John Thune

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the senior Senator from South Dakota and junior Senator from Tennessee be authorized to sign duly enrolled bills or joint resolutions during today's session of the Senate.

Mr. THUNE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, December 22 will mark an anniversary, the second anniversary of the signing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Tax reform was a big priority for Republicans. We wanted to help American families by reducing their tax burden and spurring the kind of economic growth that would result in better jobs and better wages. At the end of 2017, we passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We cut tax rates for American families, doubled the child tax credit, and nearly doubled the standard deduction. We lowered tax rates across the board for owners of small and medium-sized businesses, farms and ranches. We expanded business owners' ability to recover the cost of investments made in their businesses, which frees up cash they can reinvest into operations and their workers, and we lowered our Nation's massive corporate tax rate, which up until January 1 of 2018 was the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world, and we brought the U.S. international tax system into the 21st century so American businesses are not operating at a competitive disadvantage next to their foreign counterparts. Over the last 2 years, tax reform has done exactly what we intended. It has allowed American families to keep more of their hard-earned money, and it has helped spur wage growth and increase the availability of good jobs for American workers. For 2018, the average family of four with an income of $75,000 saw a tax cut of more than $2,000. On top of that, company after company responded to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act by issuing bonuses, improving benefits, or increasing wages. At least 100 utility companies around the country announced plans to cut utility rates for consumers. Then, of course, there is the economic growth that the law has spurred. A whopping 266,000 jobs were created in November, smashing expectations and bringing the average monthly job creation for 2019 to a strong 180,000 jobs per month. Job creation since President Trump was elected has exceeded the Congressional Budget Office's 2016 preelection prediction by more than 5 million jobs. The unemployment rate is at a 50-year low and has been at or below 4 percent for an incredible 21 straight months. The year 2019 has also seen record-low unemployment rates for African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Americans with a disability, Americans without a high school diploma, and veterans. For 20 straight months, there have been more jobs available than Americans looking for work. Meanwhile, wages for American workers are growing steadily. Wage growth has been at or above 3 percent for 16 straight months. Before the start of this streak, the last time wage growth had reached 3 percent was more than a decade ago. Income inequality has declined. The poverty rate has fallen to a 17-year low. The list goes on. Those are a lot of numbers and percentages, but they all boil down to one thing, and that is that American families are doing better. Thanks to Republican economic policies, fewer Americans are having to choose between a car repair and a doctor's bill. More Americans are able to put away money each month for their retirement or their children's education. There are more good jobs available for Americans looking for work. Of course, there is still more work to be done. Our farm economy, for example, is not doing as well as the economy as a whole. Passing policies that will bring relief to our farmers and ranchers and expand markets for their products is a priority of mine. But 2 years on from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, we can celebrate the fact that millions of American families are bringing home more money in their paychecks and have access to better jobs and better opportunities. Preserving and building on those accomplishments is a Republican priority. Unfortunately, our Democratic colleagues are more likely to suggest tax hikes than preserving the tax cuts that have brought so much economic progress over the past couple of years. Democrats opposed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, despite the fact that many of the ideas included were the product of both Republican and Democratic proposals. They objected to it, and they fought it because they were determined not to work with this President. Two years on, Democrats would still like to pretend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act didn't help American families, despite the reams of statistics on the economic progress we have made and the fact that an estimated 90 percent of middle-class families received a tax cut. After all, if Democrats acknowledged that tax cuts have made life better for families, it would be even harder for them to defend the massive middle-class hikes that would be needed to fund their socialist proposals like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. It is unfortunate the Democrats are so opposed to policies that have made life better for millions of Americans. I am proud of all we have achieved for American families with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. I will continue to work with my colleagues to keep our economy growing and to expand opportunities for Americans even further. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Cassidy), the Senator from Montana (Mr. Daines), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Kennedy), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Perdue), the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Sasse), and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).

Mr. THUNE

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

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, every American has had to deal with annoying and illegal robocalls. All of us have been interrupted at one time or another by a robocall's announcing ``You have won a prize'' or claiming to need important banking information so that our accounts will not be closed. These calls are a major nuisance. Of course, they are not just a nuisance. Too many Americans fall victim to sophisticated robocall scammers and have their money or identities stolen. These individuals spend months or years struggling to get their lives back after falling prey to these scammers. There are currently laws and fines in place to prevent scam artists from preying on people through the telephone. Unfortunately, these measures have not been sufficient. In many cases, robocall scammers simply build the current fines into the cost of doing business, and the Federal Communications Commission's enforcement efforts are hampered by a tight time window for pursuing violators. I have been working on this issue since my time as chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and at the end of last year, I introduced the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act, or the TRACED Act, with my colleague Senator Markey. The Senate passed our bill in May, and last week our bill was passed by the House of Representatives. The TRACED Act provides tools to discourage illegal robocalls, protect consumers, crack down on offenders. Criminal prosecution of illegal robocallers can be difficult. Scammers are frequently based abroad and quickly shut down shop before authorities can get to them, but I believe we need to make sure there is a credible threat of criminal prosecution and prison for those who use robocalls to prey upon the elderly and other vulnerable Americans. The TRACED Act convenes a working group with representatives from the Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Commerce, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, State attorneys general, and others to identify ways to criminally prosecute illegal robocalling. In the meantime, it expands the window in which the FCC can pursue scammers and levy fines from 1 year to 4 years. The bill also makes it easier for your cell phone carrier to lawfully block calls that aren't properly authenticated, which will ultimately help stop scammers from getting through to your phone in the first place. The TRACED Act also tackles the issue of spoof calls, where scammers make the call appear as if it is coming from some known number. I remember an article from my home State a couple of years ago that reported that scammers had successfully spoofed the number of the Watertown Police Department. To anyone who received a call, it looked as if it really was the Watertown Police Department calling. The TRACED Act also addresses the issue of so-called one-ring scams, where international scammers try to get individuals to return their calls so they can charge them exorbitant fees, and it directs the Federal Communications Commission to convene a working group to address the problem of illegal robocalls being made to hospitals. There are numerous stories of hospital telephone lines being flooded with robocalls, disrupting critical lines of communication, literally, for hours. This can't be allowed to go on. I want to thank Senator Markey for partnering with me on the TRACED Act, and my House colleagues for advancing this legislation. I am proud of the bipartisan support our bill has received in both Houses of Congress. One last step remains before we can get this bill to the President's desk, and that is Senate passage of the final bill. I am hoping we can get that done in the coming days so we can get this bill to the President before Christmas. While the TRACED Act may not eliminate all of the robocalls Americans receive, it will go a long way toward making it safe to answer your phone again. I look forward to seeing this legislation signed into law in the very near future. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).

Mr. THUNE

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

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, over in the House this week, Democrats are taking up the latest installment in their campaign to have the government take over Americans' healthcare: the Pelosi prescription drug bill. There is no question that high prescription drug costs are a problem. One in four seniors reports difficulty affording medications, and there are too many stories of patients being forced to ration pills or to abandon their prescription at the pharmacy counter. But the Pelosi drug bill is the wrong prescription for the problem of high drug prices. Why? Because it would reduce Americans' access to lifesaving treatments and discourage investment in prescription drug research. Between 2011 and 2018, more than 250 new medications were introduced worldwide. American patients have access to nearly all of them, but that is not the situation for patients in a lot of other countries. The chamber of commerce reports that patients in France have access to just 50 percent of those new drugs. French patients, in other words, are missing out on fully half of the new drugs that have been introduced in the past 8 years. Why do Americans have such tremendous access to new drugs while other countries trail behind? Because the U.S. Government doesn't dictate drug prices or drug coverage. As statistic after statistic demonstrates, when governments start imposing price controls, patients' access to new drugs and treatments diminishes. Government price controls also discourage the medical research and innovation that produce the prescription drug breakthroughs of the future. The United States leads the world in prescription drug innovation, and a big reason for that is because the U.S. Government doesn't dictate drug prices. It wasn't always this way. European investment in drug research used to exceed U.S. investment, but that changed when European governments stepped in and started imposing price controls. Today, European investment in drug research and development is almost 40 percent lower than U.S. investment, in large part because of European governments' price controls. No other country comes close to achieving the number of prescription drug breakthroughs that companies in the United States achieve. That situation, however, is not going to last if the Democratic Party has its way. The Pelosi drug bill would impose a system of government price controls on up to 250 medications, and reduced access to drugs and fewer medical breakthroughs would soon follow. The California Life Sciences Association released a statement noting that the Pelosi drug bill could result in ``an 88-percent reduction in the number of drugs that are brought to market by small/emerging companies in California.'' It goes on to say that ``such a dramatic decline would be felt most in the higher risk/smaller population therapeutic areas of R&D, including new drugs for endocrine, metabolic, genetic and rare diseases, and pediatric cancers.'' Again, that is from the California Life Sciences Association. In other words, there would be fewer medical breakthroughs for those who need them the most. As I said earlier, the high cost of some prescription drugs can be a real problem for many families, but the answer--the answer--is not to introduce a government-run pricing system that would mean that important prescription drugs would not be there when you or your child needs them. There are a lot of things we can do to lower the cost of prescription drugs without resorting to government price controls. Multiple Senate committees have been actively engaged on this topic. There are options for how to improve transparency in a complicated and often opaque drug- pricing process. There are ideas to examine competition and consolidation in the pharmaceutical supply chain; to ensure that generic companies can access the samples they need to develop a new generic or biosimilar; to prevent companies from engaging in patent thicketing to block competition; to promote real-time benefit tools to help inform consumers of cheaper drug options; to advance value-based insurance design to support coverage of high-value items and services, like medicines, that people with chronic conditions need to manage their health; and to modernize the Medicare Part D plan design and cap seniors' out-of-pocket costs. Republicans in the House recently introduced legislation on prescription drug costs that both promotes innovation and contains bipartisan ideas for reform, including increased transparency in drug pricing and provisions to prevent drug companies from gaming the system. This bill provides several ideas passed by the Senate Finance Committee, while focusing on policies that can be passed through both Chambers of Congress. Importantly, it eliminates those policies that have divided us. There are bipartisan solutions on the table. It is unfortunate that House Democrats have abandoned bipartisan efforts on drug pricing and have decided to pursue their government-run alternative. It boils down, really, simply to this: Government price controls mean access to fewer drugs, and access to fewer drugs means that when you or your child or your mom or your dad needs a lifesaving medication, that drug may be out there, but it may not be out there for you, and that is not acceptable. The Pelosi drug bill is a bad prescription for the American people. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr) and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, it should come as no surprise that I might have a different point of view than the Democrat leader when it comes to the issue of net neutrality. If you look at what has happened since the FCC ruled on this, there were all these terrible apocalyptic predictions that were made about how speeds were going to slow down, the internet was going to slow to a crawl, and you wouldn't be able to do basic applications anymore, none of which have happened. Obviously, we all believe--I certainly do, and I think most of my colleagues on this side believe--that if you want to have an open and free internet, that is a good thing, and if there are concerns about blocking or throttling or slowing speeds in some way, the Congress should be heard from on that because what we have had now for several years is this ping-pong effect. When one party is in power, they change the rules to suit their desires, and then the other party comes to power and changes it. Then you have all this litigation that goes on in the courts, which doesn't help anybody. All that does is bog things down and generates a tremendous amount of cost, and nobody's interests are served by that. So if there is a concern, and I have articulated this on many occasions to my colleagues on the other side, to work with us on a legislative solution where Congress can step in and put clear rules of the road in place when it comes to the internet--making sure we have an open and free internet--we are prepared to do that, but that is not something the Democrats have been interested in doing. They would rather have this heavy hand of government that slows this innovation down, all these wonderful things that are happening in our economy right now--the race to 5G, which obviously is critically important to so many sectors of our economy--could be dramatically impeded if you had the heavy hand of government, the heavy hand of regulation, which has been advocated by our colleagues on the Democratic side for some time, if that became the norm. When President Trump was elected, and Chairman Pai was made Chairman of the FCC, and we had a Republican FCC which did away with the heavyhanded regulations of the previous administration, we heard all these apocalyptic predictions coming from the Democrats about all of the horrible things that were going to happen to the internet. I can tell you that my experience, I think, is like most Americans. I can continue to download applications. I can continue to scroll and to see the things I want to see and to toggle back and forth between different websites in a way that I did before. It just flat hasn't happened. So they are trying to come up with a solution for a problem that does not exist. That said, we would be happy to work with them. We want to put clear rules of the road in place, but that is not what they want. They want the heavy hand of government and the heavy hand of regulation strangling what has been one of the most remarkable economic miracles of the last half century, if you look at what the internet has done in terms of productivity in this country.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch), the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Sasse), and the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``yea'' and the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize Alexander Reinke, an intern in my Washington, DC, office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several months. Alex is a recent graduate of South Dakota State University in Brookings, SD, having earned a degree in history. This spring, Alex plans to continue serving the public by working on Capitol Hill. He is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of his internship experience. I extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Alex for all of the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize William Shuster Dixon, an intern in my Washington, DC, office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several months. Will is a graduate of Altoona Area High School in Altoona, PA. Currently, he is attending American University in Washington, DC, where he is pursuing a degree in communications, law, economics, and government. He is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of his internship experience. I extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Will for all of the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize Anthony Borda, an intern in my Washington, DC, office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several months. Anthony is a graduate of Nutley High School in Nutley, NJ. Currently, he is attending American University in Washington, DC, where he is majoring in political science. He is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of his internship experience. I extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Anthony for all of the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Perdue), and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran) would have voted ``yea.''