John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I wish to turn the compliment around and extend my appreciation to the Senator from Ohio Mr. Brown for his leadership on this issue. This is long overdue to these great American patriots, the recognition they so justly earned.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, 4 years ago an Islamic radical who identified with Al Qaeda and supported the cause of global jihad opened fire at Fort Hood Army base in Killeen, TX. The shooter eventually killed 12 soldiers and 1 civilian, while wounding 30 others. He might have killed or wounded many more but for the selflessness of a civilian physician's assistant by the name of Michael Cahill and an Army captain named John Gaffaney, both of whom charged the gunman and gave their lives in order to save the lives of others. Four years later we continue to honor their tremendous sacrifice and we continue to honor the memories of all those who gave their lives or were injured on that awful day. Back in August, the Fort Hood shooter was sentenced to death for his crime and appropriately so. Let me be clear about what the nature of this crime was. This was not an ordinary criminal event. This was a terrorist attack, plain and simple, committed by a man who had reportedly had at least 20 different email communications with a senior Al Qaeda figure by the name of Anwar al- Awlaki. The late Mr. Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in September 2011, also had contacts, well documented, with the so-called Underwear Bomber, who tried to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253 just 7 weeks after the massacre at Fort Hood. Following the Fort Hood attack, Awlaki celebrated the shooter as a hero. He called him a hero. He also told Al Jazeera that prior to the attack, the gunman had specifically asked him whether Islamic law justified ``killing U.S. soldiers and officers.'' The Fort Hood shooter had repeatedly and unapologetically said that these terrible atrocities which included execution-style murders were just part of the larger jihad against the West, which is why he shouted ``Allahu Akbar'' just before opening fire. The shooter has said that by slaughtering 13 Americans, including 12 uniformed military members and 1 civilian, he was defending ``the Islamic Empire'' and ``helping my Muslim brothers.'' In short, the Fort Hood massacre was not an episode of workplace violence. This was a terrorist attack inspired by terrorist propaganda and carried out by someone who was an agent of Al Qaeda and viewed himself as an Al Qaeda holy warrior. Unfortunately, the U.S. Government so far has refused to give the kind of recognition that is deserved to the 12 uniformed servicemembers who gave their lives, and those who were injured on that terrible day. Part of that recognition should include Purple Hearts to the soldiers who lost their lives that day, and not given the civilian equivalent, the Medal for the Defense of Freedom, to Michael Cahill. In other words, the U.S. Government's official position is that this is not a terrorist attack on our own soil but instead is an ordinary criminal attack. That cannot stand. We cannot denigrate the service of those military members who lost their lives that day--and civilian hero Michael Cahill who lost his life--by saying that this is somehow workplace violence or some ordinary criminal attack. We need to officially recognize that this was a terrorist attack inspired by Al Qaeda and carried out by an agent of Al Qaeda on our own soil. Some will tell you that Purple Hearts can be awarded to victims of a terrorist attack only if the perpetrators of that attack were acting under the direction of a foreign terrorist organization. In their view, the Fort Hood shooter does not qualify. This argument fails to take into account the evolving nature of the conflict--the global war on terrorism. After all, Al Qaeda leader al-Zawahiri has urged his followers to conduct exactly the kind of deadly attacks that occurred at Fort Hood in 2009 and at the Boston Marathon in 2013. Al-Zawahiri believes that such ``dispersed,'' small-scale attacks will ``keep America in a state of tension and anticipation.'' As he declared a few months ago, ``These dispersed strikes can be carried out by one brother, or a small number of brothers.'' In other words, it doesn't make sense to distinguish so-called lone wolf terrorists acting on behalf of Al Qaeda from other terrorists with a more explicit Al Qaeda affiliation. Remember, Al Qaeda doesn't issue business or calling cards, and it doesn't issue its staff IDs. What it does do is urge Islamic radicals around the world to pick up arms and kill Americans, and that is what Major Hasan did that terrible day 4 years ago at Fort Hood in Killeen, TX. For that matter, Al Qaeda views American soil as a primary battleground in its war against western civilization. When courageous members of our military lose their lives to Al Qaeda- inspired terrorists, whether it is abroad or here at home, they deserve to receive Purple Hearts, and their grieving families deserve to receive the proper benefits accorded to all men and women in our military who lose their lives in service to their country. It should not matter whether they lose their lives in America-- whether it is in New York on 9/11 or Killeen, TX, 4 years ago--or on the battlefield in Afghanistan. It should not make any difference where they lose their life as part of the effort to protect innocent life in the war on terrorism. If they are killed by a terrorist committing violence on behalf of foreign jihadists, then they are casualties in the broader war on terrorism, and they deserve to be treated as such. Earlier this year I introduced legislation that would make the Fort Hood victims eligible for all of the honors and benefits available to their fellow U.S. servicemembers serving overseas in combat zones. My cosponsors in the House are Representatives Carter and Williams, and they have numerous cosponsors. Today I am offering a modified version of that legislation as an amendment to the Defense authorization bill. By enacting this amendment, Congress would honor the memories of those who lost their lives at Fort Hood, and it would help their surviving family members, all of whom, as you can imagine, have experienced tremendous pain and hardship as a result of this terrorist act on our own soil 4 years ago in Fort Hood, Killeen, TX, at the hands of MAJ Nidal Hasan, an agent of Al Qaeda, to be sure, and someone who deserves the penalty of death that has been meted out by a military jury a few weeks ago. I hope the Senate will rise up in a bipartisan way and pass this important legislation and erase these meaningless distinctions which differentiate between those who lose their lives in Afghanistan and those who lose their lives here on American soil. It is a just and well-deserved honor that these patriots have earned by their own blood, and these families deserve as a way of ameliorating some of the terrible loss they have suffered in their own service to our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we yield the remainder of our time.

Mr. CORNYN. I yield the remaining time to the junior Senator from Arizona.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. CORNYN. I ask the senior Senator from Arizona, as we discussed, he has been a critic and pointed out waste in the procurement process. I know the military, in designing state-of-the-art weapons systems, the F-35, for example, built in the notion of concurrency, where they are actually designing it while they are building it which creates cost overrun challenges. But I know the Senator was also instrumental in finally getting the Pentagon to negotiate a fixed-price contract. Could the Senator talk a little bit about some of the challenges?

Mr. CORNYN. I ask the Senator from Oklahoma, isn't it true he has the materials Senator McCain referred to posted on his Web site?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have been a member of this Chamber for a while now, and during my time here few of our colleagues have done more to expose waste and duplication and overspending than our colleague from Oklahoma Senator Coburn. I am, of course, cognizant of the fact that Senator McCain, the senior Senator from Arizona, has quite a reputation himself in this area. I am pleased to join both of my colleagues, along with, I anticipate, the junior Senator from Arizona, to talk about some very important work Senator Coburn and his staff have done to help highlight the savings we can find within the Defense Department budget due to duplication and waste and failure to exercise reasonable management practices, such as audits. We can save money and reallocate that money to help our fighting men and women in uniform, help keep them safe and help maintain America's role as a preeminent military leader in the world. Senator Coburn has pointed out in a new report I am sure he will talk about that we can save more than $60 billion by consolidating half the Federal Government's duplicative programs. Each of these programs has its own overhead, and through consolidation we can eliminate that overhead and still make sure the same amount of money is used to deliver the particular service. For that matter, if we were to consolidate just a third of the renewable energy programs, we could save $5 billion alone. If we stop sending unemployment checks to millionaires, we could save another $30 billion. I am a proud defense hawk. We call it the Yellow Pages test in Texas. If you can look in the yellow pages and see a service being provided by the private sector, you have to ask, why is the government providing that service? But there is no ability of anyone to provide national security except for the Federal Government. It is the No. 1 reason for the Federal Government's existence, and it is a tragedy to see so much money wasted when it is needed so desperately by our military during these very dangerous times. It is, indeed, embarrassing that the Pentagon cannot even conduct an audit. They do not know where the money is. They do not know how it is being spent, how it is being misspent. So I am a proud cosponsor of my colleague's Audit the Pentagon Act. The Pentagon isn't scheduled to actually perform an audit until 2017, and I doubt they will be able to meet that deadline. I am sure we will hear more about that from the Senator from Oklahoma. There is no good reason why the Pentagon shouldn't be able to tell the American people exactly how it is spending hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Don't get me wrong. If our military needed the money in order to protect the American people and to keep us safe, I would vote for that expenditure 10 times out of 10. But when I am told there is money that should be spent helping keep us safe and protecting our national security that is wasted through duplicative programs, through inefficiencies, through the inability to simply manage the hundreds of billions of dollars the Pentagon manages, it makes me livid, as I think it should all of the American people. We know DOD continues to experience serious cost overruns with major acquisition programs. I know Senator McCain, in his capacity on the Armed Services Committee, has been an eloquent critic of these cost overruns of various acquisition systems. A 10-percent reduction in DOD waste could yield an annual savings of $60 billion--$60 billion. That is real money, and that is money that could either be reallocated to pay down the debt or could be reallocated to help fund very important overseas operations by our military in dangerous parts of the world or here at home. The bottom line is that even those of us who are proud national security hawks should be pushing first and foremost to eliminate wasteful defense spending and to audit the Pentagon. In my view, those are no-brainers. We should not continue down the path of wasteful Washington spending and say: Well, we don't have enough money, so we are just going to bust the budget caps in the Budget Control Act. We shouldn't say: Well, we are not going to address the hard issues of wasteful spending at the Pentagon; we are just going to raise taxes. Those are cop-outs, and we shouldn't go there. With that, I yield the floor for my good friend from Oklahoma.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with my colleagues for 30 minutes and that those 30 minutes not count against the current 6-hour commitment to debate the amendments on military sexual assault.

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 the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, earlier this month I launched a Web site where my constituents in Texas could describe their experiences with ObamaCare. As of this morning that site has received more than 500 submissions and the stories are simply maddening. For example, Barry Linden of Brenham, TX, is currently waiting for an organ transplant, but because of ObamaCare his health insurance policy is being canceled, which could jeopardize his ability to access that transplant. As Mr. Linden writes, losing his health care plan ``is a potential life-ending tragedy for me and my family. The forced dropping of my plan creates a variety of complications involving my transplant team [and] my medications.'' The ``most troubling'' thing, he adds, ``is that insurance will have to recertify my transplant.'' In other words, he will have to start all over. Meanwhile, I also heard from another constituent in Lubbock, TX, whose 13-year-old daughter has type 1 diabetes. She has had it since age 4. Her family had a health insurance policy when she was first diagnosed and they have been happy with that policy. However, because of ObamaCare, they were recently notified that their daughter's health insurance is being canceled in December. Stories such as this are simply infuriating and unnecessary, but they should strengthen our resolve to dismantle ObamaCare entirely and replace it with patient-centered alternatives. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, in a front page story yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that fewer than 50,000 people had successfully used the Federal ObamaCare Web site to enroll in a private health plan--less than 50,000. Meanwhile, we know that millions of Americans are already getting a cancellation notice from their insurance company telling them that their current policy--even if they like it--will no longer be available. In other words, if you like what you have, it turns out you cannot keep it--as millions of people are finding. No less a luminary in the Democratic Party than President Clinton has said that ObamaCare should be reformed to let people maintain their current health insurance. And we will see some votes in the House of Representatives as soon as Friday on that proposition, helping the President keep his promise to the American people that if you like what you have, you can keep it, which currently has proven not to be the case. Just a month ago, Democrats of all stripes were declaring that Obama was the settled law of the land and condemning attempts on our side of the aisle to actually reform it. Now we are seeing more and more of our friends across the aisle contemplating serious changes aimed at fixing some of the law's myriad problems. Some, but not all, of the problems with ObamaCare have become painfully obvious--some, because I think most people probably think ObamaCare has already been implemented, when, in fact, it has only begun to be implemented. But we know ObamaCare is forcing people to lose their health insurance and/or their doctor. It may be that even in the exchanges, the hospital which they prefer to be treated at or the doctor from whom they would prefer to have their care, they will not be available on the exchanges. We also know that ObamaCare is raising health care premiums. Again, the President promised that if we passed ObamaCare, we would see a reduction in the premiums for a family of four of about $2,500. Instead of seeing premiums go down, we are seeing premiums go up. We know that Medicare and Medicaid remain on an unsustainable path, and we are actually seeing, in many States, the States opting to expand the Medicaid program, when they cannot even care for or pay for the people who are currently in the Medicaid program. We have found that organized labor has gone to the White House. They said that because of the incentives in ObamaCare, many full-time employees were now being put on part-time work in order to avoid some of the penalties associated with ObamaCare. We know that in the medical device sector--one of the most innovative parts of health care today--those jobs are moving offshore. They are moving outside of the United States, and it is stifling innovation, this medical device tax which is part of the pay-for of ObamaCare. But here is another issue that has not gotten much attention lately. I was a little surprised when I came across this article in the Atlantic magazine, but the truth is the ObamaCare structure penalizes people for getting married. Certain couples who do qualify for the ObamaCare subsidies right now would lose those subsidies if they got married. In some cases, the ObamaCare marriage penalty could amount to thousands of dollars. So just when you think things could not quite get any worse, you find out they do. As if all these problems were not bad enough, ObamaCare has also created a magnet for fraud and corruption in the so-called navigators program. You will remember, the navigators were created in order to help people sign up on the exchanges. But we know the navigators will be collecting sensitive tax and personal information--medical, both physical and mental health information--from folks all across the country as they try to navigate ObamaCare. But we also know, because the Secretary of Health and Human Services admitted this last week, that they are not subject to any kind of background check, including a criminal background check. As a matter of fact, I think Secretary Sebelius surprised an awful lot of people when she admitted that people participating in the navigator program could possibly be convicted felons because there is simply no screening mechanism to bar them from participating in the process and no background check whatsoever. Then we have learned, as a result of some creative journalists, that navigators, including those in my home State of Texas, were actively encouraging people to break the law as a process of signing up for the ObamaCare exchanges. It is simply astounding that the administration is urging the American people to give their Social Security numbers and sensitive personal information to people who have not been properly vetted. Yesterday I called on the President to suspend the navigators program, and I want to reiterate that call today. He needs to end it, at least until basic precautions are taken to prevent identity theft and corruption and fraud. Given the lack of Federal background checks and other safeguards, this program is an invitation to fraud and identity theft. As with so many other aspects of ObamaCare, the problems with the navigators program are the result of politically motivated decisions. Do not just take my word for it. Consider the scathing indictment that was recently issued by Michael Astrue, who served as HHS general counsel from 1989 to 1992. More recently, he served as a commissioner for Social Security, from 2007 to 2013. Writing in the Weekly Standard, Mr. Astrue points out: Instead of hiring well-screened, well-trained, and well- supervised workers, HHS decided to build political support for the Affordable Care Act by pouring money into supportive organizations so they could launch poorly trained workers into their communities without obtaining criminal background checks or creating systems for monitoring their activities. Over the long term, we need to dismantle ObamaCare entirely and replace it with patient-centered alternatives that will actually bring costs down; improve the quality of care, by making more care accessible; and leaving the choices with consumers and their families, patients and their doctors making the decisions, not Washington, DC. In the short term, we need to also dismantle the navigators program before it unleashes a wave of fraud and corruption. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, back in 2005, before some of the current membership of the Senate was even here, we had a very important development when it came to judicial nominations and the advice-and- consent function of the Senate. Never, before the Presidency of George W. Bush, had nominees to the Federal court been filibustered; that is, a 60-vote threshold been imposed as opposed to a 51-vote threshold, which is, of course, what the Constitution says--requiring a majority of the Senate. But there was an impasse. A number of judges at the circuit court level and district court level were locked down in this impasse. But, as so often happens around the Senate, a gang broke out. A gang was created. Seven Republicans and seven Democrats got together and helped us work through this impasse, and they did so by adopting a new Senate precedent which says, in essence, there will be no filibusters of Federal judges absent ``extraordinary circumstances.'' Yes, you may say that is a broad standard, and it is somewhat subjective, admittedly so, but the point was that the default position would be that Federal judges would get up-or-down votes and there would not be the resort to the 60-vote threshold absent extraordinary circumstances. But the point is that has now become the precedent, basically the rule by which the Senate operates when it comes to Federal judicial nominations, and it is a precedent that has been upheld and respected by both sides of the aisle ever since President Obama took office. This afternoon we will be voting on a second nominee to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, a court some have called the second most important court in the Nation because, situated as it is in the District of Columbia, here in Washington, most of the judicial review of administrative decisions goes through this court at the appellate level, and because the Supreme Court only considers roughly 80 cases a year, for all practical purposes the DC Circuit Court becomes the last word on judicial review on many important decisions, particularly those involving agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency or matters of national security or reviewing the regulations associated with the financial services industry, such as Dodd-Frank and the like-- a pretty important court. Well, unfortunately, the majority leader and the President have determined that they are going to try to jam through three new judges on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals even though these judges are clearly not needed and there is demand elsewhere around the country where the workload is far heavier. But because of the special significance of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, there is a conscious effort being made to pack that court with three additional judges it does not need in order to change the current division--four to four--in a court where Republican Presidents appointed four, Democratic Presidents appointed four. So it is an evenly balanced court. As I said, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals does not need any more judges. So why in the world, in a time when we are looking to make sure every penny goes as far as it can and we are not spending money we do not have, would you want to appoint three new judges to a court that does not need any new judges? Well, here is the number: Since 2005 the total number of written decisions per active judge actually has gone down. As of September 2012 both the total number of appeals filed in the DC Circuit and the total number of appeals ended in the DC Circuit per active judge were 61 percent below the national average. So you might ask yourself, if it carries a 61-percent reduced caseload compared to the rest of the country, why don't we put the judges where President Obama can nominate them and the Senate can confirm them in places where they are actually needed rather than this court? Well, because of the reduced caseload and the lack of work for the judges to do on the DC Circuit, one DC Circuit judge recently told Senator Grassley, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, ``If any more judges were added now, there wouldn't be enough work to go around.'' Again, why in the world would President Obama insist and Majority Leader Reid insist on us confirming judges who are not needed when there is not enough work to go around if they were? Well, my friends across the aisle continue to say that all they care about is filling judicial vacancies, but the majority leader has made it clear that his real objective is to switch the majority when the court sits en banc. For example, ordinarily, circuit courts sit on a three-judge panel, but in important decisions you may have the entire court sit en banc or all together. And the objective is clear that the majority leader wants to stack it in favor of President Obama's nominees, to transform it into a rubberstamp for the President's big- government, overregulatory agenda. Indeed, despite all the victories the administration has won before this court, it is apparently not good enough. This administration has won several high-profile victories--in environmental cases, for example--but they are still upset with the court because it actually ruled against President Obama on cases related to corporate governance, emissions controls, recess appointments, and nuclear waste. So our colleagues are not content to have a court that is balanced and decides cases on a case-by-case basis they want to stack the court in a way that is a rubberstamp for the President's agenda. But here are some examples of the cases the court has decided recently. In 2011 the DC Circuit told the Securities and Exchange Commission to follow the law--believe that or not--to follow the law and conduct a proper cost-benefit analysis before adopting its regulations. That is what the law required. The Securities and Exchange Commission ignored the law, and the DC Circuit said ``follow the law'' and reversed the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2012 the court rejected an Environmental Protection Agency rule that went far beyond the limits of the Clean Air Act. These regulatory agencies have a lot of power and a lot of authority, but it all springs from a legislative enactment by Congress. That is the source of their power and their authority, and in this case it was the Clean Air Act. The court said the Environmental Protection Agency exceeded the limits of its authority based on the law that Congress wrote and the President signed into law. Then, in 2013, President Obama violated the Constitution, the court said, by making recess appointments when the Senate was not actually in recess. This is a very important power that goes back to President Washington that makes sure that when Congress is in recess there is still a way for the President to fill vacancies. But that was in the old days when Congress would basically leave town for months at a time. In this case, President Obama essentially decided he did not want to wait around for the advice- and-consent function or the confirmation function that is given in the Constitution to the Senate, and he jammed these nominees through using what he called his ``recess appointment'' power. Well, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals said: That is unconstitutional. Mr. President, you cannot do that. The law does not allow it. But that is another reason why, I suggest, the President is eager to stack this court with people he believes will be more ideologically aligned with his big-government agenda. Then there was one more decision this past August that I will mention. The court reminded the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its legal requirement to make a final decision on whether to use Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository. That sounds kind of arcane, but it is very important--certainly to the people of Nevada and to the U.S. national security interests when you talk about a safe and secure location to put nuclear waste. I would submit that all of these were commonsense rulings for which there is a very sound and broad legal basis, and the court was doing what all courts are supposed to do; that is, uphold the law. Apparently, the administration does not think this court should be in a position to do that, and they do not think they should have to be in a position to follow the law. They do not seem to care that the DC Circuit Court has ruled in favor of the administration on things such as stem cell research, health care, greenhouse gas regulation, and other hot-button issues. They do not seem to care that the court's eight active judges are evenly split between Republican and Democratic appointees. In their view, by upholding the law the DC Circuit has been insufficiently supportive of the Obama agenda, so now they are attempting to pack the court with three unneeded judges in order to stack it in the administration's favor. I said last week that my colleague from Iowa, Senator Grassley, has offered a commonsense alternative. It is a good compromise, and we have done it before. It would actually reallocate two of these seats on the DC Circuit that are unneeded to other courts in the country where they are needed. What makes more sense than that? We have done that once before. We took one of these positions from the DC Circuit and reallocated it to the Ninth Circuit, where they needed judges before. We ought to be putting the resources where they are actually needed, not stacking them in a court where the resources are not needed in order to pursue an ideological end. Unfortunately, our friends across the aisle--the majority leader and others--have rejected the Grassley compromise and pushed ahead with their court-packing maneuver. Given their stated desire to make the DC Circuit a liberal rubberstamp, Democrats have created an extraordinary circumstance that justifies the filibuster under the 2005 precedent brought about by the Gang of 14 that I started off with. I wish we had resolved this sooner. I wish my friends across the aisle would give serious consideration to the Grassley proposal. But for now, I am afraid we have reached an impasse, and so we will be voting on this nomination this afternoon. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

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 Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Sessions).

Mr. CORNYN. During the first few years after it became the law, the Affordable Care Act was known to most Americans as mainly a set of promises. Americans were repeatedly told that ObamaCare, once it began to take full effect--that coverage would expand, premiums would go down, and everyone who liked their existing health care coverage could keep it. When the President and my friends across the aisle described it this way, ObamaCare sounded too good to be true. Unfortunately, the promises really have turned out to be too good to be true. After spending years listening to hollow assurances about what ObamaCare would or would not do, the past 5 years have taught us a lot, maybe only the tip of the iceberg, about the realities of what ObamaCare actually looks like. We have learned that no fewer than 3.5 million Americans have already received cancellation notices from their insurance coverage because of the new law. We have learned that millions more will receive those same types of notices in the foreseeable future. We have learned that the administration and, in fact, the Senate, knew that was going to happen in 2010 because we had a vote on the Congressional Review Act of the regulation which would have expanded the grandfather clause, and it was defeated in a party-line vote with all Republicans voting to expand the grandfathering provision and all our Democratic colleagues voting against. What we learned, when they launched the ObamaCare Web site--which has been perhaps the most visible image of ObamaCare--was they did it before they could guarantee the information people would put in it would be secure. That includes both your tax information, your Social Security, and your mental health and physical health conditions. We learned yesterday from Secretary Sebelius that the navigators, who are the people who have been hired to help people navigate the Affordable Care Act and get signed up, were hired without performing any kind of background check. To the surprise of a lot of people, Secretary Sebelius answered a very direct question about that. I asked her in the Finance Committee: Is it possible a person could be a navigator and be a convicted felon? She said it is ``possible.'' Because there is no criminal background check. In other words, America's top health care officials believe it is possible that convicted felons could be collecting some of our most sensitive personal information--our Social Security numbers, tax information, and sensitive medical data. Yet this administration continues to insist upon refusing a proper vetting system. It is bad enough the Web site is entirely dysfunctional--that will get fixed sooner or later--but the fact is this same Web site could, in the interim, become a magnet for fraud and identity theft. Many of us who were skeptics about the President's extravagant promises of ObamaCare once implemented have been expressing our concerns for years. But as skeptical as I was about ObamaCare when it passed the Senate on Christmas Eve in 2009, it is even worse than many of us predicted--certainly worse than we imagined. With millions of Americans getting cancellation notices from their insurance companies, we are finding out their premiums are about to go up and not down. It is important to remember exactly why this is happening. Thanks to the regulations our friends across the aisle continue to support, ObamaCare has allowed Washington bureaucrats to define what constitutes an acceptable health insurance policy in the individual and small group market. In other words, it has allowed Washington bureaucrats to force hardworking American families to pay for health care coverage they do not want and they do not need. I have heard from my constituents in Texas who are absolutely furious and, in some cases, absolutely desperate about losing their coverage or being forced to pay higher premiums they simply can't afford in order to buy coverage they do not need. The underlying conceit of ObamaCare is that individuals and their families can't be trusted to choose the right health insurance coverage for themselves so they must turn those decisions over to the bureaucracy in Washington to do it for them. Some have heard us talk about a government takeover of the health care system. This is what a government takeover of a health care system looks like--when you lose the choices that should be available to you as an American citizen--to decide what kind of policy you need at a price you can afford--because of this monstrosity of a law. That is a government takeover. The main objective of ObamaCare, we were told, was to provide coverage for all Americans. Yet the Congressional Budget Office has made it clear ObamaCare fails even in that objective. They estimate about 30 million people will still remain uncovered by the year 2023 when ObamaCare has been fully implemented. Thirty million people. OK, explain to me again, what was the purpose of this exercise? We were going to bring costs down and cover people without insurance, and everyone would be able to keep the insurance they had if they liked it. Yet none of that ends up being true. All of that ends up being false. As I said yesterday, the cost of ObamaCare far outweighs the benefits. It would have been a lot smarter for us to figure out how to deal with the people who are uninsured and get them insured without raising costs or prejudicing the rights of people who had policies they already liked. If Congress were to choose at some point to actually dismantle ObamaCare in its entirety, which I think we ought to do, we ought to start over and enact an alternative health care reform bill aimed at solving the problem not creating new ones. These reforms could include revising the Tax Code so that individuals could buy their own health insurance on the same tax terms as if it were employer provided. We would allow people to actually buy in the health care market nationally and form pools to share risks. That would help bring down the costs. It would increase competition. We also ought to expand the use of tax-free health savings accounts for people who decide they want to buy a high-deductible catastrophic health insurance policy because it is pretty cheap, and in the meantime they want to set money aside each month in a health savings account. Maybe they will need it for health care and maybe they won't, but they get to do that tax free. And if they don't use it, they can use that as part of their retirement. We ought to expand that. We ought to make health care price and quality information a lot more transparent. One of the most successful health care programs I have seen pass the Congress--though we made some mistakes with it and we should have offset the cost--is the prescription drug plan, Medicare Part D. It has actually worked better than any of us thought it would because it is not a government takeover. It created competition between competing prescription drug companies that had to compete based on quality and price. The result has been the price has gone down roughly 30 percent under the projected costs when it was passed. That is the kind of transparency and choice that is produced from quality information and that leaves the choices to people individually and not to the government. And yes, we ought to crack down on frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits. We have seen in Texas that reducing the costs of frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits in turn helps to protect against defensive medicine, where doctors make clinical decisions based not on their best medical judgment but based on their aversion to litigation risk. We ought to use high-risk pools to ensure people with preexisting conditions can get covered. This is one of the biggest misrepresentations I have heard about ObamaCare. Some of our colleagues have said: Well, the only way you can get preexisting conditions covered is to take ObamaCare hook, line, and sinker. That is clearly not true. Virtually all of our States have high-risk programs for people with preexisting conditions. They may need to be better funded-- and we ought to look to try to shore them up--but it would be better to fix the problems we know exist rather than creating more problems. We ought to give the States more flexibility to deal with Medicaid. Medicaid is designed as a safety net program for people who can't afford to buy their own health insurance. I see the Senator from Maine on the floor, and she was very intimately involved in this when she was the insurance commissioner for her State. Medicaid, unfortunately, pays doctors about half of what private health insurance does to reimburse them for their costs, so many doctors have to restrict their practice and their ability to see new Medicaid patients. In Texas, only about one-third of the doctors will see a new Medicaid patient because they simply can't afford to do so. So we need to have additional freedom to improve Medicaid and to shore it up while providing competition and consumer choice to bring down costs in Medicare. Mr. President, such reforms would give us a health care system with much lower costs, much better coverage, and much greater access to quality care. Those are the sorts of reforms we should have embraced in 2009 and 2010 but did not. We missed our chance back then, but there is no good reason we have to accept ObamaCare or nothing. As a matter of fact, we should take this opportunity, as we see the promises of ObamaCare being broken and not living up to the expectations of its strongest proponents, to turn to these other sensible ways to lower costs, increase coverage, and improve access. As the law's deficiencies become more and more evident, I hope my friends across the aisle will join with us, Republicans and Democrats alike, to replace ObamaCare with something better.