Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Animal Welfare Accountability and Transparency Act. This bill is a necessary step to restoring public information on animal cruelty that was removed from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's, USDA, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, APHIS, website under the Trump administration. On February 3, 2017, APHIS removed information from its website related to oversight and enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act, AWA, and Horse Protection Act, HPA, including animal inspection and licensing reports for more than 9,000 licensed facilities that use animals--facilities like commercial dog breeding operators, animal research labs, roadside zoos, and horse show participants. Since 2009, APHIS has made this information public to increase transparency and hold violators of these animal cruelty laws accountable. This information is now hidden from the public and is only available through a Freedom of Information Act Request, which can take months and sometimes even years for an agency to respond. The Animal Welfare Accountability and Transparency Act restores transparency by requiring APHIS to once again make AWA and HPA inspection reports accessible to the public. In my view, transparency is key when it comes to giving animal lovers and consumers information about whether their pets or the products they buy are the result of heartbreaking beginnings. These inspection reports also help law enforcement officials track and understand trends in animal welfare violations. Preventing animal cruelty starts with getting facts out to consumers. By shedding light on AWA and HPA violations, the Animal Welfare Accountability and Transparency Act holds accountable puppy mill operators and other businesses that use animals for breeding, research, and testing. To ensure that taxpayers are not paying for entities that violate animal welfare laws, the Animal Welfare Accountability and Transparency Act also prohibits businesses that are found to be in violation of the AWA or HPA from collecting certain tax benefits. Under current tax and accounting rules, companies can write off the value of breeding and working animals on their taxes using accelerated depreciation, as if those animals are machinery. They keep that preferential and valuable tax benefit, even if they violate animal cruelty laws. The Animal Welfare Accountability and Transparency Act puts an end to this practice and holds companies accountable for breaking the law by prohibiting businesses found to have violated AWA or HPA from claiming accelerated depreciation for tax purposes for five years. The Animal Welfare Accountability and Transparency Act is a much needed step to restore transparency in animal cruelty and to hold companies accountable for violating the law. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Animal Welfare Accountability and Transparency Act. This bill is a necessary step to restoring public information on animal cruelty that was removed from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's, USDA, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, APHIS, website under the Trump administration. On February 3, 2017, APHIS removed information from its website related to oversight and enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act, AWA, and Horse Protection Act, HPA, including animal inspection and licensing reports for more than 9,000 licensed facilities that use animals--facilities like commercial dog breeding operators, animal research labs, roadside zoos, and horse show participants. Since 2009, APHIS has made this information public to increase transparency and hold violators of these animal cruelty laws accountable. This information is now hidden from the public and is only available through a Freedom of Information Act Request, which can take months and sometimes even years for an agency to respond. The Animal Welfare Accountability and Transparency Act restores transparency by requiring APHIS to once again make AWA and HPA inspection reports accessible to the public. In my view, transparency is key when it comes to giving animal lovers and consumers information about whether their pets or the products they buy are the result of heartbreaking beginnings. These inspection reports also help law enforcement officials track and understand trends in animal welfare violations. Preventing animal cruelty starts with getting facts out to consumers. By shedding light on AWA and HPA violations, the Animal Welfare Accountability and Transparency Act holds accountable puppy mill operators and other businesses that use animals for breeding, research, and testing. To ensure that taxpayers are not paying for entities that violate animal welfare laws, the Animal Welfare Accountability and Transparency Act also prohibits businesses that are found to be in violation of the AWA or HPA from collecting certain tax benefits. Under current tax and accounting rules, companies can write off the value of breeding and working animals on their taxes using accelerated depreciation, as if those animals are machinery. They keep that preferential and valuable tax benefit, even if they violate animal cruelty laws. The Animal Welfare Accountability and Transparency Act puts an end to this practice and holds companies accountable for breaking the law by prohibiting businesses found to have violated AWA or HPA from claiming accelerated depreciation for tax purposes for five years. The Animal Welfare Accountability and Transparency Act is a much needed step to restore transparency in animal cruelty and to hold companies accountable for violating the law. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I am reintroducing a bill honoring two Oregon legends--Frank and Jeanne Moore--who have spent their lives together on the North Umpqua River as fishers, stewards of the land, and hosts to visitors from across the world at the famous Steamboat Inn. The North Umpqua River runs through the Umpqua National Forest in Southwest Oregon. The river is a destination for rafters and kayakers, and is home to some of the best steelhead runs in the world, making it a fly-fishing haven. Frank and Jeanne Moore founded the Steamboat Inn in 1957, and spent years introducing visitors to the beauty of the Umpqua National Forest and the North Umpqua River. Frank, a decorated WWII veteran and a recent inductee into the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame, was the fishing guide for the Inn's visitors, and has now been fishing this river for 70 years. The Steamboat Inn's website paints a wonderful picture of how Frank and Jeanne welcomed visitors to the North Umpqua River: ``Each night, Jeanne Moore cooked evening meals for as many as sixty road construction crew members, who ate in shifts, before turning her attention to feeding her lodge guests. Frank pitched in, helped with the cooking, and also made a policy decision that would henceforth guide the Fisherman's Dinner: From then on, anglers could fish until the last light disappeared on the river. Dinner would be served one half hour after sunset!'' In the 1960's, the river and its tributaries experienced significant degradation, and Frank Moore has worked tirelessly ever since to rehabilitate the river and the steelhead populations. Frank served on the State of Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission and has received the National Wildlife Federation Conservationist of the Year award and the Wild Steelhead Coalition Conservation Award. He works with his neighbors and local organizations to monitor the river, and just about everyone he comes across on his drives along the river knows his name and knows his work. Frank and Jeanne have opened their door to visitors and have taken great care of this Oregon treasure. The Frank and Jeanne Moore Wild Steelhead Special Management Area will stand as a tribute to the Moore's and their dedication to protecting this special place in Oregon and preserving the hard work they've put in to ensure that Oregonians and visitors alike will have a healthy river, full of steelhead, to visit for decades to come. It is my honor to reintroduce this bill today with my colleague from Oregon, Senator Jeff Merkley, on behalf of these extraordinary Oregonians. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President. 6 years ago this month, more than 100,000 Bahrainis of all ages and backgrounds joined together to protest their government. Although these men and women took to the streets peacefully, they were met with violence as the regime unleashed its state security forces. Using threats and intimidation, tear gas, live ammunition, and even torture, the regime brutally repressed the peaceful demonstrations. Following widespread international condemnation, the regime agreed to create an independent body to look into the crackdown and propose reforms--the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry or BICI--and when the BICI came back with 26 recommendations, the KING promised to urgently implement them all. Six years later, the regime has not upheld that commitment. When our own State Department last reported on each BICI recommendation, it could only identify a handful that had been fully implemented--a far cry from the regime's claim of full implementation. The chairman of the BICI admitted last year that most recommendations have not been fully implemented. NGOs following these issues have been even more critical, noting with alarm that the regime has actually reversed BICI recommendations. Earlier this year, for example, the regime restored the power to arrest and detain Bahrainis to Bahrain's National Security Agency--a power that had been stripped following the BICI report's recommendation in 2011. That decision follows a year in which the regime has moved aggressively to close the space for peaceful opposition. Since last February, the regime disbanded the largest opposition party, al-Wifaq, doubled the prison sentence of the party's leader, Sheikh Ali Salman, and detained numerous human rights advocates like Nabeel Rajab simply for speaking out. Advocates told my staff recently that the regime's escalating violence over the past year reached levels unseen since the 2011 protests. The United States should not hesitate to raise its voice when foreign governments clamp down on speech and expression. This is even truer when the government in question is a U.S. ally, as the Bahrain regime is. I was disappointed that more administration officials did not appear to share this view with respect to Bahrain Indeed the State Department chose to lift self-imposed holds on weapons sales to Bahrain in 2015, a decision that I and many in the advocacy community saw as rewarding bad behavior and incentivizing more of it. In fact, I introduced bipartisan legislation last Congress that would have reinstated the ban on certain weapons sales until the administration could certify that the regime had implemented all 26 BICI recommendations. Congress adjourned last December without passing our bill, but I intend to resume my efforts this Congress. As I sometimes remind my colleagues here, my goal here is neither to insult nor to undermine a U.S. ally. My hope is that someday I will be able to stop reading these statements into the record every February because the Bahraini regime has stopped repressing its citizens and has instead entered into a real and inclusive dialogue with them. Unfortunately, this regime has shown itself so unwilling to pursue dialogue and reconciliation that I must continue my calls for accountability. For that reason, I speak out today, on the sixth anniversary of the peaceful uprising, to call again for reform in Bahrain and an end to further oppression.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I, along with 13 of my Senate colleagues, am introducing the Presidential Trade Transparency Act of 2017. This bill establishes new reporting requirements directing the President to disclose foreign income, assets, and liabilities when initiating or continuing trade or investment negotiations with a foreign country, taking or refraining to take certain trade enforcement actions, or granting or modifying preferential tariff treatment under statutory trade preference programs. Each of these decisions may have significant commercial implications, both as to a foreign country's economy as a whole and with respect to particular investments within a foreign country. Given the complexity and lack of transparency with respect to the President's finances, additional country-specific reporting is necessary for Congress to properly exercise its oversight responsibilities and assess whether the authority it has granted to the President is the subject of undue influence due to a business relationship between the President and one or more foreign entities. Reporting of this information will also help address questions regarding improper influence by foreign entities when the President exercises trade authorities granted by Congress. Americans have a right to know if the President is looking out for the good of the country or just his own bottom line when he negotiates a trade deal, decides whether or not to enforce our trade laws, or decides whether to cut tariffs on imports from a developing country. The President has business interests around the world, but he continues to keep the full nature of those ties secret. Under the Constitution, Congress is responsible for regulating foreign commerce, including setting U.S. tariff rates applicable to imports from foreign countries. However, Congress has granted the President limited authority to modify U.S. tariffs in certain circumstances, including to enforce U.S. laws protecting U.S. industry from harmful trade or to address foreign trade barriers, to negotiate trade agreements that eliminate foreign barriers to U.S. exports, and to grant developing countries preferential access to the U.S. market. In many instances, the President himself is granted this authority and does not exercise it through a Cabinet official. While Congress has granted such authority to the President, it retains the responsibility to ensure that the President uses the authority in a manner consistent with congressional objectives. The bill directs the President to report to Congress information regarding foreign income, assets, and liabilities, consistent with the information required to be disclosed under the Ethics in Government Act, specifically as to any country that is the subject of a trade negotiation, trade enforcement action or inaction, or decision to grant or deny tariff preferences, and to describe in detail the nature of the connection between the income, asset, or liability and the foreign country. The bill specifies deadlines for disclosure of the information with respect to each action that generally track existing deadlines for Presidential reporting under U.S. law. Failure to timely submit a report would render without legal effect a Presidential proclamation modifying U.S. tariffs with respect to the country and, with respect to a trade agreement, would disqualify the agreement from eligibility for expedited consideration under trade promotion authority. Passage of this bill would close a key loophole in congressional oversight authorities over trade and shine much needed daylight on the financial relationship between the President and America's trading partners. I thank my colleagues for their efforts on this bill, and I hope the Finance Committee will consider our proposal quickly.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I, along with 13 of my Senate colleagues, am introducing the Presidential Trade Transparency Act of 2017. This bill establishes new reporting requirements directing the President to disclose foreign income, assets, and liabilities when initiating or continuing trade or investment negotiations with a foreign country, taking or refraining to take certain trade enforcement actions, or granting or modifying preferential tariff treatment under statutory trade preference programs. Each of these decisions may have significant commercial implications, both as to a foreign country's economy as a whole and with respect to particular investments within a foreign country. Given the complexity and lack of transparency with respect to the President's finances, additional country-specific reporting is necessary for Congress to properly exercise its oversight responsibilities and assess whether the authority it has granted to the President is the subject of undue influence due to a business relationship between the President and one or more foreign entities. Reporting of this information will also help address questions regarding improper influence by foreign entities when the President exercises trade authorities granted by Congress. Americans have a right to know if the President is looking out for the good of the country or just his own bottom line when he negotiates a trade deal, decides whether or not to enforce our trade laws, or decides whether to cut tariffs on imports from a developing country. The President has business interests around the world, but he continues to keep the full nature of those ties secret. Under the Constitution, Congress is responsible for regulating foreign commerce, including setting U.S. tariff rates applicable to imports from foreign countries. However, Congress has granted the President limited authority to modify U.S. tariffs in certain circumstances, including to enforce U.S. laws protecting U.S. industry from harmful trade or to address foreign trade barriers, to negotiate trade agreements that eliminate foreign barriers to U.S. exports, and to grant developing countries preferential access to the U.S. market. In many instances, the President himself is granted this authority and does not exercise it through a Cabinet official. While Congress has granted such authority to the President, it retains the responsibility to ensure that the President uses the authority in a manner consistent with congressional objectives. The bill directs the President to report to Congress information regarding foreign income, assets, and liabilities, consistent with the information required to be disclosed under the Ethics in Government Act, specifically as to any country that is the subject of a trade negotiation, trade enforcement action or inaction, or decision to grant or deny tariff preferences, and to describe in detail the nature of the connection between the income, asset, or liability and the foreign country. The bill specifies deadlines for disclosure of the information with respect to each action that generally track existing deadlines for Presidential reporting under U.S. law. Failure to timely submit a report would render without legal effect a Presidential proclamation modifying U.S. tariffs with respect to the country and, with respect to a trade agreement, would disqualify the agreement from eligibility for expedited consideration under trade promotion authority. Passage of this bill would close a key loophole in congressional oversight authorities over trade and shine much needed daylight on the financial relationship between the President and America's trading partners. I thank my colleagues for their efforts on this bill, and I hope the Finance Committee will consider our proposal quickly.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, last month I stood here to express my serious concerns about the nomination of Scott Pruitt to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. As the vote draws closer, I want to reiterate those concerns and give voice to the thousands of individuals and groups in Oregon who have sent letters and made calls and spoken up in my town hall meetings. Oregonians have expressed their fears that Pruitt will steer us into a ditch when it comes to protecting the environment and public health. I share their concerns, and I cannot support this nomination. In my view, the importance of the EPA cannot be overstated. The EPA is at the heart of maintaining clean air and clean water for every person in this country, but Mr. Pruitt has made a career of denying climate science, attempting to weaken or even get rid of worker protections, air quality standards for toxic air pollutants, and basic environmental standards. Those rollbacks would hurt us all. One prime example of how the EPA has stepped in to protect Oregonians is during a recent air quality scare in Portland. In 2015, researchers with the U.S. Forest Service discovered that heavy metals including cadmium and arsenic had been emitted for decades into the air of Portland neighborhoods and schoolyards at dangerous levels. I called on the EPA to take action, and within days they were on the ground in Portland, testing the air quality and helping our community wrap our heads around the public health risks. It wasn't long before they identified the root of the problem and corrected course. I am not confident that a Pruitt EPA would have jumped to the aid of my community in a time when parents wondered if they had been poisoning their own children simply by feeding them vegetables grown in their backyards. Mr. Pruitt's career is defined by repeated attempts to weaken or eliminate health-based environmental standards, weaken or eliminate limits on carbon emissions that would help address the challenge of climate change, weaken or eliminate air quality standards to fight the kinds of toxic air pollutants we saw in Portland. Those rollbacks hurt us all. Mr. Pruitt has a history of attacking the very Agency he now wants to lead. As attorney general of Oklahoma, he has been involved in more than 20 lawsuits against the EPA, and he has failed to give Congress any kind of assurances that he would recuse himself from matters related to those lawsuits. Mr. Pruitt has clear connections with big businesses who profit from polluting--oil and gas companies and coal-hungry electricity giants, among others. He has a history of siding with these special interests at the direct expense of the health of our families and communities. According to news reports, as Oklahoma's Attorney General and head of the Republican Attorneys General Association, Pruitt helped raise millions from industries he is now expected to regulate. More and more of this shadowy history is coming to light. Particularly after a judge has ordered him to release thousands of his emails as Oklahoma's Attorney General just days from now, the Senate should not hold a vote on a nominee when more information may come to light about an alarming association with the very industries he would be regulating as head of the EPA. However, Mr. Pruitt has until next Tuesday to release those emails--4 days after Senate Republicans are forcing a confirmation vote. In the interest of transparency, the Senators should be able to read these emails before voting so we can make a fully informed decision. By jamming this nomination through today, Senate Republican leadership is forcing the Senate to vote on a nominee without knowing the content of the full background of this nominee. In my view, that is legislative malpractice. So I join my Democratic colleagues in asking that the vote on Mr. Pruitt's nomination to lead the EPA be delayed until those thousands of emails are released and Members of the Senate have the opportunity to review their contents. The American people are demanding that Senate leadership delay Mr. Pruitt's confirmation until this important information is disclosed and questions about his possible conflicts of interest are answered. On even the most basic level, Mr. Pruitt has a troubling history. He has denied the fundamental science that should be used to inform public policy. Time and time again, Mr. Pruitt has argued against the reality of climate change, going so far as to dispute the EPA's rigorous science- based finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. The EPA cannot be run by an individual with a career founded on alternative facts; yet that is much of what Scott Pruitt is promoting. As I have said to Oregonians about this nomination and others, policymakers ought to come together and find the truth, not fall back on alternative facts. Nearly 800 former employees of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency expressed opposition to Pruitt this week in an open letter. These are 800 public servants who are dedicated to the Agency's core mission. I think Oregonians and the American people need to hear what is in this letter. It states, in part: Our environmental laws are based on a partnership that requires EPA to set national standards attind gives states latitude when implementing them so long as certain minimum criteria are satisfied. This approach recognizes that Americans have an equal right to clean air and water, no matter where they live, and allows states to compete for business without having to sacrifice public health or environmental quality. Our environmental laws include provisions directing EPA to allow for a ``margin of safety'' when assessing risks, which is intended to limit exposure to pollutants when it is reasonable to expect they may harm the public health, even when all the scientific evidence is not yet in. For example, EPA's first Administrator, Bill Ruckelshaus, chose to limit the amount of lead in gasoline before all doubt about its harmfulness to public health was erased. His action spared much of the harm that some countries still face as result of the devastating effects of lead on human health. Similarly, early action to reduce exposure to fine particle pollution helped avoid thousands of premature deaths from heart and lung disease. The magnitude and severity of those risks did not become apparent until much later. Mr Pruitt's record and public statements strongly suggest that he does not share the vision or agree with the underlying principles of our environmental statutes. Mr. Pruitt has shown no interest in enforcing those laws, a critically important function for EPA. While serving as Oklahoma's top law enforcement officer, Mr. Pruitt issued more than 50 press releases celebrating lawsuits to overturn EPA standards to limit mercury emissions from power plants, reduce smog levels in cities and regional haze in parks, clean up the Chesapeake Bay and control greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast, none of Mr. Pruitt's many press releases refer to any action he has taken to enforce environmental laws or to actually reduce pollution. This track record likely reflects his disturbing decision to close the environmental enforcement unit in his office while establishing a new litigation team to challenge EPA and other federal agencies. These former EPA employees close the letter by stating: The American people have been served by EPA Administrators, Republicans and Democrats, who have embraced their responsibility to protect public health and the environment. Different administrators have come to different conclusions about how best to apply the law in view of the science, and many of their decisions have been challenged in court, sometimes successfully, for either going too far or not far enough. But in the large majority of cases it was evident to us that they put the public's welfare ahead of private interests. Scott Pruitt has not demonstrated this same commitment. I ask unanimous consent that the full letter be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks. Americans ought to have confidence that the head of the EPA recognizes what this job is all about--defending the health of our communities, not the profits of energy companies or any other special interest; yet Mr. Pruitt has given no such assurance. Like these former EPA employees, I would not have that confidence in a Pruitt EPA. And now, with the release next Tuesday of thousands of his emails that may document an alarming association with the very industries he is supposed to regulate, it seems particularly premature, even irresponsible, to push for a vote on his confirmation today. I share the concerns of the thousands of Oregonians and hundreds of current and former EPA employees who have expressed their opposition to Mr. Pruitt. I will vote against him today because I do not have confidence in a Pruitt EPA.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I, along with my colleagues Congressmen Chaffetz from Utah and Conyers from Michigan, am introducing the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, a bill that protects Americans from seeing their phones and other devices turned into location trackers without so much as a warrant or a warning. While law enforcement agencies can and have obtained, and should obtain, probable cause search warrants from a neutral judge authorizing them to track the location of Americans, in many other cases, government agencies obtain sensitive location information without a warrant. My colleagues, Mr. Chaffetz and Conyers, and I intend to fix that. This is a situation where government agencies' use of new technology has gotten ahead of the laws in ways that would surprise many Americans. Federal, State, and local agencies routinely track Americans' locations through a variety of methods, most of the time without people knowing they are being tracked. Some tracking demands go directly from the government to phone companies. In the first 6 months of 2016, law enforcement agencies submitted at least 86,000 demands to telephone companies for subscriber location data. Some of these demands were for the records of hundreds or even thousands of customers at a time. Law enforcement agencies also regularly track cell phones with the use of a surveillance technology known as a cell site simulator or Stingray. A recent bipartisan report by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the House of Representatives found that the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have spent more than $95 million to buy over 430 Stingrays. Although Federal agencies now obtain warrants before using this technology, many State and local agencies do not. There is currently no uniform legal standard that regulates how Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies are able to spy on the location of Americans. Instead, there exists a confusing patchwork of State laws, policies adopted by law enforcement agencies, and legal precedents set by Federal and State courts. As a result, Americans in one part of the country may enjoy less privacy, based on the policies adopted by their local police department, privacy laws passed by their State legislatures, or the willingness of their phone provider to push back in court, than Americans who happen to live in a privacy-superior jurisdiction. This patchwork quilt of rules and regulations has led to confusion among law enforcement, prosecutors, and service providers, who waste valuable time and resources litigating and appealing what should be clear-cut rules--clear-cut rules that start from the premise that privacy is an inviolable right, not a convenience granted by local law enforcement. Under President Obama, there was a policy in place that required Federal law enforcement officers to get a probable cause warrant before tracking an American's location. Under the current administration, we do not yet know if this policy will remain, which makes this bill even more critical. This bill has three main components. First, it requires the government to show probable cause and get a warrant before acquiring the geolocational information of a U.S. person, while setting out clear exceptions such as emergency or national security situations or cases of theft or fraud. This probable cause requirement would apply to all law enforcement acquisitions of the geolocational information of individual Americans without their knowledge. This requirement will include indirect location information acquisition from commercial service providers and direct acquisitions using Stingrays and similar devices, including tracking devices covertly installed by the government. This bill would regulate both real-time tracking of a person's movements, as well as the acquisition of records of past movements. Second, the bill creates criminal penalties for secretly using an electronic device to track a person's movements that parallel those for wiretapping. Currently, if a woman's ex-husband taps her phone, he is breaking the law. This legislation would treat hacking her cell phone to track her movements as a similar offense. Finally, it prohibits commercial service providers from sharing customers' geolocation information with outside entities without customer consent. Passage of this bill would provide much needed privacy protections to Americans and ensure that location data is adequately protected from warrantless surveillance by law enforcement agencies. I thank my colleagues Chaffetz and Conyers for their efforts on this bill, and I hope the Judiciary Committee will consider our proposal quickly.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I, along with my colleagues Congressmen Chaffetz from Utah and Conyers from Michigan, am introducing the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, a bill that protects Americans from seeing their phones and other devices turned into location trackers without so much as a warrant or a warning. While law enforcement agencies can and have obtained, and should obtain, probable cause search warrants from a neutral judge authorizing them to track the location of Americans, in many other cases, government agencies obtain sensitive location information without a warrant. My colleagues, Mr. Chaffetz and Conyers, and I intend to fix that. This is a situation where government agencies' use of new technology has gotten ahead of the laws in ways that would surprise many Americans. Federal, State, and local agencies routinely track Americans' locations through a variety of methods, most of the time without people knowing they are being tracked. Some tracking demands go directly from the government to phone companies. In the first 6 months of 2016, law enforcement agencies submitted at least 86,000 demands to telephone companies for subscriber location data. Some of these demands were for the records of hundreds or even thousands of customers at a time. Law enforcement agencies also regularly track cell phones with the use of a surveillance technology known as a cell site simulator or Stingray. A recent bipartisan report by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the House of Representatives found that the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have spent more than $95 million to buy over 430 Stingrays. Although Federal agencies now obtain warrants before using this technology, many State and local agencies do not. There is currently no uniform legal standard that regulates how Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies are able to spy on the location of Americans. Instead, there exists a confusing patchwork of State laws, policies adopted by law enforcement agencies, and legal precedents set by Federal and State courts. As a result, Americans in one part of the country may enjoy less privacy, based on the policies adopted by their local police department, privacy laws passed by their State legislatures, or the willingness of their phone provider to push back in court, than Americans who happen to live in a privacy-superior jurisdiction. This patchwork quilt of rules and regulations has led to confusion among law enforcement, prosecutors, and service providers, who waste valuable time and resources litigating and appealing what should be clear-cut rules--clear-cut rules that start from the premise that privacy is an inviolable right, not a convenience granted by local law enforcement. Under President Obama, there was a policy in place that required Federal law enforcement officers to get a probable cause warrant before tracking an American's location. Under the current administration, we do not yet know if this policy will remain, which makes this bill even more critical. This bill has three main components. First, it requires the government to show probable cause and get a warrant before acquiring the geolocational information of a U.S. person, while setting out clear exceptions such as emergency or national security situations or cases of theft or fraud. This probable cause requirement would apply to all law enforcement acquisitions of the geolocational information of individual Americans without their knowledge. This requirement will include indirect location information acquisition from commercial service providers and direct acquisitions using Stingrays and similar devices, including tracking devices covertly installed by the government. This bill would regulate both real-time tracking of a person's movements, as well as the acquisition of records of past movements. Second, the bill creates criminal penalties for secretly using an electronic device to track a person's movements that parallel those for wiretapping. Currently, if a woman's ex-husband taps her phone, he is breaking the law. This legislation would treat hacking her cell phone to track her movements as a similar offense. Finally, it prohibits commercial service providers from sharing customers' geolocation information with outside entities without customer consent. Passage of this bill would provide much needed privacy protections to Americans and ensure that location data is adequately protected from warrantless surveillance by law enforcement agencies. I thank my colleagues Chaffetz and Conyers for their efforts on this bill, and I hope the Judiciary Committee will consider our proposal quickly.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, whenever the discussion in the Senate turns to gun violence, we often hear Senators say: We shouldn't be talking about guns; we ought to be talking about mental health. That is exactly what we are trying to make sure is the focus of this debate because this proposed rule is about mental health, and it is about background checks; it is not about taking away anyone's constitutional rights. Here is how the proposal works. If there is an individual with a severe mental impairment--that means that another person, perhaps a family member--is in charge of their Social Security benefits, then the background check is to be informed by Social Security that the person with a severe mental impairment is ineligible to buy a gun. Having listened to the debate yesterday, I think everybody is going to be a little confused about what happens then because the reality is that anyone who thinks they have been unfairly affected can appeal, and the likelihood is substantial that they are going to win. If the appeal goes the other way and the individual believes the decision is wrong, then that person can take the matter to court. It is not true to say this rule deprives any American of due process. It is a rule aimed directly at the two areas in this debate--mental health and background checks--where there is enormous support from the American people. The reality is you can talk to people in virtually any community--you can go to a townhall meeting in any part of the United States--and you will hear enormous support for background checks. One recent poll found that 92 percent of gun owners supported expanded background checks. Ninety-two percent of gun owners supported background checks. So not only is the position I am articulating not extreme, opposing background checks is the position that, in fact, has become increasingly out of the mainstream. As the courts continue to interpret the language of the Second Amendment, one matter has been clear: Background checks are a constitutional part of the exercise of those rights. I have heard some saying that the rule can be improved, that it ought to be tailored. I am very open to having a debate around those kinds of questions. That is not going to be possible if this resolution passes. This will preempt debate. The resolution doesn't just scrap the rule, it blocks any further step on this issue for years. In my view, that would be the wrong way to go, even if you have suggestions for improving the rule. So to wrap up the debate, I want colleagues to know that this rule, this proposal that has been described on the floor--this resolution-- ought to be opposed because for those who want improved mental health, for those who want background checks, for those who are just saying what we need to do in this area as it relates to gun violence--it is not about Democrats and it is not about Republicans; it is about common sense. The commonsense position today for background checks, a focus on mental health, and, most importantly, common sense is to oppose the resolution. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. I yield back.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I think Senator Murray has said it very well, and I want to pick up on what I think is really at stake with this nomination. In effect, if confirmed, Congressman Mulvaney would be the numbers guy for the Trump team, the architect for the President's fiscal plan for the Nation's future. I want to start by way of saying that, when you look at the President's promises that he made on the campaign trail to protect Medicare and Social Security from draconian cuts, Congressman Mulvaney's nomination and his record would be one of the biggest bait- and-switch schemes inflicted on America's seniors that I can imagine. I am going to start by taking a minute to read some of what the President said on the campaign trail. He said: Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security. They want to do it on Medicare . . . and we can't do that. It's not fair to the people. The President said: ``It's my absolute intention to leave Social Security the way it is, not increase the age, but to leave it as-is.'' The President said: You can't get rid of Medicare. Medicare's a program that works . . . people love Medicare and it's unfair to them. I'm going to fix it and make it better, but I'm not going to cut it. So those are just some of the promises that President Trump made with respect to Social Security and Medicare. There are quotes like that from rallies and campaign events and debates over a period of some months. I think it would be fair to say that, for a lot of seniors, when they heard that--when they heard these promises that these vital programs would be protected--that was a political litmus test for many American older people. So I describe this contrast between the promises of President Trump and Candidate Trump and Congressman Mulvaney as a bait and switch, but I think the Senate needs to know a little bit more detail with respect to specifics. In 2011 Congressman Mulvaney said: ``We have to end Medicare as we know it.'' He added in another interview: ``Medicare as it exists today is finished.'' He proposed raising the Social Security age to 70. He called the program a Ponzi scheme. While he was a State lawmaker, he even voted to declare Social Security unconstitutional. My sense is it will be a while before seniors get over the whiplash from the 180-degree turn the administration has pulled on Medicare and Social Security cuts. Now, with respect to the days ahead, for me, a lot of this debate starts in my days when I was codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers. The seniors that I worked with knew what those programs meant. It was their grandparents who faced old age without Social Security. Those seniors with whom I worked during those Gray Panther days remember what happened before we had the safety net. Before there was Social Security and Medicare, you would have needy older people shunted off to poor farms and almshouses. Even if you had meager savings, you were on your own for income or you had to rely on family, and lots of family members were not exactly well off. If you came down with a serious illness, it really meant that you would be living in poverty and squalor. Social Security and Medicare changed those unacceptable terms of the social contract between this country and older people--and changed it for all time. Those programs were about saying that in America--for the older people who fought our wars, strengthened our communities day in and day out, made America a better place because they were always pitching in to help and be constructive--Medicare and Social Security meant that older people and seniors would not face a life of destitution. That is why I believe every Member of this body--and I heard Senator Murray talk about this--ought to find what Congressman Mulvaney has said against Medicare--his anti-Medicare and anti-Social Security agenda--so troubling. I want to be very specific about the days ahead. Medicare, at its core, has always been a promise. It has been a promise of guaranteed benefits. It is not a voucher. It is not a slip of paper. It is a promise of guaranteed benefits. We made the judgment--I just went briefly through some of the history--because no one would ever know how healthy they would be when they reached age 65. We talked about it in the Budget Committee and in a number of meetings here in the Senate. I am definitely for updating the Medicare promise, updating the Medicare guarantee, and improving it, for example, to include chronic care services, cancer services, diabetes, services dealing with a whole host of chronic illnesses. That is going to consume much of the Medicare budget. We can have more home care and we can use telemedicine, and we can use nonphysician providers. Senator Murray knows that in our part of the country we really have found a way to get people good quality care in an affordable way, but we are keeping the promise. We are keeping the promise of the Medicare guarantee. Congressman Mulvaney would break the promise of Medicare. If confirmed, he would join his former House colleague who just became Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price, who said in really very blunt terms over the years that he wanted to privatize the program. He wanted to privatize and cut the program. He basically indicated with his legislation that he didn't really believe in Medicare, and he didn't believe in the guarantee of services that Medicare provided. If you look at Congressman Mulvaney's record, it certainly indicates he shares the views of our former House colleague who just became Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price. With respect to Social Security, this year nearly 62 million Americans and their families count on receiving retirement, survivors, and disability benefits to stay afloat. This is a program that keeps tens of millions of seniors out of poverty. It is unquestionably one of the most popular programs in American history. It has changed the fabric of the country for the better. Again, I think about the days when I worked with older people. We had millions of older people who month in and month out would just walk an economic tightrope. They would try to balance their food costs against their fuel costs and their fuel costs against their medical costs. Social Security and Medicare came along to make sure those older people wouldn't be pushed off that economic tightrope. So Social Security has changed the fabric of the country for the better without doubt, and yet Congressman Mulvaney proposes to raise the Social Security age to 70, which would be a 20 percent cut to benefits. Let's picture what this means, particularly for the millions of older people who might not have had a job where they could work on their laptop, and they had a physical job. They worked hours and hours on their feet day in and day out. Ask the single mom who spent decades working multiple jobs that way to put food on the table and send her kids to school what it is going to mean to cut their benefits that way--or the loggers or the dock workers, the miners, and all of those people who have worked hard and have been on their feet with physically grueling work. Ask them about raising the Social Security age this way. I think you are going to get a pretty good sense of how strongly Americans oppose this kind of Mulvaney approach. So by way of summing up, I think it would be hard to find a more significant task for the Congress at this time than protecting Social Security and Medicare, advocating for the two as great achievements in the history of American policymaking. They are right at the center of our safety net. Now you have to give Congressman Mulvaney credit for one thing. He has been blunt, he has been explicit, and he is not shy about essentially his vision of hollowing these programs out and dismantling them. When asked about whether he was going to stick to his proposal to cut the programs, he said: I have to imagine that the President knew what he was getting when he asked me to fill this role. I would like to think it is why he hired me. That is why I say--and Senator Murray touched on this--what kind of a bait-and-switch game are we talking about here? You have the President--Candidate Trump--saying: Nothing doing; nobody is going to mess with Social Security and Medicare--off limits. I want older people in America to know they are going to be safe if they elect me. It was almost like a litmus test for America's older people. Then Congressman Mulvaney comes along and he basically calls the bluff on the whole thing. He describes the bait and switch in very blunt terms, where he says: ``I have to imagine the President knew what he was getting when he asked me to fill this role''--that the President knew what the Mulvaney record was all about, which was about ending Medicare as we know it. So I will just close by way of saying that I see that a big part of my job, and what Oregonians sent me here to do, is to defend Medicare and Social Security for generations of Americans to come. That is why I am a no on the Mulvaney nomination. I urge my colleagues to oppose the nomination. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I listened carefully to my colleagues on the other side, and I want to make sure people really understand what this debate is all about. This debate is about background checks. It is about mental health. It is not about taking away constitutional rights. I am struck--and I know the distinguished Presiding Officer has taken part in a lot of these debates as well--that whenever there is a discussion about guns in the U.S. Senate, Senators get up and say: We shouldn't be debating guns, we ought to be debating mental health. That is what we are talking about today--mental health and background checks. The fact is, we can go into townhall meetings in any part of America and hear extraordinary support for the whole idea of background checks. Background checks are right at the heart of this morning's debate and supporting background checks is not some extreme far-out position to hold. In fact, opposing background checks is the view that is way out of the mainstream of American political thought. A recent poll found that 92 percent of gun owners supported expanded background checks. Let me just repeat that 92 percent of gun owners in America support expanded background checks. As the courts continue to interpret the language of the Second Amendment, one matter has been made clear: background checks are a constitutional part of the exercise of those rights. So what I am going to do is describe what this is all about, but I want to, as we get going, make sure people understand that fundamentally this is about background checks, and it is about mental health. It is not about taking away somebody's constitutional rights. Here is how the proposal under discussion works. If there is an individual with a severe mental impairment that means that another person--perhaps a family member--is in charge of their Social Security benefits, then the background check is to be informed by Social Security that the person with a severe mental impairment is ineligible to buy a gun. The fact is, we can always talk about tailoring the rule in a slightly different way. It is critically important that individuals who wind up in the background check system are not treated unfairly, but the fact is, anyone who thinks they have been unfairly affected by this proposal can appeal, and they are most likely going to win, as long as they are not a danger to themselves or anyone else. If the Social Security Administration says no, that person has the power to take their case to court. What we are talking about here is, in my view, not about Democrats or Republicans, liberals and conservatives; I think we are just talking about plain old, unvarnished common sense. We want to, all of us--all of us--stop shootings by those who are in danger of hurting themselves or other persons. The rule came out last year, but it goes back to the shootings at Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook. What the previous administration sought to do was to find some commonsense gun safety steps that could be taken under laws on the books. I want to emphasize this as well because whenever we talk about guns, what Senators always say is: Let's use the laws on the books. Let's use the laws on the books. We don't need to chase new laws and the like. So the administration sought to use the laws on the books--the previous administration--to prevent the horrendous acts of violence that have so scarred our country in recent years. I know the distinguished Presiding Officer knows something about that from his own State. I hope my colleagues will oppose the resolution. I think we are all aware in the Senate that whenever you have an issue that even touches on guns, everybody goes into their corners. They go into their respective corners. My own view is--and I represent a State with a great many gun owners. I have had more than 750 townhall meetings at home. A lot of them--a lot of them--involve debates about guns. Overwhelmingly, in a State like mine, where there are a lot of gun owners, gun owners support making sure there are background checks. They want to address this as a mental health issue. Gun owners overwhelmingly say they have just had it with Congress doing absolutely nothing when it comes to practical, commonsense gun measures like background checks. They look at what goes on in Washington, DC--and I have had so many gun owners--and this comes up not just at town meetings. We have an icon in our State, Fred Meyer, a store. I think I have had chicken in every Fred Meyer in the State of Oregon. People come up and talk about issues like this in a Fred Meyer, and they ask: Why in the world can't there be Democrats and Republicans who just come together and do something that helps make our country a little bit safer? That is what this is all about. I am not here to say this measure is a panacea; that somehow this is a magical elixir that is going to reduce gun violence in America. That wouldn't be right and certainly not part of how I see these debates. I see this as addressing a commonsense, practical measure relating to background checks and mental health. I listened to my colleague, my friend from the Finance Committee, Senator Grassley. If Members of the Senate feel so strongly that this particular rule needs addressing, then there ought to be a debate. The Senate, Democrats and Republicans, should get together and figure out how to improve the rule. What is important is that is not going to be possible if this resolution passes. If this rule is struck down under the Congressional Review Act, it wouldn't just scrap this particular background check, it would salt the Earth. It would prevent this issue from being addressed for quite a number of years. I am going to close by talking a bit personally for a minute about why I feel so strongly about this. My late brother Jeff, who passed at the age of 51, suffered from schizophrenia, a serious mental impairment. He started to withdraw in his teens. His condition got worse over the next few years. We were close. He was just a couple of years younger than I. I watched the continuing odyssey that Jeff went through of various mental health facilities, run-ins with the law on the streets. I will say to the Presiding Officer that not a day went by in the Wyden household when we weren't worried that Jeff was going to hurt himself or somebody else. That was the reality for the Wyden family, and that is a fear that I know is felt in households all across the country, day in and day out. My brother received benefits from public programs while he struggled with a mental impairment. My dad wrote a book about it because we were so hopeful at one time. He wrote a book called ``Conquering Schizophrenia.'' We thought there was a breakthrough drug known as olanzapine. We always felt during those years that it would be a big mistake if Jeff Wyden could buy a gun. He would have been a danger to himself. He would have been a danger to others. I don't think Americans should have to carry that burden and experience that kind of worry that comes along with the danger we felt week after week for years in the Wyden household and that I know other families across the country feel as well. (Mr. CRUZ assumed the Chair.) The Presiding Officer wasn't in the Chair when this began, and I started off by way of saying that, to me, this is about background checks, it is about mental health; it is not about taking away people's constitutional rights, but I can understand why other people would have a difference of opinion. That is what the Senate is about. That is what the Senate is supposed to do--to debate these issues. So if somebody said: Well, there is a better way to do this, to improve it, count me in--count me in to talk with colleagues, the Presiding Officer, and others--but if you support this resolution today, you close off that door. You preempt that possibility because of the way the Congressional Review Act actually works. I urge my colleagues to oppose this. This is what the Senate says it wants to do when we talk about guns. I wish I had a nickel, in fact, for every time the Senate talked about guns--I wish I had a nickel for each time a Senator got up and said: We shouldn't be working on guns. We ought to be working on mental health. That is what this is about, mental health and background checks. I urge my colleagues to oppose the resolution. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

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

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, there are communities across this country that are still waiting for the recovery from the great recession to show up. In many of those towns and cities, the storefronts are boarded up, the factories are shuttered, and, in what could be the most lasting scar of the crisis, homes--many homes--have been foreclosed. A lot of people in those communities cast their votes in November based on a Trump message that real change was coming. Heads are going to be spinning tonight with the news from the Senate. In just a few minutes, this body will vote to confirm as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, known by many as the ``foreclosure king.'' That is whom the President chose as his Treasury Secretary. Mr. Mnuchin turned the bank he bought into a cash cow, and they set a land speed record for foreclosures. I have supported nominees for this position from both parties. I voted for Paul O'Neill. I voted for John Snow, and Hank Paulson, who served under President George W. Bush. I don't expect to see eye to eye on each issue with every Treasury Secretary. I do expect to have confidence that the Treasury Secretary is going to work on behalf of all Americans--all Americans--and not just the well healed, not just the fortunate, not just the powerful. After considering Mr. Mnuchin's qualifications and background, I just don't believe he would be that kind of Treasury Secretary. In Mr. Mnuchin's response to questions from members of the Finance Committee, he denied that his bank, OneWest, engaged in a practice known as robo- signing. The public record says that is just dead wrong. In fact, a OneWest vice president who worked under Mr. Mnuchin, Erica Johnson- Seck, admitted under oath that she ran an office that churned out roughly 6,000 sets of foreclosure documents a week. She said she personally signed more than 750 disclosure documents a week without even reading them, and there was no notary present during the process. That is a violation of the law. When asked how much time she spent executing each foreclosure document, Ms. Johnson-Seck replied: I changed my signature considerably. It's just an E now. So not more than 30 seconds. Now, on the eve of the Finance Committee mark-up for Mr. Mnuchin, the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio reported documented examples of robo-signing in Ohio. Now, on the eve of Mr. Mnuchin's confirmation vote in the Senate, another such story has broken. This time it is in the State of Washington, more evidence of robo-signing that directly contradicts what Mr. Mnuchin told the Finance Committee and the public. Mr. Mnuchin also withheld foreclosure data requested by two Democratic members of the Finance Committee, Senators Brown and Casey. He did, apparently, give similar information to Senator Heller, one of the committee's Republican members. That is on top of $100 million worth of property and more than a dozen positions with various business entities missing from his disclosures to the Finance Committee. My own view is, if not for the committee's minority investigations team, I don't believe any of that information, none of it--$100 million, the other disclosures--would have ever come to light. I am going to turn from missing disclosures and misleading testimony to a broken promise. The day after news of Mr. Mnuchin's nomination was leaked, he appeared on television and, in effect, debuted a new tax policy. I have come to call it the Mnuchin rule, and I will quote Mr. Mnuchin directly with respect to what he said. Mr. Mnuchin said: ``Any reductions we have in upper income taxes would be offset by less deductions, so there would be no absolute tax cut for the upper class.'' I will repeat the last part of the Mnuchin rule: ``no absolute tax cut for the upper class.'' When I first called this the Mnuchin rule during the Finance Committee's hearing on his nomination, Mr. Mnuchin said he took it as a great compliment, comparing it to the Volcker rule and the Buffett rule. Well, you would think a fellow who proudly embraced having a rule named after himself would actually stick to it. The Mnuchin rule didn't last for very long before it was abandoned. The very first act of the 115th Congress in a unified Republican government, repealing the Affordable Care Act, would shatter the Mnuchin rule. Then it is set to take another hit later this year. That is with the majority working on plans to fast-track a second, even bigger tax break for those who are the most fortunate. The Trump plan, in fact, would hit millions of middle-income families with tax increases by wiping out key personal exemptions and eliminating head of household filing status. So I want to be really clear what this means to people in Oklahoma and Oregon and all across the country, working families: Working families would get hurt by the Trump plan. They would lose key personal exemptions. They would eliminate the head of household filing status while those who were more fortunate would be in a position to get tax breaks, additional tax breaks beyond what they already have in the Tax Code. The fact is, the Tax Code today is a tale of two systems. For the firefighter in Coos Bay, OR, or the retail worker in Roseburg, your taxes come straight out of each and every paycheck. That is the way it works in Oklahoma, the way it works all across the country. The Tax Code for working people is compulsory. Once or twice a month, your taxes come directly out of your paycheck--no special dodges, no special loopholes. Nobody is able to hide their pay in a Cayman Islands account if they are a firefighter or a retail worker. But there is a very different Tax Code in America for the well- connected and the powerful. They have a whole array of lawyers and accountants who specialize in helping them shrink their tax bills. And with the right advice, the fact is, those people can, to a great extent, decide what they are going to pay, when they are going to pay it, and sometimes be in a position to not pay much, if anything at all. The fact is, the tax system today punishes working Americans because it treats them very differently than it treats the most fortunate. And the administration and the majority in Congress don't seem to be doing much in terms of fixing this disparity. The Mnuchin rule just hasn't held up. It is beyond being on the ropes. It is not going anywhere at all. In fact, the early proposals only make this extraordinary unfairness, the unfairness at the heart of America's Tax Code, even worse. So what we have is another Trump nominee who, in my view, doesn't meet the test of standing up for working families in those communities all across the country who are waiting for economic recovery to show up in their neighborhood. They are the ones who have seen the factory close and seen the foreclosures and seen their neighbors laid off. And they would like to see people in these positions advocate for them, advocate for them because they need somebody who is going to stand up for them, and they were told in the campaign that is what they were going to get. The fact is, Mr. Mnuchin is yet another Trump nominee who, instead of standing up for those working families, has a different set of priorities and, in addition to that, has the ethics alarm bells sounding. He appears to be withholding information requested by Members of this body. My view is, he misled the Finance Committee and the public about his bank's foreclosure tactics. The Mnuchin rule--the first promise he made, the very first promise he made on policy, which he was proud to have described as a rule named after him, already has been broken. So I am not going to be supporting Mr. Mnuchin to lead the Treasury Department. I urge my colleagues as well to reject this appointment. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

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

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, when you serve as the Secretary of Treasury, you are charged with a variety of responsibilities, and right at the center of your duties is to address taxes. This is an area that the nominee to head the Treasury Department, Mr. Steven Mnuchin, waded into very early on after his nomination became public. News leaked on November 29 of last year that Mr. Mnuchin was the President-elect's choice for Secretary of the Treasury. The very next day, Mr. Mnuchin appeared on a CNBC program and confirmed his selection. During an extended interview with CNBC, he introduced what I have come to call the Mnuchin rule. I will quote Mr. Mnuchin directly with respect to what he said: ``Any reductions we have in upper income taxes would be offset by less deductions, so there would be no absolute tax cut for the upper class.'' I will repeat that last part of the Mnuchin rule: ``no absolute tax cut for the upper class.'' Mr. Mnuchin is the President's nominee for Treasury Secretary. This is a position that has been held by American economic giants like Alexander Hamilton, Albert Gallatin, Salmon Chase, Henry Morgenthau and Lloyd Bentsen. When a nominee for Treasury Secretary makes a pledge like Mr. Mnuchin's, it really ought to mean something. It ought to stand for something. Unfortunately, it already looks as though the Mnuchin rule is on the ropes. The very first act of the 115th Congress and a unified Republican government, repealing the Affordable Care Act, shatters the Mnuchin rule. The Affordable Care Act repeal scheme that Republicans kicked off months ago, in my view, is a Trojan horse of tax breaks for the most fortunate. Nobody outside the top 4 or 5 percent of earners would get any of that break. Most of it would go to households in the top 1 percent of earners--even then, the top one-tenth of 1 percent--and it is paid for by taking insurance coverage and tax cuts for health care literally out of the hands of millions of working people. Then it is back for another whack at the Mnuchin rule later this year. Last week, the New York Times published a story talking about Mr. Mnuchin, which said that ``his guarantee appears impossible to fulfill either under the tax overhaul that the House Republicans are pushing or similar, sketchier proposals that Mr. Trump has offered.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article titled ``Treasury Nominee Vows No Tax Cut for Rich. Math Says the Opposite.''

Mr. WYDEN. After breaking the Mnuchin rule once, the majority is now planning to fast-track a second tax break for the wealthy. This one will be even larger; in fact, it could be 10 times bigger or more. My guess is that a lot of Americans are wondering what has happened to all the campaign talk about fixing the Tax Code and really going out there and standing up for the working people. As the Republican nominee, the President said he was the guy to repair the country's broken tax system. The particulars of the Trump plan were buried deep in the business pages and on his Web site, but the broad strokes of the message were pitched in rallies across the Nation: Donald Trump alone knew how to do the job because he had taken advantage of the rules himself, and he was ready to crack down on those who weren't paying their fair share. One of the few specifics Donald Trump offered on the stump was that he would close the carried interest loophole. That, of course, has been a favorite of investment fund managers. It would be great if it were actually true. In reality, the promise turned out to be pretty much just a head fake. Rather than closing the loophole and asking investment fund managers to pay their fair share, the Trump plan actually gives them a 25-percent tax cut. In fact, the Trump plan slashes tax rates for corporations and the wealthy across the board at a cost of trillions of dollars. The President and Mr. Mnuchin might defend this plan by claiming it is a tax cut for the middle class, so I want to spend just a few minutes checking in with that part of the plan. If we read the fine print, we will notice that one of the Trump tax plan's big casualties is something called head of household status. That is a particularly important benefit for a lot of middle-income taxpayers because it reduces their bills. What would it mean for head of household status to go away? Millions of working Americans, mostly single parents, would get hit with tax increases. Furthermore, the Trump plan eliminates key personal exemptions for millions of other middle-income families. It pushes a lot of families into higher tax brackets than they are in today. The administration touts its proposals for a larger standard deduction and a new child care tax credit as the cure-all for its tax increases on the middle class and on working people, but the math just doesn't add up. Families who are struggling to get ahead today are going to pay higher taxes tomorrow. So let's recap the Trump tax plan: a multitrillion-dollar tax break for the wealthy and corporations and a gut punch of higher taxes for working families. At this point, it would be generous to say that the Mnuchin rule is now on life support. If we wanted to design a tax plan to push more Americans out of the economic winners circle, the Trump plan is what you would come up with. When I look at the Trump tax plan that Mr. Mnuchin would be in charge of spearheading, it looks to me as though the administration has zero interest in cleaning out the rot that is right at the heart of America's tax system. Here is what it is all about, in my view. The Tax Code today is a tale of two systems. If you are a wage earner--a welder in Portland or a nurse in Louisiana--your taxes come straight out of your paycheck. They are compulsory--no special deals. You can even see the numbers right on your pay stub. Once or twice a month, out it comes. There are no special tax-dodging strategies or loopholes to winnow down the tax bill for the welder in Portland or the nurse in Louisiana. You can't set up a John Doe, Inc., in a Cayman Islands P.O. box to shield your income from taxes. But the rules are different for the powerful and the well connected. At their disposal are huge armies of lawyers and accountants who specialize in tax games. They specialize in tax tricks. With the right advice, the most fortunate individuals and corporations in the country can decide how much tax to pay and when to pay it. If anybody wonders why people in America feel the tax system is rigged and the rules are stacked against them, this is a big part of the answer. I intend to talk more about that, but I want to come back to highlight the difference between the welder in Portland and the nurse in Louisiana. When those hard-working Americans are out there working for a wage and once or twice a month have their taxes taken right out of their paycheck, they know they aren't getting anything special. It is compulsory. It is mandatory. They see it on their paychecks. Yet they get lots of news coverage and articles and the like, and they will see that for those who are fortunate, instead of paying taxes in a mandatory and compulsory way, they pretty much get to decide what they are going to pay, when they are going to pay it, and maybe nothing at all. It seems to me that as we look at the nominee for Treasury Secretary, we get a pretty good example of how it does play out in terms of taxes for those fortunate few and how his taxes stand in sharp contrast to that welder in Portland or that nurse in Louisiana. Not long after ending a 17-year run at Goldman Sachs, Mr. Mnuchin opened a hedge fund called Dune Capital in 2004. He set up an outpost in Anguilla and the Cayman Islands. That is not a move you make for the infrastructure or the ease of the commute. It is about a zero-percent tax rate. During Mr. Mnuchin's hearing, he claimed that having those overseas funds benefited American nonprofits. When he testified in front of the Finance Committee, he said: You know, the main thing we are doing with these overseas funds is we are helping churches and pension funds. But documents from the Securities and Exchange Commission show something quite different. In some cases, 100 percent of his investors were from outside of the United States, and setting up overseas allowed Mr. Mnuchin to help them avoid paying taxes. What was the end effect? Dune Capital was heavily invested in movies. So millions of dollars in profits from Hollywood exports, like the movie ``Avatar,'' were funneled to an offshore web of entities and investors, giving him the chance to skirt a U.S. tax bill. At a more recent point in his career, Mr. Mnuchin's bank was up for a merger. The deal had the potential to be a personal windfall for him and a small circle of others. A foundation Mr. Mnuchin chaired reportedly used tax-exempt dollars to fund a write-in campaign pushing for the deal's approval. During the public comment period on a potential merger, this is pretty much the equivalent of stuffing the ballot box. Now, as a nominee for a Cabinet position, Mr. Mnuchin could be in line for a special elective Federal tax deferral on money made by selling stocks and bonds. That is the very definition of getting to pay what you want, when you want. We hear a frequent and common defense when these kinds of tax tricks are brought into public view. It is true that the people who use them are following the laws on the books, but the outrage in our tax system, as I have said on this Senate floor, is what is legal. That is the real outrage with the American tax system, and it is outrageous that the Senate has allowed obvious gamesmanship to stay legal. It is outrageous that the administration and its chosen nominee for Treasury have shown no interest in changing it. When you are the Treasury Secretary, one of your paramount obligations is overseeing taxes. The last time the United States overhauled its Tax Code--this was in 1986--the Reagan Treasury Department played a huge role in that effort, and one of the core principles of that reform was treating wages and wealth the same way. Democrats and Republicans came together to pass a tax reform bill based on fairness. It said that the wage earner--that nurse in Louisiana or welder in Portland--their income and the income of those who made their money in finance and on Wall Street and the like would be treated the same. I see no indication that this administration is prepared to repeat that formula. The campaign promise to fix the broken, dysfunctional Tax Code-- Donald Trump's campaign promise--lured in a lot of voters. When I heard that Mnuchin rule the first time, I said that sounds pretty good--no net tax break for those who are the most fortunate. That sounds pretty appealing. The tax plans that the administration and Republicans in Congress have on offer now will not undo the disgusting unfairness that is right at the heart of the American Tax Code. In fact, it is only going to get worse. This issue has to be at the center of the debate on Mr. Mnuchin's nomination. I am particularly troubled by the fact that the evidence shows that the Mnuchin rule is already on the ropes. I intend to oppose this nominee. I urge my colleagues to do the same. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, the Senate is now debating the nomination of Steven Mnuchin to be the Secretary of the Treasury, and this is yet another nomination on which the majority has walked away, unfortunately, from a 20-year bipartisan approach when it comes to the vetting process. In 2009, when Tim Geithner was President Obama's first Treasury nominee, a vetting issue came up and both sides of the Finance Committee carried the investigation out to its conclusion, but the situation has turned out quite differently this time. There were several properties in the United States and abroad worth $100 million missing from Mr. Mnuchin's disclosure. He failed to disclose several positions in various firms. He misled the public. He misled the committee about his bank foreclosure tactics, and he appears to have hidden key data requested by Members of this body. Frankly, I don't believe these investigations would have been uncovered at all if not for the work of the minority's investigation team. The majority, however, looked the other way, and the vetting process was ended prematurely. So the vote on this nomination is imminent. That is the first concern held by Members on this side, and I am going to speak more about that today and as this debate continues. This morning, though, I want to focus on the substance of our concerns. The single biggest challenge is what to do to reconnect working Americans with this country's economic engine. There are communities across the land, including many in my home State of Oregon where folks are just waiting for economic recovery to show up. They see their homes foreclosed, storefronts boarded up, factories shuttered. They just feel stuck. Aside from the President himself, nobody in America has greater influence over this Nation's economic future than the U.S. Treasury Secretary. That is the case whether it is through tax reform that fights unfairness, rules that rein in Wall Street abuses, or smart infrastructure and trade policies that create good-paying jobs here at home. We call them red, white, and blue jobs. The person who becomes Treasury Secretary has to be somebody who is ready to work on behalf of all Americans, including those Americans from the corners of our Nation where optimism has dimmed. If Steven Mnuchin's record is any indication, he simply doesn't fit that mold, not even close. There is a lot to debate as the Senate considers Mr. Mnuchin's nomination. Particularly significant, in my judgment as the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, is the issue of how our Tax Code punishes wage-earning Americans. I am going to cover that this morning. In my view, though, the debate begins with the story of OneWest, Mr. Mnuchin's bank. It begins with a lot of gory details of how OneWest industrialized the process of kicking people out of their homes and onto the streets, and it begins with the details of how Mr. Mnuchin enriched himself at the same time his foreclosure machine was running. As I described, the financial crisis was a personal setback from which a lot of Americans still have not recovered, but for Mr. Mnuchin, it wasn't exactly a setback at all. In fact, it was the deal of a lifetime. In March, 2009, Mr. Mnuchin led a group of investors who bought IndyMac Bank, one of several banks that had been engulfed in crisis the year before. Mr. Mnuchin and his group got an unusually sweet deal from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, buying $23.5 billion worth of assets for less than $1.6 billion. IndyMac was renamed OneWest Bank and it opened up shop the very next day. As part of this sweetheart deal, Mr. Mnuchin got what is known as a Shared-Loss Agreement from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Under the deal with OneWest, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation made nearly $900 billion in payments to OneWest for IndyMac loans. Total payments from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to OneWest, including payments for loans made to OneWest subsidiaries First Federal, La Jolla, and Financial Freedom, were $1.22 billion. It didn't take long after Mr. Mnuchin rolled out the newly branded OneWest for the bank to be investigated by State attorneys general around the country. Already they had big concerns about OneWest's foreclosure practices, and this, in my view, is where you see the guts of the foreclosure machine beginning to show itself. As part of this investigation, a OneWest vice president who worked under Mr. Mnuchin, Erica Johnson-Seck, admitted under oath to the practice known as robo-signing. This witness said she signed more than 750 foreclosure documents a week without reading them and with no notary present during the process. That is a violation of the law. When asked how much time she spent executing each foreclosure document, Ms. Johnson-Seck replied: ``I changed my signature considerably. It's just an E now. So not more than 30 seconds.'' It was not just Ms. Johnson-Seck. She was part of an entire team operating at this pace. In her deposition, Ms. Johnson-Seck stated there were about 1,100 documents signed by her office each day, or roughly 6,000 a week. So amid an economic meltdown--our Nation shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs, families facing an uncertain future--Mr. Mnuchin found a way to profit. He bought a bank from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation at an extreme discount. He struck a deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation so he could be reimbursed for 80 percent or more of the bank's losses. He had at least one team in place that could sign 6,000 foreclosure documents a week--6,000 individuals and families a week thrown into this nightmare of potentially losing their homes. Mr. Mnuchin and OneWest were churning out foreclosures with ruthless efficiency. That doesn't sound to me like somebody who is going to be the kind of person who is going to look out for the interests of working families. I want to talk a little bit about some who were victimized by OneWest's industrialized foreclosure. One of those was Dee Roberson, who in 2010 shared her story with the Orlando Sentinel. Ms. Roberson told them her parents were struggling to pay off the balance of their mortgage with OneWest. The mortgage had a balance of just $3,000, and Ms. Roberson was trying to help her parents get to the finish line, but instead of the usual mortgage payment of $600, OneWest demanded over $1,000 a month. OneWest said the home was in foreclosure and wanted $4,000 in attorneys' fees, but the Robersons had never received a foreclosure notice. When Ms. Roberson called OneWest to sort things out, it was just one big runaround. Gerald Lembach is an Army retiree who needed cash to finish an addition on his modest ranch-style home in Pasadena, MD. He and his wife had owned their home for 23 years. According to a story in the Baltimore Sun, Mr. Lembach discovered the monthly cost for the new loan was much higher than what he expected. Instead of the $3,200 monthly bill he anticipated, it was almost $4,300. OneWest, which took over the servicing of Mr. Lembach's loan in 2009, denied his request for a modification in October 2010, a month after it had started foreclosure proceedings. He struggled with the process, and he hired an attorney who noticed something that struck him as very odd. Signatures on the foreclosure documents were fakes. In fact, various foreclosure processors around the State of Maryland had been signing under the same lawyer's name, but even with this discovery of false signatures, it didn't bring about the speedy modification that Mr. Lembach was hoping for. Rose Gudiel and her family bought a small house in 2005, making payments on the mortgage until her brother was murdered in 2009 and the family lost his income. The next mortgage payment was 2 weeks late. OneWest said it wouldn't accept it, and Ms. Gudiel had to apply for a loan modification instead, but OneWest didn't actually own the mortgage, they were only servicing it. They didn't even have the authority to grant a modification. So this citizen was caught in limbo for 2 years, unable to modify the loan and at the same time had to fight eviction. Out of options, Ms. Gudiel and a group of protestors went to Mr. Mnuchin's home, protesting outside and demanding answers. Shortly thereafter, despite OneWest's claim that there was nothing they could do to help Ms. Gudiel, they relented. She was allowed to keep her home, but it took essentially a four-alarm public relations calamity to make that happen. Mark and Jenny Gin are another case Mr. Mnuchin may have heard about. The Gins sued OneWest in San Mateo Superior Court, and they won. I will just describe a little bit from the San Francisco Chronicle how their case played out. While the Gins were making dozens of calls and submitting reams of paperwork to get a loan modification from OneWest, another department of the bank proceeded to foreclose on their home. This is especially important because this is a phenomenon known as dual tracking. OneWest strung the Gins along for months before telling them just to send in their loan modification application. They said the Gins would have an answer in 30 to 60 days. But instead of a modification, they got an eviction notice. They were forced out of their home while Ms. Gin was 8 months pregnant and grappling with a breast cancer diagnosis. They were left with no choice but to take OneWest to court. Their legal battle stretched more than 2 years. The costs were so substantial that even a victory in court could not save their home. Those are all examples of typical mortgages--everyday homeowners caught up in OneWest's exceptional and ruthless foreclosure practices. But it wasn't just your typical mortgage that OneWest foreclosed upon; the bank had a big reverse mortgage operation called Financial Freedom, and the foreclosure machine was running and running and running over there too. The goal of a reverse mortgage is to give older people--62 or older-- the opportunity to use the equity in their homes to help cover the bills. Unfortunately, it doesn't always go smoothly. In OneWest's reverse mortgage division, it often went terribly wrong. A lot of older couples of modest incomes who got reverse mortgages put them under only one name, often the husband's. But here is the catch: If the person whose name appeared on the documents passed away, the terms of the reverse mortgage required the loan to be paid back in full. If it wasn't, then the foreclosure process once again kicks in. So you have a family where first they lose their loved one, then they lose their home, and they are caught up in this nightmare scenario of a reverse mortgage. A common name for this practice--it almost hurts to say it--is ``widow foreclosure.'' Widow foreclosure. According to documents reviewed by the California Reinvestment Coalition, during the first 6 years Mr. Mnuchin ran OneWest, the bank accounted for nearly 40 percent of all federally insured reverse mortgage foreclosures. They led the Nation in widow foreclosures. You know, if you think about what you can lead the Nation in and you are thinking about trying to help hard-hit families, the kinds of families I just described, I would like to lead the Nation in terms of reaching out and finding imaginative ways to help them, to really go to bat for them, take them through the process, create something that is fair and commonsense. What does this bank do? They lead the Nation in widow foreclosures. In one case, OneWest and its predecessor tried to foreclose on an elderly Florida woman. That was twice. The first time, Mr. Mnuchin's bank tried to foreclose on her home and filed paperwork saying she didn't live there. When they finally discovered she, in fact, did live in the home, they backed off. Two years later, OneWest's new parent company, CIT, where Mr. Mnuchin was a board member, tried to foreclose again. This time it was over an unpaid bill of 27 cents. This involved a woman who was 90. A woman who was 90 was involved in a foreclosure with an unpaid bill of 27 cents. She had to fight to keep her home twice because she was bombarded with petty and inaccurate allegations from Mr. Mnuchin's bank. The President recently tweeted out an allegation that this story was ``fake news'' because the elderly woman never actually lost her home. The ordeal that OneWest's foreclosure machine put her through certainly was not fake news to her and others who were up against this activity. While OneWest was putting thousands of homeowners through the nightmare of foreclosure, Mr. Mnuchin used the bank's money to make some pretty flashy investments in Hollywood. In September 2012, OneWest led a group of financial institutions that established a revolving credit facility for Relativity Media of hundreds of millions of dollars. Relativity was a movie studio led by a flamboyant executive named Ryan Kavanaugh. Press accounts also claim that Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Kavanaugh became good friends. In fact, even though Mr. Kavanaugh was a client who owed his bank hundreds of millions of dollars, he and Mr. Mnuchin bought a private jet together and then traveled to various kinds of film festivals around the world. They were even investing in real estate together. They put millions into a shell company, HMBAC LLC, which owned property in Southern California. In October of 2014, Mr. Mnuchin decided to buy into Mr. Kavanaugh's movie studio himself. He purchased a stake. He was appointed cochairman of Relativity. So while he was pulling double duty on the boards of OneWest and Relativity, OneWest had to report the size of the insider loans the bank was making to Relativity. As a share of bank capital, OneWest's insider loans exceeded 94 of the country's 100 biggest financial institutions. Unfortunately, Mr. Mnuchin's time with Relativity didn't go so hot. Each year from 2012 to 2014, the studio suffered eight- or nine-figure losses. Finally, in 2015, Relativity's problems came to a head, but it owed OneWest and Mr. Mnuchin a huge sum of money. On May 29, 2015, Mr. Mnuchin quit the board. A few days later, funds totaling $50 million in cash were swept back to OneWest from several Relativity operating accounts. One of those accounts was earmarked to pay guild expenses--salaries for everyday contractors and production tradespeople. That put the nail in Relativity's coffin, and the studio declared bankruptcy. Mr. Mnuchin's adventure of putting OneWest money into Relativity might have been a big mess, but it sure didn't do much damage to the bank's bottom line. Around the time Relativity crumbled, OneWest was purchased by an even bigger group, the CIT Group, at a massive profit. Mr. Mnuchin and his investors originally bought the bank in 2009 for less than $1.6 billion. In 2015, CIT Group bought it from Mr. Mnuchin and his partners for $3.4 billion. In between, while tens of thousands of Americans were going through this daily nightmare of losing their homes, the bank had paid out more than $1 billion in dividends to Mr. Mnuchin and its other owners. Buying OneWest was literally the deal of a lifetime for Mr. Mnuchin, but the bank's conduct caught the attention of Federal watchdogs more than once. In 2011, the Office of Thrift Supervision conducted an examination of OneWest's foreclosure process, and I am just going to outline a few of the findings. These are the findings of the Office of Thrift Supervision, which is in the business of monitoring and examining these institutions. They found, for example, that OneWest employees filed affidavits in State and Federal courts, falsely stating that they had conducted a review and had personal knowledge regarding the details of a disputed mortgage, including principal and interest due or other fees and expenses when no such reviews had taken place. OneWest employees filed documents in State and Federal courts that had not been signed or affirmed in the presence of a notary. OneWest litigated foreclosure and bankruptcy proceedings without ensuring that the promissory notes were properly endorsed or assigned and in possession of the appropriate party at the appropriate time. OneWest failed to devote sufficient resources to the administration of its foreclosure and loan modifications procedures. OneWest management failed to enact adequate internal oversight and controls to its foreclosure processes. Finally, OneWest failed to adequately oversee the outside lawyers handling foreclosure-related services. The Office of Thrift Supervision also demanded that OneWest take corrective action, and it issued what is known as a consent order. Basically in English, this OneWest consent order was an agreement to clean up its act. The order was signed personally by Mr. Mnuchin and the OneWest board of directors. They had been running OneWest for 2 years at this point, and the company was rife with problems. In 2014, another watchdog stepped in. This time, it was the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Their audit found that more than 10,000 OneWest borrowers were due $8.5 million for improper foreclosure practices. According to the same report, OneWest paid nearly $3 million to 54 borrowers for violations of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, which protects members of our armed services from losing their homes while they are serving our country. So just think about that one. Here is the bank having to pay borrowers $3 million for violations of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. This is what protects the courageous people who serve our country. It is a law that protects these people from losing their homes while they put themselves at great risk, may make the ultimate sacrifice, and every day, their families at home are worrying about them and often worrying about their finances. According to this report, OneWest paid nearly $3 million to 54 borrowers who violated this law that protects the courageous men and women who wear the uniform of the United States. At the heart of these investigations was the issue of robo-signing, the practice I have spoken about earlier in the context of the OneWest team churning out 6,000 foreclosure documents a week. Senator Casey and Senator Brown on our committee really zeroed in on this issue. And it was particularly concerning in this context to Senator Casey, who represents a lot of people who lost their homes to foreclosures by Mr. Mnuchin's bank. So Senator Casey put the question to Mr. Mnuchin in writing after Mr. Mnuchin had his Finance Committee hearing. Senator Casey asked pretty simply: Did OneWest robo-sign documents? This was a straightforward question, and based on the public record, the answer should have been a straightforward ``yes.'' Instead, Mr. Mnuchin replied, ``OneWest Bank did not robo-sign documents.'' Years of documented proof say that is false. So the committee gave Mr. Mnuchin an opportunity to amend his response. Once again, Mr. Mnuchin denied--denied--the truth. First he said, ``The concept of `robo-signing' generally referred to two distinct but related issues: (a) a signer of a foreclosure affidavit attested to facts that were not verified to be accurate; or (b) a signer of a foreclosure affidavit represented himself or herself to be someone else.'' So that is a fancy way to explain. When we gave him an opportunity to amend his answer, Mr. Mnuchin again denied the truth on this question of OneWest robo-signing documents. And he went on to say, ``OneWest did not do these things.'' There is just no way of getting around it--none. That statement is flat wrong. The language Mr. Mnuchin used to redefine robo-signing is nearly identical to the language used by the Office of Thrift Supervision in the findings of its investigation. Given the watchdogs report, testimony from OneWest employees, and the public record, Mr. Mnuchin cannot possibly, in good faith, claim that OneWest did not robo-sign. In fact, Mr. Mnuchin's signature is on one of the documents that proves otherwise, the Office of Thrift Supervision consent order. He ran the bank. Surely, he had to read the document before signing it. So Mr. Mnuchin misled the Finance Committee and the American people on robo- signing, directly contradicting a mountain of evidence. Senators Casey and Brown represent States where a lot of families were hammered through foreclosures pursued by Mr. Mnuchin's bank. Senator Casey and Senator Brown decided to do some more digging into the information. Senator Casey sought OneWest national foreclosure figures. Senator Brown asked for a State-by-State breakdown. This information was never provided. At first Mr. Mnuchin said he just couldn't get the data. Then Senator Heller made a similar request. It seems Mr. Mnuchin answered sufficiently to satisfy Senator Heller, whose State had a large number of OneWest foreclosures. So in my mind, that raises a question about why a Republican Senator could get his inquiry answered but a pair of Democrats could not. Getting other basic facts from Mr. Mnuchin was pretty much like a painful time at the dentist, pulling teeth. Here is an example. The Finance Committee requested nominees ``list all positions held as an officer, director, trustee, partner, proprietor, agent, representative, or consultant of any corporation, company, firm, partnership, other business enterprise, or educational or other institution.'' When Mr. Mnuchin filed his paperwork with the committee, he signed them, attesting that the document was true, accurate, and complete. However, it became apparent to committee staff that key information was missing. In particular, SEC filings indicated that Mr. Mnuchin was director of Dune Capital International, an entity located in the Cayman Islands. It was nowhere to be found in Mr. Mnuchin's paperwork. He also failed to disclose his role as chairman and CEO of the OneWest Foundation, an entity that is alleged to have made generous donations to groups that publicly endorsed OneWest's controversial purchase by CIT Group. He even failed to report that he had been chairman of IMB HoldCo, the holding company that he used to purchase IndyMac, the bank that he turned into OneWest. All told, after questions were raised by the Finance Committee's staff, Mr. Mnuchin disclosed that he held positions in an additional 14 entities that were not listed on his initial paperwork. Here is an example of Mr. Mnuchin's failure to fully disclose his various investments. The Finance Committee requests that all nominees list ``the identity and value of all assets held, directly or indirectly, with a value in excess of $1,000.'' That is pretty straightforward. ``The identity and value of all assets held, directly or indirectly, with a value in excess of $1,000'' was to be disclosed. Mr. Mnuchin failed to do this as well. On his initial paperwork, committee staff noted that Mr. Mnuchin listed membership in a vacation resort in Mexico, but he didn't disclose any related property. That was only the first case of missing Mnuchin real estate. After questioning by committee staff, Mr. Mnuchin disclosed still more missing Mnuchin real estate--an additional $95 million in real estate holdings that had not been listed on his initial paperwork. The fact is, the committee had to take the time and ask the questions to track down these multimillion dollar properties, Mr. Mnuchin's unreported businesses, and his undisclosed business relationships. Again, I am convinced that none of what I have described, these undisclosed assets--these substantial and undisclosed assets--would ever have been brought to light if it wasn't for the work of the committee's minority staff investigators. Yet despite these efforts, Mr. Mnuchin still has never produced the information requested by two members of the Finance Committee, Senators Casey and Brown, concerning the OneWest foreclosures. My view is that this is another nominee who has the ethics alarm bell sounding. He has already misled the public. He appears to be concealing information requested by Members of this body, and his claim to fame is the cold and staggering efficiency with which his bank booted predatory lending victims out of their home. I just don't think this is the type of person who should lead the Treasury Department. Because we will have further discussion on this, I simply close speaking about the kind of person I want to see head the Treasury Department. I note that I have supported a number of Republicans for this particular position in my time on the Finance Committee. I want the kind of person who is going to give everybody in America the opportunity to get ahead. We are going to have more discussion about taxes and particularly important in this role will be the Treasury Secretary's view of taxes. We have a Tax Code that is really a tale of two systems. If you are a cop or a nurse in West Virginia or in Oregon, your taxes are compulsory. Once or twice a month your taxes are just lifted out of your paycheck because you are a working person. That is the way it works in West Virginia. That is the way it works in Oregon. But if you have a battery of financial experts, it doesn't work that way. You can use that battery of financial experts to pay what you want, when you want to, and, maybe, not much at all. For this position I want somebody who feels passionately about giving everybody in America the opportunity to get ahead, who really understands what a priority it is to work to bring economic recovery to those communities dimmed by hardship and suffering folks. I know there are a number of people like that in the State of the Acting President pro tempore of the Senate, and there sure are a lot of them in my home State of Oregon. A lot of those rural communities just feel like they have been hit by a wrecking ball. That is the kind of Treasury Secretary I want-- a Treasury Secretary who gives everybody in America the opportunity to get ahead. Thus far, I just don't see Mr. Mnuchin fitting that mold. We will go on to talk about other issues next week, particularly, his view with respect to taxes. We will have further discussion on it next week. I urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I also refer my colleagues to the following documents: an announcement by Innate on June 10, 2016, entitled ``Private Placements and Rights Issue to Raise Additional Working Capital,'' and the Public Financial Disclosure Report signed by Congressman Price on December 15, 2016, that was filed with the Office of Government Ethics. I want to take a minute to return to the Innate company itself. I noted earlier that the company has put on a full court press to defend Congressman Price in recent weeks, as details of his special deal have come to light. I am going to describe why that might be. Innate's executives have sought to portray the company as being a small firm from Down Under that has been inadvertently caught in political crossfire on the other side of the world. But the fact is that Innate has longstanding connections to Congressman Collins and his inner circle, a circle that includes Congressman Price. As the Australian City Newspaper wrote this week, ``Mr. Collins, his children and his `intimate political allies' and donors controlled at least 27.25 percent'' of Innate's voting shares. Then there is the baffling assertion mailed by Mr. Wilkinson, the CEO, that he only recently learned of Congressman Price's existence through news articles. This is a stretch to believe and flies in the face of Congressman Price's own testimony. On January 13, the New York Times reported: Mr. Wilkinson and Michael Quinn, Innate's chairman, said they had never heard of many of the company's more prominent investors, and said they first learned that Mr. Price had invested in the company from an article in the Wall Street Journal, which first reported his investment. On February 5, Mr. Wilkinson, the CEO of Innate, told the Buffalo News, ``I think the first time I heard that a gentleman named Tom Price had invested was after the U.S. media started reporting it.'' But Congressman Price was quite clear that he had communicated with Wilkinson. In written testimony, responding to questions for the record, he said: I also communicated with Simon Wilkinson of Innate regarding my interest in participating in the 2016 private placement of company stock. According to Innate's Web site, Mr. Wilkinson is currently the managing director and CEO of the company. Congressman Price's name was also listed twice in the documents of the company, which reported the private stock sale participants to the Australian stock exchange last summer. Congressman Price also appeared to have bought nearly 5 percent of the discounted shares made available in the private stock sale. Given all that, it seems difficult to believe Mr. Wilkinson's story that he had no idea who Congressman Price was. Finally, The Australian, the Sydney paper I just mentioned, reported on Monday that Innate and Congressman Collins are facing questions about possible violations of Australia corporation law with regard to his holdings in the company. So why does this matter? It matters because a nominee to be a Cabinet Secretary, Congressman Price, was brought into this web of questionable stock transactions and obfuscations about just how special the special deal he really got was by a company insider, his friend, Congressman Collins. As I get ready to close, I refer my colleagues to the following articles and documents: ``Congressman Collins under fire for `suspicious' stock trades,'' published in the Buffalo News on January 17 of this year; ``Collins shared biotech stock news with big Buffalo names,'' again from the Buffalo News on January 19; ``Collins' controversial stock venture could be boom or bust,'' from the Buffalo News on February 5 of this year; the Notice of Innate's 2016 Annual Meeting and Explanatory Statement filed on July 29 of 2016; documents filed by Innate on September 12, 2016, and September 26, 2016, reporting results of the 2016 private stock placement. As we close, I want to return to section 3 of the STOCK Act. It says: Members of Congress . . . may not use nonpublic information derived from such person's position . . . or gained from the performance of such person's official responsibilities as a means for making a private profit. So did Congressman Price have access to nonpublic information about Innate or its private stock sale because of his position as a Member of Congress? I believe the answer is yes. Did he get special access to the discounted private sale because of his position? I believe the answer is yes. Does he stand to profit because of the information or access he may have received? I believe the answer is yes. Finally, did Congressman Price tell the Finance Committee and the HELP Committee the truth about how he learned about the private stock sale and the ability of average investors to participate? Congressman Price told the Finance Committee and the HELP Committee that the special stock deal he got in on was open to everyone. According to the Wall Street Journal and company documents, that is not true. The deal he got was clearly different than what was offered to everyday investors. According to the Journal, his previous purchase of Innate stock did not qualify him to participate in the private placement without being a specially invited friends and family guest. This arrangement allowed Congressman Price to buy more shares than other investors were allowed to buy. Congressman Price told the Finance Committee that his conversations with Congressman Collins, again, a director of the company, its largest shareholder, had no influence on his investment decisions. According to the Journal, this is not true. The Journal report made clear that Congressman Collins told him about the upcoming drug trial, alerted him to the private stock sale, and arranged to ensure he could participate. Now the majority party has shut down the vetting process, allowing Congressman Price's nomination to reach the floor before all the facts have come into view. I believe the Senate can do better. It needs to do better. The American people are owed better. I thank my colleagues, particularly Senator Reed, for his patience and his courtesy. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the debate on Congressman Price's nomination, in my view, is a referendum on the future of health care in America. On this side of the aisle, we think it is worth spending 30 hours talking about a subject this important to our people. My view is that this is about whether the United States is going to go back to the dark days when health care worked only for the healthy and the wealthy. Based on the public record, Medicare is a program Congressman Price does not believe in, and it offers a guarantee of services he doesn't believe seniors should have. On the Affordable Care Act, he is the architect of repeal and run. He wrote the bill himself. He proposed weakening protections for Americans with preexisting conditions. He would shred the health care safety net--Medicaid--for the least fortunate among us. He would take away health care choices for women, particularly the opportunity to go to the physician that they trust. As we wrap up and get ready to vote, think about the common thread among these proposals: They take away coverage from our people, make health care coverage more expensive for millions of people, or both. That is what Congressman Price stands for when it comes to health care. Every Senator who casts a vote for Congressman Price has to stand by that agenda. Beyond what this means for the future of American health care policy, there is the lingering spectre, as I have discussed tonight in detail, of serious legal and ethical issues. Congressman Price got special access to a special deal on stock in an Australian biomedical company. He claimed multiple times before Senate committees that the deal he got on discounted company stock was open to all shareholders. All the evidence--all the evidence--says that this is untrue. First, he had to go through the back door to get access to the discounted price. He got a special friends-and-family invite from his colleague in the House, Congressman Chris Collins, the company's top shareholder and a member of its board. Second, rules that apply to other investors didn't apply to Congressman Price. Other shareholders were bound by a limit. They were able to buy one discounted share for every nine they already owned. That would have allowed Congressman Price to buy just 7,000 discounted shares. He bought 400,000 discounted shares. In my view, he can't get around that. That is the definition of a special stock deal. The Congressman introduced legislation that would have lowered the tax bills of three major pharmaceutical companies in which he owns stock. He invested $15,000 in a medical equipment company and then introduced legislation to increase the amount Medicare pays for that type of equipment. Parts of his bill went on to become law. He bought thousands of dollars' worth of stock in a company called Zimmer Biomet less than a week before introducing legislation that had the potential to drive up the value of those shares. Now he has argued that he didn't purchase the stocks; his broker did. But at the very least, he would have known about those deals within days of the purchase when he filed the periodic transaction reports in the House. Under his brokerage agreement, he could have quickly resold the stock, but he did not. Furthermore, he didn't consult with the Ethics Committee regarding any of the trades I have spoken about as directed by the House Ethics Manual. As I wrap up, I want to put a human face on why so many Senators on this side of the aisle have come to the Senate floor to speak so passionately about their grave concerns with this nomination. Nothing sums up our concerns more clearly than a line from an op-ed Congressman Price wrote in 2009 that discusses Medicare. His quote speaks volumes about his perspective on this program. It is a lifeline. I first became acquainted with it back in the days when I was codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers, ran the legal aid program for older people. I saw then that seniors were walking on an economic tightrope, balancing their food bill against their fuel bill, their fuel bill against the rent bill. They saw Medicare as one of the great achievements in American policymaking. Here is what the Congressman wrote--his words, not mine: ``Nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the federal government's intrusion into medicine through Medicare.'' When I read that, I was reflecting on my Gray Panther days, and I think a lot of other Senators go back working with community organizations. We just heard a wonderful presentation from Senator King, who was also a legal services advocate. Before Medicare, before this program that Congressman Price thinks is such a negative intrusion into medicine, a lot of older people were warehoused in poor farms. I am absolutely certain that Congressman Price doesn't want to go back to those days, but when he speaks about the involvement of Medicare in American health care as though a plague has descended on the land, we just have to question his commitment to a program that has become a lifeline to millions of older people. The fact is, Medicare has always been a promise. That is what we said back in the early days with the senior citizens. Medicare was a promise. It was a promise of guaranteed benefits. Again, based on the public record, Medicare is a program Congressman Price doesn't believe in, and it offers a guarantee of services he doesn't think seniors ought to have. He has said he wants to voucherize the program within the first 6 to 8 months of the administration. What we are talking about when you want to do that is you are breaking the promise of Medicare. You are breaking the promise of guaranteed benefits, and you are going to sort of hand people a piece of paper and say here is your voucher, I hope it works for you. If your medical expenses are greater than your vouchers, that is the way it goes, tough luck. The price budget cut Medicare by nearly $1 million. By the way, that is exactly the opposite of the Trump pledge, not to cut Medicare that the American people heard on the campaign trail. There is a big gap between what President Trump said about Medicare and the bills and legislative efforts of Congressman Price in the other body--big gap. That is why it sure looks to me like the promise of Medicare is one that Congressman Price would break. By the way, we all ought to understand that if confirmed, Congressman Price would be the captain of the Trump health care team. What he says matters, and what he offered--legislatively, his positions and his votes. He voted again and again to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It really matters what his past record is. If past is prologue, it is certainly relevant. It really matters. He was the architect of what amounted to repeal and run. He wrote legislation creating loopholes in the protection for those with preexisting conditions, and the big beneficiary there was clearly the major insurance companies. Women would find it much harder to make the health care choices they want and see the doctors they trust if the price proposals were lost. Medicaid pays 65 percent of the nursing home bill in America. And on this side of the aisle, we are going to fight Congressman Price's block grant proposals that are going to put seniors at risk. I am going to close with this. I always hope I am wrong when I raise the prospects of real threats to the welfare of the American people because the reason public service was important to me was because of those first days with the Gray Panthers. I never thought I would have that kind of wonderful opportunity; that I would have had this opportunity for public service. For me and so many on this side of the aisle--I see my colleagues who have been active in their communities-- this has always been about the welfare of the American people. That is what it is about--all those faces we see when we are home, having community meetings and getting out with our people. The public record in this case indicates that as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Congressman Price would, in fact, be an extraordinary threat to seniors on Medicare, vulnerable older people who need Medicaid for access to nursing homes, millions of kids for whom Medicaid is the key to a healthy future, and women across the country who have a right to see the doctors they trust. I am going to oppose this nomination. I urge my colleagues to join me in opposition. Mr. President, I wish to take a few minutes to address Congressman Price's stock purchases. At best, this is behavior that cuts ethical corners. At worst it is dangerously close to outright insider trading. Congressman Price has a lot of questionable trading activity. He introduced legislation that would lower the tax bills of three major pharmaceutical companies he owned significant amounts of stock in. He invested $15,000 dollars in a medical equipment company then introduced legislation to increase the amount Medicare pays for that type of equipment. Parts of his bill went on to become law. But let's look at one investment in particular, Congressman Price's investment in Zimmer Biomet. Zimmer is a medical device company that specializes in joint replacements, including knee, hip, shoulder, and foot and ankle replacements. Hip and knee replacements are high cost procedures, and they are two of the most common procedures performed on Medicare patients. According to CMS, more than 400,000 hip and knee replacement procedures were performed in 2014, costing more than $7 billion for the hospitalizations alone. Despite the high frequency of these surgeries, costs vary widely across geographic areas, and complications like infections or implant failures after surgery can be three times higher at some facilities. In November 2015, in an attempt to incentivize higher quality procedures for Medicare recipients and control the cost of these replacements, CMS finalized a new pricing model slated to be implemented in April 2016. This new pricing model was a cost-bundling payment model; instead of Medicare paying for each individual service, Medicare reimburses hospitals with a single lump-sum payment, allowing hospitals to coordinate overall care for the patient. These changes were designed to incentivize improved care for patients, lowering costs and improving quality. However, according to independent analysts, medical device companies, especially those who specialize in orthopedic implants, could face ``material headwinds'' from the new pricing model since hospitals facing reimbursement pressures are likely to pass some of that burden onto those device companies. In September 2015, Congressman Price led an effort to send a letter from members of the House of Representatives to CMS challenging many of the features of the CMS proposal. A copy of the letter, dated September 21, 2015, is available on the Congressman's website. This is where Zimmer Biomet comes in. Zimmer is a medical device manufactrurer with significant exposure to the new pricing model. According to analysts, over 60 percent of Zimmer's revenues come from hip and knee devices, and the CMS guidelines had the potential to significantly affect the company's profits. On March 17, 2016, a few weeks before the CMS model was set to go into effect, Congressman Price bought thousands of dollars worth of Zimmer Biomet stock through his brokerage account. On March 23, 2016, less than a week later, Congressman Price introduced H.R. 4848, the ``HIP Act,'' which would have delayed the implementation of CMS regulations for Medicare coverage of joint replacements. Let's pause right here. In 2016, Congressman Price had a financial stake in one of the companies that stood to benefit most from the legislation he was promoting. Those basic facts are not in dispute. Congressman Price introduced legislation that had the potential to add to his personal fortune. Now, various arguments have been made, by Congressman Price and others, to defend this activity. First is the argument that there wasn't much money at stake, just a few thousand dollars. But the truth is a few thousand dollars is a lot of money to a lot of Americans. An unexpected medical bill that size could have a serious effect on many Americans and the person in charge of our health care system should take that amount of money just as seriously. Second, there is the argument that he didn't purchase the stock; his stockbroker purchased it. I am going to return to that issue in more detail in a moment, but one thing is clear. That is the fact that Congressman Price knew this stock had been purchased in his name, in his account, within a matter of days. On April 15, 2016, Congressman Price filed what is called a Periodic Transaction Report which Members of Congress are required to do within 30 days of reportable stock purchase. Not only did Congressman Price file a report that he had purchased Zimmer Biomet along with dozens of other stocks, he initialed the entry for Zimmer Biomet in order to correct a mistake on the document; a correction making it clear that the Zimmer Biomet transaction was a stock purchase. There is also the question of whether this activity violated House Ethics rules. Congressman Price also said, in answer to written questions, that ``no conflict existed and no consultation was necessary.'' He also said, ``Throughout my time as a Member of the [House], I have abided by and adhered to all ethics and conflict of interest rules applicable to me.'' He gave the same answer regarding three other bills that appear to conflict with investments he held: H.R. 4185, the Protecting Access through Competitive-pricing Transition Act of 2015, the PACT Act; H.R. 5400, a bill pertaining to tax rates in Puerto Rico, which would have likely impacted drug manufacturers he owned Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Amgen; H.R. 5210, the Patient Access to Durable Medical Equipment (PADME) Act of 2016. Let's go through that in some detail. It is true that the House Ethics rules, like the Senate Ethics rules, allow a member to cast a vote on a matter relating to a company in which he or she owns stock. However, that standard only applies to casting votes. If you do more, and become an active advocate of a bill that could benefit a company that you own stock in, a different standard applies. On page 237 of the House Ethics Manual, it says that before undertaking active advocacy of legislation that will benefit a company in which a member owns stock, such as before introducing a bill, ``the Member should first contact the [Ethics] Committee for guidance.'' The Ethics Manual is crystal clear. If you go beyond voting, and you are actively pushing a bill that would benefit a company in which you own stock, you should consult with the Ethics Committee. Congressman Price did not consult with the Ethics Committee regarding any of these trades. In a written question, I asked Congressman Price about this. I asked whether, in light of the House Ethics Manual's recommendation, he had consulted with the Ethics Committee regarding his purchase of Zimmer Biomet and other stocks. He did not answer the question. Instead, he resorted to the same talking point--that the Zimmer Biomet stock was purchased by his broker and that there was not need to consult because there was no conflict. By my reading, this interpretation is flat wrong. Under the House Manual, he should have consulted with the Ethics Committee. To be clear, the Ethics Committee might have concluded that it was a relatively small purchase, and that Congressman Price's advocacy was consistent with his longstanding position, and therefore that it was fine for him to go ahead and purchase the stock and then introduce the bill. On the other hand, the Ethics Committee might have reached a very different conclusion. It might have advised him to refrain from purchasing the stock. The public will never know, because he didn't ask. Despite the clear guidance in the House Ethics Manual, he didn't even ask. And now the majority party is carrying his nomination toward the finish line. Apart from conforming with House Ethics rules, there is also the question of whether Congressman Price's activity violated insider trading laws. Lawmakers in both the House and the Senate have a duty of public trust. The STOCK Act, which Congressman Price and I both voted for in 2012, and longstanding SEC rules denote that Members of Congress have a fiduciary duty to the American people. What that means is that we will use the public power we've been granted to benefit the interests of all Americans. The SEC's Rule 10b5, in particular, prohibits the purchase or sale of stock on the basis of material nonpublic information. As a threshold matter, Congressman Price claims that insider trading laws don't apply to him because the Zimmer Biomet stock was purchased by his broker without his knowledge. But as I've discussed at length, this argument is a red herring because Congressman Price did have knowledge of these trades. He submitted signed records of the trades shortly after they were made. Furthermore, the laws related to insider trading give clear guidance on how to trade through a broker without violating insider trading laws. And just as with the House Ethics rules, when faced with clear guidance on how to manage conflicts of interest, Congressman Price chose not to follow it. Whether those stocks were purchased directly or through a broker is not, by itself, a defense to insider trading. According to SEC rules, Congressman Price and his broker needed to agree to a ``written plan for trading securities'' that does not ``permit the person to exercise subsequent influence over when, how, or whether to effect purchases or sales of securities.'' So, if Congressman Price had, in writing, given his broker complete control over his portfolio we wouldn't be discussing this issue today. But he did not do so. Congressman Price returned to the ``my broker did it'' defense for weeks before finally providing the Finance Committee with an excerpt of his brokerage agreement. Here's what it says: In the Portfolio Management (``PM'') program, a Financial Advisor(s) who meets the program certification requirements manages your assets on a discretionary basis. In other words, your Financial Advisor, and not you, has the discretion to decide what securities to buy and sell in your account. This discretion is subject to the parameters described below and your ability to direct a sale of any security for tax or other reasons. In the course of our investigation, committee staff spoke with experts, and they confirmed what seems obvious from the plain language of the text. This agreement does not hand over complete control of Congressman Price's portfolio to his broker. His agreement with his broker simply does not shield him from insider trading laws, no matter how many times he tries to say it does. This isn't a question of whether Congressman Price followed the technical letter of the law, he didn't follow it in spirit either. Congressman Price could direct his broker to make trades when he wanted to, and he did. Case in point, when Congressman Price wanted to act on a stock tip from Congressman Collins, he called up his broker and had her buy shares of an Australian biomedical firm called Innate Immunotherapeutics. Another question raised by Congressman Price's conflicts of interest is whether they go beyond a violation of the public's trust and constitute an outright violation of insider trading laws. That question cannot be answered today. We have seen that time and time again that Congressman Price purchased stocks then turned around and promoted legislation that would help those companies, and his investments in them. What is not clear is whether the introduction of this legislation meets the legal standards of being ``material'' and ``nonpublic.'' Neither case history, nor the legislative history of the STOCK Act provide clear guidance on when pending legislation is material and nonpublic. The bottom line is that Congressman Price's activities are in uncharted waters. That is why the public and members of this body ought to be outraged that the majority party has cut off the vetting process and rushed this nomination toward completion. In my view, because of how this nomination was handled, the Senate Finance Committee has set a double standard. If you look to the recent past at the nominations of Senator Tom Daschle, Secretary Tim Geithner and Ambassador Ron Kirk at the outset of the Obama administration, the vetting process was extremely thorough and bipartisan. The committee turned over every stone, peered around every corner and followed every lead to its conclusion. Now, when a glaring issue comes up that undeniably deserves investigation, the party in power has shut down the vetting process. The Finance Committee and the Senate ought to do better. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN. I also refer my colleagues to the following news articles and documents: ``Australian Drug Maker has Low Profile but Powerful Backers in Washington,'' printed in the New York Times on January 13 of this year; ``Aussie shareholding puts heat on President's Ally,'' published in the Australian on February 6 of this year; the 2016 Annual Report to Shareholders of Innate; a periodic transaction report that Congressman Price filed with the House Ethics Committee on September 12, 2016; a list of the 20 largest investors in Innate dated January 17, 2017; and a stock price history of Innate. I wish to turn to the issue of misleading testimony. What remains unresolved are major inconsistencies between Congressman Price's testimony to the Finance Committee, statements by Congressman Collins, and statements by Innate's CEO Simon Wilkinson published last week in the Wall Street Journal. Simply put, Innate's chief executive and Congressman Collins, the company's top shareholder, provided one version of events to one of the world's most respected newspapers. Congressman Price provided a different version of events to the Finance Committee and the Health committee. These inconsistencies are among the reasons that Democrats boycotted last week's Finance Committee markup. The Senate has an obligation to know the truth about these transactions in order to protect the integrity of this body and its constitutional duty to consider executive branch nominees. Now, with respect to exclusivity of the sale, Congressman Price told the Finance Committee that the August sale was available to all Innate shareholders, which contradicts what Innate's management told the Wall Street Journal. Congressman Price was definitive in his response to my question during the hearing. Reading back the transcript, I said: ``Well, you purchased stock in an Australian company through private offerings at discounts not available to the public.'' Here is Congressman Price's response: ``Well, if I may, those--they were available to every single individual that was an investor at the time.'' That is not what Innate executives told the Wall Street Journal. Here is an extended passage from the Wall Street Journal: Rep. Tom Price got a privileged offer to buy a biomedical stock at a discount, the company's officials said, contrary to his congressional testimony this month. . . . The cabinet nominee is one of fewer than 20 U.S. investors who were invited last year to buy discounted shares of the company--an opportunity that, for Mr. Price, arose from an invitation from a company director and fellow Congressman. . . . At Mr. Collins' invitation, Mr. Price in June ordered shares discounted in the private placement at 18 cents apiece, and then more in July at 26 cents a share, Mr. Collins said in an interview. Those orders went through in August, after board approval. Mr. Price invested between $50,000 and $100,000 according to his disclosure form. . . . Mr. Wilkinson said investors who had bought in a previous private placement were called to ``make friends and family aware of the opportunity. . . . We are always looking to increase our shareholder base. But those new parties have to meet the definition of sophisticated financial investor.'' Only six U.S. investors, including Mr. Price, fell into the friends-and-family category, Mr. Collins said. About 10 more U.S. investors were offered discounted shares by the company because they previously had been invited to partake in private placement offerings. In other words, Congressman Price not only got a deal that wasn't publicly available, he was in a special group of six investors in a special category called ``friends-and-family,'' whereas other American investors got in on the private deal because they previously participated in the company's private placements. Congressman Price bypassed that requirement. He got in as what could only be called a special guest--a ``friends-and-family'' guest of his House colleague, Congressman Collins. As I mentioned earlier, when I asked the company how Congressman Price was able to get this special status, the company refused to provide an explanation. The Wall Street Journal also reported a key distinction between U.S. investors and the company's shareholders in Australia and New Zealand. The paper reported: The discounted stock offered in Innate Immuno, as the company is known, was made to all shareholders in Australia and New Zealand--but not in the United States, according to Mr. Collins and confirmed in a separate interview with Innate Immuno CEO Simon Wilkinson. The Wall Street Journal's account is supported by company documents, specifically a ``Rights Issue Booklet'' that Innate published on June 10, 2016. The booklet noted that the shareholders would buy one new share for every nine shares they already own. The booklet noted that the shareholders would have ``the option to pay for their new shares in either Australian dollars or New Zealand dollars.'' The booklet goes on to describe the private stock sale in which Congressman Price participated. I will read briefly from the book: In conjunction with this rights issue, Innate announced that it also completed a private placement at an issue price of U.S. 18 cents, raising U.S. $1.8 million. The booklet states clearly that the private placement was announced on the June 10, 2016, the same day Innate announced the rights issue for investors in Australia and in New Zealand. Our staff has reviewed all of the company's publicly available documents and found no similar advertisements for the private placement to American investors. So this paper trail pokes more holes in Congressman Price's argument that the private stock sale was open to all the company investors. First off, the company didn't announce the existence of the private sale until after it already had been completed. So unless an investor was on the company's short list of go-to people, they were just excluded. Second, the company's documents clearly show that Congressman Price and other participants in the private stock sale were able to buy far more discounted shares than the company's typical investors. Innate documents showed that the company restricted the number of shares the typical investor could buy in the rights issue to just one new share for every nine they already owned. No such limit appears to have been imposed on Congressman Price and the other American participants in the private stock sale. In fact, Congressman Price owned just over 60,000 shares at the time of the sale. His participation in the private stock sales allowed Congressman Price to buy 400,000 more shares. If Congressman Price had been held to the same rules as everyday investors, he would have been restricted to buying less than 7,000 shares. The bottom line to me is what Congressman Price said was untrue. The deal Congressman Price got was not open to every other shareholder. And again, when I sent a letter last week to the Innate CEO, asking him to explain all of this, he declined. He told my staff that as an Australian firm, the company had no obligation to cooperate. So to recap, Congressman Price told the Finance Committee and the Health Committee that the stock sales he participated in were open to all shareholders. That is not true. The private sale does not appear to have been widely marketed to American investors and was certainly not advertised in the company's public documents. The private sale reportedly included less than 20 American investors. Congressman Price was part of an even smaller subgroup known as friends and family, invited by other investors--in this case, by his House colleague, Congressman Collins. How many people were eligible to be in the friends and family group? Just six. That brings me to the next issue, which is, How did Congressman Price learn about the special sale in the first place? Congressman Price told the Finance Committee his conversations with Congressman Collins had no influence on his investment decisions. I am going to again quote from his written response to questions for the record asking Congressman Price to describe the communications with Congressman Collins regarding Innate. Congressman Price said: I had a conversation with Representative Collins in the fall of 2014 that brought Innate as a company to my attention. The nature of the conversation did not, however, influence my decision to invest in the company in either 2015 or 2016. I believe I had subsequent general communications with Representative Collins regarding Innate. I do not have a specific recollection of when those conversations occurred or their substance. Any such communications did not impact my investment decisions, however, because my purchases of Innate were based solely on my own research. I am going to quote again from the Wall Street Journal: Mr. Price got in on the discounted sale after Mr. Collins filled him in on the company's drug trial, according to Mr. Collins. Mr. Collins said he told Mr. Price of the additional private placement. He said Mr. Price asked if he could participate in it. ``Could you have someone send me the documents,'' Mr. Collins recalled Mr. Price asking him. Congressman Price wants us to believe that Congressman Collins had no influence on the decision to buy Innate stock. But Congressman Price would not have known about the company in the first place if he hadn't talked to Congressman Collins, and he wouldn't have known about the private placements without hearing about them from Congressman Collins. Congressman Price characterizes his conversation with Congressman Collins in 2015 and 2016 as being general in nature. But again, according to the Wall Street Journal, Congressman Collins, one, told Congressman Price about the upcoming drug trial; two, alerted him to the private stock sale; and three, arranged to ensure that he could participate. To me, this seems like more than ``subsequent general communications with Congressman Collins regarding Innate'' as Congressman Price put it in his written response to the committee. With respect to reporting to the committee and the Office of Government Ethics, I would just say that I think I described issues-- ethical issues--that are serious enough on their own. However, it took no small amount of effort to unravel Congressman Price's holdings in the company because he failed to fully disclose them to Federal ethics officials, the American people, and the Finance Committee. I don't believe this issue would have ever come to light if it were not for the work of the committee's minority investigations team. On February 7, 2 days ago, Congressman Price sent a letter to the independent Federal ethics officials at the Office of Government Ethics that amended his original public ethics disclosure. This letter confirmed the suspicions of Finance Committee Democrats that Congressman Price's original ethics disclosure to the public understated the value of his Innate stock holding by roughly a quarter of a million dollars. Put another way, his stake in Innate was more than five times the figure initially reported to the American people. Congressman Price's original disclosure reported that he owned less than $50,000 in Innate stock. At the time the disclosure was filed, by my calculation, his shares had a value of more than $250,000. Today his stake is valued at more than $300,000. Quite simply, it appears the shares he bought in the private stock sale in 2016 were excluded entirely from the Congressman's financial disclosure to the Office of Government Ethics. And because it is the Office of Government Ethics disclosure that is posted on a public Web site so the public can see the investment ties and investments the President's nominees hold, the American people, too, were kept in the dark about how much stock Congressman Price held in this company. In addition, the Congressman was also less than forthcoming in his disclosure of the value of Innate holdings to the Finance Committee. In his response to the committee questionnaire, Congressman Price valued Innate stock he bought in the private sale between $50,000 to $100,000. However, that amount was based on the $84,000 discounted price the Congressman paid to buy his stocks in the August private stock sale. It was not based on the actual value of the stock on the Australian stock exchange--the true value of his holdings. By December, when he made his disclosure to the Finance Committee, the stock price had nearly tripled and the shares he bought in those private sales were worth nearly $230,000. In other words, he told the committee that his private purchases were less than half the value they really were. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following items be printed in the Record: a memo from Finance Committee Staff to the Finance Committee, dated January 23 of this year, and a letter from Congressman Price to the Office of Government Ethics dated February 7, 2017, amending his public ethics disclosure.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before Senator King leaves the floor, let me just say, as one who ran the legal services for the elderly program in Oregon, that the Senator makes all of us in legal services proud tonight. Senator King has really put a face on what is at stake here in the way he has focused on the opioid scourge that is hammering areas from coast to coast. Rural health care--without rural health care, we can't have rural life. It is just that simple. Certainly when we get to the closing here in perhaps an hour and a half or so, we are going to get to the bottom line, as the Senator did. I think these changes take America back to the day where health care was for the healthy and wealthy. So I thank the Senator for his passion and his commitment to his citizens, but also to the people of this country. Anybody in legal services tonight will be very proud, as I am, because what it is all about is standing up for people, and the Senator has said it very well. Mr. President, we will be having our closing remarks here in perhaps an hour and a half or thereabouts. We have several Members of the Senate who are on their way for their remarks, and several Members of the Senate have discussed various elements of the serious and unanswered ethics questions surrounding Congressman Price's nomination. It is my view that these are issues that have set off loud ethical alarm bells. I want to take a little bit more time to lay out the full story here. The stock trades Congressman Price made while working on health care policy do, in fact, raise serious ethical and legal questions. None of Congressman Price's stock trades raise more questions than the hundreds of thousands of shares he bought in the obscure Australian biotech company known as Innate. His stock in this company is by far his largest of holdings, both in terms of the hundreds of thousands of shares he owns and the value of those shares, and that exceeds a quarter of a million dollars. Congressman Price told the Finance Committee that he did not get a special deal. He told the Health, Education, Labor Committee that he did not get a special deal. But the fact is, Congressman Price paid bargain-basement prices for Innate stock in a private sale last August. The private stock sale was limited to a small group of well-connected American investors. Congressman Price's participation has been described as a ``sweetheart deal'' by Kaiser Health News and a ``privileged, discounted offer'' by the Wall Street Journal. As I said during his nomination hearing, Congressman Price's participation in the private stock sale showed bad judgment at best. At worst, it raised serious questions about whether he violated the STOCK Act or other security laws. I will take a minute to read section 3 of the STOCK Act. It says: ``Members of Congress . . . may not use nonpublic information derived from such person's position . . . or gained from the performance of such person's official responsibilities as a means for making a private profit.'' It is well known that Congressman Price learned about Innate from a House colleague, Congressman Chris Collins of New York. Collins is not just a casual reader of the Australian business pages; he is actually a member of the company's board and its largest shareholder. This raises additional questions: Did Congressman Price have access to nonpublic information about Innate or its private stock because of his position as a Member of Congress? Did he get special access to the discounted private sale because of his position? Does he stand to profit because of the information or access he may have received? Finally, did Congressman Price tell the Finance Committee the truth about how he learned about the private stock sales and the ability of typical investors to participate? Congressman Price would have us believe that he decided to make these investments based on his own research into the company. That is what he told the Finance Committee. Let me quote from the Wall Street Journal's article published January 30: Mr. Price wasn't in line to buy shares in the last private placement because he hadn't previously participated in private fundraising rounds. . . . Mr. Price first invested in the company a year ago, buying shares through the open market on the Australian exchange. He learned about the company from Mr. Collins, who holds a 17 percent stake in it. Mr. Collins said Mr. Price is ``one of my friends'' and that he sits ``next to him'' on the House floor. . . . Mr. Price got it on the discounted sale after Mr. Collins filled him in on the company's drug trial, according to Mr. Collins. The fact is, you don't just get in on a private stock offering by accident. As the Wall Street Journal explained, Congressman Price didn't originally even meet the criteria for participating in the 2016 private offering because he hadn't participated in any previous offerings. Yet he was able to buy over 400,000 shares of stock with Congressman Collins' help. My view and the view of my Democratic colleagues is that Congressman Price failed to come clean with the Senate Finance Committee on the details of the special discounted deal. He has assured the committee he followed the law, but straightforward questions have been met with dodging, weaving, and obfuscation. Details of his purchase continue to emerge, and the public's understanding of his involvement continues to evolve. Meanwhile, as scrutiny of the deal continues to mount, Innate's top executives are defending Congressman Price at the behest of his colleague Congressman Collins, who sits on the company's board of directors. After the Wall Street Journal story was published, the company and Congressman Price went into spin control. The public knows this only because Congressman Collins made a mistake that everybody who uses email for work has seen made at least once: He mistakenly hit ``reply all'' when responding to an email from the company's CEO, Simon Wilkinson. Instead of a private note to Mr. Wilkinson, the note wound up going to a CNN reporter covering the story. In the email, Congressman Collins, the company's top shareholder, said the Wall Street Journal was ``yellow journalism,'' and he thanked Innate's chief executive, Mr. Wilkinson, for defending Congressman Price and the company. According to CNN, Congressman Collins acknowledged the email to be authentic. The Finance Committee's own experience with Innate only adds to the sense that there is a coverup as Republicans seek to race Congressman Price across the confirmation finish line. The day after the Wall Street Journal story ran, I wrote my own letter to Innate's CEO, Mr. Wilkinson. I asked the company to respond to the article and the inconsistencies in Mr. Price's explanations and for documentation of details of the private stock sales. The company refused to answer my letter. This looks to me like a coverup, and it ought to shake this body's confidence in Congressman Price's nomination. This situation, in my view, demands that further questions be asked and answered. Instead of taking time to explore these issues, Republicans took the unprecedented step of suspending the Finance Committee's rules to rush this nomination to the floor before any more questions could be asked, let alone answered. In years past, as with the nominations of Senator Daschle, Secretary Geithner, and Ambassador Kirk, the Finance Committee left no stone unturned in the vetting process. Not this time. The majority party, in my view, is on its way to an ethical double standard to cut off the vetting process. That leaves me with a question for Congressman Price and my Republican colleagues in the Senate: What is there to hide? Mr. President, before I continue, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letter that I sent to Simon Wilkinson, chief executive of Innate, on January 31, 2017.

Mr. WYDEN. I would also refer my colleagues to the following news articles: ``Trump's HHS Nominee Got A Sweetheart Deal from A Foreign Biotech Firm,'' a story published by Kaiser Health News on January 13, 2017; ``Representative Tom Price Got Privileged, Discounted Offer on Biomedical Stock, Company Says,'' a story published by the Wall Street Journal on January 30, 2017; and ``In accidental `reply all' to reporter, Collins thanks CEO for defending HHS nominee,'' a story published by CNN on January 31, 2017. Mr. President, I wish to now discuss what is known about the facts and timing of Congressman Price's investment in Innate. This is a timeline that is based on public documents, press reports, and information the nominee provided the Finance Committee. If you have never heard of Innate until the last few weeks, you would be forgiven. The New York Times described it as a ``tiny pharmaceutical company from Australia that has no approved drugs and no backing from flashy venture capital firms.'' Innate has fewer than a dozen full-time employees. The company's stock was first listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2013, and until recently its market capitalization was well below $100 million. Innate has never generated revenue from drug sales. It has repeatedly teetered on the brink of running out of cash. It has just 2,500 shareholders. By way of comparison, a major American pharmaceutical company could have hundreds of thousands of shareholders. Innate is planning to submit an investigational drug application to the Food and Drug Administration, and its ultimate goal is to one day sell itself to a large pharmaceutical manufacturer, which would take its early-stage experimental therapy to market. What I am describing is, this company is the poster child for obscure companies. It is so small and so obscure, it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. So the question is, How did Congressman Price come to learn about this company, and how did he decide to make it the single largest investment in his sprawling portfolio of health care stocks? The answer is, the Congressman learned about Innate in 2014 during a conversation with his colleague, Congressman Collins of New York. As I indicated, Congressman Collins sits on Innate's board of directors. Congressman Collins is also the company's largest shareholder, holding 38 million shares. Congressman Collins' adult children, his chief of staff, and many of his political backers are also heavily invested in the company. I am going to touch on those issues in a few minutes. According to disclosures with the House Ethics Committee, Congressman Price bought some 61,000 shares of Innate stock in 3 separate purchases during January of 2015. At the time, the stock was trading at roughly 10 cents a share. Congressman Price testified to the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that he directed his broker to make the January 2015 purchases. Fast-forward to August 2016. Congressman Price bought another 400,000 shares of Innate as part of a private stock sale for U.S. investors. When the private sale took place, Innate's shares were trading on the Australian Stock Exchange for the equivalent of 31 American cents. Participants in the private sale got the shares at a deep discount. In written testimony to the Finance Committee, Congressman Price said he paid 84,000 American dollars to buy the 400,000 shares. He bought 250,000 of those shares for 18 American cents per share in one private stock placement. He bought another 150,000 shares for 26 American cents each in a second private stock placement. Congressman Price's House Ethics Committee disclosures showed that he acquired the stock on August 31. On that day, Innate's stock was trading for the U.S. equivalent of 31 cents a share on the Australian Stock Exchange. In my book, that is a special deal. The bottom line is that Congressman Price bought these shares for $40,000 less than an average investor would have paid to buy the same amount of stock off the open market. That is nearly 33 percent off the price on the Australian Stock Exchange at the time. Since that time, Innate's stock has more than doubled. These facts are not in dispute. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record Congressman Price's written testimony in response to my questions for the record as part of his nomination hearings.