[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 100-101]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET, FISCAL YEAR 2017--MOTION TO 
                                PROCEED

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to proceed to S. Con. Res. 3.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 1, S. Con. Res. 3, a 
     concurrent resolution setting forth the congressional budget 
     for the United States Government for fiscal year 2017 and 
     setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal 
     years 2018 through 2026.

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader is recognized.


                          Affordable Care Act

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I apologize to my good friend the 
Republican leader. I couldn't be here for his remarks. I intended to 
be, but our President stayed longer and then I was meeting with the 
Vice President-elect. I apologize for that.
  I also wish to recognize the distinguished majority leader and 
reiterate what I said yesterday: I sincerely hope, just as I heard he 
hopes, that we can find common ground in the Senate. While we at all 
times inevitably disagree on the right way forward for our country, I 
know he is a patriot who cares deeply about this institution. That 
matters a lot to me. I learned that through a meeting set up by my 
friend from Tennessee. We had a dinner, and I walked away convinced 
that Leader McConnell cares a lot about making the institution 
function. That matters, and that can maybe help us through some of the 
rougher times. We know it has grand principles, grand practices, and a 
grand tradition in our national life, something we both want to 
preserve.
  Yesterday, in my opening remarks as a Senate leader, I did remind our 
Republican majority and the President-elect that there would indeed be 
places where we can work together, and I named a few of them, but let 
me be perfectly clear, kicking millions of Americans off their health 
care and throwing the entire health care system into chaos is not one 
of them.
  I am deeply troubled that the Republican majority and seemingly the 
President-elect are plotting, as one of their first campaigns in the 
new Congress, a full-scale assault on the American health care system, 
not just the Affordable Care Act but Medicare and Medicaid as well 
because they are inextricably bound. Those are the pillars that support 
the American health care system, but as its first order of legislative 
business, the Republican majority has decided to put forward a budget 
resolution to repeal health care reform. Although he promised not to 
cut Medicare in the campaign, the President-elect has nominated a man 
who spent his career strategizing health care's demise, and he chose 
him to be Secretary of HHS. I don't think that is something a vast 
majority of Americans or even Republicans believe in.
  It is too clear that President-Elect Trump and the Republican 
Congress are intent on making America sick again. Republicans seem 
determined to create chaos, not affordable care, for the American 
people.
  Today, I would like to focus on the budget resolution on the 
Affordable Care Act. I understand why the majority thinks they have to 
do it. Over the past 8 years, they promised every group--conservative 
group and audience in the country, they would repeal the law, ``root 
and branch.''
  For a long time, it has been only a conservative fever dream. 
Republicans knew they could make extreme promises about replacing it 
with something better without ever having to consider the consequences 
or even come up with a reasonable plan to replace it because they knew 
the Democrats or President Obama would ultimately block their attempts 
to roll back the law.
  Now things are different. The consequences of repealing the 
Affordable Care Act are real. I sincerely urge my colleagues to deeply 
consider the consequences. It is no longer just a game or a political 
line to say ``repeal'' because now you have to replace. So far, it has 
been 5 years of repeal, repeal, repeal; not one replace plan has 
garnered a lot of support even on the Republican side of the aisle, let 
alone in America.
  What will it mean for average Americans if you repeal the law without 
any viable replacement? Not just the 30 million who might lose coverage 
right away--that is a staggering number, many of them in very red and 
poor States and rural areas. What will happen to the overall 
marketplace if you rip away all the safeguards of the ACA and have put 
nothing in its place?
  It doesn't matter if you repeal and delay, as some of my friends on 
the other side of the aisle call it, for 1 year or 2 years--however 
long. Folks will lose a lot of benefits, and the insurance marketplace 
could fall apart long before repeal goes into place. As insurers raise 
their prices because they have to with repeal, costs to the average 
American who has employer insurance will go up as well. My colleagues 
will own that, just as we owned everything that happened previous to 
this election.
  Let me tell you, if Republicans pull the plug on health reform, on 
Medicaid, and privatize Medicare, it could mean absolute chaos, not 
affordable care. It would likely increase prescription drug costs, 
premiums, and out-of-pocket costs to American families--not, as I said, 
just for the families that got coverage on the exchanges but for all 
American families, even if you get insurance through your employer. I 
repeat that to America. Everyone who has employer-based insurance and 
is not part of the ACA should worry about this repeal with no replace 
because their costs will go up, sure as we are here together. It would 
put insurance companies back in charge. It

[[Page 101]]

would allow them to discriminate against individuals with preexisting 
conditions.
  We all know of people. Parents--their kid has cancer. They would look 
for an insurance company. Oh, no, your son has cancer, your daughter 
has cancer, you can't get it. What are our colleagues going to do about 
that one? No answers yet. I doubt they have good ones. It would cause 
premiums to skyrocket. It would unravel the insurance market.
  I would ask my colleagues before they jump into this repeal to talk 
to their local rural hospitals. In my State, rural hospitals are a 
mainstay of our rural economy. They are the largest employer in many of 
our towns and villages. Remember, New York has New York City, but we 
are the third largest rural State in the Nation, only behind 
Pennsylvania and North Carolina. In those areas, merely repealing the 
ACA and not doing anything else is going to hurt those hospitals 
dramatically. In fact, today, in 11 State capitals, rural hospitals--
many of them in red States--protested a repeal of the ACA.
  It could also exacerbate--I don't want to forget--the opioid epidemic 
by ripping away coverage from 1.6 million newly insured individuals 
struggling with substance abuse disorders. We worked so hard in the 
Cures Act to cover people. Far more would be undone by this act of 
repeal in terms of fighting opioid abuse.
  For all my deficit-hawk friends, your proposal causes a trillion-
dollar hole in the budget--at least a trillion. My colleague from 
Washington thinks it might be even higher, and I rarely doubt her. What 
are you going to do, deficit hawks, once you repeal and that hole in 
the budget becomes enormous?
  This is not conjecture. My Republican colleagues would be wise to 
remember how the American health care system operated before health 
care reform. Health care costs were growing at a much faster rate than 
they are today, eating into workers' paychecks and dissuading them from 
taking risks and changing jobs lest they lose a good coverage plan. A 
debilitating illness could wipe out a lifetime of hard-earned savings 
because there was no cap on health care costs. Women were charged more 
than men for the same health coverage. It was outrageous. We will go 
back to those days with repeal.
  Many couldn't get insurance if they had a preexisting condition. Some 
insurance companies would simply delete you from their rolls if you got 
sick. You want to go back to those ``good old days''?
  Today, because of health care reform, those things are no longer 
true. Health care costs are rising much more slowly than before, and 
the uninsured rate is the lowest it has ever been. I don't think any 
American would want to go back to the health care world of yesteryear 
where insurance companies wrote the rules and costs spiraled up 
unchecked, but Republicans seem all too eager to dial back the clock 
and make America sick again.
  Democrats are united in our opposition to cutting Medicare, to 
cutting Medicaid, and to repealing health care reform, and we will hold 
the Republican majority and the President-elect accountable for the 
consequences of repealing health care reform.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question occurs 
on agreeing to the motion to proceed.
  The yeas and nays have been ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from California (Mrs. 
Feinstein) is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 48, as follows:

                       [Rollcall Vote No. 1 Leg.]

                                YEAS--51

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--48

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Donnelly
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Harris
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Paul
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Feinstein
       
  The motion was agreed to.

                          ____________________