John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The Senator has described accurately the back-and-forth between the absolutist position the majority leader has taken that says nothing can change ObamaCare because apparently he thinks it is absolutely perfect--we shouldn't change a letter, even though, as the Senator pointed out, a number of ObamaCare's biggest advocates are now coming back and saying it is a nightmare. I think the Senator quoted Jimmy Hoffa as one of them. But is the Senator aware, reportedly, the House is going to be voting later on today and be changing once again the continuing resolution and sending it back over here? This time the report is that they will vote to delay the individual mandate to make it match--as the Senator points out, the employer mandate that has already been unilaterally delayed by the President, in an act of lawlessness. Unfortunately, it is not an isolated event. Then the Vitter language, which will overturn the Office of Personnel Management interpretation, which basically carves out Congress and congressional staff from the law that would apply to everyone else, strikes me as another attempt by the House to enter into some negotiation. Would the Senator care to venture a guess as to what sort of good- faith attempt by the House to keep negotiations open--what that will lead to? I would be interested in the Senator's observation about whether he believes, as I do, that Senator Reid is marching toward a government shutdown. Nothing the House does, nothing the House passes will deter him from shutting down the Federal Government at midnight tonight.

Mr. CORNYN. Would the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I see my colleague from Texas who gave a very high-profile speech for about 21 hours the other night on the subject of ObamaCare. I know he feels passionately about it, and his efforts have captured the imagination of the American people and reminded them of the various failures of this piece of legislation, some of which we have talked about perhaps fixing in the course of this ping-ponging of the continuing resolution. But I might ask him, through the Chair, there have been so many failures, so many promises that have been made about ObamaCare that are obviously not going to be kept--things such as, if you like what you have, you can keep it. I think that is one of the complaints the Senator from South Carolina mentioned earlier, that organized labor-- Mr. Trumka, among others--went to the White House to get a special carve-out for. We were told the President said: The average family of four would see a reduction of $2,500 in the cost of their health care, and that had not proven to be true--so many promises that have not been kept, so many broken promises, so many reasons why we ought to be working together through the course of this to fix it. So I would ask my colleague, through the Chair, perhaps he can list a few more reasons why he believes we need to be dealing with ObamaCare. I know his preferred method was defunding ObamaCare. I know he has not given up on that. I am a cosponsor of his legislation that would accomplish that. But I would ask my colleague, through the Chair, if he might comment on that.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair. It affects medical device companies that produce technology that has helped millions of Americans with disabilities. The false promises of ObamaCare have been shattered by the harsh realities of ObamaCare. A law that was supposed to solve some of our biggest health care problems in the country has, instead, made those problems even worse. Now we have a second chance. Congress has a second chance as the elected representatives of the American people under our constitutional system of learning from the experience we have had since 2010 when Congress passed ObamaCare on a party-line vote, we have a second chance today to do the right thing, a chance to stop ObamaCare in its tracks, a chance to reverse the mistakes of 2009 and to allow Congress, instead, to pass real health care reforms that will lower costs, improve access, expand quality insurance coverage to more people. Republicans have said we have an alternative to ObamaCare. Some of our colleagues who support ObamaCare said: The only way you can cover people with preexisting conditions is with ObamaCare, a $2.7 trillion expenditure. That is baloney. We all know many States have health risk pools. If we provided additional funding to those State health risk pools, people with preexisting conditions could get coverage without having to embrace the whole behemoth of ObamaCare at a much more affordable cost. We are eager to adopt reforms such as equalizing the tax treatment of health insurance and making health care price and quality information more transparent and accessible so people can actually shop based on quality and price--what a concept--also, by letting people buy insurance coverage across State lines, allowing both individuals and businesses to form risk pools for individual markets, by curbing frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits, using State-based health insurance pools to cover people with preexisting conditions, and to give States more flexibility to improve Medicaid and to bring more competition to Medicare. Republicans have spent years advocating these policies. Now that we know ObamaCare has failed in its intended purpose, it is time to look to these alternatives. We are prepared to defund ObamaCare and to move ahead with real reform as I described. The only question is how many Democrats are going to learn from the evidence since 2010. How many of them are going to listen to their constituents and say we can do better than this failed attempt from the Federal Government to take over our health care system and deny people access to the doctors of their choice and to keep the insurance coverage they have. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: I understand there has been time allocated to proponents and opponents, but there is no breakdown for individual speakers in terms of how much time is allocated?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, ObamaCare is more unpopular today than when it was passed in 2010. I know the proponents of ObamaCare--my Democratic friends who voted for it in a party-line vote--had hoped it would meet their expectations and the promises the President and other people made about how it would be implemented and what its impact would be on our health care system. I am amazed, though, that our colleagues say: You know, it is the law of the land. We cannot change it. Well, that is completely contrary to our constitutional system where the very legitimacy of our laws depends on the consent of the governed. Of course it is within the power of Congress to change the law. That is what we do when it turns out the law does not work as those who hoped it would or it, unfortunately, meets the expectations of those skeptics who thought it would never work. So it is within our power to change this law. We will be voting today on a very important provision that will give us an opportunity to start over and to address the failures of ObamaCare that even some of its most ardent advocates had hoped it would meet. So today we will vote on a number of matters, including a cloture vote on the underlying bill. I will be voting yes on cloture because I do not understand how I can otherwise vote on a matter I want to see passed. In other words, we will vote to proceed to a bill that defunds ObamaCare. I believe we should defund ObamaCare. Indeed, just as we did on the motion to proceed--we had 100 Senators vote for cloture on the motion to proceed--I do not know why we would not vote to proceed on the cloture vote on the underlying bill--especially those of us who believe we ought to go ahead and defund ObamaCare today in light of experience between 2010 and 2013 which shows it has not lived up to expectations and promises. There are some people across America who are so upset with ObamaCare--and I understand their frustration--that they say we ought to shut down the Federal Government. Our colleague Senator Coburn asked the Congressional Research Service to look at what would happen to ObamaCare if the government shut down for some reason. Their conclusion is that ObamaCare would continue to be funded even though the government was shut down because there are alternate sources of revenue that could be used to keep it going. So I say to my friends who say we ought to shut the government down to get rid of ObamaCare that it will not work. Even if they hoped it would work, it will not work. Of course, we can imagine the disruptions to our seniors, military, and to our economy, which is bouncing along the bottom with slow growth and high unemployment, and what that disruption might mean there. So I think the real vote today is going to be on the vote the majority leader will offer to strip out the defunding language. I hope we have five Democrats--perhaps those who hoped in 2010 that ObamaCare would actually work but will, in light of subsequent experience, reconsider and say: Maybe we ought to start over again because ObamaCare has not worked. Maybe it is not the best way to make health care policy, to have a bill that was passed strictly on a party-line vote. No one is invested in trying to actually make sure it will work, such as when Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan fixed Social Security and secured it for subsequent generations. Unfortunately, we have seen the President of the United States govern by waiver, exception, and exemption when it comes to implementing ObamaCare. We have learned that ObamaCare is not ready for prime time even though the exchanges are supposed to go into effect next Tuesday. Why are the American people so upset with ObamaCare? Why are there some people who are so upset that they are willing to see the government shut down in order to get rid of it and change it? Well, it is simple. When the President was promoting his health care overhaul in 2009 and 2010, he repeatedly assured the American people: If you like what you have, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you do not have to worry, nothing will change. He made that promise time and time again. He was always 100 percent unequivocal. Here is a direct quote from the President's speech in January of 2009 before the American Medical Association. He said: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what. That is the President of the United States. When the President made those remarks 4 years ago, many Americans believed him or at least gave him the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, we now know ObamaCare was sold to the American people under false pretenses. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that ObamaCare will cause millions of Americans to lose their existing health care coverage. Employers large and small have already announced that because of ObamaCare they are ending their employer-provided coverage for their employees and some of their retirees. In a front-page story, even the New York Times admits that because of ObamaCare, ``many insurers are significantly limiting the number of doctors and hospitals available to consumers.'' So if you like your doctor, if you like your hospital, you will not necessarily be able to keep them. For that matter, earlier this year one of my constituents sent me a letter she got from her insurance company informing her that because of ObamaCare the coverage she had would be terminated by the end of 2013. That letter said: Never have we experienced the uncertainty and immense challenges that confront the insurance industry during this time of health-care reform. It is now painfully clear that many people who do wish to keep their existing coverage and wish to keep their current doctors will not be able to do so if this law is implemented. This is why we are seeing some leading Democrats who are saying maybe we ought to reconsider in the light of experience since the time we voted to pass ObamaCare in 2009 and 2010. It is also clear that ObamaCare is destroying our economy. Recently, a group of labor leaders went to the White House to ask for a special carve-out because they said ObamaCare, as implemented, was killing the 40-hour work week. These are some of the folks who were the biggest cheerleaders for ObamaCare at the time it passed, but they have realized, based on subsequent experience, that it is turning full-time work into part-time work so employers can avoid some of the penalties and costs. We know it is having a particular impact on some specific types of employment such as restaurants, retailers, hotels, the people who develop medical devices which save lives and increase lifespan, and it is having a negative impact on hospitals as well. For example, the Franciscan Alliance health system recently announced that because of ObamaCare it was eliminating about 125 jobs at two hospitals in President Obama's hometown of Chicago. Meanwhile, in a letter to a DC city councilman, the owner of a popular area restaurant chain described ObamaCare as: ``the biggest mandated cost ever inflicted on restaurateurs . . . in the HISTORY OF RESTAURANTS.'' The restaurant owner added: ``We still haven't figured out how we are going to pay for that.'' Also, as I mentioned a moment ago, because of the tax on medical devices to pay for medical care, medical device manufacturers are leaving the United States or they are not hiring new people. Some constituents from Texas came in to see me and said they had an operation in Costa Rica. Instead of hiring more people in Texas, they are going to be moving that operation to Costa Rica for one reason and one reason only; that is, to avoid the medical device tax in ObamaCare. We know that because of ObamaCare's impact on the economy, many college graduates--who advocates celebrate are now able to stay on their parents' health insurance until 26--those same young men and women are unable to find jobs because of ObamaCare. We know that its impact on the medical profession is having a dramatic outcome on people's access to health care. It is very important to make a distinction between coverage and access. Just because the government provides Medicare coverage doesn't mean you are going to find a doctor to see you. Increasingly, in my State and around the country, doctors are saying: We can't afford to see new Medicare and Medicaid patients because of how much the government compensates for that service. As a matter of fact in Texas, only about one out of every three doctors who currently see Medicaid patients will accept a new Medicaid patient because of the low reimbursement rate. Medicaid is already failing to meet the important needs of the most vulnerable people in our country. Because of ObamaCare, States are preparing for a massive spike in individual health care premiums and because of ObamaCare insurance carriers are already limiting consumer choice. As many of us warned years ago, ObamaCare affects everyone. It affects working families who are happy with their employer-provided coverage. It affects Medicare recipients living on a fixed income. It affects Medicaid patients who are already having trouble finding doctors and dentists who will take their insurance. It affects young people who are struggling to pay off their student loan debt, and, yes, as I said, it affects small business owners who wish to expand their workforce.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``yea'' and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this is the moment of truth. We need to be absolutely clear about what we are voting on here. A ``yes'' vote will be a vote to fund ObamaCare because it will take out of the underlying continuing resolution the House position that Republicans have universally supported to defund ObamaCare. I ask my colleagues, before they vote yes on this important amendment, Do you really want to be responsible for killing more jobs? Do you really want to be responsible for more people losing their health insurance and their own doctors? Do you really want to be responsible for making full-time work part-time work? If not, then vote no. This is a second chance, and in life we don't get many second chances. I hope our colleagues will take advantage of the opportunity.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake) would have voted ``nay''.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake) would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, before I begin my other remarks today, I would like to say a few words about my friend, Arnold Garcia, who recently announced his retirement as editor of the Austin American- Statesman editorial page. During a time of political polarization in Washington, Austin, and other cities across the country, Arnold enjoys the respect and admiration of Republicans and Democrats alike. He is a veteran of the United States Army and the Texas National Guard, and he spent 40 years at the Austin American-Statesman serving as head of the editorial page for more than 2 decades. One of the most prominent and influential journalists in Texas, Arnold has a great love and respect for our state, his country, and the men and women who defend us. He is, by all accounts, a fair-minded reporter--which is saying something if you are in our business, because we know that there is a natural adversarial relationship between the press and elected officials. Everyone in Texas who knows Arnold agrees that he is a fair-minded reporter who has always made time to talk to almost anyone and has always had an open door for those who wanted to have a discussion on virtually any topic. I wanted to say a few words today about Arnold Garcia. Arnold, I salute your pioneering accomplishments. I thank you for all of these years of your friendship, and I wish you and your family nothing but the best in this next chapter of your life. Mr. President, turning to the topic du jour, along with many of my Republican colleagues, I spent the past several days discussing all of the negative consequences of ObamaCare. I think it is important to remember that these are human consequences, not just about numbers. When taxes and premiums rise, when doctors are forced to drop their patients, when people lose their preexisting insurance coverage, when full-time jobs become part-time jobs, and when our health care safety net is stretched to the breaking point, each has a profound impact on the lives of real people. That's especially true for the neediest and most vulnerable among us who rely on the safety-net programs that the President's health care law is further weakening. To better appreciate the consequences of ObamaCare, we should consider the following questions: Question No. 1: What does ObamaCare mean to a 28-year-old college graduate who can only find part-time work and living with his parents? It means he will either pay higher insurance premiums or pay higher taxes, and it also means he will have a harder time finding full-time employment and starting a career. Question No. 2: What does ObamaCare mean for a single mom who is insured with Medicaid--that safety-net program I was talking about? It means that her family's primary insurance program, a program that is already broken--for example, in my State only one doctor out of every three will see a new Medicaid patient because it reimburses at such a low rate. So Medicaid is already failing to reliably deliver access to health care. With ObamaCare, and the dumping of millions of additional people into this broken program, it means this program will be flooded with millions of new beneficiaries, and it means Medicaid will soon be even less effective at delivering access to quality health care to the most vulnerable people in our society, the very people it was designed to protect. Question number 3: What does ObamaCare mean to a 70-year-old retiree who is enrolled in Medicare? It means that fewer and fewer doctors will accept him or her as a patient, because Medicare pays doctors at a fraction of what private health insurance pays in terms of reimbursements for their services. ObamaCare also means that unelected bureaucrats will soon be making decisions about whether they will get the care their doctor believes they need. Question No. 4: What does ObamaCare mean for a working family that has been receiving employer-provided health insurance from their small business? It means they very easily could lose their existing coverage and get dumped into an ObamaCare exchange. It also means they could very easily find themselves paying higher premiums for lower-quality insurance. The final question I would ask is: What does ObamaCare mean for a small business owner with 49 employees? It means they have a powerful incentive to stay below that 50- employee cap which would then kick them over into the employer sanction if they don't provide government-approved health care for all of their employees. So their incentive is to keep employment low and not hire anymore workers because of ObamaCare's extensive regulations and financial penalties. As we think about each of these questions, we should also think about what business owners across America are telling us--I daresay all of them--about ObamaCare. For example, a small business owner named Linda Peters who runs a radio communications company in Anchorage, AK, recently said ObamaCare's health insurance tax ``hurts our future and threatens the stability of the small-business sector.'' In Arkansas, the owner of Little Rock Tours and Travel, a woman named Gina Martin has said, ``None of us really understand how we are going to continue to stay in business.'' In Louisiana, the owner of Dots Diner restaurant group, a gentleman by the name of Larry Katz recently told a Senate committee that he was being ``forced to put 16 people out of work just to save himself from the negative effects of [ObamaCare].'' In North Carolina, a franchise holder of the popular Five Guys burger chain, a man named Mike Ruffed, has estimated that ObamaCare will cost him roughly an additional $60,000 a year. Each of the business owners I mentioned lives in a State with at least one Democratic Senator who voted for ObamaCare back in 2009. I want to emphasize once again that ObamaCare is not inevitable. Any law that Congress passes it can repeal, it can amend, and it can change. The Members of this Chamber now have an opportunity to correct the mistake that the Senate Democrats made in 2009 when ObamaCare passed on a party-line vote. All the Democrats voted for it, and all the Republicans voted against it--including me. We now have an opportunity to stop this law before it does any more damage to people like those I mentioned and millions more across America. To add insult to injury, yesterday we learned that the IRS has somehow misplaced $67 million that was allocated to the ObamaCare slush fund. I daresay, given all of the money being pushed into the implementation of ObamaCare, we can expect more stories like that in the weeks and months ahead, unless Congress acts. As I said, I am proud to say I voted against ObamaCare 4 years ago because I simply did not see how it could possibly work. I was concerned about the higher taxes on hard-working American families such as my constituents in Texas. I was concerned about the command and control of Washington, DC, on all the health care decisions that should have been left to doctors, patients, and families trying to work together to determine what is in the best interests of those individuals and those families. And, yes, I was concerned that the government would continue to cut reimbursements to providers which would make it more and more likely that fewer and fewer doctors and hospitals could actually see Medicare or Medicaid patients. I was concerned that ObamaCare represented a statement and an attitude that Washington knows best and that nothing anybody has done at innovative medical facilities around the country and in different States matters because Washington really knows best. Many people had the audacity to say that even though ObamaCare was unpopular when it was passed, people would learn to love it--sort of like when Social Security and Medicare were originally passed. Many of our Democratic colleagues who were responsible for giving us ObamaCare have what we don't have often in life, and that is a second chance. These Senate Democrats who voted for ObamaCare--having seen and heard the stories I just described--have a second chance to help save the American people from a looming disaster. When we have people like Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, on which I serve, telling Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, that the implementation of ObamaCare is like a train wreck, we ought to listen. When some of the biggest cheerleaders for ObamaCare, such as organized labor, are now traveling to the White House and saying: Please, Mr. President, won't you give us a waiver or exemption because this is turning out different than you told us it would, we ought to listen. Full-time work--the 40-hour workweek--is in jeopardy because in order to protect themselves from employer sanctions, employers are moving people from full-time work to part-time work--if they can hire people at all--which may be one reason why the labor participation rate, which is a percentage of Americans who are actually in the workforce looking for work, is the lowest it has been in the last 30 years. As I said earlier, each of these stories is a human tragedy, and the stories behind the numbers tell a very sobering tale. But we are now powerless to deal with this looming disaster and impending train wreck, as Senator Baucus said. I hope Senate Democrats will vote with Senate Republicans and take a stand, as we will have a chance to do, when we get a chance to vote to defund ObamaCare on the continuing resolution. If we do, we will be protecting the American people from one of the most unpopular, unworkable, and unaffordable laws in modern history. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, until ObamaCare was passed in 2010, virtually every major piece of legislation involving domestic reforms in this country has passed with solid bipartisan support, from Social Security to welfare reform. From Medicare to tax reform, from civil rights to No Child Left Behind, Presidents as different across the ideological spectrum as Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton all understood there is more to making sure that legislation succeeds than just jamming it through on a partisan-line vote. Indeed, after the bill passes and it needs to be implemented, aren't you going to need that same kind of bipartisan support to see that the legislation is actually implemented and actually works for the benefit of the American people? By contrast, during the health care debate in 2009 and 2010, President Obama did not seek any kind of genuine compromise with Republicans. Instead, he chose to ram it through on a controversial party-line vote which has generated nothing but division and bitterness since this legislation was first passed. Four and a half years later, ObamaCare is more unpopular than ever. One recent poll showed that 68 percent of American voters, including a majority of Democrats, are concerned about how the law will affect their health care coverage. Medicare recipients are worried about losing access to their current doctors. Middle-class families are worried about losing their existing insurance coverage. Young people are worried about seeing their premiums skyrocket. People on Medicaid are worried that America's health care safety net is going to become even less effective at protecting the neediest and most vulnerable members of our society. Day after day, not a day passes that we don't read stories about doctors who are dropping patients because of ObamaCare or employers who are ending the existing health care coverage their employees have because of ObamaCare or businesses that are slashing full-time work into part-time work because of ObamaCare. States are projecting a spike in the insurance premiums their people will pay, because of ObamaCare, in the individual market. Even the New York Times is now acknowledging that because of ObamaCare ``many insurers are significantly limiting the choice of doctors and hospitals available to consumers.'' Rather than expanded access to coverage, consumers are finding their choices are even more limited under ObamaCare. The President's own Department of Health and Human Services has estimated that America already has a massive shortage of primary care doctors. Indeed, just to meet current needs, we will have to add more than 15,000. As a senior official at the American Academy of Family Physicians recently told Bloomberg News, ``The shortfall of primary- care access is not an insignificant problem, and it is going to get worse.'' That is bad news for all Americans, and it is especially bad news for Medicaid beneficiaries who already have a hard time finding providers who will accept their insurance. In my home State, 62 percent of primary care physicians aren't in a position to take any new Medicaid patients. This is because Medicaid pays them at a fraction of what private health insurance or even Medicare pays. So many doctors simply can't afford to see new Medicaid patients. Here you have the irony, the terrible irony, of a promise of coverage but no real access to a doctor. Most physicians in Texas believe Medicaid is broken and should not be used as a mechanism to expand coverage but, rather, as a last-resort safety net program. Unfortunately, by dumping millions of additional Americans into Medicaid without fixing it, ObamaCare will make our health care safety net even more fragile and even weaker. Meanwhile, the President's health care law continues to discourage job creation and hamper our economic recovery. If there is one thing we need more than anything else in this country, it is a stronger economy, because greater economic growth means more jobs and more opportunity. Then the people who have simply given up looking for work because the economy is growing too slowly will begin to find work again. As of last week more than 300 different employers had, according to Investor's Business Daily, ``cut work hours or jobs, or otherwise shifted away from full-time to part-time staff because of ObamaCare.'' The administration seems to realize this. Particularly, the employer mandate is discouraging job creation and prompting many businesses to turn full-time jobs into part-time jobs. It is just common sense. ObamaCare gives businesses a powerful financial incentive to not hire more than 49 workers. What else did we think would happen? If you hire more than 49 workers, you have to pay a penalty, but if you are underneath that cap you don't. In early July the administration unilaterally delayed enforcement of the employer mandate, recognizing this phenomenon of full-time work shifting to part-time work. On the very same day it also announced it would not be verifying taxpayer eligibility for ObamaCare premium subsidies until 2015, even though the subsidies will begin flowing in 2014. What this means is people will qualify for taxpayer subsidies for their health care even though the Federal Government will not be verifying that information for a year. What do we expect to happen? I think one reasonable prediction is there will be massive fraud in the program. Of course, we know the President again tried to go it alone and do this unilaterally without congressional action and, of course, without constitutional authority. If there is one question my constituents ask me back in Texas, it is how can the President keep ignoring the law? How can he keep issuing waivers or delaying the implementation of laws Congress has passed? My only answer to them is Congress could pass the laws, but the Constitution gives the President the authority--the sole authority in the executive branch--the sole authority to enforce them. When the Attorney General and the executive branch refuse to enforce the laws, their only remedy is at the ballot box and possibly lawsuits filed by outside groups that may take many years to be resolved. It is enormously frustrating to them, and they worry that our whole constitutional framework is being undermined by the administration and this White House selectively deciding which laws it is going to enforce and which it is not. The President is basically saying ObamaCare means whatever I want it to be. He is showing contempt for the rule of law, contempt for the separation of powers, and our constitutional framework. Look at the IRS. America's tax collection agency is in shambles due to the scandals that we all know way too much about. Unfortunately, this same organization is going to be the one that actually helps to implement ObamaCare. It will issue tax subsidies through the Federal exchanges, even though the law makes clear that only State exchanges qualify for these subsidies. Americans are concerned also about how ObamaCare will affect their privacy rights. After all, the health care exchanges are scheduled to open exactly 1 week from today, but there hasn't been adequate time to even test the data security system. Meanwhile, according to the Wall Street Journal, the government's software can't reliably determine how much people need to pay for coverage--not quite ready for prime time. Finally, there is the issue of fraud. I mentioned that a moment ago. The ObamaCare subsidies start next year, but the government won't actually be verifying it until 2015. In other words, the President is effectively inviting people to game the system without fear of consequences. Mr. President, the only way to effectively stop ObamaCare is to dismantle it entirely. That is why I strongly support the House bill that would defund ObamaCare and save the American people from this public policy train wreck. My colleagues stand ready to work with the President on smart patient-centered health care reforms that will actually reduce costs and improve access, but we refuse to help him salvage a law that has proven to be so unaffordable, unworkable, and so completely at odds with what the American people were told the law would do when this bill was passed. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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, as we discuss our efforts to support an effort that started in the House to defund ObamaCare in this legislation, I want to start by congratulating my colleague Senator Cruz on his remarkable 21-hour performance. I promise I will not try to duplicate that, at least not right now. But I do admire his passion and his energy, and I think probably more than anyone in recent memory, he has done more to raise this issue to the American consciousness and inspired people by his passion. I want to say that I share his determination to stop ObamaCare before it does any more damage to our country. The two of us represent 26 million people in the State of Texas, and we have heard countless stories of how the President's health care law is already hurting not just individuals and families and small businesses, but hurting the economy. I heard the distinguished Senator from Maine saying the President's health care law is working pretty well. But I have to say, even though I disagree with him about ObamaCare actually working, it strikes me that one point is irrefutable; that is, ObamaCare is hurting the economy and hurting job creation. We have heard at least from some of the major organized labor organizations in America--people like Richard Trumka, who said that ObamaCare is killing the 40-hour workweek. It is making full-time work into part-time work. That is one reason he and other labor organization leaders went to the White House recently and asked the President for a special opt-out or waiver. I believe the only solution is to dismantle ObamaCare in its entirety. Some have said: After Senator Cruz got through speaking today, after his remarkable 21-hour performance, the debate is over. To them I would say, the debate has only just begun. We will be here in the Senate for the remainder of this week debating the effort to defund ObamaCare. My friends across the aisle have repeatedly said that because Republicans want to protect the American people from ObamaCare, we want to take health insurance away from millions of Americans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Democrats argue that Republicans have not put forth any alternatives to ObamaCare. That is false. It is time to set the record straight. When it comes to health care reform, Republicans have three main objectives, all of which are filed under ObamaCare. One, we want to reduce costs. The President said this was one of his goals in ObamaCare. He promised that the average family would see a reduction in their health care costs of $2,500. What are the facts? We have seen health care costs go up by an average of $2,400 for that same family. We want to expand quality insurance coverage, and we want to improve access to care. The President has put most of the apples with his health care plan in the same sack, which is Medicaid. In Medicaid in my State, only about one doctor out of every three will see a new Medicaid patient because it only reimburses doctors about 50 percent or less of what they charge other patients. So they simply have had to refuse to see new Medicaid patients. So we want to reduce costs, we want to expand quality coverage so that you own your own insurance policy, and we want to improve access to care. In order to achieve those objectives, we first have to remove ObamaCare from the table. We know what the evidence has been in the years since ObamaCare first passed in 2010. ObamaCare is already causing employers to drop health coverage. So if you like what you have, it turns out you cannot keep it. It is already causing doctors to leave Medicare, for the same reason. As I mentioned, they are leaving Medicaid. It is already causing insurance providers to reduce consumer choice. We saw a story in the New York Times just a couple days ago about that. We know it is already causing businesses to lay off workers and turn full-time work into part-time work. It is already causing medical device manufacturers to close existing factories here in America and to move their businesses offshore because of the taxes that target that particular part of the health care industry. And it is already causing many physicians to consider early retirement, causing a restriction in access to coverage, because unless you can find a doctor to accept you, you do not have effective access to coverage, even though you may have something called Medicaid or Medicare. If and when the law is fully implemented, ObamaCare will drive up individual insurance premiums, it will cause millions of Americans to lose their existing health care coverage, it will jeopardize medical privacy rights by injecting the IRS into the implementation, it will further damage an already broken Medicaid program, and it will prompt even more doctors to stop treating Medicare patients. The closer we get to full implementation of ObamaCare, the more we learn about its myriad problems and its unintended consequences. For example, the ObamaCare exchanges are supposed to open next Tuesday. But most people still do not know how much money they will be paying for insurance. Meanwhile, a front-page story in USA Today talks about a little noticed provision of ObamaCare which threatens to cost some families thousands of dollars in health insurance and leave up to 500,000 children without coverage. For that matter, even if ObamaCare is fully implemented on schedule, the Congressional Budget Office projects that about 31 million Americans will still not have coverage. I thought ObamaCare was designed to make sure everybody had coverage. So it seems to me it has failed again in its stated objective. My friends across the aisle like to say that Republicans are opposed to expanding health insurance coverage. But, as I have just told you, we are actually for replacing ObamaCare, which would provide people with more access to affordable health care. In reality, what we are opposed to is policies that reduce health care choices and dramatically disrupt people's existing health care coverage. We are opposed to policies that raise taxes by more than $1 trillion on people like the medical device manufacturers that I mentioned a moment ago, which hurts innovation, which hurts people's access to the best quality of health care. And, yes, we are opposed to policies that kill full-time jobs in favor of part-time work. And we are opposed to policies that cause insurance premiums to go up rather than down. It is true, we are opposed to policies that put government bureaucrats between you and your doctor when it comes to deciding what access to health care you and your family ought to have. And we are opposed to policies that cause physicians to refuse to see Medicare patients. We are opposed to policies that weaken our health care safety net. And we are opposed to policies that massively expand the power of the Internal Revenue Service--that is currently racked in scandal--getting involved in implementing your health care plan. So again, we are for reform that helps bring down the cost and improves access to quality health care in a way that does not interfere between the doctor and the patient. The kinds of health care reforms that we are for are those that deal with cost, coverage, and access. For example, we support equalizing the tax treatment of health insurance so that individuals and employers are put on the same footing, unlike today. We support letting individuals and businesses form risk pools, particularly across State lines, to provide more choices and more competition when it comes to keeping down health care costs. And we support abolishing onerous mandates. Why should you have to buy health coverage that includes coverage you do not need or want? For example, if you are a young man, why should you have to buy a mandatory health plan that has maternity coverage in it? It does not make a lot of sense. And, yes, we support giving more Americans choices when it comes to how to pay for their health insurance using pretax dollars--things like tax free health savings accounts. We also believe that making price information more transparent will create the kind of discipline that comes with a market. For example, if people know what their health care costs are going to be, and they see what their choices are, they know that the competition that comes through market discipline will improve not only the price--it will bring it down--but it will improve the quality of service. Perhaps the best recent example of that is the Medicare prescription drug plan, which has now come in 40 percent below projected cost, because now seniors have choices when it comes to their prescription drugs, and those plans compete based on price and quality of service. That is benefiting the consumer and providing a lower price. And, yes, we do support tighter curbs on frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits, which drive up the costs of medical liability insurance and drive doctors out of business. In Texas, we have had a wonderful pilot program. And I tell you, we have seen doctors move to Texas because they want some predictability when it comes to their medical liability exposure and the costs of their malpractice insurance. That, in turn, provides people with better access to doctors. And, yes, we believe that you can use State high-risk pools to insure people with preexisting conditions. In other words, the idea that you need to embrace the behemoth called ObamaCare just in order to cover people with preexisting conditions is simply false. You do not. We can do it much cheaper and more effectively by supplementing the State high-risk pools so people with preexisting conditions can get access to health care. We support States having a lot more flexibility to manage Medicaid-- something that can only happen now based upon a special dispensation from the Federal Government. If we are able to help people coordinate their health coverage, we can do a better job of making sure that even people on Medicaid get access to health care at a lower cost. As I said, we support introducing competition into Medicare so that patients and physicians could work together to hold down costs, just as they have done in the prescription drug program that I mentioned a moment ago. So here is the bottom line: ObamaCare is not the only way to expand access to quality health care. In fact, it may well be the worst way to expand coverage because it raises costs and it reduces patient choices, and you have to depend on the tender mercies of the Federal Government when it intervenes between you and your doctor when it comes to your choices. By contrast, we believe that health care reforms such as those I have outlined just a moment ago would allow us to expand access to quality health care at a lower price without interfering with the doctor- patient relationship. Mr. President, before I conclude--because I know there are other colleagues who want to speak--I want to explain once again why I support moving ahead with this legislation that is now before us. I note that 100 Senators just voted for cloture on the motion to proceed to the continuing resolution which contains the defunded provision passed in the House. I am committed to defunding ObamaCare for the reasons I said. But I also believe that we ought to avoid a Government shutdown. I believe that to deny cloture--unlike the vote we just had, 100 to 0--to vote against cloture on the very resolution we are for that came from the House that would defund ObamaCare is a little hard to explain. It may well prompt the government shutdown, which I think benefits no one, and it could possibly damage our economy, which as I said earlier is fragile indeed. Here is the ultimate irony. If we are to shut down the government because we refuse to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government operating, ObamaCare still gets funded. That is because it has mandatory spending, in other words automatic spending, that even if the government shuts down, ObamaCare still, by and large, gets funded. You do not have to take my word for it. Dr. Coburn, Senator Coburn, has asked the Congressional Research Service for their authoritative opinion. They said even if the government were to shut down, ObamaCare will continue to be funded. So I support whatever strategy is likely to help us defund and ultimately dismantle ObamaCare, but in my view, shutting down the government is not the best strategy, because it would not work. According to the Congressional Research Service, ObamaCare would continue to be funded. To be clear: Republicans are united in our desire to defund ObamaCare. The bill before us does exactly that. So if we proceed to the bill, my hope is that five Democrats--maybe the five Democrats who voted for ObamaCare in its first instance but have been listening to their constituents as I have, people such as Richard Trumka and organized labor who have said: The promises you made, this simply is not performing as advertised. We need something to be done to ObamaCare. We have solutions that will address that. So if we can find five Democrats to join us, perhaps those Senators who are running for reelection in States that Mitt Romney carried by double digits, the Senate would have voted to defund ObamaCare. It is that simple. Plenty of our colleagues have acknowledged the harm ObamaCare is doing to our health care system, and to our broader economy. Now they have a chance to do something about it. Now they have a chance to actually vote with Republicans to stop this law before it is fully implemented. Four years after Senate Democrats voted to enact ObamaCare on a party-line vote--no Republican voted for it, all Democrats voted for it--the consequences of ObamaCare are plain for all of us to see. By proceeding to the House bill, we are forcing each Member of this Chamber to take a stand either for or against their constituents when it comes to a failed health care bill, one of the most unpopular laws in the history of the country. I know where I stand on ObamaCare. I know where all of my Republican colleagues stand. All of us stand united in our desire to protect the American people from this failed public policy. I would urge our colleagues across the aisle to think again, listen to their constituents, including people such as Richard Trumka and organized labor and help us save America from this failed public policy disaster. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio).

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Those negative consequences would include less private investment; more Federal spending on interest, which I have talked about briefly; less flexibility to address unexpected events, which you know always seems to occur--such as 9/11 or a natural disaster--and more risk of a full-blown debt crisis. To the extent President Obama and our friends across the aisle acknowledge our long-term debt problem, their main solution seems to be always the same: Let's raise taxes some more. In fact, they are now trying to use tax reform, which we thought should be revenue neutral, as a vehicle for another $1 trillion tax increase. We are told that is a condition of even talking about reforming our Tax Code, to make it flatter, simpler, and more growth oriented. That is after the President and his allies have already raised taxes by $1.7 trillion. So there is never enough to feed the beast of the Federal Government here in Washington. It is insatiable. Meanwhile, to the extent the President acknowledges the need for Medicare reform, his proposals always involve more price controls, primarily on the providers. Yet price controls have not solved Medicare's fundamental cost problems, and they won't solve it in the future. They say: We can save money on Medicare. We will just whack the payments we make to doctors and hospitals. I can tell you from talking to the hospitals and doctors in Texas--who would like to see Medicare patients but they can no longer afford to do so--that it is limiting access to health care by just dealing with Medicare on this basis of price controls and whacking payments to providers. Amid the weakest economic recovery and the longest periods of high unemployment since the Great Depression, the last thing we need is another massive tax increase that would discourage work, savings, and investment. We all know we cannot simply tax our way back into fiscal stability, and we cannot spend our way back into economic prosperity. If the President would merely accept those two realities, we might finally get the kind of long-term reforms and the real long-term spending cuts that might finally produce the economic recovery America is desperately waiting for and desperately needs. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, earlier this week the Congressional Budget Office released its latest long-term outlook. Of course, the CBO, as it is known around here, is the authoritative guide to all things involving the finances and the fiscal picture for the Federal Government. That long-term outlook offered us a sobering reminder the Federal Government cannot defy the laws of fiscal gravity forever. In other words, as every American knows--every working family knows--your output can't exceed your input forever. In other words, you can't spend more money than you have coming in. Unless you are the Federal Government, of course. But sooner or later we will have to reverse the trend of debt accumulation before it destroys our economy, because our current path is simply unsustainable. The crazy thing about it is that everybody in Washington, particularly the Congress, knows that. Yet it seems as though they are in a state of denial about what could very well happen to our country and to our future if we don't act. As I said, it is a very sobering message, and it is also very different from the message President Obama has been delivering lately. He likes to talk about America's short-term budget deficit falling. To remind everybody, there is the debt and there is the deficit. The deficit we measure on an annual basis. Debt is the cumulative shortfall between what comes in the front door and what goes out the back door. That debt is now about $17 trillion. For these young people down here, that means they each owe about $52,000 because my generation and other adults have not been responsible, and we have shoved off onto the next generation the responsibilities we ought to be meeting ourselves. So here is the reality. Any short-term deficit reduction will be meaningless unless we adopt longer term reforms. That means where the Federal Government spends most of its money, which is in mandatory spending--the spending that keeps Social Security and Medicare, among other programs, going. We need to also bend the spending curve down so that we are spending less money as well. The Congressional Budget Office estimates, when we factor in the likely impact of rising debt levels, the publicly held debt is on course to reach 108 percent of our gross domestic product in 2038. The gross domestic product is basically another way of saying the size of our entire economy. So 108 percent of the size of our entire economy is their projection, and that is before we include money the Federal Government effectively owes itself. I realize 2038 sounds like a long time from now. I remember as a kid I thought the year 2000 was going to be a long way away, but we now see that only in our rearview mirror. But by 2038, under current law, our net interest payments, as a share of our economy, will be 2\1/2\ times greater than the 40-year average. Let me boil that down a little bit. When we borrow money--because we are spending money we don't actually have--that adds to our annual deficit. But it also, over time, adds to our national debt. We have to get somebody to buy that debt so we can continue to spend money we don't have, so that we can continue to spend borrowed money. We have to pay interest to our creditors. In other words, they are going to expect a rate of return, as anybody would, when they loan somebody money. When China loans us money, it is not cost free. When they buy a huge portion of our national debt, it is not cost free. Over time we will see interest rates--which are really at historic lows now because of the aggressive action of the Federal Reserve keeping those interest rates low--go back up to historic norms, and then we are going to see that a larger and larger share of what the Federal Government spends is merely to pay China and our other creditors who buy our debt, unless we take aggressive measures to begin to bring our debt load down. The President and the Democrats frequently demand more spending on things such as research and development--that is a good thing--or infrastructure--that is a good thing--yet they refuse to embrace the serious reforms necessary that enable us to do so. Here again, when the interest payments on the debt invariably go up, they will crowd out spending on other priorities, such as research and development, such as infrastructure, such as education, and others that should be among our national priorities. The Congressional Budget Office projects that by 2038 total spending on everything other than major health care programs, Social Security, and net interest payments would decline to 7 percent of gross domestic product, and that is down from 11 percent, which is the average over the last 40 years. That is the crowding-out effect I was mentioning a moment ago. When we spend more and more money on these other programs, it crowds out spending on other things necessary to keep our economy growing and to keep people employed. If we don't start reforming our biggest mandatory spending programs-- again, that is Social Security and Medicare--in a responsible way, it will become much harder for the Federal Government to perform its most basic obligations and it will leave these young people and others--such as my daughters, who are in their early thirties--holding the bag, not only with the debt I mentioned a moment ago, but also with broken programs that are unsustainable, that will not be there for them when they turn 65 or when they get older. It is a law of nature that you cannot keep spending money you don't have, and you can't keep racking up debt forever without any consequences. The only question is whether the reforms I am talking about will be gradual--will be phased in over time--or whether they will be sudden and abrupt and disruptive. If we start now in a responsible way, these reforms can be gradual. Thank goodness, when Social Security was passed people didn't live to be 80 years old, on average, and they weren't as productive as they are today. That is a good thing. Modern medicine and nutrition have made it possible for us to live longer, on average, and to be much more productive. But we need to make sure we take into account, through Medicare and Social Security, the fact that people are living longer and are more productive. We need to make certain our programs are modernized to keep up with those facts and make sure they are available in the future, particularly among our most vulnerable citizens. If we wait until America is on the verge of a debt crisis, the reforms will have to be abrupt. In other words, when the bottom drops out, a lot of people are going to be hurt, and it will be far more difficult to protect the most vulnerable among us from the harshest sort of cuts. What I am suggesting makes sense. Wouldn't we prefer to be in control of a gradual reform of our mandatory spending programs that are phased in over years, in ways most Americans will not actually feel because it can be done gradually? To me, it makes sense to do that as opposed to watching the bottom drop out or just simply kicking the can down the road. You know, they say: If you kick the can down the road long enough, pretty soon you are going to run out of road. Let me again quote from the Congressional Budget Office. They said: At some point, investors will begin to doubt the government's willingness or ability to pay U.S. debt obligations, making it more difficult or more expensive for the government to borrow money. Moreover, even before that point is reached, the high and rising amount of debt that CBO projects under the extended baseline would have significant negative consequences for both the economy and the Federal budget. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as you know, today marks the fifth anniversary of the 2008 financial panic which threw our country into a severe recession and the worst economic crisis this country has had since the 1930s. It has been 5 years since Lehman Brothers collapsed. It has been 5 years since the Federal Government seized full control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It has been 5 years since Washington bailed out AIG, the giant insurance company. In the weeks and months following the events of September 2008, Members of both parties agreed that one of the most important things we could do is to fix the idea of too big to fail when it came to some of the largest financial institutions in America. Too big to fail--so the only alternative was for taxpayers to bail them out. We wanted to end it. Five years later, I wish I could say we had succeeded. I wish I could say that too big to fail was a thing of the past. Unfortunately, the very law that was passed by our Democratic friends, primarily, that was supposed to end too big to fail actually codified it, actually made it more certain to occur because it gave Federal regulators the power to identify something called systemically important institutions. Doesn't that sound suspiciously like too big to fail if you are systemically important financial institutions? We have already seen that systemically important firms enjoy huge funding advantages over smaller competitors, primarily community bankers in places such as my State, mostly because of the perception that these large companies enjoy a government bailout guarantee. In other words, their cost of doing business is lower because people actually perceive they have a Federal Government backstop available to bail them out if they get into trouble--not so for small credit unions, community bankers in places such as my State and around the country. In other words, Dodd-Frank, rather than weakening this concept, actually strengthened the de facto partnership between Washington, DC, and New York, and primarily Wall Street. That is the exact opposite of what I think the American people thought was happening and certainly the opposite of what they were demanding since 2008. It is exactly the opposite of what our financial system needs in order to operate more safely and to avoid taxpayer bailouts such as we saw following 2008. This is just another reason the U.S. economy continues to slog along, with the weakest recovery and the longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Nearly 38 percent of America's unemployed have been jobless for more than 6 months. Let me say that again. Nearly 38 percent of Americans unemployed have been jobless for more than 6 months. Those are tragic statistics because we all know that the longer someone is unemployed, the harder it is for them to get back into a job because they lose skills, they become less competitive in the labor markets. The only reason unemployment rates actually fell was not because the economy was getting strong enough to create new jobs, but it was because fewer and fewer people actually were looking for work. More and more people actually gave up. All one has to do is go on the Internet and look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics under something called the labor participation rate, and we can see that the percentage of people actually looking for work has declined to the lowest point in about 30 years or so. A recent study concludes that America is still 8.3 million jobs away from a full economic recovery--8.3 million Americans out of work who need to be back at work in order for us to get back on track. Is it any wonder that a Pew Research Center poll indicated that 52 percent of people feel as though our job situation has hardly recovered at all since the great recession? Fifty-two percent think things have not gotten that much better. Nevertheless, there seems to be this divide, this gulf between perception in Washington among the political elites and on Main Street. For example, in an ABC News broadcast this past weekend, President Obama said that since he took office, America has witnessed ``progress across the board.'' I guess ``progress'' is a relative term. But since the official end of the recession in June 2008, median household income has declined by nearly $2,500. Average working families have $2,500 less to spend, so, of course, they do not feel as though we have had a recovery. They do not feel as though things have gotten better across the board, such as the President. Of course, that is before we even account for inflation. When we adjust the numbers to reflect the increase in consumer prices, the drop in median household income has been significantly larger than the $2,500 I just mentioned. The President says he is concerned about income inequality, about the difference between the wealthy and average working families and the poor. But the New York Times has reported that the trend of rising income inequality ``appears to have accelerated during [this President's] administration.'' It has gotten worse. Indeed, according to one measure of the income gap, inequality has increased about four times faster under President Obama than it did under President George W. Bush. Of course, America's income gap is mirrored by a yawning unemployment gap. Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported that ``the gap in employment rates between America's highest- and lowest-income families has stretched to its widest levels since officials began tracking the data a decade ago.'' Again, this is happening under a President who said rising income inequality is morally wrong, a President who believes rising income inequality is holding America's economic recovery back. But the problem is not in his diagnosis, it is in his proposed remedies, his policies. His proposed remedies for growing inequality include more taxes, more spending by the Federal Government, more debt, and more regulations. It is symptomatic of the idea that Washington knows best. It does not, and we know because of the failed experiments over the last 5 years. Of course, if such policies were truly part of the solution, inequality would be declining. In other words, if the President's proposed solutions of more regulations, more taxes, and more Federal spending would work, we would be well on our way to an economic recovery, unemployment would be back to historic norms, and the economy would be growing. But it is not. Then there is the cost of health insurance. This is another one of the burdens on particularly small businesses and individuals which are keeping the economy stagnant. Back in 2008 the President famously promised that premiums for a family of four would decrease by about $2,500 if we would just pass his signature health care legislation, now known as ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act, but instead the cost has gone up by nearly $2,400 between 2009 and 2012. So we have median household income going down about $2,500, but actually the cost of health care, rather than going down, is going up by about the same amount. For that matter, the cost problem will only get worse once ObamaCare is fully implemented, as we are beginning to see as we see what the premiums are like in the individual market for people who buy their health care in the exchanges. The National Journal found that ``for the vast majority of Americans,'' premiums will be higher under ObamaCare. That is pretty easy to understand because of the way it has been wired. For example, someone has said, it is as though, because of the guaranteed issue aspect of ObamaCare, someone can wait until they are sick to buy health insurance and the insurance company has to sell it to them. So somebody said: That is akin to waiting until your house is on fire before you actually buy fire insurance. That is not insurance anymore, and that runs up the cost for everybody, as does a phenomenon such as age banning, where young people my daughters' age, in their early thirties, are going to have to bear the cost of health care for older Americans because they cannot charge older Americans any more than three times more than what they charge young, healthy people such as my daughters, even though their consumption of health care, we know, will not be anywhere near that ratio. As projected, the President's health care law will cause individual insurance premiums to skyrocket all across America, including Texas. Policies such as ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank, as I keep hearing from my community bankers, have increased the cost of doing business and generated enormous uncertainty about the future. I was talking to a businessman in Houston just 2 days ago. He said: The thing that is holding America back, our economy back, is uncertainty. People don't know what their taxes are going to be like, what the regulatory environment is going to be like. They don't know about our failure to deal with our national debt, now about $17 trillion. As the Fed begins to wind down its purchases of our own debt, interest rates start to go back up. What is that going to mean? It is going to mean we have to pay China and other creditors more money for the money they have loaned to us because of that $17 trillion debt, and it will simply crowd out our ability to fund other priorities such as national security, among others. The story of our sluggish recovery is ultimately a story of wasted human capital, again another tragedy. It is a story of mothers and fathers who cannot find full-time jobs and who are having trouble supporting their families. It is a story of college graduates who are unemployed, living at home, and drowning in student loan debt. As economists Keith Hennessey and Ed Lazear have written, ``The severe recession was bad enough, but the slow recovery is doing just as much damage to living standards since it is sustained over a longer time frame.'' I would say to our President: If you care about reducing income inequality, if you care about saving the American dream, let's try something new. You know, the definition of insanity, one pundit said, was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. So let's try something new, because we know the status quo has not worked. Instead of piling more burdens on job creators and making it harder for Americans to secure full-time employment, let's embrace policies that make it easier to create jobs and easier to get full-time work. Let's reform our Tax Code so it is progrowth, make it simpler, make it fairer, make it more logical, make it more conducive to that strong economic growth that is going to create jobs. Let's go back to the drawing board on health care and embrace sensible patient-centered reforms that will reduce costs and increase accessibility. We are never going to change our economic trajectory until we change our economic policies. Again, doing the same thing over and over again is not going to change the outcome. We need to try something new. The policies of the past 4\1/2\ years have given us an economy that is failing to deliver the kind of job creation and income gains Americans want and they need. As the President's own Treasury Secretary said this week, ``Too many Americans cannot find work, growth is not fast enough, and the very definition of what it means to be middle class is being undercut by trends in our economy that must be addressed.'' I could not agree with him more. So isn't it time to try something different? I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor the day after a terrible tragedy that befell Washington, DC, particularly those who live and work around the Washington Navy Yard. Hardly a mile from this building, and in the shadow of its dome, there occurred an act of senseless violence that took the lives of 12 men and women and injured several more, as well as the life of the shooter himself. These men and women worked, by and large, in service to our country, whether as uniformed military or as civilian contractors. Of course, they are more than just the numbers usually ascribed. They are mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands and wives. When I heard about this shooting yesterday as I was traveling from Texas back to Washington, DC, I couldn't help but think about a not- too-dissimilar tragedy that occurred about 4 years ago at Fort Hood, TX, when MAJ Nidal Hasan killed about 13 people there as well as injuring more than 30 others. At this difficult time, we, of course, pray for these souls who were unexpectedly taken from us. We pray for comfort for their grieving families and friends, and we pray that healing may come quickly for those who were wounded. We witnessed evil yesterday, but as so often is the case when the unthinkable occurs, accounts of tremendous bravery and self-sacrifice emerge. I found some small measure of solace in one such story I read. It described how one gentleman at the scene--a man by the name of Omar Grant--guided his partially blind colleague to safety. As shots rang out and people ran for the exits, Mr. Grant took his colleague by the arm and, risking his own safety, made his mission to guide him out of the building. This, of course, says nothing about the remarkable feats of bravery of the first responders who rushed to the scene and who placed their lives at risk in order to preserve the safety of others ahead of their own. Yesterday's events remind us life is fragile and it is a precious gift. Let us express our deep gratitude for those who work around the clock, both in places such as the Navy Yard and here at the Capitol, to help keep us safe. I wish to thank the DC Metropolitan Police for their important role, the U.S. Capitol Police, and all the first responders for their extraordinary response. Their courage, their vigilance, and their sacrifice is what helps keep all of us safe, all of us who work here and visit our Nation's Capital. We thank them and we promise, on behalf of a grateful nation, we will never forget. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, my dad was a pilot in the Army Air Corps in World War II. He served in the Eighth Air Force, the 303rd Bomb Group stationed in Molesworth, England. On his 26th bombing mission over Nazi Germany, he was shot down and captured as a prisoner of war where he served for the remainder of the war. So I learned at a very young age that when we start talking about matters of war and peace, we must take these very seriously. I appreciate the fact that President Obama came to Capitol Hill yesterday and spoke to both the Democratic conference and the Republican conference. I further appreciate very much the fact that President Obama spoke to the American people last night. I actually wish he had done it a little earlier since the chemical weapons attacks occurred on the 21st of August. It was roughly 3 weeks after that that he finally spoke to the American people. I think it would have been better for him and better for the country if he had done it sooner and demonstrated a greater urgency, but I am glad he did it. When a President asks the American people to support our U.S. military and the use of military force, he has a solemn obligation to communicate to the American people how it will protect America's vital interests. He has an obligation to tell the American people why going to war is absolutely essential to U.S. national security. He has an obligation to lay out clear and realistic objectives; and finally, he has an obligation to explain how military intervention fits within America's broader foreign policy strategy. I have used the word war advisedly because sometimes I think we get caught up in political correctness around here--talking about workplace violence at Fort Hood and overseas contingency operations. As a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who served 40 years told me last week when I asked for his advice on what the President was asking us to do, he said: Anytime you kill people in the name of the U.S. Government, it is an act of war. So like others in this Chamber over the last few weeks, I have attended meetings with the President where I had the honor of being in his presence and listening to him in person on two occasions. I listened to other administration officials. Like all of us, I sat through hours of classified briefings with the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, and the State Department. I have listened intently as Senator Kerry described in what I thought at first was an inadvertent statement made as a result of fatigue. I can only imagine what he must have been going through. He has been shuttled back and forth around the world to try to resolve this issue. But he described this strike as unbelievably small. I was further surprised when I heard the White House press secretary say: No, it wasn't a gaffe; he didn't misspeak. I mean, we all misspeak from time to time, so I expected him to say: Well, he should have used other words or might have used other words. Then Senator Kerry himself--now Secretary Kerry--said: No, I didn't misspeak. I was encouraged to hear the President address the Nation because I believe before we take our case overseas to American allies, we should first make the case here at home to the American people. In making their case for a brief, limited attack against Syria, administration officials have repeatedly said U.S. military intervention would not seek to topple the Asad regime even though regime change has been the policy of the U.S. Government since at least August 2011. They said their military campaign would not seek to change the momentum in Syria's civil war, even though, as I mentioned a moment ago, our government's official policy is one of regime change, that Asad must go. My view is a U.S. attack that allowed Asad to remain in power with one of the world's largest stockpiles of chemical weapons would not promote U.S. national security interests. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine how that kind of intervention could actually backfire and end up being a propaganda disaster. Many of us are concerned about upholding America's credibility, particularly when it comes to matters such as this, and I share their concern. But it would help if before we launch a halfhearted, ineffectual attack which gives our enemies a major propaganda victory that we come up with a more coherent plan and strategy for accomplishing our public policy goals. Murphy's law says what can go wrong will go wrong. Well, there is a Murphy's law of war too--perhaps many of them but one of them is no plan to go to war survives the first contact intact. In other words, we can plan to shoot the first bullet, but we can't control what happens after that. In all likelihood, such an attack would hurt our credibility and reduce U.S. public support for future interventions. This is what I mean: If we were to undertake a limited military attack against Asad in order to punish him for using chemical weapons--which is a horrific act on his part, a barbaric act on his part--but it left Asad in power, what is he going to tell the rest of the world? He is going to say: The world's greatest military force took a shot at me and I am still here. I am still in power. I won and America lost. That is how I can see this backfiring in a very serious way, undermining America's credibility-- credibility we must keep intact, particularly as we look at larger, looming threats such as the Iranian aspiration for nuclear weapons. I wish to be clear, though: I would be willing to support a military operation in Syria but only if our intervention met certain criteria. No. 1: If it directly addressed the nightmare scenario of Asad's use of chemical weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. It is not just his use of chemical weapons on his own people; it is the potential that those chemical weapons could get into the hands of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations and harm either Americans or American interests around the world. No. 2: I could support a resolution if it involved the use of decisive and overwhelming force, without self-imposed limitations, and without leaking to our enemies what our tactics are and what it is we would not do, and ruining one of the greatest tools in war, which is the element of surprise. Why in the world would we tell Asad what we are going to do--and Secretary Kerry said it would be a small attack-- and why would we tell Asad what we won't do, thereby eliminating both the ambiguity of our position and the potential threat of even more serious and overwhelming military force? No. 3: I would be willing to support an authorization if it were an integral part of a larger coherent Syria policy that clearly defined the political end state. I still remember General Petraeus, the head of Central Command covering Iraq and Afghanistan, talking about our policy in those countries. He said, The most important question, perhaps, when we go to war is how does this end. We need a clearly defined political end state that we are trying to achieve by what the President requested and we need an outline of a realistic path to get there. No. 4: I believe it is important that we have a sizable international coalition of nations, each of which is contributing to the war effort. This is an amazing reversal for the President since the time he was a Senator and a Presidential candidate. To say we are not going to the United Nations--and I understand why; because of China and Russia, their veto of any resolution out of the Security Council, we are not going to go to NATO. Indeed, the President seemed content, or at least resigned, to going it alone. And if it is true this redline is the international community's redline, then the international community needs to contribute to the effort to hold Asad accountable. The problem is President Obama's requested authorization for the use of military force under these circumstances fails to meet each of those criteria. He has failed to make the case that a short, limited military campaign would promote our vital interests and our national security. He has failed to lay out clear and realistic objectives that could be obtained through the use of military force. And he has failed to offer a compelling description of how his proposed intervention would advance America's broader foreign policy strategy; indeed, how it would advance his own policy of regime change. Therefore, if we were asked to vote on an authorization under these circumstances, I would vote no. I am under no illusion--none of us are--about the utter depravity of Bashar al-Asad. Over the last 2\1/2\ years his regime has committed unspeakable acts of rape, torture, and murder. The chemical weapons attacks, by the way, as described by Secretary Kerry's own testimony in the House of Representatives, included 11 earlier uses of chemical weapons, but they were smaller. Can we imagine the difficulty of trying to impose a redline when that redline is crossed 11 times before the President finally decides to try to enforce it? But there is no question that the use of chemical weapons shows an appalling disregard for human life and a cruel desire to terrorize the Syrian population. I, as others, have consistently demanded that Russia stop arming Asad and stop defending him and blocking U.N. Security Council resolutions, and aiding and abetting his barbaric atrocities against his own people. I want to see a free democratic Syria as much as anyone else. But that does not mean I will vote to support a reckless, ill-advised military intervention that could jeopardize our most important national security interests. There have been a lot of people who have opined on the President's request, some better informed than others. One opinion I found particularly convincing was that of retired Army MG Robert Scales who has written that the path to war chosen by the Obama administration ``violates every principle of war, including the element of surprise, achieving mass and having a clearly defined and obtainable objective.'' As I said, we know the latest chemical weapons attack occurred on August 21. Yet President Obama didn't address the Nation until 3 weeks later. The Syrians, of course, have now had weeks to prepare for any pending military intervention and no doubt have moved the chemical weapons to other locations and their military equipment to civilian population centers in order to protect them from any attack. With no element of surprise, it makes the potential for success of any military intervention much less and reveals there is no real coherent policy in this regard. Consider what happened last Monday. Secretary of State Kerry made what he calls an off-the-cuff remark about the possibility of canceling a missile strike if Asad turned over all of his chemical weapons. In the same statement he said he wasn't sure that would work or that he would ever be serious about it, but he did say it. Russia, of course, immediately responded by offering to broker a transfer of Syria's WMD to international monitors. After spending weeks trying to make the case for war, President Obama has asked that the vote in this Chamber be canceled and is apparently treating the Russian-Syrian proposal as a serious diplomatic breakthrough. I would caution all of us--the American people and all of our colleagues--to be skeptical, for good reason, at this lifeline Vladimir Putin has now thrown the administration. I would remind the President and our colleagues that Russia itself is not in full compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention, nor is it even in compliance with nuclear arms control obligations that are subject to an international treaty. The litany of Russian offenses is long, but I would remind President Obama that since he launched the so-called Russian reset, Moscow has vetoed U.N. resolutions on Syria, sent advanced weaponry to the Asad regime, stolen elections, stoked anti- Americanism, made threats over our possible deployment of missile defense systems; it has expelled USAID from Russia, pulled out of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program; it has banned U.S. citizens from adopting Russian children, and offered asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden. In short, we have very little reason to believe Moscow is a reliable diplomatic partner. The Russians are part of the problem in Syria, not part of the solution. Let me say that clearly. The Russians are part of the problem in Syria; they are not credibly part of the solution. Moreover, I am curious to learn how international monitors would adequately confirm the disposal of chemical weapons by a terrorist- sponsoring dictatorship among a ferocious civil war. While this strike the President talked about might have been limited in his imagination, if you are Bashar al-Asad, this is total war, because he realizes the only way he will leave power is in a pine box. He knows that. This is total war. I asked the President yesterday: What happens if, in order to punish Asad, we intervene militarily and it doesn't work? In his fight for his survival and the survival of his regime, he uses them again in an act of desperation? The President said, We will hit him again. Well, clearly, what had become a limited strike could quickly spiral out of control into a full-blown engagement in Syria. I think the President's own words suggest that. But, of course, the Asad regime is the same one that refuses to acknowledge the full extent of its chemical arsenal--and this is something we will be hearing more about. It has bioweapons capability. Bioweapons capability is actually a much greater threat to American interests than chemical weapons, which are more difficult to transport and much harder to handle. And this is the same dictatorship that was secretly working on a nuclear weapons program before the Israelis took care of it in 2007. We have been told that however unfortunate President Obama's ``redline'' comment might have been, upholding his threat is about maintaining American credibility. And I admit, American credibility in matters of war and peace and national security are very, very important. But America's credibility on the world stage is about more than just Presidential rhetoric. It is about defining clear objectives and establishing a coherent strategy for achieving them. In the case of Syria, President Obama has not offered a clear strategy or clearly laid out his objectives. Given all that, I am not surprised that the American people do not support the President's call for the use of limited military force in Syria. Those are the calls I got in my office. As I went back to Texas, I kept hearing people--who I would think under almost any other circumstances would say: If America's national security interests are at stake, then we are behind the President, we are behind military intervention, but they simply saw an incoherent policy and objectives that were not clearly laid out to obtain the result the President himself said is our policy. Well, the most recent experience we have had as a country with limited war has been Libya, and I have heard the President tout that as perhaps an example about how we can get in and get out. The 2011 military operation that deposed Muammar Qadhafi was supposed to be a showcase example of a limited operation in which America led from behind and still obtained its objectives without putting U.S. boots on the ground. Unfortunately, the administration had no real plan for what happened after Qadhafi fell. We all know it was 1 year ago today in Benghazi when terrorists linked to Al Qaeda massacred four brave Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Today Libya is spiraling into chaos and rapidly becoming a failed state. Earlier this month a leading British newspaper reported that ``Libya has almost entirely stopped producing oil as the government loses control of much of the country to militia fighters.'' All sorts of bad actors, including terrorist groups, are flooding into the security vacuum, and ``Libyans are increasingly at the mercy of militias which act outside the law.'' Before I conclude, I want to say a few words about America's Armed Forces and America's role in the world. We all know and are extraordinarily proud of our men and women who wear the uniform of the U.S. military. No military in history has been more powerful. No military has ever been more courageous. No military has been more selfless and fought and bled and died to protect innocent people in far-flung places across the planet. No military has ever done more to promote peace and prosperity around the world. I have every confidence that if called upon to act our men and women in uniform will do just that. They will perform their duties with the utmost skill, bravery, and professionalism. But we should never send them to war tying one hand behind their back and ask them to wage limited war against a dictator for whom, as I said earlier, this is total war. This is win or die. Military force is like a hammer, and you cannot thread the needle President Obama wants to thread with a hammer. I would like to conclude by saying that this debate--which is important and serious and one the American people expect us to have--is not about isolationism versus internationalism. Believe me, I am no isolationist, and I fully support the global security role America has played since World War II, since my dad was a POW. A world without American military dominance would be, as Ronald Reagan noted, a much more dangerous place. I believe peace comes with American strength. However, it will be harder to maintain our global military dominance if we waste precious resources, our credibility, and political capital on hasty, misguided, unbelievably small interventions. Once again, I would be willing to support an authorization for a military strike against Syria if it met certain basic criteria I have laid out. But I cannot support an operation that is so poorly conceived, so foolishly telegraphed, and virtually guaranteed to fail. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate receives from the House H.R. 2009, the Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act, the Senate proceed to its consideration; that the bill be read a third time and passed, without intervening action or debate, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. CORNYN

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