mr. toomey: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. toomey: mr. president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call: quorum call: mr. schumer: mr. president? the presiding officer: the democratic leader. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent -- are we in a quorum? the presiding officer: yes. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: first, mr. president, i'd like to send my heartfelt condolences to the bush family for the passing of the former first lady barbara bush. simply put, mrs. bush was the personification of grace and class, as first lady and as a human being throughout her life. she will be missed by people on both sides of the aisle and by all americans. second, mr. president, let me begin on our nation's issue of foreign policy. over the weekend the ambassador to the u.n. nikki nailly went on national television to's a nnounce a new round of sanctions against russia for enabling the bru

mr. toomey: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. toomey: thank you, mr. president. it's a pleasure to follow my friend and neighbor to the south and east from the great state of delaware. mr. president, yesterday, the senate finance committee had a hearing on tax reform, and i had the privilege to introduce one of the witnesses, a fellow named david cranston from robinson township in western pennsylvania. david is the president of cranston material handling equipment corporation. it's a third generation small business, and it was founded in 1957 by david's grandfather. today david leads that company, a company he's worked at since 1983, so for 35 years he has been there. today he leads a team of seven full-time employees and two part-time employees. truly a small family-owned business. cranston material sells and installs material handling and storage equipment to manufacturing companies, including very large manufacturing companies, and their products and services help these manufacturers to store and lift products in the storage pr

mr. toomey: mr. president, reserving the right to object. i long advocated for profound reforms of the export-import bank. my preference has been that a u.s. administration, this was an obligation of the previous administration which it chose to ignore, but that we negotiate an eventual phaseout of the export entities. my objection to this is the embedded taxpayer subsidy and risk, and every transaction that the export-import bank does, and i'm defending the american taxpayer. i'm pretty sure i'm not going to change anyone's mind on the floor tonight. let me make clear where we are with these nominees. during the banking committee hearings, i made it clear i would support the nominees to fill the vacancies on the board, provided that a former, such as scott gary, was included upon them. i would have supported restoring the quorum with the confidence that there would have been a good faith effort to begin the kind of reforms that we need. unfortunately the committee chose not to advance scott garrett who would have done a good job of bridging

mr. toomey: mr. president, i rise this afternoon to address the c.r.a. that we voted to proceed to and which we will vote on final passage tomorrow. it is a congressional review act that will allow us to repeal an ill-conceived cfpb regulation. let me start with just a word about the cfpb, because this is an agency that is fundamentally flawed in its design. it has been from day one. first, it's the single individual director -- there's no bipartisan board, no need for consensus. there's one man rules. this one individual can only be removed for cause. he's part of the executive branch, but the chief executive can't fire him. this makes no sense. and finally, the entire cfpb, this huge regulatory agency, is subject to no meaningful oversight. th they are not dependent on congress, the people's representatives, for taxpayer funding. they just draw whatever they want out of the fed which means the fed has that much less to hand over to the treasury. so an individual rather than a commission, no ability to remove except for cause, and not subject to appropr

toomey: are you : thank you, mr. chairman. ms. brandt, welcome. we all know medicare is the largest purchaser of prescription opioids in the country. i was little shocked to learn that a typical year, 2016, anyway, one out of three beneficiaries received and opioid prescription from a doctor is counterintuitive to me that one of three people needs to be given a drug that is so powerful and so dangerous, but that is case. it's even more surprising that medicare actually paid more on a per patient basis for opioids than either commercial insurance or medicaid. so over $4 billion on opioid alone in 2016. i really wonder about the total consumption levels. i know that medicare and medicaid have over utilization monitoring systems and i know there has been some progress with respect to the people that are being tracked, but i am concerned that the over utilization monitoring distance are in fact monitoring a tiny percentage of the people that maybe should be monitored. i say that because in november of last year, the gao identified 727,000, medicaid be

mr. toomey: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. toomey: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. toomey: thank you, mr. president. it was about two weeks ago that i had the opportunity to tour a steel plant in reading, pennsylvania. the plant is owned by carpenter technology. it's a company that was founded in 1889. it's quite extraordinary, a vast complex in reading, pennsylvania. they have 2,000 employees in burkes county which is where reading is located. they have an additional 1,200 or so folks across pennsylvania. carpenter technology is a leading producer and distributor of specialty metals, including what they call soft magnetics. as i understand it, soft magnetics increase the efficiency and the power and the battery life of electric motors. that's one of the main applications of these soft magnetics. it's a feature in steel and other metals that allows the magnetic properties to be turned on and off very rapidly. it's amazing technology. and it's an absolut

mr. toomey: thank you, mr. president. i rise this afternoon to recognize and celebrate with my constituents and friends from the seat community of pennsylvania and beyond. i want to start with the acknowledgement that my -- acknowledgement of certain words may be off. i am delighted to have so many wonderful representatives of the sikh community. i want to thank hem and all of -- them and all of the members of the sikh community who made this trip down to washington, d.c., to participate in a celebration for an important holiday and to raise awareness about the sikh community. sikhism has been around for nearly 600 years. it originated in india in the 15th century. today there are about 30 million sikhs who live in countries all around the world, making it one of the world's largest religions. sikhism believes that every individual, regardless of sex, gender, race, or creed is equal before god. sikh was introduced in the united states in the 19th century. today there are about 700,000 sikhs who live in the united states a