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Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I understand that several of our colleagues today have been on the Senate floor calling for an immediate vote on the President's new North American Free Trade Agreement.

Setting aside the fact that there have not yet been the hearings or the markups necessary to allow that to happen, it would be a major mistake for the Trump administration to seek a vote on a trade deal until it is a good deal. While the new North American Free Trade Agreement includes some improvements to the existing agreement, there is still work to be done to get the best deal for American workers and consumers.

Updating NAFTA, for example, means confronting the areas where older trade agreements continually have fallen short: fighting to protect labor rights in the interests of working families, preventing a race to the bottom when it comes to the environment, and making sure there are vigorous enforcements of our trade agreements so that other countries can't treat a trade deal as an empty document that gives them yet more time and more opportunities to rip off American jobs.

I do have real concerns about the current trade enforcement because the new NAFTA carries over too much of the weak enforcement system of the old NAFTA. It is too easy on trade cheats, and it is not good enough for American workers, particularly on the issue of protecting our working families and labor rights.

Now, I and our colleague Senator Brown have proposed several additional tools to address specific challenges in Mexico. It is my view, in having talked to trade officials and in having gathered information elsewhere, that by all accounts, there has been good progress on this front. Additionally, one of the bigger challenges that has to be confronted is that of identifying the hundreds of thousands of sham labor contracts in Mexico that have exploited workers there and harmed workers here in our country. Mexico must remain on track to get those contracts renegotiated on behalf of the interests of our workers.

To my colleagues who say this deal must be passed in the name of certainty, I want to make a point that, I think, is very important. During this overhaul, the original North American Free Trade Agreement remains in place. Workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses should not have to go to bed at night fearing that economic uncertainty is going to rob them of their livelihoods. The uncertainty arises only when the President acts out and makes impulsive threats regarding our trade relationships. When the President threatened new tariffs on Mexico this June over immigration policy, that created far more uncertainty than our taking the time that would be necessary to get this deal right. American workers and farmers have already been hurt by the President's impulses. More are going to get hurt if Trump threatens and produces chaos, causing the Congress to accept a bad deal on the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Passing a trade deal that would allow the President to unilaterally change trade rules and jerk around entire industries would be a substantial mistake and would be one that would produce still more uncertainty. That is not how you get trade done right. Based on that, I do have some real concerns about how the administration wants NAFTA 2.0 to be implemented.

I am just going to close by mentioning a fact or two about my State.

In my State, trade and global commerce are priority business. One in five jobs in Oregon depends on international trade, and the trade jobs often pay better than do the nontrade jobs because they reflect a level of added value. When I am asked at a town meeting what my views are on trade, I always say: Let's grow it in Oregon. Let's make it in Oregon. Let's add value to it in Oregon and then ship it around the world. I don't take a back seat to anybody in talking about the importance of trade, particularly in my State.

I sat and listened to a number of my colleagues who talked about their views and that we ought to just have an immediate vote, that we just should vote now. I don't know what they thought with respect to hearings and markups and the kinds of things that are required. They just said that we have to move now. As the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Finance, I just want to make it clear that you go when a trade deal is a good deal. There are issues still to be resolved on that matter, and I am interested in working with both sides in good faith in order to get a good deal.
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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, our colleagues, Senator Warner and Senator Murray, have come to the floor over the course of the day to speak about the importance of protecting Americans who have preexisting health conditions, and I want to see if I can put this in a bit of context so that people understand why those of us on this side feel so strongly, why I think Senator Warner and Senator Murray were spot-on, and I want to put it in the context of the way I came up.

When I got out of law school, I set up a legal aid program for senior citizens. I was codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers, and I saw what it meant when the big insurance companies could just clobber those people with preexisting health conditions. They would just throw all kinds of extra costs on them, heap extra expenses, and pretty much beat the stuffing out of anybody who had a preexisting health condition. We tried as hard as we could to push back. This was all before I was in public life.

At the time, I said: If I ever have the opportunity in the Congress, I am going to make this priority business to make sure that everybody in America could go to bed at night knowing that they wouldn't be wiped out in the morning if they have a preexisting condition.

So in the course of the whole debate about the Affordable Care Act, I produced a piece of legislation called the Healthy Americans Act. Seven Democrats and seven Republicans were cosponsors. Some of the Republican cosponsors are still serving in the U.S. Senate today.

What we had in it was airtight, loophole-free protection for anybody with a preexisting condition. We were thrilled that, by and large, our provision from the Healthy Americans Act became the provision in the Affordable Care Act that ensured that there would be a new generation of consumer protection and security for the millions of Americans who had these preexisting conditions.

Now, as my colleagues have said, there is a very real threat to that protection that is now in the Affordable Care Act that really does provide airtight, loophole-free protection for those with preexisting conditions. I just want to make sure that we get on the record, for those who are following the debate, what it means if you roll back these protections for those with preexisting conditions.

In a sentence, what it means is America goes back to the days--those days when I was codirector of the Gray Panthers--when healthcare was for the healthy and the wealthy. That is what you have if you allow discrimination against those with a preexisting condition. If you are healthy, you don't have an issue with preexisting conditions. If you are wealthy, you don't have an issue with preexisting conditions. But if you are not healthy and you are not wealthy and you get rid of these protections, you are in a world of hurt. That is what we are looking at should the Republicans prevail.

The Republican's official position is ironclad: Preexisting consumer protections ought to be pretty much thrown in the trash can. I am going to spend a few minutes outlining the examples of why that is the case.

First, we saw the TrumpCare disaster of 2017. The Republicans tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act with its protection for preexisting conditions. They failed, and preexisting conditions lived to fight another day. Enough said there.

Second, my colleagues have chosen to stand idly by while Republican- led States and the President tried to maneuver through the courts to toss out the entire Affordable Care Act overall with the protection for people with preexisting conditions. The so-called Texas lawsuit relies on an argument that wouldn't hold up in law class 101 on the Constitution. But thanks to a cadre of ideological judges, it does seem that this case may make its way to the Supreme Court.

I do want to be clear for those who are following this. Republican Members of this body are not just some kind of innocent bystander when it comes to this court case. They could, if they wanted to, join Democrats to take steps that would prevent this lawsuit from going forward, and, again, we can have protections for people with preexisting conditions. Instead, all the arguments are about why the Republicans just can't be involved and a lot of excuses and deflection.

Third, the so-called ``fix-it'' bills that my Republican colleagues have offered to--what they claim--``protect'' preexisting conditions are just so full of disclaimers that they look as if they might have been written by one of those insurance company lawyers from the old days who was only interested in finding ways in which the insurance company could win and the consumer would lose. Any healthcare legislation that doesn't provide an ironclad guarantee of health coverage, no matter your health status, age, or gender, amounts to a huge loophole that leaves hard-working, middle-class people emptyhanded when they need health coverage the most. If insurance companies can make coverage for your preexisting conditions so expensive that it is unaffordable, it is no different than being denied coverage in the first place.

Next, the Trump administration has given the States the green light to use taxpayer dollars to push junk plans that aren't worth the paper they are written on. I will have more to say about that in the days ahead, but not only does this approach amount to federally funded fraud, this is a gross misreading of current law that is going to disproportionately hurt vulnerable Americans with preexisting conditions who need comprehensive healthcare.

Under these rules, unscrupulous insurance companies can charge people more if they have a preexisting condition, deny benefits for specific types of treatment, or even deny coverage altogether. This rule change is--and we are going to talk some more about it--a grotesque perversion of the provision I authored in the Affordable Care Act that would let States build on the strong protections in the law but not go out and, basically, completely undermine them.

Despite this parade of grim tidings, next Friday, November 1, is the beginning of open enrollment for individual, private health insurance coverage on healthcare.gov, so there is a little bit of encouraging news. Even as the Trump administration has done everything they can to fuel the fires of uncertainty for people about where healthcare is going to be and what is going to be available, millions of families are going to be able to shop for plans that provide them with health coverage. That is because, yesterday, Americans got the news that the average premium for the so-called ``benchmark plan'' for the individual market--part of the Affordable Care Act--is going down by 4 percent. Make no mistake, this reduction is in spite of all of the things the President has done to make it harder to get affordable coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Attributing this reduction to the President is about as believable as saying that Trump University is going to make a comeback any day now.

In fact, one insurer who posted a premium decrease last year crunched the numbers and said that they could have reduced premiums by over 22 percent if it weren't for congressional Republicans and sabotage by the Trump administration.

Americans should still sign up for health coverage if they need it before the deadline on December 15, even if the President hasn't done you or your family any favors on healthcare.

One last point on healthcare: While Americans are looking for affordable healthcare plans on healthcare.gov, there are going to be a lot of scam artists on the prowl outside of the official website. These hucksters are going to be trying to pawn what are called junk plans onto unsuspecting families. The junk plans might sound attractive. They always seem to be advertising promotional materials that say: ``Low premiums! Affordable coverage!'' But I just want to make clear that if you or a loved one gets sick, chances are the fine print says that the carrier of this junk plan will not cover what you need. So despite the low premium, the real bill comes due right when you need your coverage the most.

I am also struck by how similar these junk plans are that are being offered now by these rip-off insurers--how similar they are to another part of what we dealt with when I was codirector of the Gray Panthers, legal aid for senior citizens. Back then, we saw that fast-talking insurance salespeople would sell older people 10, 15, sometimes even 20 private policies that were supposed to supplement their Medicare, and a lot of them weren't worth the paper they were written on. If you had one, often, the others wouldn't offer you coverage because they would say that you already had coverage.

Finally, we outlawed that. We wrote a law that streamlined the Medigap market, and it basically is still the law today.

With respect to the law on preexisting conditions, I hope we can protect that. We shouldn't be creating new problems for patients and consumers. And, particularly, when we make progress, such as we did with the Affordable Care Act so that we now have in it airtight, loophole-free protections for those with preexisting conditions, we certainly shouldn't turn back the clock to the days when healthcare was for the healthy and wealthy.

I am going to have more to say about these junk plans and how they have really unsavory, historical roots, particularly when the equivalent was sold to the elderly. These junk plans are now just a backdoor to denying care to Americans with preexisting conditions, and people ought to know about the dangers. People deserve to know whether their elected officials are going to fight to protect their rights or whether they are going to let a bunch of con artists weaken the core protections for preexisting conditions that Senators Warner and Murray talked about today that are so important to keeping families healthy.

I urge my Republican colleagues to change course and stand with Democrats in defense of the law and real protection for vulnerable patients, against discrimination if they have a preexisting condition.

With that,

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