[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 722-723]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THE REPEAL RESOLUTION

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, the repeal resolution we have been debating 
in the Senate this week will complete the first step toward reducing 
the Federal Government's role that has prevented Americans from 
pursuing affordable and accessible health care that meets their needs 
without emptying their wallets. After we complete our repeal work, the 
Senate can then vigorously pursue putting the Nation on a more 
responsible and sustainable fiscal path and address government's out-
of-control spending and a mammoth national debt when we begin our work 
on the fiscal year 2018 budget.
  I thank my colleagues for their consideration and cooperation for 
bringing us to this point, and I thank Majority Leader Mitch McConnell 
for his leadership in pushing the Senate to take the first steps to 
repair the Nation's broken health care system and to remove Washington 
from the equation in order to put control of health care back where it 
belongs: with the patients and their families and their doctors.
  This commitment to an open, honest, and transparent legislative 
process is crucial to helping Congress restore the trust of the 
American people.
  Thanks, as well, are due to many Members on this side who came and 
spoke on the resolution's behalf, who worked with us and each other to 
move through the resolution, the debate, the amendments, the votes, the 
whole process.
  I have enjoyed my partnership with Senator Sanders as we took on new 
roles as the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee 
last Congress. We have known each other a long time, and we have served 
on some of the same Senate committees. I believe he and my colleagues 
across the aisle share the same goal of establishing a robust and 
affordable health care system for hard-working families. I truly hope 
that they will work with us to find common ground that delivers more 
choices and lower costs in the weeks and months ahead.
  Also, I would like to focus for a moment on some of the staff who 
helped lead us here.
  I thank the Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee, 
including my acting staff director, Dan Kowalski; the director of the 
budget review and acting deputy staff director, Matt Giroux; the chief 
counsel, George Everly; senior budget analysts Peter Warren and Steve 
Robinson; budget analysts Greg D'Angelo, Tom Bork, Becky Cole, David 
Ditch and Susan Eckerly; and assistant counsels Clint Brown and Thomas 
Fuller; outreach director Jim Neill; editor Elizabeth Keys; policy 
assistant Kelsie Wendelberger; and communications director Joe 
Brenckle.
  As well, thanks are due to my personal office staff, especially my 
chief of staff, Tara Shaw; my legislative director, Landon Stropko; my 
health care policy staff, Elizabeth Schwartz, Alec Hinojosa, and Chris 
Lydon; as well as the entire Wyoming team.
  I want to pay specific attention to thanking Tara Shaw, who is my 
chief of staff. She has been filling a dual role for some time. She was 
my legislative director. We have filled that position now. But she has 
been acting as the assistant here on the floor as well and done a 
tremendous job of manipulating and coordinating both centers of action.
  Now, we have also been supported by the great work of our leadership, 
floor, and cloakroom staff. I thank them for their continued good work 
and dedication to this institution and the country as a whole. In 
particular, I want to thank Sharon Soderstrom, Hazen Marshall, Jane 
Lee, and Scott Raab in the leader's office, and Monica Popp, John 
Caphuis, and Emily Kirlin in the whip's office, and very especially 
Laura Dove and Robert Duncan in the cloakroom.
  These folks, as well as my budget team, worked hours over the holiday 
break to ensure our success. Without all their work, we would not be 
here this evening standing on the verge of passing the Senate's repeal 
resolution that will set the stage for true legislative relief from 
ObamaCare that Americans have long demanded, while ensuring a stable 
transition in which those with insurance will not lose access to health 
care coverage.
  This will allow us to move step by step on a new set of reforms, 
listening carefully to the advice of the millions of Americans who are 
affected, a step we left out when we did it previously. Or, as Senator 
Alexander of Tennessee, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, 
Labor, and Pensions Committee put it, the ObamaCare bridge is 
collapsing, and we are sending in a rescue team. Then we will build 
several new bridges to get better health care. Finally, when those 
bridges are finished, we will close the old bridge.
  After 5 days of consideration, many hours of debate, and numerous 
amendments reviewed and voted on, this part of the process can now be 
concluded. With that, I ask for the continued support and discussion on 
this valuable issue. If people have ideas for what ought to be 
included, I hope they will talk to us about them. I hope the American 
people will talk to us about the ideas they think need to be included.
  There has been a lot of fearmongering, a lot of supposition about 
what will happen at the next stage. There were amendments that were put 
in about the next stage. Those, of course, wound up being nongermane. 
But we have our work cut out for us. We do have to come through now 
with a system that will solve the problems for the American people.
  I mentioned before that when we started the whole debate on 
ObamaCare, there were 30 million people uninsured. Today, there are 28 
million people uninsured. I think that the 30 million people was 
probably closer to 28 million at that time. One of the differences is 
some people who could not get insurance have insurance, and a bunch of 
people who had insurance can't afford their insurance, and a bunch of 
people who have insurance can't afford their insurance, as you heard 
through the debate.

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  We want all the people who want insurance to be covered, and to be 
covered in such a way that they can actually get the treatment. If you 
have a $12,000 or $10,000 or $6,000 deductible, that may not happen.
  But I thank all of the people who have worked to get us to this 
point. Our work is now cut out for us even more so.
  I know that we can have a spirit of cooperation and work through 
this, or we can use the reconciliation process and do it with 51 votes. 
But it is far better if we can find common ground and common solutions 
and get the work done.

                          ____________________