a situation where we see lead levels in some parts of this community that are higher than a toxic waste dump. Even in areas now where it is OK, we have small businesses--it just breaks your heart. Downtown Flint has been doing a great job of rebuilding the downtown. Everyone focuses on the exciting things in Detroit, but Flint also has done great things, bringing great restaurants downtown. Even when folks invest in their own water system so they are absolutely sure their water is safe, people won't come in because now it is Flint, MI. Nobody believes any of the water is safe. It is now a joke: If you go to Flint, don't drink the water. So we have businesses closing. We have a community collapsing that needs help, and the bottom-line help they need is to fix the pipes. Senator Peters and I are not suggesting that it is entirely a Federal responsibility. In fact, it is a joint responsibility. In fact, we would argue that more of the responsibility be on the State than the Federal Government. But we do have a shared responsibility to step in and help and give some immediate help to be able to get this going. That is what we are asking for. Up until yesterday afternoon, we thought we had a bipartisan solution. I appreciate the work that has been done by the chair and the ranking member. We thought we were there. We found a source to pay for it. Even though we don't always pay for other emergencies, we found a way to do it. We go to the Congressional Budget Office. We find there are a couple of technical things. Lord, help us, we love the CBO. There is a technical thing that doesn't affect the Senate called a blue slip to deal with. We do it all the time--another issue around scoring that we are working hard around. Suddenly, everything stops over procedure, over bureaucracy and procedure. I know that when we did a transportation bill, we waived every single point of order because we wanted to do it. I wanted to do it. I supported it. But now when we are talking about helping an important community in the State of Michigan be able to get some help out of a disaster, all of a sudden, no, no, no; there are all kinds of procedures and reasons. I don't buy it for a second. I don't buy it for a second. When we want to help Americans, we help Americans. That is what we do. It is our job to do those things. One of the things that I now find such an insult, such a slap in the face--I don't know if this means that folks aren't--we are still trying to work this out, Mr. President, and I am hopeful that we will so there can be an energy bill. But now there is an amendment that has been filed to pay for helping Flint by taking dollars away from new development of technologies for automobiles--something Senator Peters and I have been champions of. Back in the 2007 Energy bill, I was able to get a provision in, when we raised CAFE standards, to support companies to create that new technology here in America so the jobs wouldn't go overseas, they would be here. It is work that has made a real difference, that brought jobs back from other countries. Senator Cassidy and I have been working on a provision to expand that because of trucks because they are getting CAFE standard increases and so on. I had a commitment and we had a commitment to actually do that on the floor, to get that done, but now, all of a sudden, the money from that is being proposed to pay for fixing the drinking water system in Flint. Flint is the home of the automobile industry. Flint, MI, is where much of this started, where the middle class started, where the auto industry started. General Motors is still there, although they won't use the water because it corrodes their auto parts. So they won't use the water. But now we are hearing in an amendment for the people of Flint: Well, you have a choice. You can either drink the water and have safe water or you can have a job. Well, that is an insult. I personally feel it is an insult. It is being done to just jam us and trying to embarrass us--that we don't care about the people of Flint because we are not willing to spend money from a new technology source that is being used to create new jobs. I don't buy it. That is certainly not going to be getting support. When we are trying to work in good faith to get this done, I am amazed that this would be offered, which is clearly just an effort to jam us. I don't know where we are. I still am a very positive person. I tend to spend most of my time working behind the scenes to get things done-- I am very proud of that--and so does my colleague Senator Peters. We are people who like to get results. We are not into demagoguing about this. Lord knows it is ripe for it. We want to do something that will help people who need help. So we are going to continue to do that. We are going to continue to work to try to do that. We are not going to stop, and we are not going to support moving forward until we have something that is a reasonable way that we can tell the people of Flint that we have done something to help them. At this point in time, I can't look at this child or his mom in the face--or any other children or parents--and not tell them we did everything humanly possible to be able to make sure we could help them as quickly as possible to stop using bottled water and be able to actually give their kids a bath, cook for them, and have the dignity of what every one of us has--the gift of clean water, which is a basic in the United States, or should be. So we are meeting, and we are doing everything we can. We have agreed to cut in half the original request we have asked for. We have agreed to a structure proposed by the Republican majority. We have said we are going to be flexible here, but we are not willing to walk away from Flint. We will not walk away from Flint. Too many people in the State of Michigan have done that for too long, and we are not going to do that. We are going to continue to do everything we can to fix this problem. If clean water in America is not a basic human right, I don't know what is. I hope in the end we are going to be able to stand up and say in a bipartisan basis that we did this. That is all we are asking for-- that we actually do something to fix this problem. I see that face and the face of other children every night before I go to bed. Every morning when I get up I think about what is happening this morning, what is happening tonight, what is happening tomorrow in Flint. We are going to do everything we can to make sure other people remember and are willing to step up and treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve as American citizens. Thank you, Mr. President. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. I appreciate that I am running out of time. I will close. I will be back a lot today. I would just indicate to the President and to others that we want this fixed. We have been working in good faith. We thought we had an agreement working within the framework given to us by the Republicans working on this issue. We are not going to let procedural issues that are fixed every single day in the Senate get in the way of what is happening. I am not going to tell families, I am not going to tell children, I am not going to tell moms in Flint ``Sorry, we can't help you'' because of some bureaucratic procedural issue that folks don't want to fix when they fix them every single day. I yield the floor, and I will be back.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about an urgent and truly tragic situation in Flint, MI, and ask my colleagues in the Senate to look very hard at what has happened here and to help us address this issue. This is a public health emergency on a massive scale. It is unprecedented. I don't know of any other American city where families in the entire city--in the entire city--can't drink their water, can't cook with their water, can't bathe their children with the water. We need to be very clear. This morning, as every other morning now going on 2 years, people in Flint took showers by pouring bottled water over their heads. They didn't have the dignity of clean water coming out of their taps. They had to use bottled water to drink, to make breakfast for their children, to make a pot of coffee--the things we all use water for and the things that all of us take for granted every single day. They will not have clean water until the pipes get replaced. Up until now, we have had what we thought was a good series of negotiations. We thought we had an agreement. I have been very hopeful about the bipartisan discussions to help these families, and we have been incredibly flexible, Senator Peters and I. We just want to get this done. We are not interested in the politics or making this partisan. We want to get something done for the people of Flint. We understand that money doesn't grow on trees. Senator Peters and I are willing in fact to support a proposal that was less than half of what we originally requested in order to be able to immediately get some help to the families of Flint. Now, we can't even get agreement on that because we are hearing procedural excuses--procedural excuses that are overcome every single day on this Senate floor when we want to. Lord knows, there were a whole bunch on the Transportation bill, all of which were waived because people wanted to fix the roads. I am left wondering what is going on. What is really going on here? I am asking that we come together and understand that this is a serious, urgent issue and that we not accept procedural excuses. It is an urgent, severe, outrageous crisis, and we need to act now. When we look at what has been said on the Senate floor, it is very concerning to me. One Senator yesterday said we are putting the cart before the horse by asking for money even before the government knew what this was going to cost. But, in fact, the Governor in writing requested from the President $766 million to replace the pipes in Flint and another $41 million in protective measures. So we are working within the numbers that the Governor of Michigan has identified and requested. While we truly don't know the full cost until work begins, as with any project, we need to begin to get this done immediately. I think what is most important is for us to focus on what is happening to the children and families. No lead level is safe, and I have to say I know a lot more about lead than I have ever known before. Frankly, hearing about the damage done to children and what can happen to individuals is really frightening. We should all be doing everything we can to make sure we address this lead issue across the board. The threshold set by the EPA and the Center for Disease Control is 15 parts per billion of exposure. The water filters that FEMA has provided to families in Flint are certified to protect lead up to 150 parts per billion. In many places, when they are provided and used correctly, that is making a real difference. But, unfortunately, we look at the severity of this. Last week, a new round of tests showed that lead in some homes in Flint range from 153 parts up to 4,000 parts per billion. If they are saying 15 parts per billion is when we need to be worried, I can't even fathom 4,000 parts. We are all looking at all the different numbers, but I heard one commentator in the news say that the exposure to children and families in those particular homes is actually higher than a toxic waste dump. And this is after the city switched back to the Detroit water system because of the damage that was done to the pipes. So this is severe and urgent. We have to act now. Unfortunately, the same Senator also suggested we are putting the cart before the horse because this was a local issue. Come on. I am really glad that the people of the great State of Michigan didn't have that attitude when a fertilizer plant in West Texas exploded and we spent millions of dollars in Federal funding on that town. That was also a manmade disaster where safety procedures were lax. We all saw the horror of that situation, and we stepped in as Americans to support that community and those families. That is all we are asking. When floods hit South Carolina and Texas last year, we came together with $300 million put in an omnibus for South Carolina and Texas for floods. And just last week, the same Member of the Republican leadership asked President Obama to grant a disaster declaration and funneled millions of dollars to his State. We all know we have challenges in our States, and we need to be thoughtful. But we need to be supporting Americans around the country. This is a disaster. This is a situation where we need to show that we care about a group of people who did nothing. They did nothing, and they are in a situation where their entire water system is unusable. We should be lending a hand. Right now, we have up to 9,000 children under the age of 6 in Flint-- 9,000 children--who are exposed to lead.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, unfortunately, due to inclement weather that delayed my flight to Washington, DC, I was unable to attend today's rollcall vote on the nomination of Alissa M. Starzak to be General Counsel of the Department of the Army. Had I been able to attend, I would have supported her nomination.

Ms. STABENOW

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

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I rise to talk about an opportunity we have in the midst of all the negotiations going on to do something incredibly meaningful, that has bipartisan support, and literally will address a group of diseases that affect one out of four people every year--one out of four people who work here, one out of four people in our families. A set of diseases right now for which less than 40 percent of those with the disease get the treatment they need, but when they do, it is manageable and they can go on and lead productive lives. What I am talking about is mental illness. One out of four people every year has some kind of mental illness which is treatable and with medications and with treatment--just like any other disease--can allow someone to go on and live their life. We have started the process in public policy of doing what we call mental health parity by saying now that insurance can't discriminate whether it is a behavioral disease, mental health, substance abuse or physical health, but we don't yet have the services in the community. So what happens is we pay dearly. Not only do individuals pay with their lives, their livelihoods, their families, and communities pay, but we pay as taxpayers. It was interesting to me, speaking at a conference a couple of days ago here in DC with law enforcement and mental health professionals coming together, to hear about the Cook County Jail in Chicago, a huge facility. The sheriff there now has appointed a psychiatrist as the director of the jail. Why? Because one-third of the people housed in the jail have psychiatric problems. They shouldn't be in the jail. They may have committed some minor infraction because they didn't have a job or maybe they were on the street. Maybe they were hearing voices in their head and didn't hear the police officer and didn't respond in a way--or where it was considered belligerent. We now know from papers today in Michigan that studies show that people who are mentally ill are 16 times more likely to be killed in a year by a police officer. I am not suggesting that it is at all on purpose but it is because of the nature of the behavioral problems and what ends up happening in the real world when people aren't getting the treatments they need. We know what happens in terms of violence and people committing crimes, although someone who has a mental health disease is much more likely to be a victim than a perpetrator. We have people in the emergency rooms of our hospitals. I have talked to hospital administrators and doctors who say what we need is to make sure we have a 24-hour emergency psychiatric facility, a place where someone can go or family members can call or the police can use if they find someone who needs help, not the hospital emergency room and certainly not the jail. The good news is that we have started a bipartisan effort that can fix this. My partner and colleague in this, Senator Blunt, and I, over a year ago, authored a provision that was passed by the House and Senate to begin something called the Excellence in Mental Health Act. We now have in law a definition of quality behavioral health services. We have federally qualified health centers in the community where people without insurance can go and get preventive care and get the physical health services they need, but the health clinics can't get reimbursed for mental health or substance abuse services. So we now have a definition. We have standards for what quality behavioral health care, mental health, and substance abuse care looks like. We have standards. We begin to provide dollars so that communities can provide those services if they meet the standards. A couple of years ago when we put together money for the first step by saying we are going to provide money for 8 States to be able to meet those standards--8 out of 50--the good news was that half the States in the country responded and said: We want to be one of those eight States. Twenty-four States across our country now have signed up. They have received planning grants to assess their community mental health services, what they are doing, and how they can meet these new high standards, how they can make sure they include 24-hour psychiatric emergency services in their community so their citizens have the help they need as well as ongoing help for families and individuals. Twenty- four States have said: Sign me up. We are willing to do the work. We have funding for eight of those States to actually be able to do it, to change lives; eight of those States to be able to provide services, treatment, hope for individual families, help for the sheriff, and relief for the emergency room. What we are proposing now and what is under consideration is to fund the 24 States. We have 24 States that have stepped forward. Let's provide them the resources. In the context of what we are talking about in the budget, it is a very small amount of money. We could say to the communities across this country and virtually half of the States that we are going to give them the resources to meet higher quality standards, to be able to provide the services desperately needed for one out of four people every year who have some kind of mental illness. The ramifications of doing nothing are severe in so many ways. The reality is that we are at a point where we have the opportunity to say that as a country we are going to recognize and treat diseases above the neck the same as diseases below the neck and support communities that step up with higher quality standards and services. In the world in which we live, this would be a huge bipartisan victory. I know this is under discussion, and I am hopeful that as the leadership moves forward, they will join us--the bipartisan coalition in the House and the Senate--in saying yes to give the people an opportunity to live their lives, be successful, work, and manage their diseases in the community just like any other disease. I wish to say in closing that if you are a diabetic, you check your insulin every day. If you check your sugar and take your insulin, you manage your disease. It is not debilitating. You can go out and live your life. I imagine there are many people who work in the Senate who are managing diabetes. You can do the same thing if you are bipolar. It is a chemical imbalance of the brain. It is just a different organ, a different part of the body. If, in fact, you have the medication to stabilize and you have the support and treatment you need, you can manage that disease, go on with your life, be successful, work, have a family, and be able to live with dignity. That is what we are talking about. We are talking about giving people who have diseases in the brain the same opportunity for treatment and management of those diseases to live healthy, hopeful, successful lives as we do for people who have diseases in any other organ of the body. We have the opportunity to do that. At the end of next week, I deeply hope we will be able to celebrate that we have done something incredibly important for families across America. I yield the floor.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, I thank my colleague who just spoke for his vigilance in reminding us how we have to pay attention every single day to what is happening in Iran and to be smart and strategic and let them know we are very serious about pushing back. Religious Freedom Madam President, in this country one of our core values is that you can come here and build a better life for yourself and for your family. That is the American dream. Our Nation was founded by people who had that dream, people who dreamt of religious freedom. Many of our ancestors followed that dream to these shores, from the early Puritans and Quakers, Irish and German immigrants, Italian and Jewish immigrants, and so many others. Life was not easy for them. They faced discrimination and even violence by those who were suspicious of them, who saw them as different, who challenged their right to have the American dream. But those Americans worked very hard and built a life for themselves. They raised families and became successful. They opened small businesses and large businesses. They became doctors and lawyers. They served in our armed services. They served as police officers and firefighters. They ran for office. They made amazing contributions to our Nation's economy and culture. They helped make America great. That core value, our American dream, is being challenged today. Donald Trump, who is running for President of the United States of America, has suggested that we ban all Muslims from coming into our country based purely on their faith, on their religion. As someone who represents the most densely populated Muslim population in America, I find this suggestion, this statement, to be outrageous and absolutely un-American because I know the rich history that people of Muslim faith have created in my State and the contributions they make every single day to our economy, to our wonderfully diverse culture, and the quality of life in our communities. Hundreds of thousands of people from Muslim countries came to southeastern Michigan in the early part of the last century, like so many others from the South and around the country and the world, after Henry Ford offered a $5-a-day wage to work in America's first automobile factories. Those Muslim Americans were still working in those plants during World War II, building the so-called arsenal of democracy--the planes, the ships, the tanks that won the war and defeated the enemies of democracy. Many thousands of Muslim Americans have served our Nation during times of war, and many thousands are serving our country right now, at this very moment. They are putting their lives on the line right now for the freedoms we all hold dear. Take a walk through Arlington National Cemetery, and you will see many graves bearing the crescent and star. How can anyone question the patriotism of those Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country? They helped make America great. Those men and women who defended us in the Armed Forces loved America, and they died for America because America is their home, their family's home. So of course they see ISIS as the enemy, just as every non-Muslim American does as well. Their families are the ones who are on the front lines of the violence in the Middle East. Their families have lost their homes, their businesses, and in many cases their lives because of the brutality and violence of ISIS. Their families are the ones fleeing the violence to save their children. Muslim Americans understand that ISIS does not represent Islam. Within every religion, there are violent individuals who twist the meaning of sacred texts and symbols to justify acts of violence and murder--every religion. The KKK used blessed symbols of Christianity while terrorizing and murdering African Americans. Just as the Ku Klux Klan does not speak for Christians, ISIS does not speak for Muslims. Furthermore, we must recognize that our culture of inclusion and our tradition of welcoming people of different faiths since the beginning of our country are our greatest weapons in defeating ISIS. What ISIS desires more than anything else is to see our country discriminate against Muslim Americans so they can use that as a recruiting tool all over social media, which we know they are very effective at doing. They want Muslim Americans to believe that America is not their home, that we do not value their leadership and contributions in our communities, that America does not welcome their faith, and that America hates them. They want that. That cannot be who we are. That is not who we are. All of us were shaken by the violence in Paris and San Bernardino, but we know that fear cannot be our guide in America. President Franklin Roosevelt understood that fear makes America weak. America is great when America is united and not pitting neighbor against neighbor, which is happening in too many places in my State and across the country. When we are united and dedicated to our principals of freedom and liberty, we are great. The first liberty of our Constitution's First Amendment is the freedom of worship. When I think about the Muslim American children in Michigan who were afraid to go to school today because of what might happen to them after hearing what Donald Trump was saying about them and their families, it makes me sick to my stomach. I want those children to know that his words are not what America stands for. It is not what makes America great. It is not. It is those children--Muslim and Christian and Jewish--all of whom are full of hope and promise for the future who will make America great again, and I stand with them. I thank the Presiding Officer.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I rise to support the transportation bill and crop insurance. We made a deal with farmers when we gave up direct subsidies that, instead, we would ask them to have skin in the game and to have crop insurance to manage their risk. They have a 5-year bill that gives them certainty. We should not pull the rug out from under them at this time.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. I thank the senior Senator from Vermont for his leadership on this issue. Last year, I had the privilege of leading the first all-women Senate delegation to sub-Saharan Africa to examine food, agriculture, and the critical role women play in local economies. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, nearly 50 percent of all the agricultural work in the region is done by women. Yet, too often, women are not afforded equal opportunities to own property, earn an education, or participate in the political process. That is why I was eager to lead two bipartisan provisions included in the recent AGOA renewal. The first makes clear that we expect our African trading partners to make progress toward establishing policies that support men and women. And the second expands existing agricultural trade technical assistance programs at USDA and USAID and prioritizes outreach to organizations and sectors that support women. At its core, AGOA is about creating the building blocks of an improved trading relationship with sub-Saharan African nations. For the Democratic Republic of the Congo, coffee production presents a critical export opportunity. That is why we must insist that the Congolese Government addresses its inconsistent and burdensome export taxes on coffee producers--most of whom are women--before regaining eligibility for AGOA benefits. We have an opportunity to send a strong message to our African trading partners that we expect them to recognize how vital women are to the development of those nations' economies.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak on behalf of millions of Americans who are very grateful they have health care now under the Affordable Care Act that they didn't have a few years ago. Looking back over the years, I am reminded of the steps forward that we, as Americans, have taken, starting with Medicare and Medicaid, and how we have helped to lift a generation of seniors out of poverty and ill health because of lack of insurance and not having access to prescription drugs. The majority of Medicaid coverage, about 80 percent, is for seniors in nursing homes. We are moving forward again and putting in place the ability of people to see a doctor and get the medical care that they need. With the Affordable Care Act, we took the next important step for over 17 million Americans. Moms and dads don't have to go to bed at night anymore and say: Please, God. Don't let the kids get sick. They know they will be able to take their child to a doctor. They know they are going to be able to get coverage and won't get dropped if they get sick, which was happening in too many cases before the Affordable Care Act. Women now know that just simply being a woman is not a preexisting condition, where we were paying twice as much for basic insurance or blocked from certain kinds of care. I will never forget the debate in the Finance Committee when we included an amendment of mine for comprehensive preventive care, including maternity care for women, and a colleague asked: Why should we cover maternity care? He didn't need maternity care. I reminded him that his mom did, and I reminded him of the importance of maternity care for women and children and those of us who are now adults. So that is now a part of the Affordable Care Act. Young people are now able to stay on their parents' insurance while looking for a full-time job after they graduate from college. Slowing the growth of insurance premiums is what we still need to do. That is what we should be focusing on today together--to continue to be laser focused in that area as well. Now, 17.6 million Americans have health insurance coverage. Under the reconciliation bill--the budget bill in front of us--the rug is going to be pulled out from all of them, from millions of Americans. Passing this reconciliation bill will dismantle the framework, the structure for health care for millions of Americans--men and women and children. It also will do something else. Instead of celebrating health care services that we have had for years--nearly 100 years of preventive health care services--through Planned Parenthood providing essential health services to men and women, particularly in areas that don't have services, such as in rural parts of my State as well as around the country--instead of strengthening those services, what we see is an effort to actually eliminate preventive health care services for women. It seems one more time women's health care is attacked. It takes on all kinds of different forms, but it always ends up with the same thing-- challenges to women's health care. So I am urging my colleagues to vote no on this Republican budget proposal that guts health care for families, that would strip funding for preventive health care, for family planning, and for other preventive health care. Millions will lose their coverage if this passes. Instead of focusing on this bill, which is essentially something that we know is going to be vetoed by the President of the United States--he is not going to allow that health care coverage to be taken away; he is not going to allow preventive health care services to be taken away. We know what the outcome is really going to be. So this is really a political exercise. I understand that people want to say that they voted to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, to take away health insurance for people, and to stop funding for Planned Parenthood and other preventive health care services. But we all know where it is going to end. First of all, I can't believe that people think it is a good idea to do that, but maybe other States are different than Michigan, where people want to have health care for themselves and their families. We have in front of us a whole other range of things that are very important to do right now. There is a major effort on a transportation bill that is, in fact--rather than being partisan and divisive as this budget reconciliation is--bipartisan, and we need to move that as soon as possible. We are working on budget issues and tax policy and other areas where we can work together. The list is long of things the American people want us to get done. We need to be tackling the affordability of college so that more people have the ability to work hard, get good grades, get accepted to school, and go to college. Instead, here we are debating whether people should have health care in the United States of America. The bottom line is that according to the nonpartisan budget office, this bill on the whole would increase premiums by roughly 20 percent above what would be expected under current law. So on top of everything, including over 16 million people losing their health insurance, everybody is going to see their rates go up. Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy New Year--20-percent, on average, increase in premiums. This reconciliation bill makes no sense. It is bad for the American people. It is bad for women. We ought to be focused on things that actually improve quality of life and continue to improve health care and bring down costs for all Americans. I hope we will reject this bill and move on to things that make a lot more sense, certainly for families in Michigan and across the country. I yield the floor.

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

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I wish to honor the service and retirement of one of my dear friends and most respected employees, Melissa Kaltenbach. Melissa has served me and the people of Michigan with infinite loyalty and dedication for the past 27 years. Melissa began working for me in the Michigan House of Representatives and continued her service with me in the State Senate, U.S. House, and now in the U.S. Senate as my director of constituent services. In so many ways, Melissa's job is one of if not the most important jobs on my staff. That is because her work impacts people where it matters most--in their daily lives. Her compassion toward the people of Michigan and understanding of the problems they face has been instrumental in setting the high standards for constituent services in my office and throughout the State of Michigan. She has a unique ability to listen and understand the needs of people, and she demonstrates grace and respect for the dignity of others, even in the most stressful times and most difficult circumstances. She has gone above and beyond in so many ways-- incredible empathy, unwavering loyalty, and infinite patience. There really aren't enough words to describe Melissa's contributions to my office and to my success in serving the people of Michigan over these many years. She has been the go-to person on my team to mentor new staff, handle challenging cases, and answer those questions that don't seem to fall into anyone else's job description. We all wish Melissa continued success and happiness with her family as she begins this new chapter in her life, joining her husband, Tim, in full-time retirement. Her friendship and commitment to me and to the people of Michigan have been immeasurable, as is my gratitude for her decades of service. While my staff and I will miss her presence in our office, she will forever be an invaluable member and leader of ``Team Stabenow.''

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, first, I thank the senior Senator from New Hampshire for her advocacy for small business. We work together on a number of different small business issues dealing with capital, and I appreciate her advocacy. Her partnership has helped us in Michigan on some very important things on which I hope we are going to be able to move forward, so I thank her. Affordable Care Act Mr. President, I want to speak today about the importance of having access to quality, affordable health care. The Affordable Care Act has fixed a lot of what has been wrong with our broken health care system in the past. We no longer have to be afraid of someone in our family getting sick and being dropped from our insurance plan. Being a woman is no longer viewed as a preexisting condition. Young people are able to stay on their parents' plan while they are looking for a job with full health benefits. That has certainly affected people in my family, as I am sure everyone in the Chamber and certainly those across the country have felt this, as they are supporting young people who are moving from high school or college and looking for a job. And we are slowing the growth of health insurance premiums. And, as we have this first week of open enrollment and Americans are heading to healthcare.gov to sign up and get covered, we know we now have 17.6 million more Americans enrolled in the Affordable Care Act who know that if the kids get sick tonight, they will be able to make sure they can go to a doctor and get the health care they need. If they themselves get sick, they won't just be relying on emergency rooms, which are the most expensive way to get regular health care. They will have the peace of mind of knowing they are covered if there is cancer discovered or if there is an accident or something else happens in their family. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the number of people who are uninsured has fallen to 9.2 percent. I would like to see that still lower, but the good news is that it is half of what it was just 2 years ago. So in 2 years we have seen the number of people without health insurance cut in half --I think that is good news--even before the opening of the marketplace and State exchanges. Thanks to the ACA, the rate of uninsured children dropped to 6 percent last year, which is the lowest in history. We have the lowest number of children who are now in a situation where they don't have health care coverage. Unfortunately, just as Americans are reviewing their options right now during the open enrollment period, Republicans are looking to pull the rug out from under these children and their families. A few weeks ago Republicans in the House passed what is called a budget reconciliation bill that essentially, bottom line, guts the Affordable Care Act, removing major provisions that help families get access to quality affordable health care coverage. According to the nonpartisan budget office, the bill on the whole ``would increase premiums . . . by roughly 20 percent above what would be expected under current law'' and cause 16 million people of the 17.6 to lose health insurance. Why in the world would we want to pass this bill? I don't know why in the world the House wanted to pass this bill, but why in the world would we want to pass a bill that will roughly increase premiums by 20 percent above what they otherwise would be and knock 16 million people off their health insurance? Unfortunately, we are going to have that bill in front of us very shortly. I hope we are all going to vote no. Of those who lose insurance, up to 20 percent of them--over 3 million--are children. After achieving the lowest rates of uninsured children in history, we are going to have in front of us a bill that would require elimination of 3 million children from being able to get health insurance. The bill also eliminates the Prevention and Public Health Fund. As they say, we know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of care. It is much better to focus on healthy outcomes, to focus on reducing obesity, diabetes, heart disease, strokes, and all of those things that allow us on the front end to do prevention and public health and wellness rather than picking up the pieces. It would eliminate that thought. In Michigan these funds have been used to help prevent tobacco use and to promote awareness of the importance of children getting immunized against debilitating and deadly diseases, to name just a few things. Critically important, the House bill strips funding for Planned Parenthood. The budget office again estimates that up to 25 percent-- one out of four--people currently being served by clinics for preventive health care would face reduced access to care. It makes absolutely no sense to roll back preventive health care for women, to roll back prevention that allows us to create opportunities for people with information and tools they need to be healthy rather than getting diseases down the road. Certainly, it makes no sense to raise premiums by 20 percent or to see 16 million people lose their health care. I hope when that budget reconciliation bill comes before the Senate that we will say no and allow millions of Americans to continue to have the peace of mind of knowing they will have access to the medical care they need for themselves and their families. I yield the floor.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, just a week ago the American people were able to breathe a collective sigh of relief--and I think all of us did in this Chamber as well--as Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate finally pulled back from what would have been a financial catastrophe. We had a potential default of our country's bills. There was a potential government shutdown, but that was averted, and we passed a budget with no time to spare. It was a good thing to do on a bipartisan basis, to be able to show that we could work together, develop a bipartisan budget. I believe it was 3 a.m. when we had the final vote on early Friday morning, but we put that in place and had some confidence at that moment that we were going to be moving forward with a comprehensive budget--a comprehensive appropriations process--that would allow us to say to the American people that we were addressing all of the needs they care about: security, growing the economy, making sure we are investing in middle-class families, strengthening our defense, and so on. Now, not even a week later, Republican leaders are back to their old tricks again. We are quite shocked to see that rather than giving the appropriators the opportunity to put together a comprehensive appropriations process, a comprehensive budget to be able to move forward on all of the needs of the country, what we are seeing is potentially a trick to undo the bipartisan budget agreement through the backdoor. We have seen this movie before, a few years ago, passing the Department of Defense appropriations and then forcing everything else into a long-term continuing resolution. We are not going down this road again. We are operating under the basis that we have a bipartisan agreement. A lot of folks on both sides of the aisle deserve credit for that, but we want to stick to that and a comprehensive budget moving forward--no tricks to undo the bipartisan budget agreement. Frankly, our families deserve a budget that grows the economy and invests in our middle-class families. How many of us have said the issue is that folks don't have money in their pocket, good-paying jobs, and can't do what they need to do to be able to put food on the table, send the kids to school, pay the mortgage, be able to support their families in a way that we always have in America, and be able to grow the economy with a strong, vibrant middle class. We also need to strengthen our national defense--our national security--broadly. If we only move forward on Department of Defense, as we know, we are leaving out a whole range of things that are part of our national security. I can say that as a border State in Michigan, we need to be concerned. We hear a lot of debate and discussion about border security. We need to make sure we are adequately funding border security. Cyber security, for us it means things such as the Coast Guard. When we look at other areas of security, it includes food security efforts that people care about. It includes first responders, police, and firefighters. It includes airports--a whole range of things that need to be looked at comprehensively. We want to see the whole budget, not just the Department of Defense. We want to see the agreement on the whole budget so we know there aren't going to be any tricks. If there aren't going to be any tricks, what are folks trying to hide? Let's just develop the whole budget and then move the whole budget. We also know people care deeply about growing the economy and jobs, and that means supporting small business. It means investing, making things, and growing things, which I talk a lot about in Michigan. That is what we do; we make things and grow things. There are efforts to support that that we need to do. Frankly, some of that is in critical partnerships with the private sector and job training. The No. 1 thing I hear from manufacturers today--in fact, the National Association of Manufacturers tells us there are 600,000 unfilled jobs today because we don't have people with the right skills for the right job. That is something we need to address in our budget: job training, education, and college affordability. How many times have we heard about young people or in our own families know people who have come out of college, they did everything we told them to do: Go to college, get good grades. They graduate, and then they come out with more debt than if they were trying to buy a big house. In fact, the realtors tell us now they can't qualify young couples to buy a house because of their college debt. That is part of this debate on the budget: education, access to college, job training, support for small businesses, and support for our manufacturers and our farmers, large and small. Another critical area in our budget that we want to make sure is adequately funded is our ability to save lives through medical research, such as new treatments, new cures that we all have heard so much about that we are excited about. The whole effort now--finally, we are doing research on the brain, the least researched organ in the body. That impacts Alzheimer's; $1 out of every $5 Medicare dollars is spent on Alzheimer's disease and dementias, Parkinson's, mental illness, and addictions. That doesn't count what needs to happen with cancers. It doesn't count how close we are if we were to double down on our medical research in this country. Juvenile diabetes--we could go on and on. That is part of this budget. We want to see what is being funded on medical research in the National Institutes of Health before we move forward on only one piece of this, as we are very late in the game to debate this. This might have been a strategy we could do last spring. Now what we need to have is a look at the entire budget: mental health, substance abuse, services for veterans. Whether it is veterans and job training, whether it is providing veterans an opportunity to have a home and live in dignity, whether it is mental health substance abuse services, that is in this budget. We need a comprehensive budget. We need to know, the American people need to know the whole budget and that there are not going to be tricks in this process. Protecting our natural resources. For us around the Great Lakes, 20 percent of the world's freshwater, it is incredibly important for us that we know how the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is funded; how we are supporting our clean air, clean water, and land initiatives. We have new challenges in outrageous things such as what is happening in Flint, MI, where there is very high lead found in the water and we need pipes changed. We need to be supporting infrastructure around not only roads and bridges, which are critically important, but aging pipes that have been there for 60 years, 70 years, 80 years, 100 years that we are now seeing--and multiplied by a series of errors and incredibly bad misjudgments at the State level, at the minimum. We are seeing situations where we are going to need to support efforts on making sure we can upgrade our pipes, our water pipes, water and sewer, and so on. That is all part of this budget. So when we look at moving forward, last week at the end of the week was a good time because it was an opportunity to come together in a bipartisan way, avert disaster, and actually come together as the American people want us to do every day. People in Michigan ask: Can't you guys just get something done? Can't you just work together? Well, at the end of last week we actually did that. We actually came together and developed a plan, a 2-year overall budget process, and now it is implementing it through appropriations. What we as Democrats are committed to doing is implementing the agreement in total. We are not going to support going back to where we were before, where we move one budget--the budget that has the most interest among Republican colleagues, the Department of Defense--and then potentially see all of these other needs go unaddressed in a fair and responsible way in terms of what American families are asking us to do. We just want to know that we are truly working to implement a bipartisan budget that we voted on--no backdoor tricks. Unfortunately, we have seen this movie before--no backdoor tricks to undermine critical needs for jobs, the economy, quality of life, protecting our natural resources, our broad security needs as a country. Let's put that strategy aside rather than trying to have a vote on only moving forward on the Defense appropriations. I urge that Republican leadership put that strategy aside, give the appropriators the time they need--we have good people on both sides of the aisle who can work together as appropriators--and provide us a balanced, responsible budget for the United States of America that will in fact grow the economy, invest in our middle-class families, and strengthen our national defense. I am hopeful that in the end that is what will happen. Thank you.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Will the Senator from Washington yield for one quick question?

Ms. STABENOW. Shocking.

Ms. STABENOW. Was that $9 billion?

Ms. STABENOW. That is billion with a ``B''?

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, if I might just wrap up one statement. I know my colleague from New Jersey is here. I want to thank my colleagues who are such great leaders on the Export-Import Bank, the Senator from Washington State, Ms. Cantwell, and Senator Heitkamp from North Dakota. I just want to put on the record that 100 businesses in Michigan alone were assisted in $1 billion in exports, which meant jobs in Michigan last year. We can't wait. We need those jobs. Our businesses need the support. We need to get this done now. Thank you.

Ms. STABENOW. We have economic activity that is hanging in the balance, and because of this inactivity, we are losing $9 billion every single day?

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, today's extension of the deadline to fully implement positive train control technology is deeply disappointing. Passing this extension means that our rail system failed to make good on its original deadline, despite having nearly 7 years to do so. There are many reasons for the failure to meet this deadline, and the responsibility for this failure is widely shared. The critical bottom line, however, is that positive train control saves lives. And we were tragically reminded of that fact again last May, when the derailment of a speeding train near Philadelphia killed eight passengers, including a wonderful Michigan native, Rachel Jacobs, and injured 200 others. Had positive train control been in place on this section of track, it could have prevented this terrible tragedy. I understand that today's extension includes concrete milestones, new progress reports, and stronger oversight by the Department of Transportation to ensure positive train control is a reality sooner rather than later. This needs to be a top priority for all of those responsible for getting this done. This extension should not be seen as an excuse to slow progress. We cannot allow any further delays on installing this essential, lifesaving technology.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I wish to join my colleagues in support of the 55th National Forest Products Week and to recognize the more than 26,000 hard-working men and women that work in the forest products sector in Michigan. Forests in Michigan and nationwide help keep our air and water clean, provide wildlife habitats, and places for recreation. These forests aren't just an environmental treasure; they are an economic powerhouse. Michigan is home to nearly 200 businesses that manufacture everything from office paper to wood pellets for home heating. Nationwide, our forests provide more than 900,000 jobs, creating almost $240 billion in economic output every year. This economic activity leads to new opportunities in rural communities around the country. That's one reason why, as chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, I worked with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to ensure the 2014 farm bill strengthened forestry programs and helped bolster rural economic development. Forest product companies are also leaders in the effort to increase recycling. Today, 96 percent of all communities across the country have access to curbside or drop-off paper recycling programs. On top of that, the millions of Americans who recycle at home, work, and school have helped recover more than 60 percent of the paper consumed in the U.S. in each of the last 3 years. Picture this: each day our paper companies around the country recycle enough paper to fill a 15-mile- long boxcar train. That type of leadership is great news for our planet and has some serious economic savings as well. Already more than 110 mills around the country are making paper using only recovered materials. And efforts are on track to recover more than 70 percent of all paper used by 2020. At the same time, paper can only be recycled a limited number of times, so it's important that steps are taken to ensure sustainable production of paper and forest products from our renewable forest resources. Forest products can also help us become more energy independent. Manufacturers across the industry now use carbon neutral biomass that comes from forest waste--materials like bark, wood scraps, byproducts, and other unusable products--to help power their plants, reduce emissions, and save energy. For all these reasons, I am proud to serve as co-chair of the Paper and Packaging Caucus with my colleague from Arkansas, Senator Boozman. Thank you for the opportunity to recognize the hard-working professionals of the forest products industry in the great State of Michigan. I would urge my colleagues to join me in celebrating National Forest Products Week and applaud the thousands of hard-working Americans who are working hard every day to keep America as the leader in forest products.

Ms. STABENOW

Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, I am very proud to stand up with my colleagues and say: It is time to act. Enough is enough. Close loopholes that are being used by people who are not following the law, unfortunately resulting in death and injury to children and families across the country. Like a lot of my colleagues, I grew up in a small rural town in Northern Michigan. My family members are all hunters. We enjoy the outdoors and gun ownership. I purchase and own guns myself. That is not what this is about. My family goes through background checks. We don't want people being able to use loopholes and not to have to follow the law. So this is simply about making sure that the law makes sense and that we are enforcing it. I also think it is very important to stress the fact that we know there are tremendous mental health needs in this country. In fact, Senator Blunt and I offered legislation--the Excellence in Mental Health Act--before this body that was passed as a pilot project to get started about 18 months ago. If we had the full support of our Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate, we could quickly make comprehensive quality mental health services available all across the country. Instead, because we have not yet--I hope we can get that support. I would love to see that support. If we had that support, we would have more than eight States that are going to have emergency mental health services available, 24-hour services available, so families or law enforcement or individuals have a place to take someone or someone can go in themselves and ask for help--24-hour psychiatric services available on an emergency basis. That is what is in the Excellence in Mental Health Act. We have begun the process to make sure it is available in these States. It needs to be available in 50 States. We need to make sure comprehensive services are available in the community for behavioral health just as we have for federally qualified health centers. We came together on a bipartisan basis to extend funding for federally qualified health centers. We now have a new category called federally qualified behavioral health clinics, and funding will be available to comprehensively provide those services in eight States under our pilot project. It needs to be in 50 States. I welcome colleagues coming to the floor and talking about what we need to do in mental health. We have colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

Ms. STABENOW. If I may ask for 15 more seconds. We have colleagues on both sides of the aisle on bipartisan proposals on a number of different issues. Let's get that done, too. Let's fully fund comprehensive community mental health services. Let's work together on the other issues. It is time to pass commonsense gun safety laws.