[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 101 (Tuesday, July 16, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5698-S5700]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Order of Procedure
Mr. SCHUMER. I ask unanimous consent that all future time in quorum
calls be divided equally between the two sides.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I note the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. GRASSLEY. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum
call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, during the debate over the budget, Dr.
Coburn and I offered an amendment to create a separate and independent
inspector general within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
We introduced this amendment because, thanks to a quirk in Dodd-
Frank, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the only major
Federal agency without its own inspector general. I think people know I
tend to rely a great deal on inspectors general within the bureaucracy
to be an independent check to make sure the laws are followed and that
money is spent according to the law.
Dodd-Frank created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but it
did not create a protection bureau-specific inspector general. Instead,
because Dodd-Frank funded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
through the Federal Reserve, this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
ended up sharing an inspector general with the Federal Reserve.
This has created a problem. Right now, the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau's inspector general has a split role. He serves as
both inspector general for the Federal Reserve and for the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau. I believe this creates a great deal of
confusion and, obviously, a bureaucratic battle for resources. In fact,
the inspector general has already had to create two separate audit
plans. He also has had to hire employees who can oversee both the
Federal Reserve and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The end result is an office split by two very important but very
different priorities. Dodd-Frank created the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau within the Federal Reserve in order to fund the
Bureau without having to come to us on Capitol Hill to get
congressional appropriations. This is a problem but not a problem I am
going to deal with right now. We had a marriage of convenience, the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau within the Federal Reserve.
The Bureau's function is very different from the Federal Reserve.
Despite this, years after Dodd-Frank was passed, this unique situation
remains. My concern is if you have one inspector general trying to
cover two different entities, the end result is neither gets fully
overseen. In other words, we don't have adequate checks within the
bureaucracy to make sure that laws are abided by and that money is
spent according to law.
Since the passage of the Inspector General Act of 1978, Congress has
believed that each Department and each agency needs its own independent
inspector general. This has been a longstanding bipartisan position.
Currently, there are 73 inspectors general, in every single Cabinet-
level Department and almost all independent agencies. Even small
independent agencies such as the Federal Maritime Commission and the
National Science Foundation have their own inspector general.
In each of these agencies, if each of these agencies has their own
independent inspector general, shouldn't the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau--particularly since this Bureau doesn't have to come
to Congress for appropriations. We don't get appropriations oversight
since some of their decisions can't even be challenged in the courts.
Now we are in this situation. The majority has opposed commonsense
changes such as this to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
During the budget debate when Dr. Coburn and I introduced the
amendment to create a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau-specific
inspector general, the majority would not allow it to be brought up for
a vote. The position I heard over and over was the majority did not
wish to relitigate Dodd-Frank in any way. I did not hear any concerns
related to the merits of this proposal. Our amendment wasn't about
relitigating anything, it was about creating accountability and
oversight at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and doing that
through an independent inspector general, such as 73
[[Page S5699]]
other independent agencies have these sorts of checks and balances.
Because the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is funded directly
by the Federal Reserve, there are few, if any, congressional oversight
checks on the Bureau. This makes an independent inspector general even
more important.
Right now, it seems to me, since we don't discuss Dodd-Frank very
often, we don't have legislation related to it. We don't have
opportunities to amend. This nomination of Mr. Cordray, now before the
Senate, is the only tool the Senate has to create transparency and
accountability within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As we
consider this nomination, I hope we will remember that and consider the
Senate's role in overseeing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,
what steps we can take to make the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
more transparent and, hence, more accountable to Congress, and in turn
to the American people.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum
call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, now that the so-called nuclear option has
been averted and the Senate can now turn its attention to other matters
of substance, rather than internal matters of how the Senate operates,
I think it is important we evaluate how legislation that has passed
this body is working. I wish to focus specifically on the Affordable
Care Act, which is better known as ObamaCare.
Amazingly, Senator Reid on Sunday, in one of the talk shows, was
quoted as saying: ``ObamaCare has been wonderful for America.'' The
House minority leader, former Speaker Pelosi, has said that
implementation of the health care law has been fabulous.
This stands in stark contrast to what Senator Max Baucus, chairman of
the Senate Finance Committee and one of the principal Senate architects
of ObamaCare, has said--what he told Secretary Sebelius, the Secretary
of Health and Human Services--that the implementation of ObamaCare is a
train wreck in the making. And then you contrast that with what
President Obama himself said about the Affordable Care Act, about
ObamaCare, and he said it is ``working the way it is supposed to.''
Well, not all of those things can be true at the same time, and they
are not. Indeed, in the real world, unfortunately, it looks as though
ObamaCare is a slow-motion disaster in the making.
Notwithstanding the President's comments that it is working the way
it is supposed to, the administration seems to be acknowledging by its
own actions that it is not working the way it is supposed to. Indeed,
the administration has chosen to delay the so-called employers mandate,
and they have begun to admit what Americans have been saying since at
least 2010 when ObamaCare passed--that it has simply proven to be
unworkable.
Rather than accept the reality and support full congressional repeal
of the law, the administration is instead refusing to enforce the law
and is choosing to apply it selectively. The law clearly states that as
of January 2014 all businesses with 50 or more full-time employees have
to provide their workers with health insurance or else pay a penalty.
To be clear, I didn't support the Affordable Care Act--ObamaCare--but
that is what the law says. Our Democratic colleagues, 60 of them in the
Senate, and the majority in the then-Democratically controlled House
passed the law and President Obama signed it, and that is what it says.
But the President has chosen to take unilateral action and to refuse to
enforce the law that he himself signed and that congressional Democrats
passed without a single Republican vote.
Whether you supported it or you didn't support it, many of us now are
forced to acknowledge and I would think the administration itself would
be forced to acknowledge, that the law simply is not working as
advertised. It is now obvious that the employer mandate has prompted
many businesses to reduce the number of hours and transform full-time
jobs into part-time jobs in order to avoid the employer mandate. This
has contributed to a surge in the number of people working part-time
jobs for economic reasons. Last month alone that number was 8.2 million
people--8.2 million Americans who would like to have full-time work but
simply can't find it, in large part because of the implementation of
ObamaCare.
As I said, I voted against ObamaCare 3 years ago. I remember being in
this Chamber on Christmas Eve at 7 a.m. in 2009 when our Democratic
colleagues passed ObamaCare without a single vote from this side of the
aisle. Many of us were voicing concerns about the provisions of
ObamaCare, including the employer mandate, long before it became law.
The problems with the mandate will, of course, still be there in 2015
notwithstanding the 1-year unilateral delay by the administration, and
they reflect broader problems in the Affordable Care Act as a whole.
I believe the most commonsense thing we can do is simply to repeal it
and to start over and replace it with patient-centered reforms that
actually address the biggest challenges that face most families in
America.
The President said: If you like what you have in terms of your health
coverage, you can keep it. Millions of Americans are now finding that
not to be the case. The President said a family of four will find their
premiums reduced, on average, $2,500. Actually, rather than a reduction
in cost, they are finding their premiums are going up and will go up
even more when ObamaCare is implemented.
My point is that whether or not you voted for ObamaCare, it is
important that we now acknowledge the sad reality that it is not
working the way even its most vigorous proponents wished it would.
Indeed, it seems to be working out in a way most of its critics thought
it would.
But what is important now is that we work together to give permanent
relief to this public policy train wreck for individual Americans and
for small businesses. That is actually how we are supposed to function
under our Constitution. Even under uniformly Democratic control, as the
Congress and the White House were the first 2 years of this President's
term, if things don't work out the way even the most ardent proponents
of a piece of legislation wish and hope it will, then our job under the
Constitution is to work together to try to provide some relief and
solutions for the American people. That is true whether you objected to
the law in its first instance or you simply supported it. If it turns
out not to work as advertised, it is our job to fix it, and we can do
so by replacing it with high-quality care that is more affordable and
is much simpler to use. Rather than have the Federal Government dictate
to you and your doctor what kind of care you are going to get and under
what terms, you can, in consultation with your private doctor, make
those decisions in the best interest of yourself and your family.
The bigger problem is that President Obama is simply deciding which
aspects of the law to enforce and which not to enforce, and that is
becoming somewhat of a trend, based on political convenience and
expediency. Time and time again he has made clear that if a law passed
by Congress and signed by the President--whether it is him or another
President--is unpopular among his political supporters, he will simply
ignore it and refuse to enforce it.
Shortly after ObamaCare became law, the administration began issuing
waivers from the annual limit requirements, which made it seem as if
certain organizations--oftentimes labor unions--would simply be
exempted from and would receive preferential treatment based on their
political connections. Meanwhile, to help implement ObamaCare, the IRS
has announced it will violate the letter of the law and issue health
insurance subsidies through Federal exchanges, especially in those
places where the States have declined to issue State-based exchanges,
even though the law makes clear these subsidies can only be used for
State exchanges.
Let me restate that. The law says you can only use taxpayer subsidies
for State-based exchanges, but because many States have simply said
that this makes no sense for them and are refusing to create State-
based insurance exchanges, these individuals will now be
[[Page S5700]]
in the Federal insurance exchange. And even though the law says
taxpayer subsidies are not available for those, the IRS is papering
over that provision of the law and simply disregarding it.
Again, we have seen this time and time again. We saw a similar
disregard for the rule of law during the government-run Chrysler
bankruptcy when the company-secured bondholders received much less for
their loans than the United Auto Workers' pension funds. Even though,
under the law, these bondholders were entitled to the highest priority
in terms of repayment, they were subjugated to the United Auto Workers'
pension fund basically in an exercise of political strong-arming.
We saw this again in the Solyndra bankruptcy. Remember that? The
Obama administration violated the law by making taxpayers subordinate
to private lenders. In other words, they put the taxpayers on the hook
rather than the private lenders who helped finance Solyndra.
More recently, the administration--and this is something that is in
the news as recently as today--made unconstitutional recess
appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and to the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals
held that the administration's argument in defense of its so-called
``recess appointment power'' would ``eviscerate the Constitution's
separation of powers.'' It now appears, as part of the so-called
nuclear option negotiations, that even the White House is now being
forced to withdraw these nominees who were unconstitutionally appointed
and offer substitute appointees.
We also know that the Obama administration unilaterally chose to
waive key requirements of the 1996 welfare reform law and the 2002 law
known as No Child Left Behind.
A government run by waiver or by the Federal Government picking
winners and losers is the antithesis of equal justice under the law.
Look across the street at the Supreme Court of the United States, and
above the entry it says: ``Equal justice under law.'' That is the very
definition of our form of government, which is designed for a congress
comprised of duly-elected representatives of the American people and
the President of the United States to write legislation that applies to
everybody and not to issue waivers or exemptions or to simply refuse to
enforce the law because it has proven to be inconvenient or not
politically expedient.
The U.S. Constitution obligates the President to make sure all of our
laws are faithfully executed. Yet, with President Obama, the pattern is
unmistakable: inconvenient or unpopular legal requirements are
repeatedly swept aside by Executive fiat.
If the law is not working the way it is supposed to, the President
should come back to Congress and say: We need to amend the law. We need
to replace this unworkable law with one that will actually serve the
interests of the American people.
But we are not seeing that happen. We are seeing the White House
decide on its own that it simply won't enforce a law. Last year, for
example, the administration unilaterally announced a moratorium on the
enforcement of certain immigration laws. In effect, when Congress
failed to pass legislation the President wanted, the President himself
simply decided not to enforce the immigration laws. As that example
shows, this administration has frequently relied on unelected
bureaucrats to override the people's elected representatives.
It is simply improper and unconstitutional under our system for the
President to decide unilaterally that he is not going to enforce the
law. For example, when Congress refused to enact the so-called card
check for labor unions, the administration simply turned to unelected
bureaucrats at the National Labor Relations Board. And when Congress
refused to extend cap-and-trade energy taxes, the administration turned
to unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency to
attempt to accomplish the same objectives indirectly that had been
prohibited by Congress because it couldn't get a political consensus
for doing it directly. Indeed, the President has now authorized the
Environmental Protection Agency to regulate virtually every aspect of
the American economy without congressional approval and without
recourse to the American people.
When Congress makes a mistake, when we do something the American
people don't approve of, they get to vote us out of office if they see
fit. That is not true with this faceless, nameless bureaucracy, which
is rarely held accountable, and particularly when the President
delegates to that bureaucracy the authority to regulate in so many
areas and avoid congressional accountability and accountability at the
White House.
Taken together, all these measures represent a basic contempt for the
rule of law and the normal constitutional checks and balances under
separated powers. After witnessing the President's record over the past
4\1/2\ years, is it any wonder why the American people and, indeed,
Members of Congress were skeptical about his promises to enforce our
immigration laws under the immigration bill that passed the Senate
recently?
Remember all of the extravagant promises that were made for border
security, for interior enforcement, for the implementation of a
worksite verification system, for a biometric entry-exit system to
deter 40 percent of the illegal immigration that comes when people
enter the country illegally and simply overstay their visas? If after
17 years the Federal Government still isn't enforcing those laws
already on the books, how in the world can the American people have any
confidence whatsoever that the President and Congress can be trusted to
enforce the laws that it passes?
After witnessing the President's performance, I think the American
people are deeply skeptical of his promises of future performance, and
his selective enforcement of our existing laws undermines public
confidence in the Federal Government.
I believe the executive overreach I have described is corrosive to
democratic government.
If a Republican President had ignored these kinds of constitutional
checks, had refused to enforce laws he didn't like, refused to defend
in court laws he didn't like, and used Federal agencies to flout the
will of Congress, you can be sure our friends on the other side of the
aisle would be complaining nonstop about the imperial President. Yet
they have largely given President Obama a pass.
But whether you agree with the President on health care, immigration,
energy policy, card check or other hot-button issues, we can all
agree--we should all agree--that government should not be picking
winners and losers and that we urgently need to restore the rule of law
and faithful execution of those laws to their rightful place in the
highest reaches of the Federal Government.
I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in
morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.