My case in maine. I think thats an important principal and its how i start when i approach the analysis of any nominee to any position put forward by the executive, whether the executive is donald trump, barack obama, or anybody else. Thats a kind of starting point. And thats how i started this january. And, indeed, thus far as we voted here on the floor, i have supported five of the seven nominees that have come before us, plus ive supported two additional nominees in committee, which have not yet come to the floor but who i will support on the floor. So i am not total opposition, dont vote for any nominees. I dont think thats the way our system works, and its certainly not the way i intend to approach these issues. I have a i have approached them one at a time, looking at the positions of the nominees, their views, their hearings. Ive tried to follow the hearings as closely as possible, their answers to questions. Again, i start with a bias toward approval perhaps because of my experience as a chief executive myself. But, mr. President , i cant support nominees who are fundamentally opposed to the mission of the agency that theyve been asked to lead. To me that just doesnt make sense and thats why i voted against betsy devos two days ago because i didnt believe she had the best interests of american education, particularly Public Education, at heart. Her whole career has been about attacking and undermining Public Education by trying to, in effect, vouchurize it and have people use it in other schools and in a rural state like maine it wouldnt work as a practical matter. I couldnt support it because i felt she was whos style to the president obama kwras of the agency she was being premise of what she was being asked to lead. I understand policy differences and i understood the election took place and that elections have results and there will be different policies, but his policies on the fundamental mission of the department of health and Human Services are not what that department was established to do for the American People. The title is health and Human Services, than is and that is the role that department has played and should play and will play in the future of america. Now, my problems with dr. Price and his positions and theres no doubt about his positions on various issues. He has a long history of writing, legislating and advocating. There are three areas i want to touch on tonight. One is medicare, one is medicaid, and one is the Affordable Care act. I want to try to put these all in the context of my home state of maine. Health care in maine is an enormous part of our economy. Its somewhat higher, actually, as a percentage of our g. D. P. Than it is nationally. We are at about one fifth of our healthcare is our economy. It is a very, very important part of our economy, which i will touch on a little bit later. Lets talk about medicare. First, medicare in maine, 306,000 people in maine are medicare beneficiaries. The expenditure in maine by medicare is 2 billion. Now, when were talking about cutting our changing medicare, of course, we focus, as we should, on those 306,000 people. I will talk about them, but we also need to talk about the 2 billion. If youre talking about savings, savings dont just evaporate, they occur in real life and those are funds that dont go to support medical care for seniors in maine and dont go to our hospitals and dont go to our practitioners. 2 billion is a very significant part of our g. D. P. And thats just what medicare spends in maine, 306,000 people. Now, i want to touch on an aspect of this that i dont think has been discussed much in these debates and that is the burden of anxiety about health care and the cost of health care that was lifted from generations of seniors in this country by the passage of medicare now some 50 years ago 50plus years ago. As you get older, theres anxiety about retirement, theres anxiety about income, theres anxiety about your health, but theres also anxiety about the cost of health and the miracle of medicare was that it lifted that burden of anxiety from our seniors. It was one thing they didnt have to worry about ive got medicare. Thats been the words that has comforted thousands and millions of people in this country since 1965. To change the fundamental premise of medicare which is two dr. Price has advocated continuously from the current system, which is if you get sick, if you need medical care and qualify for medicare, its paid for. To change that to a system which is essentially vouchers, which is essentially a voucher which is capped at some level of inflation but not the Health Care Level of inflation is a cruel trick on our seniors. And what it will do is through compounding of interest if inflation is 2 a year and medical inflation, the cost of medical treatment increases at 4 , 5 , or 6 a year, which is typical of what happened over the last 20 years, that is where the medical inflation rate has been. If inflation is at 2 and thats what your voucher is going to increase at and medical costs increase at 6 , that gap is going to grow to the point where we are back to where we were in 1964, before the passage of medicare, and seniors suddenly have to worry about how they are going to pay for their health care. They are going to have an added burden of anxiety and they are going to have an added burden of money, of finance, of cost. This is you can call it all kinds of things, you can call it a voucher program, whether or not its privatization. There are all kinds of ways to paper it over, but what it really is is a shift and shaft. It is shifting the cost from medicare to seniors. Over time that shift and shaft is only going to increase. And i think that is unconscionable and theres no reason for it. Theres no reason for it. Yes, the cost of medicare is going up as a percentage of our budget. Thats because were getting older. Thats because we have a demographic bulge going through our society for people who were born in the 1940s and 1950s, the baby boom generation. That is understood and there are ways to deal with that issue without the radical solution of shifting the costs over to the seniors. It makes the federal books look good, but its not going to make the household books in maine look good, and thats what really bothers me about this policy. Were just wore trying to improve our we are trying to improve our miserable budget situation by shifting a great deal of these costs off to individuals. Thats just wrong. Medicare is too important financially, emotionally, psychologically its too important as an essential part of the promise that we have made to each generation of americans for the past 50 years. And to fundamentally change that and realize, i believe cynically, that as the gap increases over time, the percentage of the premiums that is being shifted on to seniors is going to grow over time until at some point and you can do the arithmetic its going to eat the whole thing. And the federal share, yes, will be capped or capped at some lower level and the share paid by the individual, by the family, by your mom, by your dad is only going to be greater. Thats wrong, thats a breaking of the promise that weve made to our seniors. The second piece where dr. Price, i believe, is fundamentally at odds with the premise and mission of the agency is in medicaid. Hes talked about various programs. First, lets get rid of the expansion of medicaid in the Affordable Care act and then lots block grant medicaid and send it to the states. Its the same principle. Its shift and shaft, only this time youre shafting the states. Youre taking a program which now says if you have medical expenses and youre qualified, they are paid for, and youre saying, okay, in the future well give you a fixed amount of money but if the medical expenses go up, its on you, mrf maine or michigan or california or california or florida or anywhere in this country. It is repairing the federal books in the government because we are not passing a reasonable budget. It is fixing those books at the expense of somebody else. Those moneys they are talking about is a 2 trillion cut in medicaid. Great, medicaids going to look a lot better. But that 2 trillion doesnt evaporate and go anywhere. It not like people will say, they are cutting medicaid so we will charge less for our hip or treatment of drug abuse. Its going to have consequences. Its going to come out of treatment. Its going to come out of health. There it is something about medicaid that often isnt observed. I learned this as governor. People think of medicaid as a kind of Welfare Program and there are people taking advantage of it. Perhaps there are. There are always people who take care of programs. But the truth is that the majority of funds for medicaid go to people in Nursing Homes your parents, uncle, your aunt. Nursing care for the elderly is significant for medicaid. Nursing medicaid, a great deal of medicaid expenses goes to Nursing Homes. Youre going to cut medicaid, youre going to have people who arent going to be able to afford to stay in fur nursing n Nursing Homes. The other majority of people on medicaid are children they are children who are covered who wouldnt have coverage otherwise. One of the best things in this country is it the combination of medicaid and chip which has resulted in an enormous increase in the Health Coverage of children. It is so important because Health Problems in children that can be dealt with when they are young and children and covered by insurance can save us enormous costs later on. So, again, whats dr. Price want to do . Cap, eliminate a. C. A. Expansion of medicaid and block grant it. Lets not kid ourselves. Block granting is shifting and shaftining to those elderly peoe that would lose coverage for Nursing Homes, to the children who need the coverage, but most especially to the states. And as a rpl former and, as a former governor, i can see the impact of this on my state of maine. Its a difficult issue. If we limit it, the only the only option will be to limit coveragor to cut back and, of course, medicaid is one of the places that were covering the treatment of opioid addiction. The greatest Public Health crisis in this country in my lifetime is the opioid crisis. We are losing one person a day in the state of maine to overdose deaths. One person every day. I met a young man at christmas time at a treatment center. I went to the Christmas Party and met his family and he was hope full and under treatment. And i learned this week that hes gone. Hes gone. Taken by the scourge of drugs. These are real people. These are real people. These arent just numbers and statistics. And, mr. President , in the next hour, as were here debating this nomination, four people in america are going to die of overdoses four people an hour. When you think of how we mobilize this country and the money we spent to deal with ebola where one person in the whole country died, and yet we have this horrible disease and scourge that is just decimating our societies and and were talking about cutting back one of the basic props for providing treatment. And weve got cases where weve got theres a huge backlog of of treatment beds. And i have been working on this problem in maine for a long time. And one of the things ive learned is that once a person is who is addicted reaches a stage where theyre willing to ask for help, youve got to be there then. To say to that person, therell be an opening in three weeks or three months is akin to a death sentence because they might be able to make it three weeks or three months. Yet thats the situation in much of the country today. Thats the situation. And were talking about knocking down of the props out from under our ability to deal with this horrible Public Health crisis that is devastating this country. Every state. But particularly rural states. Its taking people out of the workforce that we need. Its tearing families apart. And its affecting everybody. Its not just certain people in certain places. Its everybody. Its middleclass families. Its people of all ages. And to talk about, you know, blithely were going to blockgrant medicaid and fix the amount, its the same as what i said about medicare. The iron law of interest or of the percentage changes, if you fix it today and inflation continues, then ultimately it withers away and i. T. Not going to and its not going to meet the needs of our people. And yet thats what the nominee for the department of health and Human Services wants to do. I dont get it. And then finally theres the Affordable Care act. Youve talked on ive talked on this floor before about the Affordable Care act and why i feel so passionately about it. How having insurance when i was a young man saved my life. How not having insurance costs lives. The mathematics is pretty clear. There have been a number of studies. L for ever million of people who dont have insurance, there are 1,000 people who die prematurely. For every million of people who dont have insurance, there are 1,000 people who die premature prematurely. The Affordable Care act covers 22 million people. 22,000 premature deaths a year. This isnt i had omg. These are people. This isnt ideology. These are people. To ignore that and say we want free markets and free chat choice free choice means death to a lot of people. It meant death to a young man who had what i had 040 years ago who didnt have insurance, didnt get a checkup and didnt have surgery and hes gone and im here. And thats not fair. Thats not fair. Now, im ive said since i got here that the Affordable Care act isnt perfect. It can be changed. It can be fixed. I think i hear every now and then my colleagues are saying, lets repair t im all for it. Lets repair it. But lets get over this talk about repeal. But dr. Price has been the one of the leading voices if not the leading voice in the congress to repeal the Affordable Care act. I dont know his exact voting record, but i suspect he voted for every one of those repeals in the house over the last years. Repeal, repeal. Well, youre repealing Peoples Health care. And he doesnt want to have the patient protections that are in the Affordable Care act, the ones that keep it so that you cant discriminate against women in Health Insurance because theyre women. And there have to be Preventive Services that preexisting conditions, he says, yes, you have to keep you on for the preerntion but if you lose your preexistinhealth for a few mont, the clock stops. You cant get it again because of a preexisting condition. Thats one of the most important and fundamental promises of the Affordable Care act. And yet he wants to get rid of it. Now, heres the reality of maine. Ware rural state we are a rural state. We have a lot of rural hospitals. The and i would urge every member of this body to go and talk to their hospitals. Ive done it. Ive gone to the hospitals and ive sat down with them. I did it as recently as two weeks ago with a small rural hospital in lincoln, maine. And the repeal of the Affordable Care act, they told me, would cost them 1 million a year and they cant afford it. Ive been to the bridgeton hospital. Ive talked to people from all of our small not all, but many of our small hospitals and 50 to 50e6 of our rural hospitals are and 50 for 60 of our rural hospitals are running in the red right now. The Affordable Care act has provided Insurance Coverage to people who are then customers of those hospitals and the estimates are that the repeal of the Affordable Care act without a reasonable replacement would reduce their revenues by anywhere from 5 to 8 to 10 . These hospitals cant stand that kind of cut, and theyve told me there are only two choices. One is to shrink their services to their communities and the other is to close their doors. So and in maine in our rural state, we only have 16 counties. Eight of our 16 counties, the hospital is the largest employer in that county. And im sure thats true in all of the states in our country that have these small rural hospitals. The hospital is the major employer. So again when were talking about cutting the Affordable Care act and were talking about all these policy things and ideological things, what were doing is cutting jobs. In small towns that cant afford to lose them and theyre good jobs. If thats what you want to do, fine. But fess up and understand that thats the consequence of policies that are espoused enthusiastically by this nominee for the department of health and Human Services. It doesnt make sense, mr. President. To be putting someone in charge of an agency that is supposed to be looking out for the welfare and health of our citizens who is diametrically opposed to maintaining the health and welfare of our citizens. In maine we have 75,000 people on the Affordable Care act. Who wouldnt have coverage. I know people who have it who couldnt have coverage otherwise without those subsidies. Hes not going to allow those subsidies anymore. Its every man for himself. Every man for himself means a lot of people fall by the wayside. And thats wrong. Thats wrong in maine. And i cant vote for somebody whos going to put a dagger in the heart of these citizens of maine. I cannot do it. My conscience wont let me. So on medicare, shift and shaft to the seniors. On medicaid, shift and shaft to the states. On the Affordable Care act, shift and shaft to those people that need Health Insurance and the hospitals in our communiti communities, the hospitals in those communities. If you take paying customers away, its a double whammy. You lose the revenues from the customers and then you have to treat them as charity care and it makes the bottom line of these hospitals even worse. And as i said, they have told me in my state and i suspect this is true practically everywhere 50 to 60 of our rural hospitals are skating on the edge. Theyre in the red and were going to cut their revenues by 8 , 10 . Its unconscionable. It is truly unconscionable. Thats a word thats used around here sometimes, but this is it. All in the name of some kind of ideology that wants health care we want to go back to the health care, you know i cant believe were debating medicare. A program thats been so successful and been so important to seniors throughout the last three to four generations. Were now debating it . It doesnt make any sense. And to put somebody in charge of the department of health and Human Services thats inanymore kabl to medicare, medicaid, and the Affordable Care act this guy is a wrecking ball. Hes not a secretary. Hes going into this agency to destroy it. Hes he wants to undercut and diminish and in some cases literally destroy some of the major underpinnings of providing health care to people in this country. None of us, if we were sitting in this body if somebody walked by me and was stricken by a heart attack on the one hand fell on the floor, id help him. Every one of us would help him. I suspect dr. Price would help him. Hhe would be the first one ther. By these changes what we are doing is having people fall by our side and ignoring them in large scale across the country. And its just as real as if it is happening right before our eyes. 22,000 people will die if that Health Insurance is lost prematurely. Seniors will take on a burden of anxiety and fiscal drain that they cant afford that they have avenue avoided that theyve avoided for 50 years. Now, the final point is, this mans policies are at odds with his boss. President trump through the campaign issued pretty much ironclad guarantees to seniors that he was going to maintain medicare, maintain social security, but then he appoints a guy whose whole professional career has been aimed at undermining medicare. I think they better get on the same page. I dont always agree with president trump, but in this case, i think hes right. I wish hed whisper into the ear of his nominee. You cant have it both ways. Youre either for it or you want to gut it. And thats what were facing in this vote. This is a vote of conscience for me. Its has vote about my state. I love those people. I know them. I started out as a Legal Services attorney in a small town in maine. My first boy was born in that town in a little rural hospital thats struggling. I cant see i cant stand by and see someone take over this department whos going to do harm. Thats the thats the medical creed, isnt it . Do no harm. Thats the oath. But were talking about harm to seniors, to children, to people with insurance who wont have it. Were talking about real harm. And thats why i come to the floor tonight to urge my colleagues to reject this nominee. If you want to nominate if the president wants to put somebody forward who is conservative and has some ways of fixing some of these things and things there are some improvements that should be made and we dont have to do everything the way weve always done it im not arguing that but, goodness gracious, dont give us a nominee whose whole career has been spent aimed at undermining and diminishing and gutting the very programs that have meant so much to the people of america. Mr. President , im voting no on this nominee, and i believe that my colleagues should do so as well. I yield the floor. Mr. Wyden Blood Pressure . The presiding officer the senator from oregon. Mr. Wyden mr. President , before he leaves the floor, let me just say, as one who ran the Legal Services for the Elderly Program in oregon, you make all of us in Legal Services proud tonight, because you have really put a face, senator king, on whats at stake here. The way you focused on opioid, this scourge that is hammering communities from coast to coast, Rural Health Care i mean, without Rural Health Care, you cant have rural life. Its just that simple. And certainly when we get to the closing here and perhaps in perhaps an hour and a half or so, were going to get to the bottom line, as you did because i think these changes take america back to the days when health care was for the healthy and wealthy. So thank you for your passion and your commitment to your citizens, but also the people of this country, and i can tell you if anybody from Legal Services is listenin listening tonight, e going to be very proud, like i a because what it is all about is standing up for people and youve said it very well tonight. Mr. President , as i as i said say, well be having our Closing Remarks here in perhaps an hour and a half or thereabouts. Weve got several members of the senate who are on their way for their remarks. And several members of the senate have discussed various elements of the serious and unanswered ethics questions surrounding congressman prices nomination. It is my view that these are issues that have set off loud ethical alarm bells, and i just want to take a little bit more time to lay out the full story. The stock trades that congressman price made raise ethical and legal questions, but none of congressman prices stock trades raise more questions than the hundreds of thousands of shares he bought in the australian Biotech Company known as innate. It is the largest in holdings in terms of the hundreds of thousands of shares he holds and the values of those shares and that exceeds a quarter million dollars. Congressman price told the finance committee that he did not get a special deal. He told the health, education, labor and pension that he did not get a special deal. But the fact is that congressman price paid Bargain Basement prices for innate stock last august. The private stock sale was limited to a small group wellconnected american investors. Congressman prices participation was described as a sweetheart deal by Kaiser Health news in a privileged discounted offer by the wall street journal. As i said during his nomination hearing, congressman prices participation in the stock sale showed bad judgment at best. At worst it raised serious questions about whether he violated the stock act or other security laws. I will read section 3 of the stock act. It says members of congress may not use nonpublic information derived from such persons positioned or gained from the performance of such persons official responsibility as a means for making a private profit. If is r well known that it is well known that he learn about innate from congressman collins. He is a member of the companys board and its largest shareholders. This raises additional questions. Did congressman price have access to nonpublic information about innate or its private stock because of its position as a member of congress . Did he get special access to the discounted private sale because of his position . Does he stand to profit because of the information or access he may have received . Finally, did congressman price tell the finance committee the truth about how he learned about the private stock sales and the ability of particular investors to participate. Congressman price would have us believe that he made these investments based on his own research into the company. Thats what he told the finance committee. I will quote from the wall street journal article. Mr. Price wasnt in line to buy shares in the last private placement because he hadnt previously participated in private fundraising rounds. Mr. Price first invested in the company a year ago, buying shares through the open market on the australian exchange. He learned about the company from mr. Collins who holds a 17 stake in it. Mr. Collins said mr. Price is quote one of my friends and sits next to him on the house floor. Mr. Price got in on the discounted sale after mr. Collins filled him in on the companys drug trial, according to mr. Collins. The fact is you dont just get in on a private Stock Offering by accident. As the wall street journal explained congressman price didnt reach the criteria for participating in the private offering because he hadnt participated in any previous offerings, yet he was able to buy over 400,000 shares of stock with congressman collins help. My view is that congressman price failed to come clean with the Senate Finance committee on the details of this special discounted deal. Hes assured the committee he followed the law, but straightforward questions have been met with dodging, weaving, and obfuscation. Details of his purchase continues to aoe pherpbl and the publics understanding of his meanwhile a scrutiny of the deal continues to mount. Innates executives are defending congressman price at the behest of congressman collins who sits on the companys board of directors. After the wall street journal story was published, the company and congressman price went into spin control. The public knows this only because congressman collins made a mistake that everybody who uses email for work has seen made at least once. He mistakingly hit repl reall. So reply all. Instead of a private note to mro a cnn reporter. The companys top shareholder said that the wall street journal was yellow journalism and thank mr. Wilkinson for defending congressman price and the company. According to cnn congressman collins acknowledged the email to be authentic. The finance committees own experience with innate only adds to the sense that there is a coverup. The day after the wall street journal story ran, i wrote my own letter to innates ceo ceo. I asked that they respond to the article and inconsistency and for documentation of details of the private stock sales. The Company Refused to answer my letter. This just looks, to me, like a coverup and it ought to shape this bodys confidence of congressman prices nomination. The situation, in my view, demands that further questions be asked and answered. Instead of taking time to explore these issues, republicans took the unprecedented step of suspending the finance committees rule to rush this nomination to the floor before anymore questions could be asked, let alone answered. In years past, as with the nominations of senator daschle, secretary geithner, and ambassador kirk, the finance Committee Left no stone unturned in the vetting process. Not this time. The Majority Party, in my view, is on its way to an ethical double standard to cut off the vetting process and that leaves me with a question for congressman price and my republican colleagues in the senate. What is there to hide . Now, before i continue, mr. President , i ask unanimous consent that the following items be inkhruded in the record included in the record, tprupls h. H. S. Nominee got a sweetheart deal which is an article published on jan 30, 2017, the company says the story published by the wall street journal on january 30, 2017, an accidental reply all to reporter mr. Collins thank the ceo defending the h. H. S. Nominee, a story published by cnn, and, the letter i sent to simon willing innson on wilke inn son on january 21, 2017. I ask that they be put in the record. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Wyden i would like to talk about the facts and timing of congressman prices investing in innate. This is based on press report and information the nominee provided the finance committee. If you have never heard of innate until the last few weeks, you would be forgiven. The New York Times described it as a tiny Pharmaceutical Company from australia that has no backing from flashy Venture Capital firms. Innate has fewer than a dozen fulltime employees. The Company Stock was first listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2013 and until recently its market capitalization was well below one00 million. They have never generated revenue on drug sales. It has 2,500 shareholders. A major american Pharmaceutical Company could have hundreds of thousands of shareholders. Innate is planning to submit an investigational drug application with the food and Drug Administration and its goal is to sell itself to a large pharmaceutical manufacturer which would take its earlystage experimentmental they were experimentmental therapy to market. This company is a poster child for obscure companies. It is so small and obscure it doesnt even have a wikipedia page. The question is how did congressman price come to learn about this company and how did he decide to make it the single largest investment in his sprawling portfolio of Health Care Stocks . The answer is the congressman learned about innate in 2014 during a conversation with his colleague congressman collins of new york. The congressman sits on innates board of directors, congressman collins hold 38 million shares, congressman collins adult children, chief of staff, and many of his political backers are also heavily invested in the company. Im going to touch on those issues in a bit in a few minutes. According to disclosures with the House Ethics Committee congressman price bought 61,000 shares of innate stock in three separate purchases during january of 2015. At the time the stock was trading at roughly 10 cents a share. Congressman price testified to the health, education, labor and Pensions Committee that he directed that that he directed his broker to make the january 2015 purchases. Fast forward to august 2016, congressman price bought another 400,000 shares of innate as part of a private stock sale for u. S. Investors. When the private sale took place, innates shares were trading on the Australian Stock Exchange for equivalent of 31 american cents. But pa participants in the prive share, they got a deep discount. Congressman price said he paid 84,000 american dollars to buy the 400,000 shares. He bought 250,000 of those sheurs for 18 shares for 18 cents per share, he bought another 150,000 shares for 26 american cents each in a second private stock placement. Congressman prices House Ethic Committee disclosures show that he purchase the stock on august 31. On that day the stock was trading for 31 cents a share on the Australian Stock Exchange. In my book thats a special deal. The bottom line is that congressman price bought these shares for 40,000 less than an average investor would have paid to buy the same amount of stock off the open market. Thats nearly 33 off the price on the Australian Stock Exchange at the time. And since that time, innates stock has more than doubled. These facts are not in dispute. At this point, mr. President , i ask unanimous consent that the following items be included in the record. Australian drugmaker has low profile but powerful backers in washington printed in the New York Times on january 13 of this years, aussie Share Holding puts heat on president s ally in the australian on february of 6 of this year, congressman prices written system regarding his purchases, the 2016 annual report to the shareholders of innate, a periodic transaction report that congressman price filed with the House Ethics Committee on september 12, 2016, a list of the 20 largest investors in innate dated january 27, 2017, and stock price history of innate. I ask unanimous consent, mr. President , that all of those documents be placed into the record at this time. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Wyden id like now to turn to the issue of misleading testimony, mr. President. What remains unresolved are major inconsistencies between congressman prices testimony to the finance committee, statements by congressman collins and statements by inna innates ceo published last week in the wall street journal. Simply put innates chief executive and congressman collins provided one version of events to one of the worlds most respected newspapers. Congressman price provided a different version of see vents to the finance Committee Events to the finance committee and Health Committee. These inconsistencies are among the reasons that democrats boycotted last weeks finance committee markup. The senate has an obligation to know the truth about these transactions in order to protect the integrity of this body and its constitutional duty to consider executive branch nominees. Now, with respect to exclude civility of the sale, congressman price told the finance committee that the august sale was available to all innate shareholders which contradicts what innates management told the wall street journal. Congressman price was definitive if his response to my in his response to my question during the hearing. Reading back the transcript, mr. President , i said, and i quote, well, you purchased stock in an Australian Company through private offering discounts not available to the public. Here is congressman prices response, and i quote well, if i may, those, they were available to every single individual that was an investor at the time. That, mr. President , is not what innate executives told the wall street journal. Heres an extended passage from the journal report. This is from the wall street journal. They got a privileged offer to buy a biomedical stock at a discount. The companys official said, contrary to his congressional testimony this month. The cabinet nominee was one of fewer than 20 u. S. Investors who were invited last year to buy discounted shares of the company, an opportunity for mr. Price that arose from an invitation from a Company Director and fellow congressman. And mr. Colorado at mr. Collins invitation, mr. Price in june ordered shares discounted in the private placement at 18 cents apiece and then more in july at 26 cents a share. Mr. Collins said in an interview. Those orders went through in august after board approval. Mr. Price invested between 50,000 and 100,000, according to his disclosure form. Mr. Wilkinson, again i go on from the wall street journal, said investors who had bought in a previous private placement were called quote to make friends and family aware of the opportunity, always looking to increase our shareholder base, but those new parties have to meet the definition of a sophisticateed financial investor. Only six u. S. Investors, including mr. Price, fell into the friends and family category, according to mr. Collins. About ten more u. S. Investors were offered discounted shares by the company because they previously had been invited to partake in private placement offerings. In other words, congressman price not only got a deal that wasnt publicly available, he was in a special group of six investors, in a special category called friends and family, where other american investors got in on the private deal because they previously participated in the companys private placements, congressman price bypassed that requirement. He got in as what could only be called a special guest, a friends and family guest of his house colleague, congressman collins. As i mentioned earlier, when i asked the company how congressman price was able to get this special status, the Company Refused to provide an explanation. The wall street journal also reported a key distinction between u. S. Investors and the Company Shareholders in australia and new zealand. The paper reported, and i quote, the discounted stock offered innate as the company was known to all shareholders in australia and new zealand, but not in the united states, according to mr. Collins, he confirmed in a separate interview with innate c. E. O. Simon wilkinson. The wall street journal account is supported by company documents, specifically a rights issue booklet that innate published on june 10, 2016. The booklet advertised its shareholders would buy one new share for every nine shares they already own. The booklet noted that shareholders would have, and i quote, the option to pay for their new share in either australian dollars or new zealand dollars. The booklet goes on to describe the private stock sale in which congressman price participated. Ill read briefly from the booklet. In conjunction with its rights issue, innate announced it has also completed a private placement at an issue price of u. S. 18 cents, raising u. S. 1. 8 million. The booklet states clearly the private placement was announced on june 10, 2016, the same day innate announced the rights issue for investors in australia and new zealand. Our staff has reviewed all the companys publicly available documents and found no similar advertisements to the private placement to american investors. So this paper trail pokes more holes in congressman prices argument that the private stock sale was open to all the company investors. First off, the company didnt announce the existence of the private sale until after it had already been completed, so unless an investor was on the companys short list of goto people, they were just excluded. Second, the companys documents clearly show that congressman price and other participants in the private stock sale were able to buy far more discounted shares than the companys typical investors. Innate documents showed that the Company Restricted the number of shares the typical investor could buy in the rights issue to just one new share for every nine they already own. No such limit appears to have been imposed on congressman price and the other american participants in the private stock sale. In fact, congressman price owned just over 60,000 shares at the time of the sale. His participation in the private stock sales allowed congressman price to buy 400,000 more shares. If congressman price had been held to the same rules as everyday investors, he would have been restricted to buying less than 7,000 shares. The bottom line, to me, mr. President , is what congressman price said was untrue. The deal congressman price got was not open to every other shareholder. And again, when i sent a letter last week to innates c. E. O. Asking him to explain all of this, he declined. He told my staff that as an australian firm, the company had no obligation to cooperate. So to recap, congressman price told the finance committee and the help committee that the stock sales he participated in were open to all shareholders. That is not true. The private sale does not appear to have been widely marketed to american investors and was certainly not advertised in the companys public documents. The private sale reportedly include less than 20 american investors. Congressman price was part of an even smaller sub group known as friends and family, invited by other investors, in this case by his house colleague, congressman collins. How many people were eligible to be in the friends and family group . Just six. So that brings me to the next issue, which is how did congressman price learn about the special sale in the first place . Congressman price told the finance committee that conversations with congressman collins had no influence, no influence on his investment decisions. Im going to again quote from his written response to questions from the record that ask congressman price to describe any communications with congressman collins regarding innate. The congressman, congressman price said i had a conversation with representative collins in the fall of 2014 that brought innate as a company to my attention. The nature of the conversation did not, however, influence my decision to invest in the company in either 2015 or 2016. I believe i had subsequent general communications with representative collins regarding innate. I do not have a specific recollection of when those conversations occurred or their substance. Any such communications did not impact my investment decisions. However, because my purchases of innate were based solely on my own research. So im going to quote again from the wall street journal. Mr. Price got in on the discounted sale after mr. Collins filled him in on the companys drug trial, according to mr. Collins. Mr. Collins said he had told mrl private placement. He said mr. Price asked if he could participate in it. Quote could you have someone send me the documents, mr. Collins recalled mr. Price asking him. Congressman price wants us to believe that congressman collins had no influence on his decision to buy innate stock. That congressman price would not have known about the company in the first place if he hadnt talked to congressman collins, and he wouldnt have known about the private placement without hearing about them from congressman collins. Congressman price characterized his conversation with congressman collins in 2015 as being general in nature. But again, according to the wall street journal, congressman collins, one, told congressman price about the upcoming drug trial, two, alerted him to the private stock sale, and three, arranged to ensure that he could participate. To me, this seems like more than, and i quote, subsequent general communications with congressman collins regarding innate as congressman price put it in his written response to the committee. With respect to reporting to the committee and the office of government ethics, i would just say i think i have described issues, ethical issues that are serious enough on their own. However, it took no small amount of effort to unravel congressman prices holdings in the company because he failed to fully disclose them to federal ethics officials, to the American People and the finance committee. I dont believe this issue would have ever come to light if it were not for the work of the committees minority investigations team. On february 7, two days ago, congressman price sent a letter to the independent federal ethics officials at the office of government ethics that amended his original public ethics disclosure. This letter confirmed the suspicions of finance Committee Democrats with congressman prices original ethics disclosure to the public, understated the value of the innate Stock Holding by roughly a quarter of a million dollars. Put another way, his stake in innate was more than five times the figure initially reported to the American People. Congressman prices original disclosure reported that he owned less than 50,000 in innate stock. At the time the disclosure was filed by my calculation, the shares had a value of more than 250,000. Today the stake is valued at more than 300,000. Quite simply, it appears that the shares he bought in the private stock sales in 2016 were excluded, excluded entirely from the congressmans Financial Disclosure to the office of government ethics. And because its the office of government ethics disclosure thats posted on the public web site so the public can see the business ties, investments the president s nominees hold, the American People, too, were kept in the dark about how much stock congressman price held in this company. In addition, the congressman was also less than forthcoming in his disclosure of the value of innate holdings to the finance committee. In his response to the committee questionnaire, congressman price valued innates stock he bought. He bought in the private sale at between 50,000 to 100,000. However, that amount was based on the 84,000 discounted price the congressman paid to buy his stocks august private stock sale. It was not based on the actual value of the stock on the Australian Stock Exchange, the true value of his holding. By december when he made his disclosure to the finance committee, the stock price had nearly tripled and the shares he bought in those private sales were worth nearly 230,000. In other words, he told the committee these private purchases were less than half the value they really were. So before going further, mr. President , i ask unanimous consent that the following items be included in the record an announcement by innate on june 10, 2016, entitled private placements and rights issues to raise additional working capital. A memo from finance Committee Staff to finance committee memos dated january 23 of this year. The public Financial Disclosure reform signed by congressman price on december 15, 2016, and filed with the office of government ethics and a letter from congressman price to the office of government ethics, dated february 7, 2017, amending his public ethics disclosures. I ask unanimous consent that all of these be put in the record at this point. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Wyden now i want to take just a minute and turn to the innate company itself. As i noted earlier, the company has put on a full court press to defend congressman price in recent weeks with details of his special as details of his special deal have come to light. I am going to describe why that might be. Innates executives have sought to portray the company as being a small firm from down under that has been inadvertently caught in political crossfire on the other side of the world. But the fact is that innate has longstanding connections to congressman collins and his inner circle, a circle that includes congressman price. As the extraneous materialian sidney newspaper wrote this week, and i quote, mr. Collins children and his political allies and donors control at least 27. 25 of innates voting shares. Then there is the baffling assertion made by mr. Wilkinson, the c. E. O. , that he only recently learned of congressman prices existence through news articles. This is a stretch to believe. It flies in the face of congressman prices own testimony. On january 13, the New York Times reported mr. Wilkinson and michael quinn, innates chairman, said that they had never heard of many of the companys more prominent investors and said they first learned that mr. Price had invested in the company from an article in the wall street journal, which first reported his investment. Now on february 5, mr. Wilkinson told the buffalo news, i think the first time i heard a gentleman named tom price invested it was after the u. S. Media started reporting it. But congressman price was clear that he communicated with wilkinson. In written testimony responding to questions for the record, he said i also communicated with Simon Wilkinson regarding my interest of participating in the companys stock. According to innates web site wilkinson is the director and ceo of the company. He was listed in the companys tkoubgts that reported the documents that reported the private sale to the Australian Stock Exchange last summer. Congressman price appeared to have bought 5 of the discounted shares. Given all of that it seems difficult to believe that mr. Wilk wilkinsons story thate had no idea who congressman price was. Innate and congressman collins are facing questions about possible violations of australian law. Why does it matter . It matters because a nominee to be a cabinet secretary, congressman plies was brought into this web of questionable stock transactions about just how special the special deal he really got was by a company insider, his friend, congressman collins. As i get ready to close, mr. President , i ask unanimous consent that the following items be included in the report. Congressman collins under fire for suspicious stock trade published in the buffalo news, collins shares biotech news, collins controversial stock vent aoeur could be boom or bust, and a notice of innates 2016 annual meeting filed on july 26 of 2016, documents filed by innate on september 12, 2016, and september 16, 2016 reporting results of the 2016 private stock placement. I ask unanimous consent they all be put in the record. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Wyden i want to return to section 3 of the stock act. It says that members of congress may not use nonpublic information and gain from the performance of such persons federal responsibility as a means for making a private profit. So did congressman price have access to nonpublic information about innate or its private stock sale because of its position as a member of congress . I believe the answer is yes. And did he get special access to the discounted private sale because of his position i . I believe the answer is yes. Does he stand to profit because of the information or access he may have received . I believe the answer is yes. Finally did congressman price tell the finance committee and Health Committee the truth about how he learned of the private stock sale and the ability of average investors to participate . He told the finance committee that the special stock he got in on was open to everyone. According to the wall street journal and company documents, that is not true. The deal he got was clearly different than what was offered to every day investors. According to the the innate stock did not qualify him to participate in the private shares without being a family. This allow congressman price to buy more shares than other investors were allow to buy. He told the finance that his conversation with congressman collins had no influence on his investment decision. According to the journal, this is not true. The journal report made clear that congressman collins told him about the upcoming drug trial, alerted him to the private stock sale and arranged to ensure he could participate. Now the Majority Party has shut down the vetting process allowing congressman prices nomination to reach the floor before all the facts have come into view. I believe the senate can do better. It needs to do better. The American People are owed better. I want to thank my colleagues, particularly senator reed for