John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, turning to the matter upon which I asked unanimous consent and to which the majority leader objected, and that is to take up legislation that I have sponsored here in the Senate, which has been passed in the House, which is the Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act, with each passing day it seems as though more and more supporters of ObamaCare are having second thoughts. As I mentioned last week, three of America's most powerful labor leaders have declared the President's health care law is ``creating nightmare scenarios'' and threatening to ``hurt millions of Americans.'' Those are some pretty remarkable words from people who were some of the foremost advocates for the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. Meanwhile, the union that represents IRS employees has announced it does not want its members to receive health insurance through ObamaCare exchanges. In fact, earlier today the IRS Commissioner himself said he wants to keep his current health care policy and does not want to sign up for ObamaCare, as millions of other Americans will be required to do. Speaking of the Internal Revenue Service, the agency's political targeting scandal continues to grow. I listened in my office to Senator Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, the one primarily responsible for Internal Revenue oversight in the Senate, and I hope the questions he posed will be answered by the bipartisan investigation we are conducting. We recently learned the Internal Revenue Service's Chief Counsel's Office, headed by an Obama administration appointee, was aware of the abuses. So much for a couple of rogue agents in Cincinnati, as was originally reported. We have also learned that IRS officials have been improperly targeted, not only conservative organizations but political candidates and donors as well. To make things worse, the same person who ran the IRS division that targeted conservative groups is now running the agency's ObamaCare office. I can't make this stuff up. Truth is stranger than fiction. Americans might be asking: What does the IRS have to do with ObamaCare? America's tax collection agency will be responsible for administering several of the law's most important provisions, including the individual and employer mandates, which we have heard so much about, and all of the subsidies. In other words, all of the tax dollars will go to fund the exchanges under ObamaCare. Those will be administered by the Internal Revenue Service under the current law. It is remarkable that at a time when public trust and the Internal Revenue Service has plummeted and IRS officials are complaining their staffers are overworked and overburdened, the Obama administration wants to use this tax agency to administer a massive new entitlement program affecting one-sixth of our national economy. To me, that sounds like another recipe for disaster. Back in May I sponsored legislation that would prevent the Internal Revenue Service from a role in implementing ObamaCare. Last week, I introduced it as an amendment to the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill that was pending before this Chamber. Congressman Tom Price of Georgia has introduced a similar bill in the House of Representatives. Unfortunately--and this is pretty amazing-- even before the House passed the House bill and before the Senate had a chance to take up the Senate bill, President Obama has already issued a veto threat were we to pass it. It sounds a little defensive to me. I understand ObamaCare is a deeply decisive issue in Washington, and I understand that while many have been compelled to defend the law previously, they are now feeling a little skittish about it 3 years later. I ask my colleagues: Given all we have learned about corruption and institutional abuse at the Internal Revenue Service, does anyone truly believe we should dramatically expand the agency's power to implement ObamaCare? Does anyone truly believe IRS agents should have access to even more personal financial information--not to mention medical information--about American citizens? If IRS officials conducted a systematic campaign of political targeting against conservative organizations, why should we have any more confidence that the agency will fairly and objectively implement the President's health care law? Remember, the IRS has already announced it will violate the text of the law and issue health care subsidies through Federal exchanges. Let's recall what happened. Many States said: We will pass on State- based insurance exchanges upon which ObamaCare depends to be implemented in the States. So what the IRS has said is: We are going to paper over the fact that Congress never explicitly authorized tax dollars to subsidize the Federal exchanges, even though the law clearly states that those subsidies can be issued only through State exchanges. That is another example of lawlessness when it comes to ObamaCare. In other words, the agency has already shown utter contempt for the rule of law when it comes to implementing the President's most cherished legislative accomplishment. They have already shown that contempt, and they don't deserve, nor have they shown themselves worthy of, our confidence when it comes to implementing this health care law. In my view, the IRS has absolutely no business playing such a huge role in the American health care system. For that matter, I ask my friends on the other side of the aisle one final question: Do you still believe ObamaCare will reduce health care costs? After all, it is estimated that the law will cause a dramatic spike in individual insurance premiums across the country--from Maryland to Florida, to Indiana and Ohio, to Kentucky and Missouri, to Idaho and California. Earlier this week, for example, the Florida insurance commissioner predicted that because of ObamaCare, the cost of health insurance in the individual market and Florida will increase by 30 to 40 percent. The reason for that is because the provisions in ObamaCare mandate the guaranteed issuance of health insurance even after a person is sick. Someone compared it to waiting until your house is on fire to buy insurance. It is not insurance anymore, and it drives up the cost, not to mention the fact that young people--such as those sitting in front of me--are going to have to pay the price of subsidizing health care for older Americans. The so-called age-banding requirements don't allow older citizens to pay any more than three times what young people pay for health insurance, even though the cost of their health care, given their age, will be higher. So this is what distorts the insurance markets, which is causing health insurance premiums to skyrocket across the States because of ObamaCare. Rather than make our individual health insurance markets even more distorted and more dysfunctional than they are today, we should dismantle ObamaCare and replace it with patient-centered reforms that create a genuine national marketplace for health insurance. I was just reading a story about an Oklahoma surgical center which publishes the price of common procedures for the public to read and which now has created--what markets always do--greater consumer awareness of what exactly these procedures cost. As we have seen in Medicare Part D, the prescription drug plan Congress passed a few years ago, when a market is created and vendors compete for consumers' business, prices go down and the quality of service goes up. That is what markets do. Ultimately, it benefits the consumer, and it would benefit taxpayers and patients as well. What do I mean by patient-centered reforms? I am talking about reforms that empower individual Americans by giving them more choices and flexibility in the health care markets--such as the example of the Oklahoma surgical care center--by giving people more transparent information about pricing and quality and by directly assisting people with preexisting conditions. I heard the majority leader earlier when Senator McConnell offered a unanimous consent to extend the moratorium on the individual mandate just as the President has unilaterally on the employer mandate. He said something to the effect of: Republicans want people to be subjected to preexisting condition exclusions that are not covered. That is simply false. We don't have to embrace 2,700 pages of ObamaCare just to take care of that problem or other problems we have agreement on. We should also work to protect the doctor-patient relationship. The last thing we ought to do on my list of things to do to reform the health care system is to save Medicare from bankruptcy. It is on an unsustainable path. Yet any time we try to suggest reforms that will strengthen and stabilize Medicare and make sure it is there for future generations, they are met with a ``stiff-arm.'' If we want to reduce health care costs, if we want to expand quality insurance coverage and give Americans more choices and options, we should equalize the tax treatment for health insurance so it is treated the same whether it is provided by your employer or whether an individual buys it. We should let individuals and businesses form risk pools in the individual market, and we should let folks buy health insurance across State lines. Why shouldn't I be able to buy health insurance in New Hampshire or Alabama or somewhere else if it fits my needs? Right now that is not possible. It would create a market which would create competition, bring down costs, and make it more affordable. We should expand tax- free health savings accounts so people can save their own money and spend it as they see fit on their health care. If they don't spend it there, it is available for their retirement, much like any other individual retirement account. We should curb frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits. According to one study, the annual cost of defensive medicine is a staggering $210 billion. In my State, we have had a lot of success with medical malpractice reform. It stabilized the cost of medical malpractice insurance that physicians have to buy, and it created a huge surplus of physicians who want to move to Texas and practice their profession. They realize they will not lose everything they have in the litigation lottery. They can buy affordable coverage that will protect their family and their patients should they make mistakes. We should give each State much more flexibility to design a Medicaid Program that works best for their neediest residents. Medicaid is a wonderful program, but it is broken. This is designed to protect the most vulnerable people in our society and provide for their health care needs. But because of the broken Medicaid Program, only one out of every three doctors in my State will actually see a new Medicaid patient. Medicaid reimburses at about half of what private insurance reimburses, and as a result many doctors can't afford to see a new Medicaid patient. What we have is the appearance of coverage, but there is no real access to the doctor of their choice. So we need to fix Medicaid. Finally, we should establish greater provider competition in Medicare so the competition I mentioned a moment ago in the Medicare prescription drug program could also apply in other aspects of Medicare and help make it more affordable, shore it up, and guarantee its availability to generations yet to come. There is no reason why Americans have to accept an unworkable health care law administered by an agency such as the Internal Revenue Service that has grossly abused its power and demonstrated that its current job is way beyond its capacity to perform. I realize we will not be able to dismantle ObamaCare overnight--not with President Obama still in the White House and with a Democratic majority in the Senate. I realize many of these issues need to be debated further, but I hope we can all agree that the Internal Revenue Service, the IRS, should not be administering a law that affects one- sixth of our national economy and which so dramatically affects the quality of life for 320 million Americans. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, sitting here listening to the distinguished senior Senator from Utah Mr. Hatch, who in many ways I consider my mentor in the Senate, I couldn't help but reflect on what we were all doing on Christmas Eve at 7 o'clock in the morning of 2009. We were on the floor of the Senate casting a historic vote on the President's Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare. Sadly, that piece of legislation became a partisan exercise in power. All the Democrats voted for it and all the Republicans voted against it. It was an inauspicious way to start such an important part of reform of our health care system. The President pretty well got what he wanted. The 2,700-page piece of legislation was made into law with $1 trillion-plus tax increases, with promises that if you like what you have, you can keep it, and he promised that even families of four could see a reduction in their health care costs of roughly $2,500 a year. Whether you were against ObamaCare from the beginning, as I was, because you never believed it would actually work, or you were for it and you actually believed that it would perform as advertised and as promised, I think everyone has to now acknowledge it has not turned out the way that even some of its most ardent supporters had hoped it would. The first indication, perhaps, was when the Secretary of Health and Human Services began to issue waivers, in excess of 1,000 waivers, from having to comply with the law itself. There were many questions about the basis upon which these waivers were issued. Were they given to friends of the administration and denied to adversaries of the administration? This is what happens when you pass a sweeping piece of legislation such as this and then cherry-pick who it applies to and who it does not apply to. This started with the granting of waivers. We found that most recently even the President of the United States has determined the employer mandate--the mandate on employers with more than 50 employees, that they provide this government-designed insurance policy or else they get fined--that even the President has acknowledged by his action that delaying the implementation of the employer mandate for a year is having a devastating effect on unemployment in America. The reason we know this is because many employers are simply shedding jobs so they can get beneath the 50-person threshold for the employer mandate or they are taking full-time jobs and making them into part- time jobs. This is causing a lot of people who wish to work and want to provide for their families--it is creating an inability for them to do so according to their needs. We know the individual mandate--the House of Representatives has passed a piece of legislation that says: If you are going to delay the employer mandate for businesses, shouldn't you show the same consideration for individual Americans who, unless they buy this government-approved insurance, will have to pay a penalty? The President hasn't accepted that delay in the implementation of the law. There is another important piece of legislation that I filed in the Senate that the House is also considering this week; that is, given the scandals associated with the Internal Revenue Service, the fact that clearly the IRS has more on its plate than it is capable of adequately performing, we ought to get the Internal Revenue Service out of the implementation of ObamaCare. With everything else it has to do, especially given the scandals that are currently under investigation in both Houses of Congress, we ought to be delaying the implementation of that individual mandate. We ought to be delaying the implementation of the employer mandate. We ought to be cutting the IRS out of the implementation process for ObamaCare. I confess, I voted against ObamaCare from the very beginning. I voted to repeal it every chance we could possibly have, and I voted to cosponsor legislation that would defund it. I wish to echo some of the words of the distinguished senior Senator from Utah. At some point those of us who were against it from the very beginning, who would like to repeal it and defund it, have to work together with our colleagues--who perhaps hoped that it would actually work as advertised--realizing now that even organized labor is writing letters to us saying: Please protect us from the provisions of this law because it is hurting our jobs. It is making it impossible for to us keep the insurance we have. We need to work together to try to come up with a solution at some point. As the distinguished ranking member and the distinguished Finance Committee chairman said: The implementation of ObamaCare is clearly becoming a train wreck. We don't want to visit the pain of that train wreck and that failure on the American people but provide them a reasonable alternative which will provide people access to high-quality care at a lower cost. There are plenty of great ideas out there. THUD Appropriations I wish to turn to the appropriations bill that is pending before us. Last week, in one of the President's much publicized pivots, the President turned his attention back to the economy. Of course, most Americans don't have the luxury of pivoting to or from this sluggish economy, which is growing at the most sluggish rate in the history of the American economy since the last depression, the Great Depression. The American people don't have a luxury of pivots. They have to live with this sluggish economy and high unemployment day after day. We should welcome the President back to this conversation. He has talked a lot about middle-class families, who, as we all would agree, are the backbone of our country and a source of immeasurable strength. That said, the President hasn't been a member of the middle class for some time, and I think he, along with some of our colleagues, could use a refresher. American families set their budgets, and they have to stick with them. In lean times they trim their budgets, and in times of plenty they set money aside for the future should they need it. Astonishingly, this basic principle seems to have been lost on both the President and the author of this legislation. This bill, this underlying appropriations bill, takes the first step toward violating the Budget Control Act, which President Obama himself signed into law in 2011. That law sets very clear limits on spending levels, which the Democratic majority, by bringing this bill to the floor, has chosen to ignore. They ignored it when they wrote their budget earlier this year, and they are ignoring it today with this proposed appropriations bill, which is 11 percent above the Budget Control Act numbers and 4 percent above the President's own proposed budget itself. That is $54 billion. That is how much this bill would appropriate in discretionary spending and is more than $5 billion above the current level of spending for this particular appropriations bill. As I said, it is more than the President himself has requested. It is more than $10 billion above the House bill which, unlike this bill, was written in accordance with the existing law. I understand, as a negotiating tactic, why our Democratic friends might think highballing the House bill is a good negotiating tactic, but it is a total charade. It violates the Budget Control Act, and the American people simply will not go along with it. The American people can't understand why Congress and the Federal Government are having such a difficult time doing with 2.4 percent less than we spent before the Budget Control Act went into place--2.4 percent. Yet here inside the beltway you will hear people talk about the so-called sequester and the Budget Control Act as if it were the end of the world. It is not. It is called living within your means, and that is what we tried to do when the law was passed and when President Obama signed it. I think it is also telling that the majority leader, who basically controls the agenda on the Senate floor, chose to bring this particular bill to the floor before the August recess. We could have passed any one of a number of other appropriations bills to fund our veterans hospitals or to pay our Border Patrol agents. The House and Senate aren't very far apart on the appropriations bills that would do that. Conceivably, we could have had them on the President's desk by the end of this week. Instead, the majority leader would rather leave them in limbo while attempting to pass this bloated bill which has zero chance of becoming law. My hope is that as we proceed through this next round of fiscal debate, our friends on the other side of the aisle would demonstrate a willingness to operate within the law and the Budget Control Act. Unfortunately, they are not off to a very good start with this particular appropriations bill. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), and the Senator from Alaska (Mrs. Murkowski). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we now know, the IRS targeting scandal implicates senior officials at the very highest levels of the Internal Revenue Service. Indeed, we know the Office of the Chief Counsel of the IRS, headed by an administration appointee, was aware of the abuses, according to sworn testimony in the House of Representatives. We know that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman categorically denied those abuses in March of 2012, even though senior IRS officials learned about them as early as June 2011. We know the IRS official who first revealed the abuses to the American people decided to take the Fifth Amendment, invoking her right not to incriminate herself, rather than testify before Congress. Finally, we know IRS officials improperly targeted not only conservative organizations but also political candidates and donors. Still, yesterday the White House Press Secretary called the various scandals involving this administration phony scandals. Well, I don't know anyone who actually believes that is true. When an institution such as the Internal Revenue Service, with its power to literally tax and destroy, is abusing that power, it deserves the investigation of Congress and we need to get to the bottom of it. The idea, as initially floated out, that this scandal was the work of a few rogue staffers in the Cincinnati office is no longer plausible, even if it was at one point. This scandal clearly represents a serious breach of the public trust and has created a major credibility problem for this agency that is supposed to be objective and nonpartisan. It is bad enough that America's tax collection authority has behaved like a thuggish political machine, indeed, policing political speech and rights guaranteed under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. To make matters worse, the Internal Revenue Service will soon be responsible for administering some of the most important provisions of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare, including the individual mandate. In other words, the Internal Revenue Service will be responsible for administering a law that affects one-sixth of the U.S. economy, and it will be collecting even more information about individual American citizens. Are we comfortable with dramatically expanding the power of an agency that has proven so abusive and so untrustworthy? I know I am not, which is why 2 months ago I introduced a piece of legislation that would prevent the Internal Revenue Service from participating in its current role of implementing ObamaCare. Yesterday I submitted this legislation as an amendment to the appropriations bill we are currently considering. Rather than give more power to the Internal Revenue Service, we should be giving more power to patients and their doctors. Remember, even before ObamaCare became law, the IRS had enough power to destroy the lives of American citizens. In the famous words, I believe, of a Supreme Court Justice, the power to tax is the power to destroy. He had it right. Now is the worst possible time to give this agency such massive influence over the U.S. health care system, and this is past overdue action on our part. Instead, we should be curtailing the power of the Internal Revenue Service, replacing ObamaCare with sensible, patient-centered alternatives, and my amendment would do that. Before I conclude, I wish to mention another amendment we will be filing to the appropriations bill--one I cosponsored with my friend from South Carolina Senator Graham. Our amendment would prevent any funds in this bill from being used to bail out Detroit or any American city that mismanages its public finances. We have a Federal bankruptcy code--chapter 9, specifically--that was designed to handle these problems, and Detroit has filed for bankruptcy. There is no good reason why Detroit or any other American city ought to receive a taxpayer- funded bailout from Washington. I hope that the normal bankruptcy process will be allowed to go forward, and I hope that the bankruptcy follows the rule of law and that the Obama administration resists any temptation to meddle in the process and play politics. My colleagues might recall that during the 2009 government-run Chrysler bankruptcy process, the company's secured bondholders received much less for their loans than the United Auto Workers pension funds. My colleagues might also recall that during the runup to the 2011 Solyndra bankruptcy, the Obama administration actually made taxpayers subordinate to private lenders, in violation of the law. Detroit's financial woes offer a warning to all cities and States that are struggling with pension obligations and unfunded liabilities. And speaking of unfunded liabilities, the Federal Government currently owes more than $100 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities ourselves for Medicare and Social Security--something that urgently needs our attention. It is time for government officials at all levels--State, Federal, and local--to make the hard fiscal choices we have been postponing for way too long. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I come to the floor to follow the remarks of our Republican leader on the President's pivot to the economy. Over the last 4 years, the Obama administration has given us one of the biggest economic experiments in American history. The numbers tell the story. Under this President, the Federal Government has increased the Federal debt by $6.1 trillion, raised taxes by $1.7 trillion, and imposed $518 billion worth of new regulations. The President, when he came to office, when he had a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House--in other words, his party controlled all branches of the legislative and executive branch--got virtually everything he wanted. He got a $1 trillion stimulus package. He wanted a government takeover of America's health care system and that is what he got. He wanted extensive new regulations for the financial industry and he got that too. He wanted to impose, through the Environmental Protection Agency, radical environmental regulations and that is what he got as well. From 2009 through 2010, until the voters spoke in November 2010, our friends on the other side of the aisle controlled the White House, the House of Representatives under Speaker Pelosi, and the Senate. They got virtually everything they wanted. That was their great experiment, to see whether a growing and intrusive and expanding Federal Government was the answer to our economic challenges and high unemployment. We now know what the results have been. America's unemployment rate hit 10 percent for the first time since the early 1980s and it stayed above 8 percent for 43 straight months. Meanwhile, many Americans have simply given up looking for work. How do we know that? The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes something they call the labor participation rate. We know the percentage of people in the workforce is the lowest it has been for more than 30 years. That is a tragedy. Add it all up and we have been experiencing the weakest economic recovery and the longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Even by the President's own measuring stick, by his own standards, his economic record has been a huge disappointment. Hence, his repetitive pivots to the economy, time and time again, particularly at a time when his administration is having to answer a lot of hard questions about various scandals. But I am with Speaker Boehner. I say: Welcome, Mr. President. Let's talk about the economy. Let's talk about what works and what does not work. I think we know now what does not work, which is another government program that raises taxes, increases regulations, and creates uncertainty on the job creators upon whom we are depending to put America back to work. As a Washington Post correspondent noted this past week: The President promised 1 million new manufacturing jobs by the end of 2016. But factory employment has fallen for the last 4 months, and on net is only 13,000 jobs toward that goal. There is some good news. I was on the floor yesterday, admittedly bragging a little bit about the economic growth in my State, in Texas, and one of the reasons is because we are taking advantage of the innovation and the technology boom in the energy production business and we are actually seeing a huge movement back onshore, to the United States, of a lot of manufacturing because of the low price of natural gas. But, unfortunately, the President does not seem to recognize the benefits of producing our own domestic natural energy and what that would mean in terms of bringing jobs back onshore and creating more manufacturing jobs. The President has promised to increase net take-home pay and expand the middle class. You may recall particularly on the health care bill he said it would reduce health care premiums by $2,500 for a family of four. Unfortunately, he proved to be wrong because the cost has actually gone up $2,400 for a family of four, not down. We know from Labor Department statistics that median earnings for American families have fallen by 4 percent since the recession ended. I think even its most ardent advocates now are coming to the realization that ObamaCare is not working out the way they had hoped. Indeed, I was on the floor a few days ago with a letter from three union leaders who said that basically it is turning out to be a disaster. It is hurting their own members. Again, these are people who were for ObamaCare, saying it is not turning out the way we had hoped. The administration itself has implicitly acknowledged this by saying the employer mandate; that is, the requirement for people who employ 50 people or more, is stifling job creation and prompting many companies to take full-time jobs and turn them into part-time jobs. Between March and June, the number of Americans working part time jumped from 7.6 million to 8.2 million. I think the administration saw that number and it scared them a little bit, as it should. Hence, they delayed the employer mandate for another year, unilaterally. A new survey finds that in response to ObamaCare, 74 percent of small businesses are going to reduce hiring, reduce worker hours, or replace full-time employees with part-time employees. I am not suggesting those of us who did not vote for ObamaCare should be rejoicing in this development. Indeed, I think it is a sad moment. But even its most ardent advocates are finding out that their hopes and their dreams and their wishes for this government takeover are not turning out the way they should. Again, this is not a time for anyone to spike the ball or to rejoice in the failure of this program. This is a time for us to work together to say: OK, there are people who opposed ObamaCare. They ended up being right in their predictions. There were those who supported ObamaCare and unfortunately for the country it did not work out the way they had hoped. Now is the perfect time for us to come together and say: What do we do next to prevent the failure of this health care takeover by the Federal Government hurting the very people it was supposed to help? This is an opportunity for us to work together to do that. We need to do something different. Someone said a long time ago that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It is not going to happen so we need to do something different. We need to do something different in terms of delivering access to quality health care and making it affordable. Instead of more tax increases and more temporary tax gimmicks, we need fundamental tax reform. This is something that Republicans and Democrats I think all agree on. The President himself said he believes we need to do revenue-neutral corporate tax reform that lowers the rates, broadens the base, and gives us a revenue system that is more conducive to strong economic growth. Instead of having people in politics pick winners and losers in the economy or pick which parts of the law to enforce and which parts to waive, we need to dismantle what is left of ObamaCare and replace it with sensible, patient-centered alternatives that will lower costs, improve access to quality, and not interfere with that important doctor-patient relationship-- something the Senator from Wyoming has eloquently spoken about many times. Instead of letting the Environmental Protection Agency regulate our entire economy, we need to expand domestic energy production by eliminating misguided Federal regulations. Instead of adopting energy policies that hamper job creation, we need to adopt policies that help promote jobs such as approving the Keystone Pipeline from Canada and not trying to overregulate something that is already subject to State regulation, such as fracking. Here in Washington, people act as though this horizontal drilling and this fracking process is something new. We have been doing it in Texas for 60 years and it has been regulated by the oil and gas regulator in our State. They protected the water supply and benefited job creation and economic growth for a long time. I understand it is hard for those of us who were wrong about their predictions for many of these policies to say: You know what. It did not work out the way we planned. None of us are relishing the failure of some of these policies, but we need to work together and get outside of our ideological comfort zone and address the problem of chronic high unemployment, the fact that our young people are graduating from college and they cannot find jobs. They know they are going to be burdened by the debt we continue to rack up, and that our economy is bouncing along the bottom. I am afraid if we continue with the policies of the last 4 years we will create a lost generation of young Americans who cannot find good, full-time jobs. None of us--Republicans and Democrats alike--wants that to happen, but it is time we did something about it. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I wish to say briefly to our friend Senator Chiesa how much we appreciate his remarks here today. I am reminded of what the author of Ecclesiastes points out: ``Time and chances happen to us all.'' While he may not be with us a long time here in the Senate, I have every confidence, given his tremendous track record of public service and the confidence Governor Christie has had in him to make this appointment, that we will be hearing more great things about Senator Chiesa in the future. The Economy Madam President, President Obama is scheduled to give a major speech on the economy tomorrow. Unfortunately, according to press reports, his new ideas for bolstering job creation bear a remarkable resemblance to his old ideas--ideas that have given us the weakest economic recovery and the longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression. The President will probably quite effectively talk about ``winning the future'' and helping America's youth compete in the global economy. But speeches are more than just words; they have to be about policies. Unfortunately, on that count, notwithstanding the fact that President Obama is a marvelous speech maker, his policies have resulted, as I said, in a weak economic recovery, a less prosperous America, and more debt and burden for our young people looking for a way out. The problem is that President Obama, not his speeches but his actual policies have done tremendous damage to the economic prospects of the same people he purports to be championing. Indeed, this Obama economy has threatened to create a lost generation of younger Americans who are drowning in debt and are unable to find good full-time jobs. First, on the issue of debt, since President Obama took office, the Federal Government has accumulated more than $6.1 trillion in new debt. Let me repeat that. Since President Obama took office, the Federal Government has accumulated more than $6.1 trillion in new debt. I doubt anyone within the sound of my voice can actually conceptualize how much money that really is, but under the President's latest budget proposal, that debt would grow even higher--by another $8.2 trillion--over the next decade. The gross debt is now larger than our entire economy, which is why every American child enters the world owing $53,000. We might as well call them ``generation debt.'' Unemployment, as I mentioned earlier, remains intractable. The unemployment rate among young adults age 18 to 29 is 12.7 percent. For the general population it is 7.6 percent, but for those 18 to 29 it is 12.7 percent. That figure rises to 16.1 percent when we include 1.7 million young adults who have simply given up finding a job. Of course, these are real live human beings, not just statistics, but the statistics are bad enough. Then there is the lack of good full-time jobs. Last year the Associated Press reported that half of all recent college graduates are either jobless or employed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge. A separate study in 2012 found that only 4 out of every 10 recent college graduates are doing a job that actually requires a 4-year degree. It has been estimated that 41 percent of all underemployed Americans are below the age of 31. And as we have learned, because of the ObamaCare employer mandate, many full-time jobs are being reduced to part-time jobs, especially in the hotel, restaurant, and retail industries. In a new survey, 74 percent of small businesses said they are going to reduce hiring, reduce worker hours, or replace full-time employees with part-time employees. In other words, it is not just the slowly growing economy, it is actually the policies of this administration which are making it significantly harder for younger Americans to find decent employment. Then, of course, there is the unkept promise of ObamaCare. The President extravagantly promised: If you like what you have, you can keep it. For a family of four, your premiums are going to be reduced by $2,500 on average. Well, we found out that for millions of Americans, if they like the coverage they have, they cannot keep it and will lose it, and that instead of a $2,500 reduction in premiums, an average family of four will see an increase of $2,400. Once it is fully implemented, younger people will be especially burdened. They will pay much higher health insurance premiums than they are today. Indeed, a recent survey of large health care insurers found that premium costs for young and healthy Americans in the individual and small group market will ``increase by an average of 169 percent.'' According to the Wall Street Journal, ``Healthy consumers could see insurance rates double or even triple when they look for individual coverage'' under ObamaCare. It is not hard to understand why. Under ObamaCare's provisions you can wait until you actually get sick before your buy insurance under a concept known as ``guaranteed issue,'' which then hardly resembles insurance as any of us think about it. And then because of the so- called age banding phenomenon, where premiums for older people cannot be any more than three times what they are for younger people, what is going to happen is younger people are going to have to pay higher premiums to subsidize the higher cost of caring for people when they get older. Then there is the triple whammy, perhaps, of higher education costs, some of which we are trying to address here with bipartisan student loan reform. But under President Obama, the average cost of tuition and fees at a 4-year public college or university has increased 27 percent. Again, we have been talking about: How do we deal with the interest rates on that debt? But the fact is the principal has gone up 27 percent in the last 5 years. For that matter, it is estimated that 4 out of every 10 Americans who graduated from college in 2009, 2010, or 2011 have not been able to pay off any of their student debt. As a longtime Silicon Valley businessman recently noted: The millennials are the ``most educated'' generation in American history, but they are also the ``most indebted.'' Is there any wonder that only one out of every five recent college graduates says their generation will be more successful than the one that came before them? My parents were part of the so-called ``greatest generation''--Tom Brokaw coined that title--the World War II generation, people who risked everything they had and sacrificed all they had in order to ensure my brother and my sister and I would have a better life and have more opportunities. Unfortunately, as a result of the failed policies we have seen over the last 5 years, recent college graduates actually believe they are going to have less opportunity and less prosperity than generations that came before them. There is no reason why that has to be the case. There is no good reason why the Obama economy has to become the new normal--not in a country as hard working, entrepreneurial, and innovative as the United States of America. Here in Washington, many policymakers seem to have forgotten the recipe, the ``secret sauce,'' if you will, for long sustainable economic growth. I would invite them to visit my State of Texas, which has been luring job creators from all across the Nation. And, lo and behold, you find that when people have opportunity and jobs, they tend to vote with their feet, which is one reason why, after the last census, we had four new congressional seats created in Texas, because people had literally shifted from parts of the country where they could not find jobs to places such as Texas where they could. Here is an interesting comparison, as shown on this chart. In 2010, the Texas economy grew 71 percent faster than the national economy--71 percent. In 2011, it grew 125 percent faster, and last year it grew 92 percent faster. These numbers reflect more than just happenstance. They reflect the difference between the policies that are embraced here in Washington, DC, and the policies embraced in my State. For example, here in Washington, over the last 4 years, President Obama's policies have actually made it harder for businesses to create jobs because of taxes, because of regulation, because of things such as the cost of ObamaCare. In Texas, by comparison, we have worked very hard to make it easier. Indeed, if you want more of something, it seems to me you would make it easier to create, not harder, which is why Chief Executive magazine has named Texas the Best State for Business 8 years in a row. Here in Washington, President Obama's policies have seen an increase in taxes by $1.7 trillion and increased our national debt by $6.1 trillion, as I mentioned earlier. In Texas, we have no State income tax, and we recently turned a $5 billion deficit into a projected $8.8 billion surplus, thanks to the leadership of our Governor and the members of the State legislature. Here in Washington, President Obama has presided over the weakest economic recovery and the longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression. In Texas, the total number of jobs has grown by nearly 32 percent since 1995, while the total number of jobs nationwide has grown by 12 percent--32 percent versus 12 percent. Here in Washington, President Obama's policies have actually hampered one of our greatest natural resources--energy production on Federal lands, to be specific. In my State public policies have consistently encouraged energy development, and total statewide oil production has increased by 94 percent between September 2008 and September 2012. I say that at the same time we are the No. 1 producer of electricity from wind energy. We believe in truly an ``all of the above'' approach. But Texans are unapologetic about our desire to create high-paying jobs in the oil and gas sector and produce the energy needed to power our State and the Nation. All you have to do is look at the phenomenon occurring in the Eagle Ford shale in Central to South Texas and the Permian Basin in West Texas. Indeed, the Eagle Ford shale produced 358 barrels of oil per day in 2008. Last year, it produced more than 352,000 barrels of oil a day. Over that same period, the number of Eagle Ford drilling permits increased from 26 to more than 4,100. At a time when we see the Middle East continuing its trend of being a dangerous place, why in the world wouldn't we want to develop more of our natural resources here at home and create jobs at the same time to relieve our dependency on imported oil and gas from dangerous parts of the world? In the Midland area, which is part of the Permian Basin, high school graduates can earn $75,000 a year as a starting job driving a truck. Many students aspire to all sorts of other jobs, and they are trained for it. But the point is energy production, taking advantage of the innovation and the technological changes in oil and gas production, can create jobs and opportunities and help wean us from imported energy. Here in Washington, unfortunately, the administration is still clinging to the misguided policies that are preventing the United States from reaching its full domestic energy potential. Consider these numbers: Between 2007 and 2012, total U.S. natural gas production increased by 20 percent, total U.S. oil production went up by 22 percent. However, oil production on Federal lands--that is subject to the control of the Federal Government--actually went down 4 percent, while natural gas production on Federal lands dropped by 33 percent. How do you reconcile the disparity? Well, the oil and gas and natural gas production occurred on private lands, owned by private parties, not the Federal Government. So the Federal Government's record is actually quite dismal in comparison. So the message to President Obama--as he pivots once again to the economy--the message could not be more obvious: If the President really does care about ``winning the future'' and helping the millennial generation compete in a globalized world, he should abandon the policies that have saddled younger Americans with so much debt and made it so difficult for them to find good jobs. In short, it is time to replace the Obama model with the Texas model. This chart makes the comparison I mentioned earlier. Economic growth in 2010--after the 2008 fiscal meltdown, we saw the national economy growing only at 2.4 percent, the Texas economy at 4.1 percent. We need to get the national economy growing closer to 4 percent in order to create the jobs that are necessary to give young people an opportunity to work and provide for their families and to build for their future. In 2011, we saw, actually, the national economy slow down at 1.6 percent growth. Indeed, the Texas economy slowed down a little more, albeit at 3.6 percent growth. Then, in 2012--just last year--while we still saw the national economy bouncing along at the bottom with only 2.5-percent economic growth, the Texas economy was growing at 4.8 percent. I know my friends from other parts of the country might discount my remarks here today and say: Well, this is just a Senator from a State who is proud of the accomplishments of his State and the people who have made it possible. They would be right. I am. But this is also about what Louis Brandeis once called the laboratories of democracy. That is one reason why it is so important not to just have a national government but a Federal government with national responsibilities in those areas that the States and individuals cannot otherwise take care of themselves, and reserving, as the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution points out, all other power not delegated to the Federal Government to the States and to individuals. That is what protects our freedom, and that is what creates these laboratories of democracy so Texas, so Illinois, so Washington State--any other State; Wisconsin--can try these policies and see what works and what does not, what creates the prosperity and opportunity for their people. And, hopefully, just hopefully, we in Washington, DC--those of us who happen to work here as part of our job--will embrace those policies and those success stories and make them possible for the rest of the country as well. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. In a few minutes, President Obama is scheduled to give a major speech highlighting what he believes are the achievements of his signature health care law, the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. I could understand why he is feeling a little defensive and why he feels he needs to frame the discussion because, after all, ObamaCare has disappointed some of its most ardent former supporters. For example, back in 2009 and 2010, American labor unions were among the biggest supporters of the President's health care plan. Along with many of my friends across the aisle, they are having second thoughts and, in some cases, buyer's remorse. Last week, three of the country's most prominent labor leaders, James Hoffa, Joseph Hansen, and Donald Taylor, sent a very concerned letter to Senator Reid and former Speaker Pelosi. Here is part of what they wrote: When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act, you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat. Picking up on this chart, they went on to say: Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA [Affordable Care Act] will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40-hour workweek that is the backbone of the American middle class. They went on to say: The unintended consequences of the ACA [Affordable Care Act] are severe. Perverse incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios. . . . The law, as it stands, will hurt millions of Americans. ObamaCare has been controversial since its passage in 2010. Some Members of Congress voted for it. Obviously, the Democratic majority voted for it. Some people voted against it, people such as myself in the Republican minority. But whether you supported the law with the hopes and aspirations that it would somehow be the panacea or answer to our health care needs in this country or whether you were a skeptic such as I, who believed that this could not possibly work, the fact seems to be--as these labor leaders have said--it has not met expectations and certainly it has created many problems that need to be addressed. This same letter went on to detail some of the nightmare scenarios these labor leaders have concerns about. They pointed out that many businesses are cutting full-time employment back to part-time in order to avoid the employer mandate. As I mentioned yesterday, the number of people working part-time for economic reasons has jumped from 7.6 million to 8.2 million, just between March and June. In fact, last month alone that number increased 322,000. A new survey reports that in response to ObamaCare, nearly three out of every four small businesses are going to reduce hiring, reduce worker hours or replace full-time employees with part-time employees. We know the President has unilaterally decided to delay the imposition of the employer mandate until 2015, but that doesn't change a lot. These businesses have to plan for the future and small businesses still have the same perverse incentives to limit the hiring of full-time workers, as these labor leaders point out. The employer mandate is one reason why ObamaCare needs to be repealed entirely and replaced with something better. As these leaders say in their letter, the law, as it stands, will hurt millions of Americans. We have already seen its effect on job creation, not only with the employer mandate but also with the medical device tax that has prompted many companies, including those in Texas, to simply grow their businesses in places such as Costa Rica, where they can avoid that medical device tax, rather than in my State or in other States that have medical device companies. It has also caused these companies to close factories and cancel plans for new ones in the United States. We have also seen, as these leaders point out, that ObamaCare will disrupt Americans' existing health care arrangements. As they point out in their letter, one of the promises the President made was that if you liked what you have, you can keep it, but, in fact, that has not proven to be true. Indeed, my constituents are already getting their letters from health care providers informing them that their current policies are no longer going to be available because of the implementation of ObamaCare. Millions of people will eventually have that same experience, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Why have we made this huge shift in one-sixth of our economy? What was the goal of the proponents of this piece of legislation? What we were told is that it was universal coverage. There were too many people who didn't have health care coverage. But as for this promise of universal coverage, I am afraid that is another broken promise as well. According to the Congressional Budget Office, even if ObamaCare is fully implemented on schedule, there will still be 31 million people in America without health insurance by the year 2023. Even though the proponents of ObamaCare said we need to do this, as expensive as it is, as disruptive as it is to the existing health care arrangements, we need to do this because everybody will be covered, that promise is not going to be kept either. Let me repeat, 13 years after the passage of ObamaCare, America will still have 31 million uninsured. Meanwhile, many of the newly insured under ObamaCare will be covered by Medicaid, a dysfunctional program that is already failing its intended beneficiaries. I, perhaps unwisely, decided during the markup of the Affordable Care Act in the Senate Finance Committee to offer an amendment that said Members of Congress will henceforth be put on Medicaid. I told my colleagues that I knew if Congress was covered by Medicaid we would do our dead-level best to fix it because, as it exists now, it is a dysfunctional program. It is dysfunctional for this reason: Giving people coverage is not the same thing as access. Many Medicaid recipients have a very hard time finding doctors who will accept Medicaid coverage because the program reimburses providers at such low rates. In my State, it is about 50 cents on the dollar as compared to private coverage. In my State of Texas, fewer than one-third of physicians will accept a new Medicaid patient, and many of them are accepting no new Medicaid patients. Most Texas physicians believe Medicaid is broken and should not be used as a mechanism to expand coverage, certainly if it is not fixed and reformed, which it needs to be. By relying on Medicaid as one of the primary vehicles for reducing the number of uninsured in America, the Affordable Care Act will make the program even more fragile and weaker and less effective at securing dependable health care for the poor and the disabled, the very people it is designed to protect. We also have good reason to fear ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion will reduce labor force participation. A new National Bureau of Economic Research paper argues ObamaCare ``may cause substantial declines in aggregate employment.'' Rather than expand and damage an already broken system, the Federal Government should give each State more flexibility to manage the Medicare dollars that come from Washington so they can provide better value for recipients and taxpayers. Right now, State policymakers can't manage Medicaid without first going through a complicated waiver process and obtaining Federal approval--too many strings attached. Ideally, Washington would give each State a lump sum--a block grant, if you will--as well as the freedom to devise programs that work best in their States and for the population covered. Meanwhile, we should adopt health care reforms that would make health care more affordable and accessible to everyone--for example, equalizing the tax treatment of health insurance for employers and individuals; expanding access to tax-free health savings accounts so people can save their money, and if they don't use it for health care, they can use it for other purposes, such as retirement. We should let people and businesses form risk pools in the individual market, including across State lines. We should improve price and quality transparency. One of the most amazing forces in economics is consumer choice and transparency and competition. It is called the free enterprise system, and we see it at play in the Medicare Part D Program, for example, one of the most successful government health care programs devised. We made a mistake when we passed Medicare Part D because it was not paid for-- it should have been--but it has actually come in 40 percent under projected cost and it enjoys great satisfaction among its beneficiaries, seniors who have access to prescription drugs, some of them for the first time. But the reason why it has come in 40 percent under cost is because companies have to compete for that business, and they compete--as they always do in the marketplace--on price and quality of service, and we get the benefit of that market discipline. We also need to address frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits-- something my State has done at the State level, which has made medical malpractice insurance more affordable and which has caused many doctors to move to Texas who otherwise might not have gone there, providing greater access to health care. As I have said, we also need to allow the interstate sale of health insurances policies. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to buy a health insurance policy in Virginia if it suits my needs better than one available in Texas. Why would we not allow that? Again, why would we not want the benefit of that competition and the benefits to the consumer in terms of service and price? We also need to boost support for State high-risk pools to protect Americans with preexisting conditions. This is one of the reasons why the President and other proponents of ObamaCare said we have to have ObamaCare, because we need to deal with preexisting conditions, and we do. But we can do it a lot cheaper and a lot more efficiently by using Federal support for existing State preexisting condition high-risk pools. We don't have to take the whole 2,700-page piece of legislation that cost us several trillion dollars. We can do it much cheaper and more efficiently. Finally, we need to save Medicare by expanding patient choice and provider competition. These policies would allow us to expand quality insurance coverage and improve access to quality health care without disrupting people's existing health care arrangements, without discouraging work and job creation, without raising taxes on medical innovation, and without weakening Medicaid and Medicare. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, one of the principal Senate architects for the Affordable Care Act, famously described the implementation of ObamaCare as a train wreck. These three leaders of American labor would agree, and they have also warned us that unless we fix it, it could destroy the very health and well-being of millions of hard-working Americans. It is time for us to acknowledge the reality that whether you were a proponent and voted for ObamaCare or whether you were an opponent and a skeptic that it would actually work, we need to deal with the harsh reality and the facts that exist. It is time for Democrats, including the President, to work with us to replace ObamaCare with better alternatives. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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