Executive Calendar
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHUMER. Recognition of the Minority Leader
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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I am so glad to be out here today to deal with the issue of reducing prices on drugs for seniors and others. There are so many things we must do. Some are small. Some are large. We want to do all of them.
We Democrats know how bad drug prices are for seniors. We know how bad the sabotage of our healthcare system is for seniors. If you don't have insurance, you probably can't pay for the drugs no matter what happens.
I would say to my good friend the Senator from Texas that we have a whole lot of legislative ideas, not just his. He demands his. It is good, but it is hardly large. There are millions and millions who need help who are not affected. The Senators from Illinois and Iowa have a bill to lower prescription drug costs. The HELP Committee has a bill that would help community health centers. The Senate Finance Committee has a good bipartisan bill to lower costs for seniors who are very strong supporters of allowing Medicare to negotiate prices. That would do more than anything else.
I ask my friend from Texas, Will he get his leader and himself to allow us to bring an amendment to a bill on the floor that protects seniors who have preexisting conditions from their insurance companies withdrawing from them? Will he let us do that? That is far more consequential than his well-intended good but not largely effective bill. The No. 1 thing--ask AARP--the No. 1 thing that will protect senior citizens and others from high drug prices is to allow Medicare to negotiate with them, something the Senator has blocked repeatedly. Will he change his position?
Let's not have this charade, this manipulative charade, where my dear friend from Texas comes to the floor with a bill he proposes but blocks everything and his party blocks everything that would have a far larger consequence.
No. 1, allow Medicare to negotiate. Every Member of our caucus is for that. It will lower drug prices dramatically. No. 2, stop the administration--the administration the Senator from Texas supports 95 percent of the time--even my microphone is excited about these remarks. I, once again, thank our capable staff who always come to the rescue.
We need Senator Cornyn to come to the rescue of senior citizens and not play a little game like this. Again, preexisting conditions are probably the No. 1 bane of people. We want to bring an amendment to the floor to protect those people--a mom whose daughter has cancer, and the drug company says, ``You're off,'' and the insurance company says, ``You're gone.'' Isn't that important? Let's not make a comparison, but wouldn't it do far more for the health of the American middle class and working people than this bill? Let's do them both, but we are not going to cherry-pick one unless the Senator from Texas walks across the aisle and joins us in saying: I want to help you get a vote on eliminating preexisting condition prohibitions. I want to join you in seeing that Medicare can negotiate with the drug companies and greatly lower prices.
We Democrats believe we should bring a bill to the floor that has a debate and allows amendments because there is so much to be done here--not one small, decently put together and decently intended proposal but many more. We know, if we allow our Republican friends to just pass their little bills, we will never get the big picture done. That is how this place works. So let's come together and do it all.
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Mr. SCHUMER. Would the gentleman yield for a question?
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Mr. SCHUMER. Thank you.
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Mr. SCHUMER. Will the Senator yield for a correction?
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Mr. SCHUMER. Will the Senator yield for a question?
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Mr. SCHUMER. Would the Senator support a unanimous consent request so that we could protect people with preexisting conditions, and would he support bringing that to the floor in the same way?
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Mr. SCHUMER. Will the Senator support a proposal that is coming out of the House to allow Medicare to negotiate with the drug companies to greatly lower prices?
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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for his answers.
I would say this: Let him use his power and position as leader to go to the majority leader, who has prevented any debate on anything on drugs to come to the floor, including these two most significant issues that I have talked about. Let us put a package together of all three and have a debate on each, a ``yes'' or ``no'' vote on each, and really make progress for those who are paying too much in drug prices. I await his working with me on that. Then we could bring all three bills to the floor.
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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for the interchange, and it will continue. We Democrats will not rest until we get votes, simple votes--not bring the house down--on issues of great consequence with regard to drug prices and the American people while the other side blocks them. Impeachment
Mr. President, as we speak, the House Intelligence Committee is conducting the first day of public hearings in its impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
The list of witnesses this week includes several key figures with knowledge of the events in question. While most of the witness requests from House Republicans were non sequiturs, or individuals who would have no knowledge of the President's actions nor of the allegations against him, three of the individuals requested by the Republicans were agreed to and are slated to testify next week. The idea that the Republicans and the President have no due process and can't call witnesses or influence the process is simply inaccurate.
As the impeachment inquiry in the House begins a new phase today in its pursuit of the facts, we have a serious responsibility here in the Senate not to prejudge the case but to examine the evidence impartially. We have a responsibility to let all of the facts come out and, as they do, to keep an open mind and let ourselves be ruled by reason rather than by passion or partisanship. As public hearings in the House begin, we would do well to remember our constitutional duty to act as judges and jurors in a potential trial when and if it comes to one. That is not to say we won't even read the transcript, and that is not to say the vote would come out this way. Yet, as jurors, we will be as dispassioned as each of us can be. Turkey and Syria
Mr. President, on another matter, President Trump will roll out the red carpet today for President Erdogan, of Turkey, as he visits the White House after everything that has transpired over the last few months. This is after President Trump green-lit Turkey's reckless and destabilizing invasion of northern Syria, after Turkish troops and their proxies committed atrocities against civilians and the Syrian Kurds, who are our former partners in the fight against ISIS, and after Erdogan cut a deal with our adversary President Putin and threatened our allies in Europe with the release of ISIS's detainees.
The fact that President Trump will reward President Erdogan with an Oval Office meeting today is mind-boggling. The meeting will serve as a very public example of how President Trump has mismanaged the situation in Syria and, most importantly, how he has complicated and slowed the effort to secure the enduring defeat of ISIS. It is ISIS that creates the greatest danger to our American homeland. As al-Qaida did before it, it will try to create huge damage. We in New York know that this can sometimes, unfortunately, occur. God forbid it happens again.
Yet, holy mackerel, the President has no plan for ISIS; detainees are escaping; and the Turks are far more upset with the Kurds, who have been on our side with ISIS, than they are with ISIS. Erdogan suppresses free speech, arrests opponents, and does so many other terrible things to his country, which was once a much more shining example of democracy--and the President invites him here? Does the President have no sense of value? Does the President have no sense of morals? Does the President have no sense of what affects American security? It is appalling. Agriculture
Mr. President, on agriculture, a report issued yesterday by the Democratic minority on the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry shed new light on troubling disparities as to how the Trump administration has treated farmers through the Department of Agriculture's Market Facilitation Program.
Farmers in need of Federal aid have leaned on this program to offset losses that have been caused by retaliatory foreign tariffs. In an industry in which margins are sometimes very thin, this support makes a real difference for struggling farmers across the country. Yet, rather than helping those farmers who are the most in need, the Trump administration, through this program, is picking winners and losers by using a flawed methodology to favor certain regions over others and wealthy agricultural conglomerates over small farmers.
The whole idea of the program is to help small farmers throughout the Middle West, particularly those farmers with soybeans and corn and hogs. The bulk of the program went to five Southern States. Ninety-five percent of the top payments defined as $100 or more per acre all went to counties in Southern States. Where did the lowest payments go? They went to the counties in the Midwest even though the Midwest has suffered greater losses overall.
Instead of coming up with a strategy to help smaller and less established farms, which are often more vulnerable during tough economic times, the Trump administration has doubled the payment caps for row crops while having left other caps in place. This will disproportionately funnel money to the largest farms in America while it will limit aid to smaller farms.
Most concerning, however, is that our study shows the Trump administration has awarded tens of millions in purchase contracts to foreign-owned companies, including a large beef factory in Brazil. Instead of ensuring that aid goes to American farmers, the Trump administration has been handing millions of taxpayer dollars to foreign agribusinesses.
This program was put together on the spur because the President was worried about political effects with, particularly, soybean farmers but with others, too, in the Middle West. Yet it was put together so poorly--in such a slipshod and unthought-out manner--that cotton farmers do the best of all even though their prices are not hurting the way soybean or corn or hog prices are.
To my friends on the other side of the aisle, the fiscal conservatives, we need your voices.
If this program were going to the urban areas or maybe to the poorer people, we would hear an outcry from certain Members on the other side, but our farmers need the help too. When you waste money on an ag program, the people who are hurt the most are our smaller and family farmers, particularly, in this case, in the Middle West.
For years, my Republican friends in this Chamber accused the Obama administration--unfairly, in my mind--of picking winners and losers in the market. It was one of their favorite talking points. Here, we have the Trump administration literally picking winners and losers among American farmers. Sometimes the winners are not even American. Oftentimes, the losers are the small family farmers who need assistance the most.
I am so glad that my Democrat colleagues on the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, especially Ranking Member Stabenow, have worked to inject some transparency into the agriculture relief program.
The Trump administration should be using the Market Facilitation Program to help those farmers most in need--period. The Trump administration needs to stop picking winners and losers and make sure all American farmers get the help they deserve. Veterans
Mr. President, finally, on veterans--this is another one--when I look at what this administration is doing, and if every American knew all these things, Donald Trump wouldn't stand a chance. This one, I hope, will get out.
I talked a little bit about this yesterday. We all know that so many of our young men and women--my generation--went to Vietnam and risked their lives. Many of them gave their lives for our country. One of the worst aspects of things is that they were not treated as heroes when they came home.
I think America has made up for that now, but here is a way that we are not treating them well at all. Many of them were exposed to Agent Orange, and it became clear that many got sick from exposure to Agent Orange while fighting in Vietnam.
Well, what the VA has found is that certain illnesses are caused by exposure to Agent Orange, and they found that there are four more illnesses that have an Agent Orange link. But quietly and secretly, the Trump administration denied payments to over 60,000 veterans who had these illnesses and who received emergency care at non-VA facilities in 2017.
It has missed deadlines to expand the VA caregivers program to Vietnam and Korean war veterans, and there are some reports that the Trump VA hired doctors on probation, but what is galling at the moment is this Agent Orange situation and hiding the report.
Mulvaney, evidently, the Chief of Staff, just said quietly: We are not funding it. It took a Freedom of Information Act action to reveal that they were cutting the money off for these folks.
They went to Vietnam. Some of them volunteered. Some of them were drafted. They got sick because of exposure to Agent Orange, and the Trump administration, which loves to have rallies with veterans, cuts the money off from them, saying that Mulvaney said we couldn't afford it.
These veterans could afford to risk their lives for us. We can afford to help them in their hour of need. I hope the administration will reverse its decision.
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