Pat Toomey

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about two related topics. The first is to recognize and honor the men and women of law enforcement across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and across our country. This week is National Police Week, and it is really an important opportunity for us to let the folks in law enforcement know how grateful we are to them for the service they provide and for the sacrifices they make every single day to keep us safe. It is also an important occasion to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. This week, the names of 129 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in 2017 alone were added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. Among the fallen were two Pennsylvania officers: Patrolman Brian Shaw of the New Kensington Police Department and Trooper Michael Paul Stewart III of the Pennsylvania State Police. Given the clear and obvious dangers that our police officers face, it seems to me that we have an obligation to make sure they have the tools they need to protect themselves and the public, so I want to mention two efforts to do exactly that and urge my colleagues to support these efforts. The first is a Bureau of Prisons gun locker bill. This is legislation that I have introduced with Senator Manchin. We call it the Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Correctional Officer Self-Protection Act. What it would do is allow Federal prison guards to protect themselves on their commutes to and from work. Why is this a problem? Because in many cases, the prisons where the prison guards work do not have a secure place to secure firearms, so the guards cannot bring their firearms to work with them nor would they have them to go home. They often are unarmed going to and from work. Sadly, the fact is, Federal prison guards can often be targets of criminals when they are off duty. Let's be honest here. Some of the prisoners they are guarding get released and are still pretty bad guys. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice policy essentially makes it impossible for guards to protect themselves when they are going to and from work. Sadly, Lieutenant Albarati, of Puerto Rico, paid for the price for this policy. In 2013, he was driving home from work. He was unarmed. He was shot and killed. Three inmates from the prison where he worked had hired the killer. What our bill does is very simple. It requires the Federal Bureau of Prisons to provide officers with an onsite storage locker for their personal firearms so that when they get to work, they can secure them in a safe place or allow these prison guards to store their personal firearms in a lockbox that is in their cars. It is pretty simple. It is pretty straightforward. Yesterday, the House voted on a companion bill, and it passed 378 to 0--378 to 0. Now is the opportunity for the Senate to act. We should act quickly. We should pass this. We should do it through our hotline and get this done. I am sure the President will sign this into law, and we will be providing a tool to enhance the safety of the prison guards who protect our security. There is another piece of legislation, which is the Lifesaving Gear for Police Act. I have introduced this legislation. What this would do is allow local law enforcement to continue obtaining the surplus defensive Federal gear they need to protect themselves and the public. It is based on a simple principle. The idea is that the police ought to at least have sufficient equipment. They should at least be as well- equipped as criminals and terrorists who attack them and are a threat to all of us. We should make every effort we can to make sure that law enforcement officers have the chance to go home safely to their families at the end of their shifts. It was longstanding policy that surplus, leftover, military gear that was defensive in nature, when it was not wanted or in use by the military, would be made available to law enforcement. Unfortunately, in 2015, the Obama administration severely restricted the ability of State and local law enforcement to obtain this surplus, leftover, in-storage gear. The restrictions by the Obama administration were rationalized on the completely false narrative that the police were a source of unrest and violence, as opposed to the truth that we all know, that they are brave men and women who defend us against unrest and violence. I think the American people know better. They know that the vast, overwhelming majority of people in law enforcement are good, honest, decent, hard- working people who are motivated by their desire to do a good job and protect the public. Fortunately, President Trump reversed the Obama administration's flawed policy of denying our local police forces this equipment. But that only has the power of an Executive order, and the safety of our law enforcement officers and the public should not be subject to political whims. A new administration will arrive at some point, and when they do, they could reverse this unless we codify it in law. That is what our bill would do. It would ensure that State and local law enforcement can continue to obtain this lifesaving Federal gear, regardless of who occupies the Oval Office or Congress. So as we mark National Police Week, we should never forget the courage our law enforcement officers exhibit every day in keeping us safe. I would like to say to our country's law enforcement officers, including the more than 25,000 in Pennsylvania, we thank you for your service and your sacrifice.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, the second topic I wish to touch on today is a subject that is apparently misunderstood, and it is certainly wildly mischaracterized. It is the subject of rescissions. It has become a topic of conversation since the President--the administration--has proposed a rescission. A rescission relates to our budget process. It is when money originally authorized by Congress to be spent on a program but actually is not spent--that authorization is revoked, it is rescinded, but it is with respect to money that was never spent. Now, specifically, I want to discuss how this relates to the Children's Health Insurance Program, which is often referred to by the acronym CHIP--the CHIP program. So if you follow recent media reports and comments by some of our colleagues, and even some industry stakeholders, boy, it sure seems like there is a lot of confusion. Let me state an unequivocal fact. Since 2011, there have been rescissions from CHIP every single year. This is not new. It has happened every single year since 2011. Now, is that because Congress decides during the course of each year that they don't really like the CHIP program or they don't like children or they don't want kids to get health insurance? No, that is not why it happens. The reason it happens each and every year is because Congress systematically, intentionally, and willfully authorizes far more money for the CHIP program than it is ever going to actually spend. We have a chart that illustrates this. We can see the vertical columns. The red bars show how much money Congress has authorized in the years to the left of the dotted line. Those are historical years. To the right of the dotted line is the projected future years. So the red bars are how much money Congress has authorized for the CHIP program. The green line shows how much of that money actually gets spent on the program. We can see that in each and every year the red bar is way above the green line. It has been going on back to 2009; it is every single year, and if we continue on our current path, that will continue to be the case as far as we can see going into the future. Now, take a particular year; for example, this year, 2018. We expect the Federal Government is going to spend $16 billion on the program. Now, because of the nature of the way this program works and certain features, it is possible we will spend $16.1 billion. It is possible it will end up being $15.99 billion, but we know $16 billion is enough to provide the Federal share of funding for the children enrolled by their States, but, as I say, we don't know it with precise precision right to the last dollar. So knowing it is going to be about $16 billion, how much money do we think Congress authorized for this program that is going to cost $16 billion? The answer is $25 billion. So $25 billion, when we know for a fact--everybody, including our Democratic colleagues, knows we are not going to spend anything close to that amount of money. As I say, this overfunding is not unique to 2018; it happens each and every year, and it will continue well into the future. Now, within that $25 billion, I should point out a subset. There is something called the Child Enrollment Contingency Fund. In 2018, $4.3 billion of the $25 billion is designated for this Child Enrollment Contingency Fund. The word ``contingency'' is there because it is meant, theoretically, to be a backstop in case the demand--the utilization--for this program is so great that the allocated money isn't enough, so there will be this contingency fund. That raises a question: Is that a sensible number, $4.3 billion? Well, let's look at this. Since 2009, there has been a total of $11.4 billion made available in this very category, this contingency fund. That is represented by the blue circle on the chart. How much has actually been needed? The answer is $100 million--one-tenth of $1 billion. Nine-tenths of 1 percent of the amount of money that has been made available has actually been used for this purpose, and $11.4 billion was authorized in the decades since this contingency fund was invented. During that period of time, all 50 States and the District of Columbia, if they ever needed it, would have been able to access this. That 50, plus 1, over the course of 9 years, is 460 opportunities for a State or the District to come to the Federal Government and say: We need some of that money from the contingency fund--460 times. How many times has it actually occurred over the course of those 9 years? The answer is three, and the amount of money is less than 1 percent of what has been authorized: $108 million used out of $11 billion that has been authorized. Well, next year, according to State law, despite the fact that no State is even close to consuming the full amount of the main fund, we are going to allow another $4.5 billion to be deposited in this account, when the sum total of all the States' usage for the last 9 years was $100 million, one-tenth of $1 billion. Look at it another way. If you look at all the CHIP-related accounts--all the Federal money that has been designated for this children's health program since 2009--Congress has willfully and systematically authorized so much in excess of what is needed that actually only 58 percent of the money has gone to the CHIP program because that is all the demand there was for this program. So this, obviously, raises a question: Why is it that year after year after year, including this year, Congress intentionally authorizes so much more funding than we are ever going to spend on this category, on this program, on the children's health program? I will tell my colleagues why. It is a big budget gimmick. It creates a big opportunity for Congress to lie to the American people and spend more money on other programs under the guise of putting it toward the children's health program. How does this work? Every year, as I mentioned at the beginning of my comments, after knowingly authorizing way more money than is needed, Congress comes back and says: Oh, you know what, let's do a rescission, but we will take this money out of CHIP, and we will spend it on something else. It could be spent on anything else, whatever the politically favorite cause is of the moment, but buried somewhere in a 1,000-page appropriations bill every year there has been a rescission, and the money has been shifted to something else. Basically, it becomes a slush fund to be used in the appropriations process and to allow the appropriations to exceed the cap on spending that we all agreed upon. So that is what happens. Congress willfully creates a number way above what we are going to spend, comes back a little later and says: Oh, my goodness, look at all this leftover money. Well, let's just take it and spend it somewhere else. It is completely dishonest. It completely misrepresents the CHIP program. It completely misrepresents--in fact, it blatantly violates the spending caps we have established, and it is not trivial. It is not a trivial amount of money. Over the last 8 years, the amount of these rescissions, so it can be spent elsewhere, has added up to 45 billion taxpayer dollars--entirely a gimmick, a device that just allows Congress to lie to the American people about what they are spending. So that brings us up to last week. The administration comes along and says they have a suggestion for Congress. First of all, let's fully fund the CHIP program. Let's make sure the CHIP program is fully funded. There will be no shortage whatsoever, but let's stop the lying. Let's remove the deception. Let's provide a reasonable amount of excess funding, because I acknowledge at the beginning we don't know right down to the last dollar exactly how much we are going to spend, but let's take aside all of this wild excess. Let's be honest. Let's rescind now most of the excess funding, which has been going on each and every year separately; let's leave more than enough in the contingency fund. Even though it is extremely unlikely that any of it will be tapped, the administration has proposed $500 million to be left in the contingency fund. Remember, that is the fund that has been used to the tune of $108 million over the last 9 years, but they are saying let's leave $500 million--five times as much as has been spent cumulatively over the last 9 years--and basically send all of this huge, excessive amount back to the Treasury so it is not just spent willy-nilly and irresponsibly. Now, for some reason, despite the fact that not a single dollar that would have actually been spent on the CHIP program will be spent differently, will not be spent; despite the fact that the CHIP program will not lose a single dollar of actual funding; despite the fact that Congress has been doing this every single year since 2011, as long as it can spend it on something else; despite the fact that 65 Senators, including 40 of my Democratic colleagues, voted to rescind $6.8 billion from CHIP--how long ago? In March of this year, a few weeks ago, including $3.1 billion from the contingency fund. So the vast majority of my Democratic colleagues voted to rescind money from CHIP just earlier this year. Despite that, now we have people up in high dudgeon, wailing and gnashing of the teeth, about how what we are doing would tear CHIP apart--even after what they did in March, by the way--that it is somehow a betrayal, immoral, appalling; it hurts low- and middle- class families. It would be too generous to suggest this is merely a lapse of memory. Everybody knows what is going on. This is ridiculous. So I fully support the President's proposal that we fully fund CHIP but stop with the dishonesty in our budgeting. Stop throwing a bunch of money under this category, knowing we are going to go back later and spend it somewhere else. This program shouldn't be pillaged this way to spend money on unrelated things that just allow us to bust the budget cap. I would go a step further. What the administration has proposed, to their credit, fixes this terrible flaw this year. I would like us to permanently fix it. I have suggested to my colleagues, rather than specifying a dollar amount, since we don't know the precise dollar amount, I would be OK with a provision that says: such sums as will be needed. That would guarantee it would be fully funded, but it would not create this big excess that gets wasted on who knows what. If the only concern people have is to ensure that the CHIP program will be fully and properly funded, how can they object to that? It would specify, codified in language, that would be exactly what would happen. It would be fully funded, but we have gotten this resistance to that. How could that possibly be? Unless it is that people want to continue this gimmickry, this deception that has been going on for all of these years. Well, I hope we will be able to work out a long-term solution. I hope we will bring an end to this. I understand my colleagues on the other side want to spend more money. Let's just admit it--admit it, and let's debate it. We have agreed-upon spending caps. I think they are too high, but that is what we agreed upon. We shouldn't be lying to the American people and going through this gimmick yet again. So I want to state my unequivocal support for the administration's proposal for a rescission package. I would prefer if there were actual spending being cut. This is indirectly going to help reduce excessive spending because it is going after these unobligated funds, it is going after these excessive accounts. It happens in other accounts, but CHIP is the most noteworthy. To me, this is a modest step in the direction of honest budgeting and protecting the taxpayers. I hope we will be able to have a permanent solution to this soon, but in the meantime, I hope my colleagues will support the administration's rescission package. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, it is a pleasure to follow my friend and neighbor to the south and east from the great State of Delaware. Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee had a hearing on tax reform. I had a chance to introduce one of the witnesses, a fellow named David Cranston from Robinson Township in Western Pennsylvania. David is the president of Cranston Material Handling Equipment Corp. It is a third-generation small business founded in 1957 by David's grandfather. Today, David leads that company--a company he has worked at since 1983. So for 35 years he has been there. Today he leads a team of seven full-time employees and two part-time employees, truly a small family-owned business. Cranston Material sells and installs material handling and storage equipment to manufacturing companies, including very large manufacturing companies, and their products and services help these manufacturers to store and lift products in the storage process--items like cabinets, containers, conveyors, cranes, and dock equipment. As I know the Presiding Officer understands very well, it is small businesses like this that really make up the backbone of our economy and the backbone of our communities. What is it that David Cranston had to share with us as a witness before our committee? He shared the story of how our tax reform from late last year is already working and helping his small business. How is that happening? Well, in a variety of ways. The two most direct ways are, No. 1, Cranston Material is organized as a subchapter S corporation. That is a long way of saying they are not taxed at the level of the corporation itself but, rather, the income that is earned by the business flows through to the owners of the business and is then taxed on the individual returns of the owners. How has our tax reform helped the owners of this business? We built into the Tax Code an automatic 20 percent discount on the amount of their income that is taxed. So 20 percent of their income from this business is not taxed at all. That is true for all small businesses in America. The 80 percent that is taxed is taxed at lower rates. The total tax burden for these small businesses is much lower than it used to be. Why is that important? It is important for a lot of reasons. David Cranston told us that this is how they are able to accumulate capital. This is how his business is better able to accumulate the capital that he describes as the lifeblood of his small business. It is, in fact, capital that allows these small businesses like Cranston to take advantage of new growth opportunities. Specifically, he shared with us an example. The tax savings that he is already enjoying have helped him expand into a new product line this year--a product line that he did not carry before, couldn't afford to, but now he can. In order to launch this product line, he needed to purchase new equipment, invest in employee training, and build a new website--all of which are well underway. He also touched on something else, another way in which our tax reform is helping his business; that is, the business optimism that he is seeing, which is encouraging his customers--primarily larger companies--to increase their own capital spending. That includes, in some cases, the purchasing of his products. As Mr. Cranston put it, the tax reform is ``spurring business investment and therefore has set the stage for economic growth for years to come.'' This increased investment activity that is helping workers and businesses and small businesses and our economy is exactly what we envisioned, exactly what we had hoped for, and exactly what we designed our tax reform to accomplish. I have to say, the story that David Cranston told us at the Senate Finance Committee yesterday is not an isolated story. It is completely consistent with stories I have heard all across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from small businesses; that is, tax reform is working. It is working for them. Businesses are, in fact, increasing their investments, exactly as we predicted they would if we lowered the after-tax cost of making those investments. For example, just last month, the March 2018 research report by Morgan Stanley--they surveyed their clients--concluded that its capital expenditure plans index--it is an index they keep track of that monitors the amount of capital being put to work in America, being spent on new equipment--according to them, in March, just last month, it reached an alltime high. Their characterization: ``Strength in our index indicates continued momentum in equipment investment through the second quarter of 2018.'' It is already happening, and they believe it is likely to continue. Some of our friends on the other side who are very critical of our tax reform were very critical of the idea that business should benefit from this. They didn't want business to benefit from this at all. I have to point out the multiple ways they are wrong in their analysis. First of all, when businesses--especially small businesses but all kinds of businesses--benefit from a lower tax regime, much of that benefit flows right to workers. We have seen that in a very direct fashion. In fact, over 500 known, large companies--big enough that their press releases get picked up and noticed--have given employees bonuses, pay raises, increased contributions to their pension plans, or some combination. There are now millions of American workers who work for these 500-plus companies who have directly benefited personally, in their pockets, because of the tax reform. I think this is fantastic, and it has been immediate. It is already happening. Over the long term, I think there is an even bigger benefit that will be accruing to American workers as a result of our tax reform, and that is the medium-, long-term upward pressure on wages for the people who work for a living to earn those wages. Why do I say that? The fact is, the more capital that gets spent, the more productive workers are able to become, and the more they are able to earn. Let me give an example that I like. If you go to any construction site when they are at the stage of doing the site development--when they are moving the dirt and maybe they are digging a hole for the foundation--at that stage of the process, you very typically will see somebody operating a backhoe. There is a guy operating a backhoe. He is digging the hole for the foundation. You will very often see somebody with a shovel. He is doing the tidy-up work around the edges. The guy with the shovel is working very hard. He is probably working up more of a sweat. He probably goes home with his muscles and his back aching more than the guy operating the backhoe. But who do you think gets paid more? It is not a close call; the guy operating the backhoe is always paid more. There is one reason for that. The reason is that he has a more advanced set of skills. Because he has those skills and because he has a major piece of equipment to operate, he is much more productive than any human being can ever be with a shovel. The more productive worker is able to earn more. That is why I am so excited about a reform that encourages businesses to invest in capital. It is already making workers more productive, and that means they are going to earn more income. But it doesn't stop there. All of that capital expenditure, whether it is with David Cranston's company or whether it is a backhoe--when companies want to buy that, someone has to build it. There is more demand for workers to build more of this equipment that is getting put to use. Then after it is built and it is purchased by the business that can afford it now because of tax reform, somebody has to operate it. There is still more demand for workers. So what happens in an economy when you are close to full employment-- the unemployment rate is around 4 percent, which is unusually low for the American economy--and you introduce a significant new demand for workers--well, I would say there are two things that happen. You create opportunities for people who left the workforce to return, and you put upward pressure on wages because all the businesses have to compete for whatever workers are available. So we have the direct benefit that people have seen in the form of lower withholdings and more take-home pay. We have the direct benefit that workers have seen when the companies they work for have decided to give them a raise or a bonus because they can better afford it. And we have this indirect benefit that might very well be the biggest of them all, as workers become more productive because they get to use the equipment that is put to work when their companies invest the capital that we have made more available to them. I am very bullish, as apparently the respondents to the Morgan Stanley survey were, and I am grateful to David Cranston for telling his story about how much his small business is already benefiting from our tax reform. Mr. President, I would like to make a completely unrelated point, and that is, I would like to mention that I had an opportunity to have a long conversation today with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, to discuss his vision for his role as Secretary of State, should he be confirmed, and his vision for America's role in the world, the leadership role we have historically played and how he sees that going forward. I will tell you, I was extremely impressed. He is a very thoughtful, very knowledgeable, wise individual. I think he will give great counsel to our President. I think he will be an outstanding diplomat. I think the fact that he comes from the intelligence community will inform his judgment in a very constructive way. I think we are all very, very fortunate that Mike Pompeo is willing to serve in this capacity. I am looking forward to his confirmation later this week. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

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

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I want to briefly address an issue that has been raised in the context of the vote we will have later today. As you know, later today we will be using the Congressional Review Act to repeal a very ill-conceived regulation imposed by the CFPB. Some of our colleagues and some outside this Chamber have suggested that it is somehow problematic to use the Congressional Review Act--to use this device--for the repeal of a regulation that is promulgated by guidance as opposed to those regulations promulgated in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act, which we usually refer to as a rule, or a rulemaking. The reality is that the applicability of the Congressional Review Act to a guidance, in my view, is very obvious and very well-established and should not be controversial. I understand that people might like the CFPB's rule, which I don't, but to suggest that because they issued it through a guidance rather than through the appropriate rulemaking process, we shouldn't be using the Congressional Review Act, I think, is completely mistaken. First of all, there is the CRA's definition of a rule. It is very broad and intentionally so. I will quote in part that definition. It says: ``The whole or a part of an agency statement of general or particular applicability.'' The text says nothing about limiting the Congressional Review Act procedural device to formal rulemakings that follow from the Administrative Procedure Act. It is much broader than that. Instead it says: ``The whole or a part of an agency statement.'' You don't have to just take my word for this. You could go back to the statements of the authors of the Congressional Review Act itself, the legislation that makes this vote today possible. One of the authors was none other than Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader and Senate minority leader. Senator Reid was very clear about the intention. He and Senator Nickles, at the time, and Senator Stevens put out a joint statement, which I will quote. It is brief, but it is important. It says: The authors are concerned that some agencies have attempted to circumvent notice-and-comment requirements by trying to give legal effect to general statements of policy, ``guidelines,'' and agency policy and procedure manuals. The authors admonish the agencies that the APA's broad definition of ``rule'' was adopted by the authors of this legislation [the CRA] to discourage circumvention of the requirements of [the] chapter. Here is the irony implied by the position of those who suggest we can't use the Congressional Review Act to repeal a guidance. What they really are suggesting is that the regulators and the agencies ought to be able to circumvent the very public process that is established in law--the Administrative Procedure Act--for rulemaking. They ought to be able to avoid the need to collaborate with other regulators to issue a proposed rule to the public for an extensive comment period and to make it subject to scrutiny--all of the things we demand of a proper rulemaking so that we end up with a better rule--right?--one that has been vetted, one that has been fully considered. What you are saying is that the CRA is not applicable. When this is done by a guidance, you create an incentive for the agency to circumvent this very public scrutiny so that they can impose their will directly without it. That would clearly be a terrible outcome. Fortunately, the authors of this legislation wrote it precisely so that it could apply to a guidance, and they made it clear that was the outcome they wanted. It doesn't end there, though. There have been more than a dozen instances already when Members of the Senate have asked the GAO to review guidance to determine whether that guidance rises to the level of importance and has the nature of a rulemaking so that it would be subject to the Congressional Review Act. As a matter of fact, within a single year of the passage of the Congressional Review Act, Congress asked GAO to review a guidance for this purpose. This has been done many times. In fact, it is our Democratic colleagues who set the precedent for attempting to overturn a guidance after the traditional CRA time window had expired because the guidance was not in the nature of a formal rulemaking. In 2008, there was an effort by Senators Rockefeller and Baucus to overturn a CHIP guidance and to use the Congressional Review Act to do it, exactly as we are going to use today the Congressional Review Act to overturn a different guidance. That effort by Senators Rockefeller and Baucus had 41 cosponsors, including then-Senator Obama, Senators Biden, Clinton, Schumer, Durbin, Brown, and many other Democratic Senators who are still serving today. Senator Baucus, a Democrat, laid out the case. He said: One agency attempted to ignore its obligations and circumvent the process established by the CRA. And the agency should not be rewarded. I couldn't agree more. He is exactly right. Here is more from Senator Baucus: This resolution is a way for Congress to send the message that it expects agencies to comply with the law. Congress should stand up for itself and disapprove of this rule, because it was not promulgated properly. It makes perfect sense to be able to overturn a guidance that has the force of a rule, which is to say--really, let's be honest--the force of law was always contemplated as part of the CRA, and our Democratic colleagues attempted to use it for that very purpose. To do anything else would be to encourage the agencies to sneak around the Administrative Procedure Act, to avoid the public scrutiny and disclosure requirements, and promulgate rules through guidance routinely. There is another more fundamental issue that I think we should be acknowledging; that is, the use of the Congressional Review Act is a really important--a modest but important step in the direction of restoring accountability to Congress. As the Presiding Officer understands very well, the Constitution is completely unambiguous. It is very clear. Legislative authority is vested in Congress. It is supposed to be our responsibility to write the laws, but we delegate a huge amount of authority and power to the executive branch. We say: Well, you write these rules. Maybe, it is too complicated or, maybe, we don't want to be held accountable for the outcome. It happens all the time. There has been a huge shift whereby the permanent bureaucracy, the administration, has an enormous amount of power to effectively write laws. We call them rules, sometimes guidance, but they have the power of law. They have the force of law. They are not optional. They are imposed on whatever industry or individual is subject to them. At a minimum, I think, Congress ought to be reviewing this. This is a mechanism for holding Congress accountable for the rules that we tolerate the agencies to promulgate. I think it is a really important step in that direction. Again, to summarize, the use of the Congressional Review Act to repeal a guidance is well established. It is consistent with any plain reading of the law. It is consistent with the intent of the authors at the time. Congress has attempted to do so in the past. Democrats have attempted to do it, and it is a modest but important step in restoring the accountability of Congress with respect to the regulations that we encourage the executive branch to promulgate. There is no evidence that this somehow opens a floodgate of repeal, as some have suggested. But any guidance--in fact any rulemaking, I think, ultimately should be subject to congressional review because, after all, it is our authority in the first place that is used to generate it. I am pleased that we were able to agree to the motion to proceed yesterday. My understanding is that we will be voting sometime around noon or so on this. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of repealing this ill-conceived regulation and restoring some modicum of congressional accountability to the rulemaking process. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to recognize and celebrate with my Sikh friends, my constituents, and friends from the Sikh community of Pennsylvania and beyond. I start with the acknowledgment that my pronunciation of certain words may be off, and I hope I will be forgiven. I am delighted to have so many wonderful representatives of the Sikh community here with us in Washington. I thank them. I thank Raj Singh and all of the members of the Sikh community of Pennsylvania who made this trip down to Washington, DC, to participate in a celebration for an important holiday and to raise awareness about the Sikh community. Sikhism has been around for nearly 600 years and originated in the Punjab region of India in the 15th century. Today, there are about 30 million Sikhs who live in countries all around the world, making it one of the world's largest religions. Sikhism is rooted in the belief that every single person--every individual--regardless of race, gender, sex, or creed, is equal before God. Sikhism was introduced in the United States in the 19th century. Today, there are about 700,000 Sikhs who live in the United States, and a large number of Sikhs reside in Pennsylvania. In fact, there are several Sikh places of worship, known as gurdwara, and they are located throughout Pennsylvania--in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, and Erie. In my many travels across Pennsylvania, I have had an opportunity to meet with and get to know hard-working Sikh constituents. I can tell you they are close-knit, vibrant communities, deeply committed to their families--fully American while, at the same time, preserving some wonderful and often very old traditions. The Sikhs constitute a part of the rich, cultural fabric of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and I am grateful to them for what they add to my State. A few years back, I was proud to join the American Sikh Congressional Caucus. As a member of this caucus, we honor and recognize the Sikh holiday of Vaisakhi. The holiday itself is usually celebrated on the first day of the month of Vaisakhi, which just occurred last week on Saturday, April 14. Vaisakhi is a special occasion for Sikhs to remember the founding in 1699 of the Khalsa Panth. The Khalsa were a fellowship of devout ``saint-soldier'' Sikhs who played an important role in shaping the religion's history and its identity. The holiday also recognizes the spring harvest. Sikhs recognize this important holiday with parades, with dancing, with singing, and with other festivities, as well as with volunteer service, especially volunteering meals to those in need and other forms of community service. This year, the Sikh Coordination Committee East Coast, with the support of the U.S. Congressional Sikh Caucus, has organized a parade in Washington on May 19 to commemorate Vaisakhi as National Sikh Day. The theme of the parade is the Sikh identity, the Sikh culture, the Sikh way of life, and thousands of Sikhs from all over the United States will be participating. I am proud of the Sikh communities of Pennsylvania, and I wish the Sikh community much luck in the parade and a very joyous Vaisakhi. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I have long advocated for profound reform of the Export-Import Bank. My preference has long been that the U.S. administration--in fact, this was an obligation of the previous administration which it chose to ignore--but that the U.S. administration negotiate among our trading partners a mutual phaseout of these taxpayer-subsidized export entities. My objection to this is the embedded taxpayer subsidy, the embedded taxpayer risk in every transaction the Ex-Im does. The special interest I am defending here today is the American taxpayer. Now, I am pretty sure I am not going to change anyone's mind on the floor tonight, so let me just make clear about where we are with these nominees. During the Banking Committee hearings, I and other colleagues made it clear. I would support the nominees to fill the vacancies on the Board provided that a reformer such as Scott Garrett was included among them. I would have supported restoring the quorum with the confidence that there would have been at least a good-faith effort to begin the kind of reforms we need. Unfortunately, the committee chose not to advance Scott Garrett, who would have done, I think, a very good job bridging the gap between the opponents and proponents of Ex-Im Bank, but that was not to be. Instead, Ex-Im supporters are now asking to confirm the remaining nominees but not include Scott Garrett, who has taken himself out of the running at this point, nor would it include any other person as President. What would the consequences of this be if this unanimous consent request were agreed to? The Ex-Im Bank would constitute a quorum, would resume doing multimillion- and multibillion-dollar deals, all which would put taxpayers at risk and there would be no prospect of any meaningful reform. I remain open to finding a new candidate who can lead Ex-Im and implement the kind of reforms that are needed, but that is not what is on the table at the moment, and until that time comes, I cannot support the confirmation of these additional Board members, which would reconstitute the quorum; therefore, I object.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I would like to point out that included in the list of nominees who my colleague from Ohio asked unanimous consent for confirmation, was the inspector general for the Export-Import Bank. That is a different function. That is a function I supported in committee, and I would support today. As far as I am aware, there is no objection whatsoever on this side of the aisle and no objection to confirming the inspector general to this post. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Executive Calendar No. 585; that the Senate vote on the nomination with no intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that no further motions be in order; and that any statements relating to the nomination be printed in the Record.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to address the CRA we voted to proceed to and on which we will vote for final passage tomorrow. It is a Congressional Review Act resolution that will allow us to repeal an ill-conceived CFPB regulation. Let me start with just a word about the CFPB because this is an agency that is fundamentally flawed in its design and has been so since day one. First, there is a single individual director. There is no bipartisan commission. There is no board. There is no need for consensus. There is one-man rule. Secondly, this one individual can only be removed for cause. He is part of the executive branch, but the Chief Executive can't fire him. This makes no sense. Finally, the entire CFPB--this huge regulatory agency--is subject to no meaningful oversight. They are not dependent on Congress--the people's representatives--for taxpayer funding. They just draw whatever they want out of the Fed, which means the Fed has that much less to hand over to the Treasury. An individual, rather than a commission, no ability to remove, except for cause, and not subject to appropriation-- it is a recipe for a disaster. That is what we have had. It is not just my opinion, by the way. A three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that this structure is fundamentally unconstitutional. I will quote briefly from their decision. They said: ``The CFPB's [concentration of] enormous executive power in a single, unaccountable, unchecked Director not only departs from settled historical practice, but also poses a far greater risk of arbitrary decision making and abuse of power, and a far greater threat to individual liberty, than does a multi-member independent agency.'' Fortunately, we have an Acting Director at the moment who gets this. Mick Mulvaney has testified about these very flaws in the CFPB and suggested, as many of us have, at least some structural reforms, making the CFPB subject to appropriations so Congress has meaningful oversight; requiring that the major rules they pass be subject to a legislative approval, which is Congress taking responsibility for the action Congress delegates; giving the President the ability to hire and fire a Director; and having an independent inspector general so we have a watchdog. This is the least we should do. Our colleagues on the other side have not been willing to agree to any of them, so we have this badly flawed agency. It shouldn't be surprising that a flawed structure leads to badly flawed policies. That is why we are here discussing this CRA. It is about the indirect auto lending guidance, as it is called, that the CFPB issued some time ago. Let me explain a little bit about what this is. Indirect auto lending--what is that? Direct auto lending is what you might think. It is when a consumer, a buyer--someone who wants to buy a car--goes to a bank and lines up financing from the bank. That would be direct auto financing. Indirect auto financing is when the car dealer provides the arrangement of the financing for you. The actual financing is ultimately performed by a lending institution, but the car dealer makes the arrangements. Indirect auto loans are actually very good for consumers for a variety of reasons. No. 1, it is very convenient. You don't have to shop around to a bunch of banks, as well as a bunch of car dealers. You get one-stop shopping, and you have both. No. 2, it tends to be more competition for the consumers' loan. How many banks are you going to realistically go out and visit when you are attempting to line up your financing? But the car dealer can routinely canvass all the available lending options and make sure the consumer gets the best possible deal. Finally, as a routine matter of practice, dealers have always been able to discount the loan as one of the negotiating provisions in a multipart transaction. That is important to stress here. The nature of the car-buying experience--for any of us who have done it--very typically, there are several moving parts, several transactions. There is the purchase price you negotiate for the vehicle you are buying and the trade-in value for the vehicle you are parting with. There is the value of other services you may negotiate for. It is not possible to judge the overall economics of a transaction like this unless you know all of the components. The interest rate you pay on the loan is but one of several important components. Along comes the CFPB. In December of 2013, they issued a bulletin that is an attempt to regulate the indirect auto lending. In this, they warned lenders of a disparate impact liability. Let me explain briefly what this means. First of all, if lending policy is discriminatory, it is illegal. If there is discrimination on the basis of any protected class--and that would include race, sex, age, gender, and other things--it is illegal. What the CFPB came along and said is, even if the lending policy is not discriminatory--not on its face, it is nondiscriminatory--you can still be liable for the violation of the law if the CFPB thinks there is a protected class, some category of people, who are paying, on average, a higher interest rate on their loan. This is the disparate impact theory the CFPB used in order to attempt to end the ability of auto dealers to discount loans as part of a negotiated transaction on a car purchase. Why is this so problematic? There are two categories. First is the very process by which the CFPB came up with this rule. First of all, it is actually a guidance, not a rulemaking. What does that mean? That means they chose not to follow the law, the Administrative Procedure Act, that requires an agency go through a very systematic and public process of getting a lot of input and review on a proposed law, proposed rule, before it goes into effect. For very good reason, we require regulators to get public input, to give experts, consumers, and people engaged in the business the opportunity to examine the rule under consideration and provide some feedback as to whether there might be unforeseen consequences or flaws in it. They did none of this. The CFPB did not consult with the other regulators, as they are required by Dodd-Frank, nor did they do a cost- benefit analysis, which is also required by Dodd-Frank. They surprised the industry and the consumers by fundamentally reinterpreting how the anti-discrimination legislation would be interpreted. Why did they do this? Why did they take this approach? Why did they circumvent the Administrative Procedure Act? It is a convenient way to avoid scrutiny. It is a convenient way to impose one's will without public scrutiny, without any analysis. This is a very bad process and, not surprisingly, the outcome is equally bad. The methodology they used to determine discrimination on the basis of race is really amazing. Since there is no information about the race of a borrower in financing for a vehicle, the lenders don't know the race of the borrowers, literally. They have no idea. Neither does the CFPB, but that didn't stop them from alleging racial discrimination. They developed a methodology, a system, where they attempt to guess the race of a car buyer who is financing the purchase of a car through a loan. They tried to guess their race based on the last name and geography. They assign a probability to a person being African American or Hispanic or European American or whatever based on a surname and geography. This is a wildly flawed process, which quite predictably led to huge errors. Independent, outside analysis has concluded that their error rates could be as high as 40 percent. So 40 percent of the people they would designate as African American, in fact, are not, or 40 percent of the people they would designate as European American, in fact, are not. It is not just that they got their guesstimate wrong about race, but the manner in which they got it wrong led to the wrong and erroneous conclusion. In other words, there were systemic flaws that completely invalidated their conclusions. Finally, and maybe in some ways most important, they willfully chose to ignore all the other components of the transaction. They allege that someone was adversely impacted because they paid a higher rate of interest on a loan, but they have no idea what the purchase price on the vehicle was. They have no idea what the trade-in was for the used vehicle. They have no idea what other services were being offered. This gets worse. The CFPB decided they needed to make an example of someone so they could terrorize the industry into ending this practice of discounting interest rates, and they found a good victim. The Federal Government owned about 74 percent of Ally Bank at the time. They had an application before the Fed to change their corporate organization, which they needed to do. They needed to complete that; otherwise, they would have to shed whole business lines. It is a long, complicated story. Suffice it to say, Ally Bank's future existence, as it was formed, depended on an approval from the Fed for what should have been a routine change in corporate structure. The Fed made it clear they weren't going to grant that change until there was a settlement with the CFPB, so Ally Bank was over a barrel. That was exactly what the CFPB wanted. Five days before the deadline, which would have required Ally Bank to divest itself of whole categories of business, the CFPB shakes them down for $100 million. Four days later, the Fed approves the application. The CFPB found its opportunity, made its example, and it had a chilling effect on the market. Let me wrap this up with what we are talking about here. It is an unaccountable, out-of-control agency that circumvented the proper rulemaking process in order to avoid public scrutiny about what they were trying to do. They imposed their will on an industry that the Dodd-Frank legislation explicitly forbid them from regulating. They developed a badly flawed methodology to allege discrimination on the part of lenders on the basis of race, despite the fact that the lenders didn't know the race of the borrowers. They picked a victim who couldn't fight back. They hit the victim with a $100 million fine without the CFPB knowing that any individual was actually unfairly treated by Ally Bank. It didn't matter. Who ultimately pays the price for this kind of behavior? The very consumers the CFPB is supposed to be serving. Under this very flawed rule of the CFPB, the goal was to effectively prevent auto dealers from being able to discount the interest rate on a loan, being unable to compete with a bank down the road that might be offering a lower rate, being unable to negotiate a term that might be helpful to a borrower. Consumers under the CFPB's rule have fewer options, less flexibility, reduced access to credit, and higher costs. That is why Congress should overturn this. This is our opportunity to set this right. The House voted 332 to 96 to repeal this rule. We can do this tomorrow. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have complained about the use of a CRA in application to a guidance issue. Our Democratic colleagues themselves attempted to do this exact same thing with respect to a chip guidance that was issued some years ago, and they were perfectly OK with it then. I don't see why they can't be OK with it now. It is important to note what this resolution does not do. It does not change, in any way, the legitimate enforcement of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. It doesn't amend that act. It doesn't change regulation B. The enforcement of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act would simply continue as it had gone for 30-plus years. Discrimination in credit providing has been illegal and will continue to be illegal when we successfully pass this CRA. I thank Senator Moran and Will Ruder from his staff, John Crews from my staff. I thank Terry van Doren from Leader McConnell's staff for his help. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this important Congressional Review Act resolution. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

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

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, it was about 2 weeks ago that I had the opportunity to tour a steel plant in Redding, PA. The plant is owned by Carpenter Technology. It is a company that was founded in 1889. It is quite extraordinary. It is a vast complex in Redding, PA. They have 2,000 employees in Berks County, which is where Redding is located, and they have an additional 1,200 or so folks throughout other parts of Pennsylvania. Carpenter Technology is a leading producer and distributor of specialty metals, including what they call soft magnetics. As I understand it, soft magnetics increase the efficiency and the power and the battery life of electric motors. That is one of the main applications of these soft magnetics. It is a feature in steel and other metals that allows the magnetic properties to be turned on and off very rapidly. It is an amazing technology. It is an absolutely essential component for all kinds of products, including aircrafts, electric cars, even medical devices. It is quite a range of products. One of the things I learned, of the many things I learned while I was at Carpenter Technology, is that tax reform is working for Carpenter Technology. While I was there, the CEO announced a $100 million investment, right there in Redding, Berks County, PA, to upgrade their capabilities and their capacity to produce these soft magnetics. To be more precise, they are buying an entire new hot rolling steel mill in Redding, PA. It is a $100 million investment in a new mill that will allow them to expand their output and meet increasing demand for this really fascinating product that they make. One of the things the leadership of Carpenter Technology made abundantly clear in their press release and in their public statements was that they were able to purchase this mill and make this $100 million investment in their company now because of the tax reform we passed. This is exactly the type of capital investment we envisioned when we passed the tax reform bill. It was exactly for this kind of economic activity and expansion that we wanted to lower the cost of deploying this capital and expanding business and generate the economic growth and prosperity that comes with this. By the way, Carpenter Technology is not an outlier. This kind of investment is consistent with the sentiment we are seeing all across the country. Just at the end of the first quarter--the quarter that just ended-- there was a large survey of American chief financial officers--CFOs-- across the country. It was carried out by Deloitte LLP. It was exploring the question of growth expectations for capital expenditure. The fact is, their conclusion is that these CFOs anticipate greater growth and more hiring. In fact, the sentiment is at a multiyear high. Why is that? Here is what Deloitte had to say about it: Clearly, there's a high desire for investment in the U.S., and that is coming from just the structure of tax reform. [CFOs] are expecting higher domestic wages, almost 40 percent are anticipating and planning for higher and front-loaded capital investments, and about a third higher research and development. What they've said is because of tax reform they're going to take those actions. It is very straightforward. It is very clear. So here we are, just 3\1/2\ months since passage, and the tax bill has already and continues to benefit workers and businesses, and, boy, these are not the crumbs some of our friends on the other side of the aisle have tried to suggest they are. There are over 500 businesses that we know of--businesses that are sufficiently high profile that we have read about and we can track their announcements. These 500-plus businesses employ over 4 million workers. Over 4 million workers across America have already received bonuses, wage increases, enhanced benefits, and increased contributions to their pension plans. It has already happened, and it is attributable entirely to the tax reform. So the benefits from this tax reform are clearly already flowing to the very workers we intended to benefit from it. So my friends on the other side have had some struggles in thinking about how they can disparage this tax reform. They have come to realize that calling $1,000 bonuses and multi-thousand-dollar pay raises crumbs is probably not such a good idea. So they have shifted the argument to be a kind of class warfare argument. I hear two varieties of this most frequently. One is this idea that, well, the benefits all flow to the rich. The second is this idea that, well, these are greedy corporations that get this tax savings, and they just use the money to buy stock back. Let's unpack this a little bit. What about this argument that it all flows to the rich? Well, there is one problem with that argument. That problem is it is not true; it is not true at all because when we did this tax reform, we did it in a way that makes the Tax Code more progressive. What does that mean? That means that upper income Americans--the wealthiest Americans--have an increased percentage of the total tax burden. So while everybody gets a savings in percentage terms, the savings disproportionately go to lower and middle-income workers and a disproportionately small amount of the savings go to upper income workers. So when the dust clears, the net effect is wealthier people are paying a larger percentage of the total tax bill than they paid beforehand. So, clearly, the benefits of this tax reform are flowing to everyone and disproportionately to low- and middle-income people. What about this idea that stock buybacks are such a terrible thing? There have been some stock buybacks. What does that mean? That means companies have taken the additional pretax cash flow they have, and they have decided in some cases that they will take a portion of it and return it to the owners of the company. It just so happens that about 40 percent of the owners of the public companies in America are the people who have saved in their retirement plans--401(k) plans, IRA savings accounts, 529 plans, defined benefit pension plans. These are middle-income Americans whose savings are invested in the stocks of companies. In some cases, yes, there have been stock buybacks. That means these savers have had cash introduced into their accounts, which then can be deployed by the managers of these accounts into new investments, which is what happens for anyone who is selling their stock in response to a buyback. They get cash. What do they do with that cash? They get the chance to reassess where they invest their money, making new investments, making different investments, reallocating capital, and shifting capital to where there is the greatest demand for it. This is exactly the way a free enterprise system should work. This is exactly the mechanism that allows capital to flow to its highest use and helps to encourage still more economic growth. Better still, this is just the beginning. We are only 3\1/2\ months into this. We haven't yet even begun to reap the benefits--as a country, as a society--of this reformed Tax Code. Businesses are already responding to the incentives, and with the lower after-tax cost of capital we have created, we are seeing increased investment. Whether it is a tractor or a new factory or a piece of machinery or a steel mill in Redding, PA, that investment invariably requires workers to produce that investment, so there is greater job security and more opportunities for those workers. But then the company that actually deploys that investment, such as Carpenter Technology in the case I just mentioned--their workers become more productive; their workers have new tools that allow them to command higher wages and a better standard of living. That is what is happening, and that is going to continue to develop as companies are just now beginning to have the opportunity to deploy that capital only 3\1/2\ months into this new tax regime. I am just delighted that every week that goes by, I learn about more Pennsylvania workers and more American workers who are working for businesses that are benefiting and enhancing their investments. It is a really good-news story. Now I will shift a little bit to the CBO report that came out earlier this week, which said a few things worth noting. One should be on all of our radars, and that is the fiscal challenge we face. We have too much debt, and that number is growing too rapidly. This fiscal year, the gross amount of Federal debt is $21 trillion. By the end of this 10-year window, CBO contemplates that number will go up to $33 trillion. This is a huge problem. But I think it is important that we stress where this problem comes from. This is a spending problem; this is not a revenue problem, and we can see this in CBO numbers. In June of last year, almost a year ago, CBO projected that over the 10-year window they were considering at the time, we would have $43 trillion of tax revenues flowing into the Federal Government, with $53 trillion of spending--a net deficit over that period of $10 trillion. One year later, CBO has updated its projections, and now it is calling for $44 trillion in revenue over the current 10-year window. So there will be $1 trillion more in revenue, but $56 trillion in spending--$3 trillion more in spending. So we go from a 10-year window that looks as though the CBO is projecting a $10 trillion deficit to a $12 trillion deficit. Clearly the deficit is growing, and clearly it is driven by the increase in spending. The bottom line is, whether it is $10 trillion or $12 trillion, this deficit is way too big. But tax reform is going to enhance the revenue collected by the Federal Government by helping us create a larger economy to tax. The spending is our fault. That is something we have to get under control. CBO has observed a couple of other things. They talk about our tax reform, and they talk about terrific things. They say in the report that the tax reform results in ``higher levels of investment, employment, and GDP.'' We can see dramatically different projections of economic growth post-tax reform, according to the CBO, than we had pre- tax reform, according to the CBO. In January of 2017, they projected that this year the economy would grow 2 percent. But after tax reform passed, they reassessed this year. They took the projection of 2 percent for this year, and they said that now it will grow 3 percent based on tax reform. That is a 50-percent increase in the growth of our economy. That is huge. For next year, 2019, they were projecting 1.7 percent growth. Now, post-tax reform, they are estimating 2.9 percent growth--1.2 percentage points--again, an almost 50-percent increase. These are huge increases, and they explain it. They say: ``The largest effects on GDP over the decade stem from the tax act . . . boost[ing] the level of real GDP by an average of 0.7 percent . . . over the 2018-2028 period.'' The fact is, this tax bill is already working. It is making the structural changes in the Tax Code that create a greater incentive for businesses to invest. It is making American companies and American workers more competitive than we have been in a very, very long time. It is going to increase the capital stock, the invested assets in our businesses that allow our workers to become more productive, and it is going to continue to allow those more productive workers to earn higher wages. Let's be honest. No one can prove with certainty what the future holds, so it is worth looking at what is happening in the present. As a result of our tax reform, what is happening today, what is happening in the present is this: Millions of Americans have been receiving bonuses; millions of Americans have been receiving pay raises; millions of Americans have seen increases in their pension contributions; millions of Americans have seen an increase in the value of their pensions; and millions of Americans--like the workers at Carpenter Technology--have seen greater job security and greater opportunity as their employers are investing in their companies, and that is already beneficial for all of us. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

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

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I want to address two issues today. One, briefly, is the issue of guns about which many of our Democratic colleagues have come down to speak. Then I want to speak about the financial services regulatory reform bill we will be voting on later today. Gun Legislation Mr. President, first, on the former topic, a number of our Democratic colleagues have been down here, and we have heard a real passion and concern about the victims of gun violence in our country. I certainly understand and respect their passion. I have spent a lot of time working to find sensible measures that will help address this in ways that do not infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. It does feel like we are at a somewhat different moment here, so I hope we can choose to get something done--something constructive-- and stop talking past each other and find where there is common ground. I suggest four steps by which we ought to be able to find reasonable consensus in the Senate, ought to be able to get to 60 votes, and be able to at least modestly make some progress in this space. One is a bill that has been introduced by Senators Cornyn and Murphy, a bipartisan bill that is called Fix NICS. The fact is, our background check system is only as good as the data that is in the system, and we have an inconsistent quality of data. The data is provided, generally, by the States. Some States provide excellent, comprehensive, up-to-date data--other States, not so much. The Cornyn-Murphy bill would encourage better compliance and better data from the States. Better data means we would have a better NICS system. A second piece of legislation is a bill I have introduced with Senator Coons, and the sort of nickname for this legislation is ``Lie and Try.'' Our legislation would make it possible for more States to prosecute people who commit felonies when they attempt to purchase firearms; that is to say, it is those people who knowingly lie about their own criminal backgrounds--who deny their criminal histories--in the hope that they will be able to somehow circumvent the NICS system and buy firearms. It actually happens every day in America that convicted felons, who obviously know they are convicted felons, deny that and attempt to buy firearms they are not entitled to. Our legislation would simply require the FBI, when it discovers that someone has committed this sort of felony, to inform the law enforcement in the State from which that person comes so the State would be able to prosecute, if it would choose to. It is only about enforcing the laws on the books. I often hear from my friends who are Second Amendment supporters, as I am, that we ought to do a better job of enforcing the laws on the books. This is an opportunity to do exactly that. A third opportunity for us is to recognize that the people whom we deem to be so dangerous that we will not allow them to fly on planes-- the people on a terrorist watch list who could show up at airports with valid IDs and boarding passes, and we will not let them get on a plane as we think they are that dangerous--should also not be allowed to walk into gun stores and buy firearms. Senator Collins and Senator Heitkamp have introduced legislation. I am a cosponsor of it. It states that if someone is so dangerous that we believe them to be a terrorist and we won't let them fly, then we also will preclude them from legally buying a firearm. Lastly, Manchin-Toomey is legislation that Senator Manchin and I introduced some years ago, and the idea behind this legislation is simply to require a background check on commercial gun sales. Whether they occur at a gun show or over the internet, these commercial-scale transactions ought to be subject to a background check so that we can determine whether the prospective buyer is somebody who we all agree shouldn't have a firearm--a dangerously mentally ill person, someone who has committed a violent criminal act, someone who is otherwise simply disqualified from having a firearm. The only way we can actually achieve that is if we have some mechanism to determine whether a person is disqualified in this fashion. So Senator Manchin and I have legislation that will do that without infringing on the absolutely essential constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. These four items would be very constructive--fix NICS, ``Lie and Try'' legislation, a ``No Fly, No Buy'' bill, and the Manchin-Toomey legislation. I hope we are going to make some progress in this space, and those would be candidates for doing so. Mr. President, let me shift to S. 2155, the legislation we will be voting on later today. This legislation is long overdue. Let me be very clear about this. The financial crisis we experienced is a decade behind us now. The Dodd-Frank financial services regulatory bill--a massive construct that wildly overregulates financial services--was signed into law 8 years ago, and we have done nothing really meaningful to roll that back over these last 8 years. This bill is the result of years of bipartisan work, an untold number of hearings, and an extraordinary amount of testimony, and now we have a product that we are going to, I hope, pass later today to begin to roll back some of this excessive regulation. I thank all the Democratic and Republican Members who worked to get this product to where it is today. Senator Shelby, when he was chairman of the Banking Committee, laid much of the groundwork for this. Chairman Hensarling in the House, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has done great work in this space. Of course, Chairman Crapo, as chairman, has done an outstanding job. We are at a point where we are very close to finally making some progress on this overregulation. I will disclose up front that I have my own personal experience and bias in this space, having worked with a great group of men and women in eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey. We launched a community bank back in 2005, and it was an amazing experience, a great experience. It was a very successful bank. Back in 2005 when we launched, I was shocked to learn how heavily regulated a small, tiny, startup, brandnew community bank was. It seemed to me that we needed permission from the regulators to change the color of the drapes in the lobby of the bank, and this was all before Dodd-Frank was passed. Dodd-Frank came along several years later and made things much, much worse--way too prescriptive, way too much discretion of power in the hands of regulators, a terrible trickle-down effect whereby extensive regulations that were purportedly meant to constrain large financial institutions also imposed huge costs on small banks. We have gotten to the point where, arguably, small banks are now too small to succeed. Thirty years ago we had 14,000 banks in America, and today we have fewer than 5,000. The trend toward consolidation in banking was underway before Dodd-Frank, but Dodd-Frank dramatically worsened it. One data point makes it very clear. Before the financial crisis, before Dodd-Frank came along, we used to routinely launch, on average, over 100 banks per year across America. It was an ordinary thing for a group of business folks to come together and decide they were going to launch a bank to serve their community. It is a great thing when people do that because it introduces new competition, new choices for consumers, and new access to capital. There were over 100 per year routinely for decades. From the time that Dodd-Frank was passed up through to this year, we have had five new banks start up in America. We have completely destroyed the entire de novo banking industry, and there is a price for that. There is a price to communities, there is a higher cost of credit, there is less available capital, and that doesn't serve anyone well. Our legislation, this bill we are going to vote on later today, is going to improve the overall regulatory environment. At the same time, it is going to make improvements for consumers. Let me touch on a few of the features. One is designed to improve access to mortgage credit. Section 101 of the bill provides regulatory relief for financial institutions if they originate a mortgage and keep that mortgage on their portfolio. When a financial institution originates a mortgage and sells it, which is a very common practice, there is this sense that the financial institution doesn't care about the borrower's ability to repay. It happens not to be true, but there are very, very extensive regulations that are very onerous, and they make it more difficult for borrowers to meet the criteria that are acceptable. Well, if the bank is keeping the loan on its own books, then it should be obvious to everyone that the bank has every incentive to make sure the loan is made to someone who can repay it. So this section provides some relief and some more flexibility so that the bank can actually make a loan that works for that consumer rather than one that works for whatever bureaucrats have decided. Section 107 allows relief from some of the regulations in the manufactured housing space. It is based on legislation that I introduced with Senator Donnelly. This will help consumers who are using manufactured housing, which is one of the most affordable ways of having a home. There are consumer protections like section 301, which protects consumers' credit by giving consumers greater control over their credit reports. There is section 302, which protects veterans' credit by helping prevent medical debt from improperly harming a veteran's credit report. There is help for community banks--the very small banks that are not systemically important to their neighborhood, much less the entire economy. They are wildly overregulated. This diminishes that burden modestly. It simplifies, for instance, their capital requirements. Section 202 exempts very small community banks from the Volcker rule. Why would we need to exempt them from it? Not so they can engage in the proprietary trading or the kinds of investments that the Volcker rule precludes, but it recognizes that community banks don't do that anyway. They have never done that. They end up, instead, having to spend a whole lot of money proving that they don't do that which they have never done. It doesn't make any sense. This regulation relieves them of some of that burden. Section 210 will allow very small banks to have a little bit more time between the onerous exams they are subject to periodically. It is still very onerous, but at least there is some relief here. There is a change in how we treat bank holding companies. We have, unfortunately, as a result of Dodd-Frank, this concept of too big to fail. We have enshrined it in law by creating what we call SIFIs, or systemically important financial institutions. These are officially designated ``too big to fail.'' Frankly, no institution should be too big to fail, but it happens under Dodd-Frank automatically when a bank hits $50 billion. That is a ridiculously low threshold, so this bill takes that automatic SIFI designation up to $250 billion. Frankly, it shouldn't be automatically based on the size of the institution; it should be driven by the conduct of the institution, the kind of business they do. But at least we are raising the threshold from $50 billion to $250 billion. By the way, this is problematic, actually, for banks that are a little larger than $250 billion. They still have this onerous, complex, expensive regime that they have to comply with, while their competitors, which might be just a few billion dollars smaller, are relieved of this burden. So there is an unfairness in this. I intend to work with regulators to basically have this SIFI designation reflect the activity of the institution rather than just the size. There is another provision, section 402, which deals with the supplementary leverage ratio, which goes by the acronym SLR. The SLR is basically a minimum capital ratio. It takes a look at the entire balance sheet of a bank and says: Regardless of what those assets consist of, we are going to have a minimum capital requirement. That, of course, is in addition to all the specific capital requirements that are associated with the various category of assets. That whole regulatory regime remains in place, so we have both simultaneously. This legislation has a very, very narrow exception for this secondary SLR capital requirement. It simply holds that for those handful--there are really only three custody banks, banks that have as their principal activity the custody of securities for other financial institutions. When they take custody-related cash and they put it on deposit with the Fed or another central bank, that is a risk-free transaction. There is no risk to an American bank having a dollar-denominated deposit with the Fed; therefore, this legislation recognizes that you should not have to be hit with an additional capital requirement for such a transaction. That is a constructive feature. Some have mischaracterized this and suggested that, oh my goodness, we could have deposits with the Turkish central bank or the Greek central bank. That is clearly factually wrong. The criteria for eligibility is very, very narrow, and it is only at the most secure central banks in the world, and by the way, mostly it is the Fed. A quick additional word about this too-big-to-fail doctrine. I feel very strongly that no institution should be too big to fail, and no institution should get a taxpayer bailout. Some of my colleagues seem to agree with that and have been very critical of a bailout that would occur for a financial institution. I would suggest that the best way to avoid taxpayers having to bail out a financial institution is not to attempt to prescribe every conceivable activity through massive regulation but, rather, have a bankruptcy code that allows the failure to be resolved in bankruptcy. The people who should be wiped out in the event of a failure of a financial institution are the shareholders and unsecured creditors, not taxpayers. So for those of my colleagues who have come down here and expressed great concern about potential bailouts, join me in my legislation, which adds a chapter to the Bankruptcy Code so that we can successfully resolve even a very large and complex financial institution where we should, which is in bankruptcy, and not pose a risk to American taxpayers. Senator Cornyn and I have legislation that would do that. It really, over time, can completely end the debacle of too big to fail, and that would be a very constructive development as well. Let me conclude by saying that this bill, S. 2155, which is called the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, is very aptly named. The goals expressed in the title are actually achieved in this legislation. I am confident we will make progress on all of these fronts if and when--and I think we will--we pass this legislation later today. I certainly urge my colleagues to support this, but my last plea is that this not be the last word on financial regulatory reform. This is a constructive step in the right direction, but it is a modest step forward. Much more needs to be done if we are going to have a safe but robust competitive financial system that is capable of fueling the economic growth that our economy is capable of. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, Kate Steinle didn't have to be shot and killed on a pier in San Francisco. A 13-year-old child didn't have to be raped in the city of Philadelphia by Ramon Ochoa. Both of those crimes were committed by people who were in this country illegally after previously committing multiple crimes and after having been deported. In both cases, the cities in which these crimes occurred--the police departments--had these criminals in custody shortly prior to the commission of these crimes. But in both cases, when the Department of Homeland Security asked for a temporary detention until they could take these people into custody and deport them, that was not allowed because these were sanctuary cities. These sanctuary cities systematically forbid the local police from even sharing information or cooperating with Federal immigration officials, even in the case of criminals. My amendment is a bipartisan amendment. I want to thank the Senator from West Virginia for cosponsoring it. This is an amendment that will ensure that any legal liability for wrongful detention is held by the Federal Government, and nonsecurity funds--CDBG grants and some other categories--will be withheld from sanctuary cities.

Mr. TOOMEY

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

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I want to speak about our immigration debate and my amendment in particular, but first let me say we are going to find out just how serious our colleagues are about granting not just legal status to the Dreamers--people who came to this country or were brought here illegally when they were children and couldn't and shouldn't be held accountable for that action. The proposal that will be available for a vote later this week will not just grant legal status but will actually grant a path to citizenship. It goes well beyond the illegal Executive order President Obama issued, and it will be available to far more people than those who took up President Obama's illegal Executive order. It is really going to be an extraordinary moment. I hope we are able to reach an agreement on this because I think this needs to get done. Mr. President, I want to first address an amendment I have offered that is now up and pending--and I think we will be voting on it at some point this week--which is all about keeping our communities safer by addressing the terrible problem of sanctuary cities. This is a problem that one father in particular knows all too well. On July 1 of 2015, Jim Steinle was walking arm in arm with his daughter Kate on a pier in San Francisco. Suddenly, a gunman sprang out and opened fire, hitting Kate. She pleaded, ``Help me, Dad,'' as she bled to death in her father's arms. Now, any murder is appalling, but one of the things that makes this even more appalling is that the shooter should never have been on the pier that day. The fact is, he was an illegal immigrant who had been convicted of seven felonies and had been deported five times, but even more galling is, 3 months before the day he murdered Kate Steinle, this murderer was in the custody of the San Francisco Police Department. They had him. He was in custody. They had him on an old warrant for a previous crime. When the Department of Homeland Security found out that the San Francisco Police Department had this guy in custody, they immediately reached out and said: Hold this guy until we can get someone there to take him into custody. We know he is dangerous, we know he is here illegally, and we want to get him out of this country, but the San Francisco Police couldn't provide that minimal cooperation. Instead, they released this man back onto the streets from which, 3 months later, he murdered young Kate Steinle. Why would the police of San Francisco do a thing like that? Why in the world would they refuse to provide this minimal cooperation with immigration authorities with respect to a dangerous individual? The reason is because San Francisco is a sanctuary city. That means it has as its explicit legal policy a prohibition that forbids their police from cooperating with Federal immigration officials, even if the police want to. It extends to other law enforcement, like sheriffs and deputy sheriffs. This is the case even when local law enforcement authorities believe the person is dangerous, and the local law enforcement folks wish to cooperate with the Federal authorities because they know this person is a threat to the security of their community, but local politicians override the police and decide this will be a sanctuary city. Such is the case with San Francisco, and so the San Francisco Police had no choice. They were required by local laws to release this man onto the streets. One of the many ironies about sanctuary cities is if Federal officials had called the San Francisco Police about any number of other crimes--robbery, car theft, violating a trademark, counterfeiting--any number of other Federal crimes, then the San Francisco Police would have been allowed to cooperate. They would have been happy to cooperate. They would have been able to cooperate, but because the crime was committed by an illegal immigrant, the police's hands were tied. The police were forced to release Kate Steinle's killer. It is just unbelievable to me that we have communities across the country that wish to provide this special privilege--this special protection--for even dangerous criminals because they are here illegally. It is unbelievable, but that is the case. Sadly, the Steinles are not alone. They are not the only family who has been affected this way because, of course, San Francisco is not our Nation's only sanctuary city. Philadelphia--the fifth largest city in America, the largest city in my home State--has an extreme sanctuary city policy, and it has had appalling consequences already. Maybe the most heartbreaking of these is the case of Ramon Aguirre- Ochoa. Ochoa was a Honduran national in the United States illegally. He was deported in 2009, but he illegally reentered the United States, which is itself a felony. He found his way to Philadelphia, and in 2015 the Philadelphia Police arrested him on charges of aggravated assault and various other crimes. When the background check went through, the Department of Homeland Security saw that the Philadelphia Police had this guy. They knew who this guy was. They knew he was here illegally, they knew he had been deported, and they believed him to be the dangerous criminal that he was. So they asked the Philadelphia Police: Could you hold this guy for 24, 48 hours, until we can get an agent there to take him into custody and begin deportation proceedings? We know he is a bad guy. We want him out of the country. Unfortunately, Philadelphia Police had to refuse. Instead, they released him onto the city streets in January 2015. The Philadelphia D.A. didn't feel like he had enough evidence to prosecute the case. He dropped the charges, and rather than cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security, they released Ochoa back onto the streets of Philadelphia. That was January of 2015. In July of 2016, Ochoa was arrested for raping a child under the age of 13. This brutal attack on the child was only possible because Philadelphia is a sanctuary city. It is these appalling cases--like the Steinle case or this case in Philadelphia-- that make it so important that we end these sanctuary cities if it is at all possible to do so. My amendment is a bipartisan amendment. It is identical to a bill I introduced and the Senate voted to consider in 2016. I reintroduced it in 2017. It does two things: It tackles a legal liability for localities that wish to cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security, and, with that legal liability problem solved, it imposes penalties on communities that choose nevertheless to be sanctuary cities. We don't have the authority as a Federal Government to dictate the policy that a local community must follow. There is a constitutional separation that gives them the power to do what they will, but we don't have to subsidize their behavior when it endangers all of us, and that is what my legislation goes after. So let me discuss first the legal liability issue. There are now at least two court decisions that have put pressure on municipalities, localities, to be sanctuary cities. Over a dozen Pennsylvania counties have done so. One is a Third Circuit decision; the second is a Federal district court in Oregon. They have held that if the Department of Homeland Security makes a mistake and they make a detainer request--let's say it is a case of wrongful identity. They ask a local police force to hold someone who, in fact, is an American citizen, should be here and is here legally, and so it is therefore an erroneous detention. If that happens and the local law enforcement folks comply with that request, under these court decisions, the local municipality can be held liable for the ensuing litigation on the part of the person who is wrongly detained. My bill addresses this problem by simply saying that when a local law enforcement officer complies with an immigration detainer request from DHS that is a duly issued and bona fide request, then the local officer has the same authority as a DHS official. In a way, the officer would be considered an agent of the Department of Homeland Security for this purpose, and the entity the person would then sue in the event that a person is wrongly detained and their civil rights are violated would be the Federal Government. The responsibility should be on the Federal Government, since it was, after all, a request that initiated with the Federal Government. My legislation does not in any way curb an individual's ability to file a suit if their civil or constitutional rights are violated, whether it is intentional or accidental. There is no curb on an individual's ability to redress that if they were wrongfully detained. It simply transfers the liability from the municipality to the origination of the detainer request, which is the Department of Homeland Security. So that is the first part: solve the legal liability problem which has some municipalities across America--certainly in my State of Pennsylvania--choosing to be sanctuary cities, even though they would rather not be. Now, having addressed that, if our legislation is adopted, and we have thereby solved this legal liability problem, if a community nevertheless decides it is going to endanger all the rest of us by conferring this special protection on somebody just because they came here illegally--despite the fact that they may well be a dangerous criminal--in that case, under my amendment, that community will be deemed a sanctuary city, and under my amendment several types of Federal funding would be withheld from it. Specifically, we would withhold from the sanctuary cities community development block grants and certain grants from the Economic Development Administration. I think this is eminently reasonable. Sanctuary cities impose costs on all of us. They raise the cost to the Federal Government of enforcing immigration law, but by far outweighing that is the cost to the American people of more crime and the unbelievable, staggering cost to families like Jim Steinle and his family, who lost their daughter. I think it is extremely reasonable to have as a policy that if a community chooses to impose those costs on the rest of us, the Federal Government will not be subsidizing it. Let me debunk some of the misinformation that is occasionally disseminated about my amendment. One is that it is somehow anti- immigrant. This is not anti-immigrant at all; this is pro-immigrant. The fact is, the vast, overwhelming majority of immigrants in America, legal and illegal, would never commit these terrible crimes; there is no question about that. It is also obviously the case that any very large number of people will include some criminals among them. There are roughly 11 million people who are here illegally--11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Some of them are certainly violent criminals. It makes no sense to insulate those violent criminals, however few they may be, from capture by law enforcement. It would be absurd to allege that this is somehow anti- immigrant when quite likely some of their victims will be other immigrants. Immigrants want to live in safe communities too. I am positive of that. They don't want dangerous criminals to be able to walk the streets just because they came here illegally. The second point I want to stress is that this amendment does not discourage or punish illegal immigrants for coming forward to report a crime. This is important because folks who want to keep sanctuary cities sometimes charge that if my legislation were passed, victims and witnesses to crimes, if they are here illegally, wouldn't come forward. That is not so. My amendment in this underlying law explicitly states that a locality will not be labeled a sanctuary jurisdiction for this purpose, and therefore will not lose any Federal funds, if it has a policy stating that if a person comes forward as a victim or a witness to a crime, local law enforcement will not share information with DHS. Let me be clear and explicit about this. We have an explicit carve- out in the legislation. If a locality chooses to provide sanctuary status to a victim of a crime or a witness to a crime, such a community would not lose any Federal funds whatsoever. We think that makes sense because we do want to encourage victims and witnesses of crimes to come forward. We get it. We don't want to create a worry that there would be deportation consequences for them. A third point which some have alleged and which I want to be very clear about is that the penalties my amendment has for a community that chooses to be a sanctuary city do not include the loss of any funds whatsoever related to law enforcement or security. That is simply not the case. The list of categories that we include in lost funding is economic development in its nature. It is not at all law enforcement. Another point that some on the other side have made is that somehow this legislation, my amendment, would impose an unmanageable burden on law enforcement. One simple fact to consider is, if that is the case, then why has it been endorsed by law enforcement groups? The National Association of Police Organizations has endorsed my amendment. The International Union of Police Associations, a division of AFL-CIO, has endorsed my amendment. The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association has endorsed my amendment. Would these groups endorse a bill that imposed an unworkable burden on their own members? I rather doubt it. I think they understand that this amendment encourages local law enforcement to share information with the Department of Homeland Security and in some cases to temporarily and briefly hold people in custody until the Department of Homeland Security can get there. This is a bipartisan amendment. In 2016, when the Senate voted on this very same amendment in the form of a freestanding bill, it received a majority, and it had bipartisan support. Unfortunately, a minority filibustered it and blocked it. But the fact is, it is a bipartisan piece of legislation with majority support. I don't think it should even be controversial. I think we will have a vote on this relatively soon, in the coming days. I hope it will have very broad support. This is common sense. It stands for the principle that the safety of the American people matters, that the lives of Kate Steinle and other victims of violent crime matter, and that all of our communities should be as safe as they can be.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the Super Bowl champions, the Philadelphia Eagles. Last Sunday night in Minneapolis, the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the vaunted New England Patriots by a score of 41 to 33 in one of the most amazing Super Bowls ever--one of the most amazing NFL games ever. It was really an extraordinary night. In so doing, the Eagles captured their first Super Bowl title ever and the franchise's first national championship since 1960. The Eagles' arguably improbable Super Bowl run came despite many serious injuries and a whole lot of doubt from naysayers and pundits and oddsmakers. The oddsmakers, by the way, had the Eagles as underdogs in every playoff game they played, but, of course, they won every one of them. It is a team led by Doug Pederson, a coach who, himself, entering the season, was often doubted and sometimes dismissed by the punditry and the talking heads. Not only did Coach Pederson make his critics look silly, but, in winning the Super Bowl, he beat a man who is arguably considered one of the best coaches in NFL history. Pederson did it by deploying one of the greatest offensive game plans I think the NFL has ever seen. The group of men who comprise the Eagles' roster embody the city of Philadelphia. They are brash, gritty, and talented, with a never-say- die attitude. They are led by stalwarts like Malcolm Jenkins, Fletcher Cox, Carson Wentz, and Alshon Jeffery. The Eagles' ``next man up'' mentality was incredible to witness. Think about what they had to overcome. Over the course of the regular season, the Eagles lost a Hall of Fame left tackle, their amazing middle linebacker, arguably the best pound-for-pound player in all of football, and they still steamrolled through to a 13-to-3 record in the regular season. For all of that, maybe the greatest example of the ``next man up'' mentality in NFL history was the way that Nick Foles took over for Carson Wentz at quarterback when Wentz was lost to a serious injury late in the season. The fact is, Wentz was, I think, the leading candidate for the league's MVP at the time of his injury. I think he still should be considered a leading candidate for MVP for the season. The fact that Nick Foles was able to step in and guide the team not just into the playoffs, not just through the playoffs, but all the way to the Super Bowl and to a Super Bowl victory against the New England Patriots is what legends are made of. The Philadelphia Eagles are a historic franchise. Some of the best players in the history of the game have worn the green and white. Names like Van Brocklin, Bednarik, White, and Dawkins come to mind. This Super Bowl is also for all of these great players who put on the Eagles jersey over the years. I will conclude with this. If you listen to sports radio in Philadelphia or most of Eastern Pennsylvania, you learn that the passion of the fan base is really extraordinary. This is because the Eagles, in many ways, are more than a football team to their fans. The Eagles are a part of Pennsylvania culture. They are a part of the region's culture. The mood of the region is affected every weekend that they are playing. Other cities have certainly celebrated Super Bowl victories in the past. Somebody gets to do that every year. But this Thursday afternoon in Philadelphia, get ready for a party like you have never seen because the most passionate fans in the country are finally getting a parade down Broad Street with the Lombardi trophy. Go Birds. Fly, Eagles, fly. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I wish to address the Chamber on a topic that I have been speaking on once a week--or thereabouts--since we passed the historic tax reform late last year. Last Friday, I had the chance to visit JED Pool Tools/Northeastern Plastics in Scranton, PA. It is a company owned by Cindi and Alan Heyen and employs about 30 people. JED Pool Tools makes swimming pool accessories. They make the skimmers and water test kits and other devices that people use in their pools. Northeastern Plastics is the sister company, and they make custom plastic products like locker handles, barber supplies, and all kinds of special order products. This is a great example of tax reform in action, tax reform that is working for this small business and this employer in Northeastern Pennsylvania. They, like other small businesses, get to discount by 20 percent their net income and pay tax only on the other 80 percent. That frees up cash flow for this business and businesses all across America to go out and purchase new equipment, invest in their employees, grow their business, hire more workers, raise wages. That is exactly what is happening. It is happening at JED Pools, but it is also happening across the country. In less than 2 months since our legislation passed, over 300 businesses employing over 3 million workers have announced bonuses, wage increases, expanded benefits, contributions to pension plans, and increased investment in charitable contributions. The list goes on and on. These are the ones that cite tax reform as the reason they were able to do these things for their workers, for their business. In Pennsylvania alone, we have had some recent announcements. Thermo Fisher employs 2,600 people in Pennsylvania. It is a biotech development company. They announced $50 million in additional investments, $34 million in the form of bonuses they are going to pay to each of the company's 68,000 nonexecutive employees. They also announced $16 million in additional research and development programs and support for STEM education. They cited that they are doing this as a direct result of the tax reform that was passed. Cigna is a big, global health service company. It has 5,900 employees in Pennsylvania. Again, citing our tax reform, they have announced that they are going to increase the minimum wage they pay throughout the company to $16 an hour. That will be the lowest wage anyone at an entry level, starting level, makes at Cigna. They are going to provide an additional $15 million in salary raises to people who are already working there. They are also going to put $30 million more into 401(k) savings programs that their employees participate in--all attributable directly to tax reform. Take the case of UPS. UPS employees 19,000 Pennsylvanians, and they announced that due to the ``favorable tax law impact''--those are their words--they are committing an additional $7 billion in capital spending over 3 years to build and renovate facilities, to acquire new aircraft and ground fleet vehicles, to enhance their technical platforms. They announced that they are going to contribute an additional $5 billion to their employees' pension plans as well. That comes to about $13,000 per participant. That is a tremendous amount of money for each of their employees. There are small companies that are sharing the benefits as well. Noah Bank in Elkins Park, PA, said that thanks to the passage of the new tax legislation, this Pennsylvania charter community bank is awarding $1,500 bonuses to all of its employees. We are seeing it up and down the country, certainly all across Pennsylvania--large firms, small firms, financial firms, manufacturers--across the board. Workers are already benefiting from the tax reform that we passed in December. Another important indicator that the benefits are likely to grow is in the optimism that workers and businesses have because of the environment they are operating in. It is a really important driver. UBS does research on investor and business optimism. It recently did a survey of business owners. It asked several questions. One of them was: Is your economic outlook positive? In the fourth quarter of last year, outlook was pretty positive as 65 percent said, yes, their outlook for the economy was positive. This year, it is up to 83 percent. It asked the question: Is the business outlook stronger now than it was in the past? In the fourth quarter of last year, 77 percent said, yes, it was stronger. In the first quarter of this year, 87 percent said, yes, the business outlook was stronger. It asked business owners about their plans for hiring and investing. Thirty-six percent plan to hire more workers, and forty-four percent plan to invest more. This is really important because it is optimism about the future that is a necessary precondition for more investment. After all, that investment depends on a strong economy in going forward to make it worthwhile. That investment is reaching new highs because of the combination of a lighter regulatory touch and much more pro-growth tax reform. I think it is also important to stress that this tax reform is not some kind of short-term sugar high of let's throw money at people and then hope it goes well. It is not that at all. It is a set of different incentives that will lead to a structural change in the economy and, specifically, in a greater productive capacity on the part of our economy by encouraging more investment, by lowering the cost of making that investment, by allowing businesses to retain more of their earnings so that they have more to invest. All of that expands our economy and expands our productive capacity. It creates more of a demand for workers. More of a demand for workers puts upward pressure on workers' wages. What did we see just last week? We saw a major--in fact, the largest increase in average workers' wages that we have seen in many, many years. I am thrilled that our tax reform is having such a beneficial impact all across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and so quickly. I expected upward pressure on wages. I expected more job opportunities. I expected a higher standard of living. I didn't quite expect it to happen this quickly, but I am thrilled that it has, and I am convinced that this is just the beginning. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the commissioning of the Coast Guard's 26th Sentinel-class Fast Response Cutter, FRC, the USCGC Joseph Gerczak. The commissioning ceremony for this impressive ship will take place in Honolulu, HI, on March 9. Although I regret not being able to attend the ceremony in person, I am deeply honored for the chance to speak about this cutter and the remarkable man for which it is named. Joseph Gerczak, a son of Pennsylvania, valiantly died fighting for his country during World War II. He was born on February 10, 1922, in Philadelphia, PA. Soon after enlisting in the Coast Guard on September 26, 1942, he was assigned to a tank landing ship whose job it was to carry tanks, vehicles, cargo, and troops directly onto enemy shores. Gerczak was quickly promoted to signalman third class on this ship, which was called the USS LST-66. On December 26, 1943, Gerczak and his crewmates participated in the initial Allied assault on the Japanese-held island of New Britain. During this operation, the USS LST-66 came under sudden attack by seven Japanese dive bombers. Acting without hesitation, Gerczak was the first crewmember to man his battle station; he heroically shot down two Japanese planes before being mortally wounded from the shrapnel of a bomb blast. He was 21 years old. For his valor in battle, Gerczak was posthumously awarded both the Silver Star and Purple Heart. The USS LST-66's entire crew was also given the Presidential Unit Commendation. It is exceptionally fitting that Gerczak be honored for the sacrifice he gave during World War II by having his name live on in the service of the U.S. Coast Guard. The USCGC Joseph Gerczak will be the second FRC based in Honolulu, HI, replacing the legacy Island-class patrol boats. As a Sentinel-class cutter, it will feature advanced command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance--C4ISR-- equipment. Furthermore, this ship will be fully interoperable with existing and future Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Defense assets. These state-of-the-art capabilities will better enable the USCGC Joseph Gerczak to conduct missions that include port, waterways, and the coasts; fishery patrols; search and rescue; and national defense. I ask my colleagues to join me in recognition of the commissioning of the USCGC Joseph Gerczak into military service as a Coast Guard ship.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about two separate matters. The first is a very painful and difficult topic, but I feel it is important to address. I wish to recognize, acknowledge, and honor the heroic life and legacy and sacrifice of one of Pennsylvania's finest: Deputy U.S. Marshal Christopher Hill. On January 18 of this year, Deputy Hill was shot and killed while he was apprehending a fugitive in Harrisburg, PA. Christopher Hill lived in York, PA. He was only 45 years old. He was a husband and the father of two young children. He dedicated his life to serving and protecting first his country and later his community. He was an 11-year veteran of the U.S. Marshals Service. He was a former U.S. Army Ranger who had been deployed to Somalia. In 2014, Deputy Hill was one of the deputy marshals who helped capture a notorious cop killer in Pennsylvania, Eric Frein, who was the subject of one of the largest and longest manhunts in recent history throughout rural Pennsylvania. The fact is that day in and day out for a very long period of time, Christopher Hill put his life on the line for the rest of us. He did it as an Army Ranger in Somalia. He did it as a deputy U.S. marshal. I had the privilege of attending the memorial service for him recently. It was extraordinary to hear one after another of the people whom he had served with in various capacities speak about a truly extraordinary individual, a guy who was by all accounts humble and modest but absolutely dedicated with a passion to his family, to his community, and to his country. Sometimes it is easy for us to forget the risks and sacrifices that are being taken by the men and women who wear various uniforms that represent the various organizations that defend and protect us. But I want to say to the people of Pennsylvania and to the family of Christopher Hill that we are never going to forget the bravery and the sacrifice and the service he provided for all of us.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I have 11 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Armed Services The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Korean Peninsula and United States strategy in the Indo-Pacific region.'' Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs The Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Financial Stability Oversight Council annual report to Congress.'' Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Growing the Future: Opportunities to Support domestic Seafood Through Aquaculture.'' Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``One Year Later: The American Innovation and Competitiveness Act.'' Committee on Energy and Natural Resources The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing on subcommittee assignments and the following nominations: Melissa F. Burnison, of Kentucky, to be an Assistant Secretary of Energy (Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs), Susan Combs, of Texas, to be an Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Douglas Nelson, of Idaho, to be Solicitor of the Department of the Interior, and Anne Marie White, of Michigan, to be an Assistant Secretary of Energy (Environmental Management). Committee on Energy and Natural Resources The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``The role of the Geological Survey and the Forest Service in preparing for and responding to natural hazard events, as well as the current status of mapping and monitoring systems. Committee on Environment and Public Works The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight Hearing to Receive Testimony from the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.'' Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Economic Relationship between the United States, Canada, and Mexico.'' Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Access and Innovation.'' Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Roundtable on Small Business Health Plans.'' Select Committee on Intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a closed hearing.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to speak about what our tax reform and tax relief legislation actually does. I want to start by welcoming in advance the President of the United States to Pennsylvania. The President is going to Pittsburgh, PA, to talk about the specifics of our tax reform and the effect it is having. I really wish I could be there with him, but we don't know when we are going to finish up here, as the President knows very well. We might be here well into the evening, and I have multiple obligations to which I have long been committed in addition to juggling that. Unfortunately, I will not be able to get to Pittsburgh with the President, but I hope to have another opportunity to celebrate this victory for Pennsylvanians and Americans because that is what it is. When we set out to accomplish the biggest tax reform in at least 31 years, we had two big goals. The first was to make sure we implemented a direct tax cut for working families, for middle-income families, and for the overwhelming majority of families and individuals whom we all represent. That was goal No. 1--to make sure we cut taxes for the people who are working every day, living paycheck to paycheck, working hard, and making America what it is. That was item No. 1. The second thing we wanted to do was to reform what was a completely archaic, unbelievably complicated, inefficient, and really terrible business tax code that had become arguably one of the very worst in the world and one that was systematically discouraging investment in the United States. So those were the two goals--direct tax relief for ordinary Americans and making the business tax code competitive. I am thrilled to be able to say that I believe we achieved both goals. First of all, it is a simple, straightforward, factual matter that we cut taxes on the vast, overwhelming majority of taxpayers--the families and individuals who pay taxes. That is just a factual matter. That is easy to confirm. Of course, that has the effect of increasing the take- home pay for anybody who is working. You can increase your take-home pay by either getting a raise from your employer or by paying fewer taxes on what you earn or both, and we knew for sure that we were cutting taxes and that there was going to be a take-home pay increase. I predicted at the time that we would also be creating an environment in which there would be upward pressure on wages, where over time we would start to see people getting bonuses, pay rate increases, and wage increases because we would be creating a dynamic in which employers would be competing more and more for workers so that, in effect, they would be bidding up the compensation for the workers. That is what I predicted, and I was confident that would happen within some number of months or a year or so. So I had to come down to the floor today and confess that I was wrong--very wrong--about the timing of that. You see, we didn't have to wait 3 or 6 or 12 months for our constituents-- the people whom we represent--to see the benefits in the form of higher wages. They started happening immediately--I mean, within days. It has actually been stunning. It has been about 1 month since we passed this sweeping tax reform, and many hundreds of businesses--those cumulatively employing well over 2 million workers--have announced bonuses, wage increases, expanded benefits, and increased contributions to pension accounts. They have cited the tax reform as the mechanism that has enabled them to do this for their workers. What is so exciting about this is that this is happening even before the wave of new investments has even been able to begin. This is happening because companies know that with lower tax rates, they are going to have more free cash flow. They are going to use some of that to invest in growing their business, but they have already announced that they are using some of that to enhance the compensation of their employees. Let me give you some examples. These are just Pennsylvania-related companies, a handful of the ones I am aware of. It is typical of companies across the country. Comcast, a big employer based in Philadelphia, announced specifically that as a result of the tax reform, they would make a $1,000 bonus payment to 100,000 frontline nonexecutive employees, and they committed to $50 billion of capital expenditure over the next 5 years. How many tens of thousands of jobs is all of that capital expenditure going to support? It is a big number. That is not all. Out in Pittsburgh, PNC Financial Services, a substantial large bank in Pittsburgh, announced right after the tax reform that they would pay $1,000 to 47,500 of their employees, and, in addition, they would contribute $1,500 to each of their employees for participating in their pension savings plans. They are also raising their base wage. Their minimum wage for employees at PNC goes up to $15 an hour. No Federal Government edict is forcing them to do it. This is what they want to do. It is so that they can attract more and competitive employees. They have also increased their contribution to their charitable foundation--$200 million to a charitable foundation that supports early childhood education. That is PNC. Navient has 900 or so employees in Wilkes-Barre, PA, and they announced that they are giving a $1,000 bonus to their non-officer employees--98 percent of their employees. That is not the top brass, but everybody else is going to get a $1,000 bonus. Customers Bank in Wyomissing, Berks County, PA, announced that as a result of the tax reform and the tax relief they are getting, they are going to be able to offer people who have a checking account with them a higher rate on their deposits. In another benefit for consumers, they are going to increase their charitable giving. NexTier Bank in Butler County, in Western Pennsylvania, is giving a $1,000 bonus to all their employees. As to Walmart, I think we all saw that. There are Walmart employees in every State of the Union, and there certainly are in Pennsylvania. There are over 160 Walmart locations in Pennsylvania. They are giving a bonus of up to $1,000, raising their starting wage, expanding their paid leave policy, and their adoption assistance program for their employees, all in response to the tax relief and reform that they know is going to be good for their business, and they already decided to make it good for their employees as well. That is just a small handful of the companies that I know of in Pennsylvania that have made public announcements about this. How many more are there across the country? It is a huge number, and it is growing rapidly, and it is fantastic. I think it is fantastic. I think it is fantastic when the people I represent are able to earn more to support their family, get a bigger bonus and get a bonus they might not otherwise have gotten at all. I know this view is not universally shared. The House Minority Leader Pelosi doesn't think very much of this. In fact, she said: ``In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers to kind of put a schmooze on--it's so pathetic . . . I think it's insignificant.'' I have to state that I don't think it is pathetic, and I don't think it is insignificant. I think to a family that is struggling, a family that is working hard, a family that may be living paycheck-to-paycheck, as most families do, these are not crumbs. This makes a difference. For the people who wonder, because they heard so much from our colleagues on the other side that this is not going to help middle-class families, any mystery that people may think surrounds this will be resolved very soon because the IRS has already released new withholding guidelines. The Treasury has done their evaluation, and they have concluded as the Joint Tax Committee concluded, that over 90 percent of all individuals and families filing and paying taxes will see a tax cut. So they are adjusting the withholding table so that the take-home pay goes up and so that the money that workers pay to Uncle Sam goes down. Honestly, I have to state that I am convinced that the best in all of this is yet to come. The best is yet to come because it is too early for us to have yet benefitted from the wave of new capital investment. We have made it more affordable for businesses to invest in their workers, to invest in their businesses, and to invest here in America rather than overseas. We have made that more affordable so more is going to happen, and when it happens, people are going to get the benefits from the jobs they have to provide those capital goods. Other people are going to benefits from jobs that are necessary to operate that capital equipment. Wages will rise because workers will become more productive. This is what is in store for us, and this is what is so exciting. It is not just my theorizing on this. Last week the CEO of PNC, Bill Demchak, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal. He said: For all the investment decisions that companies make, the U.S. just got that much more attractive. . . . It's going to win more than it won before in terms of where people choose to do business activity and invest. I couldn't agree more. This is clearly going to be the result. We are allowing American businesses to compete and to win in a competitive global economy. This is going to increase the supply of capital. It is going to increase the productive capacity of the American economy. It is going to provide better tools for workers when they have that capital that they can work with that makes them more productive. That enables them to earn higher wages, and with all the need for more workers that this is going to generate, it is going to continue to put upward pressure on wages, because that is what companies are going to have to do in order to attract and retain the employees they need. So I would say that I think we are well on our way to seeing the fruits of this reform. I think it is going to be extremely constructive. I am thrilled that our legislation has already begun to have tangible benefits for the people we represent, and I am convinced that the best is yet to come. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Thank you, Mr. President. I rise to speak about the conference report we will be voting on later this evening. Before I do that, I want to mention a few folks by name who deserve a big thank-you for the incredible work they did to get us to this terrific point we are at today. I wanted to start with Leader McConnell. His vision and leadership made this possible, and I am grateful for that. I want to mention Chairman Hatch, who also helped to guide the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over our Tax Code; Chairman Enzi, the chairman of the Budget Committee--without a proper budget resolution, this moment would not have been possible; Chairman Murkowski, who has fought for so long to open up this little tiny postage stamp in an incredibly remote part of Alaska to prudent energy development, and finally, tonight we are going to pass the legislation to do that; Senator Cornyn, our whip, who is also a member of the Finance Committee and played a very important role; Senators Thune, Portman, and Scott, with whom I worked very closely for a very extended period of time to try to find the consensus that I think we have reached among Republican Senators. I want to mention Senator Corker. I had many long and ultimately very fruitful conversations with Senator Corker, who approached this in a very thoughtful and responsible way. I am very grateful for him. I want to mention some of the staff who worked incredibly hard on this: Mark Warren, who handles tax policy for Senator Thune; Zach Rudisill, who works for Senator Portman; Shay Hawkins, who handled this brief for Senator Scott; Andrew Siracuse, who works for Senator Cornyn; and Bart Massey, who handled this responsibility for Senator Enzi, and Matt Giroux. They all did terrific work. A big special thanks to some of the guys on my staff who did an amazing job. Randy Herndon joined my team earlier this year and did an absolutely extraordinary job. Fortunately, he has an incredible wealth of knowledge about tax policy, and he was able to put that to work for Pennsylvanians and for Americans in a tremendously constructive way. Brad Grantz, my legislative director, also helped to guide this process. Dan Brandt, who is my chief of staff, did some great quarterbacking. I should point out the Senate Finance Committee staff who worked incredible hours and did a great job--Jay Khosla, Mark Prater, Jen Acuna, and the rest of the Senate Finance Committee staff, and also Brendan Dunn in the leader's office, who played a very important role. Speaker Ryan and Chairman Brady in the other Chamber played an indispensable role in getting us here, as did Tom Barthold, who leads the Joint Committee on Taxation, quantifying every wrinkle along the way in the final product, as well as his team. I should also mention that the President provided constructive leadership along the way, and we worked extensively with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and the Director of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, from the White House. This took a long time to put together and involved an enormous amount of work, but I am so proud of what we have brought to this floor and what I believe we are going to pass later this evening. The process started over a year ago when members of the Finance Committee began to tackle what seemed like a very daunting challenge--the most ambitious tax reform in 31 years. Could we really overhaul the entire Tax Code and achieve two very important accomplishments and do it with the very narrow majority we have, knowing that our Democratic friends did not want to participate in this process, and try to get this all the way across the goal line? I am thrilled to be able to report that I think we have accomplished those two big things. What are they? No. 1, we were determined from the very beginning that we would not even attempt to bring a bill to the floor unless it lowered the tax burden on the families we represent-- individuals, families, middle-income and lower income families. That was No. 1. No. 2, we wanted to fundamentally restructure the business side of our Tax Code so that American workers and businesses can compete and win in a global economy against anybody. I have to tell you, we did those things, and I think that is why this is going to pass tonight. First, on the individual side, this is absolutely a direct tax cut for the vast overwhelming majority of low- and middle-income taxpayers. They will simply pay less in Federal taxes. That is the reality. By the way, most high-income taxpayers will have some tax savings as well. I don't apologize for that. I am in favor of lowering the tax burden on everyone. While not every last individual is going to have a tax cut, the vast majority of people will. We do it through a variety of mechanisms. I will not go through all of them, but a couple of the mechanisms that I think people understand and appreciate are, one, we doubled the standard deduction--what does that mean? That means that a couple filing jointly, as most married couples do, the first $24,000 of income they earn doesn't get taxed at all--zero, nothing. They don't owe a dime to the Federal Government on the first $24,000 that they earn. That one step alone results in a tax reduction for many millions of Americans. In addition, we lower marginal tax rates so that the income people earn above $24,000 gets taxed at lower rates under our bill than under current law. We also dramatically increase the child tax credit so that families with children get this additional benefit on top of the ones I just mentioned. The net effect of all of this is that every single income category pays less in taxes. You don't have to take my word for it; that is the joint tax nonpartisan review of our bill. And low-income earners receive the largest percentage of benefits of all. For people who are listening to this debate, whether in the Chamber here or watching C-SPAN, I can understand that they could be a little frustrated because they hear our Democratic colleagues say: This is a terrible deal for the middle class. Some have even said it is a tax increase. And they have heard me and other Republicans say this is absolutely a tax cut for the middle class. Who are they to believe? I understand that frustration. Let me suggest that there is a simple way to cut through all of this--there are two, actually. No. 1, look what happened on the Senate floor during debate on this. The same sort of argument was taking place when a Democratic Senator offered an amendment to take our tax policy for low- and middle-income families and individuals and make it permanent. If this were a bad deal for the middle class, presumably all the Democratic Senators would vote no, but they did not. They voted yes. It was really quite an extraordinary compliment to our work that they offered an amendment to take what we did--which is not yet permanent; we weren't able to do that; we are going to come back and revisit that, and I hope we will make it permanent--and said: This is so good, we should make it permanent right now. So I appreciate the compliment. I appreciate the validation of the tax cut, that this is for low-income and middle- income families, and I want to work with them to make sure it is permanent. We should be able to do that. The second way we know where the truth lies in this debate is in late January, early February, just check your paycheck. Take a look. Withholding is going to go down because you are going to owe less money to Uncle Sam, so you are going to get a take-home pay raise. It is as simple as that. So the mystery will be all gone when people take a look at their check and discover that, yes, look at that, I actually got the pay raise those Republican guys said we were going to get. I am looking forward to when that happens and, at that point, I think this debate will shift to other topics. That is my guess. I also want to touch on the tax reform on the business side because I think that is what is likely to drive the economic growth and the opportunities I want to see for the people I represent. It comes in a context. The context is the weakest economic recovery in the history of the Republic. After a very severe recession in 2008, we never really had the booming recovery we have always had in the past. It is not a huge mystery why. Our Democratic friends had complete control of the elective government, and they did all of the things they wanted to do. They had the ability--and they did--huge, repeated tax increases with no reforms, a virtual takeover of healthcare, an avalanche of new regulations, and a massive spending binge. They did all of those things and, unsurprisingly, we got a weak economy, not a strong economy. One of the specific problems we have had and that has plagued us ever since that recession is a collapse in the growth of the capital stock, which caused a collapse in the growth of productivity, and without productivity, it is not at all surprising that workers aren't getting raises. The path to higher wages for workers is allowing workers to become more productive. To be more productive, they need better tools, and better tools are acquired through investment. So that was lacking, and that is the heart of what we are fixing. Our reform goes right to this challenge of lowering the cost of deploying capital. What do I mean by deploying capital? What I mean is investing in the very kind of equipment that makes workers more productive and allows them to earn higher wages. A simple example is, you go to a construction site and there are two guys working and one of them is working a backhoe and the other is working a shovel. They are both digging a hole. They are both moving dirt. Which one do you think is getting paid more? The guy operating the backhoe is always making more money because he is able to be so much more productive than any human can be with just his bare hands and a shovel. So when we make it more affordable for businesses to go out and buy new tractors, new equipment, new machinery, that gives them the chance to put those more valuable tools into the hands of their workers. By the way, someone also has to build those things. Someone has the job at Caterpillar of making that tractor. Someone has the job of making that vehicle. Someone has the job of making the machinery. So all of these things coming together are a very powerful driver of economic growth--not the only one. Not only do we lower the cost of acquiring that equipment, we also lower the top rate that businesses pay. We have arguably the most uncompetitive Tax Code in the world--the top rate of 35 percent. What we do in our bill is we lower that rate to 21 percent--slightly below the average of the nations we compete with; pretty close to the average. This is going to free up American workers and businesses to compete and win in all kinds of fields where we are getting beaten today. That is going to come to an end because when we have a chance to compete on a level playing field, American workers and American business, we compete and we usually win. We are going to get back to winning. We also recognize that most businesses in America are not organized as C corps, they are organized as passthroughs--small, subchapter S companies, partnerships. So we have a corollary, a reduction in tax rates for them. It comes as a deduction against their earnings. It doesn't apply to all partnerships. Professional services partnerships, for instance, don't get this treatment. I would like to revisit that. I think we want to revisit that because I personally would like to see this treatment expanded to that category, but the vast majority of businesses--partnerships, S corps, C corps--are going to experience a significant tax cut that is going to allow them to compete. Another big, important feature is moving away from this global taxation system we have. We have all been so disturbed by the stories we have read about of American companies being acquired, sometimes by a much smaller company overseas, not because the economics of the transaction make a lot of sense but because the Tax Code drives them. It just makes very little sense, from a tax point of view, to have a multinational company headquartered in the United States. So we have been driving these transactions that are terrible. They usually cost us jobs. They cost us growth. This comes to an end with this reform. We are not going to have this system where we punish business for bringing money back home to the United States. This punishment ends, and it is going to encourage a huge inflow of capital, of accumulated profits back into the United States, because no longer will companies be facing a penalty tax unique in the world. That is over. It is a very constructive development. What does it mean when you take one of the world's worst business tax codes and you turn it into arguably one of the best? It means more investment. It means more people all around the world are going to want to invest in America. It means more Americans are going to want to invest in starting a new business or expanding an existing business. It means more business will be able to afford the tools and the equipment and the vehicles I referred to earlier. That is the source of economic growth. Some of our colleagues on the other side don't seem to acknowledge that this is a reality, but there is no great mystery here. When you lower the cost of something, you get more of it, and when we lower the cost we impose on businesses becoming more productive, we will have more productivity. All of this comes at a very interesting time in the economic cycle. What I am referring to is the fact that we are arguably close to what economists think of as full employment--4.1 percent, 4 percent. Very seldom does the American economy go below 4 percent for extended periods. It means that when this money gets put to work--when companies go out and start buying this equipment--they need workers to fill the orders, but then they need workers to operate the equipment. Demand for workers is going to go up. What happens when demand for workers goes up at a time when there is a relatively small number who are not employed? It means upward pressure on the wages of those workers. This is exactly the dynamic we have been waiting for and we are going to trigger that and we are going to watch this happen. I think it is going to start relatively quickly-- probably next year--that we will start to see upward pressure on wages. That means the people I represent are going to find that they have options, they have higher compensation, they are getting a pay raise because their employer--it is not because employers suddenly wake up one day and decide: Oh, I will just be more generous today. It is nothing of the sort. This is the only way they can hold on to their workforce, hold on to the employees they need. So it is very likely we are going to see an increasing share of the total economic output in the hands of the workers who produce it, and I think that is a terrific development. A couple of other points I want to touch on briefly. One is that this legislation also effectively repeals the individual mandate of ObamaCare. Technically, what we do is we zero out the penalty. The penalty for noncompliance goes to zero, and so that is equivalent to repeal. First of all, this is a great strike for freedom, in my view. It is appalling to think that the Federal Government has the right to force an American to buy a product against his or her will--a terrible infringement on the freedom of Americans. Our Democratic colleagues have described this repeal as a stake through the heart of ObamaCare. Think about what a damning indictment that is about ObamaCare. It is a stake through the heart. If the only way ObamaCare can survive is if people are forced to buy the product against their wishes, what kind of product could that be? What kind of business model depends on forcing people to buy your product because they will not buy it if it is voluntary? So not only is it a significant strike for freedom, it is also tax relief for low-income folks. This ObamaCare penalty in Pennsylvania, in my State--and I think my State is typical--83 percent of the people who get hit with this tax penalty are in a household that earns less than $50,000 a year. So this is more direct relief for low- and middle- income folks. The last point I want to make--and I see my colleague from Ohio on the floor. He did amazing, great work getting us to this point. He was a pleasure to work with and enormously knowledgeable, and I just want to congratulate him for where we are today. A quick word about the deficits. Let me start with a very simple observation. I am convinced that when we pass this legislation and it is signed into law, the Federal budget deficits will shrink as a result of this legislation. It is very simple. The reason I say that is the economic growth, the response to the reforms, the very profound reforms we are making are going to give us a bigger economy to tax, and the extra growth, the bigger economy, means more revenue to the Federal Government. So you could reasonably ask: Well, OK, how much more growth do you really need, though, in order to offset the lost revenue that comes from some of the changes you are making? Fortunately, that is a simple exercise in arithmetic. We know what the answer is. Whether it is Joint Tax or the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan analysis is, we will need to average between two- and four-tenths of a percent of extra GDP growth--extra economic growth--each year, on average, for the next 10 years. If we do that, then we will have a smaller deficit as a result of this legislation, not a larger one. So, for me, what this bill comes down to is a simple question: Do you believe in America? Do you believe in the capacity of the American people to restore the vibrant growth we used to take for granted, decade after decade of annual growth of over 3 percent that caused people's wages to rise and the standard of living to grow? We have had this period that has been stagnant, and some of our friends think, Well, that is what America is now. Just get used to it. Accept it. That is the new normal--barely 2 percent growth, if you are lucky. I think that is nonsense, and it is not true. I still believe in America. I still believe in American workers. I still believe in our system. I still believe we are capable of restoring the kind of growth that has always been our birthright. I think this legislation takes a huge step in that direction. It is a direct, immediate tax cut and, therefore, a pay raise for the hard- working people I represent, and it is a series of reforms that is going to encourage economic growth that will result in higher wages and a better standard of living as well. I am thrilled with the opportunity we have tonight, and I urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from the Government Accountability Office, GAO, be printed in the Record.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute in opposition.