vote:

the presiding officer: have all senators voted? any senator wish to change their vote? on this vote the yeas are 80, the nays are 15. the nomination is confirmed. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the motion to invoke

cloture. the clerk: cloture motion, we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22, do hereby bring to a close debate on the nomination of aabrian zuckerman, of new jersey, ambassador extraordinary of the united states of america to row reyna. the presiding officer: is it the sense of the senate that the debate on adrian zuckerman to be ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the united states of america to romania? the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rules. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: are there any senators in the chamber wishing to vote or change their vote? if not, the yeas are 65, the nays are 30. the motion is agreed to. the clerk will report the nomination. the clerk: department of state, adrian zuckerman of new jersey to be ambassador of the united states of america to romania. the presiding officer: under the previous order, with respect to the lagoa nomination, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table and the president will be notified immediately of the senate's action.

mr. wyden: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: mr. president, as the ranking democrat on the senate finance committee, i can tell the senate here this morning that there is no higher priority for senate finance democrats than the well-being of health care patients in this country and how strongly we feel about their having a right to good-quality, affordable health care coverage. and right now, too many of those folks are getting ripped off by an insurance lobbyist's dream, taxpayer-funded junk insurance, or by big pharma that is always, always looking to engage in

price gouging for one reason -- they can get away with it. they -- take insulin. insulin prices are up 13-fold in recent years. the drug is not 13 times better. it's the same insulin we have had around for decades. but the reason the pharmaceutical companies do it is because they can get away with it. and now this morning, i'm going to take a few minutes and talk about what this really means for patients because i can tell you this fall there are a lot of families across this country who would rather be prepping for holidays than worrying about their health care. unfortunately, the trump administration is refusing to provide that kind of security for our patients. let me tell you about a youngster in oregon named jasper

to begin. jasper is 3, full of energy and love and a big, big fan of play time with cars and trucks and trains. he was born, however, with huge medical challenges. cystic fibrosis, cardiac and pancreatic problems, hearing loss. needs a variety of treatments multiple times a day. it's so hard on jasper's family. it's so hard on jasper. and of course the cost, the costs of jasper's care are in the stratosphere. the family is fortunate to have health insurance through a parent's employer. they know how absolutely vital it is to have what they consider to be a lifeline, the protection

of the affordable care act. at the heart of the affordable care act are bedrock, iron-clad protections for people like them. no discrimination by insurance companies against preexisting conditions. that was something where you had support from the other side of the aisle. i know about that because i wrote a bipartisan bill that had air-tight, loophole-free protection against what essentially was discrimination against those with preexisting conditions and we got it into the affordable care act. yet, now we see the other side of the aisle is trying to unravel those protections. they're trying to unravel the protection that we would see for

patients with respect to big expenses because our approach had no annual or lifetime limits on coverage, coverage denials to drag people into bureaucratic nightmare, young people covered on their parents' plan until age 26, and lots more. those protections save people's lives and make health care affordable for millions of americans. unfortunately, with the support of my colleagues here on the other side in the senate, the trump administration wants to eliminate those protections so important to jasper and families like his. my colleagues on the other side are standing by and just basically doing nothing while the administration in republican-led states are out there maneuvering in the courts to get the entire affordable care act wiped out.

it's the so-called texas case, an absurd lawsuit based on an absurd argument, an argument that wouldn't pass the smell test in a middle school mock trial. somehow right-wing ideological judges have kept it alive. because this lawsuit keeps hanging around, tens of millions of americans might lose their health care with hardly any warning and no fallback options to protect them. now, republicans have claimed they have fix-it bills that they could pass in the event that their allies took down the affordable care act. they do read like they were written by the lawyers and the lobbyists on the payroll of big insurance companies. if insurance companies can hike up the costs of treating a preexisting condition, so high that it becomes unaffordable, it's no different than being

denied coverage at the outset. and while the texas case moves forward, the trump administration is continuing to allow junk insurance scam artists to defraud americans into buying worthless plans that aren't worth, really, the paper they're written on and certainly don't cover the health care that americans need. this is -- i want to be very specific about it, mr. president. this is an insurance lobbyist's dream. you've got tax breaks for junk insurance. that's on every insurance lobbyist's wish list for the holidays. i think it's federally funded fraud, plain and simple, but unfortunately it's got the

support of a lot of republicans here in the congress. now, it's now the middle of the open enrollment period for health insurance on healthcare.gov. the trump administration's support for junk plans has created a whole new burden for families across the country who are shopping for insurance. and i am particularly troubled by this, mr. president, because i remember what junk insurance used to be like. i was director of the senior citizens at home for almost seven years before i was elected to the congress, and those were the days when you could go around the country, whether it was montana or oregon or anywhere else, and fast-talking salesmen would sell 10, 15, sometimes 20 policies to supplement a senior's medicare.

they were called medigap policies. and they were useless. seniors should have saved that money to pay the rent and maybe make sure that they had heat in their house. and finally, we got rid of those medigap rip-off policies. when i came to the congress, it was my top priority. we got it passed. it was a bipartisan proposal. but now junk plans are back. they're different than those medigap rip-offs, but much like what i battled when i was the head of the senior citizens in oregon, they are still built around the same proposition. they're essentially worthless. they are an insurance lobbyist's dream. and in the case of what we're dealing with, the

administration's gutting, gutting the affordable care act, i think it's essentially tax breaks, federal tax breaks for junk insurance, and that's why i think it's tantamount to federally funded fraud. the trump administration's support for junk plans has created a whole new burden for families across the country who are trying to shop for insurance that gives them real value. those shoppers used to be able to trust the junk plans had actually been banned from the marketplace. now those shoppers have got to wade through byzantine and manipulative marketing scams and incomprehensible insurance lingo to try to figure out if they're getting coverage that actually

helps them or is, as described too often, just worthless junk. what's worse, the trump administration actually redirects people looking for coverage from the health care.gov website to third party brokers who can sell unsuspecting customers junk plans. it is, i think, astounding that the trump administration has seen fit to heap another burden on vulnerable people, and after we have called this administration out on it, they're not willing to do anything to correct it. unfortunately, the beginning of the trump administration with the help of many allies in the congress, it's been one attempt after another to take health

care away from vulnerable americans, millions of vulnerable americans. those like 3-year-old little jasper and his family that i started talking about at home in oregon. on a fundamental level, mr. president, this is a debate about whether this country is going to go back to the days when health care was for the healthy and wealthy. and that was the way it worked. if the insurance companies could clobber somebody with a preexisting condition, if you were healthy, it didn't matter, didn't have to worry. if you were wealthy, you just sat down and wrote out a check. that's the way it worked. but when i came to the senate, we put together a bipartisan bill, airtight, loophole-free protection for those with preexisting conditions. there are colleagues on the

other side of the aisle, mr. president, who cosponsored my bill. and, by the way, the president of the senate knows who is the leader of that effort, one of his predecessors in the utah delegation, the late senator bennett. so this idea that we're just going to sit around and go back to the days when health care was for the healthy and wealthy, that is not acceptable to finance democrats that i have the honor of working with. it's not acceptable to any of us on this side and shouldn't be acceptable to my colleagues in the congress. that's where donald trump wants to return to, the days when health care was for the healthy and wealthy. they have made it clear by working to eliminate preexisting condition protections in the congress and the courts by giving insurance lobbyists

federal tax breaks for junk insurance plans and by seeking to slash programs, health programs for the vulnerable. i just want to make it clear, mr. president, that on this side of the aisle we're about patients. we're about protecting patients. we're about the proposition that in a country as strong and good and rich as ours where we're going to spend $3.5 trillion this year on health care, if you divide the number of americans like maybe 325 million and 3.5 trillion, you could send every family of four in america a check for $45,000. we're spending enough to take care of patients. we ought to be doing more to protect them rather than turning back the clock on young people like jasper and his family. and i just wanted to make it clear we'll be on the floor

talking about more patients in the days ahead and on the fight, a fight we are going to prosecute relentlessly to protect those patients under the affordable care act. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. brown: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. brown: i just was literally walking by and heard senator wyden. i normally don't sit over here -- but senator wyden speaking about health care. it's just so clear to me some of the things that this body could be doing to bring down the cost of health care and to expand the number of people that have health insurance. and i know in my state, i worked with -- i know a friend of the presiding officer, governor kasich, a republican -- i'm a democrat -- worked with him on expanding medicaid in ohio back after the affordable care act. we now have 900,000 more people

have insurance. but what i was, liked about senator wyden, what he was saying was some of the things we can do in the future. it's clear to me if we allowed the government to negotiate drug prices on behalf of medicare r beneficiaries the way we do with the veterans administration it could make a huge difference in drug costs. we in this body because in large part because the lobbying --. mr. wyden: would my colleague yield? mr. brown: sure. mr. wyden: my colleague has been an enormous champion for consumers. i just want to ask my colleagues, didn't you and finance democrats try in the finance committee to get rid of this restriction on negotiating to do what you are --. mr. brown: that's right. it should be an easy process. we know how to do with the veterans administration the cost is 40% or 50% of what typically

is the cost of what a patient pays. the other thing we could do when we were this close to getting the affordable care act is giving people the option at age 50 or 55 to buy into medicare. as senator wyden knows, we all have in our states, whether it's utah or ohio, we have 58-year olds that lose their jobs or 62-year olds that lose their jobs, and they can't really find, can't often find insurance. it's not affordable if they can. if they had the option to buy in a revenue-neutral way as we have built into the affordable care act but lost in the end -- we fell one vote short -- but it would have made a huge difference in people being able to get through that bridge. i'll never forget i had a town hall in youngstown some years ago and a woman stood up and said i'm 63 years old. i hold two jobs. i've never had health insurance. i just want to stay alive until i'm 65. she didn't say i wanted to stay alive to raise my grandkids or to take a trip. it was stay alive so i can get

on medicare and get insurance. that just shouldn't be in this country. mr. wyden: would my colleague yield for just a quick question? mr. brown: of course. mr. wyden: my understanding -- and again i listened to my colleague in the finance committee -- you're championing not going back but going forward with more medicare-type choices like making that person who's really wondering if they're going to make it till 65 in order to get their medicare, you'd like, for example, say an older woman who had been a victim of age discrimination, didn't have much money, you'd like to make them eligible for medicare at 60 or 61 or something like that? isn't that what you've been working for? mr. brown: thank you, senator wyden, give them that option. it's something we should be able to do. in the end it means furious trips to the emergency -- it means fewer trips to the

emergency room. those ten years where they're more likely to get sick and more likely to need medicare but aren't quite yet eligible by age. thanks, senator wyden. i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. gardner: i rise to honor a foreign service officer of the united states and a former peer peer -- fellow in my office tragically killed in an accident after serving his country abroad. after serving in my office for a year-long fellowship nathan lane was assigned to the poland desk at the u.s. state department here in washington. sadly while on temporary duty in poland, he was involved in a car accident. while he was initially hospitalized, his injuries proved too severe, and surrounded by his loving family, passed away on november

2. nathan was a committed public servant who joined the state department in 2000 and served in nearly every corner of the globe. he and his wife sarah and later his son peter traveled from mexico to russia to byelarus to vietnam and finally to kenya. after his assignment in kenya, he had the misforeign to be a -- misfortune to be assigned to my office through a pearson fellowship. here my team and i got to see his diligence and dedication every day firsthand. during his time in my office, nathan proved invaluable. his knowledge and expertise of foreign policy gave him a mastery of the portfolio as revealed by his policy papers on important international issues and matters that we tackled in the senate foreign relations committee. nathan's understanding of the dynamics of foreign relations and his skill at compiling pertinent information allowed him to craft the soon-to-be

released report on china. this product of the subcommittee on east asia, the pacific and cybersecurity policy. absence nathan's diligence and dedication this report wouldn't have been possible. nathan drafted a resolution urging the formation of an unprecedented treaty alliance between the united states and indo-pacific nation and our allies to protect what we guard against growing cyberthreats. clips was nathan's brainchild. he was passionate about this idea. he was rightfully proud of this innovative resolution and my team and i are honored to carry on this torch. of course nathan contributed so much more than just policy expertise to the office. his kind heart and curious nature made him a friend to my staff and to me. he would readily help those around him even with the sumwalt tasks without -- smallest tasks without a whisper of complaint and quickly fit into the team.

nathan had many passions beyond foreign policy. he loved chess and every so often we would catch him pulling up an ongoing game in between times of about thatness. he loved run -- of busyness. he loved running. he would step away from his desk at a convenient time to go for a run around capitol hill. perhaps his greatest passion was baseball. one of his most timeless contributions to our office was his membership of coors and corn, the joint softball team between senator sasse's office and my office. we may not have won that year but we wouldn't have stood a chance without nathan. as we celebrate the world series in washington, nathan was such a great nats fan that every time we'd cheer for that team, we'll also be cheering for nathan. he was one of a kind, he was cheerful, eager and caring.

and his loss will be felt by all of us who knew him. i ask my colleagues to join me in praying for his family, his wife and son in remembering the man who graced so many of us with his compassion. mr. president, i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

mrs. feinstein: mr. president? the presiding officer: the

senator from california. mrs. feinstein: thank you very much, mr. president. i rise today -- the presiding officer: the senate is? a quorum call. -- is in a quorum call.

mrs. feinstein: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from california. mrs. feinstein: thank you very much, mr. president. i rise today to speak on the violence against -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mrs. feinstein: i ask the quorum call be rescinded. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. feinstein: i rise today to speak on the violence against women reauthorization act of 2019. this bill passed the house by a vote of 263-158, with 33 republicans supporting it. a week ago, along with every other senate democrat, i introduced the bill in the senate. people on the front lines helping these victims wrote these bills -- this bill. this bill is is not a democratic bill. it's not a republican bill. this bill is a survivors' bill. it's written with the help of survivors who know what's needed

in the real world. the bill accomplishes two things -- it preserves the advancements we made during the last reauthorization in 2013, and it includes certain meaningful improvements to the law. in particular, there are three key elements -- one, it expands jurisdiction over non-native americans for domestic violence offenses and crimes against children, elders, and law enforcement. violence is a big problem on tribal lands, and the best way to address it is to allow the tribes themselves to prosecute these crimes. unfortunately, some instead want to circumvent the tribal justice system that we know works, and this moves us in the wrong direction. secondly, the bill builds on existing antidiscrimination

protections for the lgbt community. in the 12013 reauthorization -- in the 2013 reauthorization, congress declared that federal grant recipients could use funds to train staff to recognize and combat discrimination against lgbt individuals. unfortunately, the law wasn't clear, and organizations are still uncertain if they can use funds for this purpose. this bill simply clarifies that intent. it's a small but very important change to help this at-risk community. and there has been surprising resistance from some on the republican side to include this modest language. and, third, our bill keeps guns out of the hands of domestic abusers. it does this by adding intimate partners and stalkers to the existing list of individuals who

can be banned from possessing firearms. we know the presence of a firearm in a domestic violence situation increases the odds of a woman being killed by 500%. that's a major increase in risk. so it only makes sense to take guns away from convicted domestic abusers who may use them to kill their spouses or partners. there's simply no way to stop domestic violence, but i think we have a duty to do all we can, and this bill makes significant improvements in the law. so, mr. president, i would ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the democratic leader, no later than before the end of this year, the judiciary committee be discharged from further consideration of s. 2843 and the

senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the only amendments in order be two germane amendments per side; that debate on the bill be limited to one hour and amendments limited to 30 minutes each, equally divided between the two leaders or their designees; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the senate vote in relation to the amendments; that upon the disposition of the amendments, the bill, as amended, if amended, be read a third time and the senate vote on passage; and finally that amendments and passage be subject to a 60 affirmative vote threshold, all with no intervening action or debate. ms. ernst: mr. president? the presiding officer: is there objection? ms. ernst: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. ms. ernst: reserving the right to object, mr. president. mr. prid