quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president?

the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mrs. capito: i ask that we exit the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. capito: i also ask unanimous consent to peek in morning business for up to 15 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. capito: thank youers. thank you, mr. president. i rise today to highlight the positive change that our new republican majority has brought to the united states senate in 2015. as a first-year senator -- and i would remind -- remind everybody that i spent a lost time across the other side of the capitol observing the united states senate. so sasse a first-year senator, came to the body looking to improve this institution that for far too long has not been working for american families. not only did the senate fail to pass legislation that would help our seniors, students and workers, it failed to even debate critical issues. we kind of couldn't understand that looking across the hall from the capitol, from the house side. so in 2014, the senate only voted on 15 amendments -- 15

amendments. this year under new leadership, we have taken hundreds -- hundreds -- of amendment votes and committees are hard at work. we debated issues, clearly stated our policy priorities, and broke the gridlock that has defined the previous congress. allowing senators from both sides of the aisle to offer amendments, participate in the process, and take votes is the best way to achieve bipartisan legislation. makes common sense. isn't that the way it's supposed to be? it's kind of what i thought, and i'm glad to know that this year that's what we're doing. instead, working together is the only way to enact policies that would improve the lives of american people. the new senate work has borne tremendous friewlt fruit, partiy in the past week. we passed the first major overhaul of elementary and secondary education in more than a drks decade, and the presidens

poised to sign this into law. r5e85senators voted. a big bipartisan majority. the every student succeeds act strikes the proper balance between flexibility and accountability. the bill ends education waivers and the federal common core mandate that had turned washington bureaucrats into basically a national school board. no one cares more about a student's success than a child's parents and their teachers, and those close toast our children should be the ones gourd make those -- empowered to make those decision. at the same time, accountability matters. i have three children who went through the school system. testing, in my viewpoint, done properly is a good thing. you want to know where your child stands, where the weaknesses and where the successes r yo r you want know e the school stands. but under this bill, states will have multiple measures of student achest, not just testing. test results will just be a part of that evaluation.

taits will have broad discretion to measure other factors. high schools will now report on the rate of graduates going on to higher education. whether graduates are prepared to continue education is, in my view, an important measure of success. this bill also recognizes the importance of technology in education, not just in the classroom but also at home. it includes language that senator king and i introduced to study the homework gap. students that lack access to fast and reliable broadband at home need to be able to continue learning outside the classroom. if the teacher gives you an assignment and you are given a device and you take it home, if you don't have the connectiveity, you're behind. but if you do have the connectivity, do you have the access, you can continue your education at home and be prepared the next day. states will now have the flexibility to use federal

resources to improve this access to technology. this is a significant step forward i think for the education system that is outdated and out of step with the needs of our students. it's particularly hard hitting in rural communities. last week we passed and the president signed the first long-term highway bill in 17 years. since 2009, congress has lurched from one short-term patch to another, leaving officials across the country unable to plan, unable to plan future highway and transit projects. the shameful inability to make a lasting investment in our infrastructure came to an end last week. the fast act invests $2.5 billion in west virginia's roads and bridges over five years, and i can say going home last weekend, if anybody -- the biggest issue raised to me or in a congratulatory way was thank you for passing the highway

bill. with it, the completion of route 35 in west virginia in corridor "h" will bring economic potential it to our state. and key projects, like the king cole highway and cole fields expressway, will help isolated communities attract businesses and provide jobs. states will also now have more flexibility, which is exactly what they want and need, to spend federal dollars. new permitting reforms will help taxpayer dollars go farther and enable projects to be completed more quickly. time is money and if you can complete in a shorter time span and you can do your regulatory obligations at the same time, concurrently, it can save states and the federal government and localities money. this highway bill is truly a jobs bill. not only for the workers who will build and repair america's roads and bridges but these investments will also bring broader economic benefits to our

communities. another good thing this bill does is further -- that will help further job growth in west virginia, it reauthorizes the appalachian regional commission. this reauthorization includes bipartisan language to establish a high-speed broadband development initiative for underserved areas in appalachia. just this sunday, the charleston ga zell mail wrote about how the lack of broadband was hindering efforts to provide telemedicine in small west virginia towns. the a.r.c. reauthorization is a tangible step towards getting this region connected. broadband access can power these communities. so passage of the education and highway bills were tremendous recent achievements and they follow earlier bipartisan accomplishments this year. with our entitlement programs hurdling towards bankruptcy, it was important for congress to act. in april we permanently

eliminated medicare's sustained growth rate, s.g.r., putting an end to the long series of temporary patches that had vexed our nation's seniors and doctors. these reforms will encourage competition, save taxpayer dollars and provide a more reliable system for our seniors. we know there's more to do but this marks a good first step to preserve medicare for future generations. this same legislation extended funding for the children's health insurance program, a program that i've been intimately involved with in west virginia since my early days as a member of the house of delegates. we passed legislation to help veterans heal from the unseen wounds of war and to support victims of human trafficking. we renewed trade promotion authority to facilitate new trade agreements that can expand american jobs. and we did all of this by working together to find common ground on behalf of the people

in we serve. -- people that we serve. even when consensus cannot be achieved or the president chooses to go it alone, the senate should debate the tough issues and show the american people where we stand. we say where we stand when we're running for election. we should be saying where we stand now that we'r we're elect. we shouldn't be shying away from that. so the president's relentless environmental campaign to expand washington bureaucracy at the expense of our economy is an issue i've been deeply concerned about. energy producing states have been hit the hardest. west virginia, my state, now has the largest and highest unemployment rate after enduring thousands of layoffs and warn notices. nationwide, coal mining employment has dropped by more than 30% since 2011. when i was a member of the house of representatives, i took action to rein in the president's regulatory agenda.

but often legislation passed the house, could not garner enough support here in the senate. so as a newly elected senator, i committed to change that and to lead the legislative response to protect affordable, reliable energy. and just last month we succeeded. the senate passed two resolutions to void the clean power plan that are now headed to the president's desk, including the one that i led. under new leadership -- under new leadership, the senate strongly opposed policies that are devastating our energy economy and have negligible environmental benefit. obamacare is another costly disaster that has placed great burdens on the american people. the new republican-led senate recently delivered on its promise to pass legislation that repeals the broken law. basically obamacare is failing. americans are facing

skyrocketing premiums and deductibles. countless people have lost access to the doctor and health care plan of their choice. even insurance companies are threatening to pull out of the system. the nation's largest one is one of those. president obama and the democrats are fighting to use taxpayers' dollars to bail out the big insurance companies in a misguided attempt to save their failed health care policy. the repeal legislation we passed last week would reduce taxes by more than $1 trillion, strengthen medicare and provide significant resources for a problem plaguing our country, substance abuse and mental health treatment. the president will veto the bi bill. we know that. but new leadership in the senate has put a repeal bill on his desk for the first time. and this legislation will solve -- will serve as a model for efforts to repeal and

replace obamacare in the next congress. this year we have addressed the concerns of many americans and the serious challenges that we face. we've solved problems and delivered real results. and under leader mcconnell's management, we've been able to debate critical issues on behalf of the americans that we serve, offer new reforms and ideas through the amendment process and enact important bipartisan legislation. but this is just the beginning. while much has been accomplished, our work is far from done and i look forward to building on this record of bipartisan achievement in the year ahead. i yield the floor. thank you. mrs. capito: i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

quorum call:

ms. stabenow: mr. president, i would ask suspension of the quorum call. the presiding officer: the senator from michigan -- and that is without objection. ms. stabenow: thank you very much. mr. president, i rise today to talk about an opportunity that we have in the midst of all the negotiations going on to do something incredibly meaningful that has bipartisan support and literally will address a group of diseases that affects one out of four people every year, one out of four people who work here, one out of four people in our families, a set of diseases right now for whom less than 40% of those with the disease get

the treatment they need, but p when they do, it's manageable and they can go on and lead productive lives. what i'm talking about is mental illness. one out of four people every year have some kind of mental illness, which is treatable, which with medications, with treatments just like any other disease can allow someone to go on and live their lives. we have started the process in public policy of doing what we call mental health parity by saying now that insurance can't discriminate, whether it's a behavioral disease, mental health, substance abuse, or physical health. but we do get have the services in the community. and so what happens is we pay dearly, not onl. not only do individuals pay with

they are livelihoods, families, communities pay, we pay as taxpayers. it's interesting for me, speaking at a conference a couple days ago here in washington, d.c., with law enforcement and mental health professionals coming together, to hear that the cook county jail, shirks chicago, a huge f, that the sheriff there has now appointed a psychiatrist as the director of the jail. hmmm ... why? because a third of the people housed in the jail have psychiatric problems. they shouldn't be in the jail. they may have committed some minor infraction because they didn't have a job and maybe were sleeping on the street. maybe they were hearing voices in their head and didn't hear the police officer and didn't respond in a way they were viewed as belligerent.

we now know from papers today in michigan that studies show that 16 times more people who are mentally ill are likely to be killed every year by a priser. i'm not suggesting at all that those on purpose. but because of the nature of behavioral problems and what ends up happening in the real world when people aren't getting the treatments they need. we know what happens in terms of violence and people committing crimes, although the people -- someone who has a mental health disease is much more likely to be a victim than be a perpetrator. we have people in our emergency rooms of our hospitals. i talked to hospital administrators and doctors who said, you know, what we need is to make sure we have a 24-hour emergency psychiatric facility, a place where someone can go or family members can call or the police can use if they find swrun thaswrun that needs help,e hospital emergency room, and certainly not the jail.

so the good news is that we have started a bipartisan effort that can fix this. my partner and colleague in this, senator blunt, and i over a year ago now authored a provision that was passed by the house and senate to begin something called the excellence in mental health act. we now have in law a definition of "quality behavioral health services." we have federally qualified health centers in the community where people without insurance can go and be able to get preventive care, get the physical health services they need, but the health clinics can't get reimbursed for mental health or substance abuse services. so we now have a definition. we have standards for what "quality behavioral helt health care" -- mental health and

substance abuse care -- looks like of we have standards. and we began to provide dollars so that communities could provide those services, if they met the standard. a couple of years ago when we put together money for the first step by saying, we're going to provide money for eight states to be able to meet these standards, eight out of 50. the good news was -- is that half the states in the country responded and so we want to be one of those eight states. 24 different states across our country now signed up. they have received planning grants to assess their community mental health services, what they're doing and how they did meet these new high standards, how they can make sure that they are including 24-hour psychiatric emergency services