[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 184 (Thursday, December 17, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8765-S8768]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FINANCE COMMITTEE ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, as we count down the remaining days on the
2015 legislative calendar, there is still quite a bit of work to do and
a few more big-ticket items to put to bed. Still, even with so much
still on our plates, I believe it is appropriate to take a look back at
the year we are now finishing up and reflect on what we have been able
to accomplish.
Now, 2015 has been a big year in the Senate. After many years of
unproductive division and stagnation, the Senate finally has returned
to work. While some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have
tried to downplay the productivity we have enjoyed under the current
Senate leadership--and the Washington Post Fact Checker awarded them
some Pinocchios for their efforts--no one can seriously argue that
things haven't changed around here.
Under the current Senate majority, the committees have been allowed
to function and work. Under the current Senate majority, we have had
fuller and fairer debates on the Senate floor. Probably most important
of all, under the current Senate majority, the Senate has actually been
doing the people's business. Instead of being bogged down with
divisive, political show votes, we have tackled tough challenges--
including numerous challenges that have plagued this body for many
years--and we have delivered results, usually with a strong bipartisan
majority, which I find to be very heartening.
I am pleased to say this new trend toward efficiency and bipartisan
success has been evident in the Senate Finance Committee, which I have
been privileged to chair since the 1st of January this year. I would
like to take some time to pay tribute to my colleagues on the Finance
Committee and the successes we have enjoyed this year. I will start
with the basics, just some top-line numbers.
In 2015, the Finance Committee held 30 full committee hearings to
discuss various legislative efforts, conduct oversight of the
administration, and to question executive branch nominees. There were
also two subcommittee hearings. We convened 10 separate markups to
consider and report legislation and nominations.
Let's dig a little deeper with the numbers. In terms of legislation,
the Finance Committee moved at a historic pace in 2015, considering and
reporting 37 individual bills. Those are more bills than the committee
reported in the past four Congresses combined and more than any single
Congress in the last 35 years. I just have to reiterate that I am not
comparing 2015 to any single previous year. I am comparing it to the
entirety of past Congresses. We have moved more legislation in just 1
year than the Finance Committee has in any entire Congress in the past
three and one-half decades.
Even more striking is the fact that every one of the 37 bills we
reported this year enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support in the
committee. So far, 9 of those 37 reported bills have been signed or
incorporated into law, and several more are likely to get there before
the end of this week. In addition, three other bills that came through
the Finance Committee were discharged and subsequently signed into law.
However, while these raw numbers may be impressive, they only tell
part of the story. If we take the time to delve into the specifics of
our efforts on the Finance Committee, we will see that we have actually
enjoyed significant successes in each of our major areas of
jurisdiction, including tax, trade, health care, Social Security, and
oversight. I have often spoken about many of our individual
achievements on the Senate floor, but I think they deserve another
mention today.
Trade. I will start by talking about our efforts with regard to
international trade policy. We began 2015 with a desire to advance a
bold and ambitious trade agenda that would update our trade laws for
the 21st century global economy and set the stage for American
leadership in the international marketplace. By any measurable
standard, our efforts have been a smashing success. The centerpiece of
our trade agenda was the legislation to renew trade promotion
authority, or TPA. Prior to this year, it had been nearly three decades
since a TPA bill was fully considered and reported out of the Senate
Finance Committee. Our TPA bill received a strong bipartisan vote in
the committee and another one on the floor. Actually, to be precise, we
had to pass it twice in the Senate, with similar results on both
occasions.
This legislation put in place strong negotiating objectives to ensure
our negotiated trade agreements reflect the collective will of
Congress. It also empowered our negotiators to reach the best deals
possible by providing a path to getting fair up-or-down votes for
future trade agreements, giving our trading partners the assurances
they need to put their best offers on the table. I don't want to go
into too much detail today about any specific trade agreements that may
or may not make their way to Congress in the future. I just want to
point out that the Finance Committee's TPA bill--now a law--will ensure
that we have all the information we need to make an informed decision
on any agreement that Congress has the ultimate say over whether any
agreement enters into force.
In addition to TPA, the Finance Committee developed legislation to
renew some of our most vital trade preference programs, including
preferences for Haiti and countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and the
Generalized System of Preferences, or GSP, Program. These programs are
key tools in our arsenal for assisting developing nations and providing
important benefits for job creators and consumers here at home. The
preference bill was signed into law after getting a near-unanimous vote
in both the House and the Senate.
We also crafted the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, a
bill which will, among other things, authorize the Customs and Border
Protection agency and update our processes and standards for
enforcement at our borders, most notably with regard to the protection
of intellectual property rights, an issue that has long been of
particular interest to me.
This legislation also had a lot of support in the Senate and in the
House. The conference committee, which I chaired, charged with
reconciling the differences between the House- and Senate-passed
versions of the bill, filed its report just this last week. My hope is
that we will consider and pass this conference report as soon as
possible.
International trade is a key element of a healthy U.S. economy. We
have made great strides toward promoting trade and improving global
trade standards already this year--and hopefully we will be able to
make a few more in the very near future.
Entitlement reform. The Finance Committee has also enjoyed
significant success when it comes to entitlement reform, which I think
has surprised many people around here. For years--decades even--we were
told that bipartisan entitlement reform was impossible. The political
stakes, according to the naysayers, were far too high. The parties and
stakeholders, they said, were too entrenched.
Yet, in 2015, we have successfully enacted significant reforms to our
two most ``untouchable'' entitlement reform programs: Medicaid and
Social Security.
In April, Congress passed, and the President signed, legislation
originally drafted and reported out of the Finance Committee in late
2014 to repeal and replace the Medicare sustainable growth rate--SGR--
formula. Although it has been a little while since the bill passed, I
think we all remember the periodic scramble to find short-term offsets
to patch the SGR and kick the can even further down the road. It was,
quite frankly, an embarrassment we forced ourselves to endure year
after year and a prime example of government ineptitude and our
apparent inability to do anything in Congress to fix it.
That all changed this year with the passage of the committee's
legislation, which not only reformed Medicare in terms of the SGR but
also featured cost-saving measures within the underlying program. These
included a limitation on so-called Medigap first-dollar coverage, more
robust means testing for Medicare Parts B and D, and program integrity
provisions that have
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strengthened Medicare's ability to fight fraud.
While we are on the subject of Medicare reform, I will mention that
the Finance Committee also reported the Audit and Appeals Fairness,
Integrity, and Reforms in Medicare--or AFIRM--Act earlier this
year. This bipartisan bill is designed to address the already massive
backlog of Medicare audit appeals while also allowing for increased
efforts to improve program integrity and reduce improper payments out
of the Medicare trust fund. It will make life much easier for both
Medicare beneficiaries and their doctors who, under the status quo,
wait, on average, a year and a half before an appeal is processed and
they are able to know for sure whether their claims will be covered or
if they will be paid for the services they perform.
In addition to these steps forward on Medicare, Congress also
passed--as part of the recent budget and debt-ceiling bill--legislation
to reform the Social Security Disability Insurance Program, or SSDI,
and to prevent benefit cuts looming in the not-too-distant future.
Congress knew for years that the SSDI trust fund would be exhausted
in 2016 and did little to address it. Despite my pleas and those of a
handful of others, they did little to address it. I might add that for
the Obama White House and our friends on the other side of the aisle to
engage on this issue, it took some time. Facing the prospect of across-
the-board benefit cuts for all SSDI beneficiaries, the Finance
Committee developed proposals to extend the life of the trust fund and
put in place needed reforms to the SSDI Program itself. Most of these
proposals were included in the final legislation.
While, admittedly, these reforms are not the fundamental changes both
the SSDI Program and Social Security more broadly need to be
sustainable for future generations, they represented a very real first
step toward that long-term goal and are the most significant changes to
any Social Security Program enacted in the past three decades.
Clearly, much more work needs to be done to put both Medicare and
Social Security on firm fiscal footing. The same is true of Medicaid
and other entitlement reforms. Still, the steps Congress took this year
toward fixing those programs were the biggest we have taken in a long
time. I am pleased to acknowledge that the efforts that led to those
steps began in the Senate Finance Committee.
Highways and Infrastructure. One of the biggest and greatest
successes we have had in the Senate this year was the passage and
enactment of a long-term extension of the highway trust fund. The final
highway bill, which we passed a few weeks ago, provides 5 years of
continuous highway funding, the longest extension of transportation
funding since 1998 and one of the longest since the Reagan years.
Prior to this year, the typical cycle for funding highways went
something like this: Step 1, leaders of Congress recognize and
acknowledge a near-term exhaustion of highway funding. Step 2, those
same leaders work with the relevant committee chairmen to cobble
together enough offsets to pay for a short-term extension, usually
somewhere between 6 and 18 months. Step 3, Congress passes a short-term
extension with little fanfare and absolutely no celebration. Step 4,
every Member of Congress spends the next 6 to 18 months complaining
about this process. Step 5, start again at Step 1.
Thankfully, we broke that cycle this year. We began with a goal to
provide the longest extension possible. I was determined to do all I
could to find a way out of this rut, which is why I believed we had to
think a little outside the proverbial box and look everywhere for
potential offsets.
Generally speaking, the Finance Committee is responsible for the
financing title of any highway bill that goes through the Senate.
Usually, we focus on areas within our jurisdiction as we search for
offsets. But over the years, those resources became harder and harder
to come by, requiring us to look elsewhere.
The committee spent weeks examining numerous options and
alternatives. Many thought we could not come up with much more than
just one 1 or 2 years. Eventually, we were able to present our
distinguished majority leader with a list of potential offsets that
could provide funding for a long-term highway bill without raising
taxes or increasing the deficit.
That list we came up with on the Finance Committee, in large part,
formed the basis of the long-term highway bill that we passed earlier
this month, which has provided much needed certainty for our States as
they plan and complete highway projects, preserving jobs and
stimulating growth in our economy. That long-term Transportation bill
was, after all, a win for good Government and for bipartisanship in
Congress. To a lesser but not insignificant extent, it was also a win
for the Senate Finance Committee.
Tax. The committee also took important steps toward fixing our
Nation's Tax Code in 2015. From the beginning of the year, the Finance
Committee began considering and reporting bipartisan tax legislation
aimed at specific needs for our country. For example, in January, we
reported the Hire More Heroes Act, which relieves small businesses of
burdensome ObamaCare mandates that made it harder for them to hire
veterans. This legislation was signed into law in July.
In February, we held a markup to consider 17 separate tax bills, all
of them bipartisan, all of which passed without objection through the
committee. To date, two of those bills have become law, and, hopefully,
before we adjourn this week we will pass legislation that incorporates
at least 11 more.
Adding those 11 bills to the Finance Committee total, 20 of the 37
bills we reported will have been signed into law. That is a pretty good
batting average, and when you include the bills we discharged from the
committee, the grand total comes to 23 separate bills out of our
committee signed or incorporated into law--not bad for a year's work.
In addition, at the beginning of the year, we launched five separate
tax reform working groups in an effort to advance the larger tax reform
conversation. These working groups, each of them cochaired by a
Republican and a Democrat, spent months examining various areas of the
Tax Code, listening to stakeholders and learning the various pressure
points and tradeoffs that come with any significant changes to our tax
laws. This past summer, each of the five groups released a report
detailing their findings, outlining reform opportunities, and
acknowledging areas of likely disagreement.
I am not naive. I know that tax reform, whenever it happens, will be
a long, difficult process. However, I believe the effort our committee
members put in with these working groups will make a difference in how
that process plays out and how the tax reform debate unfolds in the
future.
While these are important steps for tax policy and tax reform, I am
hoping that we can take an even larger step before we adjourn for the
year. Earlier this week, leaders and tax writers in both the House and
Senate, and from both parties, reached an agreement on legislation that
would provide significant tax relief for millions of families and job
creators around the country. We would do so mostly by unwinding the
near-annual tradition of extending expired tax provisions.
Like the SGR and highway funding, the periodic tax extenders exercise
has been a constant source of consternation around here, with a new
cliff or crisis developing with any hint that expiring provisions would
be not be extended. Sometimes we haven't extended them. And, of course,
the whole ordeal has been further evidence that Congress is incapable
of making tough choices in order to govern more effectively--at least
in the minds of some.
The bill we unveiled this week--which the House passed earlier today
with an overwhelming bipartisan vote--would change that dynamic by
making many of the most important consequential tax provisions
permanent, significantly relieving the ongoing extenders pressure, and
allowing for a more sensible approach to tax policy. I spoke about this
legislation at length on the floor yesterday.
Permanent tax policy, such as the kind we would achieve in our bill,
means more certainty for taxpayers: individuals, families, and
businesses. It means an improved revenue baseline for future tax reform
efforts. More than anything, it means tax relief for hardworking
taxpayers, to the tune of about $680 billion over 10 years.
We moved this effort forward on the Finance Committee in July when we
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marked up the so-called extenders package, taking note of Senators'
priorities and desires for long-term solutions and setting the stage
for a real discussion about permanence. We took that momentum into the
bicameral, bipartisan negotiations, and, ultimately, the bill reflects
many of the preferences expressed in the committee.
Our bipartisan tax bill also contains a 2-year moratorium on the
medical device tax under ObamaCare, something that has been very
harmful to our medical device industry. We will look at that in 2 more
years. For years now, we have seen support grow on both sides of the
aisle for repealing this horrendously misguided tax, the medical device
tax. It has been a top priority of mine since the day ObamaCare was
signed into law. Other Members of the Finance Committee have led on
this issue as well, and one way or another we are going to get it done.
For now, we have a good first step: a bill crafted by both parties to
suspend the tax for 2 years.
Two similar suspensions of ObamaCare taxes are included in the
Omnibus appropriations bill, including a 2-year delay of the so-called
Cadillac tax--which is just a massive middle-class tax hike disguised
as a tax hit on the rich--and a 1-year moratorium on the health
insurance tax.
In other words, on top of permanence in the Tax Code and relief for
taxpayers across the country, we have bipartisan agreement to delay or
suspend some of the more harmful elements of the Affordable Care Act.
It is not a bad way to end the year, if you ask me. Of course, now we
have to pass these bills. In a day or so, I think we will.
Health Care and Human Services. Let me move on to another important
area of our committee's jurisdiction: heath care and human services. We
have been very active in the Finance Committee in this space as well.
Most recently, we worked with our colleagues on the Budget and HELP
Committees to put together the reconciliation legislation repealing
ObamaCare, which, after it passed in the Senate, paved a way toward
finally putting a repeal bill on the President's desk. This is a key
promise for congressional Republicans, one that we delivered on just a
few short weeks ago.
In June, the Finance Committee held a markup where we considered and
reported 12 separate health care bills representing a number of
priorities for our committee Members on both sides of the dais. In
keeping with the ongoing trend for 2015, all of these bills had
overwhelming bipartisan support. So far, three of these bills have been
signed into law.
In addition to these successes, the Finance Committee has spent 2015
engaged in some very important ongoing efforts that we believe will
yield results in the near future. One of those efforts is to improve
Medicare services for patients living with chronic illnesses. We held
two hearings this year to examine this issue. We sought and received
the advice and recommendations of various stakeholders and have
released those recommendations to the public.
The committee's efforts on chronic care reflect a bipartisan desire
to significantly improve the quality of care for Medicare patients at
greater value and lower cost, without adding to the deficit. This work
will go on into next year as we continue to review and analyze
proposals with an aim toward developing bipartisan legislation.
Another one of our ongoing efforts has been to improve our Nation's
foster care system. This year, we held two hearings related to this
topic--one on group homes and another on prevention. Last month,
utilizing what we learned in these hearings and with input from
numerous stakeholders, Ranking Member Wyden and I reached an agreement
on legislation that we called the Family First Act, which will increase
the availability of prevention services to allow children at risk of
going to foster care to remain safely at home and to reduce the
reliance on group homes for children under the foster system.
As we all know, entering the foster care system can be particularly
traumatic for a child. Over the years, we have seen ample evidence
suggesting that placement in group homes significantly increases
children's risks and potential for victimization. Our bill would give
States greater flexibility, with the goal of keeping children with
family members and ending the overreliance on group homes.
The Family First Act is supported by advocates and stakeholders
across the country. We hope to mark up and report this bipartisan
legislation early in the new year.
I also need to acknowledge our committee's oversight efforts. We have
been anxiously engaged in numerous efforts on the Finance Committee to
shine a light on government failures and overreach, as well as some
potentially corrupt practices in the private sector. Most notably, this
summer we concluded our investigation into the IRS's targeting of
conservative groups. This was the only bipartisan investigation into
this scandal, and our report, which was roughly 5,000 pages long,
provided the most detail yet about what went on at the IRS and the
extent of incompetence and bad decisionmaking that led to those
unfortunate events. In addition, the report provided numerous
recommendations for improvement at the IRS and in a number of ways set
the stage for consideration of legislation to reform that agency's
operations.
In addition to the IRS report, the committee has provided the most
rigorous and extensive oversight of the implementation of the so-called
Affordable Care Act, revealing many of its fundamental flaws and
uncovering a number of failures and missteps on the part of this
administration. This has included, for example, an exhaustive look at
the ObamaCare co-ops, which in recent months had been failing at an
alarming rate at the cost of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds.
Needless to say, we haven't taken our eyes off of ObamaCare.
The committee has also been conducting ongoing investigations and
oversight into the questionable contracting practices within the
Department of Treasury. We have taken a good, hard look at the tax
return preparation industry and practices that have led to stolen
identification and tax refund fraud. In fact, our investigation has
already led to new practices at the IRS and within the industry aimed
at reducing instances of this terrible crime.
This is just a small snippet of our oversight efforts over the past
year. The Finance Committee, given its massive jurisdiction, has always
had a reputation for aggressive oversight, and we have continued that
tradition, and then some, in 2015.
Finally, I just want to remark on one more of our ongoing efforts--I
suppose you could put this one in the miscellaneous or multidiscipline
file--with regard to the looming debt crisis in Puerto Rico. We have
taken a close look at this issue in the committee, and we even held a
hearing on it. Along with the leaders on the Judiciary and Energy and
National Resources Committees, we have introduced legislation that--
using the limited information we currently have about Puerto Rico's
dismal predicament--would improve the island's finances and economy by
providing responsible tax relief and transitional assistance to the
territory's government.
In addition, we worked to get a provision in the Omnibus
appropriations bill that authorizes the Treasury Department to provide
Puerto Rico with technical assistance, including help with budgeting,
forecasting, cash management, fiscal planning, improving tax
collections, and the like.
This is something we are going to have to continue to work on, and in
the coming weeks and months the Finance Committee will continue to
consider various proposals--including the bill we introduced last
week--aimed at helping the people of Puerto Rico.
By the way, we challenged Puerto Rico to give us audited financials
so that we could really work on this under the best possible terms. I
intend to see that we help Puerto Rico, and hopefully we can do that.
We have now provided them the means so that they should be able to
carry on through next February, and hopefully during that time we will
come up with some solutions that make sense not only to Puerto Rico but
to our taxpayers and others.
As you can see, we have been very busy and effective in our corner of
the Senate thanks to the diligent efforts of all of our Finance
Committee members. I have had the privilege of serving
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as chairman of this committee during such an eventful and productive
time with so many committed and honorable Members of the Senate on both
sides of the aisle.
I, of course, have to thank Ranking Member Wyden for his work on the
committee. He has been a valuable partner, and at every step of the
way, he has worked hard to ensure that all of the committee's efforts
were bipartisan. He has played a huge leadership role in almost all of
the successes I have mentioned here today.
I also wish to thank the other members of our committee. If you look
down the Finance Committee roster, you will see--from top to bottom--
every member has a reputation for working hard and achieving results.
On the Republican side, we have Senators Grassley, Crapo, Roberts,
Enzi, Cornyn, Thune, Burr, Isakson, Portman, Toomey, Coats, Heller, and
Scott. They are good people who are working in the best interest of
this country. For the Democrats, we have Senators Schumer, Stabenow,
Cantwell, Nelson, Menendez, Carper, Cardin, Brown, Bennet, Casey, and
Warner. And, of course, we have Senator Wyden. And you can also include
me in there. Every one of these members has played a key role in our
success on the Finance Committee, and I am very grateful to have the
opportunity to work with them all.
I don't want this to sound like a farewell speech. I don't want
anybody to think that with all this gushing and all these thank-yous,
we are nearing the end of anything. Last time I checked, I will still
be the chairman of the Finance Committee in 2016 and we are still going
to have this great group of Senators serving on the committee. Most
significantly, our Nation will still be facing a number of important
challenges in the coming year. We can't and we won't be sitting on our
laurels in 2016.
While I am pleased to have this opportunity today to take a short
trip down memory lane, everyone both on and off the Finance Committee
should be prepared: We are just getting started.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
Mr. DONNELLY. Mr. President, as always, it is an honor to follow my
good friend, the President pro tempore, Senator Hatch from Utah, who
has done such an extraordinary job representing his State and our
country for so many years.
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