mr. whitehouse: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, let me first thank my friend from alaska for his enthusiasm for getting the coast guard legislation completed. as a fellow ocean state, albeit it a somewhat smaller ocean state, we are strong supporters of our coast guard and appreciate very much their service op -- on our waters. i am here for my is 189th time to wake up speech to discuss the republican tax bill. who knew? folks watching today's debate from home are probably wondering what the tax bill has to do with climate change. good question. they might also ask, as i do, why the tax bill includes massive giveaways to fossil fuel producers. or what opening up precious wilderness to oil drilling has to do with tax reform. the chairman of the senate finance committee said we need a simpler tax code that puts more money back into the pockets of workers and families. republicans, he said, want to create a fairer, more predictable system for taxpayers across the country. mr. president, the tax plan is none o

mr. whitehouse: thank you, mr. president. i'm here now for the 190th time to wake up speech to talk about an issue that falls at the intersection of climate change and jobs and consumer power and protection. you would think that a policy that simultaneously reduces the carbon emissions responsible for climate change and boosts american industrial competitiveness and puts thousands of dollars back into the pockets of american consumers would be pretty universally popular. unfortunately, you would be wrong. the corporate average fuel economy standards known as the cafe standards set a minimum threshold for the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks that are sold in the united states. in 2011, the major automakers here in america, ford and g.m. and the others, enthusiastically endorsed voluntary new fuel efficiency standards which would gradually increase the fuel economy for their cars and light trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon on average by 2025. so think about that for a second. in 2011, average fuel economy for these v

mr. whitehouse: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: may i ask to speak for three minutes on behalf of my departing friend? the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: senator franken will shortly go on to his next chapter, which i hope will be wonderful for him and for franny and for their family. i hope and believe that he leaves us with everyone's goodwill here in the senate. he certainly leaves with mine. al franken has been an unusually good senator, in part because he has such a good staff. and he has also to me been an unusually good friend, particularly in this hard town where you are supposed to buy a dog if you want a friend. we served together on the help and judiciary committees where he did great committee work. he stood out particularly for his talent on judiciary without even being a lawyer. i will miss him. the senate will come to miss him, too, i expect. he is a lot of things that you want in a senator -- principled, innovative, hardworking, super smart, bipartisan, generous, caring. things will

mr. whitehouse: thank you, mr. president. i'm delighted to join my colleagues here in support of these kids who are known as dreamers or daca kids that came in under the statute or under president obama's program and who have lived here for many years in this country, passed all the requirements, met all the standards. these are good kids. there's absolutely no reason for them to be the target of the kind of anxiety and fear that they're being put through to score political points. it really doesn't make sense. by definition, these kids came to the united states of america under the age of 16. you can't even enforce a contract against a minor in this country. they do not have the legal capacity in most places to buy a sofa. and yet, we're holding them to account for decisions that their parents made when they were small children. one of the rhode islanders who will be affected by this came to the united states when she was eight years old. eight years old. think of the kind of decisions that your eight-year-old kids make or t

mr. chairman. >> senator whitehouse. >> thank you, chairman. appreciate it. dr. mccance-katz, welcome. good to see you again before the committee. >> thank you. >> we in the negotiation around the cures act got a commitment, bipartisan commitment for extra billion dollars to be spent on opioid treatment. the first half of that was already distributed, and we hope and expect that the second half of it will come through at the end of this year, funding measure, whatever that ends up looking like we are very much counting on that. in the last one, the measure by which the funding was distributed to states didn't correlate to the rate of the opioid epidemic, the intensity and severity of the opioid epidemic in that state. nor did it connected recently passed cara bill here i'm hoping that as we move forward on this, you'll be in a position to structure the grant process for the second half billion in such a way that it more accurately addresses the high impact states, and that it's better k'nex to the cara bill. i think you can probably do that in the terms of the grant application request

mr. chairman? >> senator whitehouse. >> i will only speak briefly. i accept and adopt the remarks of senator hatch. the only thing that i would add to them is that in addition to everything that he has said, we even then built a backstop into this bill to make sure that there was no harm from it, and we gave responsibilitying for that backstop to a separate agency then, -- than dea. hhs was given the legal obligation to do a report on what the result of this bill was so that we would know how to respond. they are now late and in violation of law. they have not provided that report. and i think it would be very helpful if we were having this hearing with the legally-required hhs report that we demanded. i think it's fine to go ahead without it given that they have delayed, but this would be a more productive hearing if hhs had done its job as we required. we would have better information to look at this, and in terms of the good faith of this proceeding, very clearly building in that review backstop was a strong signal that we really wanted to get thi

mr. chairman. >> thank you. >> senator whitehouse. we in the association got in theca. rar and cures act, got extra billion dollars spent on opioid treatment. the first half of that was already distributed. we hope and expect the second half will come through and at the end of this year, funding measure. whatever that ends up looking like. we're very much counting on that. in the last one the measure which the funding was distributed to states didn't coral rate to the rate of the opioid epidemic, the intensity and severity of the opioid epidemic in that state. nor did to go to the recently-passed cara bill. i hope when we move forward on this, you are in a position to structure the grant process for the second half billion, in such a way that it more accurately addresses the high-impact states and that it better connects to the cara bill. i think you can probably do that in the terms of the grant application request that you structure from samhsa. i want to hear from you where you plan to go with that? because the high-impact states kind of got, not treated so well. >>

whitehouse? >> thank you, chairman and welcome, mr. azar. i don't think there is much that you and i are going to accomplish today on the question of drug pricing, but i hope very much in office you will take the side of the american people and not just the pharmaceutical industry or worse yet the investors who have raided the pharmaceutical industry with no pharmaceutical background with the sole mission to jack up prices on necessary pharmaceuticals and extract money with monopoly authority. we know how to deal with that ordinarily. i hope you will help us deal with that. i want to talk about a different situation, which i think is an opportunity for considerable bipartisan progress. i want to start with two rhode island stories. you know what a medicare aco is. i assume? >> i do. >> we have two in rhode island. one is a very early one, coastal medical, which over four years has saved medicare $28 million relative to its benchmark while maintaining a 99% quality score. that makes it one of the best in the country. its average per member pe

whitehouse. >> thank you and i join my colleagues congratulating you and mr. murray on your success. and hope for more to come. the requests that you go into the burden of sub-representative monitoring. i just left brown research an hour ago and this is the university of rhode island's request. you get brown university and university of rhode island working together on a project and the supposed obligation to monitor their subcontractors now applies to each of them. you have your eye monitoring brown and brown monitoring uri and they're both monitoring umb, can you help reduce the bureaucratic reporting burden to your su your sub-recipients? >> we don't enjoy dog that low risk monitoring and put together a proposal to redue the amount of low risk for recipients. some don't meet that but many do. >> could you include us in that cycle so we can be helpful giving advice and making sure that goes forward at good pace? >> be happy to. >> it was helping you connect the device side with cure and you've done a good job. the original testimony from the fda is what you really needed was a thir

mr. chairman, with your permission i'm going to yield to my colleague, senator whitehouse because he had an obligation on the floor. >> thank you. i appreciate that courtesy. my questions are going to be for director brandon. let me just say that in my years as rhode island's u.s. attorney i just thought that the atf office there was terrific. you made big cases with a small office. you were low maintenance and high performance and it was terrific. so i just want to express my appreciation to may colleagues from that office back then and to the atf generally now. >> if i may say, thank you for that, because right now there are men and women all around the country for atf serving warrants, high risk warrants. i know they'll hear what you said and it will really help their morale. sincerely i say thank you. >> it's sincere on my part. we're here because of the general proposition that a database is only as good as the data that actually enters into it. if you search a database for data that's never been entered, it's going to fail. i'd like to ask you a few questions about another one the

mr. whitehouse: mr. president, is the senate in a quorum call now? the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mr. whitehouse: may i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be lifted? the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: thank you. mr. president, moody's investors service is one of america's credit rating agencies. it's not an environmental organization. it doesn't have any activity in the debate over climate change. that's not what it does. what moody's does is to analyze the ability of companies and government agencies that issue debt to meet those debt obligations. now these moody's ratings matter because they determine the interest rates that states and counties and municipalities and companies must pay. there was some interesting news last week. moody's declared that it is time for cities, counties, and states along our coasts -- alaska being an example of a state with a lot of coast -- to wake up to the growing risk of climate change. moody's, moody's h has adopted credit indicators, to quote them, to assess t