[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 19483-19484]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      RESTORING AMERICANS' HEALTHCARE FREEDOM RECONCILIATION BILL

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, today we also passed the most comprehensive 
and far-reaching repeal of ObamaCare that is possible under the 
reconciliation rules. We expect the House to pass this version shortly 
and soon this repeal will head to the President's desk for the first 
time in his tenure.
  Our bill will eliminate more than $1.2 trillion in ObamaCare tax 
hikes and save nearly $400 billion over 10 years. Lifting the burdens 
this law has placed on hard-working families will help move the Nation 
forward from ObamaCare's broken promises to better access to patient-
centered health care for each and every American.
  As I noted earlier, our Nation has made great strides in improving 
the quality of life for all Americans, but these changes were always 
forged in the spirit of bipartisan compromise and cooperation. We still 
need health care reform, but it has to be done the right way. To have 
good health care, we will have to have ideas from both parties, not 
just one party.
  Tonight we made significant progress to pointing out a bunch of the 
flaws, and there were a lot of people who were involved in that and I 
wish to take this opportunity to thank them.
  We gave instructions to the Finance Committee and the Health, 
Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that they were each to save $1 
billion. So Senator Hatch and his staff went to work on it, and Senator 
Alexander and his staff went to work on it, and they accomplished that 
task in conjunction with the House. So I thank them for their effort.
  I thank the Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee, and 
especially my staff director, Eric Ueland; as well as my deputy staff 
director, Dan Kowalski; the parliamentarian, Tori Gorman; the senior 
budget analyst, Steve Robinson; the budget analysts, Greg D'Angelo and 
Tom Borck; the junior budget analyst, Kaitlin Vogt; the chief counsel, 
George Everly; the assistant counsel, Clint Brown; the director of 
regulatory review, Susan Eckerly; and the editor, Elizabeth Keys.
  I also wish to thank the people on my personal staff who had to put 
some of their projects kind of secondary at times and then had to pitch 
in and help with the budget as well.
  I also want to express my appreciation to the staff from Leader 
McConnell's office. Leader McConnell is a tremendous strategist and has 
opened the process for the Senate so that great things like the highway 
bill can be done, and that is done by allowing committees to do 
amendments, and then allowing the committee bill to come to the floor 
and have amendments from both sides of the aisle in an open process, 
and then to go to conference committee and have the conference 
committee do their work to make sure that the House and the Senate are 
together. Some of the chief people who worked on that are the chief of 
staff, Sharon Soderstrom; his policy advisor, Scott Raab; his budget 
and appropriations policy advisor, Jon Burks; and his policy director, 
Hazen Marshall. In addition, our floor and cloakroom staff has been 
very helpful, led by Laura Dove and Robert Duncan.
  Senator Cornyn and his staff did a marvelous job of helping to find 
out what difficulties there were and what things needed to be 
corrected. Senator Thune did a great job of lining up speakers, and 
Senator Barrasso did a great job with his staff in lining up some of 
the messaging.
  Thanks are due to the Senate Finance Committee, including the staff 
director, Chris Campbell; the chief health counsel and policy director, 
Jay Khosla; and the health policy advisor, Katie Simeon; the tax 
counsel, Preston Rutledge; and the health policy advisor, Becky Shipp.
  I extend my gratitude to the staff of the Health, Education, Labor, 
and Pensions Committee, as well as Senator Alexander, who has done a 
marvelous job there. I thank his staff director, David Cleary, his 
deputy staff director, Lindsey Seidman, his senior policy adviser and 
health council, Liz Wroe, and his health policy director, Mary Sumpter 
Lapinski.
  I also need to thank the former budget staff people who lent their 
expertise on this, particularly Bill Hoagland.
  We are in a process that may help with some of the future accounting 
for projects and things and that is to do some budget reform. A lot of 
people have talked about budgeting reform and we have been doing some 
hearings on budget reform. We will be putting together a bill, and to 
make it a bipartisan bill it will have to go into effect in 2017. At 
that point nobody will know who will be in the majority, so we will all 
work to have a process that will be fair to both sides just in case we 
happen to be in the minority or the other side happens to be in the 
minority.
  So we have a lot of people on both sides who have been working on 
that issue, and we will hold a number of hearings yet and hopefully 
come up with a process where we can get rid of old programs, eliminate 
duplication, and make the programs that we have be far better. Some of 
the people who have worked on that in the past have

[[Page 19484]]

been Senator Domenici, who was the chairman of the committee; Senator 
Gregg, who was the chairman of the committee; and Senator Patty Murray, 
who was the chairman of the Budget Committee. One of the early ones, 
Senator Phil Gramm, has donated some of his time to come and work with 
both sides to take a look at what some of the future economic problems 
are, and he is also one of the foremost economic predictors, so we can 
make sure all of those things will come together as we work on future 
budgets.
  Of course, I would be grossly in error if I didn't mention the House 
chairman of the Budget Committee, Tom Price. He and I have been meeting 
at least once a week with our staffs and coordinating what is being 
done on both sides, both from a process standpoint, from a policy 
standpoint, from a bill standpoint, and from a budget standpoint. I 
think that paid off in what we are seeing tonight.
  Last and particularly not least, I need to thank the 
Parliamentarians. I need to thank Elizabeth MacDonough, Leigh 
Hildebrand, Michael Beaver, Thomas Cuffie. These are some unsung heroes 
of the U.S. Senate who do a bipartisan--a nonpartisan job for us of 
kind of refereeing when asked, and when you are doing a reconciliation 
bill, you are forced to ask. I had no idea what the process was and the 
difficulty and the time that is involved, but all of that was spent by 
the Parliamentarians.
  We are all familiar with the rule book that is in every one of these 
desks and about this thick. That is a small part of it. In their 
office, they have file cabinets full of precedents. If you are drafting 
a bill that has to meet the kind of rules and the tight constraints 
that a reconciliation bill has, they have to meet with you on a regular 
basis and give their opinion and review all of these precedents to see 
if it can be put together the way we think it ought to be put together 
to be sure that when it comes to the floor, it can be voted on and when 
it is done, it actually is a bill that will be possible to send to the 
President's desk.
  So I thank the Parliamentarians for presiding. I know the tremendous 
job they do of advising whoever sits in the Presiding Officer's chair, 
but this was a whole new level of instruction as I found out all of the 
things that they have to have as a part of their knowledge, and I 
really appreciate the effort they go to, the knowledge they already 
have, and the important role they play in this process.
  I know I left out a lot of people, but to anybody who participated, I 
want to thank them for their efforts and hope that out of all of these 
budget processes, what we come up with is a better America.
  I yield the floor, and I thank the chairman.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, let me first of all thank the Senator from 
Wyoming. It is interesting that every time we are involved in 
something--it could be reconciliation, the budget or the highway bill--
he is always in the center and he has always been the anchor that holds 
us all together, and we appreciate that so much.
  I will recognize the Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell.

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