Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I lend my support to the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act to ensure the equality of opportunity for all. Throughout our history, America has been committed to opening its doors to those who wished to build a new life here; yet, despite being ``the land of opportunity,'' the laws that we have had in place have left many families seeking a better life in limbo. Over the last 2 years, the crisis has reached new levels of inhumanity as this administration irresponsibly ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA, program and ripped families apart at our borders. This legislation should be considered in the context of a more comprehensive bill which would also address the pressing issues of DACA and family separation. It will be an important piece of the puzzle that will hopefully put us on a path to changing the unfair laws that are currently in place and once again makeAmerica a place of possibility for all. The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act makes important and long overdue changes that will create a more equitable employment- based immigration system. This system will distribute green cards based not on the applicant's country of birth, but on his or her skills. It will slowly get rid of the employment-based country caps and instead create an evenhanded ``first come, first serve'' system for equally qualified, highly skilled immigrants. This legislation is an important step towards more comprehensive immigration reform. The system as it is now is rigged and unfair. I hope that we can begin to move towards a more comprehensive bill and a brighter future where America is once again, without a doubt, the land of opportunity.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, a short while ago the Senate passed the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act. Here is why I opposed that legislation: It is a national security bill that weakens our national security. This afternoon I want to discuss why. The Chinese tech company ZTE was revealed not long ago to be a serial sanctions violator. They violated U.S. sanctions against Iran and North Korea, knowingly selling American technology to those countries. For their violations, the Commerce Department dropped the hammer and hit them with crippling penalties, including a fine of $1.2 billion. That is until Donald Trump stepped in to save ZTE. With a speed and a focus this administration seems incapable of bringing to any other issue, the President ordered his team to spring into action to rescue ZTE. He fired off tweets. He made the eyebrow- raising comment that it was a problem that U.S. sanctions were hurting jobs in China. His Treasury Secretary virtually apologized for the U.S. having taken action against a serial sanctions violator. This all comes from an administration putting on a show--constantly tough talking--and from a President pretending that he puts America first. He sure didn't in this case. Now there are a few sides of this issue for everybody at home to remember--the national security aspect, as well as the trade and economic aspect. First, I sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a few months ago, the committee held an open hearing with Bill Evanina, the Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. He is the point-man for the Trump administration when it comes to questions of counterespionage and counterterror. In response to my question, he told me that ZTE poses a national security risk to the United States. That was not some outside individual providing testimony. He is not a hearing witness chosen by Democrats. Again, that is the person who has led the National Counterintelligence and Security Center since 2014. He says ZTE poses a threat to America, but his boss, the President of the United States, let ZTE off the hook. Here is the second issue: the Trump administration loves to tout what it calls new trade deals, but as far as I can tell, just about the only deal they have cooked up with any teeth, the only one that is actually finished, is this ZTE deal that saved jobs--in China. Colleagues, the President and I don't agree on much, but one of his favorite talking points that I do agree with is that our country has to do a lot more to stop China from stealing our technology and our jobs, but when you look at this ZTE case, he seems to be giving away our jobs and our security. It is an absolute head-scratcher to me and to a whole lot of other people including Senators on both sides of the aisle. It raised the question are the President's decisions being guided by something else, something other than American interests? That is because the ZTE deal came right after the Trump family secured valuable trademarks in China and a Trump project in Indonesia got a $500 million loan from a Chinese state-owned company. So a bipartisan group of Senators, myself included, said let's figure out a way to reinstate the penalties against ZTE as a part of the annual defense authorization bill, but when it came time to hammer out the differences between the Senate's bill and the House's bill, Republicans watered down the ZTE penalties. Republicans in both Chambers caved to the White House and handed a big gift to China at the expense of American jobs and national security. In my view, it is inexcusable that the plan put together by Senators on both sides--a plan that would have protected our security and punished a serial violator of U.S. sanctions--was stripped out of this bill. The weaker House proposal that took its place doesn't go nearly far enough to fight the espionage threat that the Trump administration's own counterintelligence nominee testified to. Bottom line, Trump's ZTE deal is bad for American security and American jobs. The House got it wrong with their weaker legislation. The Senate was under no obligation to accept their watered-down bill. That is why I voted no, and that is why members who voted for this proposal cannot claim innocence when it comes to letting ZTE off the hook for its violations of our sanctions.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am lifting my hold on the nomination of Mr. Jason Klitenic to be General Counsel of the Office of Director of National Intelligence. Senator Grassley and I have received a response to our March 6, 2018, letter regarding the Intelligence Community Office of Inspector General, OIG, and the termination of its Executive Director of Intelligence Community Whistleblowing and Source Protection, ``Executive Director.'' In addition, I have been provided access to documents related to the Executive Director's termination. I remain concerned about the circumstances surrounding that termination and look forward to reviewing them further, even as I work with my colleagues to strengthen protection for intelligence community whistleblowers. My hold on the nomination of Mr. Klitenic was based on these concerns and not on the qualifications of the nominee.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I am placing a hold on the nomination of Justin Muzinich to be Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. I will maintain that hold until the Treasury Department provides the Senate Finance Committee information and documents related to Russia and its financial dealings with President Trump and his associates, as well as outside organizations Russia used to help elect him. I originally asked for these documents on May 10, 2017, and have yet to receive an answer of any kind. I have stated repeatedly that we must follow the money if we are going to get to the bottom of how Russia has attacked our democracy. That means thoroughly reviewing any information that relates to financial connections between Russia and President Trump and his associates, whether direct or laundered through hidden or illicit transactions. The Treasury Department for which Mr. Muzinich is nominated to serve as the No. 2 official is responsible for much of this information. The Treasury Department authorities include intelligence and enforcement functions to combat financial crimes and threats, including money laundering. For these reasons, I will object to any unanimous consent request concerning the nomination of Mr. Muzinich.

Mr. WYDEN

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

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the Senate is approaching the end of the debate on a significant piece of spending legislation that includes funding for the Internal Revenue Service. That is why I have come to the floor this morning to discuss one of my amendments to this legislation, which is based on a bill that I have authored, entitled the Presidential Tax Transparency Act. It is long past time for the President's tax returns to be released to the American people. This President has, in effect, thrown in the trash can a bipartisan, 40-year, pro-transparency tradition in his having refused to release his tax returns in the course of the 2016 election. This had been a tradition accepted by all liberals and conservatives across the political spectrum that had dated back to the post-Watergate era. The President has ended it for reasons as flimsy as you can get--a made-up story about the President's claim that you can't release your returns in the course of an audit. Yet now it is not just a matter of the President's destroying a four- decades', good-government campaign tradition. Week after week, month after month, there are more questions that swirl about with respect to financial ties that might skew the President's decision-making about new foreign deals The Trump Organization continues to strike that violate the promises the President made to the American people--about foreign cash coming into his properties here in the United States; about the astronomical amount of cash taxpayers spend to fund the President's many visits to Trump-branded properties, essentially forcing the American people to finance Trump resort ad campaigns. The episode that left more jaws on the floor than perhaps any other came a few weeks ago. That is when the President traveled through Europe for what should have been routine meetings with our longstanding allies. Instead, the President attacked our closest allies and put on a performance, while standing next to Vladimir Putin, that few will soon forget. With a hostile dictator at his side, the President said that the United States was ``foolish,'' and he threw our intelligence officials under the bus and refused once again to accept the conclusion that Russia interfered with our 2016 election. The cleanup he tried to do a few days later, in my view, was laughable at best. Following that meeting in Helsinki, people across the Nation were left to wonder: Does Vladimir Putin have something on the President? Does the President simply prefer dictators and strongmen to democratically elected leaders, or does Putin have information or financial influence that he is exploiting? There was also the mystery of why this administration, which seems to stumble from decision to decision, sprang into action to save ZTE--a company that is a Chinese serial sanctions violator and a tech company that the experts will tell you is a threat to our national security. In an open hearing of the Intelligence Committee and in response to my question, Mr. Evanina--the new point person for the whole question of counterintelligence and counterterror--said that he still regarded ZTE as an espionage threat. For all of the President's tough talk about enforcing sanctions on countries that pose a threat to Americans, letting ZTE off the hook after it violated sanctions against Iran and North Korea is just baffling. It certainly shows signs of weakness. The timing also raised eyebrows, as the ZTE deal came right after the Trump family secured valuable trademarks, and a Trump project in Indonesia got a $500 million loan from a Chinese state-owned company. These looming questions are yet another reason the American people should not be asked to wait any longer for a chance to see what every other President has offered in the last four decades--his tax returns. The American people deserve to see those returns and see if some of the ``almost impossible to explain'' Presidential judgments over the last few weeks have been due to what may be in those returns. So let's be clear. The financial ties between the President, The Trump Organization, and Russia could be well hidden deep within the Trump web of business entities. Releasing the tax returns, at least, is a start with respect to accountability and transparency in the long- held tradition Presidents have followed. Unfortunately, for the interests of the American people, debate on the legislation before us has now been cut off. That means that my amendment, which would call for the disclosure of these tax returns and transparency and accountability, just as we have seen decade after decade, will not get a vote, but I intend to keep calling up this legislation for a full debate. I simply believe this issue is too important to ignore. There is a reason we have had this tradition for four decades. This is the lowest ethical bar for a President. It is not a high one. It is the lowest ethical bar, and it is not being followed. Members on both sides ought to be interested in protecting good-government, pro- transparency traditions that stretch back decades. What a lot of people have wondered is, why is legislation necessary here? I had held off for months in 2016 even talking about requiring this by legislation. I had just hoped that then-Candidate Trump would have done voluntarily what everybody else had done for four decades. When it was clear he wouldn't, I had said I didn't know of any other path to get the transparency and accountability the American people deserve other than through legislation like this. Nobody in Congress ought to be in favor of keeping the American people in the dark about what is motivating the President's decision, and certainly all of us ought to be concerned about protecting against corruption. Helping Russia undermine NATO and letting sanctions violators--repeat sanctions violators--off the hook puts American interests in danger. The public has a right to know the truth of what is behind those decisions. Certainly, a part of being able to make those judgments is having the chance--the opportunity--as we have seen for four decades, to see the President's tax returns. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, I want to commend our colleague from Maryland and the Presiding Officer for the good work they have done on this issue. As a Member of the Intelligence Committee, I have seen firsthand what this has meant. I had a chance, as my colleague the Presiding Officer knows, to question Mr. Ervin Nina, who has been chosen Vice President for a key job in the intelligence field, and I asked him pointblank if he considered ZTE an espionage threat to this day, and the answer was yes. We are now going to spend the next hour talking about Medicare and Medicaid. This is the 53rd anniversary. But before he leaves the floor, I wanted to commend my colleague from Maryland and the Presiding Officer on the Intelligence Committee for their good work. 53rd Anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid Mr. President, this week marks the 53rd anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid, our bedrock Federal healthcare programs. I am pleased to be joined by my colleagues. I see Senators Cardin and Whitehouse wanting to participate and know of Senator Coons' support for these programs. Our colleagues will be talking today about why these programs are so vitally important to tens of millions of Americans--literally generations of our people. Medicare and Medicaid have stood the test of time because the American people have long understood the value of a healthcare guarantee, particularly for seniors and the most vulnerable among us. Medicare--and my colleagues on the Finance Committee talk a fair amount about it--isn't a piece of paper, and it isn't a voucher. It is a guarantee, and Americans have always understood that was the case. It wasn't that long ago when there wasn't a guarantee. Getting older or falling on hardship meant healthcare was one of the first of life's necessities to go out of reach. It wasn't that long ago when there were poor farms--literally, poor farms--to try to meet the needs of older people. People, before these programs, often fell through the cracks and into destitution. Their family wasn't there. Seniors ended up in the streets or on those poor farms. These healthcare promises--the pledges behind Medicare and Medicaid-- have lasted for more than half a century because Americans understand that when they get a paycheck, part of that pay goes to supporting the health care guarantees. Families around the country, however, are beginning to wonder, given the events of the last 1\1/2\ years, whether that guarantee will be there when they need it. They aren't wrong for worrying. Every major Republican legislation that has had a pulse in this Congress has increased the risk that Medicare and Medicaid will not be there when it counts. Most recently, Trump's tax law stole billions of dollars and years of security from Medicare's future, all to rain down tax benefits on the largest corporations and wealthy individuals in the country. As a result of this reckless tax legislation, shareholders are now swimming in a sea of tax buybacks and executives have pocketed huge windfalls while Medicare faces a crisis years ahead of the earlier projections. In addition to leaving a gaping hole on Federal balance sheets after this law passed--I am not sure many Americans know this--the Trump administration released a budget that outlines in black and white just how they plan to make up the difference. You don't have to take it from me. Here are some examples out of the President's budget document. On page 52, the President proposes revising the Graham-Cassidy proposal Americans rejected last year, which would repeal the Affordable Care Act, including its ironclad preexisting conditions protection. On page 53, the President seeks to slash Medicaid by more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years by eliminating the Medicaid expansion and placing harsh caps on the rest of the program that squeeze out critical care. On page 54, the President calls for close to $500 billion in reduced Medicare spending without an explicit guarantee that seniors will not be worse off. On pages 24, 53, and 64, the President calls in his budget for burdensome paperwork requirements for SNAP--a vital program to help hungry Americans--affordable housing, and healthcare that really create more bureaucracy without making people better off. So, as we begin this, this isn't some sort of message or something. Those are the pages in the President's budget document--specific numbers on a specific page in a specific report embraced by the President that harm Medicare and Medicaid. I am just going to spend a minute now because I am looking forward to my seatmates in the Finance Committee coming up on Medicaid. Medicaid has endured the single most concentrated attack on its future that I have seen since the days when I was codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers. In spite of Republican attempts to slash Medicaid, people power stopped that effort. Republicans would have block-granted Medicaid, choking off funding for the program--couldn't keep up with the needs of our people. Without Medicaid's guarantee, two of three seniors who count on Medicaid to help pay for their nursing costs would increasingly have nowhere to turn. People with disabilities who have been able to live and thrive in their homes and communities rather than institutions might not have that same kind of opportunity. Without Medicaid--the promise of affordable care--families and parents working two or three jobs would face yet another unnecessary obstacle to the well-being of their kids and families. Even without the partisan attacks on Medicare and Medicaid, there are challenges that need to be addressed to keep these programs secure. Drug prices are out of control while the drug industry pockets billions every quarter, with consumers and taxpayers footing the bill. A recent study by the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general found that while the number of brand-name prescriptions in Medicare Part D has decreased in the last 5 years, spending on those drugs has increased by 77 percent during that time. The number of seniors paying more than $2,000 out of pocket for medicine has nearly doubled. That is unacceptable. Americans are up in arms at the fact that our seniors still get clobbered at the pharmacy window. In the face of these challenges, there are still opportunities to improve Medicare and Medicaid so that the guarantee is strong for years to come. Earlier this year, on a bipartisan basis, Congress passed one of the most significant updates to the Medicare guarantee in a generation--one that is going to begin the effort to keep up with the rising tide of seniors managing multiple chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, diabetes, or cancer. Chronic illness is going to drive American healthcare, and this bill begins the effort to improve Medicare so that no matter how seniors get their care, there will be more opportunities for them to thrive in later years. Finally, when it comes to Medicaid, the country is witnessing a groundswell of Americans who are fed up with partisan gridlock holding up State decisions to expand Medicaid to help more people walking on an economic tightrope. One look makes it clear that this is a winning proposition for any State. When States expand the program, the uninsured rate goes down. The number of opioid-related hospitalizations is lowered in expansion States, medical debt is down, and people have more access to preventive care. While legislators sit on their hands, people are pushing ballot initiatives to force the issue. In Maine, where a Medicaid expansion initiative easily passed, incredibly, the conservative Governor says: Who cares? He is going to stand in its way. Healthcare in America is too hard to access for too many. The Affordable Care Act was a significant step forward. There were ironclad protections. I am very proud of the fact that it really came from a bipartisan bill I was part of--air tight, loophole-free protection from discrimination for Americans, from sea to shining sea, if they had a preexisting condition. It created a baseline for Medicaid so that fewer Americans fell through the cracks of patchwork health systems. But for too many, premiums increase at a far faster rate than their paychecks, and the price of prescription medicine is still spiking. We are going to talk more over the next hour about these crucial issues. I am really pleased that two very thoughtful members of the Finance Committee are here to start us off. They have long been part of the effort to stand as a bulwark protecting Americans with debilitating sickness from financial ruin, supporting the Medicare and Medicaid guarantees. I am pleased to be able to yield to the Senator from Maryland who has been involved in these programs and has championed the cause of the vulnerable for years and years.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before she leaves the floor, I want to thank my seatmate on the Finance Committee--a strong advocate for the concept that Medicare and Medicaid are guarantees. They are lifelines for working families. It is a pleasure to have you here on this special occasion, and I look forward to many more partnerships as we start thinking down the road, as Senator Cardin said, about how we are going to strengthen these programs, not just play defense against Congress. I thank you.

Mr. WYDEN. Another outstanding member of the Finance Committee, Senator Whitehouse.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank my colleague. Mr. President, I particularly appreciate the fact that more than anyone else I know in this body, he keeps coming back to the proposition of building the healthcare system around paying for value. My colleague went through some examples in his State and around the country that are doing just that. That is a big part of what we are going to have to do to strengthen Medicare and Medicaid in the years ahead. So I thank my colleague. We are also so pleased that he has joined the Finance Committee. Particularly, this argument about paying for values has to be right in the center of strengthening Medicare and Medicaid. I thank him for it. Our colleague from Nevada is its former attorney general and is a champion of the rights of seniors. I am very pleased that she is here tonight. I will tell my colleagues that we are all trying to play catchup ball as we have started running behind. I really welcome my colleague Senator Cortez Masto from Nevada, and I look forward to her remarks.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank my colleague. Mr. President, suffice it to say, the Senator is someone who gets right to the point. She succinctly got to the central question of ensuring that we build on the guarantee that has been Medicare and Medicaid. She has been a terrific advocate for seniors. I followed her work in the State government and have followed it here. We are so pleased that she is here to be a passionate healthcare advocate for millions of Americans. I thank her. To my colleagues, we have three Senators who have arrived on time. Unfortunately, the Senate is in its usual position of being a little bit late. We have Senator King, Senator Hirono, and Senator Hassan, if my colleagues can accept that. I thank Senator King and look forward to his remarks.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, I wish to thank my colleague, particularly, for noting some of the progress over the years as he makes the case for the future. I remember years ago, when I was director of the Oregon Gray Panthers, it was common for a senior to have 15 or even 20 private health insurance policies that were supposed to supplement their Medicare. Most of them weren't worth the paper they were written on, and finally we passed a law to end that incredible outrage. So my colleague has really said it well about some of the things that, fortunately, from yesteryear have been changed, but it has highlighted what we have to do in the future. I thank my colleague so much. We have another advocate for our seniors here, the Senator from Hawaii, Ms. Hirono. I have been with her in her home State and have seen the bond she has with older people. We very much welcome her for her remarks.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before the Senator leaves the floor, I want to thank my colleague for an excellent statement. I thank her, in particular, for her last point, highlighting the proposition that the administration seems to be considering--after all the boondoggles that the fortunate few have already gotten, they seem to be considering the idea of administratively and unilaterally cutting the capital gains tax to provide another windfall, while, as my colleague said--and I went sort of page by page in the President's budget--they seek to clobber Medicare and Medicaid. The Senator from Hawaii has given us the starkest example of what the priorities ought to be and what they shouldn't be, and I thank her for her excellent presentation. I look forward to working with her. Our last Senator slated to speak this evening is Senator Hassan, a Governor who knows inside out how these programs work, understands the federalism aspect of this--the Federal-State partnership, for example-- in terms of Medicaid. She has been working with families in her State and with families around the country for years and years as an advocate of these programs. I really appreciate her joining us tonight.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before my colleague leaves the floor, I want to thank her for her thoughtful remarks in recognizing that as we talk about the future of Medicare and Medicaid, what we see is a constant need to update these terrific programs for the times. When I was director of the Gray Panthers, opioids were not an issue. Today, it is a dominant force in American life. My colleague is a leader in the effort to find smart, passionate, cost-effective programs to deal with those challenges, and I thank her for her thoughtful comments.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank my colleague. Mr. President, I have one brief comment to wrap up. I see my colleague from Florida here. My colleagues have essentially spent close to an hour talking about these programs that are literally a lifeline to millions of Americans, Medicare and Medicaid. As highlighted tonight, it has always been that we have had to play a lot of defense to prevent big attacks on these programs--we even saw them in the President's budget as I went page by page--when what we really would like to do is play offense and think about the future. My colleague from Florida is here. He has a very large elderly population, as many Senators do. When I was director of the Gray Panthers, Medicare had two parts. There was Part A for hospitals and Part B for doctors. That was it. If you had a broken ankle and you went to the hospital, that was Part A. If you had a horrible case of the flu, you went to the doctor, and you were taken care of in an outpatient fashion. That is not Medicare today. Medicare today is chronic illnesses--diabetes, heart disease, chronic pulmonary diseases. Eighty percent of the Medicare Program is going to be consumed by chronic illnesses in the days ahead. Congress has just begun the effort to update the Medicare guarantee to incorporate those hugely important challenges--cancer, diabetes, heart disease. Those are chronic illnesses. I close by way of saying that this update means, again, that the guarantee reaches into every nook and cranny of our community. That means seniors in traditional Medicare, seniors who secure their healthcare through Medicare Advantage, and seniors in accountable care organizations. All of them, wherever they get their healthcare, ought to be able to secure an updated Medicare guarantee that addresses the upcoming challenge of our times, the great challenge of our times dealing with chronic illnesses. My colleagues have laid out what our job is all about, which is preventing the effort to go backward, when we like to think about going forward into the future in a fashion that updates the Medicare guarantee for all older people and those who look forward to those years, and protecting the great safety net of our time--Medicaid. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following individuals be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the Congress: Shae McCulloch and Melissa Dickerson.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, as Senator Klobuchar has noted, Democrats and Republicans are here to talk about a critically important issue; that is, protecting the franchise for our people. I want to begin by saying that the ink is barely dry on the indictment of the Russian hackers who tried to undermine our democracy, and the President of the United States is trying to deny that it actually happened. Just put your arms around that one for a moment, colleagues. The indictment of the Russian hackers is just days old, the President's own intelligence officials are telling him that an attack on our democracy is a near certainty, and he has just not been willing to step up and prevent it. In fact, he continues to refuse to accept the basic facts of the attack the Russians perpetrated in 2016. The fact, however, is that Americans are learning more and more about what actually happened, and it is becoming increasingly clear that what the President calls a witch hunt is turning up a lot of witches. The attack on our democracy was plotted and perpetrated by agents of the Russian Government. It came from the very top. It wasn't perpetrated by some other, unidentified country, and it wasn't some random fellow in his mom's basement; it was Russia. Somehow, the President is too mesmerized by Vladimir Putin to admit that. The public learned from the indictments unsealed in the last several days that Russian intelligence officials hacked into the computers of the Democratic National Committee, stole data, and planted surveillance software. They were basically hoovering up voter data that belonged to one-half million Americans. They targeted our election infrastructure and searched for vulnerabilities that might have allowed them to affect the results. A Russian national with ties to Russian intelligence used what was called a ``gun rights organization'' to infiltrate conservative circles and sway our political judgment. Those are the facts, colleagues, and no matter how the President twists himself into a pretzel to try to describe it otherwise, those are the realities. Our election system and our digital infrastructure are still extraordinarily vulnerable to attack. The President's own Director of National Intelligence, our former colleague, has said--not months ago but recently--that ``the lights are blinking red.'' So our colleagues Senator Leahy and Senator Klobuchar are proposing an important investment of funding to assist the States. There is no question in my mind that when looking at this challenge, this will be a challenge that benefits from the additional funds since this is a national problem. The Director of Homeland Security said in response to my question that paperless voting machines pose a ``national security concern.'' You know, we don't ask Delaware or Oregon or small towns if they are dealing with an attack on their democracy. We don't say to a small town in Delaware or Oregon: Will you figure out how to do it? We treat it as something where we come together as Americans to tackle the problem. So we are going to need additional funds for attacking this extraordinarily important challenge. I am going to be heading home for townhall meetings. We have these sessions, throw open the doors, and everybody's welcome. Folks are going to hear about what we are talking about in election security, and folks are going to say: Ron, what are the best ideas out there for stopping the Russians from hacking our elections? I will say to my colleagues--we are going to talk some more about this--cyber security experts are overwhelmingly united on what is best for stopping the Russian hackers. Overwhelmingly, this country's cyber security experts--people who aren't Democrats or Republicans; they are people who are knowledgeable in this field--say the two things you need most are paper ballots and risk-limiting audits--those two things, paper ballots and risk-limiting audits. Tens of millions of Americans today have no choice but to vote on unsecured machines that might as well have these words scrolled on them in Russian: ``Please hack me, comrade.'' That pretty much is what you get with these unsecured voting machines. The voting machine industry--I think I talked about this with my friend from Delaware--has basically considered themselves to be above the law. They have refused to share vital information about their operations with me, the Intelligence Committee--even basic questions, which are really called issues relating to cyber hygiene. But what we know is, some of this voting technology has actually come preinstalled with remote monitoring software. The cyber security experts will tell you that is a recipe for disaster. The experts also will tell you that bar codes, ballot-marking devices, are not the heart of a solution to really secure elections. When you ask the companies that manufacture these machines, they are ducking and weaving when they are asked even the most basic and straightforward questions about how they are protecting American voters. Colleagues, as we move to start this extraordinarily important debate, I want to be clear about what I think the most important challenge is. Our most important job is to build a new partnership between the States and localities and Federal election officials that actually protects American elections from getting hacked by the Russians. That is what this is all about--actually making sure we provide that added measure of assistance and security for American voters. In the name of supporting that cause, I have proposed legislation called the PAVE Act which, in effect, says that we have to build around common sense and what the independent cyber security experts say is important--paper ballots and postelection audits. That, in my view, is the heart of what we ought to be looking for ways to support. If a polling place starts election day with a line of people out the door, it ought to end the day with a stack of paper ballots that are hack- proof--a verifiable system that the Russians cannot touch. If the United States is going to go along with business as usual-- election security status quo of paperless machines and not very many audits, not effective audits--it is nearly as bad as leaving ballot boxes on street corners in Red Square. So I am going to close this way. When we have a debate this important about election security, what it is really about is whether Americans can trust that control of our democracy is actually in their hands. The easiest way to destroy what has certainly been waning confidence Americans have in our elections is to leave election systems vulnerable to attack. That is practically a surefire way to limit voter participation, and it certainly is going to generate a new firestorm of conspiracy theories in every American election from here on. So I say to my colleagues and Senator Coons, who really is the gold standard for working with colleagues, trying to bring people together: Find approaches that make sense for our people. He and I have talked, and I think we have agreed that we will take a good idea from anywhere in sight. If there is a good idea on this side of the aisle, we are interested. If there is a good idea over there, we are interested. The good idea here, in terms of protecting the votes of the American people who have been threatened by Russian hackers, with the evidence as recently as a few days ago with the indictments--the best way, according to people who aren't in politics and are knowledgeable in the field, is to have paper ballots and risk-limiting audits. As long as I have the honor to represent Oregon in the U.S. Senate--we will certainly be talking about this at townhall meetings this weekend. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to advance that kind of approach, which I think is the surest path to blocking those Russian hackers from doing again and again what they did to us in this past election. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, soon, the Senate will vote on the Ryan Bounds nomination, and I want to make sure each Member of the Senate is aware of two important issues as they prepare to cast their votes on the Bounds nomination to serve on the Ninth Circuit. First, Mr. Bounds flagrantly misrepresented his background to our bipartisan Oregon judicial selection committee. This is the committee that was tasked with vetting his nomination--a process I have worked on with Republicans for literally two decades. I was pleased to work with our former colleague Senator Smith on this. I worked with the late Mark Hatfield on this. Now it is a pleasure to work with Senator Merkley, and the bipartisan efforts we have had produced this selection, a process. Mr. Bounds misrepresented--in my view, really lied--as he covered up disturbing, intolerant writings from his past. Among many hateful matters he wrote about, he defended homophobic vandals who damaged a gay pride monument. He argued against efforts to protect the survivors of sexual assault on college campuses because, he wrote, he didn't think that would guarantee absolute safety. As I indicated earlier, what outraged me, and shocked me, was his comparison of organizations that promote multiculturalism and tolerance in America to Nazi rallies. I am the child of Jewish parents who fled Nazi terror in Germany. Not all of our family got out. My great Uncle Max was among the last to be gassed at Auschwitz. For Mr. Bounds to compare groups that lift up minorities in America to Nazis is an extraordinary and dark stain on his character. For him to have concealed these writings from Oregon's bipartisan selection committee is disqualifying. He never acknowledged these writings until they were uncovered and then posed a threat to his nomination. To this day, he has not fully recanted the abhorrent views that are reflected in that content. Five of the seven members of the bipartisan judicial selection committee, including the Chair, said recently they would not have included Mr. Bounds among their recommended candidates had they known about the writings as he was vetted. Our bipartisan committee forwarded Mr. Bounds' name, along with others, as part of this process, and they said if Mr. Bounds had been straight with them, he would have told them about these offensive writings, but he misled them by keeping that secret. The second issue, this is the first time in the 101-year history of what is called the blue-slip process where a nomination moved forward without a blue slip from either home State Senator. Senator Merkley and I withheld our blue slips specifically because of what I described, these lies about omission. We didn't consent to a hearing, a debate on the floor, but Chairman Grassley and Majority Leader McConnell barreled right ahead. Leader McConnell even told the New York Times that blue slips ought to be viewed as nothing more than an indication of how Senators might vote on a given nominee. That was not the tune Republicans were singing in 2009. Democrats then occupied the Oval Office, held the gavel of the Judiciary Committee, and every Member--every Member--of this body who sat on that side of the Chamber in the Republican conference sent a letter to President Obama and then-Chairman Leahy saying that the nomination's process was ``needlessly acrimonious.'' They wanted to return to an era of bipartisanship. Then, they said: We hope your Administration will consult with us as it considers possible nominations to the federal courts from our states. Regretfully, if we are not consulted on, and approve of, a nomination from our states, the Republican Conference will be unable to support moving forward to that nominee. In 2009, while in the minority, everyone who sat on that side of the Chamber rushed to defend blue slips as a statement of senatorial courtesy and collegiality. What a difference a few years makes. What is happening now cheapens the advice and consent role of the Senate, something delegated to us by the Founding Fathers. The White House wants the Senate to act as a rubberstamp on whatever nominees are sent our way. The majority seems perfectly willing to go along with that. My colleagues on the other side need to be aware of the new reality-- this new reality where the blue slips don't matter--they are creating. This is going to be the end of the blue-slip process as it has worked in the Senate to promote good government on both sides of the aisle. This breach of a century of bipartisan protocol is going to further drive the judiciary to the partisan extremes. As we consider this nomination in a few minutes, this means lights- out--lights-out--for this important bipartisan tradition. The nominee we will be voting on concealed disturbing, intolerant writings from his past, misleading the bipartisan committee that reviewed his candidacy. Moving his nomination forward, in the face of that information and without the blue slips from Senator Merkley and myself, destroys more than a century of bipartisan tradition and certainly expands the power of the executive branch of the President. What we learned earlier this week is it would take only one U.S. Senator on the other side--of all the people sitting over there, it would take only one to stop this abomination of a process. I hope one of my colleagues will be swayed by the horrendous writings Mr. Bounds lied to conceal. This has been a sad moment for the Senate and a rejection of the kind of bipartisanship this body ought to bring to judicial nominations, the kind of bipartisanship I have been honored to be part of in Oregon for two decades. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the Bounds nomination. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following individual fellows in my office be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the 115th Congress: Casey Dreher, Cathleen Carlson, Nick St. Laurent, Gabe Kaptchuk, Shaanan Cohney, Roberta Kienast Daghir, and Derek Southern.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Massachusetts for eloquent remarks. I particularly want to thank my colleague from Oregon for putting together this time to speak on issues so important to our State, as Senator Warren has noted, and issues important to our country. In the context of talking about Ryan Bounds, I am going to talk about how, unfortunately, the handling of the Bounds nomination moves the Senate even further away from what I think the Senate has always been about, which I would describe as principled bipartisanship. As I indicated, Ryan Bounds, an important judicial nominee, is being considered as a candidate from my home State of Oregon, and we will vote on him before the end of the week. As I have indicated, I believe the debate about Ryan Bounds is not a typical debate on a typical nomination for reasons I am going to outline tonight. In my view, it is vital that the Senate look at this nomination in a broader context, particularly as it relates to what I call the decline of principled bipartisanship in the Senate. I want to be clear about what I mean when I mention the words ``principled bipartisanship'' and the reason I describe it that way--bipartisanship born of principle. Bipartisanship is not about taking each other's bad ideas. I see my friend from South Dakota in the chair of the Presiding Officer of the Senate. I wouldn't come up to him in the name of bipartisanship and ask him to take a flawed idea, and I am quite sure he wouldn't ask that of me because I know the Presiding Officer well enough to know he has had an interest over the years in bipartisanship built around principle. So bipartisanship is not about taking each other's lousy ideas; it is about taking each other's good ideas. The fact is, the Senate has certainly been very polarized, very divided this session, and yet we have been able to do it when we kept that lodestar of principled bipartisanship in mind. If you had said in January of 2017 that the U.S. Senate would enact a 10-year Children's Health Insurance Program, an improved, expanded Children's Health Insurance Program, I think people would have said: You are hallucinating. It can't happen. Because my colleague, who sits right over there, Chairman Hatch, and I talked about this was a chance to help children and save money, we are able to do something nobody thought was possible because both of us shared an interest in the well- being of children and cost-effective approaches in healthcare. I know my colleague knows about this. Senator Crapo, who sits a few seats from Chairman Hatch, and I lined up more than 270 forestry groups because the whole system of fighting fire was broken, and we said we have to do something very different. We have to end the incentive, basically, for raiding the fire prevention fund to put the fire out, and then the problem got worse. It didn't make any sense in South Dakota; it didn't make any sense in Oregon; it didn't make any sense anywhere, but because Chairman Crapo and I found common ground around principles that this wasn't a cost-effective approach to discriminate against fire prevention, and we saw how important it was to take a balanced approach on natural resources so we could have forest health and get fiber in the mills and protect our land, air, and water, it was an agreement based on principled bipartisanship. So two big issues, not immigration or trade that are in the headlines, but an awful lot of people in America and in our part of the world are going to benefit from the principled bipartisanship that led to an unexpected breakthrough in terms of meeting the healthcare needs of our children and a transformative approach--not my words, the words of the Forest Service--in terms of fighting fire. The fact is, the handling of these judicial nominations, and Ryan Bounds in particular, is a break, a dramatic, sharp break from this tradition of principled bipartisanship. I would like to say, by the way, that in Oregon, we have followed the idea of principled bipartisanship as it related to judicial nominations as well. I have had the pleasure of working with two Republicans very closely on these judicial nominations: the late Mark Hatfield, a revered figure in Oregon, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and my former colleague Gordon Smith, two Republicans. Nobody ever thought Gordon Smith and I would work together. We had a race in 1996. I won by a little bit. He won the next one. Nobody ever thought we would work together, but we worked together on those judicial nominations, literally, hand in glove, a Democrat and a Republican. Senator Merkley, who defeated Senator Smith, brought exactly the same approach to this, and he said: Well, how did it work in the past? I said: Well, we had a judicial selection process that was bipartisan, and we would have all our offices represented. I remember, when I was the junior Senator and Mark Hatfield was the senior Senator and Bill Clinton had been elected, I said: Senator, I can't imagine that you and I aren't going to find common ground through our selection process and the effort to come together around judges that make sense for our State and our country--and we did. Year after year, that has been the case for almost 20 years. I have been the senior Democrat in our congressional delegation. It has been an extraordinary privilege that the people of Oregon have afforded me. Year after year after year, we would come together not because we always agreed on someone's philosophy or their view on a particular issue but because we felt, in the name of fairness and principled bipartisanship, we ought to strive to find common ground and make it possible to generally send three nominations to the White House that a President would pick from. The nomination of Ryan Bounds is a total rejection of the idea of principled bipartisanship. I am going to talk a little bit more about how the selection process works, but I want to begin by making clear that I am troubled by the incendiary, intolerant writings by Mr. Bounds that came to light only after he was nominated. I am, in fact, more troubled by the fact that he concealed those writings from the independent and bipartisan Oregon committee that reviews potential candidates for nomination. In my view, moving forward with this nomination, in the face of those revelations, is going to have regrettable and irreversible consequences. It not only tramples on Oregon's bipartisan judicial selection process, as I am going to outline--and my colleague from Oregon already has touched on this--it tramples on a century-old tradition of what is just collegiality, good relations among Senators, courtesy, allowing home State Senators to review judicial nominations. My view is, this approach cheapens the constitutional responsibility of the Senate to provide or withhold advice and consent on nominees. It has the potential to forever lower the basic standards of honesty and decency to which the Senate holds the nominee. It will be a signal that a nominee can conceal information the public has a right to know-- histories of prejudice and scorn that the potential nominees could find embarrassing and disqualifying should that information come to light. It signals that the Republican majority believes the end justifies the means in the course of seating judges, a prospect that certainly speaks to the larger debate the Senate is going to have on the Supreme Court in the months ahead. I am going to begin by walking through a number of the issues, beginning with excerpts from the writings Mr. Bounds failed to disclose to our bipartisan judicial selection committee. I want to make it clear again that I find much of what was written to be disgusting and baffling, and I am again especially concerned that it was concealed from the committee. First is a passage in which Mr. Bounds targeted ethnic minorities and expressed a dripping disdain for multicultural values. Mr. Bounds wrote: During my years in our Multicultural Garden of Eden, I have often marveled at the odd strategies that some of the more strident racial factions of the student body employ in their attempt to ``heighten consciousness,'' ``build tolerance,'' ``promote diversity,'' and otherwise convince us to partake of that fruit which promises to open our eyes to a PC version of the knowledge of good and evil. Mr. Bounds said: I am mystified because these tactics seem always to contribute more to restricting consciousness, aggravating intolerance, and pigeonholing cultural identities than many a Nazi [talking about book burning.] Now, my colleagues who are following this, I am the child of Jewish refugees who fled Nazi terror in Germany. Not all of our family got out. We lost family at Theresienstadt. One of our very dear family members was gassed at Auschwitz. To compare, as Mr. Bounds did, the work of organizations that promote multiculturalism and tolerance here in the United States to Nazi bookburning rallies is beyond extreme. Our diversity is a core strength of America. The Constitution protects the right of minority Americans to celebrate their diversity. Mr. Bounds clearly doesn't see it that way. In an even more sarcastic passage, he wrote: The opponent is the white male and his coterie of meanspirited lackeys: ``oreos,'' ``twinkies,'' ``coconuts'' and the like. He enjoys making money and buying material things just to make sure that people with darker skin don't have access to them. He enjoys killing children and revels in the deaths of minorities. If you are white male and pro- choice, for instance, it is often ascribed to your desire for poor black and Hispanic women to abort their children as frequently as possible. These are his words--words that invent an absurd sense of victimhood based on a fictional reading of how ethnic minorities view others. I would just ask my colleagues, how can somebody who wrote and published statements like those--statements that were printed in Stanford's newspaper for anybody to read--be capable of hearing a case involving matters of race in an impartial fashion? After intoxicated athletes vandalized a gay pride monument at Stanford, Mr. Bounds wrote: We hear of sensations of personal violation and outrage and of suspicion that male athletes and fraternity members are bigots whose socialization patterns induce this sort of terrorism. Perhaps all of this is true, but the castigation of athletes and frat boys for flagrantly anti-homosexual prejudices is predicated on a motivation for this vandalism that has not been articulated. He continued: The vandals might face hate-crime charges, fraternity members--regardless of their individually demonstrated prejudices (or, for that matter, sexual orientation)--face mandatory sensitivity training . . . and sensitivity insinuates itself a little further into the fissures of our community. So in that passage, Mr. Bounds somehow managed to make victims out of homophobic vandals and attack the concept of sensitivity. It is a sort of division in American society. It is as if he believed being sensitive to minorities who are the targets of hate and prejudice on a daily basis was an unreasonable prospect. Next I will turn to Mr. Bounds' views on sexual assault on campus. He wrote: There is nothing really inherently wrong with the University failing to punish an alleged rapist--regardless his guilt--in the absence of adequate certainty; there is nothing that the University can do to objectively ensure that the rapist does not strike again. He continued: Expelling students is probably not going to contribute a great deal toward a rape victim's recovery; there is no moral imperative to risk egregious error in doing so. Now, I would be the first to say that a disciplinary proceeding in a university is not a courtroom. They don't operate under the same legal standards. However, universities that receive Federal dollars do have a legal obligation to protect the young women on their campuses. Once again, this is something that the nominee, Ryan Bounds, seems not to comprehend. So when you take these writings together--the merit of diversity, the advancement of ethnic minorities, the protection of survivors from sexual assault--these are issues at the heart of some of the most significant cases that come before Federal judges. Mr. Bounds' writings reflect that he held shocking views on these matters as a young adult-- views that he hid by concealing the writings I have touched on. There are plenty of inflammatory examples beyond those I quoted here today that touch on additional topics. I hope Senators and those following this would find my judgment not something you can debate. This is indisputably appalling stuff. I believe, having talked to some colleagues, they might want to dismiss the writings because they came when Mr. Bounds was a young man, and one would certainly hope that people mature as they age. I would agree with that if Mr. Bounds had done two things: first, if he had disclosed the writings to our independent and bipartisan Oregon committee--in other words, been candid with the bipartisan and independent committee like the Oregonians who came before him for close to two decades. I don't think that is asking too much--to be candid, to be straightforward, as those other Oregonians who went on to distinguished service on the Federal bench did for almost two decades. In addition to disclosing these writings to the independent and bipartisan committee, if he had recanted and apologized for these horrendous remarks. In my view, he failed to take either action. When you think about this, nobody would ask Mr. Bounds to recant every utterance, every writing, every belief he held as a young adult. I think we would all widely think that is unreasonable. I understand that when there is a Republican in the White House and a Republican in charge of the Judiciary Committee, I am not going to see eye-to-eye with every judicial nominee who comes up for a vote. That is why I have gone to some lengths tonight to mention that I have been the senior Democrat for essentially two decades. Whether it be Mark Hatfield or Gordon Smith, two very thoughtful Republicans, and now our colleague Jeff Merkley, we have always, always tried to be deferential, tried to find common ground in recognizing what party was in the White House and what party controlled the Senate. I am not asking Mr. Bounds to transform himself into Thurgood Marshall. It is completely reasonable to expect an admission that comparing the promotion of diversity to Nazi rallies was wrong. I can only imagine what my late parents, both of whom fled the Nazis at a very young age--and all they wanted to do was to serve in our military, wear the uniform of the United States. My dad wrote propaganda pamphlets that we dropped on the Nazis. I can only imagine what my parents would say to Mr. Bounds' idea of comparing diversity to Nazi rallies. Dismissing the value of diversity is wrong, and insisting that it is not worth protecting the victims of sexual assault because it is impossible to guarantee safety from rape is wrong. Instead, Mr. Bounds hid these writings rather than recant, take back their content. The comments he has made since they came to light, in my view, suggest that Mr. Bounds sees this as a matter of clumsy word choice and youthful indiscretion. He only acknowledged it after it became a threat to his nomination. I don't think it was a true apology. It is as if he believed he could wave the writings off as a messy, isolated little episode from the past. In my view--and something I am going to talk about going forward-- nominees for the Federal bench must be held to a higher standard. If you are up for a lifetime appointment on a powerful Federal court, you have to be truthful and forthcoming in your nomination process. Ryan Bounds has not, and that ought to be a reasonable judgment from what I have outlined thus far. Now I want to touch on the second important issue, and that is the way this nomination has literally trampled on our bipartisan selection process for judicial nominees. As I have said, I am proud that for the better part of two decades, prospective judicial nominees have been identified and vetted by our bipartisan committee made up of Oregonians from across the State and from all over the legal community. As I indicated, it was especially important to me to partner with my Republican colleagues to ensure that all sides had a voice in this issue--in fact, even before I came to the Senate because I was the senior Democrat in our delegation then as a Member of the House. I always wanted to hear Senator Hatfield's views and what he thought was in Oregon's interest. When there is a vacancy on the bench, our selection committee performs a thorough statewide search for candidates. It conducts very rigorous interviews. It provides a list of recommended potential nominees to Oregon Senators. Senator Merkley and I review these recommendations closely, and we respect that not everyone on the list is going to be somebody we would have chosen ourselves. They are not all people we would agree with 100 percent. After our review, the two of us submit a short list to the President for his consideration. For us, this is the beginning of how we put advice and consent into practice. When the Trump administration came to office, Senator Merkley and I wrote to the White House Counsel to guarantee that he was aware of our longstanding bipartisan selection process. As part of the independent committee work, candidates are asked to disclose anything from their past that could have a negative impact on their potential nomination. It ought to be obvious to any lawyer--even to anybody with a casual interest in American law and history--that the incendiary writings, particularly about minorities, would qualify as potentially threatening to a nomination. This was the exact point at which Mr. Bounds withheld any and all information about his writings. It is not as if Mr. Bounds simply declined to look back far enough into his past when he was interviewed. In fact, Mr. Bounds cited certain activities from his precollege days going back to high school in an effort to paint a picture of diversity and tolerance. So the reality is, he misled the committee by omitting the writings that I have described tonight. When his writings came to light in February, five of the selection committee's seven members, including the chair, said they would have changed their decision to include Mr. Bounds among their recommended candidates. I think that is a very important statement. It is not widely known that it will always say in the newspaper that the distinguished President of the Senate recommended so-and-so and the President chose his recommendation. We all know that is generally not the case. We forward a list of individuals--usually three--that our bipartisan committee feels would be qualified to serve on the bench. In the case of Mr. Bounds, when his writings--the ones he neglected to tell the committee about--came to light, five of the selection committee's seven members, including the chairman, said that they would have changed their decision to include Mr. Bounds among the recommended candidates. Our local bar association wrote that Mr. Bounds' writings ``express insensitive, intolerant, and disdaining views toward racial and ethnic minorities, campus sexual assault victims, and the LGBTQ community.'' The association's statement went on to say that it ``strongly disavows the views expressed in those articles''--the ones I have read tonight--``as racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and disparaging of survivors of sexual assault and abuse.'' I will repeat that last part: ``racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and disparaging of survivors of sexual assault and abuse.'' Those are not my words. Those are the words of Mr. Bounds' local bar association based in Portland. The association, in addition, requested that Mr. Bounds resign from the chairmanship of its equity, diversity, and inclusion committee, which he complied with. Other member groups of the Oregon legal community added their voices and urged the leaders of the Judiciary Committee to turn to other potential nominees. The leaders of the Oregon Women Lawyers and the Oregon Asian Pacific American Bar Association wrote the following: These were not comments from the Twittersphere or errant social media posts. These were well thought-out, carefully constructed, published articles in which [Bounds] repeatedly diminished, mocked, and advocated wholeheartedly against the principles of inclusion for which our organizations have fought. That is really an important point. Mr. Bounds wasn't sitting down at his laptop, his iPad, pounding out a couple hundred characters. He was thinking carefully; these were published articles that he clearly had spent a lot of time trying to get the words to reflect what was on his mind. And people have recognized it--no 280 characters for those articles. The Oregon Hispanic Bar Association and the LGBT Bar Association of Oregon wrote the following: We believe Mr. Bounds' failure to disclose these writings-- and his conduct related to their disclosure--demonstrates Mr. Bounds does not show the appropriate judgment and discernment to faithfully uphold and apply the laws of the United States of America. These are the voices of Oregon's legal community. The nominations process is supposed to be responsive to those voices. Apparently, none of what I have gotten into tonight has been of any interest whatsoever to the chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee, the majority leader, or the White House, because they simply moved forward with the Bounds nomination anyway. Really, there were no substantive discussions with them at all. It appears now that the White House simply had no interest in respecting the bipartisan, 20-year history of tackling these nominations in a way that reflects principled bipartisanship. Mr. Bounds was their choice from the beginning, and no revelation, no red flag--no matter how big--was going to change him. Our independent group of experts--people with bipartisan roots that go back decades--had no interest in delay. But if blowing up a decades- old bipartisan tradition is bad, then blowing up a tradition that dates back more than a century is even worse. For 101 years, going back to Chairman Charles A. Culberson of Texas, the Judiciary Committee has sought input from Senators on judicial nominees from their home States. It is done by returning what are known as blue slips. It is the definition of senatorial collegiality-- courtesy, if you will, in an effort to make sure that all felt they were going to be heard. The committee sends blue slips to home State Senators when a nomination comes up. At that point, the home State Senators have a few options. Once they review the nomination, they can return the blue slip with a positive or negative recommendation, and the committee moves forward. Or the home State Senators can withhold the blue slip. Senator Merkley and I withheld our blue slips. We have not consented to a hearing, a markup, or a debate on the floor. We have done that because Mr. Bounds purposefully misled the independent Oregon committee that reviewed his candidacy by concealing the disturbing writings from his young adulthood. In my view, that is exactly the way the blue-slip process is supposed to work. History shows that this tradition has benefited both sides. It is a check on the power of the President and a moderating, democratic force on the Judiciary. It helps to ensure that administrations are not seating flawed nominees or extremist judges whose views are simply far from the mainstream of the lives that they have considerable power to change, if confirmed. In fact, let me quote a letter from the entire Senate Republican conference sent to the last President at the very beginning of his term in 2009. What that means is every member of the Senate Republican caucus sent to President Obama, at the beginning of his term in 2009, a letter with one of the very first lines saying: Unfortunately, the judicial appointments process has become needlessly acrimonious. We would very much like to improve this process, and we know you would as well. So at a time when that side of the Chamber--everybody over there--was out of power and they had no choice but to appeal to the other party's good will, they went ahead and struck a bipartisan chord. Their letter described the ``shared constitutional responsibility'' in the nominations process. They wrote that dating back to the Nation's founding, the Senate has had ``a unique constitutional responsibility to provide or withhold its Advice and Consent on nominations.'' They continued: The principle of senatorial consultation (or senatorial courtesy) is rooted in this special responsibility, and its application dates back to the Administration of George Washington. Democrats and Republicans have acknowledged the importance of maintaining this principle, which allows individual Senators to provide valuable insights into their constituents' qualifications for federal service. Here is the heart of the letter that came from that side of this body: We hope your administration will consult with us as it considers possible nominations to the federal courts from our states. Regretfully, if we are not consulted on, and approve of, a nominee from our states, the Republican Conference will be unable to support moving forward on that nominee. So there you have the heart of the fury that we represent tonight. When a new Democratic administration came into office, my Republican colleagues sprang into action to defend the blue-slip process. That letter was sent on March 2, 2009, to President Obama, and our colleague Senator Leahy was then the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. The letter clearly indicates that Leader McConnell and his Republican colleagues believed that nominations should not go forward without blue slips having been returned. That was when there was a Democrat in the Oval Office. A Democrat held the gavel in the Judiciary Committee. They had the power to tell the Republicans in the minority to get lost; take a hike. Democrats did no such thing. We upheld the blue-slip tradition on this side of the Chamber, where my good friend Senator Merkley and I sit. We went along with the unanimous request from that side of the Chamber in honoring blue slips. There were no hearings of judicial nominations when a Democrat held the gavel in the Judiciary Committee, when neither home State Senator had consented. In fact, the Judiciary chairman, Senator Leahy, has emphasized that he went above and beyond what several committee leaders before him had done to respect the rights of the Republican minority. Someone watching in the Gallery or on TV, someone who is hoping to see the Congress pick up again on what I have described as principled bipartisanship, probably hoping to hear Republicans are operating with the same bipartisan comity now that they are in power--those people are in for some serious disappointment. If the Senate approves the Bounds nomination, it will be the first time in more than a century that a judge has been confirmed without a blue slip from either home State Senator. The fact that Mr. Bounds wrote the appalling things I have described ought to have at least slowed this nomination down. For him to have hidden the writings is disqualifying. I don't think the matter can be ignored or wished away. The fact that these writings are embarrassing and reflect poorly on him in retrospect does not in any way give him a license to conceal them. In my view, my colleagues in the majority ought to look at this issue the same way. The Republican majority, working hand in hand with the Trump administration, is now on the verge of breaking a century of bipartisan tradition to seat a nominee with very serious red flags. In fact, Chairman Grassley has now held hearings on four circuit court nominees who didn't have blue slips from one or both of their home State Senators. Recently, Leader McConnell changed his tune on what the blue slip was about. He was quoted as saying that the blue slip ``ought to simply be a notification of how you're going to vote, not the opportunity to blackball.'' I have two reactions to that. Senator Merkley and I have been called a variety of things over the years, but I don't believe anybody has ever said that we are interested in blackballing people. We are interested in doing our jobs. We are interested in carrying out our constitutional responsibilities, our constitutional responsibilities to our constituents. Second, blue slips have never been simply an indication of how Senators will vote. Leader McConnell knows it. The letter he and his colleagues sent in 2009 is proof. To invent this new interpretation of how the process should work demonstrates, as I have indicated, that the Republican majority has changed the rules of the game. My colleagues on the other side ought to be aware of this new responsibility because of how the administration, the majority leader, and the Judiciary Committee have handled the Bounds nomination. This, colleagues, is going to be the end of the blue-slip process. This is lights-out for a process that ensured fairness for each Senator. I would wager that when the next Democratic administration comes in and the Democrats hold the gavel in the Senate, a Republican letter that demands a say in judicial nominations will find it hard not to be treated like a takeout menu that is shoved unsolicited under the doorway--straight to the dustbin. I have outlined the letter my Republican colleagues sent to President Obama in 2009. It talked about a shared constitutional responsibility, but the administration seems to define ``advise and consent'' as Senators rubberstamping whatever nominations are sent their way. This is a historic moment and, I think, a sad one. As I indicated, it is part of a larger context--part of a pattern of the majority violating norms, misleading the public, and bending rules to their absolute limits in order to reshape the judiciary and seat judges who are far from the mainstream. Justice Scalia passed away unexpectedly with 237 days left in President Obama's second term. During the process of deciding on a nominee to fill the open seat, President Obama did something he didn't have to do--something that upset many progressive Democrats. He specifically chose a moderate nominee as a show of good faith. After all, in 2010, when another seat opened up, my friend who chairs the Finance Committee called Justice Garland a fine man, a consensus nominee. What a difference a few years makes. Judge Garland didn't even get a hearing in 2016. The Republican majority in the Senate ran out the clock on his nomination. Now that Republicans control the White House and the Senate, they changed the rules in the Senate so they could confirm Supreme Court Justices without needing a single Democratic vote--a clear double standard. The Trump administration has outsourced the selection of judicial nominees to a right-wing group called the Federalist Society, which is funded by powerful corporate interests and individuals with deep pockets. They are answerable to no one but their well-monied backers, certainly not the public at large. Ryan Bounds is a Federalist Society hand-picked nominee. So was Neil Gorsuch, who now sits in the Supreme Court seat that Leader McConnell and Chairman Grassley held open for months and months. So is Brett Kavanaugh, whose nomination the Senate will debate at great length in the months to come. These are nominees who adhere to a backward-looking, corporatist, rightwing judicial philosophy that is packaged in the branding of so- called ``originalism.'' The guiding principle of originalism is ostensibly that our rights as a people are contained within our founding document, but in practice, originalism provides cover for rightwing jurists to empower corporations over downtrodden workers and the wealthy over the vulnerable. It is a political agenda masquerading as a judicial philosophy. For example, you would find it impossible to locate in the Constitution where it says that unscrupulous healthcare providers can lie to pregnant women about the services they do and do not provide, but a right-leaning Supreme Court just said they are allowed to deceive women in that way. Originalist judges regularly trample on the Fourth Amendment, giving the government the power to peer deep into the lives of citizens. And in an example that is particularly relevant to my home State, which has had a ``death with dignity'' law on the books for decades, originalist jurists, including Justice Gorsuch and Judge Kavanaugh, deny that Americans suffering with terrible illness have a right to make their own decisions about their own lives and bodies without interference from the State. Twice, Oregonians have passed ballot measures approving death with dignity. Oregon's Death with Dignity Act has been in place for two decades, and it was upheld by the Supreme Court in Gonzalez v. Oregon. And as I have said on this floor in previous debates, there is nothing in the Constitution that gives the State the power to deny suffering Oregonians the right to make basic choices about the end of their lives. Justice Gorsuch and Judge Kavanaugh disagree. They would put the State between patients and their doctors, and their view that our rights are only those enumerated in the Constitution conveniently ignores key precedent and the text of the Ninth Amendment, which says: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. . . . shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. So there is a clear implication written into our founding documents that there are rights held by the people that are not overtly laid out in the text of the Constitution. Furthermore, the originalist viewpoint ignores what Justice Douglas referred to in Griswold v. Connecticut as the ``zone of privacy created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees.'' It was that zone of privacy that formed the basis of his opinion that guaranteed the right of married couples to use contraceptives. That right was later extended to unmarried individuals. A similar legal theory guaranteed the right of all American women to make their own choices about their reproductive health. And it is that case, Roe v. Wade, that is now in the crosshairs of the right wing as the Kavanaugh nomination moves forward. Colleagues, Roe is settled law--it has been that way for 45 years-- but it is the right-wing agenda, wrapped in the cloak of originalism, that seeks to overturn it. Overturning Roe would turn the clock back to the dark days when women's healthcare choices were made by the State--nevermind the flimsy legal argument for it. That prospect is overwhelmingly opposed by the American people. The imagery of back alley abortions and risky procedures performed in secret is well understood, in part because those horrors are not all that far back in our history as a Nation. And the fact is, the women who have the most to lose if Roe is overturned are the vulnerable and the poor. It is the women who will lose access to the doctors of their choosing in small town clinics. It is the women who cannot afford to a fly to another State where the reproductive healthcare services they need are legal, safe, and available. It is another step that cleaves our laws and our healthcare system in two, going back to another era when healthcare in America worked only for the healthy and the wealthy. These questions are all part of the broader context I felt the need to address here today as the Senate debates the Bounds nomination. As somebody who has done my best to operate in a bipartisan manner throughout my career, it saddens me to see the majority party change the rules of the road in this way pushing through nominees that are far outside the mainstream, destroying bipartisan traditions that have stood for decades, even more than a century, reshaping the judiciary at the behest of extremist, right-wing outside groups that put the interests of the wealthy and powerful over the vulnerable. These actions by the majority collectively pull bricks from the democratic foundations of our government. They will bring to the judiciary same vitriolic discourse that Americans find so disgusting in the Congress. They undermine the public trust. In the long run, it will be an open question whether the current structure of the courts will survive. As for today, I want my colleagues to understand what is at stake as the Senate prepares to vote on the Bounds nomination. This nominee concealed disturbing, intolerant writings from his past, misleading the bipartisan committee that reviewed his candidacy. The White House and Republican leaders here in the Senate have apparently decided that does not matter, and now, a century-old bipartisan tradition that protects our power as Senators and acts as a moderating force on the courts is on the ropes. In my view, this will forever change how judicial nominations are handled. It will further divide the Congress, and it will further divide the courts along partisan lines. And this will only be a preview of the tense debate on the judiciary that is sure to come in the months ahead. I will close with one last point. There are values on the line now that are important to the people of my State and to Americans, particularly the right of all American women to make their own choices about their reproductive health and their healthcare. The Roe case is settled law, and it has been that way for 45 years, but now there is really a prospect of its being turned back. The poor and the vulnerable have the most to lose. These are all issues that are part of the broader context I wanted to address here tonight. I am not sure if Senator Merkley was here at the particular moment. I see my colleagues who have been very patient because my time has expired. We had a bipartisan selection committee for judges in our State, with the late Mark Hatfield and Gordon Smith, who was Senator Merkley's predecessor--Democrats, Republicans--all of whom said we don't want to bring the same vitriolic discourse to judicial selection that constitutes so much of the public debate today. What we sought to do in the Oregon congressional delegation--Senator Merkley, Senator Hatfield, Gordon Smith--was to buttress the public trust. What we are seeing now in Oregon and with the judges who are being given, in my view, such short shrift--such unfair treatment-- raises the question of whether the current structure of America's courts can survive. That is what is at stake in these votes. I think what we are discussing tonight is going to only be a preview of the tense debate on the judiciary that is sure to come. I think we are capable of better. Oregon has shown it for two full decades as it relates to judicial selection. I urge the Senate to return to that kind of collegial process, exemplified by the blue slip, exemplified by the Oregon bipartisan selection committee. Until that happens, I will have to urge a ``no'' vote on the Bounds nomination. I thank my colleagues for their patience. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, 2 years ago, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt, which reaffirmed the longstanding view that the government should not be in the business of deciding what kind of healthcare a woman in America can or cannot receive. A number of my colleagues are going to be coming to the floor to discuss this issue. It was a crucial victory. My colleagues who have been so involved in this issue over the years--Senator Murray and Senator Blumenthal--and I as the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee have tried to do everything we possibly could because our committee has extensive jurisdiction over women's healthcare in a variety of programs that are crucial for women. It is in that context that I want to reflect on what has happened since the Supreme Court handed down that crucial victory, that important win for women's healthcare as embodied in Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt. At every turn since the President went to the White House, the President's administration has put themselves in between American women and their doctors. The President has sought to prevent healthcare providers from sharing critical care information. The President has sought to place restrictions on health clinics that women rely on every single day for lifesaving services, such as cancer screenings, physicals, prenatal care, and more. He has again and again sought to place restrictions on and attempted to defund health clinics, such as Planned Parenthood, that women in America rely on every single day for lifesaving services, such as cancer screenings, physicals, prenatal care, and more. I hope colleagues will look at the words that I used to describe those lifesaving services--lifesaving services that have absolutely nothing to do with abortion--nothing--cancer screenings, physicals, prenatal care, and more. That is what the President sought to place restrictions on and attempted to defund in terms of health clinics that offer those services. The latest blow to the cause of making sure women can go to the healthcare providers of their choosing came yesterday from the Supreme Court. Yesterday, the Court in effect opened the door for deceptive crisis pregnancy centers that are allowed to lie to women about what kind of care they are able to receive. All of these developments demonstrate that the effort for affordable, accessible healthcare is far from done, and it is going to take a constant push to ensure that healthcare in America moves forward and not backward. In my view, one of the biggest threats to Americans' healthcare is the Trump administration's full-throated endorsement of repealing preexisting condition protections. That is particularly important for women who count on these essential consumer protections to get affordable care for all services. American women don't want to turn back the clock to the days where health insurance was more expensive by default for women because maternity care and other services weren't covered in standard plans. Women don't want to be denied health insurance because of a cancer scare they had a few years back or a small preventive surgery. That was the reality before the Affordable Care Act. I can only say that at one time, Democrats and Republicans here in the Senate felt very strongly about loophole-free, airtight protection for women and men and all Americans against discrimination for preexisting conditions. I know that because in the context of debating the Affordable Care Act, I was the sponsor of legislation, the Healthy Americans Act, which had seven Democrats and seven Republicans as cosponsors. Our proposal did have loophole-free, airtight protection for women and all Americans against discrimination for preexisting conditions. Essentially, what we seven Democrats and seven Republicans proposed is what became part of the Affordable Care Act provisions against discriminating against those with preexisting conditions, and it is those protections, which are now law, which the Trump administration seeks to roll back. It is not widely known that it is not just men and women in the individual healthcare market whom the President's reckless approach on preexisting conditions is actually threatening. If the Trump administration is successful, protections for the 167 million Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance will also lose the Affordable Care Act's airtight, loophole-free preexisting condition protections. That means America would be turning back the clock on healthcare, and an employer could once again put their bottom line over the health of the American people. Back then, it meant individuals were prevented from getting healthcare for months or leaving care for their preexisting condition uncovered. I think it is pretty clear that the American people do not want to return to a system like that. Over the Fourth of July break, I will be heading back to Oregon. I am going to have my 900th townhall meeting--900 meetings where, for an hour and a half, I don't give any speeches; folks can just come in and say what is on their minds and say what is important to them. I would say that at a significant number of those 900 open-to-all, 90-minute townhall meetings in Oregon, folks at home talk about the importance of the issue I have just described--the protection for women and men and all Americans against discrimination for preexisting conditions. Certainly, women in America can't afford to return to a system where they are systemically discriminated against. Women have been on the frontlines, standing up and speaking out to ensure that doesn't happen, ever since Donald Trump was elected. I thank my colleagues, particularly Senator Murray and Senator Blumenthal, who have been our leaders on this effort. As the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, I try to do everything I can to help them in their good work, and I appreciate their taking the time to point out that it has been 2 years since the Supreme Court handed down a historic decision that actually protected women and why we all feel so strongly about not walking back that decision. I thank Senator Murray, and I yield my time to her.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I want to honor longtime Oregon journalist Steve Forrester. Steve has retired as editor and publisher of the Daily Astorian. He will remain president and chief executive officer of the EO Media Group, which owns the Astorian, as well as several other newspapers, including publications in eastern Oregon, but we will no longer benefit from his day-to-day leadership at the Astorian. I have known Steve for nearly 40 years, since he was a reporter in Washington, DC, and I was a young Member of the House. In all that time, Steve has never hesitated to ask the tough questions and to be fiercely devoted to local journalism's principles and importance. The theme running consistently throughout Steve's career has been always to ensure local readers understand the impact of decisions and policies made in Congress, the statehouse, and city hall. I particularly wanted to honor Steve today because, over the Fourth of July recess, I will be home in Oregon highlighting the foundational freedoms of the First Amendment with events celebrating those freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, and the press. The Founding Fathers knew those First Amendment freedoms were core to our country and to creating the values that have made America a destination for all who hunger to be free of fear and liberated to pursue their dreams. As the child of parents who fled the Nazis for refuge in the United States, I learned early on about the importance of these freedoms. As the son of a reporter, I also learned especially about the importance of the freedom of the press. Because Steve has contributed so much to a vibrant and free press in our great State of Oregon, I will be proud to present him on July 1, in Astoria, with a ``Go Fourth'' award. Steve's career makes him richly deserving of this award and an inspiration for Oregon journalists for generations to come. I suspect Steve will exercise his self-deprecating modesty and question why he is worthy of such attention. I know Steve would much rather shine the spotlight on others, but the bottom line is I want Oregon to recognize his enormous and long-lasting contributions to making our State a better place to live and to making all of us as Oregonians better-informed citizens.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I begin by thanking Senator Merkley. Senator Merkley, in my view, delivered a wake-up call to the country several weeks ago when he went to the border, and I have been very pleased to be able to join him in this effort. A few days ago, we visited a detention center in Sheridan, OR. We spoke with a father who had been separated from his 18-month-old daughter. The day before Father's Day, colleagues, Senator Merkley and I listened to a father who had been separated from his 18-month-old daughter and had no idea where she was and didn't know when he would see her again. All over the country, as part of this national shame, these stories have been breaking our hearts. Now, the President has said, for example, that he is turning away gang members. What Senator Merkley and I saw last Saturday was that he is locking up innocent people who are in danger because they refused to submit to gangs in their home countries. That is what we heard at the Sheridan prison just a few days ago. These stories are particularly poignant in our household. The Wydens had the opportunity to flee the evils of Nazi Germany for the safety and the promise of the United States. My father came as a youngster. He barely spoke English. He studied hard, and when the war came he wanted to wear the uniform of the United States more than anything. He served in our propaganda arm, where his fluent native German was a great value to the war effort because he wrote propaganda pamphlets that we dropped on the Nazis telling them that they had no chance, that they had no opportunity to survive. Unlike the comical efforts of our enemies, who mangled English, the work of young immigrants like my father, wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army, struck at the morale of German soldiers freezing on the battlefield. My parents were lucky to be able to make a home in our country, and they raised my brother and me here. They did their part to add to the fabric of the United States. Now, the Wydens were able to come, but not everyone of their Jewish background was so fortunate. Shiploads of Jews fleeing persecution and violence were deemed undesirable, and they were turned away from America. Let me be clear about what happened. The rallying cry for those who wished to keep people like my Jewish parents out of this country--those who denied Jewish refugees safety in their moment of desperation--was ``America first.'' What happened to those families who turned to the beacon of America for safety and opportunity? Many were forced back to Europe, and many of them ultimately ended up in concentration camps. People don't embark on the harrowing journey to America, much less with kids by their side, unless they are fleeing serious danger and deprivation. It is with that history that I wanted to join my colleagues tonight on this floor to talk about the heartlessness we see in the Trump zero tolerance policy--thousands of kids, refugees, forcibly separated from their parents. There are reports that border agents lied to mothers and fathers, telling them that their kids were being taken away for a bath, only to have them disappear--a terrifying scenario, colleagues, with grim historical echoes. There are nursing babies taken from their mothers and kids locked in cages for days, regimented like they are criminals facing hard time. There is a reason that the courts have barred the executive from holding child refugees for more than 20 days. However, it appears the President intends now to ignore the courts and hold children in jails for the foreseeable future. The administration has gone to great lengths to defend their policy, but they will not stand up and defend it with honest answers. The administration even buried a recent government report showing that refugees are a positive economic force. I gather it is because it just didn't fit the company line. I will close by saying that in my view a strong leader does not rip kids from their mothers and lock them in cages. A strong leader does not take child hostages to use as political pawns. A strong leader does not lie and mislead the American people about the true nature of the policy he enacts. In my view, these have been acts of weakness. My view is that the national shame which we have seen over the last few weeks is going to go down as one of the dark moments in American history. It is why it is so important in the days ahead that we come together--Democrats and Republicans--and we restore the greatness of America, which is that we are better and stronger because we stand up for refugees, refugees like the Wydens, who fled Nazi Germany decades ago. I again thank my colleague from Oregon for his critical leadership on this matter. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I wish to offer my most sincere appreciation and gratitude to Erika K. Lunder, legislative attorney with the American Law Division of the Congressional Research Service, CRS. Erika will be leaving CRS on June 22, 2018, after 15 years of dedicated and selfless service to CRS and Congress. She was a trusted adviser on tax law to Members on both sides of the aisle, and her guidance and counsel will be deeply missed by me and many of my colleagues. Throughout her time at CRS, Erika provided substantial legislative support to Members of Congress and congressional staff who often turned to her for analysis, brainstorming, and consultation on various aspects of tax law. Erika covered all aspects of tax law, from individual to corporate to international, and in connection with every subject on which Congress legislates, from health and energy policy, to campaign finance, immigration, and veterans. Her work in these areas included assisting Congress with interpretations of current and proposed law, explaining case law and legal developments, and analyzing legislative proposals at various stages of the process. Erika's work was used by Congress in hearings, legislative development, markups, and preconference negotiations. Erika was a tireless worker who never said no to a request and was always willing to make herself available, on a moment's notice, 7 days a week, to help inform the policy process. She was able to describe and distill the most complex and opaque tax law concepts in layman's terms in both her writing and her oral consultations to her clients. During her time at CRS, Erika contributed her tax law expertise in support of major pieces of tax legislation that were enacted into law, as well as issues that are still the subject of congressional debate, such as the taxation of internet sales. Erika's extensive knowledge of tax law and her keen ability to frame and analyze issues of paramount concern to Congress often made her the primary point of contact for congressional staff. In addition, Erika was an invaluable resource to her colleagues at CRS, working at some time or another with almost everyone in the Service, providing her tax law expertise in combination with their legal and policy expertise in other areas. I thank her for her service to Congress and the Nation and wish her all the best.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I don't want to make this a cake-tossing contest, but I also want it understood that my colleague from Oregon has done an invaluable service to the country by showing the importance of what is happening at the border, where there is an effort in effect to traumatize children and separate kids from their parents. I look forward to working with my colleague when we do some work on it in Oregon. I certainly don't want to hold up my friend from Virginia, and I appreciate Senator Murphy. Before I came to the Congress, I was codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers, a senior citizens group, for about 7 years. Back then, we were talking about ways in which to move forward on healthcare, to advance the rights of our people, to improve the quality of life in this country. There was often a bipartisan coalition to do that, to make those advancements. In the last year, however, there has been an unprecedented effort to turn back the healthcare clock. We see it with the effort to sell junk insurance, which, in effect, involves the Trump Health and Human Services Department saying to States: Well, it is really pretty much OK to discriminate; just don't be too obvious about it. Then we saw the effort to strip away the Medicaid guarantee of nursing home coverage for older people. Now, Senator Murphy, Senator Kaine, and my colleagues are here on the floor to talk about the Trump administration's efforts to unravel the current law that bars insurance companies from beating the stuffing out of people with preexisting conditions. That is the way it used to be, folks. If you had a preexisting condition and you weren't healthy or wealthy--and that is what you face if you have a preexisting condition--you were really in bad shape. If you are healthy, you pay your bills--and you don't have bills. If you are wealthy, you pay the bills. But millions who have preexisting conditions would just get clobbered with premium hikes, so they couldn't get coverage at all. Finally, we said in the Affordable Care Act: We are actually going to start moving the clock forward, and we are going to bar insurance companies from discriminating against those with preexisting conditions. This is particularly important for the 67 million women under 65, an enormous number of women in this country who have a preexisting condition, and they have, over the last few years, counted on the healthcare protections I just described in the Affordable Care Act as a healthcare safety net, as a backstop--protections that say they can't be charged more because they need maternity care and other essential services, protections that say they can't be denied coverage due to a preexisting condition, and that means everything from ovarian cancer to asthma. Every year, those who switch jobs or stop working, perhaps to take care of a loved one--and women often perform those roles--now have the assurance that they can have the mobility of being able to move up in the workforce if they live in Virginia or Connecticut or Oregon and they see the opportunity to get a better job. If they have a preexisting condition, without these protections, they are locked in. They are locked into the workforce. What we are saying is that we want these protections to stay so that women and all Americans have the opportunity to secure advancements when they have the skills and talents to move on to another job. These fundamental healthcare rights will disappear if the President and the Republican State attorneys general are able to unravel the law of the land. This is really a head-scratcher, folks. It is one thing for an administration to say to Senator Kaine or to Senator Murphy that they want to come to the Congress, they want to come to the appropriate committees--my colleagues serve on one of them, and I serve on the other--and say: We want to pass a law that changes preexisting condition policy. We wouldn't be for it, but at least that is a legitimate debate. They are not talking about doing that. They are not talking about coming to Congress. Do you know why they are not coming to the Congress? Because they know their effort to unravel preexisting condition policy would not have a pulse up here. They wouldn't be able to get any traction for it. So what they are doing is going through the back door. They are trying to use a very complicated legal process--and it is going to be very hard to follow--about the Supreme Court and the purchase requirements and the tax and the like. But make no mistake about it, this is an effort to unravel the law of the land to deny protections to women-- protections that ensure that if they have a preexisting condition, they don't have to go to bed at night in pure panic, worried that they could wake up in the morning and they could lose everything. I will have plenty more to say about it. This is especially important because it escalates the Trump administration's campaign of healthcare discrimination against American women. This is really going to take a toll on 67 million women under 65--people who, as I have said, without this protection are going to go to bed at night, in my view, with an enormous fear and an enormous sense of uncertainty of what is ahead, where they could lose everything. With that, I thank my colleagues for their courtesy and Senator Murphy for bringing these efforts to the floor so frequently. I yield the floor.