[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 21445-21448]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   FINANCE COMMITTEE ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, as we count down the remaining days on the 
2015 legislative calendar, there is still quite a bit of work to do and 
a few more big-ticket items to put to bed. Still, even with so much 
still on our plates, I believe it is appropriate to take a look back at 
the year we are now finishing up and reflect on what we have been able 
to accomplish.
  Now, 2015 has been a big year in the Senate. After many years of 
unproductive division and stagnation, the Senate finally has returned 
to work. While some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have 
tried to downplay the productivity we have enjoyed under the current 
Senate leadership--and the Washington Post Fact Checker awarded them 
some Pinocchios for their efforts--no one can seriously argue that 
things haven't changed around here.
  Under the current Senate majority, the committees have been allowed 
to function and work. Under the current Senate majority, we have had 
fuller and fairer debates on the Senate floor. Probably most important 
of all, under the current Senate majority, the Senate has actually been 
doing the people's business. Instead of being bogged down with 
divisive, political show votes, we have tackled tough challenges--
including numerous challenges that have plagued this body for many 
years--and we have delivered results, usually with a strong bipartisan 
majority, which I find to be very heartening.
  I am pleased to say this new trend toward efficiency and bipartisan 
success has been evident in the Senate Finance Committee, which I have 
been privileged to chair since the 1st of January this year. I would 
like to take some time to pay tribute to my colleagues on the Finance 
Committee and the successes we have enjoyed this year. I will start 
with the basics, just some top-line numbers.
  In 2015, the Finance Committee held 30 full committee hearings to 
discuss various legislative efforts, conduct oversight of the 
administration, and to question executive branch nominees. There were 
also two subcommittee hearings. We convened 10 separate markups to 
consider and report legislation and nominations.
  Let's dig a little deeper with the numbers. In terms of legislation, 
the Finance Committee moved at a historic pace in 2015, considering and 
reporting 37 individual bills. Those are more bills than the committee 
reported in the past four Congresses combined and more than any single 
Congress in the last 35 years. I just have to reiterate that I am not 
comparing 2015 to any single previous year. I am comparing it to the 
entirety of past Congresses. We have moved more legislation in just 1 
year than the Finance Committee has in any entire Congress in the past 
three and one-half decades.
  Even more striking is the fact that every one of the 37 bills we 
reported this year enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support in the 
committee. So far, 9 of those 37 reported bills have been signed or 
incorporated into law, and several more are likely to get there before 
the end of this week. In addition, three other bills that came through 
the Finance Committee were discharged and subsequently signed into law.
  However, while these raw numbers may be impressive, they only tell 
part of the story. If we take the time to delve into the specifics of 
our efforts on the Finance Committee, we will see that we have actually 
enjoyed significant successes in each of our major areas of 
jurisdiction, including tax, trade, health care, Social Security, and 
oversight. I have often spoken about many of our individual 
achievements on the Senate floor, but I think they deserve another 
mention today.
  Trade. I will start by talking about our efforts with regard to 
international

[[Page 21446]]

trade policy. We began 2015 with a desire to advance a bold and 
ambitious trade agenda that would update our trade laws for the 21st 
century global economy and set the stage for American leadership in the 
international marketplace. By any measurable standard, our efforts have 
been a smashing success. The centerpiece of our trade agenda was the 
legislation to renew trade promotion authority, or TPA. Prior to this 
year, it had been nearly three decades since a TPA bill was fully 
considered and reported out of the Senate Finance Committee. Our TPA 
bill received a strong bipartisan vote in the committee and another one 
on the floor. Actually, to be precise, we had to pass it twice in the 
Senate, with similar results on both occasions.
  This legislation put in place strong negotiating objectives to ensure 
our negotiated trade agreements reflect the collective will of 
Congress. It also empowered our negotiators to reach the best deals 
possible by providing a path to getting fair up-or-down votes for 
future trade agreements, giving our trading partners the assurances 
they need to put their best offers on the table. I don't want to go 
into too much detail today about any specific trade agreements that may 
or may not make their way to Congress in the future. I just want to 
point out that the Finance Committee's TPA bill--now a law--will ensure 
that we have all the information we need to make an informed decision 
on any agreement that Congress has the ultimate say over whether any 
agreement enters into force.
  In addition to TPA, the Finance Committee developed legislation to 
renew some of our most vital trade preference programs, including 
preferences for Haiti and countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and the 
Generalized System of Preferences, or GSP, Program. These programs are 
key tools in our arsenal for assisting developing nations and providing 
important benefits for job creators and consumers here at home. The 
preference bill was signed into law after getting a near-unanimous vote 
in both the House and the Senate.
  We also crafted the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, a 
bill which will, among other things, authorize the Customs and Border 
Protection agency and update our processes and standards for 
enforcement at our borders, most notably with regard to the protection 
of intellectual property rights, an issue that has long been of 
particular interest to me.
  This legislation also had a lot of support in the Senate and in the 
House. The conference committee, which I chaired, charged with 
reconciling the differences between the House- and Senate-passed 
versions of the bill, filed its report just this last week. My hope is 
that we will consider and pass this conference report as soon as 
possible.
  International trade is a key element of a healthy U.S. economy. We 
have made great strides toward promoting trade and improving global 
trade standards already this year--and hopefully we will be able to 
make a few more in the very near future.
  Entitlement reform. The Finance Committee has also enjoyed 
significant success when it comes to entitlement reform, which I think 
has surprised many people around here. For years--decades even--we were 
told that bipartisan entitlement reform was impossible. The political 
stakes, according to the naysayers, were far too high. The parties and 
stakeholders, they said, were too entrenched.
  Yet, in 2015, we have successfully enacted significant reforms to our 
two most ``untouchable'' entitlement reform programs: Medicaid and 
Social Security.
  In April, Congress passed, and the President signed, legislation 
originally drafted and reported out of the Finance Committee in late 
2014 to repeal and replace the Medicare sustainable growth rate--SGR--
formula. Although it has been a little while since the bill passed, I 
think we all remember the periodic scramble to find short-term offsets 
to patch the SGR and kick the can even further down the road. It was, 
quite frankly, an embarrassment we forced ourselves to endure year 
after year and a prime example of government ineptitude and our 
apparent inability to do anything in Congress to fix it.
  That all changed this year with the passage of the committee's 
legislation, which not only reformed Medicare in terms of the SGR but 
also featured cost-saving measures within the underlying program. These 
included a limitation on so-called Medigap first-dollar coverage, more 
robust means testing for Medicare Parts B and D, and program integrity 
provisions that have strengthened Medicare's ability to fight fraud.
  While we are on the subject of Medicare reform, I will mention that 
the Finance Committee also reported the Audit and Appeals Fairness, 
Integrity, and Reforms in Medicare--or AFIRM--Act earlier this year. 
This bipartisan bill is designed to address the already massive backlog 
of Medicare audit appeals while also allowing for increased efforts to 
improve program integrity and reduce improper payments out of the 
Medicare trust fund. It will make life much easier for both Medicare 
beneficiaries and their doctors who, under the status quo, wait, on 
average, a year and a half before an appeal is processed and they are 
able to know for sure whether their claims will be covered or if they 
will be paid for the services they perform.
  In addition to these steps forward on Medicare, Congress also 
passed--as part of the recent budget and debt-ceiling bill--legislation 
to reform the Social Security Disability Insurance Program, or SSDI, 
and to prevent benefit cuts looming in the not-too-distant future.
  Congress knew for years that the SSDI trust fund would be exhausted 
in 2016 and did little to address it. Despite my pleas and those of a 
handful of others, they did little to address it. I might add that for 
the Obama White House and our friends on the other side of the aisle to 
engage on this issue, it took some time. Facing the prospect of across-
the-board benefit cuts for all SSDI beneficiaries, the Finance 
Committee developed proposals to extend the life of the trust fund and 
put in place needed reforms to the SSDI Program itself. Most of these 
proposals were included in the final legislation.
  While, admittedly, these reforms are not the fundamental changes both 
the SSDI Program and Social Security more broadly need to be 
sustainable for future generations, they represented a very real first 
step toward that long-term goal and are the most significant changes to 
any Social Security Program enacted in the past three decades.
  Clearly, much more work needs to be done to put both Medicare and 
Social Security on firm fiscal footing. The same is true of Medicaid 
and other entitlement reforms. Still, the steps Congress took this year 
toward fixing those programs were the biggest we have taken in a long 
time. I am pleased to acknowledge that the efforts that led to those 
steps began in the Senate Finance Committee.
  Highways and Infrastructure. One of the biggest and greatest 
successes we have had in the Senate this year was the passage and 
enactment of a long-term extension of the highway trust fund. The final 
highway bill, which we passed a few weeks ago, provides 5 years of 
continuous highway funding, the longest extension of transportation 
funding since 1998 and one of the longest since the Reagan years.
  Prior to this year, the typical cycle for funding highways went 
something like this: Step 1, leaders of Congress recognize and 
acknowledge a near-term exhaustion of highway funding. Step 2, those 
same leaders work with the relevant committee chairmen to cobble 
together enough offsets to pay for a short-term extension, usually 
somewhere between 6 and 18 months. Step 3, Congress passes a short-term 
extension with little fanfare and absolutely no celebration. Step 4, 
every Member of Congress spends the next 6 to 18 months complaining 
about this process. Step 5, start again at Step 1.
  Thankfully, we broke that cycle this year. We began with a goal to 
provide the longest extension possible. I was determined to do all I 
could to find a way out of this rut, which is why I believed we had to 
think a little outside the proverbial box and look everywhere for 
potential offsets.

[[Page 21447]]

  Generally speaking, the Finance Committee is responsible for the 
financing title of any highway bill that goes through the Senate. 
Usually, we focus on areas within our jurisdiction as we search for 
offsets. But over the years, those resources became harder and harder 
to come by, requiring us to look elsewhere.
  The committee spent weeks examining numerous options and 
alternatives. Many thought we could not come up with much more than 
just one 1 or 2 years. Eventually, we were able to present our 
distinguished majority leader with a list of potential offsets that 
could provide funding for a long-term highway bill without raising 
taxes or increasing the deficit.
  That list we came up with on the Finance Committee, in large part, 
formed the basis of the long-term highway bill that we passed earlier 
this month, which has provided much needed certainty for our States as 
they plan and complete highway projects, preserving jobs and 
stimulating growth in our economy. That long-term Transportation bill 
was, after all, a win for good Government and for bipartisanship in 
Congress. To a lesser but not insignificant extent, it was also a win 
for the Senate Finance Committee.
  Tax. The committee also took important steps toward fixing our 
Nation's Tax Code in 2015. From the beginning of the year, the Finance 
Committee began considering and reporting bipartisan tax legislation 
aimed at specific needs for our country. For example, in January, we 
reported the Hire More Heroes Act, which relieves small businesses of 
burdensome ObamaCare mandates that made it harder for them to hire 
veterans. This legislation was signed into law in July.
  In February, we held a markup to consider 17 separate tax bills, all 
of them bipartisan, all of which passed without objection through the 
committee. To date, two of those bills have become law, and, hopefully, 
before we adjourn this week we will pass legislation that incorporates 
at least 11 more.
  Adding those 11 bills to the Finance Committee total, 20 of the 37 
bills we reported will have been signed into law. That is a pretty good 
batting average, and when you include the bills we discharged from the 
committee, the grand total comes to 23 separate bills out of our 
committee signed or incorporated into law--not bad for a year's work.
  In addition, at the beginning of the year, we launched five separate 
tax reform working groups in an effort to advance the larger tax reform 
conversation. These working groups, each of them cochaired by a 
Republican and a Democrat, spent months examining various areas of the 
Tax Code, listening to stakeholders and learning the various pressure 
points and tradeoffs that come with any significant changes to our tax 
laws. This past summer, each of the five groups released a report 
detailing their findings, outlining reform opportunities, and 
acknowledging areas of likely disagreement.
  I am not naive. I know that tax reform, whenever it happens, will be 
a long, difficult process. However, I believe the effort our committee 
members put in with these working groups will make a difference in how 
that process plays out and how the tax reform debate unfolds in the 
future.
  While these are important steps for tax policy and tax reform, I am 
hoping that we can take an even larger step before we adjourn for the 
year. Earlier this week, leaders and tax writers in both the House and 
Senate, and from both parties, reached an agreement on legislation that 
would provide significant tax relief for millions of families and job 
creators around the country. We would do so mostly by unwinding the 
near-annual tradition of extending expired tax provisions.
  Like the SGR and highway funding, the periodic tax extenders exercise 
has been a constant source of consternation around here, with a new 
cliff or crisis developing with any hint that expiring provisions would 
be not be extended. Sometimes we haven't extended them. And, of course, 
the whole ordeal has been further evidence that Congress is incapable 
of making tough choices in order to govern more effectively--at least 
in the minds of some.
  The bill we unveiled this week--which the House passed earlier today 
with an overwhelming bipartisan vote--would change that dynamic by 
making many of the most important consequential tax provisions 
permanent, significantly relieving the ongoing extenders pressure, and 
allowing for a more sensible approach to tax policy. I spoke about this 
legislation at length on the floor yesterday.
  Permanent tax policy, such as the kind we would achieve in our bill, 
means more certainty for taxpayers: individuals, families, and 
businesses. It means an improved revenue baseline for future tax reform 
efforts. More than anything, it means tax relief for hardworking 
taxpayers, to the tune of about $680 billion over 10 years.
  We moved this effort forward on the Finance Committee in July when we 
marked up the so-called extenders package, taking note of Senators' 
priorities and desires for long-term solutions and setting the stage 
for a real discussion about permanence. We took that momentum into the 
bicameral, bipartisan negotiations, and, ultimately, the bill reflects 
many of the preferences expressed in the committee.
  Our bipartisan tax bill also contains a 2-year moratorium on the 
medical device tax under ObamaCare, something that has been very 
harmful to our medical device industry. We will look at that in 2 more 
years. For years now, we have seen support grow on both sides of the 
aisle for repealing this horrendously misguided tax, the medical device 
tax. It has been a top priority of mine since the day ObamaCare was 
signed into law. Other Members of the Finance Committee have led on 
this issue as well, and one way or another we are going to get it done. 
For now, we have a good first step: a bill crafted by both parties to 
suspend the tax for 2 years.
  Two similar suspensions of ObamaCare taxes are included in the 
Omnibus appropriations bill, including a 2-year delay of the so-called 
Cadillac tax--which is just a massive middle-class tax hike disguised 
as a tax hit on the rich--and a 1-year moratorium on the health 
insurance tax.
  In other words, on top of permanence in the Tax Code and relief for 
taxpayers across the country, we have bipartisan agreement to delay or 
suspend some of the more harmful elements of the Affordable Care Act. 
It is not a bad way to end the year, if you ask me. Of course, now we 
have to pass these bills. In a day or so, I think we will.
  Health Care and Human Services. Let me move on to another important 
area of our committee's jurisdiction: heath care and human services. We 
have been very active in the Finance Committee in this space as well. 
Most recently, we worked with our colleagues on the Budget and HELP 
Committees to put together the reconciliation legislation repealing 
ObamaCare, which, after it passed in the Senate, paved a way toward 
finally putting a repeal bill on the President's desk. This is a key 
promise for congressional Republicans, one that we delivered on just a 
few short weeks ago.
  In June, the Finance Committee held a markup where we considered and 
reported 12 separate health care bills representing a number of 
priorities for our committee Members on both sides of the dais. In 
keeping with the ongoing trend for 2015, all of these bills had 
overwhelming bipartisan support. So far, three of these bills have been 
signed into law.
  In addition to these successes, the Finance Committee has spent 2015 
engaged in some very important ongoing efforts that we believe will 
yield results in the near future. One of those efforts is to improve 
Medicare services for patients living with chronic illnesses. We held 
two hearings this year to examine this issue. We sought and received 
the advice and recommendations of various stakeholders and have 
released those recommendations to the public.
  The committee's efforts on chronic care reflect a bipartisan desire 
to significantly improve the quality of care for Medicare patients at 
greater value and lower cost, without adding to the deficit. This work 
will go on into next

[[Page 21448]]

year as we continue to review and analyze proposals with an aim toward 
developing bipartisan legislation.
  Another one of our ongoing efforts has been to improve our Nation's 
foster care system. This year, we held two hearings related to this 
topic--one on group homes and another on prevention. Last month, 
utilizing what we learned in these hearings and with input from 
numerous stakeholders, Ranking Member Wyden and I reached an agreement 
on legislation that we called the Family First Act, which will increase 
the availability of prevention services to allow children at risk of 
going to foster care to remain safely at home and to reduce the 
reliance on group homes for children under the foster system.
  As we all know, entering the foster care system can be particularly 
traumatic for a child. Over the years, we have seen ample evidence 
suggesting that placement in group homes significantly increases 
children's risks and potential for victimization. Our bill would give 
States greater flexibility, with the goal of keeping children with 
family members and ending the overreliance on group homes.
  The Family First Act is supported by advocates and stakeholders 
across the country. We hope to mark up and report this bipartisan 
legislation early in the new year.
  I also need to acknowledge our committee's oversight efforts. We have 
been anxiously engaged in numerous efforts on the Finance Committee to 
shine a light on government failures and overreach, as well as some 
potentially corrupt practices in the private sector. Most notably, this 
summer we concluded our investigation into the IRS's targeting of 
conservative groups. This was the only bipartisan investigation into 
this scandal, and our report, which was roughly 5,000 pages long, 
provided the most detail yet about what went on at the IRS and the 
extent of incompetence and bad decisionmaking that led to those 
unfortunate events. In addition, the report provided numerous 
recommendations for improvement at the IRS and in a number of ways set 
the stage for consideration of legislation to reform that agency's 
operations.
  In addition to the IRS report, the committee has provided the most 
rigorous and extensive oversight of the implementation of the so-called 
Affordable Care Act, revealing many of its fundamental flaws and 
uncovering a number of failures and missteps on the part of this 
administration. This has included, for example, an exhaustive look at 
the ObamaCare co-ops, which in recent months had been failing at an 
alarming rate at the cost of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds. 
Needless to say, we haven't taken our eyes off of ObamaCare.
  The committee has also been conducting ongoing investigations and 
oversight into the questionable contracting practices within the 
Department of Treasury. We have taken a good, hard look at the tax 
return preparation industry and practices that have led to stolen 
identification and tax refund fraud. In fact, our investigation has 
already led to new practices at the IRS and within the industry aimed 
at reducing instances of this terrible crime.
  This is just a small snippet of our oversight efforts over the past 
year. The Finance Committee, given its massive jurisdiction, has always 
had a reputation for aggressive oversight, and we have continued that 
tradition, and then some, in 2015.
  Finally, I just want to remark on one more of our ongoing efforts--I 
suppose you could put this one in the miscellaneous or multidiscipline 
file--with regard to the looming debt crisis in Puerto Rico. We have 
taken a close look at this issue in the committee, and we even held a 
hearing on it. Along with the leaders on the Judiciary and Energy and 
National Resources Committees, we have introduced legislation that--
using the limited information we currently have about Puerto Rico's 
dismal predicament--would improve the island's finances and economy by 
providing responsible tax relief and transitional assistance to the 
territory's government.
  In addition, we worked to get a provision in the Omnibus 
appropriations bill that authorizes the Treasury Department to provide 
Puerto Rico with technical assistance, including help with budgeting, 
forecasting, cash management, fiscal planning, improving tax 
collections, and the like.
  This is something we are going to have to continue to work on, and in 
the coming weeks and months the Finance Committee will continue to 
consider various proposals--including the bill we introduced last 
week--aimed at helping the people of Puerto Rico.
  By the way, we challenged Puerto Rico to give us audited financials 
so that we could really work on this under the best possible terms. I 
intend to see that we help Puerto Rico, and hopefully we can do that. 
We have now provided them the means so that they should be able to 
carry on through next February, and hopefully during that time we will 
come up with some solutions that make sense not only to Puerto Rico but 
to our taxpayers and others.
  As you can see, we have been very busy and effective in our corner of 
the Senate thanks to the diligent efforts of all of our Finance 
Committee members. I have had the privilege of serving as chairman of 
this committee during such an eventful and productive time with so many 
committed and honorable Members of the Senate on both sides of the 
aisle.
  I, of course, have to thank Ranking Member Wyden for his work on the 
committee. He has been a valuable partner, and at every step of the 
way, he has worked hard to ensure that all of the committee's efforts 
were bipartisan. He has played a huge leadership role in almost all of 
the successes I have mentioned here today.
  I also wish to thank the other members of our committee. If you look 
down the Finance Committee roster, you will see--from top to bottom--
every member has a reputation for working hard and achieving results. 
On the Republican side, we have Senators Grassley, Crapo, Roberts, 
Enzi, Cornyn, Thune, Burr, Isakson, Portman, Toomey, Coats, Heller, and 
Scott. They are good people who are working in the best interest of 
this country. For the Democrats, we have Senators Schumer, Stabenow, 
Cantwell, Nelson, Menendez, Carper, Cardin, Brown, Bennet, Casey, and 
Warner. And, of course, we have Senator Wyden. And you can also include 
me in there. Every one of these members has played a key role in our 
success on the Finance Committee, and I am very grateful to have the 
opportunity to work with them all.
  I don't want this to sound like a farewell speech. I don't want 
anybody to think that with all this gushing and all these thank-yous, 
we are nearing the end of anything. Last time I checked, I will still 
be the chairman of the Finance Committee in 2016 and we are still going 
to have this great group of Senators serving on the committee. Most 
significantly, our Nation will still be facing a number of important 
challenges in the coming year. We can't and we won't be sitting on our 
laurels in 2016.
  While I am pleased to have this opportunity today to take a short 
trip down memory lane, everyone both on and off the Finance Committee 
should be prepared: We are just getting started.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. DONNELLY. Mr. President, as always, it is an honor to follow my 
good friend, the President pro tempore, Senator Hatch from Utah, who 
has done such an extraordinary job representing his State and our 
country for so many years.

                          ____________________