In other states it was a matter of building treatment facilities. 1 million of this or so was used in columbus, ohio, for a very Innovative Program where there is now a new emergency room that is dedicated to people who overdose, which is better for the individual who overdoses and better for the taxpayer rather than taking him to an emergency room that has the capability to handle the gunshot wounds and trauma and so on, this is dedicated just to overdoses. Most significantly in the statement facility with the overdoses go, you have a 50bed Treatment Center. People are treated for the overdose maybe in a detox unit, but then theres no Treatment Center there. There is no treatment bed available. That person goes back to the community, back to the old neighborhood, and during that waiting period, even though theyre ready for treatment coming out of the overdose because often theyve got theyve seen their life flash before their eyes, theres not the availability and sure enough that person gets back into the use of the drug, heroin, fentanyl, prescription drugs, ends up again overdosing again and sometimes again and again and again. And you hear this from your first responders. Go to your firehouse. You will hear in every firehouse in america, i will guarantee you, about this issue. I will guarantee you in most firehouse, certainly all of them ive been in ohio and ive been to many, its the number one thing that people are doing. In other words, there are more calls for overdoses than there are calls for fires. There are more calls for overdoses than there are calls for heart attacks. This is an issue that again it affects every one of us, whether we feel it directly or not. So this is an opportunity for us to get these people into the emergency room setting, to save their lives using this miracle drug narcan, using the best help of our incredible medical professionals who are doing an awesome job on the front lines, but then to get them right into treatment. And say, by the way, heres an opportunity right here. Come right now. We think thats going to close that gap and help to avoid this issue of people not getting the help that you want them to get. Probably eight out of ten people are not getting the treatment that they should be getting. Im encouraging my colleagues to vote for the legislation this afternoon or this evening, whenever we vote on it, in part because it does have that legislation in it regarding the opioids. It does have this new funding, an unprecedented level of funding. Its going to be left to the Appropriations Committees here to deal with it as to how its spent. Again, i know they have a lot of great ideas, including legislation that we already passed called the cara act, the cara, comprehensive Addiction Recovery act. We had five conferences here in washington. We had best practices from around the country. This is all about sending funds out to programs that have been studied, that do have good results. Its not just a matter of throwing money after this problem. D weve got after this problem. Weve got to be sure its done effectively and it leverages more money at the local level. The millions of dollars that went into the Treatment Center in ohio, it was matched by private sector money, individuals who were giving funds to this because they realized what a problem it is. Thats how we should work together. Ultimately, this is not going to be solved again here in washington, d. C. Its going to be solved in our communities. Its going to be solved in our families. Its going to be solved in our hearts. Because this is an issue that ultimately is going to require all of us getting engaged on. Mr. President , i thank you for the time today. I note the absence of a quorum. The presiding officer and the clerk shall call the roll. Quorum call quorum call a senator mr. President. The presiding officer the senator is recognized. Mr. Lee i ask unanimous consent to suspend the quorum call. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Lee mr. President , there is good news, there is great news, and then there is the story of lucas warren of dalton, georgia. I dont personally know mr. Lucas. In fact, he is only 18 months old. He of course has the good sense not to engage with politicians, to get to know politicians, especially in washington. But there are so many millions of americans who have not met lucas. I will never forget him. You see, mr. President , yesterday the Gerber Baby Food Company selected little lucas as its Gerber Spokesbaby for the year of 2018. Lucas winning photograph, sent in by his parents jason and courtney, was selected from more than 140,000 entries. Even at a glance, its not at all hard to see why. But, mr. President , this picture deserves much more than just a mere glance. I dont just mean because of the bow tie. You see, lucas warren was born with down syndrome, which is to say jason and Courtney Warren are among those americans blessed to know, to love, and to be loved by someone with down syndrome. According to the global down syndrome foundation, only 38 of americans are so lucky. Lucky, mr. President. Those of us who are so lucky know the warmth and the tender cheer of individuals with down syndrome, the warmth and tender cheer that they carry with them everywhere they go. How with little more than a smile like lucas in this picture, they make gentle the life of the world. All of us are born with that mission, but we dont always fulfill it. Children like lucas and parents like the warrens dont just carry their share of that burden. They carry some of ours, too. We owe them more than we can possibly know. I am a child of god, begins a childrens song of my faith, and he has sent me here. Has given me an earthly home with parents, kind and dear. I am a child of god, and so my needs are great. Those lyrics take on a particularly special poignancy when you know families with special needs children. For children with special needs, not only deserve special love, they give it. They give it unceasingly and unreservedly, just like the god who first knitted them together in their mothers wombs. We should all commend the Gerber Baby Food Company for its choice of its new spokesbaby and especially thank the warrens for the gift of little lucas. In washington, we are often reminded of the old maxim that there are no solutions in this life, only tradeoffs. And sometimes its tempting to believe thats true. But this photograph proves otherwise. In this fallen world of ours, that smile, that little boy is a pure good, a blessing to us all. We heard yesterday after the announcement, lucas mom, courtney, said he may have down syndrome, but he is always lucas first. Were hoping when he grows up and looks back on this, he will be proud of himself and not ashamed of his disability. Not ashamed of down syndrome. So should we all hope for lucas and for the rest of the world, too. Thank you, mr. President. I yield the floor. I note the absence of a quorum. The presiding officer the clerk shall call the roll. Quorum call quorum call quorum call mr. Cassidy mr. President. The presiding officer the senator from louisiana. Mr. Cassidy id like to speak some louisianaspecific issues the presiding officer the senate is in a quorum call. Mr. Cassidy i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Cassidy madam president , i ask to be speaking on some issues relating to the spending bill, some things which have happened in louisiana. Louisiana had two catastrophic floods in 2016 affecting not just our state but louisiana and texas with over 100,000 disaster victims who became eligible for s. B. A. Or s. B. A. Disaster assistance loans. Heres one picture. Oh, my gosh. Heres the window. The water is this high inside the patio area as outside and the woman has got a face of despair. And heres another picture which kind of just shows a family being evacuated in a boat. Obviously the neighborhood with stop signs and nice trees and street lights, and theyre being evacuated. You can imagine what their family home looked like. 56 of louisiana, 64 parishes have federal disaster declarations. The august storm alone caused an estimated 10 billion in damage to private property which apart from hurricanes, made it the most expensive u. S. Disaster in the last 100 years. The most devastating thing was how little time people had to react. The storm was missing key cyclone characteristics so the National Hurricane center had no expectation of how devastating the storm would be. And the first parishes hit by the flooding had no time to evacuate or prepare. Many families that were impacted by the great floods of 2016 in louisiana lived outside of what are called special hazard zones and were not required and did not carry flood insurance. Indeed, about 80 of flooded homes did not have flood insurance. Last year i worked with a louisiana delegation to obtain about 2 billion in Community Development block grants to help cover portions of those uninsured losses for louisiana families and Small Businesses. We also got about 500 million in disaster tax relief to help with the uncompensated disaster losses. But with cdbg or Community Development block Grant Funding which is distributed through the restore Louisiana Homeowner Assistance program, it is an arcane there is something which is an arcane and arbitrary rule called duplication of benefits. The duplication of benefits rule states that an individual who is eligible and or received a loan from the Small Business administration, that individual is ineligible for a grant from the restore louisiana assistance program. The rule makes no sense. An individual who did the right thing, drew upon all available resources to rebuild their home, and put their life back together, they are denied relife. Language to fix this issue was included in the disaster shrel shrel supplemental passed by the house last year. The senate was prepared to consider this in december, but the legislation was delayed, frankly, held hostage by the minority party, using it to gain leverage to get more Government Spending as part of the budget negotiations we are now in. Now that this disaster supplemental has been rolled in, we saw the fix to the benefits rule was added but only covered texas, florida, and puerto rico. So i worked with my fellow louisiana senator, senator kennedy to make sure that louisiana is treated the same as texas and other states. Now this provision applies to individuals who are eligible to receive an s. B. A. Loan but did not take a loan. What does that mean . According to the s. B. A. , 100,000 homeowners were allowed to apply. 38,000 applications were received, 18,000 were approved. So, as i am told, if youre eligible but even dont take a loan you dont qualify for the restore louisiana grant. Again, if youre eligible, im told, if youre eligible but did not take the loan then from the s. B. A. Youre not eligible then to receive the restore louisiana grant because of the duplication of benefits rule. So theres roughly 82,000 home owners who could potentially be eligible to receive relief from repealing or altering this duplication of benefits rule. There is some confusion in my state, i want to be clear, this does apply to the 2 billion cdbg grants that the louisiana delegation received to recover from the 2016 floods in louisiana. Senator kennedy and i secured Additional Army corps resources to fully fund the comey river diversion that takes floodwaters from the comey river to the mississippi and would have preefned many prevented many homes from being flooded, probably these homes that were flooded in the great flood of 2016. We also secured 12 billion in mitigation grants for louisiana and five other states. Again, this senate bill is more dollars for more same number of dollars but for fewer states, therefore more targeted than in the house bill. The Disaster Relief portion of this legislation has taken some steps in the right direction. However, we still need additional clarification around duplication of benefits issues and legacy fema appeals matters. I thank my Senate Colleague from louisiana for his work on this. I hope to receive further commitments from the Appropriations Committee to continue to work on these important Disaster Recovery issues. Madam president , i yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. The presiding officer the clerk will call the roll. Quorum call quorum call quorum call mr. Mcconnell madam president. The presiding officer the majority leader. Mr. Mcconnell i ask that further proceedings under the quorum calldispensed with. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Mcconnell madam president , here we are at a quarter to 6 00. Funding for the government expires in just a few hours. The bipartisan agreement before us funds our troops at the level requested by the pentagon, addresses the Opioid Crisis which is extremely big in the state of kentucky and around the country, funds our veterans and many other shared priorities. The speaker of the house supports the bill, is waiting for it to pass the senate. The president of the United States supports the bill and is waiting to sign it into law. I understand my friend and colleague from kentucky does not join the president in supporting the bill, and its his right, of course, to vote against the bill, but i would argue that its time to vote. Mr. Schumer if i might. The presiding officer the minority leader. Mr. Schumer and i very much appreciate my good friend, the junior senator from kentucky, his fidelity to spending, something we dont agree with, his fidelity to trying to get his amendments on the floor, debated, something we do agree with. We i recently supported that right when the fisa bill came up, which i know was very important to him. The difficulty we have here is that the government will shut down. We still have the house that has to vote. And frankly, there are lots of amendments on my side, and its hard to make an argument that if one person gets an amendment, that everybody else wont want an amendment, and then well be here for a very long time. So i would plead with my colleague, given the exingenesis that if maybe a budget point of order, which would make the same point. That is, he believes the spending is too high, might work, and we could move forward and get a bill done and not risk a government shutdown. Were in risky territory here, as the my both friends from kentucky know. So if that would be that would accomplish the same thing, not hold us up here, let the house do its will, and then maybe get the bill to the president because we would want to move things forward. And i yield the floor. Mr. Mcconnell madam president. I am going to propose a unanimous consent that would give the senator from kentucky an opportunity to make a budget point of order, which would give him a vote on the substance of the matter he is concerned about. Therefore, i ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule 22, at 6 00 p. M. Today, the senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to concur in the house amendment to the Senate Amendment to h. R. 1892, with a further amendment. Further, that if cloture is invoked, all postcloture time be yielded back and senator paul be recognized to make a budget point of order, that the majority leader or his designee be recognized to make a motion to waive, and that following the disposition of the motion to waive, the senate vote on the motion to concur with further amendment with no intervening action or debate. The presiding officer is there objection . Mr. Paul madam president. The presiding officer the senator from kentucky. Mr. Paul reserving the right to object, i ran for office because i was very critical of president obamas trilliondollar deficits. Now we have republicans hand in hand with democrats offering us trilliondollar deficits. I cant in all good honesty and all good faith just look the other way because my party is now complicit in the deficits. But really, who is to blame . Both parties. We have a 700page bill that no one has read that was printed at midnight. No one will read this bill. Nothing will be reformed. The waste will continue, and government will keep taking your money irresponsibly and adding to a 20 trillion debt. There are no amendments being allowed. This is the most important debate we will have in the year over spending, and no amendments are allowed. We should have a full amendment process. We have been open for business ten hours today. You can do four amendments an hour. We could have done 40 amendments. So its a canard to say we cant have one amendment and cant spend 15 minutes debating whether or not its good for the country to add a trillion dollars in debt. So, madam president , i object. The presiding officer objection is heard. A senator madam president. The presiding officer the senator from kentucky. Mr. Paul today the senate will vote on a bill that will add 1. 5 trillion to the debt over the next ten years. This is a large amount of money and something that we should be very wary of. This is in addition to what we were already running debt of nearly a trillion dollars. Its adding a couple extra hundred billion dollars a year to a budget and a country and a congress that had already recklessly let spending get out of control. The bill is nearly 700 pages. It was given to us at midnight last night, and i would venture to say no one has read the bill. No one can thoroughly digest a 700page bill overnight, and i do think that it does things that we really, really ought to talk about and how we should pay for them. One of the things this bill does is going to add 500 billion in spending over a twoyear period. This bill increases spending 21 . Does that sound like a large amount . Is anybody at home getting a bonus or an increase in your paycheck of 21 . And yet your government is going to spend 21 more without really having a full debate, without having amendments. The exchange you just watched was me asking to have a 15minute vote. I have been asking all day. I have been asking all week for it. We could have literally had dozens of votes today, but we squabble because people dont want to be put on the spot. So the reason im here tonight is to put people on the spot. I want people to feel uncomfortable. I want them to have to answer people