John Barrasso

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Amy Lee for her hard work as an intern in my Washington, DC office. I recognize her efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming. Amy is a native of Cheyenne, WY. She is a recent graduate of Marquette University where she earned a bachelor of arts in political science. She has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made her an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of her work is reflected in her great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Amy for the dedication she has shown while working for me and my staff. It was a pleasure to have her as part of our team. I know she will have continued success with all of her future endeavors. I wish her all my best on her next journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Ryan Lojo for his hard work as an intern in my Washington, DC office. I recognize his efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming. Ryan is a native of Casper, WY and a graduate of Kelly Walsh High School. He is also a recent graduate of Gonzaga University, where he earned a degree in business administration-economics. He has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made him an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of his work is reflected in his great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Ryan for the dedication he has shown while working for me and my staff. It was a pleasure to have him as part of our team. I know he will have continued success with all of his future endeavors. I wish him all my best on his next journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Joel Defebaugh for his hard work as an intern in my Washington, DC Office. I recognize his efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming. Joel is a native of Casper, WY and a graduate of Natrona County High School. He is also a recent graduate of the University of Wyoming, where he earned a degree in political science. He has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made him an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of his work is reflected in his great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Joel for the dedication he has shown while working for me and my staff. It was a pleasure to have him as part of our team. I know he will have continued success with all of his future endeavors. I wish him all my best on his next journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Jennifer Trabing for her hard work as an intern in my Cheyenne, WY office. I recognize her efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming. Jennifer is a native of Buffalo, WY where she graduated from Buffalo High School. She is also a graduate of the University of Wyoming where she earned a bachelor of arts in international studies. She has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made her an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of her work is reflected in her great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Jennifer for the dedication she has shown while working for me and my staff. It was a pleasure to have her as part of our team. I know she will have continued success with all of her future endeavors. I wish her all my best on her next journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Matthew Spenny for his hard work as an intern in my Cheyenne, WY office. I recognize his efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming. Matthew lives in Laramie, WY and is a graduate of the University of Wyoming, where he earned a degree in communication and journalism. He has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made him an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of his work is reflected in his great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Matthew for the dedication he has shown while working for me and my staff. It was a pleasure to have him as part of our team. I know he will have continued success with all of his future endeavors. I wish him all my best on his next journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, with less than 2 weeks remaining before the deadline for people who need to sign up for health insurance that starts for them to be insured on January 1, there is a significant amount of anger as well as anxiety across the country. The Web site where people are supposed to go to buy that insurance has been plagued with problems that everyone in the country seems to know about, and that has caused huge amounts of anxiety. I heard about it last week in Wyoming, I hear about it on Capitol Hill with staff members, and I hear it pretty much anywhere I go. What people have been learning is that the problems with the Web site are actually just the tip of the iceberg. The Obama administration has been saying that it has been fixed, that the problems with this health care law are fine, that everything is good, that a majority of people are having good experiences. I remember listening to the President not long ago, sitting with Bill Clinton, saying: Easier to use than Amazon. Well, that is not what the American people found. He also said: Cheaper than your cell phone bill. He said: You will be able to keep your doctor if you like them. But the law continues to leave so many Americans struggling-- struggling with higher costs, with greater confusion--and really with a lot less confidence in the administration. People all around the country are worrying about whether the administration even knows what it is doing. So when I talk about the Web site being just the tip of the iceberg, people around the country are running into higher premiums, canceled coverage, finding out they cannot keep their doctor. They are running into fraud and identity theft issues and issues in terms of higher copays and out-of-pocket costs and deductibles. People at home in Wyoming--and I went not just around communities in the State, traveling to a number of different communities, but I also went to my own medical office where I practiced as an orthopedic surgeon at Casper Orthopedics for 24 years--were telling me how worried they were about the higher costs they are seeing regarding paying for insurance for next year. I got a letter from one man in Cody, WY. He talked about how the rates he has been quoted are going to go up from about $860 a month that he pays now for a family of four to $2,400 a month--$860 to $2,400 a month. He said: ``I'm not sure what planet they think I live on, but there is no way I can spend more than half of my monthly income on insurance.'' Well, I hear the same thing from people all around Wyoming. People are having this same sticker shock all over the country. We know that more than 4.7 million Americans in 32 States are being told they cannot keep the insurance they had. When we take a look at the map, we know we do not have the numbers yet on certain States, including the State of Wisconsin. We do not have Illinois. We do not have Ohio. We do not have Texas. We do not have Virginia. So we really do not know how many people have lost their coverage. But we know that at least 4.7 million Americans were told they cannot keep the insurance they had in spite of what the President may have promised them. Now what they have to do is buy new Washington-approved health coverage that really may not be the right coverage for them and may likely cost more than they were paying before. Millions of Americans are going to be forced to use money that in the past was used to pay rent or put their children through school or to invest in their communities or in a business or to help make repairs to their homes--now that money is going to go to pay for higher premiums as well as the incredibly high deductibles people are seeing related to the health care law. It is interesting, looking through the papers--this was yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Monday, December 9. Above the fold on the front page: ``Deductibles Fuel New Worries of Health-Law Sticker Shock.'' The article says: The average individual deductible for what is called a bronze plan on the exchange--the lowest-priced coverage--is $5,081 a year, according to a new report on insurance offerings in 34 of the 36 states that rely on the federally run online marketplace. The Wall Street Journal reports: That is 42% higher than the average deductible of $3,589 for an individually purchased plan in 2013 before much of the federal law took effect. So what people are seeing--and the Wall Street Journal reports above- the-fold on the first page--are higher deductibles by a lot. It is not just the Wall Street Journal. In the New York Times yesterday, Robert Pear had an article: ``On Health Exchanges, Premiums May Be Low, But Other Costs Can Be High.'' It says: . . . as consumers dig into the details-- Dig into the details--something this body never did. Members of that part of the body who voted for this health care law never did dig into the details. It says: . . . as consumers dig into the details, they are finding that the deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs are often much higher than what is typical in employer-sponsored health plans--the plans many of these people have had in the past. So what we are seeing are not just the higher costs, not just the higher deductibles, the higher copays; there is also a lot of confusion about the health care Web site itself, and I think that is only going to get worse. Ten weeks after the Web site launched, there is still an awful lot that is broken, including the parts that actually get people the insurance they think they signed up for. A number of my staff have applied, and they believe they have signed up for health insurance. They are not sure. They have not yet gotten confirmation. And I know Members on Capitol Hill who have staff signing up are experiencing the same thing. Last month one of the officials from the Department of Health and Human Services testified in the House of Representatives that as much as 40 percent of this Web site's system still has not even been built yet. The Web site still has trouble transmitting information to the insurance companies once someone has chosen a plan. The Web site was down again earlier today. It still has not figured out how to automatically pay the portion of premiums covered by any government subsidy. There are still many, many security holes that can be exploited by con artists, by hackers. Certain branches of the government have been warning citizens to be cautious when going on the Web site because of the concerns about exploitation, people who are trying to use this in a fraudulent way. And then you hear that the administration is bragging. It is really sad that almost 9 weeks after the Web site opened the administration is now bragging that it only has an error rate of 10 percent on one important step of the Web site. Madam President, 1 in 10 is their error rate. This is a President who said the Web site was going to be running like amazon.com. He said that 3 or 4 days before the Web site opened. Now, 9 weeks later, he is delighted that the error rate is still 1 out of 10. Does the President actually believe Amazon would accept a 10- percent error rate in their customers not being able to finish their purchases? I believe all of these flaws and failures have led to a dramatic loss of confidence by the American people in their government. According to a new Gallup poll, 52 percent of Americans are in favor of scaling back the health care law or repealing it entirely. People continue to turn against the law for a number of reasons, and it is not just the Web site, it is the higher premiums, it is the canceled coverage, it is that they cannot keep their doctor, and it is fraud and identity theft, higher copays, higher deductibles, and confusion about what is going to go wrong next because so many things the President and his administration have said--have looked into the camera and told the American people would be one way--turned out to be something very different. There have been so many changing stories coming out of the White House. The President said: If you like your health insurance, you can keep your health insurance, and then he actually said ``period,'' with a punctuation mark, that that was it; no ifs, ands, or buts--just the period. People now know all across the country--those who voted for him, those who did not--what they all know is that what the President said was not true. The President said: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Well, on Sunday one of the architects of ObamaCare went on FOX News and admitted also that was not true. This is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel-- the brother of Rahm Emanuel, the former Chief of Staff of the White House--who is a medicine professor. What he said was, if you like your doctor and you want to keep your doctor, you can pay more for insurance that includes your doctor. There are a lot of places where you cannot even buy insurance that will cover that doctor. This is not at all what the President promised. It is interesting, even in the Financial Times yesterday, ``Healthcare insurers cut costs by excluding top hospitals.'' So you cannot even go to the hospitals. There is a picture here of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. ``Plan will not cover treatment at Houston cancer center.'' So we have somebody who has lost their insurance who has been going to that cancer center where their doctors are--they are losing their insurance on January 1, knowing they cannot keep their doctor, they cannot keep their hospital. We see children's hospitals around the country, people who are not going to be included in these exchanges. So children with leukemia, come January 1, are going to lose their doctor, lose their hospital. But that is what the President and that is what the Democrats in this body who voted for this health care law have given to the American people. Just before Thanksgiving, the Obama administration announced it would have to delay a health insurance exchange that was supposed to let small businesses shop for insurance. I remember hearing speeches on this floor about small businesses being able to find affordable insurance. Well, it turns out, once again, the administration knew at least 6 weeks before that they were going to have to delay the program. Did they admit it to the American people? Did they tell the truth? No. They waited. One broken promise after another, one statement after another that the administration knows is not true. So is it a surprise, then, that the President of the United States is viewed as untruthful by a majority of the people of this country? It is a terrible situation for anyone to put their country in. Back when we first started talking about the health care law, Republicans offered ideas on how to give people what they really wanted, which was reform that lowered costs and improved access to care. That is what people were concerned about. So many of the complaints we have heard around the country have had to do with the cost of care. So President Obama and Democrats in Congress refused to listen, ignored all of the warning signs, and used raw majority power to force this bad law on all of the American people. I remember the vote in this body, Christmas Eve morning, voting on a health care law. We watched it crammed through on party-line votes. Now Democrats in the Senate have decided to make another power play and have broken the rules of the Senate just a couple of weeks ago to change the rules of the Senate. They took a drastic and unwarranted step so that they could have the power once again to force more bad ideas like the Obama health care law onto the American people. They say we do not need the 60 votes now; all we need is a simple majority. Let's change the way the Senate has run for well over 100 years, because, once again, the Democrats say: We know better than the American people. We know better than you. That is what the President said with his health care law. Now the American people are realizing what they knew all along. This is not what they wanted with health care reform. Regrettably it is what they are living with now, and they are seeing the higher premiums, the canceled coverage, losing their doctor, the fraud and identity theft, higher copays, and higher deductibles. It is interesting; even today in the Washington Post, the front page above the fold said: ``Under health law, insurers limiting drug coverage.'' Costs may soar. It talks about many different ailments, including for those with HIV. That is a result of the health care law. If this health care law would not have passed, forced down the throats of the American people with the President telling one falsehood after another, deliberately designed to mislead the American people, you would never have seen a headline like this today. If President Obama really wants to help the American people, he is going to sit down with the Republicans and talk about the real issues to reduce costs, to get rid of all of this confusion that he and the Democrats have caused and to restore people's confidence in America, as well as in him. There is a better way. Republicans agree we need to reform America's health care system. We think that those reforms could have been done without the kind of harm caused by the President's health care law. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Abbie Golden for her hard work as an intern in the Senate Republican Policy Committee office. I recognize her efforts and contributions to my office. Abbie is a native of Little Rock, AR and a graduate of Episcopal High School. She is also a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a degree in political science. She has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made her an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of her work is reflected in her great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Abbie for the dedication she has shown while working for me and my staff. It was a pleasure to have her as part of our team. I know she will have continued success with all of her future endeavors. I wish her all my best on her next journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Amanda Jones for her hard work as an intern in my Riverton, WY office. I recognize her efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming. Amanda is a graduate of Lander Valley High School. She is from Riverton, WY and currently attends the University of Wyoming, where she is majoring in criminal justice. She has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made her an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of her work is reflected in her great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Amanda for the dedication she has shown while working for me and my staff. It was a pleasure to have her as part of our team. I know she will have continued success with all of her future endeavors. I wish her all my best on her next journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Natasha John for her hard work as an intern in the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. I recognize her efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming. Natasha is a native of Oklahoma and a graduate of Concordia College. She is also a candidate for a masters of arts in global studies and international relations from the University of Central Oklahoma. She has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made her an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of her work is reflected in her great efforts over the last several months. I want to thank Natasha for the dedication she has shown while working for me and my staff. It was a pleasure to have her as part of our team. I know she will have continued success with all of her future endeavors. I wish her all my best on her next journey.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today and would note a headline on the front page of Politico today regarding the ObamaCare Web site. ``Tech Chief: Up to 40% Work Is Left On ObamaCare. Financial management tools are unfinished.'' This Web site has been a debacle. People all around the country are angry. They are anxious, frustrated, and bothered, but mostly I am hearing anger from people in Wyoming. And it is not just the Web site. The Web site is just the tip of the iceberg. People are furious when they get letters of cancellation, when they have coverage canceled and then they see higher premiums. All across the country people are finding out that because of the health care law, they can't keep their doctor. They are hearing stories about fraud, identity theft, and higher copays and deductibles. So I bring to the floor today a couple of letters I have received from people in Wyoming. Last week, Veterans Day, I was in Douglas, WY, for the flag-raising ceremony at the American Legion at 7 a.m. talking to folks--some who had gotten cancellation letters. Let me read a letter from a family in Douglas, WY, a small community in Converse County. They say: We just found out that our current health insurance policy with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming (which is a $20,000 deductible for our family) will not be allowed after January 1st . . . that only those under age 30 will be able to have catastrophic plans. We ranch, work very hard, have been healthy . . . can't afford and don't believe a lower deductible makes sense for us. So this is a family who decided what was best for them as a family-- not what the government told them they had to buy but what worked for them as a family. They say that what they bought was something that made sense for them. Continuing to read from their letter: . . . basically have had insurance to avoid losing our cows and land if something catastrophic happened to us. Don't know what we will do if you guys don't get this derailed. Madam President, as someone from the Rocky Mountain West, I can tell you that in a community of lots of ranchers and farmers, what they are trying to do is insure against this catastrophic loss. They go on to say: Quick side note--we think most people expect health insurance to cover everyday costs--it wouldn't make sense and it would cost way too much to get insurance to cover new tires, oil changes, washer fluid, new batteries (regular expected upkeep) for our vehicles--if we only had insurance for the big health issues, it wouldn't cost as much for all of us in the end. Of course, that is what they wanted to do. They go on: Obamacare doesn't deal with any of the issues of why health care in America costs what it does and truly seems to make it all worse. Thank you for what you do--we know you already understand this. We just thought you should know what we are dealing with. That is a ranch family in Douglas, WY, in Converse County. This past Saturday night I was in Lusk, WY, in Niobrara County, and I have an email I wish to share with you from Lusk, WY. Again, this is somebody who has had coverage canceled, higher copays, and all of the things we are talking about. Just for a second, let me show the list of the number of people who have been canceled. Some 4.7 million Americans have had their health insurance canceled in 32 States, and we don't even have the numbers for a number of other States. This is what people all across the country are seeing. Let me read this email from Lusk, WY. This individual says: I have supported the President and the Affordable Health Care act since the beginning. That changed on Thursday. All along we have been told if we have insurance, and we are satisfied, no changes will be necessary. That is a misleading statement. I was informed by my company my policy will be canceled in December. Then they will offer me another policy but with huge changes. My premium will go up . . . my deductible will rise . . . That is not the same as my current policy. I feel like, after decades of paying my own insurance, I am being penalized. I won't call it lying, but the President certainly misled a lot of us middle aged Americans. I do have one alternative I am pursuing. I can buy insurance that does not meet the guidelines of the Act. However, I will be forced to pay the penalty for noncompliance. I can afford my insurance and the penalty. Once again, Americans do not like to be misled from the top leadership down. It simply helps to solidify the mistrust we have in government. Thank you for your solid leadership. That is why I am here today on the floor. We need to hear more stories from people around the country--not just Republicans but Democrats need to hear these stories. Tweet us your story at hashtag ``your story.'' Republicans have better ideas about ways we can actually help people get the care they need from a doctor they choose at a lower cost. This health care law is hurting many millions of Americans. We now know that the President knew it at the time he continued to repeat the line--which we now know is a misleading line--to the American people. Very soon we will find that the line ``if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor'' was misleading as millions more will be losing their doctor. There is great damage continuing to be done. We need to start over. Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, how much time remains?

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

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I go home every weekend to talk to people. I was home last weekend for Veterans Day and was in the Target store in Casper and ran into a small business owner of a small electric company he runs. He has about four people who work with him. He is somebody on whom I have operated. He is a former patient of mine. He told me he was one of those 4 million Americans who had gotten that letter that they had lost their insurance. He said: The President promised this would be easier to use than amazon.com. I can't get on. He said it would be cheaper than your cell phone bill. Well, that has not been the case. He said that the President said: If you like what you have, you can keep it. Clearly, that is not the case. He said: What is wrong? What is wrong with this? How can we fix it? I got another letter from a rancher that I need to read. She is from New Castle, WY. She says: We are ranchers who buy our own health insurance. Currently, we pay $650 a month for an 80/20 policy with a $3,500 deductible. Our maximum family out-of-pocket is $10,000 a year. We do not carry maternity insurance because we have completed our family. I am 45 years old. I have had a hysterectomy. I recently called my insurance agent out of fear our policy could be canceled. Well, he said it would be canceled at the renewal time. She said that he told her that their policy did not meet ObamaCare's requirement because of maternity coverage and they would have to choose a policy from the exchanges. Now, remember, she has had a hysterectomy. She does not need or want or will ever use maternity coverage. She said the insurance agent quoted her rates for a comparable policy at $1,300 to $1,600 per month. Remember, they are now paying $650. She said the insurance agent also told her they could take a bronze policy--much less coverage than they currently have--for $900, which is still $250 a month higher than they would have to pay, but the out-of- pocket cost then was much higher, much more difficult for the family. She said: We are being forced out of a good policy, which we pay for with hard-earned money and which we choose, into a dangerous financial and health care situation with less coverage and which puts my husband and I, who are proud of our sustainability, onto what we consider the welfare rolls by needing a government subsidy to afford a plan that we do not want or need. She said: To say that we are angry is an understatement. Why is this happening? Why can Obama force me into this? We feel helpless. What are we supposed to do, just follow like sheep until we are either bankrupt or welfare recipients? This is not what President of the United States promised the American people. It is not what every Democrat in this body who voted for this health care law promised the American people. The American people deserve better. They deserve to be able to get the care they need from a doctor they choose at lower costs. None of that has come true under this health care law. I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, it has now been more than 6 weeks since the Obama administration launched its health insurance marketplace. This afternoon, the Obama administration finally confirmed how few people have been able to select insurance through the exchange. According to the White House, only 106,185 people have selected coverage since October 1. This doesn't mean people actually bought their coverage, it just means they selected a plan. For most of these, it was through the State-based exchanges. People may be wondering how the Washington-run exchange did. Only 26,794 people selected a plan through healthcare.gov. It is safe to say, if this were a commercial Web site, the plug would have been pulled by now. They came, they saw, they did not buy it. Low expectations met with even lower reality. The numbers paint a bleak picture of the confidence the American people have in the health care law and the faulty Web site created to sell it. The administration's goal was for a half million people, 500,000 Americans, to sign up in the month of October, the month of October alone. Instead, we now know that only a little over 100,000 people have actually signed up. The reason the numbers are so low and so disappointing is that the Web site is totally broken and the American people are discovering that the coverage offered on the exchange often costs them more than they can afford, and more than they were previously paying. So far, the ObamaCare exchanges have only succeeded at crashing people's computers or lightening their wallets. To make matters worse, for every one person who has selected an ObamaCare plan--either from the State or Federal exchanges--40 people have received cancellation notices. This is not what the President repeatedly promised and it is not what the American people deserve. Enough is enough. It is time to give Americans what they wanted all along: access to quality, affordable health care. It is time to stop this train wreck and ease the damage being done by this terrible law. To help make that happen, Senator Graham and I will soon introduce a bill that lets States opt out of some of the health care law's most burdensome provisions. Under the State Health Care Choice Act, States could opt out of the individual mandate that requires people to buy government-approved health insurance or face a tax penalty. They could opt out of the employer mandate that will force businesses to provide government-approved health insurance or pay penalties. Under our bill States could also opt out from the health care law's benefits mandates. These are the requirements that health insurance plans provide numerous expensive services that many people may not want, may not need, will never use, cannot afford, and do not want to pay for. The Obama administration has already issued hundreds of waivers to businesses and it has delayed the employer mandate by a year. States should have the same opportunity to give relief to their citizens. We know the numbers coming out of Wyoming. In Wyoming we see over 3,000 people have received cancellation notices. Yet only 85 people have been able to select a plan. I was at the Target store in Casper this Saturday. A former patient came up to me, somebody I had operated on. He told me he had received a cancellation notice. He is a small businessman, works hard for himself and for his family, and the insurance he had worked for him. It was something he could afford. What he told me is he will now have to pay a higher premium and also more out-of-pocket costs in terms of a higher copay and higher deductibles. Frankly, he is not sure what he is going to do. The people I talk to tell me about all of the mandates, the higher costs, the bad side effects of the President's health care law, and they tell me this is not what they wanted in health care reform. I got a letter from one woman from Newcastle, WY. She told me she is losing her health insurance plan also. The reason she is losing it is it does not meet the President's requirements that she have maternity coverage. As she points out, she doesn't need maternity care, she said, because she has had a hysterectomy and she doesn't like Washington telling her that she has to pay twice as much to get a plan that covers it--something she doesn't want, will never use, doesn't need, cannot afford. When it comes to health care and health care coverage, one size does not fit all. States should be free to help the citizens of those States get the care they need from the doctor they choose at lower costs. A lot of people in this country do not want all these new mandates, all the burdens and the higher costs. All they actually wanted was President Obama to keep the promises, to allow them to have what the President promised them: that they could keep the insurance and the doctor they already had. After all, that is what the President said. We have millions of people getting letters from their insurance company canceling their insurance plans. As of today I know that number is over 4.2 million--42 people canceled for every 1 that actually got insurance through the exchange. One of the reasons for all of the insurance plans being canceled, in spite of what the President told the American people repeatedly, is something called the grandfather regulation that the Obama administration actually wrote. The President's own people wrote the regulation so that people cannot keep the insurance they want, in spite of the President's repeated promises. This was a rule the Obama administration wrote to force more people off the insurance plans they had before the law was passed, and force them into new Washington-approved plans. Three years ago Republicans saw that this regulation was going to lead directly to the millions of cancellation letters that have now gone out across the country. My colleague from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, took the lead and he took to the Senate floor to try to stop this destructive rule from the Obama administration. He introduced a bill that would immediately overturn the administration's restrictive regulations about people keeping their plans. Senator Enzi pointed out back then, 3 years ago, that the administration's rule would have caused millions of people to lose the insurance they had and that they liked. He was right, and the Washington Democrats, here on the floor of the Senate, did not seem to care. Every Democratic Member of this body, every Democrat in the Senate, voted to make sure that the restrictive regulations stayed on the books. Because of that vote, now we have over 4 million Americans looking for new insurance plans that satisfy Obama administration mandates, but they have lost their insurance in spite of the President's repeated promises that if they like what they have, they could keep it. Many of them--such as my friend and former patient whom I ran into this past weekend in Casper--are learning that their copays and their deductibles will be much higher than the plans they have lost. Once they get those plans, many of them are going to find out that their costs have increased--but not just that; their choice of doctors has shrunk as well. They may not be able to go to their family doctor because he or she will not be covered by their new plan anymore. Last week President Obama finally admitted he and his administration were not, as he said, ``as clear as we needed to be.'' Not as clear as he needed to be? That is what the President regrets, that he was not as clear as he needed to be? For the millions of people who are losing their doctors, they don't want an apology; they don't want a new government handout. What they want is what they had before this law came into effect. They want President Obama to live up to his promise and to allow them to keep the coverage they had and they liked and that worked for them. Even former President Bill Clinton has called for a change. Remember, the Obama administration has called President Clinton the so-called ``Secretary of Explaining Stuff.'' They had him traveling the country, trying to convince people that their health care law was going to work out well for everybody. Now it looks as though he is trying to explain to President Obama how badly the President's own health care law has hurt Americans who are losing access to their insurance plans and to their doctors. Bill Clinton said it just the other day. He said: . . . even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got. Well, that is exactly right. Not only should President Obama take steps to keep his promise to the American people, he should support Republicans who want to help all Americans who are being harmed by the President and the Democrats' terrible health care law. Today's enrollment numbers show what a disaster that law has been, and the President should support the Health Care Choice Act so that States can serve their citizens and opt-out of this terrible law. I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I just returned from spending a weekend in my home State of Wyoming, traveling around the State and visiting with people in Natrona County and Casper as well as in Rock Springs, WY. I attended a marvelous event held every year in Sweetwater County called Cowboys Against Cancer. There were 700 people there to celebrate successes and remember those whom we have lost in these battles. I was there along with Senator Enzi as well as our Governor and others talking about an issue facing the Nation--an issue, of course, that is on everyone's mind--the health care law. This has been a very rough 5 weeks for hard-working Americans who are concerned about their health, and this obviously came up for significant discussion at the Cowboys Against Cancer event Saturday night in Wyoming. Many people were hoping the Democrats' health care law would actually help decrease costs; that it would actually help increase access to quality health care. But all America knows that hasn't happened. On October 1, the Obama administration launched its health care exchange. This was to be the biggest moment of the President's signature achievement in office. It was one where people were looking forward to the opening of the exchanges, and it flopped. It completely flopped. The Web site crashed and fell right on the heads of the people who were already anxious about their health care. People all across the country saw this collapse, and even the late-night comedians have made a lot of jokes about the incompetence and the mismanagement of the Obama administration. But I have to say the failure of the exchange is no laughing matter, because this is much more than a failed Web site. Real people are facing real health care problems and are being hurt because of this administration's failed health care law. Because of this law, millions of people are getting letters saying their insurance has been canceled. I talked to some of them this past weekend in Wyoming. There are at least 3\1/2\ million people impacted by this across the country, and the number continues to climb every day. The Obama administration says that is no big deal. They say only 3\1/2\ million people are losing the insurance plans they have now. But this administration's goal--their goal--was just 7 million people covered in the exchanges. So why does the White House think 3\1/2\ million Americans losing their coverage is no big deal when their goal this year was to cover 7 million Americans? President Obama and Democrats in Congress promised over and over: If you like your insurance, you can keep it. But that wasn't true. The Washington Post Fact Checker looked into the President's claim. These are the folks who decide if something is truthful or not truthful. They gave the President the full four Pinocchios for completely false claims. The Fact Checker wrote: The President's promise apparently came with a very large caveat: ``If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan--if we deem it to be adequate.'' Well, the President never said that. If the White House had been honest about people losing their health insurance, this law would never have passed. But the law did pass and people across the country are learning how much it is going to actually hurt them personally. For millions of people who are losing the insurance they have, they are finding the options available under the Democrats' health care law much more limited and much more expensive. The rates are higher, the deductibles are higher, their copays are higher. It is not the kind of reform people wanted or needed, but that is what the Washington Democrats gave them. The cost increases and the canceled insurance policies are just the beginning. A lot of people are now starting to realize they are no longer going to have access to their family's doctor. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. President Obama said this in 2009: We will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. That is what President Obama said. If the White House had been honest about how many families were going to lose access to their doctors, this health care law would never have passed. But the White House did make that promise, Democrats did pass that law, and American families all across the country are suffering as a result. Coming back from Wyoming this morning I picked up USA Today. The editorial page of this newspaper supported the President's health care law, but their view today is: Coverage cancellations belie Obama's promise. Obamacare is starting to resemble a patient bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. A month after launch, the online health exchanges where individuals are supposed to shop for insurance remain slow or unusable, except in states that opted to run their own marketplaces and did a more competent job than the administration. States were more competent than the administration. Continuing to quote the article: As if that weren't trouble enough, critics are justifiably mocking President Obama for his repeated, untrue promise that if people liked their health plans, they could keep them. The editorial on the opinion page of today's USA Today says: Oops. Hundreds of thousands of people are getting termination notices from plans that don't meet the strict new requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Presumably, not all those people disliked their plans. Referring to the President, they go on to say: Now he can't seem to admit he overpromised and oversimplified. He and his aides compound their credibility problem by suggesting that people whose plans are being canceled ``just shop around in the new marketplace''--a laughable impossibility while HealthCare.gov is plagued by bugs. So that is what I read in this morning's USA Today as I was coming back from Wyoming. Then I picked up the Wall Street Journal and turned to another column, and this is a guest column: ``You Also Can't Keep Your Doctor.'' You also can't keep your doctor. And there is a little subheadline that reads: ``I had great cancer doctors and health insurance. My plan was cancelled. Now I worry how long I'll live.'' I am sorry the Senate Chamber isn't full of all those people who voted for this health care law as this woman worries how long she will live. The Wall Street Journal says it is an absolutely devastating piece by one woman who is suffering because of the health care law. Her name is Edie Littlefield Sundby. She wrote about her experience fighting stage 4 gallbladder cancer. She had a health care plan with affordable access to good doctors who she points out saved her life. As a doctor, I will tell you stage 4 gallbladder cancer has a very small chance of success and survival. She has beaten the odds because of those taking care of her. But now she has been told that the plan she has is being canceled because of the President's health care law. Here is what she wrote: What happened to the President's promise, you can keep your health plan? Or the promise that, you can keep your doctor? Thanks to the law, I have been forced to give up a world- class health plan. The exchange would force me to give up a world-class physician. She has had some of the best physicians in the world--MD Anderson in Texas and California at Stanford, as well as in her home community of San Diego. Washington Democrats knew their law would harm people such as Edie Littlefield Sundby who writes today in the Wall Street Journal. They knew that people like her all across the country would lose their insurance and lose their doctors. They just didn't want the American people to know it. It was in the regulations that they wrote and they supported. The issue has to do with a section of the health care law that says that anyone who had an insurance policy on March 23, 2010, and continued to renew it, could keep it even after the ObamaCare exchange is launched. It is called a grandfather clause, and it is to protect people from the law's new rules and mandates--to let people, if they had something they liked, keep what they had. But less than 3 months after the President signed his health care law, the administration issued a regulation setting very specific criteria these health plans had to meet in order to be grandfathered. The regulation dismantled the section of the law by placing unreasonably tight restrictions on grandfathered policies. Now, any routine change made to a grandfathered insurance plan immediately breaks the Democrats' promise that Americans can keep their health insurance. A lot of consumers want the freedom and flexibility to increase their plan deductible, or copayments, rather than face a higher monthly premium. It is natural that people want to do it--with their health insurance, car insurance, or homeowners insurance. Looking and making decisions for you and your family is just part of being responsible. The Obama administration's regulations took away that choice. Republicans saw this train wreck coming, and we tried to stop it. My colleague Senator Enzi from Wyoming in 2010 brought S.J. Res. 39 to this floor. This was a Resolution of Disapproval, which would have immediately overturned the administration's burdensome grandfather regulations. What Senator Enzi brought to the floor for a vote of the entire body would have, if passed, allowed everyone to keep the insurance they had if they liked it--basically, to uphold the President's promise. Republicans supported this resolution. Senate Democrats voted against it in lockstep. Absolutely every one of them said no. They kept the regulation on the books and made sure people would not be able to keep the insurance policy they had if they liked it. Now Democrats don't want to hear about people like Edie with stage 4 gallbladder cancer. Republicans do want to hear about people like her-- people who are losing their coverage because of this health care law. We want people to tell us their stories by tweeting with the hashtag ``YourStory.'' We want to make sure that nobody in the Obama administration forgets that these are real people and they have been hurt by this health care law which the President has continued to, on party lines, force down the throats of the American people in its passage, and then continue to deliberately deceive the American people with his quotes, not very long ago, and repeated so many times: If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. Republicans support real health care reform. We support ideas such as allowing people to buy insurance across State lines. That would increase access to coverage and to care, not decrease it. That would increase competition and bring down prices--not raise them. But the Democrats' health care law is doing just that. That would be a reform that would help the American people. But the Obama health care law took the exact opposite approach. Here is how Edie Littlefield Sundby put it in her story. She wrote: Before the Affordable Care Act, health-insurance policies could not be sold across state lines; now policies sold on the Affordable Care Act exchanges may not be offered across county lines. That should change. President Obama and Washington Democrats wanted a political win. They were willing to do anything and say anything--to say whatever they needed--to get that win, whether it was true or not. If they had been honest with the American people, they would have never gotten this law passed. But the Democrats' health care law today in America is hurting people, hurting families, hurting Americans. This must end. The President should come to the table. He should work with Republicans to pass real reform, to help the American people who have been hurt and continue to be hurt by his health care law. Mr. President, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO

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

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Later this week we will hit the 1-month anniversary of the launch of President Obama's health insurance exchanges. My question is, what have we learned the past 4 weeks? We know the rollout of the exchanges and the healthcare.gov Web site, Americans would agree, has been disastrous. Last week the Associated Press ran a headline about what people in my home State of Wyoming had experienced. It said: ``National health insurance site sputters in Wyoming.'' The article goes on to talk about the health care law, the Web site, and says: ``Wyoming Insurance Commissioner Tom Hirsig said Monday that he's personally been unable to register on the Federal Government's Wyoming site despite trying every day.'' The insurance commissioner from the State of Wyoming has been unable to register on the Federal Government's Wyoming site despite trying every day starting October 1. This is the same story we have seen all across the country. We have also learned over the past 4 weeks that the President's health care law is much more than just a failed Web site. What we know is that there is sticker shock hitting people all across the country as they start shopping and find that higher premiums are what they are facing. They are going to be paying much higher premiums if they are able to buy health insurance, if they are able to get through the exchange. CBS News had the story of one woman in Florida whose health insurance will cost 11 times what she is currently paying--from $54 a month to $591 a month. Over the past 4 weeks, another thing we have learned is that many people have received notices in the mail--cancellation notices--from their insurance companies. They are being told that the insurance policies, the coverage they have had, is being cancelled. Only a small number of people have been able to get insurance through the government exchanges so far. We have seen that over the last month. In testimony today in the House hearing, a person from the administration said they cannot tell us how many people have been unable to get insurance through the exchanges, but we know that hundreds of thousands of people are losing the insurance they had. Here is what one woman told CBS: ``What I have right now is what I'm happy with, and I just want to know why I can't keep what I have. Why do I have to be forced into something else?'' Like many Americans, this is a person who actually believed President Obama when he promised that if people liked the insurance they had, they could keep it. Now she learned under the President's health care law, it is not only a Web site, it is a broken promise. It turns out if the White House likes your plan, then you can keep it. If the White House doesn't like your plan, then you are out of luck, you can't keep it. Yesterday the Obama administration finally admitted that millions of people across the country will lose their insurance. We know all of these ways that the President's health care law is more than a failed Web site, so the big question now is what don't we know yet? What is there that the American people don't know about the health care law? How much worse are things going to get before the White House admits the entire law is broken? We have seen one headline after another about problems with the health care law that the Obama administration knew about and would not admit. There has been one revelation after another about troubles they hid from the American people and did so deliberately. What else is this administration not telling the American people? The White House may have finally said publicly that millions of people are going to lose the insurance they have but, according to NBC News, the Obama administration has known that for at least 3 years. When the train first went off the tracks, the White House said its Web site crashed because they said millions of people tried to use the Web site at the same time. According to the Washington Post, the limited testing the administration did before the launch found the site would crash if only a few hundred people used it. It is fascinating. The Democrats' whole law was based on the idea that Washington, government, is capable of running America's health care system competently. What we have seen is gross incompetence. It turns out that Washington can't even set up a Web site competently, and it looks as if they knew it. Computer programmers warned about the rush to get the Web site done by October 1. Instead of hitting the pause button, which they should have done, hitting the pause button until it could get things working, the White House pushed on. This is what we learned from some of the contractors who built the Web site. This Web site cost the taxpayers over $400 million so far and the bills are still coming in. These contractors testified last week in the House that full tests of the site should have started months in advance, but testing didn't happen until the last 2 weeks of September. Who decided to go ahead anyway? President Obama's administration. They are the ones who decided. Contractors thought if the registration process wasn't going to work, then maybe it would help to set up a way for people to shop for plans and get information without registering. The administration told them to ``deprioritize'' that plan. What a government word, ``deprioritize'' that plan. Then when the Web site turned out to be a complete disaster, a systems failure, the Obama administration tried to hide how bad it was. It asked the largest health insurer in North Dakota not to tell anybody how many people have signed up for insurance through the exchange--the administration telling the State: Don't open up, don't tell people the truth. Why not? Because as of last week only 14 people had been able to sign up for the companies' plans. The numbers are so embarrassing for the administration they have been trying to cover up. They continued to cover up today when there was testimony and no numbers were given. It is the same reason the administration won't say how many people have signed up nationwide. They know how many people have signed up, but they refuse to tell the American people, the taxpayers, the people who pay the taxes and see their money being wasted by this administration and this government. There are new problems with this health care law every day. The Web site was supposed to be the easy part, but to me it is the tip of the iceberg. The Web site failures are just the tip of the iceberg. What else does the White House know about? By now they should know about cancelled coverage because it looks as if millions of Americans have already received notices from their insurance companies that they have lost their insurance, their insurance has been cancelled. There have been premium increases. People have talked about the fact that their premiums are going up, and there are higher copays and deductibles to deal with. People are losing access to the doctor. Plus there are always the issues of fraud and identity theft. What else are we going to learn this week when Secretary Sebelius testifies in the House tomorrow? Will she actually open up? Will she give them the truth? Will she give them the real numbers, or will she not admit to what is actually going on and refuse to answer the questions? How much worse does the Obama administration's incompetence get? What will it take for the President to admit that his health care law has been a train wreck and they will have to delay it for at least a year? We know he is going to have to do it eventually. There is no way all of these problems are going to get fixed quickly, and he is going to have to delay the individual mandate--the mandate that says every American must buy or have and prove they have health insurance. And who is the enforcer? The IRS--the Internal Revenue Service. The President should just go ahead and do it now and also delay all the other parts of the law, not just the mandate. It is time for President Obama to really come clean with the American people about what his administration knew and then come to the table to work with Republicans and give people the real health care reform that they need, want, and deserve so people can get the care they want from a doctor they choose at a lower cost. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I wish to add in a bipartisan way my thanks to Senator Chiesa for his service and add to the kind words the Senator from Delaware has spoken of our friend and our colleague. In Wyoming we talk about the code of the West, and there are 10 parts to that code, but No. 1 is live each day with courage; and No. 2 is take pride in your work. Members on both sides of the aisle have seen that sort of code lived day by day by the Senator from New Jersey who has joined us. I join my colleague from Delaware in thanking our friend from New Jersey. I say that with great admiration, great appreciation, and deep respect for his time in the Senate, and I know we are going to continue to hear great things from him in the future. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask consent to speak in morning business.

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

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, it has now been 2 weeks since the launch of the insurance exchanges that were created by President Obama's health care law. After 2 weeks of delays, error messages, things the President calls glitches, the American people are united in saying that this is what a train wreck looks like. A recent poll by the Associated Press found that only 7 percent of Americans say this rollout has gone either very well or extremely well. The Obama administration continues to say the problems were just because of too many people trying to check out the Web site the first day. I bring to the floor the front page of Sunday's New York Times, Sunday, October 13, now 13 days into the exchange, with the headline above the fold, front page on Sunday: ``From the Start, Signs of Trouble at Health Portal. Many Deadlines Missed. Web Site Problems May Imperil Finances of Insurance Market.'' This is a front-page story. It continues inside the paper. It says: In March, Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the Obama administration's new online insurance marketplace, told industry executives that he was deeply worried about the Web site's debut. ``Let's just make sure it's not a third-world experience,'' he told them. Two weeks after the rollout, few would say his hopes were realized. For the past 12 days, a system costing more than $400 million and billed as a one-stop click-and-go hub for citizens seeking health insurance has thwarted the efforts of millions to simply log in. The growing national outcry has deeply embarrassed the White House, which has refused to say how many people have enrolled through the federal exchange. Even some supporters of the Affordable Care Act worry that the flaws in the system, if not quickly fixed, could threaten the fiscal health of the insurance initiative, which depends on throngs of customers to spread the risk and keep prices low. ``These are not glitches,'' said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange. Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate the federal officials with whom he works. ``The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, `It's awful, just awful.' '' At the time, the President of the United States--he and I talked about this directly face to face on Friday at the White House. He said we just have a problem with the cash register. I would say this is a Web site with major flaws. It goes way beyond the cash register. One online database programmer told CBS News: It wasn't designed well, it wasn't implemented well, and it looks like nobody tested it. That is from a computer expert who says he supports the law but the Web site needs a complete overhaul. I would be ashamed and embarrassed if my organization delivered something like that. Remember, they spent $400 million of hard-earned taxpayer dollars. This guy says he would be ashamed and embarrassed to deliver something as bad as the Obama health care exchange. I think the Obama administration should be embarrassed about the whole law. The law wasn't designed well, hasn't been implemented well, and it looks as if nobody tested it. The problems we have seen are not just first-day glitches. The problems have continued. People still cannot sign up easily. It is still not as easy to use as Amazon. Remember the President of the United States promised it would be as easy to use as amazon.com. Why are there problems 2 weeks later? The CEO of Aetna Insurance said yesterday--this is 2 weeks into it. He said: There's so much wrong, you just don't know what's broken until you get a lot more of it fixed. We still have no idea how many people have been able to enroll successfully. What is the Obama administration continuing to hide? Wolf Blitzer came out last week on CNN and said: If they weren't fully ready, they should accept the advice the Republicans are giving them, delay it for a year, get it ready, and make sure it works. Even Jon Stewart was asking why the Obama administration gave a 1- year delay to big businesses but not to the American people. Mr. President, if you are the Obama White House, when you have lost Jon Stewart, you know things are not going well. The problems do not end with the media or professional comedians. A Democratic Member of the House who actually voted for the health care law called the launch of the exchanges ``excruciatingly frustrating.'' Robert Gibbs, President Obama's former Press Secretary, said yesterday: I hope they fire some people who were in charge of making sure that this thing was supposed to work. The biggest cheerleaders for the President's health care law are now turning against it, the American people do not like it, and people are not buying the administration's excuses for why it has failed. This is, of course, bad for the President, but the American people have even bigger problems, and that is what we should be really focused on. The White House is worried about how this looks from a PR standpoint. We should also be talking about the real harm this health care law is doing to hard-working Americans and their families and their jobs and their paychecks. Many of them are going to lose their doctors--doctors who are not included in the insurance plans sold in the exchanges. Many are already seeing that their premiums are going up because of all the Washington mandates. Remember the President and his promises in passing this health care law? That is not what the people are seeing today. One mother told a TV station in Allentown, PA, that when she went to sign up on the Web site, she was told her premium would be almost $950 for her family. That is $765 more than she pays now. She told the station, ``It would take food out of our mouths to be able to afford this coverage.'' This is what the President of the United States and Democrats in this body have foisted on the American people. People are finding that not just the premiums are going up, but many of their other health care costs are also higher. The Chicago Tribune had this headline on Sunday: Obamacare deductibles may cause sticker shock. Insurance companies are requiring higher out-of-pocket expenses to pay for complying with new rules. Expenses to pay for complying with rules--not expenses to give you health care, not expenses to keep you healthy, not expenses to prevent injury or illness, but expenses to pay for complying with the rules. That is the Chicago Tribune, the President's hometown newspaper. As if all that weren't bad enough, the administration is still insisting it is going to fine people who don't have insurance, even though people can't sign up on the ObamaCare Web site successfully. The administration was saying that this is a long process and people have until the end of March of next year to enroll in the exchanges, but even that changed last week. Now it turns out people will actually have to sign up 6 weeks earlier than that--by Valentine's Day--or pay the tax penalty. What we are looking at is a tax penalty at 1 percent of income or $95, whichever is greater that first year. That could be a sizable amount of money for some families who thought they were going to get affordable insurance under the President's health care law because that's what the President promised them. He stood in Congress and told the American people that. He stood in front of groups all around the country, and the American people feel misled and deceived. All of this frustration, expense, stress, and pain was all avoidable. Democrats in Congress and President Obama need to swallow their pride. They need to admit that the problems with the health care law are not limited to a bad Web site. The problems with the health care law run much deeper, and they are only going to get much worse. We must do something to stop this terrible law from doing more damage to people's jobs, their care, and our country. The President will be held to the promises he made as recently as 2\1/2\ weeks ago: If people like their doctors, they can keep their doctor, the cost will be less than a cell phone bill, and that it will be easier to use than amazon.com. This health care law has failed miserably. We needed health care reform so people could get the care they need from a doctor they choose at lower costs. They have not gotten it. It is time to repeal and replace this terrible health care law. I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments by the distinguished chair of the Appropriations Committee. As she said, she is ready to meet, ready to negotiate, ready to compromise, ready to work together. I come today to say tomorrow Republican Senators are finally going to get a chance to talk with President Obama about reopening the government and dealing with the debt this Nation has, dealing with the debt limit. Until very recently, President Obama has been far more interested in speaking with the press than in actually speaking with Republicans. Then we have this invitation to the White House. This morning in the Washington Post, what the administration says--it is a front-page article and it continues over to page 4--it says the White House ``emphasized that Obama will not be negotiating.'' We have the chair of the Appropriations Committee saying she is ready to meet, negotiate, and compromise, and the White House says President Obama will not be negotiating. The question is, why are we going over to the White House in the first place if the President is not interested in negotiating? Is it just to give him a photo op? I went to meetings like that during the health care debate more than 3 years ago. The President at the time would invite Republicans to a meeting and then he would reject every idea we would offer. If he had been more willing to accept Republican ideas, negotiate then, we would have had a bipartisan health reform bill that was accepted by the American people instead of a law that continues to have more people opposed than in favor of it. That is going to be my message to the President tomorrow morning when we meet. This needs to be a real discussion, a real negotiation, when we agree on how we can reopen the Government, reduce our debt and help our economy grow. This is the sixth time in 5 years that President Obama has requested an increase in the debt ceiling. How much is he asking for? According to the majority leader, I understand it is $1 trillion to extend between now until after the 2014 election. That is an incredible amount of money. Just trying to figure out how much money that is, it is over $1 million a minute. It is $1 million every minute between now and 14 months from now. The President needs to realize that is unsustainable. We have a $17 trillion debt. It is a debt on the back of our children and our grandchildren. We have families all across the country who have aspirations, anxieties, and anger about even the idea that their children and grandchildren will not be able to get careers, get jobs. If we as a nation are going to incur more debt, we also have to find real savings. We cannot continue to increase our credit card debt, another new credit card after the President has maxed out the last one, and send this bill to the American people. It is time to set priorities. We want to get moving on real solutions, not just to our short-term problems but the long-term issues that face us as a nation as we try to work together in governing this Nation. The House of Representatives has passed 12 individual continuing resolutions. These bills would open many different parts of the government right now, parts that we all agree should be kept operating. The House voted to pay for FEMA, Head Start, the National Institutes of Health, to open our national parks. Those bills have been sent to the Senate. They have been sitting here without action at all. Here in the Senate I know a lot of Democrats are saying they support these functions. We see this picture on the front page of the Washington Post this morning with the mayor, Mayor Vincent Gray, the mayor of Washington, DC, on the steps of the Capitol, talking to the majority leader saying, ``Sir, we are not a department of the government. We are simply trying to be able to spend our own money.'' Yet the majority leader, who is blocking these votes to allow the District of Columbia to do what they are requesting and what the House has said yes, they should be able to do, the majority leader is saying, ``Don't screw it up, OK? Don't screw it up.'' The majority leader continues to object to votes on these bills. History supports bipartisan action of the House and not the stonewalling of the President and the Democratic leadership in the Senate. In the middle of the last government shutdown, Congress passed and President Clinton signed laws to allow a wide variety of specific programs to function. It is a precedent we should be following today. The President also keeps saying he will not negotiate on the debt limit. He tries to make people believe that never before has Congress included ``issues that have nothing to do with the budget and nothing to do with the debt''--this is the President's quote--in its negotiation over the debt limit. The facts are not on the President's side. Even the Fact Checker in the Washington Post gave the President four Pinocchios on that claim, essentially saying it was completely not true. Negotiations have actually occurred many times on the debt limit. From 1978 until 2013, the debt limit has been raised 53 times. Of those votes, the debt ceiling increase was linked to something else more than half the time. So more than half of the debt limit increase votes since 1978 carried other provisions. They were not, as the President claims, clean increases. The President wants to ignore that history. The President wants to pretend that raising the debt limit is something that has to be done without any deliberations, negotiations, dissent, and on his terms alone. He says he will not negotiate at all. It is strange to be coming from his mouth because that is very different from the position that came out of his mouth when he was Senator Obama. That was not that many years ago. In 2006, Senator Obama voted against a debt limit increase because he said it was a sign that Washington cannot pay its bills. Senator Obama complained that the Federal debt had increased by $5 trillion in 5 years. Under President Obama, Washington's debt has grown by more than $6 trillion in 4 years. Senator Obama said, ``The more we depend on foreign nations to lend us money, the more our economic security is tied to the whims of foreign leaders whose interests might not be aligned with ours.'' Under President Obama, foreign holdings of Federal debt have increased by 82 percent. Senator Obama said that, ``Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.'' He said at the time, ``America has a debt problem, and a failure of leadership.'' A debt problem and a failure of leadership. President Obama is now asking for his sixth increase in debt in less than 5 years. Why is this, then, not a debt problem and a failure of leadership? Senator Obama was right to say at the time we have a debt problem. President Obama should remember what made him say that in 2006, and do something about it now. He should join Republicans willing to talk about real entitlement reform as part of negotiations over raising the debt ceiling. He should be willing and anxious to talk about his health care law and how it is going to become a major factor driving Washington's debt even higher in the future if we do not replace it with responsible reforms today. The President should embrace bipartisan continuing resolutions passed by the House as a way of reopening as much of the government as possible while we have responsible and reasonable discussions, deliberations, and negotiations. President Obama should stop posturing, stop playing games, and stop punishing the American people as he has been doing under this current government shutdown. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Illinois, and I have heard him make reference to the insurance exchanges that opened last week. It was 1 week ago President Obama's health insurance exchanges opened, and by all accounts it was a complete disaster. The administration had 3\1/2\ years to prepare for the big launch. It spent months and millions of dollars advertising the start date. Yet on October 1, the American people had their first chance to sign up, and the exchanges flopped. It was a complete fiasco. The administration tried to say it was caught off guard. They said they were caught off guard by too many people going to the Web site on the first day. Even Saturday Night Live ridiculed the excuse. They said: That is like 1-800-Flowers getting caught off guard on Valentine's Day. There were glitches the first day, but they lasted the whole week-- the entire first week. The question is, Did the administration finally get its act together? Well, actually, no, it didn't. The past weekend they had to pull down the Web site to try to fix some of the worst problems. USA TODAY, a newspaper whose editorials have actually in the past supported the health care law, had as yesterday's headline: ``Health sites generate more error messages than coverage.'' That was the headline. The subheadline: ``Exchange launch turns into an inexcusable mess.'' An inexcusable mess. And they go on: . . . the administration managed to turn the experience for most of those visitors into a nightmare. Websites crashed, refused to load, or offered bizarre and incomprehensible choices. Even though the system was shut down for repairs over the weekend, Monday's early reports continued to suggest an epic screw-up. The front page of the Wall Street Journal on Monday read: ``Software, Design Defects Cripple Health-Care Website.'' One does not take down a Web site for minor glitches. These are signs of major trouble. Some of us have been warning that the administration has failed to prepare properly. We said there would be security holes that would expose people to fraud and identity theft. It turns out the administration didn't even get to the point where the security flaws would actually matter early on because people couldn't even start entering their personal information. The exchanges were failing to launch. People got repeated error messages, and they couldn't fill out forms or applications. They couldn't create an account to start looking at the most basic of information to even make comparisons. When they tried to telephone to get help, they found long wait times and they got disconnected entirely. Even the administration's biggest cheerleaders admitted defeat. One reporter at MSNBC spent so much time trying to show viewers how to sign up for the exchange Web site on line that she actually gave up. They were playing this on television. She finally threw in the towel saying: If I were signing up for myself, this is where my patience would be exhausted. The Wall Street Journal tried to find out what went wrong. It talked to computer experts, who looked at the healthcare.gov Web site, and what the computer experts said is, ``The site appeared to be built on a sloppy software foundation.'' According to those experts, ``such a hastily constructed website''--and, of course, they had 3\1/2\ years-- ``may not have been able to withstand the online demand last week.'' Even the far-left Wonkblog at the Washington Post couldn't believe how badly the administration had failed. One of its columnists wrote: The Obama administration did itself--and the millions of people who wanted to explore signing up--a terrible disservice by building a Web site that, four days into launch, is still unusable for most Americans. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. President Obama promised using the exchanges would be like, in his words, shopping on amazon.com. Well, Amazon can handle 13 or 14 million transactions every day with no problem. There are over 5,000 Web sites generating more traffic than health care.gov. So how many people were able to successfully enroll in the health care exchanges on the first day? We have no idea. The administration doesn't want to talk about it. First, they said: We are thrilled so many people were checking out the Web site. By Sunday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was on multiple television shows refusing to answer questions about how many people had enrolled and just repeating the White House talking points. He claimed 4.7 million people had visited. If they are willing to tell us how many people have visited the Web site, why won't they tell us how many people actually got coverage? The administration says they won't provide any data to back up its claims until at least November. Remember, California claimed 5 million people visited their Web site for its own State exchange for the first day. They later had to back up and say that wasn't true. It turns out they had 645,000 visitors--less than 1 million, not the 5 million they claimed. That is a State that spent $313 million on their site and it couldn't handle even that many people, because they had trouble. President Obama said he was going to have the most transparent administration in history. The health care law is this administration's signature accomplishment. October 1 was the day they had been working toward for more than 3 years, and now the President won't tell the American people--won't tell any of us how many people have even signed up for health insurance. Why not? What is the President trying to hide? CNN looked into the 24 States that set up their own insurance exchanges under the law. They found that as of last Friday, about 52,000 applications had been started. That is not how many people have actually completed their application successfully; it is just they have started. It is not how many people have gotten insurance; that is just how many people get to the point of starting their application. Even if the Obama administration fixes the technical problems with its health insurance Web site, it will not have fixed the many problems with its health care law. The law will still not give people the lower cost, high-quality care they wanted--which is the reason we needed health care reform in the first place. But I think the American people will hold the President to his promises and hold the Washington Democrats who voted for this law to their promises. The President, right before the exchanges opened, said coverage in the exchanges should cost less than your cell phone bill. He said you should be able to keep your doctor. And he said it would be as easy and secure as amazon.com. So far, the President's health care law has failed on all of these. That was exactly what many of us warned would happen. It doesn't matter if the ObamaCare exchange system failures happened because of heavy traffic or because of design flaws. The administration officials should be embarrassed, but they should not be surprised. Republicans warned the exchanges were not ready for prime time, but the President and Democrats ignored calls for a delay. Why is the administration insisting now on fining people--fining people who don't have insurance, even though they can't sign up on the Web site successfully? The President unilaterally gave big businesses a 1-year delay in the employer mandate. Workers should get the same break that bosses get. If bosses get a 1-year delay in penalties, why shouldn't hard-working men and women all across the country get a 1- year delay of the individual mandate? President Obama should have delayed the launch of his insurance exchange until it was ready. That would have been the fair thing to do. It is still the right thing to do. It is also the fair and right thing to give individual Americans the same delay of the mandate that the President has unilaterally--without the action of Congress--given to businesses all around this country. Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today, because Americans all across the country today are speaking out about their personal experiences with the ObamaCare exchanges yesterday. Instead of it being as easy as buying something from Amazon, which the President had promised, Americans ran into roadblocks and technical disasters State after State. Instead of getting good coverage, their computers crashed. These were not just glitches, they were system failures to the point that in the Casper Star Tribune, on the front page today, it was talking about people spending time working their way just trying--on the computer-- one little section had a little cartoon at the bottom. The one guy worked so hard trying to work the computer that he ended up getting carpal tunnel syndrome, while trying to get through the computer to find out more about the costs of the Obama health care law through the exchanges. The Obama administration has had 3 years to prepare for the launch that occurred on October 1. Even if the technology finally gets fixed, the issue of health care will not. After people finally get a chance to examine what is being offered to them when they make a decision about enrolling or not under the mandates of the law, Americans are still going to find that the exchanges do not match the President's promise. Let's think about what those promises were. Last week, the President was in New York with Bill Clinton. They had what seemed like an infomercial to me. What the President said is that: Most people will be able to shop and compare. For many people it is going to be cheaper than an average cell phone bill. The people are not going to find that it is cheaper, even with government subsidies, than the average cell phone bill. The President has also said: The process is going to be as easy as Amazon. Even if the administration is able to paper over the many problems with the exchanges, it is not going to be as easy as shopping on Amazon. Remember, from the beginning the President said: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. We are now seeing in State after State that the exchanges are such that, to try to get costs down, they are limiting the market in a way and the networks in a way that fewer doctors are included, fewer hospitals are included. That is causing an uproar. Instead of doubling down on a broken system, the President should grant all Americans a 1-year delay--the exact same delay he gave their bosses. The President talks a lot about a ``fair shake'' for all Americans. We heard it in his campaign speeches, and we hear it as he goes around and talks to groups. He uses the words quite frequently. ObamaCare, unfortunately, delivers the exact opposite. What the President has done unilaterally is gone outside the law to grant special deals to almost everyone except to people who need it the most, which is the hard-working American public. He basically, I believe, shut down the Federal Government in order to continue his own policy of his health care law, picking winners and losers. This can't continue. The good news is that today, after once again attempting to lead from behind in a crisis, the President is finally having congressional leaders down to the White House within the next hour to meet with him. This is an opportunity for the President to do the right thing, to open the government, and to finally deliver fairness for Americans under the health care law. After all, if we are going to give people's bosses a break from the mandates of the health care law, the President ought to give hard-working men and women of America the same break. The same for Members of Congress. If the President decides that his own administration, White House employees, and Members of Congress have special treatment under the health care law, that shouldn't be so. That should be eliminated. I do want to talk for a minute specifically about the government shutdown. Over the past week Senate and House Republicans have voted overwhelmingly for legislation passed by the House of Representatives that keeps government operations running. It keeps parks open, and it keeps Americans working. Senate Democrats have overwhelmingly rejected these proposals and have allowed to have the government shut down, to have the gates closed at America's national parks, and to have critical services for America's veterans go unfunded through the Veterans' Administration. Today or tomorrow the Senate will have the opportunity to pass legislation from the House that will immediately open our parks, fund services offered through the Department of Veterans Affairs, and provide time-sensitive funding for the National Institutes of Health. We should pass these bills. We should make sure Americans can use these essential government services right now. I also would like to talk for a minute about another looming issue that is important to the American people, to our Nation, and one that the President has recently addressed. Later this month Congress will begin debate on the President's sixth debt limit increase, the sixth time he has come to increase the debt limit in his 5 years of office. The President has said he is refusing to negotiate on this issue. Instead, I believe the President should accept that our country can no longer avoid a bipartisan agreement to reform entitlements. The President can no longer avoid a bipartisan agreement to reform entitlements. It is the President's job, responsibility, obligation, and opportunity to lead the effort. If the President is unwilling to seriously deal with our country's debt, Congress is left with little choice but to use the debt limit to force him into fiscal solutions. The debt ceiling is merely a symptom of a much larger illness, which is Washington's addiction to spending. On spending, the status quo is not sustainable. It is interesting how the President has seemed to change his tune. The President gave a number of speeches in the Senate when he was a Senator. We can go back and see what he said about raising the debt ceiling. He said that adding to the debt--of course, this was when George W. Bush was President--his key word was ``irresponsible.'' President Obama as a Senator said it was unpatriotic--raising the debt ceiling--unpatriotic and unacceptable. This was Barack Obama in this body, in this Chamber, in 2006. President Obama--at the time a Senator--actually called raising the debt ceiling ``a failure of leadership.'' Isn't that what the President himself should be accused of right now as he tries to do what he so vehemently objected to when he was in the Senate? How bad is the situation? Well, in September the Congressional Budget Office reported that in the long term defense, education, infrastructure, and all discretionary spending will be squeezed by entitlement programs as well as interest on the debt. Over the next 75 years discretionary spending will increase by 39 percent. This makes the sequester cuts look like child's play. Medicaid and other health spending increases will be by 159 percent; interest on the debt increases 823 percent; Social Security spending rises by only 37 percent only because CBO assumes drastic benefit cuts in the year 2033. The President recently spoke about making cuts, though, to discretionary spending. That number is underestimated. The President failed to mention that by refusing to make much needed changes to entitlement programs, he is guaranteeing that these investments, as he calls them, will continue to shrink. Entitlement reform is needed not only to preserve other Federal spending but in order to slow our ever-expanding debt. President Obama has bragged that he is no longer setting up the record-setting deficits he did in his first 4 years. Those self-congratulatory statements will be short-lived, as the Congressional Budget Office has predicted that deficits will soon start to rise unless real reforms are made today. Without real reform, America's debt will continue to grow, and America's interest and entitlement payments are on course to overwhelm the entire Federal budget. The American people deserve to hear the truth about the tough choices we must face together as a nation. They also deserve an open and honest discussion about how we are going to make those choices. The President and congressional Democrats ought to rethink their strategies of leadership via blame game and saving via spending. The President and Democrats have an opportunity today at the White House to put the games aside and work with us on opening the government, on delivering fairness for all Americans, and on actually reducing our debt. I hope they use this meeting to finally do what is right and to help the American people. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.