planned parenthood funding. also possible today, confirmation was sent to the president trumps nominees. sonny perdue for agriculture secretary and law school dean, alexander acosta for labor secretary. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain dr. barry black will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. our father in heaven, we sing of your steadfast love and proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. make us one nation, truly wise, with righteousness exalting us in due season. today, inspire our lawmakers to walk in the light of your countenance. abide with them so that your wisdom will influence each decision they make, as you restrain them from speaking in haste. keep them from evil so that they will not be brought to grief, enabling them to avoid the pitfalls that lead to ruin. may they put country before self, people before politics, and patriotism before partisanship. empower them to glorify you in all they say and do. we pray in your holy name. amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington, d.c., march 30, 2017. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable dean heller, a senator from the state of nevada, to pefrpl the duties -- perform the duties of the chair -p signed orrin g. hatch, president pro tempore. mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i'd like to begin this morning by paying tribute to a fallen hero. yesterday rick rodman passed away yesterday after a crash tuesday night. officer rodman served in the department for three years where he followed in a strong family tradition of law enforcement. in his life, he showed compassion and dedication which were among the best virtues of public service. according to lnpd chief steve conrad, officer rodman is the second officer in the department's history to be killed in the line of duty. officer rodman's tragic death reminds us of the tremendous debt of gratitude we owe to all the courageous men and women like him who daily put themselves into harm's way to defend our community. they deserve our utmost respect. this morning i ask all of my colleagues to join me in expressing our deepest sympathy to officer rodman's family, friends and fellow officers. they will all be in our prayers. on an entirely different matter, mr. president, the senate will soon act to prevent workers from forced to are enter government-run savings plans. then we'll turn our attention to an additional opportunity to protect the american people from executive overreach with another resolution under the congressional review act. on its way out the door, the obama administration issued a regulation that prohibited states from allocating certain health prevention funds in the way that have best served local communities. it substituted washington's judgments for the needs of real people, controlling america's access to health care communities while hurting the health centers that so many americans, especially women, depend upon. this regulation is an unnecessary restriction on states that know their residents own needs a lot better than the federal government. fortunately by sending the c. r.a. before us to the president's desk we can return power back to the people and will do so without decreasing funding to women's health care by a penny. i'd like to recognize my colleague, senator joni ernst who introduced the senate companion to the house bill we'll vote on for her leadership on this important issue. i look forward to supporting it later today. on one final matter, many members came to the floor yesterday to debate the gore such nomination. we'll have all of next week to continue the debate. i would encourage my colleagues to continue discussing this important nomination. two months ago before neil gorsuch had been nominated, i spoke about the rhetoric we could expect to hear from the other side after the president's nominee was announced. i predicted then that we'd sao many on the left try to paint whomever is actually nominated in apocalyptic terms. it doesn't matter who this president nominates, i said then, it doesn't matter who any republican president nominates, no matter the nominee, i said before we had the nominee we can expect to hear end-times rhetoric from the left and in fact we have. i was alluding to the fact that sight unseen we have begun hearing from those on the far left who vowed to oppose anyone, anyone the president nominated. the democratic leader even joined in saying he would oppose anyone from the president's list of candidates and would fight it tooth and nail as long as we have to stphord -- in order to keep justice scalia's seat open even for the entirety of the president's term. remember, that was before judge gorsuch was selected, before we knew his credentials, before we heard from the current and former colleagues of his, before we examined his judicial record. and well before his hearing before the judiciary committee. our friends over here across the aisle made it clear that their opposition to this nominee would have nothing to do with the nominee himself. in fact, i said we could expect to hear a number of convoluted excuses as to why they wouldn't support the president's yet to be named nominee, excuses that would amount to little more than their dissatisfaction with the outcome of the election. sure enough, sure enough that's just what we've seen over the past few weeks. they're opposing this well-qualified nominee despite his credentials, bipartisan support and excellent testimony before the committee. judge gorsuch is such an outstanding candidate *rbgs well esteemed by people across the political spectrum, the democrats have been forced to talk about pretty much anything: president trump, think tanks, you name it, anything but the nominee himself. yesterday's comments by the democratic leader are a good example. he gave alengthy speech about why he wouldn't support the judge but when he boiled it down his remarks had little to do with gorsuch at all. he said because he earned the praise of the democratic society, democrats would not support him. all judges have participated in sitting events. let me say that again. all current sitting supreme court justices have participated in federalist society activities. that includes justices who were nominated by democratic presidents, including president clinton and president obama. so, yes, judge gorsuch received high praise from a number of conservatives as well as the support of is en terrorists and leftists -- support of centrists and leftists as well. are number of people have complimented him, people like neal katyal and professor laurence tribe, and president clinton's appointee to the tenth circuit, judge robert henry and liberal harvard law professor nora feldman and so many more. judge gorsuch has such a proven record of impartiality that people from the left and right and everywhere in between, everywhere in between voiced their confidence in his fitness to serven on the h high court -- to serve on the high court. that would explain why the american bar association which according to the democratic leader and former democratic judiciary chairman is the gold standard, the gold standard for evaluating judges, gave gorsuch his highest rating possible. unanimously well qualified. so let's be clear, the supreme court for judge gorsuch is anything but one-sided. the democratic leader also noted his concerns yesterday about the process by which we arrived at this point. but, mr. president, as we all know, this supreme court nomination process has been historically transparent. here's what i mean. months and months ago then-presidential candidate trump took the unprecedented action of compiling a list of potential nominees he would consider nominating to the supreme court. these potential nominees were made public to the american people, including every senator, to review before making his selection, now president trump's white house consulted on a bipartisan basis with each democrat on the judiciary committee as well as numerous other senators and the president followed through with his pledge, selecting from that public list judge neil gorsuch of colorado who we can all agree is well qualified to serve on the supreme court and who the senate confirmed his current position without a single vote in opposition. since being nominated, judge gorsuch continued this transparent process by meeting face to tpaoeus with nearly 80 senators tpr-l both. so you see, this process has been a straightforward and bipartisan as possible from the very beginning before we even knew that the president would indeed be making this nomination. only in the upside down world of my democratic colleagues is telling the entire world months before one is even elected present on the list of people you would choose from if you became a president a secret process. i can't think of anything less secret than putting that out in the middle of a highly contested presidential election process. so look, it's time to move beyond the hollow rhetoric and get back to the serious business of governing. confirming judge gorsuch would be a significant step in that direction. he has proven to be a worthy successor to the supreme court. earned high claim from lawyers, judges and clerks who represent all walks of life and all political ideologies. people like david frederick, a long-term democrat and board member of the left leaning american constitution society who may have summed it up best in a recent "washington post" op-ed. here's what he said. the senate should confirm gorsuch because there is no principle reason to vote no. no principle reason to oppose him. none. as this american constitution society member says, there's not one single principled reason to oppose judge gorsuch so it makes sense that democrats can't come up with a single substantive reason to oppose him either. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call: the presiding officer: the democratic leader. mr. schumer: i note the absence -- i ask unanimous consent the quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: thank you, mr. president. now, as we prepare to consider the nomination of judge neil gorsuch to the supreme court, i'd like to take a moment this morning to discuss the false choice republicans are presenting about his confirmation. the republican majority wants everyone to believe that by the end of next week, one of two things must happen. either judge gorsuch will pass with 60 votes or they must exercise the nuclear option and change the rules of the senate so that he can pass on a simple majority. as republicans tell it, one inexorably follows from the other. they are talking about next week as if they have no choice but to go nuclear if judge gorsuch doesn't earn 60 votes. it's absolutely false. it's complete hokum. this is not some inevitable showdown. the republicans control this body. they can choose to go nuclear or not. the ball is entirely in their court. in the past, when a president's nominee didn't get enough support for confirmation, for whatever reason, the president just picked another nominee. if it comes to that, that's what this president should do. if judge gorsuch fails to garner 60 votes, the answer isn't to irrevokably change the rules of the senate. the answer is to change the nominee. it is not gorsuch or bust. the republicans are playing a game of unnecessary and dangerous brinkmanship. if it comes to a rules change -- and i sincerely hope that it does not for the sake of the grand traditions in this body, for the sake of the advise and consent clause of the constitution, but if it does, it will be squarely on the shoulders of the republican party and the republican leader. a republican party who broke 230 years of precedent when it refused to even consider president obama's nominee, chief justice merrick garland, with almost a year left in obama's presidency. no vote, not even a hearing. and republicans accuse democrats of the first partisan filibuster of the supreme court nominee? what republicans did to merrick garland was worse than a filibuster. they didn't even grant him the basic courtesy of a filibuster. and merrick garland actually was a consensus nominee with republican volume for the supreme court. and second here, president trump totally dispatched of the notion of advise and consent by pledging before he was even elected to nominate a supreme court justice off of a preapproved list of hard right, conservative judges put together by the heritage foundation and the federalist society. contrast that with bill clinton who sought and took the advice of the republican judiciary chairman, orrin hatch, in nominating justices ginsburg and breyer. he did not pick his first choice, bruce babbitt, because orrin hatch said that would be a bad idea and would not bring the kind of unity we needed. or how about democratic president obama who took again the advice of orrin hatch when he picked merrick garland? there was bipartisan consultation. that's why the process worked. there was none now, and the heritage foundation, the federalist society, not simply mainstream organizations but as every republican knows, organizations on the hard right of the republican side who often threaten republicans if they don't vote the right way, far right way. so we're not talking about advise and consent. we're talking about something that was done without any consultation and a political move by a president to shore up his base with the hard right wing. what president trump did was worse than simply ignoring article 2 of the constitution. president trump actively sought the advice and consent of right-wing special interest groups instead of of the united states senate. that's another supreme court-related precedent that the republicans discard. and because president trump made that choice, now republicans are saying they have no choice but to change the rules? it's illogical and self-serving. and for all the hand wringing of my friends on the other side of the aisle that they cannot imagine democrats voting against judge gorsuch, i would like to remind them that only three, three of the current senators on the republican side voted for either of president obama's confirmed nominees. let me repeat that. only three, three of the current senators on the republican side voted for either one of president obama's confirmed nominees. most voted for neither. and every single one of them lined up to conduct a, quote, audacious partisan blockade of merrick garland. mr. president, it's true that the norms and precedents and traditions have been eroded by both sides. we change the rules for lower court nominees in 2013 after years of unprecedented obstruction by republicans on circuit and district court judges. still, among the record is regretting that decision. but this is an order of magnitude much greater than that. this is the supreme court. this is the court that is the final arbiter of the u.s. law and the constitution. we democrats have serious, principled concerns about judge gorsuch, his record, his long history of ties to ultraconservative interests, his almost instinctive tendency to side with special power citizens over average citizens. we have principled concerns about how judge gorsuch was groomed by hard-right conservative billionaires like mr. phillip anschutz. we have principled concerns about how judge gorsuch was selected, off a preapproved list of conservative judges made by organizations who have spent three decades campaigning to move our judiciary far to the right. judge gorsuch had a chance to answer these concerns in his hearings. we are all waiting and hoping, but our questions were met with practiced evasions. he couldn't even answer whether brown v. board was decided correctly. instead of considering the possibility of another nominee, should judge gorsuch fail to reach 60 votes, our republican friends are threatening to press the big red button for him. again, the republicans are creating a false choice. judge gorsuch or a nuclear option in an attempt to avoid the blame if they change the rules. and it just doesn't wash. republicans control this body, they're in the driver's seat, and they are the only reason that we are here today. they held this seat open for over a year so that this president could install someone hand-picked by the heritage foundation and federalist society. a lifetime appointment for this president whose campaign is under investigation by the f.b.i. with potential ties to russia. so, mr. president, i just repeat to my republican colleagues, you don't need to change the rules if judge gorsuch doesn't get 60 votes. you're not required to do so. you just need to change the nominee, do some bipartisan consultation as presidents of both parties have done in the past. now on the a.c.a., mr. president, h.h.s. secretary appeared before the house appropriators yesterday and testified that under his direction, the department of health and human services may try to undermine our nation's health care system in several ways. specifically, he hinted that he may make it easier for insurers to offer coverage without certain essential benefits and refused to say if he continues certain programs that stabilize our health care markets. that's in line with steps this administration has already taken to undermine the health care law like when they continue -- when they discontinued the public advertising campaigns that encouraged people to sign up for insurance. all of these things harm our nation's health care system and should be ceased immediately. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership's time is reserved. morning business is closed. and under the previous order, the senate will resume consideration of h.j. res. 67, which the clerk will report. the clerk: h.j. res. 67, joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the department of labor related to saving arrangements and so forth. the presiding officer: under the previous order, all time is expired. the clerk will read the title of the joint resolution for the third time. the clerk: h.j. res. 67, joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the department of labor relating to savings arrangements, and so forth. the presiding officer: the question is on passage of the joint resolution. is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote: vote: the presiding officer: is there anyone remaining who wishes to vote or change their vote? if not, on this vote the yeas are 50. the nays are 49. the joint resolution is passed. mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i move to proceed to -- to h.j. res. 43. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the motion. the clerk: motion to proceed to h.j. res. 43, joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, united states code, and so forth. mr. mcconnell: i ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote: vote: vote: vote:

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