Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Henning Schulzrinne, Nancy Kusmaul, Luis Rivera, and Nicholas Wondra be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the Congress.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I want to thank the vice chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence and pick up on his remarks. For my colleagues, I believe they have asked that I give my remarks before I offer my unanimous consent request, and that is what I will do. Mr. President, America is 266 days away from the 2020 elections, and Majority Leader McConnell has yet to take any concrete steps to protect our foreign elections from hacking or foreign interference. Thanks to this legislative blockade, the Senate has been totally derelict in its duty to stop foreign cyber attacks on our election. I want to give just one concrete example, having listened to my colleague from Tennessee. There is not one single nationwide, mandatory election cyber security standard on the books. That means there is not even a prohibition on voting machines having an open connection to the internet. Colleagues, that is the equivalent of stashing our ballots in the Kremlin. There is no such cyber security prohibition. The election security debacle of 2016 was 4 years ago, but still this body has refused to act. We know Russian hackers probed all 50 State election systems. They hacked at least one election vendor. Russians penetrated two Florida county election systems, according to Florida's Governor. That is just what we know about. Despite all the ways foreign hackers have already made it into our election infrastructure, the Congress has refused to arm State and county officials with the knowledge and funding they need to secure their systems. I will state what I tell my constituents at townhall meetings at home--and I have more of them scheduled this weekend--I believe, as of today, the 2020 election is going to make 2016 look like small potatoes. The list of threats and vulnerabilities ought to be a wake-up call--a wake-up call--for every Member of this Senate. There were the ES&S voting machines that for years came with preinstalled remote- access software. There is the fact that Russia hacked an election vendor called VR Systems in the summer of 2016. VR Systems electronic poll books in North Carolina malfunctioned on election day that year, and one polling place had to shut down for hours. It was 2\1/2\ years before the Department of Homeland Security even investigated what had happened, and the government still has not adequately responded to questions I and Senator Klobuchar have asked about this. Right now, many election officials across the country are buying election systems that they believe in good faith are high tech, but they are in fact vulnerable to hacking and are outdated the moment they come out of the box. There is the alarming trend of states using mobile voting apps, like Voatz, that haven't been vetted by top security experts. This is the reason why so many cyber security experts have been sounding the alarms for years, warning that putting computers between a voter and their ballots is a prescription for disaster. What happens when a ``glitch'' changes a candidate's vote totals by just 2 percent or 5 percent instead of 50 percent? What happens when a glitch shuts down machines in some precincts and not others, disenfranchising voters and skewing election results? Five States still exclusively use hackable, paperless voting machines, and nine other States still use paperless machines in some counties. These are serious problems, but there are some clear solutions. I proposed a bill called the PAVE Act, which has three key priorities that are universally supported by people who are knowledgeable in the election security field: paper ballots, routine post-election risk- limiting audits, and mandatory Federal cyber security standards for election systems. Last year, the House passed a major election security bill called the SAFE Act, which included most of the PAVE Act. Senator Klobuchar and I, on behalf of colleagues on this side of the aisle, introduced the Senate version of the SAFE Act. The SAFE Act has all three key elements recommended by our Nation's top cyber security experts--paper ballots, security standards, and postelection audits--as well as the funding necessary to make sure States can live up to the new standards. The SAFE Act, in my view, represents the most comprehensive commonsense defense against foreign election hacking. I strongly urge my colleagues to reconsider their opposition to this vitally important legislation. Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Rules and Administration Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 2238, the SAFE Act; that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WYDEN. Just to give a brief response, I think it is unfortunate that my colleague is not even willing to engage in this discussion with respect to this. I just want my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to think about their claims. They are saying, for example, that, well, they are sympathetic to the idea that there should be more money for election officials. The recent appropriations funding doesn't even have a requirement that it be spent on election security. States can buy brand new, insecure paperless voting machines that are pretty much useless when they come out of the box. They can even use the money to buy office chairs or a water cooler for the election office. Again, I come back, and I hope my colleague from Tennessee will reflect on this because she is somebody who has spent a lot of time on technology issues. The idea that this Senate is willing to say ``You know, we are not even going to do something. We are not even going to act'' when you can have voting machines with an open connection to the internet--it is just like stashing our ballots in the Kremlin. Something really is out of whack, and we ought to be coming together and passing the SAFE Act. We at least ought to be talking about it. What we have is a specific, documented case for an important piece of legislation, and the majority just says: That is the way it is. We are happy to say that you can have voting machines with an open connection to the internet. We are not even going to talk about it. I think it is very unfortunate. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. For the past 2 weeks, the President's defense team has spun bizarre legal arguments, conspiracy theories, and flatout lies that are unbecoming of the Office of the President of the United States. The country knows the facts. The President pursued his personal and political interests in a way that harmed the national security of America. He smeared our own Ambassador to the Ukraine. He promoted Kremlin propaganda on 2016 election interference. He sent his personal lawyer and willing members of his administration to trade official acts in exchange for fabricated dirt on a political rival. He stopped $391 million dollars in aid from going to the Ukraine, and when the Ukrainians made clear they were desperate for that aid to come through, he made his demands--come up with dirt on the Bidens, find or invent the server. Donald Trump's defense team has claimed the President wanted to fight corruption in Ukraine, but they have produced zero hard evidence to support that claim. Never in the history of our government has the President pursued a policy end without generating what usually is mountains of paper, and yet here there are no memos, no meeting records, no communiques on anticorruption--nothing. This defense is fiction. It is fiction because the President was not fighting corruption in Ukraine. He was causing it. We also know the President was telling the people around him to do what he wanted with respect to the Ukraine. He was telling them to talk to his personal lawyer--talk to Rudy. Because the President had forgotten what is good for the American people, he ignored the needs of our allies and forgiven the attacks on American democracy. What the American Government under this President was after--the only thing it was after--was a corrupt favor for the personal benefit of Donald Trump. This favor was to get a foreign government to target an American citizen when our own intelligence services were legally prohibited from doing so--an action that even Trump's own Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, once admitted is illegal. Mike Pompeo said: ``It is not lawful to outsource that which we cannot do.'' Yet that is what the President was seeking. And that was not the only illegal action. The GAO has said that holding up the Ukraine aid was a violation of the Impoundment Control Act. And when the aid eventually went through in September of last year, it wasn't because they suddenly had a whole lot of new respect for the constitutional powers of the Congress; it was because they got caught. When this abuse came to light, Donald Trump's response was: I pretty much can do what I want. I am above the law. On the south lawn of the White House, he confirmed that he wanted Ukraine to smear the Bidens, smear them by announcing investigations. He said he wanted the same thing from China. In a White House press briefing, Mick Mulvaney, the Chief of Staff, confirmed that the scheme had been politically motivated. A reporter who was clearly stunned at the Mulvaney admission asked for some clarification, and Mulvaney said: ``I have news for everybody: Get over it.'' And that, I would submit, is what this trial is all about, whether the Senate and the country have to simply get over it. I know some Senators are apparently prepared to do exactly that, but let's consider the precedent that just ``getting over it'' sends. If this ends in an acquittal, it will signal that politicians can get away with selling out American interests to foreign coconspirators to rig an election. What is to stop the Russians from approaching a future President with their own proposition: Dial back your support for the Baltic States, and we will take down your opponent. What would prevent the Chinese Government from approaching a Senator and offering fabricated dirt on Senators of the other party in order to smooth the way for a sweetheart trade deal? What if the President hands the Saudis an enemies list of political opponents to hack in exchange for military tech and a few regiments of American soldiers in Yemen? Ending in acquittal without hearing from any witnesses or getting any new evidence will say that the President can rig impeachment trials as well. Every impeachment trial--every one--included witness testimony. That is just good government 101. It is what Americans expect. It is what I heard in open-to-all townhall meetings in Oregon from counties Donald Trump won and from counties Hillary Clinton won. The Republican Senate majority is apparently ready to acquit the Republican President without even going through the motions, ignoring what the American people expect. How will we sustain a functioning democracy when our leaders are allowed to rig an election and there are no consequences? The Congress is going to struggle to unwind that precedent. It could outlive all of us. After these long days of arguments and questioning, in my view, this comes down to two simple questions. First, the President swears an oath, just like we do, to protect and defend our revered Constitution. Does the President's oath of office mean anything? When a President puts his own interests first, when he extorts fabricated dirt from a foreign government for his political gain, he is obviously in violation of his oath. He is not protecting the constitutional right of Americans to choose their own leaders in free and fair elections. What he is doing is protecting himself and his own power. What does the President's oath of office mean if violating it carries no consequences? If his oath means nothing and he cannot be charged with a crime, then he is bound by nothing. And if we will not hold him to his oath, are we not surrendering our own oath--our own oath to protect and defend the Constitution? The second question is, Do we believe that this is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people? Because the President's lawyers stood on the floor right over there and said, in short, it is not. Alan Dershowitz argued that nothing the President does to get reelected can be impeachable as long as he believes his reelection is in the public interest. The President's counsel continued to build on that argument even after they claimed it was misunderstood--this from the same administration that holds that the President cannot be charged with a crime, that he exists on a plane--literally a plane above the law, as it applies to everyone else. If the President may commit crimes in office and cheat in an election to stay in power, then it is no longer a government of, by, and for the people. This is a government of, by, and for Donald Trump. The proposition of free and fair elections in America is gone, replaced by elections that happen on terms set by Donald Trump or on terms set by a future President with the same sort of boost from a foreign power. Putting aside whatever political fallout there may be in the days and weeks ahead, we have to ask, how can the Senate accept this degradation of the sanctity and security of free elections? Isn't this institution supposed to protect our elections and defend our Constitution? The President's attempt to cheat in the election and the extreme lengths he has gone to cover it up are obviously dangerously wrong. What he did is a violation of his oath. It is a betrayal of the system of democratic government left for us by the Founders. And we have no choice. He is guilty. He must be convicted. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. Chief Justice, I send a question to the desk for the House floor managers.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. Chief Justice, on behalf of Senator Menendez, Senator Brown, and myself, I send a question to the desk for the House managers.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes today to honor Cary Jones, an Oregonian retiring after a long career in the Coast Guard and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The bottom line is Mr. Jones has embraced and embodied the essence of public service throughout his distinguished career. He joined the Coast Guard in 1976 and was stationed in Honolulu, Seattle, and Coos Bay. He served for several years aboard the USCGC Boutwell, a high-endurance cutter used to intercept smuggling vessels. Mr. Jones left the Coast Guard in 2001 as a senior chief yeoman, and he could have sailed off into an easy retirement. Instead, he went to work for the VA, where he would spend nearly two decades helping Oregon veterans. He served in a number of roles at the Portland VA Medical Center, but in every capacity he sought to do right by veterans. He worked with my Portland staff for years, and if you ever want to get one of them going, just ask how helpful Cary Jones was. They will tell you he worked on more than 10,000 congressional inquiries, each of which represented an attempt to help an Oregon veteran or military family. Cary Jones is a shining example of what public service is supposed to be all about. He has always been one of the good guys, in it for the right reasons, and always laser-focused on lifting up people who need a little bit of help. Mr. Jones' career reminds me of a quote by the famous naturalist John Burroughs: ``For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice--no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.'' And so today I say thank you to Senior Chief Yeoman Cary Jones for his work, patience, love and self-sacrifice. I say thank you for leading by example, for showing countless Oregonians that public service is a noble calling, and for paying the gold of real service. I wish you the best as you embark on your well-deserved retirement.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, soon the Senate will vote on the final passage of the new North American Free Trade Agreement. I am going to make just a few remarks. I know Senator Toomey is here to make remarks. Later, he is going to offer, I believe, some procedural requests. The new NAFTA is a good deal for American workers because Democrats in this body and Democrats in the other body stopped the Trump administration from going ahead with business as usual on trade enforcement. There has even been an effort by several Members on the other side in the Senate to actually block enforcement dollars. With Chairman Grassley's help, we were able to prevent that. If you write a trade agreement with weak enforcement, particularly on labor and environmental issues, my view is you sell out American workers and key industries, whether it is automobiles, whether it is technology, or whether it is manufacturing. Basically, you set up a race to the bottom on cheap wages and the treatment of labor. I particularly want to thank Senator Brown, my colleague from Ohio, who for decades has led the fight for tough trade enforcement. We spoke yesterday on the floor about our effort. We worked on this side of the aisle, but we reached out to a lot of Senators on the other side of the aisle as well. I just want to give an example of what the Brown-Wyden trade enforcement package does. In the past, it would take almost to eternity to bring trade enforcement action. I spelled out yesterday how the Brown-Wyden enforcement package speeds up the timeline for tough trade enforcement by more than 300 percent. That, in my view, throws a real lifeline--an actual lifeline to communities that are worried about whether they are going to have an economic heartbeat in the days ahead. I also wanted to mention--and I am then going to yield to my colleague, and we are going to use this time so that everybody gets a chance to make some remarks--that this is the first-ever trade agreement in which the United States locks in strong rules on digital trade and technology. Back when the first NAFTA came about, you didn't have Senators with smartphones in their pocket. You didn't have the internet as the shipping lane of the 21st century. What we did in this part of the bill, which was really bipartisan, is we protected intellectual property. We prohibited shakedowns of data belonging to innovative American companies, and I was especially involved in making sure that we drew on established U.S. law to defend the small technology entrepreneurs working to build successful companies in a field dominated by a small number of Goliaths. These rules on technology and trade ought to be the cornerstones of our trade policy in the years ahead because those rules on technology protect every single American industry--healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, you name it. It is how the United States also is going to fight back against authoritarian governments that use the internet as a tool to repress their own people, bully American businesses and workers, and meddle with the free speech rights of American citizens. The bottom line here is that my colleague who sits right behind me, Senator Brown, was key to producing a bill that had the provisions and the prerequisite to getting a law, frankly, with tough trade law enforcement that brought, literally, dozens of Members of both the Senate and the House over to support this. I want to thank him and wrap up by saying--I am not sure that he is with us today here in the Senate Gallery--that Ambassador Bob Lighthizer deserves a special thanks today. He may be off around the world somewhere talking to additional trade ministers, looking for other opportunities to come up with tough future-oriented trade agreements. Ambassador Lighthizer is the hardest working man in the trade agreement business. I want to thank him for all his work. I have a difference of opinion with my colleague from Pennsylvania on these issues. We may have some procedure, but I think you are going to see Senators handle these issues over the next 20 minutes in a way that reflects the seriousness of this issue. I yield the floor. I know the Senator from Pennsylvania will speak next.

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 1 minute and then for Senator Toomey to proceed with the procedural question.

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, first, I want to make sure that we can enter into the Record a thanks that is deserved to the bipartisan team here in the Senate that has made this day possible. Second, on one substantive point, because I associate myself with the remarks of Chairman Grassley, I think we need to understand that what the Toomey procedural issue is all about is really that of a Trojan horse for rolling back an aggressive effort to enforce the rights that workers care about and that we all care about with respect to our land, air, and water. I know the Senator from Pennsylvania disagrees with it, but I just wanted to make that point. The chairman is right with respect to the procedure. I just want people to understand what the substantive issue is. This is just a policy disagreement, and that is what the Senate is all about. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, when the Trump administration unveiled their original version of this proposal, it was stunning to see how weak it was in terms of trade enforcement. When you write a proposal with weak trade enforcement, particularly on labor and environmental issues, you sell out American workers and you launch a corporate race to the bottom of cheap wages and the treatment of labor. Senator Brown and I decided that was unacceptable, and we were going to create a trade enforcement regime with real teeth. We worked with Senators here; we worked with Senators on the other side of the aisle and in the other body. To give you an example of what this means with respect to enforcing trade law, we sped up the timeline by more than 300 percent. The second point--just very quickly--what this proposal does is bring technology and trade policy into the 21st century. When the last North American Free Trade Agreement was considered, nobody had a smartphone. So what we did is protect intellectual property; we prohibited shakedowns of data belonging to innovative companies; and on something I care deeply about, we drew on established U.S. law to defend small tech entrepreneurs working to build successful companies in a field dominated by Goliaths. I urge my colleagues to support this proposal and once again thank Bob Lighthizer, the hardest working man in the trade agreement business. I urge a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, what is the business now before the Senate?

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this afternoon, the Finance Committee is kicking off this debate. I will have some remarks, and then the distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Grassley, will have some remarks, and Senator Brown, who has played such a key role in the enforcement issues, will follow. I am glad we are getting on this debate. There is a lot to say about this topic, and I want to talk first about how the new NAFTA got to this point. In the 2016 Presidential campaign, then-candidate Trump said he was going to pull the United States out of NAFTA. He said it was ``the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country.'' As President, Donald Trump went in a different direction. After negotiating with Canada and Mexico, the Trump administration announced a deal in 2018 that actually doubled down on several key mistakes of the original NAFTA. The new NAFTA the Trump administration came up with was way, way too weak on enforcement of the trade laws. Here in the Senate, we Democrats said it wasn't good enough--not even close--to get through the Congress. So we got down to work and we fixed it. The bill we will be considering is the end product of all that work. This legislation is now the first real measure of certainty and predictability on the crucial issue of trade which American workers, our businesses, and families have. It is the first real measure of certainty and predictability since the beginning of the Trump administration. It now has the strongest trade enforcement system ever written into a trade agreement. There are significant new resources put into protecting American workers. Unfortunately, there has been an effort by a few on the other side to strip the crucial enforcement resources for enforcing the rights of workers and protecting the environment. It is masquerading under a whole lot of procedural lingo, but it is really a trojan horse to go back to business as usual with weak enforcement of trade laws that doesn't get the job done. Over the last week--and I see the distinguished chairman of the committee here--these procedural gimmicks have been opposed by the chairman and myself. I want to thank the chairman this afternoon for doing so. For decades, there has been a lot of happy talk in Washington about enforcing trade laws, but the government just moved too slowly and did too little to protect American workers when trade cheats came after their jobs. Workers and businesses were forced to wait for years for the government to crack down on the rip-off artists, and so often it was too late. Workers were laid off, factories were shuttered, and communities were left without a beating economic heart. The original NAFTA was a part of the problem. It made strong enforcement almost impossible and was particularly a problem with labor rights in Mexico. The same government that allowed corporations to undercut American jobs by paying rock bottom wages and abusing rights in Mexico had the power to actually block our country from fighting back for the workers. So it was a head-scratcher when the Trump administration proposed essentially a new NAFTA that kept the old NAFTA enforcement system. It ought to have been the first part of the original NAFTA that they threw in the trash can, but, sure enough, in 2018, the Trump administration agreed to language on trade enforcement that really did not enforce anything. So Senator Brown, who has fought for years for tough trade law enforcement, said: We are going to get together, and we are going to change this. We put together a proposal that makes the U.S. enforcement system faster, tougher, and directly responsive to American workers and businesses that are targeted by the trade cheats. Our approach puts trade enforcement boots on the ground to identify when factories in Mexico break the labor standards we should insist on. It will be a lot easier to penalize the violators and protect the jobs they threaten to undercut. Senator Brown and I worked with our colleagues, Democratic colleagues on the Finance Committee, but we talked to plenty of Republicans as well. We took our ideas to the House leadership. We got their input and support. We told the Trump administration that tough enforcement with what has come to be known as the Brown-Wyden proposal was going to be a prerequisite to getting the new NAFTA through Congress. As I said, I think this is the toughest labor enforcement measure that our country has seen, and that is a big reason why the AFL-CIO has endorsed the bill. When you combine this all-in approach to enforcement with significant new standards on labor and environmental protection, you also get the benefit of beginning to stop the race to the bottom. You raise other countries to the standards set by our country instead of forcing American workers to compete in a game that is rigged against them. These have been core Democratic trade policies for a long time. Commitments on labor and the environment weren't a part of the original NAFTA. Those issues were just pushed aside into what was essentially called a side letter. They were the trade policy equivalent of a pinky swear and about as easy to enforce. Now they are going to be at the heart of the agreement. The United States will have more power than ever to hold Mexico and Canada to the commitments made in this legislation. On technology and digital trade, something that I put an enormous amount of my time into, the new NAFTA redefines what trade policy will be about. Digital trade wasn't even a part of the original NAFTA because, by and large, it didn't exist. Smartphones were science fiction. The internet was still years away. Senator Grassley has heard me say this many times. The internet was years away from becoming the shipping lane of the 21st century. The problem has been that our trade laws were still stuck in the Betamax mindset. Technology and digital trade are obviously at the core of a modern economy. They account for millions of good-paying jobs. They are woven into every major American industry you can think of--healthcare, education, manufacturing, agriculture, and the list goes on. So when the United States fights for strong rules on digital trade, it is fighting to protect ``red, white, and blue'' jobs. That is why the new NAFTA helps to protect our intellectual property and prevent shakedowns of American businesses for their valuable ideas. It also includes something that I felt very strongly about, and that is it established U.S. law that protects small technology entrepreneurs that want to build successful lasting businesses in a field that is now dominated by just a few Goliaths. It is long past time for the United States to bring its trade policy into the modern digital world. Getting smart digital trade laws on the books is not just about boosting exports. What the internet looks like in 10, 20, or 50 years is going to be an open question. Will it be an open venue for communication among people around the world or will more governments follow the lead of China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, because what they are talking about could fracture the internet around national borders. Will the internet be a platform for free speech or will Chinese officials and corporations find new ways to reach across the ocean and trample on the rights of the American people? These are just a few of the important questions the United States will have to confront when it comes to technology. In my view, locking in digital trade rules that protect our jobs and promote free speech and commerce online is a good place to start. Labor rights, environmental protection, rules on technology and digital trade, and aggressive enforcement to protect American workers are all areas where there has been significant improvement in the new NAFTA. I call this ``trade done right.'' My State, along with Senator Grassley's State, is so dependent on trade. One out of four jobs in Oregon revolves around international trade. They often pay better than do the non-trade jobs because they have a higher value-added component. Most of them are small businesses, and they export. Agriculture is a big part of our economy. The new NAFTA will put more of our wine on shelves outside the United States. It will increase dairy exports. It will end unfair practices that discriminate against American-grown wheat. Oregon companies that sell services like apps and engineering plans to customers overseas will have new protections under the digital trade rules. It will help our manufacturers because the new NAFTA raises the bar and includes those protections on labor rights I have described. There are a lot of Members to thank who pitched in. We are going to hear from a number of them on the floor, and I am going to thank them before we wrap up. I will close with this. The last few years have delivered one trade gut punch after another to our farmers, our shippers, our manufacturers, and our exporters. The administration has driven away traditional economic allies. A lot of manufacturers are hurting. Farm bankruptcies have surged. Foreign markets are more closed off--many of them to American exports--than they were before the Trump administration began. With this legislation we have an opportunity to begin--and I want to underline that, to begin--to change that. I particularly want to thank Senator Brown for his laser focus and leadership on the issue of enforcement. I think Senator Cantwell, who will speak on this issue soon, has done a particularly good job about trying to build an infrastructure for enforcing our trade laws. I think it is only appropriate to have a special Senate shout-out for Ambassador Lighthizer, who has been straight with members of our committee. I know the chairman will speak on that next. I call him the hardest working man in the trade agreement debate. I support this bill. I hope my colleagues will do it. I know the chairman will have remarks, and Senator Brown will be here. Other colleagues will be here. I know Chairman Grassley is glad we are getting at this. I share his views. We have plenty to do on healthcare and other issues, and we look forward to working with him. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. I will.

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to pose some questions to my colleague from Ohio.

Mr. WYDEN. He has done so much work on these issues--not just in the last few months but for years and years. I want to thank him for his extraordinary commitment to the rights of workers and to all these communities that, he has pointed out, essentially lose their economic heartbeat by trade policies that cheat workers. I want to ask the gentleman about this. I have heard this, and I have heard this in lots of places. People have said: These ideas seem good, but are they really that consequential? Mr. Brown has been at this for more than a quarter of a century. We have watched him out on the floor year after year after year. Let me give my calculation of what this package which we have worked on and which he deserves so much credit for consists of. As far as I can tell--and we have worked on it with the staff--this is the fastest enforcement process by more than 300 percent because of what the Senator has done to speed up the timeline for protecting workers. It is the toughest because for the first time it allows our country to hit the worst actor the hardest by stopping rip-off artists at the individual factory level. It is the strongest because it allows us to hit companies that repeatedly violate the law. We are able to stop the products of exploitive labor at the border. I want to ask the Senator a couple of questions, but I wanted to give this overview first. Having been at this for more than a quarter of a century, is there any trade enforcement regime that, in terms of those specifics, comes close to what that new regime would consist of?

Mr. WYDEN. I appreciate Mr. Brown's taking us through this. It is faster. It is tougher because it gets at the individual factory level. It is stronger because it stops those repeat offenders who come up with products using exploitive labor. I want people to know and have it highlighted in the Record that my take is that this, given what we have seen over the last 25 years, is far better than anything we have seen before. Look, the Senator and I have worked on a lot of enforcement efforts over the years. He will recall that at one point I chaired the Trade Subcommittee, and we found people tripping over themselves to cheat because they were merchandise laundering. It was a little bit different from this. We set up a dummy website just to try to keep tabs on all the people who were cheating. We would remember--and we didn't know whether to laugh or cry--that all over the world, people were coming forward to cheat. That was useful. It didn't come close to the breadth of what has been done here. Let me just ask a couple more specific questions because I have heard lots of people in all the campaigns and the like talking about whether this was modest or really a bold set of changes. Now we have just walked through how much stronger this is than anything we have seen in the last quarter-century. The gentleman mentioned how workers can use this hotline to enforce their rights. If a worker reports violations of their rights at a call center and the government believes the complaint has merit, my understanding is that the government is obligated under the law to send labor inspectors to that facility. Is that correct?

Mr. WYDEN. If you would, Senator Brown, take us through what kinds of actions can be taken against a facility. In other words, my understanding is, if the labor inspectors find violations when they inspect it, they have a host of remedies. The gentleman touched on this in the committee, but what kinds of actions can be taken against that particular facility?

Mr. WYDEN. So would Senator Brown be saying that if it is found that there were labor violations at a car factory, the penalties could apply to any car that might come into the United States from that factory throughout the investigation, not just going forward?

Mr. WYDEN. I have appreciated this colloquy with Senator Brown. I have a couple of town meetings at home this weekend, working-class neighborhoods, where trade has been really important. One out of four jobs in my State revolves around trade, and those jobs often pay better than do the nontrade jobs. If anybody says ``Well, Ron, do you think anything is really going to be accomplished with what you and Senator Brown are talking about?'' I am going to say that I went through the entire enforcement process in terms of the key provisions, and we laid out for the country and the Senate that you have led an effort to speed up by more than 300 percent the timeline for an enforcement action. I mean, it used to take years and years sometimes. You have shortened that by literally more than 300 percent. You have been part of an effort that is tougher because you can go after the individual factories. Then, finally, I think this enforcement proposal gets to the heart of what we need to be doing because it means if you rip off workers, we are going to stop products those workers have produced at the border. My guess is, there will be a lot more discussion. I see we have another valuable colleague from the Finance Committee who has been heavily involved in these issues for a lot of years. But I want to say again that this didn't happen by osmosis, because when we got that flawed bill, I think everybody said: Well, they will probably have some discussions about it, and that will be pretty much it.

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I think this has been central to what we will be debating and we will be voting on tomorrow morning. I want to thank Senator Brown. This bill would not have happened without tough trade enforcement led by Senator Brown. This bill would not have happened, period, full stop. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. That is correct. All gasoline includes butane and, as far as I am aware, always has. Adding butane during the gasoline refining process is simply how gasoline is produced. The idea that Congress intended oil companies to benefit from a credit intended to reduce our dependence on traditional gasoline by rewarding them for making traditional gasoline doesn't pass the commonsense test. This is why the Internal Revenue Service has correctly denied such claims. However, the oil industry is litigating this issue in the hopes of winning a nearly $50 billion windfall for producing gasoline the same way they have for a century. Mr. Chairman, am I correct that Congress never intended for gasoline to qualify for this credit based on its butane content?

Mr. WYDEN. Thank you for that background, Mr. Chairman. I agree with you that it is clear that the benefit some in the oil and gas industry are seeking from this provision is illegitimate. However, given the significant amount of taxpayer dollars at stake should these companies somehow prevail in litigation, it is also important for Congress to provide clarity in this area, to protect the public purse. The tax package under consideration in the spending bill addresses this by amending the alternative fuel mixture credit to more explicitly deny the credit for butane mixed with gasoline, consistent congressional intent. This clarification is effective for any claims filed on or after January 8, 2018, when the IRS issued a formal revenue ruling putting taxpayers on notice that a mixture of butane and gasoline does not qualify for the credit. However, this does not mean we agree that such mixtures prior to January 8, 2018, qualify for the credit, and, in fact, we are of the opinion that they do not. Do you agree Mr. Chairman?

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, over the next 45 minutes or so, finance Democrats will come to the floor, and we will be discussing the second anniversary of the Trump tax bill. As the ranking Democrat, I am going to begin it. I know my colleagues will be joining me. The Trump tax law is now 2 years old, and for millions of middle- class Americans, it is not a very happy anniversary. My own view is that the economic legacy of the Trump administration will be that they spent $1.5 trillion to widen the economic gap in America. If I were to sum up what the law--the Trump tax law--was all about, it was about making wealthy people wealthier and the middle class being an afterthought. I am going to walk through some of the reasons I reached that judgment, and then my colleagues will be getting into some of these issues as well. Donald Trump and Republicans in the Congress promised--promised--they would write a bill that was focused on helping workers and the middle class. The President told me personally that he thought he and people like him should not get a tax break. He said that to me personally, but that simply wasn't the case. We were told that the Trump tax legislation would pay for itself. That was wrong by a couple of trillion dollars. We were told that it would kick off a towering wave of job-creating investments in so many hard-hit American communities. That has not been the case. We were told that workers would get, on average, a $4,000 raise. That was wrong once more. It was wrong on all counts with respect to the promises made to the American people. What, in fact, did happen is rates were slashed for folks at the top and multinational corporations. The corporations then turned around and shoveled that money back to the shareholders who, by and large, are wealthy themselves, and you saw a historic boom in stock buybacks. Now the sugar high has worn off, and I have been going home for town meetings open to all. I am going to be in a county this weekend that President Trump won. I will be listening to people. I won't give any speeches. I will be just listening to people. What I hear at these meetings in counties in Oregon that Donald Trump won is that folks see very little evidence that their lives have changed or that somehow this tax bill ended up trickling down to them. My sense is, it is amazing that a bill can cost so much and can borrow so much and fail the middle class so thoroughly. There are two issues that are important to focus on going forward, and we are going to talk about those. There is a lot of talk about how congressional Republicans and the Trump administration are talking about another--another--scam tax proposal, basically going to the same playbook that made the middle class an afterthought 2 years ago. I think it is important that people understand that all the evidence indicates this second bill isn't going to focus on the middle class either. According to the reports in the press that have been discussing this new Republican proposal--which is, in effect, an admission that the first proposal failed the middle class while helping the most fortunate--what we hear about this new proposal is that Republicans are considering what would amount to yet another massive handout for folks at the top of the economic pyramid. One Trump adviser is reportedly discussing a proposal that would effectively wipe out the taxation of capital gains, and we all know that a fraction--a tiny fraction--of the American people get most of those capital gains, and they happen to be the most fortunate. The U.S. Tax Code is already a tale of two systems. We have one for cops and teachers. Their taxes are taken out of every single paycheck. We have another one for high flyers who can make most of their money, for example, off investments. To a great extent, because of the laws that allow them to defer paying their taxes, those high flyers can pay what they want when they want to. I don't know of any cops or teachers in North Dakota or Oregon who have that. Their taxes are taken out of every paycheck once or twice a month. Their system is mandatory. If you are a high flyer and you make most of your money off investments, your taxes aren't mandatory, and if you use the doctrine of tax deferral, you can just defer and defer and defer. And after you pass, you can hand everything off to your kids, Johnny and Mary, and they get the stepped-up basis, and then they get to do the same thing. You have to have one set of rules that applies to everybody. That is what we, on our side of the aisle, have been working for. We think you ought to have one set of tax rules that applies to everybody. That, by the way, gives everybody in America the chance to be successful. That is what Bill Bradley--somebody I look to for advice, a member of the Finance Committee, and another tall Democrat with a lot better jump shot than mine--but he and Ronald Reagan got together, and they produced a proposal that gave everybody in America a chance to get ahead. That is not what this new Trump tax discussion is all about, this new proposal. I am not talking about the top paying a fair share. I will just mention what it could mean for folks at the very top. Wealthy people whose income is based on capital gains could be off the hook completely--completely. The first Trump tax law took what is already broken about our tax system, and they embedded unfairness to the middle class and made the problem even worse. They are not going to fix it by doubling down on the same failed policies. The second issue that the Trump folks are apparently going to be focusing on, going forward, is handouts to billionaires and corporations. That is the big accomplishment to date. It is inseparable from the Trump agenda, which is all about helping those at the top at the expense of everyone else. Donald Trump has sought to kick more than 20 million Americans off their healthcare since day one. He has tried to gut Medicaid, which is a lifeline for so many seniors who depend on long-term care and nursing homes, and it is a centerpiece of our fight against opioid addiction. The President proposed slashing education funding for students and teachers and slashing housing funds at a time when millions of Americans are struggling to afford rent or to cover the mortgage. I can go on--home heating assistance, Meals on Wheels, same pattern again and again. Tax handouts for the most fortunate multinational corporations and billionaires--the ones we were told would pay for themselves--sent the deficit into the stratosphere, and then working people and the middle class, in addition to being an afterthought in terms of benefits, are expected to endure the pain of the Trump budget cuts. Middle-class folks know they got a raw deal in the Trump tax law in 2017. That is why it has been so unpopular. I was struck in the campaign of 2018 by Republicans who thought they had done something that would be so valuable to the American people. They couldn't even go out and talk about it with middle-class folks because middle-class folks would say: We didn't really see much of anything. We might have gotten a little bit to take the family to dinner, but we don't remember getting much of anything. So, on the anniversary of the Trump tax law, the people who are celebrating are the high flyers and corporate executives who are tallying up stock buyback benefits and the handouts they got, but if you work for a living, you really are saying: This sure looks like a con job. In the months and years ahead, my Democratic colleagues and I on the Finance Committee and in our caucus are going to be working with anybody who is interested in fixing our broken tax system for good. We have shown that is our interest. Personally, I wrote the only two comprehensive bipartisan proposals to reform our taxes since Bill Bradley and Ronald Reagan got together, first with Judd Gregg, then the chairman of the Budget Committee and, most recently, with our colleague who is director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats. So I and others--and I see Tom Carper, a valued member of the Finance Committee from Delaware here--are committed to working with our colleagues in a bipartisan way to have a tax system that gives everybody a chance to get ahead. That is not what we got 2 years ago, but we want it understood that we are going to continue, and I say personally, as ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, that we are going to continue to reach out a hand of welcome to Republicans who want to work for something different than what passed 2 years ago and a tax code that would create one set of rules in America, built on fairness, that applies to all Americans. I note my colleague from Delaware is here to make remarks on this subject. I yield the floor.