Congressional Record, Volume 161 Issue 48 (Monday, March 23, 2015)

[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 48 (Monday, March 23, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1676-S1703]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET, FISCAL YEAR 2016

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the concurrent
resolution.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

A concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 11) setting forth the
congressional budget for the United States Government for
fiscal year 2016 and setting forth the appropriate budgetary
levels for fiscal years 2017 through 2025.

Recognition Of The Minority Leader

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority leader is recognized.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time used
for my opening statement not count against the budget resolution time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Affordable Care Act

Mr. REID. Mr. President, as the Republican leader mentioned, it is
hard to believe that 5 years have gone by since we passed the
Affordable Care Act--but it is true. It has been 5 years. We recall
back to that cold winter day when we were able finally to get it done.
But to me it doesn't seem that long ago. The memories of what took
place to get where we did to pass that are very fresh in my mind. It
wasn't an easy feat. Presidents going back to Truman and Eisenhower had
tried to pass legislation dealing with health care, and they were all
unable to do it. So it was really a great accomplishment that Congress
could pass this legislation.
It wouldn't be a stretch to say that President Obama risked his
Presidency by pushing for health care reform. It was really a defining
moment for many people.
Republican opposition at the time was overwhelming. No matter what we
as Democrats did or tried to do, there was nothing we could do to get
Republicans to join us in giving health care to the American people,
even though the original health care bill we passed was patterned after
Republican proposals. So we worked hard, and we got it done. We pled
for help, and we got none. Republicans simply were not interested in
working with us to fix our Nation's health care system.
Outside the Capitol, a sophisticated and dishonest public relations
campaign costing huge amounts of money was being waged against
ObamaCare by political operatives, lobbyists, insurance companies, and
many others. We pressed on, and we did the very best we could, and it
was pretty good. Was it perfect? Of course not. No legislation is. But
what we eventually passed was and still is good for America.
I was very surprised to hear my friend, the senior Senator from
Kentucky, talk about a woman from Kentucky. That is very unusual, since
400,000 people in Kentucky today have insurance because of ObamaCare
that they didn't have before.
Five years later, I am very proud of the work we did. I am just as
proud today as I was when President Obama signed the Affordable Care
Act into law. ObamaCare is reducing costs, expanding access, and
protecting individuals with preexisting disabilities.
Look at just a few of the things it has done.
Some 16.4 million Americans now have quality health care coverage--
16.4 million.
The United States has seen the largest decline in the uninsured
rate--probably ever, but we will use just for purposes of
illustration--in decades.
In the last 18 months, the uninsured rate for nonelderly adults has
fallen by 35 percent. That is stunning.
Health care costs have grown at their slowest level in some 50 years.
Now listen to this. Patient safety initiatives are keeping Americans
safe. Since we passed this legislation, the number of preventable
deaths at hospitals and care centers has dropped by 50,000 people. That
is 50,000 people who are alive today who wouldn't have been had it not
been for ObamaCare. That is just one aspect of the people who are alive
today because of ObamaCare who would not have been otherwise.
But for all of the incredible national statistics that are available,
the best evidence that the Affordable Care Act is working can be found
in our homes, our neighborhoods, and our communities.
This year in Nevada, ObamaCare is making a real difference in the
lives of about 73,000 people who signed up for coverage through the
health care insurance marketplace. Frankly, Nevada got off to a really
slow start because they had a contract in the State with Xerox and they
did such an awful job. The Republican Governor of the State of Nevada--
I have applauded him in the past and I will do it again--was very
courageous. He stepped forward and has made a huge difference in
Nevada. Not only are Nevadans getting covered, but they are getting tax
breaks, also. Some 65,000 Nevadans who selected a plan on the
marketplace qualified for an average tax credit of $242 per month. No
matter what standard we use, that is real money in the pockets of
Nevadans who are still recovering from the economic downturn because of
what happened on Wall Street. There are stories just like this all
across America.
After 5 years, it is as clear as ever that the Affordable Care Act is
working. Americans are benefiting from increased health coverage, lower
costs, and improved efficiency.
Again, 16.4 million Americans have quality health coverage. Since
2013, the United States has seen the largest decline in the uninsured
rate in decades. In the last 18 months, the uninsured rate for
nonelderly adults has fallen by 35 percent. Health care costs have
grown at their slowest rate in 50 years. Patient safety initiatives are
keeping Americans safe. Since 2011, the number of preventable deaths at
hospitals and care centers has dropped by 50,000.
The ranking member of the Budget Committee is on the floor today. One
of the great things we do not talk much about in the Affordable Care
Act is community health centers. The good man from Vermont, the junior
Senator from Vermont, came to me and talked to me about community
health centers. As a result of his advocacy, we put lots of money--
about $11 billion--in the Affordable Care Act for community health
centers. It has changed the health care delivery system in America
significantly. We must continue that program.
The Affordable Care Act, for all the reasons we have mentioned, is
something that is really important. It is important that everyone
understand how absolutely fantastic it was for the people of this
country. After 5 years, it is clear it is working. Americans are
benefitting from increased coverage, lower costs, and improved
efficiency.
I invite my Republican colleagues to accept that ObamaCare is the law
of the land. Put aside the unrealistic notions of repealing a law of
which 16.4 million people now have health care. Are we going to just
drop them, because the Republican plans would just basically drop them
all?
Instead, Republicans should join with us to help even more Americans
get the help they need. Perhaps, then, 5 years from now Democrats and
Republicans can look back with pride, knowing that together we helped
make a good law even better for all Americans.

Reservation Of Leader Time

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the leadership time
is reserved.
The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I will begin by propounding some unanimous
consent requests. I think these have been agreed to on both sides.
First, I ask unanimous consent that, for the duration of the Senate's
consideration of S. Con. Res. 11, the majority and Democratic managers
of the concurrent resolution, while seated or standing at the managers'
desks, be permitted to deliver floor remarks, retrieve, review, and
edit documents, and send email and other data communications from text
displayed on wireless

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personal digital assistant devices and tablet devices. I further ask
unanimous consent that the use of calculators be permitted on the floor
during consideration of the budget resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. ENZI. For the information of Senators, this UC does not alter the
existing traditions that prohibit the use of such devices in the
Chamber by Senators in general, officers, and staff. It also does not
allow the use of videos or pictures, the transmitting of sound, even
through earpieces, for any purposes, the use of telephones or other
devices for voice communications, any laptop computers, any detachable
keyboards, the use of desktop computers, or any other larger devices.
Further, I ask unanimous consent that the initial debate time on the
budget resolution be allocated as follows: time until 1 p.m. equally
divided between the managers or their designees; 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. under
the control of the majority; 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. under the control of the
minority; 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. under the control of the majority; 4 p.m. to
5 p.m. under the control of the minority; 5 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. equally
divided.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time spent
in quorum calls requested during the budget resolution be equally
divided and come off the resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, last week, the Senate Budget Committee took
an important first step in helping to change the way we do business
here in Washington--by reporting out a balanced budget.
This week, we take the next step as the Senate begins debating how
best to make the government live within its means and set spending
limits for our Nation. But we are running out of time, and unless we do
something soon, our Nation will be overspending nearly $1 trillion a
year. Now, that is actually $1,000 billion a year. A trillion dollars
makes it sound rather trivial. It is $1,000 billion a year of
overspending.
Hard-working taxpayers are paying attention. In fact, 24 States have
already passed a constitutional balanced budget amendment, and there
are 10 more that are working on it. If all of these States pass similar
measures, we will have 34 States needed for a constitutional convention
on a balanced budget and we will be forced to act as they desire. ``If
it isn't all of you,'' they are saying, ``it will be all of us.''
Well, we are elected to represent our constituents. In the face of
such demands, we should act or someday it will be out of our hands.
One of the best ways to balance our budget is to make our government
more efficient, effective, and accountable. If Congress does its job,
we can have some flexibility and eliminate what is not working,
starting with the worst first. Then we can eliminate waste and
streamline what is left.
But to do this, first Congress must do something it has not done in
the past 8 years; that is, scrutinize every dollar for which they have
responsibility. Actually, with the billions of dollars we spend every
single year, they will be lucky to scrutinize every million dollars.
If government programs are not delivering results, they should be
improved; and if they are not needed, they should be eliminated. It is
time to prioritize and demand results from our government programs.
Through the process of getting the budget together, I discovered that
we had 260 programs that have not been authorized. What is an
authorization? Well, the committees are the people who are kind of
experts or at least have a very concentrated concern over that
particular area. They pass the new programs--the details of the new
programs: the amount that can be spent on those programs, the way we
can measure whether they are getting things done.
I discovered that 260 of those programs that we are still funding
have expired. Their authorization ran out. One thing that is in those
authorizations is some kind of a sunset date; and we have passed the
sunset date on 260 programs. So what? We are only overspending,
according to the authorization, $293 billion a year on expired
programs.
Yes, some of those programs are absolutely essential. What we need to
do, though, is have those committees that have the expertise go back
and review them and reauthorize them and set the new limits and the new
matrix for what they are supposed to be doing so we can tell if they
are doing their job. Mr. President, 260 programs--one of them expired
in 1983; a whole bunch of them expired before this century. So we know
this will be a challenge for every single Member of Congress. But I
believe we are up to the task because the American people are counting
on us.
This week hard-working taxpayers will also get to see something they
have been waiting to see; and that is an open and transparent
legislative process that will see Members from both sides of the aisle
offering, debating, and ultimately voting on amendments to this
resolution.
Senate Republicans will offer amendments that will enhance fiscal
discipline, build a strong national defense, boost our economic growth,
tackle ObamaCare, protect education, and help make our government more
efficient, effective, and accountable to hard-working taxpayers.
What this budget does do. We will also hear people say what this
budget does and what it does not do. But here is what this budget does
do: It balances the budget in 10 years with no tax hikes. It protects
our most vulnerable citizens. It strengthens the national defense. It
improves economic growth and opportunity for hard-working families. It
slows the rate of spending growth.
It preserves Social Security by reducing spending in other areas to
fully offset Social Security's rising deficits and encourages our
Nation's leaders to begin a bipartisan, bicameral discussion on how to
protect and save Social Security and avoid the across-the-board Social
Security benefit cuts that could occur under current law. It protects
our seniors by safeguarding Medicare from insolvency and extending the
life of the Medicare trust fund by 5 years. It ensures Medicare savings
in the President's health care law are dedicated to Medicare, instead
of seeing those changes go to other programs and more overspending.
It continues funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program,
CHIP, and creates a new program based on CHIP to serve low-income,
working-age, able-bodied adults and children who are eligible for
Medicaid. It increases State flexibility in designing benefits and
administering Medicaid programs to ensure efficiency and reduce
wasteful spending and provides stable and predictable funding so long-
term services and supports are sustainable both for the Federal
Government and the States.
So as we begin this debate this week, it is worth noting that the
strong economic growth a balanced budget can provide will serve as the
foundation for helping all Americans grow and prosper. A balanced
budget allows Americans to spend more time working hard to grow their
businesses or advance their jobs, instead of worrying about taxes and
inefficient and ineffective regulations. Most importantly, it means
every American who wants to find a good-paying job and a fulfilling
career has the opportunity to do just that.
There are problems, however, with the family budget. Family income is
not growing as it should, and this has dire consequences for our
future. If family income does not grow, it becomes very difficult for
parents to pay for their children's education and for their own
training needs. Likewise, slow family income growth means less money
set aside for retirement, health care, a downpayment on a house, and
money to get the next generation started.
Because job growth has been so slow since the beginning of the
recovery, it is not surprising that income growth has been slow too. A
lot of people fail to note that when jobs and incomes slow down
together, the real victims are your hopes, your dreams, and your
aspirations. Moreover, these trends of slow growth in jobs and incomes
are relatively related and recent.
Hardly anyone listening to me today would be confused by the term
``family income.'' It clearly means the cash that families receive from
their jobs

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and their investments. It is the stuff that goes into a savings
account, into a retirement plan, into education for the kids, into the
household rainy day fund. You can count it, and it is tangible.
One of the other things I discovered as I was going through this
process is we have some things we call trust funds. I have discovered
that you better not trust them. There is no cash in the trust funds.
Normally that would be investments that can be withdrawn and the bills
paid. I think if we really were doing a financial statement for the
Federal Government, we would have to move those trust funds over to
accounts payable because what is backing them is the full faith and
credit of the Federal Government. I hope we can make it so that is full
faith and credit. That is why we need to change some of the things we
are doing right now.
Last year, we spent $231 billion on interest. That is on an $18
trillion debt. In the President's budget, that is proposed to go to
$780 billion. That is more than we are spending on defense, more than
we are spending on education, more than we are spending on almost any
other function the Federal Government does. If $230 billion is 1
percent, what happens if we go to the normal rate of 5 percent? Oh,
goodness, we only get to make choices here on $1,100 billion. So
virtually all the money we have would go to interest--no national
defense, no education, no other function that the Federal Government is
involved in.
Our overspending is killing us. Yes, there are two ways you can
reduce overspending. One is to cut spending; the other one is to raise
taxes. We are already collecting more money than we ever have in the
history of the United States. So how are we going to solve this problem
of the interest itself from bankrupting us? This budget is designed to
put us on a path to do that. It will not solve everything. We have only
had about 8 weeks to do what has not been done in the budget for 6
years. So I hope you will bear with us during the course of this
process.
I am an accountant. I am also chair of the Senate Budget Committee,
and we have started the monumental task of confronting America's
chronic overspending, tackling our Nation's surging debt, and balancing
our Nation's budget.
Incidentally, under the President's budget, the overspending this
year is $468 billion. Remember when we used to make decisions on $1,100
billion? If the Constitutional Convention that I talked about that the
States are putting together were in place--there are 24 already;
another 10 makes it mandatory--we would have to cut 50 percent. We are
not able to do that. It was tough enough to balance the budget over a
10-year period. That is a tremendous task we have ahead of us if we are
going to take care of balancing our Nation's debt and bringing it down
to where it is a manageable level, where we can afford the interest on
it.
Before coming to Congress, I ran a small business in Wyoming for many
years. I served as a mayor in my hometown and then served in the
legislature. One of the most important roles I had was to ensure that
my budgets were balanced every year. In time, we were even able to
build some rainy-day accounts in Wyoming. So far, there has never been
a crisis so bad that it has rained. It is time to begin this
responsible accounting in Washington because while we can lie about the
numbers, the numbers never lie.
The worst kept secret in America is that this administration is
spending more than ever and taxing more than ever. The President's
budget increases taxes dramatically and still doesn't get us to a
balanced budget. In fact, that $468 billion in overspending this year--
in the 10th year, he projects $1 trillion, which is $1,000 billion
overspent. It never goes down. It keeps going up. We have to reverse
that trend.
The Federal Government should spend your tax dollars wisely and
responsibly and give you the freedom and control to pursue your future
in the way you choose. Hard-working taxpayers deserve a government that
is more efficient, more effective, and more accountable. That should be
something on which both parties can agree because I never heard anybody
say they wanted a more inefficient, ineffective, and unaccountable
government.
Runaway spending habits over the past 6 years have created a
dangerously growing debt because the habit of spending now and paying
later is deeply ingrained. Actually, under the President's budget, it
isn't even paying later that is included. Federal deficits have hit
record highs. We have overspent nearly $1 trillion a year--that is
$1,000 billion. The more Washington spends, the more debt we owe and
the more is added to what future generations would have to pay.
Today, America's debt totals $18 trillion. In fact, every man, woman,
and child now owes more than $56,000 on that debt. The number is
expected to grow to more than $75,000 over the next decade unless we
make important changes. Yes, that is every man, woman, and child. That
means somebody born this morning owes $56,000 on that debt.
Every dollar spent on interest on our debt is another dollar we won't
be able to use for government services, for individuals in need, or
another dollar that won't be available to taxpayers for their own
needs.
It is time to stop talking and start acting. Washington has to live
within its means, just as hard-working families do every day. We have
to deliver a more effective and accountable government to the American
people that supports them when it must and gets out of the way when it
should. We didn't get here overnight, and we won't be able to fix it
overnight, but we can begin to solve this crisis if we act now.
The Republicans put forward a responsible plan that balances the
budget in 10 years with no tax hikes. It protects our most vulnerable
citizens, strengthens our national defense, and improves economic
growth and opportunity for hard-working families. A balanced budget
means real accountability in Washington and ensures that programs
actually accomplish what they set out to deliver--which goes back to my
statement about 260 programs that have expired that we are still
funding to the tune of $293 billion. A balanced budget supports
economic growth for hard-working families and creates real opportunity
for all Americans to grow and prosper. A balanced budget allows
Americans to spend more time working hard to grow their businesses or
to advance their jobs instead of worrying about taxes and inefficient,
ineffective regulations that drive down their opportunities. It also
means our job creators can find new opportunities to expand our
economy. Most importantly, it means every American who wants to have a
good-paying job and a fulfilling career has the opportunity to do that.
That is what a balanced budget means for our Nation, and it is what the
American people deserve.
Congress is under new management, and by working together to find
shared ground with commonsense solutions, we can deliver real results
and have real progress.
I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. Thank you, Madam President. Let me begin by commenting
on a few of the thoughts raised by my good friend Senator Enzi.
Senator Enzi says the economy today is not where it should be, and he
is right. I don't think anybody thinks the economy is where it should
be in terms of low unemployment and high wages--no debate about that.
But I ask the American people to think back 6\1/2\ years ago, at the
end of President Bush's term, to what the economy was like. At that
point, we were not gaining the 200,000 jobs a month we are gaining now;
we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. At that point, the deficit was not
at $480 billion, where it is today; it was at $1.4 trillion. At that
point, the stock market was not soaring, as it is today; the American
and world financial system was on the verge of collapse. So let's begin
by putting issues into perspective.
No, nobody I know thinks we are where we should be economically in
America today, but anybody who does not understand that despite
enormous Republican obstructionism, we have made significant gains over
the last 6\1/2\ years would, I believe, be very mistaken.
As we all know, the Federal budget we are working on now is not an
appropriations bill. It does not provide explicit funding for this or
that agency. What it does do is lay the foundation

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for that process, the total amount of money the appropriations
committees have to spend. In other words, this budget is more than just
a very long list of numbers. The Federal budget is about our national
priorities and our values. It is about who we are as a nation and what
we stand for. It is about how we analyze and assess the problems we
face and how we go forward in resolving those problems. That is the
task the Senate is now about to undertake, and it is a very serious
responsibility.
Let's be very clear. No family, no business, no local or State
government can responsibly write a budget without first understanding
the problems and the challenges it faces. That is even more true when
we deal with a Federal budget of some $4 trillion.
As I examine the budgets brought forth by the Republicans in the
House and here in the Senate, this is how I see their analysis of the
problems facing our country. At a time of massive wealth and income
inequality, perhaps the most important issue facing this country--a
huge transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top one-tenth of 1
percent. My Republican colleagues apparently believe the richest people
in America need to be made even richer.
It is apparently not good enough for my Republican colleagues that 99
percent of all new income today is going to the top 1 percent--not good
enough.
It is apparently not good enough that the top one-tenth of 1 percent
today own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Clearly, in
the eyes of my Republican colleagues, the wealthy and the powerful and
the big campaign contributors need even more help. Not only should they
not be asked to pay more in taxes, not only should we not eliminate
huge loopholes that benefit the wealthy and large corporations, some of
my Republican friends believe we should protect these loopholes, not
change them at all or maybe even make them wider.
It is apparently not good enough that corporate America is enjoying
record-breaking profits and that the CEOs of large corporations earn
some 290 times what their average employees make--290 times more.
It is apparently not good enough that since 1985, the top one-tenth
of 1 percent has seen a more than $8 trillion increase in its wealth
than it would have if wealth and equality had remained the same as it
was in 1985--an $8 trillion dollar increase in wealth going to the top
one-tenth of 1 percent. But apparently my Republican colleagues not
only do not talk about this issue, they will do nothing to address the
massive wealth inequality this country faces.
It is apparently not good enough for my Republican colleagues that
the wealthiest 14 people in this country--14 people--have seen their
wealth go up by more than $157 billion over the past 2 years alone.
Fourteen people saw an increase in their wealth of $157 billion, and
the Republican budget talks about cutting food stamps and education and
nutrition, because we are presumably a poor nation. Well, we are not a
poor nation. We just have massive wealth and income inequality, so that
the vast majority of people are becoming poorer but the people on top
are predominantly wealthy. That is the reality we must address.
As manifested in the House and Senate budgets, my Republican
colleagues are ignoring a very significant reality, and that is that
millions of middle-class and working families are people who are often
working longer hours for lower wages and have seen significant declines
in their standard of living over the past 40 years. My Republican
colleagues say those people who are struggling, those people who are
trying to feed their families, those people who are trying to send
their kids to college--those are not the people we should be helping;
rather, we have to worry about the top 1 percent.
At a time when over 45 million Americans are living in poverty, which
is more than at almost any time in the modern history of our country--
and many of these people are working people, people who are working 40
or 50 hours a week at substandard wages--my Republican colleagues think
we should increase poverty by ending the Affordable Care Act, by
slashing Medicaid, and by cutting food stamps and the earned-income tax
credit.
At a time when almost 20 percent of our kids live in poverty--the
highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world--my
Republican colleagues think that maybe we should even raise that
poverty rate a little bit among our children by cutting childcare, by
cutting Head Start, by cutting the refundable child tax credit, and
maybe let's even go after nutrition programs for hungry children.
To summarize, the rich get much richer and the Republicans think they
need more help. The middle-class and working families of this country
become poorer and the Republicans think we need to cut programs they
desperately need. Frankly, those may be the priorities of some of my
Republican colleagues, but I do not believe those are the priorities of
the American people.
Today, the United States safely remains the only major country on
Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a
right. Today, despite the modest gains in the Affordable Care Act, we
still have about 40 million Americans who lack health insurance and
millions more who are underinsured.

What is the Republican response to the health care crisis? They want
to abolish--do away with completely--the Affordable Care Act and take
away the health insurance that 16 million Americans have gained through
that program.
Here we have 40 million people who have no health insurance and the
Republican response is: Well, let's make it 56 million people. And if
you add the massive cuts they proposed to Medicaid and the Children's
Health Insurance Program, even millions more would lose their health
insurance.
Does anybody, for 1 second, think this vaguely makes any sense in the
real world? People are struggling to try to find health insurance and
the response is: Oh, let's cut 16 million people off of the Affordable
Care Act and millions more off of Medicaid.
While the Senate budget resolution does not end Medicare as we know
it, unlike the House budget last year, it does make significant cuts.
Further, when you make massive cuts to Medicaid, it is not only low-
income people who suffer, you are also cutting the nursing home care
for seniors. These are elderly people--80, 90 years of age--in a
nursing home, and one might argue these people are the most vulnerable
people in this country, the most helpless people, fragile people, and
we are going to cut programs for them.
I have talked a little bit about the devastating impact the House and
Senate Republican budgets would have on the American people, but I
think it is equally important, when we look at a budget, to talk about
not only what a budget does but talk about what a budget does not do,
the serious problems it does not address.
Poll after poll tells us the American people, when asked what their
major concerns are, almost always respond: It is jobs, wages, and the
economy. That is, generally speaking, what Democrats, Republicans, and
Independents respond. It is the economy, jobs, and wages.
Despite a significant improvement in the economy over the last 6
years, real employment today is not 5.5 percent, it is 11 percent,
counting those people who have given up looking for work and those
people who are working part time. Youth employment, an issue we almost
never discuss, is at 17 percent, and African-American youth employment
is much higher than that.
What the American people want--and what the Republican budget
completely ignores--is the need to create millions of decent-paying
jobs. I think if you go to Maine, to Vermont, to Wyoming, to California
and ask people what they want, they would say: We need more jobs, and
those jobs should be paying us a living wage.
In my view--and in the view of many economists--if we are serious
about creating jobs in this country, the fastest way to do it is to
rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, our roads, bridges, water
systems, wastewater plants, airports, rail, dams, levees, broadband in
rural areas.
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, we need to
invest over $3 trillion by the year 2020 just to get our Nation's
infrastructure in good repair. When we make a significant investment in
an infrastructure, we create millions of decent-paying jobs,

[[Page S1680]]

which is exactly what we should be doing and what our side of the aisle
will fight for, but it is an issue virtually ignored by the Republican
majority. Crumbling infrastructure, need to create jobs--they don't
talk about it.
At a time when millions of Americans are working for starvation wages
and when the Federal minimum wage is at an abysmal $7.25 an hour, we
need a budget that substantially increases wages for low-income and
middle-income workers. In the year 2015, no one who works in this
country for 40 hours a week should be living in poverty. I would hope
that is a tenet all of us can agree on. No one should be making the
totally inadequate Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
Raising the minimum wage to at least $10.10 an hour--I personally
would go higher than that--would not only be good for low-wage workers,
it would reduce spending on Medicaid, public housing, food stamps, and
other Federal programs by some $7 billion a year.
Sadly, when I offered an amendment in committee that called for a
substantial increase in the minimum wage, not one of my Republican
colleagues voted for it.
Well, we are going to give them an opportunity to rethink the error
of their ways. We are going to bring an amendment onto the floor to do
exactly what the American people want; that is, significantly increase
the minimum wage in this country, so no one who works 40 hours a week
lives in poverty.
We also need pay equity in this country so women do not make 78 cents
on the dollar compared to what a man makes for doing the same work.
Further, we need to address the overtime scandal in this country in
which many of our people are working 50 or 60 hours a week but fail to
get time and a half for their efforts.
I haven't heard--I sat through all of the committee meetings, Budget
Committee meetings, I was at the markup on Thursday--I didn't hear one
Republican word about the need for pay equity for women workers, about
the need to address the overtime scandal, and about the need to address
the minimum wage. These are the issues the American people want
addressed, but look high and low in that long Republican budget, you
will not find one word addressing these issues.
I can stay in Vermont and I suspect every State in this country,
young people and their families are enormously frustrated by the high
cost of college education and the horrendously oppressive student debt
that many of them leave school with. In fact, student debt today at
$1.2 trillion is the second-largest category of debt in this country,
more than credit card debt and auto loan debt.
Does the Republican budget do anything to lower interest rates on
student debt? No. In fact, their budget would make a bad situation even
worse by eliminating subsidized student loans and increasing the cost
of a college education by about $3,000 for some of the lowest income
students in America.
Does the Republican budget support or comment on President Obama's
initiative to make 2 years of community college free or do they provide
any other initiative to make college affordable? Sadly, they don't. But
what they do is cut $90 billion in Pell grants over a 10-year period,
which would make college even more expensive for about 8 million low-
income college students.
My Republican colleagues say they are concerned about the deficit--
which, by the way, has been reduced by more than two-thirds since
President Obama has been in office, and we should be clear this side of
the aisle is concerned about the deficit.
My Republican colleagues are concerned about an $18 trillion national
debt, which has skyrocketed in recent years. One of the reasons it has
skyrocketed is that we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the
experts tell us that by the time we take care of the last veteran,
those wars may cost over $5 trillion, and my deficit hawk friends on
the Republican side, how did they pay for those wars? What taxes did
they raise? What programs did they cut? They didn't. They put it on the
credit card. That is how they paid for it.
What concerns me very much is that, unfortunately, two wars unpaid
for is not enough for my Republican colleagues. In the committee markup
they put another $38 billion into defense spending on the credit card--
off-budget.
So I think we should ask ourselves how does it happen that the move
toward their balanced budget approach--they want to cut nutrition,
education, health care, virtually every program that working families
need--but when it comes to defense spending, another $38 billion. That
is not chump change, even in Washington. That is off-budget--no
problem, just add it to the deficit.
When we talk about sensible ways of addressing our deficit or
sensible ways of addressing our national debt, we cannot ignore the
reality that major corporation after major corporation, in a given
year, pays what in taxes--20 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent, zero
percent. Profitable corporations such as General Electric, Verizon,
Boeing, and many others have not only paid nothing in Federal income
taxes in some recent years, they actually get rebates from the IRS.
Can we talk about that issue or is the only way toward a balanced
budget to cut programs for the elderly, the children, and the sick and
the poor?
A report from the Congressional Research Service: Each and every year
profitable corporations are avoiding about $100 billion in taxes by
stashing their profits in the Cayman islands.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. SANDERS. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. ENZI. If the Senator needs a few more minutes----
Mr. SANDERS. I would be pleased to split the time.
I thank my colleague. I will take a few more minutes, and if he has
more, he could take the rest.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont is recognized.
Mr. SANDERS. The point I was making is if we are serious about
reducing the deficit, it is inconceivable that one does not look at the
fact that corporation after corporation is paying zero in Federal
income taxes. It is inconceivable that we do not recognize that in 1952
corporations contributed about 32 percent of all Federal tax revenue.
Today, they contribute about 11 percent. It is inconceivable that we do
not understand that according to the CRS, each and every year
profitable corporations are avoiding $100 billion in taxes.
How can we not look at that issue? How could your only approach be to
make it harder for kids to go to college or for little children to be
in the Head Start Program?
I look forward to the debate we will be having over the next several
days. I suspect there will be a lot of amendments being offered. I
think it is fair to say, on this side of the aisle, what the amendments
will be saying is that we need to create millions of jobs. We need to
raise wages in America. We need a tax system that is fair and does not
contain loopholes that allow the wealthy and large corporations to
avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
We need a budget that says women workers should earn the same as male
workers. We need a budget that says we have to rebuild our crumbling
infrastructure.
I think there will be a lot of very serious debates. I think the
differences between the two sides will become very apparent, and I hope
the American people pay strong attention to this discussion.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. ENZI. I thank the ranking member for his comments.
Madam President, I appreciate the civility with which we went through
the committee process and look forward to having that same civility on
the floor.
Yes, there are some very important things for us to talk about. I
have to agree, we need to do some things. The areas that were mentioned
were taxes, wages, health insurance, infrastructure, and student debt.
We just have a little bit different direction on how to achieve those
things, but I am hoping we can find the common ground on those.
The budget itself didn't get into specificity on how to do these
things because our Budget Committee--while we have people who represent
a lot of

[[Page S1681]]

those different committees--don't have the range of expertise that the
committees themselves do. So what we tried to do in the budget was set
the parameters for them to work in and to find the solutions that would
work best within those parameters.
We are trying to get this budget done by April 15. That is actually a
statutory deadline--it is seldom ever met--and I intend to meet that
deadline. That is so the appropriators, the people doing the spending
bills, can actually get started, so that for once maybe we can have all
12 spending bills debated on the floor, unlimited amendments, so we can
get as many of the 100 opinions that we have--it is 300 or 400 opinions
actually--involved in the decisions on how to best to spend the money
the United States spends.
The Finance Committee that I am also on is actually dedicated to
getting some tax reform done. I think they will do it in a bipartisan
way. That should eliminate some of the loopholes that have been talked
about and also clear up some of the misconceptions there are about some
of the things.
I will conclude by talking a little about deficit, because I keep
hearing the other side say they have reduced the deficit in half. Yes,
but the word ``deficit'' is so misleading. It is not the debt, it is
the deficit. That is the amount of overspending in any given year. So
they have reduced the amount of overspending by one-half, but it is
still overspent by one-half. Every time it is overspent, that adds to
the debt. That is how the $18 trillion gets to $25 trillion in the next
10 years. We have to stop doing that. So I would appreciate it if they
would use a different word. Somebody said it is the fiscal gap. Well,
maybe ``fiscal gap'' is a better word, but it is overspending.
Now overspending can be changed in two different ways: We can either
increase taxes or we can reduce our spending on things or we can do a
combination of those things. Until we start talking to each other, we
won't be doing any combinations of anything, probably.
So I am hoping we can have the civility we had in the committee here
on the floor and come up with solutions for America and Americans and
the hard-working taxpayers of this country, who are really interested
in all of these topics and feel we ought to do something about it and
that we shouldn't just be taking a lot of latitude and putting in
details that maybe aren't there in the other's provisions. So I look
forward to the debate.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

ObamaCare

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, 5 years ago today, President Obama
signed his health care bill into law. Since then Americans have watched
their paychecks shrink because of the law. Hard-working American
taxpayers have paid billions of dollars in higher taxes because of the
law. They have had less health care choice because of the law.
So what does the President say about all of this? What does the
President say to the millions of Americans who have had to suffer--
suffer--through a long list of costly and appalling side effects of the
President's health care law? Well, last week he gave a speech in
Cleveland and he said, ``It's working even better than I expected.'' He
repeated the same thing this weekend, saying, ``It's working even
better than I expected.''
Has the President not seen what has happened to workers' paychecks
over the last 5 years? Maybe the President missed an article by the
Associated Press last Wednesday. The headline was: ``Health care law
paperwork costs small businesses thousands.'' The article said,
``Complying with the health care law is costing small businesses
thousands of dollars that they didn't have to spend before the new
regulations went into effect.''
The article gives the example of Mike Patton, who has a flooring
company in the San Francisco Bay area. All of the extra ObamaCare
paperwork is costing him about $25,000 a year. To pay for it, the
article said, Mike had to ``cut back on workers' bonuses and raises.''
He told the Associated Press, ``They understand it didn't emanate from
us . . . They're just disappointed that $25,000 could have gone into a
bonus pool.''
Mike Patton's employees will get less money in their paychecks
because of all the complex and costly redtape of ObamaCare. Is that
even better than the President expected?
People are getting smaller paychecks and they are also paying higher
taxes because of this health care law. According to the latest estimate
by the Congressional Budget Office, ObamaCare will increase
Washington's spending on health care by $1.7 trillion over the next
decade. About half of that is for subsidies in the ObamaCare exchanges
and about half is to pay for all of the people who have been dumped
onto a broken Medicaid system. The $1.7 trillion has to come from
somewhere, and a lot of it is coming from hard-working American
taxpayers.
ObamaCare included more than 20 tax increases on things such as
medical devices, prescription drugs, and even on the very insurance
policies that Washington Democrats said everyone has to buy. Why so
many taxes? Why is ObamaCare so expensive? Well, an outrageous amount
of the money has been wasted over the last 5 years.
Just the other day there was another example that came out of
Massachusetts. There was a Boston Herald article last Wednesday, March
18. The headline was: ``Health Connector officials spent $170G on
perks.'' The article talks about Federal taxpayer money--Federal
taxpayer money--that was given to Massachusetts to set up the State's
ObamaCare exchange. The article says:

Massachusetts Health Connector officials behind the state's
failed health care website--

Now, remember, the health care Web site in Massachusetts completely
failed.

According to the article, ``the Connector's staff and board members
scored numerous perks even as they spent hundreds of millions [of
dollars] to fix the state portal during its botched Obamacare
rollout.''
What does the State have to say about this--about the kind of waste
and misuse of taxpayer money? Well, the article actually quotes a
spokesman for the exchange saying ``we were happy to do it.'' Does
President Obama think that kind of waste is even better than he
expected?
It seems as though the American people see headlines like this every
day and every day they see more ways the President's health care law
has failed us over the last 5 years.
Let me cite one more example, and this one concerns one of the ways
ObamaCare has meant less choice for Americans when it comes to their
own health care. President Obama promised you could keep your doctor.
Millions of Americans over the past 5 years have lost access to their
doctor because insurance plans have had to limit the network of doctors
those patients can see. That can generate and create real problems for
people trying to use their coverage to actually get medical care.
This is about a woman by the name of Pam Durocher from Roseville, CA.
An article by Kaiser Health News on February 18 told her story. The
headline was: ``Even Insured Consumers Get Hit With Unexpectedly Large
Medical Bills.'' And she is insured. The article continued: ``After Pam
Durocher was diagnosed with breast cancer, she searched her insurer's
website for a participating surgeon to do the reconstructive surgery.''
The article said she did her homework, so ``she was stunned to get a
$10,000 bill from the surgeon. `I panicked when I got the bill' ''--no
surprise that she panicked when she got the bill--``said the 60-year-
old retired civil servant. . . . ''
It turns out the surgeon had two offices and only one of those was in
the very narrow network of the insurance plan. The office Pam went to
wasn't in

[[Page S1682]]

the network so she got a bill for $10,000. According to this article:
``Consumer advocates say that the sheer scope of such problems
undermine promises''--undermine promises--``made by proponents of the
Affordable Care Act that the law would protect against medical
bankruptcy.'' It says that, ``Advocates believe a growing number of
consumers are vulnerable.''
Let me repeat that: Advocates of the health care law, people who
voted for it, believe a growing number--now with the fifth anniversary
of the health care law--are vulnerable. And President Obama said that
was exactly the type of situation his law was supposed to prevent.
Instead, it is exactly the kind of situation his devastating health
care law has created.
The Obama administration is bragging--bragging--about the number of
people covered by ObamaCare. Is this what those people have to look
forward to? Does President Obama really think that making people such
as Pam panic means his law is working even better than he expected? It
may be better than he expected, but it is a lot worse than what the
American people expected. It is also a lot worse than what they were
promised.
As a doctor who has practiced medicine for 25 years, I know Americans
have always wanted affordable care instead of expensive Washington-
mandated coverage. The American people expected health care reform to
give them the care they need, from a doctor they choose, at lower cost.
Five years ago too many Americans were paying higher premiums. Here we
are 5 years later and Americans are paying even higher premiums and
finding it harder to see their doctor. This isn't what President Obama
promised and it is not what the American people deserve.
In the coming months the Supreme Court will rule on whether the
President violated his own law with an unauthorized spending and taxing
scheme. This will be a major blow to a law that has failed Americans
for more than 5 years and will be an opportunity to finally focus on
affordable health care. Republicans are committed to helping the
millions of Americans who have been hurt by this law. We are working on
a plan that will deliver freedom, flexibility, and choice to Americans.

Five years later, the law has been bad for patients, it has been bad
for providers, and it has been terrible for the American taxpayers.
This anniversary today is not a cause for celebration. It is a call for
action.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the
Record the following articles from the Boston Herald, the Associated
Press, and Kaiser Health News.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the Boston Herald, March 18, 2015]

Health Connector Officials Spent $170G on Perks

(By Chris Cassidy, Erin Smith and Matt Stout)

Massachusetts Health Connector officials behind the state's
failed health care website have racked up more than $170,000
in taxpayer-funded expenses, including a Boston Harbor
summertime boat cruise, luxury hotel stays, ``appreciation''
meals for staffers and contractors--and a $285 Obamacare cake
commemorating the launch of the Affordable Care Act, a Herald
review has found.
Under the Patrick administration, the Connector's staff and
board members scored numerous perks even as they spent
hundreds of millions to fix the state portal during its
botched Obamacare rollout. Among them:
$553 for a harbor cruise for an employee celebration in
September 2013, part of a $1,495 total expense item that also
covered costs for Sam LaGrassa's sandwiches and Lizzy's Ice
Cream.
A $236 one-night stay at the Palms Hotel in Miami, which
bills itself as a beachside oasis with ``spa-inspired''
bathrooms, an on-site spa and ``impressive views of the
ocean,'' plus $944 in stays at Nine Zero and Millennium
Bostonian, and $352 at the Omni Parker House.
A $285 Obamacare cake in October 2013, and thousands for
employee ``appreciation'' desserts and catered meals for
staffers and contractors, including a $236 ``cookie tray''
from Metro Catering, $298 for Lizzy's Homemade Ice Cream,
$134 for pastries from Fratelli's Pastry Shop and an
unspecified amount from Dandy Donuts for call-center
employees in Illinois.
About $20,400 in parking costs that officials say the
state's taxpayer-funded Medicaid program will ultimately
cover.
All told, Connector officials ran up $171,030 in expenses
in the 19 months from July 2013 through January 2015, the
review found.
Connector spokesman Jason Lefferts defended the expenses,
noting they also include trips to Maryland and Washington,
D.C., to meet with Obama administration officials at an
important time in the relaunch of the website.
``We found the right path and we got a website that
worked,'' said Lefferts. ``In terms of the food and the
appreciation, obviously not just for staff here, but for the
vendors that worked for us and the navigators that were
helpful to us. If we bought them a bagel or a sandwich in
appreciation, we were happy to do it.''
From the start, the Connector's Obamacare portal was
plagued by embarrassing glitches that, among other things,
blocked people with hyphenated last names from signing up for
plans, and forced others to falsely claim to be prison
inmates or mental patients before they could finish their
applications. Others complained about frequent computer
crashes and long waits on the phone.
Travel costs for board members to attend meetings also ran
high, the review found. Former board member Ian Duncan--a
University of California at Santa Barbara professor--was
reimbursed $16,584 for travel.
Board member Lou Malzone, who lives on Cape Cod, expensed
$11,196 for travel and hotels. Malzone chalked up the costs
to times he stays overnight ahead of a board meeting, instead
of making the 75-mile, one-way trip to and from the Cape.
``You tell me if you can find (a hotel) for under $200 or
$300 a night in Boston,'' Malzone said.
Other larger expense reports, he said--including at least
four that topped $1,000--are from times he was out of town on
business or vacation and flew back for a board meeting.
``I have a pretty good attendance record,'' he said,
estimating he's missed just four meetings over nine years.
``If you're out of town and there's a business meeting, I go
back, rather than do conference calls.''
____

[From the Associated Press, March 18, 2015]

Health Care Law Paperwork Costs Small Businesses Thousands

(By Joyce M. Rosenberg)

New York.--Complying with the health care law is costing
small businesses thousands of dollars that they didn't have
to spend before the new regulations went into effect.
Brad Mete estimates his staffing company, Affinity
Resources, will spend $100,000 this year on record-keeping
and filing documents with the government. He's hired two
extra staffers and is spending more on services from its
human resources provider.
The Affordable Care Act, which as of next Jan. 1 applies to
all companies with 50 or more workers, requires owners to
track staffers' hours, absences and how much they spend on
health insurance. Many small businesses don't have the human
resources departments or computer systems that large
companies have, making it harder to handle the paperwork. On
average, complying with the law costs small businesses more
than $15,000 a year, according to a survey released a year
ago by the National Small Business Association.
``It's a horrible hassle,'' says Mete, managing partner of
the Miami-based company.
But there are some winners. Some companies are hiring
people to take on the extra work and human resources
providers and some software developers are experiencing a
bump in business.
Companies must track workers' hours according to rules
created by the IRS to determine whether a business is
required to offer health insurance to workers averaging 30
hours a week, and their dependents. Companies may be
penalized if they're subject to the law and don't offer
insurance.
Businesses must also track the months an employee is
covered by insurance, and the cost of premiums so the
government can decide if the coverage is affordable under the
law.
Many companies have separate software for payroll,
attendance and benefits management and no easy way to combine
data from all of them, says John Haslinger, a vice president
at ADP Benefits Outsourcing Consulting. And early next year,
employers must complete IRS forms using information from
these different sources. The process is more complex for
businesses with operations in different states.
Mike Patton's health insurance broker is handling the extra
administrative chores for his San Francisco Bay-area flooring
company DSB Plus, but he's paying for it through higher
premiums--about $25,000 a year.
To pay for the extra services the business is getting from
his broker, Patton cut back on workers' bonuses and raises.
``They understand it didn't emanate from us,'' Patton says.
``They're just disappointed that $25,000 could have gone into
a bonus pool.''
That kind of spending has led to a surge in business for
payroll providers, human resources consultants and health
insurance brokers that track hours and keep records for small
businesses, and even file documents with the government.
Sales have more than doubled in the last year at human
resources provider Engage PEO. Many of its clients are small
companies.
``They want to comply with the law and don't want to be
subject to an unintended

[[Page S1683]]

penalty,'' says Dorothy Miraglia King, executive vice
president of the St. Petersburg, Florida-based company.
Businessolver, a company whose primary business is creating
software to help companies administer benefits, also reports
an uptick in demand. In 2013, when clients started becoming
aware of the law's paperwork requirements, they asked for
software that could take care of all their needs, says Rae
Shanahan, a human resources executive at the West Des Moines,
Iowa, company.
``The traditional systems that people have can't handle
it,'' she says.
____

[From Kaiser Health News, Feb. 18, 2015]

Even Insured Consumers Get Hit With Unexpectedly Large Medical Bills

(By Julie Appleby)

After Pam Durocher was diagnosed with breast cancer, she
searched her insurer's website for a participating surgeon to
do the reconstructive surgery.
Having done her homework, she was stunned to get a $10,000
bill from the surgeon.
``I panicked when I got that bill,'' said the 60-year-old
retired civil servant who lives near Roseville, Calif.
Like Durocher, many consumers who take pains to research
which doctors and hospitals participate in their plans can
still end up with huge bills.
Sometimes, that's because they got incorrect or incomplete
information from their insurer or health-care provider.
Sometimes, it's because a physician has multiple offices, and
not all are in network, as in Durocher's case. Sometimes,
it's because a participating hospital relies on out-of-
network doctors, including emergency room physicians,
anesthesiologists and radiologists.
Consumer advocates say the sheer scope of such problems
undermine promises made by proponents of the Affordable Care
Act that the law would protect against medical bankruptcy.
``It's not fair and probably not legal that consumers be
left holding the bag when an out-of-network doctor treats
them,'' said Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and
Lee University. Jost said it's a different matter if a
consumer knowingly chooses an out-of-network doctor.
Durocher learned only after getting her surgeon's bill that
just one of his two offices participated in her plan and she
had chosen the wrong one. She said the doctor's staff later
insisted that they had raised the issue during her initial
consultation, but she doesn't recall that, possibly because
she was distracted by her cancer diagnosis.
Adding insult to injury, insurers are not required to count
out-of-network charges toward the federal health law's annual
limit on how much of their medical costs patients can be
asked to pay out of their own pockets.
Efforts by doctors, hospitals and other health providers to
charge patients for bills not covered by their insurers are
called ``balance billing.'' The problem pre-dates the federal
health law and has long been among the top complaints filed
with state insurance regulators.
Because the issue is complex and pits powerful rivals
against one another--among them, hospitals, doctors and
insurers--relatively few states have addressed it. What laws
do exist are generally limited to specific situations, such
as emergency room care, or certain types of insurance plans,
such as HMOs.
The federal health law largely sidesteps the issue as well.
It says insurers must include coverage for emergency care and
not charge policyholders higher copayments for ER services at
non-network hospitals, because patients can't always choose
where they go. While the insurer will pay a portion of the
bill, in such cases, doctors or hospitals may still bill
patients for the difference between that payment and their
own charges.
That means that in spite of having insurance, a consumer
involved in a car wreck and taken to a non-network hospital
might receive additional bills, not just from the hospital,
but from the radiologist who read his X-rays, the surgeon who
repaired his broken leg and the laboratory that processed his
blood tests.

Networks Get Narrower

Advocates believe a growing number of consumers are
vulnerable to balance billing as insurance networks grow
smaller in the bid to hold down costs.
For example, there were no in-network emergency room
physicians or anesthesiologists in some of the hospitals
participating in plans offered by three large insurers in
Texas in 2013 and 2014, according to a survey of state data
by the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a Texas advocacy
group.
Smaller networks are also becoming more common in employer-
based insurance: About 23 percent of job-based plans had so-
called ``narrow networks'' in 2012, up from 15 percent in
2007, according to a May report from the Urban Institute and
Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms.
To protect consumers, advocacy groups, including Consumers
Union and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network,
want regulators to strictly limit balance billing when an
insured person gets care in a medical facility that is part
of an insurer's network.
``Without protection from balance billing, the cost of out-
of-network care can be overwhelming,'' wrote Consumers Union
in a recent letter to the National Association of Insurance
Commissioners (NAIC), which is updating a model law that
states could adopt to regulate insurance networks.
NAIC'S current draft does not directly address the issue of
balance billing and consumer efforts have drawn sharp
opposition from insurers, hospitals and doctors.
Some states have taken other steps to protect consumers:
Earlier this month, California set out new rules requiring
some insurers to provide accurate lists of medical providers
in their networks.
New Jersey specifies that insurers guarantee that certain
providers be available ``within 20 miles or 30 minutes
average driving time.''
Colorado insurers must pay non-network medical providers
their full charges, not discounted network rates, for care at
in-network hospitals.
In Maryland, insurers must pay for ``covered services,''
which includes emergency care, but the state sets
standardized payment rates.
Starting in April, New Yorkers won't face extra bills for
out-of-network emergency care, when an in-network provider is
unavailable or when they aren't told ahead of time that they
may be treated by a non-participating provider. Instead, the
bills must be settled in arbitration between the providers
and the insurance companies.

Cost Trade-Offs

Insurers defend the move to smaller networks of doctors and
hospitals as a way to provide the low-cost plans that
consumers say they want. Since insurers can no longer reject
enrollees with health problems or charge them more, the plans
are using the tools left to them to reduce costs.
If regulators required them to fully cover charges by out-
of-network doctors, that could reduce ``incentives for
providers to participate in networks'' and make it harder to
have adequate networks, America's Health Insurance Plans, the
insurers' trade group, and the Blue Cross Blue Shield
Association wrote in a joint letter to the NAIC.
It would also raise premiums.
Instead, AHIP says, states could require out-of-network
doctors to accept a benchmark payment from insurers, perhaps
what Medicare pays, rather than balance billing patients.
Physicians, meanwhile, blame insurers for inadequate
networks.
``It is the limited coverage, not the physician bill, which
is the cause of the unfairness,'' the Texas Medical
Association wrote to the NAIC.
At the very least, doctors and hospitals say insurers need
to do a better job of educating policyholders that their
plans may not cover care provided by some doctors and
hospitals.
``There's no `free' anywhere,'' said Lee Spangler, vice
president of medical economics with the Texas Medical
Association. ``You either pay for the coverage through
premiums, or you pay for service when you receive it.''
Doctors choose whether to balance bill, he added--and some
don't.
But he noted that patients ``have received professional
services in the expectation that they will get alleviation of
what ailed them, and the physicians provided it in the
expectation they would be paid. There's no in between,''
Spangler said.
For patients like Durocher, who got billed even after doing
everything she was told, the only recourse is to negotiate
with the physician or hospital to ask them to lower or drop
the charges.
``Fortunately for me,'' Durocher said, ``this doctor was
very nice and wrote off almost $7,000 of the bill.''

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HATCH. Madam President, today marks the fifth anniversary of the
signing of the so-called Affordable Care Act. Of course, few people are
actually celebrating.
Five years--that is a long time, more than long enough for us to
evaluate the impact of the law to determine if it is working. On that
question, I think the answer is clear: The President's health care law
is not working--not even close.
Most Americans recognize this. They have seen how the law has failed
to deliver on the many promises that were made at the time it was
passed, and they want a change. I will have more to say on the change
in just a few minutes. For now, I would like to take some time to talk
about the lessons we have learned over the last 5 years.
If we think back to 2009 and early 2010, when ObamaCare was being
debated in Congress, we will remember a number of promises that the law
would actually reduce the cost of health care in this country. Those
were big promises. After all, costs represent the biggest barrier to
health care in the

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United States and are, by almost all accounts, the top concern for
health care consumers. We simply cannot adequately reform health care
without reducing costs, and on that count alone ObamaCare is a
miserable failure.
For example, under the law, we have seen premium hikes. Studies have
shown the health care law increased costs in the individual insurance
market by as much as 50 percent in 2014 alone. This year, we have
already seen a 4-percent increase for benchmark plans in the health
insurance exchanges. Moreover, a recent report by Avalere Health found
premiums in the most popular exchange plans increased by an average of
10 percent in 2015.
In addition to these spikes, which some might try to write off as
isolated, premiums have increased faster overall under ObamaCare.
According to a recent report by the National Bureau of Economic
Research, 2014 premiums in the nongroup health insurance market grew by
24.4 percent, on average, compared to what they would have been had the
law never been passed.
Looking to the future, costs are projected to continue going up.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, premiums will increase by
about 6 percent per year over the next 10 years. This increase can be
attributed to a number of factors, including high demand for expensive
medical care, higher provider rates as enrollment increases,
uncertainty created by haphazard regulatory changes under ObamaCare,
and the failure of the plans to attract enough young and healthy
consumers.
Of course, none of these increased costs are surprising. Despite the
promises made by the President and his allies in Congress that
ObamaCare would actually reduce costs, numerous studies and projections
indicated that costs would be on the rise after the law was
implemented. Indeed, those of us who opposed the law have been noting
this almost nonstop for the last 5 years.
As we can see, the President's health care law is a failure on its
own terms. The law is named the ``Affordable Care Act.'' The promise to
reduce the cost of health care is right there in the name, and, by any
measure, the law has failed to live up to this promise.
Of course, the failure to bring down costs isn't the only problem we
have seen with regard to ObamaCare. Another major problem is the lack
of security and failed oversight of the online marketplace, which has
put consumers' personal information at risk of fraud or theft.
It started with a lack of preparation. Two government watchdogs--the
GAO and HHS Office of Inspector General--found that healthcare.gov was
given a green light to launch, even though it was not adequately
secure. It continued with weak security.
Shortly after the launch of the exchanges, GAO found security
problems in State computer systems that link to the Federal network and
warned ``increased and unnecessary risks remain of unauthorized access,
disclosure, or modification of information collected and maintained by
HealthCare.gov.''
CMS did take action to lower those risks, but even with those changes
in place, the HHS OIG--Office of Inspector General--remained concerned
about security issues, including the use of encryption technology that
did not meet government standards.
I was one of the first Members of Congress to note these security
problems, and I introduced legislation to address some of them. Sadly,
with the Democrats in charge of the Senate, the legislation did not go
anywhere, and the results were predictable.
In late 2013 and early 2014, cyber security experts warned the
healthcare.gov Web site was vulnerable to hacking, and, sure enough, in
July of last year, the site was hacked, resulting in the upload of
malicious code.
These security problems are a prime example of how careless and
haphazard the Obama administration has been as it has tried to
implement the Affordable Care Act. Sadly, there are even more examples,
many of which directly impact the lives and livelihoods of the American
people.
As this tax session has commenced, we have seen how the health care
law--and the administration's poor management of it--has resulted in
frustration and delay for hard-working taxpayers. Let's talk about that
frustration.
According to H&R Block, in the first 6 weeks of this tax-filing
season, 52 percent of customers who enrolled in insurance through the
State or Federal exchanges had to repay a portion of the advanced
premium tax credit they received under ObamaCare. That same report
found that individuals, on average, are having to repay about $530,
which is decreasing their tax refunds by an average of roughly 17
percent.
Now let's talk about delay.
On February 20, 2015, the Obama administration announced that due to
an error in the health care law, they sent out about 800,000 incorrect
tax statements relating to form 1095-A, meaning that hundreds of
thousands of Americans may be seeing delays in their tax refunds this
year.
These are just some of the problems hard-working taxpayers are facing
as they try to deal with ObamaCare during this tax season.
While the ramifications to taxpayers are significant, the overall
impact on America's budget is even greater. The total overall cost of
ObamaCare so far has numbered in the tens of billions of dollars, and
we are barely through the first phases of implementation.
In numerous areas, taxpayers have been left on the hook for funds
that were doled out for ObamaCare to States, corporations, and
contractors with little or no accountability. Unfortunately, a
significant portion of that money resulted in no benefit whatsoever to
the taxpayers.
Last week, the Finance Committee held a hearing on the anniversary of
ObamaCare, where I noted five specific misuses of taxpayer funds that
have resulted from ObamaCare. In just these five areas, roughly $5.7
billion went to projects that added absolutely no value. Those examples
of wasteful spending bear repeating.
No. 1, failed State exchanges. According to CRS--the bipartisan
Congressional Research Service--$1.3 billion in taxpayer funds have
been spent on State exchanges that failed and were never operational.
No. 2, consumer-oriented and operated plans or co-ops. CMS has loaned
$2.4 billion to 24 co-ops, one of which failed before it enrolled
anyone. When all is said and done, nearly half of this money will be
lost due to defaults or artificially low interest rates, and CMS has no
plans to recoup any of these funds, meaning a total cost to taxpayers
of around $1 billion.
No. 3, healthcare.gov Web site. The failures of the Federal insurance
marketplace are well documented. Despite fixes that eventually came to
the Web site, the total cost of the failed enrollment system surpassed
$2 billion.
No. 4, Serco. This contractor was awarded $1.2 billion to manage
paper applications during the first enrollment period of the health
care law. Of course, very few of the applications received were on
paper, and Serco employees had little to do. One former employee felt
ashamed after leaving the company and reached out to the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, saying:

I feel guilty for working there as long as I did. It was
like I was stealing money from people.

No. 5, marketplace navigators. The administration has spent over $120
million on the Navigator Program for the 2014 and 2015 open enrollment
periods. With enrollment in the exchanges surpassing 11 million
individuals, the efficacy of the Navigator Program has yet to be
determined. The overall value of the Navigator Program is, at best,
inconclusive, and, at worst, it represents more wasted taxpayer
dollars.
These are just five examples of the misguided, poorly defined, and
improperly managed aspects of the health care law. There are, of
course, many others.
Finally, there are the unilateral changes the administration has made
to delay, extend or modify elements of the Affordable Care Act without
action or even input from Congress. I have been on the floor a number
of times to talk about the overreach on the part of the administration
when it comes to implementing ObamaCare, so I will not go into
excruciating detail today.
We all know those abuses have taken place. It is no secret. Without
statutory authority, the administration twice delayed the employer
mandate. They created a transition period out of thin air so the
President could pretend that his promise that ``if you like your health
care plan, you can keep it'' was not a lie. There have been numerous

[[Page S1685]]

other exemptions and special enrollment periods created to help the
administration avoid negative fallout from patients and the business
community--and it wasn't true that ``if you like your health care plan,
you can keep it.''
All told, the Obama administration has made literally dozens of
unilateral changes to the health care law, apparently recognizing that,
as drafted, the law is as problematic as its critics have said.
I could go on, but I think I have sufficiently made some of the
points that need to be made. The so-called Affordable Care Act is, by
any objective measure, a dismal failure. While its proponents continue
to cherry-pick favorable data points in order to fool the American
people into thinking the law works, the majority of us know the truth:
It is time for a change.
It is no secret that I support a complete repeal of the President's
health care law, but a simple repeal isn't good enough. We need to
replace ObamaCare with health care reforms that will actually work.
That is why I have joined my colleagues Senator Burr and Chairman
Upton of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in unveiling the
Patient CARE Act, a legislative proposal that will actually reduce the
costs of health care in this country, while giving people more rights
to choose what kind of health care for which they want to pay money.
Our proposal is a serious, workable solution to the problems caused
by the Affordable Care Act. It is out there for everyone to see. I,
once again, encourage all of my colleagues to look it over and provide
us with your thoughts and input on our ideas. We would be interested in
hearing from you. If those ideas can be improved, we are certainly
interested in improving them.
Once again, the 5-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act is
hardly cause for celebration, but it should be a time for all of us--
particularly those who supported the law at the outset--to reflect on
the last 5 years and decide how we want to move forward when it comes
to the Nation's health care system. I hope our colleagues will think
about that. This bill was passed through both bodies on a totally
partisan vote, with 100 percent of the Democrats voting in each body.
I think I have made a pretty compelling case for why the current law
isn't working and why we need to go in a different direction. I hope
eventually my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will reach this
same conclusion so we can work together to come up with a health care
system and health care set of laws that will work, do good for the
American people, and give us some element of respectability in the
Congress that I think the Congress needs at this particular time.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. COTTON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator is recognized.

Negotiations With Iran

Mr. COTTON. Madam President, this week we will debate the budget. The
key part is the military budget, one part of our government where the
strategy and threats must drive the budget, not vice versa. The
greatest threat to our national security is a nuclear-armed Iran, and
this man, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran.
Last week marked Nowruz, the beginning of the Persian New Year. On
the occasion we were treated to speeches by President Obama and Iran's
Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. I have to say, President Obama's
speech was ill-advised. He spoke to the Iranian people directly, asking
them to press their leaders and speak up in support of a nuclear
agreement.
Let's be clear about one thing: Iranians who speak up tend to
disappear into secret prisons or wind up hanging from cranes by the
neck. Worse, by acting as if public opinion matters to the Ayatollahs,
President Obama is treating Iran as if it were a legitimate democracy,
not a brutal theocratic dictatorship. No President should legitimize
such a regime, which emboldens the dictator and undermines the Iranian
people struggling under his yoke.
But today I want to focus on the speech of this man, Ayatollah
Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran. The Ayatollah gave his speech on
Saturday, just 2 days ago. It may have escaped your attention, but it
was not exactly a New Year's message filled with blessings of hope and
peace.
Ayatollah Khomeini has never been a great admirer of America, of
course. He sometimes likes to refer to us as the ``Great Satan.''
During his Nowruz speech, he whipped the crowd into frenzied chants of
``death to America.'' What was his response to that chant? He said,
``Yes, certainly, death to America.'' Death to America. That was just 2
days ago.
Remember, this is the leader with whom the United States is
negotiating today, a theocratic tyrant who, in the middle of nuclear
negotiations, chants ``death to America.'' I suggest that we rethink
the wisdom of granting nuclear concessions to such a man.
Unfortunately, Ayatollah Khomeini may know his negotiating partners
somewhat better than they know themselves, for the Ayatollah also
observed, ``Iran's enemies, particularly America, are moving forward
with prudence and diplomacy. I understand them. They know what they are
doing. They need these negotiations. America needs the nuclear
negotiations.''
Regrettably, he is right when he says he understands his enemies,
since the West, especially the President, acts as if we need these
negotiations more than Iran does. After all, we had Iran on its knees
in 2013 when President Obama gave Iran billions of dollars in sanctions
relief for merely starting negotiations. The West has extended
negotiations twice in exchange for nothing. The President has also made
a series of one-sided concessions from Iran's uranium enrichment
capabilities to the length of a nuclear agreement. So, yes,
unfortunately, Ayatollah Khomeini is correct when he says he
understands his enemies.
Let's consider what he said about the negotiations in this light.
This past weekend, the Ayatollah emphasized, ``We are absolutely not
negotiating or holding discussions with the Americans over regional or
domestic issues and neither over weapons capabilities.'' Again, he is
absolutely right. Iran has a ballistic missile program, which it only
needs if it wants to strike the United States or our European allies,
because it already has missiles capable of striking Israel or anywhere
else in the Middle East. Yet we have removed its missile program from
the negotiating table, just as we have removed the possible military
dimensions of its nuclear program from the table, even though that is
critical to understanding how far they have progressed toward a bomb.
It is not just their weapons capabilities. Note that the Ayatollah
also said Iran is not negotiating over regional issues. He made this
point repeatedly, saying also, ``We are not negotiating with the
Americans over regional issues. U.S. goals in the region are in
complete contrast with our goals,'' and, ``Negotiations with the U.S.
are only over the nuclear issue, and nothing else. Everyone should be
aware of this.''
By ``regional issues'' and ``our goals,'' to be clear, Ayatollah
Khomeini means Iran's drive for regional hegemony. The outlaw Assad
regime in Syria is more beholden to Iran than ever. Iranian-aligned
militants have seized the capital of Yemen, causing the American
Embassy to close and our troops to evacuate. Iranian-backed and
Iranian-led Shiite militias are slowly taking over Iraq, and Lebanon
remains subject to Hezbollah, Iran's terrorist proxy.
Despite this multifront aggression, President Obama is
compartmentalizing the nuclear negotiations as if Iran's drive for
hegemony and its pursuit of nuclear weapons are distinguishable and
unrelated rather than springing from the regime's revolutionary nature.
In fact, President Obama reportedly wrote a private letter to Ayatollah
Khomeini--his fourth private letter to the Ayatollah--in part
reassuring him that the United States would not undermine Assad's
regime in Syria. Is it any wonder then that the Ayatollah boasts the
negotiations are so limited? Is it any wonder what Ayatollah Khomeini
said this weekend

[[Page S1686]]

about sanctions relief? President Obama and Secretary Kerry keep
insisting that sanctions can only be lifted gradually as Iran
demonstrates compliance with any deal. The Ayatollah is having none of
that. He said this past weekend: ``The lifting of the sanctions is part
of the issues being negotiated and not the outcome of the
negotiations.'' In other words, in exchange for the Ayatollah's
ephemeral and easily reversed promises, ``sanctions must be lifted
immediately following an agreement.'' That is not a splittable
difference. And let's just say our side's history of one-sided
concessions in these negotiations does not inspire confidence that we
will preserve a sanctions regime that we took decades to assemble
fully.
Finally, Ayatollah Khomeini wants the world to know that Iran will
not be bound in perpetuity by any deal, no matter its terms. He said:
``The Americans keep saying that there should be irreversibility in the
terms Iran accepts and the decisions it makes. We do not accept that.''
The Ayatollah is happy to pocket concessions now for billions of
dollars in sanctions relief and international legitimacy while
preserving the option of going nuclear in the future, much as North
Korea did after the 1994 Agreed Framework. I understand why Ayatollah
Khomeini would want that deal, but why would we?
This is the man with whom we are negotiating. Evil men rarely cloak
their wicked intent, and I urge my fellow Senators and all Americans to
pay careful attention to Ayatollah Khomeini's words both this past
weekend and more generally. When someone chants, ``Yes, certainly,
death to America,'' we should take him at his word and we should not
put him on a path to a nuclear bomb. Those words are appalling enough.
Let's not give him the ability to act on them.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). Without objection, it is so
ordered.

Affordable Care Act

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I was in the House of Representatives for
16 years, and I have been in the Senate now for 8 years. During all of
that time, this country faced and still faces a major health care
crisis.
As the Presiding Officer knows, the United States is the only major
country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all of our
people. Today, despite the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act,
which I will discuss in a moment, we still have about 40 million
Americans without any health insurance. By the way, despite so many
uninsured and so many underinsured, we end up paying, by far, per
capita the highest costs of any country.
How does it happen? Millions of people are uninsured, millions more
are underinsured, and we end up paying per capita almost double what
any other Nation faces.
Now, I was in the Congress during the years of the Bush
administration, and I waited eagerly to hear what my Republican
colleagues had to say about tens of millions of people without any
health insurance and about the cost of health care being so expensive.
I waited and I waited, and my Republican colleagues had nothing to say.
Apparently, the private insurance companies were doing just great under
that system. Drug companies were charging our people the highest prices
in the world under that system. What is there to complain about? What
is there to worry about? So 40 million, 50 million people have no
health insurance and people can't afford health care, but it is no
problem for my Republican colleagues.
Five years ago, the Congress, with no Republican support, passed the
Affordable Care Act. Let me be very clear. I voted for the Affordable
Care Act. I will be the first to say that the Affordable Care Act has
many problems and, in fact, in many ways, it did not go anywhere near
as far as it should have gone. By far, it is not a perfect piece of
legislation. Yet I still wait to hear what my Republican colleagues
have to say about how we address the health care crisis, other than
doing what they are doing in this budget, which is to repeal the
Affordable Care Act completely.
Let's take a look at what the Affordable Care Act--ObamaCare--has
accomplished, which they want to end completely. After 5 years of the
Affordable Care Act, more than 16 million Americans have gained health
coverage. Many of those people never had health insurance in their
entire lives. Many of those people were getting their health care
through the emergency room at outrageously high costs. Since 2013, we
have seen the largest decline in the uninsured rate in decades, and the
Nation's uninsured rate is now at the lowest level ever recorded.
Just since October 2013, the uninsured rate for nonelderly adults has
fallen by 35 percent, and 16 million more Americans have health
insurance.
Republican response: Get rid of the ACA; throw 16 million Americans
off of health insurance.
Since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, health care prices have
risen at the slowest rate in nearly 50 years. All of us can remember 7,
8, 10 years ago health care insurance rates with increases of 20, 30
percent. Since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, health prices have
risen at the slowest rate in nearly 50 years. Are they going up? Yes,
they are, but at the slowest rate in nearly 50 years.
Thanks to exceptionally slow growth in per-person costs throughout
our health care system, national health care expenditures grew at the
slowest rate on record--on record--from 2010 through 2013. Are we
making progress in controlling the growth in health care costs? Yes, we
are.
Republican response: Throw it out.
Ten million low-income Americans are now able to get health insurance
through Medicaid. And if one is a low-income American struggling to
make ends meet and not able to afford health care, in many instances,
this is health insurance that saves one's life. It saves one's life
because they now have the opportunity--maybe for the first time in
years--to be able to go into a doctor's office because they have
Medicaid.
Republican response: Throw it out; 10 million low-income Americans no
longer have health insurance.
All of us remember not so many years ago, before the ACA. You have
health insurance for your family, and when your child reaches the age
of 21, that child is now off of your health insurance plan. So we have
huge uninsured numbers for young people in this country who are no
longer able to be on their parents' health insurance plan.
Under the Affordable Care Act, some 5.7 million young adults have
been able to stay on their parents' policies. The uninsured rate for
young adults has dropped by 40 percent. I would like to see it drop
even more than that, but 40 percent is nothing to sneeze at.
The Republican response: Let's make sure all of these young people
from 21 to 26 rejoin the ranks of the uninsured.
One of the great scandals that existed in this country before we had
the Affordable Care Act--when we think back on it, people find it hard
to believe--somebody was diagnosed with diabetes, with cancer, with
heart disease, with AIDS, or whatever it may be, and that person walked
into an insurance company and said: I need some insurance. They filled
out forms. The insurance company said: Oh, you had breast cancer 3
years ago; we are not going to insure you. You had diabetes; you are
not going to get insurance. So the people who needed insurance the most
were the people least likely to be able to get insurance. Can we
imagine that--for people who had a history of heart disease, a history
of cancer, scared to death it may reoccur, in absolute need of
insurance, insurance companies said: No. We can discriminate against
you. You are sick, you may get sick again, and we will have to pay out
money. We don't want your business. Well, the ACA did something about
that. It should have never been allowed to happen in the first place.
It provides protections for people with preexisting conditions.
Republicans want to end the ACA. That is in this budget. They want to
get rid of it. So for those people who have serious illnesses,
understand that if the Republicans succeed, people may not be able to
get health insurance, because we will go back to a time when

[[Page S1687]]

companies could discriminate against people with serious illnesses.
Before the ACA, many individuals couldn't gain access to health
insurance for a variety of ``illnesses,'' including pregnancy. I guess
pregnancy is an illness for which a person doesn't deserve insurance.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to most Americans, but that is what will
reoccur if the Republicans are successful.
Millions of seniors in this country are struggling in terms of how to
pay for their medicines. The cost of medicine in America is very high--
the highest of any country on Earth. The Affordable Care Act moves to
close the doughnut hole, which means money that has to come out of
seniors' own pockets. If the Republican budget gets passed and if that
gets implemented into law, seniors will now be paying significantly
more for their prescription drugs. The Affordable Care Act includes
important health care for seniors in the doughnut hole, including 45-
percent discounts on the cost of their drugs, but allowing the full
price of the drug to be counted toward the amount they need to spend to
get out of the hole.
The Affordable Care Act gives people access to free preventive care
that keeps them healthy and out of the hospital.
The Affordable Care Act ends discrimination against women by health
insurance companies so that they don't have to pay more for health
insurance simply because they are a woman. Are we going to go back to
the days when because a patient was a woman, she had to pay more for
health insurance than a man? I certainly hope not. But that is what
happens if we end the Affordable Care Act.
The Affordable Care Act protects against a practice by insurance
companies of including lifetime limits in their policies. Prior to the
ACA, many insurance plans included lifetime limits--a limit on the
amount of coverage that plan would provide an individual or a family in
their lifetime. So, in other words, if somebody was racking up large
claims because they were seriously ill, the insurance company said:
Sorry, that is it. We are not going to pay any more. Are those the days
we want to go back to?
I think we can all agree the Affordable Care Act is far from perfect.
In my own view, we should provide health care to every person in this
country as a right, and I would do it through a Medicare-for-all
program. Other people have different ideas. But it is hard for me to
imagine anyone thinking that the solution to America's health care
problems today is simply to eliminate the Affordable Care Act.
Let me change topics and take a broader look at the Republican budget
going beyond the Affordable Care Act, which they want to abolish.
The question we have to ask ourselves is whether we are such a poor
country that we should move toward a Republican budget which forces
more and more people to have no health insurance; which makes it harder
for working families to send their kids to college; which makes it
harder for low-income families to send their kids to Head Start; which
cuts back on nutrition programs, whether it is the Food Stamp Program,
the Meals on Wheels program, the WIC Program; which helps people who
are struggling, literally, to try to come up with the income to
adequately feed themselves. We have many people in this country who are
actually hungry, and the Republican budget cuts those programs. Are we
such a poor country that those are the choices that stand before us? I
think not. I think the facts are quite the opposite. I think the facts
tell us that the United States of America is, in fact, the wealthiest
country on this planet. In fact, we have never been a more wealthy
country. We are not a poor country. We are an extremely wealthy
country.
The problem we face is that we have a grotesque level of income and
wealth inequality such that tens of millions of families are struggling
economically and many are hungry, while at the other side, people on
top are doing phenomenally well. But when you add it all together, it
turns out that we are a very wealthy country. And the idea that people
would come forward and say: We are going to make it harder for low-
income families to feed their kids, we are going to make it harder for
working-class families to send their kids to college, and we are going
to make it harder for working families to get their kids into childcare
is a totally absurd argument. We are not a poor country.
Let me demonstrate how we are not a poor country. When some of us
talk about the rich getting richer, that is a general statement. Let me
be more specific. From the year 2013 to the year 2015, the wealthiest
14 Americans--14 people--increased their net wealth by more than $157
billion over the last 2 years. The wealthiest 14 billionaires in
America saw their net wealth increase by more than $157 billion from
2013 to 2015.
Let me be even more specific, and tell me whether this is a poor
nation that cuts kids off of health insurance, a poor nation that
denies nutrition to families who need it, a poor nation that cuts back
on Meals on Wheels for elderly, low-income seniors. Here is what is
going on in this ``poor nation.'' From March of 2013 to March of 2015,
Bill Gates, the wealthiest person in America, saw his wealth increase
by $12.2 billion, going from $67 billion to $79 billion in 2015. During
that period, Warren Buffett saw his wealth increase by $19 billion--one
guy in 2 years. Larry Ellison saw his wealth increase by $11 billion.
The Koch brothers saw their wealth increase by almost $18 billion in a
2-year period. The Waltons saw huge increases in their wealth--they are
the wealthiest family in America--Christy Walton by $13.5 billion, Jim
Walton by $13.9 billion, and S. Robson Walton by $13 billion. Michael
Bloomberg saw his wealth increase by $8.5 billion. Jeff Bezos's wealth
went up by $9.6 billion. Mark Zuckerberg's wealth went up by $20
billion, Sheldon Adelson's by $9.5 billion, Larry Page's by $7.6
billion, and Sergey Brin's by $6.4 billion. These are just the top 14.
Added together, their wealth increased by $157 billion.
This is a reality my Republican friends don't want to deal with. They
do not want to ask the wealthiest people in this country--many of whom
are paying an effective tax rate lower than that paid by truckdrivers
and nurses--to start paying their fair share of taxes. Their solution
to the deficit problem is to cut programs for working families, the
elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor.
Despite the fact that the billionaires of this country are doing
phenomenally well, their view is, oh no, we can't go to those guys.
They may be potential campaign contributors. We are going to go after
the elderly--they don't contribute a whole lot. Elderly people on the
Meals on Wheels program, elderly people making $14,000 a year--they
have no political power here in Washington. They have no lobbyists out
there. We will just go after the working families, the poor, the
elderly, the children, the sick. They are easy. They are not actively
involved. Many of them don't even vote. We can go after them, but we
have to protect the interests of the wealthy and the powerful.
At a time when the richest 400 Americans paid a tax rate of just 16.7
percent in 2012--the second lowest on record--the Republican budget
does nothing to ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share of
taxes to create jobs or reduce the deficit. They are immune. The rich
get richer, but leave them alone. No problem. Working families pay a
higher effective tax rate than billionaires--not a problem because we
are going to cut the deficit by going after the most vulnerable people
in this country, the people who don't have a lot of political power.
While the effective tax rate of large, profitable corporations was
just 12.6 percent in 2010 and corporate profits are at an alltime high,
the Republican budget does nothing to end the outrageous loopholes that
allow major corporations to avoid $100 billion a year in taxes by
shifting their profits to the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax
havens.
Now, why would you ask large, profitable corporations that in some
cases pay zero in Federal income taxes to start paying their fair share
of taxes? These are powerful people. These are people who have
lobbyists all over Capitol Hill. These are people who make campaign
contributions. Why would we ask them to start paying their fair share
of taxes?
At a time when billionaire hedge fund managers on Wall Street pay a

[[Page S1688]]

lower effective tax rate than a truckdriver or a nurse, the Republican
budget does not eliminate the carried interest loophole that will cost
the Federal Government $16 billion in lost revenue over the next 10
years. The Republican budget protects over $40 billion in unnecessary
and expensive tax breaks and subsidies for oil and gas companies even
as the five largest oil companies alone made more than $1 trillion in
profits over the last decade. Ask large, profitable oil companies to
pay more in taxes? Don't be ridiculous--not when you can cut programs
for hungry kids or cut Head Start or cut Pell grants for working-class
young people.
Let me tell you what this budget does do. At a time when millions of
Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, the Republican
budget paves the way for a tax hike averaging over $900 per person for
13 million families--$900 apiece for more than 13 million families with
25 million children--by allowing the expansions of the earned-income
tax credit and the child tax credit to expire.
So we can't ask billionaires who are doing phenomenally well to pay
more in taxes. That we don't do. We can't ask corporations that stash
their money in tax havens in the Cayman Islands to start paying their
fair share of taxes. We can't do that. But what we can do is impact the
lives of millions of working families by allowing the earned-income tax
credit and the child tax credit to expire. In other words, we raise
taxes for low-income Americans and working-class Americans and the
middle class, but we do not ask the wealthy and large corporations to
pay a nickel more in taxes.
Further, the Republican budget paves the way for a tax hike of about
$1,100 for 12 million families and students paying for college by
allowing the American opportunity tax credit to expire. So if you are a
family trying to send your kid to college, you are going to have to pay
more because our Republican colleagues are allowing the American
opportunity tax credit to expire.
The Republican Senate budget would balance the budget on the backs of
the elderly, the children, the sick, and the most vulnerable people in
our society. It would slash investments in education, health care,
nutrition, and affordable housing, while paving the way for another
unpaid war by significantly increasing defense spending. It also would
not ask millionaires, billionaires, and profitable corporations to
contribute one penny for deficit reduction. No, it is only working
families, the middle class, and low-income people who have to help us
with deficit reduction, not billionaires or large corporations.
As we all know, the budget we are debating today is not an
appropriations bill; it is a budget bill, which, by the way, is filled
with magic asterisks--those little asterisks which tell us nothing
about how Republicans are going to be moving toward a balanced budget.
But by making over $5 trillion in budget cuts over the next decade--$5
trillion--reasonable estimates have been made about the harm those cuts
would do to the American people.
At a time when the cost of college education is becoming out of reach
for millions of Americans, the Republican budget would eliminate
mandatory Pell grants, cutting this program by nearly $90 billion over
10 years, which would increase the cost of a college education to more
than 8 million Americans.
Take a deep breath and think about this. Young people all over this
country--and I know this because at a lot of Vermont high schools, when
you talk to kids, they are wondering how they are going to be able to
afford to go to college. They are worried about the high cost of
college. The Republican solution is to cut--eliminate mandatory Pell
grants, cutting this program by over $90 billion during a 10-year
period. So what they are doing is making a very difficult situation
even more difficult in terms of enabling the middle-class and working
families in this country to be able to send their kids to college.
I think everybody who has children or grandchildren understands that
we have a major preschool and childcare crisis in this country, and in
Vermont and all over this Nation, it is very difficult for middle-
income Americans to find decent, quality, affordable childcare or
preschool education for their kids. Within that context of a crisis in
childcare, the Republican solution is to give us a budget that would
mean that 110,000 fewer young people, young children, would be able to
enroll in Head Start over the next 10 years.
So we have a crisis in terms of higher education, and what they do is
cut back on Pell grants, making it harder for families to send their
kids to college. We have a crisis in childcare, and what the
Republicans do is cut back on Head Start, meaning that 110,000 fewer
young children would be able to get into the Head Start Program. Under
the Republican budget, 1.9 million fewer students would receive the
academic help they need to succeed in school because of some $12
billion in cuts to the title I education program. The Individuals With
Disabilities Education Act would be cut by $10 billion over the next
decade, which would shift the cost to States and local school districts
and could lead to increased property taxes for millions of Americans.
At a time when there are more than 20 million hungry Americans,
people who in the course of the week are not quite sure how they are
going to get the food they need to survive, when many working families
are running to emergency food shelters in order to get the help they
need to feed their families, the Republican budget would take some 1.2
million women, infants, and young people from the WIC Program, or the
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and
Children, which goes to pregnant women and new mothers. They would cut
that by $10 billion over a 10-year period, impacting some 1.2 million
women, infants, and young children.
Once again, we do not ask billionaires to start paying their fair
share of taxes, but we tell the pregnant mother or the mother of a
young child that the nutrition programs she has been receiving to make
sure her kids are eating well are going to be cut by $10 billion over a
10-year period.
I come from a cold-weather State, and we have had a very rough
February. Only yesterday, the weather in my hometown was about 10
degrees.
Under the Republican budget, up to 900,000 families would be denied
the help they need to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer by
cuts to the LIHEAP program, or the Low Income Home Energy Assistance
Program--a $5 billion cut over the next decade impacting some 900,000
families. Many of the people on LIHEAP are seniors--a good percentage
of them. These are elderly people without a lot of money in cold-
weather States trying to keep warm in the wintertime. We are going to
see a $5 billion cut in that program over the next decade.
In Vermont, and I think in many parts of this country, we have a real
housing problem for low-income people. The cost of rent in many cases
is much more than people can afford. People are spending 40, 50 percent
of their limited incomes on rent.
To address that problem, the Republican budget would kick nearly half
a million families off the section 8 affordable housing program and out
of their homes by cutting section 8 by $46 billion over a 10-year
period.
So you have low-income people all over this country--and I see it
every day in Vermont--paying 40, 50, 60 percent of their income for
rents, and what the Republican budget does is it cuts $46 billion over
10 years from section 8 housing, again, making a bad situation worse.
At a time when real unemployment is 11 percent, the Republican budget
cuts job training and employment services for more than 2 million
Americans.
So what we have is a budget which in many ways is a Robin Hood budget
in reverse. At a time when the rich are getting richer and the middle
class is getting poorer, the Republicans take from the middle class and
working families to give more to the rich and large corporations.
The Republican budget has a set of priorities that are way, way, way
out of touch with where the American people are.
During the next week, there are going to be a number of amendments
being offered by Members on our side which will create jobs for the
unemployed, raise wages for low-income workers, address the overtime
crisis facing millions of Americans who are not getting time and a half
when they

[[Page S1689]]

should, provide pay equity for women workers, address this issue of tax
breaks for the rich and large corporations, which are unconscionable
and unsustainable. That is what we will be doing. I look forward to
that debate and those amendments.
I note that Senator Markey is on the floor and has asked for 10
minutes.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I wish to follow on the comments that were
being articulated by the Senator from Vermont. He has done an excellent
job laying out these issues for the American people to deliberate upon
this week as we debate the budget of the United States of America.
Right now, millions of Americans are gripped by March Madness and the
Final Four showdown, but for our Nation's seniors and the middle class,
the real March madness is happening in Congress with the proposed
Republican budget.
Our country isn't like the big dance. Our country was not built on a
zero-sum game, where one side wins and the other side loses. But that
is exactly what this Republican budget does. It picks winners, and it
picks losers.
Let's take a look at the GOP's budget brackets. The Republican final
four features their perennial favorites. In the first game, they have
seniors versus special interests.
Well, in this Republican budget, it removes 11 million families from
Medicaid, including 400,000 seniors in my State of Massachusetts alone.
It turns Medicare into a voucher program. It forces millions of
seniors, including 80,000 in Massachusetts who receive Medicare, to pay
$1,000 more for their prescription drugs next year. It does all of this
while preserving tax breaks for special interests, such as the
deductions for corporate jets and for shipping jobs overseas.
The budget preserves billions for atomic bombs of the past--supported
by the defense industry--which is why I introduced legislation today to
cut $100 billion over 10 years from our bloated nuclear weapons
program.
So there are no surprises yet in the GOP budget bracket. Special
interests advance and seniors lose. That is the first match. Seniors
lose. It is not unexpected.
In the next game, it is a battle of generations. It is the old guard
of Wall Street against the new blood of our Nation, our students. So
what does the GOP budget do?
Well, it cuts 8 million Pell grants for college students by almost
one-third, making college less affordable for millions of young people
and their families. It yanks 100,000 children from the Head Start
Program over the next 10 years. It does all that while not meeting the
needs of the Wall Street cops on the beat at the Commodity Futures
Trading Commission, and it puts Americans at risk from predatory
lenders and credit card scams by continuing the GOP effort to kill the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So in the battle between the Wall
Street boardrooms and America's classrooms, it is the big money over
the little guy yet again.
In the next David versus Goliath matchup, it is America's working
families against billionaires. Surely the spirit and character of
America's working families is deserving of a win. But there is no
Cinderella story with the Republican budget. That is because it kicks
nearly 900,000 families off of low-income energy assistance. So
families will need to decide between heating and eating.
This budget includes $660 billion in cuts over the next decade to
Federal programs that lift up our most vulnerable, such as food stamps,
school lunches, school nutrition programs--slashed, slashed, slashed.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 69 percent of
nondefense cuts included in the House and Senate budget resolutions
come from these programs that serve the poor, the sick, and the needy
in our society.
This budget sticks to the Republican policy of not increasing the
minimum wage, keeping millions of Americans who want to get into the
middle class out of the game. Are the billionaires asked to do more
with less? Do they have any tax breaks taken away? Do they pay a little
more to make sure the less fortunate are better off?
No, the Republican refs make sure that the Republican playing field
remains tilted in their favor. It is another win for the rich.
Now, the matchup we have all been waiting for is the Big Oil
juggernaut against clean energy and climate change. In a Republican
Senate, Big Oil is undefeated, but can upstart American clean energy
companies pull out a win? Well, the Republican budget protects billions
of dollars in subsidies to the oil companies while killing the wind
energy tax credit. The Republican unwillingness to extend the tax
credit has already cost us 30,000 American jobs in the last few years.
Republicans continue to deny the existence of climate change by
stopping funding to protect communities against sea level rise and
stronger storms, even though 2014 was the warmest year on record and
extreme weather impacted every part of the country. It does all of this
while handing over more of our public land to Big Oil and to coal
companies instead of preserving it for all Americans.
So, who is the winner? No surprise, Big Oil. They keep all of their
tax breaks, even as we are taking money away from seniors, from
students, from working families, and from a clean energy future in our
country. It is no surprise, because when you have the Republican budget
final four--special interests, Wall Street, billionaires, and Big Oil--
the fix was in from the start.
Unlike the March Madness games we love to watch each year, there are
never any upsets in the Republicans' bracket. There are no budget
buzzer beaters. In fact, the only ones upset here are grandma, grandpa,
students, clean energy workers, and hardworking Americans.
Senate Republicans, once again, are trotting out their well-worn
playbook to pick the winners and losers in our society and in our
economy, because in this budget, there are clear winners and there are
clear losers. Special interests score huge on big tax breaks. Wall
Street gets to block legislation. Billionaires take a bigger share of
the winnings, and Big Oil remains undefeated.
Meanwhile, American families and industries lose. Seniors pay more
for health care. Working families pay more for energy. Students pay
more for college. Clean energy companies cut more workers, stopping
this incredible clean energy revolution in our country.
This is the real March madness, the Republican budget that makes
winners out of Big Oil and billionaires, while the clock runs out on
seniors and hardworking Americans, who are left to fend for themselves.
I implore my colleagues to reject this scheme and to create a plan
that does not bust the budgets of families across this Nation. I call
upon my colleagues to reject this completely and totally distorted
sense of priorities for our country.
I call for my colleagues to put together a budget for the future of
our country that invests in students, invests in clean energy, invests
in research, and invests in what the 21st century should be all about,
while we pay the proper respect to the seniors in our country.
We cannot leave behind the poor, the sick, and the elderly. We have
obligations in this country. We understand that this country has been
made the great country that it is--the greatest in the history of the
world--by remembering our obligations to all of those who built our
country--not just those in the upper 1 percentile, who have been the
primary beneficiaries, but the other 99 percent who got up every single
morning and went to work as well, the other 99 percent who built this
country and its values from the ground up. We have an obligation to
them as well. This Republican budget does not reflect that.
I urge a ``no'' vote on the Republican budget. I again thank my
colleague from the State of Vermont for being an articulate,
passionate, and moral voice that ensures that this debate is heard by
every single person in our country.
I yield back the remainder of my time.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.

[[Page S1690]]

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I just want to reiterate what I think is
the key point in this entire debate, and that point is whether we
develop a budget that works for the vast majority of our families--
working families, middle-class families who, in many instances, are
working longer hours for lower wages--whether it works for our children
at a time when we are experiencing the highest rate of childhood
poverty of any major country; whether it works for our elderly citizens
who often have to make the choice about whether to heat their homes,
buy the medicines they need or buy the food they need--and there are
millions of people in that position--or do we have a budget that works
for the top 1 percent of people who are doing phenomenally well or
maybe even the top one-tenth of 1 percent.
I want to get back to this chart, which I think is real interesting.
I want everybody to take a deep breath and think about this. At a time
when the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the
bottom 90 percent, when the people on top, the very wealthiest
Americans, are doing well almost beyond imagination, do we really want
to cut food stamps and nutrition programs for hungry kids? Do we really
want to make college education less affordable for working families? Do
we really want to ask seniors to pay more for prescription drugs--those
people trying to live on $13,000, $14,000 a year.
So here is the chart. This comes from Forbes magazine, not notably a
leftwing publication. They simply give us the facts, and here are the
facts. The top 14 wealthiest people in this country have seen their net
worth increase by $157 billion over the last 2 years--14 people.
Do my Republican colleagues go to these people and say: You know
what, you are Americans. We have a lot of problems here. Our middle
class is disappearing. We have an infrastructure which is crumbling. We
have millions of families who can't afford to send their kids to
college. You, the top one-tenth of 1 percent, are doing phenomenally
well. Is it so hard for my Republican colleagues to say to these
people: Maybe you will have to pay a little more in taxes.
Let me list them. Bill Gates, in that 2-year period from 2013 to
2015, saw his wealth increase by $12 billion; Warren Buffet, $19
billion; Larry Ellison, $11 billion; Charles Koch, almost $9 billion;
David Koch, almost $9 billion; Christy Walton, over $13 billion; Jim
Walton, almost $14 billion; S. Robson Walton, $13 billion; Michael
Bloomberg, $8.5 billion; Jeff Bezos, $9.6 billion; Mark Zuckerberg, $20
billion; Sheldon Adelson, $4.9 billion; Larry Page, $6.7 billion; and
Sergey Brin, over $6 billion.
That is just the increase in their net worth in a 2-year period. Who
can deny the very richest people in this country are doing phenomenally
well? How do you ignore that reality? How do you not say to those
people: You are going to have to help us with our infrastructure, with
education, with our deficit.
But my Republican colleagues have a different approach. Their
approach is to say to working families: Well, we are going to make it
harder for your kids to get into Head Start. We are going to make it
harder for you to get the nutrition programs you need to keep your
family from going hungry. We are going to make it harder for seniors to
get the prescription drugs they need.
So I think, with this budget, the choices are pretty clear. It is
laid right out there. Republicans want to balance the budget on the
backs of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor, and protect
all of these guys--not ask them to pay one nickel more in taxes. I
think that is wrong from a moral perspective, from an economic
perspective, and I think this is a budget that should be defeated.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. COATS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Ernst). Without objection, it is so
ordered.

State Of The Economy

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, it is my understanding that reserved time
is now available for the Joint Economic Committee, particularly in
regard to presenting the report which is part of the budgetary process,
so I will go forward with that.
It is an honor for me to serve as chairman of the Joint Economic
Committee. One of the main roles of that committee is to report to the
Senate Budget Committee and to my colleagues in the Senate on the state
of the economy, and that is why I am here today.
Just last week, Dr. Jason Furman, the chairman of the President's
Council of Economic Advisers, appeared before the Joint Economic
Committee to discuss this topic as well as to discuss the findings of
the annual Economic Report of the President. Our committee is tasked
with evaluating and responding to that President's Economic Report.
Last week our committee released our findings and recommendations, and
I am here today to present some of those findings.
We found that despite improvements in economic conditions over the
past year, our economy remains stuck in second gear. Let me discuss why
we have concluded that.
I often hear back home from Hoosiers--and I know my colleagues hear
back home from people they represent--that we need to take action to
grow the economy. I think it is safe to say that of course all of us in
the Senate think the same way. But the age-old question in economics is
this: How does a nation best create an environment for economic growth
and raise living standards for its citizens?
We are now nearly 6 years into this recovery. While there are many
encouraging signs of economic improvement, particularly in the last
several months, the recovery has been modest and there still are many
Americans in need of and still seeking meaningful job opportunities.
Since 1960, our Nation has experienced seven recessions and
recoveries. The recoveries of the past 50 years provide comparative
data to measure the progress of our current recovery. On the measures
of GDP, jobs, and income growth, our current recovery ranks either dead
last or second to last in all of those seven recoveries. Let me restate
that.
In the last 50 years we have had 7 major recessions. Following those
recessions has been an economic recovery. As things get sorted out, the
economy kicks back in. If we take all those seven and we average them
out in terms of what the results were following the recession, we get
certain numbers. What we have seen now in this last recession is
performance far under the average--in fact, dead last--of those seven.
I will give a couple of metrics here.
Annual gross domestic product--the total of everything produced--has
a value and grew 4 percent in the average post-1960 recovery, while
this recovery has averaged just 2.3 percent of gross domestic product
growth. So we are growing about half of the average of the previous
recessions.
Personal income rose an average of 15.3 percent in the past
recoveries. During this recovery, personal income has reached only 7.1
percent growth--less than half of what the average is for the previous
seven recoveries.
At the same time, median household income has collapsed by $2,100 in
real terms per family during this current recovery.
And while the pace of job creation has picked up recently, there are
still 5.5 million fewer private sector jobs in this recovery than the
average of past recoveries.
In addition, the labor force participation rate--the percentage of
working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for a job--has
fallen to 35-year lows. What this means is reduction in the
unemployment rate over the past year is at least partially the result
of many Americans giving up on looking for work. This, contrary to what
our President said in his State of the Union Address, is not something
to be proud of.

So we must ask ourselves: Why is this recovery so different? What
does the future economic situation look like for the average American
family?

[[Page S1691]]

In our Republican Joint Economic Committee Response, we find that
these questions are addressed partly by the historic factors identified
in the President's report.
For instance, there is mutual concern about the labor market scars
that remain in the aftermath of the recent recession, as well as the
challenges to restoring a more productive and participatory workforce.
Where we differ with the President is on how to best address these
problems and what policies we can offer that will return us to, at a
minimum, the average of past recoveries. We are not asking for the Moon
here. Although we would like to see growth exceed the average of the
past, we are simply saying: What policies do we need to enact just to
get back to the average recovery? And we are half of that, as I said.
We differ with the President on how best to address these problems
and what policies we can offer that will return us, at a minimum, to
the average of past recoveries. Unfortunately, we have found that many
of the recommendations put forth in the President's report would not
deliver the benefits the administration projects. For instance, the
administration's proposal to increase the minimum wage would result in
reduced job opportunities. That has been documented over and over in
testimony before our committee by analysts and economists who have
looked at this. It freezes out those seeking entry-level jobs--a start,
a foot in the door, the ability to show you can come to work and do a
good day's work, arrive on time and don't leave before your time ends.
You could be a productive person, and up the ladder they go. That entry
level is killed when we raise the minimum wage beyond what the market
calls for. We end up losing a lot of small businesses that provide
those entry-level jobs, or end up hiring on a part-time basis to avoid
that result.
Additionally, the economic report of the President insufficiently
addresses the challenges we face in terms of improving the American
economy, improving economic mobility, preparing students in the
workforce, enacting progrowth policies, and addressing our long-term
fiscal challenges. Allow me, if I could, to discuss these items in
greater detail.
Let's look at economic mobility. For example, the Obama
administration continues to press income inequality as an issue, when
it would be better to focus on policies that improve economic mobility.
Economic mobility is far more important for Americans as they move
through different stages of life--from making less income after
graduation, to starting the process of building a career, building a
resume, to building up earnings through a career experience, and
establishing families, to accumulate savings for retirement, and other
goals that all of us have gone through and many are going through and
many hope to go through as they look forward to meaningful work in the
future.
Despite good intentions, President Obama continues to pursue policies
that impede job growth and real income growth. This restrains economic
mobility.
Nearly 6 years now into the current recovery, Americans are only just
beginning to see signs of significant income growth--and income growth
feeds into upward economic mobility. My hope and our hope is this
growth will continue to strengthen in the coming years. But we need a
change of policies from this administration if this is going to happen.
Let's look at education reform. We also differ with the President in
the area of education reform. It is becoming increasingly clear that
traditional solutions no longer work in today's labor market. The
connection between education and jobs is fractured, and repairing this
connection requires collaboration with employers who know what skills
their workers need.
Education remains an area ripe for reform, yet the Obama
administration has preferred to promote the idea of making community
college free rather than focus on the existing education deficits
experienced by so many students across the country. Many low-income
Americans are already able to receive a community college education for
free if they are eligible for Pell grants. But the real question here
is: What kind of curriculum will they be taking as they enter the
education process? To simply go into a system that is not coordinating
and cooperating with the private industry in terms of the skills needed
for them to grow and to join that particular means of production is
sadly lacking in the President's proposals.
Today, many of the classes offered at community colleges are
remedial. They are compensating for deficits in education at the high
school level. Many students find themselves unprepared for even the
most basic postsecondary courses at the community college and
university levels, let alone for skilled jobs that offer good pay.
Until we address this fundamental foundational underpinning in terms of
how to receive the right education, we have to address these questions
rather than just simply say: Everybody go; don't worry, the taxpayer
will pay for your tuition; take whatever courses you want. That simply
is not the model.
In Indiana, we have a consolidated model now, working with private
industry and our 2-year colleges, which is producing terrific results
because we are matching the skills needed with the curriculum and
teaching that provides those needs.
For these students, finding a good job remains a challenge, as does
our ability to address those in this category who have given up looking
for a job. That takes us to the labor participation rate.
The labor force participation rate for those age 20 to 29 is more
than 4 percent lower now than in 2007. And the lower that goes, the
easier it is to achieve an unemployment number that sounds good but
really is false because the factor of labor participation is skewing
the results.
Furthermore, for those who find a job in that 20-to-29 category, the
Federal Reserve board survey of young workers reveals that only 42
percent of those surveyed reported having a job that is closely related
to their field of study. Students' time and resources need to be better
invested so they can enter the workforce truly equipped, and without
needless delay and countless dollars spent on a degree that leaves them
unemployed or jobless. This is a major challenge to our education
system, and the President's education proposals fall far short of the
reforms needed to address these challenges.
Let's look at growth and productivity--absolutely essential if we are
going to have a growing economy and provide more jobs for more people.
As it stands, the United States remains one of the most productive
economies in the world. We can treasure that. We can celebrate that.
However, much concern remains about whether America will be able to
sustain that productivity of which it proved capable over the last half
century, but there is a real question today as to whether that can be
sustained.
Business creation, entrepreneurship, and technological innovations
have slowed over the past decade, alarmingly. If these trends prove to
be more than temporary, then they will have negative consequences for
America's standard of living.
Productivity and labor force participation growth alone cannot
address the Federal spending problems that have been years in the
making. It appears the administration has not stopped to consider the
effects of existing regulations and government policies.
ObamaCare's effects on labor force participation and hours worked
continue to drive down productivity. Economist Casey Mulligan estimates
that, if fully implemented, by 2017 ObamaCare's long-term effect will
translate to roughly 3 percent less in weekly employment--3 percent
fewer total hours worked, and 2 percent less in labor income. That is
not how to boost productivity. That is a killer of increase in
productivity.
Nonetheless, the Obama administration prefers to add more spending
programs to the existing structure in an attempt to counterbalance the
current disincentives to work.
In contrast, we--Republicans on the committee--believe aggressive
action on progrowth policies will improve the future economic situation
of American families.
As we detail our report to Congress, there are three areas where
immediate opportunity to kick-start our economy and provide for the
sustained growth needed to address the current fiscal and economic
growth challenges we

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face that need to be implemented--one, comprehensive tax reform; two,
implementation of foreign trade agreements; and three, regulatory
relief. Let's take those three in a little deeper discussion.
Tax reform. The need for comprehensive, pro-growth tax reform could
not be clearer. There is admission on both sides of the aisle in this
Chamber--the Republicans and the Democrats--that we have gone far too
long in terms of dealing with tax reform of our current taxation
system. The Administration and Members of Congress in both parties
agreed that it's broken. It is loaded with so many exemptions,
exclusions, subsidies, credits, special interest provisions, rules and
regulations, it is incomprehensible to fathom the complexity of this
current system. It is hurting our economy.
For example, the U.S. corporate tax rate is the highest in the
developed world. If American businesses are going to be able to compete
in a global market, it has to be significantly lower. There is consent
on this. The President has acknowledged that this is needed and that
this is the case. Yet we see little if any policy coming forward--
direct policy--from the White House and from our Democratic friends as
to whether we should go forward.
I am hopeful that the Ways and Means Committee in the House and the
Finance Committee in the Senate, of which I am a Member, will take this
seriously and will address this issue in a comprehensive way.
Unfortunately, the President's framework may not lead to the desired
goals of productivity and other economic gains because with a tax code
of 4 million words and compliance costs to American families and
businesses equaling $168 billion a year, it is not surprising that 9
out of 10 Americans turn to a paid preparer or computer software to
calculate their tax burden. Six billion hours are spent every year by
Americans simply trying to figure out their tax return or get their tax
return taken care of, and an extraordinary amount of money is spent on
having someone else prepare that return because it is simply
incomprehensible for most Americans to address.
Progrowth tax reform would simplify the Tax Code for individuals and
families, reduce the corporate rate, lower individual rates paid by
small businesses, and make our individual tax system more competitive
in the global market. By comparison, the Administration's suggested 28
percent corporate tax rate and hybrid territorial and worldwide tax
system would still place the United States among the highest global tax
rates and would still continue to put American businesses at a
competitive disadvantage.
Let's look at trade. Another area of agreement between Congress and
the administration, so-called, is the pursuit of more trade
opportunities. President Obama's National Export Initiative aimed to
increase the level of exports to $3.14 trillion before 2015 in order to
support up to 2 million jobs, but it fell far short of that goal.
The opportunity to improve GDP growth is available now, pending the
administration's efforts to secure trade promotion authority to
finalize new trade agreements. During the State of the Union Address,
one of the few topics that brought Republicans to their feet, cheering
in support, was the President's call for trade promotion authority.
Yet, it appears--and I remain concerned--that the President and the
administration are not really working hard enough and putting the
pressure on their own party Members to secure the necessary support of
Congress to achieve this much needed result.
The President should fully engage with Congress to ensure passage of
trade promotion authority. This is a necessary policy if we are to get
the kind of economic growth we need. With these trade agreements, we
can expand market access for American goods and services and improve
the economic well-being of Americans and of citizens in our trade
partner countries.
Regulatory burden. We have to stem the rising tide of regulatory
redtape. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, the cost
of complying with Federal regulations exceeds $1.75 trillion every year
for U.S. businesses, and it disproportionately affects small
businesses. This amounts to more than $10,500 per American worker.
Furthermore, the administration has launched an aggressive assault on
fossil fuels and the low-cost electricity they provide. In addition to
the EPA's harmful carbon regulations, the administration has unleashed
more than a dozen rules aimed at eliminating coal-fired plants in the
United States.
We cannot neglect the costs and effects of new major regulations
under ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank that continue to subdue business
investment and job growth.
Taken individually, each burdensome regulation increases costs to
American families and slows economic growth. Taken collectively, these
regulations hang as a giant albatross around the necks of working
people and American businesses, both large and small. To reduce
excessive regulations, Federal agencies need to review and remove
outdated and ineffective rules and should more fully evaluate the costs
and benefits of any proposed rule.
I would like to turn now to the long-term effects and fiscal health
that is a challenge to all, each and every one of us. I have spoken at
some length about this recent recovery and our report's findings. In
addition to working to improve the recovery in the short term, we must
also address the greatest threat to a successful economic America--our
long-term fiscal health.
Earlier this year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued
its updated budget and economic outlook for the next decade. The report
warned that under current law, if we just stay where we are and don't
make adjustments, ``large and growing federal debt would have serious
negative consequences, including increasing federal spending for
interest payments; restraining economic growth in the long term; giving
policymakers less flexibility to respond to unexpected challenges; and
eventually heightening the risk of a fiscal crisis.''
Federal Reserve Chairman Yellen said essentially the same thing when
she appeared last year before the Joint Economic Committee. Her answer
highlighted why the long-term deficits Washington currently is
projected to run must be addressed. I put that question to Chairman
Yellen, Chairman of the Fed, and this was her answer:

There is more work to do to put fiscal policy on a
sustainable course... Progress has been made over the last
several years in bringing down deficits in the short term,
but [through] a combination of demographics, the structure of
entitlement programs, and historic trends in health-care
costs, we can see that, over the long term, deficits will
rise to unsustainable levels relative to the economy.

With these comments, the Fed Chairwoman joined a long list of
academics, economists, and business leaders who have all stated the
obvious: Unless the United States makes politically difficult but
absolutely necessary spending choices in the near term, eventually we
are going to face a debt-induced crisis in the future. It is only a
matter of time. The clock is running down. We continue to postpone the
ever-more-necessary policy changes that will help us avoid the coming
fiscal crisis. It is there for everybody to see. That clock has been
running now for tens of years. Republican Presidents and Democratic
Presidents have watched this grow, the deficit spending and national
debt--plunge into national debt at a staggering rate. The consequences
will come home to roost, and they will affect not only our own
generation but in particular our children's generation and our
grandchildren's generation and generations to come if we don't address
this.
In fact, if interest rates were not artificially held down by the Fed
at historically low levels, we might already be facing our day of
reckoning. According to the Congressional Budget Office, even a 1
percentage point increase in interest rates would add $1.7 trillion to
the deficits of the United States over a 10-year period of time. That
is just a 1-percent increase in interest rates. If we go back to
average, we will be looking at a 3-percent or 4-percent or maybe even a
5-percent interest rate level. Each one would cost us $1.7 trillion
over a 10-year period of time. That new debt would occur without any
changes in spending or taxing; interest rates alone would simply drive
our debt out of control. It is a ticking time bomb, a fiscal ticking
time bomb that must be addressed.
While the administration has taken credit for the current reduction
in our

[[Page S1693]]

annual deficit, overall debt has increased dramatically under President
Obama--from $10.6 trillion to almost $18.2 trillion just during his
term of office. And they brag about making progress? Yes, the deficit
is smaller than it was in the early years of the Obama administration,
but it is still a deficit of half a trillion dollars a year, and it is
going to spike dramatically within 2 years, according to the
Congressional Budget Office. What a bag of misery turned over to the
next President.
In addition, the reduction in our budget deficits is only temporary,
as I just said, because the conclusion of the Congressional Budget
Office is that this will spike in 2017 and publicly held debt as a
percent of GDP will continue to rise in the second half of the coming
decade. Yet, the CBO's projections of deficits and publicly held debt
over the next decade does not tell the whole story. The debt will
continue to climb to unsustainable levels over the next three decades--
30 years of climbing into even more debt. By the end of that time, we
will owe our creditors more than our entire economy produces in 1 year.
Let me say that again. At the end of that period--the next three
decades--we will owe our creditors more than our entire economy is
worth. What a gift to our children. Thanks a lot.
Thanks for ignoring doing what you needed to do. You saw it coming.
You talked about it on the floor of the Senate. Everybody saw what was
happening, and no one had the will to stand up or too few had the will
to stand up and do something about it.
It is reckless policy. It is dangerous. We have an obligation to the
American people. We have a moral obligation to our future children and
grandchildren to address this and to act responsibly.
There have been several bipartisan attempts, both in Congress and by
outside groups, to address this ticking time bomb. Groups such as Fix
the Debt, the Business Roundtable, the Domenici-Rivlin effort at the
Bipartisan Policy Center--all tried to develop solutions and present
them. They did present them to us, and it is clear for everyone to see.
Official government efforts were undertaken--Simpson-Bowles, the Gang
of 6, the supercommittee that resulted from the Budget Control Act, and
the dinner club of Senators, which I participated in, that met directly
with the President and his senior advisers. Unfortunately, all of these
efforts, all of the effort put into this, all of the alarms that were
ringing--all of this failed to reach agreement.
I am particularly disappointed with the failure of the final effort,
which began with Senators and the White House seeking to go big and
ultimately got to the point where it was hardly worth putting anything
in place. Even when we took the President's own recommendations and
sent them to him for approval, they were rejected.
Despite the inability to reach agreements in the past, we must not
give up, my colleagues. We must not give up. We must continue to focus
on this greatest fiscal threat perhaps in the history of our country.
It is something we have a moral responsibility to tackle, a moral
responsibility to put our future careers in jeopardy by making the
right choices. You know what, I think if we did that, the American
people are wise enough to know now that that would be rewarded rather
than condemned, that we would receive support for our future interest
in elected office rather than rejection. The country understands maybe
more--or at least reacts to maybe more than we in this body do because
year after year after year we continue to fail to do what we all know
we need to do.

Despite the inability to reach agreements in the past, as I said, we
should not give up. The administration and the Congress must make tough
fiscal choices now so future generations will have an opportunity to
reach their potential and not be saddled with an even higher burden of
debt.
We must make reforms to our mandatory spending programs to tackle
out-of-control Federal spending. Congress should also pass sensible
policies that will help create jobs and grow the economy. This is our
priority and this is what need to do.
I will conclude by talking about the Republican budget plan that we
have begun to debate and will be debating this week and offering
amendments and ultimately voting by the end of the week.
We know that job creators and future entrepreneurs see today's large
debt levels as tomorrow's likely tax hikes, interest rate increases,
and inflationary pressures. So we must lift the cloud of uncertainty
that is hanging over our economy. This is the first budget we have
debated on the Senate floor in 2 years. This is a budget plan that is
so vital to the future of our economy and the future of America. We
have lacked such focused direction in the form of a budget over the
past several years and that has hurt Americans. Americans need to know
what is coming and what to expect. We need to move off of the word
``certainty'' so that business owners, American families, and everyone
engaged in this economy knows what the rules are, knows what is coming,
and has a clear picture of where we stand even if there are some areas
that they are in disagreement with.
They need to know the Federal Government is carefully managing its
spending and revenues. Every American family and business must have a
budget and live within their means, and it is about time Washington
does the same.
I am pleased to be here talking about this Republican budget
resolution that was led by the Senator from Wyoming, and many of us
participated. I am not on that committee, but I commend them for the
work they have done in bringing forth a budget for us to talk about,
debate, amend, pass, and then live by. Certainly no budget is perfect.
This budget takes several important steps to putting our country back
on the right fiscal track.
Most importantly, this budget resolution balances the budget over 10
years. We must stop spending more than we take in. We must move toward
a balanced budget. I have long been a proponent of a constitutional
amendment to require us to do this, as is done in many of our States.
We have to live up to the responsibilities of our oath to the
Constitution and to not spend more than we take in. We do that in
Indiana, and we have a successful economy and a successful legislature
that has made that the case, but it is severely and sorely lacking here
in Washington.
In contrast to the Republican budget, the President's budget does not
come close to balancing the budget. In fact, for all of the
administration's praise of the short-term reductions in the annual
deficit, the President's budget predicts increases in deficits starting
in 2018--yes, it is going to be dumped in somebody else's lap--and an
$800 billion deficit in 2025.
Our Republican budget helps address the issue of underfunding the
Department of Defense. It boosts defense spending by a necessary amount
of money above the President's request because, along with the debt
bomb, we have a terrorist bomb--potentially marrying terrorists with
weapons of mass destruction--and a strong America and strong military
are absolutely necessary to address the threats we see burgeoning all
over the world today. Our budget addresses this specific question and
strengthens our national defense.
It helps preserve our safety net programs. It does not change Social
Security, yet it will benefit Social Security by shoring up our broader
finances and achieving stronger economic growth and increased
employment.
In addition, the budget extends the solvency of the Medicare trust
fund by calling for the same level of Medicare savings as called for by
the President. Let me be clear. Our budget does not call for the same
policies as the President. We would instead achieve these savings
through policies based on free-market principles.
The budget also seeks to improve the Medicaid Program by increasing
State flexibility, and it seeks to help economic growth by promoting
several progrowth policies, including tax reform, reducing the impact
of Federal regulations, promoting free trade, investing in
infrastructure, and enhancing U.S. energy security.
Finally, the Republican budget provides the means for addressing the
flawed, confusing, distorted, tax-laden policy of ObamaCare. The repeal
of ObamaCare provides flexibility to replace this disastrous law with
health

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care solutions that bring down the cost of care and protect the
vulnerable.
I will conclude by saying and reiterating what this Senate Republican
budget resolution accomplishes. It balances the budget in 10 years,
ensures flexibility for funding national defense, provides repeal and
replacement of ObamaCare, protects Americans from new tax hikes,
preserves Social Security, extends Medicare trust fund solvency,
improves Medicaid, supports stronger economic growth, and enhances U.S.
energy security.
I am proud my Senate colleagues have drafted a plan to return our
spending to a sustainable path toward a balanced budget, and I am
hopeful this is the beginning of responsible action and look forward to
debating and passing the Republican budget this week.
Again, I commend the chairman and his committee for bringing forth a
budget that is sorely needed and will give Americans a clear picture of
a different path than this administration has proposed.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.

Unanimous Consent Agreement--Executive Calendar

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that on Monday,
March 23, at 5:30 p.m., the Senate proceed to executive session to
consider the following nomination, Calendar No. 19; that the Senate
then vote without intervening action or debate on the nomination, the
motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, that
no further motions be in order, that any statements related to the
nomination be printed in the Record, the President be immediately
notified of the Senate's actions, and the Senate then resume
legislative session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, writing and passing a budget is one of
the most fundamental responsibilities of any legislative body.
Unfortunately, it is something we have not done in the U.S. Congress
since 2009. It is outrageous. It should be considered a scandal.
Today I will take a few minutes to discuss the budget we have before
us today and how we intend to discharge our responsibilities to the
American people in the 114th Congress. Of course, one of the most
important parts of a budget is that you have to determine what your
priorities are--things you have to have, things you want but maybe need
to defer, and things you want but maybe cannot afford.
When it comes to the budget Chairman Enzi and the Senate Budget
Committee have produced, our priority is clear. Our priority is to
protect the hard-working taxpayers of this country. Where do we start
and how does the Senate Republican budget get America on the right
track, boosting economic growth and job creation?
To start with, this budget actually balances and puts us on the path
so we can begin to pay down our national debt, and it is important to
say that it does so without raising taxes. Those seem like pretty
straightforward goals for any budget, but unfortunately that has not
been the case in recent years.
Throughout his 6 years in office and in the budgets he has sent to
Congress, President Obama seems to be committed to the notion that the
only way Washington can revive strong economic growth is by steadily
growing the government. Unfortunately, at the same time you end up
adding to deficits and debt in the process.
Yes, it is true that we have had an experiment in the size and role
of government over the last 6 years, and I must say we are no longer
talking about esoteric theories that were debated in the Federalist
Papers or during the founding of our country. We now actually have hard
evidence. We have things we can point to that show this has been a
failed experiment.
Under this administration, our national debt--and the bills, not that
I will have to pay, but these young people and my children will have to
pay--has gone from $10.6 trillion to more than $18 trillion. I know
those numbers are almost meaningless to most of us because we simply
cannot conceive of numbers that big.
The latest budget from the President adds another trillion in tax
increases and never balances--ever, while, in fact, the budget which
was voted out of the Budget Committee and is now before us on the floor
of the Senate actually brings us a surplus, and the President's budget
would leave our country with a massive deficit of over $800 billion in
its final year.
The last budget proposed by our friends across the aisle, Senate
Democrats in 2013, would have hit the economy with another $1 trillion
in taxes and added more than $7 trillion to our national debt.
I believe, based on the failed experiment of the last few years, we
should conclude that just taxing and spending is not going to allow us
to achieve the kind of prosperity and economic growth we all so badly
want. America's debt is a real danger, and one that apparently the
President chooses to ignore, and our friends across the aisle, in their
budget proposals, seem to ignore it as well.
The reason our debt is so dangerous is because it makes us vulnerable
to fiscal shocks and shocks to our national security and makes it much
harder for us to respond to them, and our debt obviously costs money to
service. We need to pay interest to the people who buy our bonds, our
national debt, and when interest rates go back up from where they are
now, which is a historically low rate, more and more of the hard-earned
tax dollars the American people will be paying to the Federal
Government will be used not to pay down the debt but will be used to
pay interest on the debt to the people who own it, countries such as
China and other sovereign entities that purchase that debt. We will be
paying interest on that debt in a way that makes us dangerously
vulnerable not only to fiscal shock, but also crowds out our ability to
deal with other priorities, such as law enforcement, education,
national security, and the like.
Last year the Congressional Budget Office pointed out that in the
past few years debt held by the public will be significantly greater
relative to the gross domestic product than at any time just after
World War II. Our debt will be higher relative to our economy than at
any time since World War II.
What does that mean to my fellow Texans? The CBO goes on to say that
with a debt so large, Federal spending on interest payments will
increase substantially as interest rates rise to more typical levels.
That is what I was just referring to. The other thing that happens is
that as the Federal Government's debt goes up, we basically reduce
national savings and capital stock at the same time and wages will be
smaller. In other words, our national massive debt is hurting economic
growth today. It is hurting our economy, and it virtually assures that
it will get worse in the days ahead.
The good news is it doesn't have to be that way, and this budget puts
us on a path to balance and one that begins to pay down the debt, not
adding to the debt with more taxing and spending along the way. And the
good news is we don't have to start from scratch and reinvent the
wheel.
There are better options, many of which are reflected in the budget
we have proposed and will be voting on this week. There are policies
and programs in the budget that we have borrowed which have proven to
be successful around the country in States such as Texas and others.
My State, in particular, has experienced an economic surge that has
seen a boom in job creation and exports and it has been named the best
State in the Nation in business 10 years running. Some people have
actually called this the Texas miracle, but I take issue with that
characterization. There is nothing miraculous about what has happened
in Texas when we talk about the economy because you cannot explain a
miracle, but it is no secret why Texas has been one of the leading job
creation engines over the last several years. If we ask business
leaders, they will tell us what makes Texas such an attractive place to
do business.

In Texas, we know we should not punish job creators with taxes that
discourage investment and overregulation, which make it hard to make
the bottom line balance. We are not ashamed of our abundance of natural
resources, nor are we apologetic about encouraging its development. The
results have been extraordinary.

[[Page S1695]]

For example, Texas added nearly 460,000 jobs in 2014 alone--460,000
jobs in 2014--more than any other State. Despite being home to about
8.5 percent of the total U.S. population, Texas accounted for nearly
one-third of all new job gains during the last 10 years for the Nation.
Simply put, what we have shown is what can be accomplished with sound
public policy that allows for job creation and economic prosperity, and
that is the good news. It is not a fluke. It is not a miracle. It is
about good policies actually working to benefit the people of my State
and that could also be put to work for the American people.
We can take strategies that have worked in the States and lessons we
have learned in these laboratories of democracy and apply them here in
Washington on a greater scale for the benefit of the entire Nation.
Simply put, it boils down to lower taxes, sensible regulations, and a
lower level of per capita government spending.
What happens under those conditions is that the private sector is
willing to invest, and when they invest, they create jobs and grow the
economy, and we all benefit, including the government, by increased tax
revenue. The government doesn't benefit, nor do the people benefit,
when government policies discourage investment and job creation and
economic growth, which is what has been happening over the last few
years.
In the budget before us, which balances without tax hikes, we can
protect taxpayers and foster an economic environment that allows jobs
and opportunity to blossom.
Gallup released a survey earlier this month that talked about the
biggest concerns facing the American people. The top concern was
government. They are concerned about their government. The second was
the economy, and the third was jobs. All three of those concerns
actually tie neatly together because many Americans now feel they don't
have the same opportunities they once had. Maybe they have been laid
off or had a tough time finding a new job that is as rewarding for them
personally and financially. Maybe they are actually working as hard as
they ever did, but they are actually making less money than they did 10
years ago.
If people are deeply concerned, as I am, about the availability of
good jobs and the state of our economy, it only makes sense that people
would not be satisfied with the government as well. These concerns
transcend geographic, partisan, and demographic boundaries, and they
are shared by Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike.
Sadly, one of the statistics that hasn't gotten better over the last
few years, even though the unemployment rate has crept down, is the
percentage of the American people--the workforce--who have actually
left the job market and given up looking for a job, and that remains at
a near historical high--about a 30-year high--the so-called labor
participation rate. So when the unemployment rate goes down and we say,
Oh, that is a good thing, a lot of the reason it is going down is
because fewer and fewer people are actually looking for work and they
have dropped out altogether. That is a bad thing.
Most people don't see themselves as future business owners; they
simply hope to find a good job doing something that provides them the
ability to put food on the table and to take care of their families,
and that gives them a sense of satisfaction for a job well done. Yet,
as we know, small businesses are the lifeblood of the economy, and it
is the small businesses that actually help create the jobs that most
hard-working taxpayers are occupied in. So if we are making it harder
for small businesses to create jobs, we are also making it harder on
workers to find jobs.
As I travel my State and talk to small business men and women, they
tell me one of the biggest challenges they have had is something the
President trumpets here in Washington as a grand success; that is,
ObamaCare because ObamaCare has been a job killer. This budget assumes
full repeal of ObamaCare, and it gives us the opportunity to make good
on our promises and finally remove one of the biggest roadblocks to job
growth. Is that because we don't care about health care? Well, no;
exactly the opposite. What we intend to do as a replacement is to
replace ObamaCare with affordable health care that provides people
access to the kind of quality care they want for themselves and their
families.
The irony of ObamaCare is that it spends and taxes so much, and yet
still 30 million people are uninsured. Many people find the health
insurance they purchased--even on the exchanges--has high premiums,
which basically render them uninsured to the extent that they can't
even afford it, and it has raised their premium costs by adding
mandates for coverage they don't want and they don't need.
We can do much better.
Now, I have heard the President and some of his allies say, Well, we
have to have ObamaCare because we need to cover young adults up to the
age of 26 who can be covered under their parents' policy or we need
ObamaCare because we need to cover people with preexisting conditions.
The fact is we can do both of those things. We will do both of those
things, and we don't need everything else that comes with it.
We also need to capitalize on an energy boom that is taking place
across the United States. This budget boosts development of American-
made energy. Unfortunately, the President decided to put his party and
his politics ahead of American job seekers recently when he vetoed a
bipartisan bill to construct the Keystone XL Pipeline that the State
Department said would create 42,000 jobs--construction jobs to start
with--and a number of other jobs thereafter. It would also provide an
alternative means to transport oil from a friendly ally, Canada, and we
wouldn't have to ship so much of it in railcars over the surface, which
is admittedly a much more dangerous and volatile situation.
The President, when he vetoed the Keystone XL Pipeline, took
basically the opposite approach to what we have taken in my State and
other States around the country, where we have seen our natural
resources and the development of those natural resources as a way to
grow jobs and grow the economy.
In Texas, we have produced 94 percent more oil between September 2008
and September 2012. That has been primarily due to the innovation of
the oil and gas industry and the so-called shale oil and gas
revolution, which transformed States such as North Dakota and Texas,
and in places such as Pennsylvania where the Marcellus shale exists.
The Eagle Ford, the Barnett, and the Haynesville shale plays in Texas
have been economic boons in my State and created thousands of jobs and
added hundreds of thousands of dollars to the tax rolls.
As my friends along the border of Texas and Mexico remind me, those
natural resources do not stop at the international border. Indeed, I
was recently in Mexico City with our colleague, Senator Kaine from
Virginia, where we met with a number of oil and gas company
representatives at the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico City,
talking about the change in the Mexican law which now will encourage
private investment in developing their natural resources in Mexico. Of
course, the better the Mexican economy does, the better our economy
does, and the fewer people who feel as though they have to immigrate to
the United States in order to provide for their family.
This budget is a responsible budget. It balances in 10 years, it
doesn't raise taxes, and it begins a downpayment on our national debt.
It sends a very important message that the 114th Congress and the new
majority are very serious about discharging the most basic
responsibilities of governance--something that hasn't been done since
2009, since the last time we had a budget, but we also learn from the
States when it comes to protecting taxpayers and removing barriers to
growth and how that helps not only the small businesses but the people
who work at the jobs created by those small businesses.
In conclusion, there is one other thing this budget does. We know
that since the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the sequestration that
occurred--the automatic caps on spending that occurred as a result of
the failure of the supercommittee to come up with a grand bargain--our
Nation has spent less and less on our national security. That has given
rise not only to deep concerns by many of us, including the Presiding
Officer, about America's role

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in the world and the message we are sending to our adversaries, but it
also raises the question of what is the primary purpose--what should be
the No. 1 priority of the Federal Government? I believe, and I think
many of us believe, that national security is the most important
priority of the Federal Government. We have kind of lost sight of that
in recent years with the budget caps and sequestration. We have tried
to be responsible about spending. Unfortunately, with an unhelpful
partner in the White House, sequestration seemed to be the only way we
could keep a cap on runaway discretionary spending, higher deficits,
and greater debt. But I think now is the time for this Congress to step
up and say that national security is our No. 1 priority. This budget
does just that, and it provides additional resources necessary for the
Department of Defense to make sure we not only maintain our status as
the preeminent military power in the world but also keep our commitment
to our military families and those who have chosen to make the armed
services a career.
We also send a very important message to our adversaries that America
will not shrink or retreat from its leadership role on the world stage.
Unfortunately, I think as a result of not only our budgetary decisions
but also a number of missteps and missed signals by the administration,
some of our adversaries have gotten the idea we are in retreat and that
we are somehow pulling back and going to be rendered a spectator rather
than a leader on the world stage. Perhaps the single most important
thing this budget does is it says, America is back as the leader of the
free world and we will not shrink and we will not turn our back on our
responsibility not only to ourselves and our people but to our friends
and allies across the world.
I yield the floor.
Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, in a moment I am going to yield for
Senator Kaine, but before I do that, I just want to make a few points
based on the remarks from my friend, the Senator from Texas, Mr.
Cornyn.
When Senator Cornyn talked about military spending--and how much we
should spend on the military is a very important debate. We now spend
more money than the next nine countries combined. But as we talk about
the deficit and the debt, I would remind my colleagues and the American
people that one of the reasons our national debt is at $18 trillion and
one of the reasons our deficit is as high as it is is because under
President Bush, we went to war in Iraq and we went to war in
Afghanistan, and we put those wars on the credit card. We didn't pay
for them.
On Thursday, at the Senate Budget Committee meeting, an amendment was
passed to add another $38 billion of defense spending to the deficit.
So I have a little bit of a problem understanding all of my Republican
friends coming down here and saying: We are really concerned about the
deficit and the debt. We are going to have to cut back on Head Start.
We are going to have to cut back on health care. We are going to have
to cut back on the Meals On Wheels programs for seniors. We are going
to have to cut back on Pell grants, making it harder for young people
to go to college. We just can't afford those things anymore because the
deficit is so high. But, when it comes to military spending, we don't
have to worry about the deficit at all.
I have a real problem with that, and I suspect that within the next
couple of days there will be an amendment on the floor which makes it
very clear that if people want to go into another war--and I certainly
hope we do not go into another war; I think two wars is quite enough--
but if people want to vote for another war, they are going to have to
pay for that war and not pass that debt on to our kids and our
grandchildren.
With that, Madam President, I yield the floor for the Senator from
Virginia, Mr. Kaine.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. Thank you, Madam President. I thank my colleague from
Vermont who has done an able job as the ranking member on the Budget
Committee.
I rise today to talk about the budget resolution that we are
considering on the floor of the Senate this week.
I came to the Senate in 2013 with a background as a mayor and a
Governor. I believe in getting budgets done and getting them done on
time. Doing budgets under regular order is an important priority, and I
have enjoyed and look forward to more work with colleagues on budgeting
matters.
Quickly, we have been in a budget crisis of our own making in
Congress. It is not someone else's fault. It is not the President's
fault. The budget crisis we have been in has been of Congress's making.
In August of 2011, when one House pushed the country to the verge of
defaulting on our debt for the first time in our history, in order not
to default we came up with the idea of the sequester. This was before I
was in the Senate, but the basic idea was this: Let's impose punishing
across-the-board cuts on all of these Federal spending levels to begin
in March of 2013 to force us to try to come up with a better deal. I
call that ``let's try to do something good, and if we don't, then let's
do something really stupid.'' I don't know that this is a principle you
should ever apply.
When I came to the Senate on the verge of sequester going into
effect, my first floor speech as a Senator and one of my first votes
was this: OK, we didn't find the budget deal that some wanted, but
let's not do something stupid. Let's not embrace the sequester and hurt
priorities that matter to people every day. Sadly, we couldn't get the
60 votes to cut off the sequester in the Senate. So since March of
2013, we have been in sequester mode. I said in committee and I will
say again: The sequester violates every good principle of budgeting I
have learned as either a public sector budgeter as a mayor and a
Governor or as a private sector budgeter managing a multinational law
firm with lawyers on three continents. Nobody would do budgeting this
way. The United States, because of Congress, is doing budgeting this
way, and I think we need to come up with a better solution.
During the last Congress we did find a better solution. It wasn't a
perfect solution, but the Murray-Ryan budget act did a 2-year budgetary
framework that eliminated half of these punishing sequester cuts and
gave a significant lift to the economy.
The economy has generally been pretty strong, cutting deficits but
also avoiding some of the mindless austerity that full sequester means.
A good budget for the country--and I am sad to say that the budget we
will be debating on the floor this week is not a good budget for the
country--but a good budget for the country would do a couple of things.
It would put the promotion of growth and jobs first. The best
antideficit strategy--if that is what you are interested in--is
promoting a strong economy, and job growth would be the first priority.
Second, we would replace a mindless across-the-board sequester with a
more targeted approach. If we did that, we could credibly reduce
deficits rather than reducing deficits in a way that hurts the economy
and punishes programs that matter to people.
The economy and jobs side, we will grow the economy and grow jobs if
we do things such as moving away from unnecessary austerity and
promoting infrastructure. My colleague from Vermont has a strong
proposal about infrastructure that we debated in committee and we will
be debating this week. If you did infrastructure and other investments
in human capital, you could credibly reduce sequester and increase
jobs. We could also increase jobs if we had a tax code that didn't
punish work, that didn't punish labor, wages, and salary the way this
one does.
The second way would be to restore key spending priorities and
replace sequester with a targeted approach. We should be focusing on a
budget that maintains a strong national defense; that keeps our
promises to veterans; that invests in education, especially important
programs such as Head Start, pre-K, and college affordability.

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We can protect Federal employees, we can protect programs for people of
low and moderate incomes, such as SNAP or Pell grants, and we could
ensure the environment is protected if we followed targeted strategies.
That would be better.
Finally, growing the economy and pursuing targeted budget strategies
would enable us to credibly reduce the deficit. It is important to note
that the deficit has been coming down since the Murray-Ryan budget deal
was done, and that is important. But that is not the budget that will
be on the floor this week.
Last Thursday we voted a budget out of committee. It was a long day
of debating and voting. I was able to support a number of amendments,
and I had some of my own and others that were passed, and I appreciate
them. But I ultimately voted against the budget, and unless there will
be dramatic changes on the floor of the Senate, I will, in all
likelihood, be voting against the budget for the following reasons:
First, the budget before us proposes cuts to nondefense discretionary
programs--education, infrastructure, research--the nondefense,
noninterest, nonentitlement programs that are about 14 to 15 percent of
the Federal budget. It proposes not just cutting those to full
sequester levels but cutting them by an additional $236 billion over 10
years. Even the sequester levels are untenable, slashing these programs
even further to make college more expensive, to spend less on
infrastructure, and to spend less on research. It is foolish for the
Nation.
The budget proposes $4 trillion in unspecified cuts to programs such
as Medicare and Medicaid, but it only includes a budget reconciliation
instruction totaling $2 billion, which leaves a very unusual gap in the
terms of how we are going to find magically the $4 trillion in cuts.
The budget depends on gimmicks and sort of magic tricks to achieve
balance, when we are not really achieving balance.
It uses outdated baseline proposals by the CBO. We just had CBO
numbers come in this March from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget
Office, showing that the country, because of an improving economy, is
poised to collect more revenue and poised to spend less on some key
programs. Instead of using that baseline data--the March data--the
budget we worked on in committee used worse January data to make the
situation seem more dire than it is. I don't know why we would do this.
We should use the most updated numbers.
Finally, I voted against the budget because it contained a critical
dishonesty. It proposed to do two things simultaneously that violate
the basic laws of physics. The two measures are this: First we are
going to entirely repeal the Affordable Care Act. However, all the
taxes we are collecting from companies and people to pay for the
Affordable Care Act--we are going to keep all of those in the budget.
So we will repeal all of the benefits, all of the coverage, all of the
protection that tens of millions of Americans get under the Affordable
Care Act, but we will keep taxing people and companies and keep all
that tax revenue in the budget. Clearly, both of those things are not
going to happen. So the budget has this air of unreality about it.
But to me, the unreality of the numbers is even dwarfed in importance
by just the flat statement that we are going to repeal the Affordable
Care Act. There are many things I can say about the Affordable Care
Act. Why don't I just pick one? That is that 16.4 million Americans are
receiving insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act. What does
this budget say will happen to those 16.4 million Americans? The budget
doesn't say. It has no plan for providing that they will be able to
have health insurance.
Taking away health insurance from 16.4 million Americans, many of
whom have it for the first time in their lives, is no small issue. That
number is a big number. Sometimes big numbers just sound like big
numbers. Let me put it in context. How many Americans are 16.4 million
people? Well, 16.4 million people with health insurance is the entire
combined population of Wyoming, the District of Columbia, Vermont,
North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island,
New Hampshire, Maine, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, and West Virginia. That
is 14 States and the District of Columbia. The entire combined
population from birth to death in those 15 jurisdictions is what 16.4
million American people are. What this budget proposes is to reach in
and strip away health insurance from every last one of those 16.4
million people without a proposal, without a plan, without even any
indication of how we would tackle this problem.
I refuse to be a part of that. I refuse to contemplate voting for
that. I have had too much experience with people who don't have health
insurance to push willingly people back into the shadows when they have
had health insurance for the first time in their life.
I know the Presiding Officer understands this. We all do. Health
insurance is about two things. It is about health, but it is also about
assurance. So if you are sick, if you are in an accident, if your wife
is in an accident, if your kids are sick, you have to have this so that
you can receive health care, so that you can receive treatment. But
when you are not sick and when you haven't been in an accident, you
still go to bed worrying about what will happen to your children if
they get into an accident, what will happen to your wife if she gets
ill. Even when you are healthy, the absence of health insurance imposes
an anxiety--especially on parents--that is very, very severe.
So I will not be part of a budget that tells 16.4 million people--the
combined population of 14 States and the District of Columbia--that
while you may have had this health insurance for the first time in your
life, we are now going to take it away from you without a plan to help
you have the assurance and the peace of mind and the protection of your
health that you have under existing law.
We should not step backward. We should always step forward. Can we
find improvements? Of course we can. But we shouldn't step backward.
That is why I voted against the budget in committee, and that is why I
am likely, absent major change, to vote against it on the floor.
I yield back the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. I thank Senator Kaine for his outstanding work on the
committee and for his very cogent remarks.
In the Republican budget, we don't have to talk about protecting
absurd loopholes for large corporations and for the wealthiest people
in this country. We don't have to talk about significant cuts in Head
Start, making it harder for working families to send their kids to that
very important program. We don't have to talk about cuts in the Pell
grant program, some $90 billion in mandatory funding, making it harder
for working families to send their kids to college. We don't have to
talk about raising taxes on working families by allowing the earned-
income tax credit and the children's tax credit to expire. We don't
even have to talk about that. All we have to do is to hear what Senator
Kaine just said.
Does anybody in America think it makes sense to tell 16 million men,
women, and children--who today have health insurance, some for the
first time in their lives--that they are going to lose that health
insurance, but, by the way, we will continue to collect the taxes from
the Affordable Care Act?
Does anyone take that proposal seriously--throwing 16 million people
off of health insurance, the equivalent of, what was it, the 15
smallest States in America--and having no plan with what to do with
these people?
On the surface, I think the Republican budget makes no sense at all
and has a very warped sense of priorities in terms of protecting the
wealthiest people in this country--the largest corporations--but
sticking it to the middle-class and working families.
Senator Kaine mentioned that one of the areas that we, in fact, are
going to focus on is the need to create jobs. I think all of us who are
not particularly partisan are aware of the fact that the economy today
is a lot better than it was when President Bush left office and we were
hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs a month. Is the economy where we would like
it to be today? I don't think anyone believes that. But have we made
some significant progress in the last 6, 6\1/2\ years? Yes, I think we
have.

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But having said that, let's be clear. If you look at the unemployment
rates, unemployment in this country is not 5\1/2\ percent. Real
unemployment is close to 11 percent. Youth unemployment, which we never
talk about at all, is somewhere around 17 percent, and African-American
youth unemployment is off the charts.
In addition to that, we have another major problem. That is, our
infrastructure is crumbling. So what many of us think we should be
doing is that at a time when our roads, bridges, rail systems, water
plants, wastewater plants, dams, levees, and airports need a huge
amount of work, and at a time when real unemployment is much higher
than it should be--well, what about a commonsense approach which says:
Let's start rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and let us put
Americans back to work?
Do you know what, that is what the American people want. On every
poll I have seen, the top priority of the American people--Democrats,
Republicans, Independents--is the economy, create jobs, raise wages,
and that is what we should be doing.
In about 1 hour or so I will officially offer an amendment which
will, in fact, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and create many
millions of decent-paying jobs.
In terms of infrastructure, which is a fancy word for roads, bridges,
water systems, rail, and so forth, I don't think you have to be a Ph.D.
in infrastructure to know our infrastructure is really in quite bad
shape. Every day somebody gets into a car--whether it is in Vermont or
Washington, DC--and you see that pothole that takes away half of your
axle, that is what infrastructure is about.
When you are in a traffic jam because the road is inadequate to deal
with traffic, that is called infrastructure.
When your water pipes in your town are bursting and flooding
downtown, that is called infrastructure.
The truth is that for too many years Congress has dramatically
underfunded the maintenance and improvement of the physical
infrastructure our economy depends upon. That has to change, and that
is why I will be introducing an amendment to invest $478 billion over 6
years to modernize our infrastructure.
How will we pay for that? Will we pay for it by throwing children off
of Head Start? Will we pay for it by throwing people off of the
Affordable Care Act? No. We are going to pay for it in the right way,
and that is to close tax loopholes that allow corporations and
billionaires to shift their profits to the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and
other tax havens. So instead of having these corporations putting their
money in tax havens--paying zero in Federal income tax--and at a time
when we are losing about $100 billion a year without reason, we are
going to ask these corporations to start paying their fair share of
taxes, and then we are going to use that money to repair our crumbling
infrastructure and put millions of people back to work.
This amendment--by the way, I will tell you personally I have
introduced legislation that is more expansive than this, but because I
want all of the Members of the Senate to be supporting this, I have
tailored it down a little bit, and we are talking about $478 billion
over 6 years. This amendment will support more than 9 million good-
paying jobs over 6 years, more than 1.5 million jobs a year. This is
money that not only creates jobs and rebuilds our infrastructure, it
makes the country more productive, more efficient, and safer.
Right now, Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary, makes the
point that if we take into account the impact of depreciation, our net
investment in infrastructure is actually closer to zero of GDP, zero
percent. In other words, what we are spending our money on is not
rebuilding new infrastructure but replacing and patching old
infrastructure.
The sad truth is that as a nation we are falling further and further
behind. Throughout China, multibillion-dollar projects are underway to
build new bridges, airports, tunnels, an $80 billion water project, and
high-speed rail lines--in China, not in the United States.
This past November, China approved nearly $115 billion for 21
additional major infrastructure projects. While we are debating, while
we refuse to invest in our crumbling infrastructure, China is doing
just that--in spades.
It is no surprise that the World Economic Forum's Global
Competitiveness Report now ranks our overall infrastructure at 12th in
the world--12th in the world. That is down from seventh place a decade
ago. There was once a time when the United States had an infrastructure
that was the envy of the world. Now we are in 12th place.
Let's take a look at some of the problems we face and why we need to
invest in infrastructure.
One out of every nine bridges in this country is structurally
deficient, and nearly one-quarter are functionally obsolete. We need to
rebuild crumbling bridges.
Almost one-third of our roads are in poor or mediocre condition, and
nearly 42 percent of all urban highways are congested. We need to
rebuild crumbling roads.
Transit systems across the country are struggling to address deferred
maintenance, even as ridership steadily increases. People want to take
advantage of transit, to get to work on transit, and yet the transit
authorities are deferring maintenance because of limited funds.
Meanwhile, nearly 45 percent of American households lack any
meaningful access to transit, which is a huge problem in rural areas
across the country, including the State of Vermont. In Vermont, in most
cases you have one way to get to work and only one way: That is in your
automobile.
The amendment I would be offering also creates a national
infrastructure bank. This idea, championed in the past by Senators on
both sides of the aisle, will leverage private capital to finance more
than $250 billion in transportation, energy, environmental, and
telecommunications projects.
My amendment will also greatly expand credit assistance to projects
of national and regional significance through the TIFIA Program, long
championed by my good friend from California, Senator Barbara Boxer.
It will boost funding for the highly competitive TIGER Program that
funds locally sponsored transportation projects across the country that
increase economic competitiveness and promote economic innovations.
But we all know our infrastructure problems are not just limited to
roads, bridges, and transit. Much of our Nation's rail system is
obsolete, even though our energy-efficient railroads move more freight
than ever and Amtrak's ridership has never been higher.
While we debate the merits of high-speed rail in Congress, countries
across Europe and Asia have gone ahead and built vast high-speed
networks. Guess what. They work. High-speed rail trains relieve
congestion on roads, airports, and whisk people around quickly and
efficiently.
China has already 12,000 miles of track with trains that run at least
125 miles per hour and several thousand miles with trains that can
travel at 200 miles per hour. Meanwhile, the Acela, Amtrak's fastest
train, travels at an average speed of just 65 miles per hour.
This amendment will invest $12 billion to make much-needed
investments to upgrade our passenger and freight rail lines, and to
move people and goods more quickly and efficiently.
It is time for America to catch up with the rest of the world. There
was once a time when we were No. 1 in infrastructure. Today we are No.
12.
I hear my friends on the other side talking about the debt we are
going to be leaving our kids and our grandchildren, while we are going
to be leaving them a crumbling infrastructure which at some point
somebody is going to have to pay for unless we get our act together
now.
America's airports are bursting at the seams as the number of
passengers and cargo grows. The Airports Council International--North
America says America needs $76 billion over the next 5 years to
accommodate growth in passengers and cargo activity and to rehabilitate
existing facilities.
Moreover, and rather incredibly, our airports still rely on
antiquated 1960s radar technology because Congress chronically
underfunds deployment of a new satellite-based air traffic control
system.
This amendment will invest $6 billion to improve airports across the
country. It will invest another $6 billion to

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bring our air traffic control system into the 21st century by
accelerating deployment of NextGen technology that will make our skies
safer and our airports more efficient. Anyone, as many of us do, who
travels, who flies a lot, knows our airports need to be more efficient
than they are.
Bottlenecks at our marine seaports, which handle 95 percent of all
overseas imports and exports, cause delays that prevent goods from
getting to their destinations on time. The same is true--perhaps even
more so--for our inland waterways, which carry the equivalent of 50
million truck trips of goods each year.
My amendment will invest an additional $1 billion a year to clear the
backlog of projects needed to improve inland waterways, coastal
harbors, and shipping channels. Our businesses simply can't compete in
the global economy if they can't move their goods and supplies to,
from, and within our country more efficiently.
Right now, more than 4,000 of the Nation's 84,000 dams are considered
deficient--not in need of a few repairs, but deficient--serious
problems.
Even worse, one of every 11 levees has been rated as likely to fail
during a major flood. I will talk a little more about this issue in a
few minutes as this is something that could concern everyone in the
Senate.
My amendment will invest $5 billion a year to repair and improve the
high hazard dams that provide flood control, drinking water,
irrigation, hydropower, and recreation across the country, and the
flood levees that protect our cities and our farms.
Much of our drinking water infrastructure is nearing the end of its
useful life. I like to tell the story of Rutland, VT. A few years ago
that city--one of the largest in Vermont--had water pipes that were
built before the Civil War--before the Civil War--and I think that is
not all that uncommon. Cities and towns all over this country, in many
instances, have pipes that go way, way, way back and are constantly
breaking and causing serious leaks.
Each year, there are nearly one-quarter million water main breaks
with the loss of 7 billion gallons of freshwater. Let me repeat that:
Each year, there are nearly one-quarter million water main breaks with
the loss of 7 billion gallons of freshwater. But that is nothing
compared to the amount of water we lose through leaky pipes and faulty
meters. In all, the American Water Works Association estimates that we
lose 2.1 trillion gallons of treated drinking water every year--2.1
trillion gallons. Clearly, this is an issue that cannot continue to be
delayed. We have to address that.
Our wastewater treatment plants aren't in much better shape than our
freshwater pipes are. Almost 10 billion gallons of raw sewage is dumped
into our Nation's waterways every year when plants fail or pipes burst,
often during heavy rains. My amendment would invest $2 billion a year
so States can improve the drinking water systems that provide Americans
with clean, safe water.
The amendment would similarly invest $2 billion a year to improve the
wastewater and storm water infrastructure that protects water quality
in our Nation's rivers and lakes.
America's aging electrical grid consists of a patchwork system of
interconnected power generation transmission and distribution
facilities, some of which date back to the early 1900s. Not
surprisingly, the grid suffers from hundreds of major power failures
every year, many of which are avoidable. Our grid is simply not up to
the 21st century challenges it faces, including resiliency to cyber
attacks. It is no wonder the World Economic Forum ranks our electric
grid at just 24th in the world, in terms of reliability, just behind
Barbados.
My amendment will invest $3 billion a year for power transmission and
distribution modernization projects to improve the reliability and
resiliency of our ever more complex electric power grid. This
investment will also position our grid to accept new sources of locally
generated renewable energy and will address critical vulnerabilities to
cyber attacks, an issue of great concern to many of us.
Another area where we are falling behind is Internet access and
speed, and this is especially important to rural States such as
Vermont. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the
OECD, ranks the United States 16th in the world in terms of broadband
access--16th in the world in terms of broadband success--not something
we should be terribly proud of. We are only marginally better in terms
of average broadband speed--12th in the world, according to Akamai's
2014 annual report.
How can it be that businesses, schools and families in Bucharest,
Romania, have access to much faster Internet than most of the United
States of America?
My amendment will invest $2 billion a year to expand high-speed
broadband networks in underserved and unserved areas and to boost
speeds and capacity all across this country. Let us be clear: Internet
access is no longer a luxury, it is essential for 21st century
commerce, for education, for telemedicine, and for public safety. We
cannot continue to lag behind many of our global competitors in terms
of broadband quality and access.
That is a brief summary of what my amendment does. It addresses a
chronic funding shortfall. It addresses the need to start the kinds of
investments we need to bring our physical infrastructure into the 21st
century. If $478 billion over 6 years sounds like a lot of money,
please consider this: The American Society of Civil Engineers--the
people who actually know the most about the state of America's
infrastructure--says we need to invest $3.6 trillion by 2020 just to
get our Nation's infrastructure to a state of good repairs. So this
amendment is a good start, but that is all it is. It is a good start.
Much more has to be done.
Let me conclude by asking my fellow Americans to imagine an America
where millions of people in our 50 States are hard at work earning good
wages rebuilding our crumbling bridges, making our roads much better,
dealing with wastewater plants, dealing with water systems, and dealing
with our rail system. Think about what America looks like when we
create an infrastructure that is 21st century.
Our job right now is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. As a
former mayor, I can absolutely assure you infrastructure does not get
better all by itself. You can't turn around and ignore it and think it
gets better. Quite the contrary, it gets worse. If you have a bridge
right now which is in serious disrepair, it does not get better by
ignoring it. It only gets worse, and in fact it ends up costing more
money to rebuild it as it deteriorates.
So we have an opportunity right now. We have an opportunity to make
our country more efficient, more productive, and safer by creating a
21st century infrastructure, and at the same time we have an
opportunity to create millions of decent-paying jobs. In many respects,
this is a no-brainer. This amendment is paid for by ending outrageous
corporate loopholes that allow large profitable corporations from
paying any Federal income tax. So I hope we will have wide bipartisan
support for this amendment, which, as I understand it, will be voted on
tomorrow, and I will officially bring it up in about half an hour.
With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I am going to talk about the fifth
annual celebration of Congress Week, sponsored by the Association of
Centers for the Study of Congress. It is a national commemoration which
coincides with the week in which Congress achieved its first quorums in
the year 1789.
Before I do so, let me make a couple of observations on other items
of business in front of the Senate. First of all, we are about to
embark on the annual process of adopting a budget. This Senator had the
privilege as a young Congressman in my first year in the House of being
assigned to the House Budget Committee. That was not long after the
whole apparatus of the Budget Committees were set up requiring Congress
to adopt an annual budget. The original reason for requiring it, and
requiring a process called reconciliation,

[[Page S1700]]

was so a majority vote--instead of what used to be the Senate cutting
off debate at two-thirds, now it is 60 votes to cut off debate--would
be required to pass a budget because of the tough decisions that needed
to be made in lowering a deficit by cutting spending and raising tax
revenue.
But along come the administrations in the early part of the last
decade, and they reversed the process, using reconciliation not to
require the hard votes for Senators and House Members in raising tax
revenue but to do exactly the opposite with a majority vote, instead of
having to reach the 60-vote threshold to cut off debate in the Senate.
So as the decade started, after the administration in 2000
transferred over to the new administration in 2001, with a healthy
surplus, lo and behold the budget, in the course of the next almost
decade, went completely out of whack. Instead of revenues being up and
spending being here on a bar graph--the difference being the surplus of
more coming in each year--it went in exactly the opposite
direction. The tax revenues fell off so significantly because of the
tax policies adopted through that budgetary reconciliation process in
about the year 2001. The tax revenues fell off, the spending increased,
and we went to huge annual deficits.

I don't know what the majority is going to try to use reconciliation
for this time, but this Senator is looking for balance and common sense
and taking care of the needs that government needs to provide--provide
for the national security; provide for those who are the least
fortunate among us; provide for what a society with a big heart like in
America, reflected by the people who are elected in its representative
government--to reflect the American people with a big heart and to keep
our fiscal house in order.
So as we start this process, I think we ought to be listening to
Senator Sanders, the ranking member of the Budget Committee. We ought
to be listening to the members of the Budget Committee. I have served
on that committee up through this last Congress for 14 years. It is an
important process, and it can be effective if it is not misused. That
process was misused when it took us from a position of huge surpluses
in the 1990s, up through 2000, to exactly the opposite, huge annual
deficits.

Airport Security

Madam President, I wish to mention another item I had occasion to be
involved in over the weekend. If we go back to the latter part of last
year, there was a 6-month period--if you can believe this--that guns
were being smuggled onto commercial aircraft flying from Atlanta
Hartsfield to New York City, where they were then sold on the streets
in Brooklyn.
We might say: Well, if this criminal ring is selling guns in a State
that does not allow the possession of guns--New York--why wouldn't they
just run them up I-95 in a car or a truck? Because law enforcement was
on to that. So they devised this ingenious scheme where instead they
were bringing the guns into the passenger cabin of a commercial
airliner--not once but over a 6-month period--and hundreds of guns were
transported right in the passenger cabin.
Here is how the scheme worked: One perpetrator would go through TSA
security with an empty knapsack, a backpack. Another perpetrator would
go through security--because there was not an actual check of whether
that airport employee at the Atlanta airport in fact had any
contraband, he could get into the area underneath the aircraft, go up
into the secure area for passengers, go into the men's room, and
transfer the guns to the fellow with the empty backpack who had already
come through security with TSA. They transferred--if you can believe
it--an AK-47. At the time they finally picked up this fellow in
December of last year, he had 16 handguns in his backpack.
Naturally, in our responsibility and as the ranking member of the
commerce committee, I wanted to get into this. What I found is that
they weren't doing those secure checks--like we do when we go through
TSA as a passenger--in the perimeter of the airport for the thousands
of employees who work at the airport. That is how they got the guns in
and then did this scheme of transferring the guns. It is a good thing
the perpetrator was a criminal, not a terrorist, because we can imagine
what it would be like had he been a terrorist.
So what are the airports going to do about it? I would suggest they
ought to take a look at the Orlando airport and also the Miami airport.
This Senator visited the Orlando airport over the weekend. They took
hundreds of entry points at the airport for their employees and boiled
them down to a handful--specifically, 7 entry points for about 6,000
employees at the Orlando airport. They put up the metal detection
devices, the conveyer belt that takes backpacks through the machine,
that looks at their backpacks to see if there is any contraband, et
cetera. So it was not financially prohibitive when they boiled down the
number of entry points for their employees to a manageable number. A
similar thing was done at the Miami airport.
As a result, it has at first blush the appearance that this is a way
of solving the problem. Now, sooner or later, if this kind of scheme
happens in another airport, it is going to be absolutely unacceptable
and intolerable as to what happened in the Atlanta airport.
The question is, What about employees losing their badges and
somebody grabbing the badge and utilizing it? Well, at these screening
points, they swipe their badge, but the officers in that reduced number
of entry points for airport employees are checking the badge, looking
at the picture on the badge and the person with the badge, and then
having the holder of the badge go over and enter a personal
identification number--a PIN number--as another safeguard before going
into the secure area of the airport.
We are going to have to do this. There is no excuse for what happened
in Atlanta.

Congress Week

Madam President, now I would like to speak about this great fifth
annual celebration of Congress Week, and it goes back to when Congress
first started in 1789, the very first quorums this Congress had. The
birth of the Congress was not on a single day or an event, but it was a
process of deliberation in the Federal Government that met in the
spring and summer of 1787. They hashed out the Constitution, which
provided for Congress to convene on March 4, 1789. On that date in New
York City, which was the temporary capital at the time, the first
meeting place of the Congress, cannons fired and church bells rang to
announce the birth of the new Congress, but only a few Members of
Congress had arrived by that date. Weeks passed before the House
achieved its first quorum on April 1, with the Senate not getting a
quorum until 5 days later on April 6. The House and Senate met jointly
on April 6 in the Senate Chamber to count the ballots of the
Presidential electors.
So Congress Week's theme, ``The People's Branch,'' reflects and
emphasizes that Congress is the part of the government designed to be
closest to the people and the most likely to reflect the sentiment of
the people--because it is those of us in the Halls of the House and the
Senate who go back home and are directly reflective and responsible to
our constituencies.
We try to keep historical records of all of this. Our congressional
papers are some of the richest sources for the study of national
affairs, local history, regional issues, and, of course, for American
history. They document the legislative branch, and they document the
history and foreign affairs of the country. It is imperative that we
manage and preserve our own papers for future historical research and
study of democracy.
The Association of Centers for the Study of Congress, founded in
2003, is an independent, nonpartisan alliance of more than 40
organizations and institutions that preserve the papers of Members of
Congress and promote a wide range of programs and research
opportunities related to Congress. James Madison said that an informed
citizenry was the best guarantee that this Nation's great experiment in
representative democracy would work and survive for future generations.
So I want to call Congress Week to the attention of the Senate and to
the Nation's public--awareness of the rich and colorful history of
representative democracy through the institution of

[[Page S1701]]

the United States Congress. I encourage our colleagues to preserve
their records and the history of the individuals who make up this great
institution.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from
Michigan, Ms. Stabenow.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, first I thank the distinguished
Senator from Vermont for his advocacy, passion, and hard work in laying
out what this is all about.
I also appreciate the work of the distinguished chair, even though we
have disagreements on the budget, because this is really an opportunity
we have to create a serious budget--a serious budget that gives every
American a fair shot to work hard and to get ahead and the opportunity
to strengthen the middle class of our country. But that is not what is
happening here.
What America needs is a middle-class budget. Unfortunately, instead,
what we have is a budget that continues to rig the system on behalf of
the wealthy and the well-connected. This budget does not close
corporate tax loopholes or end practices such as inversions that take
our jobs overseas. It doesn't even address the folks who pack up and
leave the country and let taxpayers and workers pay the tab for the
move.

This budget does not help us address our crumbling infrastructure,
which is a burden on our workers and a drag on the economy. Frankly, if
we address that, as our ranking Member has urged, we will create a lot
of good-paying jobs, millions of middle-class jobs.
This budget does not invest in a meaningful way in education and
opportunity for the future, which is the key to equipping our workers
to excel in the global economy we all face, nor does it help make
college tuition more affordable or help the millions of Americans who
are struggling to pay back college loans. Too many young people today,
too many young professionals come out of college and get a job and have
loans that are more than a mortgage would be. They can't afford to even
buy a house as a result of it. This budget needs to address that.
This budget does nothing to address what is happening in terms of
wages for tens of millions of Americans who are working hard every day
trying to hold it together. It does not raise the minimum wage, nor
does it help the millions of working women who are living in poverty.
By the way, half of the women living in poverty could be lifted out of
poverty if we really had equal pay for equal work. That is stunning. We
could address that in this budget resolution.
This budget does not protect our seniors who have worked hard to earn
the security that comes from Medicare and Social Security. We are
talking about a situation where the House, in fact, outrageously is
suggesting doing away with the Affordable Care Act that has a group of
exchanges through which insurance companies have to compete to lower
prices--a whole process of the Affordable Care Act that they want to
eliminate. At the same time, they are proposing to put the same thing
in place for Medicare--take away the universal structure of Medicare
and create a situation that will be unstable and more costly for
millions of seniors.
Finally, this budget calls for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act,
but it does some very interesting things. First of all, it would take
health care coverage, medical care, away from 16.4 million families and
raise taxes on millions of middle-class families right now. At the same
time they are taking away medical care, health coverage, they turn
around and exclude the Affordable Care Act from the process of points
of order that are in this bill that say if there is a point of order--
there can be a point of order against anything that increases the
deficit except for the Affordable Care Act. We are going to exclude
that. Why? Because the Affordable Care Act actually reduces the
deficit, and they admit it in the resolution because they exclude that
from points of order.
So we have a very interesting situation where, on the one hand, this
budget takes away medical care, health care, extra help with closing
what is called the doughnut hole for our seniors under medical, all the
provisions, all the protections for people who already have insurance
who now can't get dropped if they get sick and if they are sick can get
insurance even if they have a preexisting condition, all of the folks
who have their children on their insurance up to age 26, all of the
other protections--gone under this budget. However, they admit that to
do that actually increases the deficit, so they exempt the Affordable
Care Act from that provision.
On top of that, we are talking about millions of Americans who would
have increased costs. So people are going to get increased costs,
increased taxes, increased deficit, and less medical care.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coats). The Senator has used 5 minutes.
Ms. STABENOW. I ask if I may have 1 more minute.
Mr. SANDERS. The Senator may have 2 more minutes.
Ms. STABENOW. I thank my colleague and leader of the Budget
Committee.
We are in this crazy situation where this bill would eliminate health
care for 16.4 million Americans right now, most of whom have not had
the ability to find affordable health care. It would raise their cost,
raise their taxes, raise the deficit, and then at the same time this
bill keeps the revenue and the cost savings from the Affordable Care
Act. This is a pretty nifty trick, I have to tell you. So you lose your
health care, but the revenue that is generated to pay for health
services stays in the baseline. They are counting the revenue, they are
counting the cost savings in this budget. They are counting the savings
and taking away your health care. Not a good deal. I would suggest that
is a very, very bad deal.
This is not honest budgeting. It certainly is not a budget that puts
middle-class families first or those who are working very hard--one
job, two jobs, three jobs--trying to lift themselves up to get into the
middle class for themselves and their families.
It is not just irresponsible budgeting; it is irresponsible governing
to create a document that hurts so many people in the priorities that
are set--low-income people, middle-income people, those struggling hard
and working hard to get into the middle class--but protects the
interests of privileged Americans. This is a budget rigged for the
wealthy and well-connected of the country, and I would urge a ``no''
vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. I thank Senator Stabenow not only for her remarks this
evening but for the great work she has done on the Budget Committee,
and I certainly concur with the thrust of what she is saying. Our
middle class is struggling, and the wealthiest people are doing
phenomenally well. Corporations are enjoying recordbreaking profits.
CEOs make 270 times more than their average worker.
We don't need a budget that protects the top one-tenth of 1 percent
and the CEOs of major corporations. We need a budget that protects
working families and the middle class. I know that is something Senator
Stabenow has been fighting for throughout this entire process, and I
thank the Senator very much for that.

Amendment No. 323

(Purpose: To create millions of middle class jobs by investing in our
nation's infrastructure paid for by raising revenue through closing
loopholes in the corporate and international tax system)

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 323, which is at
the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], for himself and Mr.
Wyden, proposes an amendment numbered 323.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading
of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of
Amendments.'')
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me just reiterate what I said a
moment ago. The wealthiest people in this country are doing
phenomenally well. Ninety-nine percent of all new income created in
America today is going to the top 1 percent. Those people are

[[Page S1702]]

doing great. They don't need the help of the Senate. They are doing
just fine. The top one-tenth of 1 percent own almost as much wealth as
the bottom 90 percent. Those people are doing extraordinarily well.
They do not need the help of the Senate.
The people who do need the help are the working families and the
middle class of this country, many of whom are working longer hours for
lower wages. They, in fact, need our help. Seniors who are having to
make the difficult choice of whether they heat their homes in the
winter, buy the medicines they need, or buy the food they need, need
our help. Young people in this country who would love to go to college
but don't know how they can afford to go to college need our help.
People graduating college with $50,000, $60,000, $100,000 of debt and
don't know how to pay off that debt need our help.
We have to get our priorities right. We have to know whose side we
are on.
The amendment I am offering, which I suspect will be voted on
tomorrow, is very significant in that it addresses two major issues. At
a time when real unemployment in this country is not 5.5 percent--if we
count those who have given up looking for work--and I believe the
Presiding Officer touched on that issue during her remarks--if we count
those who have given up looking for work or those who are working part
time when they want to work full time, real unemployment is 11 percent.
We need to create millions of jobs. Youth unemployment is at 17
percent. African-American youth unemployment is off the charts. Right
now, when we talk to people all over this country, they say: Help us.
Create decent-paying jobs.
That is what this amendment does. This amendment creates 9 million
decent-paying jobs over a 6-year period, and it does it in a very
sensible way.
Mr. President, I think you know, I know, and every Member of this
body knows and virtually every American knows our infrastructure is
crumbling. Our roads, our bridges, our water systems, our wastewater
plants, our levies, our dams, our airports, and our rail system are in
need of significant improvements. We cannot be a first-rate economy
when we have a third-rate infrastructure. Everybody knows that.
Let me be very clear. If we don't invest in infrastructure today, it
is not going to get better all by itself. It will only deteriorate. We
keep pushing it off, and we keep pushing it off, and the roads get
worse, the bridges get worse, and the water systems get worse. Now is
the time to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, and when we do that,
we will create or maintain some 9 million good-paying jobs. I would
hope that maybe once around here we can have bipartisan support for a
piece of legislation that I believe in their hearts every Member of
this body knows makes sense.
How are we going to pay for this? We are not going to pay for it by
cutting Medicare. We are not going the pay for it by cutting Pell
grants. We are not going to pay for it by cutting Head Start. We are
not going to pay for it by asking low-income seniors to pay more for
their prescription drugs. We are going to pay for it by an eminently
fair way; that is, by undoing huge tax loopholes that enable large,
profitable corporations in some cases to pay zero in Federal income
taxes. It is time to end those loopholes. It is time to invest in our
crumbling infrastructure. It is time to create millions of decent-
paying jobs.
I would hope very much that we would have strong bipartisan support
for this amendment.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. ENZI. 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. ENZI. Mr. President, we have now had our first amendment offered,
one to add more infrastructure. I doubt there is anybody in the
Chamber--even when we are all here--who would doubt that we need to do
things with infrastructure. My infrastructure time actually goes back
to when I was elected mayor of Gillette, WY. It was a boom town. We
didn't know how big it was going to increase. We knew we were already
short of sewer, water, electricity, streets, sidewalks, not to mention
police, garbage, and all the other things that come with it. The
infrastructure was sorely lacking. In fact, one of the first calls I
got was from a person who said: What are you going to do when your
substation blows up? I had to ask what a substation was, and then I
would have to ask why it would blow up. When it gets to 110 percent of
capacity--or the first warm day--it ought to blow up. If that happened,
the consequence of that was the people at Gillette would have been
without electricity for about 6 weeks. I think in this day and age if a
company went without electricity for 6 weeks, a person would be tarred
and feathered. So I understand infrastructure and the need for it.

The Federal Government never once offered to do any infrastructure
for me, and we didn't need them to either. But there are things the
Federal Government has taken the responsibility for and that we need to
make sure are funded and taken care of and repaired, and I am sure both
sides of the aisle want to do that.
The title of this amendment sounds great, but when you get down into
the details, there are some problems. The budget resolution has a
deficit-neutral reserve fund for infrastructure and envisions that
Congress will fully fund transportation priorities to strengthen our
crumbling infrastructure with a new highway bill in May.
I have been here long enough to know we always do that. It is not
very difficult to get the votes together to pass a highway bill. The
difficulty, of course, is coming up with the money, but there is a
deficit-neutral reserve fund established to allow the flexibility to
get that to happen. It provides a mechanism so a bill can move. It
allows authorizers to find new revenue or offsets to extend the life of
the highway trust fund.
The Senate budget resolution strives to maintain a well-functioning
national transportation system, a core element of the U.S. economy,
which helps hard-working Americans while reducing lower priority items
that do not contribute to a national transportation network and should
be handled in a local way.
Our Nation's system of roads and bridges has deteriorated and is in
desperate need of repair. Everyone here is fired up about the issue
because we have all experienced these infrastructure deficiencies. We
have seen bridges collapse. We have seen some of the deterioration of
the roads. We have all been frustrated with traffic, bottlenecks and
potholes.
Today, there are more than 1 million miles of roads eligible for
Federal aid and more than 60,000 bridges are structurally deficient.
However, the highway trust fund is bankrupt. Each year trust fund
spending outpaces the revenues from the gas tax by about $14 billion
and that gap is growing. To compensate for funding shortfalls, the
trust fund has required large transfers totaling $65 billion since
2008, $62 billion of which came from the general fund of the Treasury.
We didn't use to have to do that. Usually the gas tax provided a big
enough fund that we were able to increase the number of dollars spent
on infrastructure.
When the Bowles-Simpson group met, their suggestion was that the gas
tax--the user fee for cars using the highways--needed to be raised a
nickel a gallon for each of three consecutive years. Unfortunately,
that was about 5 years ago, and they predicted the money would run out
before now if we didn't make that kind of a raise. There have been
several things that have been proposed, but we never had a vote on any
of them.
A one-time cash infusion from a corporate tax increase does not do
anything to take care of the discrepancy between spending and revenues
that results in the highway trust fund insolvency. We do need a long-
term highway trust fund solution rather than another short-term fix
that kicks the can down the road. A corporate tax increase is not a
long-term solution for the problems of the highway trust fund.
I have been interested in the international tax piece, and that is
the part the President hung his hat on for the infrastructure piece.
The way that works is to mandate a 14-percent tax on all of the money
that is overseas. I didn't really see any clause in there

[[Page S1703]]

that allowed that to be paid over any kind of a period of time. We
didn't need all of that revenue right in the first year.
I did an international tax piece that had a much lower repatriation
fee on it and it was not mandatory. The difficulty of making it not
mandatory is it doesn't score so it does not show any money coming back
because nobody has to bring it back. They have to declare everything
upfront and agree to pay the tax over a period of 5 years if they were
going to bring it back. There would be 5 years of revenue from this
repatriation of funds, even at a lower rate, which could fund what we
are talking about here, or it could fund the other needs that have to
be done in tax reform.
The way the budget is written, that is left up to the individual
committees to come up with the solutions they need. It is not up to us
here on the floor doing a budget where we have a mixture of people from
all of the committees, but not the kind of structure we have in the
specific committees to come up with the final solution for it. There
has to be a solution, and I know it can be made, but it can't be done
so that it bankrupts the companies. If we take the tax that is overseas
and impose a 14-percent tax on it that has to be paid this year, we
will bankrupt almost every company that is out there, and the reason is
they don't just have that money sitting over there; it is being used
over there. They have to be able to sell off or reclaim whatever money
they have in order to be able to pay any taxes on the money they have
overseas. And that needs to be done, because if we can find a way for
companies to bring their money back to the United States, they will
invest it in the United States and it will grow the economy and we will
have more jobs.
Incidentally, the best way to take care of most of these problems is
to grow the economy, which is the opposite of what this administration
is doing. It fascinated me that in the President's budget he said if we
could grow the economy by just 1 percent, it would result in $4
trillion in taxes. But everything I saw in there were ways to change
that back so we didn't grow the economy the 1 percent to raise $4
trillion.
I had the Congressional Budget Office look at it, and they said a 1-
percent increase in the economy would raise $3 trillion, so we have a
small deficit difference, but that is a lot of money any way you look
at it, whether it is the CBO's estimate or the President's estimate.
Some of Senator Sanders' tax reform ideas have merit, but it should
be dealt with within the context of the comprehensive tax reform and
the highway bill. These tax policies have nothing to do with
infrastructure and will force transportation spending even further away
from the user-pays principle we have always had until recently when we
started tapping some of the other trust funds.
The U.S. tax code is overly complicated, inefficient, and archaic. I
think we all agree it needs to be fixed, and I believe Senator Hatch
and Senator Wyden are on a path to do that. Both have taken a look at
it very extensively and have been working on it for quite a while.
Senator Hatch was working on it with Senator Baucus before Senator
Wyden became the chairman. I think the two of them are still working on
it, and that is how it needs to be done. It is complicated, it is
inefficient, it is archaic, it is too big, and it is not fair.
The current structure hurts economic growth, it frustrates working
Americans, and it pushes American businesses overseas. Any discussion
of international or corporate tax reform should be dealt with in the
context of a comprehensive tax reform to simplify the entire system. We
should not drag tax reform into the highway funding debate. One of the
tendencies we have around here is to come up with some very simple
solutions that, as a solution, sound like a really good idea, but when
we get into the details, there are a whole bunch of complexities that
result in unintended consequences that can foul up the whole system,
and that is one of the things that something as complex as our tax
system can do if we try to write that as a budget resolution.
The budget resolution assumes the tax-writing committees will adopt a
tax reform proposal that reduces marginal rates but broadens the tax
base to create a fairer, efficient, competitive, progrowth tax regime
that is revenue neutral, and I look forward to their work. I am on that
committee so I will get to be a part of that work. One of the areas I
am particularly interested in is, of course, small business.
I was in small business for a long time. My wife and I had shoe
stores. If you have a small business corporation, you pay the taxes on
the money you make in that given year, even though you still need to
keep it invested in the business if you are going to keep the business
going. Those are called the passthrough businesses, so we have to be
careful that when we fix the corporate tax structure, we don't ruin the
small business tax structure at the same time. That is a major
complication, but when you get into the details of that, it gets even
more complicated.
I am hoping we do both corporate and individual at the same time. I
have listened to Senator Sanders talk about and mention a number of
corporations that didn't pay taxes and even got some money back, and my
first reaction to that is that is terrible; it should not happen in
America. But after I looked at it, I thought if they had really
violated the law, they would be in jail. They didn't violate the law.
They used the tax laws we have now, which shows why we need to have tax
reform.
I am in favor of tax reform and eliminating loopholes. I had an
opportunity to look at a number of the tax expenditures. I know some of
the businesses that were listed as tax expenditures actually wound up
getting a different name for the same thing they get to write off that
every other business gets to write off, and so we have to be careful
that when we eliminate those that we are not moving into another
category because one of the tax breaks I looked at, if we eliminated
it, it would allow them to write their expenses off much faster than
how they agreed to write them off. So it is more complicated than it
seems on the surface.
I am hoping we can eliminate some of that complication and eliminate
some of those loopholes. I hope we can use some of the money for
infrastructure and the rest for the simplification and fairness of it.
Fairness is very important, and that is why we have the committee
structures the way we do too so we can have people looking at the
issues from both sides to make sure there is fairness in the eyes of as
many people as possible. When we start tinkering with the tax code in
very small ways, that is how we wind up with these unfairness issues
that appear in there. Helping out one sector can sometimes be adverse
to another sector, but we don't realize it until the actual action
takes place.
I am looking forward to the debate on infrastructure. It is my
understanding we will vote on that sometime tomorrow around noon and
that gives us an opportunity to have more debate on it.
In the meantime, I think we can probably come up with some
commonsense solutions that could be worked through the committee, which
was what was always envisioned in our budget.
I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of the time.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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