John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. And after Senator McCain speaks and a Democrat speaks, that a Republican gets to speak and so forth. That is all I am asking.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, the majority leader asked for a number of Democratic Senators to speak without any intervening speeches or remarks by Republicans. All I am suggesting is, after he and the Republican leader speak----

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I would ask the distinguished majority leader if he would consider modifying his consent request so that we could alternate back and forth across the aisle. With that modification, I have no objection.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I agree with our colleagues that a government shutdown is not the best way to do business around here. We should get together--the President, the House, and the Senate--and we should work this out, both the continuing resolution and the debt ceiling, of which Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew has said he will basically run out of all of the extraordinary measures he can use to avoid us reaching the debt ceiling--which, colloquially speaking, I would say is the equivalent of maxing out your credit card, the Federal Government's credit card. But it is worth remembering that as James Baker, former Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of State, with a distinguished record of public service going back many years--he recently noted in an article in the Wall Street Journal that since 1976 we have had 17 government shutdowns temporarily until differences between the parties, between the branches could be worked out. I hope we can do that sooner rather than later. The truth is that there was a way out with regard to the shutdown, particularly when the House passed a piece of legislation that would maintain the spending limits at $988 billion, which was the same level the Senate majority had chosen, but it also attached two other provisions to it, one of which would have eliminated the carve-out for Congress for ObamaCare--in other words, the carve-out that treats Congress differently than the rest of the country. Our Democratic friends unfortunately voted against that provision. All Republicans voted to eliminate that carve-out. The second was the delay in the penalties that would be applied to individuals who do not buy government-approved health insurance under ObamaCare. The President has unilaterally delayed for 1 year the penalties for employers who do not meet the requirements of ObamaCare. All we were asking is that the same consideration be given to hard- working Americans. If our friends across the aisle--or at least enough of them--had joined with us to vote for both of those provisions that came over with the House bill, the government would not be shut down, it would be operating. But that was the decision they made. I think they made a mistake. But we know the government shutdown debate is now quickly becoming a debate over the broader subject of what we do about spending and debt, particularly what we do with regard to the debt ceiling I mentioned earlier. We have reached almost the top of our credit limit on the Nation's credit card, and President Obama is asking for another trillion dollars in spending, in debt limit. But the President differs from many of us in that he thinks this debt ceiling cap ought to be lifted by another trillion dollars without anything else attached to it. He thinks it ought to be automatic, even though we believe it is entirely appropriate--and the majority of times in the past, the debt ceiling increase has been accompanied by other long-term policy reforms. The President himself has agreed to these kinds of reforms in the past. But apparently this time he has drawn a line in the sand. So now he believes, unlike the past, that Congress should act like a rubberstamp when it comes to raising the limit on America's credit card, our debt limit. Meanwhile, it seems our friends across the aisle also feel the House should be a rubberstamp for the Senate. All of this leads me to conclude that James Madison, the father of the Constitution, must be rolling over in his grave because he and others of the Founders were the geniuses who decided that it was the checks and balances from separated government--the executive and the legislative, the House and the Senate--that would best protect our freedoms and best prevent overreach by other branches. But in a way I can understand why the President and the majority leader are refusing to negotiate and are saying ``it is my way or the highway.'' After all, the last time we had these kinds of major fiscal talks in advance of a debt ceiling deadline, the result was the Budget Control Act. That was 2011. That law produced, by default, real spending cuts and real deficit reduction. If you recall, that was where the supercommittee was created to try to negotiate a grand bargain. The supercommittee was unsuccessful, and the default was the Budget Control Act and the sequester, which automatically cut discretionary spending. Our friends across the aisle clearly think that was a big mistake. The President and the majority leader now are refusing to negotiate at all on the debt ceiling. They believe it ought to be rubberstamped. Well, amidst all of the rhetoric and the finger-pointing, now Washington has erupted into something it does best, which is the blame game. I am afraid we have lost sight of our underlying debt problem. Despite the short-term deficit reduction we have witnessed since 2011 due to the default position of the Budget Control Act, our long-term fiscal trajectory remains unsustainable. Last month the Congressional Budget Office projected that publicly held Federal debt is on course to exceed the size of our entire economy. By that point, again, under current law, the interest we have to pay to China and other foreign creditors that hold more than half of our debt will be 2\1/2\ times greater than the 40-year average. We know interest rates are extraordinarily and abnormally low because of the policies of the Federal Reserve. But can you imagine, for that $17 trillion in debt on which the U.S. Government would have to pay historic averages of interest to our creditors in order to get them to buy our debt, what impact that would have? Well, I will talk about that more in a moment. If we continue down this road without adopting real reforms for our long-term fiscal challenges, we will condemn our children and our grandchildren to fewer jobs, slower economic growth, worse opportunity, and a much greater risk of a full-blown fiscal crisis. In the event of a crisis, our safety net programs that we all care about for the most vulnerable in our country would be cut harshly and abruptly, as would our ability to fund national security and other priorities. Nobody wants that kind of a future. Nobody has to accept that kind of a future if we just do our job--not the President trying to go it alone again, not the Senate saying ``it is my way or the highway'' to the House, but by the House and the Senate and the White House working together to try to work our way through it. But if we continue to rack up debt--another trillion is what the President wants to raise the debt limit--and if we continue to postpone the hard choices and leave it to others, we will move closer and closer to an eventual disaster. By contrast, if we were to take the responsibility now to reform our safety net programs, we could reform them gradually so that people would barely feel it. That will make it much easier to protect the Americans who need these programs the most-- our seniors and the most vulnerable in our society. Of course, we cannot make any real progress as long as the President and the majority leader in the Senate refuse to negotiate. As I said earlier, Congress is not a rubberstamp. That is not the Constitution written by our Founders. The House of Representatives is not a rubberstamp for the Senate. We have been willing to compromise and negotiate. As a matter of fact, the House has sent over multiple bills. Every time a Member of the opposing party comes to the floor and talks about the National Institutes of Health's funding being cut off for children's cancer research, we have come down here and said: Well, let's pass the bill. Let's pass that appropriation. When someone has said: Well, what about the veterans' disability claims that are stacking up and are not being processed as a result of the shutdown, the House has passed legislation. We have come to the floor and offered legislation that would allow us to address that problem, but we have been told no time and time again. I ask unanimous consent for 4 additional minutes.

Mr. CORNYN. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we need to work together. That is the only way this is going to happen. We know it will happen. It is going to happen. The President cannot take the unsustainable position that ``it is my way or the highway and I will not negotiate,'' especially since he has done it before, especially since that is the only way our constitutional framework allows the resolution of problems. If we were to do--which we are not going to do--what the President and the majority leader have asked us to do, which is to raise the debt limit automatically without dealing with any of our long-term fiscal problems, we would simply be encouraging Congress and our policymakers to delay the tough choices and hard votes. We would be encouraging-- indeed, we would be enabling--this type of fiscal profligacy that has left us with a gross national debt of $17 trillion, which is about $53,000 for every man, woman, and child in America. More than $6 trillion of debt has been added since President Obama became President of the United States. Yet the President seems to show absolutely no sense of urgency in dealing with it. That is despite his own fiscal commission, the Simpson-Bowles Commission, coming back in December 2010--that was a bipartisan commission he himself appointed-- they came back with their own policy prescription to deal with this problem. Republicans, some of our most conservative Members, and some of the most liberal Members on the other side of the aisle came together and they voted for the Simpson-Bowles Commission report in December 2010, but the President simply walked away from it. Back in March, he told ABC News: We do not have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the next 10 years, it is going to be in a sustainable place. That is what the President of the United States said last March. But that is not what his own bipartisan fiscal commission said in December 2010. That is not what the Congressional Budget Office says. As everybody around here knows, the Congressional Budget Office is the final authority on these matters. In their 2013 long-term budget outlook, on page 13, they have a couple of pages that I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my remarks. It is entitled ``Consequences of Large and Growing Federal Debt.'' They did not say: We do not have an immediate crisis in terms of debt, and we are pretty much in a sustainable place for 10 years. They said: The high and rising amounts of Federal debt held by the public that CBO projects for the coming decades under the extended baseline would have significant negative consequences for both the economy and the federal budget. What were those? They said there would be less national savings and less future income. They said there would be pressure for larger tax increases and spending cuts to deal with this, particularly the phenomena of high interest payments that I mentioned a moment ago. Again, because of the Federal Reserve's policies, it costs next to nothing for the Federal Government in terms of interest on our national debt, but when that goes back up to historic averages, to 4, 5 percent, it is going to cost trillions of dollars more for us to service the existing debt, not to mention the additional trillion the President wants to borrow. What is that going to do? Well, that is going to crowd out other priorities such as NASA, which my colleague from Florida and I both think is an important national priority. I heard the Senator from Ohio say the same. But higher interest payments as a result of not dealing with this high debt are going to crowd out other important national priorities. Finally, the Congressional Budget Office said there is a ``greater chance of a fiscal crisis.'' Specifically, what they are talking about is that as we pay more and more for interest on our national debt, we lose more and more control over our fiscal future. As we all know on a bipartisan basis, we have been told time and time again by the experts that when our creditors lose confidence in our ability to repay debt, there can come a breaking moment when all of a sudden we lose control and all of these things happen, which we can avoid if we deal responsibly today. In other words, the President seems content to let one of his successors deal with the problem of our rising national debt--that is only, I would add, if we get lucky enough to postpone the kinds of crises and problems CBO and Simpson-Bowles project that long. The President obviously has other priorities, but I want to remind him what his own former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ADM Mike Mullen, said when he was asked about the Nation's biggest threat to our national security. He said it was the national debt. The President himself has echoed those comments, but the President is still sitting on the sidelines and still takes the untenable position that he is unwilling to negotiate. At a time when the country needs genuine leadership, he is nowhere to be found. Until that changes, we are not going to get any closer to where we need to be sooner, rather than later, and that is a true bipartisan compromise. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article: ``Consequences of Large and Growing Federal Debt.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), and the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I will not yield for a question at this time. I will at a later time. He would love to visit the World War II Memorial. Unfortunately, his health is not such that he can. But those who can are coming to Washington. There will be one from Fort Worth coming on Tuesday, and I intend to meet them and to welcome them. They should not be turned back because of this politically concocted government shutdown--one that the President and the majority leader seem to be enjoying but which is causing a lot of hardship and inconvenience. The House of Representatives has passed a separate piece of legislation that would open the World War II Memorial, along with other national park services. I would note it got 252 votes in the House of Representatives yesterday, including 23 Democrats. I hope it would enjoy the same sort of bipartisan support in the Senate. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.J. Res. 70, making continuing appropriations for National Park Service operations, which was received from the House; that the measure be read three times and passed; and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to raise as a preliminary matter under rule XIX of the Senate Rules, no Senator shall in debate directly or indirectly by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator. I want to remind all our colleagues that when they talk about Members of the Senate who are not on the floor and not here or able to defend themselves, I think if not the letter of the rule, certainly the spirit is in jeopardy of being transgressed, and I think we don't want to head down that path. I would point out that we have witnessed, with some dismay, many of our World War II veterans being turned away at the World War II Memorial here in Washington, DC. A number of these Honor Flights come from my State. There will be one that comes here tomorrow afternoon. I intend to meet them and welcome them to Washington and visit the World War II Memorial with them. These gentlemen and ladies are quite advanced in years, and for many of them--like, for example, my father-in-law who landed on Utah Beach on the second day of the Normandy invasion, his physical health is not such that he could come. But he would love to come to the Memorial.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, may I inquire. Did the majority leader object to my unanimous consent request or seek to amend it?

Mr. CORNYN. I object.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, for the information of the majority leader, and anyone else who is interested, there will be some unanimous consent requests. We will frontload those so the majority leader doesn't have to stay on the floor more than maybe about 10 minutes, if that suits his schedule.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to engage in a colloquy with the Republican leader, the Senator from Missouri, the Senator from Georgia, if he wishes to join, and the Senator from South Dakota during the 30 minutes allocated to our side.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Regular order, Mr. President.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I recognize my colleagues from Missouri and South Dakota, who I know also have unanimous consents, and I yield to them for those.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Senators from South Dakota and from Missouri for making very important points. I know the leaders--bicameral leadership of the House and the Senate--were called to the White House last night, at which time Senator McConnell, the distinguished Republican leader, reported here on the floor, the President announced he was not going to negotiate. Bizarre. Why would the President call the Republican and the Democratic leadership to the White House to say: I am not going to negotiate. Is it for a photo opportunity? Is it to give sort of some false impression that he is actually rolling up his sleeves and is engaged in the business of government to which he was elected? I hope the President reconsiders leaving town while the government is shut down, in the words of the majority leader, and leaving for a trip to Asia while, as our distinguished Democratic colleagues just pointed out, many federal employees are furloughed during this government shutdown. My hope would be that the President would cancel his trip and that he would stay here in Washington, as we are, trying to solve this problem and break this impasse. These proposals we have made here today, many of which have been voted on by the House of Representatives in a bipartisan fashion, are designed to do exactly that--to break this impasse. Yet what is the response of the White House to some earlier proposals? They sent out a Statement of Administration Policy saying: If it is passed, I would veto it. That is President Barack Obama. How is that rolling up your sleeves and being engaged in the job you got elected to? He earned it. He was elected twice as President of the United States. But it is not leadership to convene a meeting of Republican and Democratic leadership at the White House and say: I am not going to negotiate. And by the way, I am leaving town on Saturday. Good luck. That leads me to conclude that the President and his party are actually enjoying this shutdown because they see this as partisan political gain. They read the public opinion polls, just as we do, but I do not think the American people should be fooled and they are not being fooled. House Republicans and Republicans in the Senate have made many reasonable proposals, only to be given the Heisman, and the President is not negotiating and the government remains shut down. The President needs to stay here, demonstrate leadership, continue to meet with leaders on both sides of the Capitol, and we can break through this impasse, get the money for children's cancer research, get the money for the troops, and open the World War II Memorial to the Honor Flights coming from Texas and around the country. We can do this. They call it self-government for a reason. We all ought to be working together toward that end.

Mr. CORNYN. May I ask how much time remains?

Mr. CORNYN. I ask the Senator from South Dakota, I know South Dakota has a lot of uniformed military. The Senator has already addressed a piece of legislation that has passed the House and come over here. Is it the Senator's impression that the House is trying to address some of the hardships--inconvenience in some cases, hardships in others--that are caused by the government shutdown? In his experience, are they being reasonable in demonstrating good faith in trying to break this impasse?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I heard the assistant leader on the Democratic side, the majority side, yesterday make what I thought was a very impassioned speech on behalf of access to research that is provided by the NIH for children who are suffering from cancer. I ask the Senator from Missouri, would the bill the House has passed and the Senator asked consent the Senate consider address the very same sort of cancer research for children the assistant majority leader was arguing for yesterday?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I grew up in an Air Force family. My dad served in World War II in the Army Air Corps, and as I have mentioned on this floor many times, he continued to serve for 31 years in the U.S. Air Force. As fate would have it, he was transferred to Tachikawa Air Force Base in Japan right after my junior year in high school. So I graduated from high school in Japan, and I became acquainted with this 17th century stylized form of drama and dancing called kabuki. The thing about kabuki is that the audience oohs and aahs as the actors demonstrate their great skill at carrying out this stylized form of drama and dance. What we have seen on this government shutdown, contrived as it is, is a form of kabuki. We know exactly what is happening. The Senate, under the majority leader, has turned down at least four--and now here today four more--proposals from the House of Representatives to try to mitigate some of the hardship as a result of their determination to protect the special congressional carve-out from ObamaCare--which was tabled the other day at the instance of the majority leader--as well as to deny average Americans the same opportunity the President has unilaterally given to employers to delay the implementation of ObamaCare for 1 year when it comes to the individual mandate. That is what the majority has objected to. That is what the majority leader in a party-line vote has tabled, and that is the only reason we are engaged in a government shutdown--because of their refusal to accept those reasonable conditions from the House of Representatives. So this is kabuki as we in America understand it. We all understand the dance. We understand this is a form of drama. But the problem is the American people are suffering either hardship or great inconvenience as a result of the unwillingness of the President of the United States to negotiate and the hard-line ``my way or the highway'' position of the majority party. I ask my colleagues who are on the floor--both of whom served with great distinction in the House of Representatives--whether they believe the House has acted in good faith, whether they have tried to resolve this impasse by sending over to the Senate reasonable pieces of legislation which, if accepted by the majority, could break this impasse and reopen the Federal Government. I ask the Senator from Missouri to respond first.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, may I inquire how much time is remaining in our allocated time?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from South Dakota.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I listened with great interest to the comments of the distinguished deputy Democratic majority leader. I was reminded of a radio commentator, who perhaps is not remembered as frequently now, but when I grew up, he had radio show where when he started out he would say: And now for the rest of the story. I wish to offer the rest of the story. I listened as Senator Durbin spoke about the fact that the National Institutes of Health is not open for business. The good news is that Republicans and Democrats both agree that we should reopen the National Institutes of Health. In fact, it is my understanding that the House of Representatives will pass a bill perhaps as early as today and send it over to the Senate. I hope Senator Reid, unlike over the last few days where he has killed every reasonable offer by the House of Representatives, will reconsider and he will not kill that funding for the National Institutes of Health during this partial government shutdown. There are some other areas where I think we could work together. Senator Reid knew that Republicans were going to come to the floor and try to make sure that our uniformed military continued to get their full pay on time during this impasse of Congress. Like the good politician he is, he actually beat us to the punch. He came down here first and made the same offer. The good news is there was bipartisan support for funding our troops in full, our uniformed military, on a timely basis during this impasse. This has been sort of a surreal experience in so many ways because my friends on the other side of the aisle have been making what I consider to be some very strange arguments. The argument they have been making is that President Obama's health care law, the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare, is untouchable, and that our efforts to modify it in any way are illegitimate. Their favorite word is ``extreme'' or the product of some effort by the tea party Republicans or some other disparaging connotation. I am not sure exactly how to respond except to say this: If ObamaCare is untouchable, if the Obama administration is perfect, if we can't change one word and one sentence about ObamaCare, then you need to tell the Obama administration. Since 2010, the administration has granted more than 1,000 different waivers to its friends and political allies. It suspended all work on a large portion of ObamaCare known as the CLASS Act. It has delayed ObamaCare's basic health program and delayed the employer mandate. When we tried to delay the individual mandate so average Americans get the same sort of consideration from this administration that employers get, that businesses get, we were told this is an unreasonable request. Senator Reid tabled that, in essence killing that provision rather than taking it up and embracing it and saying: You know what. If employers get a break for 1 year, then let's give average Americans a break. The Obama administration has likewise delayed the eligibility verification for the exchanges. It started yesterday. In other words, you can apply for one of these insurance exchanges, but you don't have to prove what your income is. If there is a bigger open invitation for fraud, I am not aware of what it might be. But that is what the Obama administration has done, delayed the eligibility verification for the Obama exchanges, and they have delayed the cap on out-of-pocket expenses. In short, the Obama administration has, by its very actions, demonstrated that ObamaCare is not perfect. The administration itself, by its own actions, has acknowledged ObamaCare is not ready for prime time. This became painfully obvious to millions of Americans yesterday when the ObamaCare exchanges encountered widespread problems on its first day of operation. The President calls these glitches--glitches, a nice poll-tested, fairly benign-sounding word. But these were systemic failures of the ObamaCare exchanges yesterday when they came online-- obviously, not ready for prime time. Meanwhile, there have been other changes in this perfect, inviolable, can't-change-a-word ObamaCare. While the Supreme Court, we certainly acknowledge, has upheld major portions of ObamaCare, it is important to remember it declared a major piece of the law--the compulsory expansion of Medicaid--as unconstitutional. Unconstitutional: incompatible with our fundamental law of the land. Does that sound like a law that is perfect, can't be changed? Let me give another example. During the ObamaCare debate, Democrats voted on a party-line vote to impose a medical device tax on medical device manufacturers. It is not based on their income, it is based on their gross receipts or how much money comes in the door, before they even deduct their cost of doing business and their overhead. So they would actually have to pay taxes without it generating any net income because of the nature of this tax. This is a job-killing tax. I have had constituents come into my office and say: We have operations in Costa Rica, so we are going to have to move jobs we would create in Dallas to Costa Rica because of this job-killing medical device tax. You know what. Medical devices are some of the most innovative parts of our health care system. How better to discourage medical innovation and lifesaving discoveries and manufacturing than to impose this gross receipts tax on medical devices. That is not just my opinion. The last time we had a debate on the budget resolution, 79 Senators voted against the medical device tax because they realized it was a terrible mistake in this law we are told today, yesterday, and the day before is perfect in every way, wouldn't change a thing. But Senate Democrats are now lining up to repeal the medical device tax. Somehow, in a schizophrenia I don't quite understand, other Democrats are saying an attempt to do that would represent partisan extremism. Which is it? I think the American people know. I am not sure exactly how our friends on the other side of the aisle define extremism, but I would submit that very few extreme ideas gain the support of 79 Senators in the Senate on a bipartisan basis. How is it extreme to delay ObamaCare's individual mandate when the administration has unilaterally done the same thing for businesses? How is it extreme to ask Members of Congress to live by the same laws that apply to everyone else? The majority leader, Senator Reid, tabled two amendments to the continuing resolution that would change this special carve-out for Congress that would provide a delay of the individual mandate for average Americans, such as the administration has already done for businesses, and we are told that is extreme; that somehow we are the ones who caused the government shutdown. I am absolutely convinced President Obama and Harry Reid think this shutdown is the best thing that ever happened to them politically in recent memory. So rather than come out and tell sympathetic stories about what is happening at NIH, let's work together to mitigate some of the hardship and inconvenience. Let's talk about working through this impasse. Why can't we get the President to do what he reportedly intended to do in the first place, which is to convene a meeting at the White House with Republicans and Democrats to work through this? They are not just refusing to negotiate big compromises, they are refusing any compromise. It is my way or the highway. They will not even agree to keep the war memorials open for our Honor Flights coming to Washington, DC. I would urge the majority leader and President Obama to join with us in passing a bill today that would keep our war memorials open. My father was a World War II veteran. He is dead now, but he was a B- 17 pilot in World War II. On his 26th bombing mission, he was shot down and captured as a prisoner of war. My father-in-law landed on Utah Beach the second day of the Normandy invasion. He is 95 years old now. His mind is still sharp, his body not quite what it used to be. He would love nothing better than to come to Washington, DC, on one of these Honor Flights. Unfortunately, his health will not allow him to do it. The chairman of the Honor Flight Network, James McLaughlin, has said: It is beyond belief that those deserving men and women who have waited decades to see their memorial and were selected for this trip of a lifetime, to discover they may not be able to see their memorial. For many of them, this may be the last time they get during their lifetime. I would ask that the President cancel his trip to Asia--he is leaving on Saturday--to overrule Senator Reid and convene that meeting at the White House and come together to try and work through some of these differences. We can fund NIH. We could do it today if Senator Reid and President Obama would allow it. But, no, instead, we are told it is my way or the highway. We actually like this shutdown, they are saying to themselves, because they think they are winning politically. But they are not winning politically when the American people are the net losers.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, if we need evidence that there is a parallel universe in America today, on one hand is Washington, DC, and the bubble that seems to occur around this place, and then the rest of America. If we need evidence of that parallel universe, all we need to do is listen to the comments of the majority leader this morning who said, in the presence of these folks in the gallery in the Senate, ``The government is shut down. The government is shut down.'' That is clearly false. You know what. There are a lot of Americans who think that Washington is a train hurtling down the track, out of control. Who can blame them? When they look at our national debt, $17 trillion, more than $50,000 for every man, woman, and child in America; when they see our unsustainable programs such as Medicare and Social Security, which the majority leader and the distinguished Senator from California hold so dear--we do too. Those are important programs. So why would we not want to try to fix them? The most amazing thing I heard today is the majority leader said that ObamaCare is sacrosanct. It is the law of the land. You cannot touch it. Over the last 3 years the Obama administration has repeatedly and unilaterally issued waivers, granted exemptions, and announced delays relating to this sacrosanct law known as ObamaCare. Since when is it beyond the power of the Congress to change existing law by amending it or repealing it or defunding it? It is absolutely unprecedented to have a majority leader of the Senate, someone who knows this institution as well as anyone, say Congress is powerless to act when our constituents tell us they want us to act because they do not believe ObamaCare will perform as advertised. The best evidence is the unilateral actions of the President of the United States, who granted waivers, exemptions, and delays for his preferred constituents. Meanwhile, the rest of America has to live with this monstrosity that will not work as advertised. Again, all we have to do is compare the President's promises to what has actually happened. He said if you like what you have you can keep it. That is not true. Millions of Americans are being dropped from their employer-provided coverage into the exchanges they do not want to be on because they would prefer to have their employer-provided coverage. When the President says the average family will see a reduction in their health care premiums of $2,500, that is not true because they have actually gone up, on average, $2,400. For many young people, such as my daughters, they are going to have to pay more so my generation will have to pay less, even though they do not need the government-approved, gold-plated health care plan, nor want it, nor can afford it. We know that ObamaCare is, in the words of some of the leaders of organized labor, doing permanent damage to full-time work because people are being moved from full-time work to part-time work in order to avoid the employer sanctions, and it is doing damage to our broader economy. All of us have listened to the small business men and women for whom we work, who are our constituents, who say: We cannot afford ObamaCare, so we are not going to hire more people. In fact, we are going to cut back in order to avoid some of the sanctions associated with it or, you know what. At some point I am tired of working for the government instead of working for myself, my family, so I am just going to close business and shut her down. Despite all that, the majority leader has the temerity to come on the Senate floor and say this is the law of the land; we can't touch it; it is perfect, couldn't be better. That is like whistling past the graveyard. Senate Democrats have refused to make any changes whatsoever, even in those provisions they themselves believe are flawed or defective in ObamaCare. They are refusing to abolish the medical device tax, which is a job killer and kills medical innovation that saves lives, even though 79 Senators, Republicans and Democrats alike, voted against the medical device tax on the budget resolution. They are refusing to delay the individual mandate, even though the President of the United States has given businesses a 1-year delay in the employer sanction. Yet Democrats voted against delaying the individual mandate for average Americans. How can that be fair? Most remarkably, when it comes to the ObamaCare exchanges, Senate Democrats have toed the line--you might say walked the plank last night, at the insistence of the majority leader--and they refused to treat Members of Congress the same as all other Americans. That is what one of the votes we had last night did. If I were a Democrat running for reelection in red States in 2014, I would be very worried about that. This is a toxic vote for them because Americans, although they may not be able to quote Federalist 57, know what it says in their hearts and spirits because it is fundamental to our democracy; that is, that Members of Congress should be treated no differently, certainly no better, than the rest of America when it comes to the law of the land. Those who cast that vote, who walked that plank last night, will be held accountable in the 2014 election. You know what. I believe all of this points to the fact that the majority leader and President Obama want a government shutdown because they are reading some of the polls that say they think this will benefit them politically. They are willing to risk a shutdown of the Federal Government in order to gain political advantage. I am not so sure about that. I certainly did not believe that a shutdown--it was not my first choice. I thought surely cooler heads would prevail. When it came to the individual mandate, when it came to the medical device tax, when it came to eliminating the special carve-out for Congress, surely we can find some common ground somewhere. When there is plenty of evidence that the President and his administration have acknowledged the flaws and the defects and the unkept promises of ObamaCare, surely we could find somewhere we could find common ground. Our colleagues in the House have now passed multiple bills to keep the government open and allow ObamaCare to remain funded, even though clearly our first choice is to repeal and replace this devastating legislation which is killing jobs, running up costs, and falling out of favor with even its most ardent advocates such as organized labor. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party, from the President of the United States to the majority leader of the Senate, to all Democrats in this body, have become the party of no: no compromise, no negotiations, no changes. It is all perfect. We would not change a thing. Life is good. But the Government shuts down and invariably some people get hurt. The President of the United States was thinking about holding a meeting of congressional leaders at the White House. The report in one of the newspapers in Washington is Senator Reid, the majority leader of the Senate, shut it down. The President wanted to demonstrate some leadership. He should demonstrate some leadership. People expect leadership out of the President of the United States, but Harry Reid shut it down. So Harry Reid shut down the Government and got what he wanted. I think it is about time the President overrule Harry Reid. He was elected by the American people. For many of us he was our second choice, but he is the President of the United States. He needs to demonstrate some leadership. Instead, the Democrats have doubled down on their strategy, hoping to gain political advantage at the expense of the people hurt. The shutdown was not my first choice, but there are many of my constituents who are calling me, telling me: Look, we are worried. We are scared about our future. We are scared not only about our ability to find jobs, we are scared about our children and their future. My generation was the beneficiary of the sacrifice and hard work of the greatest generation, the World War II generation, people who risked everything so we might have a better life. I am hearing from a number of my constituents back home, and they are saying, look, we are willing to risk some hardship if that is what it takes to get the American people, the Democratic Party, and the President to wake up and say: We need to work together and fix these problems that we all know exist, the national debt, lower median income, unsustainable Medicare and Social Security, for which the Democrats offer only higher taxes and more regulation. No wonder the economy is growing so slowly. The triple whammy is ObamaCare, which is killing jobs and hurting the economy. We can do better than that, and we certainly can by working together. Now is the time for the President to call that meeting in the Oval Office. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as the Republican leader noted, there are a number of Members here on the floor who have come en masse from a meeting we just held following the tabling of the latest House proposal that would keep the Federal Government operating and make sure all of our uniformed military would continue to get paid, together with the other operations of the Federal Government. It is clear that it was under the pressure of the knowledge that we were coming to the floor to ask for unanimous consent and the knowledge of how, frankly, untenable it would be to object to that that the majority leader has quite skillfully come to the floor to try to preempt this issue. The truth is that none of us should be under any illusion that the majority leader has done anything other than make it more likely that we will have a shutdown of the Federal Government tonight. The House has sent over several reasonable proposals which would keep the Federal Government operating and which would also make sure our troops would be paid--not just uniformed military but other government personnel performing important jobs. Rather than calling us in yesterday after the House acted--we know that perhaps the majority leader and other Members enjoyed watching a little bit of professional football yesterday--they waited until this afternoon to cut the legs out from under the House proposal and make it much more likely that the government will shut down. The House worked late into the night this weekend to draft a compromise proposal that would fund the government and avert a shutdown. The House Members sent the proposal over to the Senate, and the majority leader did nothing until today--no emergency session, no bipartisan negotiations. There is a report in Politico that President Obama was suggesting calling the leadership in both of the Houses--Republicans and Democrats alike--to the White House to have a meeting to say: What can we do to solve this impasse? If the story is to be believed, it was Harry Reid who shut that down, just as he is going to be responsible for shutting down the Federal Government by the actions he took earlier today. So the question is, Who is really being unreasonable? Who is really being stubborn? Who is really seeking to gain partisan advantage over the best interests of the country? Of course, we know the President has been eager to negotiate with the President of Iran about a very serious issue: Iran's nuclear aspirations, but he will not talk to the Speaker of the House of Representatives or the Republican leader of the Senate. He will not talk to them, but he will negotiate with the Iranian President. He seems absolutely allergic to doing his job. He can give a heck of a speech. He is a skillful orator. But when it comes to actually doing his job, he is missing in action. He will not negotiate over a government shutdown, and he will not negotiate over raising the debt limit. In the past, President Obama has urged Republicans to offer just a little bit of compromise when he likes to be the voice of reason. But now he himself refuses to engage in any sort of negotiation and refuses to offer any kind of compromise whatsoever. Is it possible the President of the United States thinks his own health care law is perfect in every way? Seventy-nine Members of this body voted against the medical device tax. The House could pass that piece of legislation and send it over here and attach it to the continuing resolution. The President himself has repeatedly delayed different provisions of the health care law, including the employer mandate. What we would like to do is get the same break for the rest of the American people as he gave businesses. The bill that was passed by the House of Representatives would have delayed ObamaCare for 1 year, and it would also have repealed the medical device tax, which is already killing jobs and hammering medical innovation. Now we are being told that those sort of very same proposals, which mirror the same proposals the President has unilaterally taken or which are supported by a bipartisan majority of the Senate--they are called an act of extremism. What is more extreme, trying to negotiate through an impasse to resolve this issue of the Federal Government functioning or to refuse to negotiate, to stonewall against any reasonable proposal by the House and to make it more likely that the Federal Government will shut down tonight? I ask who is being more unreasonable and more stubborn? We know the clock is ticking. The American people are absolutely disgusted. I share their frustration. I can only hope cooler heads will prevail among our friends on the other side of the aisle.