Daniel Coats

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, it is my understanding we are in morning business.

Mr. COATS. I will be glad to yield.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I rise to speak but first want to acknowledge and thank my colleague Senator Collins for allowing me to step ahead of her in this process. I promise to be expeditious in terms of getting through this. It turns out her plane to Maine leaves later than my plane to Indiana, so she has very graciously allowed me to go forward.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. May I ask, is the Senate in morning business?

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

Mr. COATS. Madam President, I come down here every week, as the Presiding Officer knows. She is usually in the chair when I am here, listening to my ``Waste of the Week''. I am a little bit later this week than I normally am. But the issue of waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government continues. We have covered a lot of ground on serious issues such as tax fraud and misplaced death records, to the more absurd, such as the federally funded rabbit massages and marketing support for pumpkin doughnuts. Each of those has a pricetag. That pricetag is paid for by the American taxpayer. I am happy today to be able to announce that one of the items which I highlighted in a previous ``Waste of the Week'' speech has been addressed. In May, my 11th ``Waste of the Week'' speech examined ways to improve compliance measures for higher education tax benefits. I outlined how Congress can fix this problem to achieve $576 million in taxpayer savings. So that is a former ``Waste of the Week''. It is a great benefit to universities, colleges, and educational institutions across the country because previous laws required them to provide information even when those applying for the particular aid refused to provide certain information. It created a nightmare of paperwork and a nightmare of compliance for those colleges and universities. So that provision that we brought forward was incorporated into law that has now been passed, signed by the President, and is operative. We not only have saved the taxpayer $576 million, but we have provided universities relief from an unnecessary procedure that consumed an extraordinary amount of time. Today I want to talk about software licenses. The Federal Government needs to purchase literally millions of these licenses. In order to get the IT, the information technology, working right you have to have the right equipment. In fact, the government spent $80 billion last year on information technology, including these software licenses. Now, the Office of Management and Budget and the 24 Federal agencies that are covered by the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 have very key roles and responsibilities for overseeing IT investment management. Federal law places responsibility for managing investment with the heads of these agencies and establishes chief information officers to advise and assist agency heads in carrying out this responsibility. Now, there are two Executive orders that have been issued that provide information for these Federal agencies regarding the management of how they go about procuring and managing these software licenses. Executive Order No. 13103 specifies that agencies must adopt procedures to ensure that they are not using this computer software in violation of copyright laws. Additionally, Executive Order No. 13589 states that agencies must ensure that they are not paying for unused or underutilized IT equipment, software, and services. Now, the Government Accountability Office has conducted a study, an evaluation of how well this is being managed and implemented. What they found is that in many, many cases it is not happening. Specifically, the Government Accountability Office found that the Office of Management and Budget and the vast majority of Federal agencies lacked adequate policies for managing their software licenses. Of the 24 major Federal agencies that I mentioned before, only 2--only 2 out of 24--had comprehensive policies that included the establishment of clear roles and central oversight authority by managing enterprise software license agreements. Only 2 out of 24 have lived up to their requirement to manage in the way that these executive orders have ordered. An additional 18 agencies had some type of policy in place, but the Government Accountability Office determined that this simply was not comprehensive enough and effective enough. Four agencies were found to have no policy at all. They totally ignored the mandates of the executive orders. So these weaknesses in the system result from principally a lack of priority in establishing software license management. Now, this is kind of a technical thing. I certainly admit that I am not fully comprehensive in terms of how all of this IT stuff needs to work. But we hire people who are talented and have the skills necessary to oversee this kind of management. Now, the key here is that the result of not effectively managing this has racked up a cost estimated at $10 billion over a 10-year period of time. So this is just complying with the executive orders, complying with the procedures that are done by every business in America. But the Federal Government has not complied with the necessary steps to achieve the right kind of management and oversight, and that is costing the taxpayer up to $10 billion. So today we add more to our ever-increasing amount of waste, fraud, and abuse that has been found within the Federal system, and we are moving toward our goal of $100 billion. There will be more ``Wastes of the Week'' in the future. We hope to reach that $100 billion before we leave here for the August recess, with 3 more weeks before that happens. We are way ahead of schedule. We had hoped to reach the $100 billion by the end of this Congress. But we have determined and found so many examples of waste, fraud, and abuse, that our gauge is climbing much faster than we thought it would. Look, we have major fiscal problems in this country. It is going to take major decisions relative to how we structure how we spend taxpayers' money. We have had numerous efforts to deal with this in a macro way. All of those have come up short. While I was engaged in all of that before, I have turned my attention to this: Let's see at least if we cannot find savings for the taxpayer in the areas of waste, fraud, and abuse, and document it. I am pleased, as I said at the beginning of my remarks, that one of those has just been implemented, saving the taxpayers $576 million and saving our colleges and universities and institutions of higher education from a nightmare of paperwork and compliance requirements that they will no longer have to engage in. So we will continue. We will do serious issues. We will look at some absurd things that cause people to say: Why in the world would we ever spend that money in the first place? It is just not responsible leadership and governing. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. COATS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the remaining time under the current order be divided equally between both sides.

Mr. COATS. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, today, I am back on the floor of the Senate for the 15th installment of the waste of the week. We all know the debt clock is ticking and that the Federal Government is racking up trillions of dollars of debt, which will have to be paid off at some point in the future by our generation and more likely our children and our grandchildren. It is unsustainable. It is going to cause immense harm. It is something that has been ignored as of late, but we are unable to move forward with any kind of constructive solution to this problem or putting us on a path to deal with this because the President of the United States simply refuses to come to an agreement in terms of how to deal with this and, in fact, doesn't even bother to mention it. We also have an issue that is part of the problem; that is, an inefficient, ineffective use of taxpayer money here in Washington. The money that was hard-earned by the people back home and then deducted from their payroll income and sent to the Federal Government. It is not always used in an effective, efficient way to address the necessary and essential issues the Federal Government deals with and that we talk about here every day. Instead, it goes into programs that can only be deemed as waste, fraud, and abuse, and that is what I have been trying to highlight for the past 15 weeks as we deal with the waste of the week. Today, what I would like to talk about is a sweet deal. Everyone likes a sweet deal, right? Well, no, not quite everyone and not always. But, unfortunately, in this case what is a sweet deal for some is actually a raw deal for the American taxpayer. I am talking about the sugar subsidy. Currently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the USDA, issues loans to sugar producers and allows them to repay those loans with raw sugar if sugar prices fall below a certain price. After obtaining the sugar through this so-called loan, the USDA ends up with a bunch of sugar that it needs to resell, and it resells that sugar at a discounted price. As a result, these loans function as a price support for sugar, ensuring that sugar producers never sell their product below the price determined by the government--not the fair market but by the government. This cost taxpayers nearly $300 million in 2013 alone. I don't have the figures yet for 2014. I assume that they are the same or that they may have fluctuated a little bit up or down, depending on the world sugar price. If this sweet loan deal for sugar producers isn't enough--$300 million a year in cost--there is more. In addition to providing a subsidy to sugar producers through the program I just described, the Federal Government also enforces a system of quotas and tariffs on imported sugar, thereby blocking Americans' fair-market access to cheaper sugar and resulting in a large difference between the international or global price of sugar and domestic sugar prices. In fact, the USDA's sugar program has caused the price of American sugar to be about 40 percent higher than the global price, resulting in an estimated cost to consumers of $3.5 billion annually between the years 2009 and 2012. So when we take these two programs and put them together, they effectively function as a mass Federal subsidy of sugar, which drives up prices for consumers and provides a double benefit to the sugar industry. As a result of these two sweet policies, thousands of jobs in sugar- using industries, particularly candy manufacturers, have been lost, and the American taxpayer pays for it all. Now, why were these policies put in place in the first place? Well, the global price of sugar was much higher in the early 1980s. So the idea was that higher sugar prices would result in more sugar growers, and the more sugar growers we had, the more sugar would be produced, thus lowering the price. That is how fair and free markets work. It is a supply-and-demand issue. But government interference through subsidies distorts the free-market price of goods, and in the case of sugar, it results in a direct hit to the taxpayer and much higher costs for the consumer of sugar-based products. To this day, the sugar subsidy remains a giveaway to sugar producers and a raw deal for sugar consumers. Ice cream, doughnuts, cakes, pies-- we know they are not the healthiest foods to eat, but they are some of the more desirable foods that we like to eat, particularly after we have been forced to eat broccoli and greens. Our mothers raised us saying that you can't have ice cream or cake or pie after dinner unless you eat what is on your plate. And so we should suffer through eating some of that green stuff--I don't mean to belittle that, it is healthy and we should do that, but I'm not going to tell the public what to eat. Nevertheless, it is these products and many others that incorporate the cost of sugar in making the product that drive up the price of the product simply because of the subsidies that are provided by this government through its policies to sugar producers. The end result is companies not being able to provide the jobs they would like to provide or to be the dynamic industry they would like to be, and that puts them in a less than competitive position against our overseas producers. Many companies in my home State of Indiana have been affected by this subsidy. Let me give a couple of examples. The Albanese Confectionery Group, Inc., is a renowned Indiana-based manufacturer of confections, including the World's Best Gummi Bears--in Germany they call them Gooies; here we call them Gummis--Gold Label Chocolates, and other products. They are a very successful manufacturer. They estimate they could save $3 million annually by having access to sugar from the world market price. But, no, they are not allowed to do that. They are forced to buy it at the U.S.- subsidized producer price, which is, as I indicated earlier, roughly 40 percent more than what they could otherwise pay. Lewis Bakeries is headquartered in Evansville, IN, and is one of the few remaining independent bakeries in the Midwest and the largest wholesale bakery in Indiana, and they have the same issue. Artificially high sugar prices contribute directly to increased costs that hamstring budgets of businesses such as Lewis Bakeries and other bakeries throughout Indiana. Artificially high sugar prices affect the large companies also, such as Kraft Foods. It has a marshmallow and caramel plant in Kendallville, IN. They say that dismantling the sugar program would enhance the competitiveness of U.S. food manufacturers. If Congress were to terminate the sugar subsidy program, which we have tried to do year after year after year and have not succeeded in passing it, we could save billions of dollars for U.S. taxpayers, not just from the U.S. Treasury but also in the grocery bills of American families. These savings could have extremely positive consequences for our economy if they were allowed to be used to support the economy. According to an Iowa State University study, if the sugar program were abolished, domestic sugar prices would fall by roughly a third-- earlier we were talking about 40 percent--saving consumers, said this study, at least $2.9 billion to $3.5 billion a year. And according to a recent report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, eliminating this subsidy could save the Federal Government at least $116 million over 10 years. So here we have a subsidized program by the Federal Government that is costing consumers billions per year. And here we have a second subsidized program by the Federal Government that through its policies of pricing and unfair practices, in my opinion, is costing nearly $116 million a year to American taxpayers. This is a perfect example of an outdated government program that is hurting consumers and wasting taxpayer dollars. The net effect of the program is that Americans are paying higher prices for sugar and more taxes to pay for the sugar subsidy. So what is a sweet deal for the sugar producers is a raw deal for the American consumer. It is a subsidy--a package of subsidies that only go to the producers and deny the consumers the right to have reasonable prices for sugar in accordance with international pricing. I have joined with a bipartisan group of my colleagues in supporting legislation, the Sugar Reform Act, introduced by Senator Shaheen from New Hampshire, that would end the sugar subsidy. If we could pass this legislation, it would result in a savings of at least $116 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office. So today I add to our chart $116 million of savings that the government can claim, moving our chart ever closer to our goal of $100 billion of savings. How do we pay for some essential programs here, and where are we going to get the money? Why don't we start here? Why don't we start by eliminating some of these programs? Better yet, why don't we let the taxpayers keep their hard-earned money rather than send it to Washington to pay for waste and abuse that occurs almost on a daily basis. We are gradually creeping up to our $100 billion goal. I think we are going to have to go way beyond that, because these examples just keep rolling in. They are documented through nonpartisan agencies related to Congress and related to the Federal Government, including inspectors general and various programs. Why are we spending this money in the first place? The program is wasted, it is abused, and it is misused. It doesn't need to be in place. So we are going to keep coming to the floor week after week talking about the waste of the week. No. 16 is on the way. Stay tuned. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes in morning business.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I understand that Senators have some business to wrap up and are expecting an early out here today, and this Senator is letting some of them finish their conversations. I do want to speak, and I appreciate the unanimous consent request to go forward.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, the nuclear negotiations with Iran are now approaching a self-imposed deadline of June 30, just a few days from now. The negotiators chose that deadline when they concluded the interim accord 6 months ago and have reportedly been determined to stick to it to focus their efforts. At the same time, it may be the case that a brief extension deadline rather than a rush to a conclusion that would bring us to a bad deal is something we ought to consider. Senator Corker has told Secretary Kerry exactly that, cautioning him that there is no need so desperate that requires either accepting a bad deal or yielding to unacceptable Iranian demands. I don't necessarily oppose a short-term extension to reach a better conclusion or a better deal, but I have deep concerns about whether that will be the case, even if we extend for a small amount of time. I fear the Obama administration is not hearing the message that a potential bad deal could be in the making, and it raises great concern. I fear that yielding to one Iranian demand after another in order to secure a deal is exactly what the Obama administration has been doing in its negotiations. I fear that we will return from our Independence Day celebrations to take up a pending Iran nuclear deal that neither permanently foils Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions nor makes us or the world more secure. I fear this administration, so seemingly desperately eager for a legacy, will choose to define any Iranian deal at all as a great success for diplomacy, no matter how much it concedes to Iranian positions. In May, I and many of my colleagues worked hard to impose a requirement for the administration to present any Iran deal to Congress. Despite strong opposition from the Obama administration, 99 of the 100 Senators were convinced that Congress must have the ability to evaluate in detail every aspect of a negotiated settlement and how it is to be imposed, how it is to be monitored, and verified. That is our core task once a deal is presented to us. It is an immensely important duty of historic dimensions. I hope and pray that each of us will evaluate the proposed deal on its merits alone and what it would mean for our Nation's security, both now and in the future when the terms have expired. Unfortunately, to take up that duty and perform that task, we will have to immerse ourselves in some of the arcane technical details that lie near the heart of such negotiations. I say ``near'' the heart rather than ``at'' the heart because the very central issue for me--and hopefully for my colleagues--is the nature of the Iranian regime, their proven, demonstrated ill will revealed by decades of murderous aggression and lying deceit. That is the proven record of our negotiating partner, and all their claimed commitments will have to be evaluated in that light. However, evaluating the technical details will present its own challenges and we need to prepare ourselves for those challenges. We need to take stock now of some of those details as they appear at the moment any deal is finalized. To do that, we will have to look through a fog of claims and counterclaims to see the outlines of something that is still evolving, even as it remains in the shadows. But with just those partial images, I have some deep concerns. First, it now appears from public comments that our negotiators--and especially Secretary Kerry himself--are no longer insisting that Iran come clean on its past nuclear weapons development activities. This has long been a central demand by our side, as often confirmed by our negotiators themselves. To cave on this demand would be a fatal flaw and should all by itself lead to rejection of the deal. Let me state that again. To cave on this demand that Iran come clean on its past nuclear weapons development activities all by itself should lead to rejection of the deal, if we do not achieve that goal. The International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, has been pressing for information from Iran about the past nuclear weapons programs for years. Recently, the IAEA Director General explained the importance of the issue this way: What we don't know [is] whether they have undeclared activities or something else. We don't know what they did in the past. So, we know a part of their activities, but we cannot tell we know all of their activities. And that is why we cannot say that all the activities in Iran is in peaceful purposes . . . the Agency is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities. The Obama administration has long agreed with the IAEA that Iran needs to come clean on its past activities to create a baseline for understanding future activities under any agreement--an absolutely essential standard that has to be met. The U.S. head negotiator, Wendy Sherman--who, incidentally, negotiated the utterly failed deal with North Korea as well--told a Senate committee in 2013 that ``Iran must agree to address past and present practices, which is the IAEA terminology for possible military dimensions . . . we intend to support the IAEA in its efforts to deal with possible military dimensions.'' Later, she told the SFRC that ``in the Joint Plan of Action we have required that Iran come clean.'' These are the statements of our negotiators. These are the commitments they made to the Senate and to the American people that these were the standards that could not be breached and that if it was not a part of the arrangement, then we would not accept this deal. So we are quoting here from the record of what policy and what conditions the United States has laid out before the Iranians that, if not achieved, are a nonstarter of a deal. Secretary Kerry has repeatedly said that the possible military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear program ``will have to be addressed'' and ``that Iranians will have to do it.'' ``It will be done,'' he said. However, I was shocked to read last week that Secretary Kerry told this to the Department of State press corps: We are not fixated on Iran specifically accounting for what they did at one point in time or another. We know what they did. We have no doubt. We have absolute knowledge with respect to the certain military activities they were engaged in. What we are concerned about is going forward. First of all, this is completely misleading. It is a complete 180- degree turn from what had been committed to earlier. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I can state emphatically that we do not have absolute knowledge of anything. That is not how intelligence works. Secretary Kerry's statement suggests that he may be misusing one of our most useful tools of statecraft--perhaps a more concerning issue than the statement itself. If we did have absolute knowledge of what the Iranians had done and have done to this date, we would not have spent the past years joining with the IAEA and the responsible international community to demand that Iran come clean. For the life of me, I cannot understand what the Secretary is thinking about when making such a claim. It is in total contradiction of a key facet--maybe the key facet of this deal. Now, suddenly we are backing away, saying ``We know everything'' when we have for years been pursuing with the IAEA to get the knowledge of what we do know and the IAEA basically saying to us: No, we don't know everything. There is a lot we do not know. In any case, I regard this new position as a blatant reversal of a key part of our negotiating objectives and a capitulation to the Iranians--a capitulation that reveals, perhaps, how desperate the administration is to secure a deal--any deal. The next point of concern is the type and pace of sanctions relief we seem to be dangling as an incentive for the Iranians to accept any deal. This issue is very complex technically, legally, and legislatively. One key point is that throughout these negotiations, the administration has consistently argued that any deal would lead only to sanctions relief regarding nuclear issues. But the fact sheet that the White House put out following the interim deal framework stated that U.S. sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, and ballistic missiles will remain in place under the deal. Let me say that again. The administration put out this fact sheet following the interim deal stating that U.S. sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, and ballistic missiles will remain in place under the deal. Now it seems this limitation was not good enough for the Iranians, and we have caved again. Yesterday, the so-called Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, included this matter in his expanded list of redlines. He said that all economic, financial, and banking sanctions implemented either by the United Nations Security Council, the United States Congress, or the administration must be lifted immediately when the deal is signed. According to media reports, which have not been refuted by the administration since they began appearing last month, the Supreme Leader has won again. The emerging deal may roll back sanctions that had been imposed for these other nonnuclear reasons. According to these reports, based on leaks from the negotiating teams, 23 out of the 24 currently sanctioned Iranian banks will be delisted as sanctions targets, including the Central Bank of Iran. This is the Revolutionary Guard Corps-dominated institution that was sanctioned because of its role in money laundering, financing terrorism, ballistic weapons research, and campaign claims of bolstering the Assad regime in Syria. Removing sanctions applied to these banks will give Iran hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used for their terrorism activities in regional proxy wars. These reports, if true, constitute yet another reversal of clearly stated policy and yet another capitulation to the Iranians. No. 3, it appears that negotiators may be aiming at an arrangement to set aside the dispute about open, free access to Iranian facilities. We have long maintained that any agreement would have to give the IAEA such access--stated over and over to us through our briefings, by the Secretary, and by others negotiating this. What this means is open, free access anytime, anywhere. It appears this is not now the case. We have long maintained that the IAEA have access anytime, anyplace, as their spokesmen have often emphasized. President Obama himself reassured the region's nervous Arab leaders on this very point in an effort to gain their acceptance of the deal. In the meantime, once again Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, has stated emphatically that no such access would be granted, and other Iranian authorities repeated this redline that the Iranians have drawn in the deal and that we are capitulating to, one after another. Their Parliament even recently passed a law to this effect. It looked like an unbridgeable gap. Khamenei repeated this firm position again just yesterday. Some argue that Khamenei's declarations are part of the negotiating strategy. Well, if so, it seems to have worked. Anyplace access for intrusive inspection has been taken out. We have dropped ``anytime, anyplace.'' The buzzword phrase that now is being giving to us is ``managed access.'' When I first heard that, I said, what in the world does that mean, ``managed access''? With this concept, it appears there would now be a mechanism that would evaluate requests for access to determine if there is a genuine need. Instead of anytime, anyplace, anywhere, for any reason, in order to verify that the Iranians are not cheating, that has turned into now a request for a search or for access at their time and their decision as to what the place will be or what the place will not be. This makes a mockery of the state of the original required demand for access at anytime, anyplace. ``Access where needed, when needed'' seems to be the new mantra--where needed, when needed, giving them plenty of time to make a decision as to yea or nay or to remove from those sites damning evidence of their pursuit of nuclear capabilities. Because this issue of access is crucial to the issue of credibility, verification, and compliance, it arguably is the most important requirement of all for an acceptable deal. Those advocating for the emerging deal are actually boasting that this artful dodging is a negotiating victory. Is there anything more we need to say about the weak and compromising negotiating strategy of those who are currently at the table representing the United States? I have just named and spelled out three major concerns regarding these negotiations, but there are many other aspects of the apparently emerging deal that separately and together show a pattern--a very disturbing pattern of constant retreat and capitulation by this administration in the negotiations with the Iranians. I won't go into the details of each of these, but let me just run off several other issues of major concern. One, the clearly inadequate timeframe for any agreement, the sunset clause--it is no longer a part of the negotiations; two, outrageously generous details of sanctions relief, both scale and timing; the almost laughable, specious claims of sanctions snapback provisions--whatever that means--once the sanctions regime has been dismantled; the number of and types of enrichment equipment to be retained by the Iranians; the types of enrichment activities that will be permitted in the thousands of modern centrifuges in the most fortified, bunkered facilities; fatal limitations on our ability to monitor and verify compliance; and the Joint Plan of Action provisions that Iran has already blatantly violated without any White House comment. My colleagues, once a deal is announced, it will be critical that we exercise the wisdom and courage to evaluate it honestly. My doubts about our ability to do so are aggravated by the public relations campaign we can foresee. Indeed, we have seen it before when the Clinton administration told us the nuclear deal with North Korea was ``good for America.'' I was a Member of the Senate at that time. I raised a number of issues and concerns about whether this deal with North Korea was good for America. I did not vote to support that effort. Nevertheless, the treaty was agreed to. The framework agreement with North Korea, President Clinton said in 1994, ``is a good deal for the United States. North Korea will freeze and dismantle its nuclear programs.'' North Korea will freeze and dismantle its nuclear programs. ``South Korea and our other allies will be better protected. The entire world will be safer as we slow the spread of nuclear weapons. . . . The United States and international inspectors will carefully monitor North Korea to make sure it keeps its commitments. Only as it does so will North Korea fully join the community of nations.'' That is what was promised in 1994. That is what was stated to Senators on this floor in 1994--that we can count on the fact that we are going to know if the North Koreans cheat and we are not going to allow them to do that. How significantly this resonates now, all these years later, as we are assured by the administration and by Secretary Kerry: Don't worry. Everything is covered. Inspections will take place. They won't be able to cheat. We will know it if they do. The sanctions will come back on. We will snap back those sanctions, et cetera, et cetera. Some Members took a bite of that apple and regret that. I did not. I am sure not going to take another bite of that apple, and no one else should view this current negotiation with Iran without putting it in the context of what was done before. We have been here before. We need to learn the lessons from that. We now know that North Korea possesses dozens of nuclear weapons and the ballistic missile capacity to deliver those weapons. We now know they cheated blatantly and we did not know it. The so-called guarantee of verification was not accomplished and not achieved. So before making a final decision on the Iran so-called deal, we need to learn the lessons from the Clinton administration and the agreement with North Korea. The similarities between the secret negotiations then and the secret ones now are remarkable. In 1994, a key sticking point was complete access to nuclear sites, and then, too, we caved in order to get the deal. In 1994, the White House and major media outlets trumpeted a deal that would make the world safer--a victory for diplomacy over force and hostility. Those who did not see this as something that was going to be enforced were called warmongers. Here is the choice, war or peace. Some choice. North Korea promised to forgo their nuclear weapons ambitions, and although I could not vote to support President Clinton's request, enough of the Senate did to approve the agreement with North Korea. Now we know they have between 20 to 40 nuclear weapons, possibly miniaturized, ICBMs--intercontinental ballistic missiles--to put them on and recently tested submarine launch missiles. Another lesson is the time gap between the heralded diplomatic breakthrough and the revelation that we had been taken to the cleaners. It took years to learn what we had really done in North Korea and not done in North Korea. The failure of a bad deal with Iran will not be evident to most of us for years perhaps--perhaps even 10, 11 or 12 years, even when President Obama concedes that Iran's nuclear breakout time will be zero. In fact, such a delay--in the unlikely event Iran actually complies with a deal--is the stated objective of the P5+1 negotiators--to impose a delay of a decade or so on Iran's nuclear weapons program. That is what they will define as success. But we must remember this: Today's brutal, unhinged, nuclear-armed North Korea is actually a product of misguided and naive American diplomacy, sold to the Senate as something other than what it was. We now know the agreement with North Korea was not a diplomatic victory but a diplomatic and policy failure, an absolute failure. My deep concern is that this time many will, once again, see the emerging deal as a great victory for diplomacy, no matter what it contains. The utterly false claim that it presents a choice between peaceful resolution of a dispute and war, as a consequence of not arranging and agreeing to a deal, will be a central part of the discourse and salesmanship that will confront us as Senators. Those opposed will potentially be labeled as war mongers. It is good of us to remember something that was said by Winston Churchill leading up to World War II: Peace at any price does not lead to peace. It only lengthens the path for war with far greater consequences in terms of cost or blood. So, for us, we are going to have to stand up to those who posit the false choice between peace and between war. We have a more difficult obligation of historic consequences, looking to the following decade. Such a duty must not be guided by party. It must not be guided by politics. It must not be guided by deference either to the White House, our own leadership or even our constituents. We must look at each and every detail of any agreement presented to us to reach a judgment on whether this so-called deal with Iran will prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. Then, and only then, we must decide on that basis whether to approve or reject the deal that will be presented to us by the President and his Secretary of State. To do anything less than fulfilling this obligation and this duty that each one of us has, will be a failure of our duty as a U.S. Senator, with historic consequences if we get it wrong. My hope, prayer, wish, desire, and admonition is that each one of us sees this as something with historic consequences that will affect not only the future of our Nation and our people but will affect the future of the world. Therefore, we must give full attention and every ounce of our best wisdom and judgment in determining, not for political or party or any other reason--other than finding out and determining whether this deal is acceptable or not acceptable and make our yes be yes and our no be no and well reasoned, well judged, and well decided. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I wish to speak about several amendments I have submitted to the Defense authorization bill currently before the Senate. First, I wish to commend Chairman McCain in his first mission as chairman of the Armed Services Committee. The bill before us bears his imprint and that of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and it addresses the growing challenges facing our military. This legislation came out of committee in a bipartisan way and came to the floor with the opportunity for every Member of the Senate to offer amendments to this bill. It was an open amendment process, something we have been doing this year that hasn't been done previously under the leadership of the now minority. Unfortunately, that effort was blocked by the minority, and we now are where we are. I have introduced amendments that will hopefully be carried now in a manager's package with the support of Senator McCain and others here. I just want to describe what those were. First of all, let me say that despite the efforts of the minority to block our progress on this bill, perhaps one of the most essential things the Senate and the Congress does in any year is to provide for the common defense by passing authorization and appropriations for our military so that they have the policy and the authority and the resources to be able to conduct their efforts, both defending us here at home and dealing with issues overseas. The bill is a lifesaver and a nation defender, and it is not--to quote the minority leader--``a waste of time.'' How could anyone come to this floor and simply say that discussing, debating, and passing legislation that protects our country and provides support for our military is a waste of time? It just defies credulity and has us all scratching our heads. Nevertheless, we proceeded, and we go forward because, thankfully, under the majority leadership of Senator McConnell and the leadership of Senator McCain as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, we are moving forward with this bill. The personnel, platforms, and programs in this bill could very well save the lives of our military personnel deployed on the frontlines of freedom around the globe, and it is necessary that we go forward. That brings me to the rationale behind the first amendment that I have introduced. Last week, President Obama admitted to the Nation and to the world that he still does not have ``a complete strategy'' to deal with ISIS. A year ago this month, the terrorist organization Islamic State proclaimed itself as a worldwide caliphate, claiming control of territory in Syria and Iraq. ISIS quickly has become the largest, best organized, best financed, and most ambitious terrorist organization in history--not to mention the most brutal terrorist organization that we have ever seen. The previous Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff described the threat arising from ISIS in apocalyptic terms--as well they should. The unspeakable depravities committed by ISIS are enough to evoke images of death's pale horse. ISIS has used sophisticated and successful Internet and media outreach tools to attract tens of thousands of radical Islamists to join its fight in Syria, Iraq, and beyond. They have captured and control major population centers in Iraq, including Mosul, Fallujah, and Ramadi. They have secured their bases of operations in Syria and expanded the territory ISIS controls throughout Syria, threatening to dominate any successor state emerging from the Syrian civil war. In the meantime, ISIS has also expanded its influence and secured allegiance from cooperating terrorist organizations in Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. Yet early last year, the President compared ISIS to a junior varsity. Some junior varsity--it looks more like something that rises to the level of a major, major threat to the nations of the world--not just in the Middle East but to the nations of the world. But why call it a junior varsity? Then, following the terrorist group's dramatic expansion, later the President acknowledged the threat but admitted that ``we don't have a strategy yet'' to confront ISIS. Eventually, though, the President did come up with a plan that included two main elements: training moderate volunteers--not American volunteers but Iraqi volunteers--to fight ISIS in Syria and training and equipping the Iraqi Defense Forces to fight ISIS in Iraq. The first part of this plan has produced no fighters after a year of talk and has just begun to train the first cohort of 400 volunteers, whose training is to be complete in another year or so. Even then, they will be equipped to assume only defensive missions in Syria, according to the Pentagon. That is the U.S. portion. The Iraqi portion deals with training that I will be talking about here in just a moment. How could this severely limited strategy be even remotely responsive to ISIS, to the means and the threat ISIS poses? How is it that ISIS manages to recruit, transport, train, deploy, and effectively fight tens of thousands of radical men and women, while we are spending 2 years finding and training just 400 in our program in Syria? In Iraq, 10 years and billions of dollars spent creating defense forces has produced nothing capable of standing up to the ISIS fanatics. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier this month that Iraqi forces ``did not have a will to fight'' when confronting a vastly inferior--vastly inferior--``Islamic State'' force in this particular battle. They just melted away in Mosul and Ramadi, said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Those who had spent months, if not years, and spent very significant amounts of money on training simply melted away because they did not have the will to fight. The President's intention to train and equip the Iraqi forces to confront the Islamic State has failed to produce an effective fighting force that is adequately led and sufficiently equipped. That is the only conclusion we can come to after months and years and extraordinary expenditures of dollars to try to deal with the ISIS threat. The other major component of the President's strategy is airstrikes. Airpower, when used as part of an integrated grand strategy, can play an essential role. In this case, there is no integrated larger strategy, and therefore airpower is limited in terms of what it can do. The administration's airstrikes have been much less effective in dealing with the ISIS threat than anticipated. They have not halted ISIS's advances in the region. In the words of retired Air Force General David Deptula, a key architect of the air campaign in Operation Desert Storm: Air power has to be applied like a thunderstorm, not a drizzle. In the campaign against the Islamic State, we are averaging 12 strike sorties per day. During Operation Desert Storm in Iraq and Kuwait, the average was 1,241. Airpower, when properly utilized in concert with troops to support the effort, can bring battlefield success. However, the Obama administration has failed to provide the proper number of well-trained American spotters on the ground in Iraq designating targets. If you do not have forces in position to target the exact target, airpower becomes random and not nearly as effective as it should be. And that has not been authorized by the President as a means of dealing with this issue; therefore, the limits that have been placed on the use of airpower have left us in a situation where it is much less effective than it could be. It has now been over a year since ISIS was widely acknowledged as a major threat to our national security. When asked just last week what is and is not working in the fight against ISIS, the President stated once again that we still do not have ``a complete strategy'' to confront ISIS. Instead, he blamed the Pentagon and the Iraqis for not finalizing a plan. Yet the President says we still do not have a complete strategy to address this threat. How is that possible? As the Wall Street Journal put it in its June 11 editorial, ``The fundamental problem with Mr. Obama's strategy is that he is so determined to show that the U.S. isn't returning to war in Iraq that he isn't doing enough to win the war we are fighting.'' In the meantime, the White House announced that we would be sending another 450 troops to Iraq to train Sunni tribal fighters. I understand that this really means little more than 50 actual trainers, the rest of this small cohort to provide security for themselves. So we are down to about 50 trainers, and that is the next step in dealing with a threat that far expands the need to do much more. We must insist that President Obama immediately produce a complete, detailed, and realistic plan to confront, degrade, and defeat the Islamic State. This plan must include realistic, well-substantiated estimates of timeframes, resources required, expected allies, and anticipated obstacles. Also, it must include clear definitions of milestones and metrics of success. Most importantly, the plan must include clear accountability. I have introduced an amendment to the Defense authorization bill that will require just that--a serious, credible, complete strategy for addressing the threat posed by ISIS. President Obama has shown a tendency to blame others--the Pentagon or allies or Sunnis or the Iraqi Government or Congress--for his own failures of leadership in this effort; therefore, we must demand a coherent, realistic plan so the American people can properly apportion the credit for success or the blame for failure where it belongs. Let me briefly talk about a couple of other amendments I have introduced, and I am hopeful we can include these two amendments in the managers' package. Amendment No. 1705 addresses the Department of Defense's present policy of not allowing Active-Duty flag and general officers to visit our friends in Taiwan. Instead, the DOD relies on retired flag and general officers--retired officers to visit Taiwan in what can only be seen as appeasing Communist China. It is difficult for military officials in both Taiwan and the United States to discuss contingency responses when Active-Duty U.S. generals and flag officers are not able to meet regularly with their Taiwanese counterparts. Without visiting Taiwan, they are not able to familiarize themselves with Taiwan's command centers, terrain, and operational capabilities. Active-Duty U.S. generals and flag officers have to be able to visit Taiwan and see its military in action in order to gain a better understanding of Taiwan's armed forces and the weapons they require for self-defense. In the event of an emergency, such as humanitarian assistance or a disaster relief mission, senior officers from Taiwan and the United States will have little, if any, experience working together to save the lives of thousands of Taiwanese citizens and Americans living abroad in Taiwan. My amendment would simply state that the Department of Defense should undertake a program of senior military officer exchanges with Taiwan. Note that this amendment does not require such exchanges. I do not believe in tying the military's hands in this sort of matter, but I do believe it is important that the Senate go on record as concerned about the current policy of refusing to allow such exchanges. The armed forces of Taiwan are a very valuable partner of the U.S. military. These visits by our generals and admirals will encourage Taiwan to make increased investments in their national defense, especially in light of the belligerent behavior demonstrated by the Chinese. I understand that there is bipartisan agreement on this amendment, and I hope and trust that we can include this measure in any upcoming managers' package. Finally, I have offered amendment No. 1877, which would require the Secretary of the Navy to submit to both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees a report detailing the potential impacts to the industrial base if the July 2017 start date for the refueling and complex overhaul of the USS George Washington is delayed by 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years. As we learned last year when the administration briefly considered postponing the scheduled overhaul of the USS George Washington, such delays only drive up costs because of the uncertainty they create among the industrial base. I hope to avoid a repeat of that mistake by requiring the Navy to report on the true costs of any delay. I hope the Senate will agree to this amendment. Once again, I thank Senator McCain for his leadership on the Defense authorization bill, and I hope the Senate will act to pass this critically important bill without delay. This is one of the most essential bills this Congress takes up each year, and to deter this for any political reason simply is not acceptable when our troops' lives and safety are at risk. They are there to defend us. They need our support, and they need it now. I yield floor.

Mr. COATS

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

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Madam President, this is week 14 of ``Waste of the Week.'' I have been coming to the floor for 14 weeks while the Senate has been in session this year to talk about yet another waste which, if we can correct, can save the taxpayers a lot of money. In this case, we are talking about several billion dollars that have been determined by the inspector general of the Social Security Administration to have been spent improperly, accidently--by whatever reason--money that belongs to the taxpayers and falls under the category of waste. It is waste, and I give this inspector general and his staff great credit for doing something very creative and interesting. Actually, this is their job, delving into how an agency handles its business and, more importantly, how it handles the taxpayers' money. Whether you are looking at big business or big government, you find examples of cost cutting that can save the company and, in this case, save the taxpayer, a very significant amount of money. The inspector general decided to take a random sample of over 1,500 beneficiaries of the Social Security disability fund, and 44.5 percent of them received an overpayment at some point during the 10-year period that he studied. And based on this sample, the Social Security inspector general estimated that overpayments totaled about $16.8 billion over a period of time from October 2003 to February 2014, covering nearly 4 million beneficiaries. Now, that is a lot of people, but in this digital age, there are ways in which we can ensure that correct payments are made to the right people and that we don't end up overspending money that comes from hard-earned taxpayer dollars. Now, there is some good news to this story because the Social Security Administration, following up on this study, determined to go through its records and try to recover some of this money that had been overpaid. They were successful in recovering nearly half of the $16.8 billion. They recovered $8.1 billion of overpayments during this period of time, and I commend them for their effort in doing that. But while we celebrate the good news, we also need to dig in and determine how we make sure this doesn't continue. There is another $8.7 billion out there that needs to be recovered and, of course, the goal is to not only recover that money, if possible, but also to keep this from continuing in out-years. So let us put the steps in place that will give us the ability to stop this from happening going forward. Now, let me go back and give a little background, the history of how this all came about and how this happened. Of those who improperly received benefits, the circumstances break down like this: Nearly 40 percent--actually 37.9 percent--of the overpayments happened when individuals started working and made enough money by law to support themselves and, therefore, no longer qualified for Social Security disability benefits. Another 23 percent had their medical condition improved to the point where they could go back to work. Now, interestingly enough, I believe it was my very first ``Waste of the Week'' that I pointed out that a very significant number of individuals were receiving payments both from Social Security disability and unemployment insurance. To receive unemployment insurance, you have to prove you cannot work or you have been thrown out of work and can't get back. To receive Social Security disability payments, you have to prove you no longer are able to work and get back. Yet these people were receiving payments from both of those sources. That was the very first ``Waste of the week,'' and we put up a chart indicating that we are hoping to reach our goal of $100 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse, to show the example of money being sent to Washington. Some say: We can't cut a penny from any program. Well, every business that has gone through this great recession--now going on for the sixth year or so--has had to make sacrifices and they have had to cut costs. Families have had to cut costs. Businesses have had to cut costs. Only the Federal Government says we can't cut a penny; every program we have is valuable and has to be saved and, in fact, needs more money to be efficient. So let's start with those issues that have been determined, through inspections by independent agencies, and proven to have fraud and waste and see if we can add this up. As you can see, this gauge is growing every week. Returning to the breakdown of those who improperly received benefits: Another 8.6 percent had multiple reasons they were no longer eligible for the benefit, 7.5 percent were imprisoned and had fugitive status, which means they were no longer qualified for the disability benefits, but 7.2 percent of those people continued to receive checks after they had died. So you not only have people in prison and therefore no longer eligible, but 7.2 percent of the people receiving benefits received those after they died, and that totaled up to a very significant amount of money. Again, we certainly have the technology and the capability to run the death records through the system to make sure checks are not continuing to be sent out to the last home address or whatever to deceased individuals and then taken in and cashed perhaps by family or who knows who. There were 3.4 percent who weren't entitled to benefits in the first place. It should be pretty easy to scratch those names and save some money. There were 1.8 percent who had their payment improperly computed--in other words, overpayment, a mistake made by the Social Security Administration--1.8 percent had financial resources exceeding the limit which they were supposed to get, 1.7 percent had a change in their living arrangements--they moved abroad and no longer were eligible--and 5 percent fell under another category of reasons. The bottom line is an inspection was made, a study was conducted to see how this came about, and we now have the information that money was returned through legal process, but there is still $8.7 billion out there we didn't get back. So we want to make sure measures are now put in place so this doesn't continue. We certainly don't want some Senator on the floor 5 years or 10 years from now saying: Let me tell you about the latest study of the Social Security inspector general, and when the former Senator from Indiana came to the floor he announced there was $8.7 billion still out there and that we ought to make changes in the system so it wouldn't happen again. But guess what. It didn't get done, and now here I am back at it. So let's do this now. Let's make these changes now so the American people understand we are here not to extort them from the kind of overpayment that is taking place and using their taxpayer dollars to achieve that goal. We can fix this problem, but it is going to take some work. We need better cross-referencing for beneficiaries with other government lists or private lists to help identify earned wages or other assets. We need information sharing that can save billions and make a significant financial debt into these unfortunate overpayments. Assuming the trend of the IG report continues, this change can be made, and the missing $8.7 billion in overpayments can be recovered by the Social Security Administration in future payments. We haven't calculated what potentially we could save in out-years because, hopefully, we will be able to put measures in place, now that we have this information, that will stop these overpayments from being made. But we do know there is $8.7 billion out there of money that can be recovered. So we are adding today a big chunk of money, bringing us up nearly to three-quarters of our goal of reaching $100 billion in savings from waste, fraud, and abuse. We are only into week 14, and we have several more weeks and months ahead of us. I am hoping we are going to have to put an extension onto this chart. We will see how high it goes. Because our goal is to save the taxpayer dollars that the Federal Government has been proven to waste through waste, fraud, and abuse. Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COATS

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

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, now that we concluded the vote, I would like to announce for the Record that I am privileged and honored to be able to host a number of people from my alma mater, Wheaton College. The board of trustees is holding a meeting here in Washington. They are visiting the Capitol and we are about to go on a tour. I want to thank them for their service to our college and to America. They are spending a good amount of time here working through issues that are very important to the school. Wheaton College is an evangelical school that has been true to the faith in dealing with the challenges that exist today. I am pleased to be able to acknowledge that they are here visiting the Capitol, and enjoying the sites of Washington while making some tough decisions. I yield the floor.

Mr. COATS

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

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I know we are in morning business time, and if I could speak on the Republican time, reserving the time remaining for the Democrats, I would be pleased to do that.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I rise today, the 13th time, for the ``Waste of the Week.'' So far, we have identified waste in many areas, ranging from the familiar, such as the duplication of government programs and outrageous spending and lack of control, to the bizarre, such as the government-funded massages for New Zealand rabbits. I have received more responses on that than I have for some of the major items I have listed. Every once in a while, I throw in a ``Can you believe they do that?'' To date, we have estimated nearly $67 billion of fraud, abuse, and waste. This is taxpayer money. These are taxpayer dollars that are coming in for programs that the Congressional Budget Office, the Government Accountability Office, and other special investigators have looked at and said: Why are we spending this money in the first place? It is a total waste, it is fraud, and it has been abused. So we are at the level of nearly two-thirds of our goal of $100 billion and moving forward. And so today, I wish to talk about yet another fiscal situation we have come across that is costing the taxpayers the hard-earned dollars. They're sending them to Washington and they want accountability. Since we are doing debate on the Defense bill this week, I thought I would look at the defense issue. I will use contracting accountability as an example of the need for another effort to save the taxpayers' dollars because they are being wasted. Now, it is not uncommon for every agency of the Federal Government to use contractors. The Department of Defense uses contractors. They do necessary work. They provide services for our troops overseas. We owe our troops, we owe them, given the sacrifices they are making to provide those needed services in an effective and efficient way, but we also owe the taxpayer clear oversight in terms of how their money is spent to make sure that these services that are provided, these tasks that are undertaken by defense contractors as well as all Federal contractors are done so in an accountable way. The issue today arises out of a report by the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. That report identified a total of $135 million of questionable costs spent by one specific contractor between October 2011 and March 2014. He said that in most cases the funds that were spent were not supported with adequate documentation or did not have prior approval. In another instance, this same contractor also overcharged the government by over $1 million. The government lost about $37,000 in interest payments. That is a little bit of change in a total of billions of dollars being spent, but nevertheless it is not all that small of an amount to a number of Americans who work awfully hard to pay their taxes, and they want those taxes to be used wisely. Again, this same contractor in three other cases violated Federal procurement law in securing contracts totaling almost $5 million. So here we have one contractor that has been singled out among many but put in place $135 million of questionable costs, and the American taxpayers have every right to know how and where their tax dollars are spent and particularly those tax dollars which are spent on providing our Armed Forces, men and women in uniform, with the necessary services they need. This was compounded when in 2012 headlines showed that two former employees of this particular contractor, in a video, were drunk or under the influence of narcotics during parties that were allegedly thrown ``every other day'' at the contractor's operations center in Kabul. So to compound the problem, not only were the costs questioned, but also the character and behavior of the employees were something we certainly are not proud of. All of this happened, as the video shows, while weapons were present. Bonfires were also lit, and employees would often throw live ammunition rounds and fire extinguishers into the flames. Some might say: Well, OK, that is a one-off. That is an aberration. That surely doesn't happen all the time. There is a bad apple here, and there are a bunch of good apples in the barrel. Yes, there are contractors that are providing services to our men and women who are doing it in a responsible and legal way, but the special inspector for Afghanistan has also found multiple examples of similar types of waste. In fact, since its creation, the special inspector for Afghanistan has undertaken 324 investigations--he is a busy man--and has accounted for over $571 million of misspent taxpayer dollars, and this is just in Afghanistan. As you know, we have operations around the world, and when we total everything, who knows what that final number will be. I am pleased to report that while these numbers are disturbing, there is also progress being made. The special investigator for Afghanistan whom I have referred to has made over 200 recommendations for reforms and over 160 of those recommendations have been adopted by the Department of Defense in trying to help safeguard Federal dollars. So I don't want to leave the impression that something isn't being done about this. Nevertheless, it is important that we bring these things to light so that we can put procedures in place that will prevent them from happening again. Also, I am pleased that title VIII of this bill we are now debating on this floor, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016, directly addresses defense acquisition policy and management and would make several reforms to the contracting process. So action is being taken. For instance, the bill that calls for the Department of Defense to establish a preference for fixed-price contracts when developing new programs is a needed reform that is part of this legislation we are debating now. Entering into fixed-price contracts helps eliminate the kinds of questionable costs and cost overruns seen in many previous contracts. We need to make sure, Congress needs to make sure, all of us need to make sure that our service men and women have the support they need to defend our Nation. That is why it is so frustrating when we hear about these instances of contractors that are supposed to be supporting our troops but instead are wasting money, whether intentionally or through error or through simply misbehavior. So what we have done today is add another $571 million to our taxpayer savings gauge. As you can see, we are pushing toward the goal of $100 billion. We hope to go past that. There is no end of issues that need to be addressed so that we can tell the American people that we are running an efficient and effective shop in Congress and that we are being careful with their taxpayer dollars. I look forward to returning to the floor next week for my next installment of the ``Waste of the Week.'' With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, given the fact that no one has come to the floor, I wish to speak on another matter. I will do so, and when other Members come to the floor to speak, I will try to wrap up and save that time for them.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, last week I chaired a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee entitled ``Examining the Employment Effects of the Affordable Care Act.'' The purpose of the hearing was to discuss how the Affordable Care Act has affected the ability of Americans to earn and do business, particularly for small businessmen. The impact of the Affordable Care Act--better known as ObamaCare--is particularly important to discuss at this point this year now that the delayed employer provisions are in effect and employers are feeling the pinch. Frankly, ``pinch'' is the wrong word; they are feeling the hammer blow of the burdens imposed on them, both from regulatory and a tax standpoint that are directly affecting their ability to grow, to provide jobs, and to expand their business. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the law, ObamaCare, will reduce the total number of hours worked by as much as 2 percent from the years 2017 to 2024. People said: Two percent--is that a big deal? Yes, it is a big deal. It is equal to 2.5 million full-time- equivalent jobs--for workers who are looking for those jobs. The CBO reasoned that this would result from new taxes embedded throughout the ObamaCare program--not talked about when this was passed. In fact, nothing was talked about that was passed in terms of the way people could understand it, as acknowledged by the former head of the House of Representatives. With new taxes and measures that employers will face and the financial benefits that some will be imposed, the CBO estimates a 1- percent reduction in total pay over the same timeframe as a result of ObamaCare. This was something that was sold to the American people without credibility. All the promises that were made, some so defiantly made by the President. He said: Take my word for it, period, not one penny of increase in your premium cost. Keep your doctor. If you like your doctor, keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, keep your health care plan. What a misrepresentation of the bill this has been. I have received many stories in my office, by email, by regular mail, by phone calls with descriptions of the impact this law has had and the broken promises that have imposed higher premiums, higher copays, higher deductibles, and higher costs for the American people. So we anxiously await the decision of the Supreme Court, which will be coming in several weeks or less, to see where we go. I want to take this opportunity to share just one story of one company and the head of that company and what that one small company-- providing needed and good jobs for Hoosiers in my State--has had to endure under this particular law. I think this was expressed so well by the head of that company. His name is Dr. Joseph Sergio, president of the Sergio corporation. He came before our committee, and we heard some of the most clear and defined discussion of the impact, the personal impact on families and workers of the ObamaCare act and what it has done to his small business, which I think is representative of millions of small businesses across the country. Dr. Sergio is a first-generation American citizen whose family business was founded 36 years ago. His father was an Italian immigrant who came to America to realize the American dream, and he did. Dr. Sergio expanded his father's business, which includes First Response--a national award-winning disaster restoration company, involved in every major hurricane and storm disaster in recent history, with awards for their performance and how effectively and efficiently they brought response to people who needed it following these disasters--and Polar Clean--another company he has which is an environmentally friendly dry ice blast cleaning industrial service. We talk about going green. We talk about caring about our environment. This is a revolutionary way of cleaning any number of factories, businesses, energy companies, and so forth with a new environmentally friendly process. Here is what Dr. Sergio said to me: ``As a small business, we have felt the profound imposition of the Affordable Care Act, or as it is known among many small business entrepreneurs, the Unaffordable Care Act.'' As a small business owner, Dr. Sergio said to be successful he needed to be able to accurately identify, forecast, and control expenses in order to create profits which would then be reinvested in his growing business. That means new jobs and new opportunity. That, he said, is where the frustration with ObamaCare begins. Now, look, what Dr. Sergio outlined is economics 101. It is the first thing you learn in an economics class or the first thing your parents tell you: To be successful--and I wish this applied to the Federal Government--you have to control your costs, you have to identify and forecast what your expenses are going to be in the future and make sure you can cover those. And only when you make a profit--not just seeking neutrality here in the Federal Government--but only when you make a profit in the business can you grow that business and put more people back to work. ObamaCare, Dr. Sergio said, has imposed a whole set of complications and regulations on small business owners that obscures their ability to do just that--to identify, forecast, and control expenses. This makes it difficult to determine profits that are needed to increase employee wages, expand research and development, and invest in new equipment. For a company working in disaster response, all of this is important. Of course, all of this is important for any company. Dr. Sergio said his business has been forced to make major changes to meet the requirements imposed by ObamaCare. They had to drop their health care plan because it didn't meet the requirements of ObamaCare, even though it had been worked out between the employer and the employees and they were happy with their plan. As a result, his employees and the company are paying more for an inferior policy. He said: Employees are now paying larger co-pays and larger deductibles. Some are opting to pay the penalty rather than absorb the high cost of ObamaCare. This not only illustrates how ObamaCare affects businesses but how it directly affects families all across our Nation. Small business owners are angry because ObamaCare promised to lower costs for the average family by $2,500. That was another broken promise from the White House. They said it would lower costs by an average of $2,500. Rather, ObamaCare now has increased the price of insurance and decreased the quality of affordable insurance. In addition to the quality of insurance, the mandate has affected his company's growth, said Dr. Sergio. Small business owners have a limited amount of capital to spend on their labor pool--employees. The mandates of ObamaCare have pushed spending over to the benefits side. This limits the amount of day-to-day compensation increases a company can provide. This is not only demoralizing to the employee but frustrating to the employer that is seeing capital going into an ObamaCare-compliant benefits plan that is not benefiting their employees as well as it used to. So all the touting of the magnificence of this ObamaCare helping people to have better insurance coverage without increasing their cost is a fraud. It has simply not turned out to be what it was promised to be, and it doesn't benefit his employees--small business employees--as well as the plans they had before, he said. So this is Dr. Sergio's current dilemma. He has a history of providing a strong benefits package, paying up to 50 percent of insurance for employees and their dependents and now is unsure how he can keep it under the new law. He testified that surpassing 50 employees would now bring on more administrative costs and reporting requirements, causing him to purposely stay under the 50-employee threshold and utilize more part-time employees that work less than 30 hours per week. We have heard story after story after story on this floor. I have an abundance of messages coming into my office simply saying I have no choice other than to put my full-time employees on a part-time basis. And I have no choice of adding new employees who take me over the 50- employee threshold because it puts me into all these regulations and impositions by ObamaCare. So it is having a dramatic negative effect on employment--on business growth--and that is where the jobs are. It is not the big companies as much as it is small companies in America, and they are being strangled over these regulations and taxes imposed and the regulations telling them what they have put together that their employees are happy with, that allow the employer to be profitable so they can continue to maintain these benefits and increase wages is simply out the window under ObamaCare. Can we repair the damage of ObamaCare? Dr. Sergio closed his remarks with this request: Please work to undo the vast harms that ObamaCare has and is causing to the middle class and start addressing the essential issue of unleashing small businesses to create millions of new jobs which could raise most people from being at risk and into truly affordable plans. As a small business entrepreneur and job creator, I urge you to repeal ObamaCare, and allow for market innovation within the health industry, and allow for pooling across State lines, and allow small businesses freedom from oppressive requirements, new taxes and fees, and increased uncertainty. I was moved by his testimony, and that is why I am standing here today, so I can put it in the Record. I was moved by his experience of how ObamaCare has impacted his business decisions in a negative way, how it has hurt his employees, the families of his employees, how it has restricted him from expanding his business, how it has caused him from going to a profitable business, where he could do more research, do more innovation, pay more, provide more benefits to his employees to a situation where he now has to reduce those benefits, where he has to sit down with his employees and say, I am sorry, under the requirements of this new act, this is where we are as a company. We can't continue to give you the benefits you once had. We can't raise your wages because we are not making the profits, and it is either go out of business or it is to try to struggle along under this new law, which is why he believes we need to change it. I certainly agree with that, and I think this is backed by tens of millions of businesses all across America. We can all agree with the goal of ensuring access to quality care when it is needed. I don't think anyone on this floor has disputed that fact. Unfortunately, a one-size-fits-all government-run health care system is not the answer. We are looking for the best workable, real-world solution for Americans and their health care, and we have not hit that mark. This Congress has failed and this administration has failed to hit that mark. We should pursue initiatives that truly make health care an option for all. Such initiatives should drive down costs by increasing competition and transparency, reforming medical malpractice, making health insurance portable, promoting pooling options for small businesses, and giving States greater flexibility in how they deliver their services. Dr. Sergio should have better certainty for his business, and all small business people should have better certainty for their future. His employees should have a better health care system, as should all Americans. These are the goals we need to reach. We should strive for a system that puts individuals squarely in charge of their health care and doesn't discourage Americans from working and improving their earnings. That is the American dream Dr. Sergio's father sought to achieve when he started his business 36 years ago. That is the dream we should pursue. Yet we are hampered in doing that by the onerous regulations, taxes, and stipulations imposed by the health care law passed by one party without any input from the opposing party, and famously labeled as something we would need to learn about after it was passed. That was probably the most telling statement by a Member of Congress--in this case the former majority leader and then- Speaker of the House of Representatives--about something that was shoved down America's throat without any bipartisan support whatsoever. Now, yes, if it had been read before it was passed, we could have avoided all of this. It could have been debated and people could have looked for a bipartisan way of moving forward to provide health care for the uninsured and to ensure the health care plan they imposed would not have these negative effects. That is what should have happened. It didn't. We now have a chance to rectify that. We have a chance to remedy that. We are waiting for a Supreme Court decision before we go forward with an alternative to what has cost us in terms of jobs and all the costs to small businesses in terms of their ability to grow. That is a part of the American dream. We have denied that under this health care program, and I am hoping my colleagues will join us as we look to address this very important issue--important not only for the health of the American public but important for the growth of our economy. Mr. President, with that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COATS. The Senator will be happy to do just that.