American people. We welcome you the senator from texas and colleagues back after thanksgiving break. I had my parents had our thanksgiving dinner with all of their children and grandchildren and cousins so i have a lot to be thankful for. As my mom and dad see their whole family and be happy about it. That now we are back in we have a lot of work to do before the end of the year and precious little time to do it to. Expiring one week from this friday 100,000 dreamers are waiting to work kinnealey santry they have never known. 9 million children are waiting for us to reauthorize the health insurancefo program and millions more waiting for us to restore funding from the Community Health centers. We need to fund the cost sharing programs because the administration refuses to do so texas, louisiana, porter rigo, u. S. Virgin islands are desperately in need of additionalom aid to recover from a National Disaster skyhe brought on them in the debt ceiling must we raised. Andhe with these issu
In recess with votes on judicial nominations expected at 5 30 p. M. Eastern and starting on g. O. P. Tax reform bill tomorrow. Watching live coverage of the senate floor here on cspan2. The senate will come to order. The chaplain, dr. Barry black will lead the senate in prayer. The chaplain let us pray. Our father, god, thank you that we see you in the world around us be holding your works in the earth and sea and sky. Your everlasting mercies sustain us, enabling us to borrow our heartbeats from you each day. Today, be for our lawmakers and abiding and sustaining presence. May they live to serve and honor you bringing glory to your name. Make them patient in debate, charitable in judgment, and slow to anger. Lord, empower them to defend and maintain the right as they seek justice and freedom for all. We pray in your sacred name. Amen. The president pro tempore please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to our flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of ameri
We do leave the last few minutes of this, take you live now to the u. S. Capitol. Good afternoon, everyone. As you know, we had a lunch with the president. He did q a with our members for about an hour. Underscored the importance of accomplishing for the American People the First Comprehensive tax reform in 31 years which we fully intend to accomplish in the next few days. The Budget Committee will be meeting at 2 30 to take a step that is required to move the process forward, and were optimistic that step will be taken. Im going to have to run down to the white house for a meeting that i gather senator schumer and leader pelosi are not coming to, so i will not be here very long. But in order to allow for a couple of questions, ill be happy to throw it open just for a minute, and then im going to call on senator hatch if hes here right behind you. Yeah. Nancy . Leader mcconnell, how do you address all of the concerns that some of these gop holdouts have simultaneously without making th
Missile launch there the last hour or so lets get to eamon javers at the white house to sort this out for us eamon . Reporter were expecting to hear from the president in the roosevelt room at the white house. We dont know what topic hes going to be speaking on. This is a moment where theyre allowing the press pool to come in to a previously scheduled meeting. That meeting was going to be with democratic and republican congressional leaders, but after the president tweeted about the Democratic Leaders earlier this morning and said he saw no hope for a deal with them, the democrats backed out of this meeting. The republicans are still tae attending. The white house says the invitation is still open for the democrats to come to the meeting. You can expect well see a few empty chairs in the meeting where nancy pelosi and Chuck Schumer would have been sitting. The president might address that in his remarks to the press pool which is waiting to go in as we speak. He might also talk about t
Todays hearing to serve on secretary of health and Human Services. It will vote on the nomination. We will each have an Opening Statement and then former secretary and former governor who we welcome today good to see you and senator young will introduce him after his testimony each will have five minutes of questions. We already have a good turnout. I anticipate a good vigorous questioning period. Youll be overseeing medicare and medicaid National Institutes of health and excellent leadership. The United States is leading efforts to develop a cart for efforts. A nonaddictive painkiller and new treatment for dancer. You also have an opportunity to implement what the majority leader of the senate called the most important piece of legislation last year. The 21st century cures act which members of our committee agreed on and gave broad new powers that included the first Major Organization they worked on Mental Health programs as well as significant new funding for the Opioid Crisis you ha