Save Our Seas Act of 2017
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, on another subject, we are 5 days away from a lapse in appropriations, and President Trump still doesn't have a plan to keep the government open. In fact, the only indication he has given is that he wants a government shutdown.
At the moment, the situation should be clear to everyone: President Trump does not have the votes for his wall. He certainly doesn't have the votes in the Senate, and it doesn't seem he has the votes even in the House, where he needs only Republican votes.
Tellingly, the House is on recess until Wednesday night--just 2 days before the Trump shutdown would start. It is because the House leadership has no idea what to do, where the votes are, or where the people are. Many of them don't want to come back. Everyone knows the situation. Even with a Republican Congress, no threat or temper tantrum will get the President his wall.
On the other hand, Democrats are all together. We have given a proposal to President Trump. We have given two alternatives to President Trump that could easily pass both the House and the Senate. We could pass the six bipartisan appropriations bills and a 1-year CR on homeland security, or we could pass a 1-year CR for all of the remaining Agencies. President Trump should support one of these options and spare innocent, hard-working Americans the pain of an unnecessary Trump shutdown. His temper tantrum will get him a shutdown but will not get him a wall. It is futile.
Unfortunately, since our meeting last Tuesday, Leader Pelosi and I have still not heard from the White House whether they will accept either of these two options, nor have we even heard from our Republican colleagues in the Senate or House about what they might support to avoid a shutdown--not a peep. They are nowhere to be found.
A reporter told me that Republicans said: What is the Democrats' plan? We gave them two. The real question is, What is the Republicans' plan? They don't have one. They don't know what to do. In the scuttlebutt, where we talk to one another, Senate Republican leadership has no idea what President Trump wants. Neither does House Republican leadership. And they don't have the courage, the strength, in my judgment, or the wisdom to tell the President he is wrong on this, and let's move forward. That amazes me more in the House than anywhere else. House Republicans lost 40 seats by just clinging to President Trump even when they knew he was wrong.
Are they continuing this pattern of behavior, and are our Senate colleagues going to do the same? It makes no sense. My friends on the other side of the aisle know the President's wall is wrong, ineffective, and it cannot pass. The President's daily Twitter outbursts can't alter reality.
My Republican friends need to step up and convince the President to pick one of the two sensible offers we have made. Right now, nobody seems to know what Republicans want or plan to do. It is shocking that Republicans haven't engaged yet in this process, considering they control the Presidency, the House, and the Senate. What a symbol, what evidence of disarray.
Once again, I remind my Republican colleagues that going along with a Trump shutdown is a futile act. When Democrats take control of the House on January 3, they will pass one of our two options to fund the government, and then leader McConnell and Senate Republicans will be left holding the bag for a Trump shutdown. The onus for reopening the government will wind up on their lap. That is not what they should want. I don't think they do want it. They are just so fearful of departing from President Trump. I remind them, when the President wasn't mixing in, we did two good budget seasons. We did two good appropriations bills, which got large majorities of Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate. You can't let the President interfere, particularly when he does it in a pound-table, tantrum-like way, without any plan or knowledge of how to get things done.
If President Trump decides to shut down the government, there is no endgame in which President Trump gets the wall. There is no endgame for Republicans in which they can avoid their share of responsibility-- overwhelming share--for a shutdown. The time to solve this problem is now.
Healthcare
Madam President, on healthcare, on Friday, in response to a suit brought by Republican attorneys general, a district court judge in Texas issued a bizarre and dreadful ruling that the Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional because of changes to the law made by congressional Republicans. If the ruling is ultimately upheld, the consequences would be disastrous for the American people. It would jeopardize health insurance for more than 20 million Americans who gained insurance on the exchanges or through expanded Medicaid. It would end protections for the 133 million Americans living with preexisting conditions. Can you imagine a mom and dad who have a daughter or a son with cancer, and we now allow the insurance companies to cut them off by not giving them new insurance as they watch their child suffer? That is not America. That is not the situation now because of what we all did in 2009 with the ACA. Are our Republican colleagues going to let that happen?
Americans under the age of 26 could no longer stay on their parents' health insurance. That has been a sigh of relief a breath of fresh air for millions who get out of college and want to get a job but can't take the job they want because there is not adequate health insurance.
It would reopen the prescription drug doughnut hole in Medicare. That would mean that seniors on Medicare--tens of millions--would pay more for prescription drugs, and essential health benefits would be gone.
These are not just trivial things. They include guaranteed access to maternity care, free preventive cancer screenings, treatment for opioid addiction--crucial things that Americans need that allow them to go away.
You can see the extent of the disaster if this court case prevails. Hundreds of millions of Americans would be hurt. Our healthcare system would be thrown into chaos, including for families who get health insurance from their employer.
We Democrats believe the ruling is based on such faulty premises that it will not be upheld by a higher court once it is appealed, but given the potential consequences of their ruling, we cannot twiddle our thumbs and hope for the right result.
The court, I would remind my colleagues, based a good portion of its decision on what Congress intended. We can clear that up in a minute-- in a minute. My friend, Senator Manchin, has a resolution which every Democrat in this body has signed onto, to petition the Senate legal counsel to intervene in the lawsuit and defend the Affordable Care Act on behalf of the Senate because the Trump administration refuses to defend the law and is in favor of it being overturned.
President Trump was almost gleeful when this court case came out. Is he going to be gleeful to those parents with cancer, to that college graduate who needs healthcare, to a family who has a father on opioids and needs help? Is he going to be gleeful if they don't get it? I don't get him sometimes, much of the time.
I hope our Republican colleagues will join us in this petition because if a majority of the House and a majority of the Senate tell the appeals courts our intention was not to overthrow healthcare, it will have a great deal of weight. Some say: Well, let's do legislation. We have all been through that before, with both Democrats and Republicans in charge, a very hard, long time--it takes a long time to get healthcare.
By the way, the President and a lot of my Republican friends want to cut back on healthcare. That is their goal. They will never come to agreement with us--Democrats in the Senate or the House, which will be democratically controlled in a few weeks--if they stick with that.
Legislation is not the best and first way to go; court intervention is. We will be watching. The American people will be watching, particularly so many of my colleagues who said: I am for preexisting conditions.
We are going to let them know this idea of ``let's do legislation'' will not work. Where are they on the petition? That will determine whether they are hypocrites, saying they want to protect preexisting conditions but not doing the best thing for it or whether they really care about the people who will lose health insurance.
The American people spoke loudly and clearly in the midterms: They want their healthcare protections, and they don't want Republicans to take them away. I believe Republicans will have no choice but eventually to join us. To not do so would be to jeopardize healthcare for hundreds of millions of Americans and risk a complete disaster for Republicans in future elections.
Tribute to Lamar Alexander
Madam President, on Lamar Alexander, my dear friend, we received sad news today--sad for us, happy for him--that our friend, the senior Senator from Tennessee will not be running for reelection in 2020. There will be time to reflect on his life and career at a later date, but upon hearing the news this afternoon, as I was taking the Amtrak down from New York, I felt a pang of sadness. Lamar and I have been dear friends, and we worked so hard on many things together.
I want to say a few words now. When Senator Alexander eventually does leave this body, the Senate will lose an incredibly capable legislator and statesman. He cares so much about legislating. He reminded me, when I talked to him this afternoon, that he will still be around for 2 years and wants to work together to get things done--an ``Alexanderian'' statement, if there ever was one.
Senator Alexander has been in the midst of so many things for his 16 years in the Senate, and that is not because he is some ideologue who stood all alone in his own corner and made a lot of speeches and didn't get things done. No. Senator Alexander seeks compromise almost reflexively, and he gets things done--the recent higher education bill and legislation dealing with opioids, which he was so passionate about, and he talked to me about it every day for about a month. He gets things done because of his passion, his intelligence as a legislator, and his persistence.
Both sides of the aisle respect and trust Lamar. I do. We have worked together so many times in my years here, and hopefully, as he said on the phone, there will be a few more opportunities in the next 2 years, his last 2 years in the Senate, to work together successfully, hopefully, and God willing again.
Even though he is not here at the moment, I salute my friend from Tennessee and look forward to seeing him in the gym tomorrow morning-- we always see each other in the gym--where I can convey these sentiments personally.
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