Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, later today the Senate will vote on the confirmation of Michael Brennan to the Seventh Circuit over the objections of one of his home-State Senators, Ms. Baldwin, who has not returned a blue slip on his nomination.
It is an abject breach of senatorial courtesy that both parties have long respected. In fact, the seat Mr. Brennan will fill on the Seventh Circuit has been held open for 6 years by the senior Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Johnson, via the same process, the blue slip. When Barack Obama was President and when Patrick Leahy was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, we Democrats obeyed the blue slip, and it led that seat to be vacant for 6 years. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, the Republican majority will ignore the blue-slip rights of the Democratic Senator even though it fervently believes that we ought to listen to the rights of the Republican Senator from Wisconsin. The actions of the Republican leader erode one of the few remaining customs in the Senate that forces consultation and consensus on judicial nominations.
In the grand scheme of things, the vote may seem to some of my colleagues on the other side like a small one--one judge for one circuit court. But in truth, the vote on Mr. Brennan is a death by a thousand cuts of the grand tradition of bipartisanship and comity in the U.S. Senate. I know all too well that there is plenty of blame to go around on both sides of the aisle, but if we don't take a step back now, the Senate will soon become a rubberstamp or graveyard for Presidential nominees, rendering our advice and consent nearly meaningless.
I understand the pressure on the leader from the hard right. They want judges who are not bipartisan. They wanted a judge in this case who did not go through a bipartisan judicial panel, composed of both Democrats and Republicans, who have always sent us judges from Wisconsin. Two were sent, but, instead, Brennan, who couldn't get through the panel, was sent.
This is so wrong. This goes beyond what we have seen done before. When Leader McConnell changed the rules on the Supreme Court--which we didn't--many on the other side, I understand, said: Well, that is tit for tat because Democrats changed the rules on the lower courts. But the blue-slip tradition has always been obeyed. We didn't change that. We could have. We could have stuffed through our nominees with no Republican support, but we didn't.
I hope for the sake of comity that one or two of my Republican colleagues will stand up and vote against Mr. Brennan's nomination, not because of his beliefs--which they may agree with, for all I know--but for the sake of the Senate, for the grand tradition of the Senate, for the right afforded to every Senator to consult on judges from their State, minority or majority, and most of all, for the traditions that have held this body together for more than two centuries and separated it from the more partisan Chamber on the other end of the Capitol. Release of American Hostages in North Korea
Madam President, on another matter--North Korea--early this morning, the three American hostages who were being held in North Korea were returned home. It was great to see them come home, back in America, back with their families.
It is a wonderful thing, but the exultation by the President and others of the greatness of North Korea doing this evades me. We can't be fooled into giving the North Korean regime credit for returning Americans who never should have been detained in the first place. American citizens are not diplomatic bargaining chips. While we celebrate the return of the three Americans, for the sake of their freedom and their families, we should not feel as if we need to give Kim Jong Un anything in return.
It is troubling to hear President Trump say that Kim Jong Un treated the Americans excellently. Kim Jong Un is a dictator. He capriciously detained American citizens, robbed them of their freedom, and didn't let them go home to their families. Their release should not be exalted; it should be expected. It is no great accomplishment of Kim Jong Un to do this.
When the President does this, he weakens American foreign policy and puts Americans at risk around the world. If our adversaries look at what the President has said in reaction to Kim Jong Un, why shouldn't they detain American citizens and get a huge pat on the back when they release them?
It is like so many of the President's foreign policy actions--quick, not thought through, related to show and to ego. If our adversaries from Iran to China who already wrongfully hold Americans think they can get something--praise, standing, diplomatic concessions--by unlawfully detaining Americans in their country, you can bet they will try. These are bad people, the leaders of these dictatorships like Iran.
So I caution the administration. We are all rooting for diplomacy to succeed on the Korean Peninsula, but we cannot sacrifice the safety of American citizens around the world in exchange for an illusory veneer of peace. I worry that this President, in his eagerness to get acclaim and a photo op, will strike a quick and bad deal, not a strong and lasting one. President Trump and Secretary Pompeo must seek strong, verifiable, enduring commitments from North Korea to disarm. Nuclear Deal with Iran
Madam President, now on oil prices and Iran, earlier this week the President exited the Iran deal. We all know that. Even as someone who opposed the deal--which I did because I thought it was flawed; I thought President Obama and Secretary Kerry should have waited longer and given more time for the sanctions to bite, and we would have gotten a stronger and better deal. I still believe that. But once the deal is in place, it seems to me that we should not be focused on undoing this deal. We don't want a nuclear Iran. That is one of the reasons I opposed the deal. But there is no report from anybody, including our own intelligence, that Iran is violating that part of the deal.
In the meantime, Iran is doing some very bad things. It is not a country we should admire or respect in any way--the leadership, anyway. They are trying to develop an ICBM. They are creating havoc with the Houthis in Yemen. Worst of all, in my opinion, the greatest immediate danger is that there are Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops in Syria, right near Israel's border, and hundreds, if not thousands, of deadly rockets that Iran gives to Hezbollah, a militant terrorist organization. They placed them in Lebanon where they have hegemony in certain areas. That is the greatest danger to Israel. That is the greatest danger to peace in the Middle East. Down the road, it will be the greatest danger to the United States, at least in the next several years.
What we should be doing is not undoing this deal right now but creating new sanctions and telling Iran that if they continue giving missiles to Hezbollah, if they continue sending troops to Iran, if they continue their activities with the Houthis and the placing of additional missiles, we will put on additional sanctions. That is the smartest thing to do, and that is what is most in need now, given America's and the world's security needs. But we need our allies to do it.
Sanctions don't work when they are unilateral. We learned that in South Africa years ago with apartheid. Only when the sanctions became broad and enacted by many nations did they have an effect. It is the same situation here.
The United States, by pulling out of the agreement and getting our European allies' noses way out of joint, makes it far harder to enact new sanctions on what I perceive to be the greatest dangers we face.
There is one other thing Americans should realize about pulling out of the Iran deal, and that is it affects gasoline prices across the country. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, gas prices will rise over the summer, and the average American family can expect to pay $200 more this driving season than last. The Iran deal is certainly some part of that. For middle-class families, $200 this summer is more than the tax break they will get, if they get one at all.
When President Trump makes rash decisions without consideration of the consequences and no coherent strategy, which is what has happened with Iran, the American people pay the price in many different ways: security, the declining ability to find and go after the greatest dangers we face with Iran, and money out of our own pocketbooks with an increase in gasoline prices. One of the ways Americans will pay for President Trump's unthought-out decision to exit the Iran deal will be at the gas pump this summer.
So again, to repeat, I didn't think the deal was a good deal; still, I am proud I voted no. But at this time, in this place, and for so many reasons, pulling out precipitously without our allies involved does not achieve anything, does not achieve the goals we need to achieve, and hurts Americans in different ways. Prescription Drug Prices
Madam President, finally, on prescription drugs, tomorrow the President will give a speech on another important topic in American healthcare: the high cost of prescription drug prices. He is right to give that speech. Americans suffer from the highest prescription drug costs in the developed world. On average, Americans pay over $850 a year on prescription drugs, compared to an average of $400 across 19 other industrialized nations. Remember, that is on average.
If you are sick and need one specific new drug on the market for your condition, you could be paying in the tens of thousands of dollars per month for that drug. Sometimes that new drug isn't much different from one already on the market and hasn't been proven to be more effective. Sometimes pharmaceutical companies intentionally corner the market on the drug and raise prices by absurd percentages. We saw that with Mr. Shkreli, and there is no cop on the beat to stop the Shkrelis of the world. It is outrageous, venal, and hurts seniors, the infirm, and regular middle-class families every day.
We ought to do something about it. That is why Democrats make lowering the cost of prescription drugs a central pillar of our Better Deal agenda. We propose that there should be greater transparency from companies when they are proposing to increase the prices of their drugs. We propose allowing the government to negotiate for lower drug prices and to establish an office that would go after the most egregious companies and actors who are raising prices on drugs for no reason--price-gouging enforcement. If we were in the majority, these policies would be our top priorities.
Hopefully, President Trump will get on board. In fact, I agree with a lot of what President Trump has already said on the issue. He said that the drug companies are ``getting away with murder'' and in the State of the Union Address he said:
One of my greatest priorities is to reduce the price of prescription drugs. Prices will come down.
President Trump's rhetoric focuses on a problem that we have to address, and we hope sincerely that tomorrow he will follow through on that rhetoric with a tough and detailed plan to achieve what we both wish to achieve. But so far, President Trump has taken little action to downgrade the price of prescription drugs. He installed a former top executive of a pharmaceutical company, Alex Azar, to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Now, 6 months before the election, without consulting Democrats or Republicans on the Hill, he will give a speech tomorrow on his plan to bring down the cost of prescription drugs.
We welcome the newfound attention. We sincerely hope the President outlines a clear, strong plan in detail about how to tackle this incredible problem. Another ``all hat and no cattle'' speech will not get the job done. More rhetoric, more half measures will not move the needle.
We need to do something bold and effective to bring down the outrageous cost of prescription drugs, and we Democrats have a good, strong proposal. We hope he will embrace it.
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