[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 175 (Wednesday, December 11, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8717-S8719]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 NOMINATION OF LANDYA B. McCAFFERTY TO BE UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE 
                   FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
  The assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Landya B. 
McCafferty, of New Hampshire, to be United States District Judge for 
the District of New Hampshire.
  The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. REID. On behalf of the majority, I yield back 57\1/2\ minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 15 of 
the 113th Congress, there will now be up to 2 hours of postcloture 
consideration of the nomination equally divided in the usual form.
  The Senator from New York.


                 Unanimous Consent Agreement--H.R. 3548

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask 
unanimous consent that if the Senate receives H.R. 3548 from the House 
of Representatives and the bill is identical to S. 1689, as introduced, 
then the bill be considered as having been read three times and passed; 
and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the 
table, with no intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleagues, in the 
Christmas spirit, despite these contentious times, for letting this 
bill move forward. Let me just briefly explain.
  On Christmas Eve, 2012, nearly one year ago today, the 125-member 
West Webster Volunteer Fire Association--a volunteer fire department 
outside of Rochester--faced an unimaginable tragedy when four of their 
brave members were wounded, two fatally, when they responded to a fire 
but in instead faced an ambush of unspeakable proportions.
  While many of our families across our Nation were waking up last 
Christmas Eve morning preparing Christmas dinner, shopping, wrapping 
presents or picking up family from the airport, four families in 
Webster, NY, were instead confronting a heart-wrenching tragedy.
  The call of a house on fire came in to the West Webster Fire 
Department at 5:30 a.m. that morning, December 24. It was a cold, snowy 
morning, still dark, but the everyday heroes from the West Webster Fire 
Department courageously did what they volunteered to do on behalf of 
their neighbors and on behalf of their hometowns. They left their homes 
and their families to put out a fire.
  Instead, this routine call turned into a tragedy which shocked this 
community and people throughout the country and even the world. What 
they didn't know was that the fire was intentionally set by the home's 
owner in order to lure these innocent firefighters into a senseless 
sniper ambush. The sniper was hiding behind a berm amid the chaos of 
the fire and began shooting at the responding firefighters.
  The firefighters were confused at first to hear popping sounds; they 
thought it might be the fire, but Lieutenant Mike Chiapperini, who was 
also a Webster police officer, knew better and shouted to his fellow 
volunteers to take cover, but it was too late.

[[Page S8718]]

  Firefighter Hofstetter was shot in the pelvis while trying to alert 
dispatchers on the radio to the situation.
  Ted Scardino was shot in the shoulder, and 5 minutes later shot in 
the leg. A 16-year volunteer lay there bleeding for an hour, enduring 
the December cold while sustaining second-degree burns on his head.
  Lieutenant Chiapperini and firefighter Kaczowka both died in the 
ambush.
  As news of this horrific senseless Christmas Eve tragedy spread, well 
meaning people from Rochester, New York State, the Nation, and the 
world reached out to the West Webster Fire Association to offer their 
support and prayers.
  Not realizing that collecting and distributing the funds to the 
family would jeopardize the association's tax exempt status with the 
IRS, the association accepted donations from generous people all around 
the Nation wanting to help the poor families who suffered so on that 
day. They collected these donations for the victims and their families. 
They wanted to give these donations to the victims and their families. 
It defies reason that they would be unable to do so because of a 
technicality in the Tax Code.
  Just as we did after 9/11 and again after a similar fire department 
tragedy in California, it is our obligation to make sure the West 
Webster Volunteer Firemen's Association can now distribute to these 
families the contributions their neighbors and unknown countless 
generous others wanted them to have. With the passage of this 
legislation, that will happen.
  I thank my colleagues, particularly on the other side of the aisle. I 
know these are contentious times, and this was done truly in the 
Christmas spirit, and I thank them.


                          Wolford Confirmation

  One more brief moment. We just confirmed to the U.S. district court 
the first woman to serve on the Federal bench in the Western District 
of New York, Elizabeth Wolford. She is going to be a great judge. Ms. 
Wolford is right out of central casting for the role of a Federal 
judge. Not only will the legal community of Western New York be well 
served by her ascension on the bench, the entire community will benefit 
from her leadership, wisdom, and judgment.
  It is an honor to have nominated and to now confirm Elizabeth 
Wolford, the first woman to represent the Western District of New York, 
a very distinguished bench.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to speak about where we are right 
now. We are moving toward confirming a number of individuals with the 
majority deciding that the majority could do that by themselves. 
Apparently, they had the right to change the rules, which I guess means 
there really are no rules and the majority can change the rules any day 
they want.
  What we are seeing now with the health care implementation is what 
happens, frankly, when one side decides they don't want to make any 
effort necessary to get even one other person from the other side to 
agree with them on moving forward with something as big as the health 
care legislation. That should have been an example to us, but 
apparently the example was the example that they, the majority, can do 
whatever the majority wants to do.
  Let me share for a few minutes some of the things I am hearing in our 
office from people who are contacting us to tell us the problems they 
are having that they didn't anticipate.
  This is a letter from Pam from Chesterfield, MO. She says: My husband 
and I have always played by the rules and carried insurance. I had no 
idea we were going to have to change plans and go to the exchange, but 
our provider apparently doesn't want to have individual plans any 
longer because it is too costly to figure out the complexities that 
would apply to individual plans.
  Then Pam says: At least for now, my husband and I are not getting 
health insurance, and I guess we have to hope for the best. What a 
mess, she says. So much for playing by the rules. I never expected the 
two of us to be uninsured. But, now, she thinks that is what is likely 
to happen.
  Jennifer, a college student from St. Louis said that she initially 
supported the Affordable Care Act. She worked part-time at a Home Goods 
store where she had what she thought were great health benefits--or at 
least the health benefits she wanted--and where she could work as many 
hours as she wanted. But, she says, because of the health care plan, 
her employer reduced the maximum number of hours she could work to 24 
hours.
  So, she says:

       My name is Jennifer, a hard-working student from St. Louis, 
     MO, and I would like to share my emerging problems. At first 
     I was supportive of the Patient Protection and Affordable 
     Health Care Act. Insurance for everyone--that sounds so 
     appealing, but now that it has affected my life in a negative 
     way, I am not so sure I can be supportive anymore. I have 
     worked for my employer for almost 3 years while going to 
     school. It has been an excellent place to work until now, and 
     now not only do I not have the health care benefits I had 
     before, but I am not able to work as much as I was able to 
     work before.

  Carla and her husband are farmers from Oreck, MO. They farm full-
time; neither of them is employed off the farm. They have two sons, one 
just graduated from college and just went to work; another is a junior 
in college. They have one full-time employee on the farm. Her family 
provides their own insurance. In order for them to have insurance they 
have had a health savings account through Humana. Their deductible is 
$10,000, and they still pay a little over $500 a month or $6,057 a year 
for their family insurance. But she tells me beginning January 1, 2014, 
their deductible goes to $12,600. Their premium goes to $11,422, an 89-
percent increase in a family that provides their own insurance. By the 
way, they provide insurance with dollars they earned and they pay taxes 
on, so we can add another premium to that and find out how this family, 
that has done all they could to have insurance for their family, now 
has an 89-percent increase in their insurance and a deductible they 
hope they never use. But if they do, it is a big problem if they use 
that deductible. The deductible is going to be over $12,000.
  If a family is paying $11,000 for premiums and then they develop 
health care needs, they pay another $12,000 before their insurance 
helps them, that is $23,000 a year before their insurance benefits them 
in any way for a family that had insurance coverage that, until right 
now, they thought was working for them while doing all they could to 
have it.
  Catherine from Springfield, MO, says a few weeks ago she was informed 
she was going to lose her health coverage because of the President's 
health care plan. She has been concerned that she might not be able to 
sign up because the Web site wasn't working. Whether the insurance 
costs more or not wasn't as big of a concern to her as having 
insurance. She says: The nightmare that is ObamaCare is going to affect 
us in a major way, and the stress of what is coming is affecting many 
people. Not only are we losing health insurance plans we liked, and 
possibly the doctors we trust, but the new coverage is not as good and 
it costs us more. This is--to paraphrase the Vice President, ``a big 
deal'', she says.
  Ken writes:

       Dear Senator Blunt. I am writing to inform you of my recent 
     experience with health insurance and the ACA. My wife and I 
     make a decent income but are far from wealthy. On September 
     30 I received a notice that due to the ACA, my employer-
     sponsored health insurance plan would no longer be available. 
     Yesterday--after worrying about this since September 30, 
     apparently--yesterday, he continues--I discovered that my 
     employer was able to renegotiate an early renewal and our 
     monthly premium will only increase by 12.5 percent. However--
     by the way, 12.5 percent is a pretty good increase by my 
     books except the ones that compare what is happening right 
     now. However,

he continues,

     I have been made aware that next year my plan premiums will 
     increase by a minimum of 39 percent.

  So it increased 12.5 percent this year, and they have already 
notified this family that their increase will be a minimum of 39 
percent next year, and his deductible, according to him, will double. 
So reading his letter further, he says: So I guess I will not be able 
to keep my insurance and my costs will not decrease as the President 
said they would.
  Carol from Republic, MO, says her monthly premiums have gone from 
$600

[[Page S8719]]

to $800, and the part-time jobs she and her husband both had at the 
local community college have actually gone down because they are not 
able to teach as much as they were able to teach before, because the 
community college has decided they can't let any of their part-time 
faculty work more than 30 hours. So their income went down, their 
expenses went up, in both cases because of the President's decisions on 
health care and the legislative decisions on health care in both cases. 
We know this has impacted the workplace, part-time workers, people 
holding their workforce down so they wouldn't be covered, holding their 
worker hours down so they wouldn't have to pay the penalty if they 
didn't offer insurance or offer the insurance for the first time at 
levels they hadn't had before.
  Now we are also seeing--not only did the hours of work go down, but 
the cost of health insurance goes up. Surely, we can come up with a 
better plan than that.
  Christian from St. Peter's, MO, just learned that his wife's employer 
will start excluding him from their family coverage and that he now has 
to receive insurance in some different way. It looks like he is going 
to be able to do that with his employer for $1,300 more per year. This 
is actually the best story I have told so far--only $1,300 that this 
family used to have to spend for something else, and they are now 
spending for health care. He says: I am not sure who ObamaCare 
benefits, but it sure isn't my family.
  These stories are just examples of some of the things we are hearing.
  Last weekend I noticed that one of the architects of the President's 
health care bill, Dr. Zeke Emanuel, on Fox News to Chris Wallace, said 
that what the President really should have said--and this is his exact 
quote: ``If you want to pay more for your insurance company that covers 
your doctor, you can do that.''
  I don't know what he is looking at, and some may be able to find 
their doctor for more money, but in our State some of the health care 
providers aren't on the exchange.
  I read the other day that more than half of the hospitals in New 
Hampshire aren't on the exchange. So if your doctor happened to work 
for more than half of the hospitals in New Hampshire, there is no 
amount of money you can pay on the exchange and keep your doctor, 
because your doctor is no longer available through the way that you are 
told by the health care act that you can get insurance as an 
individual.
  The President promised that. He said: My plan begins by covering 
every American. If you already like your health insurance, the only 
thing that will change for you under this part is the amount of money 
you will spend on premiums, and that will be less.
  I think we are going to quickly see not only are people losing 
insurance, but for most people the premiums are not going to be less 
and the deductibles are going to be higher, not lower.
  This is going to be a story that is going to affect American families 
as nothing the Federal Government has done in a long time, and maybe 
nothing the Federal Government has done ever.
  If you truly want to impact the lives of families, impact their 
health care. Somebody told me one time: When everybody in your family 
is well, you have lots of problems. When somebody in your family is 
sick, you have one problem.
  We are dealing with the one focusing problem for American families: 
their access to health care that they can afford with decisions they 
like.
  I yield back.
                                 ______