[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 147 (Wednesday, September 5, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6039-S6040]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                 UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--S. RES. 581

  Mr. MANCHIN. Madam President, today I call for a live unanimous 
consent request on my resolution to protect nearly 800,000 West 
Virginians and millions of Americans from losing their health insurance 
because of their preexisting conditions. This is an immediate danger. 
It is life and death for over 800,000 West Virginians and millions of 
Americans.
  Today oral arguments began in the Texas v. United States lawsuit 
being waged by 20 U.S. attorneys general, including West Virginia's 
attorney general, that will, once again, allow insurance companies to 
have total control to be able to deny health insurance to people with 
preexisting conditions. Now that the Department of Justice has 
recklessly refused to defend the existing law, people with cancer, 
heart disease, asthma, diabetes, or pregnant women are at risk of 
financial and physical duress. Today, we have a chance to help right 
this wrong.
  My resolution, S. Res. 581, will allow the Senate legal counsel to 
intervene and defend West Virginians and Americans with preexisting 
conditions from this inhumane lawsuit. Even my Republican colleagues 
have admitted that millions of Americans will lose their health 
insurance if Republican attorneys general succeed.
  Now, that is something when my own colleagues, over nine of my 
Republican friends in the Senate, have introduced a piece of 
legislation that also acknowledges how destructive this will be.
  In a press release, my good friend from North Carolina, Senator 
Tillis, and nine other Republicans who introduced the bill wrote that 
oral arguments in Texas v. United States will begin today, on September 
5, and if the judge rules in favor of the plaintiffs, protections for 
patients with preexisting conditions could be eliminated. What it 
basically says is, insurance companies will be allowed to determine if 
you are too sick and too costly for them and they can't make enough 
profit or see that there is no end in sight, they will just deny you.
  Four hundred thousand West Virginians will be denied. They couldn't 
even buy insurance if they could afford it. The other 400,000 in West 
Virginia are going to basically have their rates raised or capped. That 
means they are one illness away--one illness away--from financial 
disaster.
  Senator Tillis said this legislation is a commonsense solution. This 
is a commonsense solution. We want to fix it together. We are just 
asking people, who basically believe the same as we all have agreed on 
both sides of the aisle, to ask our attorneys general to stop this 
senseless lawsuit and withdraw it. That would cure the problem 
overnight, but without it, we need to intervene, and we are asking for 
this to happen.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules 
and Administration be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 
581; that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; and that 
the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions 
to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no 
intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hyde-Smith). Is there objection?
  The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, reserving the right to object.
  Right now, there is a court case being heard in Texas on the 
constitutionality of ObamaCare. We are all aware of that.
  In their decision upholding the constitutionality of ObamaCare, the 
Supreme Court said that under the commerce clause alone, ObamaCare 
would be unconstitutional. It was only because of the individual 
mandate, which they saw as a tax, that ObamaCare was upheld.
  Last year, we eliminated the individual mandate in our tax cut, so 
the constitutionality needs to be revisited, which is what these States 
are doing. It would be inappropriate for the Senate to intervene in 
this case.
  Further, this resolution instructs all provisions of ObamaCare to be 
defended, including the medical device tax, the Cadillac tax, the 
health insurance tax, and other provisions that have proven extremely 
unpopular on both sides of the aisle. For that reason, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Madam President, if I could please respond?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia has the floor.
  Mr. INHOFE. I have already objected.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  The Senator from West Virginia has the floor.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Madam President, let me just say that I hear my good 
friend from Oklahoma. I understand where he is coming from. I would 
only say that if that were the intent--and they keep saying Affordable 
Care Act, ObamaCare, TrumpCare, no matter what you want to call it, 
politicizing it--we can fix it. We have a fix. We have had a bipartisan 
fix lying on the majority leader's desk for over a year now--12 
Democrats and 12 Republicans, working together to fix the things we 
talked about.
  One thing we all agreed on is people with preexisting conditions 
should not be left in an inhumane situation where they have nothing to 
count on--no insurance whatsoever. We have been down that road before. 
This is a correction. We have had this.
  Basically, it is against the law for an insurance company to say: 
Listen, you are too sick. You have had high blood pressure. You were 
born with a heart defect. You had cancer when you were 40 years of age, 
and now you are 70; it might return. We don't want to go down that road 
again. That is all we have asked for, and even our Republican 
colleagues agreed with us too.
  If that were the intent, to rule this unconstitutional, then that 
would have been in the tax cut bill. The tax cut bill was the mandate. 
It had nothing to do with the preexisting condition. That is still the 
law. That is still the law of the land. All we are asking is for them 
to withdraw their lawsuit. They withdraw the lawsuit, and it is still 
against the law for any insurance company--if they pass this lawsuit, 
then they are going to be at the hands and the mercy of the insurance 
companies to pick and choose life and death for so many thousands of 
people--millions of people, 800,000 West Virginians. That is all.
  I understand this is a hot topic, but I can tell you one thing, 
healthcare in West Virginia is something that is needed. It is 
something we now have a chance to fix that we haven't. We have opioid 
addiction, and we are able to treat that. Mental illness, we are able 
to treat that. Senior citizens, we are able to help them close the 
doughnut hole. These are a lot of good things we have all agreed on.
  The things we want to fix is what they are harping on, and, 
basically, that can be taken care of and keep the Affordable Care Act 
where it should be, in the hands of the people who need it.
  Right now, we are in jeopardy so I am asking for the consideration. I 
understand the objection, and I understand the process here, but 
basically what we are asking for is for human decency, and it is 
basically the concern of millions of people in America.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, while I have the floor, I want to make 
one comment about the statement that was made by my good friend from 
West Virginia. The States are looking at it now. In some of these 
areas, preexisting conditions, the Senator is correct; there is a broad 
support for this. For that reason, various States are now looking at 
it.
  I want to share something, since I have the floor. We have had an 
exciting day with the addition of a new Member, Jon Kyl. I want to 
mention one thing about Senator Kyl. Many years ago, Senator Kyl and I 
were actually elected to the House of Representatives on the same day, 
and we were elected to the Senate on the same day.
  I remember so well, many years ago, when I was first elected to the 
House, it happened that my father--I lived in Iowa at that time, and 
Jon's father was a Member of Congress. So the first thing he said to me 
was, when you get elected, go over and meet a guy named Jon Kyl. Never 
did I dream we would go through all of this, and we would be meeting 
again for the third time in another election.
  He will be a great addition. Everyone knows that no one can fill the 
shoes of

[[Page S6040]]

our good Senator, John McCain, but certainly there is no one who comes 
closer than Jon Kyl, having served with Senator McCain for 20 years.
  I had an experience that I want to share this afternoon, something 
that happened in church on Sunday. On Sunday, I was at a church. It is 
a little rural church in Oklahoma called Church On The Lake. A guy 
named Mark Deckard is the pastor there. This is not my church. In fact, 
my wife and I, our church is the First Presbyterian Church in Tulsa. 
That is the church she and I were married in a number of years ago, 
where all of our kids were married, and where all of our kids were 
baptized. My wife was baptized there over 80 years ago. So no one is 
closer to that church than we are, but occasionally I will go to 
another church.
  Nobody actually knew I was going to be at this church last Sunday. I 
want to share an experience I had. A lady whom I didn't know came up to 
me. Her name is Lois Keene. She asked: Would you give this letter to 
President Trump? I don't think there is a Member of the Senate or the 
House who doesn't get this request quite often. It sounds quite easy to 
do, but it is not easy to do. After I read the letter, I decided this 
is something I really want to do.
  She asked: Would you give this letter to President Trump?
  I said: Is it OK if I read it?
  And I read it. It was a letter supporting him, recognizing--and this 
is someone from Afton, OK. It is so obvious to her what the press has 
done unmercifully to this President. I have never seen anything like 
it. She has never seen anything like it, and so she had something she 
wanted to give to me defending the President.
  I read it, and I said: You know, I have to say that these are not the 
words I would use. If I were defending the President, I would say--
because to get people's attention, when you have an unfriendly media, 
you have to simplify it so everyone understands it. So I said I would 
normally just talk about three issues.
  No. 1, the economy. Our economy right now at this time, we have not 
seen anything like it in 40 years. There are two indicators that you 
look at, one is economic growth. The economic growth during the last 
quarter actually exceeded 4 percent. It has been averaging over 3 
percent. During the Obama years, for 8 years, it averaged 1.5 percent--
1.5 percent growth--as opposed to at least doubling that or maybe three 
times that.
  Now, why is this important? It is important because for every 1 
percent increase in economic activity, what that does is bring in new 
revenue equaling about $2.9 trillion over 10 years. What does that tell 
you? It tells you that when we are now going through and rebuilding the 
military and all of these things, the infrastructure, these are things 
we need to do, and they are going to cost money. That indicator is 
there. Then, also, there is the indicator in terms of employment. Our 
unemployment right now has actually dipped below 4 percent. Economists 
always say 4 percent is full of employment, and so we have that.
  The economy just couldn't be better than it is. It is undeniable, and 
yet nobody talks about it. The media doesn't talk about it.
  The second thing I would say is that everyone knows now what happened 
during the 8 years. I don't criticize former President Obama. He is 
what I call a real honest liberal. He is not a closet liberal. He comes 
out and says it. He believes we need to have more of a socialist 
society. We have lived through that. Someone with that belief is not 
going to be real strong in terms of building the military. We have gone 
through this military thing for about 8 years, and now we are 
defending--we passed the Defense bill, which we named after John 
McCain. That Defense bill is putting us back on the road for a strong 
national defense.
  People think erroneously that America has the best of everything, and 
they don't. Right now, we have gotten to the point where our--a lot of 
our systems--our triad system, for example, which is the modernization 
system, both China and Russia have one now that is better than ours.
  Our artillery systems--you measure our artillery by the range and by 
rapid fire, and we are outgunned by both Russia and China in those 
areas. We know what has happened.
  Right now, we are at the point where we have actually confirmed 26 
appellate judges just in the short term that this President has been 
in. So I would be talking about that, but that is not what she said.
  It is true, and her observation is true, that it doesn't go unnoticed 
by people when you have the media that is really not treating the 
President right.
  By the way, I was a victim of this too. In fact, during the McCain 
discussion, after McCain's life was lost, several times on the floor I 
talked about the fact that way back in 1994, when I ran for U.S. 
Senate, there were only three Senators who came out to Oklahoma to 
help, and one of them was John McCain. He came out twice. We flew all 
over in my little airplane in about 100 degrees, and he campaigned for 
me. So he has been a good friend. Yet, by responding to one of the 
major medias in a way that I made some comment about the fact that we 
have two individuals, Senator McCain and President Trump, who just 
don't have a good relationship--everybody knows that--they tried to 
turn that into something that was negative that they wanted people to 
believe that I said. In fact, I was in St. Louis between flights, at 
about 10 o'clock at night, and shortly after that, someone jumped all 
over me and was convinced that I had said something negative, and it 
just flat was not true.

  So, anyway, I would like to read the letter before I tell you that I 
am going to try to pass this on to the President.
  So I read it. As I read the letter, there was a group, as can happen 
after a sermon takes place and people are all sitting around talking, 
and every head nodded with approval of this letter that this lady gave 
me. Here it is right here. That is her handwriting there. The letter 
says:

       Dear President Trump,
       I am writing this letter to encourage you. All across 
     America God's people are praying for you. With all my heart I 
     know God put you in office for such a time as this. He has 
     given America a window of time. At this time there is a 
     spiritual war going on for the soul of America. Good versus 
     evil. That is why there is so much opposition against you and 
     the Christian people.
       You have so many, many people praying for you. Stand 
     strong. I know you are a warrior or God would not have placed 
     you in office. You will continue to come against opposition 
     because the enemy (Satan) will continue to fight you as he 
     will God's people. The stakes are high!
       As God's warrior, continue to fight. We are fighting the 
     battle with you on our knees. Many battles are won on our 
     knees. Thank you for being our leader and our President! Our 
     love is with you.
       Yours in Christ,
       Lois Keene
       Afton, OK

  So I would just say to the President: You are being butchered by the 
media. Everybody knows that. But keep in mind that America is full of 
Lois Keenes and they love you.
  With that, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________