[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 111 (Wednesday, July 16, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4528-S4534]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


PROTECT WOMEN'S HEALTH FROM CORPORATE INTERFERENCE ACT OF 2014--MOTION 
                         TO PROCEED--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 2578.
  Under the previous order, the time until 2 p.m. will be equally 
divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees.
  Who yields time? Does any Senator yield time?
  If no one yields time, the time will be charged equally to both 
sides.
  The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, the most extraordinary feature of the bill 
before us today is the incongruity between the bill's title and its 
content. The title, the ``Protect Women's Health from Corporate 
Interference Act,'' is clear and straightforward. It suggests the bill 
is aimed at the important and worthy goal of protecting women's health. 
But the text of the bill plainly demonstrates that the bill's true 
objective is to circumscribe Americans' religious freedoms--the 
religious liberties of individual Americans--within the narrow confines 
of the Democratic Party's partisan agenda and the whims of politicians 
and bureaucrats.
  While maintaining the appearance of preserving all of the current 
legal protections of religious freedom in America today, this proposal 
quietly adds to them a subtle yet deeply problematic and inappropriate 
qualification. The Federal Government will not prohibit the free 
exercise of religion until the Federal Government decides that it wants 
to do so. Under this bill, your religious liberties stop at the 
doorstep of the Democratic National Committee.
  So I rise today in opposition to this bill because it doesn't do 
anything to protect women's health and it does much to undermine the 
bulwarks of religious liberty enshrined in our Constitution that have 
made America the most religiously diverse and tolerant Nation in human 
history.
  Although this proposal is only the latest maneuver attempted by my 
Democratic colleagues to assert their power and restrict religious 
freedom in America, it also represents the culmination, at least for 
now, of their opposition to the Supreme Court's recent ruling in 
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.
  On June 30 of this year, the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal 
Government may not force closely held businesses to violate their 
sincerely held religious beliefs in order to comply with the 
contraceptive mandate issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human 
Services under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This 
decision has received a great deal of attention, but it has received 
this attention for all the wrong reasons.
  Contrary to what many critics have suggested, the Hobby Lobby 
decision did not promulgate national health care policy nor did it 
render any opinion on the virtues of contraception and religious faith. 
No, the issue in Hobby Lobby involved not a dispute of competing rights 
but a straightforward application of plainly written law.
  As the Constitution states in Article III, Section 2, the role of the 
Supreme Court is to adjudicate legal disputes by hearing ``cases and 
controversies'' that arise when two laws or two parties come into 
conflict.
  In Hobby Lobby, the two laws in dispute were the Religious Freedom 
Restoration Act, passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 
Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, and a 
Federal mandate issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, 
acting under the powers delegated to it by the Affordable Care Act.
  The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA as it is sometimes 
called, reaffirmed Americans' commitment to the fundamental religious 
liberty already protected by our Constitution.
  With RFRA, a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President, in 
cooperation with Republican minorities in both Houses, declared that 
when the Federal Government seeks to infringe on Americans' religious 
liberty, it must clear two thresholds. First, it must show that the law 
in question serves a compelling State interest. Secondly, if it does, 
the law must do so by the least restrictive means possible.
  Given that the government openly acknowledged that there was a 
significant number of far less intrusive means to ensure affordable 
access to the drugs at issue, the Supreme Court rightly ruled that the 
contraception mandate violated RFRA.
  However unwarranted, the overheated response to the Hobby Lobby 
decision among some ideological extremists on the left has led some of 
my colleagues to introduce a bill that would not simply overturn that 
modest and narrow decision but fundamentally rewrite America's social 
contract as it pertains to matters of personal conscience.
  Whereas, the Court's ruling was limited to ``closely held'' for-
profit companies such as Hobby Lobby, this bill would empower the 
Federal Government to coerce employers of all faiths and of no faith 
into violating their deepest personal convictions. It would deny any 
employer--devout or secular, individual or corporate, for-profit or 
nonprofit--conscience protection under RFRA against all present and 
future government mandates.
  Perhaps most troubling is the warped theory of rights underlying the 
text of this bill. This theory holds that the American people possess 
constitutional and legal rights only when acting alone but not when 
acting in a group. These rights, along with any duties one may hold as 
a person of faith, must be forfeited whenever acting in association 
with others, on penalty of fines to be paid to the Federal Government.
  This view of religious liberty might be summarized as an amendment to 
Matthew, chapter 18, verse 20: For where two or three are gathered 
together in My Name, there is the IRS in the midst of them.
  This view is extreme. It is out of touch with the Constitution, with 
commonsense, and with America's heroic history of religious tolerance.
  From our earliest days as a country, one of the sources of our 
strength as a people and one of the reasons for our success as a nation 
has been our robust understanding of religious liberty. The breadth and 
depth of that conception has allowed and encouraged people of all 
faiths and all traditions to live here in friendship and in cooperation 
with one another.
  As two members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious 
Freedom put it:

       . . . respect for the flourishing of people requires 
     respect for their freedom--as individuals and together with 
     others in community--to address the deepest questions of 
     human existence and meaning. This allows them to lead lives 
     of authenticity and integrity by fulfilling what they 
     conscientiously believe to be their religious and moral 
     duties. . . . It also includes the right to witness to one's 
     beliefs in public as well as private, and to act--while 
     respecting the equal right of others to do the same--on one's 
     religiously inspired convictions in carrying out the duties 
     of citizenship.

  Expanding as wide as possible the space in which all people can 
witness their faith alongside one another has for two centuries 
elevated, enriched, and united American society. This robust conception 
of religious liberty was so essential to American unity that not only 
did the Founding generation reinforce its protection in a Bill of 
Rights--which many Framers actually thought was redundant--but it was 
the first freedom articulated in the First Amendment.
  They understood, as most Americans still do, that the proper role of 
government is not to define people's happiness but to protect all 
individuals' equal rights, to pursue happiness according to their own 
hopes and values and conscience.
  Yet for all its legal and constitutional protections, America's 
exceptional tradition of religious toleration rests ultimately on the 
uniquely American principle of equal dignity and respect for all women 
and all men, not simply as ``fellow passengers en route to the grave'' 
but as fellow pilgrims in search of their own promised land.
  The authors of this bill know all of this. They know the American 
people reject their intolerance of diversity and indifference to the 
First Amendment. We know their bill cannot become law. Indeed, we know 
this for a fact because if the regulations they support were actually 
written in the law, ObamaCare itself would never have passed. It was 
slipped in after the fact by bureaucrats who are not subject to public 
accountability and never stand for election.
  This legislation is more than an insult to the people it would 
target; it is

[[Page S4529]]

an embarrassment to the party leadership that has embraced it.
  I still hold fast to that principle and to the freedom it preserves 
and thus strongly urge my colleagues to vote against this bill.
  Thank you.
  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. MURPHY. 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. MURPHY. Mr. President, we are entering into a new era in which 
five men in the Supreme Court are going to get to make the decisions 
about what kind of health care you get as a matter of right, living 
under the protection of the laws of the United States, and what kind of 
health care you get as an employee, at the whim of the decisions made 
by your boss.
  These are the kinds of decisions that your boss should be making: 
decisions about the direction of your company, decisions about the 
level of your salary, about new products that your business is going to 
offer.
  This should not be your boss's decision. It should not be up to your 
boss as to whether you as a female employee get access to prescription 
contraceptives. But that is the world we live in today after the 
Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, has given the power to particular 
employers to deny women access to prescription birth control.
  Prescription birth control, contraception, is used by 99 percent of 
women in this country at one point over their life. A big portion of 
those prescriptions are actually for purposes related to complicated 
medical treatments such as cancer therapy. No matter how the Supreme 
Court tries to explain this, there is no way to effectively 
differentiate what the Supreme Court has done on birth control with a 
whole other range of potential discrimination.
  As Justice Ginsburg said in her dissent, this exemption the Supreme 
Court has given for employers' religious beliefs would extend logically 
with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions held by 
Jehovah's Witnesses; to religious objections to antidepressants held by 
Scientologists; medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, 
intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin held by certain 
religions; and even vaccinations, a belief held by Christian 
Scientists, amongst others.
  The idea that the Supreme Court is now going to get into the business 
of micromanaging which particular religious beliefs they are going to 
protect and which ones they are not going to protect is unacceptable to 
the majority of people I represent, so that is why I am here today to 
support the Protect Women's Health from Corporate Interference Act. 
Pretty simple. All we are saying here is that employers should not be 
allowed to refuse health coverage that is guaranteed to their employees 
and their dependents under Federal law.
  When we decide to pass a law with the majority of the House and the 
Senate agreeing to it, signed by the President, those protections 
should be available to all employees. It is not easy to pass a law and 
get it signed by the President. The Senate has already set up a lot of 
pretty significant barriers to the passage of any law, never mind a law 
that guarantees a certain level of health care coverage.
  Until the Hobby Lobby decision, the Supreme Court has stayed out of 
that decision, said that if the Congress decides a minimum level of 
coverage should be available to employees, then employers should not be 
able to get in the way. That precedent is now blown up. There is no 
going back, as Justice Ginsburg has said. I hope we pass it this week.
  The reality is it is more important now than ever to protect this 
coverage, because as a result of the Affordable Care Act, there are 
millions more women, millions more families all across the country who 
have access to prescription contraception. Twenty-four million more 
prescriptions for oral contraceptives were filled without a copay in 
2013 than in 2012. That is by virtue of the protections in the 
Affordable Care Act.
  On this particular type of prescription alone, the Affordable Care 
Act has saved $483 million in out-of-pocket costs for oral 
contraceptives. That saved a lot of families money, but that has also 
given access to this important medication for millions of women.
  It is just another example, just another piece of evidence amidst a 
mounting pile, that tells us the Affordable Care Act is working today. 
I want to spend a few additional minutes going over the latest litany 
of good news when it comes to the implementation of the Affordable Care 
Act. Republicans have kind of gone quiet, silent even, in many parts of 
the Nation, when it comes to their critique of the Affordable Care Act. 
That is in large part because on both sides of the aisle, there is a 
quiet acceptance that the Affordable Care Act is working. It has 
vanished from most campaigns as a political issue this summer and this 
fall because it is increasingly impossible, aside from anecdotal 
evidence, to make the case on an empirical data-driven basis that the 
Affordable Care Act is not working.
  Senator Reid did a little bit of this earlier this week, but I want 
to share again some of the new numbers we have. Here is maybe the most 
stunning number: The uninsured rate in the United States fell 2.2 
percentage points in the second quarter of 2014. We now have the lowest 
quarterly rate of uninsured in this country since Gallup began tracking 
this percentage in 2008. There are approximately 20 to 25 percent less 
people and families in this country without insurance than 6 months 
ago. That is absolutely stunning, that in 6 months of implementation of 
this act, we have taken one-quarter off the rolls of the uninsured in 
this country. Even the biggest optimists about how the implementation 
of the Affordable Care Act was going to go could not have guessed we 
were going to take that big a chunk out of the rolls of the uninsured.

  But here is more evidence that this is working. Fifty-seven percent 
of the individuals who purchased coverage through the exchanges were 
uninsured when they were enrolled. So a lot of Republicans said: Well, 
you know, the big numbers you are seeing, 8 million people insured 
through the private health care exchanges, that may be people shifting 
from one kind of insurance to another.
  Well, a Kaiser study says that, in fact, 6 out of 10 of the people 
who got insurance in the exchanges, through Medicaid, through staying 
on their parents' insurance, had no insurance beforehand. Frankly, to 
my mind, it does not necessarily matter, because to the extent they 
went on these plans coming off of another plan, it was for a reason: 
They were saving money, by and large. That is a good thing in and of 
itself.
  But you have 4 out of 10 people going onto the new plans to save them 
money, 6 out of 10 people coming onto the new plans because they had no 
insurance at all. They are getting care as well. A new Commonwealth 
Fund survey says that 60 percent of the adults with this new coverage 
through the marketplace or Medicaid reported that they had visited a 
hospital or a doctor or filled a prescription. Sixty-two percent of 
those people said they could not have had access or afforded this care 
previously.
  That was the theory. All of these people who were waiting to get so 
sick that they had to go to the emergency room, costing us all sorts of 
money in the long run, now can get preventive care. Of the 60 percent 
of the people who went out and saw a doctor because of the new coverage 
they had by virtue of the Affordable Care Act, 60 percent of them said 
they would have never gotten that care had they not had that coverage. 
That is millions of people, millions of people all across the country 
who are going to have an injury or an illness, who were going to sit at 
home and live with it until it got so bad they had to show up at the 
emergency room--they are now getting care.
  What about the premiums? People said: Well, you know, these presume 
are going to be unaffordable and people are going to start paying them 
and then stop paying them. HHS did a survey of the premiums and found, 
on average, that the monthly premium people are paying is $82 per 
month, after a tax credit is factored in.

[[Page S4530]]

  Listen, $82 a month is not pocket change. There are a lot of families 
out there who have trouble coming up with $82 a month. But for somebody 
like Susie Clayton, a breast cancer survivor from North Canaan, CT, 
that is a big deal. She is paying right about that number, $90 per 
month. But prior to the Affordable Care Act, because she had a 
preexisting condition, Susie Clayton was spending $1,600 per month. 
There are hundreds of thousands of Susie Claytons out there. Premiums 
are pretty affordable.
  The critics said: All right, we will concede that more people are 
getting covered. We will concede they are using the care. We will 
concede premiums are affordable, in part because you are spending all 
of this money on premium assistance. But you are going to just start 
spiraling health care costs. Well, that did not come true either. With 
April's updated CBO projections, spending on major Federal health care 
programs--Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA subsidies--has now been 
revised downward by $900 billion. That is a half a percent of GDP since 
the 2011 projections. So in 3 years, CBO has pushed down its 
projections of 10-year spending by $900 billion.
  Here is an even more stunning way to think about this. If you look at 
what CBO said we were going to spend on a per-Medicare recipient basis 
in 2010 versus what they now say we are going to spend on that 
recipient today over the next 10 years, that per-Medicare recipient 
spending level has been decreased by $1,000. We are spending $1,000 
less per Medicare recipient.
  That does not have anything to do with the private exchanges. That 
has to do with all of the other provisions in the bill that start to 
shift health care spending away from a system that rewards volume: How 
much medicine you practice to a system that rewards outcomes: How good 
is the medicine you are practicing. Are you keeping your patients 
healthy?
  The reality is that spending is remarkably low, historically low on 
health care. Listen, admittedly, some of that is because of an economy 
that has been slow to recover over the course of the last 6 years. But 
a lot of that is because of the Affordable Care Act, so much so that I 
saw an article in the Wall Street Journal the other day that said the 
President was to blame for the slow economy because he had been so 
successful in pushing down the rate of health care spending that now it 
was an economic catastrophe that we were spending so much less than we 
had initially projected on health care. There is no way for the 
President to win. If health care expenses spiral and premiums spiral, 
it is his fault. But if he does something to control health care 
premiums and health care costs, than it is a drag on the economy.
  In the long run, the truth is if we get health care spending down, 
really just a transfer payment within our economy, then we have room to 
spend more money on much more necessary investments, in our 
infrastructure, in our scientific edge over other countries.
  I am here today to support the underlying bill, because I think it is 
the right thing to do for women in this country, but also because it is 
part of a growing success story of the Affordable Care Act: $500 
million saved on prescription contraception alone. But add that to all 
of the other evidence, and we are living in a world in which it is 
increasingly hard to argue that the Affordable Care Act is not working: 
millions more people covered, huge chunks out of the uninsured rolls 
being eliminated, costs for overall health care expenses decreasing. I 
will not even get into it this afternoon, but quality is improving as 
well. That is people having hospital-acquired infections, having to be 
readmitted to the hospital.
  The stories just keep on coming in. I certainly understand that on an 
anecdotal basis you can find people who have had negative experiences 
with the health care system under the Affordable Care Act. I could find 
millions of other people before the Affordable Care Act was passed as 
well. But there are many more people like Sean and Emilie Hannon, who 
are two freelancers from Weston, CT, who were looking for coverage 
previous to the Affordable Care Act being passed. The best they could 
do was $1,500 per month from Golden Rule. When they heard about the 
Affordable Care Act, they called the Connecticut exchange and they 
found a plan through ConnectiCare that was going to cost them $309 a 
month. This is a fairly young couple, a savings of nearly 80 percent 
compared to what they used to pay. That is a story that can be 
replicated millions of times all across this country.
  We would be wise this week to restore this protection to women across 
this country so they have access to affordable prescription birth 
control. That is just one part of a growing, overwhelming array of both 
success stories and positive data about the implementation of the 
Affordable Care Act, proving that the ACA works.
  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.
  Mr. BARRASSO. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to respond to 
some of the comments by the Senator from Connecticut and specifically 
with regard to the health care law. I come with an interest because I 
did part of my medical training in that State, still have many friends 
who practice medicine in Connecticut, and feel from the comments I hear 
from them that they see a very different side of the picture than what 
we hear from the Senator from Connecticut.
  For some time now Republicans have been talking about the terrible 
side effects of the President's health care law. The Senator from 
Connecticut made some references to a family who certainly may have 
been helped by the health care law, but there are clearly people in 
that State who are being harmed by the health care law.
  In the past I have spoken on this floor about a story in the 
Washington Post about how the health care law is hurting families all 
across Connecticut. The article said that two insurance carriers in the 
Senator's home State of Connecticut have proposed increasing their 
health insurance premiums by an average of about 12 percent. I didn't 
hear the Senator from Connecticut make reference to that today. So some 
people will have smaller increases than the average, but many people in 
Connecticut are going to pay much more. That is an expensive side 
effect families are going to have to deal with because of the 
President's health care law for which the Democrats in the Senate have 
voted.
  There was another article a week or so ago in The Hill newspaper with 
the headline ``Personal data on ObamaCare enrollees may be 
compromised.'' It says:

       Connecticut's health insurance exchange acknowledged Friday 
     that the personal information of some enrollees may have been 
     compromised.

  Someone found a backpack on a street in Hartford, CT, containing 
personal information of about 400 people, and it looks as if some of 
the information is connected to the exchange.
  It is interesting. There was a story in the Danbury, CT, newspaper. 
The headline is ``Affordable Care Act could cost schools big bucks.'' 
So it is not just health care; the Affordable Care Act itself could 
cost the schools big bucks. I haven't heard the Senator from 
Connecticut make reference to that. This could cost school districts 
hundreds of thousands of dollars they didn't expect to pay.
  The Senator from New York is here, and I don't know if the Senator 
has time locked in. If not, I wanted to speak for a few more moments 
because this continues to be a major impact.
  The law includes a special tax on what are called the Cadillac plans. 
These are generous health insurance plans that some people--such as 
union workers, police, and school employees--get in some places.
  Another big thing is the way the law defines full-time workers, and 
this is a problem we are seeing in a lot of places. Employees are 
considered full time under the health care law if they work 30 hours a 
week. So schools--schools that are being impacted--are having to 
provide insurance for those people or cut back their hours.
  It is hurting a lot of folks in the Senator's home State and 
specifically in the school districts in Connecticut.

[[Page S4531]]

What they are finding is that they are having to pay more money to buy 
insurance for the people whom they can't cut back. So the school 
superintendent in Danbury, CT, wrote to the congressional delegation 
from Connecticut asking for help. According to a newspaper story from 
Danbury, he wrote:

       Unless there is some reasonable modification to the ACA 
     [the President's health care law] there will be a tremendous 
     drain on our limited resources.

  So when I see the Senator from Connecticut with a sign that says the 
health care law works, I would say: Not for many people, and it is 
harming people, including students in our schools. The law is a drain 
on resources of schools, towns, and counties across the country--a very 
costly side effect of the health care law at the local level.
  I hear the same from my constituents in Wyoming who are seeing 
similar decisions having to be made, tough choices. I know the Senator 
from Connecticut is hearing it from his constituents, such as the 
superintendent of schools in Danbury.
  Middle-class families are getting smaller paychecks because of the 
law. School districts are getting stretched thin by the health care 
law. Families are having to pay higher premiums because of the health 
care law, and on top of that they are being exposed to potential fraud 
and identity theft in the exchanges created by the health care law, as 
evidenced by a backpack found on a street in Hartford, CT, containing 
names, Social Security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates of 
people who signed up for the exchange.
  Republicans are going to keep talking about these devastating, 
dangerous side effects of the Democrats' health care law. We are going 
to keep pushing for real health care reform that gives people the care 
they need from a doctor they choose at a lower cost.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the Protect 
Women's Health From Corporate Interference Act of 2014, introduced by 
my friends and colleagues Senator Murray and Senator Udall. I am proud 
to be a cosponsor of this legislation.
  We are at a critical moment when it comes to women's health care 
rights. We just witnessed a Supreme Court decision that curtailed 
important access to health care for employees across the country. The 
Hobby Lobby case has now opened the door for the vast majority of 
companies and bosses to start denying their employees contraceptive 
coverage if the owners have a religious objection. We must slam the 
door shut. To do that this body must set the record straight about the 
law the Supreme Court used to make their decision, the Religious 
Freedom Restoration Act.
  As one of the original authors of the Religious Freedom Restoration 
Act, I was the lead sponsor in the House of Representatives. Senator 
Kennedy was the lead sponsor in the Senate.
  I can say with absolute certainty that the law has been unwisely 
stretched by the Supreme Court to extend religious protections to 
corporations Congress never intended to be covered under the bill. I am 
compelled to do so because several of my colleagues on the other side 
have come to the floor to defend the Hobby Lobby decision using my 
words. These were arguments I made in 1993 when we first passed the 
RFRA and we were dealing with the protection of individual--underlining 
individual--liberties. The quotation they used dealt broadly with the 
importance of religious freedom of expression in our country. I said 
the RFRA would help restore the American tradition of allowing maximum 
religious freedom. That is as true today as it was then. I believe as 
strongly in RFRA as it was written then as I do now, but it was 
misinterpreted and wrongly expanded by the Supreme Court.
  When my colleagues used this quotation as a point of argument, they 
completely missed the point of the debate. The debate is not about the 
conflict between freedom of religious expression and government-
mandated health coverage. That is a false choice. The debate is really 
whether the Supreme Court appropriately interpreted the RFRA in 
applying it to profit-making corporations.
  As the author of the bill, I can say again with absolute certainty 
that the Supreme Court got the Hobby Lobby case dead wrong.
  When we wrote RFRA back in 1993, we did so to protect that which 
individuals with strong religious beliefs had always enjoyed--the 
presumption that they should be able to exercise their religious 
beliefs without interference from the government. But the Court took 
that protection and misapplied it to for-profit companies that exist 
for the purpose of benefiting from the open market.
  The Hobby Lobby decision marks a sharp departure both from the intent 
of RFRA and from prior judicial interpretations of RFRA. The Supreme 
Court got it wrong. That is why this bill, authored by my colleagues 
from Washington and Colorado, is of paramount importance--to clarify 
the law and to restore protections for employees that were stripped 
away by this wrongheaded Supreme Court decision.
  My colleagues on the other side of the aisle will continue to assert 
that this is just another assault by Democrats on free exercise of 
religion or peddle other falsehoods. So I would like to clearly explain 
what this bill will and won't do.
  This bill will ensure that companies cannot deny their workers any 
health benefits, including birth control, as required to be covered by 
Federal law.
  This bill will make it clear that bosses cannot discriminate against 
their female workers, ensuring equal treatment under the law for tens 
of thousands of workers whose coverage hangs in the balance.
  This bill is not only about birth control. The Hobby Lobby decision 
has implications for other health services, and now this bill will 
ensure that all covered employees have access to all necessary health 
care--not only contraceptives but also blood transfusions, 
antidepressants, and vaccines.
  The bill does not require churches or nonprofit organizations to 
provide contraceptive coverage even when they object on religious 
grounds. The Affordable Care Act exemption process for nonprofit 
organizations with a religious mission is unchanged by this bill.
  This bill will not allow new laws that can target specific religious 
groups.
  The bill only applies to health care.
  Most importantly, this bill does not restrict the Constitution's 
First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. The bill only 
clarifies the relative weight the Court should give when two Federal 
statutes--such as the Affordable Care Act and the Religious Freedom 
Restoration Act--come into conflict.
  As I continue to say, RFRA was intended to give individuals who 
profess strong religious beliefs what they had always enjoyed--the 
strong presumption that they should be able to exercise their religious 
beliefs without government interference. RFRA was not intended to 
extend the same protection to for-profit corporations the very purpose 
of which is to profit from the open market.
  The Supreme Court's cavalier decision to grant religious rights to 
closely held corporations could curtail the health care freedom of 
women at as many as 90 percent of American businesses. By putting 
health care decisions in the hands of a woman's boss instead of a woman 
and her doctor, the decision creates a slippery slope that could affect 
tens of millions of Americans--our daughters, our wives--in the future.
  We need this bill to clarify the law and firmly protect a woman's 
right to access essential health care.
  I thank my colleagues Senator Udall and Senator Murray for offering 
this legislation. I urge my colleagues to support this effort to 
protect women's health care and religious freedom.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about one of the 
saddest developments in the Senate--namely, the all-out assault on the 
First Amendment being led by Senate Democrats.
  It is important to clarify what the issue before this body is not 
about. The issue before this body is not about access to 
contraceptives, despite a whole lot of politicking by Senate Democrats 
who suggest to the contrary.
  In this body the number of people who would do anything to restrict 
access to contraceptives to anybody is

[[Page S4532]]

zero. Let me repeat that. There is no one in this body, there is no one 
I am aware of across the country who is advocating restricting anyone's 
access to contraceptives.
  My wife and I are blessed with two little girls. I am very glad we 
don't have 17.
  Nobody, nobody, nobody is talking about restricting access to 
contraceptives.
  What are we talking about? What we are talking about is the Federal 
Government using brute force to force people to pay for the abortion-
inducing drugs of others against their religious faith. That is 
extraordinary. It is remarkable and it is dismaying.

  I am sorry to show what the current First Amendment looks like in the 
wake of the Democrats' assault on the First Amendment.
  In the Senate Judiciary Committee we have been debating on amendments 
some 47 Democrats have supported that would repeal the free speech 
protections of the First Amendment. Sadly, every Senate Democrat in the 
Judiciary Committee supported it.
  Today, this body is considering another provision that would 
effectively cross out the free exercise rights.
  Where have we entered when the Bill of Rights has become a partisan 
matter? What kind of world is it? It used to be the case that we would 
find bipartisan agreement that the First Amendment is part of our civil 
compact--that we will stand together with one voice in support of the 
free speech rights of individual citizens, in support of the religious 
liberty rights of individual citizens.
  The proposal we are going to vote on in just a few minutes would go 
directly after the religious liberty rights of Americans.
  Let me talk a little bit about one group of people who will be 
affected by this bill if this bill were to pass. Let me talk about the 
Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of Catholic nuns.
  The Little Sisters of the Poor are an international congregation of 
Roman Catholic women founded in 1839 by St. Jeanne Jugan. Their mission 
is to:

       . . . offer the neediest elderly of every race and religion 
     a home where they will be welcomed as Christ, cared for as 
     family and accompanied with dignity until God calls them to 
     himself.

  The bill that is being voted on on this floor would shut these nuns 
down. The bill that is being voted on on this floor, if it were 
adopted, would fine the Little Sisters of the Poor millions of dollars, 
unless these Catholic nuns are willing to pay for abortion-producing 
drugs for others.
  When did the Democratic Party declare war on the Catholic Church? And 
let me note, this is not hypothetical. I am not suggesting in theory 
this might be applied to the Little Sisters of the Poor. Right now--
today--the Obama administration is litigating against the Little 
Sisters of the Poor, trying to force them to pay for abortion-producing 
drugs and threatening to shut the Little Sisters of the Poor down.
  How far have we come from the basic bipartisan agreement in favor of 
religious liberty? Faith fines should have no place in American 
society.
  The Little Sisters of Denver, which provides approximately 67 full-
time jobs, has said it will incur penalties of roughly $6,700 per day--
nearly $2.5 million per year--if it chooses to stay true to its 
religious beliefs; that is, $2.5 million a year in faith fines--fines 
to Catholic nuns who are devoting their time to caring and providing 
health care for the elderly. That is more than one-third of their $6 
million budget each year.
  What has become of the Democratic Party? When did they become so 
extreme that they would actually propose fining nuns millions of 
dollars if they are unwilling to pay for the abortion-producing drugs 
of others? That is not a mainstream position. That is a radical, 
extreme position.
  I would encourage every one of my colleagues on the Democratic side 
of the aisle to ask themselves: How are they going to answer their 
constituents when they say: Senator, why did you vote in favor of a law 
that would fine Catholic nuns millions of dollars if they refuse to pay 
for the abortion-producing drugs of others?
  Let me make a basic suggestion. If you are litigating against nuns, 
you have probably done something wrong. And the Obama administration is 
doing so right now.
  Mr. President, drop your faith fines.
  Mr. Majority Leader, drop your faith fines.
  To all of my Democratic colleagues, drop your faith fines. Get back 
to the shared values that stitch all of us together as Americans.
  I call upon my Democratic colleagues to stop playing election-year 
politics. I recognize scaring women by suggesting someone is coming at 
their birth control may be good politics. It is false. Even the 
Washington Post has said it is false and a lie.
  But election-year politics should not trump religious liberty. Senate 
Democrats should not wage war on the Catholic Church.
  It is not just the nuns who are dismayed. The Catholic bishops have 
said the proposed bill ``does not befit a nation committed to religious 
liberty'' and would allow the government to ``override religious 
freedom rights of Americans regarding health coverage.''
  So it is not just the nuns. It is to the Catholic bishops that the 
Democratic party has said: Your free exercise of religious rights has 
no place in a Democratic Senate.
  The Catholic bishops went on to say:

       If, in the future, the executive branch chose to add the 
     abortion pill RU486, or even elective surgical abortion, 
     including late-term abortion, to the list of ``preventative 
     services,'' those who object to providing or purchasing such 
     coverage would appear to have no recourse.

  Think about that for a second. The Catholic bishops just said the 
bill this body is getting ready to vote on, if passed, would enable the 
Federal Government to try to force Catholic nuns to pay for and carry 
out partial-birth abortion. That is staggering.
  If we want to talk about mainstream positions, there are mainstream 
positions, there are far-left positions, and then there is extreme 
radical fringe, which is the Federal Government forcing Catholic nuns 
to pay for partial-birth abortions. And that is where virtually every 
Senate Democrat is today.

  Under the legislation before this body, the Catholic University Ave 
Maria would be forced to make the same choice: Authorize abortion-
inducing drugs right now or pay millions of dollars in fines to the 
U.S. Government.
  As Ave Maria President Jim Towey has said:

       Ave Maria University pays 95 percent of the cost of the 
     health plan we offer our employees. Under the federal mandate 
     Ave Maria University would be paying for these drugs if we 
     complied with the law. So we will not.

  Every Senate Democrat who votes yes in a few minutes will be voting 
to fine Ave Maria Catholic University millions of dollars simply for 
standing true to their faith. That is a vote that should embarrass any 
Member of this body.
  Mr. Towey went on to say:

       We are prepared to discontinue our health plan and pay the 
     $2,000 per employee, per year fine rather than comply with an 
     unjust, immoral mandate in violation of our rights of 
     conscience.

  Belmont Abbey College is another proud religious school--founded by 
Benedictine monks--that the Democrats have put in the same predicament. 
The Democrats' legislation would force Belmont Abbey College to pay 
$20,000 a day in faith fines. Faith fines have no place in our 
democracy.
  Let me ask again: Why are Democrats so hostile to the Catholic 
Church? Why are Democrats trying to use the Federal Government to fine 
Catholic institutions for holding true to their religious beliefs? It 
all comes down to a hard-line, extreme, out-of-touch position on 
abortion.
  Just yesterday we had a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee 
about legislation so broad that it would set aside State laws providing 
parental notification for abortion, prohibiting late-term abortions, 
mandating taxpayer-funded abortions. These are extreme radical views 
held by a tiny percentage of the American people but yet held by a 
large percentage of Democratic activists.
  This position would also rip apart the bipartisan legislation that 
President Clinton signed into law in 1993. The Religious Freedom 
Restoration Act passed the Senate 97 to 3. When President Clinton 
signed that Act, he said:

       What [RFRA] basically says is that the Government should be 
     held to a very high level of proof before it interferes with 
     someone's free exercise of religion. This judgment is shared 
     by the people of the United States

[[Page S4533]]

     as well as by the Congress. We believe strongly that we can 
     never, we can never be too vigilant in this work.

  We should listen to the words of Bill Clinton in 1993, and the Senate 
should back away from this assault on religious liberty.
  I will finally note two simple things.
  In 1997, when the Senate considered another assault on the free 
speech protections of the First Amendment, then-Senator Ted Kennedy, 
liberal lion of the Senate, stood and said:

       We haven't changed the Bill of Rights in over 200 years and 
     now is no time to start.

  Senator Ted Kennedy was right in 1997.
  Likewise, President John F. Kennedy, in a historic speech to the 
Nation, said:

       I would not look with favor upon a president working to 
     subvert the First Amendment's guarantees of religious 
     liberty.

  Where are the Kennedys today? Does any Democrat have the courage to 
stand and speak for the First Amendment today? Does any Democrat have 
the courage to stand and speak for the constitutional rights of 
practicing Catholics? Does any Democrat have the courage to stand and 
speak for the Little Sisters of the Poor? Does any Democrat have the 
courage to listen to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and speak 
for religious liberty?
  It saddens me that there are not 100 Senators here unified, 
regardless of our faith, standing together, protecting the religious 
liberty rights of everyone.
  Faith fines have no business in our democracy. I urge every Member of 
this body to vote no on this assault on basic religious liberty of 
every American.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. President, I have come to the floor every 
day this week to talk about my commonsense bill to keep corporate 
interference out of women's private health decisions.
  On Monday when I was on the floor, I shared the concerns of a Denver-
based OB/GYN who said that in light of the Supreme Court's split 
decision in the Hobby Lobby case, physicians might now have to consider 
an employer's religious beliefs when making a medical recommendation to 
ensure their patients are covered for very basic contraceptive 
treatments.
  Yesterday I spoke about a Colorado mother whose college-aged daughter 
depended on contraception--prescribed by her doctor--to help her manage 
a debilitating health condition that often kept her from attending 
class. She told me that without that contraceptive coverage through her 
family's health plan, her daughter would not have had the coverage for 
a medically necessary treatment.
  Women are sharing these stories with me every day. And Coloradans 
agree--they should not have to ask for a permission slip to be covered 
by the method of contraception that is best for them.
  Women should be in charge of their health care, not their boss, and 
certainly not a corporation.
  This week my colleague from Washington State and I called on our 
colleagues to join us in supporting our bill--the Protect Women's 
Health From Corporate Interference Act--or the ``Not My Boss's Business 
Act.'' Our bill is straightforward. It is common sense. It ensures that 
no boss can come between a woman and her access to affordable health 
care.
  I thank my colleagues who have come to the Senate floor this week to 
highlight the importance of passing this bill. In just a few moments, 
we will be casting our votes as to whether we should bring this bill to 
the floor. So I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle can 
at least agree this is a debate worth having. It is a discussion I know 
women and men in every State are encouraging their representatives to 
have.
  After bringing this legislation to the floor for a proper debate, if 
my colleagues then believe that this simple bill to keep a boss's 
religious beliefs from impacting access to essential health care for 
millions of American women is misguided, then they can vote against it.
  Bosses have no business interfering in women's private health 
decisions. Women have asked us to act. Let's act.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, last month five conservative justices on 
the Supreme Court decided that a corporation's rights can trump a 
female employee's right to make her own health care decisions. This is 
just the latest of several rulings from a thin majority of justices 
that diminish the rights of hardworking Americans and have a direct 
effect on their economic security. I am proud to be a cosponsor of the 
Protect Women's Health from Corporate Interference Act, which the 
Senate is considering today. It is needed to overturn the Court's most 
recent expansion of corporate rights.
  For far too long, women were priced out of health care simply because 
of their gender. The very fact of being a woman, in effect, was 
brandished against women as a pre-existing condition. Thanks to the 
Affordable Care Act, much of the discrimination women faced in the 
health insurance market was eliminated. It is unthinkable that as 
recently as last year, a woman's health care premiums could cost 45 to 
140 percent more than a man's. No wonder over half of women identified 
cost as a barrier to health coverage and why so many women went without 
insurance. Women could be denied coverage for something as simple as 
having had a C-section, or for being a victim of domestic violence. It 
is a travesty that in a country as great as ours this inequity survived 
as long as it did.
  Unfortunately, in the Hobby Lobby decision, which this legislation 
would address, the Supreme Court set back these advances in equality in 
health coverage by sanctioning the very discrimination in health care 
access and services that the Affordable Care Act remedied. By ruling 
that the owners of corporations may impose their religious beliefs on 
their employees, women are no longer guaranteed the right to make their 
own health care decisions. Additionally, this ruling could have far 
reaching consequences beyond access to contraception. Unless Congress 
acts, we could see employers restricting the right to other health care 
services, including vaccines or blood transfusions.
  This ruling comes on the heels of another decision that also 
threatens women's access to health care. In McCullen v. Coakley, the 
Court ruled that a 35-foot buffer zone protecting women from harassment 
when entering women's health clinics was not justified and was 
therefore unconstitutional. This was yet another decision where the 
Roberts Court allowed other's rights--whether an employer or a stranger 
on the street who holds a different view point--to trump that of a 
woman seeking health care.
  In addition to the Supreme Court narrowing the rights of American 
women, we have seen many legislative efforts across the country to cut 
away at the progress we have made in women's health over the last few 
years. We have seen Federal bills and amendments introduced that would 
take decisions out of the hands of patients and doctors, and place them 
with businesses and insurance companies. States have followed suit by 
passing laws limiting women's access to health care services. I believe 
our focus should be on improving access to quality and affordable 
health care for all Americans, not arbitrarily restricting the 
important treatments needed by millions of women.
  The Protect Women's Health from Corporate Interference Act would 
restore Congress' intent by preventing any company from denying their 
workers specific health coverage, including birth control, as required 
to be covered by Federal law. Without this legislation, for-profit 
corporations that otherwise offer preventative health benefits can 
choose to deny their employers contraception coverage based on their 
bosses' religious beliefs. The bill before the Senate would once again 
prohibit bosses from discriminating against their employees based on 
their gender and would ensure that women's health care decisions are 
put back in the hands of those women and their doctors, where they 
belong.
  At the core of the Affordable Care Act is the principle that all 
Americans, regardless of health history or gender, have the right to 
access health care services and make their own decisions about their 
health care. As chairman of the Judiciary Committee--and as a husband, 
a father, a grandfather, and as a Vermonter--this is a principle I take 
seriously. I will continue to fight

[[Page S4534]]

against efforts to roll back protections for women, minorities, or any 
group that has faced discrimination.
  I hope that instead of focusing on ways to limit health care options 
for women, we can join together to promote the interests of women 
across America by supporting this bill. Nothing less than the economic 
security of our families is at stake.

                          ____________________