John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would welcome that any day and every day. The only way we get things done around here in any sort of durable fashion is on a bipartisan basis. But so far, I have seen zero indication from our friends across the aisle that they are interested in working with us. I hope that is a misunderstanding on my part, and I hope going forward we will be able to come up with some bipartisan bills. The truth is that, given the constraints of the budget process, we are not going to be able to do everything we want to do in this bill that is going to pass the House on Thursday and which we will take up here in the Senate next week. So there is going to be a necessity to do some more, and I hope we can do that on a bipartisan basis. We also know that the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Tom Price, is working from a regulatory standpoint to try to do everything he can to stabilize the insurance market and to make sure that people continue to have some choices. I think this is fundamentally a test of our principles regarding whether we actually believe in more choices and competition, and my firm conviction is choices and competition improve the quality of a service and the quality of a product. That is really one of the foundational principles upon which our economy is based. I think it also works in healthcare, but we haven't had that since ObamaCare passed. Nomination of Neil Gorsuch Mr. President, I want to speak a little bit about the important hearing on the judicial nomination of Judge Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court that is taking place in the Senate Judiciary Committee even as we speak. We know that President Trump nominated Judge Gorsuch at the end of January to a seat left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Justice Scalia was a lion of American law. He was bigger than life. His intellect, his writing, and his wit inspired a lot of young lawyers and not-so-young lawyers and judges and law students over the past decades, and reminded us that judges have a distinct and special and important role in our system of government, but it is decidedly not to be a legislator or a policymaker because they are ill-suited for doing that. First of all, Federal judges are appointed for life. Judges are not supposed to take public opinion polls to figure out how to rule in a case. I asked Judge Gorsuch today: Is it proper for a judge to decide in a case in front of him or her who he or she thinks should win and then try to work backward to justify it in a judge's decision? He said: Well, it is actually just the opposite. What you try to do is to take the facts and the law and you apply them and you respect the outcome, even if sometimes it is not an outcome you would prefer if it were a matter of your personal preference. What he described, really, is called the rule of law, which has distinguished the United States of America from most of the rest of the world and which has given us our competitive advantage. When people know that we are going to have a legal system that doesn't depend on personalities, doesn't depend on politics, but rather on a written law or Constitution, then people can take confidence in their investments, in their plans, and our economy has been the winner. There is a Peruvian economist who wrote a book called ``The Mystery of Capital.'' I will just summarize, briefly. I was intrigued by the book and by his thesis. Basically, his argument is the United States is no more entrepreneurial than other parts of the world, but what distinguishes us from much of the rest of the world is what I just said a moment ago: It is the rule of law. For example, if you buy a house and get a title to that house, then you have a legal right to it, and you can defend it against all other claimants or people who might try to say: No, that is really my house. I know that sounds so basic, and we take it for granted, but it really does distinguish our country from others, where the law is really not about law, but it is about politics. It is about who is in power. Well, our laws are designed to protect people who are not in power, including people in political minorities. I think the greatest legacy of Justice Scalia was a strong belief that the words in the Constitution and laws passed by the Congress matter. He believed judges should apply those texts and not just pronounce their policy preferences in deciding cases. He understood, as I do, that a careful adherence to text ultimately protects our democracy, which is the intention of our Founding Fathers. I have spent time, like many of my colleagues, talking about the type of judge we need to fill this vacancy--someone who understands the lessons that Justice Scalia taught us--and will apply them faithfully, without regard to persons or personalities or politics. I believe there is no question that Judge Gorsuch is the man for the task. I am confident that the hearings this week will make that clear to the rest of America. It is interesting to listen to some of my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee who want to talk about everything other than Judge Gorsuch and his qualifications. They want to talk about President Trump. They want to talk about abortion. They want to talk about same-sex marriage. They want to try to get Judge Gorsuch to prejudge some future case that may come before the U.S. Supreme Court. Well, no judge worthy of that title will tell anybody: Well, if you confirm me as a judge, I promise you this outcome. That is a violation of the most fundamental ethics of a judge, because a judge is not, again, a policymaker, a judge is not a politician; judges aren't about outcomes, but rather a commitment to the rule of law and due process of law in reaching their decisions. So far, in almost two days in the Judiciary Committee, I think Judge Gorsuch has performed admirably and demonstrated no reason why our colleagues across the aisle can't support him. As a matter of fact, my view is that if you can't vote for somebody like Judge Gorsuch, there is probably nobody that would be nominated by this President that you would vote to confirm. It is hard for me to imagine the nomination getting much better. We have already learned a lot about the judge. We know of his intellect. We know of his sterling qualifications and his extensive experience. I particularly appreciated his testimony today about access to justice and his concern that people of modest means--low income, the so-called little guy that our friends across the aisle keep talking about. The little guy in America is essentially denied access to our courts because it costs so much and it takes too long, and there have to be mechanisms in place for us to resolve our differences that everybody has access to or else the statement carved in the marble over the U.S. Supreme Court that says ``equal justice under law'' is just a pathetic joke. So we have a lot to do in terms of providing access to justice. I think somebody with Judge Gorsuch's background--someone who actually has practiced the law and who has represented clients in court and who has been thoughtful about this and so many other topics--is just the type of person that can help us get our legal system back on track, so that saying, that model, ``equal justice under law,'' is a reality. We know that Judge Gorsuch has spent a decade on the bench and about 10 years in private practice, and he has also worked at the Department of Justice. Like Justice Scalia, he is a steadfast believer in the Constitution laws and that they should be interpreted based on their text; that is, what they actually say. I asked Judge Gorsuch today: If you don't believe that you ought to interpret the law based on what the law actually says, what would you use as your guide? If you are not going to interpret the Constitution based on what the Constitution says, what are you going to use as your guide? Well, some of our friends would talk about a living Constitution or judges knowing better than perhaps the elected representatives of the people. To me, that is just misguided. Judges are not philosopher kings or queens. Judges, as I said at the outset, hold a very important but finite role in our system of government. It is our job as the legislature to make the policy. It is the executive--the President's job--to execute the policy. And if we don't like the law, then it is our job to change it, not to look to the Court to say: I am going to let the Congress off the hook, and we are just going to write an opinion and render a judgment that changes the law under the guise of actually judging, actually engaging in more policymaking. Well, the great thing about somebody like Judge Gorsuch is that the people who admire him also include people who differ from him politically but have seen him in action--people like the former Solicitor General under President Obama, who said he is ``one of the most thoughtful and brilliant judges to have served our nation over the last century,'' and someone who ``has always put aside his personal views to serve the rule of law.'' In other words, Judge Gorsuch is the type of judge that we should all be able to get behind, and he is exactly the kind of nominee we would hope to see from any administration. That is why he was previously confirmed by the U.S. Senate 10 years ago when he was nominated to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. He was confirmed by voice vote. For people who may not be familiar with the practices of the Senate, that essentially is by unanimous consent, by unanimous agreement, including the Democratic leader, the Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer. He thought Judge Gorsuch was good enough for the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. I would challenge him to identify a reason why he is not well suited for the United States Supreme Court, unless it is based on some political calculation. As the Judiciary Committee this week considers his nomination, I want to make crystal clear the purpose of the hearing. It is not about pinning the nominee down or asking trick questions or asking the judge to prejudge cases that might come before the Court. We know there have been outside special interest groups who have criticized Judge Gorsuch for failing to rule in favor of one sympathetic constituency or another, but, again, that is not what judges do--or what they are supposed to do. Are they really supposed to find the most sympathetic party to a lawsuit and say: I am going to decide that case for them, and I will figure out the justification for it later. That is not what judges are supposed to do. Judges are supposed to apply the law impartially and fairly and decide the facts and apply the law and render judgments on cases or controversies that become before the court, not write policy at large. So I think some of these attacks are pretty silly, but they also are a reminder of the importance of these hearings because I really believe this is one of those opportunities to help acquaint millions more Americans with our unique founding story and the unique nature of our Constitution and our Nation of laws. I see my friend from Tennessee here. I remember something he told me once about telling his constituents that one of the important functions of the Senate was to remind people what it means to be an American. Well, being an American means believing in the rule of law and equal justice for all. I will close on this because I see my friend from Tennessee here waiting to speak. This is another kind of an interesting statistic I found pretty amazing, and the Presiding Officer, a distinguished lawyer in his own right, can marvel at this as I do. Judge Gorsuch is no radical. He follows the law wherever it leads: sometimes for the police, sometimes for a criminal defendant; sometimes for the government, sometimes against the government. That is the way the rule of law works. He noted that about 97 percent of the thousands of cases he has decided have been unanimously. As the Presiding Officer knows, the circuit court sits in three-judge panels. The idea that 97 percent of the cases he decided were decided unanimously is pretty remarkable, and he sided with the majority 99 percent of the time. This is nobody out of the mainstream. This is a mainstream judge. So let's be honest and open about it. I hope our colleagues across the aisle, after this nominee is voted out of the Judiciary Committee, will allow us to have an up-or-down vote on this nomination. It wasn't until the Presidency of George W. Bush in 2000 that somehow the tradition of allowing an up-or-down vote for nominees went out the window and instead some people got together and decided, well, we are going to come up with a rationale to raise the threshold to 60. In other words, a President won't be able to see his nominee confirmed unless not just a majority votes for it but 60 people vote for it in the Senate because of the Senate's rules on cloture closing off debate. That period of our history during the George W. Bush administration was an aberration, and I would hope no one would want to repeat that--again, politicizing the judicial nomination process. People can vote any way they want, but denying the opportunity for the Senate to vote up or down on a nominee, particularly to the U.S. Supreme Court, is certainly not a road I would hope our colleagues would go down. As they presumably learned this year, after Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, led his conference into the nuclear option, which basically changed the Senate rules by breaking the Senate rules--that is what allowed us to confirm the President's Cabinet with 51 votes, and that is what will allow us to confirm all lower court judicial nominees with 51 votes. So we would think they might have learned the lesson that what goes around comes around and that while you are in the minority one day, you might be in the majority in the not too distant future. What you force the Senate to do in order to do its job may end up biting you in the future. So I hope they seriously consider allowing Judge Gorsuch an up-or-down vote when his nomination comes to the floor sometime around or after April 3. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 6 p.m. today, there be 10 minutes of debate, equally divided in the usual form, remaining on H.J. Res. 69; further, that following the use or yielding back of that time, the resolution be read a third time and the Senate vote on the resolution with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I will yield for a question, but I will not yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I came to speak on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch as Associate Justice for the United States Supreme Court, but in listening to my colleague from Florida, I feel like I am missing something because he has described the Affordable Care Act in a way that I do not recognize, and he has talked about a bill that has not even passed the House of Representatives as a fait accompli. ObamaCare was sold under false pretenses. The President himself said: If you like what you have, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Oh, yes, by the way, a family of four will see a reduction of its premiums by $2,500. None of those have proven to be true. So we are going to repeal and replace ObamaCare. I have to tell my friend from Florida to please join us. If he does not like the product that is working its way through Congress, please join us and help us make it better because, right now, all I see from our Democratic friends is sort of like a Pontius Pilate moment--a washing of their hands and letting the Republicans alone do the heavy lifting. We invite them to work with us in a bipartisan way, which is something that did not happen, by the way, in ObamaCare, which was passed on a purely party-line vote, and I think it has proven to be a terrible mistake.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: The Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe) and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague for yielding for those unanimous consent requests.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that following morning business on Tuesday, March 21, the Senate proceed to executive session for the en bloc consideration of the following nominations: Executive Calendar Nos. 21 and 22. I ask unanimous consent that the time until 12 noon be equally divided and that following the use or yielding back of time, the Senate vote on the nominations, en bloc, with no intervening action or debate; that, if confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, en bloc, and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that no further motions be in order; and that any statements relating to the nominations be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for yielding for a brief UC request, as I think this would be in the best interests of the entire Senate. I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, the cloture motion on Executive Calendar No. 19, the McMaster nomination, be withdrawn; that the time until 1:45 p.m. be equally divided in the usual form on the Coats and McMaster nominations concurrently; and that at 1:45 p.m. the Senate vote on the Coats nomination, followed by a vote on the McMaster nomination; and that, if confirmed, the President be immediately notified of the Senate's actions, with no intervening action or debate. I further ask that 1 hour of minority debate time be reserved for Senator Wyden.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Corker), and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``yea'' and the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Corker) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Corker), and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``yea,'' the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso) would have voted ``yea,'' and the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Corker) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank my friend, the Senator from Virginia, who is the vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, for his remarks. I, too, support the nomination of Dan Coats to serve as the next Director of National Intelligence and succeed James Clapper, who has been in the intelligence business for 50-plus years. He has big shoes to fill, but I have every confidence Dan Coats can do that. One of the things I hope he looks at is that post-9/11, when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created, we basically created another layer in the intelligence community. As the Presiding Officer and other Members know, the DNI--the Office of the Director of National Intelligence--has grown by leaps and bounds. I just hope he takes a good, hard look at the layers we have created, perhaps at the duplicative functions that do not necessarily make our intelligence any better but that do create more problems in managing what is a very important office to our national security and certainly to the intelligence community.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, may I ask the Senator to yield to consider a couple of brief consent requests?

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time until 5:45 p.m. today, including quorum calls, be equally divided in the usual form, with 15 minutes of the Democratic time being reserved for the use of Senator Wyden or his designee; further, that at 5:45 p.m., the remaining time on H.J. Res. 42 be considered expired, the resolution be read a third time, and the Senate vote on the resolution with no intervening action or debate.

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, today the Senate Finance Committee has considered the nomination of Mr. Robert Lighthizer to be the country's next Trade Representative. This position serves as a vital role in our country's economic policy by negotiating trade agreements on behalf of the American people and making sure they are enforced according to their terms. President Trump has made clear that his administration will be devoted to getting the very best trade deals possible for the American people. For Texas, my State--the Nation's top exporting State--trade is incredibly important. Many of our jobs and industries rely on trade agreements, like NAFTA, so that our goods and services can find new markets and more customers. As a matter of fact, 5 million American jobs depend on binational trade with Mexico alone, which gives us a sense of how important trade is to our economy at large. I am happy to support Mr. Lighthizer for this important post. He has served in the Senate as a staffer on the Senate Finance Committee for the former chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Bob Dole, and as the Deputy U.S. Trade Representative during the Reagan administration as well. In his nearly three decades in the private sector, Mr. Lighthizer has represented a number of U.S. commercial interests through trade enforcement cases, while also focusing on opening up foreign markets to American ranchers, farmers, and small businesses. I look forward to working with him to improve existing trade deals and to cut better ones for the benefit of the American people. American Health Care Act Mr. President, last week the House of Representatives unveiled a plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare with one that provides more options for the American people at a price they can afford. This was in direct response to what has been an ObamaCare disaster--one that led to skyrocketing healthcare costs, insurers leaving markets left and right, and a big government solution to a complicated problem that fails to actually deliver on its promises. We have all heard it a hundred times if we have heard it once. President Obama said: If you like your policy, you can keep it; if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor; and a family of four would see a decrease in their premium costs by $2,500. Obviously, that did not prove to be the case. There is really no denying that ObamaCare isn't working, and the status quo is unacceptable. Under ObamaCare, tens of millions are uninsured--almost 30 million people now in America, which, to me, is one of the most supreme ironies of ObamaCare. It was sold to us on the premise that everyone would have insurance. Yet 30 million people are uninsured, and 20 million of those 30 million are either people who have paid a penalty because they haven't bought the government- approved healthcare and thus are not complying with the individual mandate or they are people who claimed a hardship exemption, saying they simply can't afford to buy the policy that the government mandates they purchase, so the government has supplied them an exemption. So 30 million are uninsured under ObamaCare, and 20 million of those 30 million have either paid the penalty or have been otherwise excused from complying with the mandate. We know that under ObamaCare, tens of millions are uninsured, premiums have skyrocketed, and mandates have crushed job creators. I remember several conversations with employers--restaurant owners and one gentleman in an architectural firm--saying: When does the employer mandate kick in? In other words, when do you get penalized for not complying with the ObamaCare requirements? He said: I am going to hire fewer people because I don't want to come within the ambit of that employer mandate. Then I remember one restaurant in East Texas where a single mom basically was laid off of her full-time job and forced to work two part-time jobs to make up for that lost pay because her employer couldn't comply with the employer mandate under ObamaCare, so what he decided to do was lay off his full-time workers and hire people on a part-time basis. ObamaCare is riddled with stories like that, which demonstrate its flaws. Consider that a 24-year-old individual in Texas could spend up to 30 percent of their gross income just paying for their healthcare premiums and their out-of-pocket costs--hardly affordable healthcare. We really should have called it the un-Affordable Care Act. We have begun the first step to repeal and replace it. Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office offered us a glimpse into the impact the legislation would have. But I hasten to add that this is just the first step out of multiple steps, and there is additional work to be done, first of all, by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who has enormous discretion in terms of how to administer healthcare policy at the national level and the authority to delegate a lot of that responsibility, along with the money that goes with it, back to the States where it historically has been done, to offer people lower cost health insurance that suits their needs--not a government mandate--and offers them more choices. There is a number of additional things in the Congressional Budget Office report yesterday which are important to consider. First, the CBO estimates the American Health Care Act would lower premiums by 10 percent over time. We know ObamaCare raised premiums for many families across the country; they skyrocketed to an unaffordable level. So this is a start in the right direction, but I hasten again to add that it is just a start. The Congressional Budget Office also confirmed that the American Health Care Act is a fiscally conservative bill that puts forward responsible solutions to our Nation's healthcare woes. CBO estimates that we could reduce the Federal deficit by $337 billion by passing the American Health Care Act. It also reforms Medicaid. Many of our most vulnerable population get their healthcare through Medicaid. This bill provides a way of sending that money and authority back to the States and lets them manage the growth of the Medicaid Program according to a Consumer Price Index. So people who are on Medicaid now, including those in the expansion States, can stay on Medicaid, but ultimately the responsibility is going to be sent back to the States, along with the money to pay for it, and grow--not to cut it, but to grow--according to a Consumer Price Index, which makes sense. That change alone saves taxpayers another $880 billion--$880 billion. This is the most significant entitlement reform in certainly a generation. The bill repeals ObamaCare's job-killing taxes like the individual employer mandate and the medical device tax, which has moved jobs offshore to places like Costa Rica because of its impact on innovation. We also repeal the payroll tax, the tax on investments, and the tax on prescription drugs. The fact is, middle-income Americans and our job creators will find massive tax relief as a result of this legislation-- to the tune of more than $800 billion. Put simply, the American Health Care Act dismantles, repeals, and stops ObamaCare in its tracks. I should point out that the CBO doesn't take into account other steps Congress and the administration will take in order to make our Nation's healthcare system a vibrant marketplace where more options and better quality healthcare exist. I might say that a lot of the news yesterday on the CBO report had to do with the reduction in the number of people who would actually buy health insurance under this new legislation, but the reason for the change is in large part, as the Congressional Budget Office said, that when you don't punish people through a penalty for not buying government-approved health insurance, as ObamaCare did, people may well decide in their own economic self-interest not to purchase that government policy, particularly when their choices are so limited. I believe this is a first step in unraveling this convoluted puzzle called ObamaCare and getting our Nation's healthcare back on track. The American people have demanded better than ObamaCare. Families are forced to pay for insurance they can't afford that provides subpar care, and they are tired of being forced to pay a penalty because they don't want to opt into a government program that fails to deliver on its most basic promises. Let me just say this in closing: I know some of our friends across the aisle have a dim view of this proposal. They say the CBO score demonstrates that not enough people will be covered by this alternative to ObamaCare. But my question to them is, What are you going to do about the current meltdown in ObamaCare that is forcing people into insurance they don't want and denying them any real choice, where the premiums are skyrocketing, and where the deductibles are so high you are effectively denied the benefit of any health insurance coverage? What are they going to do about that? I would simply say that if they don't like the alternative we have offered, I invite them to join us in trying to solve this problem. One of the lessons of ObamaCare is that partisan healthcare legislation isn't very durable and doesn't survive. I hope at some point the fever will break, and Democrats and Republicans alike will find a way to work in the best interests of our constituents, the people we serve--the American people. We can't afford another one-size-fits-all approach to healthcare. The American Health Care Act will provide the first important steps of relief from this unworkable, unsustainable system that was created based on false promises made to the American people. At the end of the day, our goal is to deliver more access, more options, and better quality care for families across the country. I look forward to getting it done soon. In the House, the Budget Committee will take up the healthcare bill, which passed the Ways and Means Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee, and then it will move to the floor of the House where I presume it will be open to some amendments. Then it will come to the Senate where, under the Senate rules, it will also be open to amendments. If people have a better idea, I hope they will join us in trying to come up with the very best solutions possible. But to simply hang back and sort of enjoy the difficulty of trying to reform this broken ObamaCare system for partisan reasons, to me, seems to be beneath the dignity of what we are sent here to do by our constituents. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: The Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have 6 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to Rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Armed Services Committee The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 14, 2017, at 10 a.m. Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 14, 2017, at 10 a.m., in order to conduct a hearing entitled ``Reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program, Part I.'' Committee on Energy and Natural Resources The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate in order to hold a hearing on Tuesday, March 14, 2017, at 10 a.m. in room 366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Finance Committee The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 14, 2017, at 10 a.m., in 215 Dirksen Senate Office Building, to consider the nomination of Robert Lighthizer. Select Committee on Intelligence The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the 115th Congress of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, March 14, 2017 at 2:30 p.m., in room SH-219 of the Senate Hart Office Building to hold a CLOSED hearing. Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety, and Security The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to hold a meeting during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 14, 2017, at 2:30 p.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building. The Committee will hold a Subcommittee Hearing on ``Continuing to Improve Truck Safety on our Nation's Highways.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: The Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, last week our colleagues in the House of Representatives introduced the American Health Care Act--legislation that will deliver on a promise we made to repeal ObamaCare and to replace it with healthcare options that won't force people to buy an insurance product just because the government tells them to do so or penalize them if they don't but will replace it with one that actually fits the needs of their families at a price they can afford. It is no secret that ObamaCare was oversold back in 2010 when the President said: If you like your policy, you can keep your policy. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. And by the way, an average family of four, he said, would save $2,500. That has not proven to be true. ObamaCare, to boot, has wreaked havoc on our economy and on American families just trying to stay healthy. In my State of Texas, it has led to fewer healthcare options, skyrocketing premiums, and deductibles so high that insurance plans are rendered almost useless. By one estimate, about one-third of Texas counties have only one insurance option, and that is the case throughout the Nation. Nearly one-third of all counties in the country have only one insurance company offering plans on their States' exchanges. The truth is, ObamaCare has never added up to better coverage at a more affordable price; it has never delivered more options--just the opposite; and it never kept its promises when it was being sold to the American people. Now is the time for us to do right by the American people by delivering more access to quality healthcare at a price Americans can afford. The American Health Care Act doesn't just tinker around the edges of ObamaCare; it is a complete do-over. This bill, for example, repeals ObamaCare's individual mandate, the requirement that you buy government-approved insurance, and if you don't, we are going to fine you. That is repealed. It repeals the employer mandate. I still remember being in Tyler, TX, and talking to a gentleman who owned a restaurant and who said he had to lay off some of his full-time staff, putting them on part time, just to avoid the penalties that go along with the employer mandate. And by the way, he introduced me to the single mom who now, instead of working one full-time job, had to work two part-time jobs just to keep food on the table for her family. This bill also repeals the medical device tax. This was an incredible tax on medical innovation which wasn't on income but literally on gross receipts, forcing jobs to move from the United States to places like Costa Rica and Central America. This bill repeals ObamaCare's Medicare payroll tax increase, the net investment tax increase, the ObamaCare tax on prescription drugs, and the ObamaCare health insurance tax. This is the full repeal of ObamaCare that we have been promising for years now. I want to point out that this bill also provides unprecedented entitlement reform. Some of the main cost drivers for the Federal Government are not the 30 percent of Federal funds that we appropriate each year that are largely divided between defense and nondefense spending. Entitlements are driven by the fact that they are not capped or pegged to an inflation rate for Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. This legislation actually begins to put Medicaid--the healthcare plan for the most vulnerable in our country--on a reasonable path to sustainment. This bill also makes sure that the States that share in the cost of Medicaid can manage their own State budgets in a much more responsible way. This bill is the first real Medicaid reform since the program was created which, perhaps most importantly, gives more authority, more flexibility to the States to manage the dollars they spend, to manage not only the dollars they come up with through their own tax rolls but the Federal portion as well. And as I said, it puts the Medicaid Program on a path toward fiscal responsibility. I believe this legislation is critically important across the country and for my State of Texas, too. In Texas, every other year, when the legislature meets and tries to determine how to allocate its budget, they work very hard to try to make sure that Medicaid isn't the single largest expenditure in the State budget. Right now, about a third of that total budget is spent on Medicaid alone, and the Federal Government essentially ties the hands of the State in terms of managing the healthcare delivery system to help those most vulnerable low-income folks in our State. With this legislation, not only do States like Texas have the ability to manage the expenditure of the money to focus on chronic diseases-- people who are using our healthcare system a lot because of the nature of the illnesses they have--but also to help encourage medical homes so that people have ways of managing their healthcare to stay healthy longer and to reduce healthcare expenditures. This legislation will help Texas and the rest of the country have a way to rein in spending while serving those who need Medicaid the most. You will hear some of our friends across the aisle saying that this is about kicking people off of Medicaid. Well, that is not true. For those people currently on Medicaid, Medicaid expenditures will not change at all as long as they remain on the rolls. That includes those who live in States that expanded the Medicaid coverage from 100 percent of Federal poverty to 138 percent. Those people will stay on Medicaid as long as they are eligible. Under this new legislation, Medicaid is put on a sound fiscal footing so the program is still around for our children and grandchildren. Another important feature of the American Health Care Act is that it establishes a patient and State stability fund to equip Texas and other States to meet the specific healthcare needs of their patients, particularly those, as I have said, with low incomes and those suffering from chronic illnesses. It will provide more money to community health centers that do a lot of heavy lifting to make sure that families are healthy and that people get access to the treatment they need regardless of whether they actually have health insurance. In Texas, we have hundreds of community health centers serving more than 1 million Texans each year. Under the American Health Care Act, they will be able to do their job more effectively and keep more Texans healthy. Responsible entitlement reform is something we should be all about. It serves the American people not just for tomorrow but for decades down the road. Most importantly, I believe what this legislation does is it finally delivers on the promise we made back during the debate over the Affordable Care Act. Now that the Affordable Care Act has proven itself to be unsustainable and does not deliver on the basic promises, the fundamental promises upon which it was sold to the American people, I believe it is important that we keep our promise to repeal it and replace it with more choices of affordable healthcare at a price people can afford. It is the conservative answer to healthcare that will empower individuals, provide more options and competition, and responsibly help those who need care have more access to it. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, this week the Senate continues to press forward on a number of congressional review actions; in this case, a disapproval that will roll back and repeal many Obama-era regulations that have hurt people across the country and strangled our economic growth. By doing away with excessively burdensome rules and regulations, we are delivering on our promise to the American people to actually do what we can to help the economy, to grow the economy, to create jobs and not hurt it with unnecessary, expensive, and burdensome redtape. Earlier this year, we began the legislative process to deliver on our biggest promise: repealing and replacing ObamaCare with more affordable and more accessible healthcare options, options that will work for all American families. The American Health Care Act, introduced in the House on Monday, is the first step in fulfilling that promise. ObamaCare is collapsing. It has already failed countless families across the country, and it has forced people off good insurance plans they liked and strong-armed them to sign up for plans that were more expensive, offered less care, and didn't even let them use the doctor of their choice. So we would be revisiting healthcare even if Hillary Clinton had been elected President of the United States because ObamaCare is in a meltdown mode. ObamaCare has also saddled our economy with more than a trillion dollars in new taxes. Most of those taxes are so hidden that most Americans are probably not aware of the fact that there is even a tax charged on the premium for their health insurance policy, for example. Well, all of these taxes end up being absorbed and have to be paid by American families. At its very core, the individual mandate of ObamaCare was a major power play and overreach by the Federal Government. Basically, what it said was, if you don't buy the government-prescribed health insurance plan, we are going to fine you; we are going to penalize you. The government should not be able to force anyone to spend their own hard-earned money for something they don't want but have to buy under a threat of financial penalty. The American people have spoken up loudly and clearly and rightfully demanded that Congress do better, and we will. Since the 2010 timeframe--when our colleagues on the other side of the aisle passed ObamaCare with 60 votes in the Senate, a majority in the House, and with the White House--they have lost the majority in the Senate, they have lost the majority in the House, and they have lost the White House. I think ObamaCare has been one of the major reasons why, because people, the more they learn about it, the less they like it, and they don't appreciate Washington forcing them to do things they don't want to do with their own money. About 2 months ago, one of my constituents in Texas wrote me about her skyrocketing healthcare costs. Before last year, her premium was about $325 a month. A short time later, that was revised to $436 a month. This same Texan later moved from one city to another and, because of her change of address, her premium jumped to $625 a month. It started at $325 and is now $625. In 2017, thanks to ObamaCare, her premium went up again to an astronomical $820 a month. It started at $325 before ObamaCare and is now $820 a month. I don't know many people who could absorb that kind of increase in their healthcare insurance premium. In about a year, her monthly healthcare payment jumped by more than 150 percent--150 percent. That is hardly what I would call affordable; thus, the misnamed Affordable Care Act should be the un- Affordable Care Act. To make matters worse, she then found that her provider would be putting a halt to individual plans in Texas, something that has been a recurring theme in my State and across the country. So while President Obama said: If you like your plan, you can keep your plan, as a result of ObamaCare, she was not able to keep her plan so she had to find a new plan and a new doctor, a plan ultimately with less care, less flexibility, and even a higher price. Suffice it to say, for this constituent of mine and for millions more like her, ObamaCare is not working. ObamaCare is not affordable, and it is hurting Texans. It is time for Congress to keep its promise that we have made in every election since that given the privilege of governing--of being in the majority, being in a position to change things--we would repeal and replace ObamaCare with options that fit the needs of all Americans and their families at a price they can afford.