John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN. To the Senator's point about Medicaid, in Texas, I believe the number is basically only one out of every three doctors-- about a third of doctors--will see a new Medicaid patient because it reimburses at about 50 cents on the dollar of what a private insurance plan will. I know there is the problem of coverage versus access that the Senator alluded to. But I wanted to just ask the Senator about that sometimes our friends who supported this legislation said: If you care about getting people with preexisting conditions coverage or if you care about young people being able to stay on their parents' health insurance coverage, you have to take the whole enchilada; in other words, you have to accept all 2,700 pages of ObamaCare, and that is the only way you could address these concerns. Are there ways to address some of these legitimate concerns, such as preexisting conditions, without embracing all of ObamaCare?

Mr. CORNYN. Will the Senator yield for one other question?

Mr. CORNYN. I just ask my colleague, I am aware of his own experience that he just recounted here with the fact that MD Anderson--the world class hospital located in Houston that is really the premier cancer treatment facility in America and perhaps even in the world--they are not in the exchanges so the Senator cannot continue his treatment there. Can the Senator explain how that happens because I think a lot of people think if they like their current doctor and they like their current hospital facility, they are expecting that when they sign up for ObamaCare they are going to be able to continue to see that doctor and go to some same high-class health care facilities. How did that happen?

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. CORNYN. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as we continue this week's vote-arama on executive branch nominations, I wish to remind the American people how we got here today and what it means to the future of our great country and our system of government. Over the last 5 years President Obama and his administration have repeatedly bent the law to serve their own purposes in a way that I think is unprecedented in my experience. We saw this when he gave special treatment to union pension funds during the Chrysler bankruptcy process. We saw it again during the Solyndra bankruptcy. We saw it when President Obama unilaterally announced a moratorium on the enforcement of certain immigration laws. We saw it when the administration unilaterally issued waivers from the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and the 2002 No Child Left Behind law. And, of course, we have seen it multiple times with the President's signature legislative--accomplishment, if you can call it that--ObamaCare, which effectively became a law that means whatever the President wants it to mean. Indeed, without any real legal authority, the administration has unilaterally delayed the employer mandate, unilaterally delayed the income verification required in the ObamaCare exchanges, unilaterally delayed the cap on out-of- pocket expenses, and has unilaterally delayed other insurance regulations. Meanwhile, the Internal Revenue Service has been hauled into court because it has said that it will flout the text of the law by issuing ObamaCare tax subsidies in the Federal exchange even though the law that Congress passed and the President signed made clear that those subsidies may only be used in the State-based insurance exchanges. I constantly get asked by my constituents back home whether Congress can do something about it. My response ordinarily is, well, the Congress under our system of government passes the laws, but it is the executive branch's obligation to enforce those laws. Indeed, that is the oath the President takes when he is inaugurated--to uphold and defend the laws and to faithfully execute those laws. I think we have seen the kind of havoc that can be wreaked when the executive decides to pick and choose which laws to enforce based on expediency, political or otherwise. We used to say that we are a nation of laws and not of men. Indeed, that is one of our country's--indeed, our economy's--great strengths. There is a great little book written by a Peruvian economist on the nature of capital, which, of course, is so important to our economic growth. The point he makes is there are a lot of entrepreneurial societies in the world, but one of the things that really distinguishes the U.S. economy and our success relative to those other entrepreneurial societies is the rule of law. It is the things, for example, that mean that when you invest money in a piece of real estate or in a contract or in some other investment, you know with reasonable certainty that investment will be protected against arbitrary action by either government or some other person, which, if you think about it, really is one of the unique characteristics of the U.S. system of laws because we know with reasonable certainty that if those rights are breached, if that investment is stolen, if it is nationalized by the Federal Government, you can go to court and seek compensation for that law-breaking. Well, if President Obama wanted to continue to legislate in this time and effect from the White House by changing the laws Congress passed, he should have stayed in the Senate. But his responsibility--indeed, his sacred oath--is to enforce the laws even if those laws prove awkward or inconvenient. One of the other important aspects of being a nation of laws is that if, in fact, it turns out that those laws prove inconvenient or awkward or undesirable for some reason, we have the capacity through the legislative process to change those laws. That is sometimes referred to as a conversation or a dialog that the branches of government have with one another. So Congress passes laws that the President signs, and then if they are being implemented either by the executive branch or by administrative agencies that are part of the executive branch and they turn out not to have the result Congress thought they would have or the President thought they would have, the great thing about our system of government is we have the capacity to change those laws when they prove to have resulted in unintended consequences or when they prove inconvenient or awkward or otherwise undesirable. I believe that, notwithstanding the greatest hopes and, I would grant, the good faith of those who actually thought ObamaCare was going to work--it sounded pretty good. The President said: If you like what you have, you can keep it, and if you think your premiums are too high, the average family of four is going to see their premiums go down by $2,500. And if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Well, all of that sounded pretty good, especially when you looked at the public opinion polling back in 2009 when the President first started saying those kinds of things because 88 to 90 percent of the people polled said they liked what they had. So when the President said they could keep it, they said: OK; that is fine. I guess this is all about dealing with that 10 or 12 percent of people who had no coverage or who had what they viewed as inadequate or otherwise undesirable coverage. So I understand that some people may have been lulled into this idea that this is the best thing that has happened in terms of health care delivery in a long time. As a matter of fact, we have talked about this approach for many years. Even before I got to Congress, during the Clinton administration we had HillaryCare. That was another grand scheme to basically commandeer the health care delivery system in the country that, in a way--again, I would grant the good faith of those who actually thought they could make it work, but it didn't work, at least as manifested in ObamaCare. And now we are confronted not with the grand theory and good intentions but with the hard facts and the reality that ObamaCare has proved to be an unmitigated disaster. Whether you are one of ObamaCare's biggest cheerleaders or whether you were a skeptic like me and voted against it because you did not think it was going to work, I think it is incumbent upon us to try to figure out how to come up with an alternative, to hit the reset button and to pivot to patient-centered health care reform that leaves the choices not in the hands of bureaucrats and the Federal Government but leaves the choices in the hands of hard-working American families and patients, where doctors whom we choose and trust can work with us to come up with the best solutions rather than having the Federal Government say: We have done a cost-benefit analysis, and you are out of luck. You're not worth it. The Federal Government, the bureaucracy doesn't think you should get that kind of treatment. Well, what I don't want is for any President, including this President, to unilaterally waive or change or refuse to enforce a law for political reasons. And that is what has happened. We have watched the President's poll numbers plummet as the American people, who by and large during his first term of office and now during the first year or so of his second term of office wanted this President to succeed--I think the fact that President Obama's Presidency was historic in many ways, as the first African-American President ever elected in this country, gave all of us a sense of pride that our country had come so far--over, admittedly, a long period of time but so far that a person who back at the beginning of our country might have been considered less than a fully human being would now be the President of the United States. That gave us all hope in the future and hope in this great experiment known as America, to have the first African-American President of the United States. So this President was elected in 2008 and reelected in 2012 with a huge reservoir of good will and hope that he would be successful. Indeed, all of us, regardless of our political stripes--whether we are conservatives or liberals, whether we are Independents, Republicans, or Democrats, we are Americans first and we want America to succeed. That is what we want more than anything. It is also important to remember that our system of government is important to our success over these last couple of centuries and that we haven't gotten here by accident. We have gotten here because of our Constitution, because of the genius of checks and balances between coequal branches of government. That is a lesson this President seems to have forgotten; that too often he decides to go it alone or do an end run around Congress because he can't get what he wants. Well, we are not guaranteed, any of us, in political life or in life in general, to get everything we want. We know that particularly when it comes to legislation--things like health care reform--nobody gets everything they want if, in fact, it is going to be a bipartisan product. But rather than attempting a bipartisan product, this President and our friends across the aisle decided to jam the American people and to jam the minority party in Congress and to pass a law which now they own lock, stock, and barrel. Again, I am willing to concede the good faith and good intentions of those who thought this would work, but now we have gone from theory to evidence and experience, and we know it hasn't worked. Well, thankfully, in our three coequal branches of government, we have not just the legislative branch that passes the laws and the executive branch that is supposed to enforce the laws, we have a third branch of government; that is, the judiciary. And they have done their part--but they are not through yet--to stop executive overreach and uphold the rule of law. I have heard some of our colleagues say: Well, the Supreme Court has upheld most of ObamaCare and it is the law of the land--as if it is somehow sacrosanct and can never be changed. Well, that is just not true, at least not under our system of laws. As I said to begin with, if we find that the laws we passed result in consequences we did not intend or we find that the American people are dissatisfied with it and it leads to undesirable results, we can change it, and that is the way our system works. We are not bound forever by any law. We can change them because that is the way our system works. So when people say it is the law of the land, get over it, move on down the road, that is not an American perspective, at least under our Constitution. As I said, we have seen a number of times where this President and this White House have simply ignored laws, refused to enforce laws, and overreached. For example, the District of Columbia Circuit Court has demanded that this administration follow the law on issues related to corporate governance, emissions requirements, recess appointments and the disposal of nuclear waste. This is the same court that this majority leader, Senator Reid, and his political party have decided to stack. They decided to break the rules of the U.S. Senate that have been in effect a long time in an overt power play in order to stack this second most important court in the Nation, the DC Circuit Court, by breaking the Senate rules in order to deny the minority a voice in the confirmation process and to confirm these nominees in what we are engaged in this week, which is another overt power play. But the stated reason for doing that, and the supposed necessity of doing that, is because the senior Senator from New York, the majority leader, and others say they are not happy with the way the DC Court of Appeals has ruled on cases involving the Obama administration. But as I said a moment ago, in at least four of these big areas, the DC Circuit Court has upheld the administration's point of view in important appeals before the court. At the same time, the DC Circuit Court has also ruled in favor of the administration on some issues related to health care, embryonic stem cell research, and several other major environmental matters. But notwithstanding those successes in terms of policy approval by the DC Circuit Court of this administration's policies and of the bureaucracy's interpretation of those policies, we know that the majority leader was bound and determined, along with his allies in the other party--that they were bound and determined to make sure the DC Circuit Court of Appeals would issue no rulings which would undercut or fail to enforce this administration's policies. So they decided to pack this court, which is what this process we are engaged in this week is all about, with ideological allies who would rubberstamp their agenda. When the minority in the Senate--and, by the way, I am not just talking about my rights or Senators' rights. We are just representatives. I represent 26 million people. When the majority leader shuts me out of the amendment process or the opportunity to have a say in the advice and consent over the nomination of judicial nominees or executive branch nominees, he is not affecting my rights per se but the rights of 26 million Texans, to have their voice heard in this process. That is something he ought to think about and reconsider. We know the nature of the Senate has been fundamentally transformed under the leadership of Senator Reid. When I first got to the Senate, which was a while ago--it doesn't seem like that long ago, but it has dramatically changed--we had an open amendment process. We would actually have bills come to the floor, legislation such as the national defense authorization bill, and we would spend up to 3 weeks debating and offering amendments on that important piece of legislation. As we have heard at different times, the national defense authorization bill is viewed as so important by both political parties and by the entire Senate that we have passed a Defense authorization bill for I think at least 50 consecutive years. That is quite a tradition. But instead of doing that, Majority Leader Reid decided to cut off the opportunity for the minority to offer amendments to this important piece of national security legislation. When we were able to block cloture in order to protest that in order to provoke, hopefully, a negotiation which would result in a process whereby minority rights would be respected and an opportunity to amend this legislation provided, now we learn that as part of this end-of- the-year sprint to Christmas, that in addition to jamming through these nominees, the majority leader's intention is to take a bill that was basically negotiated among four Members of Congress, that would be the four Members of the Armed Services Committee, both the chairman and ranking members on both sides of the Capitol, to fill up the amendment tree, file for cloture, and pass it in the last week we are in session. It is beyond outrageous, this transformation in the Senate. I think what shocks many of us the most is that Majority Leader Reid is an institutionalist, and by that I mean it as a compliment. He has been in the Senate a long time. He understands how the Senate works and why the Senate rules are so important. Yet nobody in my memory has done more to undermine the institution of the Senate and its rules and traditions than the current majority leader. For what purpose? For short-term gain. Why do I say it is short-term gain? They can get away with it when they are in the majority, but it is temporary, because during the time I have been in the Senate I have been in the majority and I have been in the minority. I have to admit, being in the majority is a lot more fun. But in other words, what I am saying is this short-term power play by the majority party in the Senate to break the Senate rules, to jam through legislation and to deny my 26 million constituents in Texas an opportunity for me, on their behalf, to offer amendments to important legislation affecting the national security of the United States is an outrage. It is an outrage. I will give just one example. Four years ago at Fort Hood, TX, Nidal Hasan, a major in the U.S. Army, killed 11 people and wounded about 30 more. This is about 4 years ago. You will remember it. The reason it took so long for him to be brought to justice--I am not sure I understand exactly why--but there was some concern, and a concern I shared, that if we identified this for what it truly was, which is a terrorist attack on our own soil, it might undermine the fairness of his trial and give him some grounds to appeal and perhaps escape the just punishment for what he did. Major Hasan, when there was initial review of what he did and evidence that he had shown absolutely clear signs of being radicalized and joining the fight of Islamic extremists against the United States of America, against his own government, that those were completely ignored by the military, by the Army, in an exercise of political correctness. Even though he stood up that day and he said Allahu Akbar, ``God is great,'' in the traditional cry of Al Qaeda and Islamic extremists and others who were bent on suicide and homicidal acts, initially when that was reviewed, the conclusion by the politically correct police here when they reviewed it was this is workplace violence. In other words, they refused to call it what it was, which was a terrorist act on our own soil. I do not fully understand the reticence to identify it for what it is because we all know we had at least one other major terrorist attack on our own soil on September 11, 2001, when approximately 3,000 Americans were killed by one of the most horrific terrorist acts to occur in our lifetime and hopefully ever--hopefully it will never occur again. After that, the Department of Defense decided to use its discretion to award the people who were injured or killed in that incident the recognition and benefits they deserved under our laws--Purple Hearts and other death benefits. But when I and my colleagues on the other side of the Capitol, Congressmen John Carter and Roger Williams, sponsored legislation to recognize that this attack at Ford Hood that cost the lives of 11 Americans, including 10 members of the U.S. military and 30 more people were shot and injured, many of whom bear those wounds even today--when we filed legislation on the national defense authorization bill in order to amend that bill in order to give that same recognition to these 11 Americans who lost their lives and the 30 more who were injured in that terrorist attack on that day at Fort Hood, TX, in Killeen, TX, some 4 years ago, that amendment has been shut out of this process. Do not be confused. This is not about denying me my rights as a Senator. This is about denying those 11 Americans who lost their lives that day justice, and the 30 more who survived that attack, the benefits they are entitled to by virtue of being a victim of a terrorist attack on our own soil--again. There are real human consequences to the machinations of the majority leader and this revolutionary change in the nature of the Senate, denying the rights of the minority to be heard and to offer legislation on behalf of our constituents. That has such far-reaching impact. In many ways I think what we are experiencing this week and what we have experienced recently is an attempt to distract the American people from the train wreck known as ObamaCare. If I had voted for the President's signature legislative proposal and I was one of the Democrats who voted for it, since no Republican voted for it, I would want to change the subject too. As someone who served in this Chamber for 11 years, it saddens me that our Democratic friends choose to obliterate the Senate rules and gravely weaken minority rights for petty partisan reasons. Again, it is so shortsighted it is just unimaginable. It is as if Members of this body have attention deficit syndrome, where they are so focused on immediate gratification that they forget or they ignore the long-term consequences of this revolutionary change in what once was called the world's greatest deliberative body, which is no more the world's greatest deliberative body, at least under this majority leader and under his rule-breaking regime. Over the years leading up to last month's showdown, the majority leader repeatedly promised not to use the nuclear option. Again, I know this is about process. The eyes of the American people begin to glaze over when we talk about the internal processes and operation of the Senate. But as I attempted to demonstrate a moment ago, they have real- world consequences. Tell that to the people back at Fort Hood who lost their family member in this terrible terrorist attack on our own soil, committed by an American citizen wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army, where he joined the enemy, Islamic extremists, was radicalized by the same person who essentially tutored the Underwear Bomber who was arrested in Detroit, who tried to blow up another airplane on that day. Those people are the ones who are suffering the negative impact of the undermining of this institution by the majority leader. Well, the majority leader repeatedly promised not to use the nuclear option, but he broke that promise. My experience in public life is--again, we all have different ideas about how to accomplish our goals and hopefully improve life for the American people, but one of the things that are even more important is the personal relationships between Members of the Senate. There is a lot of good work that can get done when there is good faith and trust between Members of the Senate, and, indeed, those are not the kinds of things that typically make their way into the newspapers or that people pay much attention to because they are done quietly behind the scenes, cooperatively and collaboratively. But when the majority leader--the leader of this institution--breaks his word repeatedly about undermining the Senate rules in a partisan power grab, it necessarily undermines the trust that has come to be the important glue to this institution, and because it is important to this institution, it is important to the country. When we learned that trust is unjustified and that his promise is hollow and meaningless--well, it reminds me of another American who has made extravagant promises to the American people that were obviously false and could not and cannot be relied upon. I am talking about the President's promise in ObamaCare that if you like what you have, you can keep it. I saw a poll recently that said 37 percent of the respondents in that poll believe the President is honest and trustworthy. I didn't vote for this President, but he is still my President. The ability of the President of the United States to actually govern and to be respected--not only here in America but around the world--and viewed as a person of character and substance, well, it is completely undermined by the kinds of false promises this President has made in ObamaCare. It is not just limited to health care; it has broad ramifications and a huge ripple effect. In terms of the way that, for example, Bashar al- Assad in Syria used the President's redline on the use of chemical weapons--if Bashar al-Assad thinks this President is not going to be honest or trustworthy in terms of his statements, then his threats of a redline simply will not be believed. It is the same thing in Tehran, where 19,000 centrifuges are spinning and enriching uranium in Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons--a goal which, if achieved, and which is not too far off in the distant future, will destabilize the Middle East and will threaten not only a regional war but a larger conflict because if Iran gets a nuclear weapon--Iran is not just any average nation state. It is a state sponsor of international terrorism in the form of Hezbollah and other support, particularly directed at our ally and friend, the nation of Israel. Iran has been killing American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq for many years through their training and support for our more obvious adversaries there, through the design and importation in Iraq, for example, of explosively formed penetrators that will melt through the metal of our vehicles and other protective armament that our military uses and, as I said, resulted in the deaths of multiple American GIs. So Iran is not our friend. So when the President says: This is another redline, well, our enemies can read our newspapers. They read the same polls we read. They see a President making false statements that cannot be relied upon, and it undermines his credibility when it comes to our enemies--people who want to wipe Israel off the face of the map. That can have very dangerous consequences, obviously, because when people don't believe what America says through the voice and in the person of our Commander in Chief, the leader of the free world, it emboldens our enemies. They push the envelope in North Korea, Iran, Syria, and other places around the world. This is not a minor issue. When the President acts as if the law does not apply to him and if the law means just what he says it will--meaning at any given moment--it is as if the law doesn't really matter and his word cannot be trusted. Just a few other thoughts on how ObamaCare was passed. I remember being in this Chamber on Christmas Eve in 2009. I think it was 7 in the morning. It may have been 7:30 in the morning when we had the vote on the ObamaCare passage--at least the initial passage. It passed with 60 Democratic votes and no Republican votes. I often pointed out that before ObamaCare, every major domestic reform in modern U.S. history--from civil rights, to Medicare, to welfare reform, to No Child Left Behind--enjoyed significant bipartisan support at the time of its passage. Why is that important? Well, because ObamaCare was a pure partisan power play. It was shoved through on a party-line basis without a single Republican vote and despite high levels of public opposition. I remember people were told: Well, we just haven't done a very good job of messaging and explaining or when ObamaCare is implemented, people will learn to love it. Well, we now know that jamming through legislation which basically commandeers one-sixth of the American economy is a recipe for disaster. It is a bad way to pass any major law, let alone a measure that affects everyone in the country because our health care delivery system affects every man, woman, and child in our country. ObamaCare is a part of a broader pattern that should be deeply disturbing to anyone who cares about our Constitution and the checks and balances that the Framers of our Constitution knew would be so important to maintaining consensus and maintaining balance. Today's Democratic leaders seem to believe that might makes right and that inconvenient legislation can be swept aside by Executive fiat and that when the Senate rules prove to be an obstacle to obtaining what they want, such as stacking the second most important court in the Nation in order to be a rubberstamp for the bureaucracy's ideological zeal, well, they can sweep aside those rules too. This debate is about far more than policy differences. It is about the respect for the rule of law and respect for our Constitution, it is about preventing the executive branch from running roughshod over Congress, and it is about safeguarding the constitutional government. If we need any more examples about the Obama administration's abuse of power, I am prepared to provide that. We know the Obama administration showed contempt for the normal legislative process in a number of ways. When Congress refused to enforce card check for labor unions, the administration turned to unelected bureaucrats at the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB. When Congress refused to, on a bipartisan basis, pass cap-and-trade energy taxes, the administration turned to unelected bureaucrats, the Environmental Protection Agency. Indeed, now President Obama has authorized the EPA to regulate virtually every aspect of the American economy without congressional approval even though the EPA itself has acknowledged that its proposed greenhouse gas rule would not have a notable impact on carbon dioxide emissions during the next decade. The Obama administration is acting in a lawless manner in other ways as well. In early 2011, more than 2 years before the Supreme Court ruled on the Defense of Marriage Act, President Obama ordered his Justice Department to stop defending the law even though it was passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Congress. It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton and broadly supported by the American people. The right way to deal with that is not for the executive branch to refuse to enforce the law, but it is to come back to Congress and say: You know what. We think things have changed. Congress ought to reconsider. Rather than do that, the President decided to have the Justice Department refuse to enforce the very law Bill Clinton signed. Then there is the Independent Payment Advisory Board. This is part of ObamaCare--one that perhaps has one of the most pernicious impacts because what it does is it puts unelected bureaucrats in charge of deciding health care for your mother, your father, your grandmother, or your grandfather--in other words, whether Medicare beneficiaries can get the health care they need. How do they have an impact? Well, these 15 bureaucrats, under this ObamaCare-created bureaucracy, will have the authority to decide what sort of health care Medicare pays for. This is just a way to ration access to care. So if these 15 bureaucrats on IPAB--the Independent Payment Advisory Board--say: You know what. We think you are too old; we don't think it is worth it for you to get a hip replacement so you can walk and be productive and mobile; we don't think it is worth it for you to get bypass surgery; we are not going to pay for it, the Federal Government will not pay for it, and so it will not be delivered. What is worse is that IPAB's recommended Medicare cuts automatically take effect unless a congressional supermajority votes to cut health care spending by an equivalent amount. Columnist George Will said: This is a travesty of constitutional lawmaking: An executive branch agency makes laws unless Congress acts to achieve the executive agency's aim. This is the Constitution turned on its head. Indeed, IPAB makes a mockery of our constitutional system of separation of powers, and it should be repealed immediately. Not only has the administration used unelected bureaucrats to sidestep the normal legislative process and disregarded the rule of law for transparently political or ideological reasons, it has also fostered a culture of deception and intimidation. One example is Operation Fast and Furious. This has particular impact to my State, which is a big border State. My colleagues will recall that Operation Fast and Furious was this boneheaded idea wherein the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives would actually allow weapons to go from American gunshops into the hands of the drug cartels without interdiction. I guess the idea was once they got in the hands of the cartels, we would somehow trace them and know who the bad guys are, but it broke down along the way. So many of these guns were simply not recovered and no doubt have been used to kill many people in Mexico, as well as an American citizen, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, 3 years ago. Attorney General Holder, who is administratively responsible for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, repeatedly obstructed a congressional investigation into Fast and Furious, and his sworn testimony was repeatedly contradicted by the Justice Department itself, by their own memos. One DOJ official--a U.S. attorney in Arizona--tried to smear a whistleblower by leaking a private document. The Department of Justice's own inspector general called this behavior inappropriate for a Department employee and wholly unbefitting a U.S. attorney. A separate DOJ official was forced to resign her position after she was caught collaborating with leftwing bloggers to slander both whistleblowers and journalists. Then there is the IRS scandal. It is almost hard to keep up with all of the scandals, but we can't let these get away from us because they are so important to get to the bottom of one of the most important governmental bodies in the U.S. Government, and that is the Internal Revenue Service that, again, touches all of our lives. We found out, of course, that IRS agents were deliberately targeting people based on their political views. At least one conservative activist, Catherine Engelbrecht from Houston, TX, was targeted by multiple agencies, including the IRS, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA. We also know the administration--or at least the bureaucracy--has targeted political donors. The 2012 Obama campaign bullied private citizens who donated money to Gov. Mitt Romney, including a man named Frank VanderSloot whose experience was chronicled by Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal. In April of 2012, Mr. VanderSloot found himself, along with seven other Romney donors, condemned by an Obama campaign Web site for being ``less than reputable.'' The Web site suggested that quite a few of the eight donors had placed themselves on the wrong side of the law and had gotten rich at the expense of so many other Americans. Mr. VanderSloot was singled out because--or I should say he was singled out as a ``bitter foe'' of the gay rights movement. Mr. VanderSloot didn't run for public office. He didn't volunteer to be treated like this. He is an American citizen who was engaging in a constitutionally protected right to provide financial support to a political candidate of his choosing. Rather than keep the fight on the political opponent--Governor Romney--the Obama campaign went after the donors. Mr. VanderSloot didn't have a criminal background, nor did any other of the Romney donors who were similarly targeted. But shortly after he was denounced by the Obama campaign in this manner, a Democratic opposition researcher began researching his divorce records. Meanwhile, the IRS decided to audit 2 years' worth of his tax filings, and the Labor Department announced a separate audit of the immigrant workers employed at his cattle ranch. As Kimberley Strassel wrote for the Wall Street Journal: ``Every thinking American must henceforth wonder if Mr. VanderSloot has been targeted for inquiry because of his political leanings.'' We also know this administration has harassed journalists. Although President Obama said this administration would be the most transparent administration in American history, it has proven not to be so. In the case of FOX News correspondent James Rosen, the Obama Justice Department tracked him down like a common criminal simply for doing his job. The Department of Justice tracked Rosen's movements, got a search warrant to examine his private emails, and even obtained his parents' phone records. This is a journalist. As a Washington correspondent for the New Yorker magazine noted: ``It is unprecedented for the government, in an official court document, to accuse a reporter of breaking the law for conducting the routine business of reporting on government secrets.'' We also know the Obama Justice Department has conducted a disturbingly intrusive investigation into the phone records of journalists who work for the Associated Press, and, as I said, displayed an unprecedented level of contempt and obstruction for the Freedom of Information Act. Washington lawyer Katherine Meyer has filed FOIA cases under six different administrations dating back into the late 1970s. FOIA is the shorthand for the Freedom of Information Act, of course. Last year, she told Politico that ``this administration is the worst on FOIA issues-- the worst.'' So much for the President's claim to be the most transparent administration in this Nation's history. In 2011, the Obama-Holder Justice Department received a mock award from the nonpartisan National Security Archive which said that the DOJ had shown the ``worst open government performance'' of any Federal agency that year. This is the agency that is supposed to enforce the Freedom of Information laws, and it was recognized as demonstrating the ``worst open government performance'' of any agency that year. Among other things, the Department of Justice was cited for its mistreatment of whistleblowers and its efforts to undermine the Freedom of Information law. Speaking of whistleblowers, we know the State Department has also punished U.S. diplomats for cooperating with congressional investigators looking into the September 2012 terrorist attack that killed four Americans at Benghazi, Libya. This is so outrageous that it bears recall that Susan Rice, the President's U.N. Ambassador, showed up on five, I believe it was, Sunday morning talk shows and claimed the attack at the American consulate in Benghazi that took the life of four Americans was precipitated by a video that was deemed to be disrespectful of the religion of Islam. It turns out that wasn't true, and for a long time the administration denied this was even a terrorist attack--something which it now acknowledges. But when people come forward, such as the whistleblowers, diplomats who knew the Ambassador and those who lost their lives on that terrible night in September of 2012, then they are punished, not welcomed as truth tellers, to get to the bottom of this terrible incident in Benghazi, Libya. Then we know that further intimidation continued with ObamaCare in 2010. Actually, this preceded the Benghazi intimidation. In 2010, various health insurance companies began alerting their customers that ObamaCare was going to force them to raise premiums. This is back in 2010. Fast forward to 2012. That is what has happened. So first of all, people saw the Web site was a problem and now that is getting fixed, and now they are experiencing cancellations, and then there is the sticker shock where their premiums have gone up. In 2010, when the insurance industry tried to tell their own customers their premiums are going to go up because of this law, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, responded by threatening to punish these companies and bar them from participating in the ObamaCare exchanges. It is quite remarkable. I think in any other context we could call this thuggery, intimidation, abuse of power. A few years later, we learned that Secretary Sebelius was shaking down private companies to help fund the implementation of ObamaCare because Congress, believing it had been misled in so many instances regarding ObamaCare, had refused funding. It is very disturbing to learn that the same IRS official who led the division that targeted people because of their political beliefs is now in charge of administering large portions of ObamaCare. As I said a moment ago, one of the biggest casualties in all of this--particularly as it relates to the false promises of ObamaCare--is the President's own credibility. The other day I had a chance to speak on this topic and I said, ``ObamaCare is the single biggest case of consumer fraud in American history.'' Anybody else under any circumstance would find themselves hauled into court and be called to account. If a private citizen or a private company had spoken out, they would be sued for money damages. They would likely be put out of business because there would be an injunction granted or perhaps punitive damages. When the President speaks on behalf of the United States, whether it is in domestic affairs such as ObamaCare or whether it is on international matters such as the red line on chemical weapons in Syria or the red line on Iranian nuclear aspirations, it should count for something. But according to a new NBC Wall Street Journal poll, only 37 percent of Americans give President Obama a ``very good'' rating for ``being honest and straightforward''--37 percent. That compares with 63 percent in January of 2009. So the President's reputation for honesty went from 63 percent in January 2009 to 37 percent on December 11, 2013, or at least that is the date the Wall Street Journal and NBC reported the results. We know when the President's approval rating--particularly his approval rating for honesty and truthfulness--is damaged, all of those who trusted the President as he led them down the gangplank with the implementation of ObamaCare are bound to get pretty nervous, because while the President was able to move the actual implementation of ObamaCare past his own reelection in 2012--this law was passed back in 2010. Yet the President himself was able to avoid accountability, by and large, by pushing the implementation past his election in November 2010. But 2014 will be a midterm election. The President will not be on the ballot, but his allies will be on the ballot--people who trusted him, as he told them and he told the American people that you are going to be able to keep what you have if you like it, even though he knew it wasn't true. We know that from as far back as 2010. Senator Mike Enzi led the effort to expand the grandfathering flexibility in the Health and Human Services rules, and that was defeated on a party-line vote. All of our Democratic friends voted against expanding the flexibility of these grandfathering provisions back in 2010 when HHS and, indeed, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that as many as 78 million Americans on employer-provided plans would find they would no longer be able to keep their coverage either. So there is going to be a day of accountability in November of 2014, as those who, perhaps unwisely, trusted the President, who believed in this big government scheme that simply has not worked--and that many of us believed would never work--there will be a day of accountability. My hour has come and gone, and I see the Senator from Oklahoma on the floor. In conclusion, I ask unanimous consent that a summary of stories from Texans who have been affected by ObamaCare be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, 4 years ago Members of both parties came to this Senate floor virtually every day to discuss the problems with America's health care system and offered suggestions for how we could remedy that. I distinctly remember being here on Christmas Eve, 2009, at 7 in the morning and witnessing a party-line vote on ObamaCare. All of our Democratic friends voted for it, and all Republicans voted against it. I guess the most charitable thing I can say is that our Democratic friends actually thought it would work while Republicans were skeptics about this big government takeover of one-sixth of our national economy. Well, 4 years later the cost of ObamaCare has become abundantly clear. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that ObamaCare is the biggest case of consumer fraud ever perpetrated in this country. A law that was supposed to expand coverage to those without it has instead caused millions of people with coverage to lose their coverage. A law that was supposed to improve patient access has instead resulted in smaller provider networks where people are restricted in terms of the doctors and hospitals they can see, making it much more likely that people will not be able to keep their doctors, should they want them. A law that was supposed to bend the cost curve down has instead caused individual and family premiums to skyrocket. We have heard story after story that even if the premiums are lower, people, due to copays and deductibles, are finding themselves with thousands and thousands of dollars of deductibles they didn't previously have, meaning it is more money out of their pocket before the insurance actually kicks in. We were told this was supposed to make Medicaid the safety net program for the most economically disadvantaged among us. We were told that Medicare for seniors was supposed to make them stronger. Instead it has made them weaker. A law that was supposed to help our economy has instead hurt our economy by discouraging full-time job creation, because if you have a full-time job your employer has to pay for the full ObamaCare pricetag. Due to ObamaCare businesses have been moving people from full-time work to part-time work. A number of labor organization leaders went to the White House a few months ago and called the implementation of ObamaCare a nightmare. They said it made full-time work part-time work. It is worse than that. ObamaCare has hampered medical innovation by taxing the very people who build medical devices here in America and is causing them to move those businesses offshore or simply cut down their hiring. It has placed costly new burdens on small businesses, the entities which produce as much as 70 percent of the new jobs in America. It is not the Fortune 500 companies that create the vast majority of jobs in America, it is the small mom-and-pop operations, the entrepreneurs who create those jobs, and that is who ObamaCare hits the hardest. It is no wonder our economy continues to struggle. It is no wonder the labor participation rate--the number of people who are actually in the workforce--is at a 35-year low. People have given up looking for work, and that is an American tragedy. As I stand here today, the broken promises of ObamaCare are causing enormous distress and financial hardship for people all across my State of Texas and all across America. It is undeniable that millions of Americans have lost their insurance because of ObamaCare despite President Obama's almost daily recitation that if you like what you have, you can keep it. He was making that promise as late as 2012, and we knew it wasn't true. We knew it was not true--and he knew it wasn't true--as early as 2010 when we debated some restrictive grandfather regulations from the Department of Health and Human Services. Senator Enzi, who was the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, tried to get it fixed, and again we saw a party-line vote. All of our Democratic friends said, no, let's not provide flexibility for the grandfather provisions. Let's maintain the rigid grandfather provisions which have now resulted in more than 5 million people getting notices telling them that even though they like the policies they have, they can no longer keep them. That is why I have said this is one of the biggest cases of consumer fraud ever perpetrated in the United States by virtue of its scope and the audacity with which these promises were made time and time again, which are demonstrably not true. They are false. We know ObamaCare is leading to a dramatic spike in insurance premiums for many people who buy their insurance in the individual market. My colleagues will recall that during and after the 2008 Presidential election, President Obama repeatedly told Americans his health care plan would reduce their health care premiums for a family of four by about $2,500. I don't know where he came up with that number, but it turned out to be just another broken promise. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, annual premiums for employer-based family health insurance increased by nearly $3,000 between 2009 and 2013. In other words, the President was $5,500 wrong. Rather than going down $2,500, they went up $3,000. For that matter, a recent study by the Manhattan Institute estimated that ObamaCare will drive up individual premiums by an average of 41 percent. I don't know many hardworking American families who can afford a 41- percent increase in their health care costs as a result of a law promising that health care would be more affordable. The single biggest increase, according to this study, will be in the majority leader's home State of Nevada where individual premiums are projected to rise by an astounding 179 percent. The increases in New Mexico, Arkansas, and North Carolina are 142 percent--that would be New Mexico; 138 percent, that would be Arkansas; and 136 percent in North Carolina. What do each of these States have in common? They are represented by Senators who voted for this bill, perhaps believing what the President said would be true, but their constituents are having to pay the price. Such premium increases are particularly burdensome for senior citizens and other folks on a fixed income. For example, recently in Copper Canyon, TX, one of my constituents wrote to me and said that because of ObamaCare, her monthly premiums were increasing by $200, which is only $27 less than her monthly Social Security income. In other words, it takes up almost the entire amount of her Social Security check for her to purchase this insurance. That is wrong. In addition to premium hikes, many Americans entering the ObamaCare exchanges are facing higher deductibles. I mentioned that a moment ago. In a front-page story just yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, it was reported that many ObamaCare deductibles are so high that people with modest incomes may not be able to afford the portion of medical expenses that insurance doesn't cover. What is that all about? In fact, according to one study, the average deductible for the cheapest individual coverage on the Federal ObamaCare exchange is 42 percent higher than the average deductible for individual health insurance earlier this year, before most of ObamaCare kicked in--a 42-percent higher deductible. As we know, many of these deductibles we are hearing are in the $4,000 and $5,000 range for individuals and they are up to $10,000 or more for married couples. I don't know many households in Texas or across America that can absorb $10,000 in a deductible for their health insurance policy. Certainly that doesn't strike me as a success if the purpose is to cover health care costs and to prevent people from suffering economic hardship as a result. That strikes me as an epic failure. In other words, ObamaCare is making it significantly harder for many Americans to pay their bills, to buy groceries, and take care of their families. Again, as I have said many times before, it didn't have to be this way. It didn't have to be this way. In 2009, polls demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of Americans who had health insurance liked what they had, and they were broadly satisfied with it. I assume that is why the President said: If you like what you have, you can keep it, because about 90 percent of the respondents said: We like what we have. So if you are the President trying to sell this so-called Affordable Care Act, you wouldn't want to scare that 90 percent of people into thinking they can't keep what they have even though they like it. So you misrepresent what you are selling. You tell people you can keep what you have and your premiums are going to go down and it is all going to be all right. If we had focused on those people who either did not have coverage or who had inadequate coverage--obviously a smaller subset of Americans than the whole country--if we focused on them and dealt with their challenges in purchasing health insurance, we could have done much better. There were millions more who had low-quality Medicaid coverage that many doctors refused to accept because, in my State, Medicaid pays a doctor about 50 cents on the dollar compared to private insurance. Many doctors said: Look. I want to see more Medicaid patients, but I simply can't afford to do it. I have to opt for higher paying private insurance patients. We know Medicare was facing a fast approaching bankruptcy date. What Congress could have done--what we should have done--is to enact sensible, narrowly drawn, targeted reforms, No. 1, aimed at improving the coverage options for each of these groups and strengthening and preserving Medicare and Medicaid. We needed to bring down the costs, not jack up the costs. If we ask most people the biggest problem they have with their health insurance, they say it costs too much, and we have made it worse. It is worse, not better. To bring down the costs, we could have allowed people to buy health insurance across State lines. I know that doesn't sound like a panacea, but most States have captive insurance markets and many State legislatures, including the Texas legislature, have mandated coverage that many people simply don't want, but it adds to the cost of their health insurance. So I could have the choice to buy insurance across State lines if we enacted this reform. If I liked the insurance coverage of Wisconsin or Louisiana or somewhere else, and if that suited my needs, I could buy it there and we would have a true competitive market and people would compete based on quality and price, but we don't have that now. What else could we have done? We could have expanded the use of tax- free health savings accounts paired with high deductible plans, such as the kind I talked to a number of my constituents in Austin, TX, about who are employed at Whole Foods. They cover roughly 80 percent of the out-of-pocket costs for health insurance through health savings accounts and high deductible insurance, and the employees--I think it is still the case; it was then--still vote on an annual basis for what kind of coverage they want. They vote for this type of coverage because they are satisfied with it and it gives them a sense of ownership, which is actually true, because the money put in a health savings account they get to keep and if they don't use it on their health care, then they get to save it, the same as with an IRA or something such as that. But it also changes the calculation. It makes people much smarter shoppers and it moves us further along to a system where people can shop for their health insurance and their health services as they do with everything else and it will bring down costs and it will improve quality of service as a result of competition for that business. We could have cracked down on frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits which cause defensive medicine. Just think about it. If a doctor is worried about losing everything they have worked a lifetime to achieve in terms of assets and their medical practice, the last thing they want to do is be subjected to a lottery-type lawsuit. So the easiest thing for those doctors to do--I know they don't do it on purpose--is make the decision to provide a test or a treatment based not so much on a patient's clinical situation but based on their desire to not be sued and to not be second-guessed 2 years later when somebody comes in and says you should have done this or that. So the temptation is to do everything and to run up the cost of health care coverage. These are just a few examples. But by lowering costs across the board, these reforms--which I talked about and which the President and his political party rejected--could have helped people who already had coverage and we could have helped those who previously could not have afforded coverage. Some people--if I have heard it one time, I have heard it a thousand times--said we need ObamaCare because people with preexisting conditions couldn't get coverage. That is a serious concern. But we already have in place high-risk pools in the States, and if we needed to help those States provide coverage to people with those high-risk health conditions, we could have done it a whole lot cheaper and a whole lot more efficiently than creating this huge monstrosity, this huge bureaucracy, this huge expense known as ObamaCare. We could have increased funding to the high-risk pools that were already operating in about three dozen States. The irony is that the people in the high-risk pool in Texas got a letter that said their coverage has been canceled effective December 31--the very people ObamaCare was supposed to help--your coverage is canceled because ObamaCare kicks in January 1. But because people were worried about their ability to get on the exchanges due to the Web site problems, the Texas legislature and the Texas Department of Insurance decided to extend the coverage of the high-risk health insurance pools in Texas so people wouldn't fall through the cracks because of this train wreck of a rollout of ObamaCare. How about Medicaid. We hear a lot of discussion about Medicaid. I have already mentioned that Medicaid only reimburses doctors about half what a private insurance policy would, so a lot of doctors simply can't afford to see a new Medicaid patient. In Texas, only one doctor out of three will see a new Medicaid patient for that reason. It is not because they don't want to; it is simply because they can't afford to do so. We could have made it a lot easier for States to bolster their Medicaid Program and deliver targeted policies that would allow them to manage Medicaid populations, for example; create a medical home, for example. But because of the redtape Washington refused to cut, Medicaid ends up in many instances being an appearance of coverage, but people can't find a doctor who will see them. What good is that? That is, to me, a sleight of hand and part of the reason I call this one of the biggest cases of consumer fraud in American history. To help Medicare patients--who are, of course, our seniors--we could have increased private competition and patient choice by embracing the premium support model that was endorsed by 10 members of President Clinton's Medicare Commission back in 1999. That is not a partisan solution; it is one President Clinton's Medicare Commission embraced back in 1999. The reforms I have just outlined would have given us a genuine national marketplace for individual health insurance. Unfortunately, our friends across the aisle and our President decided to take a different path with the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare. Unfortunately, the folks who designed ObamaCare consciously chose to destroy the individual market and force millions of people to pay for Washington-mandated coverage they didn't need and they didn't want and at a price they can't afford. Rather than adopt measures to bring down the costs and coverage issues for a subset of the population, the roughly 10 percent who weren't among those 90 percent who said they like what they had, the President and his allies chose to wreck the existing health care system--to wreck it, to make it worse, not better. As a result, they have made the cost problem worse. They have jeopardized physician access for millions of Americans who like their current health plans and wish to keep them. And, of course, now the administration is boasting that the Web site is mostly fixed. Indeed, by most objective reports, people are not experiencing the same sort of epic failure they did when they first tried to get into the Obama exchanges. But at this point the President and his allies have lost all credibility with regard to other aspects of ObamaCare, which I have mentioned. Fixing the Web site will not fix the underlying deficiencies of ObamaCare. These are not glitches. These were baked in the cake. These were designed. This is the way ObamaCare was created and was supposed to work, notwithstanding the fact that the American people had been sold a bill of goods to the contrary. Indeed, the only way to solve America's biggest health care challenges is a do-over, to replace ObamaCare with the sort of patient- centered reforms I mentioned a few moments ago. ObamaCare may be a complete disaster, but it is not too late for us to work together to fix what is broken and to start over. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), and the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necesarrily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson) would have voted ``nay.''

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jason Church, a military fellow in Senator Ron Johnson's office, be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of consideration of S. 1197, the National Defense Authorization Act.