Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I have listened carefully to the Presiding Officer's comments earlier and the comments of others who have talked about the importance of passing this bill and drawing focus again to the health care plan that is just not working. It is not working. The State exchanges are failing. They are sort of fleeing to a bigger Federal exchange, and the insurance companies are fleeing the Federal exchange as well as the State exchanges. They are moving out of the family market. They are moving out of the individual market. The biggest health insurance company announced recently that they were likely to abandon this particular process next year. The plan where the insurance companies that had a profit would use some of that profit to offset the loss of other companies isn't working because, as others have well explained, the incentive for young, healthy people to be part of this plan is just not there. The premiums are too high, and the deductibles are too high. There is no reason to be part of this, and there should be nothing new here. The failures of this plan were almost guaranteed when the House and Senate, under the control of our friends on the other side, decided they were going to pass the bill the Senate passed when there were 60 Democrats here to vote for a bill. It doesn't matter how flawed that bill was. It doesn't matter how many problems were in that bill. It is the only thing we can do, and we are going to do it, and in doing it, we are going to interject a government between not only a whole lot of the economy but between people and their health care. I have said on this floor before and many other places that somebody told me one time that when everybody in your family is well, you have lots of problems; when somebody in your family is sick, you have one problem. When the Federal Government decides they are going to help families in ways that families don't want that help, when the Federal Government decides they are going to interject themselves between families and their doctors, families and their health care, families and their insurance company choices, you can't really expect good things to happen. The anticipation not too long ago was that on the individual exchange, where you go get your own insurance for yourself, there would be 20 million people signed up by the end of last year. When that projection was made, I think there were 14 million Americans on the exchange. Not too many weeks ago, they were back down to 9 million, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services said a better and more realistic goal for the end of 2016 would be 10 million people--exactly half of the number the administration thought would be there 6 months ago. What would be wrong that would cause that to happen? How could you be that far off in how you thought Americans and American families were going to respond to this? You could be that far off by just not listening. For the first year of implementation of this plan, I came to the floor week after week after week, and week after week after week, I had letters, calls, and emails from Missourians talking about how this was impacting the lives of their families. I have told those stories on this floor before, so I won't tell them again today, but there are hundreds of them multiplied by thousands if you talk to anybody who has talked to anybody about this system. Interestingly, those calls, letters, emails, and contacts appear to be coming back because people have now decided that this is not as bad as they thought it was; it is worse than they thought it was. The problems aren't as great as they had feared; they are worse than they had feared. In 2013, Lance called our office. He was very concerned. He liked his coverage. The President said you could keep your coverage, but his coverage didn't conform to the new standards the Federal Government has suddenly decided you needed to have no matter what you thought and the Federal Government has decided you needed to pay for no matter whether or not you could pay for it. So he was told: You can't keep that policy. Well, like so many other things in this law, he was pretty quickly then told: Well, no, we figured out a way that for a year or so, you can keep your policy. So Lance was going to keep the policy, but he found out that for any number of reasons related to this big change in health care, the policy he wanted to keep was $150 more a month than he had been paying for it and the deductible increased by $7,500. So, like a lot of other people, he would have loved to have kept the policy he had before, but none of it made any sense for him anymore. I received a letter just a few days ago from a friend of mine who runs a business in Kimberling City. In that letter, she mentioned they were 3 or 4 employees short of 50 employees. As employers, they didn't have to do this, but they had always provided group health and life. They wanted to do that again, but in her letter, she said that the prices have skyrocketed and the way companies now feel as though they have to aggregate their employees is much different than it used to be, particularly for older employees, if you are over 47. Here are some numbers she gave me in that letter. If you are over 52, the increase this year over last year was $2,128. That is the annual increase. That is not the annual premium; that is the annual increase, $2,128.76. If you are 58, the annual increase was $4,599.60. Again, that is not the cost of the policy; that is the increase this year over last year. And if you were 61, the increase was $5,680.20. This is a company that for years has done everything it could to provide this as a benefit. One, it is clearly a benefit they have a hard time affording, and suddenly it is a benefit that creates a huge obstacle for older workers. Where everybody used to be rated the same, they would rate your group, now they want to rate the individuals in your group. In our State, in Missouri, the average premium has increased by more than 10 percent. In Kansas City, the increase is 20 percent. The silver plan--not the best plan and not the worst plan--is 13 percent higher. The bronze plan, which sort of meets the minimum standards the administration says you have to have or pay the penalty, is 16 percent higher. That is just 1 year, and this is just your insurance. It is not your higher utility bill that is higher because of another government regulation; it is not your higher this or your higher that; this is just your higher cost of not having to pay the penalty. Just the other day, Health and Human Services said for the first time ever, the average deductible is over $2,000. There is a little merit to having some of your own money invested in your own health care as you make these decisions, but the average is over $2,000. Many families are now seeing a $5,000 individual deductible with a maximum of two family members, if you happen to have two people sick in the same year. Those same families may be paying $500, $600, $800 a month or more for insurance, so you have your insurance costs approaching $1,000 a month and your deductible of $10,000. For most families, that is just like not having insurance at all. You are writing this check every month hoping nobody gets sick. If you get sick, you might have to write another $10,000 check or more. As a matter of fact, I just mentioned that Lance had the policy where his deductible went up $7,500 as his premium was going up $150. I spent a lot of time with the hospital community in our State. Over and over again, I said: OK, what is your fastest growing column of bad debt? Over and over again, the answer is people with health insurance. People with health insurance are the fastest growing column of bad debt because the health insurance has a deductible that family can't pay. If the deductible had been $500, you had that discussion: Well, we can do $200 of that, and maybe your mom and dad could help us with half of the other $300, and somebody else would help with the other $150, and we will pay it. But if it is a $5,000 deductible, many families just say: We are never going to pay--we can't pay $5,000. And so the health care provider writes that off. They are also taxing health savings accounts and flexible savings accounts, which are other tools people were using and using pretty effectively to have that money for a deductible, to have that money to offset things they didn't want to insure against. This is a system that is simply designed to fail, and there is no news here. There is no news here. Every time I came to this floor to talk about this--and that was many, many times--I explained why the system would fail. Some of the press in my State--at least I remember one column that said: Senator Blunt is spending way too much time talking about the weaknesses of ObamaCare. This is everybody's health and 60 percent of the economy. It is pretty hard to spend too much time talking about those things. The other thing we constantly hear is that there were no alternatives. Let me quickly list those, and I am going to then yield the floor to others. The things that could have been done and still could be done, things that were proposed even though we constantly hear ``Well, there were no other ideas out there''--there were lots of ideas out there. Expand health savings accounts. Let those accounts be used for long-term care or long-term care insurance. Let small businesses join as a group. Let young adults stay on the policy longer. Liability reform, fair tax treatment, and buying across State lines are the kinds of things that could happen. Prohibit policy cancellation. Use what were very strong high-risk pools--expand those so that people with preexisting conditions could never be shut out of the insurance market. All of that fell on deaf ears, and now all we hear is that there were no other ideas, this is the only idea. This is a plan that is not working. I urge my colleagues to vote yes on this bill that puts the responsibility right back where it belongs--on the President's desk. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. We are trying.

Mr. BLUNT. I think this is a problem, and there are lots of families in the United States who would love to have kids from wherever in the world kids are who need families. The two examples you have just given are some of the frustrations of international adoption in just the last few years, where thousands of kids were coming to the United States from other countries such as China, Ethiopia, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and certainly from Russia. The tragedy of so many of these stories is that the child has suddenly seen that opportunity, they have bonded with families, and they have gone through the whole process. Many people, when Russia stopped Russian adoptions, were ready to go to court, had been to Russia multiple times and had exchanged visits and photos. Not only is it that the family is ready for the adoption to occur, but, more importantly, the person who is to be adopted is ready for the adoption to occur. Just to show what can happen, in the case of Russia, the kids who were closest to being adopted by American families, the Russian Government suddenly created incentives to put them at the top of a list that doesn't get much attention, which gave special incentives to Russian families to adopt these kids before the American families who were ready to welcome them could adopt them. We are having a meeting today with the Ambassador from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and I am grateful the Ambassador would come. Our real concern there is that there are many kids in the Congo who had actually been adopted. There was a commission that had been put in place to study the question of why they can't get their exit visas now to leave with the families the courts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have said could adopt these kids and that group has been disbanded. All that is necessary there is the exit opportunity--the exit permission--to leave the country to go with the families who have already legally adopted them. The Senator and I and several of our colleagues are going to meet with the Ambassador today. We are glad he is coming. We would like to see that meeting result in going back and looking at cases where their government has already decided this is a great match for these kids and these families and figure out how to let those families get their kids to the United States.

Mr. BLUNT. I would say in this regard that there are several things we are trying to do that we are still working on with Senator Klobuchar and others together. Clearly, there are great stories to be told. One thing we don't want to forget with National Adoption Month and National Adoption Day is the many families and the many individuals who benefit from adoptions. It is very easy to talk about the frustrations of trying to make things work better--the foster kids who aren't adopted, the international kids who should be here who have families who want them to be here. We also want to talk about the many success stories. We had an Angels in Adoption event just a few weeks ago and recognized from virtually every State a family that had done something extraordinary, such as the family who took a family from the Philippines. Expanding the farmhouse is probably job one if you are going to bring nine more people into your house. The Supporting Adoptive Families Act, the Timely Mental Health for Foster Youth Act, and the Adoption Tax Credit Refundability Act all need attention to make adoption work and to make it easier. It is life changing for everybody involved and, in most cases, it is life changing not just for the family but for anybody who really knows the family and sees what happens when people are able to reach out, become a family, and make a difference in the moment but also to make a difference forever. I will let Senator Klobuchar finish, but working on these issues is important, and it is bipartisan. You are never going to find anybody who says: Well, we don't need that. But we do need to be sure we are paying the kind of attention that we need to make this work better, to make it easier, and to increase the chances that adoptive families not only are able to become adoptive families but that they are also able and more likely to be successful adoptive families. Again, I thank Senator Klobuchar for her leadership and for her work.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 315, submitted earlier today.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, before I start my remarks, let me say how pleased I am to see Senator Reed and Senator Collins here with this important bill, the opportunity to amend the bill and do the business we should be doing. This Senator is also glad to be here with Senator Klobuchar. She and I cochair the Senate side of the congressional caucus on adoption, and the resolution that was just agreed to adopts November as National Adoption Month, and November 21 as National Adoption Day. While we are here talking about this, all of our States have kids who need to be adopted. If you went to the Missouri Department of Social Services Web site today, you would find 114 foster youth who are ready and waiting to be adopted. If you looked around the country today, you would find that there are 415,000 children in the U.S. foster care system and 108,000 of those kids are waiting to be adopted. Last year 22,000 young men and women aged out of the foster care system and they never got that opportunity for the permanent home, the forever home that could make such a difference in their lives, not only as a kid but their lives as an adult. I have two or three kids I want to talk about. Austin is 12. He is full of energy. He has a great smile. He is extremely active, as lots of 12-year-old boys are. He loves to be outside. He enjoys, as he would phrase it, ``going on adventures.'' He likes animals. He would like to live on a farm one day. He likes basketball. He likes being on his basketball team, but mostly he would like to have a family. Mostly his dream is the dream that he would have a family to encourage him and support him. There are two other young brothers, aged 11 and 7. When you first meet Mykez, you can tell he is relaxed. He is laid back. He is an easy guy to be with. In his free time he likes being active. He likes to be on his bike. He likes to play football. If it is possible being outdoors, he would like to be outdoors, but he is also happy with a video game or with the TV. At school he likes history class the best, but his best grade in school is art. His brother Jameer appears to be pretty shy and quiet, but once he gets to know you, he easily turns on the charm. He is a football and basketball guy as well, but he enjoys quiet activities such as drawing, reading, and coloring. He loves being with his brother. He loves video games. His favorite class is math, earning his highest grade there. But what they would like is a family. They would like a family that would allow them to keep in contact with their siblings but would also give them some structure, some attention, and some consistency that has been missing in their life. Marissa is 5. She has some challenges. She is a sweet, loving girl. She is happy, curious, and loves to laugh. She has a hard time right now expressing herself in lots of other ways. She is working on building her vowels and consonant sounds. She works on her sign language vocabulary. She has a spunky attitude, but she would melt the heart of a future family if those things ever become connected. There are tens of thousands of children all over the country just like them who just need a family--tens of thousands of children where a family could make all the difference in the world, not only when they are growing up but when they are adults and they have that family to turn back to. Nobody is better to work with on these issues than Senator Klobuchar. I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with her and then come back to me in a little bit after she has had a chance to talk about the importance of National Adoption Month and National Adoption Day.

Mr. BLUNT. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to honor today the 22 years of service of Jim Harriger as the executive director of Springfield Victory Mission. Since starting his work at the mission, Jim has faithfully dedicated his life to addressing the needs of the most vulnerable members of the Springfield community. Jim is truly an icon of the philanthropic community in my hometown of Springfield, MO. From the beginning, he has said he felt called by God to serve Springfield in this way. He exemplifies what it means to put faith into action. At the beginning of his service in 1993, the mission consisted of just two small buildings on Commercial Street. Under Jim's effective leadership, the mission grew to include some of its most well-known programs including the culinary arts school; Victory Trade School; and a student-run restaurant, Cook's Kettle. The mission has been a place of help and hope for lives affected by poverty and addiction. In the mission's service to those in need, Jim has promoted the idea that we should see a person's God-given potential, rather than defining them by their circumstances. Lives have been changed, the hungry have been fed, the homeless have gained shelter, and the hopeless have found hope. The work of Victory Mission will continue, and both the mission and Springfield are better because of the work of Jim Harriger. Jim is set to officially retire on January 31, 2016. There is no doubt that Jim will continue his exceptional work in the next chapter of his life. I join countless individuals in the Springfield community in expressing my gratitude for his many years of faithful service.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I am honored to represent nearly 500,000 Missouri veterans in the Senate. Tomorrow, on Veterans Day, we pause to reflect on the countless contributions and sacrifices that the men and women who serve in uniform and have served in uniform have made to our country. I hope we will all use this opportunity to recommit ourselves not only to appreciate their service but to be sure that the commitments our government has made to them are commitments that we move forward on and that they are commitments that we look at the time, place, and the veterans being served and decide when they need to be changed. I think one of the things we have done in the last year to create more choices and more competition for veterans is an important step in that direction. When I introduced the Excellence in Mental Health Act with Senator Stabenow, one of our biggest support groups for that act, which not only would treat behavioral health care like all other health care but would also create more opportunities to access behavioral health care, were the younger veterans. The Iraq and Iran veterans and the veterans from Afghanistan wanted to have more choices and were big supporters of not just traditional VA services but other services as well. I am pleased that the bill today steps forward in important ways and does things for veterans. The bill we just voted on, the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs appropriations bill, actually reached a record level of funding for veterans services. It increases veterans services by $7.9 billion over last year's levels, and it appropriates $1 billion more than the President asked for. It was also a bipartisan vote for lots of reasons. There should be no more of a bipartisan cause among all the funding bills than a bill that takes care of veterans and provides the facilities for those who are serving and for their families' needs. This is an important matter for us to address, and this is a great week for us to do it. This bill provides specific funding for women veterans. I was at a women's veterans clinic in St. Louis recently. This bill includes additional care for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. It provides treatment for the kinds of traumatic brain injuries that veterans often leave the military with today, which they did not have post-9/11 and post the cowardly devices that are used to attack our people in the service. It increases veterans funding in areas such as health care, benefit claims processing, medical research, and technology upgrades. It also includes funding for construction and renovation of projects that ensure military readiness and improve the quality of life for military families. As GEN Ray Odierno, the recently retired Chief of Staff of the Army, has said, our military families are the strength of the military. Senator Gillibrand and I recently introduced a bill--The Military Families Stability Act--that allows us to do new things. It allows families for educational or professional reasons to stay longer or leave earlier, depending on when the person serving gets transferred. If there is a month of school left or a professional matter that the spouse needs to be a part of and needs to finish a job quickly or go to a job early, why wouldn't we want to allow that to happen through legislation? This legislation looks at military families' needs, among the other things it looks at. Because of the dissatisfaction that many of our veterans appropriately have with the Veterans' Administration, this bill includes necessary reforms such as protection for whistleblowers, the kind of protection that construction oversight managers need, and it assesses some new measures for construction oversight so that we don't have these facilities costing more than they should cost. Frankly, if we look at competitive alternatives that veterans should have available to them, it is probably a good time to think about how we could make that program work better--rather than to continue to invest more money in facilities that they have to drive by--with better locations to get to that would give them that choice. This bill has been ready for months now. I was disappointed the Democrats blocked consideration of this bill earlier this year, but I am pleased that we finally got to a bill that everybody could vote for. It actually shows how shortsighted the lack of willingness was to let us do our work, to bring this bill to the floor, and to let Members offer amendments. Those amendments were either included in the bill or explained to Members: No, this is already in there. We have already taken care of this, and this is why this doesn't have to be done. We have a real obligation to take care of our veterans--those who have served for our country--and I hope we continue to build on the work we have done today. Earlier today we also passed the bipartisan Defense Authorization Act, another bill we could have gotten to earlier. In fact, the House passed it earlier. The President vetoed it, but now that same essential bill goes back to the President's desk because some other problem has been solved that should never have been tied to authorizing the defense of the country. Every year since 2011, the Congress has passed and the President has signed a bill just like the bill we passed today that would make it clear to the President that the Congress doesn't want the President to go forward with his proposed changes for Guantanamo. Unfortunately, the media reports suggest that the President once again is considering acting unilaterally to bring terrorists to the United States. Both of these bills today said no terrorist can be brought to the United States from Guantanamo. It is another example of the President ignoring the law, deciding instead: I am going to enforce the law I want to enforce, and I am going to ignore the law I want to ignore. He did that a few months ago with Executive amnesty. The President decided there are some laws that relate to people who are in the country and who are here without documents that he doesn't intend to enforce. Unfortunately for the President and fortunately for the law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled last night that the President can't do what the President said he was going to do. An earlier court had immediately said the President can't do what he said he was going to do. This morning, I heard one of the spokesmen for the White House say: Well, every legal expert we have talked to believes the President has the authority to do this. Well, apparently none of the legal experts they have talked to are Federal judges, because Federal judges now, at the two levels below the Supreme Court, have decided that the President doesn't have, in all likelihood, the authority he says he has. The courts, along with a bipartisan majority of the Congress, have taken the President to task on a sweeping new rule on waters of the United States--an issue we debated here last week. The law says the EPA has the authority to regulate navigable waters in the country. For 170 years everybody understood what that meant, and I think everybody still probably understands what that means, even the people at the EPA, who want it to mean something much broader than it clearly means. The Federal courts, again, at both the first level and the appeals level-- the appeal of the appeal court and the appeal court have said: No, you don't have the authority to do that. We are not going to let that rule go into effect. That rule, by the way, in my State would put more than 99 percent of all of the geography of Missouri under the control of the EPA for anything that is related to water, including any water that runs off a roof, any water that runs off a parking lot, any water that runs down a roadside ditch. If the EPA wants that authority, they need to come to the Congress and say: Change the law. Give us the authority over all of the landmass, 99.3 percent of Missouri and similar amounts in many other States. Give us that authority. Of course, the Congress wouldn't do that. The Congress knew what they were doing when they said ``navigable waters,'' and the EPA has never suggested to the Congress that the Congress change the law. The EPA would like to change it on their own, but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said: No, you don't have the authority to do that. Here is another issue that has to go to the Supreme Court. Apparently, the President doesn't mind going to the Supreme Court and doesn't mind being reversed by the Supreme Court. The President particularly, it appears, doesn't mind being reversed by the Supreme Court if somehow the rules got by the other two levels of Federal court, as the mercury rule did 2 years ago. Twenty-two months later, when the Supreme Court finally ruled, they said: No, the EPA doesn't have the authority to regulate that item in that way. But even people at the EPA said: Well, even though we didn't have the authority, 1,500 powerplants had to close down permanently because of the rule. And they seemed to take great pleasure in the fact that the rule accomplished its goal even though the law was not served and the EPA, according to the Supreme Court, didn't have the authority for that rule. On the President's overreach, I reintroduced a law again this year-- the Executive Needs to Faithfully Observe and Respect Congressional Enactments of the Law Act--the ENFORCE Act--which simply says something one would never think the Congress would have to say to the President, which is: Mr. President, you have to enforce the law. Mr. President, you have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution. There is a way to do this job in a constitutional way, and there is a way to do the job in the way you are doing it now. We shouldn't need this bill. The President swore to uphold the law. With the action we took today, we see another place where the Congress has clearly spoken over and over and over again, and the President says: If the Congress won't do this, I am going to do it on my own. Apparently, the President has discovered some authority as Commander in Chief to close military bases. Does that mean the President on his own can close any military base in the country? I don't think that is a precedent we want to set. There is a way to do this. The Congress has to be involved. The laws of the Constitution have to be respected. Over and over again, even on the eve of Veterans Day--a celebration of those who did more than anybody else to defend our freedoms--even on the eve of Veterans Day, we need to remind ourselves what the Constitution is all about, what the country stands for, and the freedoms those veterans were willing to serve to defend. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to inform all Senators that on November 9, 2015, the Committee on Rules and Administration adopted the U.S. Senate Internet Services and Technology Resources Usage Rules which will supersede and replace the U.S. Senate Internet Services Usage Rules and Policies previously adopted in 2008. Given the many advances in technology since the last regulations were adopted, an update was required to facilitate the use of modern communication tools. The new regulations modernize our rules so Senate offices can utilize new technologies, such as third-party social networking sites and data analytics, to more effectively communicate with constituents. While in some cases, outmoded restrictions on these technologies have been eased, certain restrictions necessarily remain in place including prohibitions on campaign content or links on official sites, for example. The regulations should be reviewed carefully to see where new methods have been authorized as well as what restrictions remain. These rules are effective immediately. I hope Senate offices will be able to make use of the new technologies and methods they authorize to enhance constituent communications. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the rules as adopted be printed in the Record.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 305, submitted earlier today.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, my good friend from Kansas mentioned that distance between third base and home plate, and in the ninth inning of the fifth game of the World Series, Hosmer was on third, and I believe there was one out. A ball was hit squarely to the third baseman, who caught it, ready to throw it to first, and then Hosmer did something nobody ever does: He decided he was going to steal home. And when you do that kind of thing, people respond in certain ways. They are surprised, you are surprised, and the Royals did that over and over again. He stole home and the game was tied in the 9th and then went to the 12th, but only because somebody did something nobody thought they would do. We could do a little more of that here, but certainly the Royals did that all season. I want to ask Senator McCaskill if there is anything she wants to add as we close up here.

Mr. BLUNT. It was a great season. We have had a great time here on the floor talking about the Royals and the Kansas City spirit that drove those teams. For us Missourians, maybe we will see both of our teams in the World Series again next year.

Mr. BLUNT. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. BLUNT. There are a lot of life lessons watching the Royals. There might even be some lessons for us Senators watching the Royals and the way they do what they do. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT. ``Them apples'' as in the Big Apple? Are those the apples we are talking about? I start in the spring going to minor league games and to major league games, but as we go back and forth across the border here, there is no bigger, more dedicated baseball fan in the Senate than Senator McCaskill. If you want to know who is playing, what position they are playing, what their batting average is likely to be, this is always a good way to find out, and I look forward to hearing what she has to say about the Royals.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, it may be obvious that my colleagues and I, here in the back of the room--even during a serious debate--are a little happier than the Senate usually finds itself. Of course, we are very pleased to be able to commend our baseball team. While Senator McCaskill and I wish to quickly point out that the team is located in Kansas City, MO, certainly Kansans and Missourians join together to support the Royals, support the Royals in the American League, and in this case support the Royals in the World Series--and what a series it was. What a team it has been to watch the last couple of years. I think maybe my favorite comment from the series that didn't end quite so well for us last year was the one game the manager of the Giants just said: They kept hitting the ball where we couldn't get to it. That is very much the kind of baseball the Royals play, that big ball park they play in. Home runs aren't as much a part of the game as just hitting the ball where the other side can't get to it and then always getting to the ball that the other side hits anywhere. This is a series that started with a 14-inning classic and ended in a 12-inning thriller, with 5 Royals' runs being scored in the top of that 12th inning. If this had been a seventh-inning series, the Royals wouldn't have won. The Royals outscored the Mets 15 to 1 from the seventh inning on and won three of the four games after they were behind in the eighth inning or later in the World Series. That just doesn't happen. It is a great record. It has been a great team. Every player on that team contributed to the wins and contributed in significant ways. Christian Colon became the first Major League player in history to get a series-clinching hit in his first postseason at bat ever. Raul Mondesi became the first player in history to make his Major League debut in the World Series. He never played a World Series game before because he had never played a Major League game of any kind before. Of course, the manager of the Royals, Ned Yost, had the highest winning percentage in Major League Baseball postseason history as he goes right on to do what he and the Royals have been doing. Salvador Perez hit 0.364 in the World Series and started 16 consecutive postseason games after catching 139 games in the regular season. It makes my knees hurt just to think about it, but he did it. Yesterday 800,000 fans turned out in Kansas City to welcome the Royals home. We are all pleased to be here. I certainly wish to congratulate the owners, the Glass family; the manager, Ned Yost; the general manager, Dayton Moore; the players; the coaches; the fans; and the families. What a great series for the Royals, what a great series for Kansas City, but what a great series for baseball. What a great season for baseball. Certainly, we were all pleased to see the Royals bring this victory home. We will start by going to Senator Roberts of Kansas and then we will go back to either a Missourian or a Kansan as we talk about this great baseball team and this great victory.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the cosponsors of the resolution I am about to call up and I be allowed to engage in a colloquy.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I had a few minutes yesterday before the vote--the Congressional Review Act vote on this truly terrible EPA rule on water--to talk about the reasons EPA shouldn't do this, the long- term understanding of what ``navigable waters'' meant, the ability for EPA--if they wanted to change the law--to come and ask the Congress to change the law, but of course they don't want to do any of that. In fact, I had a small version of this map yesterday that shows the Farm Bureau projection--that I believe other projections agree with--of how much of our State is covered by this new jurisdiction by the Federal Government over essentially all the waters of the country. If you will notice, the only part of Missouri that would be covered under the so- called waters of the United States rule is just the part in red. Only 99.7 percent of the State would be under this new jurisdiction that the EPA would ask for. Surely, nobody believes the EPA could ever exercise this jurisdiction. And uniquely, as it relates to this rule--I think ``uniquely'' is the right word to say here--Federal agency after Federal agency opposed the EPA going forward with this rule. This is basically not just the EPA versus a few people who are concerned about it. It is the EPA versus anybody who has looked at it. According to the Small Business Administration--by the way, another agency of the Federal Government headed by someone else who is appointed by the President--they have a number of concerns. One is that utility companies would have a hard time complying with the law in a way that allowed the power grid to continue to be utilized. Of course, anything that raises utility company power costs raises the cost to the consumer. There is no mythical way anybody else pays for that except the people who get utility bills, which almost every person in America or at least the family of almost every person in America does. The Home Builders Association of St. Louis believes that if this rule goes into effect, on average, the increased cost for permitting to build a home would go from a little under $30,000--right now the average cost, at least for St. Louis home builders to get all the permitting necessary, is $28,915--and would increase by 10 times. So the average permit to build a home, if this silly waters of the United States thing is allowed to happen, would go from a little under $30,000 to $271,596, and the wait time would go from a little less than 1 year to more than 2 years, just to get the permitting you need to build a home. Now, the SBA also says the rule will increase permitting costs generally by $52 million in the country, just for permitting costs generally, and environmental mitigation costs by $113 million every year. With the addition of the power rule the EPA also has out, I think you would be hard pressed to come up with a third rule that would do anywhere as much damage as the two rules they already have out there do to the American economy. In April of 2015, a memo from MG John Peabody to Assistant Secretary Darcy of the Corps of Engineers, states that ``in the Corps' judgment, the documents contain numerous inappropriate assumptions with no connection to the data provided . . . and logical inconsistencies.'' This is the view of the Corps of Engineers--not necessarily my favorite Federal agency--on the EPA rule. This rule would also mean that Federal bureaucrats, assuming you could ever assemble enough of them to do the job the EPA says they like here, can decide what falls under the jurisdiction, and they would be deciding from a long way away. This kind of authority is barely able to be exercised by the local city or county. It becomes even more complicated when the State department of natural resources gets involved. It would be impossible to do and will slow down both the economy and add cost to families. Thirty-one States, including mine--including this State here, where again only the red part is covered by the waters of the United States rule--have sued the EPA to overturn the rule, and the courts appear to be listening. The district court that covers our district and North Dakota issued an injunction for 13 States. Then in early October, the Sixth Circuit issued a nationwide stay on the rule. So not only is the Congress concerned and involved, or a majority of the Congress--unfortunately, only 59 Senators were concerned with something that 60 Senators could have solved--but so is Federal agency after Federal agency, and the courts themselves are saying this should not be allowed to happen. I hope we see the Congressional Review Act put this issue exactly where it deserves to be--on the President's desk. He appointed the head of the EPA. The Senate confirmed the head of the EPA. I didn't vote to confirm the head of the EPA. In fact, I held that nomination back as long as I could possibly hold the nomination back, hoping the new nominee would suggest they were going to be better than the person who had been holding the job before. This rule indicates the EPA doesn't really have the best interest of the country at heart. They do not have a reasonable way to enforce the authority they say they would like to have. So I look forward to the President having to deal directly with this issue and that the American people will pay attention, as we all do, to the job we are sent here to do. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of this effort to turn back this rule. The rule has been well explained by the Senator from Iowa. Her efforts are about all that Congress can currently do. Frankly, I would hope that we can figure out how to go further so that the Congress has to approve every rule that is issued by every agency of government that has significant economic impact. It is, frankly, hard to imagine a rule that has a more wide-ranging impact or more economic impact than this one does. As has been well pointed out, the authority given to the EPA under the Clean Water Act was very consistent with Federal discussions and debates for 170 years. I think 1846 was the first time the term ``navigable waters'' was used in Federal law, in a bill that James Knox Polk--President Polk actually vetoed the bill, but the term was understood, and it quickly came back into Federal law, and it meant exactly what it said: navigable waters of the United States. Why would that be a Federal responsibility? Because ``navigable'' means you can move something on it. ``Moving something on it'' means commerce, and one of the principal reasons for the Constitution was to regulate interstate commerce. So this is a long-established principle. Yes, there is some Federal responsibility for those avenues of commerce in the country--areas, rivers, waterways you can navigate. But, of course, that is not good enough for the EPA--170 years of Federal law, total and complete understanding around the country and, it appears, even on the part of Federal judges of what ``navigable'' means. There is a way to get expanded jurisdiction if the EPA wanted expanded jurisdiction, and that is to come to Congress and say: Give us not just responsibility over navigable waters but all the water that can run into all of the water that can run into any water that can run into any water that can run into navigable waters. If the EPA got this jurisdiction, you wouldn't be able to come up with enough Federal bureaucrats to oversee this level of jurisdiction. In a map that is not nearly as large as the map we have on the poster but a map that the Missouri Farm Bureau put out in our State, this is how much of the State of Missouri would be under the jurisdiction of the EPA under this law. Even if you are standing very close to this map, you can't see the non-red areas. The red area is the new Federal jurisdiction. The non- red area is three-tenths of 1 percent of the State. So anything that goes on in 99.7 percent of our State is really founded on the basis of the rivers that cut through the middle of it, that bind it on the east, and would be, obviously, waters that are in most cases navigable and inarguably navigable, but all the water that runs into any water that could ever run into any water that runs into that water is clearly not navigable. That is why county commissioners all over our State are calling and saying: If this passes, what does it mean? Can we mow the right-of-way without a Federal permit? There is no question that if this passes, every roadside ditch in the entire State of Missouri would be navigable waters. There is nowhere outside the offices of the EPA and the most extreme among us where anybody would want to argue that every ditch along every road and highway is navigable waters. The EPA wants jurisdiction they couldn't exercise. This is a moment when Congress can stand and say: We do not want this rule to go into effect. We are going to pass a resolution that puts this on the President's desk, and if the President is going to be for this no matter what the courts say, no matter what the Corps of Engineers says, no matter what the Congress says, the President has to take a position on this rule. It is his EPA; it is out of control on this rule. I hope my colleagues join the Senator from Iowa and me and many others in saying we don't want this rule to go into effect. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 27, 2015, 9 a.m.