Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

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 I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

Mr. BLUNT. He can get into the exchange even if he had a preexisting condition. What they found in the exchange is Aaron can no longer use his neurosurgeon from Kansas City, the surgeon he has used for years now. They can't buy a catastrophic policy that would allow them to have some choice and pay some upfront costs on their own so they could have the doctor they are comfortable with. This is where they are. The insurance they had has gone away. The insurance they have doesn't allow them to see the doctor this young man has seen for years with a condition he has had his whole life. The President also promised that premiums would decrease, and that is clearly not the case. I look forward to Missourians continuing to let us know the challenges they are having. I look forward to being able to share those on the floor of the Senate in the next few weeks. One of my constituents from Independence discovered when his wife came home, their policy which has been costing $500 a month now is going to cost $1,100 a month. She is the office manager of an office with about 20 employees. Their insurance more than doubled. Unfortunately, these aren't the only cases I could talk about today. They are not nearly as limited as we would hope they would be. People are finding out that the Affordable Care Act that wasn't good for the workplace is now turning out to be not very good for health care. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT. It has been less than 6 weeks since the President's health care initiative, the Affordable Care Act, was launched. The Web site is still not working, but the Web site will work. Actually, the Web site will be the easiest thing, in my view, that the administration will deal with as they try to solve the problems created by the act itself and, frankly, then the problems that were created by the Web site not working when we started. What we see happening already in these 6 weeks is that families are losing their current health care coverage, and certainly the cost, in example after example from my State of Missouri and across the country, appears to be going up at substantial levels for many families. A few families are lucky enough that they don't have much additional cost but not very many. A lot of families are simply losing the coverage they have had even though the President said, as we all have been reminded over and over in recent days: If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. Apparently, there are a whole lot of caveats on that that weren't said at the time, because people aren't able to keep their health care plan. The Associated Press reported that at least 3.5 million people have received cancellation notices. I heard somebody at the White House the other day say: These individual policies, that is only about 5 percent of all the people in the country. Five percent of all of the people in the country are millions and millions of people. Even if there weren't millions of people, if someone is one of the 3.5 million families who were recently told their health care policy was cancelled--100 percent of their health care policies were cancelled because they don't have one right now--or at least they were told they won't have one sometime between now and the end of the year. As millions of people are losing their plans, we find out that only a few thousand people are signed up. Reports apparently show that fewer than 50,000 people have been able to successfully get through this system in 6 weeks, a period where the estimate was 500,000 people. So far we have 50,000 people signing up, not 500,000 people. We have millions of people losing their plans, even though everybody was told that if they like their plan, they will be able to keep their plan. It is estimated now that 7 million people were expected to get coverage by the end of March. Nobody, any longer, thinks that is a number that will come anywhere close to being achieved. The American people, obviously, would like the President to figure out how to live up to the promise that people can keep the health care they have if they like it. A lot of people are weighing in. President Clinton, in the last day or so, says we ought to figure out a way to keep the promise. This is not a real reach. This was not a promise made only one time and accidentally stated, this was a promise stated over and over again: If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. We are finding that is not true. Whether it is President Clinton who said we should figure out how to keep that promise, or there are all kinds of bills being filed in both the House and the Senate that would keep the promise, what I think we are going to find out is there are many promises in the Affordable Care Act that aren't going to be kept. We already know this has a workplace impact that is not good. People are going from full time to part time. People are trying to keep their employee numbers under 50 so they don't have to comply with the law. I have heard from many Missourians who have seen their hours reduced, seen their health care premiums rise, seen their options of insurance limited and their policies being cancelled. They deserve to have the people who made this pledge now keep this pledge. Congressional Democrats voted for the law. And there are very few laws one could say congressional Democrats voted for the law. This is a law that not a single Republican in the House or the Senate supported. There were many alternatives available. High-risk pools would work better, medical liability reform, expanding the marketplace where one could buy across State lines, more reporting by healthcare providers of what they charge and what their results are. The idea that there were no other options, which is widely repeated-- that the people who don't want to follow the Affordable Care Act don't want to do anything--is simply not true. When I was a Member of the House of Representatives, I filed a handful of bills, none of which were more than 75 pages long, that would deal with these rifleshot things that would have made the best health care system in the world better. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best health care system in the world, and I think we are in danger of losing that. The President promised: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Over and over again, that is not the case. The largest insurer on the Missouri exchange, on the exchange that Missouri voters have access to, doesn't include the largest hospital system. That means thousands of patients won't be able to see the doctors or to go to the 13 hospitals of the largest health care system from the company that was their likely provider. This was the largest insurer--and as of this moment, the largest insurer in our State, the largest health care system--not part of their plan. Your insurance company, hospital, long- time doctor, all should be your choice, not the choice of some government-dictated health care plan. With only one other insurer selling policies in the region where this big hospital system is, people aren't going to be able to go there. Many States have this same problem. Many States have options that don't include many of their hospitals or many of their health care providers. People are beginning to look at this and not only be concerned about a violated pledge, but being concerned about somebody besides them interfering with a long-term relationship with the hospital people go to and the doctor they see. Patients across the country are seeing and are likely to continue to see narrower and narrower networks available to them as insurers will try to keep costs down. With all of the new mandates in the law, one of the things they can control is they can negotiate with the people who would be available to see patients under their plan. That is obviously what has happened. Smaller networks can require patients to travel farther. People are driving by the doctor's office that they went to for years to get to the doctor they now have to go to. People are passing by the hospital that their family may have gone to for generations to get to the hospital that now is the only hospital available in their area, available under the exchange. This is going to become the routine for Americans who aren't going to be able to keep the insurance they like. They are not going to be able to keep the doctor they like, and in many cases they won't be able to go to the hospital they like. Last week I told stories of several Missourians who had preexisting conditions and are going to lose those policies when the Missouri high- risk pool goes out of existence. Another thing we suggested in 2009 was to look for ways to expand the high-risk pools and make them work even better. They were working pretty well. The problem was there was always a waiting list to get into the high-risk pool. This was a way to deal with preexisting conditions. In a State such as ours where 4,300 people are in the high- risk pool, they pay about 135 percent of the normal premium. That is a little more than the normal premium, but they are getting insurance after they got sick. This is a high-risk pool where that has to work, 135 percent. For somebody who didn't have insurance until they got sick or lost their insurance after they got sick, that was probably a whole lot better than they are going to do right now. They are finding out it is a whole lot better than they are going to do right now. One of the stories we received this week was from Pam in Oronogo, MO, just outside of Joplin. Pam says her oldest son Aaron was born with a medical condition where there was a buildup of fluid inside his skull. He had his first shunt surgery at age 18 months. Her family has a family business and held onto their insurance through the business as long as they could, because they knew that no one would insure Aaron if they lost their insurance. That is obviously not a reason we would want to see perpetuated. Aaron, however, was ready to go to the high-risk pool. After 10 years, their premiums had increased to $2,000 a month with a $10,000 deductible. They were able to get Aaron in the high-risk pool and they were reasonably comfortable with that. With the elimination of the high-risk pool--all of which close December 31 in every State in the country--Pam and her family have to go to the exchange for Aaron. The exchange has to take Aaron, because he can get into the exchange.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, today I wish to honor CHARACTERplus, an organization based in my State of Missouri, which helps build strong school communities where students feel valued and can succeed. As a former classroom teacher, I appreciate the work CHARACTERplus does to help educators instill positive character traits in students--such as responsibility and respect--by teaching, encouraging and living these values at school. Created by Sanford N. McDonnell in 1985, CHARACTERplus is the largest community-wide character education organization in the country. More importantly, because of the efforts of CHARACTERplus, Missouri leads the Nation in character education. Currently more than 75 school districts across several States are members of CHARACTERplus, which serves more than 330,000 students and 29,000 teachers at 645 schools to transform school climate. Member districts and schools have unlimited access to professional development, national experts, the most current research on social, emotional and character development, skill training modules, survey tools to access school climate and opportunities to network with others in the field. Each year, the Character Education Partnership, CEP, recognizes schools that have demonstrated a commitment to character education by naming them a National School of Character. In 2013, CEP chose 29 schools, 9 of which were members of CHARACTERplus, making Missouri the national leader in character education. Those schools include Independence Elementary in the Francis Howell School District; Jefferson City Academic Center in the Jefferson City School District; Beasley Elementary, Bierbaum Elementary, Hagemann Elementary, and Mehlville High School in the Mehlville School District; Chesterfield Elementary and LaSalle Springs Middle School in the Rockwood School District; and Discovery Ridge Elementary in the Wentzville School District. CHARACTERplus also works closely with the Missouri Department of Secondary and Elementary Education on several projects and runs the State School of Character Awards. I would like to congratulate CHARACTERplus for all of their hard work and commend them for helping the State of Missouri be a leader in character education.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, last week our Nation lost a true American hero. In the last 40 years no member of the Congress has been more dedicated to America's defense and those who defend it than my good friend and former colleague Ike Skelton. Growing up in Lexington, MO, his dream of joining the military like his father was cut short when he was diagnosed with polio. A true sign of his determination occurred when he overcame this hardship and went on to serve his Nation in a way he could never have imagined as a young patient at Warm Springs, GA, at a center founded by President Franklin Roosevelt and focused on their common challenge of how to overcome polio. Ike served in the Missouri State Senate for 4 years. He was encouraged by a family friend, another Missourian named Harry Truman, to represent Missouri at the national level. A few years after that encouragement he eventually followed President Truman's advice and was eventually elected to the House of Representatives, where he started to serve in 1977 and continued to fulfill his dream of protecting America. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, Ike Skelton successfully led an effort that transformed Whiteman Air Force Base to house one of the most iconic military aircraft in U.S. history, the B-2 Bomber. Fort Leonard Wood grew from a training base for the newly enlisted to a center for many of our military schools and the Army Corps of Engineers. By ensuring military bases remained in Missouri, Ike Skelton's legacy continues to protect our Nation's military and provide hundreds of jobs in our home State. From the time he was a young boy, Congressman Skelton loved our country and its history, and now after years of service he has earned his own spot in our Nation's history. It was truly a great privilege to serve Missouri in the Congress with him and to benefit from his friendship and advice. Health Care

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I would just say that both our States have led in this area. Missouri has clearly been a pioneer in mental health efforts. Our community health centers--many of them--have added behavioral health in the last few years. There are other pieces of legislation out there that add to this mental health first aid, where people, particularly dealing with young people, can take a course. And they do not become people who can deal with your problem, but they may help you recognize if you have a problem and that somebody needs to deal with this. In 2011, Missouri pioneered a program for Medicaid beneficiaries with severe mental illness that is based in community mental health centers and provides care coordination and disease management to address the ``whole person,'' including both mental illness and chronic medical conditions. This combination saves money. I have worked closely with the Missouri Coalition of Community Health Centers, which just celebrated their 35th anniversary and they are very excited about how this legislation could benefit the population they are serving. I also co-sponsored the Mental Health First Aid Act of 2013 to help people identify, understand and respond to the signs of mental illnesses and addiction disorders through a pilot program for mental health first aid training. In my State, we are already benefitting from this program and in August over 100 new mental health first aiders were certified during Missouri's first large-scale mental health first aid training. In addition, I co-sponsored the Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Act to improve access to mental health services for people in the criminal justice system. This bill would give law enforcement officers the tools they need to identify and respond to mental health issues, while continuing to support mental health courts and crisis intervention teams. These bills--all of which have garnered bipartisan support--are steps in the right direction. I hope Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will allow stand-alone votes on mental health legislation, and I hope President Obama will work with members from both parties to improve our Nation's policies before another mental health crisis results in senseless loss. I agree with Senator Stabenow that the time is now. We are actually probably beyond the time we should have done this. But we would be ill- advised to go further down this road without looking at this system and figuring out how we can improve it. There are many bipartisan ideas in the Senate, and I believe the Excellence in Community Health Act is right at the top of that list. But we need to look at this, do it, and do it now. I look forward to seeing something happen on this between now and the end of the year.

Mr. BLUNT. I wish to say it is a very important topic, and it is a moment when there are many reasons, as the Senator said, that we should keep returning to it. It was this day 50 years ago when President Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Act. He called it a ``bold new approach.'' Frankly, while some things happened in the 50 years since then and now, there haven't been that many bold new approaches in the last 50 years. This is a topic that for whatever reason our society hasn't dealt with in ways that have been satisfactory in making great changes. In fact, some of what we have done in other areas has made it harder for communities and families to work with people who have behavioral challenges, to find out the information that person does not want to share with them. All of us can probably think of some family where this has happened, where someone still has an ongoing commitment to an adult son or daughter, mom or dad, and are part of what they are doing. They are paying some bills or whatever. The information that people would benefit from knowing is hard to get to or the requirement that somebody follow up on a court-ordered procedure is difficult to enforce and make that happen. This is one of the times when we really need to be thinking what do we need to do to make this challenging work better. First, it is a widespread problem, but it is not a problem that is untreatable. There is one statistic I have seen from the National Institutes of Mental Health: ``One in four adults suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder'' that is diagnosable and, in virtually every case, treatable--one in four. This is not a stigma. This is not something where you are the only person this has ever happened to or to your loved ones, that this is the only person this has ever happened to. This is something that many families understand. Many people have a challenge that never gets diagnosed, frankly. Creating a way for that to happen, where we make it easier, we make it more comfortable, and we make it affordable--whatever we are doing to allow that, in almost every case, the treatable problem to be diagnosed and treatable is important. One of the topics the Senator and I started talking about almost at the very first of this year--we have been talking about this for almost 10 months. Of course, it was after the tragedy at Newtown. One thing we know is that somebody who has a mental health problem is much more likely to be the victim of a crime than they are to be the perpetrator of a crime. The other thing we know is that as we look at these tragedies we have seen happen in the last few years, the one common denominator--whether it was in Newtown, Aurora, Tucson, the Navy Yard or Virginia Tech, whether it was at a supermarket, at a theater or on a college campus-- what we saw in every case was this was somebody who had a behavioral problem, a mental health problem that hadn't been dealt with in the right way. In many ways this has turned the attention of the country back to a problem that, for whatever reason, we would just as soon apparently not talk about. In fact, when the Senate committee that deals with mental health had a hearing in January of this year on mental health, it was the first time since 2007 that there had been such a hearing devoted to this topic--a topic that the National Institutes of Health said one of four adults is challenged by and the Senate, in 6 years, hadn't talked about it in any kind of official, focused way. This is why Senator Stabenow and I have been working to try to take advantage of the moment. In the principal piece of legislation we have been working on, the Excellence in Mental Health Act, we also have a model that works. A couple of different things were done. One, of course, was to expand the federally qualified health center concept, if they wanted, to add behavioral health, and they could under the same rules and regulations. Frankly, people would be walking through the same door as their neighbors. We also created ways for community health centers--the very health centers that President Kennedy's legislation created--to add some of the advantages to be in a federally qualified center, to be in a community mental health center. Certainly the Senator's efforts--and I know we both have other stories to tell about other things we are working on as well, but we have had great response from the community mental health centers and great response from veterans. The Senator may wish to talk about that a little bit because I know she has been engaged in many discussions with veterans' groups who say if only our veterans had a place to go that was close and where their neighbors were going perhaps for some other kind of behavioral health. We have a wide swath of support from our veterans' groups as well as our health care groups.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with my colleagues from Delaware and Ohio for up to 30 minutes.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, this is one of those all-too-rare occasions anymore where we all agree, and it is about making things. We will be talking for the next few minutes about what happens in our country and what needs to happen so we can not just make things again--because we still make lots of things, and we make them very well--but what we need to do to be able to make more things. What do we need to do to be sure we are at the competitive front of the line as we work to make things. All of us are working on things together. Senator Brown and I have been working on advanced manufacturing--something that he has spoken about and we have spoken about together and that he has been a leader on for a long time--and all of our States benefit. Missouri and Ohio have certainly been among the significant manufacturing States. In Missouri we have more than $32 billion a year in manufacturing. For about the last 4 years that has been the top manufacturing employment, has been in the agricultural industry, in food processing, as well as transportation equipment, fabricated metals, machinery of all kinds, and automobiles have been in the top of our manufacturing sectors. I believe we are really at a point where so many things could easily come together, and the Federal Government and the Congress can help make those things come together by taking down barriers and by creating easier ways to work together. In the case of advanced manufacturing, we have talked about the centers of excellence and we have worked on that together, and we have both seen some of these ideas work. I wish to ask Senator Brown some of the things he has seen and the things he thinks we can do better through the legislation we have been talking about.

Mr. BLUNT. The Senator's point is well made. These manufacturing jobs are goods jobs. The American workforce is competitive. As Senator Brown said, we have always been on the cutting edge, the outside of competition, making things in a better way than we did last year. Everybody who is competing today is trying to figure out how they can do whatever they did last year better. We see that and what we can add to that, how we can make that process work better. In our State, the average manufacturing job pays 21.5 percent more than the average wage. Mr. President, $52,000 or so for the average manufacturing job salary in Missouri is a significant improvement in where you might otherwise be. In Missouri we have 6,500 manufacturing firms. Almost a quarter of a million people work in manufacturing in Missouri. We used to have more than that. We used to have more than that, and I think we will have more than that again. The country used to do more in terms of manufacturing than it does now. But we are going to see that happen. The Senator from Delaware just wrote an article in Congressional Quarterly that talked about what needs to be done, the great opportunities we have in energy. If we take advantage of those great energy opportunities, suddenly the utility bill is more predictable, the delivery system is more guaranteed. I was talking to a manufacturer today in my office and this topic came up. At some point now, as you get further and further into innovation, people not only have to be better trained--the Senator talked about that too: the importance of a skilled workforce--but how the workforce competes with maybe a lower paid workforce in some other country maybe is not nearly as important as how the utility bill competes. If you can run that facility--and I just gave him an example of another manufacturing facility in my hometown of Springfield, MO, that was making a significant expansion, I think about a $150 million expansion. They did not expect to hire any more people, but they expect to use that current workforce in a much more competitive way. Nobody was losing a job because of advanced competition. They are just expanding that workforce in a way that ensures they will keep their job and be more competitive. Of course, somebody, by the way, is building that expansion. There are jobs there as well. And those all matter. We have all kinds of examples. Perryville, MO, is a town of less than 10,000 people. In that town, they have become a hub--it is about 80 miles south of St. Louis--of 21st century manufacturing. A Japanese company is there, Toyoda Gosei, that makes plastic components for automobiles. Sabreliner makes aviation parts and is in the airplane industry. There is Gilster-Mary Lee, a much more traditional employer. But here is a town that has a significant number of manufacturing jobs. The town of Cassville, near Springfield, for a number of years had more manufacturing jobs than they had population. Now, of course, that meant in the part of the country where I live lots of people may have been driving a significant number of miles to get to those jobs. But there are not very many cities. This is a smaller community. It is the county seat of Barry County. But they had more manufacturing jobs than the number of people who lived in the community itself. It meant that is a competitive community. That is a community that knows how to build jobs. Perryville is a community that has launched itself well into the 21st century. And the skills the Senator was talking about--the skilled workforce, the energy needs, the research component--one of the components of these hubs of excellence that we have been looking at and talking about, Senator Brown and I have been working on, is to create ways to encourage that higher education be part of that research component. I think Americans are eager to produce. I bet the Senator and I both hear the same thing over and over: How can we have a strong economy if we do not produce? Well, you can have a strong economy in parts of the economy that do not produce, but I think not only do you need to produce, but there is something that defines who we are in a positive way when people see American production that is not only heavily competitive here but competitive all over the world. I think that is what Senator Coons and I are talking about, the kind of bipartisan effort we need to make. I do not know any Republicans or any Democrats anywhere, or any Independents, who have said: Oh, we don't need to worry about making things. We don't need to worry about a competitive economy. Actually, private sector jobs should be the No. 1 domestic goal of the Federal Government today. And the jobs we are talking about are a significant component because they lead to lots of other jobs. All of the ripple effects of manufacturing jobs are great: the other businesses that spring up, the suppliers that come. Of course, the Senator and I have talked about his father was a significant part of launching new things into the marketplace. I think that is what the Senator and I want to see this Congress encourage, as we can encourage things without law and look for legislative ways to facilitate a growth back toward manufacturing.

Mr. BLUNT. Let me just talk a little bit about the startup act that Senator Coons and I have worked on. The Senator mentioned, I think, all the cosponsors of that: Senator Rubio, Senator Stabenow, Senator Moran, Senator Kaine, Senator Schumer, and Senator Enzi. What that does is try to extend the opportunity of research and development to startup businesses. The way the tax credit works, you can deduct those costs from the taxes you pay. Well, if you are a startup business, you often do not have any profit to deduct from. That is part of the courage, frankly, of starting a business. You are almost insured, guaranteed, that for the first weeks, months, sometimes the first years, depending on how big a venture this is, you are not making money yet. So what the Senator and I and our friends have done in the startup act is say--these people would have employees--so what we do is allow the same tax credit for a big corporation or a big business or a highly successful business with lots of profit to be applied against what they pay as taxes for their employees--the Social Security tax, the other taxes that are paid--and, again, trying to encourage innovation. We all know that small business is the engine that drives the country. But also small business can be the engine that drives manufacturing, if we figure out a way to let them have some of the same benefits that existing businesses have that have already gotten themselves in a profit-making situation. This just gives them a place to go and utilize that credit. That is the kind of thing we ought to be looking at. Startup businesses are important, encouraging traditional businesses to figure out how to upgrade their equipment, upgrade the way they do things so they are more competitive in an international marketplace. I really do firmly believe that for reasons the Senator mentioned--the wage gap is not what it was, the transportation costs are more than they were to get something made from somewhere else back to the greatest market in world, the United States of America; and the more we know about the utility bills--Senator Donnelly from Indiana, who is the Presiding Officer, and I have been working on things that pay attention to the utility bills. Again, that is a key component of future manufacturing. The more competitive you are, the more innovative you are, the more you are likely to be concerned about that part of your input costs. And sometimes when you expand, the utility bill is a bigger than the additional labor cost. But that may be exactly what ensures you can keep the labor you have and grow that labor by being able to make a commitment that you feel good about because you feel good about your ability to run that facility once you build it. You feel good that not only is it going to work this year, but, by the way, we are doing so well and doing so many things that 10 years from now we feel whatever the utility costs are going to be, they are going to be within the range we can deal with and still produce right in Missouri, right in Ohio, right in Delaware, or right in Indiana. That is the kind of thing we ought to be focusing on. How do we make things again? How do we create other kinds of private sector jobs, the No. 1 domestic priority of the country today? Every time the Senator and I talk about manufacturing, I really do get excited about an America that is thinking about not are we going to be able to continue to make what we have always made, but what can we make better than anybody else that we are not making yet that is going to allow us to be out there in a world marketplace? Trade has become a much greater opportunity for the American workforce, as all of these other factors we have been talking about on the floor have come together to make our workforce what it is. If Senator Coons has any final remarks, I would like him to finish our time here on the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise today to honor an important historical date in Greene County, MO, my home county. October 26 was the centennial of the historic Greene County Courthouse--the place where I worked for more than a decade as county clerk. The current Greene County Courthouse is actually the third built in Greene County. The 20th century courthouse was intended to be a unifying structure for what had developed as two communities prior to the Civil War. Both communities came under one municipal government in 1887, and the new courthouse was to be a structure built between North Springfield and the central business district. Work to find a site was begun in 1904 and concluded with the purchase of a lot on Central Avenue in 1908. Architect A.N. Torbitt, of Miller, Opel and Torbitt in Jefferson City, MO, was chosen to draft plans for the new structure, and the cornerstone ceremony for the new courthouse was held on July 16, 1910. The impressive new building, built of Greene County Phoenix stone, took nearly 2 years to complete. In March 1912, the courts moved into the new building. Even Springfield's city hall took up residence there, where it remained for more than 25 years until its move into the post office a block away. The historic Greene County Courthouse was and remains important to the economic growth, development and prosperity of Springfield and Greene County. Over the years, the courts expanded to an additional judicial center nearby, but the old courthouse remains the center of Greene County administrative duties. Today, it is occupied by the Greene County commissioner, clerk, recorder of deeds, treasurer, assessor and collector of revenues. Today, the interior of the 100-year-old courthouse is in great shape, and plans are underway to raise funds to replace the parapet. Past elected officials have worked to improve the building's energy efficiency and maintain its appearance. As a former Greene County clerk and one who has a deep appreciation for the history of Greene County and this grand building, I want to express my pride in the services that are provided in this structure and those county employees who work in it every day. My hope is that the historic Greene County Courthouse has many years of service ahead.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, today I wish to mark an important birthday in my hometown of Springfield, MO. This year the Boys & Girls Club of Springfield celebrates its 75th year of operations. These 75 years have been marked by dedication and service to the young people of Springfield and the surrounding area. The club's commitment has helped shape the community, mold business and civic leaders of tomorrow, and made a lasting impact on the region. Through the Boys & Girls Club, young people of all backgrounds have a place to build relationships and grow as individuals. With adults from their own community, these children foster relationships not only with each other but also with a set of great role models committed to making each day better for every child. The Boys & Girls Club of Springfield got its start in 1938 while the country was still in a depression. Mrs. Jennie Lincoln got the idea to launch the group from her husband, Judge A.W. Lincoln, who discussed the need for an organization to serve youngsters with special problems. Without hesitation, the Springfield community joined the effort. The Commercial Street Business Men's Club agreed to the free use of the basement of their building at 219 East Commercial as the first headquarters--they even provided utilities for free. This basement became home to the North Side Boys Club for 11 years. Even as the Depression continued, Mrs. Lincoln enlisted her friends to create the Boys Club Women's Auxiliary to raise funds for programs and essential expenses for the Boys Club. Today, the auxiliary continues to be an important arm of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Springfield, raising thousands of dollars each year for scholarships. The original Girls Club was established in 1963 by the Community Service League, now known as the Junior League. The Girls Club flourished under the direction of Genevieve Kynion, who served as the group's executive director for 21 years. In 1991, the Boys & Girls Clubs merged. The Boys & Girls Club of Springfield owes its lasting success to many people--from volunteers, to employees to various charitable and community organizations that have extended financial support. The club continues to grow today, offering multiple locations to provide services to its 600 after school attendees. The club's generosity extends beyond afterschool activities as they serve more than 100,000 meals each year. Today, many of those kids who spent their early years at the Boys & Girls Clubs are elected leaders, champions of commerce, church elders and business leaders. Their careers are varied but distinguished with alumni ranging from former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to famed actor Brad Pitt. The Boys & Girls Club continues to positively influence the city of Springfield in immeasurable ways. I look forward to seeing its ongoing success as the Boys & Girls Club continues to promote their motto that every child can truly ``be great!''

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, first of all, I wish to follow up on a comment my friend from Alabama just made on Social Security and Medicare. I think it is very important that we listen carefully to what he had to say, that if we do things that are so-called reforms--and I think there are many places where we could reform those programs--we should use those savings to save those programs. We shouldn't say we are going to have reforms in Medicare, more likely, perhaps, right away, then Social Security, and then not use those reforms to extend the life of these important programs. These are programs, we have told Americans--in the case of Social Security since the mid-1930s, and in the case of Medicare since the mid 1960s--that people would be able to rely on. We see that those programs can be extended and adjusted and reformed, but I think our leader on our side of the budget effort who spends so much time trying to make the case for the right kind of budget decisions is clearly pointing out that if we make savings in these programs and then use that money to fund other discretionary spending, is that the fair thing to do with Social Security or Medicare? I don't think so, and I think the Senator from Alabama has raised a very good point. As we try to figure out how to move forward this year, we need to be sure that savings are real savings, that they are not double-counted, that we are not saving money in one program that clearly should go toward the priority of that program rather than the other priorities we haven't yet set. This brings me to the topic of setting priorities. We had the opportunity to go to the White House--the Democrats yesterday, Republicans today--to talk to the President about how we move forward with the budget year, the spending year that has already started. When we were there, the President made it clear once again that we shouldn't negotiate, but on more than one occasion in the morning when we were there, the President said we shouldn't be allowed to negotiate for things we couldn't get or didn't get in the regular process. My view of that is there is no regular process. As the President said that, I thought, this is like pouring gas on a fire of frustration for Members of the Senate and particularly in the House who are frustrated that there is no process. There is no place earlier than a crisis to say: Let's debate these issues, let's debate these priorities. How many of the 12 spending bills for the year that began 11 days ago have we had on the floor of the Senate? One. One of the bills that should have been done starting in about last March and April and that should have been completed over the summer. That money would have been spent beginning October 1. Not one of the 12 was on the floor, and, frankly, it was a bill the majority leader had every reason to believe wouldn't pass if it was brought to the floor. Let's assume it would have passed. It still would have just been one of the 12 bills we need to run the government. So when the President or anybody else says we shouldn't use these crisis moments to try to get our priorities discussed, they are the only moments we have. They are the only time we have. I don't like government by crisis. I think it is very unfortunate for this Presidency that if we really look at how the government has worked in the last 5 years, it is from one crisis to another. If I could do anything to help President Obama pull away from this crisis management, I would be inclined to want to try to do that, particularly if pulling away from crisis management meant we were going to come back and have a fair debate between a divided Congress that leads to some way forward that can actually accomplish something. The idea that we won't negotiate at this moment--or the President, feeling that somehow he won't be held hostage to the debt limit--I am certainly going to vote tomorrow not to even move forward with this discussion for a $1 trillion debt ceiling increase with no discussion of what we are going to do to change our behavior. President Obama, to his credit, entered into a negotiation just 2 years ago, in August of 2011, and in return for $2.5 trillion worth of spending cuts over a decade, he got $2.1 trillion in additional debt ceiling. Now, the President agreed to that in August of 2011 and then in October of 2013 says nobody should ever negotiate on the debt ceiling. Fifty-three times since 1978 we have had a change in the debt ceiling, and since 1978 more than half of those debt limits included legislation dealing with either spending or other matters. The President says: I will not put this on future Presidents, to be the President who goes forward with increasing the debt ceiling under some--with a negotiation. Well, every President since 1978 has had the same situation the President had in August of 2011, the same situation the Presiding Officer and I would have if we were going to get our line of credit extended and we had exceeded our line of credit. Whoever is going to extend that line of credit is going to say: What are you going to do to change the behavior that allowed you to blow through your last line of credit? The President and others will say: This is about America paying its bills. This is about wanting the current Congress to pay the bills it has incurred. Well, most of the bills that have been incurred weren't incurred by this Congress; they were incurred by past legislation. Sixty-two percent of the spending is now in last year--it will probably be higher in the year we are in at this moment--62 percent of the spending was mandatory spending. It was spending put in place by Congresses beginning in the 1930s, through the health care bill. That is mostly mandatory spending. The current Congress didn't get to vote on the health care bill, but more importantly, most of the current Congress wasn't alive when the Social Security Act passed. Many of the Members of the Congress and even some of the Members of the Senate were not alive when Medicare passed. This is the time for this Congress to look at those pieces of legislation and say: What do we need to do to adjust them to the future needs of the country? What do we need to do to adjust them to the current and future demographic realities of society? People live longer. People need these services longer. What do we do to make this work in a way that these programs can last? These are not programs put in place by this Congress. These are not bills incurred by this Congress. These are bills, in fact, for which this Congress and this President can decide we are going to look for these programs and be sure they last and look at these programs and be sure they can be paid for. That is exactly the kind of discussion we should be having when we ask the American people, through their Congress, to extend the line of credit. The idea that we will not negotiate on the debt ceiling or we will not negotiate on how to spend the money--if we do not negotiate on how to spend the money by bringing the appropriations bills to the floor, how are we supposed to negotiate and set priorities and let democracy work? I do not like democracy by crisis. Whatever we do in the next few weeks or months that it takes to finish out the year we have already started, what we should all do is commit ourselves for the year that begins next October 1 to be prepared for that like the Congresses until just 6 or 7 years ago generally were prepared at or near that date. When there was a government shutdown in 1995, six of the appropriations bills had been passed, signed into law, and all those parts of the government were working after a debate that provided funding. So I would just say, as I conclude, we need to move away from management by crisis, but we also need to understand that if we do not do the work the regular way, there is no other place to take a stand, there is no other place to have this debate. As to the President's sense that you could get this at some other point, there is no other point if the Congress and the President are not doing their job. I will just say, we should do our job, we should do it in a way people can see. We should do it in the small bites that the budget process is set up to allow us to look at and debate. We have not done that over the last 12 months. We have started this year in about the worst possible way. Hopefully, we will get through this and then resolve to do the work the right way for what begins 1 year from now. But at this moment, the President thinking we can just go ahead and move forward without negotiating is a wrong decision on the President's part. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, today I wish to honor Dr. Tara Palmore and Dr. Julie Segre, 2013 Federal Employees of the Year, for their ground-breaking research to stop the spread of deadly hospital-acquired infections. Each year approximately 100,000 patients die from hospital- acquired infections. These deadly infections affect patients who are in the course of receiving healthcare treatment for other conditions; therefore, the patients often already have compromised immune systems. These two doctors created a revolutionary model to identify and halt the spread of infection for the rest of the health care industry to follow. Over the course of a 12-month period in 2011 and 2012, a rare and deadly ``superbug'' was spreading from patient to patient at one of the Nation's premier research hospitals, the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center. This two-woman team--Dr. Tara Palmore, a deputy hospital epidemiologist, and Dr. Julie Segre, a senior investigator--partnered with a talented team of doctors to accomplish an extraordinary achievement. For the first time ever, they were able to sequence the bacteria's DNA to decipher how the pathogen spread from patient to patient. This allowed doctors to detect the origins of the infections, trace the transmission, and implement measures to put an end to the outbreak. Tragically, 18 seriously ill patients acquired the bacteria and seven ultimately died from the infection, but this use of genomics could profoundly change the way hospital-acquired infections are identified and halted, leading to quicker response times and saving tens of thousands of lives. Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of the NIH said, ``It is a groundbreaking advance in one hospital that will now have an impact across the world and will become the standard. It is a fantastic example of taking a challenging medical problem and applying technologies in a new way to come up with a remarkable result. We now have a new weapon in the battle to stop the spread of drug-resistant organisms.'' Dr. John Gallin, the Director of the NIH's Clinical Center, said the breakthrough by the NIH team is ``a magnificent demonstration of how a hospital can contain these infections when they occur.'' There are a limited number of antibiotics available to fight these types of highly resistant bacteria, so this new discovery provides a new approach for hospital infection control that will benefit numerous patients in the future. I congratulate Drs. Palmore and Segre for their hard work and critical contributions to the health care community and to all of their colleagues for the great work at the National Institutes of Health.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Reserving the right to object, I would remind my good friend from Illinois that there was a time when in the Senate we dealt with all of these issues individually--as we should have last year and didn't. There were no appropriations bills on the floor. A continuing resolution is not the best way to do the business of the country, and I would object.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend from Texas for yielding. On Monday morning, I was scheduled to be at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, to look at some of their research. A lot of the research NIH does has been done in our State; one-third of the research for the human genome project was done in our State. Then, on Tuesday evening, for the fifth year in a row, I was at the fundraising event for the Children's Inn at the National Institutes of Health, where families and children can stay while they are there for treatment. This is a private sector event. In spite of everything else that was going on, it was a great event where lots of money was raised for those kids. I said at that event that somebody told me years ago that if everybody in your family is well, you have lots of problems. If somebody in your family is sick, you have one problem. The Children's Inn is one of the places where people help families deal with the one problem they have. But as virtually every Member of this Senate at one time or another has said, the work of the NIH is important. It is important that it continue. The House yesterday passed a House joint resolution that would continue that work. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.J. Res. 73, making continuing appropriations for the National Institutes of Health for the fiscal year 2014; that the measure be read three times and passed; and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I was impressed by the comments of my friend from Illinois yesterday about NIH funding. I am for NIH funding. I have never failed to vote for NIH funding. Frankly, I have never failed to vote for an amendment that would increase NIH funding, as far as I know. I have seen it increase dramatically. Opening the doors of that research facility is the right thing to do. We could do it today. I cannot imagine the President would not sign a bill that let three-quarters of that workforce go back to work and let the 200 people who will be turned away in the next 7 days be told instead: Come on, be part of this process. We are waiting for you. We are here. We are doing the kinds of things your family critically needs us to do.

Mr. BLUNT. Let me say to my friend from Texas that until the leadership in the Senate changed to the current leadership 7 years ago, we always did appropriations by debating and advancing individual things. The idea that we don't want to debate anything if we don't debate everything makes no sense. It is not the way the government should run. I think the House is not only well intended but that their goal is a worthy goal. The House of Representatives, led by Republicans beginning in 1995, doubled NIH funding in 10 years. My good friend from South Dakota and I were there for the majority of that 10-year doubling of NIH funding. Last year in the Appropriations Committee markup I voted for a bill that would add $1 billion extra to NIH funding. It was defeated in the committee. This year I voted for a bill that would add almost $1.5 billion of additional NIH funding. This makes a difference in the lives of people. Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of NIH, has estimated that each week there is a shutdown his agency's research hospital would have to turn away an estimated 200 patients. He estimated 30 of those patients would be children. I know they took the children and individuals who were coming Monday and Tuesday but are now beginning to notify people: If you were scheduled to come, we have 4,000 people working and 14,000 people not working. We can't accept you right now. I think this is the right thing to do. It is an easy thing to do, if we would just stand and do it. If we do not oppose NIH--and I do not believe there is a Senator who does--why don't we continue their funding and do it right now?

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I am disappointed that the process has failed us in the last week for my friends in the House and in the Senate who, as I did, when we ran for these jobs, said we would do everything we could possibly do to not go down this path where the government gets between people and their doctor. Those are heartfelt and sincere views. If we were in the majority and had a President on our side, we would have already taken care of this issue. For those who mistakenly thought if we didn't have any appropriations bill that somehow the President's health care plan wouldn't move forward, we now see today that was a mistaken view of what would happen. Most of the President's health care spending is mandatory. It is something the Congress doesn't even vote on. The way not to move forward is to change the law, but we have not had any opportunity to change this law. We didn't have an opportunity when the Presiding Officer and I served in the House together to change the law. This is a law that never was amendable on the floor of the Senate or the House. It is hard to imagine that we have decided to restructure 1/16th of the whole economy and everybody's health care relationships without ever having a chance to amend the law. Surely my friends on the other side who have supported this bill, are supportive of this law, understand the frustration we have when there has never been a possibility to bring an amendment to the law and say: Let's see if we can't make this part of it work better. What was the amendment yesterday? The amendment yesterday to the law that the House offered the Senate--the principal amendment was: Let's not have the individual penalty for a year. The President, on his own, decided we won't have the corporate penalty for a year, that we wouldn't have the business penalty for a year. This is sort of a strange place for us to wind up. On this side of the Senate we are saying: Don't give job creators--we like to talk about job creators on this side of the Senate aisle--a break and not give people working at those jobs a break. The President, on his own, can apparently amend the law without us. This is also pretty unusual, that the President, on his own, without us, thinks he can amend the law, but we have no avenue to amend the law. The President, on his own, said: We are going to eliminate the corporate penalty. We are going to say that for this first year, businesses that have more than 50 employees don't have to offer insurance or pay a penalty; that is what the law says was supposed to happen on January 1. But the President said: No, we are not going to do that; that is too hard to do. We are going to take a $12 billion hit in funding this program because that is what the estimated penalties might have been. Frankly, that might have been low because a lot of businesses that were offering insurance I think will not offer insurance when we get into the requirement to offer insurance. I think that was probably a low number, but it was a number. It was $12 billion. Our friends in the House sent something over here that said: If we are going to waive $12 billion, let's waive $4 billion. Let's waive the penalty for individuals if they don't have insurance. By the way, many of those individuals were led by this law to believe they were going to get insurance at work. The President said there is no penalty for not offering insurance at work for this first year, but we are still going to penalize individuals who don't have it. If you are an individual and for whatever reason you can't afford or don't have insurance, you will have a $95 penalty the first year, and it goes up after that. That was a chance to amend the law in the right way. The House would have voted, the Senate would have voted, and the President would have signed a bill. Imagine that. The House votes, the Senate votes, and the President signs a bill. I think that is the way the process is supposed to work. How we could have a $12 billion waiver for the employer and have a $4 billion penalty for the employee doesn't make any sense to me. This law was not amendable, so, sure, would it be better not to amend it on a resolution to support the government? Absolutely that would have been better. Would it have been better for the Senate to pass a single appropriations bill of the 12 that were supposed to be passed before the spending year begins? Absolutely. That would have been a lot better. Would it have been better for the Senate to prioritize anything? Senator Mikulski, the chairman of my committee, the Appropriations Committee, as was mentioned earlier, voted out most of the bills. Some of them were voted out on a partisan vote, some of them were voted out on a bipartisan vote, but only one got here, and it was one the leader knew couldn't possibly pass. So we haven't passed one bill. It would have been better to do it that way. We wouldn't be at this moment if in fact we passed the appropriations bills and agreed with the Senate. Then the majority leader talks about the hardworking chairman of the Budget Committee, and said we can't do our work because we don't have a budget conference. Last year the majority leader said we don't even need a budget. It is too late for the budget. The spending year has begun. That was months ago when that should have happened. Why didn't that happen? Because the House passed a budget that obeyed the law and the law says we can't spend more than $967 billion. That is the law, like it or not. Just like on my side of this discussion, ObamaCare is the law, like it or not. Apparently that is a law we have to enforce, but we don't have to enforce the Budget Control Act because the Senate budget was over $1 trillion--$1.038 trillion was the Senate budget. Of course we are not going to have an agreement if we are $70 billion or $80 billion apart and one side obeys the law and the other doesn't. Essentially for a week now Republicans in the House have been negotiating with themselves because there is nobody who is willing to negotiate. The President says negotiating on the debt ceiling is blackmail. It has never been blackmail before. In fact, we wouldn't have the Budget Control Act if we hadn't negotiated on the debt ceiling. So it is blackmail to negotiate? This is a process where the House, the Senate, and the President are supposed to work together to move forward. The debt ceiling has been used over and over to talk about spending. It has been used a number of times to talk about things that weren't spending. Usually Congress is controlled by Democrats with Republican Presidents. And they said, ok, the President doesn't want to talk about this issue without the debt ceiling, so we are going to add it to the debt ceiling discussion. But more often than that, it has been used to talk about spending. If you go to the banker and say: I have spent all the money you have given me, used up my line of credit, so I would like to extend the line of credit, I guarantee your banker will say either no, you have already exceeded what we told you you could borrow from us to spend, or if we are going to do that, let's talk about your spending habits. Show me a plan that shows you will spend differently in the future than you spend now. But the President says that is blackmail. More than anybody else in the United States of America, the President of the United States is in a position to figure out what he is for that the Congress would be willing to do. That is not happening, and that has not happened. There is plenty of blame for the fact that there is no funding today, but there are also plenty of victims. Everybody who depends on the government is a victim. Social Security checks are going to go out, but you can't apply for Social Security if you don't have it. If your check is lost or didn't go out, you can't find out why that happened. People in harm's way: The border control agents, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement people are out there, but their paycheck for their family is not coming. How could we have solved that yesterday? I am confident that one of the ways we could have solved that is by saying, okay, we won't collect this $4 billion from individuals just as we are not collecting the $12 billion from companies. The reason this health care law continues to be such a problem is it was never amendable, and it was never discussed. Even the President said, as he does some of these unilateral things, if this were a normal circumstance, I would go to Congress and ask them to change the law, but it is not a normal circumstance. I can't find that anywhere in the Constitution where the President gets to decide if the Constitution applies or doesn't apply. Everybody is to blame here because the Congress is not doing the work Congress is supposed to do and the President is not leading. Americans are going to suffer because the Congress and the President haven't done their job. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I thank the Chair for recognizing me and allowing me to follow the Senator from Alabama whose remarks I agree with. I am disappointed in what happened this week. Those of us in the minority learned another lesson for the minority, is to get to a bill we wanted to get to, the majority then has the votes to amend that bill unless some of the majority would happen to side with us. And they did amend the bill in ways that I didn't agree with, taking the provisions out that would have defunded the move toward the health care plan that I think we are going to see more and more of the country isn't ready for. But the bill did go back to the House. The bill was changed from the bill the House sent over. So the bill went back to the House, and they have a chance to see what else they might be able to do--hopefully, in the next few days. But between now and the end of the fiscal year--which is Monday, by the way-- hopefully, we will find a way to make the system work better, will do what we should have done in the budget debate process. As I said here on the floor just a day or 2 ago, the great disappointment is that over and over we have failed to let the process work. Over and over we have failed to bring the bills to the floor, offer amendments, and set the priorities for the country. So here it is, the last Friday of the spending year, the last Friday of our budget year, the last Friday of the fiscal year, and the Senate has not passed one single appropriations bill--except the 6-week CR that says we cannot decide how to do anything new, so let's just do for another 6 weeks what we did last year. Surely that is not good enough, and we need to get beyond that. The vote today, taken on the Senate floor, did not send a bill to the President to be signed. It sent the bill back across the Capitol Building to see what the House of Representatives may want to do next, and I look forward to working with them and with my colleagues here in the Senate to see what that might be. I want to talk for a few minutes about the debt ceiling itself. The White House announced just in the last few days that we reach that debt ceiling in about 3 weeks. That number always seems to me to be pretty much a number that can be worked with. It is not like the end of the fiscal year. But it is a date that the Secretary of the Treasury has said we need to look at. The President said he would not negotiate on the debt ceiling. That is a very interesting position to take, and it is what is wrong with the government right now. I suppose the Congress could now say: And we will not negotiate on the debt ceiling either. So maybe that just means we do not have a debt ceiling increase because nobody wants to negotiate. Then the President said to a group in Washington this week that--I think he said that nonbudget items have never been attached to the debt ceiling before. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks an article from the Washington Post of just a few days ago by Glenn Kessler who actually looked at that. Is that really accurate? Is what the President said accurate--that we have never done this before? This is totally new? This is a new demand that no Congress has ever made before--except, by the way, the Budget Control Act 2\1/2\ years ago that the President signed and a few other things that have happened? It has happened before, and I want to talk about that a little bit. This is not new moment for us. When Members of the Congress have been concerned about spending--certainly since the 1970s Budget Act, but even before that--when the debt ceiling had to be increased, Members of Congress wanted to talk about spending and other things that they could not get attention to any other way. In 1953, during the Eisenhower administration, fiscal conservatives in the Congress--at that time led by a Democrat from Virginia, Harry Byrd--did not believe we would be able to fund the Interstate Highway System. So they used the debt limit vote, the debt limit debate as a place to try to find out what they could do about the Interstate Highway System and how it was going to be funded. In 1953--that was a long time ago; almost longer ago now than the lifetime of most Members of the Senate--that is how it was used then. In 1973, when Richard Nixon was President, Democrats in the Senate sought to attach a campaign finance bill to the debt ceiling. This was during Watergate and, of course, I guess that would certainly meet the definition of a ``nonbudget item''--a campaign finance bill that there was a great effort to do in 1973 and to add to the debt ceiling legislation. In 1993, a study of the politics of the debt limit, for Public Administration Review, said that ``during this period, the genesis of a pattern developed that would eventually become full blown in the mid- 1970s and 1980s: the use of the debt ceiling vote as a vehicle for other legislative matters.'' So certainly that is something we could talk about. Some would have economic consequences, others would not. I know one thought is, let's not move forward with the individual mandate in health care. Now, if you do not move forward with the mandate, there may be significant advantages in the pressure that takes off the spending in the exchange. But whether it is an economic issue or not, it is a fairness issue. The President, who now has suspended the requirement that businesses offer insurance in 2015--it seems to me the only fair thing to do, if you take the obligation off businesses to offer insurance, is to take the obligation off individuals who the law would require to have insurance if they did not get it at work. You have just taken away the requirement for businesses. Surely you cannot justify saying businesses do not have to pay the penalty but individuals do. I think that is a fair debate to have. It is a fair debate to have either over the weekend as part of how we move forward with funding the government or a fair debate to have if we are going to increase the Federal Government's ability to borrow money. We ought to talk about things that are going to result in spending lots of money. Remember, the requirement for the individual mandate that the President also waived was the requirement to prove income. Now, why does that matter? On the exchange, depending on how high your income is, you get a taxpayer subsidy for the insurance you buy. But the President said the requirement to verify income will not be there in the way the law envisioned for this first year. So again, how is that fair to the taxpayers that the taxpayers are subsidizing somebody's estimate of income? We just got through with the taxpayers subsidizing a lot of mortgages that could not be paid because that structure allowed people to estimate what their income would be on their mortgage application without submitting anything but their estimate of what their income could be. As it turned out, when people were trying to buy a house and prove they could make a mortgage payment, a significant number of people estimated they would make more money than they made. I think it is going to be equally true when it comes time to qualify for taxpayer assistance, a significant number of people may estimate--maybe even on some level of good faith--it could work out that way, that I am going to make less money than I made last year or less money than I am likely to make this year, but I am going to have a level of income that allows me to have a higher subsidy. I think it is certainly a possibility. One of these two things is happening right now. We need to look at the equity and fairness of having an individual penalty and the President saying we do not have a penalty for businesses that do not provide insurance. Let me get back to a few more examples. In one of the debt limit debates, major changes in Social Security were attached. An amendment in one of the debates was to end the bombing in Cambodia. Twenty-five amendments that were nongermane to spending were in this discussion between 1978 and 1987. The President maybe is proving here more than anything else that you better be very careful when you say something has never happened, particularly if it has happened over and over, and particularly if you think that somehow, as President, you can decide that the future of the country is nondebatable, that you can decide that how high the debt limit is is nondebatable. Whatever the Secretary of the Treasury says, that is what we need. And what would the President say about that? He would say, well, that is because we have already obligated this money. The fact that this money may be already obligated does not mean we should not look at every other way we are spending money or every way we control spending and do what we need to do about that. In 1982, the Senate majority leader at that time, Howard Baker, said we will have a free-for-all on the debt ceiling legislation, and 1,400 nongermane amendments became part of that debate. They included limiting Federal jurisdiction over school prayer and other things. In 1980, the House and Senate rejected a central part of President Carter's energy policy--an oil import fee--as part of the debt ceiling discussion. No bigger stretch than not going forward with the individual mandate as part of the debt ceiling discussion. Less than 10 percent of the debt limit bills passed between 1978 and 2002 contained amendments not related to the debt or budget. But many of them contained an amendment that was related to how we spend our money. When you are spending too much money, when you already owe $17 trillion, it is time to talk about: How are we spending this money and what can we do to do something about it before we further extend the line of credit? If any of us went to a banker and said: We have spent all the money we have already borrowed. We still have a lot of bills coming in, and we need to borrow a lot more money, frankly, under any of the rules that this Congress has passed in the last several years, the banker could not loan you money, and if they could loan you money, they would not loan you money without saying: Tell us again, what are you trying to do to get your spending under control so you are not back here in a few days or a few months asking for more credit. The thing we know is, under almost any imaginable circumstance, this is not the last debt ceiling increase we will ever make. So if we are going to be back in a few weeks, a few months, a year--however long this debt ceiling extends to--asking for more money, we ought to be talking about how we are spending the money we have. October 17 will not be as far away as it might seem. It is very close to us now. The Secretary of the Treasury says that the country will have only approximately $30 billion to meet our country's commitments. But on October 17, money does not stop coming in. On October 18, you might be able to arrange the books in a way where you do not have quite enough money to pay all the bills coming in, but this is not a government shutdown scenario. We need to solve the problem of this weekend and early next week and then get to the debt ceiling. Whether the President wants to debate it or not, it is going to be debated. I think it is going to be negotiated. The idea that this is going to be a so-called clean debt limit increase that will not be negotiated because it impacts the full faith and credit of the United States of America--we are going to pay our bills. I think we all know that. We have paid our bills since the founding of this government. But we are not going to pay our bills, we are not going to get another advance on our allowance, without somebody saying: Exactly how are you spending this money as fast as you are spending it? And why are you back again saying you need more of it? The American people have overwhelmingly rejected the idea that this should not be negotiated. According to a new Bloomberg poll out this week, Americans by a 2-to-1 ratio disagree with the President's contention that the Congress should raise the debt ceiling without conditions. Instead, 61 percent said that it is ``right to require spending cuts when the debt ceiling is raised,'' and they said ``even if it risks default.'' The American people want us to fight--as we have this week and we will continue to--to try to defund a health care system that will not work. But they also want us to fight, to be sure that the money we are spending that we get from taxpayers--the money that we obligate future generations to, the bills that we are building up for somebody else to pay--to have the kind of debate, the kind of negotiation, the kind of important view of the future that they deserve to have. I would urge the President and the majority leader of the Senate to sit down with leaders of the House and others and try to work this out as soon as we can. Understand, frankly, that whether you want to negotiate or not does not matter. There is nowhere in the Constitution that says when we owe more money than we pay, the President can decide whether there is going to be a discussion or not. That is not how this system works. It is not how it is going to work over the next 2 weeks or the next month or whatever it takes to resolve the debt limit. Hopefully, we will all be working hard over the next 2 days to do whatever it takes to keep the government of the United States working on October 1. Just because we have failed for the entire year to do the work the Senate is supposed to do does not mean we can continue to fail in a way that punishes the American people by not having a government that is functioning on the first day of the spending year.

Mr. BLUNT. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I have had the chance to listen for almost a better part of an hour to my two neighbors, Senator Harkin and Senator Coburn, one from Oklahoma and one from Iowa, both of whom, as many of us know, have totally different views of why we are here and what is going to happen based on what we do in the next few days and the days that follow after that. First of all, why are we here? The new spending year starts a week from yesterday. It starts next Tuesday. Has the Senate passed a single appropriations bill? No. Why are we doing this again? Why are we so committed over the last 5 or 6 years to management by crisis? I think in the last 6 or 7 years now, the appropriations process has not worked one time. It wasn't too many years before that when we passed all of the appropriations bills for the year that ended September 30 and began October 1 in July--all of them, individually. That is how the government worked and was supposed to work. Here we are a week away, and why are we here? Why does everything have to ride from crisis to crisis? That is why people are frustrated, people are upset. Senator Harkin, my good friend, we are both frustrated and upset. We would like to see this process work. The Appropriations Committee would like to see the process work. Why do we go from standing on one edge of the cliff, and the next time people pay any attention, we are on the edge of another cliff again? We need to work together to make this process work. There has been, as Senator Coburn pointed out, some significant disagreement on where the current debate could take us. One side believes that at some point--one side of the debate believes that at some point the President of the United States would sign a bill that eliminated the health care plan that he now calls ObamaCare, so I am going to call it that too, as he has, and Senator Harkin has alternated using that term. I don't believe the President would sign that bill. I do believe he is President and I do believe he has to sign a bill for the bill to happen, and so we have to at some point decide what can we do to make this process understood in a better way by the American people. Senator Harkin referred to this as a starter home. I don't know exactly where this goes, but I do know that the majority leader said over the last few days, Well, what this really is is a single-payer system. I am not for that. As far as I know, nobody on my side of the aisle and many people on the other side of the aisle aren't for that, but that is where the Senate majority leader says this goes. I don't want to go there. So what can we do to make the health care system work better? I wish to talk about that a little later too because there have been plenty of ideas about what could make this better. Apparently, when it comes to not moving forward with the Affordable Care Act, the administration believes it can decide what not to move forward on, but the Congress can't. It can decide what to essentially repeal. Part of this act was called the CLASS Act, long-term health care provisions that about a year and a half or 2 years ago, the Secretary of HHS said what I said, but in the committee, when this bill came up, when I was on the House Commerce Committee that dealt with this, essentially saying this long- term plan won't work. ``Oh, no, it will work and it will provide lots of money.'' Secretary Sebelius--even though it is the law--said, about a year and a half ago, this will not work, so we are not even going to try to do it. The President said recently--or I guess the Secretary said recently-- that the small business plans that were supposed to be available on January 1, 2014, will not be available. The President said: We are not going to have any penalties for the business requirement in 2014, but we are still going to have the individual requirement. Interestingly, the President also said: In normal circumstances, I would go to the Congress and say change the law, but these are not normal circumstances. I do not believe there is a Presidential prerogative to decide whether you are in normal circumstances or not. If the law needs to be changed, let's change the law. If parts of it need to be repealed, let's repeal it. If parts of it need to be postponed, let's postpone it. Here we are, only 6 days from the beginning of a new spending year. We are also 6 days from what will be a critically important moment for a lot of families--a lot of individuals, employers, people who are going to be looking at these exchanges, and they do not seem to be ready. It had been hoped that there would be available information out there so that for weeks we could have sort of what is called the dry run, where people could see if this works, where they could compare plans. That is just not there, and we know it is not there. In Missouri, where I live, people have been concerned from the very first about what they saw as a flawed law. In fact, our State was the first State in the country to actually vote on whether we wanted to be part of this. Overwhelmingly, Missouri voters said no, and that was when it was more popular in any polling than it is right now. People have looked at this and they do not want to go there. Missourians, in August of 2010, had a vote on the ballot, and 71 percent said we should not participate--71 percent--and that was, again, when the law was more popular than it is now. That was the first time people had a chance to vote on this. In November of 2012, Missouri voters voted again. This time the direction to the legislature and all State agencies and the Governor was: Do not establish a State exchange unless the legislature agrees. There was some disagreement as to whether the Governor could do that on his own. Missouri voters said: We do not want you to do that on your own. So in our State, as in a majority of the States, it has not happened. The implementation will is not there because people do not believe this plan will work. The elements of this that improve what happens in a competitive marketplace could still be there in other changes we could make. This is incredibly unpopular around the country. People are frustrated by it. People are looking for ways to end moving into the Affordable Care Act; that it simply will not work. Senator Coburn explained earlier why they would not work. Charles Krauthammer, one of the leading conservative commentators in the country today, said about one of the plans this week: It will not work. The President's health care plan is falling under its own weight. When something such as that is happening in politics, you do not rush in to stop it from happening. If you do not think the law should be implemented anyway, let people see that this will not work, and we are seeing that. I am for defunding the plan. I am for starting over again. I believe most Americans would like to see us start over again and take the best health care system in the world and make it work better. Anybody who was defending our system as perfect got into a trap they should not have gotten into because it was not perfect. It was largely an accident of a couple of decisions made in the 1940s, where health care and health insurance became way too dependent on where people worked, where people did not have the ownership they needed in health care, and where we did not have the competition that we needed to buy across State lines, to shop for a better product, to do all those things. But this is a plan where, again, the law is the law, unless it applies to the administration, apparently. The Congressional Research Service--no partisan organization--recently found that the administration has missed 41 of 82 deadlines. If you are a batter in professional baseball, that is a pretty good average, .500. It is not very good if you are trying to figure out how to implement the law. They missed 41 of 82 deadlines. The employer mandate requirement, the White House has said, is unworkable now and announced its delay. How in the world we could defend saying that employers do not have to meet their requirement but individuals have to pay a penalty if they do not have insurance--how can any of my friends defend that? We ought to, at the very least, postpone the individual mandate for as long as we postpone the employer mandate. If individuals are paying a penalty and employers that the law says are supposed to offer insurance are not offering insurance and they are not paying a penalty, there is something wrong with a government that decides that is the appropriate way to do this. Despite the employer mandate delay announcement, we still see businesses beginning to react because they know or they believe this is eventually likely to start. Businesses, big and small, are trying to look at: If somebody does not have to have insurance if they do not work more than 30 hours, maybe we should have more employees who work less than 30 hours because our competitor might decide that companies that have always provided insurance and assistance for families and spouses decide the law now does not say we have to do that, so we are not going to do that any longer. The law initially anticipated 3 million people who currently had insurance would lose that insurance. It is going to be a lot higher than that. The same people who were saying 3 million are today saying somewhere between 8 and 15 million, and that number is going to go up. All we have to do is calculate what has just been announced in the last few days to know that is going to go up. The Cleveland Clinic hosted President Obama in July 2009, during the height of trying to convince Americans this was going to work. He talked about how the Cleveland Clinic was an example of cutting-edge technology. But what they recently cut in cutting-edge health delivery--what they recently cut--were 44,000 employees, and they said it was because of the President's health care plan. The same organization the President went to, to talk about how that organization runs and why we should have his health care plan, announced they are terminating 44,000 employees because of the health care plan. This is a plan where people who were for it--and I was not for it, I have not been for it, I just simply do not believe it will work--people who were for it overpromised, and now they are underdelivering. That famous statement made over and over again: If you like your health care plan, you can keep it--nobody believes that anymore. In fact, ask the employees at General Electric or IBM or UPS or Walgreens or Home Depot or thousands of smaller businesses than those: What about keeping the health care plan you like--the day that commitment was made? Those plans are not there anymore. It was one of the main selling points of this plan: If you like your health care, you can keep it. It just turned out not to be true at all. Not only has this not made health care more affordable, but family premiums have gone up by more than $2,500 since this became the law-- even though it was the law and we are moving toward it, not implementing it. Nearly three in four small businesses say they plan to cut hours or let employees go because of the President's health care plan. People who have more than 50 employees are doing everything they can not to have more than 50 employees because that is one of the criteria where they are penalized under this law. Meanwhile, in April of 2013, the administration said it would delay a provision that allowed employees to pick their own plans in States that have the Federal exchange--States such as ours. It is not going to happen. Another delay. In July of 2013, the administration delayed enforcement of the employer mandate for a year. In July, the administration announced it would significantly scale back the requirements for new State-based insurance marketplaces to verify income. When you scale back the requirements to verify income, you are also scaling back the burden that people have to provide information in order to get assistance. I assume that means more people will get taxpayer assistance. But it also means the cost of that assistance is going to be higher, for many reasons. That is one of them. Another one is that people are going to be on the exchange that everybody anticipated would still be getting workplace-based health care. In August of 2013, the Department of HHS--Health and Human Services-- delayed the signing agreements with insurance companies that was supposed to have specific amounts available in August. I wrote a letter at the time that said: It is very important that you meet this deadline because people need to begin to think about the decision you want them to make beginning October 1. The Department of Labor delayed a limit on out-of-pocket spending for beneficiaries from 2014 to 2015. Again, apparently, if you want to delay the law, if you want to decide that you are not going to enforce the law, that is OK. But for those of us who say: Let's have a permanent delay, let's not fund this and now go back and start with a process where the House passes a bill, the Senate passes a bill, the two bodies come together and talk about the differences--that never happened with this law. My friend from Iowa said: It is a starter home. But there is no remodeling process to start up for the starter home, and we are seeing what happens there. Unfortunately, there are too many examples of this. Americans deserve commonsense health care solutions, where doctors and patients are in charge, not government bureaucrats, not people at the IRS. When you have a health care bill that adds thousands of new IRS workers and does not add a single new doctor or nurse, you probably missed the boat in what you are trying to do with health care. There are lots of better ideas out there: More individual ownership, fair tax treatment. The tax treatment we have had for decades now, where you do not pay income tax on a benefit you get at work, but if you get insurance on your own, you do that with dollars you have paid taxes on--now one way or the other, make that equal. Either say nobody gets a tax benefit for the money that is used to buy insurance or everybody gets the tax benefit. Let people shop across State lines. Let people find what they need that meets the needs of their family. You are going to have more single, young adults without insurance. Why are you going to have more? Not because of the provision that allows people to stay on their family's policy--that actually added people to the insurance roles--but because of the provision that says that the most expensive people you insure cannot be charged more than three times that of the least expensive people you insure. Young, healthy people are going to look at insurance rates higher than rates they have ever seen on the individual market before, and it will make a difference. There is plenty that can be done here. My colleagues on the other side face an important decision this week. They can stand with what is now the overwhelming majority of Americans who have rejected the direction we are headed and say: Let's defund this. Let's start over again. The one thing we have in front of us that would allow us to start over is the House bill that we just voted to move forward on that would defund ObamaCare and let us start over again or my friends on the other side can decide that the President and Senator Reid are right, that Senator Reid's idea that this leads us to a single-payer system is where we want to go, that the President's idea that he can change this law however he wants to and the Congress is not involved is right. I will strongly urge all of my colleagues to join me in voting against any attempts by the majority leader to restore funding for this flawed law and to work with all of us, working together, as we work to replace it. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.