[Pages S4830-S4840]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           EXECUTIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

                           EXECUTIVE CALENDAR

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the following 
nomination, which the clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Peter 
Joseph Phipps, of Pennsylvania, to be United States Circuit Judge for 
the Third Circuit.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.


                        Prescription Drug Costs

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I listened as the Republican leader came 
to the floor and announced the business of the Senate for this week. 
Highlighted in the business will be tax treaties--tax treaties with 
Spain, Switzerland, Japan, and Luxembourg. According to the Republican 
leader, these are critical to economic development in the United 
States. I don't question their importance, but I will tell you that, 
routinely, these are done by voice vote. We don't spend the time of the 
Senate to come to the floor and talk about our relationship with 
Luxembourg.
  When you look at the issues that most American families expect us to 
address, I would say the tax treaty with Luxembourg would be low on the 
list. What might be high on the list and should be considered in the 
Senate this week is the No. 1 concern of families across America--
Democrats and Republicans. The highest concern and the No. 1 issue when 
asked about the economy of the United States is the cost of 
prescription drugs.
  The United States Senate has the authority to do something about the 
cost of prescription drugs. We will not be doing it this week. We will 
be dealing with a tax treaty with Luxembourg.
  What kind of issues, when it comes to the cost of prescription drugs, 
might be important? Let's start with one that I have started focusing 
on back home.
  Did you know that there are 30 million Americans who suffer from 
diabetes, type 1 and type 2 diabetes? Did you know that 7.5 million 
Americans use insulin every single day to stay alive? Four of them were 
in my office last week from Illinois. They were between the ages of 10 
and 17. Talk about amazing young people. Three young women and a young 
boy talked about their lives and what had happened to them since it was 
discovered that they had juvenile diabetes.

[[Page S4831]]

  Their lives have been changed a lot. Each one of them is hooked up to 
a CGM--I believe that is the proper term, a continuous glucose 
monitor--that measures whether they need additional insulin, which is 
pumped in another device on their arm. They talked about how this was a 
commitment around the clock to make sure their insulin levels were 
appropriate.
  One little girl talked about what it meant to her family for her to 
be a type 1 diabetic. This beautiful young lady started talking about 
it. Then she got to the point where she said: It has changed our 
family; my diabetes has changed our family.
  Then she started crying.
  She said: We can't do things in our family that others do. We can't 
take the same vacations that my cousins take, and we can't rent that 
house out on the lake because of the cost of my drugs, the cost of my 
insulin.
  I turned to her mother, and I said: Tell me, what does it come down 
to?
  Her mom said: We are lucky. We have health insurance. Our health 
insurance covers prescription drugs. However, there is an $8,000 
deductible. So we start each year buying the insulin for our daughter 
until we have spent $8,000 out of our savings. Then the health 
insurance kicks in. Usually it is about 3 months.
  She is paying, or she is being charged, about $3,000 a month for 
insulin.
  Let's look into this for a minute as we consider why the U.S. Senate 
thinks a tax treaty with Luxembourg is more important than this issue. 
Let's look into the fact that insulin was discovered almost 100 years 
ago in Canada, and the researchers who discovered it came to the United 
States and said: We have the patent rights to this lifesaving drug for 
diabetics. We never want to see anybody make a profit at the expense of 
this lifesaving drug.
  The Canadian researchers surrendered their patent rights to insulin 
for $1--gave it up. I recall that when it came to the Salk vaccine for 
polio, he did the same thing. He said that no one should ever make a 
profit on a drug that eliminated polio. These two Canadian researchers 
felt the same about insulin.
  What happened then? Insulin was produced in the earliest stages in a 
rather crude way but in an effective way to save the lives of people 
with diabetes. Over the years, that process was improved. There is no 
question about that.
  Today there are three major pharmaceutical companies that make 
insulin products for the United States--Eli Lilly of Indianapolis, IN, 
is one of them; Novo Nordisk is another; Sanofi is another. I know a 
little bit about the Eli Lilly product. It is called Humalog. Humalog 
was introduced in the American market in 1996, an insulin product. The 
charge was about $20 to $30 for a dosage--a vial, I should say, and was 
used as a dosage for those with type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes. It 
was about $21.
  Here we are 20 years later, and how much is that same vial? It is 
$329. Remember, this was a drug discovered almost 100 years ago. 
Remember, those who could have capitalized and made a fortune off of it 
surrendered their patent rights.
  How did we reach the point where this drug, in 20 years, is 10 times 
more than it cost when it was introduced? It is the same drug from the 
same company. Why has it gone up so much in price? Because they can do 
it, because these pharmaceutical companies have the power to raise 
their prices, and people like that little girl in my office from 
Jerseyville, IL, who broke down in tears, can't control how much that 
price would be. They need this to survive.
  Now you must ask yourself: What are other countries paying for 
exactly the same drug made by the same American pharmaceutical company, 
Eli Lilly?
  We don't have to go very far to find out. All we need to go to is 
Canada--Canada. The $329 Humalog vial in Canada costs $39. Why? It is 
exactly the same drug and is a fraction of the cost in Canada. It is 
because the Canadian Government stands up for the people of that 
country and says: You cannot gouge, you cannot overprice these drugs. 
You are going to be paid a reasonable amount so that you make a profit, 
but you aren't going to do it at the expense of our families in Canada.
  They care. They have done something about it.
  We care about a tax treaty with Luxembourg. I am sorry, but as 
important as that may be in that small part of the world, it is more 
important for us to deal with the issue of prescription drugs and to 
ask ourselves why this U.S. Senate, this empty Chamber, is not filled 
with Senators of both political parties doing something about the cost 
of prescription drugs.
  There is one traffic cop in this Chamber. He just spoke. The 
Republican leader decides what comes to the floor of the Senate. He has 
decided we are not going to consider prescription drugs. Maybe he will 
change his mind, but I think he will need some persuading to reach that 
point.
  What I am hoping is that the 30 million Americans and their families 
will speak up when it comes to the cost of lifesaving insulin for 
diabetes. I hope they will do the same when it comes to other drugs--so 
many of them.
  Senator Grassley of Iowa, a Republican, was just on the floor a few 
minutes ago when we opened the session. He and I are working on a bill, 
which is just a first step--and I underline, only a first step and not 
the answer to the problem. But it comes down to this: You can't turn on 
the television these days without seeing a drug ad. If you haven't seen 
drug ads on television, you must not own a television. They are on all 
the time. All of the information we are given about drugs with long 
names that are hard to pronounce and remember--all of that information 
is given to us over and over again so that we know much more than we 
ever dreamed we would know about XARELTO. We can even spell it. We know 
what different drugs are supposed to do to improve the lives of 
individuals. Those ads are being thrown at us so that eventually we 
have that name in our head and take it into the doctor's office and ask 
for that expensive drug as opposed to a generic drug. That is running 
up the cost of healthcare.
  Senator Grassley and I put in a bill, and the bill is pretty basic. 
With all of the things they tell you on television about the drugs, it 
wasn't until just 2 weeks ago--the first time I have ever seen it--that 
one of these companies disclosed the cost of the drug.
  You say to yourself, maybe that is an important part of speaking to 
consumers across America. Senator Grassley and I have a bill that will 
require price disclosure on these pharmaceutical companies' 
advertising. It is not the total answer, but I am hoping it will in 
some way at least slow down, if not embarrass these companies from the 
runups in cost that these drugs are going through.
  That is part of the answer, but it is not the total answer by any 
means. There is a long list of things we can do and should do that are 
a lot more important than a tax treaty with Luxembourg, which should 
pass by a voice vote without taking the time of the Senate.


                               Healthcare

  Madam President, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 20 million 
Americans gained health insurance--including more than 1 million in 
IIlinois. Thanks to the law, the uninsured rate in Illinois has been 
cut in half. People with preexisting conditions can no longer be denied 
health insurance coverage or be charged higher premiums. This protects 
5 million people in Illinois with a preexisting condition. Insurance 
companies are no longer allowed to impose annual or lifetime caps on 
benefits or deny coverage for maternity care, mental health treatment, 
prescription drugs, or hospitalizations. Young people are allowed to 
stay on their parents' health plans until age 26 and seniors in the 
dreaded Medicare donut hole are saving money on their prescription 
drugs. Thanks to the law's Medicaid expansion, rural hospitals in 
Illinois have found a critical lifeline to help alleviate economic 
challenges. Yet, just last week, the Trump administration and 18 
Republican-led States argued in a Federal court that the entire law 
should be thrown out--ruled unconstitutional. If President Trump is 
successful, more than 600,000 people in Illinois will lose their health 
insurance. Nearly 5 million Illinoisans with preexisting conditions 
will, once again, be at risk of discrimination.
  Two years ago, President Trump tried to convince Congress to repeal

[[Page S4832]]

the Affordable Care Act. He failed. So what President Trump couldn't do 
with a Republican-controlled House and Senate--eliminate health 
insurance for 20 million Americans--he is now trying to do through the 
courts. That is right. Rather than defending the law of the land, 
President Trump's Department of Justice is arguing before the U.S. 
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that the entire law is 
unconstitutional. Protections for people with preexisting conditions? 
President Trump wants them struck down as unconstitutional. A 
prohibition on insurers imposing annual or lifetime caps on benefits? 
President Trump wants that ruled unconstitutional. Tax credits to help 
people afford health insurance? Unconstitutional, according to our 
President. If you thought that the U.S. President would be on the side 
of Americans with preexisting conditions--women in need of maternity 
and newborn care, young adults just out of college, or seniors with 
high drug costs--well, you would be wrong. Instead, President Trump's 
administration is arguing that every single one of these protections 
should be eliminated. If President Trump and Republicans have their way 
in court, insurers will once again be able to discriminate against 
patients with preexisting conditions and impose arbitrary caps on 
benefits, millions will be thrown off health insurance, and families 
nationwide will pay more.
  Earlier this year, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives 
said: Not on our watch. That is right. On a bipartisan basis, the House 
passed the Protecting Americans with Pre-existing Conditions Act. This 
bill would prevent President Trump from once again allowing health 
insurance companies to discriminate against people with preexisting 
conditions. The House didn't stop there. They also passed a bill to 
restore funding to programs that help people sign up for health 
insurance, and they passed a bill to limit the sale of junk plans.
  Why is the Affordable Care Act so important? Why are these House-
passed patient protection bills so important? Why is this court case so 
important? They are important because of people like Nathan from Sleepy 
Hollow, IL, who recently wrote to me about his brother. Nathan wrote:

       My 12-year old brother has Crohn's Disease and his 
     treatments are very expensive. . . . I worry about whether he 
     will be able to still have insurance if the ACA is 
     overturned. . . . Please do everything you can to help.

  To Nathan and his brother, I say this: The House of Representatives 
is attempting to help you. Unfortunately, the Republican-controlled 
Senate is not. What is the Senate, under McConnell's watch, doing 
instead? Nothing. Rather than address the existential threat facing 
America's health care system, the Senate HELP Committee advanced 
legislation that is stunningly silent on protections for preexisting 
conditions. Republicans are abdicating their legislative duty to 
preserve healthcare in America. As my colleague, Senator Chris Murphy, 
said during the HELP Committee markup, we are applying a bandaid to one 
arm, while the other is being sawed right off. Republicans on the HELP 
Committee announced grand plans to lower prescription drug costs and 
shield patients from surprise medical bills, but all they really did is 
tinker around the edges of the problems. Similarly, the Senate 
Judiciary Committee was slated to tackle the outrageous cost of 
prescription drugs. Yet what emerged from committee was the bare 
minimum of legislative action. When will Congress get serious about 
going after drug companies that are gouging the American public? When 
will congressional Republicans stop tweeting and issuing press releases 
about preexisting conditions and instead do something--anything--to 
help protect people in need? Talk is cheap, but, unfortunately, it is 
all congressional Republicans know how to do.


                              Immigration

  Madam President, I went to Chicago on Friday. I went to the northwest 
side of the city, and I met with a group called Communities United. It 
was a meeting I am not going to soon forget. There were about 20 people 
in the room. Most of them were women with their children, and a couple 
of us were politicians. They talked about the fear that is running 
through their community with President Trump's threat of mass arrests 
and mass deportations. Each one of them had an important thing to say. 
The one that stuck with me was a young lady--I will give just her first 
name. Guadalupe was her first name. She is a high school student in 
that section of Chicago. She started to read from a little piece of 
paper on which she had written down the feelings of her family about 
what was happening with the threats of these raids.
  You see, one of her parents is undocumented. She is a citizen of the 
United States, having been born here, but her mother is not so lucky.
  Guadalupe said: I am tired of living in fear. I am tired of being 
afraid that the next knock on the door means our family will be torn 
apart; that my mother, who has been here for almost 20 years, will be 
forced to leave.
  She has never committed a crime. She has worked hard every single day 
for the family, to bring a little money home, taking jobs that most of 
us don't want to take, being paid low wages in the hope that her 
daughter Guadalupe and others would have a better life in the years 
ahead.
  I remember that meeting because that was just the beginning of a 
weekend filled with meetings just like those all across that great city 
of Chicago, particularly among the Hispanic population--a genuine fear 
that ICE would start knocking on doors. People are being told their 
rights, their legal rights, if ICE comes to the door. Most of them are 
being told: Don't open the door unless there is a real search warrant 
from a real judge, not an ICE administrative warrant.
  These people, I am sure, will find it hard to make that distinction, 
but it really is a question of whether they may be able to stay in the 
United States or cannot.
  Keep in mind that we are not talking about people who have been 
convicted of a serious crime. As far as I am concerned, if you come to 
this country and you are undocumented and you commit a serious crime, 
you have forfeited your right to stay here. I am not making any defense 
of those people, but they are a tiny, small percentage of those who are 
here undocumented. The vast majority came to this country, some 
undocumented when they came, others who have overstayed a visitor's 
visa, a work visa or student visa, and started a life and started a 
family.
  These are the people who have become a major part of our economy. Of 
the 11 million who are undocumented in this country, 8\1/2\ million 
actually work. They are employed. They pay taxes. They are not 
officially or legally part of our economy. Yet they are all subject to 
the mass arrests and deportation that President Trump has threatened.
  As a Presidential candidate, Donald Trump regularly used inflammatory 
anti-immigrant language. You will remember most of these quotes because 
they were said over and over again.
  Donald Trump said:

       The Mexican government is forcing their most unwanted 
     people into the United States. They are, in many cases, 
     criminals, drug dealers, [and] rapists.

  Donald Trump said that a Federal judge was biased against him because 
the judge was ``a Mexican.'' He called for a ``total and complete 
shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.''
  He attacked a family I have come to know, Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the 
Muslim American parents of the American soldier who was killed in the 
line of duty. This Gold Star family gave their son to this country in 
defense of it and were ridiculed because they disagreed with President 
Trump.
  For the last 2\1/2\ years, President Donald Trump has continued to 
use divisive language. On January 11, 2018, I heard it personally. In a 
meeting in the Oval Office that I will never forget, the President used 
a crude term to refer to Haiti and African countries.
  This weekend, President Trump sunk to a new low. His tweets saying 
four Democratic Congresswomen should ``go back'' to their countries 
were racist and reprehensible comments. Elected officials of both 
parties should condemn the President's statement.
  It is important to understand the President's hateful language is 
also reflected in his policies. The Trump administration has shown 
unprecedented cruelty on the issue of immigration, especially to 
children and families.
  The Muslim travel ban created chaos at airports across the country 
and continues to separate thousands of American families.

[[Page S4833]]

  The cruel repeal of DACA threatens 800,000 young immigrants with 
deportation to countries they barely remember.
  The termination of temporary protected status puts more than 300,000 
immigrants at risk of deportation to dangerous conditions. Imagine this 
for a moment. We have a travel advisory that says to American families: 
Do not--do not--go to the country of Venezuela. It is too dangerous.
  But for those Venezuelans who are in the United States and should 
qualify for temporary protected status, this President has said: We are 
returning you to Venezuela.
  Really? It is too dangerous for Americans, but, Venezuelans, we are 
going to force you to go back to the horrible situation in that 
country.
  The disastrous separation of thousands of families at the border has 
done permanent damage to these families and especially to their 
children. Under what was known as the zero-tolerance policy announced 
by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, over 2,880 infants, toddlers, 
and children were separated from their families at the border.
  What was even worse, they were cast into this bureaucratic no-man's-
land, and they couldn't be located to be reunited with their parents 
until a Federal judge demanded it. We still have some who have not been 
reunited with their parents over a year later.
  The inhumane overcrowding and migrant detention facilities that the 
DHS inspector general found was ``an immediate risk to the health and 
safety of detainees and DHS employees'' was so bad that after I 
personally witnessed it, I joined with more than 20 other Democratic 
Senators writing to the International Red Cross and asking for them to 
send in a team to investigate American detention facilities. I never 
thought I would do that.
  This President's threatening, and now mass arrests and deportations, 
of millions of immigrants who have committed no crime and pose no 
threat--no threat--to the security and safety of this country has 
created rampant fears, as I mentioned, in Chicago and across the 
Nation.
  Now, today, the Trump administration has put in place a new rule 
which will block nearly all asylum claims at the southern border from 
nationals of any country except Mexico, including families and children 
fleeing persecution.
  The UNHCR, the refugee Agency for the United Nations, said this rule 
proposed by the Trump administration ``will endanger vulnerable people 
in need of international protection from violence or persecution.''
  How did we reach this point? During World War II, we made a fateful 
decision in the United States to turn away hundreds who were fleeing 
Europe. Many of them were people of the Jewish religion who believed 
the Holocaust, which Hitler had initiated, would eventually reach their 
families and take their lives. There were 700 or 800 of them who were 
on a ship called the USS St. Louis. They came to the United States and 
asked for refuge here, asylum here, to escape the Nazis. Sadly, our 
government turned them away. They went back to Europe, and 200 died in 
the Holocaust. After that, after that horrible experience, we said we 
were going to do this differently from this point forward.
  Since World War II, the United States has led the world in accepting 
refugees and asylees. Other countries have done more than their part. I 
think of Jordan immediately. We have tried to be a leader among 
developed countries in accepting refugees and asylees, and we have done 
it. When you look at all of the Cubans who came to the United States to 
escape communism under Castro--we have three Cuban Americans serving in 
the U.S. Senate whose families were part of that exodus from the island 
of Cuba. We did the same thing with Jews who were facing persecution in 
the Soviet Union. We did it, as well, after the Vietnam war, when those 
Vietnamese who had stood by American soldiers and risked their lives 
were given refuge to the United States. The list goes on and on, and it 
reflects who we are as a nation. We screen those who come in, but we 
say our doors are open to give them a second chance in life and the 
protection of the United States.
  That was what we did from World War II until the election of Donald 
Trump as President of the United States. Now he has turned back the 
clock. We are back in the USS St. Louis era, where we are turning away 
refugees who are simply coming here trying to find some safe place to 
be.
  America is better than this. We can keep our Nation safe and respect 
our heritage as a nation of immigrants. We can have a secure border and 
abide by our international obligations to protect refugees fleeing from 
persecution, as we have done on a bipartisan basis for decades.
  The reality is President Trump's cruel and ineffective policies on 
immigration have made our southern border much less secure than when he 
took office. The President's obsession with his almighty border wall to 
be paid for by the Mexicans, as he suggested, led to the longest 
government shutdown in the history of the United States--35 
days, paralyzing agencies and the government, ironically paralyzing 
immigration courts that were supposed to process the people presenting 
themselves at the border. More refugees have been driven to our border 
because the President has shut down legal avenues for migration and 
blocked all the systems to stabilize Northern Triangle countries in El 
Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

  There is also a gaping leadership vacuum at the Trump 
administration's Department of Homeland Security. In less than 2\1/2\ 
years, there have already been four different people heading this 
Department. Every position at the Department of Homeland Security with 
responsibility for immigration or border security is now held by a 
temporary appointee, and the White House has not even submitted 
nominations to fill these positions.
  The Republicans have tried to blame Democrats for the President's 
failure to secure the border, but Democrats have tried to work on a 
bipartisan basis to solve this crisis. In February, after the President 
finally agreed to end the longest government shutdown in history, 
Congress passed an omnibus appropriations bill that included $414 
million for humanitarian assistance at the border. When I hear Vice 
President Pence and others saying they were begging the Democrats to 
give them money for the border, we did--$400 million in February.
  Then, last month, Congress passed an emergency supplemental 
appropriations bill with $4.6 billion of additional funding to 
alleviate overcrowding at detention facilities and provide the basics--
food, supplies, and medical care.
  Last year, before the border crisis began, Senate Democrats supported 
a bipartisan agreement--bipartisan agreement--from centrists in both 
caucuses that included robust security funding and dozens of provisions 
to strengthen border security. We put this together last year. It was a 
compromise. I didn't like parts of it, but it is the nature of the 
Senate that you can't get everything you want; you have to do the best 
you can to solve a problem. We had a bipartisan solution. This was a 
chance last year for the President to step up and accept a bipartisan 
approach. The President rejected it. He threatened to veto it. Instead, 
he wanted to push for his hardline, get-tough immigration reform 
instead. The Senate rejected the President's bill, his proposal, with a 
strong, bipartisan supermajority. It was that unpopular and unworkable.
  In 2013, 6 years ago, I was part of a gang of eight Senators--four 
Democrats and four Republicans--who wrote comprehensive immigration 
reform legislation. It passed the Senate 68 to 32. Unfortunately, the 
Republicans who controlled the House of Representatives refused to even 
consider the bill.
  The acting DHS Secretary, Kevin McAleenan, recently said that if our 
2013 bill had been enacted into law, ``We would have a very different 
situation. . . . We would be a lot more secure at our border.'' That is 
what he says now about a bill we passed 6 years ago.
  Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who supported the 
2013 bill, said: ``If that bill became law, most of the problems we're 
having today we'd not be having.'' There are ways to deal with this in 
a sensible, bipartisan way. Our comprehensive bill did that.
  Getting tough, threatening a wall, and cutting off foreign aid has 
backfired on this President. It has created failure when it comes to 
immigration.

[[Page S4834]]

  The Democrats have introduced the Central American Reform and 
Enforcement Act as a comprehensive response to our current border 
crisis. Let me tell you the highlights.
  It addresses root causes in the Northern Triangle countries that 
drive migrants to flee. It cracks down on traffickers who are 
exploiting migrants. It provides for in-country processing of refugees 
and expands third-country resettlements so migrants can find safe haven 
without making that dangerous and expensive trip to our border. It 
eliminates immigration court backlogs so asylum claims can be processed 
quickly. It expands the use of proven alternatives to detention, like 
family case management, so immigrants know their rights and show up for 
court.
  Democrats stand ready to work on smart, effective, and humane border 
security policies, but we need our Republican colleagues to condemn 
President Trump's cruel campaign against families and children and to 
work with us on a bipartisan basis.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Roberts). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                                Treaties

  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I am pleased, at long last, to speak on 
the floor today in support of four protocols amending the tax 
conventions between the United States and Spain, Switzerland, Japan, 
and Luxembourg.
  I have long been a strong supporter and proponent of these tax 
protocols and worked to advance them across multiple Congresses. In the 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I voted to advance Japan and Spain 
protocols three times and voted four times to advance the protocols 
with Luxembourg and the Swiss Confederation. I am pleased that, after 
too many years of waiting, the majority leader has finally decided to 
take up these protocols.
  I am a strong believer in the benefits these treaties provide our 
country. They play a critical role in relieving U.S. citizens and 
companies of double taxation, encouraging foreign investment in the 
United States, and enforcing U.S. tax law on those who seek to evade 
it. There are no downsides to these treaties.
  As I conveyed directly to Secretary Mnuchin, the Treasury 
Department's initial interaction on these treaties without consulting 
the Foreign Relations Committee was completely inadequate. This botched 
effort resulted in a completely avoidable delay in taking up these four 
protocols. However, I am pleased that Treasury responded quickly to my 
concerns, including providing a written commitment on behalf of the 
administration that the Foreign Relations Committee chair and ranking 
member would be consulted on any changes to the model tax treaty prior 
to negotiations based on a new model or new model provisions. 
Therefore, I support moving the tax treaties as expeditiously as 
possible and urge my colleagues to support them.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                                Medicare

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, last month, during National Nurses 
Week, Ballad Health, a healthcare system in East Tennessee, announced 
it would be giving several thousand nurses a raise.
  The head of Ballad Health announced a $10 million investment in pay 
increases for nurses.
  He said: ``Our nurses and those who work with them in the provision 
of direct patient care are heroes . . . however, it is also true that . 
. . we face significant national shortage of these critical health care 
providers.''
  Alan, the head of Ballad Health, said that his investment was, in 
part, because of a new rule proposed by the Trump administration in 
April.
  This new rule will update the formula that determines how much 
Medicare will reimburse hospitals for patient care. The formula takes 
into account, among other things, the cost of labor in that geographic 
area called the area wage index.
  This new rule attempts to level the playing field between hospitals 
in areas that have higher wages, and therefore are reimbursed at a 
higher rate than hospitals in areas with lower wages.
  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator, Seema 
Verma, wrote in a recent op-ed in The Tennessean in Nashville:

       Many stakeholders have raised concerns that the Medicare 
     hospital payment system disadvantages many rural hospitals. 
     Our proposed rule brings payments to rural and other low-wage 
     hospitals closer to their urban neighbors.

  I say this standing in the Senate Chamber, where we have the chairman 
and the ranking Democrat on the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry 
Committee--two experts on rural areas and rural hospitals in our 
country.
  In recent years, too many rural Americans have seen their local 
hospital close and their doctors leave town.
  Since 2010, 107 rural hospitals have closed across 28 States and 
another 637--about one-third of all rural hospitals--are at risk of 
closing.
  In Tennessee alone, 12 rural hospitals have closed since 2010.
  A recent survey by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard 
School of Public Health found that one in four Americans in rural areas 
couldn't access healthcare when they need it.
  This new rule will help rural hospitals keep up with the cost of 
providing care and keep those hospitals open.
  Alan from Ballad Health said: ``This proposed change indicates that 
Washington finally understands that rural health systems, like ours, 
have been historically unable to keep up with the real cost growth of 
nursing and other direct care providers.''
  Craig Becker, who leads the Tennessee Hospital Association, wrote in 
The Tennessean earlier this month that this rule ``is good news for our 
State's hospitals and will provide much-needed relief to many of them, 
especially those in rural areas'' and that the rule ``finally will 
address the significant inequities in the Medicare area wage index--the 
first meaningful effort by any administration to address this flawed 
system.''
  This new rule from CMS will help ensure Americans can access 
healthcare close by to their homes by leveling the playing field 
between urban and rural hospitals that rely on the Medicare hospital 
payment system.
  Last month, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions 
Committee, which I chair and Senator Murray of Washington State is the 
ranking Democrat, approved, by a vote of 20 to 3, a bipartisan package 
of 55 proposals from 65 Senators to lower healthcare costs that will 
help rural Americans.
  For example, the legislation would ban anticompetitive terms that 
large hospital chains sometimes use in contracts with employers, such 
as the so-called all-or-nothing clauses. These clauses increase prices 
for employers and patients and can block healthcare plans from choosing 
hospitals based on the care quality, the patient experience, or one 
hospital's competitive pricing.
  Banning all-or-nothing clauses will help level the playing field for 
smaller, independent hospitals who are not part of a large corporate 
chain.
  Another provision in the Lower Healthcare Cost Act of 2019 will 
expand technology-based healthcare to help Americans in rural areas 
have access to specialty care.
  I hope the Trump administration and CMS Administrator Verma will 
quickly finish this rule and give Americans better healthcare choices 
and outcomes at lower costs, especially in our rural areas.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, before our distinguished leader and 
chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee 
leaves, I want to thank him for his hard work.
  Having grown up in a small, rural community in Northern Michigan, I

[[Page S4835]]

can speak directly to how important healthcare services are. My mother 
was director of nursing at a small hospital, and I know, since that 
time, they have gone through many changes, barely holding on to the 
hospital. We have had a number of hospital closings and consolidations.
  There is important work that has happened in the health community. I 
want to congratulate the distinguished chairman and also indicate that 
the Presiding Officer and I, as we were doing the farm bill--it is my 
honor and privilege to work with the Presiding Officer--we were part of 
the solution, including language on telehealth in rural development to 
actually help expand services, and I think telehealth is an important 
way to do that as well.
  I thank the chairman for his comments.


                        Prescription Drug Costs

  Mr. President, 2 weeks ago, people in Michigan and across the country 
were getting ready to celebrate the Fourth of July.
  Families were deciding what to take on picnics and planning a day on 
the water, particularly if you were in Michigan, on the Great Lakes, 
and were finding the very best possible place to watch the community 
fireworks display--and we have many great fireworks displays.
  So what were drug companies doing to celebrate?
  Well, nothing so wholesome, I am afraid. Instead, they were raising 
prices on prescription medications--prices that are already the highest 
in the world.
  People in the United States have the highest prices in the world. 
Happy Independence Day.
  On July 1 alone, just 1 day, 20 companies ratcheted up the price of 
40 of their prescription drugs by an average of more than 13 percent--
just in 1 day.
  Those companies aren't alone. Already this year, prices have gone up 
for more than 3,400 different medications. The average price hike was 
five times the rate of inflation.
  I know families in Michigan, seniors in Michigan, would love to have 
their incomes, their wages go up five times the rate of inflation, but 
that certainly didn't happen. It is getting harder and harder for the 
average Michigan family to afford the medications they need to get and 
stay healthy, and I know that is true all across the country. I know 
because I hear about it every day.
  I know we hear these stories every day. I hear this from friends and 
family and certainly people as I am moving and traveling throughout 
Michigan. Some folks skimp on groceries--it is still happening today--
or put off paying their electric bill or their gas bill. Other people 
take their heart medication every other day instead of every day, 
which, by the way, is dangerous to do. Still others cut back on 
insulin, putting their lives at risk. We had testimony before the 
Finance Committee from a mom whose son did that and lost his life.
  Perhaps nobody has been hurt more than our seniors. Seniors tend to 
live on fixed incomes, as we know--pensions and Social Security. They 
also tend to have more medications than younger people, and costs 
quickly add up.
  In 2017 alone, the average price of brand-name drugs that seniors 
often take rose at four times the rate of inflation, according to 
AARP--four times the rate of inflation in 1 year--for the average 
medication a senior citizen is using. That is one of the reasons why 72 
percent of seniors in a recent poll said they are very concerned about 
the cost of their medications.
  It is absolutely shameful that people in America, one of the richest 
countries in the world, are going without the medicine they need to 
survive. We can fix that. This does not have to happen.
  I have always believed healthcare is a basic human right and that it 
includes medicine. Over and over again, I say on the Senate floor: 
Healthcare is not political. For a senior, for a family, for a child, 
it is personal. It is personal.
  We need to do something about it, and the No. 1 way we know we can 
bring prices down is to let Medicare negotiate--let Medicare 
negotiate--for prescription drugs. Harness the full power of tens of 
millions of seniors and people with disabilities across the country who 
are on Medicare to bring down the prices.
  We know negotiation can work because it works for the VA. We know 
that. The VA--Veterans' Administration--is allowed to negotiate the 
price of prescription drugs and, on average, saves 40 percent--40 
percent--compared to Medicare.
  In fact, if Medicare paid the same prices as the VA, it could have 
saved $14.4 billion on just 50 of the most commonly used drugs in 2016 
alone--in 1 year, $14.4 billion on just 50 commonly used medications. 
This is according, again, to the AARP.
  So what is stopping us?
  Well, we have the biggest lobby in the world called the 
pharmaceutical lobby in DC. The fact is, in 2018, there were 1,451 
lobbyists for the pharmaceutical and health product industry. That is 
almost 15 for every 1 of us as Senators.
  Their job--and they do it extremely well--is to stop competition and 
to keep prices high.
  Back in 2003, Medicare Part D was signed into law. I had worked very 
hard as a new Member of the Senate to have Medicare cover prescription 
drugs, but in the end, they blocked Medicare from harnessing the 
bargaining power of 43 million American seniors in order to bring down 
prices. Unfortunately, our Republican colleagues supported that.
  Sixteen years later, pharmaceutical companies are still doing 
everything they can to put profits before people. One of those people 
is Jack, who lives in Constantine, MI, and was diagnosed with cancer 
late last year.
  Imagine being told you have cancer and then being told the drug you 
need to treat it is going to cost you $15,000 the first month--$15,000. 
Jack was lucky. A generic drug became available. However, that drug 
still cost $3,400 the first month and $400 every month after that. That 
is about $8,000 a year. In Jack's words, it is an ``extreme 
hardship''--$8,000 a year--trying to figure out how to be able to have 
your cancer medication so you can continue to live.
  Jack added: ``I hope and pray you and your colleagues on both sides 
of the aisle would be able to get something done.''
  We can get something done, and we can do it quickly. The best thing 
is to let Medicare negotiate and harness the bargaining power of 43 
million people. There are various proposals that are good proposals and 
are being talked about. We can cap increases, but that doesn't cut 
prescription drug costs right now. If we are going to seriously talk 
about making medicine affordable and do it the right way--do it the 
right way and the way we know that will work--it is about letting 
Medicare negotiate. Let Medicare negotiate.
  I think it is time to take Jack's advice. We need to work together. 
We need to put people above profits. We need, very simply, rather than 
moving the chairs around on the Titanic, to harness the bargaining 
power of 43 million Americans and get the best price for them. They 
deserve it.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cruz). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                            Border Security

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, last Friday I joined the Vice President of 
the United States and a number of our colleagues on the Senate 
Judiciary Committee for a trip to the Rio Grande Valley and, 
specifically, to McAllen, TX.
  The Rio Grande Valley Sector, headquartered in McAllen, is ground 
zero for the humanitarian crisis on our southern border. I know some of 
our colleagues refused to acknowledge that this was indeed a 
humanitarian crisis on our border, but that seems to have waned in 
recent days in light of the overwhelming evidence. In fact, in 2014 
President Obama himself called it a humanitarian and security crisis, 
and it has gotten nothing but worse.
  Of all the sectors, it is head and shoulders above the rest in terms 
of apprehensions of people trying to enter the country illegally. In 
fact, 46 percent of all apprehensions along the southern border last 
month occurred in the Rio Grande Valley Sector. Across

[[Page S4836]]

the entire border, 68 percent of those apprehended in June were 
unaccompanied children or part of a family unit. In the Rio Grande 
Valley, that figure shot up to a whopping 79 percent.
  People may be asking themselves: Why are unaccompanied children and 
families--that is, an adult with a child--the ones predominantly coming 
across the border? It is because human smugglers know our laws better 
than we do, and they are exploiting the vulnerabilities in our asylum 
laws in order to make a lot of money. They charge roughly $5,000 to 
$10,000 per person whom they deliver across the border from Central 
America or from anywhere around the world. As a matter of fact, the 
Border Patrol told us on Friday, when we were in McAllen, that just in 
the last year they had detained people from 60--six-zero--different 
countries coming across the border at the Rio Grande Valley Sector. 
That is because these human smuggling networks are really worldwide. If 
you want to come from Bangladesh or Syria or Iran or Russia, all you 
have to do is make your way to Central America, hire one of these human 
smuggling networks, and they will work your way up across the border 
into the United States. This is a national security as well as a 
humanitarian crisis.
  As of July 1, the Rio Grande Valley Sector had 8,000 migrants in 
custody. They are overwhelmed, to be sure. This is placing a huge 
strain on our resources. Our Border Patrol stations were never designed 
to hold that many people.
  The men and women who apprehend and care for these migrants have been 
unfairly criticized and mischaracterized as bad guys, but last week I 
got to see once again that they aren't the real villain in this 
scenario. In fact, they are the heroes.
  The Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley, and those along 
the entire border, are pulling double duty as law enforcement officers 
and caregivers. They are hired to be law enforcement officers, but they 
have had to basically end up handing out juice boxes and diapers to 
unaccompanied children or family units because that is what we are 
seeing flood across our borders. One minute they are stopping fentanyl, 
heroin, and methamphetamine from coming across the border and they are 
stopping dangerous criminals from entering our country, and the next 
they are comforting crying babies and providing sustenance to children.
  Balancing an overcrowded facility and a constantly growing list of 
responsibilities is no easy task, but it is not their fault. It is 
Congress's fault because only Congress has the authority to provide the 
change in the laws necessary to stop this endless flood of humanity and 
this overwhelming of our resources, both human and 
infrastructure. These dedicated agents handle these demands with 
professionalism and compassion.

  My colleagues and I had the opportunity to hear from several of these 
agents, including Chief Patrol Agent Rudy Karisch. Chief Karisch talked 
about the work his agents do to provide quality care to those in 
custody, particularly medical care. In his sector alone, that equates 
to an average of 32 hospital runs each day--32 hospital runs each day--
to ensure that migrants receive the care they need.
  As these agents know too well, many of the people who cross the 
border do so because they are deeply familiar with the loopholes in our 
immigration laws, and they are eager to exploit them, as I described a 
moment ago.
  One of those loopholes is something called the Flores Settlement 
Agreement, which was created as a way to ensure that unaccompanied 
children don't remain in Border Patrol custody for long periods of 
time. It was expanded in, I believe, an unintended and unnecessary sort 
of way to effectively expand this protection for unaccompanied children 
to families as well.
  As a result, we can't detain those families for more than 20 days, 
the adults in particular. As a result, we see the dramatic increase in 
the number of families arriving at the border. Why not? What is to 
discourage them or dissuade them?
  As we learned during our visit, many of these migrants coming across 
the border are not families at all. Tim Tubbs is a deputy special agent 
in charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security 
Investigations, HSI. He discussed the rise in fraudulent families. In 
other words, by that I mean adults claiming to be the parent or family 
member of a child when, in fact, they are not related at all.
  In April, ICE HSI sent more than 400 employees to the southern border 
to investigate these fraudulent claims of family units. In the roughly 
90 days since, more than 352 fraudulent families were discovered across 
the southern border.
  He described one case of a Honduran man that illustrates why leaving 
these loopholes untouched is so dangerous. Again, only Congress can 
change that. He mentioned the fact that a 51-year-old man negotiated 
with a pregnant Honduran woman to purchase--to buy--her baby when it 
was born. For the equivalent of about 80 U.S. dollars, this man 
purchased her child and then traveled with human smugglers into the 
United States. If you have a child with you, it is a ticket to entering 
the United States and exploiting those gaps in our immigration laws.
  Deputy Agent Tubbs said HSI also uncovered an organization that 
recycled--recycled--approximately 69 children in order to smuggle 
people into the United States. In other words, once you successfully 
get to the United States, these children are sent back and used over 
and over again in an endless loop to smuggle more adults into the 
United States under the guise of being a family.
  We can point the finger of blame at the Border Patrol for being 
overwhelmed for not having facilities that were designed to handle the 
influx of this number of people, but that would be a terrible 
miscarriage of justice. The fact is, Congress needs to look in the 
mirror. The only people who can change the laws under our Constitution 
is the U.S. Congress and the President. The President has called time 
and again for Congress to fix these loopholes in our immigration laws 
to begin to stem the tide of humanity coming across our border.
  Our broken laws are fueling this behavior. Unless we take action to 
close those loopholes that invite more people to illegally enter into 
our country, the problem will only continue to grow.
  Amid calls from many of the so-called progressive Democrats running 
for President to do things that make illegally crossing the border 
legal--in other words, rather than protecting the sovereignty of our 
country, securing our borders, they want to actually make entry into 
the United States legal--the work being done by our Border Patrol and 
our Health and Human Services and other nongovernmental organizations 
at the border to keep our country safe and care for migrants in their 
custody cannot be overstated.
  The key to solving this crisis isn't opening the door to more illegal 
immigration; it is removing the pull factors that encourage people to 
come here in the first place. Of course, you can imagine, if the door 
were wide open, how many people would come from other countries into 
the United States at will. They would flood our country. That is part 
of what is happening now because they don't see any limits or any order 
or any rules being applied to who enters our country.
  We are a proud nation of immigrants. We naturalize almost 1 million 
people a year. This isn't about being anti-immigrant. Immigrants have 
made our country stronger. Legal immigration is the key distinction.
  Our friends across the aisle seem to be the champions of illegal 
immigration. We want our legal, orderly, lawful, rules-based 
immigration system to work so it can be fair to everybody, rather than 
let people who have been waiting in line for years to come into the 
country legally see people jump in line ahead of them and enter the 
country illegally. That is not fair to them, and that is not a rules-
based and lawful and orderly system of immigration.
  I have introduced legislation that will take major steps to achieve 
filling those gaps, plugging those holes in our asylum and immigration 
laws. It is called the HUMANE Act. This bill would close the Flores 
loophole, streamline the processing of migrants, improve standards of 
care, which we all want to do for individuals in our custody, and 
require additional training of customs and Border Patrol and 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees who work with children.

[[Page S4837]]

  This bill is, to my knowledge, the only bipartisan, bicameral 
solution that has been offered. It is bicameral. My friend and 
colleague in the House, Henry Cuellar, from Laredo, TX, and I have 
cosponsored this bill--bipartisan, bicameral.
  As we consider this and other legislative proposals, I hope our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle will finally get serious 
about taking the required action.
  Chairman Graham of the Judiciary Committee tried to organize a 
bipartisan trip to the border, believing that would be an important 
step in helping us witness together the facts on the ground and then 
hopefully work together to try to solve the problem.
  I am disappointed that none of our Democratic colleagues accepted his 
invitation. I hope this is not an indication of what our immigration 
reform discussions will look like moving forward: no desire to help, no 
desire to solve the problem, no desire to work together on a bipartisan 
basis. I hope that is not where we are, but I am fearful that is 
exactly where we are.
  I appreciate the Vice President taking the time to visit Texas once 
again and getting a chance to see the frontline challenges our officers 
and agents are facing. I would thank Mrs. Pence as well for 
accompanying the Vice President.
  Despite the challenges this humanitarian crisis has brought, the Rio 
Grande Valley remains a wonderful region, characterized by a thriving 
economy and a vibrant culture. You would be hard-pressed to find more 
generous people. They have been extraordinarily generous to the 
migrants who found their way to our front doorstep and are trying to 
take care of them in a compassionate sort of way, but, frankly, they 
are overwhelmed too.
  I thank the men and women of the Border Patrol, as well as local 
officials, businesses, and members of the border communities who 
continue to assist with this humanitarian crisis. It would be nice if 
Congress, on a bipartisan basis, would lift a finger to help.


                           Energy Innovation

  Mr. President, on another matter, this morning, the Energy and 
Natural Resources Committee held a hearing to consider numerous bills 
introduced to promote energy innovation in the United States. Breakneck 
changes in technology have fueled our economy, propelled our 
communications sector, and completely transformed each of our daily 
lives. Just this alone has done that. It is time to harness this 
ingenuity to revolutionize our energy sector. Smart policies can't 
prioritize only conservation, productivity, or economic power. We 
obviously need to strike the proper balance. You are not going to 
achieve that balance by imposing heavy-handed regulations and driving 
up costs for consumers.
  To put it another way, the Green New Deal will bankrupt our country 
and crush our innovation economy. Instead, we have to harness the power 
of the private sector and build partnerships to create real solutions.
  The NET Power plant in La Porte, TX, is a shining example of how 
public-private partnerships can drive next-generation energy solutions. 
NET Power has developed the first-of-its-kind power system that 
generates affordable, zero-emissions electricity from natural gas. 
Using their unique carbon capture technology, they have taken natural 
gas and made it emission-free.
  This technology is relatively young, and it is not ready to be scaled 
up yet at the national level. By investing in this type of research, I 
believe we can take serious strides to decreasing our carbon emissions.
  While renewable energy sources like wind, solar, hydropower, and 
biomass have come a long way in recent years, they are not alone 
sufficient to fuel our economy. As one witness said, the Sun doesn't 
always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow. So you need a baseload 
of electricity that has to be provided by other sources like natural 
gas powerplants like the one I saw.
  Last year, renewables accounted for 17 percent of our total energy 
sources. In Texas, as the Presiding Officer knows, we produced more 
electricity from wind turbines than any other State in the Nation. Yes, 
we are an oil and gas State, but we truly believe in the all-of-the-
above approach. Some people say that and don't really mean it, but we 
do it every day in Texas.
  While renewables account for 17 percent of our total energy sources, 
natural gas alone accounts for double that. Imagine if we could take 
natural gas, a plentiful energy source, inexpensive, and bring more 
projects like NET Power online. That is precisely why I introduced the 
LEADING Act with my colleagues, Senator Coons, Cassidy, and Sinema. 
This bill would incentivize research and development of carbon capture 
technology for natural gas and support energy innovation.
  This legislation was crafted with the understanding that reliable, 
affordable, and environmentally sound energy supplies are not mutually 
exclusive. You wouldn't know that sometimes by the rhetoric here in 
Washington.
  By incentivizing research into the development of new technologies, 
we can keep costs low for taxpayers, for seniors, for people on fixed 
incomes, while securing our place as a global leader in energy 
innovation. The goal of this legislation is to accelerate development 
and commercial application of natural gas carbon capture technologies. 
We should do this by requiring the Department of Energy to establish a 
program to develop cost-effective carbon capture technologies for 
natural gas power facilities.
  This legislation would also encourage partnerships with the National 
Laboratories, as well as universities and other research facilities to 
improve and strengthen our efforts. I am proud the LEADING Act passed 
the Energy and Natural Resources Committee this morning, and I hope we 
will have the opportunity to vote on this and other similar and related 
bills before the full Senate soon.
  We need smart energy policies that will strengthen our economy 
without bankrupting American families or turning the keys over to the 
central government to regulate our lives, to micromanage our lives. We 
don't need the Federal Government to tell us what to do. We need to 
follow the private sector and innovate our way to solve these problems, 
and that is exactly what the LEADING Act would do.
  When you implement policies that get government out of the way and 
let the experts do their job, you can be pro-energy, pro-innovation, 
pro-growth, and pro-environment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.


                     50th Anniversary of Apollo 11

  Mr. JONES. Mr. President, today I rise in absolute awe--remain in 
awe--of what happened in this country and in this world 50 years ago 
this week, and I am still inspired by the events of our space program 
50 years ago.
  Fifty years ago today, Americans of all ages, in every corner of this 
great Nation and, in fact, all over the world, stopped what they were 
doing to watch in complete awe as Apollo 11 launched from Cape Kennedy, 
headed toward the Moon. It is unbelievable what we saw, what we 
witnessed, that entire week.
  It would be the first time that humans would set foot on a celestial 
body other than the Earth. We would step foot on the Moon, which had 
captured the imagination of the world since time began, trying to reach 
that big, round object in the sky. It was a remarkable feat, made 
possible by the sheer determination and grit of the American space 
program and all of those who participated in it.
  I was just a kid growing up in Alabama at the time. I lived just 2 or 
3 hours south of what was known as Rocket City in Huntsville, AL. It is 
still known as Rocket City because of all of the work at NASA and in 
our space program today. It was a thriving metropolis then and even 
more so today. That is where all of the rockets were built. That is 
where the engines, the powerful engines that drove the rockets into 
space, were built. They were tested in Huntsville, AL. If you go there 
today, most of those stands are still there. Some of them are about to 
be used again. Those Saturn V rockets, the most powerful rocket engines 
man had ever created, were built in Huntsville, AL. They were the 
engines that would propel man to the Moon.
  I was absolutely mesmerized--absolutely mesmerized--by all things 
involving the space program. I still am. I can remember so many times 
when my maternal grandfather, Oliver Wesson, whom I called Paw-Paw, and 
I would just sit for hours and watch and listen

[[Page S4838]]

to the commentaries. We would watch the liftoffs. We would watch the 
splashdowns. Some of my best memories as a kid were literally sitting 
in front of a TV set with my granddad, watching the heroes I saw, the 
heroes I wanted to be, and the heroes America wrapped their arms 
around. At the time, there was nothing--nothing--and maybe to some 
extent today--more that I wanted to do than to be an astronaut and to 
go into space. It sounds corny for an old man like me to say that, but 
it is absolutely true.
  Those astronauts, the original Mercury Seven astronauts, were heroes 
in every sense of the word. I admire their courage, not having a clue 
when they blasted off from Florida whether they would return safely. 
And we did lose astronauts along the way.
  I did so many things. I read. I studied. I watched. I read papers. A 
lot of papers in my grammar, junior high, and high schools were all 
written about the space program.
  I am a memorabilia collector, as many of you may know, including of 
autographed baseballs. I have a few autographed baseballs by some of 
the astronauts, but the ones I like most are the newspapers. From that 
time, I could see that everybody could sense something was special. 
From the time Apollo 11 took off from Cape Kennedy, and the headlines 
in the Birmingham News read ``Man Sets Foot in Heavens,'' to the time 
they splashed down, I collected and saved every one of those 
newspapers. They are still at home, and they are prized possessions.
  We watched every single launch. We knew every single name of every 
astronaut. We stood there with intense, mesmerizing attention to every 
moment of those launches.
  It was something that captivated this entire country. It was a 
unifying time. It was a unifying force at a time when America needed 
it--the 1960s. For Apollo 11 in 1969, it was a time when we needed that 
sense of collective pride. We needed that sense of unification. We had 
gone through tough times during the civil rights era. We had gone 
through and we were still in the midst of the Vietnam war and all that 
tore this country asunder. We saw all that happened in 1968. We saw the 
deaths of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, but the 
space program was that one sense of pride.
  It didn't take a tragedy to unify America at that time. It took 
success. It took a build of what we do. It took our determination. It 
took knowing that we were the most patriotic, and, doggone, we were 
going to beat those Russians to the Moon. It sounds so corny these 
days, but it is absolutely the case. We were going to do it. It was 
going to be the United States of America, and, doggone, we did it.
  A lot has changed. Today, we are building on this legacy. We are 
still building on this legacy in space. We are building it in 
Huntsville, AL, and elsewhere with NASA, and we are going to continue 
to inspire a new generation--and more generations to come--of Alabamans 
and Americans, people all across this country, to help us reach even 
loftier heights.
  Yes, a lot has changed since 1969--50 years ago--but there is a 
reason that space flight and exploration of other worlds continue to 
capture our attention and to capture our imagination. It is because, at 
the end of the day, we are all dreamers. We always dream of those 
loftier heights. We always want to achieve. We always want to make this 
country great--consistently make this country great. We always want to 
reach for the stars, whether it is in our personal lives or whether it 
is collectively as a country. That is what we do. We are dreamers.
  Today, 50 years after the launch of Apollo--and on Saturday, we will 
celebrate 50 years of the actual steps on the lunar surface--we 
celebrate the achievement of a dream five decades ago, but a dream that 
started long, long before that, long before President Kennedy 
challenged America to put a man on the Moon.
  Looking back, 50 years ago was really just the beginning. It showed 
us that a true moonshot was possible, and, quite literally, it opened 
our world to new possibilities.
  Today, we are reaching for human spaceflight back to the Moon and to 
Mars. It is not just us; other countries are doing the same. We are 
looking for a return flight to the Moon for deeper exploration. We are 
receiving pictures from the farthest reaches of the galaxy, things we 
have never seen before. We have seen the surface. We have landed rovers 
on the Moon surface and have seen the pictures and have done the tests. 
It is just unbelievable. Who would have ever thought of this some 50, 
60 years ago when I was a kid?
  Today, we have a greater understanding of the universe around us and 
how we apply that knowledge to our own lives. We continue to reach for 
the stars.
  Yes, a lot has changed, but a lot hasn't. We still have divisions in 
this country. We still need that unifying voice. We still need that 
sense of pride that we can all--everybody--wrap our arms around.
  Today, we seem to be divided more than we were during the height of 
the Vietnam war. We seem to be divided over the very issues that my 
friend Senator Cornyn was talking about a moment ago with regard to 
immigration. We are divided over politics--a partisan divide. We are 
divided over gun violence. You name it; we are divided. So we need that 
unifying voice. We need something positive that we can all wrap our 
arms around.
  It is not just a holiday--and sometimes now, in today's world, 
unfortunately, even our holidays get divided. Even on our holidays, 
people go to their corners for political reasons, on both sides of the 
aisle. Make no mistake, folks, I am not casting a stone one way or 
another. I am casting it across this land. People are divided.
  We have to honor the visionaries of long ago, as well as the 
visionaries of today who think big, dream big, and give our Nation a 
collective sense of purpose and unity--a collective sense of unity and 
purpose--not a divisive sense of purpose for their own benefit but a 
collective sense of unity and purpose.
  We can honor those folks by setting aside all of the differences we 
see. We can honor those folks by not going to our corners every time a 
hot-button issue is mentioned either here on the floor of the Senate or 
in a tweet or in a Facebook post or in the national news. We can set 
that aside. We can set it aside by setting aside our differences.
  We honor folks by setting aside our differences today. We can honor 
those folks by remembering our collective pride and who we are as 
Americans, by making sure that all men and women are created equal and 
living up to the creed that we so proudly point to in the Declaration 
of Independence and the Constitution. We can do that again. We can 
honor these visionaries by coming together, reaching across the aisle 
and also reaching within our aisles to bring people together to talk 
about those things we can do together and with a sense of pride. We can 
do it by, once again, being the leader of the world and not trying to 
do everything alone but bringing our friends and allies to join us in 
these collective efforts to make us stronger.
  Yes, we owe those folks a great debt of gratitude for making America 
a leader in space, a leader in the world, and giving us all something 
to dream about. Let us now meet that challenge in a different way.
  Let us continue to explore space. Let us continue to reach for the 
stars, but let us dedicate ourselves to becoming that unified voice so 
that something we can all dream about is one America--one America--not 
a house divided but one America for everyone.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, since it is getting close to shutting-
down time, I ask unanimous consent to finish my entire remarks. I 
promise the Presiding Officer I will not be too long.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                            EB-5 Regulations

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I come to talk to my colleagues today 
about the deeply flawed EB-5 green card program.
  Several weeks ago, we learned that the Office of Management and 
Budget at the White House had completed its review of the new rules to 
update and reform the EB-5 Program. I have been an advocate for 
reforming this program for a long, long period of time. Several times I 
have even talked to the White

[[Page S4839]]

House about moving these regulations along.
  Now that they have been reviewed by OMB, for the rule to come into 
effect, it must now be published in the Federal Register. The rule was 
first proposed in January 2017. We have been waiting for it to be 
finished for 2\1/2\ years. I hope that President Trump now makes that 
happen as soon as possible.
  The proposed rule would raise the minimum investment amounts required 
under the program. It also makes sure that investments are directed to 
rural areas and truly high-unemployment areas, as Congress intended 
when EB-5 was created in 1990.
  Considering those points of where EB-5 ought to be concentrated and 
now looking at how they have been diverted from the original intent of 
Congress is the very best reason for these rules to be put in place--to 
get us back to square one, the original intent of the law.
  Since the 1990s, rampant and abusive gerrymandering of the EB-5 
Program's targeted employment areas has undermined that congressional 
intent, which was to direct it toward high-unemployment areas and rural 
areas. Instead of channeling investment to rural and high-unemployment 
areas, EB-5 has become a source of cheap foreign capital for big-city, 
big-moneyed interests. The targeted employment area reforms in the 
proposed rule would take a first step toward refocusing EB-5 investment 
in the way that Congress originally intended in that 1990s legislation.
  In addition to channeling investment away from the areas of our 
country that need it the most, this is what has happened. The EB-5 
Program has been plagued with other forms of fraud and abuse, and this 
has been going on for years and years. There are examples of EB-5 fraud 
from all over the country, and I am going to give just a few examples 
as a reminder to the President why these rules need to be put into the 
Federal Registry right away.
  In Chicago, a businessman defrauded 290 investors of $150 million in 
funds that were supposed to be used for construction of a hotel and 
conference center near O'Hare Airport.
  In Palm Beach, FL, a real estate developer and real estate attorney 
teamed up to defraud 60 Chinese and Iranian EB-5 investors of $50 
million. Instead of that money being used to fund the construction of a 
proposed hotel, it was instead used to pay personal taxes and purchase 
a 151-foot yacht.
  In Wisconsin, a businessman used over half of the $7.6 million in 
funds he had solicited from investors to pay for personal expenses, 
including Green Bay Packers tickets and the purchase of a Cadillac 
Escalade.
  I could go on all day.
  In May of 2017, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted 
an internal fraud assessment and found 19 cases of national security 
concerns within the EB-5 Program. Those are national security concerns. 
The No. 1 responsibility of the Federal Government is to protect the 
American people, and that involves national security. These cases 
related to terrorism, espionage, and information and technology 
transfer.
  Unfortunately, multiple bipartisan efforts in the Congress to modify 
the EB-5 Program have been consistently stymied by powerful special 
interest groups and big-moneyed interests. Because I have been in the 
middle of those battles--and they are bipartisan battles--over the 
years, I know exactly where these big-moneyed interests are coming from 
and the special interest groups that keep this program from being 
reformed.
  Now we have an opportunity for one person--the President of the 
United States--through regulation, to reform this program in a way that 
would be very helpful. So that makes the publication of the EB-5 reform 
rules even more important. I applaud President Trump and the 
administration for getting the proposed rule to this point, but now it 
is time for the President and his team to finish the process and make 
sure the final rule goes into effect as soon as possible.
  Iowans and all Americans who live in rural and high-unemployment 
areas deserve to have the investment that Congress intended when the 
EB-5 Program was created almost 30 years ago. President Trump and his 
administration now have a chance to finally address some of the very 
serious flaws in this program that have hurt rural America. We have 
been waiting for these reforms for over 2 years. It is time for this 
final rule to be published, and it needs to happen right now, if not 
sooner.


                                Treaties

  Mr. President, I rise today for the purpose of expressing my support 
for the passage of the resolutions of advice and consent that the 
Senate is considering this week with respect to the protocols to our 
tax treaties with Spain, Switzerland, Japan, and Luxembourg.
  Tax treaties are a very integral part of the architecture of our tax 
system. For example, these treaties would help define the rules of the 
road for cross-border investment and trade for U.S. individuals and 
companies doing business in one of our treaty partner countries, like 
Spain, as an example, and for individuals and companies in those 
countries doing business in the United States.
  The protocols before us today provide important updates to the tax 
treaties with these four countries. In general, several of them lower 
withholding taxes and include provisions to prevent double taxation. 
Several provide mechanisms for resolving disputes in a timely manner 
through mandatory binding arbitration. In addition, they provide 
important updates to the exchange of information provisions in the 
underlying treaties.
  I am aware of the concerns that have been raised regarding the 
standard used to provide for such exchange of information. The standard 
provided for in these protocols is that relevant information shall be 
exchanged between the United States and its treaty partners. That 
relevant standard has been used throughout our treaty network for 
decades and is also the standard used in U.S. domestic tax laws.
  This issue was raised last month in the Foreign Relations Committee, 
and an amendment was offered to the resolution regarding the protocol 
with Spain that would have required a narrower standard. That amendment 
was appropriately defeated. If the issue is raised again as an 
amendment here on the floor, I will urge my colleagues to vote no on 
the amendment.
  These four protocols have been awaiting action by the Senate for many 
years. In some cases, it has been nearly a decade. It is important that 
the Senate fulfill its constitutional duty to provide its advice and 
consent on tax treaties and protocols. It is also important that our 
treaty partners know that the United States really values these 
agreements and negotiates these treaties and protocols in good faith, 
with the expectation that they will be implemented without lengthy 
delays.
  Our actions on these protocols are also timely, given the 
international effort to address the effects of digitalization on the 
international tax system.
  For the past several months, representatives from the Treasury 
Department have been actively engaged in negotiations at the 
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. These talks are 
focused on finding a multilateral agreement to these issues and 
avoiding the regrettable unilateral approach that some countries have 
taken--most notably, France. Ultimately, if these negotiations are 
successful, there could be a need for the United States to update its 
bilateral income tax treaties.
  It is important that the Senate take action on the pending protocols 
and send a strong signal to our treaty partners that the international 
tax agreements are a priority for our country.
  In addition to moving forward on these four protocols, we have three 
new income tax treaties with Chile, Hungary, and Poland that are 
awaiting action by the Foreign Relations Committee. I urge Chairman 
Risch and Ranking Member Menendez to use the wave of momentum that is 
building this week to move forward on those three new treaties and send 
them to the floor of the Senate as soon as possible.
  I thank the chairman and ranking member for moving these protocols to 
the floor. These treaties were reported favorably by the committee by 
voice vote without amendment, and their consideration is long overdue.
  I thank Leader McConnell and Minority Leader Schumer for their 
efforts to bring these protocols up for consideration on the floor this 
week.

[[Page S4840]]

  I urge all of my colleagues to vote yes on these resolutions of 
advice and consent.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________