[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12271-12274]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            WORKING TOGETHER

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I am glad to see that Senate Democrats 
have finally ended their obstruction of the bipartisan student loan 
bill. It has been weeks since the Democrats blew past the July 1 
deadline they kept warning about, and it has been even longer since the 
House passed a bill similar to the one they are actually now agreeing 
to. But at least Democrats have finally stopped obstructing and 
arguing. At least now they are ready to put their partisan political 
fix aside and join President Obama and congressional Republicans in 
enacting real permanent reform for all students--the only real reform 
on the table that is designed to help every middle-class family.
  I would like to thank the sponsors of this bill for their hard work: 
Senators Manchin, King, Alexander, Burr, and Coburn. They may come from 
different political parties, but they all really care about students, 
and this bill certainly proves it.
  There is something else this bill proves too: that Democrats can work 
with Republicans when they actually want to--when they check their 
partisan take-it-or-leave-it approaches at the door and actually talk 
with rather than at us.
  That is why it is really disheartening to hear about the partisan 
speech President Obama plans to give today, the one the White House 
can't stop talking about. With all the buildup, you would think the 
President was unveiling the next Bond film or something, but in all 
likelihood it will be more like a midday rerun of some 1970s B movie 
because we have heard it all before. It is really quite old.
  These speeches are just so formulaic, and they are usually more 
notable for what they leave out than what they contain. Here is what I 
mean. We all know the President will bemoan the state of the economy in 
his speech, but he won't take responsibility for it. He will criticize 
Republicans for not rubberstamping his policies but will leave out the 
fact that for 2 years Democrats did just that, and yet the economic 
recovery is still stagnant.
  He won't talk about the fact that since he lost control of the House 
and his ability to have things exactly the way he wanted, he has 
refused to engage with seemingly anyone in Congress on ways to get the 
economy moving. A perfect illustration of that is the fact that instead 
of working with us on solutions, he is out giving speeches. And here is 
the kicker: Instead of taking responsibility for his failure to lead, 
he will probably try to cast this as some titanic struggle between 
those who believe in ``investing'' in the country and those who 
supposedly want to eliminate paved roads or stop signs or whatever 
ridiculous straw man he invents this time.
  Give me a break. There is a real philosophical debate going on in our 
country, but it is not anything like how he imagines it. I would say it 
is more of a debate between those who believe in a government that is 
smarter and more efficient and some who seem to believe in government 
against all the evidence; between those who draw the obvious lessons 
from human tragedies in places such as Greece and Detroit, and some who 
cannot face up to the logical endpoints of their own ideology, who 
cannot accept the terrible pain their own ideas inevitably inflict on 
the weakest in our society.
  It is between those who understand the necessity of empowering of 
private enterprise if we are ever going to drive a sustained recovery 
for middle-class families and some who can't seem to let go of ivory 
tower economic theories, even after 4\1/2\ years of an economy 
literally treading water.
  Speaking of ivory tower theories, here is another difference. Some of 
us believe it is actually possible to act as good stewards of the 
environment without declaring war on vulnerable groups of Americans. I 
know a lot of people here in Washington who think of Appalachia as fly-
over country, but many in my State have another word for it. They call 
it home. When these struggling families hear one of the White House 
climate advisers say a war on coal is exactly what is needed, can you 
imagine how that makes them feel? It makes them feel as though they are 
expendable, as though Washington does not understand them or, frankly, 
simply doesn't care. ``[It is] like going to some of these big cities 
and shutting Wall Street down,'' is how a coal worker from eastern 
Kentucky recently put it. ``See how it affects everything,'' he said. 
``Coal is our Wall Street.''
  This is just one of the many reasons Republicans have long called for 
an ``all of the above'' strategy. We understand that traditional 
sources can be developed in tandem with new alternative energies and 
technologies and that there is no other sane strategy anyway, since it 
is basically physically impossible, even putting the catastrophic 
economic consequences aside here for a moment, to even come close to 
meeting our energy needs with renewables today. We cannot even come 
close.
  What are we going to do in the meantime, power our country with 
foreign energy or American energy? This should be a no-brainer, but 
then again we are talking about Washington here. That is why it is so 
frustrating when the administration drags its feet on projects such as 
the Keystone Pipeline. The North American oil that Keystone would bring 
is basically going to come out of the ground whether we take it or not. 
So will the administration take it and the jobs that would come along 
with it or surrender it to places such as China? The White House will 
not say. The President's spokesman was asked for a decision again 
yesterday. You know what his answer was? Don't look to us.
  Look, this pipeline has been under review for years and years. It is 
basically being held up for one reason and one reason only: because the 
President is afraid to stand up to some of the most radical elements of 
his base, the kind of people you will find at one of those meetings of 
the Flat Earth Society he likes to talk about.
  It is time for him to choose between his political friends and the 
middle-class families who stand to benefit from the jobs, growth, and 
energy that Keystone would bring. Keystone is just one example of a 
project the President could work with both parties to implement right 
now, that would help our economy. There is a lot more we can get done 
if he would actually pick up a telephone and try to work with us every 
once in a while. I know Democrats would love to hear from him every now 
and then as well, because every time he goes out and gives one of these 
speeches, it generates little more than a collective bipartisan eye 
roll.
  It is such a colossal waste of time and energy, resources that would 
actually be better spent working with both parties in Congress to grow 
the economy and to create jobs. I know that is what my constituents in 
Kentucky expect and, frankly, they should expect that.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican whip is recognized.

[[Page 12272]]


  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I come to the floor to follow the remarks 
of our Republican leader on the President's pivot to the economy. Over 
the last 4 years, the Obama administration has given us one of the 
biggest economic experiments in American history. The numbers tell the 
story. Under this President, the Federal Government has increased the 
Federal debt by $6.1 trillion, raised taxes by $1.7 trillion, and 
imposed $518 billion worth of new regulations. The President, when he 
came to office, when he had a Democratic Senate and a Democratic 
House--in other words, his party controlled all branches of the 
legislative and executive branch--got virtually everything he wanted.
  He got a $1 trillion stimulus package. He wanted a government 
takeover of America's health care system and that is what he got. He 
wanted extensive new regulations for the financial industry and he got 
that too. He wanted to impose, through the Environmental Protection 
Agency, radical environmental regulations and that is what he got as 
well.
  From 2009 through 2010, until the voters spoke in November 2010, our 
friends on the other side of the aisle controlled the White House, the 
House of Representatives under Speaker Pelosi, and the Senate. They got 
virtually everything they wanted. That was their great experiment, to 
see whether a growing and intrusive and expanding Federal Government 
was the answer to our economic challenges and high unemployment.
  We now know what the results have been. America's unemployment rate 
hit 10 percent for the first time since the early 1980s and it stayed 
above 8 percent for 43 straight months. Meanwhile, many Americans have 
simply given up looking for work. How do we know that? The Bureau of 
Labor Statistics publishes something they call the labor participation 
rate. We know the percentage of people in the workforce is the lowest 
it has been for more than 30 years. That is a tragedy. Add it all up 
and we have been experiencing the weakest economic recovery and the 
longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression in the 
1930s.
  Even by the President's own measuring stick, by his own standards, 
his economic record has been a huge disappointment. Hence, his 
repetitive pivots to the economy, time and time again, particularly at 
a time when his administration is having to answer a lot of hard 
questions about various scandals. But I am with Speaker Boehner. I say: 
Welcome, Mr. President. Let's talk about the economy. Let's talk about 
what works and what does not work.
  I think we know now what does not work, which is another government 
program that raises taxes, increases regulations, and creates 
uncertainty on the job creators upon whom we are depending to put 
America back to work.
  As a Washington Post correspondent noted this past week:

       The President promised 1 million new manufacturing jobs by 
     the end of 2016. But factory employment has fallen for the 
     last 4 months, and on net is only 13,000 jobs toward that 
     goal.

  There is some good news. I was on the floor yesterday, admittedly 
bragging a little bit about the economic growth in my State, in Texas, 
and one of the reasons is because we are taking advantage of the 
innovation and the technology boom in the energy production business 
and we are actually seeing a huge movement back onshore, to the United 
States, of a lot of manufacturing because of the low price of natural 
gas. But, unfortunately, the President does not seem to recognize the 
benefits of producing our own domestic natural energy and what that 
would mean in terms of bringing jobs back onshore and creating more 
manufacturing jobs.
  The President has promised to increase net take-home pay and expand 
the middle class. You may recall particularly on the health care bill 
he said it would reduce health care premiums by $2,500 for a family of 
four. Unfortunately, he proved to be wrong because the cost has 
actually gone up $2,400 for a family of four, not down. We know from 
Labor Department statistics that median earnings for American families 
have fallen by 4 percent since the recession ended.
  I think even its most ardent advocates now are coming to the 
realization that ObamaCare is not working out the way they had hoped. 
Indeed, I was on the floor a few days ago with a letter from three 
union leaders who said that basically it is turning out to be a 
disaster. It is hurting their own members. Again, these are people who 
were for ObamaCare, saying it is not turning out the way we had hoped.
  The administration itself has implicitly acknowledged this by saying 
the employer mandate; that is, the requirement for people who employ 50 
people or more, is stifling job creation and prompting many companies 
to take full-time jobs and turn them into part-time jobs. Between March 
and June, the number of Americans working part time jumped from 7.6 
million to 8.2 million. I think the administration saw that number and 
it scared them a little bit, as it should. Hence, they delayed the 
employer mandate for another year, unilaterally.
  A new survey finds that in response to ObamaCare, 74 percent of small 
businesses are going to reduce hiring, reduce worker hours, or replace 
full-time employees with part-time employees.
  I am not suggesting those of us who did not vote for ObamaCare should 
be rejoicing in this development. Indeed, I think it is a sad moment. 
But even its most ardent advocates are finding out that their hopes and 
their dreams and their wishes for this government takeover are not 
turning out the way they should. Again, this is not a time for anyone 
to spike the ball or to rejoice in the failure of this program. This is 
a time for us to work together to say: OK, there are people who opposed 
ObamaCare. They ended up being right in their predictions. There were 
those who supported ObamaCare and unfortunately for the country it did 
not work out the way they had hoped. Now is the perfect time for us to 
come together and say: What do we do next to prevent the failure of 
this health care takeover by the Federal Government hurting the very 
people it was supposed to help? This is an opportunity for us to work 
together to do that.
  We need to do something different. Someone said a long time ago that 
the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and 
expecting different results. It is not going to happen so we need to do 
something different. We need to do something different in terms of 
delivering access to quality health care and making it affordable. 
Instead of more tax increases and more temporary tax gimmicks, we need 
fundamental tax reform. This is something that Republicans and 
Democrats I think all agree on. The President himself said he believes 
we need to do revenue-neutral corporate tax reform that lowers the 
rates, broadens the base, and gives us a revenue system that is more 
conducive to strong economic growth.
  Instead of having people in politics pick winners and losers in the 
economy or pick which parts of the law to enforce and which parts to 
waive, we need to dismantle what is left of ObamaCare and replace it 
with sensible, patient-centered alternatives that will lower costs, 
improve access to quality, and not interfere with that important 
doctor-patient relationship--something the Senator from Wyoming has 
eloquently spoken about many times.
  Instead of letting the Environmental Protection Agency regulate our 
entire economy, we need to expand domestic energy production by 
eliminating misguided Federal regulations. Instead of adopting energy 
policies that hamper job creation, we need to adopt policies that help 
promote jobs such as approving the Keystone Pipeline from Canada and 
not trying to overregulate something that is already subject to State 
regulation, such as fracking.
  Here in Washington, people act as though this horizontal drilling and 
this fracking process is something new. We have been doing it in Texas 
for 60 years and it has been regulated by the oil and gas regulator in 
our State. They protected the water supply and benefited job creation 
and economic growth for a long time.

[[Page 12273]]

  I understand it is hard for those of us who were wrong about their 
predictions for many of these policies to say: You know what. It did 
not work out the way we planned. None of us are relishing the failure 
of some of these policies, but we need to work together and get outside 
of our ideological comfort zone and address the problem of chronic high 
unemployment, the fact that our young people are graduating from 
college and they cannot find jobs. They know they are going to be 
burdened by the debt we continue to rack up, and that our economy is 
bouncing along the bottom. I am afraid if we continue with the policies 
of the last 4 years we will create a lost generation of young Americans 
who cannot find good, full-time jobs. None of us--Republicans and 
Democrats alike--wants that to happen, but it is time we did something 
about it.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, later today President Obama is scheduled 
to give the first in a series of speeches about the economy. He is 
pivoting one more time to turn his attention to the millions of 
Americans who are still struggling 4 years after the recession ended. 
The reason I say ``one more time'' is because this morning one of the 
reporters said this is about the tenth time the President has pivoted 
to the economy.
  A White House adviser said on Sunday that the President is going to 
speak about ``what it means to be middle class in America.'' Well, I 
hope President Obama will talk about how his own policies have harmed 
and continue to harm the middle class in America. I hope he will talk 
about the harm that his health care law has done to hard-working 
families. I hope the President will finally start talking about these 
things because the American people have been talking about them for a 
long time now.
  I hear it every time I go home to Wyoming--almost every weekend. It 
doesn't matter whether I am in Fremont County, Park County, Laramie 
County, or Natrona County--wherever I am in Wyoming, I continue to hear 
about this law. Now we are even hearing about it from the very union 
leaders who were among the law's biggest supporters. The heads of three 
major labor unions put out a letter recently that warned of the damage 
the health care law is doing to the middle class. They wrote:

       The unintended consequences of the ACA are severe. Perverse 
     incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios.

  Perverse incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios. That is 
what the law's supporters are saying.
  They wrote that the health care law ``will shatter not only our hard-
earned health benefits but destroy the foundation of the 40-hour 
workweek that is the backbone of the American middle class.''
  If the President wants to talk about what it means to be middle class 
in America, he needs to explain why his policies are destroying the 
backbone of the middle class. That is what the union leaders are 
saying. They are seeing, just like the rest of us, that the job numbers 
are not good for America.
  In June, the number of people working part time who want to work full 
time soared by 322,000. There are more than 8.2 million Americans 
working part-time jobs because their hours were either cut back or 
because they can't find the full-time work they seek.
  The White House conceded that the law was a problem for employers 
when it said they needed relief from the logistical mess the law has 
created. That is why the Obama administration decided to delay the so-
called employer mandate. That was one of the signature parts of the 
President's health care law. Under the law, every employer with 50 
people who were working 30 hours a week or more was going to have to 
offer expensive government-mandated health insurance. Now we have a 1-
year delay on this extremely unpopular and damaging Washington mandate.
  If the law is so bad for businesses that they can't handle it in 
2014, it is still going to be bad for them in 2015, and that was just 
one regulation. The President's health care law has already created 
more than 20,000 pages of new regulations. Well, those regulations 
concern middle-class families I hear from in Wyoming, and it is not 
just Wyoming. The front page of the Washington Post has a headline that 
reads ``Health law's unintended impact on part-timers.''

       For Kevin Pace, the president's health-care law could have 
     meant better health insurance. Instead, it produced a pay 
     cut.
       Like many of his colleagues, the adjunct music professor at 
     Northern Virginia Community College managed to assemble a 
     hefty course load despite his official status as a part-time 
     employee. But his employer, the state--

  The State of Virginia is his employer. This is not some company, it 
is the State of Virginia--

     slashed his hours this spring to avoid a Jan. 1 requirement 
     that all full-time workers--

  As a requirement in the health care law.

     for large employers be offered health insurance. The law 
     defines ``full time'' as 30 hours a week or more.

  This isn't a business worried about a bottom line, this is the State 
of Virginia.

       Virginia's situation provides a good lens on why. The state 
     has more than 37,000 part-time hourly wage employees, with as 
     many as 10,000 working more than 30 hours a week.

  Remember, 30 hours is the key number.

       Offering coverage to those workers, who include nurses--

  An important part of our economy and important as far as the needs of 
our country--

     park rangers and adjunct professors, would have been 
     prohibitively expensive, state officials said, costing as 
     much as $110 million annually.
       ``It was all about the money,'' said Sarah Redding Wilson, 
     director of Virginia's Department of Human Resource 
     Management.

  The health laws have an unintended impact on part-timers, and as a 
result it is hurting the middle class.
  Middle-class Americans are also worried about their health insurance 
premiums--and they have a right to worry. The McClatchy News Service 
ran this headline last week: ``Obama boasts of health care saves, but 
costs likely to rise for many.''
  The article went on to say:

       Experts predict that premiums on individual plans will 
     increase in most states because of the new consumer 
     protections this sweeping legislation requires.

  ``Consumer protections'' is just the White House's way of saying more 
redtape. That includes all of the new, required services people have to 
have in their Washington-mandated, Washington-approved health 
insurance. It is all of the health care services people have to pay for 
in advance whether they need them, whether they want them, or whether 
they will ever use them. Those requirements are a big part of the 
reason--and another reason--that health insurance costs are still going 
up even though Washington Democrats promised the health care law would 
have the opposite effect.
  It is happening all across the country. Indiana was the latest State 
to announce that premiums are going to go up next year--not down. Last 
Friday the State insurance department--this is not just somebody 
looking around--said the average rates for people buying individual 
plans will go up 72 percent. That announcement follows big increases in 
Ohio, Maryland, Idaho, Missouri, and Kentucky.
  In one State after another, rates for next year are being announced, 
and they are much higher than they were before the President's health 
care law went into effect. When President Obama gives his speech today 
and over the next few weeks he should tell his audience the truth about 
what is happening to the rates and why. He should also talk to middle-
class Americans about what might happen as far as their access to their 
family doctor under his health care law.
  Remember when the President said: If you like your doctor, you can 
keep your doctor? That was something the unions wrote about in their 
letter. It is a promise they think the President now isn't going to 
keep. Well, I think they are right.
  Now the Health and Human Services Department admits that individuals

[[Page 12274]]

may not be able to keep their doctors. This comes from the Web site the 
Department set up to try to answer questions people have been asking 
about the health care law. The Department's Web site now says if you 
get your coverage through the government's new insurance marketplace 
``you may be able to keep your current doctor.''
  That is a long way from when the President of the United States stood 
up and promised--actually he used the word ``guarantee''--you will be 
able to keep your doctor. It is that kind of backpedaling and broken 
promises that has union leaders worried. It has them worried, it has 
job creators hesitant, and it has middle-class Americans all across 
this country concerned.
  Of course, the health care law is just one of the areas where 
overregulation is hurting the economy. Another example is President 
Obama's announcement last month of tighter regulations on powerplants. 
That is on top of the excessive redtape the administration has already 
put in place that makes it harder and much more expensive for America 
to produce American energy.
  Last week I introduced a bill to block President Obama from going 
around Congress to implement his national energy tax through 
regulations. The American people have repeatedly told Washington to 
focus on jobs, not to roll out more redtape that increases energy bills 
and decreases economic opportunities.
  The President promised that he cared about hard-working, middle-class 
families, but his policies, one after another, are hurting those 
families and are making their lives much more difficult.
  President Obama needs to stop the Washington spin and tell the truth 
about his health care law and the truth about his other failed 
policies. Then he needs to come back to Washington, put aside his 
tired, old rhetoric and work with the Republicans to do the right thing 
for the American people. That means coming up with a replacement health 
care plan to finally give people what they were asking for all along: 
The care they need from a doctor they choose at a lower cost.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, are we in morning business at this point?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Yes, we still are.

                          ____________________