Congressional Record, Volume 159 Issue 175 (Wednesday, December 11, 2013)

[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 175 (Wednesday, December 11, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8724-S8750]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

NOMINATION OF PATRICIA M. WALD TO BE A MEMBER OF THE PRIVACY AND CIVIL
LIBERTIES OVERSIGHT BOARD

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the
nomination.
The bill clerk read the nomination of Patricia M. Wald, of the
District of Columbia, to be a Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties
Board for a term expiring January 29, 2019.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Pursuant to the provisions of S.
Res. 15 of the 113th Congress, there will now be up to 8 hours of
postcloture consideration of the nomination equally divided in the
usual form.
The assistant majority leader.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I yield back the majority's time on this
nomination.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The time is yielded back.
The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I would like to speak on the nomination.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator is recognized.
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am glad to have this opportunity to
come to the floor of this great body to talk about issues that are of
great concern to the people of Ohio whom I represent and to the
country. We are facing a lot of challenges right now. Certainly health
care costs are on the rise, as we have seen, but jobs are also hard to
come by.
There is a middle-class squeeze going on out there where paychecks
are down and health care costs are up, and belief in the American
dream, as a result, is on the decline. Some say for the first time
since polling has begun people think that future generations are not
going to be as well off as we are. This is sad, and there is work we
can and should do to address this.
It starts with dealing with some of the gridlock in Washington and
getting some things done. One of my concerns about what the majority
has done in terms of taking away the rights of the minority to be heard
on nominations is creating a very tough environment to break through
that gridlock and get things done.
I think about the judiciary. Today we are talking about a court judge
who is up for a nomination and the question is whether she is going to
be confirmed. Right now, under the current rules that exist,
Republicans have no voice, in essence, because the 50 votes from
Democrats--and there are 55 Democrats--can put up a judge and get the
votes and put anybody through they want.
Under the system that has prevailed in this body for decades, and one
consistent with the intention of the Founders, you have to get 60
votes. In other words, the minority would have some voice, and
specifically Republicans, in that there are 45 of us and we would have
to supply about 5 votes. That makes a big difference in terms of the
kinds of judges who are nominated and ultimately confirmed.
There has been a lot of discussion about what is going on here on the
floor in terms of ending the ability of the minority to have their
voice heard. I think we also need to focus a little on what impact this
will have on the judiciary.
When someone is appointed to the DC Circuit Court--somebody was
recently confirmed yesterday and the day before for that body--these
are lifetime appointments. Instead of having to go through a process
where you have to figure out how to get some Members of the other party
to support you, right now--under the new rules that were done by
breaking the rules, and again, inconsistent with the intent of the
Founders who allowed their voices to be heard--they don't have to get
the minority. They can do it with just 50 votes. Again, with 55
Democrats, there is no need to consult with Republicans or to get any
support. In fact, they can allow five Democrats to vote the other way.
I worry this will polarize the judiciary. I think we are polarized
enough in this place. I think Washington is becoming dysfunctional for
a lot of reasons, but one is this increased polarization. Now to have
this rule change only creates a difficult environment to get work done,
but it will also put judges on the judiciary with lifetime
appointments; these judges who, frankly, are more liberal under the
Democrats and more conservative under the Republicans than they would
otherwise be.
In States such as mine where there is a Republican Senator and a
Democratic Senator, we work together to try to put judges forward.
Democrats realize in the majority they have now, they have to get some
Republican support, so they work with us. You tend to get center-left
judges nominated and confirmed right now.
Again, under the new rules that Leader Reid and the Democrats have
insisted on, that will not be required. Why would you have to consult
and work with your counterpart in your State or Republicans on the
other side of the Chamber?
When there are 50 votes, you can put forward any judge you want. I do
think this will result in judges who are not center left but left and
not center right but right. This will polarize the judiciary more, and
that concerns me.
I hope, as we are thinking about how we deal with our own
procedures--and I know this is an issue that has been debated a lot in
the last few weeks because of the decision the Democratic leadership
made to take away this right--we also think about what impact this will
have on the judiciary. Do we want a more polarized judiciary where some
of these ideological differences make it difficult for them to operate
just as it makes it difficult for the Congress to operate? I don't
think so.
I don't think that is what the American people want, and I know it is
not

[[Page S8725]]

what the Founders intended when they gave the minority a voice in this
body, and I hope we can get back to a regular order where we have a
limitation on amendments that is reasonable with reasonable time limits
so we can get our work done.
Let's allow amendments to be offered. Let's allow the voices to be
heard. Let's allow--in the case of these nominations--input from the
other side.
I am very concerned about where this is headed. The logical extension
of what the Democrats have done, of course, is to extend this to
legislation as well, which I think creates more of a problem than we
have already in terms of legislation being passed here that is not
reflective of the will of the people, that is not subject to the checks
and balances we would have under a rule where we have to get 60, not
50, votes in order to pass legislation.

A prime example is ObamaCare. Let's be honest. The reason it got
through the Senate was because a special provision was used called
reconciliation, which is supposed to be used for budget matters,
revenues, and spending.
I believe that was an inappropriate use of reconciliation as do many
other observers who are objective observers and have followed this
place for a long time.
ObamaCare was pushed through, not with 60 votes--because after the
election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, they didn't have 60 votes to
get ObamaCare through because not a single Republican would support it
because Republicans supported an alternative plan. So without a single
Republican supporting it, Democrats chose to ram it through with 50
votes. That is all they needed because they used this so-called
reconciliation provision that, again, is supposed to be for budget
issues, not health care.
I think the results are now plain to see. We have law in place that
is affecting my constituents and affecting the constituents of every
Senator, that has very negative consequences. Did we need to do
something to reform the health care system? Yes. Was the status quo
acceptable? No. Is it acceptable now? No.
There are smart reforms to reduce costs, smart reforms add more
choice, to allow markets to work better in health care, to not only
provide for better quality and better choice but also lower costs.
Those were not pursued. We still have the opportunity now to do that.
I talked earlier about the fact that health care is a big concern to
the American people. It certainly is among my constituents in Ohio. We
do a tele-townhall meeting periodically. We had a couple of them last
month where I will get maybe 25,000 Ohioans on the phone at any one
time and talk to them about the issues of the day and hear their
questions and concerns.
During the tele-townhall meeting, we ask a poll question, such as
what is the most important issue you think is facing the country? We
ask whether it is national security and terrorism, energy policy and
costs at the pump, health care and health care costs, jobs and the
economy, or some other issue.
It is interesting in that every single tele-townhall meeting I have
had over the past few years has always been that jobs and the economy
is the No. 1 issue. Again, there may be 25,000 people at any one time.
When we asked the poll question, that has been the No. 1 question.
Usually the No. 2 issue is debt and deficit and spending.
The last two tele-townhalls we did last month--guess what the No. 1
issue was. It was not jobs and the economy or debt and deficit. It was
about health care because people are so concerned about what ObamaCare
is doing to them and their families.
I will let them speak for themselves. Some of us were on the floor a
few weeks ago talking about this, but since that time I have received a
lot of stories from people I represent.
Here is one from Susan from Batavia which is in Clermont County in
southern Ohio. She says:

I am a single mom. I pay for my own health insurance. I am
active and fit. I have cycled over 4,000 miles this year. I
am seldom sick. In the 3 years I have paid for my own
insurance, I went to the doctor once for illness. My rate was
$146 a month. In September I received a letter from Anthem
saying that my plan does not meet the requirements of the
Affordable Care Act and will be discontinued as of January 1,
2014. I was offered the same coverage I had--not for $146 a
month but for $350 a month.

To Susan from Batavia, thanks for your story and letting us know what
is happening and how this is affecting you as a single mom who is
taking care of herself, doing the right things, and had a plan that
worked for her and was told, no, the government knows best. You can't
have your plan. Here is the plan you have to have, and in order to have
comparable coverage we are going to raise your rates by over double.
This is from Mike from Westlake in northeast Ohio. Mike says:

I own a small business. Our health insurance rates for
single employees under 30 went from $198 per month last year
to $650 per month this year. That is a 260-percent increase
thanks to ObamaCare. This bill is going to put small
businesses out of business.

Here is one from William from Columbus, OH:

We were paying $540 per month but received a letter from
Anthem stating that the rates would increase to $662 per
month beginning September 2013 and then $1,014 per month in
September 2014 as a result of the requirements per ObamaCare.
If that wasn't bad enough, our family doctor of 25 years
informed us that he will end his practice on January 1,
2014. The reason being is the government requirements of
ObamaCare just made it too difficult to continue.

That is William from Columbus, talking about an issue of price,
obviously, going from $540 a month to $1,014 per month. But it is also
about choice because his doctor is stepping out because of ObamaCare.
Rachel from Solon says:

My family owns a small business. We were notified that our
current health care plan is substandard at $860 per month. To
comply, we now must pay $1,880 a month. This is beyond
outrageous.

That is what Rachel says. I agree with her: $860 to $1,880 per
month--more than double--in order for her to have health care as a
small business owner for her and her husband.
Jon from Dublin:

We currently have a high-deductible plan from Anthem and
pay $331 per month. We are perfectly happy with our plan. It
provides wellness visits for free, which is what we really
need, and then catastrophic coverage in case of something
very unpleasant. When I recently reviewed our coverage and
tried to renew it, I asked what an equivalent plan would cost
under the exchange. The quote I received was for $833 per
month.

Remember, he was paying $331 per month. He likes his plan with
wellness visits and catastrophic coverage. It goes from $331 per month
to $833 per month.
Back to his letter:

The deductible even went up from $11,000 to $12,700.

So this notion that people have to get out of these plans because
their deductible is too high--the one that is acceptable based on
ObamaCare and this top-down approach is now a higher deductible.
He says:

My family simply cannot afford this plan.

Here is Sarah from Raymond, OH. Sarah writes--and this is painful.
These are painful. But Sarah writes:

I am literally crying right now because of our insurance.
My family's new monthly cost starting January 1 is $323.82
biweekly and $647.64 a month, a difference of $420 in what we
currently pay, and the new plan offers less with more out-of-
pocket expenses. The ACA has failed and it is hurting my
family, not helping.

Here is Chuck from West Chester:

I tried to give this health care thing the benefit of the
doubt. I went to the Web site and all the estimates are more
expensive than my canceled policy. My canceled policy was not
only cheaper; it was better, and I don't qualify for any
subsidies. Do I have any choice besides paying more money?

Chuck, I am probably not qualified to give advice, but I will anyway.
Your choice is to pay a penalty or pay more. That is what the
government is telling you. That is what ObamaCare is telling you.
Cynthia from Canton, OH:

I am a substitute teacher. Recently I received notice that
I was not getting jobs every day like I have been for most of
the past 13 years. I am a good, dependable sub, and I work
for $70 a day before taxes. I contacted the school system and
was told that they are watching any sub to prevent over 30
hours a week because of the Affordable Care Act.

Cynthia's letter to me, unfortunately, is something that I am hearing
all over the State of Ohio. It is that people are being told: We need
to keep you under 30 hours. She is finding out

[[Page S8726]]

as a substitute teacher in Canton, OH, that she can't get the jobs she
used to get because they are telling her they want to watch the subs to
prevent anybody getting more than 30 hours a week because of the
Affordable Care Act. My colleagues probably know this: Under the act,
if a person works over 30 hours a week, that person is considered full-
time; therefore, the company has to provide the health care insurance
that, again, this top-down approach insists on; not the health
insurance you may want or your employer may think is appropriate, but
the health care insurance that the Affordable Care Act thinks is
appropriate. So companies are telling folks, as in the case of this
substitute teacher--private and public sector--we need to keep you
under 30 hours because we simply can't afford that kind of health care.
Here is Mark from Urbana, OH:

My wife and I are farmers. We have our own private health
insurance, which is not cheap. We just learned that our
insurer is canceling our plan and that the ObamaCare plan
will double our premiums to more than $1,000 per month. My
wife is 55 years old. We do not need maternity coverage or
free birth control or so much other coverage mandated by
ObamaCare. We are modest, middle income people. What we need
in this country is a policy to make health care more
affordable. We can do this if we let Americans determine
their own health care needs and shop for the best and most
affordable care. Why not medical savings accounts for
everyone? They would be privately owned so that no one is
chained to their employer-sponsored plan. Why not require
that health care providers post prices of their services? We
can come up with much better alternatives to ObamaCare.
Please help us.

I agree with him. We can come up with much better alternatives,
including letting people save money for their own health care. Why
should we want to discourage that? By the way, those HSA savings
accounts that Mark is talking about that he would like to see for
everyone, those are made less attractive because they take away some of
the health care tax benefit.

So we are moving the wrong way. We are moving away from people taking
care of their own health needs and encouraging them again to focus on
wellness and prevention, understanding that it is their dollar that is
at stake and allowing them to build up a little nest egg if they are
healthy and if they are able to avoid a health problem, and if they do
have a problem, they have coverage, with a high deductible, and they
have coverage to take care of it. People should be able to make that
decision on their own if that is what is best for them and their
family.
Here is Brian from Mentor:

My family's Aetna plan has been canceled due to ObamaCare.
My old plan was $454 per month with a $5,000 per person
deductible. The same deductible policy to buy a new plan is
$1,038 per month--

more than double for Bryan.
Dean from Sandusky:

Ever since I lost my job in 2009, I have been purchasing my
own health insurance. Last month, I received a letter in the
mail stating that my plan is being canceled due to the ACA. I
was told to look at plans on the exchange, which I did, and
found a comparable plan that is over twice the cost of what I
now have. In addition, this is over half of my monthly
pension. I simply cannot afford this.
I have always been a responsible, hard-working, self-
dependent person. Now, because of the actions of our
government, for the first time in my life I will not have
health care coverage. I am 59 years old now and I need this
coverage. I am outraged, to say the least. How can our
government do this to us? I will remember this come election
time.

That is Dean from Sandusky. He lost his job and picked up a plan on
the individual market that worked for him. He is now going to have to
pay twice as much. He can't afford it. He is not covered. He is on a
fixed income. It sounds as though he is going to go without coverage.
By the way, new polling data is out showing that a lot of young
people are going to go without coverage. One number is 28 percent of
them are; another number is closer to half. I don't know how many. But
a lot of young people I talk to say they would rather pay the penalty
and take the risk than be covered. That is a problem for them, but it
is also a problem for the Affordable Care Act because it is based on
those people coming into the system and, frankly, providing the ability
for others to get coverage under the risk pools that are set up under
ObamaCare.
So the stories I have told are real people facing real problems and
they are problems that Washington created for them and their families.
They were fine with their coverage. They liked their coverage. I know
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have their own stories
about people who are getting coverage and benefiting from it,
particularly those with preexisting conditions. I understand that. But
these stories really obscure the question we should be debating on the
floor. I agree we should cover people with preexisting conditions, and
so do most Republicans. The question is how do we do it.
So when Democrats come to the floor and tell me, Rob, you have all of
these stories about people who cannot afford health insurance anymore
and are having a really hard time on the individual market, but we will
tell our stories of folks with preexisting conditions, my answer is
that I also believe we ought to cover those people. I don't dispute
that. We want to get coverage for more Americans. That is not the
question we are debating. The real question is whether ObamaCare, with
its mandates, its top-down, centralized controls is the way to
accomplish those goals.
If the President and my friends on the other side of the aisle
believe that the only way to increase coverage is to make everyone to
pay more, to force millions of Americans to give up their insurance, to
make people lose their doctors, then they should say that is what their
plan is because that is what is happening.
A lack of honesty and transparency, in my view, is one of the great
failures of the Affordable Care Act. I believe ObamaCare was sold to
the American people under false pretenses. President Obama famously
said, ``If you like your health care, you can keep it.'' He said, ``If
you like your health care, you can keep it, period.'' But the one thing
he could not do then was keep his word. He had to have known it then.
All of the information coming out indicates that was knowledge he
should have had, yet he kept saying it. What began as a broken Web site
and cancellation notices has turned into sticker shock for millions of
Americans who are seeing their health care costs soar under ObamaCare.
By the way, as I said earlier, these rising costs are not a mistake in
ObamaCare; they were intended in ObamaCare. Under ObamaCare, millions
of Americans have to pay more for insurance in order for the program to
work. The Web site can be fixed. I assume it will be at some point,
although they are certainly having a tough time with it. But this basic
premise that is the heart of ObamaCare that other people's costs have
to go up, and pretty dramatically, cannot be fixed.
The reason goes back to a critical choice made at the beginning of
the health care debate. There are different approaches to covering the
uninsured, covering those with preexisting conditions. The approach
favored by Republicans, at least many Republicans, including me, would
create real economic incentives to bring the uninsured into covered
access to health care while taking critical steps to reduce the costs
of health care. One of the reasons people aren't covered is cost. The
best way to lower the number of the uninsured is to make it easier and
less expensive for people to get insurance in the first place.
The President chose to take a very different approach. He chose not
to focus on the costs, which have gone up; not to focus on providing
incentives for people to get coverage, but instead a top-down,
centralized approach. He turned to mandates. ObamaCare requires that
all Americans purchase insurance. It mandates what type of insurance
that coverage includes, and it requires that private insurers accept
all comers, including those with preexisting conditions.
Again, we all want to ensure that those with chronic conditions
receive health care, but it also changes the way health insurance
underwriting works. Normally, insurance works by pooling resources for
some future harm. So for those who have preexisting conditions,
obviously the harm is already present and their premiums are not going
to be able to pay for their care, for the most part. That is why these
high-risk pools in States are something I support and others support,
providing tax incentives for that. But the offset is these often have
astronomical costs. That is how ObamaCare was designed.

[[Page S8727]]

So this notion of these costs are going up and we didn't intend
that--of course they intended it. It is exactly the way they intended
it. ObamaCare needs more money than these policies would provide, so
these private plans we talked about earlier--people in the individual
market--many of which are high deductibles, low cost, catastrophic
plans, many of the people who have these plans are young people who are
relatively healthy. These folks were forced to buy insurance they
didn't need because ObamaCare needed the money. The plans they had met
the needs of those people--met the customers' needs--but, frankly,
didn't meet the government's needs. So those plans were regulated out
of existence, padded with extra benefits and consumer protections that
many of those who chose this policy didn't want, as Mark from Urbana
said, and will never use. Sometimes these policies are double or
triple, and we have heard cases where they are five, 10 times more.
What we have seen in the individual market is only the beginning.
Next year, the same mandates and government outreach that have hit the
individual market will come to effect for the employer-based market as
well, where the vast majority of us get our health care, through our
employer. So at some point 80 million Americans will likely see their
health plans canceled or sold and replaced by--when the employer-based
market comes under the ObamaCare mandates, which, as we recall, is
going to happen about a year from now, because it was put off for a
year--that was the delay the President put in effect--we are going to
see much more of this.
Again, there is a better way. There is a way to put this partisanship
behind us and do this together. We talked earlier about the fact when
you cram something through with all votes on one side of the aisle and
ignore the other, we tend to get a policy that doesn't work for the
American people.
That is exactly what we are seeing here. There is a better way, and
we still need to pursue it. Instead of having less choices and higher
costs for all Americans, there is a way to put together a plan that
actually helps people.
This is something that Republicans and Democrats alike need to focus
on. Instead of a top-down, centralized, government-knows-best solution,
we need to go to solutions that actually reduce the costs of health
care and provide more choice in health care. It can be done.
ObamaCare should be repealed and replaced, in my view, but it should
be replaced. The status quo is not acceptable. I think the failures of
ObamaCare point the way as to what we should do--reduce the costs.
There are steps we could take today; for instance, remove the shackles
of government regulations from the market. Let health care insurance
and health care be less expensive. Let health care insurance be sold
across State lines. That is something you can do with Federal
legislation that will provide more competition. It will lower the cost.
There are some areas in my State where there are only a couple plans. I
am told under ObamaCare, in some States there are only a couple plans.
You want to have more competition, not less.
We should give people the ability to get health care on their own. We
talked about health savings accounts. We should help create a healthy,
vibrant individual health care market by giving people a tax incentive
to purchase health insurance comparable to incentives they would
receive with employer-provided coverage where there now are tax
incentives to provide health care coverage. Let's deal with these
frivolous lawsuits. That reduces the costs.
So I appreciate the fact that one of my colleagues has joined me on
the floor and is going to continue this discussion. But I wish to go
back to where we started. It does not have to be this way. What we are
doing in the Senate by taking away the rights of the minority is not
going to help us with regard to getting better judges. It did not help
us in terms of cramming ObamaCare through with 51 votes rather than the
normal 60 that should have been required. It does not help for us to
now continue down this track of a government, one-size-fits-all
approach to health care. We have heard the stories. We see what is
happening and have not even hit most Americans yet because they get
coverage from their employer.
Instead, let's work to together. Let's provide more choice. Let's
reduce the costs. Let's ensure that everybody has access to health care
that works for them and their families. If we do that, the American
people might regain a little bit of trust in this institution and in
this town.
Madam President, I would like to yield the floor, if I could, for my
colleague and your colleague from North Dakota.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I thank the esteemed Senator from Ohio
for his remarks and express my support for his remarks as well.
Myself and other colleagues have been on the floor today talking
about the need to work in a bipartisan way. Obviously, the business
before the Senate right now is nominations, and we want to emphasize
again the importance of advice and consent in the nomination process
but that it needs to be on a bipartisan basis.
The change that, of course, has been made is that now the majority
party can vote through, confirm a nomination without any input, any
consent, any debate from the minority party. That is an issue not only
in terms of the nomination process, the confirmation process of advise
and consent, but that is also very much an issue in legislation.
The importance of bipartisanship, whether it is in advise and consent
in the confirmation process or whether it is in passing legislation, is
seen because we have a country of more than 300 million people--
Republicans, Democrats, Independents--but at the end of the day, if we
are going to have broad-based public support for the work we do, for
the legislation we pass, it has to be done in a bipartisan way.
My colleagues have been pointing that out in terms of the
confirmation process. Also, they have been pointing that out in the
context of the Affordable Care Act and ObamaCare. That is legislation
that was passed on a partisan basis. One party, and one party only,
voted for that legislation. What we have seen is that does not work.
To get broad-based support for any legislation--let alone something
as important as reform of health care--both parties have to be part of
that work product. That is the only way we are going to get broad-based
support across this great Nation on the important issues we face.
Earlier today I read story after story from people from our great
State expressing real challenges, real difficulties--the higher costs,
higher deductibles, higher premiums, higher copays--they are facing as
a result of the Affordable Care Act. I talked about the need to engage
in the right kind of health care reform, the kind of health care reform
that truly empowers individuals to pick their own health care insurance
and their own health care provider; the need to pass the kind of
legislation that will help us provide expanded health savings accounts
tied with higher deductible policies that will encourage our young
people to purchase health care insurance because they will be able to
do so with lower premiums; the need for tort reform to help bring down
health care costs; the need to increase competition across State lines
so people have more choice, and with that competition, lower prices
when it comes to choosing their health care insurance; and I talked
about the need to reform Medicare, as the Presiding Officer knows, to
provide the right incentives.
Look at our great State of North Dakota. We have lower health care
costs than most other States, and we have very good outcomes. For that
we get not more Medicare reimbursement but less. That is exactly the
wrong incentive--providing more reimbursement to States that have high
costs regardless of outcome and lower reimbursement for States even
with lower costs and better outcomes; in essence, getting less
reimbursement, getting penalized for good performance. That is exactly
the wrong approach and why we so desperately need to make reforms that
create the right approach.
These are the kinds of solutions we are advocating that we will
continue to advocate to put in place for the American people. We need
Members on both sides of the aisle to come together with

[[Page S8728]]

a step-by-step, comprehensive approach, market-based approach, that
will truly create more choice, more competition, and empower people--
empower people--the great citizens of this country to take control of
their health care decisions and make the decisions that best suit them
and their families.
I see that my colleague from the great State of South Dakota is in
the Chamber. As always, I am very pleased to see him, and at this time
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. THUNE. Thank you, Madam President. I thank my colleague from
North Dakota--both colleagues from North Dakota who are here in the
Chamber--and I appreciate his leadership as a former Governor,
understanding these issues such as health care, which do profoundly
impact the people whom we all represent in the Dakotas. There are some
unique challenges, obviously, of meeting the health care needs of
people in our States because we have a big geography, lots of wide open
space. We do not have the big population centers that are in other
places in the country, and so health care delivery and coverage of
health care, health care insurance and access to it are enormously
important to the people we all represent.
I would say it has become abundantly clear that the American people
are rejecting ObamaCare, which is the law that was passed several years
ago in the Senate, in the house, signed into law by the President. I
remember being here at the time and voting on that on Christmas Eve. We
were actually here. It was December 24, 4 years ago, I think now, in
2009. We were right up here until the end, and this was, I would say,
jammed through the Senate.
The majority had the votes. They were not all that concerned about
having participation or input from those of us who served in the other
party--as a consequence of that just shoved this thing through right on
Christmas Eve. I think that was an unfortunate way in which to conduct
the business of the Senate, to enact major legislation. It is very rare
around here that legislation of that consequence that literally impacts
one-sixth of the American economy is shoved through on a partisan
party-line basis.
So that is the way it was done. We said at the time--many of us were
down here on the floor over and over predicting that because of the way
this was structured it was going to lead to higher insurance premiums,
it was going to lead to fewer jobs in our economy, a lot of stress on
employers that were trying to create those jobs. All of that is coming
to fruition as we hear now reports day after day after day across this
country--from my State of South Dakota, other States across the
country--from people who are feeling the very real and harmful impacts
of the ObamaCare legislation, both in terms of higher premiums but also
canceled coverages, higher deductibles, things that affect the
pocketbooks of millions of Americans and issues that are discussed and
debated at kitchen tables, but they are profoundly important to the
economic well-being of people in this country.
When you are seeing the dramatic increases in premiums, the dramatic
increases in deductibles, the loss of coverage, the canceled coverages
we are seeing across the country right now, it is very disturbing to
people. That is why I think you have seen this widespread rejection of
ObamaCare.
Interestingly enough, yesterday Health and Human Services released
new enrollment numbers for the exchanges for October and November. Over
the course of those 2 months, in my State of South Dakota, just 372
South Dakotans--or less than one-half of one-tenth of 1 percent of my
State's residents--signed up for health care on the exchanges.
Ten other States also had fewer than 1,000 people sign up.
Oregon, which embraced ObamaCare very early on, had just 44
enrollments. Think about that--44 enrollments to show for 2 months
thanks to their Web site, which suffered an even more catastrophic
failure than the Federal Web site.
In all, there were 364,682 enrolled in the exchanges during the
months of October and November--not even one-quarter of the number the
administration had projected after 2 months. To meet its goal of 3.3
million signups by December 31, the administration would have to sign
up almost 3 million people in the next 3 weeks or more than 145,000
every single day.
Considering that the administration has averaged fewer than 6,000
enrollments a day over the past 2 months, I would not want to put a lot
of money on them being able to meet that goal. It is obvious from the
sluggish enrollment numbers that the American people are rejecting
ObamaCare. But if anyone needs more proof, three new polls came out
last week, all reporting strong opposition to the law among the
American people.
The Pew Research Center poll reports that 54 percent of the American
people disapprove of the President's health care law.
According to Pew's most recent survey, the percentage of Americans
who think the health care law has ``had a negative effect on the
country'' rose 11 percent just since September of this year.
In the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released yesterday, the
President's disapproval rating reached an alltime high of 54 percent.
When asked what issue shaped their view of the President this year, 60
percent cited ObamaCare.
The same Wall Street Journal poll also found the number of Americans
who think the President's health care law was ``a bad idea'' reached an
alltime high.
Quinnipiac University also released a poll yesterday that found that
57 percent of the American people oppose ObamaCare.
The President's health care law has never enjoyed strong popular
support. But Democrats and the President argued that public support for
the law should not be judged until the law's benefits were in effect.
The law is now in effect. People can buy insurance on the exchanges.
Yet opposition to the law is not declining; it is the opposite that is
happening. It is actually rising. Opposition to the law is increasing
over time as more and more people become aware of the impact on their
personal economic well-being.
Quinnipiac reported a 10-point jump in opposition to the law between
October 1 of this year and December 11.
Meanwhile, support for the law, already low, dropped a further six
points over the same time period.
Even worse for the President, it is not just Republicans and
Independents who are fleeing the President's signature law. Many of the
President's strongest supporters, those who initially supported his
health care law and helped reelect him last year, are deserting the
President.
The Pew Research Center found a 10-point drop in support among
African Americans since September and a 9-point drop in support among
Hispanic Americans--both groups who strongly supported the President in
the last election.
The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll also found ``faith in Mr. Obama
has dropped noticeably in recent months among young voters and
Hispanics, two groups that had been among his steadiest supporters.''
So the question, I guess, is why are the American people and even the
President's strongest supporters rejecting ObamaCare? Why, now that the
law is mostly in effect, is opposition growing rather than declining?
Well, I think the answer is very simple. It is because the law has
failed to deliver on the President's promises. From rising premiums, to
canceled health plans, to lost doctors, ObamaCare is doing the exact
opposite of what the President promised it would do. The President said
his new law would reduce the cost of health care. In fact, he claimed
families would see their premiums fall by an average of $2,500 a year.
But that promise fell apart almost immediately after ObamaCare was
enacted. In fact, what we are seeing out there is that the average
family has seen its health care premiums rise by more than $2,500 since
the law's passage. Now that the law is being implemented, those numbers
are only going higher. Those families who are lucky enough to keep
their plans have been receiving insurance renewal notices with
staggering premium increases. Premiums are doubling or

[[Page S8729]]

even tripling for many families, and deductibles are increasing as
well. Imagine getting a $600-a-month increase in premiums. That is
$7,200 a year. How on Earth is a working family, a middle-class family
in this country supposed to be able to afford that?
The President would like you to believe that these Americans'
updated, more expensive health plans are far superior to what they had
before. But, in fact, many of these plans were as good or better than
what these families are getting now. Many of these plans are falling
short of people's expectations because they have higher deductibles. Of
course, with all of the mandated coverages that are in many of these
plans, there are all kinds of things that people who are subscribing,
trying to get on the exchanges, are finding they do not need. I have
had people in my State of South Dakota who are in their fifties and
sixties who are asking why they need to have things such as maternity
coverage.
You see that as these letters and emails and phone calls are coming
into your office and people are finding out about the specifics--the
details, if you will--of these various plans, they are rejecting them
not only because they have higher premiums, but they are also plans
that are not sufficient or adequate compared to what they are currently
experiencing with the plans they had before. Now thousands of families
around the country are going to be struggling to pay huge premium
increases without receiving any additional benefit.
The situation is no better on the exchanges. While there are
certainly plans with low premiums on the exchanges, many of those plans
have deductibles that are so high that, barring some catastrophic
illness or injury, the family might as well not have insurance at all.
A family without insurance who typically pays $8,000 a year in health
care costs may see no benefit at all from an insurance plan with a
$12,000 deductible. In fact, they may spend more on health care because
now they have to pay high insurance premiums as well. So you have
higher insurance premiums, higher deductibles, meaning in many cases
that they are not going to reach the threshold that would trigger a
payment from their plan, and so they are getting no additional benefit,
but they are paying way more for the same or worse coverage.
In addition to promising a new era of affordable health care, the
President also promised that nothing would change for people who liked
the health care they had. He repeated many times--we have all seen the
videos of this--that if you like your health care plan, you can keep
it. He even went so far as to say ``You can keep it, period'' to make
it even more emphatic. ``If you like your doctors, you can keep your
doctor, period.'' But Americans are now finding out that was not even
close to being true. Millions of Americans have seen the health care
plans that they liked canceled by insurance companies in response to
new ObamaCare regulations. So far, more than 5 million Americans have
lost their health care plans as a direct result of ObamaCare. In fact,
today, millions more Americans have lost health care than have gained
it under the President's signature law.
Millions of Americans are also realizing that they cannot keep their
doctors or their hospitals. ObamaCare put in place scores of new
regulations on insurance companies and the plans they offer. To meet
all of the ObamaCare requirements while still getting their plans
approved, insurance companies have been forced to drastically shrink
their networks of doctors and hospitals. As a consequence, many
families are finding that their new health care plans force them to
give up doctors they have been seeing literally for years.
That may not sound so terrible to some of us if we do not have a
close relationship with our doctors, but what if you are a cancer
patient who relies on your network of doctors and oncologists to
coordinate your lifesaving care?
More than one cancer patient has spoken openly in the press about the
struggle to find a replacement health care plan after having their
original plan canceled as a result of ObamaCare, a plan that covers all
of the doctors and the medicines they are currently using.
Joan Carrico, a nurse from Michigan and a cancer patient, published a
heartbreaking column on CNBC yesterday updating readers on her
struggles to find a health care plan that covers all of her care. I
will let her words speak for her and the other Americans in her
position:

I can't begin to describe how devastated I am. Many people
like me, who are in a difficult health crisis and fighting to
regain good health, are finding it very difficult--if not
impossible--to make sure that we can keep our doctors and
receive the chemotherapy and other treatments and medicines
that are keeping us alive. . . . I'm scared and wondering
what surprises are around the corner.

Well, Ms. Carrico brings up another thing people may lose under
ObamaCare besides their doctors and their health care plans; that is,
their medications.
Forbes published an article this week outlining the reasons ObamaCare
may cause millions of Americans to lose access to the medications they
are currently taking. The author points out that many exchange plans
have steep cost-sharing requirements for prescription drugs. Purchasing
a bronze plan, for example, the article points out, means you will
likely be responsible for 40 percent of a drug's cost. That may not be
so bad if we are talking about a common antibiotic, but that gets very
expensive when we are talking about more sophisticated drugs, such as
cancer drugs and other lifesaving treatments.
The second reason patients may lose access to their medications,
according to Forbes, is that some plans simply may not cover the
prescription drugs that person has been taking. Out-of-pocket limits,
the article notes, do not apply if the drug you are taking is not on
your new insurance company's ``approved'' list of drugs. You may find
yourself paying for a very expensive drug without any benefit at all
from your new insurance plan.
In addition to higher costs and the loss of their doctor and health
care plans, there is another reason Americans are rejecting ObamaCare.
ObamaCare is not just bad for health care, it is bad for the economy.
New health care regulations are discouraging businesses from hiring and
expanding their businesses.
Earlier this week a CBS News article reported that ``nearly half of
U.S. companies said they are reluctant to hire full-time employees
because of the law.'' The Hill reported on a recent survey by the
National Association of Manufacturers that found that 77 percent of
manufacturers cite soaring health care costs as the biggest issue
facing their business. The title of the Washington Post article on the
health care law's impact on small businesses says it all: ``Health care
law's aggregation rules pose a compliance nightmare for small
businesses.'' That is the headline of the Washington Post.
Small businesses are responsible for a majority of the job creation
in this country. If we look at some States around the country, my State
of South Dakota being a good example, most of the jobs, a huge
proportion of the jobs created in States like mine are created by small
businesses, but the health care law is discouraging them from hiring,
drowning them in regulations, and promising stiff new requirements if
they have 50 or more employees. I can't tell you how many times, when I
am traveling in my State of South Dakota--or, for that matter,
traveling outside my State but specifically in my State of South
Dakota--when I am talking to businesses, to people who are creating
jobs, investors, the uncertainty associated with this health care law
and the new costs because of its mandates and its requirements are
making it more difficult and more expensive for them to create jobs.
So what are we seeing as a result of that? We are seeing a slower,
much more sluggish economy; chronic high unemployment; and fewer jobs,
particularly for people who are coming out of college. Younger
Americans in particular are paying a dear price because of the slow
economy. When businesses do not hire, the economy suffers. Every
American who has spent weeks, months, or years struggling to find a job
suffers too.
I know my Democratic colleagues here in the Senate know all of this.
That is why some of them are starting to run away from ObamaCare too.
Democrats in Congress may have supported the law, but now that they
have

[[Page S8730]]

seen how it looks in reality, some of them--particularly those running
for reelection--are eager to distance themselves from it. No one
running for reelection wants to be too closely associated with the law
that is raising Americans' health care costs, taking away their health
care choices, and hurting an already struggling economy.
The American people have spoken. They do not like ObamaCare. They do
not want ObamaCare. They cannot afford ObamaCare. It is time for
Democrats in Congress to start listening. I always think it is never
too late to do the right thing. I hope that as more Americans start to
weigh in and start to engage in the discussion about how this is
impacting them personally, that will have such a profound impact on
Members of Congress here in Washington, DC, that they will come to the
conclusion that many of us reached a long time ago; that is, this is a
bad, flawed bill, built upon a faulty foundation that is destined to
fail, and that the best thing we can do is pull it out by the roots and
start over in a way that makes sense for the American people, that
addresses the challenges we have in our health care system in America
today but does it in a way that does not require the government to take
over literally one-sixth of the American economy and create political
control--command and control from here in Washington, DC, over
literally one-sixth of the American economy.
One out of every six dollars in our economy today is spent on health
care. Think about that. There are very few areas where you can say that
complete, total government intervention impacts that big of a swath of
our economy. Unfortunately, government intervention is impacting way
too much of our economy. As a consequence, we are paying a price in the
form of fewer jobs, chronic high unemployment, and a slower, sluggish,
anemic economy, which is making it more difficult for people to find
jobs and more difficult for us to get ourselves out of what is a very
difficult economy.
My hope would be that before this is all said and done--and I do not
know when this will happen; hopefully sooner rather than later because
I think the sooner we make that adjustment and decide this was the
wrong course and reverse course and go in a different direction, the
less damage we will do to people's livelihoods, to their personal
economic circumstances, and the less damage we will do to the overall
economy in this country. I hope that realization comes sooner rather
than later. But I think what will drive it--I have maintained all along
that ultimately the only thing that can really change this is the
American people because clearly we have a President of the United
States for whom this is his signature achievement. Unless he starts
hearing from the American people, he is unlikely to change.
We have a lot of people here in the Senate--every Democrat here today
who was here in 2009 voted for this. Not a single Republican who was
here in 2009 voted for it. That is probably one of the reasons this is
such a failed policy. It did not have input or buy-in from the other
side. It did not get some of the best ideas coming to the forefront.
There was a much better way to do this. Many of us who have been
around here for very long have been proposing solutions to address
health care challenges that have been rejected by Democrats here in
Congress.
We have talked a lot over the years about allowing people to buy
insurance across State lines. Why wouldn't we create interstate
competition? Competition in a free market economy generally, as a
matter of principle and as a matter of practice, drives down price. If
we create more competition and give people more choices, that tends to
drive down prices. That is a fairly basic economic principle.
Why wouldn't we allow small businesses to join larger groups where
they can get the benefit of group purchasing power and thereby put
downward pressure on the cost of health care in this country?
Why wouldn't we allow for expanded opportunities for people to take
care of their own health care circumstances by allowing for expanded,
larger health savings accounts, opportunities for people to put money
aside in an account, perhaps buy a catastrophic policy with a high
deductible but tax free. They can put money aside that allows them to
cover some of those health care costs that don't reach that
catastrophic level.
What about finally doing something to reduce the cost of defensive
medicine, which means we would have to reform our medical malpractice
laws in this country and weed out a lot of the junk lawsuits that clog
our legal system and make it so much more expensive to deliver health
care. I talk to physicians all the time for whom concern about
liability is a major issue. It creates overutilization. You take all
this great technology we have in America today, and you have physicians
who are worried about being sued. Of course, they are probably going to
run duplicative tests. Anybody who is involved in the delivery of
health care in this country knows very well about the cost of
practicing defensive medicine. There have been many studies done on it,
all of which conclude that it adds significantly to the cost of
delivering health care in this country. There are differences of
opinion about how much that is, but there is no question that it is a
factor in the high cost of health care.
There have been proposals. There are a number of my colleagues on
this side of the aisle who have suggested allowing people to have their
own personal, refundable tax credit for the purchase of health
insurance and to create equity between the tax treatment of health care
that people can get through their employer with that which they would
be able to get in the individual marketplace.
Again, the principle is greater choice, greater competition, and
therefore lower prices. It is a fairly straightforward and simple
formula when it comes to a market-based approach to how we deal with
the health care crisis we have in this country.
Clearly, we have programs such as Medicare and Medicaid where the
government is fairly heavily involved in the delivery of health care in
this country. That too is an area where we need to be looking at how we
can reform and make those programs work more efficiently, more
effectively, in a way that hopefully maximizes the return the taxpayers
get on those particular programs.
If we look at programs such as Medicare, there was a good example a
few years ago, which was Medicare Part D, which is the only program I
can think of since I have been here--or, for that matter, since I have
been following policies that have been put in place over time--that has
actually cost less than what it was projected to cost. Why? Because it
allowed for competition. It created a private component where private
insurance companies would vie for, would bid for the business of senior
citizens across this country when it comes to their medications. As a
consequence of that, we have seen those costs come down to a reasonable
level. It actually has cost less than what was anticipated.
That is a principle we could start to apply in other areas. There are
a number of things that could be done to reduce the cost of delivery of
health care when it comes to the component of it that the government is
heavily involved with.
But the point, very simply, is that whenever we create more choices,
when we create more competition, it has a downward impact on costs. It
drives costs down. So why weren't a lot of these things considered or
incorporated into ObamaCare when it was passed? Well, we all know the
answer to that. It is because the majority party, which had the votes,
decided to do it their way. They decided to go their own way, and as a
consequence we ended up with a bill, a piece of legislation, and now a
huge new program that has been an utter disaster.
I think any objective observer would come to that conclusion based
upon the rollout of the Web site and everything subsequent to that that
impacts costs; that impacts people's ability to keep the plan they have
and the doctor they have; that impacts to the economy, which is
overburdened with the cost of regulation in the new law; as well as the
many--and I say ``many''--taxes that were included in the new law.
There were many new taxes included, not to mention lots of cuts to
Medicare, which, interestingly enough, were double-counted. That was
allowed to be used as ``savings'' put in the Medicare

[[Page S8731]]

trust fund, therefore extending the lifespan of Medicare. At the same
time, that was going to be spent on the new health care proposal.
Only in Washington, DC, could someone get away with an accounting
convention that would allow someone to double-count revenue, which is
essentially what happened. We raised that question many times, and
eventually we had a letter from the Congressional Budget Office that
said: Yes, this is double-counting revenue. You are spending the same
money twice.
Yet the majority party had the votes. Around here, it is a function
of math: If you have the votes, you can do pretty much whatever you
want. And that is what they did. We are paying a dear price for that,
but the people who are really paying the biggest price are the American
people, who are seeing these increased premium costs, increased
deductibles, fewer jobs, slower economy, and lower take-home pay. That
is the bottom line.
It boils down to basic economic terms. What we are talking about is a
slower, more sluggish, anemic economy, chronic high unemployment, and
lower take-home pay for middle-class America. In fact, if we look at
average household income, which is something we use as a metric to
measure people's overall economic situations, the average household
income in this country, since 2009 when the President took office, has
decreased by about $3,700 per family. There are a lot of things,
obviously, that contribute to that, but I don't think it is any
surprise that when you drive up the costs of something that everybody
needs in this country--and by that, I mean health care--in the form of
higher premiums and higher deductibles, it is inevitable that you are
going to see a lot of people's household incomes impacted by that. Then
you couple and layer on top of that the impact it has on the economy.
When you have a sluggish economy creating fewer jobs, that, too, has a
very devastating impact on people's personal economic circumstances and
livelihood. So average household income, since the President took
office, has gone down by about $3,700--lower take-home pay. That is
another of the results and the outcomes and the ultimate impacts, if
you will, of policies created in Washington, DC, that make it more
expensive and more difficult to create jobs in this country.
As I said earlier, I think ultimately what will get us to where we
really can change this, change course, change direction, take this
thing which is headed for the cliff and turn it around and move it in
the other direction, is going to be the American people. If every
Senator, every Member of Congress, if the White House is hearing what I
am hearing from people in South Dakota, perhaps there is some hope that
we can persuade enough people in Congress that we have to change the
direction we are heading.
I would like to share a few things that I heard from people in my
State of South Dakota.
A male constituent from Sioux Falls, SD, wrote and said:

I just received notice that our health insurance will go up
almost 60 percent due to the ACA, from $718 per month to
$1146 per month. We will also lose our prescription drug
benefit and office co-pay benefit until each of us reaches a
$5,000 deductible. We have maternity benefits now and
pediatric dental and vision care, although I am 64 and my
wife is 59. This will cost us an additional $5,000 per year.

For somebody who is trying to make ends meet in this country, trying
to get the mortgage paid, trying to put a little aside for their kids'
education, $5,000 is real money. That is a tangible impact of this law
on the economic circumstances, the standard of living, the quality of
life this particular couple is experiencing in America today.
ObamaCare is sticking hard-working Americans with higher costs for
unnecessary coverage. Families were denied the ability to keep their
plans--the plans that best fit their needs, lifestyles, and budgets.
The following is a letter we received from a female constituent from
Wilmot, SD:

My husband and I have four small children and purchase our
own health care. My husband runs his own small business and I
am privileged to stay at home. We are very healthy, so we
have always purchased a plan with a large deductible, so we
can afford a reasonable premium.
Today we received our letter from our health insurance
provider letting us know that next month our premium will be
jumping 232 percent! That's over $500 more a month--and we
barely use our health insurance.
We currently live in an 1,800 square foot house and have
been trying to find something bigger. This jump in our
monthly health care premium could prevent us from being able
to afford any kind of monthly house payment.

ObamaCare is cutting into the carefully planned budgets of American
families, holding them back from the futures for which they have
carefully budgeted. This is an example of a family who is trying to get
by--four small kids--and they buy their own health care in the
individual marketplace. The husband is self-employed, runs his own
business, and the mom has been able to stay home and care for those
four kids. They work very hard staying healthy and very rarely use
their health insurance policy. They are going to see a 232-percent
increase, over $500 more a month. They live in a 1,800-square-foot
house. They had hoped to be able to find something a little bit bigger,
and they aren't going to be able to because of the consequences of
ObamaCare.
A female constituent from Spencer, SD, writes:

Thanks to ObamaCare, my monthly premium will increase over
100 percent, which equals 45 percent of my monthly income. My
daughter lost her insurance, as well. The ACA is not
affordable, and if I could tell the President so, I would. My
private insurance did change.

The Obama administration has broken its promise that Americans who
wanted to keep their plans could. We are also learning that this law
simply isn't affordable for many middle-class families, such as this
lady from Spencer, SD, whom the Obama administration said it would
protect when they said: ``If you like your insurance plan, you can keep
it, period.'' A lot of Americans took that to the bank. Clearly, they
should have known better. The double talk coming out of Washington, DC,
is not only frustrating a lot of Americans, it is creating cynicism and
a lack of trust and confidence, which is going to make it difficult to
do big things in the future.
A male constituent from Rapid City, SD, wrote:

I know you did not vote for this--

Thank you--

but I wanted to tell you. My health care premium went from
$640 a month to $1080 a month. My deductible went from $3600
to $5000. I feel like the federal government has stolen over
$5000 a year from me.

Americans feel betrayed by this law, likening the increased rates to
theft by their own government. That is the level of frustration people
across this country are feeling. They are frustrated, they are
discouraged, they are despondent, and they want something to give. They
want something to change. They know we can't continue down this path
and expect that any of these families are going to be able to provide a
better standard of living and a better quality of life for their
children and grandchildren. The family has over a $400 increase in
their monthly premium and a $l,400 increase in their deductible. That
is the effect on this constituent in Rapid City, SD.
A constituent family from Watertown, SD, writes:

You need to know how ObamaCare is harming my life and
health care. We were one of the families that lost their
health care plan. We heard President Obama say, ``if you
like your health care, you can keep it.'' That was a lie.
Our new health care plan is going to cost our family
$21,600 a year compared to the health care plan of 2013
which cost us $7,335.96. That is a 300-plus percent
increase. We are a healthy family of six people. We are
outraged and upset.

Madam President, these letters and calls to my office echo similar
complaints from American families back home in my State of South Dakota
and all across the country. ObamaCare is costing this family more money
and denying them the plan they want. That is the real life, real world
impact.
If you think about it, this is really pretty staggering. This new
health care plan is going to cost this family over $21,000 a year
compared to $7,335 today. A 300-plus percent increase for a healthy
family of six. You can't blame them when they say they are upset and
outraged. Who wouldn't be. Who wouldn't be.
This is from a small business owner from Brookings, SD, who writes:

In the mail today was a letter from my health care
insurance provider . . . and, well,

[[Page S8732]]

guess what? Thanks to the great ObamaCare plan, my monthly
premium almost doubled, and my deductible doubled. I'm a
small business owner, and I would like to hire an employee
next spring. . . . Well, that's not going to happen. When
will those we elect to Washington ever do something to help
people and small businesses?

Madam President, ObamaCare is not only slamming individuals, it is
hitting the small businesses, the job creators that Washington needs to
be protecting. ObamaCare is stopping employers from expanding their
workforce.
In a bigger place, in a big city, this may not have the same domino
effect or the ripple effect that it does in a small State such as South
Dakota where you have a small business owner, such as this gentleman
from Brookings, SD, who wants to expand his business, wants to hire
another employee but is saying that is not going to happen, and the
reason it is not going to happen is because of this huge increase in
their monthly premiums--almost doubling the monthly premium, and
doubling the deductible.
I don't know how an employer in this country today, who is trying to
grow a business, expand the business and provide for themselves and
their families, perhaps put a little aside to use for the kids' college
education or perhaps put a little aside for retirement, deals with the
doubling of probably one of their biggest costs of doing business, and
that is the cost of health care. You double your premiums; you double
your deductible.
This is from a mother in Garretson, SD, who writes:

Next year, our insurance is changing, and I will lose my
family practice doctor of 22 years--the doctor that delivered
all my children and that has cared for our teenage children
all their lives. We will also lose all the backup doctors our
family has seen when we couldn't see our regular doctor. I
was happy with my insurance, and now I have to lose my
doctor.

This is more testimony from people losing their plans and doctors,
which the Obama administration--President Obama himself--repeatedly,
over and over, told the American people they could keep. Families are
losing their trusted doctors.
Whether it is a doctor, a hospital, or prescription drug coverage,
these are all real life examples, real world examples of the impacts of
ObamaCare that point to just one thing, and that is this law, No. 1,
doesn't work, and No. 2, it can't be fixed. There is no way we will be
able to address what most people care about when it comes to their
health care--and that is the cost--when we require the people who
provide that health care coverage to deal with more mandates, more
requirements, higher taxes, all of which are going to get passed on and
paid for by the very people in this country who are just trying to make
ends meet and make a living and provide for their families.
Those are seven examples from my State of South Dakota. I could go
on, because there are many more examples. There are examples from
people all across the country. But I think the point that needs to be
made here--and can't be made often enough--is that these are real world
economic impacts that are affecting every day Americans in a way that
is making it more difficult for them, making their economic
circumstances more complicated and more difficult.
What, if anything, should we here in Washington take away from this?
First off, as I said earlier, this doesn't work. Let's start over.
Let's do this the right way. It is not too late to do that. It is never
too late to do the right thing. We could, if we decided to pull this
thing out by the roots and start over, come up with a whole series of
reforms that would move us in a step-by-step direction toward the
ultimate goal, and that is to address the health care challenge we face
in America today; that is, the cost.
I don't think there is any American family, any individual, as they
think about having to purchase health care--and particularly if you are
a young healthy person, obviously, you don't want to pay a lot for it
because you are probably not going to use a lot. Yet those are the
people who will get hit the hardest. I can't tell you, if you are in
your 20s, how much more you are going to have to pay to get health care
coverage in this country, simply because the law requires what they
call the community rating band be narrow so that people who are
healthier and younger are going to pay much more to cover people who
are less healthy. That is a reality in the legislation and it is a
reality now in terms of the way it is being applied and being
implemented.
So we are looking at a lot of people in this country--for sure
younger Americans, but Americans of all ages as well--who are looking
at higher cost because of these regulations and mandates and
requirements that are being imposed upon the insurance companies and
health care providers in this country. The new taxes, which I mentioned
a little bit earlier, are also something that ultimately get passed on.
When we were debating this, the Democrats argued that we would have
$\1/2\ trillion in tax increases and $\1/2\ trillion in Medicare cuts
and that was how this was to be financed. It turns out when it is fully
implemented the cost is much higher. What they did is they front-end
loaded some of the revenues and back-end loaded the costs. When the
Congressional Budget Office looked at it, in a 10-year window, they
said there will be about a $1 trillion cost.
When it is fully implemented, and we see the full impact of the cost
and the revenues together, the 10-year cost is more like $2\1/2\
trillion. So it was a massive expansion of the Federal Government--
literally the largest expansion of the government in 50 years. It was
literally a takeover of one-sixth of the American economy. That is what
health care represents in this country.
So if we think about that in those terms, how much this thing is
going to cost--and at the time they said: Don't worry, it is all paid
for. It will not add to the deficit--we are finding out now more and
more information, with more and more analysis being done, and it is
coming to light that, in fact, it is going to cost way more than what
was initially expected. I think this is the tip of the iceberg, the tip
of the iceberg in terms of the cost to the American taxpayers. Again,
this is financed by higher taxes, all of which get passed on to the
very people in this country this is supposed to help.

The Medicare cuts that were proposed to help pay for this, many of us
said at the time were cutting hospitals, cutting home health agencies,
cutting nursing homes, cutting hospices--which is what this did. This
was all designed to take $\1/2\ trillion. But again, when it is fully
implemented, it isn't $\1/2\ trillion, it is $1 trillion, when you look
at the full 10-year implementation. But taking this out of Medicare
was, No. 1, going to help pay for all the new benefits that would
happen under ObamaCare; and No. 2, somehow--somehow, don't ask me how--
it was going to be credited to the Medicare trust fund, thereby
extending the life of Medicare.
How do you do that? How do you, with a straight face, say we are
going to take--let's just use the conservative number used by the
Democrats on the floor--$\1/2\ trillion out of Medicare, use it to
finance a new entitlement benefit and somehow be able to say we are
going to credit the Medicare trust fund and that this is actually going
to prolong the lifespan of Medicare? It was absolutely stunning at the
time that we were having this debate and we raised these issues. But
people would say: The CBO says this, the CBO says this. That is because
CBO uses some pretty strange accounting conventions that aren't used
anywhere else in the world. Anyplace else in the world you would be in
jail for doing something like that, for double counting revenue--
spending the same money twice. But that is essentially what happened.
Many of us at the time, as I said, raised this issue on the floor and
tried to point out we are spending the same money twice. At that time
it fell on deaf ears. To me, that is again a symptom of a process that
is geared to get a result with a majority vote driven through here,
jammed through here, forced through here on Christmas Eve. We all had
that vote Christmas Eve morning, and all I can say, as someone who was
here and observed that entire process, we tried our best to warn the
American people about what was going to happen.
It is too bad we didn't at the time decide, as we usually do when we
do major legislation--major legislation that has enormous consequence
for the American people--to do it in a bipartisan way that incorporates
the best

[[Page S8733]]

ideas of both sides of the aisle and perhaps gets a big bipartisan
vote. Usually, when you pass major legislation around here, you are
sort of hoping for 70 to 75 votes, perhaps even more, because you have
the buy-in, everybody has been involved in helping shape and formulate
that legislation. But that wasn't the case when this passed.
Again, I understand. This becomes a function of math. You have the
votes or you don't. That is the way this place operates. At that
particular time, 60 votes was something the majority had the luxury of
and didn't seem to care a whole lot about what Republicans had to say.
The President was bent on getting his initiative through and getting it
his way. Today, that is the reason, in my view at least, we are where
we are, with a piece of legislation the impacts of which are now being
fully felt by the American people, and their conclusion is what I think
their conclusion should be: This is a really raw deal.
I can't tell you, as I think about the broader context, beyond just
the world and the space of health care when it comes to public policy,
how these decisions that are made here, major policy decisions, impact
the broader economy. There is no question, there is no debate about the
impact this is having on the economy.
If you talk to any small business person in this country, anybody who
has the responsibility of providing health insurance for their
employees, who has the responsibility for hiring and employing people
and, hopefully, paying them a living wage and benefits that go with it,
there is no question this is having a detrimental impact on the overall
economy, which continues to sputter along at a 1 to 2 percent growth
rate. The best thing we could do, if we want to really help the
American people and really improve the standard of living and the
quality of life for people in this country, is to first get people
unemployed back to work; but, secondly, get the economy expanding at a
faster rate.
We are growing at 1 to 2 percent a year instead of 3 to 4 percent,
and that has a profound impact in not only the number of jobs created
but also the wealth that is created. When we think about an economy
that is growing at 3 to 4 percent versus an economy that is growing at
1 to 2 percent, the difference in the gross domestic product, the
difference in the total economic output is substantial. In fact, it is
dramatic.
What does that mean? It means a lot, not the least of which is that
government revenues are a lot lower than they otherwise would be. If
you had a more robust economy, growing at a faster rate, people are
working, people are investing, they are making money and they are
paying taxes.
We have this debate around here like it occurs in some sort of vacuum
or static environment. Republicans come in here, those of us who
believe in limited government, and we talk about doing what we can to
make government more efficient and make it cost less.
Democrats believe that we ought to have more revenue, more taxes; and
the problem isn't that we spend too much, it is that we tax too little.
That is a fundamental philosophical debate that we have here on a
regular basis. One of the reasons, by the way, why it is so hard to
reach a significant budget agreement: There is a profound difference in
the way we view the world and how we get our country on a more
sustainable fiscal path.
There are those of us who believe in spending reforms, lower
spending, a more limited role for the government and think that is what
we ought to be doing. Democrats by and large believe that we just need
a little more tax revenue. If we just raise taxes a little bit more, we
could do more here in Washington for the American people. I happen to
be of the view that the American people can do just fine for themselves
if you allow them to keep more of what they earn.
The reality is that there is a third way, and that is to grow the
economy. We can reduce spending, we can raise taxes. We ought to reduce
spending. We ought to reform spending in a way that changes this fiscal
trajectory which we are on today, which becomes increasingly
problematic the farther we get down the road in the future.
But in addition to reducing and reforming our spending programs in
this country, we also ought to be looking at growing the economy and
actually making the pie bigger. Because that is a surefire way, a
certain way of getting the kind of growth in the economy which would
allow Federal revenues to go up rather than down.
We have seen this over time historically. If history is any sort of
guide and we go back to the 1920s under Coolidge or to the 1960s under
Kennedy, a Democratic President who understood the importance of
reducing marginal income tax rates or Reagan in the 1980s or more
recently in the last decade President George W. Bush, when you reduce
taxes on income and investment, you don't get less revenue. You get
more because it changes the behavior of the American people. People
have an incentive then to invest, to go to work. That generates not
less revenue but more and puts us in a situation where we are much
better off, not only in terms of our economy and the opportunities it
provides the American people but also to the fiscal track we are on as
a Nation.
I see my colleague from Kentucky is here. I know he has some
observations on this issue of ObamaCare, the economy generally, and
other matters before us. But certainly one of the reasons we are here
is because we have this rush to approve all of these nominees to these
various agencies of government--many agencies which are guilty of the
very overreach which has contributed to where we are with regard to
ObamaCare. We have too many regulatory agencies with way too much power
and are circumventing the will in many cases of the Congress to
accomplish an agenda that is very contrary to the very things I just
talked about, which are economic growth and job creation.
But through the Chair, I yield the floor for the Senator from
Kentucky. I believe Senator Paul is here to take up the measure.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Warren). The Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. PAUL. Madam President, as we enter into the Christmas season, I
think it is a good time to talk about stories to describe sort of
pastorally where the Senate is. So I have a story today I would like to
tell about how the Senate works--or doesn't work.
So it came to pass that the filibuster was dismembered, dishonored,
and indefinitely detained.
With the end of the filibuster came the end of any semblance of
comity and compromise on Capitol Hill. The party that never cared much
for the rule of law broke the rules of the Senate to change the rules.
Senate rules for nearly 2 centuries allowed the filibuster. The
filibuster was simply a requirement that 60 percent of Senators must
approve nominations and legislation. This super majority requirement
actually fostered more centrist solutions and compromises.
In order to change the rules, though, and kill the filibuster, it
required a two-thirds majority to change the rules. However, the party
which doesn't and hasn't concerned themselves with the rule of law
simply broke the rules.
When the Chair said: That is against the rules, they said: We don't
care if it's against the rules. The rules are whatever we say the rules
are.
The best way to put this in perspective: You are watching a tennis
match. The ball is clearly a foot out of bounds. The umpire says, ``Out
of bounds.'' Instead of going by the rules, you have everyone vote. So
the audience at Wimbledon votes that it was in bounds when it was
really out of bounds.
That is what we have here: We have no more rules and we have no more
comity. We have no more compromise. What we have is poison--poison that
has been given to us by people who have no concern for the rules.
Historically, it has always required two thirds of the Senate to
change the rules. But, for the first time, we break the rules to change
the rules. So when the parliamentarian rules to Senate Democrats that:
You're breaking the rules, they say: No, it really wasn't out of
bounds. It was in bounds or we don't care that it was out of bounds. We
don't care what the rules say. We want our way. We are impatient. We
want our nominations, and we want them now. We don't care about the
history of the Senate. We don't care about the history of the Congress.
We want our way or we will pick up our toys and we

[[Page S8734]]

will go home. We want it now. We want it now. We want all of it. We
don't want to talk with the other side. We don't want compromise. We
don't want discussion. We don't want negotiation. We want our way or
the highway.
The rules, it seems, aren't binding upon the Senate Democrats. To
them, the rules are living, breathing, evolving, and apparently
optional.
We shouldn't be surprised, though. We shouldn't be surprised that a
party that believes in a living, breathing, ever-evolving, whatever-
you-want-it-to-be Constitution, might not think the rules of the Senate
are important.
We shouldn't be surprised that the party that believes that morality
is unfixed, unhinged, unchanged, unchained to any constants, that all
ethics are a situation that this party might break the rules--we
shouldn't be surprised.
Is anyone really surprised that such a party with no apparent concern
for the burden of debt they are placing on every American family would
break the rules to get their way?
We are told they are upset because the Senate just takes too long.
They want their way, and they want it now. They want their people
confirmed. They don't want to talk to the other side. They won the
election. They want their way.

So now they have it. They have bullied and brayed, and they have won
the day. The iron-fisted rule of the rule-breakers has now begun.
There will be no return. Are they going to return to the rules
halfway, partway? No. I predict they will only go further. If they
don't get their way, if they don't get it quickly enough, I predict
they will break the rules further.
What passed for gridlock before this will pale in comparison to the
poison that seeps from the hands of those who are careless and reckless
with the law.
Where the filibuster once created conversation, the iron-fisted rule
of the rule-breakers will stifle it. For you see, contrary to popular
belief, the filibuster actually fostered compromise, dialogue, and
often results. In exchange for the release of nominations, in exchange
for the cooperation of the minority party with the majority party,
often there were votes on legislation that not everybody wanted. There
were discussions, there were amendments, there was dialogue, because we
were forced to talk to each other because one side couldn't always get
what they wanted. They couldn't slam their fists down in angry tantrum
and say: My way or the highway. We want what we want. We don't care
what 50 percent of America wants or what 47 percent of America wants.
We want our way, and we want it now.
The tantrum used to not work. But now we will live in an era where
the iron-fisted rule-breakers will throw their tantrum and they will
get whatever they want.
Contrary to popular belief, the filibuster led to dialogue. Every
week, the majority party talked to the minority party. There was a
meeting each week in which the agenda for the week was set through
dialogue and discussion and compromise, behind the scenes, not always
out in public. But there was discussion and compromise every week,
because the majority party could not rule with an iron fist.
But now, in the era of the iron fist, in the era of the iron-fisted
rule-breakers, why will there be any discussion? Why not just roll over
the opposition? Why allow debate? Why have debate? Why have discussion?
Why have dialogue? Why have votes? It has been getting less and less--
as the grip gets tighter and tighter, there is less debate. There is
less voting. There are less amendments. I don't think the American
public likes that. I think the American public disavows this place and
is unhappy with Congress in general because of a lack of dialogue. But
that is where we are headed. We are headed towards less dialogue, not
more.
In the past, Republicans and Democrats would come together. They
would agree to votes. They would schedule them for the week. They would
agree to dialogue; they would agree to nominations; and they would
agree to quick and easy votes for noncontroversial nominees.
But if there is to be no rules, what incentive is there for
cooperation? If it is to be my way or the highway--if the majority
party is simply to roll over, if they are to beat their iron fists upon
the table and say: My way or the highway; we don't need you; we don't
care that half the country disagrees with our policy, it is our way or
the highway; that is the way it is going to be, then I think there will
be less dialogue and less compromise.
Historically, the filibuster encouraged a reluctant President to
cooperate with oversight from the Congress. This isn't a Republican or
Democrat thing. This is about the separation of powers. This is about
the checks and balances to power. This is about a President who might
say--or not say--whether or not he would kill Americans with a drone.
This is about using the filibuster to get information from a
reluctant President. This is about a filibuster that allowed Congress
to get information and to force a President to say: I will not kill
Americans with drones.
This is about a reluctant President being asked: Will you detain
Americans? Can you put an American in jail without a trial? Can you
send an American to Guantanamo Bay?
How do we get those answers from a President who is reluctant to
answer? Through the filibuster.
The filibuster is an empowerment of Congress. It really isn't
Republican versus Democrat. The filibuster is about Congress having
power to counterbalance a Presidency. Information about malfeasance or
transparency can be pried from a President in exchange for nominations.
Quite typically, holds on nominations were used to get information,
were used to force people to testify. Recently, I had questions for the
nominee for Homeland Security. I asked him: Does the Fourth Amendment
apply to third-party records? This is a big constitutional question,
and there are answers. I might not have agreed with his answer. He said
he had no legal opinion on the Fourth Amendment.
I asked him: Can one warrant from a secret court apply to all
telephone records? Can every American who has their records with a
phone company have their records looked at through one warrant? Is that
consistent with the Fourth Amendment?
And this nominee said: I really don't have an opinion on the Fourth
Amendment. I really haven't thought that much about the Constitution.
But he is going to lead one of the largest agencies in our government
that may well have to do with spying on Americans, and yet has no
opinion on the Fourth Amendment.
So what would the filibuster do? Historically, the filibuster would
stop his nomination. What would a hold do? Would it be petulant? Maybe
at times. But for the most part, holds were placed on nominees who
wouldn't answer questions. So if you wanted answers from nominees and
you didn't want them to get up there and say I don't recall, 49 times,
I can't remember, I don't have an opinion today, sir, on the
Constitution; then you would hold their nomination. You would hold
their feet to the fire.
The filibuster, holds, about slowing things down--this is about the
separation of powers. This is about the checks and balances. Currently
we have a President who apparently thinks he is more than a President.
He thinks he has a few monarchial powers. He believes more he is a
monarch than he is a President because he thinks he can amend
legislation. More than 20 times ObamaCare has been amended after the
fact. They do not come back to Congress. So what would the filibuster
do? What would a hold do? It would say to that President: You will obey
the Constitution. We have no way to get him in court on these matters.
It is very difficult to prove or disprove the constitutionality by a
challenge. The beauty of our Founding Fathers is they separated the
powers. One of the powers of Congress is the filibuster. It is placing
holds. By doing that we check a rebellious or an adventurous President
who thinks he can take this power upon himself.
Montesquieu, who is one of the people we look to about the separation
of powers, once wrote: When you allow the legislative power to
gravitate to the President, when you allow the President to take this
power and he can legislate or do whatever he wants, you are allowing a
tyranny. That is why Montesquieu wrote you have to separate these
powers so no one body of people, no one grouping within government
would assume or absorb too much power. That is what is happening here,

[[Page S8735]]

by giving up our power for petty partisan reasons.
Let's be very frank with each other. The Senate Democrats have, for
petty partisan reasons, taken away the power of Congress, taken away
one of the checks and balances on a rogue Presidency. These checks and
balances are not something we should stoop to the level of petty
partisanship over. By allowing us to do so, what has happened is we
have allowed ourselves to give up one of the great checks and balances
that was one of the beauties of our Constitution.
The loss of the filibuster truly weakens Congress and it makes the
executive, regardless of party, more powerful and less likely to be
transparent and less likely to compromise. In short, when you give
power to the party in the minority, when you have that power in the
party that is in the minority, it works to coax compromise out of
people.
In the era of filibusters and holds, someone such as myself who is
new to the Senate could place a hold on the Federal Reserve Chairman
and release it in exchange for a vote auditing the Fed. Auditing the
Fed passed through years ago in the House. It is a transparency bill.
We should know what decision happened. Congress created the Fed. People
are getting personally wealthy off the policies of the Fed. There is a
revolving door between the Fed and the Treasury and the people who sell
the Treasury bonds. There are Treasury Secretaries who leave employment
in government and make $160 million a year buying and selling the
securities that are bought from a bank that we are not overseeing
properly.
There are all kinds of reasons why we should audit the Fed. Every
Republican in the House voted for it, 100 Democrats voted for it. You
rarely have a bill that 350 out of 435 Representatives voted to audit
the Fed. It has been over here for 3 years. It has been held hostage by
the Senate majority. The only way the minority party ever gets any
votes on anything is by using their leverage, by using the leverage of
the filibuster, by using the leverage of a hold--I think often to get
something good. There are a lot of things that need to be discussed
that are never discussed in this body.
Whether your phone calls, the records of your phone calls, the
records of your e-mail should be looked at by your government without a
warrant, without an individualized warrant, is something that should
have a debate here. We are, in the next week, supposed to go back on
the Defense authorization bill. The Defense authorization bill, in
2011, allowed for the first time in our history an American citizen to
be held indefinitely. It allowed for the first time an American citizen
to be sent from America to Guantanamo Bay and held in a foreign prison
in a foreign land, forever, without charge, without trial, without
lawyer, without accusation.
When I had the debate on the floor with another Senator over this in
2011, I said, incredulously, you mean an American citizen could be sent
to Guantanamo Bay without a jury trial, without a trial by a jury of
his peers? He said, yes, if they are dangerous.
Who gets to decide who is dangerous and who is not? Are these
questions we would want debated on the floor? One year ago we voted to
get rid of indefinite detention; 67 Senators voted to get rid of
indefinite detention. Then, secretly in conference committee, it was
stripped out by a minority of one or two Senators. So this year we have
been prepared for 6 months to have a vote on whether an American can be
detained in prison without a trial. We will get no vote because of the
iron-fisted rule of the rule breakers. The rule breakers have decided
no debate, no dialog, no compromise, no discussion of questions until
we tell you it is time--and it never seems to be time.
You have to think about this because there have been times in our
history when we have detained Americans unjustly. You have to think
about how important a jury trial is for everyone and you do not have to
go far back in our history to see times when we made mistakes. Remember
Richard Jewel, falsely accused, unfairly accused of being the Olympic
bomber in Atlanta about a decade ago. If he had been a Black man in
1920 in the South, he might not have survived a day. Fortunately, he
lived in an era when we believed in trial by jury, when we believed
that no one should be detained without a trial by jury, no one should
be kept in prison without a trial. For goodness' sake, can there be
anything more American than that? Yet the law of the land says that is
no longer true.
Anybody in our society who ever thinks they have been treated
unfairly, whether one is an African American or Japanese American who
can remember what happened to the Japanese Americans in World War II,
should be horrified that our current law says an individual, an
American citizen, can be detained.
The President says: I am a good man and I will never use it. He signs
into law the authority for all Presidents for all time to indefinitely
detain American citizens without a trial. Yet he says: I am not going
to do it. That is not a lot of comfort to those of us who believe in
the law. I believe the appropriateness or the ability for us to get to
dialog and discussion is important; that the American people want it
and that the filibuster actually aided that. I think it aided it. It
forced us to have discussion. Without the filibuster, I do not think
there will be discussion. I do not think compromise will occur. It was
infrequent before. I don't think it is going to occur without the
threat of filibuster. The Senate will now be run with an iron fist, a
fist clenched so tightly, a power wound so closely that dissent will no
longer be heard. Debate will be stifled and amendments to legislation
will become nonexistent. They are already rare.

Washington described the Senate as the saucer that cools the tea that
boils over from the cup of the House of Representatives. The Senate was
that saucer that cooled the tea, deliberating, gave review and time for
calmer minds to prevail. The Senate was one of those items that our
Founders established to separate our Republic from the whims of an
unrestrained majority, from the headlong dash of an unrestrained
mobocracy. I think the public will be burned more often as the Senate
becomes less saucer and more boiling caldron. The loss of the
filibuster will lead to more enmity and less compromise. The death of
the filibuster is the death of negotiation. Why negotiate if you do not
have to? Through brute force and a disregard for the rule of law,
Senate Democrats have found temporary victory--but at what cost?
We will now become the other House of Representatives. Will debate
and amendment then become a thing of the past? Will an iron fist smash
the saucer that once cooled the tea? Make no mistake about it, the
death of the filibuster is the death of dialog. All power that is taken
from the minority party is a leverage that is taken from possible
compromise. One day I believe those who have seen fit to break the
rules to change the rules will regret their actions. The question is,
When cooler heads prevail, will there be anybody left with the spirit
of compromise?
All one has to do, to see what happens when there is no debate, when
there is no dialog, when there is no compromise--all one has to do is
look at the health care fiasco. It was passed without any discussion
with Republicans--no input, zero input from Republicans. Why? Because
at the time, even though we still had the filibuster, Senate Democrats
were 60 and Republicans were 40. They did not have to talk to us.
When the majority party does not have to talk to the minority party,
they will not. So with ObamaCare, with the unaffordable health care
plan he has given us, there was no discussion, no debate--60 Democrats,
40 Republicans. We got a bill that is completely and entirely their
baby--no compromise.
The same thing in the House. It passed by brute force by a majority
of Democrats and no Republicans.
What we have now is something that is completely unworkable and does
not represent the American people. I will be the first to admit we are
divided. Not everybody is Republican, not everybody is a Democrat. But
the interesting thing is it is about 50-50. It is not 80-20. It is not
that everybody or the vast majority in the country want it one way or
the other, it is almost 50-50. But instead of having 50-50 solutions
come out of here, what is coming out of here is my way or the highway.
You look back, about 1 month ago when the government was shut down,

[[Page S8736]]

we were trying to open the government. Every day we tried to open the
government. We said what about just delaying ObamaCare a little bit?
What about delaying just the individual mandate? No way. We will not
negotiate with a gun to our head, the President said. The President
bellowed: I will not negotiate. You can't make me negotiate. I will not
compromise.
Immediately after the government opened back up he did exactly the
same thing we were asking for, he delayed the individual mandate. Of
course he did it unconstitutionally and illegally because he did it
without the approval of Congress. That is the way it has been from the
beginning. This is something that we as Americans should be extremely
worried about. This is the stuff of kings, this is the stuff of
monarchs, and this is the stuff of tyrants because he thinks he can do
the legislation by himself.
But if there is no recourse to come back to Congress, what happens?
ObamaCare is a story of favoritism, it is a story of dispensing favors
to your contributors, your friends. Should not we have a government
where your campaign contribution buys you a different sort of scrutiny?
It is no longer equal protection under the law, it is protection based
on contribution history.
We have given waiver after waiver to special interest groups. You can
see them with a big smile plastered on their face when they come out of
the White House. There are special interest groups that have been to
the White House hundreds of times. Meanwhile, the Secretary in charge
of putting up ObamaCare and getting it started was there once. But
hundreds of times special interests came. They paid first. They gave
their campaign contributions. They paid, they got access to the White
House, and they got a waiver.
Why would McDonald's get a waiver and not Burger King? Why would one
business get a waiver and not another? Why would a union get a waiver
and not another business that is not union? Is that equal protection
under the law? Is that the way we are going to live? That is the way
you will live if you allow all the power to gravitate to one person who
has no checks and balances.
That is why we are supposed to have a separation of powers. That is
why we are supposed to live under a rule of law. Legislation is messy
and it takes a while. They no longer have the 60 votes to have his way
or the highway. They cannot get everything they want so they do it by
executive fiat. But realize that an executive can dictate for good and
for harm or does one person always know what is best for the country?
So we have been dictated to, all of these changes with ObamaCare, but
the bottom line is more people are now losing their health insurance
than are gaining it. Those who are gaining it, those who have been
forced into ObamaCare, will recognize a few things. They are losing
their freedom of choice and they are being forced to pay more.
There are two things that are irrefutable about ObamaCare: You have
lost your freedom of choice and you are being dictated four plans.
Where there was once hundreds of plans you could purchase for
insurance, there are four plans left in America you can choose from,
and they are more expensive. Why? Because you are told your kids have
to have pediatric dental coverage. What if you don't have any kids? You
are being told you have to have infertility coverage. What if you are
not married? You are told you have to have pregnancy coverage. What if
you are not married? The thing is that what has been outlawed is
cheaper insurance policies.
Let's think back to the original problem. Eighty-five percent of
Americans had health insurance, right? Fifteen percent of Americans
didn't. Of the 15 percent who didn't have health insurance, one-third
of them were eligible for Medicaid, and we could have helped them by
fixing some eligibility with Medicaid or actually trying to help people
sign up. One-third of the 15 percent who were uninsured, some reports
said, were not here in the country legally, and then one-third of the
15 percent made between $50,000 and $75,000, but they did not buy
insurance because they were young and healthy and decided to roll the
dice and they perceived health insurance as being too expensive.
The main impediment to the body of people we could have gotten
insured was expense. What have we done to help them? We made health
insurance more expensive for them. If you are young and healthy, you
should want a high deductible with few mandates. That is very cheap.
What does ObamaCare give you? It gives you a high deductible and gives
you a million and one things you don't need or don't want and it is
very expensive. Really what we have done is taken away freedom of
choice and given you something you don't want and made it more
expensive.
This is the danger of having one-sided, one-party rule. There is no
debate and no discussion. And that is what happened with ObamaCare--a
lopsided result, a misbegotten legislation that doesn't work, can't
work, and is leading to disaster.
Some have said: How can we fix it? Can we make ObamaCare less bad? I
am not positive we can. Some are saying--and the President came back
unilaterally and said: OK, I will give you another year. Look at it
from the perspective of the insurance company. They can offer the
cheaper policies for 1 more year. What incentive do they have? You are
being told that within a year you have to buy more expensive insurance.
Does the insurance company have any incentive to sell insurance that is
less expensive again? If you are mandated to buy something more
expensive, why would they do something less expensive? Now everybody in
the country will be forced to buy something more expensive.
A lot of young people will say: Well, it is more expensive, and the
penalty is not that bad for my income. Maybe I would be better off
without insurance. Besides, now I can buy it anytime I get sick.
Other than the penalty--there is no incentive to buy health insurance
when you are healthy other than the penalty.
Many people may say: I will just wait until I have chest pain, when I
am rolling into the emergency room, or until I get in an auto accident,
and then I will buy my insurance.
This is about choice versus coercion. We have one party that has
decided they know what is best for you. They feel you are not smart
enough to take care of yourself. They feel they should be--in a
benevolent way--your parents. So you have a party that has decided they
will take care of you from cradle to grave, but don't worry, it is
free. No big deal. It is free. We are going to give you free health
care.
Mark my words. There is nothing free about this. You will pay for
this. If you had insurance before, you will pay for this with more
expensive insurance premiums. If you didn't have insurance before, you
will pay for this with more expensive insurance than you could have
bought before.
The question is, How do you make it work? It only works now--if it is
going to work at all--through coercion. You are forced to buy
something. To me, that is antithetical to what the American Republic
was founded upon. We were founded upon freedom of choice. You have
freedom of choice every day in the things you purchase. Why is the one
thing you are not allowed to have is the freedom of choosing your
health insurance?
Realize what this stems from. This stems from allowing government to
get so completely in one hand that there are no checks and balances.
There are checks and balances between the branches of government, and
there are checks and balances between the parties. If you let one party
get too strong of a hold in Congress, you will get something that is
not the product of compromise and not the product of discussion.
Also, if you weaken the body of the Senate--which was intended to
slow down legislation--by taking away the ability to filibuster or to
place holds on nominees, once you do that, you are going to get away
from compromise.
I think it is important that people know, when they look at this and
say: Well, that is just obstruction; Republicans with their filibusters
and holds are just obstructing the process, if the process is to run
headlong away from the Constitution or to run head over heels and
trample the Bill of Rights, you would want things to cool off. You
would want that saucer the Senate was that allowed the tea to boil over
and cool off.
So the question we really have is, Do we want checks and balances?
That is a

[[Page S8737]]

big question. We have gotten to the point in our history where so much
power has gravitated to the President--not just this President;
Republican Presidents also. This is not a 4- or 8-year evolution; this
is a 100-year evolution toward a stronger Presidency. We have now
allowed Presidents to go to war without congressional authority. We
have allowed them to trample over civil liberties without congressional
authority.
We now allow regulatory regimes to write so many rules that your
elected officials have little to say over what laws you live under. For
example, we complained that ObamaCare was 2,000 pages. The Democratic
leader in the House of Representatives said: Don't worry; you can read
about it after we pass it. That was a mistake, and that is why so many
people still don't understand this piece of legislation.
To top it off, this was a 2,000-page bill, but then 20,000 pages of
rules were written. Unelected bureaucrats are writing most of the
rules. For example, when ObamaCare passed, believe it or not, I think
the original legislation would have let you keep your doctor, period.
There was a regulation written 3 months after the bill was passed that
changed it and said: You can keep your doctor, but you have to pay
more, and it has to obey this rule.
Let's just say you can maybe keep your doctor if President Obama
likes your doctor. This rule was not written by Congress. It wasn't
part of the legislation. This is a rule that was written afterward.
About 3 months later, as they are writing 20,000 pages of rules, a
rule comes up that says: If your insurance ever changes, it is not
grandfathered in and you will lose your insurance. It will be canceled.
You will be forced to be canceled.
The reason millions of people are having their insurance canceled is
because the President authorized this through his bureaucracy without
the permission of the Senate.
However, it gets more interesting. Occasionally, when a regulation is
passed, we can try to stop it. So 3 months after ObamaCare was passed,
they passed this regulation that says: You will be canceled. Millions
of people were being canceled because President Obama and his team
wrote this regulation.
One Republican Senator, Mr. Enzi from Wyoming, stood up and said: No,
we will vote on this. We will vote on whether your policy can be
canceled. So what happened? It came back. And guess what. The
regulation that says your policy can be canceled if it ever changed--
the regulation that is allowing millions of people to be canceled--
every Democrat in the body voted for it, including a few of them who
are running headlong away from the President. They can't get away from
the President fast enough. They are running headlong away from the
President and saying: Oh, I didn't know that rule was going to be
there. I really thought you could keep your doctor.
Bunk. They all knew it. They all voted directly on it. Not only did
they vote for ObamaCare, 3 months later they voted for the rule that is
allowing millions of people to have their insurance canceled.
So these Senators who are saying: Mr. President, we might need to fix
this, and I have a solution, all voted for the rule. We had a direct
vote in the Senate on the rule that says: If you like your doctor, you
can't keep your doctor. The whole idea when the President said: If you
like your doctor, you can keep him, period--which we have now found to
be false--we had a chance to fix it. We had a vote in this body. Every
Senate Democrat voted to allow your insurance to be canceled. So if you
are one of the millions of Americans who have had your insurance
canceled, you can thank the Senate Democrats. Every Senate Republican
voted to say you should not have your insurance canceled. Every Senate
Democrat voted to allow your insurance to be canceled if it ever
changes.
While some people have been wondering how many people are going to
lose their insurance because of ObamaCare, the answer is everyone
because insurance changes gradually over time. So within a few years
everybody's insurance policy will change and you will be canceled.
Everyone in America will lose their insurance. They will be canceled
eventually, and they will have to buy ObamaCare. So people went from
having hundreds of choices for insurance to having four choices in
America.
Really what this debate is about is whether you believe in freedom of
choice, whether you think you are smart enough to rule over your own
destiny or whether you want a paternalistic government that makes these
decisions for you. Are we so insecure as a people that we need the
nanny state? Do we need the nanny state to take care of us? Do we not
want choice? Why don't we extend it to all things? Health care is
important, but so is food. Why don't we have the government decide what
type of food we eat? Why don't we have the government decide how much
we can charge? God forbid we charge too much for food. Shouldn't food
be cheap and economical and affordable?
Maybe the government should own the farms. If the government can
distribute health care and health care is so important, so is food and
water. How can we let anybody in the private marketplace determine
water? How can we let private people control water? Shouldn't we let
the government be in charge of everything?
The bottom line is this: We shouldn't let the government be in charge
of anything that can't be handled by the private marketplace, which
means very little should be handled by the government. The reason you
want minimal government is that government is not very good at stuff. I
tell people that it is not that government is inherently stupid--
although that is a debatable point--it is that the government doesn't
get the same signals we get.
In the private marketplace, you get signals. You have to make a
profit or you have to meet a payroll. So there are different signals
that come. As far as health care and the government running it, there
is no signal. They get no feedback. Right now they have a Web site that
would have sent any private business into bankruptcy. This would have
been a failed initiation, and the company would have gone bankrupt. No
company could roll out something as bad as this, but no private company
would. The private company is influenced by the marketplace, and they
have to make good decisions. The government doesn't make good decisions
because it is not required to. That is why when you have a choice on
whether something should be done by government or the private
marketplace, you want the private marketplace.
Milton Friedman often talked about this. This is a truism of all
government: Nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely as they spend
their own. The private marketplace will inevitably make better
decisions because it is a cruel master. In the marketplace, you have to
please consumers all the time, every day. They vote. You have heard the
term ``democratic capitalism.'' There is nothing more democratic than
consumer and capitalism voting every day, and the people who are
rewarded are those who give a product that people want to buy, and they
do it in an efficient manner, so people are forced to be efficient.
They are forced to have good consumer service.
The consumer is king only in the private marketplace. The consumer is
treated as a stepchild if it is government. You are treated with
reckless abandon by government. As a physician, I dealt with the
government for decades and decades. You know what. It takes at least an
hour to get someone on the phone. When you get them on the phone, they
tell you they can only answer two questions. If they are not in a good
mood, you have to call again. You have to get on the phone again and
wait an hour to talk to another bureaucrat who may be surly and may
have had a bad day and will probably get a bonus anyway.
If you want government to take over your health care, think of the
case of Jonathan Beal. He worked for the EPA for 11 years. He told his
boss that he was a spy and that he worked for the CIA. He took 6 months
off at a time for years and years. He always got bonuses for good
employment, good behavior, and good productivity for 11 years. This is
what goes in government. Would that happen for a week or 2 weeks in a
private industry? No way would that happen. The government is so big
and vast, they have no idea who all is even working in government. We
are going to turn that over, our health care system. The bottom line is
it will

[[Page S8738]]

not be efficient, it will not try to save money; it will try to spend
money, and it will not lead to us having lower premiums, it will lead
to having higher premiums.

Thomas Payne said that government is a necessary evil, and he was
right. That sounds kind of harsh, but the thing is we need to have
government, but because government is inefficient, we should keep what
government does to a minimum. There are certain things we probably
can't have private industry do, including a national defense, an Army,
a Navy, an Air Force. Government needs to be in place for that. We have
decided with most of our infrastructure to have government involved. We
have some private entities involved as well. But do we want government
involved in every one of our affairs? Do we think government is going
to be distributing goods very well?
Think of it this way: Tomorrow we nationalize grocery shopping. We
nationalize and everybody gets insurance and it will be subsidized.
When people go to Walmart, they will just pay a $20 copay. Do my
colleagues think they will buy less or more there? People will empty
the shelves.
The other day--my colleagues may have heard that food stamp cards
stopped working and they didn't have any limits; people just kept
loading up thousands and thousands of dollars' worth of stuff. They
trashed the whole place, carts were everywhere, and then someone turned
the cards back on and there were limits and people had to leave the
store. When there are no limits, people will spend without limit. The
same goes with health care. So when government gives us something for
free, the tendency is to use it. So what we find, for example, with
Medicaid--a big part of ObamaCare is the expansion of Medicaid. I wish
to help people who can't help themselves. There are a lot of people who
are missing both legs and on dialysis and they have $10,000-a-month
insurance. I think we can find a way to help these people. But we have
now added able-bodied people to this, generation after generation of
able-bodied people, so instead of a temporary hand up, a helping hand,
we have turned it into something permanent.
But it is also the most rapidly rising cost in State governments, so
State governments, I believe, will ultimately succumb to this burden.
In our State it will be a 50-percent increase in Medicaid. In fact, for
most of the people signing up around the country, three-fourths of them
in my State are signing up for prehealth care. It is not truly free. We
are going to pay for it. Anybody who is working will pay for it. But
the thing is that what they are signing up for is free.
I think if we expand our safety net beyond sort of those who are not
able-bodied or we expand it to make it permanent for people, what it
becomes is a drag on the economy and a drag on everything and it
disallows or prevents us from growing as an economy.
We have been having this debate for a while. The President has
decided that people who are working just have too much money and he has
to take from those who are working to give to those who aren't working.
That is not how we get more jobs; that is how we make the pie smaller.
If we keep dividing up the pie and shifting the pie from those working
to those nonworking, it doesn't help anybody. It divides the pie
smaller. There have been times in our country where we have greatly
grown the pie, but we have to get beyond these petty things.
The President preaches fear and envy, class warfare. He preaches that
if your neighbor has three cars, send me and I will take one of their
cars. I will get some of your neighbor's stuff and I will give it to
you. The problem is it doesn't make us rich as a nation.
There has been a discussion for thousands of years about whether it
is good or bad to spend time coveting your neighbor's wealth. It isn't
healthy personally or spiritually for our country. If I labor my whole
day saying my neighbor has a Mercedes and I don't--I should instead be
saying maybe my son or daughter will be working at the Mercedes dealer
selling to somebody who is buying a Mercedes. Instead of feeling
jealous and envious of others, I should be saying we are all
interconnected and we want more people to rise and be part of the top 1
percent. Instead of taking a meat-ax to those who are successful in our
society and trying to drive them down, we should try--in the 1920s,
Coolidge took the top rate from 70 percent down to 23 percent. We had a
boom. Employment thrived. He balanced the budget. We did it again under
Kennedy in the 1960s. Unemployment was once again cut in half. By the
time we get to Reagan, the rates had risen to 70 percent again, and
Reagan said our economy will boom if we lower rates on everybody, and
he did. He lowered rates from 70 percent at the top rate--the top 1
percent. He lowered their rates. He didn't raise their rates. He didn't
say covet thy neighbor. He didn't say I will get you one of your
neighbor's cars. He said lower the rates and the economy will boom, and
it did. We lowered the rates from 70 on the wealthy to 50 to 28 and we
had a decade-long boom with millions of jobs created.
We have to have this debate as a country. We can't say the debate is
over. If we say the debate is over and that what we need to do is just
divide it up, pass the money around, we are going to be talking about a
shrinking pie that we pass around.
We also have a pie right now that has millions of people unemployed.
So how are we going to grow this economy? Are we going to grow our
economy by saying let's tax people more? It is exactly the opposite.
I was in Detroit last week talking about how we could help Detroit.
We can't send money from Houston to Detroit and bail them out. It
doesn't work. One, because it is just like when the President did his
government stimulus. When the President chose to pick winners and
losers, he wound up with a bunch of losers because no central planner
knows who is going to win and who is going to lose. Nine out of ten
businesses fail. That is why we don't want government choosing the
winners and losers.
When they do that, they choose people such as Solyndra. One, it was a
little bit unfair on the face of it. The guy who ran the company was
the 20th richest man in the country. What business does the middle
class--that the President says he is so proud of--what business does
the middle class have giving money to the 20th richest man in the
country? It turned out people didn't want his solar panels.
But that is the government picking winners and losers, many times
based on campaign history and based on environmental politics. It is
picking winners and losers and it doesn't work. Why? Because the
marketplace, when it winnows out and finds who will be successful in
business, who is a harsh task master, but it asks all of you--it asks
300 million Americans every day to vote on which businesses will
succeed. So you get to vote every day. So there is a big difference
between reducing taxes for those who are in business and trying to
stimulate the economy and taxing people in Houston, bringing it up
here, and then passing it out to people I think might be good at
business in Detroit. No one knows that. No one has that knowledge. Only
the marketplace can decide who is a good risk and who is a bad risk.

Banks are part of that, but the consumer votes every day on which
businesses are good and should receive more money.
So my plan is basically economic freedom zones. Let's lower the taxes
in impoverished areas. Let's don't tax Houston and bring a bunch of
money up to Detroit and say: Here, you are going to succeed. The same
thing will happen to that money that happened to the last 50 years'
worth of money; that is, it was stolen, some of it was misappropriated,
some of it was given to the wrong people.
But if we are to lower the taxes for the people in Detroit, I think
we could truly help them. My plan would lower the personal income tax
to 5 percent for everybody in Detroit. It would lower the corporate tax
to 5 percent. We might find people in the suburbs who want to move back
into Detroit if their income tax is 5 percent. That is a good thing.
People would pay those taxes. Instead of being envious of these people,
instead of saying they might buy another car, I might be saying they
might buy that car from somebody selling it in Detroit.
The thing is that economic freedom zones and reducing taxes I think
would help spur the economy.

[[Page S8739]]

There are 20 counties in eastern Kentucky that have unemployment 1.5
times the national rate. A large degree of our unemployment is due to
the President and his war on coal. He always talks about a balanced
solution, but he doesn't balance his hatred for the coal industry with
jobs. He doesn't balance his so-called like for the environment with
jobs. When we look at regulations, we should preserve the environment,
and we have many Federal regulations that I do agree with on the
environment. We shouldn't be able to dump chemicals in a stream. I
agree completely with that. The Clean Water Act says you cannot
discharge pollutants into navigable waters of the United States. I
agree completely. But do we know what they have done over the last 30
years? They have taken that commonsense regulation, which we can
probably all agree to, and they now say dirt is a pollutant and your
backyard is a navigable stream.
So we have actually put people in prison for putting clean dirt on
dry land. As a consequence, I think we spend less time protecting the
Ohio River and more time meddling with some property owner. We have
gone crazy with regulations because they are now written by unelected
bureaucrats. They are not written by people we can unelect; they are
written by bureaucrats.
We have to get back to some common sense with these issues. We have
to look at how injurious this is. Even things that are well-intended,
we think, well, gosh we have to protect the bald eagle and we have to
have endangered species protected. I agree. I have two bald eagles in
my backyard. They have come for the second year and they are
fascinating. They live on the pond behind my house and it is
fascinating to see them. But what we have done in the name of
protection for the environment and protection for certain species is we
have gone nuts with it.
In my State, we are protecting the Indiana bat. I had a guy come up
to me and he said: The Indiana bat? They came up to my property and
they took a survey and they found one bat. It was already tagged as a
brown bat. The scientists had a big fight. Two of them said it was an
Indiana bat and the other two said a brown bat, but did they tell me I
had to do anything to help the bat? No. They just charged me money to
cut down trees on my own land. So it isn't about the bat; it is about
money. They charge $2,400 per acre to chop down your own trees.
Another city in my State, Grand Rivers, when it rained, the sewage
was flowing into the river overflowing and they were overcapacity and
wanted to have a new sewage plant. They couldn't do it because the EPA
was saying we need to know how many pocketbook muscles there are. Are
we going to stop the building on the planet? No. What it does is cause
hundreds of thousands of dollars to be spent looking at this.
The bottom line is, remember, separation of powers is important, and
the loss of the filibuster I think is leading toward a one-sided party
rule and leaning toward less power here and more power in the executive
branch, I think all to the detriment of the voter.
At this point, I see my colleague from Oklahoma has arrived, and I
yield the floor.
Mr. INHOFE. I thank my good friend from Kentucky.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Since he was talking about the EPA, the overregulations
there, I happen to have been privileged when we were in the majority to
be the chairman of the committee called the Environment and Public
Works Committee. It does a lot of very important things in terms of
highways and roads and infrastructure. What the Senator from Kentucky
was talking about is all the overregulations that come from that. I am
very sensitive to that.
That is not why I am here tonight. In fact, I wish to talk a little
bit about the nuclear option, about how this has changed things around
here, and it is somewhat of a crisis level we have arrived at. Before I
do, I wish to share something on ObamaCare. A lot of things have been
said on this floor about the problems with ObamaCare. I wish to
elaborate a little bit about that in a minute but not right now. I only
wish to say that 2 months ago, when my good friend from Texas, Senator
Cruz, and 11 of us were concerned about trying to do something to stop
ObamaCare and we took some pretty drastic steps--he actually stayed up
and spoke all night--I did not, but I spoke during the evening and
again in the morning. But I told a story at that time. It puts it into
a context that people don't understand.
The story was this: Keep in mind this was 2 months ago. I said it has
been admitted by Obama and by many of the leaders--even the leader of
the Senate--that the ultimate goal of ObamaCare would be the single-
payer health care system, very much like what was talked about back in
the early 1990s when Bill Clinton was President and Hillary had her
Hillary health care and at that time I think it was ultimately going to
be a single-payer system. As my colleagues well know, a single-payer
system by definition is socialized medicine, and that was what it was
going to be at that time. I remember talking--and we ultimately did
defeat it, but at that time I asked the question, I said: Wait a
minute. You are talking about socialized medicine. It doesn't work in
Denmark or Sweden or Canada or in the UK. Why do you think it would
work if you were doing it? They never tell us this, but they say it may
not work somewhere else, but if I were running it, it would work. We
defeated that back in the 1990s.
Now, some time has gone by, and we have very much the same situation.
We have a system that is edging into socialized medicine, a single-
payer system. This is what they want. This is what liberals normally do
want. They somehow think that government can run things better than
people can.
So I told this story, I say to my good friend in the Chair. Keep in
mind, this was 2 months ago. It had been less than a year before that
when something happened to my wife--and my wife is just a year younger
than I am--something happened, and all of a sudden she found out she
had to have emergency open-heart surgery. It was a valve that was the
problem at that time. We did some research. She immediately had open-
heart surgery. It was successful. She is great now. They replaced the
valve, and she is in really good shape.
But the point I am making is that if this had happened and we had
been citizens of Canada--we went and checked--someone that age with
that kind of an emergency would have to wait 6 months before they could
determine whether they were going to allow them to have that operation.
If it were in the UK, it would be 2 months. She would not have lasted
that long.
That was to let people know that when it hits close to home, it
really means lot more, instead of just talking about how many people
are not happy with the enrollment and all this stuff.
Well, ironically, what happened to me 5 weeks ago was exactly the
same thing. I ended up having to have emergency surgery. I had four
heart bypasses. I got to thinking. Just a few weeks before, I had been
talking about my wife. I would not be here now. That is how serious
this is. Because those individuals who are talking about ObamaCare,
they really want a system that the government is running, and it has
not worked anywhere else in the world. In cases like mine, I would be
on the waiting list and I probably would not have made it this far and
would not have been here today.
I only say that--and I want to elaborate a little bit on that
shortly, but I need to get in something very significant that is going
to take place.
First of all, I do not like the idea of what is going on right now. I
am very much upset that we had the nuclear option. I think most
people--and it has been said over and over on the floor--
constitutionally, we have a system that is set up that puts the Senate
in a position where there has to be a supermajority that will ratify
the various treaties and will confirm nominees. Well, the nominees who
are confirmed are confirmed with a supermajority. Consequently, that
would preclude one party from being able to control the confirmation of
nominees.
Well, the makeup of the Senate today and for the next year is going
to be 53 Democrats dominating, which means, of course, they can always
get the 53 votes for confirmation but not any more, not enough to reach
60. So they changed all that, and that is wrong. They should not have
done it.
So now we are going through this operation, and I decided that rather
than to stay here during this Christmas season for the next few days
just voting no

[[Page S8740]]

on judges, I am going to say right now that I am going to vote against
all the judges, but I am not going to be around here to do it. I will
say this though.

James Nomination

There is one vote that is coming up, and I am going to appeal to the
leadership that I hope the confirmation of Deborah Lee James to be
Secretary of the Air Force does not come up until this next week
because I want to be here for that, and I would hope it could be
postponed until Monday. The reason for that is I think that is a great
appointment. I do not remember in the years I have been here--and I am
the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee--I do not
remember anytime when we have had someone who is as qualified at the
outset as she is. She has an incredible background for this position. I
have met her. I have talked to her. I have talked to her about the
concerns about the readiness, which is very serious right now. Our
readiness capabilities are lower than they have ever been since World
War II. I know she is the right person to be at the helm to take care
of that.
It was not long ago that through the sequestration or preparing for
sequestration they made a decision to ground one-third of the combat-
coded Active squadrons. Now, let's keep in mind that she is nominated
to be Secretary of the Air Force, so this is something she would
directly be interested in and concerned about.
What they did was, in order to--I suppose at that time the motivation
was to try to save money. They grounded one-third of the combat-coded
Active squadrons. That was in April of this year. It was not until 3
months later that they decided this is not good because you have the
idle airplanes, the idle pilots. Pilots were resigning; they were upset
because they were not being used. So they reinstated the squadrons that
had been closed.
General Welsh, a great general, the commander of the Air Force, made
the statement, and made it in a very articulate way, that it is going
to cost us more to reinstate and to requalify the pilots and to make
sure the planes are back in flying order than just the amount of money
that was saved during that 3-month period.
That is really quite a statement. It is very serious. He said it
could cut the flying hours by 15 percent in the months to come--and it
has--as a result of that closure.
Well, I have to say to Ms. James that I am convinced you are going to
be confirmed as Secretary of the Air Force. I will do all I can to make
sure you are confirmed. But you are walking into a hornet's nest. It is
a real serious problem there. The things that are happening to our
military, which I am going to talk about in just a minute, are very
serious.
She has a background. She served with a technical defense contractor
in Virginia. It was the SAIC Technical and Engineering Sector. She was
the executive vice president for communications and government affairs
and the senior vice president for homeland security. Prior to that, she
served as vice president for international operations marketing at
United Technologies. That was all the way from 1998 to 2000. She served
as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs from 1993 to
1998, overseeing all matters pertaining to the Guard and Reserve
forces. So she has probably as much preparation, background, expertise,
education, and knowledge as anyone who has ever been nominated to be
Secretary of the Air Force.

I hope we will be able to have that vote maybe on Monday as opposed
to some time in the next few hours since I want to be here. I want to
be one of the first to congratulate her.
(Mr. COONS assumed the Chair.)

The Budget

Mr. INHOFE. Let me say something about the budget. I try to think of
things other people have not talked about. I do not even know right now
whether I am going to be for or against this budget, but I had looked,
and I was very alarmed. The minority staff on Armed Services did some
research, and it came out that there are some parts of this act that we
did not know were there. It would include an annual adjustment for
retired pay and retainer pay for retired members of the Armed Forces
under age 62. This penalizes current and future military members who
have served our Nation for over 20 years.
Now, keep in mind, people go into the military quite young sometimes,
knowing that the time they would serve would be for 20 years--many of
them longer but most of the time 20 years. That is kind of a given.
They do this predicated on the assumption that retirement benefits and
all these things are going to be there. They are making a career
decision, I say to the Chair, and that is very significant.
To come along with a bill that supposedly saves $6.2 billion--there
are about 2 million retirees. Of those, just under half are under the
age of 62. They would see a steady erosion of their retired pay,
approaching 20 percent of their retirement pay by the time they reach
age 62.
The 1-percent annual reduction to uniformed service retired pay cost-
of-living adjustment--those are the COLAs--for those under age 62 will
have a devastating, long-term impact for those who retire at the 20-
year point. It implements an annual adjustment to retired pay of the
``Consumer Price Index -1%'' beginning in December of 2015. What that
means in summary is that you could have a gunnery sergeant retiring at
age 42, and by the time he is 62, this bill would cause him to receive
in his retirement pay approximately $72,000 less than he would
otherwise. So it is a big deal.
This has not been discussed on the floor, and I think that as we get
into the discussion we are going to have on the budget, we have to keep
these things in mind. Again, I have not decided yet because I know it
is not an easy job. I know we had a Democrat and a Republican working
very hard on it. But that is one thing that I believe can be changed.
In fact, it would have to be changed before I would support it.

National Defense Authorization Act

Well, we went through something, and I want to talk a little bit
about the National Defense Authorization Act. Every year we have a
National Defense Authorization Act. That act is more important than
anything else we do around here, in my opinion.
If you read the Constitution, it will say that providing for the
Nation's defense is our major concern. This is what we are supposed to
be doing. So we have always had--in fact, for 51 consecutive years we
have passed an NDAA bill prior to January. It has always been that way.
This is a budget that must take place.
This is very disturbing to me because the House passed an NDAA bill
some time ago. We in the Senate Armed Services Committee, way back--was
it May or June--we passed the NDAA out of our committee, not
unanimously but almost unanimously, and it was bipartisan, had strong
bipartisan support to come to the floor. Well, it never came up. And
why it never came up is not that important right now. The fact is that
we are now in a position where we have to do it and have to have one
come up, and it has to be this coming week.
So, anyway, we put together a bill. There is something a lot of
people do not understand because it is not very often used, but when
the House and the Senate are not able to put something together, they
go to the big four. They get the committee of jurisdiction--in this
case, the Senate Armed Services Committee. So they had the chairman and
the ranking member--the ranking member is the one who has the most rank
from the minority, and that is me in the case of the Senate--and then
the chairman of the House and the ranking member of the House. Four
people. We sat together 10 days ago here in Washington and put together
a bill, taking the best parts out of the House bill, the best parts out
of the Senate bill, and put together this thing, and it is one that I
think--when people understand it--it is one for which I do not know of
anyone who would really oppose it.
The problem we are having is that the way it was done was not the way
it should have been done. It should have been done as it has been done
in the past; that is, to take about--in the last 10 years, it has taken
9 days on average to pass this bill, where we have all of the
amendments processed and people come forth with amendments. Well, that
did not happen this time. So what we did in this bill is we took 79 of
the amendments that people had in the House and the Senate--Republicans
and Democrats--we did 79; that is, 41

[[Page S8741]]

Republican amendments and 38 Democrat amendments. These are ones that
had been submitted on the Senate floor, and we were able to go ahead
and put these into the bill.
So we have a good bill. It is out there. We really need to do it.
People are concerned about the process. I am concerned. We are going to
get busy to make sure this does not happen in future years. We do not
want it to happen. But we do not want our service people, who are in
harm's way today, to be paying for the fact that we had a procedure
that was wrong. We have a vehicle here. We have a bill. It will come up
for consideration. It will come over from the House, and I anticipate
in the first part of the week we will have this bill.
What does it do? First, it authorizes 37 special and incentive pays,
including reenlistment bonuses and certain health bonuses. Here, we are
talking about people who are considering reenlisting. Right now they
are in the service.
I mentioned a minute ago some of the aviators. Well, this is mostly
the Army and the Marines and the Navy. These people are making career
decisions. They make career decisions predicated on what they
anticipate is going to be out there, and what is going to be out there
is what kind of a bonus they will get at the time. Of course, in the
event this does not happen, they would not be entitled to these
bonuses, if we do not pass this bill. That is how significant it is.
When you talk about certain health professional bonuses, they would
expire also.
These health benefit bonuses are very significant, because these are
the people who are the health providers for our Wounded Warriors, not
just the ones that are in our hospitals today but also in hospice care.
We cannot do that to them.
However, if we do not pass this bill, that is going to be a real
serious problem. There has been a lot of talk about sexual assaults. We
have two Senators, both Democrats, Senator Gillibrand and Senator
McCaskill, who disagree with each other but who have amendments. So
what we did is take parts of each one of those amendments--27 specific
reforms to support victims and to encourage sexual assault reporting
and an additional nine enhancements to the military justice system.
Arguably the one on the floor who knows most about this would be our
friend Senator Graham. I think he has looked at these and agrees that
these provisions are really very significant, and things that are not
going to be there otherwise. These would have been in the House bill
and in the Senate bill in the regular procedure to pass these bills,
but they will not be there if we do not pass this one bill. They are
there.
Gitmo. I look around the Chamber, and it seems like there is such a
diverse attitude toward what we have done in the past and will do in
the future with Gitmo. That is Guantanamo Bay down in Cuba. I have
often said from this podium that is one of the few good deals that we
have. We have had Gitmo since the year 1904. It costs $4,000 a year.
Half the time Castro does not collect it. So it is a pretty good deal
which you do not often get in the government.
It is very expensive to house people there. But it does perform a
function that cannot be performed anywhere else. So last year in the
National Defense Authorization bill, we put a provision in there,
fortunately at that time, that would restore the 1-year prohibition on
transferring Gitmo detainees to the United States and to prohibit
constructing any type of facility to house them if they are successful
in doing that.
That was not good. It should have been forever. But it expires now.
That means if we do not have this bill, we will cede that to the
President. The President will have total control. If he wanted to take
every one of these terrorists out of Gitmo and send them to Yemen or
put them in the United States, he could do it. So that is probably one
of the most significant parts of this bill.
So this restores the 1-year prohibition on transferring Gitmo
detainees to the United States, and it prohibits the construction or
modification of facilities in the United States to house Gitmo
detainees.
Our training ranges. This bill provides DOD with access to millions
of acres of Federal land. Keep in mind, it does not cost anything; it
is Federal land--for military tests and training ranges that are really
absolutely necessary for the readiness of our combat forces.
We have all heard about end strength. The Obama administration I have
often said I think will go down in history as the most antidefense
President ever. One of the things that we know is going to happen is
the end strength will continue to reduce. This bill allows the Army and
the Marine Corps' top people to make the decisions as to where this end
strength is going to be reduced and by what amount. By doing this, they
can accelerate the strength reduction and save a considerable amount of
money. So they will have the flexibility to draw down faster, save
money, do it quicker and do it better. Without this bill, they cannot
do that.
Military construction. You know, no other military construction can
take place. But what is worse than that is, on military construction
that has already been started, that is new construction, they would
have to stop that military construction. When you do that then you come
back later and start it again, it costs millions and millions of
dollars more, a lot more money.
Here is another good example of another area that would be a huge
savings. Right now we are working on several aircraft carriers. One is
CVN-78, the USS Ford. It is a huge project. It is 75 percent completed.
We have already spent $12 billion on it. In the absence of this bill,
that construction would have to stop. Now, I know that we would come to
our senses and maybe in a few months come up with a CR that might have
money that would go toward this.
But that is still--when you stop and then start up again, it would be
millions, hundreds of millions of dollars of cost. That is corrected in
this bill. Not to say anything about the number of people who would be
immediately released: 4,300 ship builders who work directly on the
ships, and about 1,500 who work indirectly. So it is an economic issue
for a lot of people. That is important but not as important as the fact
that it is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars if we do not
pass this bill.
The LCS. This allows the littoral combat ship construction to
continue in the shipyards. That is in Alabama and Wisconsin. Again, it
does not happen if this bill is not passed. That is not going to
happen.
Special operations. I think we are all familiar with the special ops
guys. I know the chair is very familiar with that. These are the ones
who go out there in harm's way and take the risk and are specially
trained. The commander there is Admiral McRaven. That is his No. 1
priority--the preservation of special operations forces and families
after the 12 years of sustained combat by authorizing various human,
resiliency and family care programs. In other words, these people, many
of them have families. The families are cared for in a way that has
been certainly well deserved by the fighter that they represent. Yet
those programs would stop in the absence of this.
So I think that is very important. Just looking at the human end of
it, the families, the mothers and the kids that are back there. They
have special needs because of the sustained deployments that these
great troops have. I would mention also, that in addition to some of
the things that we have talked about in using some of the Federal land,
this includes land use agreements to ensure special operations. That is
what we were just talking about, so the special operations forces have
sufficient access to training ranges, including the Chocolate Mountain
Aerial Gunnery Range in California, which serves an indispensable role
in training Navy seals.

In fact, when you go and you watch them, you see that you cannot
train our Navy seals without this facility. So this takes care of that.
Lastly--I could mention a whole lot more--one of the significant
things people are taking about is waste in the Pentagon. This provides
for an audit of the Department of Defense. It requires a full audit of
DOD no later than March 31, 2019. It will take a long time to do this.
It has never been done before. This bill will call for the beginning of
this process.

[[Page S8742]]

We all know about the nuclear triad. The nuclear triad gives us that
nuclear capability in our bombers, ICBMs and our submarine-launched
ballistic missiles. This bill prohibits the elimination of one of those
three legs. We have seen a lot of programs. You could save so much
money if you eliminate the submarine element of that.
But in order to adequately protect America, it is important that we
have all three legs. So that nuclear triad--and remember that phrase.
That is the one where one leg would be eliminated in the absence of
this bill.
The prohibition on tech transfers with Russia. This would prohibit
the transfer of some missile defense technology to Russia and
strengthen the Congressional oversight of the administration's efforts
with regard to the United States and Russia's missile defense
cooperation.
You know, if we do not do it, the President is going to do it. I
would hope that anyone who would be voting in this Chamber knows that
is a key issue, and it should be a key issue. We recognize, if we do
not continue to take control of that in the Congress, then that would
automatically go to the President. I do not think we want that to
happen. We all saw what happened in the first budget that the President
had. I would never forget that, because I went over--I knew that he was
going to be antimilitary, antidefense. So I went over to Afghanistan to
respond to it, knowing full well that we were going to have to do
something to let the American people know how bad that budget was on
the military.
In that first budget of President Obama's, it was 4\1/2\ years ago,
almost 5 years ago, he did away with our only 5th generation fighter,
the F-22; did away with our new lift capacity, the C-17; did away with
the Future Combat System, which is the only advancement we have had in
about 30 years in our ground capability.
He did away with the ground-based interceptor in Poland. Now, let's
keep in mind, the ground-based interceptor in Poland is one that we
were putting there because we have currently 33 ground-based
interceptors here in America, but they are on the west coast. That is
where the threat was at that time. Now things have changed. We found
out in the year 2007--it was not even classified. Our intelligence said
that Iran is going to have the nuclear capability and a delivery system
by 2015, and 2015 is just a little over a year away from right now.
So we knew that way back in 2007. We started building a ground-based
interceptor in Poland, with a radar in the Czech Republic. I thought we
were doing very well. We had to give them the assurance that we would
not pull the rug out from under them if they would cooperate. Then that
went out. That was withdrawn in the President's first budget 4\1/2\
years ago.
Now we are faced with that threat. Because if something comes into
this country from Iran, it is going to come from the East. If there is
a lucky shot from the west coast, that is fine. But I do not have that
confidence that could happen. So I say that because it fits in with the
missile defense. It directs the administration in this bill to make
improvements and modernize the ground-based midcourse defense system.
That is what we are talking about here.
Without this, that could probably--not probably, possibly--be the
most significant thing that we have been talking about here, because
now we are talking about an incoming missile to the United States.
The BRAC process, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission. We
have had five of them since 1987. Whether you are for a base closure or
not, that is not as significant as it is that we are at a time in
history where we have the greatest need to put back some of the money
that has been taken out by this administration into our defense system.
As good as a lot of BRAC systems are, the fact is that the first 3 to 5
years of the BRAC, it costs money, it does not save money. That is what
we cannot let happen. So we restrict the use of funds to conduct a
round of base realignment and closures for the coming year, because
people are talking about that.
Here is a big one too that means a lot. It means a lot to my son,
Jimmy, who is real big time into Second Amendment rights. We are from
Oklahoma. We actually believe that stuff. We believe in the Second
Amendment to the Constitution, I say to my friend in the chair.
There is a treaty called the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty that the U.N.
has. I am the wrong one to talk about this, because I have never seen
anything good come out of the United Nations. But in this case it is
worse than usual. The UN Arms Trade Treaty is one that our Secretary of
State has already signed onto. But it has to be ratified by the Senate.
Well, in this bill, it restricts the funding to implement the U.N.
Arms Trade Treaty without the Senate's advise and consent on the
treaty. Well, that is important. In fact, it reminds me a little bit of
what happened when we had the budget vote a few months ago. At that
time, I am trying to remember now, but I think it was 5 o'clock in the
morning. You would be surprised the kind of amendments you can get
passed at 5 o'clock in the morning.
So at 5 o'clock in the morning, I had an amendment that said that we
would not allow the United States to join--to be a part of the U.N.
Arms Trade Treaty. That was good. But this reinforces that and says
that--it restricts it. So if we were to do it, even if the Senate were
to do it, it would restrict the funding so it cannot happen.
So I would say to all of my friends out there who believe in Second
Amendment rights, who have been concerned that through a U.N. treaty
you could lose the Second Amendment rights, do not worry about it
because we would have it. If we pass this bill, you are going to be
well taken care of.
So I feel very good about the provisions in this bill, I really
believe that, when you stop and think about the fact that we actually
had 79 amendments that were agreed to in this bill that we tried to
pass before.
The Senate Armed Services Committee adopted its version of the NDAA
by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in June, and yet we know what
has happened. We know why it is necessary because this is the last shot
we actually have at a bill.
The House, at 11 o'clock Friday morning, will go out of session. They
will be adjourned for this year. The week after that the Senate will.
That shows the time we have to get all of this done. That is why there
are those individuals who say: You don't have to adopt a bill that the
four of you put together. Even though it may be good, we want to have a
lot of amendments and go through that process. Unfortunately, there is
not time because if we did that it would have to go over to the House.
They are already adjourned as of 11 o'clock Friday morning.
We are out of time and the only choice we have now is either to adopt
this or not have a bill at all. As frustrated as I am about the
process, we have a commitment to provide our military men and women the
support that they require, and we have a bill that will do that. If we
fail to pass the NDAA, it would send a terrible signal to all of our
troops over there.
I have a card of some of the things that we would lose that I
mentioned on that rather lengthy list may not happen until next year,
may not happen until the first part of the year. Some of them would
take place in February and some in March. What would happen is a
question that was asked by our fine Senator Fischer from Nebraska.
She said: What would happen at the end of this year on December 31.
What provisions would we lose if we don't pass this bill?
The answer is there are several of them, and I will highlight a few
of them. One would be the bonus for new officers in critical skills,
the incentive bonus for conversion to military occupational specialty
to ease personnel shortages. For those of us who have been in the
military, that is called the MOSs.
The incentive bonuses for transfer between armed forces. Someone who
is transferred from one area to the other, we have the obligation to
pay his expenses and without those bonuses, we wouldn't be able to do
it.
Aviator officer retention. I mentioned a minute ago that one-third of
the combat squadrons were deactivated, they were grounded and the
pilots with them. I talked about that and how General Welch gave us a
good documentation. That endured for 3 months. At the end of the 3
months the

[[Page S8743]]

amount of that money that was saved by grounding that equipment was far
offset by the amount to get people back up to the correct
qualifications.
One of the things that would happen is the aviation officer retention
bonus. This is to keep these pilots in the service, because it costs
much less to retain a pilot than it does to retrain one and start from
scratch. I know that. We have a couple of the Rangers in my State of
Oklahoma in Vance Air Force Base where I will be tomorrow. That is one
of the largest centers that we have training pilots.
Our problem is a pilot shortage. One of the reasons is because, as I
just said, if they are grounding these airplanes these pilots finally
say: If I can't fly, I am getting out of here.
There have been a lot of them who have left. The only thing that
would hold them would be the existing aviation officer retention bonus.
This gives a bonus for someone to re-up.
If anyone has been in the services, they will remember--as I do from
the U.S. Army--that when they are trying to get people, to encourage
people to re-up, it is a lot cheaper to retain someone than it is to
retrain them. We give them bonuses. We did that when I was in the
service. That is a bonus they would not get.
With already a serious problem with a shortage of pilots, we have to
do something about that. That would abruptly stop December 31. That
means the pilots making this decision may not even know this. They may
decide they are going to do it and then they find out they don't have a
retention bonus.
The assignment pay or special duty pay, this would be for transfers.
This would be something you would not be able to do, as well as the
hardship that would have to be borne by the military.
Healthcare professionals bonus. This is important. If we go out to
Walter Reed and see the great job that is done by the professionals
with our wounded warriors, it does impress people to see what is going
on. I am very excited to see that program has been good. But these
health care professionals operate on a bonus or special pay. That would
stop December 31.
I know they are committed, they would stay as long as they could, but
some of them couldn't afford to do that. This would stop on the January
31.
Reenlistment bonus for active members, that would stop also.
What I am saying is we are going to have to do this bill. It is
absolutely necessary. I am not the only one who says that.
If we look at General Dempsey--talk about the deteriorating condition
of our military now--keeping in mind that with this President over 4\1/
2\ years ago, over this 10-year budget, he has taken over $487 billion
out of the military, if we have Obama sequestration as it is designed
now, that will be another $500 billion. That is a total of $1 trillion.
General Dempsey is the top military person in the military. He is the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He said:

But I will tell you personally, if ever the force is so
degraded and so unready, and then we're asked to use it, it
would be immoral to use the force unless it's well-trained,
well-led and well-equipped.

Admiral Winnefeld, the second in charge, the vice-chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: ``There could be for the first time in my
career instances where we may be asked to respond to a crisis and we
will have to say that we cannot.''
Secretary Hagel, I opposed his confirmation when he was in. Actually,
I think he has improved so much more than I thought he would since that
time. He is not afraid to talk about these things. He said: ``If these
abrupt cuts remain, we risk fielding a force that over the next few
years is unprepared due to a lack of training, maintenance, and the
latest equipment.''
It is America he is talking about. This is the Secretary of Defense.
Another thing General Dempsey said--in fact, I carry a card around
with me because a lot of people don't believe this. General Dempsey at
one time in February 2013, this year, told the Senate Armed Services
Committee that: We are putting our military on a path where the force
is so degraded and so unready that it would be immoral to use force.
General Odierno, the Commander of the Army, said: Additionally, it is
unlikely that the Army would be able to defeat an adversary quickly and
decisively should they be called upon to engage in a single, sustained
major combat operation.
When we talk about a major combat operation, we are talking about one
they used to call the combat operations where major contingencies are
on a regional basis.
Our policy, since World War II, has been able to do this to defend
America on two regional fronts. That has gone out the window and we are
not able to do that anymore.
Secretary Hagel also said: ``If sequester-level cuts persist''--which
is what we are talking about, the second half trillion that Obama would
be taking out of the military--``we risk fielding a force that is
unprepared.''
I can't imagine hearing that from our own Secretary of Defense, but
it is there.
I wish to show us why our choices are down to only one choice.
On this chart if we look at December, today is the 12th. The House
leaves at 11 o'clock Friday morning. They are gone, they are gone for
the rest of the year. Anything we do that has to go to the House, they
won't be there. It can't be done. We work for 1 more week starting the
December 16, this coming Monday, and we go all the way through the week
where we will be in session. Anything we would do or pass or amend
could not go to the House, and that means we would go into December 31
without any kind of advance authorization. On that basis it is
significant and that shows we actually have to do it.
I think I mentioned this. I have a chart, but I don't have it in
front of me--show since 1970 we always have had our Defense
authorization done before January. The only two exceptions to that were
when they were vetoed by the President on two occasions and we had to
override the veto. Nonetheless, that is why this month is the last
chance we have to do it.
I would mention that there is such popular support for this around
the country that we have extremes--not really extremes--but
publications generally considered to be on the progressive or moderate
side and some conservative.
This is one where both the Heritage Foundation and the Washington
Post say let's pass the defense deal. It has to pass.
The Heritage Foundation has an extra paper that if there is time
later on I may make some quotes from that.
The Washington Post says:

With the end of 2013 rapidly approaching, Congress has an
opportunity to rise above a year of massive dysfunction and
prevent major disruptions in U.S. defense operations. The
leaders of the Senate and the House armed services committees
have managed to fashion a bipartisan version.

That is what we are talking about when I say the big four, so this is
what we are talking about.
Continuing:

It's a decent compromise that the leaders of both chambers
ought to embrace and bring to a vote in the coming days.
A failure to do so would be a new political low for this
Congress. The NDAA has been passed 51 consecutive years, even
when much of the rest of government had to make do with
temporary authorities. But much more than political symbolism
is at issue. Though defense funding ultimately must be
provided by appropriators, the authorization bill extends
vital Pentagon authorities and ultimately sanctions new
operations.
If no bill is approved by Jan. 1, combat pay and bonuses
for U.S. troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere would be
suspended; work on major weapons systems, including a new
aircraft carrier, would be halted at considerable cost; and
support for the Afghan army and the disposal of Syria's
chemical weapons would be interrupted at a critical moment.
The bill also contains important measures to combat sexual
crimes in the military.

We talked about that, but this is being editorialized, not by me on
the floor of the Senate, but by the Washington Post.
They talk about Guantanamo Bay and they say:

. . . advance the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison--

It could take place in the absence of this legislation.
Continuing:

Though a proposal was favored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
(D-N.Y.), providing for the prosecution of sex crimes outside
the military chain of command, it was not included--did not
receive a Senate vote--some three dozen other reforms in
legislation would make the punishment of these crimes

[[Page S8744]]

more likely while providing more protections to victims.

Let me conclude this editorial by reading the next-to-the-last
paragraph.
It says:

Other measures in the bill ought to attract broad
bipartisan support. The effects on defense of the so-called
sequester would be eased by transferring money to operations
and training from less essential accounts, such as
construction and staffing in office headquarters. The
Pentagon is still vulnerable to a $50 billion sequester cut
in January unless a separate budget deal can head it off. But
passage of the authorization act would prevent the worst
disruptions of ongoing operations.

It goes on to say that this is in the House and the House, very
likely, is going to pass it, and send it over to the Senate, and they
strongly support it.
We have letters from all of the Armed Services to us and to the
leader, Senator Harry Reid. This one is from Martin Dempsey. He is
urging us to pass this. It is not only me and a handful of Senators,
this is the military speaking. He is the top military personnel.
He said:

I write to urge you to complete the National Defense
Authorization Act this year. The authorities contained
therein are critical to the Nation's defense and urgently
needed to ensure we all keep faith with the men and women,
military and civilian, selflessly serving in our Armed
Forces.

He goes on to say, ``This is the most significant concern we have
right now,'' that we may not be able to pass this bill.
We have a letter from General Welsh. General Welsh, if you remember,
is the chief of the Air Force. He is the one who is so upset with the
fact we had grounded some of our combat squadrons. He says:

The FY14 NDAA contains critical authorities that enable us
to protect the American people while keeping promises to our
active duty, Guard, Reserve and civilian Airmen. If this
important legislation is not enacted I worry about
significant impacts to Air Force operations that could
jeopardize the missions we are tasked to perform.

He goes on to say how important that is; that it is a matter of life
and death to many of the airmen who are out there.
We have the same thing from General Amos of the Marine Corps, who
says:

. . . our hard-won gains on the Twenty-nine Palms land
expansion will be threatened, and the construction of the
next generation aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford,
will stop. Passage of the this vital legislation will prove
to our Marines and Sailors our unwavering support.

That is what we are talking about because those are the guys who are
out there.
I see my good friend from Arizona Senator McCain, and I would say I
have been talking about the degraded condition of our military right
now and how much worse it is going to be if we are not able to do this
bill that I have outlined in some detail. Hopefully, we will be
successful in doing that.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with my
friend from Oklahoma.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. McCAIN. First, I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for his
leadership and his dedication to getting this authorization bill
passed. I think my friend from Oklahoma would agree with me there is no
reason we are where we are today.
Is it not true this bill was passed out of the Armed Services
Committee in May and here we are now in December just now contemplating
bringing it to the floor of the Senate?
Mr. INHOFE. I would say to my friend that is true, but also, over in
the House they did it the way it should be done. They passed it out of
committee, they got it to the floor and passed it. Ours was passed by a
huge bipartisan margin. We only had three or four vote against it, and
that was way back in--I think it was the last of May or 1st of June. It
should have been done back then instead of waiting until 1 week before
we are out of here.
Mr. McCAIN. With all due respect, one has to wonder about the
priorities of the group and the leader who sets the agenda for the
Senate. One of the real advantages of being in the majority is you set
the agenda. So rather than take the bill to the floor, as we have for
51 years--for 51 years the Congress of the United States has taken up
and passed a Defense authorization bill--we are now here in December,
with the House of Representatives going out of session tomorrow, and we
are faced with an unsavory parliamentary situation where we are having
to maneuver in a way that a ``message''--and my friend from Oklahoma
can correct me if I am wrong--a message that cannot be amended,
otherwise it would have to go back to the other body, which is going
out of session, which would then take us into January.
I ask my friend from Oklahoma: Isn't that where we are, and isn't
that a commentary on the concern my friends on the other side of the
aisle, the majority leader, has about the men and women who are serving
in the military?
We will talk a little about what a failure to pass a Defense
authorization bill is. But we are now in a situation which is a
disservice not only to the men and women who are serving but to all of
us--to every one of the 100 Senators--because every one of these
Senators would want to have an amendment to make this bill better and
that will impart to the rest of the body their knowledge, their
expertise, and their priorities. So what are we doing? We are asking
Members on this side of the aisle and the other side of the aisle to
accept a piece of legislation without a single amendment to it. That,
my friends, when we are talking about the defense of this Nation, is
absolutely outrageous.
Would my friend from Oklahoma agree?
Mr. INHOFE. It is right up here. It shows the House, on Friday, at 11
o'clock, is out of here. They are gone. They are adjourned. If
something should happen--we were to amend something--they are not
there. So it can't be done. This is where we are now. We only have
these 5 days that are left.
A lot of people have said--and I would ask my friend from Arizona if
he agrees with this--well, we can come back in January and do this. But
then look at this. We come back on the 6th of January, and the CR--the
continuing resolution--is here. I can assure you, from past experience,
that will dominate the floor. They are certainly not going to have time
to do it. So the only shot we have is up here.
But also important, I read a list of things before my good friend
came in, that expire on December 31, and those are things that are
happening right now to all of our pilots. My colleague certainly knows
about that. They have bailed out. They are gone now. They are so upset
with what is happening with the grounding of our squadrons. If we take
away their reenlistment incentive, are we going to have any pilots
left?
Mr. McCAIN. So we have established, by the calendar and by what has
happened since May, that, obviously, the majority and the majority
leader had a higher priority for whatever the hell it is we did rather
than the defense of this Nation. That is a fact. I would challenge
anyone on the other side of the aisle to come and argue differently. It
is outrageous.
Now that we have established that, could I ask my friend what
happens--and I know he has gone through it--what happens to the men and
women in our military if we do wait until January, if we do wait until
February or March or don't act at all?
For example, one of the best examples I have seen is that right now a
married sergeant in the U.S. military who is serving as a helicopter
crew chief in Afghanistan, beginning on the 1st of January--
please correct me if I am wrong--will lose $890 a month; is that
correct?

Mr. INHOFE. That is correct.
Mr. McCAIN. So we send people into combat, and while we dither around
here we are going to keep the men and women who are serving in harm's
way from getting the benefits they have earned and deserve and are
theirs by law. But we are not going to act, at least until January,
perhaps.
I know the Senator from Oklahoma has gone on with a very long list
about the completion of ships, about the health programs, and about a
number of other issues, but I wish to focus for 1 minute on one area
with my friend from Oklahoma.
I think all my colleagues are aware, and the American people are
aware, there is a serious issue in the U.S. military. It is a very
serious issue and it is the issue of sexual assaults. It is the

[[Page S8745]]

issue the Senator from Oklahoma has spent untold hours in discussions
and debate and learning about this issue because it is a terrible thing
that is going on in our military today.
Under the leadership of the Senator from Oklahoma and the
distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Levin, we have--and
with the participation of every member of the committee, under their
leadership--come up with a way to, at least to a significant degree,
address this problem in the military.
There are still some controversial aspects of it that are not
necessarily either side of the aisle but just a different viewpoint.
But I would argue and ask my friend from Oklahoma, is it not true that
we have made significant improvements in the Defense authorization bill
on the issue of sexual assaults?
These changes, after hearings, after debate, after discussion were
put into law and they were agreed to as being very necessary measures
to try to bring this terrible situation of sexual assaults in the
military under control. I ask my colleague from Oklahoma if this isn't,
among many others, an issue that needs to be addressed.
Mr. INHOFE. I respond to my friend that it was addressed in the House
bill and in the Senate bill, but the Senate bill didn't pass, so this
is all that is left. Specifically, 10 days ago, we were meeting and
putting this together--the big four, as they call it. It had 27
specific reforms in this area to support victims, to encourage sexual
assault reporting, and, in addition, nine enhancements to the military
justice system.
I mentioned our good friend from South Carolina, who is probably the
expert in this area, and we consulted him, along with a lot of the
other people, both Senator Gillibrand and Senator McCaskill had
amendments and we have bits out of each one of those amendments they
had. They are both better off than they were before. But without this,
we got nothing--no changes at all.
So we have made great progress in this bill in the sexual assaults,
as well as I mentioned Gitmo too which is a very controversial issue.
Mr. McCAIN. Would the Senator agree that even though there is
significant difference between Senator Gillibrand and Senator
McCaskill, they were in agreement with the many provisions my colleague
just pointed out, which, whether we address their disagreements or not,
they were both agreed these are very important measures they both agree
on, that the entire committee agreed on in addressing this issue of
sexual assaults in the military.
Mr. INHOFE. That is exactly right. As you point out, they were apart
on a lot of issues, but what we did was to take those areas that will
improve the situation and adopted them, and they are a part of this
bill. So the whole issue of sexual harassment will not be addressed at
all in the absence of this legislation. Of two of the very significant
provisions that are here, certainly that is one of them.
I mentioned a minute ago the other one. I know we have had
differences of opinion between us on the whole Gitmo thing. Yet we have
a provision in there now that I think satisfies us both until we all
have time to sit down and work these things out.
The bottom line is this: We have things where it would cost huge
amounts of money. If you just take the CVN-78, they would have to stop
construction, after we have already spent $12 billion, and after it is
75 percent done. That cost would be tremendous, especially when we all
know we will go back and reinstate it. But this wouldn't be just
millions, it would be hundreds of millions of dollars. That is what is
going to happen if we don't pass this bill.
Mr. McCAIN. I know long ago both the Senator from Oklahoma and I
served in the military, which is not too relevant anymore, but both of
us keep track of the military. We visit our military installations, and
we spend time with the men and women who are serving both here and
overseas. We are in communication with them. It is part of our
privileges as their representatives, whether they happen to be in our
home State or serving overseas in harm's way. When you talk to these
young people--and they are the bravest of the brave and we all know the
best of America--they do not understand why, when they are serving in
combat and they are entitled to some additional pay because of being in
danger, that will not happen. They do not understand why the bonus of
special duty and incentive pay will lapse. They don't understand why
that should happen. They do not understand why we are not addressing
the issue of sexual assaults in the military. Many of them are deeply
concerned about that.
By the way, I would also add--and I think my friend from Oklahoma
will agree--this issue impacts on recruiting the most highly qualified
young Americans.
So here we are on December 12 and we have still not completed our
duty, our obligation to the men and women who are serving. They rely on
us. They rely on us to take care of them. They rely on us to provide
them with the weapons and the capabilities and the pay and benefits and
to take care of their families. They rely on us. I am getting feedback
from them that they are now beginning to believe we don't care that
much. Frankly, I can't argue with that because why are we here in
December? Why are we here in December? The fiscal year ended on 1
October. They ask: Why is it that you in Congress can't act to provide
us with the tools we need to carry out our mission of defending the
Nation?
Frankly, I don't have a very good answer, but maybe the Senator from
Oklahoma does.
Mr. INHOFE. My colleague is fully aware, because no one has spent
more time over in these areas of hostility than my good friend from
Arizona, that when you talk to these guys, and you sit in the mess hall
with them, one of the things--and we know this is true because we have
both had experience in the military--they are talking about is their
careers.
They are talking about their careers. Right now our retention is as
good as it has ever been. What is going to happen to our retention if
all of a sudden we renege on the reenlistment bonuses that they all
depend upon? They all talk to each other. About the time that stops on
December 31, I have great fear over what is going to happen to our
retention rate.
I talked about in the very beginning about what has happened in the
military in the last 4\1/2\ years, and I read all of the statements
from our commanders, from Dempsey, and actually even the Secretary of
Defense, talking about what a crisis it is. They all said it is much
more of a crisis if we don't pass this bill. This isn't going to help
us like it should. We should be in much better shape than this even if
we pass it. But we have to pass this or all those things we talked
about which are going to be affecting our troops directly are going to
take place.
Mr. McCAIN. I finally say to my friend, I thank him for his
leadership. I thank him for his willingness to really short circuit
what should have been a 2- or 3-week exercise, where every Member of
the Senate would have had the opportunity to propose amendments, to
debate those amendments.
My colleague just mentioned the issue of detainees which is still
something that deserves great scrutiny by this body. The issue of
surveillance is clearly one that needs debate and discussion on the
floor of the Senate. There are so many issues that we are not
discussing in the slightest because we are now entrapped by a process
which doesn't allow us to pass a single amendment to this absolutely
vital piece of legislation.
I thank my friend from Oklahoma for understanding that even though we
are placed in this incredibly unsavory situation where we are not able,
every Member of the Senate who chooses to--and as the Senator from
Oklahoma knows well, when we consider the Defense authorization bill,
there are literally hundreds of amendments that we consider because of
the interest and the commitment that all of our colleagues have. We are
not going to be able to do that this time. But it seems to me too, at
least we ought to get the bill passed so we can get our Defense
Department and the men and women who are serving in it in the kind of
condition they deserve.
Mr. INHOFE. I thank my friend from Arizona for coming down and
showing what a traumatic situation we have right now. I hope two things
come from this. First of all, that we go ahead and

[[Page S8746]]

pass the NDA bill and then make sure that next year we are there to
make sure this doesn't happen again in the same way it has happened.
I ask unanimous consent to have some testimonials printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Oklahomans Are Hit Hard by ObamaCare

It took me three days to sign up for ObamaCare due to
website glitches. When I finally got through, I saw my own
premium rise 20% and my out of pocket costs go up. But this
is nothing compared to what Oklahomans are experiencing. In
just a week's time, I received more than 400 stories from my
constituents impacted by ObamaCare.
Julia in Broken Arrow said that to keep her family's
current plan, they will pay an additional $1,400 in premiums
and another $4,000 out-of-pocket.
Lloyd, from Tecumseh, says he is dropping his current
insurance and choosing to pay the penalty after learning his
monthly premium will jump from $592 to $1,952.
Stacy, a mother of three in Oklahoma City, shared with me
that her family's health insurance premiums will increase
20%, with an additional $6,000 in out of pocket costs per
person, up to $18,000.
Joy of Oklahoma City said her family's deductible is
increasing by $2,000 and they will have to pay out of pocket
for prescriptions. This will create significant financial
difficulties for them as her husband is battling cancer.
Greg and his family, who live in Oklahoma City, are worried
about having to choose between making a monthly mortgage
payment of $1,100 or an insurance payment of $1,197.
Jim, with employer coverage in Choctaw, is facing a
deductible increase of $4,000.
Janice is currently on a COBRA plan in Sapulpa. On a new
exchange plan, she will be paying $240 more each month.
Paul, who says he is in good health and rarely requires a
visit to the doctor's office, will be paying $70 per month.
Ralph, who has employer-based insurance in Durant, will pay
$80 more each month.
David from Owasso let me know his family's premium and
deductible will increase by $318 a month and $500,
respectively.
Linda in Pryor says ObamaCare has doubled her deductible
and increased her out of pocket costs by 30%.
Darrell, who has a group plan in Cashion, is expecting his
premiums to go up 40% and his deductible to double.
Ed, a widow in Oklahoma City, will be paying $250 more in
premiums every month.
Linda, from Chelsea, says her family's deductible has
increased $700.
Roger, who is on a fixed income in Comanche, says his
premiums have doubled.
Peggy in Boise City said her deductible has increased 250%.
An employer in Tulsa says he must choose between a 128%
premium increase or a 500% increase in deductible for his
staff.
A small business owner in Oklahoma City reports that the
cost of the insurance he provides to his employees has gone
up 41% and will cost him $1,000 per month more. Because of
the mandate to have insurance, more of his employees are now
electing coverage, which will drive his costs up even more.
A family of four in Shawnee is facing a 20% increase in
premiums and a $1,500 increase in deductible.
A single father of two and small business owner in Lawton
says he will be paying 24% more in monthly premiums.
A family of three in Miami is choosing to go without
insurance and pay the penalty rather than see their premium
double and deductible increase by $3,200.
Nancy from Oklahoma City said she probably should be one to
support Obamacare due to her income, but can't because ``it
is not the right answer''. She believes the government
doesn't have the right to tell her how to live or define what
is ``affordable'' for her.
Sharon from Oklahoma City went onto the website. Despite
entering in her full name, social security number and
address, her identity was not able to be verified. She said
she spent 5 weeks trying to get someone to assist her and at
this rate she is ready to give up and pay the fine.
Erin from Beggs is a wife and a mother of three. She was
dropped from her insurance company and instructed to enroll
in Obamacare. She has tried to access the website since it
was ``fixed'' and has not been able to get past the first
step. She is repeatedly kicked off and has to re-enter her
information every time she goes on the site.
Janice from Sapulpa spent over 40 hours attempting
unsuccessfully to apply for insurance on Healthcare.gov. She
finally asked for them to send her a paper application and
when it arrived, it was in Spanish.
The OKC Chamber of Commerce can no longer offer insurance
plans to its members since the plans don't meet mandated
requirements, impacting 1,400 businesses.
A 50-year-old female from Chandler said she and her husband
were dropped from their insurance plan. The plan offered to
her now includes maternity care and pediatric dental care--
neither of which she needs--and will cost over 200% more per
month.
Cyndee of Suphur lost her family's insurance plan while she
was still in a critical time frame for treating her cancer.
She called this a ``scary'' experience. She had this plan for
10 years until ObamaCare deemed it unworthy. Cyndee wrote to
me about her new plan under ObamaCare and said: ``No one
wants affordable insurance more than me, but at $1,100 a
month, just for me--one person--it's certainly not
affordable.''
A married father of two from Muskogee was also dropped from
his insurance plan. The plan offered to him as comparable in
coverage would cost him and his family 46% more than what
they used to pay.
Another male, from Edmond, was dropped from his employer
sponsored health care. The plan he had through his employer
provided him with a 75% employer subsidy on his deductible
and covered 100% of his medical bills.
Rockey from Enid said he and his wife's hours were cut at
work to 25 hours a week because of the employer mandate. Now
that they work part time, they are no longer eligible for
coverage through their employer and Obamacare is not
affordable for them.
Jessie from Moore said her husband's employer is
considering dropping spouse and dependent coverage due to the
rising costs of health insurance.
Debbie of Frederick said she is fortunate enough to still
have insurance through her employers, but because of mandates
in the Act, their family doctor of 30 years has had to
eliminate hospital visits from his services. Any time Debbie
is in the hospital, the doctor who knows her health the best
can no longer be on the front lines of helping make health
decisions with her in the most crucial circumstances.
Donna from Elgin said not only have her insurance costs
gone up, but two of her doctors have left their practice. She
cannot afford the new health insurance, and is having
troubling finding new doctors.
Roderick from Shawnee said within a three-month period,
three of his doctors have chosen to retire. He is worried
about finding new doctors his insurance will cover.
This is devastating. We absolutely need to bring the cost
of healthcare down, but ObamaCare is clearly doing the
opposite. My colleagues and I have supported common-sense
ideas like purchasing insurances across state lines or
enacting tort reform. We could have started here, but
instead, President Obama forced America down a destructive
path that will likely end in a single-payer option. We must
repeal ObamaCare and put common sense healthcare reform in
its place. I'll continue this fight to ensure Oklahomans have
quality, affordable health care options.

Mr. INHOFE. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, as we consider some of the nominations
before us, we are reminded that one of the reasons we have all these
problems around the country associated with ObamaCare and all our
constituents are being impacted in such a negative way by higher
premiums, higher deductibles, higher taxes, and fewer jobs is because
of the overreach of government.
This is a perfect opportunity for us to discuss the fact that
overreaching government--in this case, government which has literally
taken over one-sixth of our economy--is causing great harm to the
American people and that there is a much better approach most of us
here advocated when this was debated. Of course, at the time we didn't
have the votes. This was passed in a party-line, partisan way and, as a
consequence, we are seeing now the results and the impact on the
American people, all of which are very harmful to their own economic
circumstances.
I have a personal example from the emails and letters coming into my
office of the adverse impact of ObamaCare. This comes from a female
constituent of mine in Wilmot, SD. She writes:

My husband and I have four small children and purchase our
own health care.
My husband runs his own business and I am privileged to
stay at home.
We are very healthy, so we have always purchased a plan
with a large deductible, so we can afford a reasonable
premium.
Today we received our letter from our health insurance
provider letting us know that next month our premium will be
jumping 232 percent! That's over $500 more a month--and we
barely use our health insurance.
We currently live in an 1,800 square foot house and have
been trying to find something bigger. This jump in our
monthly health care premium could prevent us from being able
to afford any kind of monthly house payment.
. . . ObamaCare is cutting into the carefully-planned
budgets of American families, holding them back from the
futures for which they have carefully budgeted.

This is just one example of the harmful economic impact ObamaCare is
having on countless Americans from my State of South Dakota.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I realize Democrats want to deflect
attention of the impact of ObamaCare from our constituents. That is one
of

[[Page S8747]]

the reasons we are having these nominee votes. But our constituents
have the right to be heard, so I wish to share some thoughts from a
constituent of mine in Owensboro, Cheryl Russell. Here is what she
wrote:

We got a letter from our insurance company saying our
current policy will not meet the affordable care act, which
means it will go away.
According to our insurance company, we will have to take
pediatric dental and vision insurance, [even though] we don't
have kids.
They said it was because of ObamaCare. . . .

She goes on:

Another plan . . . will cost us over $150.00 more a month
plus our deductible goes up to $5700.
Please keep taking a stand against Obama Care . . . not
only are we going to lose our insurance, but when we go to a
different policy we have to pay more. . . .
We are 58 & 56 years old. We will have to work the rest of
our lives just to pay for our insurance. . . .
This isn't fair and it isn't right.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to share a couple letters I received
just today.
I was talking earlier in the day on some of these situations and
again what happens when one side thinks they can do whatever they want
to do and the consequences of that.
This letter is from Paul from East Prairie, MO, in the Missouri
bootheel:

Upon hearing the potential changes coming January 1st, I
decided to investigate the stories I heard. I learned that in
2014 my family's premium would go from $597/mo with two $5000
deductibles to $1119/mo with two $4300 deductibles. My
cheapest option is $1,085.00/mo with a $12,700 deductible.
Not only was this unaffordable, it was pointless to have
insurance.

Certainly, I agree with that. If your deductible is $12,700 and you
are paying over $1,000 every month to get insurance, what is that? It
is certainly not affordable health care.
Here is a letter from Tom in St. Louis, who said:

My company is a great company to work for, but
unfortunately our health insurance policy went from $490 to
$690/month. That is $200/month that I can't put towards my
kids' education. That is a lot of money for a working guy to
come up with every month. My co-workers are struggling with
this increase too. I will look into all the options available
and hope we do not have doctor changes. We are familiar with
the plan we had and we liked it.

A third one from Sherri in Holts Summit, MO. She had a preexisting
condition and was in the high-risk pool. She said:

I saw the price, the co-pays and the deductibles and I
can't afford it.
So it looks like I will suffer on and have even less money
while having a policy I won't be able to afford to use.

We are getting those letters every hour of every day. I think it is
not what the American people thought they were going to get.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, there is more wrong with the Affordable
Care Act than just the Web site not working. In fact, the Web site is
just a symptom of bigger problems.
Similar to my colleagues, I wish to share the problems Iowans have
with the Affordable Care Act. So I come to the floor today to share
just one of hundreds of emails, letters, and phone calls from my
constituents in Iowa expressing sticker shock about the Affordable Care
Act.
A working mother in Decorah, IA, who lost her employer-sponsored
coverage for her family because of rising costs, wrote to me and said
the following:

. . . comparable plans do not seem to exist on the
healthcare exchange. The closest we can come (and still see
our own doctors) cost almost $1050 per month. This represents
a 247% increase in cost over our prior employer provided
plan--and with much higher deductibles!
My husband is a self-employed small business owner. We
covered our family of 4 on my group health plan, which
includes a 21 year old adult daughter in college, who is not
a legal tax dependent. If we receive any `subsidy', it will
be insignificant in relation to the total jump in our out of
pocket costs related to the so called ``Affordable Care
Act''.
The general public seems to believe that anyone who does
not qualify for premium subsidies can easily afford a premium
increase--no matter how outrageous. Yet an increase of almost
250% in our personal cost of providing an inferior policy for
our family--which represents an increase in costs of roughly
20% of our gross income--can only be described as an absolute
disaster.

I think this email from a real person who is really living this train
wreck of a health care law speaks for itself.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, part of our job as Members of the U.S.
Senate is to help people who have problems. This has been a very
difficult time for many Americans and difficult for me as somebody who
wants to be able to help people with a problem.
As my colleagues have indicated, the letters, the phone calls, the
conversations, the emails continue to come. The one I wish to highlight
to my colleagues is from a person who describes herself as a 62-year-
old female retired teacher from Wichita. She says she considers herself
a middle-class American.
She indicates in her letter that her current health policy expires at
the end of this year, less than a month away. Here is what she says in
her letter:

When I inquired why, I was told the policy no longer meets
the guidelines under ObamaCare.
Yet, in the previous 2 years, my premiums have increased
25% and 28% respectively to which the answer from [my
insurer] was that it was to help pay for ObamaCare.
Now I can't even have that plan any longer.
It had a $500 deductible and $1,500 Max out of pocket
expense per year, with a $300 premium per month.
After over 20 hours online, and multiple calls and online
chats, I finally was able to see some numbers for healthcare
costs from the Obamacare Marketplace, only to learn that the
premium is 1.5 times what I currently pay, and the deductible
is 4.5 times higher (and it's a different insurer).
A plan [from my current insurer] was double the premium.
I will not qualify for tax credits, as my projected income
for 2014, which includes some tax free interest income and
social security, places this middle class retired American,
over the threshold of any kind of subsidy.
I'm sad that my well laid plan for retirement, now will
redirect my earnings to pay for healthcare, much of which I
will never use.
At 62 and having had a hysterectomy, prenatal care is NOT
an issue I will face, nor will I ever need female
reproductive disorder treatment, as those parts are gone, but
I will have no discount for not needing those coverages.
So I'm paying a higher premium for other women to have
them?
I'm very frustrated at these changes.
It's the middle class that will be hit the worst by this
mandate, and I fear that many will opt for the government
fine because now they truly won't be able to afford the cost
of healthcare.
One more question, how will folks who can't even make the
premium payment, ever be able to pay the outrageous
deductible?
Honestly, $6,500 out of pocket expenses per person per
year?
That's crazy, who will be able to pay that? And then who
will end up paying it? This is NOT a solution for the Middle
Class Americans!

Surely we can develop a policy, a program of caring for Americans
without doing damage to people who already had insurance.
I yield the floor.
Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, I am pleased to take the floor today and
join my colleagues in opening the mailbag. All of us have received a
lot of mail and email and faxes and texts from individuals who are
being harmed by this law.
For example, Steve from Peoria, AZ, is looking at the premium for his
policy through his employer going up in response to ObamaCare nearly 20
percent. In addition, his employers have told him to brace for more
impacts like rising prices--all customers are going to get this--and
falling salaries for new hires as well.
Leanne from Eager, AZ, is facing what she calls ``sky high'' rates
now thanks to ObamaCare. If this is not bad enough, it looks as if she
and her husband will have to put off buying their parents out of their
family business. It looks likely that Leanne's parents are going to
have to keep working for a while.
Cristian from Flagstaff, a young husband and father who has a young
boy, says he might see his premiums actually decrease marginally.
However, thanks to ObamaCare and thanks to changes his employer is
making in response to ObamaCare, he is looking at higher copays, higher
deductibles, and a decrease in the level of coverage. He is looking at
``a large increase in my

[[Page S8748]]

responsible portion of my medical bills.''
ObamaCare is far from ideal for those in the workplace, those looking
to retire, and for new families.
With story after story like these, we clearly see that the Affordable
Care Act is a misnomer.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on behalf of
nearly 7,000 Nebraskans who have contacted my office with concerns
about ObamaCare. The sticker shock has hit Nebraskans hard.
A woman from Palmyra writes:

This is the first time I have ever written my Senators. We
just received our insurance letter telling us that they no
longer would have our health insurance policy and the closest
policy under the ACA would up our monthly premium from
$590.14 to $932.24 for our family of 6. How is this
affordable?

A constituent from Holdrege writes:

I cannot believe the letter I got from Blue Cross today. It
informs me that I have to switch my coverage, and my new
selected plan will cost me $1,116.74, per month. That's a
$571.58 per month increase than what I have now. That's
almost double my mortgage payment.
Also, why am I forced to carry coverage that I don't need
or want? At 58, my wife and I are not going to have any more
kids. I don't believe I'm going to qualify for any government
subsidies. Our planned budget includes our current health
care policy. There is no way we can afford the suggested new
policies.

This law is anything but affordable.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I join my colleagues as one who has
received tweets and hits on the Web site, emails, phone calls ringing
the phone off the hook, written letters, responses that I hear as I
talk to people back in Indiana. These are not Republicans, Democrats,
liberals, conservatives; they are all of the above. They are not
writing to say: Stand with the Republican Party. Stand with this. Stand
with that. They are writing to say: Wait a minute. The President
promised that we would not have an increase in our premiums. He
promised that if we liked our doctor, we could keep our doctor. He
promised this would be affordable.
Tell that to Deborah from Logansport, who said that her increases in
premiums will strain an already strained budget. I think she speaks for
millions of Americans, tens of millions of Americans--a lot of
Hoosiers, that is for sure.
Doug, a small business owner from Bloomington, told me that he
expects his company health insurance to increase over 30 percent next
year and, he said, ``this will preclude me from providing wage raises
to our employees and will make hiring additional employees much less
attractive, if not impossible.''
The President promised a lot. The worst thing you can do to your
constituents, the people you represent, the people who put their trust
in you, is overpromise and underperform. This could be the biggest gap
between overpromising and underperforming of anything any President has
said in the history of the United States. And he punctuated his
statements with ``period,'' meaning ``take it to the bank. Count on it.
Trust me. Your premiums won't increase.'' It is sad.
It is sad, but it can be corrected. We can work. We can repeal this
now. We can work together on a bipartisan basis. We can fashion a
reasonable, affordable solution to providing Americans who are
uninsured with insurance, creating the kinds of products through an
open market system, a competitive system that will deal with this
problem. We do not have to keep swallowing this so-called Affordable
Care Act. It simply will not go down.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Mr. President, last night I read a number
of emails we received of the hundreds we received from constituents in
Wisconsin specifically talking about the problems they have had in
losing their coverage and certainly finding this law not being
affordable.
They use words like ``scared,'' ``begging for help,'' feeling they
were just collateral damage in this scheme that simply is not
protecting patients or offering affordable care. They cannot fathom
that this is actually happening to them because they knew it was not
supposed to.
Today I rise to read an email received from Steve Walrath from
Beloit. Steve writes: I am 54 years old, in good health and no prior
conditions. I just received my health insurance renewal bill. I used to
have affordable and user-friendly health care that cost about $290 a
month with no copay. According to my renewal letter from Dean health
care, my choices are now $854 a month with a 10-percent copay, up to
$1,315 a month with a zero-percent copay.
Let me put that in perspective. He was paying $290 a month with no
copay, so if he wants a similar plan he will now experience a 440-
percent increase, up to $1,315. If he wants to pay a 10-percent copay,
it will be a 285-percent increase. This was not supposed to happen.
This is not what President Obama promised the American people, the
citizens of Wisconsin.
Steve goes on to write:

Where is the promise of reduced insurance rates under the
Affordable Care Act? What choices do you want me to make
after January 1? Dental care or health insurance? An
occasional night out or health care? Helping my kids get
settled into home ownership or health care? What choice do
you want me to make? This increase of over 300 percent is a
betrayal of the laws you passed and promises you made.
``Can't be denied coverage'' doesn't mean we can afford it.
Not when it's more than my mortgage payment. Which of the
above choices do you want me to make after January 1?

That is just the sad fact. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act is not protecting patients, it is not providing affordable care,
and it is not about choice. It is about coercion, and I am asking the
President of the United States and I am asking our Democratic
colleagues here in the Senate and the House to work with Republicans to
start limiting the damage, to start repairing the harm that is being
caused to citizens of Wisconsin and America.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, in Utah I have a program that I call the
Mobile Office. It is a way for many of my constituents, many of whom
live some distance from my two offices in the State, to meet with
members of my staff in order to discuss various concerns they have with
the Federal Government, concerns that arise from their interaction with
any of various Federal programs and agencies. It allows us to help
these constituents, and it provides vital information that I can use to
better represent them back here in Washington.
At one meeting in Davis County, a man attended who wanted to tell us
about his experience with ObamaCare. He owns two small food stores and
a 7-Eleven. He is also an immigrant, having come to the United States
just 12 years ago to seek a better life for himself and for his family.
He gives back to his community. He contributes to his economy and
provides jobs for people who live in his town. Now ObamaCare is
threatening all of that. His insurance premiums for his family are
going to be rising by $200 a month. This cost will destabilize his
personal finances and may well force him to make cutbacks or to let
some of his employees go.
These are the real human costs of ObamaCare. It is not what the
President promised, and it is turning out to be an absolute,
unmitigated disaster for families all across this country. It is time
to start over and develop a health care system that works for everyone.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, the Affordable Care Act promised
accessibility, affordability, and choice. As we heard from the stories
told here tonight, it delivered on none of the above.
I join Senator Lee, Senator Johnson, and the others to call on
Congress to come together. Let's fix this flawed program before it is
too late and before we destroy health care in the United States of
America.
I get constant communication from my State about the problems that
are there. This one that I want to read from Beth Hatfield demonstrates
the fear, confusion, and lack of accessibility the health care plan has
at this time.

I have tried many times over the past few weeks to purchase
a health insurance plan

[[Page S8749]]

for myself on the healthcare Web site. I finally was able to
complete an application, but have not been able to choose a
plan yet. Twice I asked questions on the ``live chat''
option, but they were not able to answer my questions,
instead they [told me to make a long distance call to the
help desk. I did, but I couldn't get an answer there either].
I was disappointed to find out that in order to ``compare
plans'' you first needed to enroll. In what other shopping
experience do you have to sign up before you actually shop?
Now I saw on the news that my personal information may be
compromised from the Web site. This makes me angry,
especially since it seems they knew all along [this problem
existed].
Is anyone going to be able to do anything about protecting
my information? I need health insurance. I am not working and
my COBRA policy is expensive [and runs out soon].
I need someone to help me, and I need them to help me now.
Thank you for the opportunity to be heard.

I yield.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I just found out PolitiFact, which is a
group who takes a look at what politicians say each year, just came out
with what they are describing as the ``Lie of the Year.'' PolitiFact,
``Lie of the Year.'' It is none other than that of President Barack
Obama, ``If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,'' called
by PolitiFact the ``Lie of the Year.''
It is not surprising that those of us from around the country are
getting letters, emails, and calls from folks at home who are finding
out they cannot keep it. They listened to the President, they believed
the President, who has now had his statement listed as being the ``Lie
of the Year.''
I have a letter from Cody, WY, from a man who said:

Just got a quote from my insurance agent on a Obama care
insurance. From $860 that I currently spend per month for my
family of 4, to $2,400 per month.

He said:

All with the low deductible of $10,000 per person per year.
I'm not sure what planet they think I live on, but there is
no way I can spend more than \1/2\ of my monthly income on
insurance. For the first time in my adult life I will soon be
without insurance. What does it matter if my two 18-year-old
children can stay on an insurance plan if I can't afford to
keep one? Also, all the airtime to preexisting conditions is
meaningless if I can't afford to keep a plan.
I feel greatly blessed to have the good paying job that I
have. It puts me above the pay level that would allow me to
get any subsidies. By the way, with the system in place this
year I wouldn't have needed subsidies.

Because he was paying something he could afford.

I have never needed them in the past and would like to
continue to never get a hand out from my government.

This is what I expect to hear from the people of Wyoming--not looking
for a handout from the government and able to take care of themselves.
They are rugged individuals.
What this constituent has gotten from a Presidential promise turns
out to be the lie of the year. He sees an increase in his health
insurance from $860 a month to over $2,000 a month.
He said:

I employ 35 people with my company. When we first opened
about a year and \1/2\ ago we were talking about getting some
sort of coverage. It became very clear that we will not be
able to do this, and have stopped any of our plans to provide
this in the future. We also know for sure that we can not
afford to ever employ more than 50 people, so as we continue
to grow, there is an upward limit on how many people we will
hire.

Here is an individual who has a business and has hired 35 people. He
is not going to provide insurance because the costs are too high. He
says that he is never going to have more than 50 employees. The
opportunities may be there--wanting to put people back to work--but,
no, there is a cap at 50. Why? Because of the health care law that has
been forced down the throats of the American people. It was voted along
party lines by Democrats in the House and in the Senate. So here we
are, hurting the economy and hurting people's health.
He goes on:

Simple economics, Obamacare is a job killer in Wyoming.

ObamaCare is a job killer not just in Wyoming but all across the
country.
He said:

It has never been easy to be in business, that is part of
the fun of being successful. It is discouraging when our
federal government limits the American dream for everyone.
I am thankful for your efforts, but from my chair in Cody,
it is already too late.

A failed Web site is just the tip of the iceberg. Web sites can be
fixed, but what can't be fixed is the destruction this health care law
is doing to the health of America in terms of canceled policies. We now
have over 5 million policies that have been canceled across the
country. Five million people have letters saying: We are sorry, but
your policy is canceled. Why? Maybe they didn't have the type of
insurance the President deemed good enough for them.
I received a letter from a lady who lives in Newcastle, WY. She is a
rancher. I talked to her at our Farm Bureau meeting in Wyoming. She
said: I lost my insurance because the President didn't deem my policy
good enough because it didn't include maternity coverage. She knows me
and knows I am a doctor. She said: Doc, I had a hysterectomy; I don't
need maternity coverage. She knows whether she needs maternity
coverage. The President of the United States doesn't have a clue. Yet
he is the one who determines what kind of coverage she needs because it
is the President who decided that he will be the one who will decide
what the American people need, not them. She knew what worked for her
and her family and what they could afford as far as a deductible.
There are people across my State who have absolute levels of anger
and anxiety, and it is reflected in the letters I continue to get.
The front page of yesterday's Wall Street Journal talked about the
amount of deductibles. The deductibles in the bronze policy are the
cheapest and average over $5,000 per person. A husband and wife will
have a $10,000 deductible before they even get to the insurance. Yet
they have to buy expensive insurance with these huge deductibles in
order to comply with the individual mandate the Democrats have forced
on the American people, that you have to buy it whether you call it a
fee, a fine, or a charge. Call it what you will--a tax.
So we have the fact that the costs are too high and, of course, the
deductibles.
I am going to continue to come back. I will be back later this
evening with more letters, but I appreciate your attention.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I commend the Senate for confirming Judge
Patricia M. Wald to be a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties
Oversight Board, ``PCLOB''. The Senate previously confirmed Judge Wald
to this post on August 2, 2012. The President renominated Judge Wald to
this position in March, and the Judiciary Committee favorably reported
the nomination without objection months ago. Like many other nominees,
her confirmation has been held up on the floor for months by Senate
Republicans.
During her tenure on this important oversight board, Judge Wald has
served with great professionalism and dedication. And last month, she
received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor
that the President can bestow.
For the past several months, our Nation has been engaged in a
national debate about the ever-growing need for limits on the
government's surveillance powers. The House and the Senate are
considering bipartisan legislation to rein in those expansive powers,
in an effort to better protect Americans' privacy and to increase
transparency and oversight. The PCLOB is also expected to issue an
important report on the government's surveillance programs to the
President and Congress.
Today's confirmation vote will ensure that the Privacy and Civil
Liberties Oversight Board remains at full strength as the board
continues this work to safeguard our constitutional rights. Democrats,
Independents, and Republicans alike have supported the work of this
non-partisan board. I commend the Senate for confirming this well
qualified nominee, so that the PCLOB can continue to carry out its
important responsibilities.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All postcloture time has expired.
The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the nomination
of Patricia M. Wald, of the District of Columbia, to be a Member of the
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board for a term expiring January
29, 2019?

[[Page S8750]]

On this question, the yeas and nays have been ordered, and the clerk
will call 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 Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr.
Kirk).
The result was announced--yeas 57, nays 41, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 264 Ex.]

YEAS--57

Baldwin
Baucus
Begich
Bennet
Blumenthal
Booker
Boxer
Brown
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Collins
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
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Nelson
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Stabenow
Tester
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wyden

NAYS--41

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

NOT VOTING--2

Inhofe
Kirk

The nomination was confirmed.

____________________