Congressional Record, Volume 160 Issue 16 (Tuesday, January 28, 2014)

[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 16 (Tuesday, January 28, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S505-S516]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

HOMEOWNER FLOOD INSURANCE AFFORDABILITY ACT OF 2014--MOTION TO
PROCEED--Continued

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.

Scholarships For Kids Act

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this morning the Senator from South
Carolina, Mr. Scott, and I went to the American Enterprise Institute
and outlined two bills that together represent the most ambitious
proposals ever to enable States to use Federal dollars to allow parents
to find a better school for their child.
I would like to take a few minutes to talk about my proposal, which
is called the Scholarships for Kids Act, and the context in which we
find ourselves today as we look forward to the President's State of the
Union address. I would also like to briefly mention the

[[Page S506]]

proposal of Senator Scott from South Carolina. He has already
introduced his bill. He will be on the floor at another time to talk
about it. But these are big ideas. Together they represent redirecting
about 35 billion Federal dollars that are now being spent through a
series of programs and instead spend them in a way that better fits the
age in which we find ourselves, an age in which the best Federal
investments can be made in things that enable Americans to do things
for ourselves to make our lives better and happier and safer and
longer.
Let me talk first about Scholarships for Kids. I ask unanimous
consent that an article describing the bill be printed following my
remarks.
The legislation that I am introducing today would allow approximately
11 million new Federal scholarships to follow low-income children to
any school their parents choose as long as it is accredited. It is not
a Federal mandate. It would enable States to create those choice
options. But it would mean about a $2,100 scholarship of Federal
dollars on top of the money that States already spend on elementary and
secondary education for each child.
The State of Tennessee, for example, spends nearly $8,000 per child
on public elementary and secondary education. This would be providing a
$2,100 scholarship to the one-fifth of students who are low income and
allowing that money to follow them to the school they attend.
Our country is united, not by race, but by a set of principles upon
which we agree. One of the most important of these is the principle of
equal opportunity. For me, equal opportunity means creating an
environment where the largest number of people can begin at the same
starting line. I believe this is a real answer to the inequality in
America that we hear so much about, giving children more opportunity to
attend a better school.
The Scholarships for Kids Act will cost $24 billion a year. It will
be paid for by redirecting about 41 percent of all the dollars we now
directly spend on Federal elementary and secondary education programs.
About 90 percent of all of the spending on our elementary and secondary
schools is State and local spending, and about 10 percent is Federal
spending. This is 41 percent of that 10 percent.
It includes all of the money the Federal Government spends on
elementary and secondary education except money for children with
disabilities--and Senator Scott's legislation addresses that. It does
not touch the Student School Lunch Program. It does not affect Federal
research in education, and it does not affect Impact Aid.
The whole purpose of Federal aid to elementary and secondary
education is to help low-income students. But unfortunately, often the
Federal dollars are diverted to schools with wealthier students. The
left and the right both have noticed this and would like to change it.
Scholarships for Kids would benefit only children that fit the
Federal definition of ``poverty'' which is about one-fifth of all
school children. That is because it would pin the $2,100 scholarship to
the blouse or the shirt of the child, and it would follow that child to
the school the child attends.
Allowing Federal dollars to follow students to a school has been a
successful strategy in American education for more than 70 years. Last
year, $33 billion in Federal Pell Grants and $106 billion in Federal
loans followed students to the public and private colleges of their
choice. Since the GI bill began in 1944, these vouchers--that is what
they are--have helped to create a marketplace of about 6,000 autonomous
institutions and a higher education system that is regarded by almost
everyone as the best in the world.
Our elementary and secondary education system is not the best in the
world. U.S. 15-year-olds rank 28th in science and 36th in math. I
believe one reason for this is that more than 93 percent of the dollars
that we spend through the Federal Government for higher education
follows students to the colleges of their choice, but Federal dollars
do not automatically follow students to the elementary or secondary
school of their choice.
Instead, with our elementary schools and our middle schools and our
high schools, money is sent directly to the schools. Local government
monopolies run most of those schools. They tell most students exactly
which school to attend. There is little choice and no K-through-12
marketplace as there is in higher education. Again, in higher
education, you have 6,000 autonomous institutions. You have generous
amounts of Federal dollars. They can follow you to the college or
university of your choice, whether it is public or private or nonprofit
or for-profit, as long as it is accredited. So students may go to
Harvard, Yeshiva or Notre Dame, or to Nashville's Auto Diesel College
or to the University of Tennessee or to the community college nearby.
The former Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin, often wrote that
American creativity has flourished during ``fertile verges,'' times
when Americans became more self-aware and creative.
In his book, ``Breakout,'' Newt Gingrich argues that society is on
the edge of such an era, the Internet age, an age where everything will
change, like everything changed at the time of the new internal
combustion engine.
Newt Gingrich in his book cites computer handbook writer Tim O'Reilly
for his suggestion about how the Internet could transform government.
Here is how Tim O'Reilly says we ought to do our job as we try to help
use the government to help Americans during this period of time:

The best way for government to operate is to figure out
what kinds of things are enablers of society and make
investments in those things. The same way that Apple figured
out, ``If we turn the IPhone into a platform, outside
developers will bring hundreds of thousands of
applications to the table.''

Already 16 States have begun a variety of innovative programs
supporting private school choice. Private organizations in many parts
of our country supplement these efforts. Scholarships For Kids,
allowing $2,100 Federal scholarships to follow 11 million children,
would enable other school choice innovations in the same way that
developers rushed to provide applications for the iPhone platform.
Senator Tim Scott has proposed what he calls the CHOICE Act. It would
allow 11 billion other Federal dollars that the Federal Government now
spends through programs for children with disabilities to follow these
6 million children to the schools their parents believe provide the
best services.
So there might be a child in Tennessee or Wisconsin or South Carolina
who is eligible for both--the Scholarship For Kids, because he or she
comes from a family that fits the Federal poverty definition. So there
is $2,100. Then, if that child is also disabled, the child might be
eligible for a scholarship under the CHOICE Act of several thousand
dollars. That would then be in addition to the amount of money that
South Carolina, let's say, spends on education per child, which is in
the neighborhood of $9,000.
So to take the case of Tennessee again, $8,000 or so for the State,
$2,100 more Federal dollars through Scholarship For Kids, a few more
thousand dollars, depending upon circumstances, for the scholarship
under Senator Scott's proposal, and you have a significant amount of
money that a parent could use to follow a child to the school that
helps that child succeed.
Especially in the case of children with disabilities, that seems to
make so much good sense to me. Senator Scott tells a poignant story of
a young girl in South Carolina who was in a kindergarten. She has Down
syndrome. She was in a kindergarten that helped her succeed. But then
her parents moved. They had to fight for a year to get her new school
to treat her in a mainstream way. Then they realized that the school
they had been fighting for a year was the one they were counting on.
Why not let that family take the $13,000, $14,000, $15,000 or $16,000
for that child with Down syndrome, pick a school that treasures that
child, and let the money follow the child to the school the child
attends.
So a student with a disability and from a low-income family would
benefit under both programs. As I said when I began my remarks, taken
together with Senator Scott's proposal, Scholarship For Kids
constitutes the most ambitious proposal ever to use existing Federal
dollars to enable States to expand school choice.
Importantly, this is not a Federal mandate. Washington is full of
politicians who fly an hour or an hour and a half from their home town,
and they

[[Page S507]]

get here and think they have suddenly gotten smarter. They have a good
idea and they say: Oh, let's apply that in Wisconsin and in Tennessee
and in South Carolina. I try not to do that. I am a very strong
believer, for example, in teacher evaluations. I led the fight for
teacher evaluations as Governor of Tennessee 30 years ago. We were the
first State to do it. When I came to Washington people said: Well then,
you will want to make everybody do that? My answer was no, I will not.
States have the opportunity to be right, and they have the opportunity
to be wrong.
The last thing Tennessee needs is the Federal Government peering over
the shoulders of communities and school districts and legislators and
governors and school boards who are trying to work out the very
difficult problem of teacher evaluations. It is the holy grail of
education reform as far as I am concerned, but it should not be
mandated from Washington. I very much believe in school choice, but it
should not be mandated from Washington. So under Scholarships For Kids,
States still would govern pupil assignments, deciding, for example,
whether parents could choose private schools.
When I was Secretary of Education years ago, Milwaukee was in the
midst of a major program to try to give low-income parents more choice
of schools, including private schools. So along with President George
H. W. Bush, we proposed what we called a GI bill for kids to allow
Milwaukee and Wisconsin to do it if it wished to do it. But it did not
impose what we thought was a good idea from Washington. Under
Scholarship For Kids, schools that parents chose for their child with
their $2,100 scholarship would have to be accredited. Federal civil
rights rules would apply. My proposal does not affect school lunches.
There also is an independent evaluation after 5 years so that Congress
can assess the effectiveness of the new tool for innovation.
In remarks that Senator Scott and I made this morning, the issue of
private schools came up, which always does when we talk about expanding
school choice. But in this case, we are not necessarily talking about
private schools. Most schools are public schools. I would assume that
most of these $2,100 scholarships would follow students to the school
they attend, which would be a public school.
So if a State chose to create a program whereby its low-income
citizens could choose a private school, as long as it was accredited,
that would be appropriate under the law. Why shouldn't a low-income
family have the same opportunities for a better school for its child
that a wealthier family, who may move to a different part of town or
may be able to afford a private school, does?
The idea of allowing dollars to follow students to the school of
their choice has not exclusively been an idea of the left or of the
right in our country. In the late 1960s, the most conspicuous proposal
for school choice was from Ted Sizer, then Harvard University's
education dean. He suggested a $5,000 scholarship in his poor
children's bill of rights. That $5,000 scholarship would be worth two
or three times as much today.
In 1992, when I was the U.S. Secretary of Education, President George
H. W. Bush proposed a GI bill for kids, a $\1/2\ billion Federal pilot
program for States creating school choice opportunities. Yet despite
its success in higher education, and despite the fact that it has had
powerful advocates on both the left and the right, the word ``voucher''
remains a bad word among most of the kindergarten-through-12th-grade
education establishment, and the idea has not spread widely. Equal
opportunity in America should mean that everyone, as much as possible,
has the same starting line.
During this week celebrating school choice, there would be no better
way to help children move up from the back of the line than by allowing
States to use Federal dollars to create 11 million opportunities to
choose a better school.

State of the Nation

If I may conclude with a word about the context in which we find
ourselves today, Senator Scott and I made our remarks today at American
Enterprise Institute. I am speaking on the floor of the Senate on a
very important day in our country's history. It is not only National
School Choice Week, but it is the day the President of the United
States makes his annual state of the Union address. Every President has
done that except two--as the Senate historian told us today--and those
two died before it was time to make the address, so it is a tradition
that goes back to the beginning of the country. We will all go over to
the House of Representatives, listen carefully, and the country will
watch to listen to what the President has to say.
We are told the issue the President will address is the one of income
inequality. If that is what he does, that is certainly an appropriate
issue for any American President. Because if equal opportunity is
central to the American character, so is the idea of the American
dream, the idea that anything is possible, that anyone can go from the
back to the front of the line with hard work; and equal opportunity,
therefore, helps to create a starting line from which we move.
If the President makes that proposal, I think we know the kind of
agenda we are likely to hear. It will have to do with a higher minimum
wage that would actually cost jobs. It will have to do with more
compensation for perpetual unemployment. It will have to do with
canceling more health insurance policies, which is what ObamaCare will
be doing in 2014--much more so than it did in 2013.
There is another agenda, another picture, another vision of how we
can help the largest number of Americans realize the American dream;
that is, more jobs, more job training, and more choices for low-income
parents of better schools for their children so they can get a better
job.
Instead of a higher minimum wage, which actually reduces the number
of jobs, we would liberate the free enterprise system of the wet
blanket of ObamaCare, other Obama rules and regulations, and create
many more jobs with good wages. Instead of more compensation for long-
term unemployment, we would say let's have more job training so they
can take one of these good new jobs we propose to create.
Then, instead of directing the money to a model that hasn't worked as
well over the last 70 years, let us take the Federal dollars we are now
spending on elementary and secondary education and let them follow low-
income children and disabled children to the schools of their parents'
choice, So they have an opportunity to go to a better school, just as
children who aren't disabled and with parents who have more money do.
We will be arguing that a better agenda for income equality to
realize the American dream, to help Americans move from the back to the
front of the line, is more jobs, more job opportunities, and more
choices of better schools for low-income children. That agenda is
especially right for the age we are in.
I mentioned the discussion Daniel Boorstin had about America's
fertile verges, Newt Gingrich's new book, and the suggestion by the
computer programmer that the best way for government to operate is not
with Washington mandates or Washington programs but to spend money on
things that enable each of us as Americans to do things for ourselves--
to live a happier life, to live a better life, to live a wealthier
life, to live a safer life.
I hope in the remarks I have made today that I have done that,
because we have 70 years of experience with such programs in education.
I would argue there may be no more successful social program in
American history than the GI bill for veterans. It began 70 years ago
in 1944. It did not send money to the University of Chicago, Tennessee,
Michigan, and Harvard. It followed the soldier, the airman, and the
Navy veteran to the college of his or her choice. We began that
practice in 1944. We continue it with the Pell grants today. We
continue it with the student loans today. Why should we not follow it
with the Federal dollars we spend for elementary and secondary
education?
If Federal dollars following students to the colleges of their choice
helped to produce the finest higher education system in the world, why
should we not allow States to try to create the best schools in the
world for our children--especially our low-income children?
I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will recognize this
isn't the proposal of the left or the right. I don't know many
Democrats who want to get

[[Page S508]]

rid of Pell grants or student loans. They are vouchers, pure and
simple, that have lasted for 70 years and may be the most successful
social program we have. Why not allow States in this Internet age to
take the Federal dollars we are already spending for low-income
children and make sure the money gets directly to them--and for
disabled children, and make sure it goes to directly to them--and give
their parents an opportunity to exercise the same kinds of decisions
wealthier parents do? They would say: What school would be the best
school for my child.
Would that not be a way to help a young American get a leg up on
moving to the same starting line that children from wealthier families
have--and maybe even a chance to move to the head of the line?
I hope my colleagues and American people will take a good look at the
Scholarships for Kids Act, and Senator Scott's CHOICE Act. Together
they constitute the most ambitious proposal ever to use existing
Federal dollars to enable States, and to allow parents--especially low-
income parents--to choose a better school for their child. There is no
better way to create opportunity in America.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

11 Million $2,100 ``Scholarships for Kids": A Real Answer to Inequality

Today I am introducing legislation that would allow $2,100
federal scholarships to follow 11 million low-income children
to any public or private accredited school of their parents'
choice.
This is a real answer to inequality in America: giving more
children more opportunity to attend a better school.
The ``Scholarships for Kids Act'' will cost $24 billion a
year--paid for by redirecting 41 percent of the dollars now
directly spent on federal K-12 education programs. Often
these dollars are diverted to wealthier schools.
``Scholarships for Kids'' would benefit only children of
families that fit the federal definition of poverty, which is
about one-fifth of all school children.
Allowing federal dollars to follow students has been a
successful strategy in American education for 70 years. Last
year, $33 billion in federal Pell grants and $106 billion in
loans followed students to public and private colleges. Since
the GI Bill began in 1944, these vouchers have helped create
a marketplace of 6,000 autonomous higher education
institutions--the best in the world.
Our elementary and secondary education system is not the
best in the world. U.S. 15-year olds rank 28th in science and
36th in math. I believe one reason for this is that while
more than 93 percent of federal dollars spent for higher
education follow students to colleges of their choice,
federal dollars do not automatically follow K-12 students to
schools of their choice.
Instead, money is sent directly to schools. Local
government monopolies run most schools and tell most students
which school to attend. There is little choice and no K-12
marketplace as there is in higher education.
Former Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin often wrote
that American creativity has flourished during ``fertile
verges,'' times when citizens became more self-aware and
creative. In his book Breakout, Newt Gingrich argues that
society is on the edge of such an era and cites computer
handbook writer Tim O'Reilly's suggestion for how the
Internet could transform government.
``The best way for government to operate,'' O'Reilly says,
``is to figure out what kinds of things are enablers of
society and make investments in those things. The same way
that Apple figured out, `If we turn the iPhone into a
platform, outside developers will bring hundreds of thousands
of applications to the table.' ''
Already 16 states have begun a variety of innovative
programs supporting private school choice. Private
organizations supplement these efforts. Allowing $2,100
federal scholarships to follow 11 million children would
enable other school choice innovations, in the same way that
developers rushed to provide applications for the iPhone
platform.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) has proposed the CHOICE Act,
allowing 11 billion other dollars the federal government now
spends through the program for children with disabilities to
follow those 6 million children to the schools their parents
believe provide the best services.
A student who is both low income and has a disability would
benefit under both programs. Especially when taken together
with Sen. Scott's proposal, ``Scholarships for Kids''
constitutes the most ambitious proposal ever to use existing
federal dollars to enable states to expand school choice.
Under ``Scholarships for Kids,'' states still would govern
pupil assignment, deciding, for example, whether parents
could choose private schools. Schools chosen would have to be
accredited. Federal civil rights rules would apply. The
proposal does not affect school lunches. So that Congress can
assess the effectiveness of this new tool for innovation,
there is an independent evaluation after five years.
In the late 1960s, Ted Sizer, then Harvard University's
education dean, suggested a $5,000 scholarship in his ``Poor
Children's Bill of Rights.'' In 1992, when I was U.S.
education secretary, President George H.W. Bush proposed a
``GI Bill for Kids,'' a half-billion-federal-dollar pilot
program for states creating school choice opportunities. Yet,
despite its success in higher education, voucher remains a
bad word among most of the K-12 educational establishment and
the idea has not spread widely.
Equal opportunity in America should mean that everyone has
the same starting line. During this week celebrating school
choice, there would be no better way to help children move up
from the back of the line than by allowing states to use
federal dollars to create 11 million new opportunities to
choose a better school.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.

Health Care Reform

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, it has been 1,406 days since the
President signed into law the Affordable Care Act. Since that time,
about 10 million Americans who have not had access to affordable
insurance have gotten it and patients have been reempowered, along with
their doctors, to take control of their own health care, taking power
away from the insurance company which had run our medical lives for too
long.
The Presiding Officer and I lived through dozens of votes in the
House of Representatives to repeal the bill, as the Senate saw as well,
but absolutely no genuine effort to replace the health care bill. I was
sitting in the Chair yesterday when one of our colleagues, Senator
Hatch, came to the floor to talk about a new proposal--I would probably
argue the first proposal from Republicans in 1,406 days to actually
talk about what their vision--what Republicans' vision--for health care
reform would be. This is just a framework, not a bill, that has been
suggested by our colleagues, Senator Hatch and Senator Coburn and
Senator Burr. So I wanted to come to the floor to talk about the
implications of this framework for affordability and patient
protections all across this country.
First of all, I give some credit to our colleagues because it has
been 1,406 days of complaints, of politics, of obfuscation, of
obstruction. So for the first time we are at least beginning to see
what the Republican vision is for the future of health care in this
country. Although we don't have a bill--all we have at this point is a
framework--it is a pretty scary future because the proposal from our
Republican colleagues would dramatically increase the cost of health
care for millions of Americans and would put the insurance companies
back in charge of our health care.
So for a few minutes I wish to talk in real terms about what this
proposal will actually do for health care in this country. I only have
a few minutes, so it is hard to go through the litany of backward steps
we would take were we to adopt the proposal that has been laid out by a
couple of our very brave Republican colleagues.
But the first thing it would do is it would reinstate the fact that
being a woman for decades in this country was considered to be a
preexisting condition. The health care reform bill says very simply
there can be no difference in the amount of money one pays for health
care based on gender. The facts are plain: Women have historically paid
50 percent more in terms of health care costs than men have across this
country; $1 billion more is the total amount of money women have paid
more than men simply because insurance companies believe that being a
woman is a preexisting condition. That is no longer the law of the
land. Women pay the same rate as men. There is no difference based on
gender. But that would be eliminated by this plan. Once again, being a
woman could be considered a preexisting condition.
Second, annual limits on the ability to recoup the cost of your
health care from your insurance company would be reimposed. The health
care bill says: Listen. It isn't fair that you buy an insurance policy,
and when you get very sick, you are told at some point midway through
the year your insurance is up. That is not real insurance. The idea of
insurance is that we all pool our risks together, and then if one of
us, through no fault of our own, gets sick, we actually get those
insurance bills paid.

[[Page S509]]

The Affordable Care Act says there can't be any more of those annual
limits, but the proposal from our Republican friends says that annual
limits can come back from insurance companies. To someone such as Debra
Gauvin from Connecticut, who had a $20,000 limit and who was diagnosed
with stage II breast cancer and hit her limit about halfway through the
year and then incurred about $18,000 of additional costs, causing her
to basically forgo treatment, that was a painful reality of an
insurance plan not delivering on insurance simply because she got so
sick she had big costs. That would once again be the reality. The
Republican plan would once again allow for annual limits.
Our friends talk about the fact that they address the issue of
preexisting conditions, but they don't. They truly don't. Because all
their plan says is that if you switch plans and you have no gap, the
new plan has to cover whatever illness you may have. But that is not
how life works. There are 89 million Americans, in an average year, who
have at least a 1-month gap in coverage. That 1-month gap in coverage
under the Republican plan--the one shown to us in a basic framework--
would allow for preexisting condition discrimination to once again be
the law.
Betty Berger, one of my constituents, had insurance her entire life
except for basically about a 1- or 2-month period of time where her
husband was switching jobs. During that time, their son was diagnosed
with cancer. The new insurance company at her husband's new employer
wouldn't cover the preexisting condition, and the Bergers lost
everything. They lost their home, they lost their savings, and their
lives were financially ruined.
The Affordable Care Act ends that nightmare for families. Fifty
percent of bankruptcies in this country are caused by medical debt. The
Republican plan does not fix the preexisting condition discrimination.
All it says is, if you don't have any change, any gap in your coverage,
then the new insurance company has to cover your preexisting condition.
But for millions of families that is not how life works.
Lastly, although the Republican plan does acknowledge the basic
underlying wisdom of the Affordable Care Act is right, in that the best
way to get coverage to people is to give them a tax credit with which
to go buy private insurance--that is the foundation of the Affordable
Care Act, and the Republican alternative that our colleagues introduced
basically adopts that as their framework for expanding coverage as
well--it is at a much lesser subsidy rate, with much greater tax
consequences to Americans than the Affordable Care Act has in it.
For instance, the Republican alternative says, if you hit 300 percent
of the poverty level, that is it, no more subsidy. Well, 300 percent
sounds like a lot. Three hundred is a big number. But the poverty level
is pretty measly in this country. If someone is making 300 percent of
the poverty level, they are making $34,000 a year. I don't know about
the State of the Presiding Officer, but in Connecticut it is hard to
put food on the table on a consistent basis at $34,000 a year. Then to
have no help from the government to buy insurance essentially means we
will have a huge class of people making $30,000 to $40,000 a year who
under the Affordable Care Act are getting helped by insurance but whom
under this alternative plan will get no help.
But here is how it is even worse. The Republican alternative we have
seen this framework on says that one of the ways we are going to pay
for this is by taxing people for the health care they are
getting. Right now, if someone gets health care coverage through their
employer, which 150 million Americans do, they get to essentially
exclude that money from taxation. They get those benefits in pretax
dollars. The Republicans have said: Well, we are going to allow that to
happen but only for about 65 percent of your benefit. So just under
half of your health care is now going to be taxable. That is a massive
tax increase on the people of this country.

We can debate whether there is policy wisdom in limiting the tax
exclusion of health care, but let us just admit that if you are going
to fund your proposal based on eliminating the tax exclusion of
employer-sponsored benefits to employees, then you are dramatically
raising taxes on middle-class Americans all across this country.
So while I give a lot of credit to the Senators who have put this
framework out there, because it is the first time we have seen any
alternative, it is a pretty miserable alternative for consumers all
across this country who have finally for the first time, because of the
Affordable Care Act, gotten access to affordable insurance and for
countless more Americans who have been insured and who finally feel as
though all of the tricks and the gimmicks they have seen from insurance
companies, such as excluding people from coverage because of a
preexisting condition or putting an annual limit on their coverage,
that those days are over.
So as we go into the debate about the effective implementation of the
Affordable Care Act and as we talk about these alternatives that are
now being promoted, it is important we do that with eyes wide open.
Nobody on our side of the aisle who supported the health care bill is
going to tell you it is perfect. No one on our side of the aisle is
going to defend every step of the implementation, but it is changing
the lives of millions of Americans. It is reducing the overall health
care expenditure of this government, and it is putting Americans back
in charge of their health care.
Now is not the time to be discussing going back to the good old days
when millions of Americans were left out of the rolls and the ranks of
those who are insured and insurance companies dictated the day-to-day,
week-to-week, and month-to-month health care that is so critical to the
lives of middle-class families.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.

The Economy

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, tonight President Obama is going to
deliver his State of the Union Address. It will be in front of Congress
and the TV cameras, and he will be talking to the American people as
well. He and his advisers are probably working right now on some last-
minute sound bites and applause lines. But I would say, instead of
that, they should be working on an agenda that actually helps
unemployed Americans, an agenda that will get our economy back on
track.
The President doesn't have very many big opportunities left to do
this. He is quickly becoming a lameduck President. The President is
going to become a lameduck even faster if he comes to the Capitol
tonight and delivers a lengthy speech that just attacks Republicans.
The economic recession ended 4\1/2\ years ago. Many Americans have
still not seen their careers or their finances or their quality of life
improve. That is what Americans are looking for. Unfortunately, they
haven't found it because of the Obama economy. That is what the Obama
economy has done to Americans.
Millions of Americans have actually, regrettably, given up looking
for work. They are falling further and further behind, further and
further away from achieving the dreams they have had. Is the President
going to tell those people he has no new ideas about how to actually
help them?
President Obama is failing. He is failing to make it easier for the
American economy to recover and he is failing to help Americans who
desperately want to work. He is failing because he is focused on things
such as extending emergency unemployment benefits and raising the
minimum wage. While an unemployment check can be a vital safety net for
families, it is not a long-term solution for what is becoming a part-
time economy under President Obama.
Tonight the President can deliver yet another partisan political
speech--he may get a standing ovation here and there from the most
liberal side of the aisle--or he can do what he should do as President:
focus on solutions with proven bipartisan support.
The President has made a point of saying lately that 2014 will be, as
he calls it, a year of action. He said he intends to act on his own,
without waiting for Congress. I believe that would be the wrong course.
President Obama has had trouble getting some of his policies through
Congress, and the main reason is the American people do

[[Page S510]]

not support his policies. He should use this speech tonight to move to
the center, to show he is willing to work with others. He shouldn't
give a speech that shows he is moving further to the left. We have had
too much of the President's politics of division.
The politics of division is hurting the economy and it is hurting the
country. Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill already agree on
ideas to get America and Americans back to work.
There are many policies that President Obama can talk about in his
speech tonight that will not require him to go around Congress but,
rather, to come to Congress. I would like to suggest three of them that
he should announce tonight.
First is the Keystone XL Pipeline. The President should say he will
stop blocking construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. His own State
Department says that the pipeline construction could support over
42,000 jobs across the country, and a bipartisan group of 62 Senators,
62 Members of this body, backs the project. Early in 2013 President
Obama met with Senate Republicans. He told us we would have an answer
about the pipeline by the end of the year. That was 2013. The year has
come, gone, and the Keystone XL Pipeline approval is still sitting on
the President's desk. The American people deserve an answer, and the
answer should be yes.
Second, the President really should address his reckless
Environmental Protection Agency--the EPA--and how its regulations are
putting Americans out of work. Recently the EPA released new
requirements for powerplants. The requirements are unachievable and
they are unnecessary. Ironically, the EPA did this on the exact same
day as the 50th anniversary of the start of the war on poverty declared
by LBJ. These harsh new regulations are going to cause energy costs to
go up, and they are going to cause people to lose their jobs as coal
plants are forced to close. The job losses and higher prices are going
to fall most heavily on people struggling in Appalachia and across coal
country. Higher energy costs clearly hurt our economy. The President
must sensibly rein in his EPA before it does even more economic damage.
Third, the President should support bipartisan efforts to repeal his
medical device tax. This is a destructive tax, and it was part of the
health care law. It has been estimated by some that the tax puts
thousands of American jobs at risk because it helps to push
manufacturing overseas. An amendment to repeal that medical device tax
passed right here in the Senate last year with a bipartisan vote of 79
to 20. With all the changes President Obama has made to his health care
law, it is barely recognizable. Repealing this tax would be a change
that actually helps Americans and not just the President's poll
numbers.
There are many things the President can talk about tonight that have
this sort of bipartisan support. These are just three, but they would
be a good place to start.
When the President leaves here after the State of the Union, he is
going to go visit four States: Maryland, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and
then Tennessee--four States, eight U.S. Senators. When we take a look
at who they are, four are Republicans, four are Democrats. All 8 of
them--4 Democrats and 4 Republicans--were part of the 79 Members of
this body who voted to repeal the medical device tax.
When the President's spokesman the other day on Sunday's TV shows
said the President is going to use his phone and his pen, I would say
he ought to use the phone to call the eight Senators to say: I am going
to use my pen, after you vote to repeal the medical device tax, to sign
that into law. That is something which would show bipartisanship on the
part of the President as well as really help with our economy.
Nearly 21 million Americans are out of work or they are trapped in
part-time jobs. It is time for President Obama to talk less about
divisive ways to redistribute Americans' prosperity and more about
helping all Americans increase their own prosperity. America is a
strong and resilient nation. We can overcome the Obama economy, and we
will. We can overcome--and we will--the bad policies of this
administration. The President should come tonight to the Capitol and
say he is willing to help Americans return to prosperity.
If the President announces these three policies tonight, the country
and the economy will benefit and a bipartisan group of Republicans and
Democrats will all be able to stand and applaud.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin.) The Republican whip.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would also like to address the matter of
the President's State of the Union speech tonight. I am sure that, as
has been the rule, President Obama will make an eloquent speech. He is
very good at that. There is just one problem: The President's
credibility has been shattered. Indeed, on issue after issue we see a
massive gap between his rhetoric and the reality. You might say that
the two biggest challenges the President faces tonight are those two
challenges. One is to his credibility, and the other is to his
competence and the competence of the Federal Government, actually, to
be able to deliver on the promises it makes.
The most obvious example is the health care law, which we have heard
a lot about and will continue to hear a lot about in this ensuing year.
I was visiting with one health insurance company executive who told me
that basically the bad news is going to continue to unroll and unravel
over the coming months. There will be nowhere to hide.
Perhaps what people want most from Washington, DC, is accountability.
I hear it all the time. People say what does it take to get fired? Do
people promise the Sun and the Moon and deliver nothing without any
consequences? How about people who were charged with implementing the
policies of the administration, whether it is the Web site contractor
or whomever. The Web site contractor finally did get fired and a new
one hired, so I assume that sooner or later the Web site will actually
work as advertised. But that still leaves us with the flaws in the
underlying policy, which will not work. The American people understand
that and they are looking to Washington for help, saying please deliver
us from this epic failure which is not what we were promised. In the
event there is not a response to that that they deem credible, I
promise there will be an accounting come November 2014.
The President said repeatedly that under his signature health care
law, if you liked the coverage you had you could keep it. Public
opinion polls then showed that roughly 90 percent of the American
people liked their health care coverage. Why in the world did we
undermine or did ObamaCare undermine the existing coverage people liked
just in order to cover more people, which in fact it did not do. We
know ObamaCare has forced millions of Americans to lose their preferred
coverage, the coverage they said they liked back in 2009. The President
repeatedly said ObamaCare will reduce your premiums, make them lower--
for a family of 4, about $2,500. The stories we see, day after day, of
American citizens signing up on the health care exchanges is just the
opposite. They are experiencing premium shock, and the fact is it is
going to continue to get nothing but worse as people realize that the
ones who are signing up for ObamaCare are older, sicker Americans and
that young healthy Americans are simply taking a pass, saying I cannot
afford it and if I have a problem I will take care of it later.
Premiums are going to continue to skyrocket, and Americans who are
looking for more affordable health care coverage will find out that
indeed it has been priced beyond their ability to pay.
Here is the rub. The President said--and I think this was the
implicit, underlying promise of ObamaCare: If you pass ObamaCare,
Congress, everybody will have coverage. We will have universal
coverage. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that ObamaCare,
even if it were implemented to perfection, exactly as the proponents
and the President had expected, it would still leave 30 million people
uninsured--30 million people uninsured.
The President said this new law would bring a greater sense of
certainty to the U.S. health care system. Instead, we see one of the
credit rating agencies actually slashing the credit rating of America's
health insurers,

[[Page S511]]

citing the uncertainty generated by the implementation of ObamaCare--
the opposite, again, of what was promised.
The President also said the Web site, when you plug in your personal
information--your Social Security number, your health information that
is protected already by Federal law--if you plug it into the ObamaCare
Web site it is going to be safe and secure. Cyber experts have
testified, particularly in the House of Representatives, that the
security of the Web site is worse today than it was several months ago.
There is no guarantee that if you put your personal information, your
private information, your confidential information into the Web site,
it is going to be protected.
Here is the real surprise: I remember when Secretary Sebelius
appeared before the Senate Finance Committee just a couple of months
ago. I asked her about the navigator program. You remember, the
navigator program was supposed to get people to help you sign up for
ObamaCare. I said: There is no background check, is there, to be a
navigator.
She said no.
I asked: So is it possible that a convicted felon could be a
navigator, somebody you are giving your personal information to, to
help you sign up for ObamaCare?
To her credit she said, in all candor: Yes; that is possible.
I nearly fell out of my chair.
ObamaCare's broken promises have caused enormous pain and anxiety in
millions of Americans in Texas and all around the country. We see from
the Wall Street Journal poll that came out this morning, which had to
be a wake-up call to the administration and its allies, the American
people are anxious, they are dissatisfied, they are wondering what has
gone so terribly wrong in Washington, DC, and ObamaCare is exhibit 1.
That is why we are committed on this side of the aisle to working with
our colleagues, when they are ready to talk to us, and to replacing
ObamaCare with patient-centered alternatives that will actually bring
down the cost and make it more affordable.
What better way to get more people covered than to make it more
affordable and to make sure government does not make these private
decisions for us and our family when it comes to health care but that
we, families, get to make that decision in consultation with their
family doctor.
When you begin to scrape the surface, the President's problem of
credibility and competence--those are the two crises he confronts
tonight as he addresses the Nation--all we have to do, beyond
ObamaCare, is look at what is happening in the economy. After raising
taxes $1.7 trillion, that was about 1 year ago, during the time
President Obama has been President of the United States, the national
debt has gone up $6.6 trillion. But my friends across the aisle, many
of them--I would exclude the present occupant of the Chair who I know
is concerned about this--my friends across the aisle think nothing of
bringing legislation to the floor that is unpaid for that would add to
the national deficit and national debt. That is the reason we now have
a national debt in excess of $17 trillion.
That is more than any of us can possibly conceive. When President
Obama became President, the national debt was about $10 trillion. That
is bad enough. But in the last 5 years it has gone up $6.6 trillion--or
more than $6.6 trillion. It is no coincidence that he has presided over
the weakest recovery and highest unemployment since the Great
Depression back in the 1930s.
President Obama has this very strange idea that the best way to get
the economy going is to raise taxes and spend more money. It is just
not working. As a matter of fact, we have great debates in Congress
about the role and the size of the Federal Government. But perhaps the
best example of why big government does not work has been the lousy
economy, the slow economic growth, the high unemployment, and the
number of people who have actually dropped out of the workforce.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has this figure that it calculates. It
is called the labor participation rate. You can Google Bureau of Labor
Statistics or labor participation rate. That will show you that the
percentage of people between the ages of 25 and 54 who are actively
engaged and looking for work is lower today than it was at the height
of the recession in 2008. Another 347,000 people dropped out of the
workforce in December alone.
I know when we look at the unemployment rates that are released from
time to time, we see the rate coming down a little bit, and we say:
That is great. The unemployment rate is coming down. The problem is
that in December alone almost 350,000 people quit looking for work.
They gave up. We know that nearly 4 million people who are still
looking for work have been out of a job for more than 6 months. That is
not an economy to be proud of.
Let me just contrast that with what happened in the 1980s during the
Reagan recovery. Typically, what economists will tell you is that when
we have a recession, it is sort of a V shape. So when it hits bottom,
it actually bounces up pretty quickly because there is nothing but the
upside left to go. Yet this recession has been more of a U shape. In
other words, we hit bottom, and we are still bouncing along the bottom.
We haven't seen the kind of economic growth that we need to get people
back to work, to grow our economy, and to get our budget balanced. I
think the reason for that is some of the very policies I talked about a
moment ago. It is due to the same misguided policies that the President
has advocated and will no doubt talk about again tonight in his State
of the Union Address.
I heard my colleague Senator Barrasso from Wyoming talk about the
Keystone XL Pipeline. The President likes to say: I have a pen, I have
a phone, and I'm going to go it alone. Of course he can't do that under
our Constitution. We all learned in high school about the checks and
balances of the three coequal branches of government. The President
can't spend a penny without Congress appropriating the money.
If we take him at his word, and he really wants to do something about
the economy and reduce our dependence on imported oil from dangerous
sources abroad, he could use that pen he talked about to authorize the
Canadian-American connection of the Keystone XL Pipeline. You would
then see a lot of the oil and energy produced in Canada, which is
combined with the energy added to that pipeline, make its way down to
southeast Texas where the refineries will turn it into gasoline and jet
fuel, and in the process create thousands of new jobs.
Rather than using that pen to put people back to work and make sure
that we have safe sources of energy, his administration is working
behind the scenes to kill the Keystone XL Pipeline. Politics is the
only explanation.
The President should not be surprised at what this Wall Street
Journal poll showed this morning--that most of the voters disapprove of
how he handled the economy. Likewise, he should not be surprised that
trust in the Federal Government has also fallen to historic lows; that
is the credibility problem. You can't promise the Sun and the Moon and
deliver squat and expect people to trust you next time when you make
another promise.
Then there is this. The Obama administration has repeatedly ignored
or waived laws that prove inconvenient--from ObamaCare to immigration
to welfare reform to education, energy, and drug policy.
One of the most frequent questions my constituents ask me back home
in Texas is: How can the President do that? I thought we were a Nation
that believed in the rule of law, that the law applied to everybody in
America no matter how humble your station in life or how exalted--
whether you are the commander in chief. I guess we have to revisit that
when the President picks and chooses which laws he wants to enforce. Of
course, Congress can pass laws. That is what Congress does.
The executive branch is the one that is supposed to enforce the law.
So unless someone files a lawsuit--not Eric Holder in the Department of
Justice, one of the most politicized Departments of Justice I can even
remember. When some private organization or individual--such as the one
who recently challenged the contraception mandate in ObamaCare that was
recently stayed by the Supreme Court of the United States--or some
association or business files a lawsuit that culminates in a judgment
of a court years later, but

[[Page S512]]

for that, there really isn't much of a check on President Obama. But
that can change, and the voters know how to do it: By changing who is
in charge in the Senate in November.
Here is another place where the President overreached and recently
had his hands slapped by the courts. This had to do with his claimed
authority to do another end run around Congress to make recessed
appointments. We all know that under the Constitution the advise and
consent function of the Senate is to act on the President's nominees
and to vote to confirm them or not. Again, in a case of the President
trying to go it alone, the court of appeals slapped down his attempt to
do this end run around the Constitution and the advise and consent rule
of the Senate. But that didn't stop him. Now he is threatening to take
even more unilateral action: I have my phone, I have a pen--he is ready
to do it again. That is not how the Federal Government is supposed to
operate.
For example, after the President made these unconstitutional recess
appointments, the DC Circuit of Appeals ruled on them and said: If the
President's claim to make that appointment would be upheld, it would
``eviscerate the Constitution's separation of powers''--the three
coequal branches of government, checks and balances. What could be more
fundamental to our form of government? The court of appeals said that
if they upheld the President's claimed power to make those
appointments, it would ``eviscerate the Constitution's separation of
powers.''
We know how important the role of checks and balances is in our form
of government and in our democracy. Indeed, our democracy would not be
able to survive without them. The people who founded this great country
knew that the greatest threat to their freedom and their individual
liberties and their most basic rights was the concentration of power,
so that is why they separated power at the Federal and State level in
the Tenth Amendment, but they also separated the power at the Federal
level between the judicial, executive, and the legislative branches.
Yet this President and his administration have shown repeated contempt
for the checks and balances that are so essential to our form of
government.
I have said many times that no President has the authority to
disregard or selectively enforce the law based on political expediency.
If he or she can, then we are nothing better than a banana republic. We
are no longer a Nation that believes in the rule of law, which has
really been the competitive edge that this country has had over other
countries. People know if you come and do business in the United
States, you are going to have access to the courts, your contracts are
going to be enforced, and the laws that are written will actually be
enforced by an impartial judiciary. That gives us a competitive
advantage economically, morally, and otherwise, but it is being
undermined.
Republicans are not the only ones that are worried about the
President's willingness to bypass the normal legislative process.
Yesterday my colleague from Maine, a Democratic caucus member, urged
the White House not to treat Congress as--what he called--an
afterthought.
In that spirit, I would like to remind the President of something he
said just a few months ago. He said:

We've got this Constitution; we've got this whole thing
about separation of powers. So there is no shortcut to
politics, and there's no shortcut to democracy.

That is what the President of the United States said just a few
months ago. Yet now he is claiming: I have a phone, I have a pen, and
I'm going to go it alone. I would like to remind him of something he
also said back in 2006, which is very similar. He said:

The Founders designed this system, as frustrating as it is,
to make sure that there's a broad consensus before the
country moves forward.

I couldn't agree more with the Barack Obama of 2006 or the Barack
Obama of a few months ago, but I couldn't disagree more with President
Barack Obama of today who somehow has this fantasy--it is nothing
better than a fantasy--that somehow he can rise above Congress and the
Constitution and the separation of powers and don the robe of a virtual
dictator, force new laws down our throat or force the country in a
direction that it doesn't want to go. It is a fantasy. It ain't gonna
happen.
Yet on issue after issue the President still likes to tell the
American people that he can move forward without any regard to
consensus or constitutional checks and balances. It is a terrible
mistake, and I wish he would reconsider.
In addition to its assault on the separation of powers, this
administration has targeted other enemies, such as its intrusive
monitoring of journalists' phone records. It has attempted to shake
down private companies to get them to fund ObamaCare. It has fostered a
culture of intimidation and punished whistleblowers. There have been
scandals from Benghazi to Fast and Furious and those responsible for
the attempt to intimidate the American people--or some part of the
American people--from participating in the political process through
the IRS scandal.
We know this administration has repeatedly obstructed the
investigations and refused to cooperate with the inquiries that would
bring the facts out into the light of day so we can all know what
happened, make sure that those responsible are held accountable and,
more importantly, make sure it never happens again.
I am confident that this is not the record President Obama will talk
about tonight. Although this is his record, it is not too late to
change. His own record is what has destroyed his credibility, as well
as caused people to question his competence and the Federal
Government's ability to actually deliver on the extravagant promises he
has made time and time again.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I grew up in East Saint Louis, IL, on the
banks of the Mississippi River. As a child, it was a dominant feature
in my life--crossing that river, watching that river. It didn't take
long as I grew up to realize that that river has a mind of its own.
Last year, because of drought conditions in the Midwest, the
Mississippi River was so low in January and February of 2013 that the
Army Corps of Engineers had to come out on an emergency basis and
literally scour the bottom of the river of rock formation so that
navigation could continue. We were worried that we would have to shut
down this major economic artery in the Midwest because the river was so
low. The Army did a great job. The navigation continued with only
slight delays and no major interruptions. Within 60 to 90 days, that
same river was at flood stage. That is what those of us who grew up in
the Midwest come to expect and understand--the unpredictability of that
river. As we grew up and started to look around, we realized there were
bluffs behind us that at one point were the banks of this great river
and that we were living in the flood plain, if you will--that area
close to the river that once was totally under water, way back when.
So there were flooding episodes, as most communities went through,
and efforts made to deal with that flooding, including the building of
levees. Those levees, for the most part, on the Illinois side of the
river have been reliable. Some have questioned whether they can meet
500-year standards or these epic floods, and I think the question is
well worth asking. But the fact is that the efforts made on the
Illinois side--I can't speak for others, but at least in that region--
have really been up to the task and we have not had serious flooding in
a long time in that part of the world.
Because of concerns raised by the Army Corps of Engineers about
whether these levees that protect the towns and businesses and families
were up to the job, something remarkable occurred. Leaders who lived in
the counties--and I will be more specific in a moment--closest to that
area got together and said, We are not going to

[[Page S513]]

wait on the Federal Government. We are going to impose a tax on
ourselves and raise tens of millions of dollars to start fortifying
these levees to protect our towns and businesses. I don't know if that
has ever happened anywhere else. We have to salute them. They weren't
waiting for Uncle Sam to show up and ride to the rescue; they took it
into their own hands. Well, I salute them because they did raise the
money and they are prepared and they are fortifying those levees.
I love the Army Corps of Engineers. They came to our rescue last
year. But the locals have asked the Army Corps of Engineers to come in
and certify these levees, that they are stronger now than they ever
were, and the Army Corps has been slow to do it. It is frustrating. The
locals are doing everything we could ask of them and they aren't
getting at least a timely response from the Army Corps of Engineers.
So, as a consequence, we are living in this uncertain world.
All of these businesses, all of these towns, all of these families in
this so-called flood plain believe they are protected by the levees,
the levees have not been certified by the Corps, and now comes the new
National Flood Insurance Program which says to the people living there
that they are going to have to pay higher premiums for flood protection
in the future. The people rightly said, Wait a minute. We are paying
higher sales taxes; we voted to pay higher sales taxes to protect
ourselves, and now we are being told we still have to pay higher
premiums. That gets to the heart of why we are on the floor discussing
the National Flood Insurance Program.
Now I wish to say a few words about my position on this issue because
it is one I have struggled with, to try to find the right answer in
light of what I think is an extraordinary, if not heroic, effort by
local people to address their problem and not wait for the Federal
Government, their frustration of not having at least a timely
cooperation by the Army Corps of Engineers, and now the prospect that
the premiums for their flood insurance are going to go up despite their
best efforts to protect themselves. If they were doing nothing,
standing back and saying, This isn't our worry; if something bad
happens, Washington will ride to the rescue, that is one thing. But
they are doing something specific that costs them money and they are
trying to protect themselves.
Rapid increases in flood insurance premiums, which are on the
horizon, are hard for many people in my State. For the people in Metro
East, which is the area I just described which is on the eastern side
of the Mississippi River across from St. Louis--the southwestern part
of Illinois--for many of them this increase in these premiums would be
impossible for them to pay. Forty percent of the Metro East I have just
described is mapped as flood plain, and most of the National Flood
Insurance Program policyholders there have their premiums subsidized.
This meant that instead of paying $500 a year, they were paying about
$150. It made it more affordable to them. However, the new increases
that are anticipated could be as much as 400 percent.
In Granite City, IL, policyholders paid $585 last year for flood
insurance, but with the new increases, the premiums are expected to
rise to $1,500 or even $2,000 a year. For some people, $2,000 a year
may not sound like a sacrifice. But for hard-working families in small
homes they have worked hard to buy and build, another $2,000 a year can
make some real impact on their lives.

Additionally, 30,000 new structures in Metro East could be newly
mapped into a flood plain when FEMA finally finalizes its flood maps.
These homeowners could end up paying $500 to $2,000 a year for flood
insurance. Allowing their premiums to rise so high so quickly is
unacceptable, especially given how the people in Metro East have worked
together over the last 7 years at significant expense to themselves to
improve the 74-mile levee system.
In 2007, the Army Corps notified Metro East locals that their levees
needed improvement. The next year FEMA notified them that much of the
area would be mapped into a flood plain, triggering mandatory flood
insurance purchase requirements unless the levee was improved. In
response, the three Metro East counties I mentioned earlier--Madison,
Monroe, and St. Clair, where I grew up--taxed themselves to pay for the
improvements to their levees. They raised $150 million. I believe this
type of local commitment is unprecedented. I don't know if anyone else
is doing this. They did it.
There have been a number of setbacks, but when they occurred, I have
tried to work with the Army Corps and with my colleagues in Congress to
get these projects back on track. I commend the people in Metro East
for working together to honestly address the threat of flooding. No
community wants to go through the pain and loss of damaging flooding.
The Presiding Officer has been through it in West Virginia. I have been
through it. Twenty years ago, in 1993, there was horrific flooding on
the Mississippi River and there have been several instances since. I
was out there piling up the sandbags with a lot of folks trying to
protect homes and businesses.
These communities in Metro East are actively doing something to
prevent the recurrence of that kind of a disaster. So while the locals
continue to work with the Army Corps to achieve the highest level of
levee protection as quickly as possible, I am going to continue to make
their work a priority in my efforts. Because the residents of Metro
East have taken on a significant financial commitment to protect homes
and businesses, I will work to ensure that flood insurance premiums are
affordable.
I wanted to draw attention to the way the residents of Metro East
have taken the initiative to help protect themselves from the risk of
flooding, because not every community is engaged as directly with this
threat as they have been. My constituents in this part of the country,
for the most part, cannot afford to buy flood insurance at the new
levels and the new rates.
I agree with the effort underway by Senators Menendez, Isakson,
Landrieu, and others to slow down these increases, and that is why I am
supporting their effort. But we need to do this with our eyes wide
open. The National Flood Insurance Program is not going to keep up with
the costs of recovery from severe weather events that we see on the
horizon.
The National Flood Insurance Program provides nearly 6 million
business owners, homeowners, and renters $1.2 trillion in coverage. The
problem is the program simply doesn't collect enough money to cover the
costs of rebuilding communities from floods, hurricanes, and other
disasters.
The flood insurance program will be more than $20 billion in debt
after making payments for Superstorm Sandy. If we in Congress continue
to ignore the structural weakness in the flood insurance program, that
deficit, that debt, that shortfall is going to grow in the future. We
can and should, sadly, expect more intense extreme weather events.
According to computer models, the changing climate means the storms we
are seeing will become stronger and more extreme in the future, causing
even greater amounts of damage. Nationwide, the financial consequences
of weather-related disasters and climate change hit an historic high in
2012, causing over $55 billion in damages.
I had a hearing on this issue, and I thought: If I bring in
environmentalists, a lot of folks will discount it completely when they
start talking about climate change. They may not attend. They may walk
out of the room. So instead I brought in people from the property and
casualty industry, the insurance industry. What do they do for a
living? They watch the weather. They watch it more closely than any
politician ever did, and they decide adequate premiums to cover the
reserves needed to protect from these weather disasters.
The story they told us was: Get ready. The weather is going to get
more extreme, and the costs and damages are going to grow dramatically.
Some insurance companies--major insurance companies--have walked away
from States, saying: There is just too much exposure there. We cannot
charge premiums and collect enough to create a reserve in the instance
of a natural disaster.
Now, that is the reality of the private sector analysis of this
issue. This is not some--pejorative term--tree-hugging environmentalist
musing about possibilities. These are hardhearted actuaries and
accountants taking a hard look at what the future

[[Page S514]]

holds. The private insurance industry has looked at the scientific
data, and they have made changes in the way they do business. They are
adjusting their operations to prepare for worse weather and bigger
losses. They have begun raising premiums for wind, earthquake, and
flood insurance in areas where disasters are likely, ensuring the rates
accurately reflect the risk of damage. The industry has also begun to
refuse insuring properties in states where there is just too much risk.
In contrast, the Federal Government has not adequately prepared to
handle the growing number of severe weather events.
Well, Senator Durbin, where does this leave you? You do not think
your people can afford to pay the higher premiums, and yet you do not
think the reserves set aside for the flood insurance program are
adequate.
I think that is the reality of what this political vote is likely to
show.
Yesterday the vote on the floor was an overwhelming bipartisan vote
to go forward on this measure. We know the Flood Insurance Program will
not be able to keep up with the damage inflicted on our communities.
The cost--asking homeowners and businesses to pay dramatically more in
flood insurance premiums--is too high to make the National Flood
Insurance Program viable in the near future.
We need to recognize that losses from future floods will likely cost
more than the National Flood Insurance Program can cover. And then--and
that is why I think we need a dose of reality in this Chamber and on
Capitol Hill--Congress has to step up. That is a reality. We know these
disasters are likely to occur, and we cannot--will not--collect the
premiums necessary to create the reserves to cover them. It will be our
responsibility to ensure that help is there. Whether that disaster is
in Kansas, Illinois, West Virginia, or anywhere across the United
States, Congress cannot deny that help.
It is time that we seriously address the effects of climate change
and rethink how we protect and provide disaster assistance to
communities on a regular basis. Those who choose to ignore the
overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change cannot ignore the
overwhelming accounting evidence that the National Flood Insurance
Program will not be able to meet the increasing expense of natural
flooding disasters.
Our votes--if we pass this measure before us--may spare families from
an unacceptable financial burden if flood premiums skyrocket, but they
do not spare us from the reality that the damages from future flooding
disasters will be nationalized, as the damages of Katrina and Sandy
were.
Those who vote for this Menendez-Isakson-Landrieu measure--as I
will--are voting at the same time to nationalize the cost and damages
of future disasters, to say that this is going to be something we will
respond to as needed. I have done that throughout my congressional
career in the House and Senate, stood up to help those regions of the
country in trouble, from California all the way to the east coast, and
I will do it again because I think it is an American family
responsibility. There is a limitation to what this National Flood
Insurance Program can achieve. There is certainly a limit to how much
working families can pay for these premiums. And we have to accept the
reality that when these flooding events occur, when these disasters
occur, we have to accept that responsibility.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Kansas.

Farm Bill

Mr. ROBERTS. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the Agriculture
Act of 2014. That is the new name of the farm bill.
After over 3 years of hard work by the House and Senate Agriculture
Committees and other interested Members, we are finally nearing the
finish line for this version of the Nation's farm and food policy.
As all Kansans and all farmers and ranchers from every State know,
the farm bill impacts not only our farmers and ranchers but also
businesses up and down Main Street, as well as families in our rural
towns and urban cities.
Everyone in Kansas, people who work in agriculture or are impacted by
its success--which, by the way, is every single American--and my
colleagues in the Congress deserve to know why I was the only Senator
on the conference committee not to sign the conference report as of
last night. I am here today to fully explain my reasoning and why I
cannot and will not vote for this legislation.
It all comes down to this simple question: Does the new farm bill
improve agriculture in America? I believe the answer is, unfortunately,
no.
While we all want to provide long-overdue certainty to producers--
something lacking for over 400 days, for 2 years; a record--the
conference missed an opportunity for greater and necessary reforms to
our Nation's farm programs, Federal nutrition programs, and burdensome
regulations.
We should not march backward and pass a farm bill with more
government subsidies, more regulations, and more waste.
How on Earth did we get to this point today?
Back in 2011 Chairperson Stabenow and I started the process of
writing a new farm bill with a field hearing in her home State of
Michigan. Later that year we held another successful hearing in
Wichita, KS. After more formal hearings in the Senate and conversations
with Kansas producers, Michigan producers, producers all over this
country, it was clear to me that this farm bill would have to be
reform-oriented, reduce the deficit, and be responsible--not only to
farmers and ranchers but also to consumers and taxpayers.
Unfortunately, as I stand here today, this farm bill does not meet
those standards, and, taken as a whole, the conference report fails to
move both Federal farm and food programs forward.
I previously voted against the Senate bill, which looked too much in
the rearview mirror for outdated programs, but this report is even
worse. Just listen to this: Last year's House bill was officially
called the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act--
``reform,'' ``risk management''--and here in the Senate we passed the
Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act. The final report now is reduced
to the Agriculture Act, the farm bill.
Today I will focus my comments on my three biggest concerns:
commodity subsidy programs, nutrition program spending, and the lack of
regulatory reforms so sorely needed.
Considering we all commonly refer to the legislation as the farm
bill, my first concern and criticism is the new price loss coverage
program. The acronym for that is PLC. It is a subsidy program.
Back in 2012, 2 years ago, I was pleased that the Senate Agriculture
Committee and the full Senate passed a bipartisan commodity title that
contained real reform. We ended the current countercyclical commodity
subsidy program and got the government out of the business of sending
signals to producers essentially telling them which crops to plant by
setting target price guarantees for producers--farming for the
government, not farming for the market. Unfortunately, that reform was
replaced in the latest Senate bill with a new target price subsidy
program, doubled down in the House version with even higher target
prices, and manipulated even more in the conference report to suit the
desire of specific crops over the objections of others in different
regions.
The new Price Loss Coverage Program repeats a classic government
subsidy mistake: setting high fixed target prices or subsidies, which
only guarantees overproduction, with long periods of low crop prices,
leading to more expensive farm programs funded directly by taxpayers.
Why do we have to go down that road again? I have yet to hear one
legitimate explanation for why Congress is about to tell all producers
across this country that the Federal Government will guarantee the
price of your wheat at $5.50 per bushel--by the way, it is a little
over $6 right now at the country elevator in Dodge City--and rice at
$14 per hundredweight for the next 5 years regardless of what happens
in the market. We have done this before, and we know it creates
planting and marketing distortions instead of letting our producers
respond to market conditions.
After the World Trade Organization--the WTO--ruled against the United
States for our cotton programs, I thought we had learned a lesson. I
have

[[Page S515]]

said it before and will say it again: The WTO stove is hot. Why would
we reach out and touch it again? Remember that we are still required to
pay Brazil millions of dollars a year under that decision.
The Amber Box subsidy programs in this bill will open American
agriculture to global trade disputes--which we have already lost and
will likely lose again if challenged.
To date, objections and solutions from me and my colleagues--ranging
from South Dakota, Senator Thune; Nebraska, Senator Johanns; Iowa,
Senator Grassley; and even Ohio, Representative Bob Gibbs--have all
fallen on deaf and stubborn ears. Our efforts to add market orientation
to the price loss coverage subsidy program, as well as attempts to end
it outright, have all been blocked and are certainly not reflected in
the final report.

I am equally unhappy with the final outcome of the nutrition title of
the farm bill.
Partisan politics has unnecessarily infiltrated this debate, with
many Members on the other side of the aisle drawing a line in the sand
at zero savings or real reform to the expensive and unrestricted
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. That is called SNAP. It is
really the food stamp program. Facts are stubborn things. Despite good
intentions, SNAP--food stamps--now makes up more than 80 percent of the
Department of Agriculture's budget and was previously exempted from
across-the-board sequestration cuts.
What we have here today is a ballooning and expensive set of Federal
nutrition programs, with a patchwork of eligibility standards,
loopholes, and, frankly, unneeded bonuses to State governments for
simply administering the program. If you administer the program right,
you get a bonus.
I understand and sympathize with the need for nutrition assistance
for hard-working families. I have championed their efforts. However, we
cannot and simply should not box off SNAP from unnecessary and timely
reforms.
While the Senate version of the bill in 2012 and 2013 did tighten the
Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program--LIHEAP--loophole to save
roughly $4 billion over 10 years, there have always been additional
needed reforms to the program.
At the end of the 2012 Senate bill, I included my personal views in
the report. I identified eight additional ways to rein in the out-of-
control spending and reinstitute program integrity for the SNAP
program.
Last year, in 2013, I introduced a stand-alone piece of legislation
that would have saved a total of $36 billion in SNAP without ever
touching individual monthly benefits, and it failed on a party-line
vote.
Eventually, the House of Representatives passed nearly $40 billion in
savings--after intense debate over there--within the SNAP program. That
is a 5-percent reduction over a 10-year period. I do not see how the
final legislation, amounting to a 1-percent reduction in SNAP spending,
is a fair compromise between both versions of the legislation. This
just does not add up.
In every single one of my townhall meetings in Kansas--and I know the
Presiding Officer from West Virginia finds the same thing true in his
home State--the first question fed-up producers and business owners ask
is, How can we stop or even slow down the onslaught--the onslaught--of
regulations?
This farm bill had great potential to help producers and ranchers and
all of agriculture with reducing the crushing regulatory burden from
the government's rules and requirements. They just want relief.
Despite years of work in both committees and strong provisions in the
House-passed farm bill, the final legislation lacks key, commonsense,
and sound science regulatory reforms.
I am more than disappointed that a WTO-compliant resolution to
mandatory country-of-origin labeling--it is called COOL--was not
reached. As a result, our livestock producers who were already facing
drought and high feed prices, now are going to have to worry about
retaliatory actions by the Governments of Canada and Mexico.
Our ranchers are equally troubled that provisions in the House bill
directing the USDA to refocus their efforts on the Grain Inspection
Packers and Stockyards Act, the acronym for that is GIPSA, they were
excluded. Another regulatory relief provision was already cleared by
the full House and the Senate ag committee would have ended the
duplicative National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. I will not
try the acronym for that.
These are pesticide permits required by the Environmental Protection
Agency. We had an opportunity to protect human health and eliminate
duplicative, unnecessary regulatory actions, and instead, despite all
of our commitments to work together to resolve the issue, we were all
blocked from including the simple and necessary regulatory relief.
Each of these regulatory reforms had bipartisan support. But now
producers across the country are left without an explanation and, much
worse, no needed relief. I am shocked at how far some Members will go
to protect this administration's regulatory agenda instead of
protecting real hard-working Americans.
After all of that, let me point out that with any large piece of
legislation one can usually find some positives to point to and today's
farm bill is no different. While I support many of the programs in the
less talked about titles of the farm bill, I am especially appreciative
of the inclusion of strong crop insurance provisions and livestock
disaster programs. The No. 1 issue we heard over and over again from
our producers across the country and in every corner of Kansas was that
crop insurance was their No. 1 one priority for the farm bill;
secondly, they said get the regulations off our backs.
The policies in the final bill protect the commitment to producers by
strengthening crop insurance as the cornerstone of our farm safety net,
regardless of the size of their farm or the commodity they grow. As
this bill moves forward, the Risk Management Agency, RMA, will be busy
offering expanded coverage for commodities such as cotton that have not
traditionally participated in the program as much as other crops.
However, I am concerned that the conservation compliance requirement
included in the legislation on crop insurance, not on cropping
operations, not on being a farmer but on crop insurance, will
unnecessarily burden producers who are already good stewards of their
land and already subjected to conservation requirements in the
commodity programs. This is a duplication--more paperwork.
As the western half of Kansas continues to linger in a historic
drought, the lack of livestock disaster programs that expired in 2011
is truly upsetting. We should have never let the programs expire in the
first place. We had an opportunity in 2012 to reauthorize them, but the
Senate failed to act, over my calls of action.
All of the livestock disaster programs are finally retroactively
authorized. But the assistance will be too little and too late in many
parts of cattle country. Some have lost part of their herds and even
strains of cattle genetics.
Unfortunately, as a Kansan, as well as a member of the Senate
Agriculture Committee and the farm bill conference committee, I am
disappointed to say that the final policies of this farm bill do not
outweigh the positives. While we all want to provide certainty to
producers, the conference has missed an opportunity for greater and
necessary reforms to our Nation's farm programs, Federal nutrition
programs, and burdensome regulations.
After over 3 years of debate, the challenges that agriculture faces
at home and across the world have only continued to grow. We need 21st
century policies and innovative solutions. Instead, this bill misses
the mark and goes backward to protectionist programs.
The issues I raise deserve to be debated fully and publicly. I know
time is of the essence. Yet the full conference committee met only once
for opening statements last October. With all of the ramifications of
the farm bill, we met once last October--for 3 minutes apiece.
In truth, the majority of this bill was negotiated behind closed
doors without the opportunity for votes, amendments or discussion.
There is too much of that around here. Producers, consumers, and our
global trading partners expected more. Unfortunately, the

[[Page S516]]

U.S. taxpayers deserve better than this conference report. I did not
sign this conference report last night and cannot in good conscience
vote for this legislation.
But I will promise this to all of the Members who worked so hard to
at least get a bill. I will continue to work and advocate on behalf of
advancing agriculture.
I yield the floor.
Mr. REID. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call
be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

____________________