[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 130 (Friday, September 27, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6971-S6992]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         MAKING CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2014

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume consideration of H.J. Res. 59, which the clerk will 
report by title.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       A joint resolution (H.J. Res. 59) making continuing 
     appropriations for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Reid/Mikulski amendment No. 1974, to perfect the joint 
     resolution.
       Reid amendment No. 1975 (to amendment No. 1974), to change 
     the enactment date.
       Reid motion to commit the joint resolution to the Committee 
     on Appropriations with instructions, Reid amendment No. 1976, 
     to change the enactment date.
       Reid amendment No. 1977 (to (the instructions) amendment 
     No. 1976), of a perfecting nature.
       Reid amendment No. 1978 (to amendment No. 1977), of a 
     perfecting nature.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the time 
until 12:10 p.m. will be equally divided between the proponents and 
opponents of the motion to invoke cloture.
  The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Well, here we are Mr. President. I guess this is like the 
movie

[[Page S6972]]

``High Noon.'' The two sides are walking down the street. I just hope, 
like in the movie ``High Noon,'' the good guys win. In other words, I 
hope reason and judiciousness and a sense of responsibility to the 
people of this country prevails, and not some knee-jerk reaction to 
what a few people in the House of Representatives want to do to our 
government.
  There seems to be a sense among some Members across the aisle here, 
and certainly among a block of Republicans in the House, that shutting 
down the Federal Government is no big deal. Well, I suppose if you are 
of an anarchist mind--which I think some of them may be--then you do 
not want government, you want to create chaos, you want to create 
confusion.
  Someone might ask: Why would someone want to create chaos and 
confusion? I think if you read your history, you will find that most 
authoritarian governments and most authoritarian movements that are 
based upon a minority view or a minority support gain their power 
through confusion and chaos, by disrupting--disrupting--the public 
body. I do not care whether it is authoritarian movements of the left 
or the right, that is what they do. They know they cannot gain power 
through the normal channels, especially in a democratic government, so, 
therefore, they do everything they can to skew the way government 
operates.
  First, you manipulate the district lines for how you elect Members of 
the House of Representatives so that you have a lot of safe districts 
for one party. I have to hand it to the Republicans, they were very 
keen on this for the last 10 years or so, and they focused on redrawing 
the district boundaries so they would have what we might call 
sinecures, a safe seat.
  But if you look at the election results of the last election, more 
Americans voted for Democratic Members of the House than they voted for 
Republican Members of the House, but the Republicans are in charge of 
the House. That is because of the way the district lines were drawn 
after the last census was taken.
  So that is one way you do it, you skew it that way. And then what 
happens is you bring in a minority block of tea party-type people to 
the House of Representatives, and they want to sow more confusion and 
more chaos because they know that is the only way their views are ever 
going to prevail. They will never prevail in the open marketplace of 
ideas and debate and discourse among the American people.
  On what do I base that statement? Look at the last election. A lot of 
what the tea party is proposing and what they are now doing in terms of 
focusing on shutting down the government, much of that was proposed by 
their candidate for President--not all of it but a lot--and I think the 
American people soundly rejected that. So the tea party, being 
frustrated because they cannot get their way electorally or in the open 
marketplace of ideas and discourse and public debates, now sees their 
only way to do it is to create confusion and chaos.
  One might say if they are doing that, certainly the public will turn 
against them. Well, I think to a certain degree that is happening. But 
for the vast majority of Americans out there--who go to work every day 
and work hard, who are raising their families, thinking about where the 
next paycheck is coming from or whether they are even going to have a 
job; young people getting out of school with mountains of debt, trying 
to get a job, to start a family, perhaps--they are not focusing on the 
everyday activities of what we do around here in Washington. They read 
the headlines and may see the news or see something on their laptops or 
on their iPads or whatever, and what they see is a Congress that is 
muddled and mixed up and cannot get anything done.
  You read the polls, and the people blame all of us for this. I think 
the people in the tea party have seen that, and I think they believe 
that if they can create more confusion and chaos and disruption of 
government, both sides will be blamed, and out of that they believe 
somehow they can rise to the top of the heap and infuse the government 
with their minority views.
  That is what is happening. It is a small group of willful men and 
women, who have a certain ideology about how our country should run and 
what we should do, who cannot get their way in the normal, as I say, 
discourse and debate and votes either here in the Congress or in the 
body politic at large. And since they cannot get their way, they are 
going to create this confusion and discourse and hope the public will 
be so mixed up on who is to blame for this that they will blame both 
sides, and perhaps they feel their minority--which is so imbued with 
this passion of theirs, this ideology, this rigidness of ideology of 
theirs--that they are the ones who will come out en masse and vote in 
the next election, other people will be so discouraged they will say: 
Oh, a pox on both your houses, I won't vote, and, therefore, that is 
the path they see to taking over government.
  It is dangerous. It is very dangerous. I believe we are at one of the 
most dangerous points in our history right now--every bit as dangerous 
as the breakup of the Union before the Civil War. We are at a point 
where: Will this Congress allow a small group dedicated--I give them 
credit for working hard--but a small group of dedicated, ideologically 
driven individuals to dictate to the Senate and the House what our 
course of action is going to be? We cannot give in to that.
  So I call upon my friends in the Republican Party who are moderates--
and there a lot of them in my own State, around the country. They are 
conservative, but they are responsible conservatives. They may look at 
Democrats and say: You want to go too fast one way. We might want to go 
a little bit slower that way or maybe we want to go in a slightly 
different direction, so let's get together and work it out and see 
which way we go. That is being a responsible conservative or a 
responsible liberal too, I would say. I call upon them to disabuse 
themselves of this idea that somehow they have to march in lockstep 
with this small band of tea party--call them what you will--rightwing 
ideologs--you can use whatever adjectives you want--but they must 
disabuse themselves of the idea that they have to somehow march in 
lockstep with them.
  I keep reading the papers that somehow the Speaker of the House is 
trying to find a way out of this. Well, I do not know John Boehner real 
personally, but he was on the Education and Labor Committee all the 
time I was on the committee here. We always went to conference. We 
worked things out in a reasonable manner.
  There is a way forward--there is a way forward--and that is for the 
Speaker basically to take what we do here. What we are about to pass 
today is a stripped-down version of a continuing resolution that will 
keep the government running until November 15. But it knocks out all 
that other junk the House put in about defunding ObamaCare and all this 
other stuff they put in there. It is just a straightforward: Let's keep 
the government running until November 15.
  The compromise we made on our part was to give up on our budget line. 
We had a certain level that we wanted to fund the government. The 
Republicans had a lower level. So we accepted the lower level. We 
accepted that lower level. In turn, we asked, rather than going until 
December 15, go to November 15 on this continuing resolution funding 
the government.
  So we accepted the lower level--hard for some of us to swallow. I 
didn't believe in that lower level. I thought it should be higher so we 
could adequately fund things such as education, health care, the 
National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention, all of the things--transportation infrastructure. But it 
was a compromise. We took the lower level.
  We said: Do it until November 15 so we can bring our appropriations 
bills out on the floor, hopefully between now and then, and we can work 
on an overall spending package for next year, one that is not just a 
continuing resolution that just keeps things going, but maybe we want 
to make some changes--and we do. I know in my committee we want to 
change some things, hopefully make them work better. So by doing that 
by November 15, then that gives us a month from November 15 until 
Christmas to get it all worked out and hopefully have this package 
passed by Christmas. If we go to December 15, we will not have time to 
do that. So that is what is before us today.

[[Page S6973]]

  Here is the Speaker's avenue to act responsibly and to let the 
American people know there are responsible Republicans. All he has to 
do is take the bill we pass here and bring it up in the House and 
encourage some of his more moderate Republicans to support it and get 
the Democrats to support it and pass it in a bipartisan fashion. 
However, if the Speaker wants to just cater to this small band of 
ideologs, well then he will take what we pass here, change it around, 
add this, add that--I hear they have a laundry list--and then send it 
back to us. That is totally irresponsible.
  There is a path forward. It is the path of responsibility, of being 
responsible, being judicious, not giving in to a small band of ideologs 
who want to seed confusion and discord, a small band of ideologs who 
want to use the power of the minority to do what they can to disrupt 
government in order to get their way.
  When we were kids, there was always some kid who was playing marbles 
with you--or whatever it was, playing games--who did not get his way. 
So they picked up and went home, threw a temper tantrum. Well, for kids 
who were out playing, as we did, in the fields in small communities, 
temper tantrums were something they lived with. They did not really do 
much harm. But that is not true here in the Congress. We cannot afford 
the temper tantrums of a few ideologs.
  There is more I could say about what they want to do and how they 
want to nullify laws by doing this. We have the Affordable Care Act 
that we passed here. It is being implemented. There has been a lot 
written about the exchanges starting next week. It is the law of the 
land and has been upheld by the Supreme Court. Yet a small band, a 
small group, a few on this side--not everyone on the Republican side--
and some in the House want to nullify that law not through votes, they 
want to nullify it by shutting down the government or by not paying our 
bills when the debt ceiling comes and defaulting on our debt. 
Nullification of a law through that type of action--that is sort of 
like picking up your marbles and going home. But when you are a kid, no 
one really gets hurt. But who gets hurt from this? The American people.
  I think there are a lot of people who say that shutting down the 
government is no big deal. It is a big deal. OMB recently estimated 
that in 1996 when the government shut down, it cost in today's dollars 
$2.1 billion just because of a few days of a shutdown of government. So 
those who say they are fiscal conservatives have to think about that, 
what the cost would be to the American people of shutting it down.
  I happen to be privileged to chair the appropriations committee that 
funds Head Start Programs, early childhood development programs, 
elementary education, Pell grants, student loans, and medical research. 
I can tell you that if the government shuts down, a lot of people are 
going to get hurt.
  Twenty-two Head Start providers will be delayed. About 18,000 kids 
will be denied Head Start Programs. The National Institutes of Health 
will not be able to fund new biomedical research projects. Social 
Security offices will close. Every day in this country, 445,000 people 
will call their Social Security office. They have a missing check. They 
have something wrong. They need some help. With the government shut 
down, no one will be able to call the Social Security office and get 
that kind of help.
  I could go on and on. This is not a game. This is not a game. 
Hopefully we are not children. Hopefully we are responsible adults. I 
believe what we are doing today is responsible, in passing a stripped-
down continuing resolution to keep the government going until November 
15. I understand we will have the votes to do that. I just hope the 
House of Representatives will be responsible and forget about kid's 
games like picking up your marbles and going home or throwing a temper 
tantrum or shutting down the government because you cannot get your 
way. This is a dangerous time. I just hope the Members of this body, 
the Senate, and the House of Representatives, in which I was privileged 
to serve for 10 years, will rise to the occasion and let the American 
people know we are going to act responsibly.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes of proponent time to 
Senator Cornyn.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: I understand there 
has been time allocated to proponents and opponents, but there is no 
breakdown for individual speakers in terms of how much time is 
allocated?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, ObamaCare is more unpopular today than 
when it was passed in 2010. I know the proponents of ObamaCare--my 
Democratic friends who voted for it in a party-line vote--had hoped it 
would meet their expectations and the promises the President and other 
people made about how it would be implemented and what its impact would 
be on our health care system.
  I am amazed, though, that our colleagues say: You know, it is the law 
of the land. We cannot change it.
  Well, that is completely contrary to our constitutional system where 
the very legitimacy of our laws depends on the consent of the governed. 
Of course it is within the power of Congress to change the law. That is 
what we do when it turns out the law does not work as those who hoped 
it would or it, unfortunately, meets the expectations of those skeptics 
who thought it would never work. So it is within our power to change 
this law.
  We will be voting today on a very important provision that will give 
us an opportunity to start over and to address the failures of 
ObamaCare that even some of its most ardent advocates had hoped it 
would meet. So today we will vote on a number of matters, including a 
cloture vote on the underlying bill. I will be voting yes on cloture 
because I do not understand how I can otherwise vote on a matter I want 
to see passed. In other words, we will vote to proceed to a bill that 
defunds ObamaCare. I believe we should defund ObamaCare. Indeed, just 
as we did on the motion to proceed--we had 100 Senators vote for 
cloture on the motion to proceed--I do not know why we would not vote 
to proceed on the cloture vote on the underlying bill--especially those 
of us who believe we ought to go ahead and defund ObamaCare today in 
light of experience between 2010 and 2013 which shows it has not lived 
up to expectations and promises.
  There are some people across America who are so upset with 
ObamaCare--and I understand their frustration--that they say we ought 
to shut down the Federal Government. Our colleague Senator Coburn asked 
the Congressional Research Service to look at what would happen to 
ObamaCare if the government shut down for some reason. Their conclusion 
is that ObamaCare would continue to be funded even though the 
government was shut down because there are alternate sources of revenue 
that could be used to keep it going.
  So I say to my friends who say we ought to shut the government down 
to get rid of ObamaCare that it will not work. Even if they hoped it 
would work, it will not work. Of course, we can imagine the disruptions 
to our seniors, military, and to our economy, which is bouncing along 
the bottom with slow growth and high unemployment, and what that 
disruption might mean there.
  So I think the real vote today is going to be on the vote the 
majority leader will offer to strip out the defunding language. I hope 
we have five Democrats--perhaps those who hoped in 2010 that ObamaCare 
would actually work but will, in light of subsequent experience, 
reconsider and say: Maybe we ought to start over again because 
ObamaCare has not worked. Maybe it is not the best way to make health 
care policy, to have a bill that was passed strictly on a party-line 
vote.
  No one is invested in trying to actually make sure it will work, such 
as when Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan fixed Social Security and secured 
it for subsequent generations. Unfortunately, we have seen the 
President of the United States govern by waiver, exception, and 
exemption when it comes to implementing ObamaCare. We have learned that 
ObamaCare is not ready for prime time even though the exchanges are 
supposed to go into effect next Tuesday.
  Why are the American people so upset with ObamaCare? Why are there

[[Page S6974]]

some people who are so upset that they are willing to see the 
government shut down in order to get rid of it and change it? Well, it 
is simple. When the President was promoting his health care overhaul in 
2009 and 2010, he repeatedly assured the American people: If you like 
what you have, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you do not 
have to worry, nothing will change.
  He made that promise time and time again. He was always 100 percent 
unequivocal. Here is a direct quote from the President's speech in 
January of 2009 before the American Medical Association. He said:

       If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your 
     doctor. Period. If you like your health-care plan, you will 
     be able to keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will 
     take it away. No matter what.

  That is the President of the United States. When the President made 
those remarks 4 years ago, many Americans believed him or at least gave 
him the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, we now know ObamaCare was 
sold to the American people under false pretenses. The Congressional 
Budget Office has projected that ObamaCare will cause millions of 
Americans to lose their existing health care coverage.
  Employers large and small have already announced that because of 
ObamaCare they are ending their employer-provided coverage for their 
employees and some of their retirees. In a front-page story, even the 
New York Times admits that because of ObamaCare, ``many insurers are 
significantly limiting the number of doctors and hospitals available to 
consumers.'' So if you like your doctor, if you like your hospital, you 
will not necessarily be able to keep them. For that matter, earlier 
this year one of my constituents sent me a letter she got from her 
insurance company informing her that because of ObamaCare the coverage 
she had would be terminated by the end of 2013.
  That letter said:

       Never have we experienced the uncertainty and immense 
     challenges that confront the insurance industry during this 
     time of health-care reform.

  It is now painfully clear that many people who do wish to keep their 
existing coverage and wish to keep their current doctors will not be 
able to do so if this law is implemented.
  This is why we are seeing some leading Democrats who are saying maybe 
we ought to reconsider in the light of experience since the time we 
voted to pass ObamaCare in 2009 and 2010.
  It is also clear that ObamaCare is destroying our economy. Recently, 
a group of labor leaders went to the White House to ask for a special 
carve-out because they said ObamaCare, as implemented, was killing the 
40-hour work week. These are some of the folks who were the biggest 
cheerleaders for ObamaCare at the time it passed, but they have 
realized, based on subsequent experience, that it is turning full-time 
work into part-time work so employers can avoid some of the penalties 
and costs.
  We know it is having a particular impact on some specific types of 
employment such as restaurants, retailers, hotels, the people who 
develop medical devices which save lives and increase lifespan, and it 
is having a negative impact on hospitals as well.
  For example, the Franciscan Alliance health system recently announced 
that because of ObamaCare it was eliminating about 125 jobs at two 
hospitals in President Obama's hometown of Chicago.
  Meanwhile, in a letter to a DC city councilman, the owner of a 
popular area restaurant chain described ObamaCare as: ``the biggest 
mandated cost ever inflicted on restaurateurs . . . in the HISTORY OF 
RESTAURANTS.'' The restaurant owner added: ``We still haven't figured 
out how we are going to pay for that.''
  Also, as I mentioned a moment ago, because of the tax on medical 
devices to pay for medical care, medical device manufacturers are 
leaving the United States or they are not hiring new people. Some 
constituents from Texas came in to see me and said they had an 
operation in Costa Rica. Instead of hiring more people in Texas, they 
are going to be moving that operation to Costa Rica for one reason and 
one reason only; that is, to avoid the medical device tax in ObamaCare.
  We know that because of ObamaCare's impact on the economy, many 
college graduates--who advocates celebrate are now able to stay on 
their parents' health insurance until 26--those same young men and 
women are unable to find jobs because of ObamaCare. We know that its 
impact on the medical profession is having a dramatic outcome on 
people's access to health care.
  It is very important to make a distinction between coverage and 
access. Just because the government provides Medicare coverage doesn't 
mean you are going to find a doctor to see you. Increasingly, in my 
State and around the country, doctors are saying: We can't afford to 
see new Medicare and Medicaid patients because of how much the 
government compensates for that service.
  As a matter of fact in Texas, only about one out of every three 
doctors who currently see Medicaid patients will accept a new Medicaid 
patient because of the low reimbursement rate. Medicaid is already 
failing to meet the important needs of the most vulnerable people in 
our country. Because of ObamaCare, States are preparing for a massive 
spike in individual health care premiums and because of ObamaCare 
insurance carriers are already limiting consumer choice.
  As many of us warned years ago, ObamaCare affects everyone. It 
affects working families who are happy with their employer-provided 
coverage. It affects Medicare recipients living on a fixed income. It 
affects Medicaid patients who are already having trouble finding 
doctors and dentists who will take their insurance. It affects young 
people who are struggling to pay off their student loan debt, and, yes, 
as I said, it affects small business owners who wish to expand their 
workforce.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has consumed 10 
minutes.
  Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair.
  It affects medical device companies that produce technology that has 
helped millions of Americans with disabilities. The false promises of 
ObamaCare have been shattered by the harsh realities of ObamaCare. A 
law that was supposed to solve some of our biggest health care problems 
in the country has, instead, made those problems even worse.
  Now we have a second chance. Congress has a second chance as the 
elected representatives of the American people under our constitutional 
system of learning from the experience we have had since 2010 when 
Congress passed ObamaCare on a party-line vote, we have a second chance 
today to do the right thing, a chance to stop ObamaCare in its tracks, 
a chance to reverse the mistakes of 2009 and to allow Congress, 
instead, to pass real health care reforms that will lower costs, 
improve access, expand quality insurance coverage to more people.
  Republicans have said we have an alternative to ObamaCare. Some of 
our colleagues who support ObamaCare said: The only way you can cover 
people with preexisting conditions is with ObamaCare, a $2.7 trillion 
expenditure. That is baloney. We all know many States have health risk 
pools. If we provided additional funding to those State health risk 
pools, people with preexisting conditions could get coverage without 
having to embrace the whole behemoth of ObamaCare at a much more 
affordable cost.
  We are eager to adopt reforms such as equalizing the tax treatment of 
health insurance and making health care price and quality information 
more transparent and accessible so people can actually shop based on 
quality and price--what a concept--also, by letting people buy 
insurance coverage across State lines, allowing both individuals and 
businesses to form risk pools for individual markets, by curbing 
frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits, using State-based health 
insurance pools to cover people with preexisting conditions, and to 
give States more flexibility to improve Medicaid and to bring more 
competition to Medicare.
  Republicans have spent years advocating these policies. Now that we 
know ObamaCare has failed in its intended purpose, it is time to look 
to these alternatives. We are prepared to defund ObamaCare and to move 
ahead with real reform as I described.
  The only question is how many Democrats are going to learn from the 
evidence since 2010. How many of them

[[Page S6975]]

are going to listen to their constituents and say we can do better than 
this failed attempt from the Federal Government to take over our health 
care system and deny people access to the doctors of their choice and 
to keep the insurance coverage they have.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes of proponent time to 
Senator Sanders.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Let me begin by saying I think a debate over ObamaCare, 
a debate over health care, is good for the Nation. As I think many 
Americans understand, the United States is the only country in the 
industrialized world that does not guarantee health care as a right to 
all of our people.
  Today, before the initiation of ObamaCare, we have 48 million people 
who have no health insurance. I would tell my good friend from Texas 
that the State of Texas, I think, ranked first in the country in the 
percentage of their people under 65 who have no health insurance, one 
out of four.
  George W. Bush was President for 8 years. Where were the ideas about 
how we provide health care to all of our people. It is not only 48 
million people today who have no health insurance; there are many more 
who have huge deductibles which prevent them from going to the doctor. 
They have high copayments. At the end of the day, in this dysfunctional 
health care system we have, we are spending almost twice as much per 
capita on health care as do the people of any other nation, many of 
which have better health care outcomes than we do in terms of life 
expectancy, infant mortality, and the treatment of a number of 
diseases.
  In my view, ObamaCare is a step forward, but we have to make 
significant improvements. That is a good discussion and debate to have.
  One thing that is absolutely certain is you do not hold the American 
people hostage by threatening to shut down the government or, for the 
first time in the history of our country, not pay our bills, bringing 
this country and perhaps the entire world into a major financial 
crisis. That is what you don't do.
  ObamaCare was passed with 60 votes in the Senate, it was passed in 
the House, and it was signed by the President. ObamaCare was challenged 
in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled it constitutional.
  There was an election 1 year ago on this very issue, one of the major 
issues in the campaign. The Republican candidate said: Let's defund 
ObamaCare. He lost the election. Republicans lost seats in the Senate. 
They lost seats in the House.
  This is what democracy is all about. What democracy is not about is a 
handful of the Members of the House of Representatives, extreme 
rightwing Republicans, saying if we do not get our way, we are prepared 
to punish tens of millions of Americans. Yes, we lost the election; 
yes, we lost seats in the House and the Senate, but we are prepared to 
bring this government down; we are prepared to cause, perhaps, a major 
global financial crisis unless we get our way.
  That is not what the American system is about. That is not what 
democracy is about. If we want to debate about how we improve 
ObamaCare, that is a good debate. Let's have it. Let's not tell men and 
women in the U.S. Armed Forces, who today are putting their lives on 
the line to defend us, that they are not going to get paid. Let us not 
tell police officers here in Washington and elsewhere they may not get 
paid. Let's not tell working families who take their little kids to 
Head Start so they can then go out to work that program may be killed. 
Let's not tell senior citizens, who are on the Meals on Wheels Program 
who can't leave their homes and depend upon a meal, let's not punish 
them because we have a small number of extreme rightwingers who want to 
get their way at the expense of millions and millions of people.
  Let's have a debate, continue the debate. ObamaCare will provide 
health insurance to 20 million more Americans, a good step forward, but 
28 million more remain uninsured.
  Many of the trade unions are concerned about some provisions, and I 
share those views. Let's change that, let's improve it. Let us not shut 
down the U.S. Government and make us look like fools throughout the 
entire world because a handful of rightwing extremists are so 
determined to try to destroy this President.
  Senator Cruz was on the floor the other day. I appreciate anyone--I 
was on the floor a couple of years ago for 8\1/2\ hours, and he was on 
the floor for 21 hours. That is tough. I respect anyone who can do 
that. I disagreed with most of what he did say, but he did say one 
thing which I think was right; that is, we need a serious debate about 
fundamental issues.
  What I believe very strongly is that this debate about ObamaCare is 
kind of small change, nickel and dime, compared to where many of our 
rightwing Republicans wish to go. It is important we have that debate 
because I think the American people are not understanding the role of 
multibillionaires, such as the Koch brothers, worth some $70 billion, 
pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the tea party. This is 
what this debate is about; it is not about ObamaCare. I will give some 
of the issues we should be debating. Senator Cruz was right.
  The Texas Republican Party platform calls for an immediate and 
orderly transition away from Social Security; in other words, they want 
to kill Social Security. That is a good debate. Let's have it.
  How many of the American people think we should end Social Security 
and go back to the days of the 1920s, when the elderly people were the 
poorest people in America. That is what rightwing Republicans want to 
do. Let us have that debate.

  The Republicans in Texas--again, their view represents a whole lot of 
folks here in the Senate and in the House--want to privatize veterans' 
health care. I am the chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, 
and I will tell you very strongly the veterans of America want to 
improve and expand the VA health care system, not privatize it. But let 
us have that debate.
  Quoting from the Texas platform, the Republican Party in Texas 
believes--and, again, reflecting the views, I believe, of a strong 
majority of Republicans here in Washington--``We believe the minimum 
wage should be repealed.''
  The minimum wage today is $7.25 an hour. We have millions and 
millions of workers who are trying to get by on $8 an hour, $9 an hour. 
I think the minimum wage should be significantly expanded--raised. Many 
Republicans say let's abolish the minimum wage. Do you know what that 
means? It means in Maine, in high unemployment areas; in Detroit, in 
high unemployment areas; and in Vermont, in high unemployment areas, 
what the employer will say is: Look, there ain't no jobs around here. 
You want to work, here is 3 bucks an hour. But we have the government 
out of your lives. There is no longer a minimum wage.
  They consider that freedom. I consider that wage slavery. Let us have 
the debate about whether we should abolish the minimum wage, abolish 
Social Security.
  The Ryan Republican budget in the House a couple of years ago wanted 
to end Medicare as we know it and create a voucher system. Here is a 
check, 8,000 bucks. You got cancer, good luck. Here is your $8,000 
check. Go to the doctor, to the hospital, you will get good care--for 
about 2 days--and then we don't know what happens to you.
  We are going to end Medicare as we know it. We are going to make 
devastating cuts in Medicaid. We are going to give tax breaks to the 
rich at a time when the rich are doing phenomenally and the middle 
class is collapsing. Let us have that debate. That is a good debate to 
have.
  It is very interesting; there was a CBS/New York Times poll that came 
out the other day absolutely consistent with every other poll I have 
seen. What these polls do is they say to the American people: What do 
you think are the most important issues facing America? What should 
Congress be focusing on? You know what. They are not talking about 
health care. They are not talking about ObamaCare. They are not talking 
about taxes. What the American people are saying is: We need jobs.
  Real unemployment today is close to 14 percent. Youth unemployment is 
higher. We need to create millions of

[[Page S6976]]

jobs. Where is the debate? We bring forward ideas about rebuilding our 
crumbling infrastructure, creating jobs, moving to a more energy 
efficient society, and creating jobs. Where are their ideas on jobs? 
They do not have any. All they can say is: Let's give more tax breaks 
to billionaires. One out of four corporations doesn't pay any taxes. 
Let's give more tax breaks to the rich and to the corporations. 
Trickle-down economics has not worked.
  What the American people also understand is that most of the new jobs 
that are being created are low-wage jobs. Often they are part-time 
jobs--a trend, by the way, that has been going on for many, many years, 
well before ObamaCare. Major employers didn't need to think too hard to 
figure out if you hire people for 25 or 28 hours a week you don't have 
to provide them with benefits. Let us discuss about how we create 
decent wages in this country.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's yielded time has 
expired.
  Mr. SANDERS. The last point I will make.
  Maybe the most important discussion we should have is ending and 
overturning this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision 
which gives the billionaires in this country the ability to control 
what goes on here in the Congress, forcing Members of the House and 
Senate to raise unbelievable sums of money.
  So there is a lot to be debated. But one thing we should not be 
debating is shutting down the United States Government in order to 
achieve a narrow political goal.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to use 15 minutes of the 
appointed time and be notified after 10 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator is recognized.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair.
  Look, what we are here today about is the Democratic majority in the 
Senate has built a fortress around ObamaCare--the Affordable Care Act. 
They have refused steadfastly any serious reevaluation of the law. They 
have blocked every attempt to do that. The House, Senator Cruz, 
Republicans, and others are trying to force this Congress to confront 
the obvious flaws in that law, and they have refused to do so.
  That is why it has all come down to a debate at the end of the year 
over what we are going to do. Do we just give up? Do we allow the 
majority in the Senate to not even allow votes in the weeks to come? 
They are not. They will not do it unless they are forced to do so. They 
made a strategic decision to reject and fight off any attempt to bring 
up a vote on the floor of the Senate.
  People in America, I am sure, cannot believe if a Member of the 
Senate desires to try and fix and improve the Affordable Care Act that 
they cannot go to the floor and get a vote on it. That is exactly what 
has been happening ever since it passed. Polling data show the American 
people want substantial changes to it. Members, even Democrats, have 
said they want some change. But nothing gets voted on that will 
actually make a real change in the law.
  It is the plan of President Obama and Senator Reid to accept no 
change. Indeed, Senator Reid has made clear his plan is to move to a 
single-payer system. He said openly and publicly just a few weeks ago 
he wants a single payer system for all health care in America--the 
United States Government. And that can only be described as socialized 
medicine.
  That is what the goal is, and we have got to confront this. So I 
wanted to say that first of all. But as ranking member of the Budget 
Committee, I want to share a few thoughts about where we are 
financially and what is going to happen with this legislation. First 
and foremost we have to know that the Affordable Care Act is deeply 
unsound financially. The President's promise--repeatedly made--was that 
it would not add one dime to the debt. He said it would not add one 
dime to the deficit ``now or ever, period.''
  Is that true? No, sir, it is not true. This is a hugely unsound new 
entitlement program that will endanger the financial future of America 
at a time when we need to quit digging ourselves deeper in debt and 
begin to work ourselves out of debt.
  The Acting President pro tempore is on the Budget Committee. We both 
know these numbers.
  We are dealing with Social Security, desperately trying to figure out 
a way to make Social Security sound so our seniors can go to bed at 
night and not have any worries about the future of Social Security. 
Medicare is even more stressed. Now we are adding this law--ObamaCare.
  What does it do? The Government Accountability Office, headed by an 
independent person, actually appointed by President Obama, has issued a 
report stating that under the likely financial scenario over the next 
75 years--that is how they figure Social Security and Medicare's 
liabilities--this bill will add $6.2 trillion to the Federal deficit. 
Social Security's unfunded liabilities are only $7.7. We are talking 
about adding almost as much debt to the future of the United States and 
to our children and grandchildren as Social Security has in 
liabilities. We need to be fixing Social Security, not creating a new 
entitlement. We need to be fixing Medicare, not adding another one. We 
need to be fixing some of our pension plans that are unsound, not 
adding more debt. We were promised it wouldn't happen.
  We are going to have a budget point of order later, and we will hear 
arguments that ObamaCare is good for the budget. But this is how a 
country goes broke. This is how a country goes broke. We are going to 
have a score from the Congressional Budget Office that says over 10 
years this law will bring in more money than goes out.
  In one sense that is correct. But where did they get the money? The 
money--$500 billion or so--is coming out of Medicare. But it is 
Medicare's money. They are cutting doctors and hospitals--providers--
$500 billion, and they are saying, therefore, the U.S. Treasury--the 
conventions of unified budget accounting, as CBO says--will show it as 
increased money. Therefore, it can be spent by an entirely new program. 
But it is not money for a new program or the U.S. Treasury. It is not 
Congress' money. This is Medicare's money, and it will be loaned by the 
Medicare trustees to the U.S. Treasury so it can be spent on this 
program.
  The ObamaCare money that comes out of the Medicare savings is 
borrowed money. It is not free money. It is not new money. It is 
borrowed--borrowed from the trustees of Medicare--and it is headed in a 
downward spiral, and they will call those loans in very soon. There is 
just no money there, and that is how it all comes out.
  The Government Accountability Office says under a realistic set of 
assumptions this law will add $6 trillion--$6.2 trillion--to this 
country's deficit. Mr. Holtz-Eakin said in the first 10 years there 
will be $500 billion added to the debt of America.
  Supporters of the new law will contend otherwise, but it is 
indisputable that this is so. We are adding to the debt and it is going 
to threaten the future of America.
  I would also point out, as we work our way through the entire effort 
to focus on our debt and what we will do for America, we need to 
understand how this accounting works. The Congressional Budget Office, 
on December 23, the night before the bill passed in 2009, in response 
to my request, sent a letter saying you cannot simultaneously use the 
money for Medicare and to fund a new program, though the conventions of 
accounting might indicate that. You cannot use it for both purposes. 
They used the phrase it was ``double counting.''
  That is our own Congressional Budget Office. The night before this 
bill was rammed through the Senate, they told us that. Yet we still 
have the President--we still have Members of this body insisting this 
law is fully paid for and will not add to the deficit ever, period. 
Nothing could be more false. Nothing could be more false.
  I know there are good people who feel like we have to keep this 
process moving, we have to send something to the House, and they will 
want to move this bill to the House. I understand that. But I just want 
everybody to know that we all need to fully understand that this health 
care law is unsound financially. This health care law will never work.
  Second, I am disappointed that our colleagues in the House have sent 
a bill

[[Page S6977]]

over that spends at a rate that would add $20 billion more to our debt 
than the Budget Control Act would allow.
  Colleagues, we have got to be so careful about this. I know they have 
an excuse for it. I know they say that by the end of the year the 
sequester will cut those spending levels down and it will not add to 
the debt at the end of the year. Don't worry about it, they say. But 
right now we couldn't agree, so we just spent more money on the 
discretionary side than we should have otherwise. We are going to spend 
$988 billion instead of $968 billion, $20 billion more at that rate.
  But they say after 3 months or 2 months, when this CR ends, it will 
all be fixed. I am worried about that. It is going to be harder, I 
think. I think the pressure is going to be more intense 2 months from 
now to keep spending at that level.
  I don't think they should have sent a bill to this floor, even though 
they can correctly argue that if sequester laws stay in effect, it will 
be reduced. I recognize that they can continue to argue that.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has consumed 10 
minutes.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair.
  But fundamentally it is going to be harder for us to confront this 
problem as we go forward in the future because we will have more cuts 
over 9 or 10 months than would otherwise have been the case if we don't 
make any of them in the first 2 months in this Congress.
  I would say to our colleagues who are thinking, ``We may need to 
waive the budget points of order. Let's just go forward, and somehow we 
will work all this out in the future. We are going to be watching''--I 
can't support it. But those who feel they have to do so to keep the 
ball moving when the House sends another bill back over here, it ought 
to be on the budget level, not above it. I hope they will do that. That 
will relieve one more problem.
  But the truly big issue is how to understand the cost of this health 
care law. My colleagues, using a score from the Congressional Budget 
Office, are going to contend that if you eliminate ObamaCare, it will 
cost the Treasury money. That is what they are going to tell you, and 
that is the score CBO would issue. But the CBO Director told us it is 
double-counting the money. You can't score this money twice.
  But according to the conventions of accounting and the 10-year window 
over which this occurs, by reducing the cost of Medicare, you can 
therefore spend more money to fund a new program. You can do that, and 
it will appear not to add to the debt. But you can't count the amount 
of money coming in because it is Medicare's money. It is simply 
borrowing money from Medicare. It is going to add to the debt.
  Our own independent Government Accountability Office has said, 
according to the likely analysis of events over the next 75 years, as 
they do for Social Security and Medicare, this plan is going to add 
$6.2 trillion to the Federal deficit. In other words, what they are 
saying is that you would have to deposit $6 trillion into an account 
today to have enough money to honor the commitments that are being made 
with the Affordable Care Act. So that much money, in addition to the 
other revenues and taxes that are in the legislation and the payments 
that are made by Americans, is not going to be enough, and we need that 
much more money. But we are committing this benefit to American 
citizens. It becomes an entitlement. We are committing these benefits 
to them, and we don't have the money to honor the commitment. That 
cannot continue. We cannot as a nation continue down this path.
  Wall Street and others are telling us we have to get our house in 
order. We cannot continue to add to our debt in this fashion.
  I understand the difficulties Members will be facing when they cast a 
vote as they come up here today. I am not going to criticize any Member 
on their vote--although I am not going to vote to waive the budget. I 
think we ought to stay within our budget, and I think we cannot get by 
with this idea that the Affordable Care Act is going to improve the 
financial condition of America when it absolutely is not.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. SESSIONS. I would be delighted. The Senator is such a fine leader 
of the Appropriations Committee and one of the most knowledgeable 
people here, a person I respect greatly.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. And I feel the same way.
  I understand the Senator from Alabama is the ranking member of the 
Budget Committee. Could the Senator tell me why six Senators have 
objected on his side of the aisle to having the conference on the 
budget? The Senate passed a budget bill 5 months ago, and we could have 
been in negotiations to resolve that. Could the Senator tell me why 
those six Senators object? And because of that objection, we do not 
have a budget. Senator Murray passed a budget working here in a 
marathon. The Senator will remember that.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I certainly do. And I think I may have had a little 
role in the fact that a budget was passed since I had been complaining 
that the Democratic majority went 4 years without passing a budget and 
several years without even bringing it to the floor. While the House 
was passing a budget every year, the Senate failed and refused a 
fundamental legal requirement to even produce one.
  But this year our new chairman, Senator Murray, did bring a budget 
forward and did move it through the body. There was a concern--I didn't 
raise it, but a number of colleagues on this side of the aisle said: We 
are glad to have the budget move forward, but we want you to commit not 
to raise the debt ceiling on a budget reconciliation because you could 
raise the debt ceiling with 51 votes instead of 60 votes.
  I know the Senator may not like that, but that is exactly what was 
said. And Senator Durbin on this floor said he did not think it could 
be done under the rules of the Senate and that we could raise the debt 
ceiling on the budget. But then why wouldn't the Senator agree to that?
  So the request from the people who objected to sending a budget 
forward to conference was based solely--and they expressed it 
repeatedly--on the concerns that budget reconciliation would be used to 
raise the debt and therefore not be subject to a 60-vote majority.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I thank the Senator for his answer. I dispute the logic 
and the reasoning, but I thank the Senator, and I thank him for working 
with Senator Murray to move the budget. I will comment on that.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I yield the floor. If I have not used 
all my time, I reserve the remainder of my time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I now yield 3 minutes of the proponents' 
time to Senator Murray, the chairperson of the Budget Committee, who 
actually did pass a budget 5 months ago but has been precluded because 
of sheer, rigid, ideological posturing from being able to go to a 
conference, sit in a room with Paul Ryan, and work out what the budget 
of the United States of America should be. This is why we have gone 
from the greatest deliberative body to the greatest delay body.
  So I yield 3 minutes and any other time she wishes to consume to 
Senator Murray, who has done an outstanding job, and I wish people 
would follow her lead and let her go to the conference so we could have 
a budget.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maryland for her 
tremendous leadership. She is absolutely correct--we are here in a 
manufactured crisis. This Senate and the House passed a budget last 
spring. For 6 months we have been trying to get those two budgets 
together to conference a deal to set our budget priorities for the next 
several years. We have been precluded from doing that by the same 
Republicans who now want to kill a continuing resolution that will 
simply keep our government open for a few short weeks so we can do the 
work we should have been doing for the last 6 months.
  The answer to this is easy. Let's pass a clean resolution, keep the 
government open for a few short weeks, do the responsible thing, say to 
the Nation and to the world that we will pay our bills and raise the 
debt ceiling, and then do what we need to do, what every

[[Page S6978]]

one of us knows we need to do, which is to work out the differences 
between the House and the Senate budgets.
  But we are here in a manufactured crisis because the same Republicans 
who are now leading us to a shutdown are saying they don't want us to 
talk. I agree with the Senator from Maryland. Keep the clean 
resolution, send it to the House, keep government open, and do what we 
should do as leaders and adults and come to a budget agreement.
  I also wish to speak today on and urge my colleagues to support the 
majority leader's motion that he will bring to us to waive the budget 
point of order against the continuing resolution we will vote on in a 
few hours.
  My Republican colleagues who announced their intent to raise this 
point of order are concerned that the funding levels in both the House 
and Senate continuing resolutions violate the Budget Control Act. But, 
as we all remember, sequestration was never supposed to be in there. It 
was supposed to be so unthinkable that it would force a compromise, 
which is what we are going to have to do anyway. But since those 
automatic cuts took effect, we have now heard from families and 
communities across the country that sequestration is costing us jobs, 
it is slowing our growth, and it is harming our national security. That 
is exactly why the Senate and House budgets both require changes to the 
Budget Control Act.
  It is true that we took very different approaches to altering the 
automatic cuts. The Senate budget on our side fully replaced the 
sequestration. We did it with an equal mix of spending cuts and new 
revenues that we raised by closing loopholes skewed toward the 
wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations. The House budget on the 
other side replaced sequestration fully also, but they did it by fully 
funding defense programs and paying for that with very deep cuts to 
investments in families and jobs, all the while protecting the 
wealthiest Americans from participating in this at all and helping to 
pay for it.
  We do have a lot of work to bridge that divide, but that alone shows 
how important it is that we pass a clean, temporary continuing 
resolution to keep the government operating while we have that space to 
negotiate a longer term budget agreement that works for our families 
and economy.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has consumed 3 minutes.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask for 1 additional minute.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mrs. MURRAY. To do that, we have to be able to finish this bill, send 
it back to the House, and get our country back on the right course 
again.
  So voting to sustain this point of order isn't voting against a 
funding level or a policy vote. Voting to sustain this point of order 
is voting for a government shutdown because if this bill that is in 
front of us today dies, it is very likely the government will not be 
open for business on Tuesday, and then our American families will have 
to deal with the disruption and all the uncertainty that will cause.
  There is no reason to let the gridlock and dysfunction in Washington, 
DC, cause more harm to our families and businesses. A vote for this 
point of order is a vote to kill this bill and shut down the 
government, and we do not want that to happen. So I oppose it. I urge 
my colleagues to join me in waiving the point of order when we have 
that vote later today. Let's pass a clean continuing resolution, have 
the House pass a clean continuing resolution, and then do the job we 
were sent to do. Every one of us knows what needs to be done, which is 
to bridge the divide between the House and Senate budgets and get our 
country back on track again.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Washington 
State for her comments because, as usual, they were clear, cogent, and 
compelling.
  We need to get a job done today. Our job today--am I correct--is 
passing a continuing resolution, which means we keep the funding at 
fiscal 2013 in place until we resolve other budgetary issues with the 
House. Is that correct?
  Mrs. MURRAY. I would say to the chairwoman of the Appropriations 
Committee, that is absolutely correct.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, we will be voting at 12:30 on four 
questions. Those four votes are cloture on the continuing resolution, 
waiver of a Budget Act on the point of order, the amendment that I 
offered on the continuing resolution, and final passage. But 
essentially it is all pretty much the same thing--it is four separate 
votes that get there.
  Our goal today is to send to the House of Representatives a 
continuing resolution, stripped of ideological riders, that keeps the 
government funded until November 15 while we work out other budgetary 
issues. The continuing resolution historically was always meant to be 
short-term to get us over problems, to keep the government functioning 
while we solve problems we have been working on, and it has always been 
historically not to have ideological riders attached to them.
  We the Democrats, hopefully with others who will join with us to find 
the sensible center--America always governs best when it finds the 
center, a sensible center--we want to find that and send it to the 
House where, No. 1, our continuing resolution will be until November 
15. This gives us a couple of weeks to work these issues out.
  No. 2, to take out the ideological riders. The first rider is to 
defund President Obama's Affordable Care Act. We want to strip that out 
because it is now the law of the land. There is no need to keep 
fighting the same battle.
  Next, there is an ideological rider on how we structure paying our 
debt. That rider is a rigged game, that we pay China first before we 
pay other obligations to people here, debtors in our own country. We 
want to strip that out and then send them the continuing resolution, 
which is not new money. It keeps the Government operating until 
November 15 at fiscal 2013 levels. That is where we are. I want to 
explain, if we do not do this we could head to a government shutdown 
that is harmful to our country, it is harmful to our economy, and it is 
harmful to our standing in the world.
  In plain English, after debating the continuing resolution last 
Thursday, we now have these four votes. A vote to waive a point of 
order against the continuing resolution where we could end up with more 
sand in the gears. Where we are now is that the vote on the Senate 
amendment to the House CR, as I said, strips out partisan ideology, 
shortens the date and moves on so the House can look at it.
  A government shutdown is a serious matter. If we do not come together 
across the aisle, across the dome, across town, we will be facing a 
damaging government shutdown. Here are a few things that will happen. 
If we cannot enact a clean continuing resolution by October 1, our 
troops, including troops deployed overseas, will not be paid on time; 
800,000 civil servants who serve the American people will be sent home 
and told they are nonessential. Shutting down the government will have 
an immediate and harmful effect on our economy. Small Business 
Administration approval of loans will be put on hold; important rural 
development housing and farm loan grants will be stopped.
  Our economy is struggling to pick up steam. The uncertainty that we 
will create in the marketplace, in our own country and in the world, 
will put on the brakes to our economy. It is irresponsible and 
unacceptable for this to happen.
  Every day, thousands of Federal workers keep Americans safe. We don't 
hear about them every day but they do make a difference. Every time a 
defective product is removed from the market, every time an inspector 
recommends a change to keep people safe in terms of approving the 
safety of our food supply or drug supply, every time a scammer or a 
schemer is arrested for fraud, the Federal Government and the people 
who work for them play an important role.
  In my own State, I represent the National Institutes of Health. Last 
spring, Director Dr. Francis Collins announced we had reduced cancer 
rates in this country by 15 percent. Instead of pinning a medal on the 
men and women who did the basic research that could then lead to the 
private sector inventing new pharmaceutical and biological

[[Page S6979]]

products that would put that into clinical practice--instead of that, 
they had to announce a furlough. How would you like to be working at 
NIH right this minute and be told you are nonessential? You are working 
on a cure for cancer, you are trying to find out the causes of autism, 
you are trying to come up with a cure or at least cognitive stretchout 
for Alzheimer's--just talking about the A words--then you are told you 
are nonessential. They did not know that. The American people do not 
believe it.
  We have to avoid a government shutdown and a government showdown. 
What we need to be able to do today is to be sure we work on our 
amendments and make sure we have cloture on the continuing resolution. 
We have had substantial debate. It is now time to bring that together, 
waive the Budget Act and the point of order, pass my amendment to 
change the time to November 15, and then have final passage.
  The time to act is now. You hear in my voice great frustration. I am 
frustrated, not because of solutions I do not like--that is give and 
take in a legislative process. What I am frustrated about is the 
continual process of delay, where we not only throw sand in the gears 
of our ability to function, we are now throwing cement into those 
gears.
  I hope we can move. There are cool heads on both sides of the aisle. 
There are people on both sides of the aisle who have worked together 
and can come together. Let's pass this continuing resolution, have the 
House act so we can avoid a shutdown so that our focus is on solving 
the important issues facing our country. Yes, there are those who call 
for reducing the public debt. I support that. We can do that through a 
balanced approach: additional strategic cuts, a review of mandatory 
spending, and a look at closing tax loopholes.
  But there are other debts we have. We have the issue of chronic 
unemployment, of growing education unattainment, where our standing in 
the world is slipping. I worry that we will not fund the necessary 
research and development so, working with the private sector, we will 
come up with those new ideas that lead to new products, that lead to 
new jobs.
  DARPA, a government agency, helped create the Internet. Then the 
genius of our private sector unleashed a power that the world has never 
seen. This is what America is known for--discovery, entrepreneurship, 
moving our own country ahead. This is what I hope we will get back to.
  Let's get through this process. Let's get through this quagmire and 
let's keep America being what America can be.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I do have time right now that is 
scheduled. However, my friend from Alabama had one other point to make. 
I would like to yield 2 minutes of my time to the Senator from Alabama.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, as I explained the unfunded liabilities 
of the Affordable Care Act, I now want to make something clear. It is a 
lot more than that. It is unlike Social Security and Medicare, where 
there is a dedicated tax that supports those programs that are on our 
payroll withholding every week, that FICA withholding, dedicated to 
Social Security and Medicare. There is no dedicated tax support for 
ObamaCare.
  If you assume all the new taxes they raise are actually used to fund 
ObamaCare, then there would be a $6.2 trillion shortfall, a liability. 
But if you do it like it should be accounted and assume that none of 
this money raised in taxes is actually dedicated to the Affordable Care 
Act, then it runs about $17 trillion according to estimates by my 
Budget Committee staff.
  Congress is well-known for this. Unless your tax money is absolutely 
legally dedicated to something, it gets spent on other things. So we 
have no confidence we will come in with just $6.2 trillion. It is 
likely to be far higher than that, the way we know this body operates.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. I agree with my good friend from Alabama. He has done a 
great job on this subject.
  I would like to say, one of the things I enjoyed about the 
presentation that was made by my good friend from Texas Senator Cruz 
was that we were in a position that is very rare in this body, where we 
could talk as long as we wanted to. In fact, we actually tried to talk 
longer. We were looking for different things to fill in. We may have 
forgotten some.
  That is not where we are today. We are confined. But I have to share 
with my good friend in the chair that something I am going to say now 
is going to be very offensive to a lot of people, but I really don't 
care. At my age and being here, I think I know what this country is all 
about and I think I know that we have the obligation to express our 
true feelings.
  I have written a speech and have put it off. I am not going to give 
it today. But I was rereading it this morning. I had no intention of 
coming down and talking because I talked long enough during the course 
of the Cruz talk. But I went back and reread the speech I was going to 
give. What it is is to answer the question one of my sons asked me, and 
everyone has been saying this over a period of time in Oklahoma. I 
don't think Oklahoma is that different from other States. But they ask 
me over and over again, they say: What happened? Why is it that we have 
an administration--people in government, not just the Obama 
administration but others--who are praising Islam and trashing 
Christianity, trashing the Judeo-Christian values and other things that 
are happening today?
  We all know it is true. How do you answer that? It is a tough answer. 
So I am preparing and later on I will give you a little warning, I am 
going to make a little talk.
  There is a guy named Paul Johnson who wrote a history of the American 
people. He talks about how we got to where we are today. This is going 
to tie into ObamaCare. He says that the Puritans were devoted and 
single-minded to their ambition of creating a colony that was built on 
the foundation and teachings of Jesus Christ. The Mayflower compact is 
evidence of that. Paul Johnson, the guy who wrote the book I told you 
about, is right to observe the document was not just a ``contract . . . 
between a servant and a master, or a people and a king, but between a 
group of like-minded individuals, with God as a witness and symbolic 
co-signatory.''
  Why is this important? It is important because William Bradford and 
the other Puritans understood that while forming a civil government was 
fully within their rights, there were limitations to what they could 
and could not do. Not talking about government here. Those limitations 
were established by God and enumerated in the Bible.
  I go on. When I make my talk on this, I quote the Apostle Paul in 
Romans, but there is not time for that. I go on to say it is within the 
foundation of Biblical authority that the Puritans crafted the 
Mayflower compact and their system of government at Plymouth Colony. 
Paul Johnson rightly observes that this line and model of thinking was 
critical to laying the foundation for a successful United States of 
America. Ultimately, it is a morality derived from God that had its 
strongest enduring influence over the Nation, and this is what has 
crafted our history as a strong nation.
  I say all this as a predicate to the answer to the question people 
ask me: Why is it that we are trashing our Judeo-Christian values in 
favor of something that was not American to start with? Sadly, our 
Nation does not have the same belief today that we had during that time 
in our history. We have become arrogant, inward-focused individuals. 
Rather than submit to God's authority and definitions of truth, 
justice, and goodness, as we conduct our government's business, we have 
replaced them with our own ideals defined on what feels right at the 
time. As Americans, we now look inward to ourselves to define with 
fluidity the foundation of truth. We have allowed ourselves to become 
ultimate arbiters of what is right and wrong instead of the higher 
moral authority of God.
  Lastly, what was going to be in this talk, this time getting back to 
the subject at hand, today, instead of having leaders who are 
protecting the church from government, we have leaders who

[[Page S6980]]

believe it is government's job to impose on churches what should be 
universally upheld as truth. Instead of leaders who are protecting an 
American's freedom to practice his or her religion of their choice--
here I am not talking about the choice you may be thinking about--they 
may instead be using government institutions and law to force them to 
do or buy things that are in very violation to their religious beliefs 
and conscience. That is the issue we are talking about now.
  Government has become so strong and influential in our lives that we 
are losing our powers, and these are our ordained powers that we know 
are a part of this country. There is not a person in here who didn't 
study the Pilgrims coming over on the Mayflower and having that meeting 
in the captain's chamber and making these decisions and now we are 
where we are today.
  I have an example. I have a friend in Oklahoma whose name is David 
Green. David Green started a company called Hobby Lobby. David Green 
and his wife started this company by making picture frames in their 
garage. They were able to open their first store, which was 300 square 
feet, with the profits they made in their little garage operation 
making picture frames.
  Over the years their business has grown to 550 stores. It has an 
annual revenue of $2.5 billion, and David Green has had success despite 
running his business in a very countercultural way. For instance, all 
of the retail stores close at 8 p.m. each night and all day on Sunday 
so employees can spend time with their families. This is appreciated by 
the company's 16,000 employees--remember, it all started in a garage--
who are paid at a minimum $12 an hour, even though they could be paying 
a much lower legal rate.
  At one point, the company was challenged by a competitor who said 
they would bury Hobby Lobby with their money, so their firm opened 
their doors on Sunday, ultimately earning the company $150 million in 
revenue each week. Eventually, David Green said he was challenged by 
God to trust in him with his business, to go back to his policy of 
closing on Sundays and he did and his business has prospered. It is one 
of the largest businesses in America today.
  David's Christian faith runs deeper than his desire to have a 
profitable, successful company. When he was faced with a decision to 
make more money or obey God, he chose to obey God, whatever the 
consequences.
  Keep all of that in mind and listen to this. This is what I am 
getting at. Recently, he was faced with a new test. It didn't come from 
a competitor. It came from the U.S. Government. Part of the ObamaCare 
law requires employers not only to provide health care insurance to 
their employees but also to provide free access to the pills that 
terminate pregnancies.
  David, as I do, and many others believe--and some don't believe that 
we believe--that life begins at conception, and offering an option to 
end that life would be in violation, in his case, of his moral compass 
as defined by his faith in Jesus Christ.
  As a result, he said he would rather pay the $1.3 million a day in 
daily fines from the Obama administration than comply with the law. 
Here is a guy who feels so strongly in his beliefs--that I think are 
consistent with the beliefs that made this country great, but that is 
just my belief--that he would pay $1.3 million a day in fines from the 
Obama administration rather than comply with this law.
  Today the Obama administration is vigorously opposing Hobby Lobby's 
legal challenge to the mandate, claiming that this privately owned 
business is waging a war on women for not agreeing to provide these 
treatments for its employees free of charge. That is just one example 
of what is happening. By the way, I don't think my State of Oklahoma is 
that different from most other States.
  Last week, four universities in my great State of Oklahoma filed a 
lawsuit against the Federal Government over the ObamaCare mandate to 
provide certain types of contraception to their employees. These are 
four universities which are joining with this one great American named 
David Green. So we have the faith of an individual and what he is 
willing to do for his faith. He is willing to stand up to this abusive 
government that we have today and to this ObamaCare law and is willing 
to pay $1.3 million a day. My feelings are just as strong as his on 
this issue, but that is a subject for another day.
  My wife and I have 20 kids and grandkids. Back in the old days, when 
we were having our kids, there was kind of a rule where you couldn't go 
into the hospital, I say to my good friend who is occupying the chair. 
Back then we couldn't see this and we had to wait outside and we didn't 
have notice of what the baby was going to be and all that.
  But in the case of my first grandchild, my daughter called me up and 
said: All right, Daddy. Come on over. It is time. I went over to the 
hospital delivery room. What a great experience that was. I never 
dreamed that would ever happen. We are talking about a number of years 
ago--17 years ago. So I watched this take place, and I honestly--a tear 
did come out from my eye.
  At that time we were talking about partial birth abortions and the 
fact that they could have taken little baby Jase and jammed scissors 
into his skull and sucked his brains out. That could have happened, but 
it didn't happen.
  I feel just as strongly as David Green does. I can make all the 
arguments I want about this, and I made arguments on the floor during 
the Cruz debate.
  I remember Hillary health care, which was about 19 years ago and it 
was the same thing. It was government taking over the health care 
system, and I had my friends in Parliament and Great Britain who would 
call and say: What is wrong with you guys over there? Don't you realize 
we are just getting away from this thing that hasn't worked? Don't kid 
yourself and think this is not a road to socialized medicine if we end 
up not doing something about ObamaCare. It is.
  I have a great deal of respect for the leader of the Senate, Harry 
Reid. Senator Reid himself said: Yes, I believe this is leading to--and 
I endorse it--the single-payer system. So we are talking about 
socialized medicine.
  They called and said: What is wrong with you guys? It hasn't worked 
in Great Britain, it hasn't worked in Denmark, and it hasn't worked in 
Canada. Yet you think it is somehow going to work there.
  That is the big issue. We have an abusive government, and this is 
probably the greatest single step we have witnessed in the last 4\1/2\ 
years as to the abuse that has taken place. We need to look at the big 
picture and do something about this. They say it can't be done now. It 
is too late. They are probably right, but they said the same thing 
about Hillary health care 19 years ago, and I will never forget it 
because I was on a plane going back to my State of Oklahoma and had a 
stop in Chicago.
  I thought we finally drove the final nail in the coffin and killed 
Hillary health care. Yet I picked up the Wall Street Journal, and there 
was a full-page ad by the AMA endorsing Hillary health care. They had 
given up, and that was the day before they gave them that story.
  Anyway, it is never too late. This is something that needs to be 
stopped. I have faith in the American people that somehow we are going 
to win this thing.
  I thank the Chair. I know my time has expired.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I yield 8 minutes to the Senator from New 
Hampshire, Mrs. Shaheen.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. I am pleased to join my colleagues on the floor, the 
members of the Appropriations Committee and others who have been down 
to speak in support of passing this continuing resolution.
  I am a new member of the Appropriations Committee, and I have been 
very impressed with the work our chair, Senator Mikulski, and Ranking 
Member Shelby have done. They have crafted the appropriations bills 
that would address the budget for the coming year. Those appropriations 
bills would replace the harmful cuts from sequestration. Those are cuts 
that people on both sides of the aisle have said they oppose. 
Unfortunately, because of the obstructionism we have seen so clearly

[[Page S6981]]

this week, those bills have not yet come to the floor and so we need a 
short-term CR to keep the government open.
  We all know that the continuing resolution before us is not ideal. It 
is short term and it doesn't replace sequestration. So it doesn't 
either deal with the cuts or give businesses and our economy the 
certainty they need. But this suggestion that we should refuse to keep 
the government open is irresponsible. There is too much at stake for 
our economy, for our small businesses, and for our families across this 
country. Unfortunately, what we have seen this week is that there are 
some who are pushing this country to the brink of another manufactured 
crisis as a tactic to prevent health care reform from going into 
effect.
  I am not going to review what Senator McCain said so well about how 
the democratic process works in this country and the fact that once a 
law goes into effect, it is important to implement it. I think 
democracy works, but it doesn't always work the way I want it to 
either. When a law is passed, we have a responsibility to go ahead and 
make it work. We have a seen a small minority of this body and of the 
House who are willing to shut down government to defund the new health 
care law.
  The people I talk to in New Hampshire don't think that shutting down 
government is a good approach because they understand the serious 
consequences it would have for them, for their businesses, and for the 
country. It would especially hurt small businesses, which are the 
foundation of the economy in New Hampshire and the Presiding Officer's 
home State of Maine and Rhode Island, Senator Reed's home State. Those 
small businesses create two out of every three new jobs. Many of those 
small businesses in New Hampshire and across the country rely on 
Federal contracts as they figure out how they are going to grow and 
create new jobs.
  We talked to one CEO of an innovative small company in New Hampshire 
who told me if its contracts were shut down:

       Our income would drop to essentially zero and we would burn 
     our very thin cash reserves . . . when that money is burned 
     it is not able to be replaced so our basic financial 
     viability can be irrevocably damaged even after the crisis 
     passes. There will be no way to recover those dollars.

  We had a chance to hear from the former Secretary of the Treasury, 
Bob Rubin, this week. He said: Unlike 1995, when there was a short-term 
consequence to shutting down the government, if we do that this time, 
it will be felt not just for years but for decades to come.
  A shutdown would close the Small Business Administration's lending 
programs, and those SBA lending programs are critical to small business 
in New Hampshire and across this country. On average, SBA supports 
loans to over 1,000 small businesses per week.
  Then there is the housing market. In New Hampshire and across this 
country, the housing market has been one of the slowest sectors to 
recover, but in the last year we have begun to see some signs of 
improvement. The Federal Housing Administration has been a big part of 
that recovery because they have helped families afford homes and kept 
our housing economy afloat.
  Under the shutdown, it is estimated that assistance to 34,000 
homeowners would be delayed. With all of the problems that have been 
caused by the housing crisis, we should not be stalling one of the most 
effective programs we have for assisting homeowners, and that is what 
we would do with a government shutdown.
  Then, of course, this would be terrible timing for the tourist 
industry in New Hampshire and across New England because fall foliage 
is one of our biggest seasons and tourists come from all over the 
world. They spend money in our local restaurants and hotels. Many small 
businesses rely on this time of year to increase their revenues. But if 
the government shuts down, we will be turning away those customers. 
Applications for visas will come to a halt. According to the 
Congressional Research Service, during the 1995-1996 shutdowns, 
approximately 20,000 to 30,000 applications by foreigners for visas to 
come and visit in America went unprocessed. That will not just affect 
the tourism industries in New Hampshire, it will affect airlines and 
people across the country.
  Then, of course, there are Federal workers. In New Hampshire there 
are 7,400 of them. It is one of the State's largest employers, the 
Federal Government, and their salaries are not just important to them 
and their families but to the grocery stores and gas stations and all 
of the other businesses they support.
  The Presiding Officer certainly knows, as I do, about the impact on 
the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard of a potential government shutdown.
  These are just some of the effects on the economy. Considering the 
many industries that would be affected, it is no surprise that 
economists have forecast that failure to pass a continuing resolution, 
as Bob Rubin said, would do significant damage to our economy. Even a 
3- or 4-day shutdown would slow growth by 0.2 percent, according to 
economist Mark Zandi.
  It doesn't have to be this way. I was a Governor for three terms. The 
Presiding Officer was a Governor for two terms. We understand what it 
is like to work across the aisle. We always passed a budget because we 
had to put in place a budget.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has 1 minute remaining.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. I thank the Chair.
  There were a lot of differences on both sides of the aisle, but we 
understood the importance of compromising, because it would have been 
impossible to get something through the New Hampshire legislature and 
get a budget to my desk if people hadn't been willing to compromise, if 
they had been continuing to play the kinds of political games we are 
seeing here in Washington.
  It is unacceptable. Congress can do better. We need to work together 
to pass this continuing resolution, and then to raise the debt ceiling 
later this year so we avoid the negative effect to families, to 
businesses, and to our economy.
  Thank you very much.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I yield 3 minutes of proponent time to 
Senator Coats, as well as, by agreement of the other side, 3 minutes of 
opponent time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, there has been a great deal of confusion 
over what has been happening in the Senate this week. I know Hoosiers 
want a clear explanation, so I wish to take a moment to explain exactly 
where I stand on the issue before us.
  Let me start by laying out a few facts. This is the reality we face. 
No. 1: Every single Republican opposes ObamaCare and wants to see it 
repealed and defunded. That is unassailable. We are all together on 
that.
  No. 2: The House has sent us a bill that would defund ObamaCare while 
keeping the rest of the government running. I support that bill, and I 
think all Republicans support that bill.
  No. 3: Senate Democrats are united in their opposition to repealing 
ObamaCare and, unfortunately, the fact is they control the Senate and 
they control the White House, and we don't have the votes to prevail.
  So the confusion sets in because, let's face it, we have a lot of 
confusing procedures here in the U.S. Senate, but I have always been 
guided by the principle that to the extent possible, a yes should be 
yes and a no should be no.
  We have all of these procedural motions and Members like to attach 
caveats, such as: This is what it means if you vote to go forward or 
this is what it means if you don't vote to go forward. It is so easy to 
run home and say: Oh, well, that was an issue politically. That was 
procedural, so don't pay any attention to that.
  Sometimes we have no other option because the majority leader won't 
allow any votes on the issue itself. In this case, the majority leader 
has allowed that vote. That is not the case here. We don't need a 
procedural vote to determine whether one is for or against ObamaCare. 
We will be able to have a vote if we invoke cloture and move forward 
and keep this alive to continue debate not just this week but next year 
and however long it takes to deal with this issue. We need to move 
forward or everything else comes to a standstill.
  That is why I will be voting to move forward. I will be voting to 
keep the

[[Page S6982]]

process alive. Otherwise, everything stops. The House of 
Representatives, controlled by our party, is waiting for us to send 
this bill back. If we deny cloture, it doesn't go back to the House. 
They don't have an opportunity to go to the next step.
  There is bipartisan support for a bill I have introduced in the 
Senate, and Todd Young, a Congressman from southern Indiana, has not 
only introduced but passed in the House of Representatives a measure to 
delay this process for a year so we can continue to address and 
hopefully repeal ObamaCare. The President has delayed implementation 
for business, and again today for small business. He can delay it for 
individuals, and that will give us time to continue this effort.
  Voting for cloture today so we can send something back to the House 
is not a vote for ObamaCare. It is exactly the opposite. It is a vote 
against ObamaCare. It keeps the process alive. Saying otherwise is 
misleading. Also, if that were the case, then the procedural vote we 
had on Wednesday would not have been 100 to zero. So those who try to 
define this as a procedural vote are essentially stopping the process 
from going forward and stopping the government from running. It affects 
military families, it affects veterans, and it affects thousands and 
thousands of people in critical jobs. It affects people all across my 
State.
  The problem with this approach is that it doesn't achieve the goal. 
We all know a major portion of ObamaCare is funded through mandatory 
spending, and that is not what we are addressing here. It can only 
affect the appropriations, the discretionary funding, which is less 
than 50 percent.
  If it achieves the goal, then it may be worth considering. But since 
it doesn't achieve the goal, let's keep this process alive and let's 
all be on the record with a yes or a no. Let's get this bill back to 
the House so we can continue the fight and let's be straight up on 
where we stand on this issue, not through a procedural vote but through 
a clear yes or no. The American people deserve no less.
  I commend the passion of my colleagues talking on the floor, trying 
to get rid of ObamaCare. We have a difference of opinion as to how 
tactically we can achieve this objective. I have come to the judgment 
and the conclusion that I think many are coming to, which is that 
instead of just stopping everything--which means being at a total 
impasse and shutting down the government--and even if we were 
successful, it wouldn't address the full shutdown and defunding of 
ObamaCare, the best course of action is to move forward. Our House 
Republican Members are waiting for us to send them legislation so we 
can keep this process going and come to, hopefully, a much better 
resolution than just simply using a procedural gimmick to define where 
we stand on this issue.
  I take a back seat to no one on where I stand on ObamaCare, and I 
will not give up the fight until we achieve the goal of replacing the 
law with real health care solutions.
  Mr. President, I yield any time I may have remaining.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes of proponent time to the 
Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Markey.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, where is America now? We have an economy 
in recovery. The Dow was at 7,900 when George W. Bush left office. It 
is over 15,000 right now. Our deficit is heading downward. Unemployment 
is still high, but jobs are coming back. But, as we make this progress, 
people continue to struggle, and they expect us to put together a 
business plan for America, here on the Senate floor, and work with the 
President--work together as Democrats and Republicans--to put that plan 
together for every American family.
  What is the tea party Republican response? It is to shut down the 
government, to stamp out signs of our fragile economic recovery, to 
send the signal that America can't perform the most basic job of 
government--and that is to pass a budget.
  What is driving these tea party Republicans? I know all about these 
tea party extremists. I served in the House of Representatives with 
them. I served over there for years. They live by the Republican tea 
party paradox: They hate the government but, paradoxically, they have 
to run for office in order to make sure the government doesn't work, 
and that is where they are today.
  They sent us a bill from the House and they know it won't pass. This 
is a bill to nowhere, and nowhere is where the tea party Republicans 
want the government to go.
  The tea party Republicans want to repeal ObamaCare. I say to those 
who want to repeal ObamaCare, to those who do not like ObamaCare, and 
to those who like ObamaCare: We have had that debate. We debated here 
in Congress. The bill passed. It was signed by the President. It was 
held up by the Supreme Court of the United States. It is the law. It is 
time to stop playing games and to let the law work. But that is exactly 
what the tea party Republicans are afraid of--that the law will 
actually work.
  Shutting down the government for ObamaCare is like canceling the 
World Series because your team didn't make it. ObamaCare is the law. We 
can't cancel the government. We can't cancel the World Series. We have 
to accept the reality that it is the law. We had an election. But what 
we have here are the mad hatters of the Republican tea party in 
Congress who have decided that their approach to government--to the 
old, to the sick, to the needy, to every single principle of the United 
States of America that we stand for--it is off with their heads for all 
of those people who depend upon these programs in our country. We are 
living in an absurd ``Alice in Wonderland'' Republican tea party world 
here.
  This government has to work for the American people. Instead, what 
they are about to do, over this weekend, is send another Maalox-moment-
for-the-marketplace signal to the credit markets of the world that the 
United States cannot be depended upon to operate a government, to pay 
its bills, to respond to the needs of the families within our own 
country, to meet its obligations not only here but around the world.
  And those families who are dependent upon a paycheck from the Defense 
Department? They are wondering, along with the families who are 
dependent upon a Federal helping hand, whether or not they are going to 
get that help over the next week, over the next two weeks, over the 
next month.
  I will just give my colleagues one final example. The National 
Institutes of Health budget--well, it is really the national institutes 
of hope. That is what we give to families who have somebody with 
Alzheimer's, with Parkinson's, with cancer, with heart disease--is 
being cut and cut and cut and cut. It is being cut at the same time 
that last year we spent $132 billion worth of taxpayers' money on 
Alzheimer's patients in our country. We can't cut the money for the 
cure and simultaneously say we want to cut the money for taking care of 
those who have the disease. We can't have it both ways. That is what 
this nihilistic tea party approach is bringing to our people.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The time of the Senator has 
expired.
  Mr. MARKEY. I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for yielding. I 
hope the tea party Republicans come to their senses.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from South Dakota.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, we are going to have the opportunity to 
vote today to reverse course. I think most people agree that ObamaCare 
is not working out as it is intended. In fact, we had a Democrat 
recently say that when it comes to the implementation of ObamaCare, it 
is a train wreck. Whether one believes it is a train wreck, which is 
what I happen to believe, or whether it is a slow motion derailment, it 
is time for us to reverse course.
  We have an opportunity to go in a different direction with the vote 
we are going to have here in about an hour on whether or not to defund 
ObamaCare. I think the overwhelming opinion across this country--an 
overwhelming number of Americans--believe that this is not working. It 
is hurting middle class families. It is costing us jobs. It is driving 
up health insurance premiums for people across this country, and we 
need to do something to reverse course.
  For example, when we look at how this impacts average people in my

[[Page S6983]]

State of South Dakota, we have young people today who, when they look 
at what they are paying in terms of health insurance premiums this year 
and what they are going to pay under the exchanges when the exchanges 
kick in, are seeing that a healthy 30-year-old woman in South Dakota is 
going to be faced with a 223-percent premium increase as a result of 
ObamaCare. A healthy 30-year-old man living in South Dakota is facing a 
393-percent premium increase, when we compare the data being put out by 
the Department of Health and Human Services of what people in my State 
of South Dakota are paying today for similar coverage. I am using the 
bronze plan under the exchanges as a case in point.
  For a young person in South Dakota, we are talking about $1,500 more 
a year to pay for health insurance for a young woman, and $2,000 more 
for a young man. This money is money that could be used to pay off 
student loans, save for a home, maybe start a family.
  It is not just young adults who are going to be faced with making 
tough budget decisions between having health care and paying for other 
items. We know also that families are seeing health care premiums 
skyrocket, since the President took office, by about $3,000, or by 
about $2,500 since ObamaCare became law. That is happening at a time 
when average household income is going down. If we look at the average 
household income since the President took office, it is down by about 
$3,600. So families are seeing health insurance premiums go up by 
$3,000 while average household income is going down by $3,600. As we 
can see, middle class families in this country are being squeezed from 
both ends.
  We have an opportunity to correct that. The vote today is a vote to 
defund ObamaCare. I have been a big advocate for delaying, defunding, 
replacing, repealing. When it comes to this issue, count me as one of 
the ``all of the above''--anything we can do to get rid of this bad law 
and the harmful impacts it is having on the American people.

  The vote today is going to be on defunding. I would daresay that 
every Republican in this Chamber--all 46 Republicans--will be casting a 
vote to defund ObamaCare. There is not a single Republican in the 
Chamber today or when this law was passed back in 2009 who voted for 
it. Since that time, we have had numerous votes--I think 29 or 30 
votes--here in the Senate on repealing all or parts of ObamaCare.
  So everybody on our side is going to be on the record today in favor 
of defunding this bad law. All it will take is 5 Democrats--5 
Democrats--to get us to the 51 votes necessary to change the direction, 
change the course, turn this train around, and head it in a different 
direction. Republicans are going to be united on that point. There is 
sometimes a difference of opinion on tactics, about the best way to 
reach the goal, but one thing that unites all Republicans is the goal, 
and that is doing away with this bad law and its harmful impact on the 
American people, on middle-class families, on jobs, and on our economy. 
The question before the House is, Are there going to be Democrats, a 
handful of Democrats--five is all it takes--to stand with Republicans 
today and help us defund this law?
  Nearly 60 percent of Americans say they oppose ObamaCare. We can stop 
it. We can start over and do this the right way. We have talked about, 
many times, the things we would do differently if we had the 
opportunity to write a law that actually would address the health care 
challenges people face in this country, that would create greater 
competition in the marketplace by allowing people to buy insurance 
across State lines, by allowing small businesses to join larger groups 
in pools so they get the benefit of group purchasing power, by reducing 
the cost of defensive medicine, by ending a lot of the junk lawsuits 
that clog the system today, by allowing people to have a refundable tax 
credit where they can buy their own health insurance and they have more 
choice, more competition.
  These are all approaches we think make sense and would provide a 
positive alternative to the American people that would not cost us the 
jobs, that would not be driving up health insurance premiums by 393 
percent for a 30-year-old man in the State of South Dakota or 223 
percent for a 30-year-old woman, and that would give American families 
an opportunity to save more for their future, to provide for their 
families, and hopefully to invest in what is a better and a more 
prosperous future for their children and grandchildren.
  That is the vote before us today. Again, I do not have to belabor the 
point when it comes to the harmful impacts this has had if you look at 
what it is doing to jobs, if you look at what it is doing to employers. 
We talk to people all the time. I doubt there is a Member here in the 
Senate who, when they go home to their State on weekends, does not have 
conversations with small businesses, with employers who are talking 
about what this is doing to their ability to create jobs, to put people 
to work, to raise salaries, to make sure the people they employ have a 
better future for their families.
  But, clearly, as long as this bad law stays in place, it is going to 
be more expensive and more difficult for businesses in this country to 
create jobs; it is going to be more difficult, more expensive for 
middle-class families to make ends meet; it is going to create a much 
bigger, more expansive government that is going to cost the American 
taxpayer way more than I think was originally promised; and certainly 
it is going to add significantly to the massive amount of debt we are 
passing on to future generations.
  We have an opportunity to get a do-over today. There has been talk 
during the implementation of this that it has glitches and bumps and 
inaccuracies and malfunctions. This is not ready for prime time. I 
think we can all acknowledge that. At a minimum, we ought to figure out 
a way to delay this and change course, change direction, and go in a 
better direction for America's future.
  Mr. SCOTT. Mr. President, let me start by getting something out of 
the way: I am opposed to funding Obamacare, plain and simple, and my 
votes this week reflect that. The allegedly Affordable Care Act is 
raising premiums, forcing millions of Americans into part-time work, 
and raising taxes on hard-working American families.
  However, I want to bring up another problem we are facing this week, 
which has so far been mostly drowned out in this latest budget crisis. 
Short-term, month-to-month budgeting is no way to run a government. 
Even if we manage to avoid a government shutdown this time, we will be 
debating this same question in just 6 weeks. We should not continue to 
place bandaids on Washington's failure to pass a responsible, long-term 
budget.
  When I ran a small business, I had a plan to meet payroll and keep 
the lights on and doors open with the revenue I brought in. Even small 
businesses need long range planning, fiscal discipline, and foresight. 
When families sit down to plan their budgets, they are forced to make 
tough choices--like how to save for college, or simply how to get food 
on the dinner table that week. But the Federal Government has 
repeatedly failed to play by these same rules, and as a result, we move 
from crisis to crisis with no solution on the horizon for our growing 
fiscal mess. Congress has not completed all 12 regular spending bills 
on time since 1997. This year, Congress has not yet passed any of these 
bills. As a result, our debt continues to rise, our government grows 
ever bigger, and our economic future remains uncertain. This hurts our 
economy and hurts our families.
  A big part of the solution here is not rocket science: Pass a budget. 
Pass all 12 appropriations bills. Show some fiscal foresight. While 
Obamacare is certainly more than enough reason to oppose the current 
continuing resolution, I will not support this stopgap spending measure 
and further grind our budgeting process to a halt.
 Mr. President, I want to take a moment to reflect on the 
current Senate debate over the funding of our government and the future 
of the so-called Affordable Care Act.
  At the outset, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I oppose 
Obamacare and have from the beginning.
  I was among the most outspoken critics of Obamacare when it was being 
debated in the Senate. In fact, I was the first Member of Congress to 
suggest that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, an argument 
that eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court.

[[Page S6984]]

  Since the law's passage, I have been one of the foremost voices in 
Congress in favor of repeal.
  I have introduced legislation to repeal some of Obamacare's most 
egregious provisions, including the individual mandate, the employer 
mandate, the health insurance tax, and the medical device tax.
  I have come to the floor countless times over the years to call for 
either a full repeal or permanent delay of the implementation of 
Obamacare.
  In short, Mr. President, no one can accuse me of acquiescing when it 
comes to opposing Obamacare. I have and will continue to do all I can 
to protect the American people from this monstrosity of a law.
  That said, I wish to express my admiration for my colleagues who are 
currently fighting to defund Obamacare as part of the continuing 
resolution to fund the government. I admire their commitment to their 
principles and share their desire to see Obamacare disappear once and 
for all.
  While I may not agree with their chosen strategy, our overall goals 
are the same.
  It is that strategy that I want to comment on today.
  Once again, no one is more committed to repealing Obamacare than I 
am. However, if we are going to be successful in this endeavor, we need 
to look at the bigger picture.
  Quite simply, the strategy of forcing a government shutdown in order 
to defund Obamacare has no chance of success. And, in the long run, I 
believe it will do more harm than good.
  Unlike a number of my colleagues, I was around for the government 
shutdown of 1995. And, while purists may have patted themselves on the 
back for their resolve, the shutdown did nothing to advance 
conservative principles and, in the end, harmed the Republican Party.
  I can't help but think that the same would happen now if we end up 
shutting down the government over a fight about Obamacare.
  In fact, given the number of setbacks he has faced recently, I have 
little doubt that President Obama is hoping for a government shutdown 
so that he can blame it on Republicans.
  That is what the Wall Street Journal editorial page argued recently, 
saying:

       With his own popularity fading, Mr. Obama may want a 
     shutdown so he can change the subject to his caricature of 
     GOP zealots who want no government. He'll blame any turmoil 
     or economic fallout on House Republicans, figuring that he 
     can split the tea party from the GOP and that this is the one 
     event that could reinstall Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. Mr. Obama 
     could spend his final two years going out in a blaze of 
     liberal glory.

  Does anyone seriously believe that the mainstream media would portray 
a government shutdown over Obamacare in a light that was favorable to 
congressional Republicans?
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, at the 
conclusion of my remarks, a copy of the Wall Street Journal editorial.
  I also ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of 
a recent op-ed piece authored by Karl Rove.
  In that opinion piece, Mr. Rove rightly argues that:
  ``The desire to strike at Obamacare is praiseworthy. But, any 
strategy to repeal, delay, or replace the law must have a credible 
chance of succeeding or affecting broad public opinion positively. The 
defunding strategy doesn't. Going down that road would strengthen the 
president while alienating independents. It is an ill-conceived tactic, 
and Republicans should reject it.''
  Karl Rove isn't the only conservative making these arguments.
  Writing in the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer said of the 
shutdown strategy: ``[T]here's no principle at stake here. This is 
about tactics. If I thought this would work, I would support it. But I 
don't fancy suicide.''
  Mr. Krauthammer continued, saying: ``Nothing could better revive the 
fortunes of a failing, flailing, fading Democratic administration than 
a government shutdown where the president is portrayed as standing up 
to the GOP on honoring our debts and paying our soldiers in the 
field.''
  Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review wrote that this strategy is 
``a grass roots-pleasing slogan in search of a path to legislative 
fruition,'' and that it ``seems tantamount to believing that if 
Republican politicians clicked their wing tips together and wished it 
so, President Barack Obama would collapse in a heap and surrender on 
his party's most cherished accomplishment.''
  Mr. President, these aren't critiques aimed at the Senators pursuing 
this strategy. Instead, these are stalwart conservative commentators 
recognizing the reality of our situation.
  If the strategy that some of my colleagues are apparently pursuing 
had even a minor chance at success, I would be the first in line to 
support their efforts. Once again, no one wants to see Obamacare 
defeated more than I do.
  But, facts are facts.
  For this strategy to be successful, it would require at least 15 
Senate Democrats to change their minds and support defunding Obamacare. 
That is unlikely.
  It would also require President Obama to sign into law a resolution 
defunding what he believes is his signature domestic achievement. That 
is even more unlikely.
  That being the case, I cannot support this strategy. I cannot support 
a filibuster of the continuing resolution now before the Senate.
  The CR does what Republicans want it to do--it defunds Obamacare. I 
urge all my colleagues to vote for cloture on the continuing 
resolution.
  At the same time, I oppose any effort to strip the language defunding 
Obamacare from the resolution and to raise the overall spending levels 
above those established under the Budget Control Act.
  Indeed, if, after the Senate invokes cloture on the CR, the Majority 
Leader's amendment is agreed to, I urge my colleagues to vote no on 
final passage.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 16, 2013]

                            The Power of 218


 If House Republicans can't hold together, they have no leverage at all

       Perhaps the only war strategizing more inept than President 
     Obama's on Syria are GOP plans for the budget hostilities 
     this autumn. Republicans are fracturing over tactics, and 
     even over the nature of political reality, which may let Mr. 
     Obama outwit them like a domestic Vladimir Putin.
       In our view the GOP would be less confused if more House 
     Members appreciated the power of 218. That's the number of 
     votes that makes a majority and it is the only true 
     ``leverage'' Republicans have while Democrats hold the Senate 
     and a Presidential veto.
       The latest GOP internal dispute is over a continuing 
     resolution to fund the government at sequester-spending 
     levels. The current CR runs out at the end of the month, and 
     about 40 to 50 House Republicans (out of 233) want to attach 
     a rider that either delays or defunds the Affordable Care Act 
     for a year and leaves everything else running.
       Speaker John Boehner floated a CR with an arcane procedure 
     that would force the Senate to take an up-or-down vote on the 
     anti-ObamaCare component. But pressure groups like Heritage 
     Action and the Club for Growth rebelled and the vote had to 
     be postponed, like so many other unforced retreats this 
     Congress. Here we go again.
       These critics portrayed the Boehner plan as a sellout 
     because of a campaign that captured the imagination of some 
     conservatives this summer: Republicans must threaten to crash 
     their Zeros into the aircraft carrier of ObamaCare. Their 
     demand is that the House pair the ``must pass'' CR or the 
     debt limit with defunding the health-care bill. Kamikaze 
     missions rarely turn out well, least of all for the pilots.
       The problem is that Mr. Obama is never, ever going to 
     unwind his signature legacy project of national health care. 
     Ideology aside, it would end his Presidency politically. And 
     if Republicans insist that any spending bill must defund 
     ObamaCare, then a showdown is inevitable that shuts down much 
     of the government. Republicans will claim that Democrats are 
     the ones shutting it down to preserve ObamaCare. Voters may 
     see it differently given the media's liberal sympathies and 
     because the repeal-or-bust crowd provoked the confrontation.
       With his own popularity fading, Mr. Obama may want a 
     shutdown so he can change the subject to his caricature of 
     GOP zealots who want no government. He'll blame any turmoil 
     or economic fallout on House Republicans, figuring that he 
     can split the tea party from the GOP and that this is the one 
     event that could reinstall Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. Mr. Obama 
     could spend his final two years going out in a blaze of 
     liberal glory.
       The defunders sketch out an alternative scenario in which 
     Mr. Obama is blamed, and they say we can't know unless 
     Republicans try. But even they admit privately that they 
     really won't succeed in defunding ObamaCare. The best case 
     seems to be that if

[[Page S6985]]

     all Republicans show resolve they'll win over the public in a 
     shutdown, and Democrats will eventually surrender, well, 
     something.
       If this works it would be the first time. The evidence 
     going back to the Newt Gingrich Congress is that no party can 
     govern from the House, and the Republican Party can't abide 
     the outcry when flights are delayed, national parks close and 
     direct deposits for military spouses stop. Sooner or later 
     the GOP breaks.
       This all-or-nothing posture also usually results in worse 
     policy. The most recent example was the failure of Mr. 
     Boehner's fiscal cliff ``Plan B'' in December 2012, which was 
     the best the GOP could do because Mr. Obama had the whip hand 
     of automatic tax increases. The fallback deal that was sealed 
     in the Senate raised taxes by more and is now complicating 
     the prospects for tax reform.
       The backbenchers are heading into another box canyon now. 
     Mr. Boehner is undermined because the other side knows he 
     lacks 218 GOP votes, which empowers House and Senate 
     Democrats. They want to reverse the modest spending 
     discipline of the sequester, and if the House GOP can't hold 
     together on the CR they will succeed. The only chance of any 
     entitlement reform worth the name is if Mr. Boehner can hold 
     his majority and negotiate from strength.
       We've often supported backbenchers who want to push GOP 
     leaders in a better policy direction, most recently on the 
     farm bill. But it's something else entirely to sabotage any 
     plan with a chance of succeeding and pretend to have 
     ``leverage'' that exists only in the world of townhall 
     applause lines and fundraising letters.
       The best option now is for the GOP to unite behind a budget 
     strategy that can hold 218 votes, keeping the sequester 
     pressure of discretionary spending cuts on Democrats to come 
     to the table on entitlements. The sequester is a rare policy 
     victory the GOP has extracted from Mr. Obama, and it is 
     squeezing liberal constituencies that depend on federal cash.
       The backbenchers might even look at the polls showing that 
     the public is now tilting toward Republicans on issues 
     including the economy, ensuring a strong national defense and 
     even health care. Some Republicans think they are sure to 
     hold the House in 2014 no matter what happens because of 
     gerrymandering, but even those levees won't hold if there's a 
     wave of revulsion against the GOP. Marginal seats still 
     matter for controlling Congress. The kamikazes could end up 
     ensuring the return of all-Democratic rule.
                                  ____


             [From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 18, 2013]

          Karl Rove: GOP's Self-Defeating `Defunding' Strategy

                             (By Karl Rove)

       In 2010, Republicans took the House of Representatives by 
     gaining 63 seats. They also picked up six U.S. senators and 
     675 state legislators, giving them control of more 
     legislative chambers than any time since 1928. The GOP also 
     won 25 of 40 gubernatorial races in 2009 and 2010.
       These epic gains happened primarily because independents 
     voted Republican. In 2010, 56% of independents voted for GOP 
     congressional candidates, up from 43% in 2008 and 39% in 
     2006.
       Today, independents look more like Republicans than 
     Democrats, especially when it comes to health care. In a new 
     Crossroads GPS health-care policy survey conducted in 10 
     states likely to have competitive Senate races and in House 
     districts that lean Republican or are swing seats, 60% of 
     independents oppose President Obama's Affordable Care Act. If 
     this holds through 2014, then Republicans should receive 
     another big boost in the midterms.
       There is, however, one issue on which independents disagree 
     with Republicans: using the threat of a government shutdown 
     to defund ObamaCare. By 58% to 30% in the GPS poll, they 
     oppose defunding ObamaCare if that risks even a temporary 
     shutdown.
       This may be because it is (understandably) hard to see the 
     endgame of the defund strategy. House Republicans could pass 
     a bill that funds the government while killing all ObamaCare 
     spending. But the Democratic Senate could just amend the 
     measure to restore funding and send it back to the House. 
     What then? Even the defund strategy's authors say they don't 
     want a government shutdown. But their approach means we'll 
     get one.
       After all, avoiding a shutdown would require, first, at 
     least five Senate Democrats voting to defund ObamaCare. But 
     not a single Senate Democrat says he'll do that, and there is 
     no prospect of winning one over.
       Second, assuming enough Senate Democrats materialize to 
     defund ObamaCare, the measure faces a presidential veto. 
     Republicans would need 54 House Democrats and 21 Senate 
     Democrats to vote to override the president's veto. No 
     sentient being believes that will happen.
       So what would the public reaction be to a shutdown? Some 
     observers point to the 1995 shutdown, saying the GOP didn't 
     suffer much in the 1996 election. They are partially correct: 
     Republicans did pick up two Senate seats in 1996. But the GOP 
     also lost three House seats, seven of the 11 gubernatorial 
     races that year, a net of 53 state legislative seats and the 
     White House.
       A shutdown now would have much worse fallout than the one 
     in 1995. Back then, seven of the government's 13 
     appropriations bills had been signed into law, including the 
     two that funded the military. So most of the government was 
     untouched by the shutdown. Many of the unfunded agencies kept 
     operating at a reduced level for the shutdown's three weeks 
     by using funds from past fiscal years.
       But this time, no appropriations bills have been signed 
     into law, so no discretionary spending is in place for any 
     part of the federal government. Washington won't be able to 
     pay military families or any other federal employee. While 
     conscientious FBI and Border Patrol agents, prison guards, 
     air-traffic controllers and other federal employees may keep 
     showing up for work, they won't get paychecks, just IOUs.
       The only agencies allowed to operate with unsalaried 
     employees will be those that meet one or more of the 
     following legal tests: They must be responding to 
     ``imminent'' emergencies involving the safety of human life 
     or the protection of property, be funded by mandatory 
     spending (such as Social Security), have funds from prior 
     fiscal years that have already been obligated, or rely on the 
     constitutional power of the president. Figuring out which 
     agencies meet these tests will be tough, but much of the 
     federal government will lack legal authority to function.
       But won't voters be swayed by the arguments for defunding? 
     The GPS poll tested the key arguments put forward by 
     advocates of defunding and Mr. Obama's response. Independents 
     went with Mr. Obama's counterpunch 57% to 35%. Voters in 
     Senate battleground states sided with him 59% to 33%. In 
     lean-Republican congressional districts and in swing 
     congressional districts, Mr. Obama won by 56% to 39% and 58% 
     to 33%, respectively. On the other hand, independents support 
     by 51% to 42% delaying ObamaCare's mandate that individuals 
     buy coverage or pay a fine.
       The desire to strike at ObamaCare is praiseworthy. But any 
     strategy to repeal, delay or replace the law must have a 
     credible chance of succeeding or affecting broad public 
     opinion positively.
       The defunding strategy doesn't. Going down that road would 
     strengthen the president while alienating independents. It is 
     an ill-conceived tactic, and Republicans should reject 
     it.

  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I have opposed the Patient Protection and 
Affordable Care Act since it was forced through a Democratic-controlled 
Congress without the support of a single Republican in the House or 
Senate. I have voted to dismantle, defund, delay and reverse this law 
every chance I have been given. I will continue to take every possible 
action that might be effective in achieving its repeal.
  As the negative impacts of this law become more apparent, people in 
my State of Mississippi have expressed a great deal of concern about 
how the law is affecting their families and businesses. They have 
articulated a pronounced unease about the costs of the law, and the 
extent to which the Federal Government will be involved in their 
personal healthcare decisions. I share their concerns.
  My constituents recognize that the law is not working as promised. 
The administration has delayed implementation of several of the law's 
key provisions. These special exceptions and exemptions are clear 
indications that the law is overly complex and ill-conceived.
  As their representatives in Washington, we should respect the fact 
that the majority of Americans do not support this law, otherwise known 
as ``Obamacare.''
  I dislike Obamacare as much as any of my colleagues. I strongly 
support the provisions in this appropriations bill that would bring 
implementation of Obamacare to a halt. However, to now vote to stop 
that very bill in its tracks makes little sense to me.
  Shutting down the government to show how much we dislike the law 
would not stop Obamacare. The mandates in Obamacare do not go away if 
we do not fund the rest of the government. Most of the funding to 
implement Obamacare does not depend on us passing this appropriations 
bill; that funding is mandatory spending that has already been provided 
in law.
  To stop Obamacare we have to enact a law that does just that. That 
requires a sufficient number of votes in the House and in the Senate, 
and it requires either the President's signature or a veto-proof 
majority in both houses. I suspect that we do not currently have the 
votes in the Senate to pass such legislation. But more importantly, I 
do not think voting to stall the very language that we opponents of 
Obamacare wish to see enacted--and risking a government shutdown as a 
result--will get us closer to the goal of stopping Obamacare.
  I think a government shutdown might have the opposite effect. It will

[[Page S6986]]

shift public and media focus away from the costly and damaging aspects 
of the health care law just as it is being fully implemented, and it 
will detract from the ability of the American people to clearly express 
their discontent about the law. It is only such expressions of 
discontent that will either change the minds of a sufficient number of 
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, or send new 
representation to Washington to aid in the fight against Obamacare.
  It is shortsighted for those of us who oppose the Obamacare law to 
take actions that would not reverse the law's potentially devastating 
impacts, and will likely damage our prospects of achieving that goal in 
the future. The stakes are too high.
  I will continue to fight for our shared end goal--to fully repeal the 
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, since 2001 I have served as chairman 
on three different appropriations subcommittees.
  I chaired subcommittees on Military Construction and Veterans 
Affairs, the Interior Department, and today the Subcommittee on Energy 
and Water Development.
  Over the years I made a lot of tough choices on which programs to 
fund and which programs not to fund. But never have things been as bad 
as they are today. The cuts that we are making to our appropriations 
bills under sequestration are strangling programs that must be funded. 
Programs that are vital to our economy, vital to public safety, and 
programs that promise to deliver the next breakthroughs in energy 
research.
  To compound the problem, we are now just a few days away from a 
government shutdown that has the potential to devastate our economic 
recovery and shake the confidence in our government to get anything 
done.
  I would like to speak today about the negative effects a shutdown and 
continued sequester would have on my subcommittee.
  The agency within my subcommittee that may have the most direct 
impact on the public is the Army Corps of Engineers.
  The Corps safeguards our dams, our levees and our drinking water, it 
keeps our harbors open for cargo ships, and it maintain more than 4,000 
recreation sites. Simply put, a government shutdown would mean the 
termination of a wide range of vital Corps activities.
  Work would stop on virtually all construction projects, studies and 
activities related to flood control and navigation across the country. 
These important projects protect tens of millions of Americans.
  A shutdown would mean the Corps stops work on improving dam safety 
projects including the dam at California's Isabella Lake, the dam most 
at-risk of failure in the State. Halting these projects would endanger 
citizens and ultimately increase the cost to complete this vital work. 
What's more, these projects actually reduce overall costs to the 
federal government. Damage prevented by Corps projects exceeds $25 
billion per year. Other Corps projects interrupted by a shutdown 
include strengthening levees and floodwalls to reduce the risk of loss 
of life and economic loss from flooding and coastal storms. Work would 
stop on improvements to flood protection levees along the Mississippi 
River, levees that experienced record flood levels in 2011. Projects in 
Boston, Kansas City, and Seattle would be suspended. Even worse, these 
construction delays would come at a time when severe storms are causing 
damage with greater frequency.
  Even dam safety projects would be affected by a shutdown. One example 
is California's Folsom Dam, where the Corps and the Bureau of 
Reclamation are working to increase dam safety. A shutdown would likely 
cause the Corps and Reclamation to suspend contract activities, 
delaying this vital project. The Folsom Dam is a major component of the 
Central Valley Project, which provides clean water to more than 20 
million Californians, and should not be put at risk by a government 
shutdown.
  A shutdown will also have dramatic impacts on water-borne commerce. 
More than 2.3 billion tons of cargo moves through our marine 
transportation system. Improvements to channels, harbors and waterways 
ensure that this vital traffic flows without pause.
  Projects at Oakland Harbor in California, Savannah Harbor in Georgia, 
and Charleston Harbor in South Carolina would be impacted by a 
shutdown, meaning higher construction and transportation costs.
  The country's vast system of inland waterways would also suffer from 
a shutdown. More than 600 million tons of cargo move through our inland 
waterways on commercial ships. A shutdown would mean this cargo would 
be dramatically slowed, and the use of locks would likely not be 
available at all to recreational boaters. While facilities on lakes 
that combine flood control and hydropower would continue to operate 
because of safety issues, hydropower operations would likely be 
curtailed. This means 353 hydropower units operated by the Corps--which 
provide roughly one-quarter of the country's hydropower--would operate 
at reduced capacity. This would cut into the $1.5 billion in payments 
the units generate each year.
  There are also major permitting and operational impacts that would be 
immediately noticeable. Processing of regulatory permits under the 
Clean Water Act, which the Corps handles, would be immediately 
suspended. In a typical year, the Corps processes more than 80,000 
permit actions. This means anyone from an individual building a dock to 
a community planning a major development would not be able to move 
forward because they won't be able to secure a permit. The Corps would 
also be unable to provide enforcement actions on existing permitted 
activities, which could harm sensitive environmental or aquatic 
resources.
  Another visible effect would be the shuttering of recreation areas. 
The Corps of Engineers is the largest provider of outdoor recreation 
among all Federal agencies. They maintain more than 4,200 recreation 
sites at 422 projects in 43 states, with more than 370 million visits 
each year. Those visitors spend more than $18 billion annually and 
support 350,000 full-time or part-time jobs. All would be suspended by 
a government shutdown.
  The Department of Energy would also face severe limitations under a 
shutdown. Research grants to national labs and universities would be 
suspended. These grants fund important clean energy challenges related 
to biofuels, supercomputing, and materials research. The output of 
world-class science facilities on cutting edge research and product 
development may be significantly reduced. With U.S. leadership in 
science threatened by China, Japan and Europe, now is not the time to 
suspend major scientific research.
  Regarding the national security missions of the National Nuclear 
Security Administration, a government shutdown may delay important 
nuclear modernization activities. A government shutdown may disrupt and 
delay efforts to replace aging components in every single nuclear 
weapon in the stockpile. For example, delays in replacing aging 
components in the W76 submarine-launched warhead--which makes up more 
than 50 percent of the Nation's nuclear deterrent--would have serious 
impacts to the Navy's nuclear deterrence mission. Upgrades to aging 
infrastructure related to uranium, plutonium and high explosives 
capabilities would also be delayed. Delays of just days can add 
millions of dollars to a project's bottom line.
  A government shutdown may also delay the design of a new nuclear 
reactor for the Ohio-class submarine. A shutdown may also delay 
refueling one of only three training nuclear reactors for sailors, 
which is critical for supplying sufficient numbers of sailors to man 
the U.S. submarine fleet.
  Finally, a government shutdown will delay and increase costs to clean 
up and remediate nuclear contamination at former nuclear weapons and 
nuclear energy research sites. These activities should be completed as 
quickly as possible to protect human health.
  I have laid out only a taste of the effects of a government shutdown. 
What I cannot begin to convey is the harm to millions of families who 
would be out of work or whose work would be curtailed because of 
canceled projects across the country.
  This is only one of 12 subcommittees. A government shutdown would be 
folly, and we must prevent it from happening.

[[Page S6987]]

  Before I close, I would like to touch on another threat to the 
agencies funded through my subcommittee, and that is the dangerous and 
ongoing cuts forced on us by the sequester.
  With Congress focused on this immediate threat, we risk losing sight 
of the even more dangerous and long-term consequences of sequestration. 
Once again, the Energy and Water Appropriations bill provides a fine 
example of the choices--and dangers--that we face. The Senate bill 
funds the Corps of Engineers at $5.3 billion.
  The House bill, based on sequester levels of funding, would slash 
that by $596 million. This would take money from vital flood control, 
ecosystem restoration and navigation projects. The House also would not 
approve a single new study or project, further delaying vital flood 
protection and navigation needs. The sequester would also jeopardize 
such vital projects as harbor maintenance and dredging, putting a crimp 
on billions of dollars in cargo that moves through our coasts. The 
House sequester level also slashes $136 million from the Bureau of 
Reclamation's budget, 12 percent lower than the Senate level.
  One example of what the sequester would cut: The Senate bill directs 
funds to the WaterSmart Program and the Recycled Water Program, both of 
which increase the efficiency of water use in the West. With record-
breaking droughts, farmers are desperately in need of more water, but 
the sequester would dry up these programs.
  The Senate would also restore funding arbitrarily cut by the House 
from restoration programs such as the San Joaquin River Restoration in 
California. This joint Federal-State-local program was the result of a 
settlement that ended 17 years of litigation. Defunding the program 
could force the project back into the courtroom.
  The House funding level also further weakens U.S. scientific 
leadership and efforts to improve the competitiveness of U.S. 
manufacturers through the Department of Energy. The House would cut 
funds for the Office of Sciences by $500 million, the cutting edge work 
of ARPA-E by $329 million, and efficiency and renewable energy programs 
by $1.4 billion.
  While Europe and Asia invest heavily in renewable energy and basic 
research, the House funding under sequester would cut in half our 
investments in renewable energy development and by 10% investments in 
basic research.
  The government shutdown is a manufactured crisis and it is dangerous. 
The continuation of the sequester--while less immediate--is arguably 
even more dangerous.
  I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, particularly in 
the House, will join with Democrats to keep our government operating at 
responsible levels. We need to make those tough choices, we need to 
keep the government open and we must repeal sequester.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schatz). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEE. 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. LEE. Mr. President, everyone knows that the vote we are about to 
take--cloture on the House-passed continuing resolution--is essentially 
a vote to allow the Democrats to gut the House bill. That is why the 
Senate majority leader, the Senator from Nevada Mr. Reid and every 
other Senate Democrat are supporting it.
  Twenty-one House Members know this is a vote to gut the bill that 
they passed, that they worked so hard to pass out of the House of 
Representatives. That is why they signed a letter yesterday asking the 
Senate Republicans to stand united and vote against cloture on this 
bill.
  You see, what happened was the House of Representatives, acting 
boldly and nobly and in response to a growing cry from the American 
people--a cry for help--acted to keep the government funded, to fund 
government while defunding ObamaCare, protecting the American people 
from a law they are becoming increasingly aware of; a law that was 
passed 3\1/2\ years ago without Members of Congress having read it and 
all of its 2,700 pages; a law that has since led to the promulgation of 
20,000 pages of implementing regulatory text; a law that has since been 
rewritten not just once but twice by the Supreme Court of the United 
States, which, having concluded that the law as written was 
constitutionally deficient in two respects, became convinced that it 
was its duty, its prerogative, and within its power to rewrite the law 
in order to shoehorn it within the provisions of the U.S. Constitution; 
a law that has since then been rewritten three or four times by the 
President of the United States without any statutory or constitutional 
authorization to do so--a President who has acknowledged that the 
legislation, this law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 
is not ready to be implemented.
  If the President of the United States is convinced this law is not 
ready to be implemented, if the President of the United States, who 
pushed this law through Congress 3\1/2\ years ago and counts this as 
his signature legislative accomplishment--if this same President is 
unwilling to follow the law and is convinced it is not ready to be 
implemented, Congress should not fund it, and Congress should keep the 
government funded while protecting the people from ObamaCare.
  Millions of Americans are concerned about what this law will do for 
them. We have seen millions of Americans worried about keeping their 
jobs, noticing that jobs are becoming harder and harder to find. Many 
are losing their jobs. Others are seeing their wages cut. Others still 
are seeing their hours cut. Many, including those 20,000 Americans who 
work for Home Depot who were informed last week--like many other 
Americans, they will be losing their health coverage.
  This is why the House of Representatives acted. This is why what the 
House of Representatives did by passing this continuing resolution is 
such a good thing. It keeps the government funded, and it protects the 
American people from the harmful effects of ObamaCare.
  Now we get over to the Senate. When it came to the Senate, we saw 
that the Senate really had a couple of options--a couple of very 
legitimate options--upon receiving this legislation from the House.
  The Senate could take up this legislation and subject the legislation 
to an open amendment process, allowing Democrats and Republicans to 
submit amendments as they deemed fit, to debate those amendments, 
discuss their relative merits, their pros and their cons, and 
ultimately vote on them, making compromises and adjustments along the 
way, in the forum that has long been honored and revered in this 
institution, which heralds itself as the world's greatest deliberative 
body. Another option, of course, would be to bring it up for a vote as 
is, an up-or-down vote based on what the House passed. You can vote on 
it as it was passed by the House or you can subject it to an open 
amendment process.
  Either one of those would be fine. If that is what we were looking 
at, I would be voting yes on this cloture vote on this resolution. 
That, however, is not the option majority leader Harry Reid selected. 
Instead, what he chose was a different procedure whereby he would 
select a single amendment--one that guts the House-passed bill of its 
most important provisions--without allowing anyone else the opportunity 
even to present an amendment and have that considered for a vote.
  The American people are tired of the games that hide the true meaning 
of this kind of tactic, of this kind of vote. So it is incumbent upon 
us to try to explain them as best we can. The people who elect us do 
expect us to do what we say we are going to do--not sometimes, not just 
when it is convenient. In fact, they expect us to do what we say we are 
going to do especially when it is inconvenient. That is really what 
this first vote is about. Cloture on this resolution is about showing 
the American people that we will do what we say we are going to do even 
when--especially when--it is inconvenient.
  We have the ability to prevent the majority leader, Senator Harry 
Reid, from unfairly gutting the House continuing resolution. If we all 
vote no, that is what we will achieve. It is what many of us have 
told--have promised--the American people we will do.

[[Page S6988]]

  I, along with several of my colleagues, including Senators Ted Cruz, 
Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and several others, have promised to do 
everything in my power to bring the message that we have received--
received overwhelmingly and repeatedly--from the American people, to 
bring that message inside this Chamber, inside these halls. That is 
what this effort has been all about. We promised to do everything we 
can to improve the procedure and improve the outcome for the American 
people, taking their message to Washington, incorporating their message 
into our legislative strategy.
  Across this great country, Americans stayed up with us this week. 
They stayed up with us even overnight, choosing to forgo sleep, just to 
show they were supportive in this effort, and we greatly appreciate 
that.
  I want you all who have participated in this effort in one way or 
another to reflect on how you feel at this very moment. It has been 
said that opportunity looks a lot like hard work, how change is hard 
work, especially here in Washington. This is what it feels like to take 
on Washington. This is what it feels like to take on the immense and 
intimidating inertia of big government. This is what it feels like to 
do what the American people ask and expect and demand. Those of you who 
have been involved in this effort should be proud, should feel 
energized and motivated to take on the next big challenge. The American 
people, of course, expect more and deserve better than what they 
frequently get from Washington.
  I wish I could say that the fight that has ensued over the last few 
days was just about ObamaCare and nothing more. Sadly, ObamaCare is 
just one symptom of a much larger problem. It all stems from the 
syndrome of self-importance that the political ruling class in 
Washington tends to feel. The bigger problem in Washington is that the 
bigger the problem the American people face, the more people in 
Washington tend to think Washington has all the answers. ObamaCare, 
like the fiscal cliff, like our $17 trillion debt, like our almost $1 
trillion annual deficit, like our $2 trillion annual regulatory 
compliance costs in this country, all are the natural, inevitable 
results of a Federal Government that is simply too big and too 
expensive, that delves far too deeply into the lives of the American 
people, delves far too deeply into everything from our communications 
to our health care decisions, into everything from what kind of light 
bulbs we use, to how much water our toilets flush.
  These are deep and personal decisions that are getting deeper and 
more personal every single day. The American people understand that 
they are the sovereigns in this country. They are not subjects. We the 
people are citizens. The government works for us, even though it has 
started to feel as though it is the other way around.
  All these things show what happens when the political elite, not we 
the people, pretend to be in control. This is not about any one person 
or even any one policy or even one political party. This is about this 
town and it is about the American people, what they deserve, what they 
demand, what they expect, and what they have a right to, which is the 
right to live free of undue interference from their national 
government.
  This vote is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. 
This is simply the end of the beginning. Washington may appear to have 
the upper hand at this moment, but it is essential that we remember 
that the American people will always have the final word.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, 3\1/2\ years ago, perhaps reasonable minds 
could have differed over whether ObamaCare would work. Perhaps 
reasonable minds could have differed over whether it would cripple the 
economy. Perhaps reasonable minds could have differed over whether it 
would be devastating to millions of Americans. Today, that is no longer 
the case.
  Today, we have seen the impact of ObamaCare. We have seen what it is 
doing. ObamaCare is a train wreck. It is a nightmare, to use the word 
used by the lead Democratic author in the Senate, and a union leader 
who previously supported ObamaCare. ObamaCare is the single largest job 
killer in the country. ObamaCare is forcing Americans all over our 
Nation into part-time work, to working 29 hours a week or less.
  ObamaCare is causing health insurance premiums to skyrocket all over 
this country. ObamaCare is jeopardizing the health care for millions of 
Americans, threatening that they will lose their health insurance 
altogether. It, quite simply, is not working.
  Perhaps saddest of all, the Senate is not listening. The Senate 
Democrats are not listening to the millions of Americans who are being 
hurt by ObamaCare. If you are a young person right now coming out of 
school, and finding door after door closed to you because small 
businesses are not growing, because jobs are not there, because we have 
the lower labor force participation in decades, Senate Democrats are 
not listening to you.
  If you are a single mom right now, perhaps waiting tables at a diner, 
and you are seeing your hours forcibly reduced to 29 hours a week--29 
hours a week is not enough to feed your kids. But that is what 
ObamaCare is doing to you. Senate Democrats are not listening to you. 
If you are a recent immigrant trying to raise a young family, working 
hard and seeing your health insurance premiums skyrocket, and you are 
wondering how on Earth you are going to be able to pay these rising 
premiums while still meeting the needs and expense of your young 
family, Senate Democrats are not listening to you.
  If you are retired, if you are a person with disabilities, getting 
notice from your insurance carrier that the policy is going to be 
dropped because of ObamaCare or if you are concerned that you will be 
getting notices--so many others across this country have been--Senate 
Democrats are not listening to you.
  If you are married and on your spouse's health insurance, and you 
have received a notice like 15,000 employees at UPS recently received a 
notice, telling them that their spousal coverage was being dropped, 
that their husbands and wives were losing their health insurance 
because of ObamaCare, Senate Democrats are not listening to you.
  If you are a union worker working hard to provide for your family to 
seek the American dream, and you are discovering that the health 
insurance that you liked, that you have worked for, that you have paid 
for, is going to be taken away from you because of ObamaCare, Senate 
Democrats are not listening to you.
  Perhaps some might say, how could it be that this is happening? 
Surely Senate Democrats would listen to the American people if that 
sort of suffering were happening. Well, if you do not take my word for 
it, let me urge you to take the words of James Hoffa, president of the 
Teamsters. I would like to read a portion of a letter Mr. Hoffa wrote 
recently to Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House minority leader 
Nancy Pelosi.

       Dear Leader Reid and Leader Pelosi: When you and the 
     President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act, you 
     pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we 
     could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat. Right 
     now, unless you and the Obama administration enact an 
     equitable fix, ObamaCare will shatter not only our hard-
     earned benefits but destroy the foundation of the 40-hour 
     work week that is the backbone of the American middle 
     class.

  That is not me speaking, that is James Hoffa, the president of the 
Teamsters.

       Like millions of other Americans, our members are front-
     line workers in the American economy. We have been strong 
     supporters of the notion that all Americans should have 
     access to quality, affordable health care. We have also been 
     strong supporters of you.

  I would note this is addressed to Senate majority leader Harry Reid 
and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi.

       In campaign after campaign we have put boots on the ground, 
     gone door-to-door to get out the vote, run phone banks and 
     raised money to secure this vision.

  The vision of a Democratic majority in the Senate. So how is that 
Democratic majority in the Senate working out for union workers across 
the country? Well, the next sentence in this letter is:

       Now this vision has come back to haunt us.

  I would note this is the exact same sentiment I expressed a moment 
ago. Senate Democrats are not listening to you. The letter continues:


[[Page S6989]]


       Time is running out. Congress wrote this law; we voted for 
     you. We have a problem. You need to fix it. The unintended 
     consequences of the ACA are severe. Perverse incentives are 
     already creating nightmare scenarios:

  Note that word ``nightmare'' which I started my remarks by quoting. 
That is not my word, that is the Teamsters describing ObamaCare. 
Indeed, the letter concludes by saying:

       On behalf of the millions of working men and women we 
     represent and the families they support, we can no longer 
     stand silent in the face of the elements of the Affordable 
     Care Act that will destroy the very health and wellbeing of 
     our members along with millions of other hardworking 
     Americans.

  Let me note, No. 1, Mr. Hoffa says millions of working men and women. 
Not hundreds; not thousands; millions. What does Mr. Hoffa say is 
happening to those millions of working men and women? That their health 
care is being destroyed. Destroyed is the word he used. What answer do 
we get today from the Democrats in the Senate? Nothing.
  President Obama has granted exemptions from this failed law to big 
business and to Members of Congress. So the friends of the 
administration do not have to bear the burden of the law's collapse, 
but hard-working Americans, those without lobbyists, without friends in 
the corridors of power, are getting no exemptions from Senate 
Democrats. That is wrong.
  In roughly an hour, if Senators vote as they have announced publicly 
they intend to vote, this body will vote to put back, to restore the 
funding for ObamaCare and to gut the House continuing resolution. But 
the good news is, the process is not over. It is going to go back to 
the House of Representatives. I salute the House for having the courage 
to stand and fight and defund ObamaCare. I remain confident, hopeful, 
and optimistic that the House will stand their ground, will continue 
the fight, which means this issue is coming back to the Senate.
  That is good news. That is good news, No. 1, for Republicans. It is 
unfortunate that there has been Republican division on this issue. When 
it comes back to the Senate after the House stands their ground yet 
again, we will have an opportunity for Republicans to come home, for 
Republicans to stand together. I very much hope the next time this 
issue is before this body in a few days, all 46 Republicans are united 
against ObamaCare and standing with the American people, that we 
listened to the American people the way Senate Democrats are not.
  Let me tell you I hope also that it is not just 46 Republicans. Our 
friends on the Democratic side of the aisle go home to their States, 
they listen to their constituents. They are hearing the suffering from 
the men and women who elected them. It is not easy to disagree with 
your political party. But at the end of the day, what we are doing here 
is bigger than partisan politics. What we are doing here is fitting for 
300 million Americans across this great country.
  So I hope when this issue comes back, when the House stands their 
ground and sends it back to us, instead of just exercising brute 
political power, as this body is getting ready to do, I hope the Senate 
Democrats begin listening, that they begin listening to young people, 
that they begin listening to single moms, that they begin listening to 
immigrants, that they begin listening to people who are retired, people 
with disabilities, that they begin listening to married people, that 
they begin listening to union workers, all of whom are suffering under 
ObamaCare.
  This is an opportunity for the Senate to return to the finest 
traditions of this body, where we listen to and fight for the American 
people. That has not happened in a long time. But I am very hopeful 
that we are in the process of seeing it begin to happen now.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy.) The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I am not sure if you have a fax machine at home. Many 
Americans don't anymore and neither do a lot of small businesses. It 
seems a bit odd to tell small businesses they need to fax in--fax in--
enrollment forms for ObamaCare, but this is what the Obama 
administration is now doing.
  If I might paraphrase the President: The 1980s called, and they want 
their health policy back.
  To be fair, snail mail is also an option and it looks as though the 
President's people will try to have the issue fixed soon, despite 
passing a law more than 3 years ago. Again this is the same President 
who told us that ObamaCare is ``working the way it's supposed to,'' and 
that those who already have health care won't see many changes under 
this law. This is the same guy who promised us his health care ideas 
would make American premiums lower and that they would be able to keep 
the plans they like.
  Forgive me for being a little bit skeptical, given how these other 
rosy scenarios have played out. I am not the only skeptic out there. 
Just ask the folks who have already been laid off or seen their hours 
cut. Ask the graduate who can't find anything but part-time work. Ask 
the twenty-something who is going to lose her employer health plan and 
pay more over in the exchanges.
  The reality simply does not match up with the rhetoric. That includes 
the President's remarks yesterday in Maryland. He said there is no 
``widespread evidence'' that ObamaCare is hurting jobs. That is 
actually what he said, no ``widespread evidence.''
  We all know the President was hanging around with Bill Clinton the 
other day. What we didn't know was he was getting pointers on syntax. 
It makes you wonder what would constitute widespread evidence of job 
loss in this President's mind. I mean, only yesterday his press 
secretary dismissed reports of a company dropping health insurance for 
55,000 employees as only an ``anecdote.''
  Maybe that is how things look from the south lawn. It looks a lot 
different if you just lost the health care plan you liked and wanted to 
keep. As Senator Moynihan used to tell us: Data is the plural of 
anecdote. There are just too many stories about the impact of 
ObamaCare, far too many to be dismissed with the wave of a hand.
  Ironically, the same day the President was painting more rosy 
scenarios in Maryland, the administration announced yet another delay 
in this law's implementation. That is about the time we found out about 
the fax machines and all that follows the revelation of yet more 
exchange problems, this time with an exchange in the District of 
Columbia. You might be able to take away any one of these ObamaCare 
problems in isolation and explain it away, say it doesn't matter and 
call it an anecdote, but what we are getting here is a constant drip, 
drip, paired with the effect of seeing what is happening to our jobs, 
our health care, and the economy.
  It all adds up to just one thing: a law in trouble, a law that needs 
to be repealed. This is the goal of every Republican Member here in the 
Republican Conference in the Senate. We are united on the need to 
repeal ObamaCare. We want to replace it with sensible, bipartisan forms 
that actually will work, and in a few minutes each and every one of us 
will vote against funding ObamaCare.
  The American people want this repealed. Republicans want it repealed. 
I wouldn't be surprised if a number of our Democratic colleagues 
secretly want it repealed as well. The problem is we can't get this 
done unless my friends on the other side are prepared to step up with 
us and work on the issue, because there are 54 of them and 46 of us. 
This doesn't mean we will give up the fight if they don't. We won't. 
There are a lot of other things we can do in the meantime.
  For instance, we can follow the administration's lead in offering 
ObamaCare a delay for the American people. After all, the 
administration seems to think businesses deserve a break from 
ObamaCare. Doesn't the middle class deserve the same treatment, the 
very same treatment? Republicans think so. I think we might be able to 
convince enough Democrats to join us on that to help us provide 
fairness--fairness to the middle class.
  Yesterday, one Democratic Senator already signaled his willingness to 
delay some of the worst aspects of the law as well. He called a delay 
for the

[[Page S6990]]

American people ``very reasonable and sensible.'' He posed a question: 
``Don't you think it'd be fair?''
  The answer is: Yes, that would be fair. That is a question for my 
Democratic colleagues to respond to. Many of them know how badly this 
law is hurting their constituents. Isn't that the fair thing to do? Of 
course it is.
  I am calling on Democratic Senators to put the middle class ahead of 
the President's pride, calling for them to pass a delay for everyone. 
We have already filed legislation that would do just that. A bipartisan 
majority of the House already supports it. Let's work together to 
actually do it. Once we get that done, let's keep working to get rid of 
this law and replace it with real reforms, not with ideas from the 
1980s, but with commonsense, step-by-step reforms that will actually 
lower the cost for the American people and spare them from this 
terrible law.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time until 12:30 
is reserved for the two leaders, with the final 10 minutes reserved for 
the majority leader.
  The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. During my time in Washington I have had the opportunity to 
work with many reasonable, thoughtful Republicans, including those 
serving in this body today. Those reasonable Republicans value this 
institution, the Senate, and they respect the government of which it is 
a part.
  Today, the Republican Party has been infected by a small but 
destructive faction that would rather tear down the House our Founders 
built than govern from it. These extremists are more interested in 
putting on a show, as one Republican colleague put it, than in 
legislating. That is why they prevented the Senate from taking action 
to avert a government shutdown last night to put on a show today.
  Despite pleas from the House of Representatives for a quick Senate 
action, that same vocal minority was determined to waste the dwindling 
hours before a government shutdown--1 day, basically, they wasted. 
Although every minute that passes puts this country 1 minute closer to 
a shutdown, a shutdown that would shatter our economy, they continue to 
obstruct and to delay.
  A bad day for government is a good day for the anarchists among us, 
those who believe in no--I repeat, no--government. That is their 
belief. Modern-day anarchists known as the tea party believe in no 
government. They are backed by a very wealthy group of people who 
finance this effort to destroy our government.
  It is important to note these tea party obstructionists don't 
represent mainstream Republicans either in this body or mainstream 
Republicans in our country. But unfortunately their grip on the rudder 
of the Republican Party is very firm.

  For the last few years these radicals in the House and Senate have 
driven America from crisis to crisis--we lurch from crisis to crisis--
leaving a trail of economic destruction behind them. Now they have 
taken the U.S. Government hostage and demanded an impossible ransom--
that Democrats repeal the law of this land known as ObamaCare.
  The Affordable Care Act has been the law of the land for 4 years. The 
U.S. Supreme Court has declared it constitutional and soon it will help 
25 to 35 million people in America who are currently living without 
health insurance. It will allow them to get access to the lifesaving 
care they need and deserve.
  I don't know if people truly know what it means not to have health 
insurance, not to have the ability to go to the doctor or hospital when 
they are sick or hurting. Some of us do. Some of us understand how tens 
of millions of people in America can't go to the hospital when they are 
sick or when they are hurt.
  When I was a boy--I don't know how old I was, 10 or 11 years old--I 
was so sick. I can still remember how sick I was. I had been sick for 
quite a long time in the house we lived in. But, you see, we didn't 
have doctors in Searchlight. There wasn't a doctor for 50 miles and we 
had no car. I was very sick. We didn't go to doctors. But it was 
obvious I was very ill and so one of my older brothers came to visit 
and he was with a friend. That friend of my brother Don agreed to take 
me to the hospital. So I went to the hospital. I still have the scar. I 
had a growth on my large intestine. I would have died had I not gone to 
the hospital. So I know what it is like not to be able to go to the 
hospital or doctor when you are sick.
  My wonderful mother took in wash. Searchlight had nothing much there, 
but once, I remember, a TB wagon came through. That was a truck where 
they would do x-rays of somebody's chest to find out if they had 
tuberculosis because it was still around. People in Searchlight--I 
remember Conn Hudgens and others--had tuberculosis. My dad wouldn't go, 
but my mother went and had her chest x-rayed. The results came back on 
a little card in the mail, and she had tuberculosis. She was positive 
for tuberculosis.
  What did we do? What did she do? Nothing. Nothing. As a boy, caring 
about my mother, I worried so much about that. I can't imagine even to 
this day how she must have felt. In hindsight, it looks like it was a 
false positive, but that didn't take away the concern I had for a long 
time. So I can't imagine, I repeat, how my mother must have felt.
  So I have had some view of what it is like not to be able to go to 
the doctor or hospital when you are sick or hurt.
  Again, I don't know how old I was, but my little brother, 22 months 
younger than I am, was coming up on a bicycle and he slid and he was 
hurt. He was crying. I guess he was 10 years old or something like 
that, and no one was home. So I helped him get up to the house and lie 
down. I went and found my mother. My brother never, ever went to the 
doctor, and he had a broken leg. He still has a bent leg to show today. 
He laid on that bed. He couldn't touch the bed it hurt so much. He laid 
there until he could get up and walk a week or 10 days later.
  So these people who just nonchalantly don't focus on the fact that 
millions of Americans have no health insurance--we can't just walk away 
from this. The health care law we have is important.
  Republicans fought long and hard in opposition to ObamaCare, and they 
lost. It was a fair fight. They made their case against Obama directly 
to the American people in November last year, and they lost again. 
Obama won not by a small margin. He won by 5 million votes. What was 
the main issue in that campaign? It was health care. The American 
people overwhelmingly reelected the President, and one reason they did 
is because of health care.
  Yesterday, on this floor, from over there, a colleague of ours, the 
senior Senator from Arizona, John McCain, spoke with great eloquence 
about this law, a law he opposes. This is what he said:

       The people spoke. They spoke, much to my dismay, but they 
     spoke and reelected the President of the United States. That 
     doesn't mean we give up our efforts to try to replace and 
     repair ObamaCare. But elections have consequences. The 
     majority of the American people supported the President of 
     the United States and renewed his stewardship of this 
     country. I don't like it. But I think all of us should 
     respect the outcome of elections, which reflect the will of 
     the people.

  Who said this again? Who said this? Who is this John McCain? He is a 
proven fighter, in war and in public service. This is a man who held 
the mantle of the Republican Party's nomination to be President of the 
United States. He is not some gadfly but an American patriot, and 
history books will talk about that in generations to come. The 
Republicans heard his message, for which the Senate and the country 
should be grateful.
  So there is challenge this fall, closing in on the end of the fiscal 
year, for those of us who respect the system of government devised by 
America's Founders, those of us who believe in the rule of law and that 
elections reflect the will of the American people will face a test. Can 
we prevent an economically disastrous government shutdown, and can we 
protect the full faith and credit of the United States?
  From one newspaper--not lots of newspapers, one newspaper--look at 
the headlines ``GOP hard-liners block strategy to avoid shutdown''; 
``Government shutdown would entail cost''; ``Shutdown could carry pay 
risk even for employees kept on the job.''
  One newspaper.
  ``Agencies prepare to furlough workers in the face of partial 
government shutdown.''

[[Page S6991]]

  ``Shutdown grows more likely as House digs in.''
  This is from Governor Christy: ``Shutdown would be a failure.'' He 
says it would be irresponsible.
  ``As government shutdown looms, Americans brace for possible 
disruption, disappointment.''
  Another headline: ``Surrounding jurisdictions develop shutdown game 
plans.''
  ``Threat of shutdown delays some Colorado flood relief.''
  Is it any wonder the stock market is going down? Is it any wonder 
that people are concerned? Is it any wonder that someone such as the 
woman who works for the Park Service, who came to see me yesterday, 
said to me: I have been through this before. I am not going to get paid 
for my work.
  So the question is, Can we overcome modern-day anarchists? In just a 
few minutes the Senate will take the first step toward wresting control 
from these extremists. Democrats will vote to avert a government 
shutdown, and I am confident many of my Republican colleagues will vote 
with us to allow the government to perform its basic duties. Together, 
we will send a message to radical Republicans that we will not allow 
the law of the land to be used as a hostage, a law that has been in 
place for 4 years.
  I am pleased so many of my Senate Republican colleagues seem to 
understand the stakes of this debate--the economic health of a still 
struggling Nation and the economic well-being of still struggling 
families. I urge sensible Republicans in the House of Representatives 
to follow our lead, to follow the lead of Republicans in the Senate, 
and let the House Democrats vote. Don't just make it a majority-
minority; let the 435 Members who serve in the House of Representatives 
vote and pass a clean bill to avert a shutdown. Defy the anarchists. 
Respect the rule of the law and help the Senate govern.
  I ask unanimous consent that the time remaining for Senator McConnell 
and myself be yielded back and that we begin the vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  All time is yielded back.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, and pursuant to rule 
XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the following cloture motion 
which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to Calendar No. 195, H.J. Res. 59, a joint resolution 
     making continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2014, and 
     for other purposes.
         Harry Reid, Barbara A. Mikulski, Carl Levin, Patrick J. 
           Leahy, Elizabeth Warren, Charles E. Schumer, Richard J. 
           Durbin, Christopher A. Coons, Christopher Murphy, 
           Edward J. Markey, Patty Murray, Tim Kaine, John D. 
           Rockefeller IV, Bill Nelson, Angus S. King, Jr., 
           Benjamin L. Cardin, Kirsten E. Gillibrand.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent the mandatory quorum call 
has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on H.J. 
Res. 59, a joint resolution making continuing appropriations for fiscal 
year 2014, and for other purposes, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) 
would have voted ``yea'' and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake) would 
have voted ``nay.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 79, nays 19, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 206 Leg.]

                                YEAS--79

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Boxer
     Brown
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Chambliss
     Chiesa
     Coats
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson (SD)
     Johnson (WI)
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Thune
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden

                                NAYS--19

     Crapo
     Cruz
     Enzi
     Fischer
     Grassley
     Heller
     Inhofe
     Lee
     Moran
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Toomey
     Vitter

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Flake
     Hatch
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there any other Senator wishing to vote?
  If not, a reminder that expressions of approval or disapproval are 
not permitted in the Senate.
  On this vote, the yeas are 79, the nays are 19. Three-fifths of the 
Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in the affirmative, the 
motion is agreed to.
  Under the previous order, cloture having been invoked, all time is 
yielded back. Amendment No. 1975 is withdrawn.
  The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional 
Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive all applicable sections of the Act 
and any other applicable budget points of order for purposes of the 
pending joint resolution and the amendments.
  I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a 
sufficient second.
  Mr. REID. I yield back all time on the motion to waive.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) 
would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake) would 
have voted ``nay.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 68, nays 30, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 207 Leg.]

                                YEAS--68

     Baldwin
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Chambliss
     Chiesa
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Cornyn
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Isakson
     Johnson (SD)
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Portman
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden

                                NAYS--30

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Boozman
     Burr
     Coats
     Coburn
     Corker
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Enzi
     Fischer
     Grassley
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Johanns
     Johnson (WI)
     Lee
     Moran
     Paul
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Flake
     Hatch
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 68, the nays are 
30. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in 
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
  For the information of the Senate, upon the invoking of cloture, the 
motion to commit falls.
  There will now be 2 minutes of debate equally divided.
  The Senator from Maryland is recognized.

[[Page S6992]]

  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Reid-Mikulski 
amendment to the continuing resolution. Our amendment makes two 
important changes in the House CR. First the amendment clears out the 
toxic political item in the House CR--defunding the Affordable Care 
Act. It also removes the debt-limit provision that threatens the full 
faith and credit of the United States. It changes the date of the CR 
from December 15 to November 15 to see if we can't get to vote on an 
omnibus bill and end the sequester.
  We are out of time. The fiscal year ends in 3 days. Let's pass the 
Reid-Mikulski amendment, let's pass the CR, and let's keep America's 
government working as hard as its taxpayers.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican whip.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this is the moment of truth. We need to be 
absolutely clear about what we are voting on here. A ``yes'' vote will 
be a vote to fund ObamaCare because it will take out of the underlying 
continuing resolution the House position that Republicans have 
universally supported to defund ObamaCare.

  I ask my colleagues, before they vote yes on this important 
amendment, Do you really want to be responsible for killing more jobs? 
Do you really want to be responsible for more people losing their 
health insurance and their own doctors? Do you really want to be 
responsible for making full-time work part-time work? If not, then vote 
no.
  This is a second chance, and in life we don't get many second 
chances. I hope our colleagues will take advantage of the opportunity.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to amendment No. 
1974.
  The yeas and nays were previously ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Once again, a reminder that expressions of 
approval or disapproval are not allowed in the Senate.
  Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) 
would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake) would 
have voted ``nay''.
  The result was announced--yeas 54, nays 44, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 208 Leg.]

                                YEAS--54

     Baldwin
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Johnson (SD)
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--44

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Chambliss
     Chiesa
     Coats
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Enzi
     Fischer
     Graham
     Grassley
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson (WI)
     Kirk
     Lee
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Flake
     Hatch
       
  The amendment (No. 1974) was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there is 2 minutes 
equally divided.
  The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, it is now time to vote on final passage. 
I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote for this. It 
will prevent a government shutdown. It will lay the groundwork for us 
to get to a solution on the long-term fiscal needs of our country, 
including to replace sequester and to come up with an approach to fund 
essential government services where we make investments that America 
desperately needs.
  If the Senate keeps this government open, it means continuing our 
critical services, it avoids a shutdown, and it lays the groundwork for 
solving our problems.
  I urge the adoption and passage of this bill.
  We yield back our remaining time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
  The amendment was ordered to be engrossed, and the joint resolution 
to be read a third time.
  The joint resolution was read the third time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the 
third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  There is a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake) 
would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would 
have voted ``nay.''
  The result was announced--yeas 54, nays 44, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 209 Leg.]

                                YEAS--54

     Baldwin
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Johnson (SD)
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--44

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Chambliss
     Chiesa
     Coats
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Enzi
     Fischer
     Graham
     Grassley
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson (WI)
     Kirk
     Lee
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Flake
     Hatch
      
  The joint resolution (H.J. Res. 59), as amended, was passed.

                          ____________________