Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, just a few minutes ago, four young people from the State of Illinois visited my office. They were a variety of different ages, from 10 years of age to the age of 17. They all came because they had a similar life experience, and they wanted to share it with me. Each one of them had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

Ten-year-old Owen from Deerfield told a story--the cutest little kid; great reader; read me a presentation that he put together--and the young women who were with him all talked about how their lives changed when they learned at the age of 7 or 8 that they had type 1 diabetes. For each one of them, from that point forward, insulin became a lifeline. They had to have access to insulin, and they had to have it sometimes many times a day, in the middle of the night. It reached a point where, through technology, they had continuous glucose monitoring devices and pumps that were keeping them alive, but every minute of every day was a test to them as to whether they were going to get sick and need help.

It was a great presentation by these young people, whose lives were transformed, and their parents, who were hanging on every word as they told me their life stories.

They brought up two points that I want to share on the floor this afternoon. The first is the importance of medical research. As one young woman said--she is about 17 now. She has lived with this for 8 or 9 years. She said she is a twin, and her brother told her when she was diagnosed that he hated the thought that, as an old woman, she would still be worried about her insulin every single day. She said: I told my brother ``We are going to find a cure before I am an old woman.''

Well, I certainly hope that young girl is right, but she will be right only if we do our part here on the floor of the Senate and not just give speeches. What we have to do is appropriate money to the National Institutes of Health. It is the premier medical research agency in the world.

We have had good luck in the last 4 years. I want to salute two of my Republican colleagues and one of my Democratic colleagues for their special efforts. For the last 4 years, Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri; Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee; and Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, have joined forces--I have been part of that team too--to encourage an increase in medical research funding every single year, and we have done it.

The increase that Dr. Collins at NIH asked for was 5 percent real growth a year. That is 5 percent over inflation. Do you know what we have done in 4 years? NIH has gone up from $30 billion to $39 billion. Dramatic. A 30-percent increase in NIH research funding.

We are going to have a tough time with this coming budget, as we have in the past, but I hope we really reach a bottom line, as Democrats and Republicans, that we are committed to 5 percent real growth in medical research every single year so that we can answer these young people who come in dealing with diabetes, those who are suffering from cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's--the list goes on and on--that we are doing our part here in the Senate; that despite all the political battles and differences, there are things that bring us together, and that should be one.

The second point they raised--one of the young girls there, Morgan of Jerseyville, started telling me a story about the cost of insulin. As she was telling the story about the sacrifices being made by her family to keep her alive, she broke down and cried. What she was telling me-- her personal experience, her family experience--was something that every family with diabetes knows: The cost of insulin--charged by the pharmaceutical companies--has gone up dramatically, without justification, over the last 20 years.

In 1999, one of the major insulin drugs--called Humalog, made by Eli Lilly--was selling for $21 a vial. That was 20 years ago. In 1999, it was $21 a vial. The price today is $329 a vial. What has caused this dramatic increase? There is nothing that has happened with this drug. It is the same drug. And, I might add, Eli Lilly of Indianapolis, IN, is selling the same insulin product--Humalog--in Canada for $39. So it costs $329 in the United States and $39 in Canada.

These families told me they were lucky to have health insurance that covered prescription drugs. That sounds good, except they each had large copays--$8,000 a year. And what it meant was that for this young girl, this beautiful little girl who was in my office and who has juvenile diabetes, they would spend $8,000 a year at the beginning of the year for 3 months of insulin before the health insurance kicked in and started paying for it. Of course, there are families who aren't so lucky--they don't have health insurance to pay for their drugs.

So what are we going to do about it? It happens to be something the Senate is supposed to take up. We are supposed to debate these things and decide the policy for this country. We will see. Very soon, we will have a chance. A bill is coming out of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and we will have a chance to amend it on the floor and to deal with the cost of prescription drugs. I will have an amendment ready if my colleagues want to join me--I hope they will--on the cost of insulin, and we will have a chance if Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, will allow us--it is his decision. We will have a chance to decide whether these kids and their families are going to get ripped off by these pharmaceutical companies for years to come.

It isn't just insulin; it is so many other products. It is time for us to stand up for these families and their kids, to put money into medical research, and to tell pharma once and for all: Enough is enough. Insulin was discovered almost 100 years ago. What you are doing in terms of increasing the cost of it for these families is unacceptable and unconscionable. Border Security

Mr. President, in the last 2\1/2\ years of this administration, we have seen an incredible situation when it comes to immigration and our border. We have seen, unfortunately, some of the saddest and most heartbreaking scenes involving children at the border between the United States and Mexico.

The pattern started with the President's announcement shortly after he was sworn in that he was imposing a travel ban on Muslim countries. That created chaos at our airports and continues to separate thousands of American families.

Then the President stepped up and repealed DACA, the Executive order program created by President Obama that allowed more than 800,000 young immigrants to stay in this country without fear of deportation and to make a life in the only country many of them had ever known.

Then the President announced the termination of the Temporary Protected Status Program, a program we offer--and have throughout our modern history--for those who are facing oppression or natural disaster in their countries. President Trump announced that he was going to terminate it for several countries, affecting the lives of 300,000 immigrants.

Then came the disastrous separation of thousands of families at the border--2,880 infants, toddlers, and children separated from their parents by the Government of the United States. This zero-tolerance policy finally was reversed by President Trump after the public outcry against it.

Then what followed was the longest government shutdown in history over the President's demand that he was going to build a border wall, even at the cost of shutting down the Government of the United States for 5 weeks.

We've also seen the tragic deaths of 6 children apprehended at the border and 24 people in detention facilities in the United States.

The President then announced that he was going to block all assistance to the Northern Triangle countries--El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the source of most of the immigrants who come to our border--and that he would shut down the avenues for legal migration, driving even more refugees to our border.

Now, on President Trump's watch, we have an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. We have seen that crisis exemplified by the horrifying image of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, who fled El Salvador and drowned as they tried to cross the Rio Grande 2 weeks ago.

We have seen this crisis play out in the overcrowded and inhumane conditions at detention centers at the border.

In April, I visited El Paso, TX. What I saw in the Border Patrol's overcrowded facilities was heartbreaking.

In May, I led 24 Senators in calling for the International Committee of the Red Cross and the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security to investigate our Border Patrol facilities. I never dreamed that I would be asking the International Red Cross to investigate detention facilities in the United States. They do that, but usually you are asking them to look into some Third World country where inhumane conditions are being alleged.

After being in El Paso, after seeing what is going at our border, I joined with 23 other Senators in asking the International Red Cross to investigate the U.S. detention facilities.

Later that same month, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security released a report detailing the inhumane and dangerous overcrowding of migrants at the El Paso port of entry. The Inspector General's Office found that overcrowding is ``an immediate risk to the health and safety'' of detainees and DHS employees.

One week ago, the Inspector General's Office issued another scathing report, this time about multiple Border Patrol facilities in the Rio Grande Valley. The Inspector General's Office asked the Department of Homeland Security to take immediate steps to alleviate the dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention. They stated: ``We are concerned that overcrowding and prolonged detention represent an immediate risk to the health and safety of DHS agents and officers, and to those detained.''

Congress recently passed legislation 2 weeks ago that included $793 million in funding to alleviate overcrowding at these CBP facilities and other funding to provide food, supplies, and medical care to migrants. The bill also includes critical funding for the Office of Refugee Resettlement to care for migrant children.

We must now make sure that this money is spent effectively by the Trump administration. We gave them over $400 million in February, and they came back to us within 90 days and said: We are out of money. I would like to know how they are spending this money, and I want to make sure it is being spent where it is needed.

There is a gaping leadership vacuum at the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security. Think of this: In 2\1/2\ years, there have already been four different people serving as head of that Department. Every position at the Department of Homeland Security with responsibility for immigration or border security is now being held by a temporary appointee, and the White House refuses to even submit nominations to fill these positions.

Two weeks ago, I met with Mark Morgan, one of those temporary appointees. In May, President Trump named him Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mr. Morgan was asked at that time to carry out the mass arrests and mass deportations of millions of immigrants the President had threatened by his infamous tweets.

Shortly before I met with Mr. Morgan to ask him about the mass arrests and mass deportations, there was a change. They took him out of that position and named him Acting Director of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He went from internal enforcement to border enforcement. Now he is in charge of solving the humanitarian crisis that President Trump has created at our border.

The Trump administration can shuffle the deck chairs on this Titanic, but we must acknowledge the obvious: President Trump's immigration and border security policies have failed. Tough talk isn't enough. We need to do better.

This morning, I met with Dr. Goza, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. She came to give me a report about her visit to several border facilities that has been well documented and reported in the press. She said that it was hard for her, as a doctor for children, to see these things and realize they were happening in the United States.

Yes, children are being held in caged facilities with wire fences and watchtowers around them, some of them very young children. As a pediatrician, she told me those things have an impact on a child--on how that child looks at the world and how that child looks at himself.

She said that she took a lot of notes as she went through these facilities, but it wasn't until she got on the airplane on the way home that she read through them. She said: Then I started crying. I am supposed to be a professional who can take this, but I couldn't imagine what we were doing to these children at the border. There just aren't enough medical professionals there--not nearly enough.

The United States is better than that. We can do better than that. We can have a secure border and respect our international obligations to provide a safe haven to those who are fleeing persecution, as we have done on a bipartisan basis--Democrats and Republicans--for decades.

I stand ready, and I believe my party stands ready, to work with Republicans on smart, effective, and humane solutions to the crisis at our border. I suggest that the following be included:

Crack down on traffickers who are exploiting immigrants. That is unacceptable.

Provide assistance to stabilize the Northern Triangle countries. That is long overdue.

Provide in-country processing and third-country resettlement so that migrants can seek safe haven under our laws without making the dangerous and expensive trek to our border.

Eliminate the immigration court backlog so that asylum claims can be processed more quickly.

We have authorized more than 100 immigration court judges, and this administration can't find people to fill them. They want more judges. They have authority to hire 100 more, and they have been unable to do it.

We need to ensure that children and families are treated humanely when they are in the custody of the U.S. Government.

Eventually, the history of this period will be written, and there will be accountability, not just for the officials in government but for all of us--those of us in the Senate and the House and those in journalism and other places. We are going to have to answer for the way these people have been treated. Whether or not they qualify for legal status in the United States, I hope we can hold our heads up high and say that, at least from this point forward, we are going to show them that we are humane and caring people. No matter where they come from, no matter how poor they may be, we will take care that children are treated in a merciful way and a compassionate way; that the adults are given appropriate opportunities to exercise whatever rights they have under the laws of our country; and that at the end of the day we can hold our heads high because we have done this in a fashion consistent with the values of the United States of America.

We haven't seen it yet. It is time for the President to acknowledge that get-tough, bizarre tweets just aren't enough. We have to have a policy that makes sense to bring stability to our border.

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