May 22, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 86 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
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Senate Legislative Agenda (Executive Session); Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 86
(Senate - May 22, 2019)
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[Pages S3026-S3028] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] Senate Legislative Agenda Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, we are now 5 months into the new 116th Congress. During that 5-month period, the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has passed a series of bills on issues important to the overwhelming majority of the American public. They include legislation to reduce the death toll from gun violence by requiring universal criminal background checks and legislation to end the millions and millions of dollars of secret money flowing into elections and polluting our politics. The House legislation includes a bill to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work, and the House has also passed legislation to strengthen the protections under the Violence Against Women Act. Those are just some of the initiatives the House has passed in the last 5 months. Here in the Senate, what has the Senate done on those important issues? What has the Senate done with the legislation that the House has passed and is now sitting in this body? We have done nothing--zip. We haven't taken up any of those bills. In fact, the Senate Republican leader has refused to allow this body to consider those important measures. What are we doing instead? Instead, the Senate is consuming all of its time not on the matters most important to the public but on debating and confirming judicial and executive branch nominees. Here is the thing: If you look at these judicial nominees--let's just take the ones we are looking at this week--you will find a very dangerous pattern. This week, in looking at the five nominees, the pattern is selecting judges who will strip away women's reproductive choices and who will strip [[Page S3027]] away and potentially eliminate the rights under Roe v. Wade. That is the clear pattern. If you look at the records of these nominees, they indicate hostility toward a woman's right to choose and hostility to Roe v. Wade. Take, for example, Stephen Clark. He is the nominee for the Eastern District of Missouri. He drew the outrageous comparison between Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade, including Roe as bad law. He also opposed provisions in the Affordable Care Act that would expand access to contraception to help people avoid unintended pregnancies. Then there is the nomination of Kenneth Bell to be a judge in the Western District of North Carolina. He has argued that abortion rights, the pro-choice position, is ``indefensible'' and went on to say that ``there is no middle ground'' on this issue. In other words, he is another judge who would deny women the right of reproductive choice, and the list goes on if you look at the list of judges who are before the Senate this week. This would be alarming at any point in time, but the timing of these nominations is no coincidence. Just in the last couple of months, we have seen States around the country passing laws to take away a woman's right to choose. Let's take a look at Alabama. In the case of Alabama, they passed a law that denies a woman's right to choose to have an abortion even in the case of rape or incest. Under the Alabama law, doctors who perform abortions could be locked up in prison for up to 99 years--a prison term longer than that of a rapist. We also have Candidate Trump arguing that not only should doctors be punished but women who exercise their rights to reproductive choice should be punished too. Meanwhile, in addition to Alabama, five other States have passed laws that would outlaw abortion at a very early stage--in fact, at a stage of pregnancy when many women do not realize they are yet pregnant, especially if the pregnancy is unplanned and unexpected. I think people recognize how outrageous it is to see State legislators and other elected officials who normally take the position that the government has no place in regulating or being involved in any aspect of our lives, who then take the position that they want the government right between a woman and her most sensitive decisions with respect to reproductive choice. We have legislators who say they don't want the government protecting people from air pollution. They don't want to pass any regulations to protect people from air pollution or water pollution. We have some legislators who say they don't want any legislation to protect consumers from predatory lending or other scams in the economy. They don't think the government has a role there, but, by God, when it comes to interfering with a woman's right to choose, they want the government smack in the middle of that decision. That is what Alabama has done. That is what the other five States have done. Now we have judicial nominees coming before the Senate who are going to sign off potentially on those State laws. It gets even more alarming because we also see a pattern from the judicial decisions that have been made and from the records of a lot of the nominees who are before us now of judges or people being appointed, who not only want to strip away a woman's right to reproductive choice but who actually want to go after programs that help provide family planning, programs that help prevent unwanted and unplanned pregnancies. So, on the one hand, States are passing these laws restricting a woman's right to choose, but at the same time they are saying that they want to get rid of or severely limit programs that prevent unintended pregnancies. Looking at the figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention--and they keep statistics on all sorts of health indicators--you will find that from 2006 to the year 2015, there was a 24-percent drop in the number of abortions in the United States. There was a 24-percent drop in the years between 2006 and 2015. Researchers who have looked into this have determined that the biggest driver behind this decline in abortion has been increased access to contraception and family planning. Yet the Trump administration is going after and targeting for elimination the very programs that help reduce unintended pregnancy and, therefore, also help reduce abortions. So this administration is trying to take a hatchet to title X. They want to essentially take Planned Parenthood out of the equation, even though Planned Parenthood provides family planning services to 4 in 10 women. As we all know, Planned Parenthood is barred by law from spending any Federal dollars on abortion. They spend most of their time counseling their patients on family planning and helping people make decisions about contraception to avoid unplanned pregnancies. This administration tried to target the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. I know that because it went after a program in Baltimore City that has been very successful in reducing teenage pregnancy. In fact, if you look at Baltimore from a period during the year of 2000 to 2016, we saw a 61-percent decline in teen pregnancy. That was as a result of a number of programs, easier access to contraception, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program that was targeted for elimination by the Trump administration, and, after the Affordable Care Act went into effect, the ability to access contraception as a result of the Affordable Care Act. All of these measures to help prevent unplanned pregnancies have also helped to significantly reduce the number of abortions. Yet we have an administration that wants to go after those family planning programs, and we have a number of judges who would side with the administration. I will mention a couple of important family planning programs. One is title X. This administration wanted to severely undermine title X. It has not been successful. Why not? Because it was taken to court. So far, the courts have stayed the administration's decision. Let's look at the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, which I mentioned, that is so important in Baltimore. The administration wanted to eliminate it, and so we had to go to court. The judge said that it was an illegal action--an unauthorized action--by the Trump administration. Let's look at the contraception provisions--the provisions on access to contraception--in the Affordable Care Act. This administration wants to wipe them out. The only reason they are still there is due to the courts. The courts have been very important not only in protecting a woman's right to choose but in protecting these important family planning programs that have prevented unintended pregnancies and, therefore, have also reduced the number of abortions. Now we have a whole bunch of judges who are coming before the Senate who would rule differently in all of these cases. That is why I believe the American people need to really be alarmed about what is happening here. We are not acting on important measures that are coming out of the House that I mentioned earlier. What we are doing is spending the full time passing through judges--in a factory-like procedure here--who will undermine a woman's right to choose and go after important family planning programs. We have a lot to think about, and I hope all of our colleagues will recognize what is happening here. I will go back to where I started. Instead of churning out judges who are going to strip away the rights of women--and other nominees who side with big corporations against consumers--let's take up the legislation that is in front of us right now that has come over from the House. We have before us H.R. 8. It is the Bipartisan Background Checks legislation. It was bipartisan because it came out of the House on a bipartisan vote. It was bipartisan because, if you ask the public, 85 percent of the public is in favor of the simple idea that we should have criminal background checks and that the people who have committed crimes shouldn't be able to go to gun shows and purchase guns. If you have a record of posing a danger to the community, my goodness, why would we want to put a gun in your hand and endanger the community? [[Page S3028]] It is a pretty straightforward piece of legislation, and it has been in this Senate for 83 days now. For 83 days, it has been sitting right here in the Senate, but the Republican leader will not let us take it up to debate it or to vote on it. I mentioned another bill that came over from the House that would get rid of secret money in politics. What do I mean by that? After the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, we had two things happen. One was that just a flood of corporate money flew into elections because, before that decision, corporations could not spend money directly to try to elect public officials. The Congress had previously passed a law to prevent that, and previous Supreme Courts had upheld that ban on corporate spending to try to elect public officials. In Citizens United, they decided, well, corporations are people, too, for the purpose of spending money in elections. So they got rid of that law. If you read that opinion, even those who voted to overturn those laws said that what is going to protect the system will be the public's knowing who will be spending all of that money. They said: All right, we are going to let corporations spend all of that money. We are going to let 501(c)(4)s spend all of that money. Do you know what? The public will know, and that will serve as a check on the system. That will provide transparency, and the transparency will provide accountability. Guess what. It didn't happen. In fact, the Senate's Republican leader has been one of the arch opponents of any kind of transparency and disclosure. I have had a long-running back-and-forth with him on this issue because, even if you look at the proponents of the terrible Citizens United decision, as I said, those Justices said: Well, transparency will take care of it. The reality is that people spend millions and millions of dollars in secret money in elections. Let me just tell people that it may be secret to the public, but it is not a big secret to the candidates who are running. It is not a big secret to them who is spending millions of dollars to try to get them elected or to defeat them. That is a farce. Years ago, when I was in the House, I authored something called the DISCLOSE Act. It passed the House. It died here by one vote. We got 59 votes on an almost identical bill. It didn't get 60. So we still have secret money in politics today. My view is that voters have a right to know who is spending millions of dollars to try to influence their decisions, and that is a big part of the bill that came over from the House 74 days ago. It is called the For the People Act. It has a lot of other important provisions in it to protect our elections and important provisions to make sure that we uphold the right to vote. Among the important provisions is the DISCLOSE Act--to get rid of secret money in politics. That is sitting over here and has been for 74 days. What else has the House sent over? It sent over the Equal Pay Act, which has a pretty straightforward idea, and I think most Americans agree with it. In fact, public surveys show that people agree that if you put in an equal day's work--if you put in the sweat equity, if you do the job--and if a woman does the job just like the man does the job, by God, obviously, she should get paid the same amount. It is a pretty simple concept. That came over from the House. In fact, it came over from the House just 55 days ago. For 55 days, it has been sitting here. Another bill that has come over from the House also relates to making sure that we address issues that are important to all of us, but it has specifically dealt with the Violence Against Women Act. What we say within the Violence Against Women Act, in the House bill, is that if you have someone who is abusing you in a relationship--it doesn't have to be your spouse; it could be someone else who is abusing you in a relationship--they shouldn't be able to go out and buy a gun. What we have seen from the sad statistics is that those kinds of situations often escalate into somebody's getting killed when someone is in a relationship in which one of the people in that relationship is abusing the other. Just as we prevent the sale of guns to spouses who have records of domestic violence and domestic abuse, we should extend that prohibition on running out and getting guns to other abusive relationships. That was the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, and it passed out of the House 47 days ago. So, 47 days ago, the House passed the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. It passed the Paycheck Fairness Act--equal pay for equal work--55 days ago. It passed the For the People Act 74 days ago, which includes the provision to get rid of secret money in politics. It also passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act--to reduce the death toll from gun violence in our country--83 days ago. All of those bills are sitting right here in the Senate. We could be debating them today if the Republican leader would allow them to come up. Instead of taking up that important work, we are here, acting like those in a factory who churn out more judges who have records of stripping women of their right to reproductive choice. It is a very, very dark time in the Senate, and I hope that we will get about the business of the American people and stop stripping women of their constitutional rights. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The Senator from Missouri.
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