National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I come to the floor to mark a very unfortunate date. We are recognizing the 2-year anniversary of the shooting at Pulse nightclub on June 12, and on Sunday, June 17, we are going to mark the 3-year anniversary of the shooting at a church in Charleston. The killer in Charleston murdered nine people attending a Bible study. The killer in Orlando murdered 49 people who were at a nightclub.

I just came from my office meeting with one of the survivors of the Pulse nightclub shooting.

About 93 people are killed every day from guns. That is a mixture of suicides, homicides, and accidental shootings. That means that in the 731 days since the Pulse nightclub shooting, we have had somewhere around 70,000 people killed by guns in this country. That is a statistic that has no comparison anywhere else in the world. In the United States, we have about 20 times the number of people on a per capita basis who are being killed by a gun than the average OECD competitor nation. Something is going on here that is different than what is happening anywhere else.

As my colleagues know, I try to come to the floor every few weeks to talk about who these victims are to give a sense about the lives that are cut short, all the promise that is erased from this Earth 93 times every single day because of what is happening inside the epidemic of gun violence and to try to relate to people how furious this mounting cavalcade of those left behind is by our inaction. Remember, we have done virtually nothing meaningful since the tragedy in my State at Sandy Hook, and thus the slaughter continues.

Melvin Graham's sister, Cynthia Graham Hurd, was murdered in Charleston in that shooting. Earlier this year, he talked about how angry he is that Congress has done nothing meaningful to try to affect the reality of gun violence in this Nation. He said:

You would think that this would be the time. Each time something happens, you think, this is the time we're going to get some action, some movement, some unity in Washington to do something. . . . And each time they have let me down, they have failed me. They've shown me . . . that they simply do not care.

On the evening of June 17, 2015, Dylan Roof walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and killed nine people. He had a criminal record and shouldn't have had a gun, but because of a loophole in the background checks law that allows for a gun seller to transfer weapons to someone if the background check takes a long time, Roof was able to get a weapon, immediately go to this church, and kill nine people. The reality is, FBI data indicates that over the last 5 years, 15,000 people have been sold weapons who shouldn't have gotten weapons under this loophole. That means 15,000 people are walking around the United States today with firearms who have criminal records because their background check took 3 or 4 or 5 days. The reason background checks take a long time--most of them take about 10 minutes--is some people have complicated criminal histories, like Dylan Roof did. So it simply belies commonsense to say you are going to give a gun to somebody simply because they have a complicated criminal background and it takes a few days to sort out. This is an example of a crime that may not have been committed had our laws been different.

Until October of 2017, the Pulse nightclub shooting, which happened on June 12, 2 years ago, was the deadliest in U.S. history. These massacres that reach that tragic landmark of being the worst in U.S. history don't last for long, given the increasing pace of gun homicides in this country. This was an individual who was known to law enforcement, who had been in the system because of activity on line with respect to his connection with terrorist groups. Had we had a comprehensive no-fly ban in this country that gives the Attorney General the power to put people who are having conversations with terrorist groups on the list of those who can't buy guns, it is also very possible that Omar Mateen, the shooter in this case, would never have been able to buy a gun, killing 49 people and injuring 53 others. This is another example of our laws being inadequate to meet the moment.

Unfortunately, this country tends to only pay attention to the issue of gun violence when these mass shootings happen. They are truly soul- crushing, community-changing events. Newtown, CT, is never ever going to recover from what happened there.

Every single day, whether or not we see something scrolled across the bottom of our cable news screen about a shooting, there are still upward of almost 100 people dying every single day--people such as Malachi Fryer, who was 6 years old when he walked into a room where a handgun was left unattended on a table. He took the gun back into his bedroom to play with it, and he accidentally shot himself. He was 6 years old, and he had just finished first grade in Elizabethtown, KY.

His school principal said:

Malachi was special in many ways. He had a smile that warmed your heart, a contagious laugh and a positive attitude. He was a little comedian and the classroom was his stage. He loved people and he didn't meet a stranger. Basketball was his pleasure and joy. Our hearts are heavy because a piece of our New Highland family is gone.

Age 6, Malachi is one of the victims of the many accidental shootings that happen in this country.

In my State, Antonio Robinson was recently ready to graduate from Stamford Academy. He was a former cocaptain of the Stamford High School football team. He was standing in an overpass, and he was shot to death. His sister said: He never bothered anybody, so he never thought he had to dodge or hide from bullets. He was on his cell phone standing at an overpass. He wasn't even aware he was about to be shot.

His former coach and sixth grade teacher said:

He wasn't the biggest kid out there [on the basketball court], but he played with a lot of heart and soul. He gave it everything he got.

Another one of his football coaches said that he was ``very respectful.'' He was just an ``awesome, awesome kid,'' just 18 years old. Antonio Robinson is gone.

Ryan Dela Cruz was 17 years old, from Seattle, WA. He was a senior at Franklin High School. He dreamed of a career in the Marine Corps. He and his friends went to a local park one recent Friday night. They encountered another group, words were exchanged, and shots were fired. Ryan Dela Cruz isn't living any longer.

He was described by his high school principal as ``a sweet, thoughtful, inquisitive, and compassionate young man. . . . He was determined to commit his life to the service of others.''

His father didn't want him to go into the Marines. His father was worried about the safety of his son, but, increasingly, you couldn't change Ryan's mind. He was committed to serve this country. What Ryan said to his father sticks with his dad. When he raised the issue of Ryan's safety, Ryan said to his father:

Papa, wherever you are, it's God's will. If you die, you die.

Ryan Dela Cruz died at age 17.

Bob Stone was 64 years old when he died. From South Beloit, IL, he was a community pillar, longtime member of the city council, commissioner of the police and fire department. He and his wife Rebecca were known throughout the community because they had put together a festival every year in town. They were the organizers. It started with Rebecca's parents back in 2006, and they kept it up, something to bring the community together.

This story is particularly hard to hear because it is a murder- suicide involving his son Vito. The two of them were in a tent in the backyard. They were spending the night with Vito's two young children. Something happened inside that tent. Vito shot his father and then shot himself. Luckily, the children were unharmed, but for the rest of their lives, they are going to have to deal with the unspeakable, indescribable trauma of that murder-suicide that took the lives of their father and grandfather right in front of their eyes.

The young woman I met with today has gone through one of these traumas herself, having survived the Pulse shooting from 2 years ago, and speaks about that same kind of trauma.

Her life has been fundamentally changed from that day. Relations with her family members have been ruptured. She lost her cousin inside the nightclub that evening. It is a reminder. Researchers tell us every time 1 person is shot, there are likely 20 other people who experience some kind of trauma from that 1 shooting. Take the average of 93 people every single day and multiply that times 20, and that will give us a sense of just over a 24-hour period the catastrophe that happens in families and communities across the country because of gun violence.

Well, today I will not go into the details about all the things we can do to solve this, but I will share a statistic I came upon the other day. My head is full of statistics, trying to explain what is happening when I come to the floor to tell the stories of these victims.

Here is an interesting one. I heard some of my friends say to me: Well, America is just a more violent place. Sure, we have more guns than other places have, but there are a lot of things happening in the United States, different cultures living side by side, people with different backgrounds, which may lead to more episodes of violence.

Here is a really interesting statistic. Let's go back to the OECD countries, which are what you consider to be the most advanced 20 or so countries in the world. If you look at rates of gun violence, the chart tells only one story. The United States has a rate of gun violence of about 10 people per 100,000 in terms of gun deaths, and there is no comparison. The next highest country is Finland, which has a rate of about 3 per 100,000. The average country is down around 1 per 100,000. We are talking about a rate that is 10 times higher in this country than other countries.

Let's go to another measure of violence because some people will say we are just a more violent country. That actually is not true. We are actually, by other measures, a less violent country than all the rest of these.

Let's take another measure of violence. Let's take a look at assaults. There is a statistic that measures reported assaults in these same countries. When you look at reported assaults, the United States is actually almost last. We aren't the country with the most assaults; we are close to the country with the lowest number of assaults. Belgium has more; Israel has more; Portugal has more, as does Sweden, France, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Norway, Ireland, Finland, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Only Japan and Canada report fewer assaults per person per capita than the United States.

So it is not that we are a more violent nation. It is that we are, in particular, a nation plagued by one type of violence--gun violence, which tends, of course, to be the most lethal kind, the kind that comes with the greatest degree of cascading trauma.

I know we have important business to do today with respect to the Defense authorization bill. I and my State have important equities in that bill that I hope to advance, but I still think it is worthwhile every now and again to come to the floor and remind my colleagues that even if they don't read about an episode of mass violence today, there will still be nearly 100 people who lose their lives. It is an epidemic that happens only here in the United States and is not explained by the United States being a more violent nation in general. It is simply explained by a nation that has more guns per capita and a Congress that is unwilling to make sure that only the right people get their hands on those weapons.

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, we have begun the period of time in the year when insurance companies start to declare what their intention is with regard to rate increases, and the news is not good for American healthcare consumers.

I am going to be joined on the floor today by a few of my colleagues to talk about what the impact of these radical increases in premiums is going to be for our constituents. The news is not good, but, frankly, it is no surprise because for a year and a half now, the Trump administration has been waging a very deliberate assault on the American healthcare system, trying to sabotage it as retribution for the country not agreeing to overturn the Affordable Care Act, which now enjoys widespread popularity across the country. This deliberate campaign of sabotage--beginning the first day Trump got into office with an Executive order, leading up to these last 2 weeks in which the Trump Justice Department is trying to rule that protecting people with preexisting conditions is unconstitutional--has had an impact. It has had an impact.

I want to quickly run through what we have seen thus far with respect to premium increases all across this country as a result of the Trump administration's and Republicans' campaign of sabotage.

First is in Maryland. The highest increase we saw in Maryland--these were announced about a month ago--was one plan announcing a 91-percent increase--in 1 year, one time, a 91-percent increase. It is almost a doubling of premiums for a PPO plan in Maryland that was primarily being used by people with preexisting conditions, people who were sick.

The reason this plan is going up by 91 percent is because, as the Trump administration and this Congress take steps to move healthy people off of insurance plans to either no insurance at all or to junk plans, only sick people or people with preexisting conditions are left on plans like the CareFirst PPO plan. A 91-percent increase. Who in Maryland with any kind of middle-class income can afford a 91-percent increase?

Virginia is not much better. In Virginia, at about the same time, one plan asked for a 64-percent increase. Again, I don't know many families who are making $30,000 a year who can afford a 1-year, 64-percent increase in premiums.

Remember, overall, medical inflation in this country--meaning on a percentage basis, the amount of increase in medical costs from year to year--is about 6 percent. So if you were just passing along the costs to your consumers, the rate should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 5, 6, or 7 percent. Instead, in Virginia, it is 64 percent.

Senator Merkley is going to talk about Oregon, but premiums in Oregon are going up by double digits--14 percent.

Washington State is looking at a premium increase of 30 percent. The Kaiser plan in Washington is asking for a 30-percent increase. The statewide average is right around 20 percent. Kaiser, in Washington, says: ``The rate changes shown are primarily driven by the claims experience of the single risk pool, medical inflation, and projected changes in the risk profile of the membership due to the elimination of the individual mandate.'' That is the change that Republicans made to the Affordable Care Act.

You are actually in decent shape in Maine, so I will give you the good news too. In Maine, you are only seeing a 10-percent increase in premiums--just slightly above the rate of medical inflation.

In one of the more popular States in the country, New York, the news is catastrophic--a 39-percent increase in premiums in the largest health insurance plan in New York. Fidelis, which is on the State healthcare insurance exchange, is asking for a 39-percent increase.

Let me read to you what the New York Department of Financial Services said about this requested 39-percent increase:

With respect to the individual market, the single biggest justification offered by insurers for the requested increases is the Trump Administration's repeal of the individual mandate penalty. The individual mandate, a key component of the Affordable Care Act, helped mitigate against dramatic price increases by ensuring healthier insurance pools. Insurers have attributed approximately half of their requested rate increases to the risks they see resulting from its repeal.

It is not as if the Republicans in this body didn't know what was going to happen. The CBO said that rates will go up by at least 10 percent in the first year if you repeal that part of the Affordable Care Act and 13 million people will lose insurance. That is what happens when rates go up by 40 percent. Some people just cannot afford to pay it. So whether the number is 39 or 91 or 64, these rate increases that are happening because of this campaign of sabotage by the Trump administration are simply unaffordable.

Before I turn this over to Senator Merkley, let me quickly run through what I am talking about.

In January 2017, President Trump signs an Executive order telling all his agencies to dismantle the ACA, despite the fact that Congress didn't repeal the Affordable Care Act and never would appeal the Affordable Care Act.

In April of 2017, he cuts open enrollment in half for the Affordable Care Act just to try to make sure that fewer people can sign up for health insurance.

In May, Republicans start voting to try to take insurance away from 23 million people. Actually, one of the proposals would have taken insurance away from 30 million people. In December of 2017, they finally settle on legislation that takes insurance away from 13 million people and drives costs up by at least 10 percent.

In February of this year, the Trump administration starts to allow insurance companies to expand the use of junk plans. These are plans that cover very little. They might not cover prescription drugs or mental health or addiction care, but they are cheaper, so healthy people tend to move to these plans, leaving the sick people on the plans that are now going up by 39 percent.

The final cherry on top is that right now as we speak, the administration is making an argument before the Supreme Court that the remaining scraps of the Affordable Care Act that the Republicans left are unconstitutional.

The protection for people with preexisting conditions, which Trump promised over and over and over again to keep--Lesley Stahl pinned him down in a ``60 Minutes'' interview and asked: You are going to keep protection for people with preexisting conditions, right? You are going to keep the part of the Affordable Care Act that is wildly popular, aren't you?

He said: Yes, I am going to keep that part.

In fact, he has now instructed his Department of Justice to break precedent and argue the unconstitutionality of a statute of the United States, that statute being the portion of the Affordable Care Act that protects people with preexisting conditions.

Believe me, insurance companies are paying attention to this unending withering assault on the Affordable Care Act and the American healthcare system. That is why we are seeing these big premium increases.

We want to make sure that our colleagues understand what is happening here and that the American public understands what is happening here. These increases in healthcare costs are unprecedented, but they are not surprising, given what this administration and what this Congress have been doing.

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