[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 16316-16329]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           EXECUTIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

  NOMINATION OF RICHARD F. GRIFFIN, JR., TO BE GENERAL COUNSEL OF THE 
                     NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination which 
the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Richard F. 
Griffin, Jr., of the District of Columbia, to be General Counsel of the 
National Labor Relations Board.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will be 2 
minutes of debate equally divided in the usual form prior to a vote on 
the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination.
  Who yields time? The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, we are getting ready to vote to end 
debate. This is a cloture vote on the nomination of Richard Griffin to 
serve as general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board. As I 
stated yesterday, this is an important role for making sure the NLRB 
can do its job.
  This summer, as we know, we voted to fill the Board with the 
requisite number of Republicans and Democrats on the Board. I thought 
that was a good vote. This is the one left over; that is, the general 
counsel position. Mr. Griffin is very well qualified. He has been 
thoroughly vetted.
  I have received absolutely not one objection to his qualifications or 
his background. He has had 30 years' experience as a labor lawyer and 
he deserves strong bipartisan support. I urge my colleagues to vote for 
cloture so we can get to the vote later today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I am not going to vote to confirm Mr. 
Griffin because I think his nomination to be general counsel to the 
Board does not do anything to keep it from moving toward advocacy 
instead of being an umpire. But I do think it is time to close the 
debate and have an up-or-down vote. I am going to vote yes on cloture.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the cloture motion 
having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to 
read the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination of 
     Richard F. Griffin, Jr., of the District of Columbia, to be 
     General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board.
         Harry Reid, Brian Schatz, Barbara Boxer, Carl Levin, Bill 
           Nelson, Jeff Merkley, Robert P. Casey, Jr., Debbie 
           Stabenow, Mark R. Warner, Tammy Baldwin, Jeanne 
           Shaheen, Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Mark Udall, Tom Udall, 
           Michael F. Bennet, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Ron 
           Wyden.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
nomination of Richard F. Griffin, Jr., of the District of Columbia to 
be General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board shall be 
brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 62, nays 37, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 221 Ex.]

                                YEAS--62

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Flake
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Johnson (SD)
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCain
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--37

     Barrasso
     Boozman
     Burr
     Chambliss
     Chiesa
     Coats
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Cornyn
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Enzi
     Fischer
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson (WI)
     Kirk
     Lee
     McConnell
     Moran
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Inhofe
       
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and 
sworn having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
  Pursuant to S. Res. 15 of the 113th Congress, there will now be 8 
hours of debate on the nomination equally divided in the usual form.
  The Republican whip.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, in the aftermath of the battle over the 
continuing resolution and the debt ceiling, I am sure I am not alone in 
hearing from my constituents they are hoping that Democrats and 
Republicans can now work together on some of the most important and 
chronic problems that challenge our country. But instead of doing that, 
my friends across the aisle have taken this opportunity to engage in 
what can only be described as a power grab that will result in even 
more polarization and partisan acrimony here in Washington.
  What I am talking about specifically is the effort of the President 
and Democratic leadership to pack the District of Columbia Court of 
Appeals. For those who may not follow the Federal court system, America 
has 13 different Federal appellate courts, but the D.C. court stands 
out as the most powerful in the country. Some have called it the second 
most important court in the Nation because it has jurisdiction over a 
variety of regulatory and constitutional matters. Whether it relates to 
Dodd-Frank in financial services, to ObamaCare and its implementation, 
or to national security matters, all of those types of cases get heard 
in the D.C. Circuit Court. No other appellate court in the Nation 
wields such vast influence over hot-button issues, ranging, as I said, 
from health care to the Environmental Protection Agency and its 
activities, which I know are as important to the Presiding Officer as 
they are to me, as well as gun rights and the war on terrorism.
  President Obama argues the D.C. Circuit Court needs three more judges 
in order to get its work done, but the facts simply don't bear that 
out. That is not true. For example, between 2005 and 2013, the D.C. 
Circuit's total number of written decisions per active

[[Page 16317]]

judge actually went down by 27 percent. The number of appeals filed 
with the court fell by 18 percent. So instead of having more work to 
do, it has less work to do than it did in 2005.
  As one commentator has observed: The D.C. Circuit already has the 
lowest caseload in the Nation and, if anything, trends show their 
workload is decreasing--decreasing, going down--not up.
  Indeed, one D.C. Circuit Court judge recently told the senior Senator 
from Iowa that if any more judges were added now, there wouldn't be 
enough work to go around. So one might wonder why then the President 
and Senator Reid would want to pack the D.C. Circuit Court with three 
additional judges if there is not enough work to go around today.
  Let me also note the D.C. Circuit Court has a unique record in that 
it actually took 4 months off between May and September of this year. 
That is hardly the record of a court that has too much work to do and 
simply can't get it done.
  Meanwhile, there are courts across our country, both appellate courts 
and district courts, that are overburdened. Some of these courts are 
labeled as judicial emergencies because they simply have such a heavy 
caseload they can't get the work done. Why wouldn't we want to allocate 
more judicial resources, more help, to those courts that need the help 
rather than to pack the D.C. Circuit Court with judges it simply 
doesn't need?
  Don't just take my word for it. Prominent Democratic leaders have 
actually made no secret of what is happening here. One might wonder 
what the rationale is, if there is not enough work to do. Why would 
Senator Reid and other Democratic leaders want to add new judges to a 
court that doesn't have enough work to do? Well, back in March, the 
senior Senator from New York, Senator Schumer, said the following of 
the D.C. Circuit judges:

       Here's what they have done in the last year: They have 
     overturned the EPA's ability to regulate existing coal plants 
     . . . They have rendered the SEC impotent by saying that the 
     SEC can't pass rulings unless they do what is called a cost-
     benefit analysis . . . They have ruled that recess 
     appointments couldn't be taken into account.

  Senator Schumer also said:

       We will fill up the DC circuit one way or another.

  Well, I disagree with Senator Schumer's characterization on some of 
these cases, but it is true the D.C. Circuit Court has a unique role in 
American jurisprudence in deciding some very important cases for the 
entire country. There are administrative agencies that are part of the 
executive branch, and when they make decisions--whether it relates to 
financial services, the Environmental Protection Agency, Health and 
Human Services, or any administrative agency--those decisions typically 
get decided and reviewed by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
  More recently, the majority leader put it this way when he said:

       We're focusing very intently on the D.C. Circuit. We need 
     at least one more. There's three vacancies. We need at least 
     one more and that will switch the majority.

  So this isn't about the efficient administration of impartial 
justice. This is about stacking the court by changing the majority. 
That was a quote from the majority leader of the Senate. So there is no 
mystery about what is going on here. The majority leader and his allies 
are attempting to pack the court with judges who will rubberstamp their 
big-government agenda.
  The majority leader is also threatening to use the nuclear option 
again unless Senate Republicans simply snap to attention and salute 
smartly. Well, that is not going to happen. In simple terms, Democrats 
are prepared to violate the Senate's own rules to help flip the D.C. 
Circuit in favor of the Obama administration's aggressive 
administrative overreach. If these tactics succeed, the Senate will be 
weakened as an institution and the Nation's second highest court will 
be transformed into a far-left ideological body.
  But I will remind my colleagues that what goes around comes around in 
the Senate. When Republicans control the Senate and we have a 
Republican in the White House, I warn my colleagues the same rules they 
put into effect with the nuclear option will be used to their 
disadvantage then. We shouldn't do it. We shouldn't go there.
  But it is clear what the motivation is. Again, this is not about the 
efficient administration of impartial justice. This is about getting 
your way and getting a rubberstamp on the actions of regulatory 
overreach that are far too common here in Washington, DC.
  It is true the D.C. Circuit Court has ruled against the Obama 
administration and its regulatory agencies, but it is also true they 
have affirmed many of the most important and far-reaching decisions of 
the Obama administration's regulatory agencies. One example where it 
ruled against the administration is in 2011, when it struck down the 
``proxy access'' rule of the Securities and Exchange Commission by 
declaring the agency failed to conduct a cost-benefit analysis required 
by law before adopting the regulation.
  I don't know about anyone else, but I wish the government would do 
more cost-benefit analyses, not less, and so I am glad the D.C. Circuit 
Court struck down that rule because of the failure of the Securities 
and Exchange Commission to conduct a cost-benefit analysis.
  In another example last year, the court vacated the cross-State air 
pollution rule of the Environmental Protection Agency, noting it would 
``impose massive emissions reduction requirements'' on certain States 
``without regard to the limits set by the statutory text.''
  In other words, they acted beyond their congressional authorization. 
This was also an example, in Texas--Texas got swept into this cross-
State air pollution rule without even an opportunity to be heard and to 
offer competing analyses of the models the Environmental Protection 
Agency used. No matter how committed we all are to clean air, we should 
not sanction an administrative agency run amok, doing what is not 
authorized by the statutory text.
  The D.C. Circuit has also rejected as unconstitutional a pair of 
appointments the President made to the National Labor Relations Board. 
Talk about overreach. This is where the President tried to trump the 
confirmation powers of the U.S. Senate in the Constitution--the power 
of advice and consent, it is called--by making unconstitutional so-
called recess appointments. The D.C. Circuit called him on it and held 
that it was unconstitutional.
  More recently, the court held that the President's Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission was simply flouting the law. Do we not want a court to call 
the President when administrative agencies are simply flouting the law 
if we are a nation of laws? In this case, they flouted the law by 
delaying a decision on whether to use Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste 
repository.
  These were all commonsense decisions, and you can probably tell from 
my comments that I think they were well grounded in the law and the 
facts and I agree with the decision. In that case, they all went 
against the Obama administration's preferred position, but it is true 
that the D.C. Circuit has also ruled in favor of the administration's 
position in a number of cases. Again, here is an EPA decision. Since 
2012, Jeremy Jacobs reports, the Agency has won 60 percent of the cases 
that have been reviewed by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In 60 
percent of the lawsuits where the Environmental Protection Agency has 
been taken to court for exceeding its authority, 60 percent of the time 
the EPA position has prevailed. That is a better performance than the 
EPA had at the circuit during George W. Bush's administration. In 
particular, the EPA has scored landmark victories related to greenhouse 
gas regulations, ethanol-blended gasoline, and mountaintop-removal coal 
mining. But beyond energy and environmental issues, the D.C. Circuit 
Court has upheld President Obama's Executive order regarding embryonic 
stem cell research on two separate occasions, in 2011 and 2012.
  Again, these are not my preferred outcomes, but I think they 
demonstrate that the D.C. Circuit Court

[[Page 16318]]

has learned to strike a balance and certainly is not pro-administration 
or anti-administration. It epitomizes what a court should be, which is 
an impartial administrator of justice. Again, this same court upheld 
the Affordable Care Act in 2011, ruling that the individual health 
insurance mandate was constitutional under the commerce clause. We know 
what happened when it got to the U.S. Supreme Court. They had a 
different view.
  It demonstrates the kind of judicial restraint that the current D.C. 
court, balanced as it is with four nominees by a Republican President 
and four nominees by a Democratic President--how it has administered 
evenhanded justice, which would be destroyed if the President is 
successful and if Senator Reid is successful in packing this court with 
three more of their liberal allies. As I said, this court is currently 
split right down the middle. Four of the active judges were appointed 
by a Republican President and four were appointed by a Democratic 
President. Yet it is clear that the D.C. Circuit Court is in the 
crosshairs of the majority leader and his Democratic allies, including 
the President, because they want to tilt the court in their direction--
a more liberal, bigger government direction, one that is more 
deferential to administrative agencies, such as the Environmental 
Protection Agency and other agencies that refuse to take into account a 
cost-benefit analysis, which we ought to have more of, not less.
  The truth is that there is an answer to this standoff in terms of the 
court-packing President Obama and Senator Reid are attempting. There 
actually is a way to reallocate these unneeded seats from the D.C. 
Circuit Court of Appeals to other courts that actually need the judges, 
unlike this court that has the lightest caseload of any circuit court 
in the Nation.
  Senator Grassley, the senior Senator from Iowa, has offered a 
reasonable compromise which would allow several of President Obama's 
appellate nominees to be approved for district courts or courts of 
appeals where they are actually needed. In other words, President Obama 
would still get to pick them; he would just have to pick them for 
courts where they would actually have enough work to do and where they 
are needed.
  Again, based on current caseloads, the D.C. Circuit Court does not 
need new judges, but other appellate courts really do. I would think 
that during a time when judgeships are constrained after the Budget 
Control Act, when discretionary spending is down, and when the courts 
need more resources allocated, we would want to allocate the resources 
to courts and to jurisdictions where they are actually needed, not to 
places where they are not needed.
  For all these reasons and more, I hope Members of both parties will 
agree that the reasonable way to do it would be to pass the Grassley 
bill, the Grassley compromise to reallocate these judges to the places 
where they are really needed and to prevent the stacking of this court 
and this reckless power grab.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.


                            Superstorm Sandy

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I rise today in recognition of the 1-
year anniversary of Superstorm Sandy's landfall in the Northeast and 
the destruction it brought on a ruinous path through Connecticut, New 
York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. I will be joined today on the 
floor--and I ask unanimous consent that we be permitted to engage in a 
colloquy--by my colleague from New York, Senator Schumer, and from 
Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, if there is no objection.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I can scarcely capture in words the 
awesome, monstrous power of this storm as it hit the Northeast as I 
traveled there. I was near the coastline of Connecticut, traveling some 
of the roads in the midst of this storm as it ripped through my State, 
tearing apart communities along the coast, destroying homes and 
businesses, displacing families, and forever altering the shoreline 
itself. Anybody who questions the power of nature at its most 
destructive should have seen this storm as it unfolded and the damage 
it left in its wake--in fact, in Connecticut, $770 million in damages.
  What I remember from touring Connecticut is not only the size and 
magnitude of the destruction but also the resilience and strength of 
Connecticut's people as they struggled through the pain and anguish of 
coping with this devastation, wondering how they would ever rebuild. In 
fact, they have rebuilt with the courage and relentless strength and 
fortitude that have so marked the character of Connecticut and New 
England and New York as they rallied around one another and exhibited 
that sense of optimism and hope. It was as important as any material 
resources that were brought to bear. They rallied around each other 
with gratitude and with hope because they had each other, and they have 
succeeded in clearing the debris, reconstructing, rebuilding in a way 
that is inspiring.
  I only wish Congress's response was as effective and courageous as 
that of the citizens of Connecticut that I viewed in the storm's 
aftermath. The Senate was slow to act, but it was before the House in 
passing the $60 billion recovery package for the Northeast. The effort 
was stalled in the House, quite bluntly, with bipartisan politics of 
the worst kind and trivial obstruction.
  There are lessons to be learned. No. 1 is that partisanship and 
politics should have no role in our response to disasters, whether in 
Oklahoma or Colorado or Louisiana or the Northeast. We are all in this 
effort together when disaster strikes. We should rally around each 
other as the people of Connecticut rallied.
  Our response has to be quicker, smarter, stronger than it was in this 
institution. We owe it to ourselves as well as to the people who 
suffered the financial and emotional loss. For many of them, there were 
physical injuries as a result of this natural disaster.
  Those two lessons are reinforced by a third, which is that these 
superstorms have become a new normal. We can no longer regard the once-
in-a-century storm as once every hundred years. They are coming once 
every year because climate disruption is increasing their frequency and 
force in a way that is awesome and alarming and astonishing. So another 
lesson is that there has to be preparation to prevent damage and to 
mitigate the effects of these storms when they strike, and the 
investments--and they are investments--have to be smart and strong, 
with means such as storm barriers, breakers, better shoreline 
resilience.
  Eventually, the Federal Government provided aid, and Connecticut has 
put to good use the $200 million that was distributed through the 
National Flood Insurance Program to homeowners and business owners. 
Cities and towns around my State have used $42 million in FEMA 
assistance, and more than $10 million has gone toward health services 
and facilities. As our Governor announced yesterday, an additional $65 
million has been granted to the State to supplement the initial $72 
million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the 
form of community development block grants for disaster relief. These 
new Federal dollars are critical to the effort of rebuilding, and I 
will continue to fight not only for additional funds but also against 
the bureaucratic logjams and redtape that have prevented so many from 
receiving more timely aid.
  This aid has come too slowly, it has been too small, and it has been 
behind the efforts--in time and strength--of the people of Connecticut. 
I will continue to fight for increased aid, including from the $100 
million that was announced yesterday and today--today's announcement of 
the U.S. Department of Interior of $100 million in the coastline 
resiliency project. I will support all qualified applicants from 
Connecticut securing some of this competitive funding. We will fight 
for a fair allocation of this money to benefit the important work 
Connecticut is doing to strengthen our coastline so that we can prevent 
and reduce the effects of these storms in the future.

[[Page 16319]]

  I had the privilege to travel the State as a leader of a listening 
tour for the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force this past May, just 
over the half-year mark from the time Sandy hit.
  The progress made with this help from the Federal Government, 
combined with the good will, drive, and sense of responsibility toward 
one another--exemplified by the people of Connecticut--has been 
remarkable. We must resolve to do better at the Federal level, and I 
hope that not only the storm itself but the shortcomings of the relief 
effort will be a teaching moment for the Nation.
  The evidence is irrefutable that climate disruption is impacting our 
oceans and atmosphere and leading to an increasing number of severe 
weather storm events across the country that we cannot control. We will 
see more of such monstrous storms here and in other parts of the 
country.
  I thank my colleagues, Senator Whitehouse and Senator Schumer, who 
have been strong and steadfast leaders in this effort to recognize the 
effects of climate disruption and prepare for them.
  Connecticut is in the process of upgrading our infrastructure to 
strengthen our resiliency among the most vulnerable communities. We are 
investing in microgrids, often powered by hydrogen fuel cells 
manufactured in our State, to provide backup power for hospitals and 
senior communities in towns such as Preston and Franklin, which I 
visited in the aftermath of the storm.
  In Milford, residents are using HUD funding to elevate their homes so 
they can guard against these storm surges. Other coastal towns are 
employing green infrastructure with marsh grass to slow surging waters 
during storms.
  In Stamford, CT, my hometown, the city is using Federal aid to 
upgrade a 17-foot hurricane barrier by replacing manual pumps to ensure 
against damage to the city's communities in future storms. I visited 
the shoreline of Stamford, as I did up and down the coast of 
Connecticut, and I have since, to see how Connecticut is learning these 
lessons so we can reduce dollar costs as well as human costs. The 
improvements taking place across Connecticut speak volumes to our 
strength of will and mind and the determined character of our people in 
Connecticut.
  I express appreciation to colleagues, such as Senators Schumer and 
Whitehouse and others in this body, who helped us in a time of need. 
They came forth to provide encouragement and support. They assured the 
people of Connecticut that they are not alone.
  No one in the United States--whether it is in the Presiding Officer's 
State of West Virginia or in the western-most part of Hawaii--should be 
alone after being struck by a natural disaster. We need to rally 
together.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Before I join the colloquy with Senators Blumenthal 
and Schumer, I have two bits of housekeeping.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 5 p.m. today all 
postcloture time on the Griffin nomination be yielded back, and the 
Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate; the motion 
to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no 
intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; that 
any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be 
immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then resume 
legislative session.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this is my 48th trip to the floor to 
remind Congress that it is time to wake up to the threat of climate 
change.
  I am joined by Senators Blumenthal and Schumer because 1 year ago 
today Hurricane Sandy struck our States with frightening force. Now, a 
year later, communities across the Northeast have dug out and are 
rebuilding, but Sandy left a permanent mark on our coasts and on our 
consciousness.
  To be sure, we cannot say that this devastating storm was 
specifically caused by climate change. However, Sandy showed the many 
ways we are vulnerable to the undeniable effects of climate change, 
such as rising sea levels and warming oceans--effects that can in turn 
load the dice for more damaging storms.
  As evening fell on October 29, 2012, a storm surge from the largest 
Atlantic hurricane ever recorded swept against Rhode Island's shores 
about 5 feet above mean sea level. A few hours later, waters peaked 
around New York City--about 9 feet above mean sea level. A harrowing 
night followed for victims of Hurricane Sandy. It was a night that took 
more than 150 lives and caused $65 billion in physical damage and 
economic loss.
  Hurricane Sandy, or Superstorm Sandy as many remember it, hit 24 
States with direct effects. Floodwaters invaded homes and swept out 
roads. High winds knocked out power to 8.5 million homes and 
businesses, cutting a swath of darkness that could be seen from space. 
An entire New York neighborhood was gutted by fires that emergency 
personnel could not reach through the storm.
  Sandy flooded nearly the entire coastline with beaches and dunes 
driven down by the waves and wind. Displaced sand and stone covered 
roads like here on Atlantic Avenue in Misqaumicut, RI. Houses were 
swept off their foundations in Rhode Island's southern coast 
communities like Matunuck, shown in this photo. Here we see Governor 
Lincoln Chafee, a former Member of this body, surveying the damage to 
these homes.
  President Obama granted Governor Chafee's request for a Federal 
disaster declaration covering four of Rhode Island's five counties. 
More than 130,000 Rhode Islanders lost power. Eight cities and towns 
implemented evacuation actions. Nearly one-third of all Rhode Islanders 
were directly affected one way or another. In a close-knit State such 
as ours, nearly everyone was touched by Sandy.
  Rhode Islanders are resilient and we are recovering. Over $30 million 
has been paid out to Rhode Islanders for more than 1,000 Federal flood 
insurance claims. FEMA has approved more than 260 projects for 
reimbursement. Over $12 million has been put to repairing our State's 
parks, wildlife refuges, and historic sites. Individuals and families 
received more than $423,000 in grants to meet their immediate basic 
needs for housing and other essential disaster-related expenses.
  The Federal Government will always play a central role for 
communities such as ours, picking up after a disaster like Sandy. So it 
would make sense for the Federal Government to learn from these events 
and be smart as we plan for future risks.
  The Government Accountability Office recently reported on the risks 
to U.S. infrastructure posed by climate change. Roads, bridges, and 
water systems are designed to operate for 50 to 100 years. Well, 50 to 
100 years from now, our climate and our coastline will be very 
different. Sandy threw at Rhode Island's shores Atlantic seas that had 
risen almost 10 inches since the 1930s, against a shoreline that had 
already retreated more than 100 feet in some locations. As climate 
change progresses, more and more infrastructure will be exposed to more 
and more risk.
  Earlier this year GAO added to its High Risk List the United States 
financial exposure to climate change. GAO, our congressional watchdog, 
now warns that it is fiscally irresponsible to ignore the signs of 
climate change. The President's Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, 
and his Climate Action Plan, both call for adaptation to this risk from 
climate change--particularly for better coastal resiliency and 
preparedness.
  Here is an example of doing it right. When hurricane Katrina hit the 
I-10 Twin Span Bridge that crosses Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans, 
it twisted and toppled the bridge's 255-ton concrete bridge spans off 
their piers and into the lake. The bridge was rebuilt by using Federal 
Highway Administration funding, but they built it stronger, better 
engineered, and in some sections they built it more than 20 feet 
higher.

[[Page 16320]]

  It makes sense to make sure that our agencies repair American 
infrastructure to the commonsense standard that it is ready for future 
risks. Rebuilding to the specs that failed is not common sense. Being 
deliberately stupid in order to deny climate change is a losing 
proposition.
  Congress can do something smart right now. We could pass the Water 
Resources and Development Act with the resiliency and restoration 
provisions that were in the Senate-passed bipartisan bill. Congress 
could support the President's Climate Action Plan, using our wise 
Earth's natural protections for our coastal infrastructure.
  Of course, even robust climate adaptation won't let us off the hook 
in some places. New England can build levees and dams to hold the 
waters back, but the vast low areas of southeastern Florida are porous 
limestone. Even if you built a giant dike, the water would just seep in 
through the underlying limestone.
  A study last year found that 3 feet of sea level rise, which is what 
we presently expect, will hit more than 1.5 million Floridians, and 
nearly 900,000 Florida homes--almost double the effect on any other 
State in the Nation. So Florida should want to prevent as much climate 
as possible, and that means cutting carbon pollution.
  Ultimately, for the open market to work, we need to include the full 
cost of carbon pollution in the price of fossil fuels. Anything less is 
a subsidy to polluters. What Florida should want is for Congress to 
enact a carbon pollution fee to correct the market, and then return 
that fee to American families.
  Ultimately, inaction is irresponsible, and Americans get it. Eighty-
two percent of Americans believe we should start preparing now for 
rising sea levels and severe storms from climate change.
  Young Americans, in particular, see through the phony climate denial 
message. Three-quarters of independent young voters and more than half 
of Republican young voters would describe climate deniers as 
``ignorant,'' ``out of touch,'' or ``crazy.'' Let me repeat that. The 
majority of Republican voters under 35 would describe climate deniers 
as ``crazy,'' ``ignorant,'' or ``out of touch.'' Continuing the climate 
denial strategy is not a winning proposition for our friends on the 
other side. Even their own young voters see through it.
  Congress should wake up to the alarms that are ringing in nature and 
to the voices of the American people. One of the loudest alarm gongs 
was Hurricane Sandy. Voltaire said: ``Men argue, nature acts.'' Well, 
nature acted, driving epic winds and seas against our shores, and she 
will continue to act if we continue to tip her careful balances with 
reckless carbon pollution and shameless subsidies to the big polluters.
  We need to wake up as a Congress and take responsible action to 
protect our homes and communities. We need to remember Sandy and learn 
her lessons.
  I yield the floor for my distinguished colleague from New York.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, the Senator from 
Rhode Island, for calling Senator Blumenthal and me and others together 
and for taking action on climate change. There has been no one in this 
body who has done more to sound the alarm about climate change.
  I have enjoyed his regular ``time to wake up'' speeches. I guess this 
is number 49--excuse me, 48. One of them was so good I read it twice. 
He has been relentless on this issue in a positive, articulate, and 
superb way.
  There could not be a better day to talk about climate change than 
today because we are at the 1-year anniversary of Superstorm Sandy. 
Senators Whitehouse and Blumenthal and I remember it vividly. We each 
visited our communities on the days afterwards and saw the terrible 
blow that Sandy delivered to New York and the whole east coast. It 
created such damage and upheaval to communities and lives. Sandy was a 
horrible event, but the one silver lining in this large awful cloud is 
that people take climate change more seriously. I think most Americans 
agreed that climate change is real, but there was not a sense of 
urgency about climate change pre-Sandy. People said, well, it is 
happening 25 years from now or 50 years from now. Unlike Senator 
Whitehouse, who has a sense of passion and a sense of urgency daily and 
immediately about this, most people said we can let things wait.
  Unfortunately, despite the efforts of the Senator from Rhode Island 
and others, our bodies are not doing enough on climate change. But when 
Sandy occurred, a sea change occurred. Americans understood--those of 
us in the Northeast probably more than anybody else--that we cannot 
afford to wait. It took 10 years to get the American people to accept 
the fact that climate change is real. It took one storm to get them to 
understand that we had to move immediately.
  Sandy was awful. In the days after the storm, I toured places such as 
the Rockaways and Long Beach, Staten Island, Lindenhurst. Whole 
neighborhoods were leveled and thousands of New Yorkers were homeless. 
To see an elderly gentleman, Mr. Romano, sitting in front of his lot in 
Great South Bay in Lindenhurst, his house totally destroyed, sitting in 
one of his few possessions left, a little lawn chair, was devastating. 
I asked Mr. Romano: Are you going to move?
  He said: Look at the view.
  Two days after Sandy, the skies were peaceful, the Sun was beautiful, 
and it was reflected off of Great South Bay. He said: Every year I have 
had 364 good days and 1 bad day. I am not moving.
  That story can be repeated, but the devastation was real. To drive 
down the streets in the Rockaways or the streets of Long Beach or of 
Staten Island, the South Shore of Staten Island, and see house after 
house with piles in front of the houses of not just furniture, although 
that was a problem--we all have our favorite chair, a favorite place to 
sit. But people's lives were out there: heirlooms that had been in the 
family for generations, pictures and albums gone, like that.
  This is an example of one of the places hurt the worst: Breezy Point, 
a hardy community of cops, firefighters, teachers, EMT workers; the 
heart of New York City's middle class. They are the very same people--
many did from Breezy Point--who rushed the towers on 9/11, and some 
lost their lives. They were the people who were devastated here. A fire 
erupted, 120 houses--it looked like Dresden after the bombings in World 
War II--and all that was left was this religious shrine. I will never 
forget that scene and having the local firefighters showing me what had 
happened.
  Of course, our local infrastructure was terribly damaged as well. 
Here we have the R train, which Secretary Fox and I just announced is 
going to be up and ready in 1 year. The tunnel had millions of gallons 
of water--brackish water, salty water--that not only ruined the 
infrastructure of the tunnels, but the signals that depended on 
electric functioning--gone. These scenes are repeated over and over.
  What Sandy did is make climate change real to New Yorkers in a 
horrible way. The same is now happening across the country. So what 
Sandy did was not alert us to the fact that climate change exists but 
alerted us that it was a call to action. While climate scientists try 
to avoid blaming any single weather event on climate change, we know 
that a warming planet can load the dice for more frequent and extreme 
storms. As sure as we all are sitting here, there will be other storms, 
unfortunately, and God forbid but in all likelihood, of Sandy's 
devastation that will affect different parts of the country. As I and 
others have said in the days after Sandy, we have had far too many 
events over the past 3 years in New York, including Irene, Lee, and 
then Sandy, to think we can ignore the impact of a warming planet and 
the impact that is having on our communities.
  Even if one denies the scientific reality of climate change, there is 
little dispute over the stark challenge facing our country. The weather 
is more dangerous than ever and threatens our economy. According to 
recent polling, Americans now support taking action on climate change 
to protect our children and grandchildren.

[[Page 16321]]

  So we need to do two things at once. We need to decrease our reliance 
on fossil fuels to slow down the warming of the planet, and we have to 
start investing in real climate adaptation projects in the most 
vulnerable parts of the country.
  My colleague from Rhode Island talked about the devastation in 
Florida. He is right. The Florida delegation should be up in arms. I 
know some of our colleagues--they tend to be on this side of the 
aisle--are, but we hear silence from the other side of the aisle on 
climate change. In just a generation, a good percentage of Florida will 
be out of commission. Miami, one of the largest cities in the country, 
is virtually unprotected when it comes to climate change.
  So we have to do both of these things. One year after Sandy, I am 
pleased we have made some progress.
  First, the Hurricane Sandy relief law we passed earlier this year 
provided an injection of billions of dollars into mitigation for the 
east coast. When we rebuild this subway line, the signals are going to 
be higher up so if, God forbid, there is another flood, they will not 
be out of commission. At the entrances to the various tunnels--hundreds 
of thousands of people take these every week--there will be gates or a 
certain kind of airbag that can instantaneously prevent the tunnel from 
being flooded. We are elevating homes and building new floodwalls and 
dunes to prevent damage from the next Sandy.
  So one thing we are doing is mitigation. Those of us--Senator 
Whitehouse, Senator Blumenthal, and others from New Jersey and Maryland 
and Pennsylvania and Delaware and New York and Connecticut, 
Massachusetts and Rhode Island delegations made sure in this 
legislation there is ample money for mitigation, so that if or when, 
God forbid, another storm such as Sandy occurs, we will be better 
protected.
  Second, the President took a bold and important step in releasing his 
climate action plan, a critical blueprint for reducing carbon 
pollution. The plan also lays out a framework for implementing new 
mitigation plans for Federal, State, and local governments by tying 
Federal funding to new standards on climate adaptation. We now know a 
simple economic truth from many years of investing in mitigation 
projects: They save money. According to research, for every $1 we 
invest in mitigation, we save $4 down the road because of what will be 
protected and taxpayers will not have to shell out the same dollars 
again and again and again.
  So it doesn't matter what side of the climate change debate one is on 
when it comes to investing in mitigation. Being promitigation makes 
good fiscal sense for the Federal Government.
  A recent study found that Federal taxpayers spent $136 billion on 
disaster relief in just the 3 years of 2011, 2012, and 2013--$400 per 
household. The only way we can shrink this burden for the American 
people over time is to make critical mitigation investments at the same 
time we fight climate change by cutting carbon pollution.
  I wish to specifically mention one piece of legislation which my 
colleague from Rhode Island also mentioned. He is on the EPW Committee 
and he has championed it with many of our colleagues. WRDA, the 
bipartisan Water Resources Development Act, got 83 votes in the Senate 
and will be a real boost for investment in climate adaptation.
  In this bill, there is a new program called WIFIA. The very 
successful TIFIA Program which, for instance, without the local 
taxpayers spending a nickel, will bring our subway system all the way 
over to the far west side. I look forward to opening it with the mayor 
soon. Modeled on that program is WIFIA. It helps local governments 
invest in mitigation projects by providing low-interest loans and a new 
banking design to attract private investment into these projects.
  There are also new authorities that will allow the Army Corps to 
expedite and prioritize hurricane protection studies and project 
recommendations. I thank my colleagues, led by Senator Boxer, of the 
EPW Committee for working with us to draft some of this language.
  These new policies are very important for New York and the States 
affected by Sandy. I urge our colleagues in the House to work with us 
to include these items in the WRDA conference.
  We need to use the tragedy of Sandy to learn how to make our cities 
and towns stronger for the next storm. We know it is coming. We have to 
work at the local level in terms of mitigation. We have to work at the 
macro level to reduce the amount of carbon that has poured into our 
atmosphere that will just devastate the planet if we continue to sit on 
our hands.
  I will close my remarks by borrowing a simple refrain from my friend 
from Rhode Island. As his poster says, it is time to wake up. 
Superstorm Sandy was New York's wake-up call. Let's honor the thousands 
of victims of that event by investing in our future.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, before I depart the floor, and while 
Senator Schumer and Senator Blumenthal are still here, I wish to add a 
point that is a personal observation of mine as a Senator; that is, 
first the Senator from New York is widely and properly regarded as one 
of the more formidable presences in the Senate. Having witnessed the 
difficulties that Senator Blumenthal discussed at getting the Sandy 
disaster relief out and done, I will say we learned Senator Schumer has 
an even higher gear when it comes to the urgent needs of his home State 
and of his coast. When his New York City lies battered and drowned by 
storm, the work that he did to make sure a reluctant House passed this 
relief for us was an exercise in legislative craftsmanship and personal 
vigor that many of us will long remember.
  Of course, I have seen Senator Blumenthal fighting for his people in 
Connecticut, both after Hurricane Sandy and, of course, after the 
terrible tragedy that Connecticut experienced when a crazed gunman went 
into an elementary school and began to murder its children. So Senator 
Blumenthal, in responding to those cares, concerns, and crises of his 
home State of Connecticut, has been truly exemplary. It has been a 
privilege for me as a Senator to see these two Senators in action in 
their causes I just mentioned.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I am sure Senator Blumenthal joins me. I wish to say to 
my dear friend from Rhode Island--and he truly is a dear friend--that 
his generosity of word and spirit is only equaled by his intelligence, 
his diligence, and his foresightedness, not only on this issue but on 
so many other issues on which we are working. In fact, we are going to 
make a call in a few minutes--he and I and a few of our colleagues and 
I think Senator Blumenthal as well--to talk about another of his 
issues. He is just such an intelligent thinker, and he is thinking 
ahead of the curve on climate change. But delivery system reform in 
health care is another issue on which the Senator from Rhode Island has 
taken leadership.
  So I thank him for his kind words and just say ``right back at you, 
baby.''
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank both of my colleagues. I am 
not sure I can match their eloquence in describing their gifts and 
their contributions on this issue and so many others, but I hope they 
and others will join me in meeting with the present Sandy task force in 
seeking to remedy or correct perhaps some of the logjams and redtape 
and deficiencies in process that led the people of our States to wait 
for so long before they saw relief in practical terms.
  I thank them for their eloquence today and for their truly formidable 
contribution on the issue of climate change and global warming and to 
thank them also for the very powerful contributions they have made on 
the response to Superstorm Sandy that affected so many people in 
Connecticut.

[[Page 16322]]

  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.


                           Budget Conference

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise to talk about an opportunity--
actually something good that this body could do for the American people 
and for our economy and for the taxpayers. Tomorrow, the Senate budget 
conference that was established as part of this recent agreement that 
was made over reopening the government and extending the debt limit 
will meet. This will be the first public meeting of the group. We have 
had some other meetings, including the one I just had with some of the 
Members of that group, but this is the first opportunity for us to meet 
as House Members and Senate Members, Republicans and Democrats, in this 
budget conference, and it could not come soon enough.
  The opportunity we have with this group is that in the wake of what 
happened at the beginning of this month--which was, again, a government 
shutdown and then a debt limit debate and then pushing right up against 
the debt limit--the opportunity we have now is to finally deal with 
this issue of government shutdowns and to deal with the underlying 
problem of overspending that forces us to extend the debt limit time 
and time again.
  So let's start with government shutdowns.
  The agreement opened the government for 3 months. That is right. In 
January, we once again come to this cliff where the government shuts 
down unless we act. So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everybody. In 
January we hit this again.
  It does not have to be that way. Earlier this year I introduced, with 
Senator Tester from Montana, bipartisan legislation that would have 
prevented the last shutdown and would prevent all shutdowns in the 
future. It is called, appropriately, the End Government Shutdowns Act. 
It is pretty simple, and it addresses several critical issues we saw 
firsthand during this last shutdown.
  It would end the chaos we saw on Federal services and citizens who 
depend on them. It would give government agencies the predictability 
they need to plan their budgets based on these appropriations levels. 
It would add certainty to the economy, and more certainty in the 
economy is certainly needed right now as we try to bring back the jobs. 
It would also take away the pressure for these haphazard, last-minute 
budget deals, which inevitably have stuck in them little provisions 
that nobody finds out about because they are all done at the last 
minute to avoid a government shutdown.
  Here is how this would work: When we do not have spending bills 
agreed to by the time the fiscal year comes to an end--and that would 
be October 1--then the spending continues just as it was the previous 
year. So it is the same level of spending, except that automatically it 
would begin to reduce spending after 120 days and 90 days. So Congress 
would have 120 days to come together and figure out a budget. That is 
the carrot. The stick is that after 120 days the spending would be 
ratcheted down 1 percent and then again every 90 days another 1 
percent.
  I think it has become painfully obvious that Congress needs 
encouragement to get its work done, and this certainly would be 
encouragement. By the same token, we would not have these government 
shutdowns. That gradual decline in spending, by the way, would treat 
all spending equally. So all discretionary spending would be treated 
the same way--no exceptions for liberal spending priorities or 
conservative spending priorities. It would be the same for everybody. 
Both sides of Congress would feel the pain, and both sides then might 
be more willing to actually get the work done.
  Is this the ideal solution to end government shutdowns? No, it is 
not. The ideal solution is that Congress actually does its work, which 
is our constitutional duty--the power of the purse--and that is to sit 
down and have these appropriations bills pass. That requires oversight 
of the agencies and departments which are badly in need of it. It then 
requires prioritizing spending in 12 different areas. That is how it 
should work. This legislation, the End Government Shutdowns Act, would 
actually encourage that to work, again, because it would establish this 
situation where, instead of doing a last-minute deal where you can kind 
of throw in these provisions that Appropriations Committee members 
might want, you actually have to go through the process; otherwise, it 
just continues the spending from the previous year and then ratchets it 
down over time.
  Sadly, Congress has shown it is pretty much incapable of doing 
appropriations bills without some sort of pressure. The Congress has 
not completed all regular appropriations bills by the October 1 
deadline since 1997. Here in the Senate, actually, over the past 4 
years, during the current administration, the Obama administration, and 
under Democratic control here for the last 4 years, we have passed all 
of one appropriations bill on time. So that is 1 out of 48 that has 
been done on time. It was a MILCON bill in about 2011, as I recall.
  Congress does better with a deadline. Again, we see this with the 
debt limit and with what we just went through these last few weeks. We 
can do better. This legislation would keep the impetus for Congress to 
act without including the threat of another costly and destructive 
shutdown. I think it is a good idea. It is one that is already 
bipartisan. It should be adopted by both sides. We had a vote on it 
earlier this year. It got nearly half of this Chamber. I hope others 
will take a look at it. I think particularly with what we have just 
gone through, it is something our constituents would think would make a 
lot of sense. I hope it gets the support it deserves in this body.
  Of course, in addition to dealing with government shutdowns in this 
budget conference that we are meeting on this week, we also have a 
chance to address the debt limit--which is going to come up soon also 
because February 7 is the date that was chosen there. Now some say, 
well, the Treasury Department can use extraordinary measures to shift 
that beyond February 7. I suppose they could. But instead, why not deal 
with the underlying problem--why we need to extend the debt limit--
which is the overspending.
  It is as though you have maxed out on the credit card. It is a lot 
like that. We can spend only at a certain level in Congress, and then 
we have to have statutory authority to go beyond that limit. When you 
max out on the credit card, you do not just go to the bank and say: I 
would like to extend it. You have to deal with the underlying problem; 
otherwise, you cannot keep your credit card and you cannot keep your 
credit.
  So dealing with the debt limit is the other part that I think gives 
us an opportunity. Over the past 2 weeks I know the administration has 
said repeatedly: Even though we would not negotiate on the debt ceiling 
before, even though the President refused to talk to Congress about 
it--which was unprecedented, by the way; no President in history has 
ever said that--but he said over the last couple weeks: If you all 
extend the debt limit and if you reopen government, then I will talk. 
So now is the time to talk, and the President should talk. I have 
worked for two Presidents: President Bush 41 and President Bush 43. 
They did talk to Congress about debt limits. Why? Because it is a tough 
vote, because our constituents get it, because it is akin to maxing out 
on the credit card and they want to know we are not just going to 
extend it again without doing something about the underlying problem. 
So this budget conference gives us the opportunity to do that, and I 
hope the administration will engage with us.
  It has been 4 years since we have had a budget conference. Think 
about that. The debt has gone up $5.9 trillion since we had the last 
budget conference around here. Almost $6 trillion later we are sitting 
down again, and things are only going to get worse if we do not do 
something to deal with the underlying problem.
  The two-thirds of the budget that is on autopilot--the mandatory 
spending--obviously is where not just the biggest part of the budget is 
but the

[[Page 16323]]

fastest growing part of the budget. It includes vital programs to our 
seniors, for those in poverty--Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security--
vital but unsustainable. These programs cannot be sustained in their 
current form. By the way, that is not me saying it. That comes from 
data from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The President 
himself has talked about this. By the way, the Congressional Budget 
Office says that Social Security and health care entitlements alone are 
100 percent of the long-term increase in deficits. Revenues are 
starting to pick up. The discretionary spending is now being capped. 
The issue is this part that is on autopilot. By the way, it is 66 
percent of spending now. It is 77 percent of spending in 10 years. The 
health care entitlements alone are going to increase 100 percent over 
the next 10 years based on what the Congressional Budget Office has 
told us.
  I have heard rumblings in the press that this upcoming budget 
conference is just going to kick the can further down the road; in 
other words, we are not going to deal with the issue. We are going to 
say let's just extend the debt limit a little bit further and push off 
the issue.
  I think it is time for the can to kick back. If the can kicks back, 
that means we will actually tackle some of these tough problems. After 
all, that is why the American people hired us. That is why they sent us 
here. If we are not going to do it now, I do not know when we are going 
to do it. I think divided government is actually an opportunity to do 
it.
  It is time for leadership in the Senate and the House, and certainly 
from the President. It is time to come to the table. As I said earlier, 
the President has indicated he now is willing to do it. Do so in good 
faith and try to put our country on a stable fiscal path. If we do 
nothing, by the way, if we allow these annual deficits to continue, 
they will more than quadruple. Annual deficits will more than quadruple 
to $3.4 trillion within three decades. That is based on the 
Congressional Budget Office.
  We already have a debt that is about $140,000 per household in 
America. We are talking about annual deficits quadrupling. If we let 
mandatory spending reach that point where it becomes 100 percent of the 
deficit--which is what they project--if we allow our national debt to 
reach two and a half times the entire size of our economy--it is about 
the size of our economy now, and it would go up to two and a half times 
the size of our economy--it will be the next generation that will pay, 
and pay dearly, and our legacy will be one of bankruptcy, skyrocketing 
interest rates, skyrocketing unemployment rates, and the collapse of 
these vital programs we talked about earlier: Medicaid, Medicare, and 
Social Security.
  Again, this is not ideology; this is math. It is fact, and it is fact 
that has been reiterated by the Congressional Budget Office, the 
trustees of Social Security, the trustees of Medicare, their trust 
funds time and time again.
  This is our opportunity to begin to do something about it--at least 
take the first steps--both in terms of ending government shutdowns, as 
I talked about, but also dealing with this underlying problem that 
everybody acknowledges and that has to be dealt with if we are not 
going to have for future generations these issues of bankruptcy, higher 
interest rates, lower value of the dollar, higher unemployment.
  The single greatest act of bipartisanship in this Congress over the 
past few decades has been overpromising and overspending. We created 
this mess together, and we can only get out of it working together. I 
have suggested where we can start: $600 billion in the President's own 
budget. In his own budget he has $600 billion-plus in savings on 
mandatory spending over the next decade. But whatever we do, I think we 
can call agree that we are tired of the gridlock, we are tired of the 
stalemates, we are tired of getting nothing done.
  It is time to make some progress, and this is an opportunity to do 
it. These past few weeks have been trying. They have been tough on the 
American people, as they have looked at us and said: Wow. Are these 
guys going to figure it out? And we just kicked the can down the road. 
But we also set up this process and this structure. Let's take 
advantage of it. Let's use this opportunity to do something important 
for the future of our country and for the good of the people we 
represent. Let's seize it.
  I yield back my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.


                           Deficit Reduction

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I say to the Presiding Officer, former 
Governor Manchin, I wish to follow on the comments we just heard from 
Senator Portman, who, as he said, served in two administrations--in one 
of them as OMB Director, in the other as Trade Representative. Before 
that he had a distinguished career in the House of Representatives. He 
is someone I am fortunate to serve with on the Finance Committee. I 
have a lot of respect for his intellect and for his intellectual 
honesty.
  Before I talk about the real reason I came to the floor, I feel 
compelled to say something. As former Governors, the Presiding Officer 
and I have made tough decisions on spending, we have made tough 
decisions on revenues, and they are not always well received by people. 
They are not always well received by people in our own party.
  I like to say there are three or four things we need to do on this 
issue to make sure our deficits continue to head in the right 
direction. I do not worship at the altar of a balanced budget every 
single year. But what I do believe is that when the economy is 
strengthened and growing stronger, we ought to be having the deficit 
heading down, and when we are in a war or when we are in an economic 
doldrum, then I think it is appropriate to, in some cases, deficit 
spend.
  Four things we need to do if we are serious about deficit reduction: 
No. 1, we need, in the President's words, entitlement reform that saves 
money, saves these programs for our children and our grandchildren, and 
does not savage old people or poor people. That is No. 1.
  No. 2, we need, in my view, tax reform that brings down the top 
corporate rates--something more closely aligned with every other 
developed nation in the world. At the same time we are doing that, we 
need to generate some revenues for deficit reduction to match what we 
are doing on the spending side.
  If you think about it, the Senator from Ohio knows and the Senator 
from West Virginia knows about tax expenditures: Tax breaks, tax 
credits, tax deductions, tax loopholes, tax gaps, add up over the next 
10 years anywhere from $12 trillion to $15 trillion. We are going to 
spend more money out of the Treasury for tax expenditures than we are 
going to spend on all of our appropriations bills combined. If we could 
somehow capture 5 percent of $12 trillion over the next 10 years for 
deficit reduction, that is $600 billion. If we can match that in a 
Bowles-Simpson number, such as $2 of deficit reduction on the 
expenditure side and $1 on the revenue side, we could do about another 
$2 trillion on deficit reduction on top of what we have already done. 
Is that a grand compromise that I want and I think the Senator from 
Ohio wants, I know the Senator from West Virginia wants?
  It is not a grand compromise, but I would call it a baby grand. A 
baby grand is certainly better than kicking that can down the road. The 
last time we kicked the can down the road at the beginning of this 
year, I remember saying on this floor: We kicked a rather large can 
down the road not very far. I am tired of doing that. I do not want us 
to do that.
  We have maybe our last best chance here in this budget conference in 
order to do the kinds of things I talked about. Democrats do not want 
to give on entitlements. I am willing to do that. But I am only willing 
to do that if Republicans will give on tax reform that generates some 
revenues.
  I mentioned there are three things to do. The third thing is to look 
in every nook and cranny of the Federal Government--everything we do. 
The Senator from Ohio is a member of the

[[Page 16324]]

Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. He knows that we 
focus--we have large, broad investigative powers, oversight powers, 
authority over the whole Federal Government. There are all kinds of 
ways to save money, all kinds of ways to save money in this government 
of ours, just as there are all kinds in big corporations, big 
businesses. What we need to do is, in everything we do, look at that 
and say: How do we get a better result for less money in everything we 
do?
  I do not know if my friends from Ohio and West Virginia hear this 
from their constituents, but I hear from Delaware constituents and 
folks outside of my State these words: I do not mind paying more taxes, 
I just do not want you to waste my money or I do not want to pay more 
taxes, but if I do, I do not want you to waste my money. I do not want 
to waste your money or mine.
  The fourth thing we need to do to be serious about moving the economy 
and getting out of this kind of rut we are in right now is to be able 
to make sure we have some money around that we can invest in the things 
we know will strengthen our economy. Foremost among those is a strong 
workforce, capable workforce. The second thing is infrastructure, 
broadly defined, not just transportation: roads, highways, bridges; not 
just ports, not just airports, not just railroads, but broadband, all 
kinds of infrastructure-related items.
  The third thing is R&D, research and development that will lead to 
technologies that can be commercialized, turned into products, goods, 
and services we can sell all over the world.
  The fourth thing we need to do is to do an even better job--and 
Senator Portman was the leader as our trade ambassador. He knows what 
it is all about in terms of knocking down trade barriers. But while we 
do entitlement reform, we do tax reform, while we look in every nook 
and cranny of the Federal Government, investing in the three areas I 
mentioned, we have got to make sure when we develop these new products 
and services that we can sell them around the world without impediment, 
we can knock down trade barriers. The Senator has done a lot of work in 
that regard as well.
  As the Senator leaves the floor, I will say there are many things for 
us to work on. I hope we will.


                          Archuleta Nomination

  That is not why I came to the floor, but I thank the Senator for 
letting me join in that colloquy with the Senator from Ohio. The reason 
I came to the floor is to say a word on behalf of the President's 
nominee to be our next Director of the Office of Personnel Management. 
We have not had a confirmed OPM Director for the last half year. If you 
look across the Federal Government, the executive branch of the Federal 
Government, it reminds me a lot of what I call Swiss cheese, executive 
branch Swiss cheese.
  We start with the Department of Homeland Security. We do not have a 
confirmed Secretary. We have one nominated, just nominated, just 
starting to go through the vetting process in the Senate. We have not 
had one for a month. The Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security--we do 
not have a confirmed Deputy Secretary. We have had ``acting'' for a 
number of weeks now, months. While the people who are in the acting 
capacity are very good people, very able people, it is not the same as 
having a confirmed Secretary of Homeland Security or confirmed Deputy 
Secretary.
  There are any number of other positions in Homeland Security. As 
chair of Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, I probably 
focus more on that than on the OMB, Office of Management and Budget, 
trying to make sure that Sylvia Burwell from Hinton, WV--the Presiding 
Officer knows her well. As a guy who grew up in West Virginia a little 
bit, born there, spent some time in Hinton, I have a huge respect for 
her. We worked very hard to get her management team, her senior 
leadership team confirmed. They are confirmed. She has a great team. We 
need to make sure that in our other departments we have from the top to 
way down the ranks strong people in confirmed positions.
  OPM, Office of Personnel Management. The President nominated a woman 
I had never heard of earlier this year. He nominated a woman named 
Katherine Archuleta. Katherine Archuleta--I never met her, never heard 
of her. The first thing I learned about her is she has been the 
political director in the President's reelection campaign. She must 
have done a pretty good job if the results were to be examined. Maybe 
some people are troubled by that. If we stopped there, that does not 
define who she is or what she has done.
  If somebody looked at my resume while I have been a Senator, if they 
think that is all I have ever done in my life, they would be wrong. I 
have been privileged to be Governor of my State, leader, and, as the 
Presiding Officer has, chairman of the National Governors Association, 
one of the great privileges of my life. I was privileged to be a 
Congressman for a little bit, treasurer of my State, and before that a 
naval flight officer for 20 some years, retired Navy captain. That is 
who I am. That is not all of who I am, but that is a better resume. If 
people say all I have ever done is my current job or my last job, they 
would say: Well, he is not very well rounded.
  I want us to take a minute and say--I am going to date myself on 
this, but a guy named Paul Harvey used to do the news. He used to say 
page 1, and then he would say page 2. I am going to go to page 2. Page 
2 is a little resume of some other things she has done with her life. I 
want to quote one of our old colleagues, Ken Salazar, who has known her 
for decades and hear what he has to say about her. She was born and 
raised in Colorado, I think has spent almost more than half of her life 
there. She has been, from time to time, among other things, chief of 
staff at the U.S. Department of Labor. She did that for several years. 
She also served as senior advisor on policy and initiatives for the 
city and county of Denver, CO. There are more people who live in the 
city and county around Denver than live in a lot of States, including 
my own. She has done that job.
  Before that, a number of years ago, she had a number of roles in the 
office of mayor of Denver, for almost a decade, including deputy chief 
of staff. In a city that size, again as big or bigger than a number of 
States, that is a lot of responsibility.
  She has been a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of 
Energy.
  She has also served at the U.S. Department of Transportation, first 
as deputy chief of staff, and then later as chief of staff.
  She has been a professor at the University of Denver. She has done 
all kinds of things. But she is a whole lot more than what people see 
and say: Well, I know what her last job was. She has done a whole lot 
before that. I think that helps prepare her for this job.
  There has been a bunch of people who have been nominated to serve as 
Office of Personnel Management Director since I guess the 1970s. I 
think this is the first time we have ever had a situation where the 
President's nominee--I do not care what party, Democrat or Republican--
where the OPM nominee has required cloture or even a rollcall vote 
since the agency was created in 1978. That is 35 years ago.
  I want to quote Ken Salazar, one of my dearest friends, who was a 
Senator, went on to become Secretary of the Interior, who has known 
Katherine Archuleta for 25, 30 years, really all of her adult life. 
Here is what Ken Salazar says about Katherine Archuleta. He says she is 
a ``terrific'' human being. He goes on to say she ``helped create 
modern Denver'' as we know it as deputy chief of staff through Mayor 
Pena. She led economic development efforts throughout the city. She was 
instrumental in the creation of the new Denver International Airport. 
Ken went on to say she was ``a star of the Clinton team in the U.S. 
Department of Transportation.'' Star.
  I say to my friends and colleagues, we have to get past this 
situation--I do not care if it is a Democrat President or Republican 
President--where we leave these gaping holes in leadership in confirmed 
positions. It is not good

[[Page 16325]]

for our country; it is not good for these departments; it is not good 
for morale; it is not good for efficiency. We are interested in getting 
work done.
  You can disable the government by shutting it down or you can disable 
the government and make it less effective, less efficient, by making 
sure we do not have key people in the top leadership positions. It 
makes a difference if people are confirmed as secretaries, deputy 
secretaries, and these other positions.
  As the agency responsible for managing our Federal workforce, OPM's 
mission is critical to ensuring that our government runs efficiently. 
Unfortunately, vacancies at the top levels of leadership have limited 
OPM's ability to fulfill its mandate. They have backlogs in terms of 
the processing they are supposed to be doing in job applications and 
others, people applying for pensions. They need to be addressed.
  In Katherine Archuleta's hearing before a subcommittee chaired by 
Senator Tester, one of the things she made clear is that she would make 
that her priority, going after the backlog, which I would say God bless 
her if she is confirmed. I hope she will be.
  But at any given moment, we are lacking critical leadership in any 
number of positions in just about every agency. It undermines the 
effectiveness of our government. While Congress and the administration 
have taken some steps to address this problem, the fact remains we 
still have more work to do to ensure we have got the talented people in 
place to make these critical decisions.
  This week, we consider the President's nomination of Katherine 
Archuleta to be the next Director of OPM, Office of Personnel 
Management. I have talked a little bit about her background. One of the 
other people who knows her pretty well, another Senator from Colorado, 
is Senator Udall. She was actually introduced at her confirmation 
hearings along with Michael Bennet. Here is what Senator Udall said 
about Katherine Archuleta. He said, ``Throughout her career, Katherine 
has demonstrated her ability to lead, to motivate and to work 
constructively with a diverse range of people and personalities.''
  Her story is a story of firsts. Although neither of her parents 
completed high school, they worked tirelessly to create better 
opportunities for their children. Throughout her career, she served as 
an example for women and Latinos and would be the first Latina Director 
of OPM.
  The President nominated her to this critical position back in May. We 
held a hearing to consider her nomination--Senator Jon Tester held it. 
We voted her out of committee shortly thereafter. At her confirmation 
hearing, Ms. Archuleta committed to quickly taking steps to identify 
some of OPM's challenges, such as continuing to implement the 
multistate plan under the Affordable Care Act, reducing the retirement 
claims backlog to ensure retirees receive their full pension benefits 
without serious delays, which many retirees see today.
  As to the recruiting and retaining the next generation of Federal 
employees, I think we have a nominee who is qualified. We have a 
nominee who has been vetted. We have a nominee who is ready to go to 
work. It is our responsibility to give her a swift vote, a thoughtful 
vote, but a swift vote here on the Senate floor, I hope this week, so 
she can go to work, take the reins at OPM, and begin directing this 
critical agency with oversight from us.
  When the Presiding Officer was Governor of his State of West 
Virginia, when I was privileged to be Governor of my State, the 
tradition in Delaware is the Governor would nominate the people to 
serve on his or her cabinet. The tradition in our State was to nominate 
division directors under the cabinet secretaries. The tradition in my 
State is that the legislature, the senate to which the nominees were 
sent, would hold hearings, and would vote up or down without delay on 
those nominations. I think in the 8 years I was privileged to serve as 
Governor of my State, every one of them was confirmed. I do not think I 
ever lost a nomination for a cabinet secretary or for division 
director. That is the way we do business in Delaware. That is the way 
we ought to do business here.
  If you have a nominee who is qualified, who has good integrity, is 
going to work hard, surround themselves with good people and has a 
track record he or she can be proud of, that nominee deserves a vote. 
Let's give this nominee a vote and let's give her a chance to go to 
work.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.


                            Superstorm Sandy

  Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Today it has been exactly 1 year since Superstorm 
Sandy hit my home State of New York and the surrounding region. Today 
is a very solemn day where we pause to ponder the unimaginable loss of 
61 precious lives and the great collective pain as countless other 
lives were shattered. Over 300,000 homes were damaged or destroyed and 
businesses lay in rubble. Over 250,000 businesses were affected, many 
of which are still unable to open their doors.
  There is something else to remember today. In the days and weeks that 
followed Superstorm Sandy, we also saw the absolute best of New York. 
We know New Yorkers are a resilient bunch. We get knocked down, but we 
get right back up.
  As I traveled all across New York City, I saw neighbors coming 
together, going door to door to help the homebound, donating resources, 
volunteering their time, clearing debris. In the Rockaways I saw 
hundreds of residents create an impromptu bustling plaza of hot food, 
clothing, and anything people might need.
  I remember talking to one small business owner in Staten Island whose 
restaurant was nearly split in two by a boat from a nearby marina, and 
he simply said to me: ``We will rebuild this better than it was 
before,'' before agreeing to have dinner together this time next year 
in that very spot where that boat was resting. He said yes, and we had 
lunch at his restaurant only a few months ago. It was amazing.
  In Westchester, a small business owner gave me a hug, and she vowed 
she would rebuild. She said defiantly, ``This is our community.''
  On Long Island, I walked the streets of Lindenhurst, Massapequa, and 
visited Long Beach and Fire Island. While the devastation I saw was 
awful, I have never met more resilient and compassionate people. I 
witnessed homeowners struggling to pick up their own pieces and to get 
it out of the way to help neighbors, sharing food, sharing water 
supplies, giving each other rides to the stores, sharing generators, 
and clearing each others' debris.
  While the road to recovery is very long and very hard, New Yorkers 
will rebuild. They will rebuild stronger, but we all have to do our 
part. Too many communities are still recovering and rebuilding. Some 
families are actually still homeless, living in trailers or confined to 
the second floor of their homes and still waiting for additional 
assistance. Too many homeowners have not yet received the funding to 
repair their homes and their businesses. Too often, those who are 
struggling to rebuild have been caught in redtape.
  Throughout the past year, I have pushed to change some of the Federal 
policies that have stood in the way of recovery. We have had some 
successes. We were successful at pushing FEMA to extend critical 
deadlines for Sandy survivors to document their losses, so that those 
who have had trouble getting back into their homes are not prevented 
from filing flood insurance claims.
  We were able to get the Department of Housing and Urban Development 
to relax regulations that would have prevented substantially damaged 
homes from accessing critical recovery funds. We received assurances 
from the Army Corps of Engineers that they will fund critical shore 
protection projects at full Federal expense, ensuring that these 
projects can move forward quickly without having to wait for our 
communities to find the matching funds out of very tough and local 
struggling budgets that are already stretched too thin.
  That is not enough. For all of our successes, we are still facing so 
many

[[Page 16326]]

challenges. There is still far too much redtape getting in between 
families and recovery. My office hears every single day from homeowners 
and families who are struggling just to move forward.
  Many of us are working on a bipartisan bill to postpone the 
potentially disastrous flood insurance rate increases coming into 
effect as a result of the Biggert-Waters flood insurance reform law. I 
urge my colleagues in the Senate to pass this bipartisan bill that was 
introduced by Senator Menendez and Senator Isakson that would delay the 
premium increases set to go into effect until after FEMA has completed 
a study and provided Congress with a plan to make the rates more 
affordable. Our families working so hard to rebuild, frankly, deserve 
nothing less.
  Some homeowners, even as they do rebuild, have started seeing their 
rates increase. This would cause so many of our constituents to be 
forced out of their homes and communities that they love, that they 
have lived in their whole lives. This is why the Menendez-Isakson bill 
is so critical and why I strongly urge my colleagues on both sides of 
the aisle to support this commonsense legislation.
  As we focus on providing communities with all of the resources they 
need to rebuild from Sandy, the Federal Government is partnering with 
States, local governments, the private sector, and academia to develop 
solutions that will protect us from the next disaster. We know that for 
every dollar spent to make our homes, businesses, and infrastructure 
more resilient, $4 is saved in potential recovery costs down the road.
  Earlier this year Senator Wicker and I introduced the STRONG Act, 
which stands for Strengthening the Resiliency of Our Nation on the 
Ground. This bipartisan bill seeks to build on the progress that has 
been made locally by requiring the Federal Government to develop a 
national resiliency strategy, assess where there are gaps and 
opportunities for improvements. It also creates a new information 
portal for both the public and private sectors to share information 
about how to strengthen our communities and protect against future 
extreme weather threats.
  We have come a long way in the past year, but I am very sad to say we 
have so much more work to be done. Our communities are working as hard 
as ever to recover, but we have to work equally as hard toward 
rebuilding and being better prepared for the next storm.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.


                               ObamaCare

  Mr. BARRASSO. Later this week we will hit the 1-month anniversary of 
the launch of President Obama's health insurance exchanges. My question 
is, what have we learned the past 4 weeks? We know the rollout of the 
exchanges and the healthcare.gov Web site, Americans would agree, has 
been disastrous.
  Last week the Associated Press ran a headline about what people in my 
home State of Wyoming had experienced. It said: ``National health 
insurance site sputters in Wyoming.''
  The article goes on to talk about the health care law, the Web site, 
and says: ``Wyoming Insurance Commissioner Tom Hirsig said Monday that 
he's personally been unable to register on the Federal Government's 
Wyoming site despite trying every day.''
  The insurance commissioner from the State of Wyoming has been unable 
to register on the Federal Government's Wyoming site despite trying 
every day starting October 1. This is the same story we have seen all 
across the country.
  We have also learned over the past 4 weeks that the President's 
health care law is much more than just a failed Web site. What we know 
is that there is sticker shock hitting people all across the country as 
they start shopping and find that higher premiums are what they are 
facing. They are going to be paying much higher premiums if they are 
able to buy health insurance, if they are able to get through the 
exchange.
  CBS News had the story of one woman in Florida whose health insurance 
will cost 11 times what she is currently paying--from $54 a month to 
$591 a month.
  Over the past 4 weeks, another thing we have learned is that many 
people have received notices in the mail--cancellation notices--from 
their insurance companies. They are being told that the insurance 
policies, the coverage they have had, is being cancelled. Only a small 
number of people have been able to get insurance through the government 
exchanges so far. We have seen that over the last month.
  In testimony today in the House hearing, a person from the 
administration said they cannot tell us how many people have been 
unable to get insurance through the exchanges, but we know that 
hundreds of thousands of people are losing the insurance they had.
  Here is what one woman told CBS: ``What I have right now is what I'm 
happy with, and I just want to know why I can't keep what I have. Why 
do I have to be forced into something else?''
  Like many Americans, this is a person who actually believed President 
Obama when he promised that if people liked the insurance they had, 
they could keep it. Now she learned under the President's health care 
law, it is not only a Web site, it is a broken promise. It turns out if 
the White House likes your plan, then you can keep it. If the White 
House doesn't like your plan, then you are out of luck, you can't keep 
it.
  Yesterday the Obama administration finally admitted that millions of 
people across the country will lose their insurance. We know all of 
these ways that the President's health care law is more than a failed 
Web site, so the big question now is what don't we know yet? What is 
there that the American people don't know about the health care law? 
How much worse are things going to get before the White House admits 
the entire law is broken?
  We have seen one headline after another about problems with the 
health care law that the Obama administration knew about and would not 
admit. There has been one revelation after another about troubles they 
hid from the American people and did so deliberately. What else is this 
administration not telling the American people?
  The White House may have finally said publicly that millions of 
people are going to lose the insurance they have but, according to NBC 
News, the Obama administration has known that for at least 3 years.
  When the train first went off the tracks, the White House said its 
Web site crashed because they said millions of people tried to use the 
Web site at the same time. According to the Washington Post, the 
limited testing the administration did before the launch found the site 
would crash if only a few hundred people used it.
  It is fascinating. The Democrats' whole law was based on the idea 
that Washington, government, is capable of running America's health 
care system competently. What we have seen is gross incompetence. It 
turns out that Washington can't even set up a Web site competently, and 
it looks as if they knew it.
  Computer programmers warned about the rush to get the Web site done 
by October 1. Instead of hitting the pause button, which they should 
have done, hitting the pause button until it could get things working, 
the White House pushed on. This is what we learned from some of the 
contractors who built the Web site. This Web site cost the taxpayers 
over $400 million so far and the bills are still coming in.
  These contractors testified last week in the House that full tests of 
the site should have started months in advance, but testing didn't 
happen until the last 2 weeks of September. Who decided to go ahead 
anyway? President Obama's administration. They are the ones who 
decided.
  Contractors thought if the registration process wasn't going to work, 
then maybe it would help to set up a way for people to shop for plans 
and get information without registering. The administration told them 
to ``deprioritize'' that plan. What a government word, ``deprioritize'' 
that plan.

[[Page 16327]]

  Then when the Web site turned out to be a complete disaster, a 
systems failure, the Obama administration tried to hide how bad it was. 
It asked the largest health insurer in North Dakota not to tell anybody 
how many people have signed up for insurance through the exchange--the 
administration telling the State: Don't open up, don't tell people the 
truth. Why not? Because as of last week only 14 people had been able to 
sign up for the companies' plans. The numbers are so embarrassing for 
the administration they have been trying to cover up. They continued to 
cover up today when there was testimony and no numbers were given. It 
is the same reason the administration won't say how many people have 
signed up nationwide. They know how many people have signed up, but 
they refuse to tell the American people, the taxpayers, the people who 
pay the taxes and see their money being wasted by this administration 
and this government. There are new problems with this health care law 
every day.
  The Web site was supposed to be the easy part, but to me it is the 
tip of the iceberg. The Web site failures are just the tip of the 
iceberg.
  What else does the White House know about? By now they should know 
about cancelled coverage because it looks as if millions of Americans 
have already received notices from their insurance companies that they 
have lost their insurance, their insurance has been cancelled.
  There have been premium increases. People have talked about the fact 
that their premiums are going up, and there are higher copays and 
deductibles to deal with. People are losing access to the doctor. Plus 
there are always the issues of fraud and identity theft.
  What else are we going to learn this week when Secretary Sebelius 
testifies in the House tomorrow? Will she actually open up? Will she 
give them the truth? Will she give them the real numbers, or will she 
not admit to what is actually going on and refuse to answer the 
questions?
  How much worse does the Obama administration's incompetence get? What 
will it take for the President to admit that his health care law has 
been a train wreck and they will have to delay it for at least a year? 
We know he is going to have to do it eventually. There is no way all of 
these problems are going to get fixed quickly, and he is going to have 
to delay the individual mandate--the mandate that says every American 
must buy or have and prove they have health insurance. And who is the 
enforcer? The IRS--the Internal Revenue Service. The President should 
just go ahead and do it now and also delay all the other parts of the 
law, not just the mandate.
  It is time for President Obama to really come clean with the American 
people about what his administration knew and then come to the table to 
work with Republicans and give people the real health care reform that 
they need, want, and deserve so people can get the care they want from 
a doctor they choose at a lower cost.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks of my colleague 
from Wyoming.
  Here in Washington and, indeed, throughout the country everyone is 
talking about the ObamaCare Web site. No doubt that is a serious 
concern. The healthcare.gov Web site has been, to put it bluntly, a 
debacle. I don't know of a single Member of Congress, Democrat or 
Republican, who would say otherwise.
  That said, we need to be clear about something: The problems with 
ObamaCare go much deeper than a faulty Web site. Sure, the 
administration would have the American people believe that the problems 
with this law are simply technical in nature and that once they bring 
in technical experts to fix the Web site, all will be right with the 
world. But let's not kid ourselves. The problems with ObamaCare are 
fundamental and systemic. The administration may very well get the Web 
site up and running in the next few weeks, and they should, but that 
won't fix the health care law. I would like to take a few minutes today 
to talk about some of the problems facing ObamaCare that have nothing 
to do with the Web site.
  When he was trying to get the law passed, President Obama repeatedly 
promised Americans that ``if you like your current health plan, you 
will be able to keep it.'' This promise was central to the President's 
efforts to sell ObamaCare to the American people, and as it turns out, 
it was all a lie. Now even the White House admits that millions of 
Americans will not be able to keep their health plan under the law, and 
if recent news reports are to be believed, they have known this for 
years. Experts have predicted that as many as 16 million Americans may 
lose their existing coverage due to ObamaCare's new requirements. 
According to the NBC News story from yesterday, the Obama 
administration has known about this for at least 3 years. We have known 
about it as well.
  Consumers throughout the country are already receiving cancellation 
letters from their insurance providers. For example, in New Jersey 
800,000 individuals are being dropped from their existing plans. Kaiser 
Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people informing 
them their current coverage will end. Florida Blue is ending policies 
of 300,000 customers due to ObamaCare. This isn't some unforeseen or 
unintended consequence of the law. On the contrary, it is precisely 
what was intended when the law was put into place.
  As you know, Mr. President, the President's health care law includes 
a mountain of new mandates and requirements for health insurance plans. 
Any plans that fail to meet those onerous requirements are invalidated 
under the law. True enough, the law provides that plans that were in 
effect as of March 2010 will be grandfathered in, allowing consumers 
who prefer to keep those policies to do so even if the plan's don't 
meet the law's requirements. However, the Department of Health and 
Human Services has, through regulations, all but eliminated the 
protections enjoyed by those in existing plans by saying that the 
grandfathering provision does not apply to plans that have undergone 
any changes--even small changes to deductibles or copayments--since 
2010. Under this requirement, many of the plans that were in place 
before passage of ObamaCare, particularly those in the individual 
health insurance market, will fail to pass muster. That is why we are 
seeing hundreds of thousands of Americans being dropped from their 
current insurance plans and why the same fate is certain to befall 
millions more.
  As I said, the Obama administration knew about these problems a long 
time ago. In fact, regulations issued in July of 2010 estimated that 
because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, 40 to 67 
percent of consumers would not be able to keep their policies. Let me 
repeat that. The administration knew in July 2010 that at least 40 to 
67 percent of consumers in the individual market would not be able to 
keep their plans in place. Yet the President never took back his 
promise: ``If you like your current health plan, you will be able to 
keep it.'' This, quite frankly, is preposterous.
  The response we are getting from the administration is that, sure, 
many people will lose their existing health insurance, but it will be 
replaced by better, cheaper options. This claim is at odds with the 
facts. For many people, health expenses will increase under the new 
plan as a result of higher premiums, higher deductibles, and higher 
copays. One study from the Manhattan Institute found that individual 
market premiums will increase 99 percent for men and 62 percent for 
women nationwide. For others, the new plans may not cover visits to 
their current doctor or the hospital they have used in the past. That 
is because insurers are reducing the number of doctors and hospitals 
covered by plans in the exchanges in order to reduce premium prices. 
These changes are a direct result of ObamaCare's new requirements and 
mandates.
  I have received letters from my constituents from all over Utah who 
are scared, who are angry, and who are confused about the changes they 
are

[[Page 16328]]

facing. For example, Brenton in Provo, UT, currently has a high-
deductible plan and uses a health savings account. This arrangement 
works well for Brenton and his family, and they would like to keep it. 
Unfortunately, Brenton's plan has been canceled due to ObamaCare. The 
plan he will be required to purchase is more expensive and includes 
coverage he doesn't want. There is also Kathy from Salt Lake City, who 
wrote to tell me her deductible will increase from $3,000 to $5,000, 
her copays for doctor visits will increase by 30 percent, and her 
copays for prescription drugs will increase to 50 percent. Kathy let me 
know that as a result of these changes, her health care expenses will 
now be higher than her income.
  Even those who were in favor of the law are now finding it is not 
being implemented as they expected. A recent L.A. Times article 
profiled a young woman who was shocked by the 50-percent rate hike she 
received as a result of the health care law. She was quoted as saying, 
``I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it.'' That 
is a refrain I think we will be hearing from a number of people who 
supported ``health care reform.''
  Increased costs aren't the only problem consumers will be facing 
under ObamaCare. There are other serious, more subtle problems that 
have yet to be addressed. For example, some consumers may have their 
personal information compromised by an ObamaCare navigator or by 
submitting an application to the federally facilitated marketplace, the 
Federal data services hub, or one of the Affordable Care Act call 
centers. I have warned about that for a number of months--that they are 
moving too fast and not doing the job well enough--and a lot of people 
are going to get hurt.
  Social Security numbers, employment information, birth dates, health 
records, and tax returns are among the personal data that will be 
transmitted to this data hub, resulting in an unprecedented amount of 
information collected in one place by a government entity. Every piece 
of information someone would need to steal an individual's identity or 
access their confidential credit information will be available at the 
fingertips of a skilled hacker, providing a gold mine for data thieves 
and a staggering security threat to consumers. The entire system, 
including the data hub--a new information-sharing network that allows 
State and Federal agencies to verify this information--has not gone 
under any independent review to determine whether the data that is 
entered is secure. This means an individual's personal and financial 
records may be at serious risk of becoming available to data thieves.
  I have already been to the floor several times to discuss these 
issues. I am here again today because as of yet there has been no 
solution--or should I say no solutions--to these problems. In fact, the 
ObamaCare exchanges are less than a month old and data breaches are 
already occurring at the State level. A recent CBS News story featured 
a Minnesota insurance broker who was looking for information about 
assisting with ObamaCare implementation. Instead, what landed in his 
in-box last month was a document filled with the names, Social Security 
numbers, and other pieces of personal information belonging to his 
fellow Minnesotans. In one of the first breaches of the new ObamaCare 
online marketplaces, an employee of the Minnesota marketplace, called 
MNsure, accidentally emailed him a document containing personally 
identifying information for more than 2,400 insurance agents. While the 
incident was resolved, the broker said it raised serious questions for 
him as to whether those who sign up for MNsure can be confident their 
data is safe. These types of incidents are only going to increase as 
time goes on if rigorous testing is not performed to ensure that the 
data hub is sufficiently secure.
  Despite assurances by the chief technology officer for the 
administration in early September that ``we have completed security 
testing and received certification to operate,'' we all now know that 
all the testing had not been completed until just days before the 
October 1 launch date and that no third party--no third-party expert--
had a chance to review it.
  But there is much we don't know. What kind of testing was done? Who 
did the testing? What did they look for? What were the results? And 
perhaps most importantly, what are the risks of using the Web site? To 
help get answers to these questions, today several of my colleagues on 
the Senate Finance Committee and I are sending a letter to Secretary 
Sebelius asking detailed questions about the testing protocols, what 
waivers were received with respect to the testing requirements, and any 
and all results of the limited testing that did occur. Hopefully, that 
will enable Congress and the American people to better understand 
exactly what is broken with the system and help to ensure it does not 
happen again.
  These questions and problems demonstrate why it is imperative that 
the Government Accountability Office--GAO--independently verify that 
sufficient privacy and security controls are in place for the data hub 
and the entire Federal marketplace so that Congress has independent 
assurance that the necessary controls exist and that taxpayers know 
their personal information is secure. That is why I introduced S. 1525, 
the Trust But Verify Act, which calls on the GAO to conduct such a 
review and delays implementation of the exchanges until the review is 
completed. The bill currently has 32 Senate cosponsors.
  As you can see, Mr. President, the problems with ObamaCare are 
numerous and fundamental. As I said before, this law was bad policy 
when we debated it, it was bad policy when the Democrats forced it 
through the Congress, and it remains bad policy today.
  I have little doubt the administration can eventually get the Web 
site up and running. They would have us believe that once that task is 
accomplished, everything will be fine. But that is simply not the case. 
They can't say everything will be fine when millions of Americans are 
losing their existing health coverage as a direct result of the health 
care law. They can't say everything will be fine when health care costs 
are continuing to skyrocket even though the President claimed his 
health law would bring costs down. And they can't say everything will 
be fine when consumers' personal information is at serious risk because 
the administration didn't take the proper precautions with its new data 
system.
  As I said, the healthcare.gov Web site has been a debacle and the 
President is right to recognize it as such, but it would be a huge 
mistake to simply write off the problems with ObamaCare as a simple IT 
problem.
  My own position on ObamaCare is very clear. I support repealing the 
law in its entirety. As more and more Americans lose their health 
coverage--coverage they shopped for and liked--and face outlandish 
costs as a result of the law, I believe that position will eventually 
be vindicated. In the meantime, I think we can all agree that the law 
is simply not ready for prime time and that at the very least it should 
be delayed so we can protect the American people from further harm.
  I have made this call before and I am sure I will make it again. 
Today, with all the new information we have received--the broken Web 
site, the security problems, the skyrocketing costs, and the millions 
of Americans losing existing coverage--I hope my friends on the other 
side of the aisle will begin to see the light. I hope they will finally 
see what happens when one party tries to take on something as vast and 
as complicated as our health care system all on its own without any 
help from the other side.
  I hope that they would work with us to come up with real solutions to 
our Nation's health care problems. I will keep waiting, and if the 
problems we have seen in the last few weeks are any indication, I 
should not have to wait too much longer.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Warren). Under the previous order, all 
postcloture time is yielded back.
  The question occurs on the nomination.

[[Page 16329]]


  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  At the moment there is not.
  Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I suggest the absence of quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                  Senator Thad Cochran's 12,000th Vote

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, our good friend, the senior Senator 
from Mississippi, is about to cast his 12,000th vote, a truly 
remarkable accomplishment by a remarkable man. He was the first 
Republican to be elected to the Senate from Mississippi since 
Reconstruction. A few years ago he was named by Time magazine as one of 
the 10 most effective Members of the Senate, and they called him ``the 
quiet persuader.''
  For those of you who have recently arrived at the Senate, if you have 
not had any dealings with Senator Cochran yet, you will find that 
indeed he is the quiet persuader. In fact, it may be the secret to his 
success.
  He has had an extraordinarily accomplished career here in the Senate, 
and I wanted to take a few moments to congratulate him, not only on his 
service to his State and the Nation but to our institution.
  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I am sorry I am a little late here. I see 
my colleague, the senior Senator from Mississippi. I have had the 
pleasure of knowing Thad Cochran during my entire stay in Washington. 
He is a fine man. He has had experience in the House and the Senate, as 
I have. I have always appreciated his courtesies. He is just such a 
fine human being.
  Before his election to Congress, he served honorably in the U.S. 
Navy. He was a lieutenant in the Navy. After his tour of duty, while 
attending law school at Ole Miss, Senator Cochran returned to active 
duty for his naval work, even while he was going to law school. After 
graduating from law school in 1965, he joined the very prestigious law 
firm Watkins & Eager in Jackson, MS, and in less than 2 years he became 
a partner in that law firm--which was remarkable. It speaks well for 
his acumen in the law and for being a nice person.
  His break from public service did not last long, though. From the 
Navy he ran for Congress in 1972 and served in the House for 6 years 
before running for the Senate. He served as Chairman of the Republican 
Conference, the Agriculture Committee, and the Appropriations 
Committee.
  Throughout his time in Congress, Senator Cochran has promoted the 
best interests of Mississippi's citizens. Even when we were on 
different sides of the issues, I always respected Senator Cochran's 
service to his country, his dedication to the people of Mississippi and 
to the people of this country. I congratulate him on this impressive 
milestone and appreciate most of all his friendship.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is, Will the Senate advise and 
consent to the nomination of Richard F. Griffin, Jr., of the District 
of Columbia, to be General Counsel of the National Labor Relations 
Board.
  Mr. HARKIN. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a 
sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 55, nays 44, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 222 Ex.]

                                YEAS--55

     Baldwin
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Johnson (SD)
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--44

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Chambliss
     Chiesa
     Coats
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Enzi
     Fischer
     Flake
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson (WI)
     Kirk
     Lee
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Inhofe
       
  The nomination was confirmed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to 
reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table. The President 
will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

                          ____________________