[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8491-8495]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          EXECUTIVE OVERREACH

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise to discuss a critical issue facing 
this body and this country. The occasion for my remarks happens to be 
the nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell to head the Department of 
Health and Human Services. As a senior member of the HELP Committee and 
the ranking member on the Finance Committee, I have taken a great deal 
of interest in her nomination and have participated in her confirmation 
hearings.
  I am afraid the cordial nature of our exchanges and my recognition of 
Ms. Burwell's impressive qualifications has allowed some ObamaCare 
partisans to misconstrue my approaches as an acknowledgment that 
somehow the Affordable Care Act is working. Let me be absolutely clear 
on this point. I oppose ObamaCare, and I am going to fight as long as 
it takes to repeal that misguided law and replace it with a system that 
actually works for American families.
  That is why I have collaborated with several of my colleagues to 
unveil the framework of the Patient CARE Act, a plan that would repeal 
ObamaCare and replace it with commonsense, patient-centered reforms 
that would reduce health care costs and increase access to affordable, 
high-quality care. It would save the taxpayers about $1 trillion and 
yet have a better health care system than we have today with Obama.
  Let me also be clear on another point. No matter what the 
administration says, the reality is that ObamaCare is not working. The 
President and his allies are claiming the law is a success because the 
administration has mostly corrected the botched rollout of 
healthcare.gov and has had a certain number of individuals sign up--as 
if forcing people into ObamaCare, under the coercive threat of 
government penalty, is somehow cause for celebration. In reality, the 
mass cancellation of insurance coverage last fall was just the first 
prick of pain ObamaCare will inflict on the American people.
  I could talk for hours about rising premiums, growing deficits, 
backdoor bailouts and of course numerous other maladies, all of which 
threaten the quality and the enforceability of health insurance for so 
many Americans already struggling through the Obama economy, but the 
concern that motivates me to speak today goes beyond the many failures 
of ObamaCare as a matter of policy. Perhaps the most troubling of all 
has been the unlawful manner in which this administration has gone 
about implementing it.
  When faced with the prospect of enforcing disruptive features of his 
signature law, the President has chosen to ignore his fundamental 
obligation to enforce the law and has instead sought to rewrite various 
provisions of ObamaCare unilaterally.
  These actions form a troubling pattern of lawlessness and executive 
overreach by the Obama administration, one that all citizens and all 
Members of this esteemed body, whether Republican or Democrat, ought to 
condemn and resist.
  The harms I will discuss today are not just a theoretical 
abstraction. This administration's abuse is a very real threat to our 
constitutional system of government and to the liberties each of us 
enjoys. In recent weeks, I have come to the floor on a number of 
occasions to speak out about the Obama administration's lawlessness in 
a wide variety of contexts. I will continue to do so to defend the 
separation of powers, the rule of law, and the legitimate prerogatives 
of the legislative branch and this body in particular under the 
Constitution.

[[Page 8492]]

  Even in light of these serial abuses which have only accelerated 
under the President's new ``pen and phone'' strategy, the 
implementation of ObamaCare stands out as the crown jewel of executive 
overreach. By my count, this administration has acted unilaterally on 
at least 22 separate occasions to alter the law, something it does not 
have the right or power to do.
  Through its actions, the Obama administration, in particular the 
current Health and Human Services Secretary, has demonstrated cavalier 
disregard for the constitutional obligations of the executive branch. 
The President and his team have shown outright contempt for the 
legitimate role of Congress.
  Today, I wish to highlight a few of the Obama administration's most 
egregious acts and explain why these actions are unlawful and pose such 
a serious threat to our constitutional system of government. Let me 
begin with something most Americans unfortunately remember all too 
well, President Obama's now infamous promise that if you like your 
plan, you can keep it.
  Make no mistake, this promise was the key selling point for 
ObamaCare, which was approved by the Senate by a razor-thin party-line 
vote. Without the President's assurance that Americans could keep their 
current health plans if they wished, the bill simply would not have 
passed this Chamber.
  Yet it has long been clear that the White House never intended for 
Americans to be able to keep their plan. I do not say that lightly. It 
is not some unsubstantiated partisan attack. It is a well-documented 
fact. From the very beginning one of the key premises underlying 
ObamaCare's government takeover of health care was the notion that 
Americans could not and should not be trusted to choose their own 
health insurance and that instead Washington's so-called experts could 
be tasked with determining the sort of coverage Americans could buy.
  Indeed, that is the entire point of having the minimum coverage 
provision the Obama administration fought so hard to include in the 
bill. If Americans' existing plans do not comply with some government 
official's specifications, then ObamaCare forces individuals off of 
their insurance. To put the President's promise more honestly, if he 
likes your plan, you can keep it.
  Several respected news outlets have responded how policy aides within 
the Obama White House objected to the President's obviously inaccurate 
claim that if you like your plan you can keep it, only to be overruled 
by the President's appointed political advisers. Despite knowing it was 
false, the administration purposely perpetrated this dishonest claim.
  Tragically, millions of Americans relied on the President's promise, 
only to face the prospect of having their health insurance plans 
cancelled after his reelection. To make matters worse, the 
administration did not settle for the natural attrition that would 
eventually force Americans with the plans they like to buy an 
additional level of coverage, one they did not want, but one that 
ObamaCare forced them to purchase. No. Instead the administration 
rushed to publish regulations that defined exactly which existing plans 
could be grandfathered into the new scheme. The regulatory definition 
was so narrow in scope that even a minor or routine change to an 
existing plan could disqualify it.
  As the Solicitor General recently conceded to the Supreme Court, 
Obama administration officials knew the number of qualifying 
individuals would be ``very, very low, because it is to be expected 
that employers and insurance companies are going to make decisions that 
trigger the loss of the so-called grandfather status under the 
governing regulations.''
  Given the President's broken promise and the many cancelled plans, I 
joined with a number of colleagues to move quickly to use our power 
under the Congressional Review Act to try to overturn these 
regulations. Unfortunately, every single one of my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle voted against providing this relief.
  What followed was tragic but entirely predictable. Insurers were 
forced to cancel policies and millions of Americans were unable to keep 
the plans they liked. When ObamaCare's failed social engineering became 
a reality in the wake of millions of cancellation notices that went out 
last fall, even staunch supporters felt the intensity of the inevitable 
public outrage. Many in this body were eager to support legislation 
that offered relief to constituents suffering from this latest dose of 
the ObamaCare plan.
  The House of Representatives passed legislation with the bipartisan 
support of more than three dozen Democrats that would have allowed 
insurers to continue to offer the plans that millions of Americans had 
chosen to purchase. Yet once the chorus of public outrage got so loud 
that even President Obama could no longer ignore ObamaCare's 
destructive effects, what did he do? Did he try to work with a 
bipartisan majority in Congress to provide relief to the hard-working 
Americans injured by ObamaCare's forced cancellations, did he move to 
rescind the administration's aggressive regulations, or did he bite the 
bullet and enforce the law as written, demonstrating that he was 
willing to endure the unpopularity in order to live up to his 
obligations under the Constitution?
  Unfortunately, President Obama chose none of these legitimate 
approaches. Instead, his Department of Health and Human Services simply 
acted unilaterally to cancel and then rewrite the minimum coverage 
requirements in the statute. After doing so, HHS simply cited the vague 
notion of transitional relief as the only possible suggestion of where 
the administration could find executive authority to refuse to enforce 
clear statutory law.
  In reality, this action represents a shocking and radical abuse of 
power by this administration. Let me offer some background to 
contextualize how extreme the Obama administration's claimed authority 
is in this instance. In the enforcement of this Nation's tax laws, the 
IRS has for some time claimed the authority to adjust how a new tax is 
phased into operation, providing a slight delay in enforcement to ease 
the administrative burden imposed by the new tax.
  The IRS has engaged in this practice to adjusting enforcement timing 
with some regularity through the use of this asserted authority, which 
tends to be narrow, for example, by delaying the retroactive 
enforcement of an aviation fuel excise tax by just 16 days. The Obama 
administration's attempts to fix the failed bailout from the ``if you 
like your plan you can keep it'' lie does not even involve tax law, nor 
does it involve the IRS's past practice or its claimed legal authority.
  The Department of Health and Human Services simply invoked the 
claimed powers of the IRS in a wholly distinct context, a context in 
which it could not point to statutory authority or a similar history of 
past practice. In the absence of clear authority to alter or cancel 
enforcement, the President remains constitutionally obligated to take 
care that the laws be faithfully executed.
  In this case, the Obama administration does not have a leg to stand 
on. The sort of transitional relief here is nothing like a minor 16-day 
delay. The failure to enforce the minimum coverage provisions will now 
drag on for 3 full years past the required statutory deadline. The 
administration's fix is different in kind from prior examples of 
transitional relief, because in this case the government did not 
actually face enforcement difficulties. Insurance companies had already 
complied with the statute by canceling millions of plans, as the law 
required them to do.
  In fact, precisely the opposite was true. What finally motivated the 
administration to act was, instead, the public backlash generated from 
proper compliance with the law.
  No matter how much the Obama administration may want to mitigate the 
disastrous effects of its own signature law, neither HHS nor any other 
part of the executive branch has legitimate authority, in the form of 
prosecutorial discretion or otherwise, to ignore or rewrite a Federal 
statute.

[[Page 8493]]

  In the words of the Justice Department's longstanding position: The 
President may not ``refuse to enforce a statute he opposes for policy 
reasons.'' But that is precisely what the Obama administration has done 
in this case. The whole idea of administrative transitional relief is 
premised on the notion that such action is properly derived from, or at 
the very least is consistent with, relevant statutory authorities. 
Here, the administration's action directly contradicts the plain 
language of the statute, which obligates insurance companies to offer 
only plans compliant with the statute's requirements and which 
obligates State and Federal governments to enforce those requirements.
  A generic brand of regulatory authority cannot provide the executive 
branch with unilateral power to rewrite effective dates made explicit 
in the statute. This is especially true of ObamaCare, since, as we were 
told repeatedly during the debate over the law, the precise effective 
dates for various intertwined provisions were deemed central to the 
effectiveness of the entire statutory scheme.
  All this is to say that the Obama administration's actions in this 
area far exceed any transitional relief authority the President might 
rightfully claim and instead amount to a vast illegitimate use and 
abuse of power by the executive branch. The Constitution obligates the 
President to follow the law. It also commands him to ``take care that 
the laws be faithfully executed,'' meaning he must ensure that others 
subject to his authority comply with the law.
  In this case, President Obama has not only rejected his own 
obligation to follow and enforce the law, but he is also permitting, 
even urging, States to disobey their obligations to enforce ObamaCare. 
He is likewise actively encouraging insurance companies to offer plans 
that violate the company's explicit obligation under the minimum 
coverage requirements. He is encouraging consumers to participate in 
and rely on this lawlessness by purchasing what are, in fact, unlawful 
policies.
  Such executive lawlessness should be troubling to all Americans 
regardless of political stripe or partisan affiliation. It is the 
Constitution, the political institutions it established, the legal 
framework it enshrines, the checks and balances it requires, that 
ensures we remain a government of law and not of men. Absent these 
essential restraints, we will all become subject to increasing 
arbitrary rule, a government that knows no bounds and seeks to regulate 
and control virtually every aspect of our lives.
  Sadly, this is just one example of the administration's lawlessness 
in implementing ObamaCare. It gets worse, though. Consider the 
individual mandate. I firmly believe the individual mandate constitutes 
an unprecedented and unconstitutional overreach that, in the words of 
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, ``changes the relationship of 
the Federal Government to the individual in a very fundamental way.''
  But even as we seek to repeal and replace ObamaCare, for now the 
individual mandate is the law of the land. The President who fought so 
hard to impose this terrible burden on the American people through the 
legislative process and in the courts, is bound to enforce it.
  Yet when it came time to implement the individual mandate, which the 
administration long argued was the linchpin of the entire ObamaCare 
scheme and ``essential to creating effective health insurance 
markets,'' the administration simply decided that enforcing that 
provision as written in law no longer suited their interests.
  Again, I ask, did the Obama administration work with Congress to 
relieve this burdensome mandate? Of course not.
  As has become his habit, the President once again chose to act 
unilaterally, stretching his statutory and constitutional authority to 
the breaking point in an effort to avoid engaging in the legislative 
process, the only legitimate means of revising the individual mandate.
  Let me reiterate that I abhor ObamaCare's individual mandate. I want 
to repeal it, along with the rest of the Affordable Care Act, so that 
it no longer infringes on the liberties of any American. But either 
implementing or repealing the individual mandate must be done lawfully, 
not by executive fiat.
  The administration sought to justify its unilateral actions to delay 
application of the individual mandate on the basis of ObamaCare's 
hardship exemption. But in announcing the delay, the administration 
determined it would exempt anyone who simply completes a hardship form, 
indicates that their current insurance policy is being cancelled, and 
considers other available policies unaffordable. Such a standard is the 
very definition of lawlessness, and it contradicts the letter of the 
law. Indeed, the White House and its supporters in Congress drafted 
exceptions to the individual mandate very narrowly to make it as 
universal as possible.
  Although the statute gives the HHS Secretary some flexibility in 
granting hardship exemptions, the plain text of the law specifies 
precisely when a health plan is unaffordable, when it costs 8 percent 
or more of household income. By granting an exemption to anyone who 
subjectively thinks that available coverage is unaffordable, HHS has 
made a mockery of the mandate, not to mention completely ignoring the 
affordability exemption's objective standard.
  In doing so, the Obama administration has stretched beyond 
recognition the limited regulatory authority it does possess, simply in 
order to frustrate enforcement of its prized individual mandate.
  The administration's unwillingness to enforce the individual mandate, 
which lies at the very core of ObamaCare, demonstrates not only how the 
bill has failed to live up to its lofty promises, more fundamentally it 
shows how irresponsible the President has been in failing to live up to 
his constitutional obligation to take care that the laws--his signature 
law, no less--be faithfully executed.
  But the administration's lawlessness does not end with the individual 
mandate. Once again, it only gets worse. In a massive law chock-full of 
burdensome requirements, the administration has found it necessary to 
ignore mandates of all shapes and sizes.
  Take also the employer mandate. Perhaps less public attention is 
focused on the administration's effort to dictate coverage requirements 
backed by stiff penalties to every American business with more than 50 
employees. But this employer mandate would have devastating effects, 
first, by discouraging small businesses from hiring and thereby leaving 
millions unemployed; second, by forcing employers to cut their 
employees' work hours, limiting take-home pay for millions of current 
workers struggling to get by; and, third, by discouraging many 
employers from even providing health insurance to their workers, 
leaving millions of Americans to fend for themselves.
  As the statutory deadline for implementing the employer mandate 
approached, even ObamaCare supporters feared these consequences, and 
the administration once again unilaterally suspended its enforcement of 
the law.
  The first clue that the Obama administration was up to something 
illegitimate came when HHS announced its total suspension of the 
employer mandate in a blog post euphemistically and ironically entitled 
``Continuing to Implement the ACA in a Careful, Thoughtful Manner.''
  That such a significant announcement was made using insidiously 
innocuous language, that it was made via such an informal medium, came 
as little surprise given this administration's propensity toward 
flippant and frequently unaccountable governance by blog post, hashtag, 
and selfie.
  In this case, the announcement did not bother to identify any legal 
basis for suspending the employer mandate and merely made passing 
reference to the limited concept of so-called transition relief.
  Upon subsequent scrutiny, it became clear that the logic of 
transition relief simply doesn't apply here because Congress and the 
President, in passing the bill into law, enacted an explicit statutory 
requirement detailing when the

[[Page 8494]]

employer mandate must be implemented. By acting in direct contravention 
of this explicit statutory deadline, the power of the Obama 
administration's authority was, as the Supreme Court explained, ``at 
its lowest ebb,'' with the President authorized to act only if Congress 
has no constitutional power to act. But in this case Congress's power 
to lay and collect tax is clearly enumerated in article 1, section 8 of 
the Constitution.
  In other words, the Obama administration's unilateral action to 
suspend the employer mandate was lawless by any definition, including 
of the Supreme Court.
  It did not have to be that way, and it should not have been that way. 
A broad bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives acted to 
provide lawful statutory relief from the employer mandate. The House 
bill was strictly limited to changing the statutory deadlines for the 
employer mandate and its reporting requirements, and the bill changed 
those dates to match the timeline on which the administration announced 
it intended to begin enforcement. In other words, the House bill gave 
the administration the precise employer mandate delay it wanted and the 
bill contained none of the other policy changes that most Republicans 
favor.
  When offered the opportunity to delay the employer mandate in a 
lawful manner, what did President Obama do? He threatened to veto it. 
By doing so, the President conveyed in unmistakable fashion that his 
priority lies in political gamesmanship and that he has no respect for 
his constitutional obligations.
  I wish I could say the Obama administration's reckless and unlawful 
unilateralism in refusing to enforce the employer mandate ended there. 
Sadly, it does not.
  A few months later, the administration essentially rewrote the 
employer mandate, announcing it would delay enforcement for years--and, 
in some cases, permanently--well beyond the precedence of past 
enforcement delays.
  But it still gets worse. Rather than simply offer another blanket 
delay of the employer mandate, the Obama administration went much 
farther. Officials announced that the mandate would only be enforced 
for businesses with 50 to 99 employees if those businesses failed to 
comply with a new onerous maintenance-of-workforce regulations. That 
regulation prevents businesses from reducing the size of their 
workforce or the overall hours of service of their employees unless 
they have a bona fide business reason acceptable to government 
bureaucrats.
  For businesses with more than 100 employees, the Obama administration 
likewise suspended enforcement of the employer mandate until 2015, at 
which time executive officials will replace the statutory requirement 
requiring coverage for all employees with a new administrative formula 
for determining how many employees must be offered coverage.
  I could stand here all day criticizing the backward logic and 
terrible consequences of having Federal bureaucrats police the 
employment practices of our Nation's small businesses. There are so 
many reasons why the employer mandate is bad policy, but I have come to 
the floor today to highlight the sheer lawlessness of these unilateral 
executive actions.
  In the case of the employer mandate, the law itself dictates when 
that mandate should be enforced. HHS has not suggested that it lacks 
sufficient resources to enforce the mandate, nor can it have considered 
the equity of enforcement in individual cases when it sweeps up every 
single business subject to this mandate and categorically refuses to 
enforce this law.
  Instead, the Obama administration has simply abdicated its duty to 
enforce the law. Even worse, it has usurped legislative authority by 
devising a wholly different scheme--a wholly different enforcement 
scheme--with its own conditions, goals, and timeline inconsistent with 
those prescribed in the statute.
  Sadly, the executive abuses of this administration in implementing 
ObamaCare extend beyond the minimum coverage requirements and the 
individual and employer mandates.
  Consider the unilateral use of a so-called demonstration project to 
divert attention from ObamaCare's cuts to Medicare Advantage. By 
providing seniors an alternative to traditional Medicare that takes 
advantage of market-based competition to enhance patient choice, 
quality of care, and cost-effectiveness, Medicare Advantage has proven 
an extraordinary success. I am pleased to have played a role in its 
creation.
  In advancing President Obama's now-broken promise that his health 
care plan wouldn't add one dime to our deficits, the final ObamaCare 
bill mandated more than $300 billion--with a B--in cuts to Medicare 
Advantage over 10 years.
  But the Obama administration has had to grapple with yet another 
inconvenient fact. Medicare Advantage has become increasingly popular 
with each passing year. As of last year, nearly 3 in 10 Medicare 
beneficiaries chose it over traditional Medicare. In my home State of 
Utah, one in three beneficiaries receives coverage from Medicare 
Advantage.
  Rather than acknowledge his blunder and ask Congress to reverse 
ObamaCare's unwise and unpopular Medicare Advantage cuts, the President 
has once again taken unilateral action that makes a mockery of his 
signature law.
  His administration used a minor provision, one that allows the 
administration to demonstrate different bonus payment models in pilot 
programs as a thinly veiled guise for delaying Medicare Advantage cuts 
ahead of an election. Never mind the clear conflict between awarding 
the bonuses across the board and the statutory purpose of such 
demonstration projects to determine if the payment changes produced 
efficiency and economy. Never mind the obvious absurdity of pretending 
to use pseudodemonstration authority to delay the Medicare Advantage 
cuts unilaterally, when such a demonstration is at least seven times 
larger than any other Medicare demonstration conducted since 1995 and 
is greater than the budgetary impact of all those previous 
demonstrations combined. And never mind that the statutory authority 
for the demonstrations calls for budget neutrality.
  When I first learned of the Obama administration's clear abuse of 
this narrow statutory authority, I asked GAO to investigate. GAO's 
report confirmed that the administration had indeed exceeded its legal 
authority and recommended canceling the program because it wasted 
taxpayer money. Still, the administration pressed forward, simply 
ignoring its obligations and usurping Congress's constitutional power 
of the purse.
  I wish I could say this move was surprising, but through a repeated 
pattern of such actions, President Obama and his administration have 
earned a reputation for executive arrogance and constitutional abuse.
  The list of fundamentally illegal actions by this administration in 
implementing ObamaCare goes on and on. For now, let me mention one more 
example where President Obama has completely disregarded his obligation 
to enforce the law and yet again sought to usurp Congress's power to 
make taxing and spending decisions through the constitutionally 
ordained legislative process.
  The ObamaCare provision at issue in this instance is remarkably 
simple. It provides tax subsidies for individuals to purchase health 
coverage through an exchange ``established by the State under section 
1311.''
  Section 1311 is the provision of ObamaCare that allows States the 
option to create their own exchanges, but section 1311 is not the 
provision that authorizes the creation of the Federal exchange to 
operate where the States choose not to act. That is section 1321.
  I can't imagine how this provision could be any clearer. The law only 
authorizes subsidies in connection with State exchanges, not the 
Federal exchange, and this is no accident. ObamaCare incorporated the 
principle of so-called cooperative federalism--a polite term for thinly 
veiled Federal coercion and commandeering of the

[[Page 8495]]

sovereign States. Indeed, this figleaf hiding Federal dominance was 
critically important to rounding up 60 votes to pass ObamaCare in the 
Senate.
  As my friend, the former Senate from Montana--now Ambassador to China 
and a principal author of the ObamaCare text--noted during the Finance 
Committee markup of the bill, conditioning tax credits in this way was 
the only means by which our committee could establish jurisdiction to 
demand rewriting State insurance laws, as ObamaCare requires, but in 
the end, the Federal Government's own exchange ended up covering the 
majority of States.
  As written, the law does not permit subsidies in connection with the 
Federal exchange. Given these circumstances, did the administration 
choose to enforce the legislative compromises to which President Obama 
agreed by signing the bill into law? Did the White House seek to work 
with Congress to address this disparity? Of course not.
  Yet again, HHS chose to ignore the clear statutory restrictions and 
instead authorized billions of dollars in illegal subsidies through the 
Federal exchange in direct conflict with the plain text of the law.
  This obvious abuse has been challenged in court, and after hearing 
the judges' deep skepticism of the administration's case, I am 
confident the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit will roundly 
reject the Obama administration's radical arguments seeking to justify 
this lawlessness. I hope the court will hold the administration 
accountable for its deliberate and unmistakable violation of the law 
and that it will do so despite the effort by President Obama and his 
allies to fill the DC Circuit with compliant judges who might overlook 
the administration's executive abuses, but whatever that or any other 
court determines as a matter of specific legal principle, the fact 
remains that Obama administration officials--and in particular the HHS 
Secretary--have repeatedly and purposefully sought to undermine 
Congress, usurp legislative power, and become a law unto themselves.
  President Obama came into office promising the most transparent and 
accountable Presidential administration in history. The Obama 
administration has ended up being transparently lawless.
  Today I have discussed only five examples of the administration's 
lawlessness in implementing ObamaCare. I will save for another day the 
significant legal concerns surrounding the administration's abusive 
handling of high-risk pools, its actions involving the small business 
exchange, its sweetheart deals granting unauthorized exemptions for 
labor unions, and many other similarly problematic actions.
  But even in the five examples I have mentioned today, the overriding 
point is clear: the tenure of President Obama has amounted to an 
unmistakable pattern of executive abuse. Time and again his 
administration has flouted its constitutional responsibilities, 
exceeded its legitimate authority, ignored duly enacted law, and sought 
to escape any accountability for its executive overreach.
  Such executive abuse cannot stand. Whether Republican or Democratic, 
each of us has a sworn obligation to defend the Constitution, and each 
of us has the responsibility to defend the rightful prerogatives of the 
legislative branch. I have long argued that ObamaCare 
unconstitutionally intrudes on our most basic liberties, but those 
liberties cannot be secured when the executive branch defies legal 
bounds and ignores its constitutional obligations.
  The continued well-being of our Nation, the legitimacy of our 
republican self-government, and the basic liberties of our fellow 
citizens depend on ensuring the exercise of executive prerogative is 
properly kept within lawful bounds. Doing so requires continual 
vigilance--by the courts, by Congress, and by the American people--
especially in the face of such reckless lawlessness by the current 
administration.
  Our Nation needs new leadership. Ultimately, we need to elect a new 
President in 2016, one who will respect the Constitution and seek to 
protect the rights of its citizens, but until then we need an HHS 
Secretary who will uphold the law and respect the rightful prerogatives 
of the legislative branch.
  That is why I pressed Ms. Burwell during her confirmation hearing 
last week about the administration's illegitimate and lawless actions 
and about the need for a different approach. No matter how cordial our 
debate may be, no matter her impressive qualifications, my overriding 
concern is that she be accountable to Congress, to the law, and to the 
Constitution.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Warren). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REED. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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