John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. May I ask the Senator from South Carolina about this other promise? Does he recall the President saying in July of 2009, if you like what you have, you can keep it? Is the Senator aware of the fact that according to the Congressional Budget Office, between 8 and 9 million people who would have been covered by employment-based plans under the current law would not have an offer of such coverage under this bill if passed, and seniors, because of the cuts to Medicare, particularly Medicare Advantage, will actually have their benefits cut? How do you reconcile those promises with what we see in this monstrosity of a bill?

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask my colleagues to comment on some of the other broken promises. The President made a solemn pledge that he would sign a universal health care bill. This bill, as I understand it, still leaves 15 million people without insurance coverage. He says the costs will be cut by up to $2,500 a year. The reality is the average premiums would increase by $2,100. I ask perhaps our distinguished colleagues from South Carolina and Georgia to comment on the promises that the President has made with regard to transparency, the promises he has made with regard to premiums going down rather than up, the promises he has made with regard to Medicare--promises it appears this bill will not allow him to keep.

Mr. CORNYN. I call for the regular order.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent for 2 more minutes.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, may I inquire of the Chair, is it the intent of the Presiding Officer to prevent any Senator from speaking on the floor on this important bill? I am looking around. I don't see any other Senator waiting to speak. I simply would like an explanation of the Chair's ruling.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Senator for his courtesy.

Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as I contemplate the task ahead of us between now and Christmas to consider this huge change--some might say radical change--in our health care system, I am reminded of an oath that doctors take called the Hippocratic oath, which basically is, first, do no harm. In other words, you don't want to kill the patient when you are trying to cure them of cancer. You don't want to disable a patient, make their condition actually worse than trying to help them. I think it would be advisable if Congress took a Hippocratic oath, and nowhere is that more appropriate than when talking about health care. We ought to make sure whatever we do, we don't make things worse. Yet the underlying health care bill, the Reid bill, makes things worse. I will talk about that in detail. We all agree health care reform is needed. Some of us have different ideas about what reform should look like. We know health care premiums have more than doubled in the last 10 years for American families and that health care costs typically rise at two or three times the rate of wage growth. We also know this is all unsustainable. We can't keep doing what we are doing. Republicans and Democrats agree on the nature of the problem. The question is, What is the cure? What are we going to do to make it better? Are we, perhaps, due to inadvertence or unintended consequences, actually going to make things worse than they are now? The Reid bill, the health care bill that will be considered along with a substitute that has been negotiated behind closed doors and which we haven't seen, the basic Reid bill would actually increase premiums by $2,100 for American families purchasing insurance on their own. I would like to recall the words of President Obama as he was describing his bill. He said: I have made a solemn pledge that I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500. Yet this bill breaks President Obama's pledge because for an average American family buying their insurance on their own, it would raise their premiums by $2,100. According to the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation, all of the new taxes--the tax on health benefits, if you have so-called Cadillac plans. I had three firefighters from Texas in my office 2 days who said: Please don't let them tax our health care plans. We have negotiated those in lieu of wage increases. We accepted lower wages because we wanted a better health care plan. Now you are going to tax our health care plan. That is just not right. We know those taxes on medical devices, on health insurance, whatever they may be--on prescription drugs--eventually will find their way back to the consumer. It is sheer fantasy to think these companies are just going to absorb those taxes and those cuts and they would not have an impact on the price to the consumer. That is why rather than bending the cost curve down, making health care more affordable, this will actually make it worse. A new independent study by Oliver Wyman found that the Reid bill would actually increase insurance premiums for people with insurance. Again, I thought the purpose of health care reform was to bring costs down through managed care, medical homes, accountable care organizations, delivery reform, medical liability reform, parity of tax treatment, increased competition across State lines. Those are the kinds of things this bill does not do which would actually have some hope of bending the cost curve down for the average American family. This study by Oliver Wyman found that the Reid bill would actually make people's insurance premiums go up. This study said premiums would go up by 54 percent--in my State of Texas, by 61 percent--for Americans purchasing health insurance on their own. In other words, it is not employer provided. They would have to go out in the marketplace, if you are a small business man or woman, and buy insurance or if you are an individual buying health insurance, this will make your premiums go up by 61 percent in Texas and 54 percent across the Nation. So an average family of four in Houston would see their premiums more than double to $1,352 a month. Is that the kind of health care reform we thought we were signing on to when we engaged in this debate? It certainly isn't what I call health reform. This is not what my constituents in Texas call health reform, to double the premiums for an average family of four in Houston. That just makes things worse. Premiums could go up 20 percent higher for small businesses struggling to provide benefits for their employees. The worst part about this is that these kinds of so-called reforms have been tried before. They failed miserably. For example, in New Jersey and New York, both tried the kinds of mandates, community ratings, guaranteed issue--these other things that sound a little arcane but which have had the impact of skyrocketing premiums in those States and causing insurance companies to leave the market. Rather than bearing these financial and regulatory burdens, many of them say: We are out of here--leaving people with less choice and higher premiums. Then there is the Medicaid-Medicare cost shift. For example, Medicare pays about 80 percent of what private insurance does to a doctor or a hospital, Medicaid even less. So these providers have to make it up somewhere else. What they end up doing is charging more to people with insurance. That is what the cost shift is all about. According to one study, that cost shift means higher premiums of about $1,800 a year for the average family. About half of that comes from Medicaid alone. Yet the Reid bill includes the biggest expansion of Medicaid since the program was created in 1965. And lest we forget, Medicaid is a joint Federal-State program. By expanding the coverage of Medicaid, we are basically imposing an unfunded mandate on the States. In my State, a State of 24 million people, this Medicaid expansion will result in a $20 billion unfunded mandate imposed on State taxpayers that the Federal Government is not going to help them out with, $20 billion over 10 years. The American people intuitively know all of this. A new Washington Post-ABC poll came out this week that found that most Americans, 53 percent, believe Washington's health care bill will actually increase their costs. Small businesses know this is true. According to a letter I received from the National Federation of Independent Business: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is short on savings and long on costs, is the wrong reform at the wrong time and will increase health care costs and the cost of doing business. Why in the world would we impose additional costs on small businesses at the same time we are trying to get small businesses to create jobs to try to get our economy to come back? We know that small businesses are the engine of job creation. Now we are just going to impose more costs, more higher premiums on them. What is that going to do? That will discourage them from keeping employees they have in a tough economy and perhaps not hiring new people, when we want to do everything we can to bring down the 10 percent unemployment rate. In Houston, TX, according to one small business owner: The proposed health care bill is going to have a negative impact on my business because the cost of employee health insurance will go up. I don't believe what some are saying that the costs will go down. This bill does not make economic commonsense. One thing about common sense is, as you find out the older you get, it is not too common. This bill simply defies the explanation that some have given to it that it will actually make things better rather not worse. My constituents, small business owners, everyone understands that the pressures put on premiums and costs is going to make things worse. Here is a chart that shows that from the time this bill is passed until 2016, we will see a huge increase in premiums for businesses and individuals as well--large businesses, small businesses, individuals. Americans know this is going to make an unsustainable status quo even worse. Yet the President and the majority----

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we have conferred with the other side of the aisle, and I think we have reached an agreement. I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to speak for up to 10 minutes, and then I believe two Senators from the other side of the aisle would like to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it just shows we can do some things in a bipartisan way around here still, albeit small things. We are talking about the Defense appropriations bill. I think it is important to point out that the majority leader has waited until the very last minute to bring up this very important bill, which I am sure will pass by a large majority, but it was 2 months ago that the fiscal year ended. The majority leader has now left us here 8 days before Christmas with a lot on our plate, a lot yet to do, and, of course, threatening to keep Congress here through Christmas--certainly up to Christmas. I would not say we are happy to be here, but this is a great responsibility. These are important issues, and none of us is going to shy away from dealing with these issues, albeit 8 days before Christmas. It is also appropriate to talk about Christmas because this bill not only funds our troops, it is a Christmas tree on which Members of Congress have hung nice shiny little ornaments, provisions that have nothing to do with funding our troops and the Defense appropriations bill. As a matter of fact, this bill would actually create new entitlement spending programs--that is what some of these little shiny ornaments are--rather than fix the ones we have. It is significant. We are talking about our troops. At the same time, we are talking more generally about health care, because under Federal law TRICARE, which handles the reimbursement rates for health care for our troops and their families, is required under Federal law to follow Medicare reimbursement rates. We know that under the underlying health care bill we will be considering up until Christmas, it looks like there are actually going to be $500 billion in cuts to Medicare. The concern is, if access to care is jeopardized for Medicare beneficiaries, which we know it will be for at least some--particularly Medicare Advantage beneficiaries-- then cuts to TRICARE reimbursement rates could follow. We also know this bill includes a 2-month bandaid for the Medicare reimbursement rate for doctors, the so-called doc fix. This is the sustainable growth rate formula which has never worked since Congress passed it in 1997. It shows Congress makes assumptions--this one back in 1997--that we are going to cut Medicare, and in this particular instance Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors and that somehow that will not have a negative impact on people's ability to find a doctor who will see them. I know in Travis County in Austin, TX, at last report, only 17 percent of doctors will see a new Medicare patient, and it is even worse for Medicaid, which pays less than Medicare. So we know the cuts the underlying health care bill will make to Medicare are going to have a negative impact on access to care for many of our seniors, and because TRICARE rates are linked to Medicare rates under Federal law, they could well jeopardize our troops' and their dependents' access to care as well. This experience we have had since 1997 under the Balanced Budget Act with the sustainable growth rate which, unless Congress acts, will actually cut reimbursement rates for doctors by 23 percent--and this bill provides a 2-month--a 2-month--fix--these assumptions have never worked. Yet this health care bill, at least the 2,074-page version--we have yet to see the Reid substitute, which will appear, I am sure, miraculously sometime around Saturday as the majority leader tries to cram this bill through before Christmas--we know it contains or will contain many other assumptions, such as this SGR formula that will prove unenforceable and will never work. Yet those will be used by the Congressional Budget Office to provide a cost estimate or score which may meet the demands of politics today but which will bear no relationship whatsoever to the ultimate costs. And the American people understand that. They understand the budget gimmicks of having a 10- year program and not implementing it until year 4 but starting the taxes to pay for it on day one. They understand that, and that is why they don't trust the Congress to be honest and transparent when it comes to spending their money--because of their unfortunate experience. I also want to focus on other promises the President has made about health care reform which bear on the process by which health care reform and these bills are being considered--unfortunately, ways in which the Reid bill breaks those promises. This is one we have talked about before, but I think it bears repeating because the American people want us to read the bills before we vote on them. They want to be able to read the bills and to have them posted on the Internet so they can understand how this legislation will impact them and their families. Here is what the President said: I'm going to have all the negotiations [the health care negotiations] around a big table. We'll have negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. I see one of our colleagues on the floor, who is a chief proponent of an amendment that had to do with drug pricing. We all know it is the worst-kept secret in Washington, DC, that the drug companies have cut a special deal behind closed doors--not around a big round table on C- SPAN but behind closed doors--and many of us don't know the exact terms of this deal. We do know that while the big drug companies may be protected, the American people are not at the table while special interests are cutting deals that have not yet fully come to the light of day. I think this is a tragedy. There is no reason the President's promise cannot be kept, other than to try to run something by Congress and the American people before they have had a full opportunity to read it and understand what is in it. This is exactly the kind of cynical act that breeds public skepticism about Congress and their elected representatives. We are elected by the people in our States to use our best judgment on their behalf, listen to them, and ask: What do you think about this? Tell me, as your elected representative, how do you think I should vote on these important issues? If we hide the substance of these cooked-up deals behind closed doors from the American people, no wonder the congressional approval rating is so low. Unfortunately, promises such as this which are broken by the Reid bill do nothing but breed skepticism or cynicism on behalf of the American people. The Washington Post reported last October that the first Reid bill was written in secret and ``behind closed doors.'' That is the 2,074- page bill we have seen stacked up on our tables. That bill, with sleight of hand, will be swept off the table and a new one will miraculously appear sometime on Saturday. That is the bill we are going to be asked to pass by Christmas--again, without anybody knowing what exactly is in it. Of course, there is speculation among the press corps and the political class in Washington as to whether the majority leader will be able to get 60 votes on a bill. People are saying: Yes, I think he will get 60 votes. Others say: No, he is missing a few votes; he is not quite there yet. And we are talking about a bill most of us haven't even seen. How in the world can anybody tell their constituents they are for the bill or against the bill before they have had a chance to read it? It is mind-boggling. Yet we know these closed-door meetings are still going on--8 days before Christmas--to work on perhaps a new 2,000-page Reid bill. I know some of our colleagues were irritated with our colleague from Oklahoma, who asked that the Sanders amendment be read before we actually considered it. Only in Washington, DC, would people be mad about knowing what is in a bill or an amendment before we are asked to vote on it. The American people want to know. They are being excluded, as are many of the rest of us who don't get to know what is being cooked up behind closed doors. We know these private meetings continue. The President has had meetings with our Democratic colleagues from which Republicans have been excluded. We don't know what kinds of agreements or discussions were occurring behind those closed doors. Certainly, no C-SPAN cameras were allowed.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we need to have every single Senator look at what is in these bills before we are asked to vote on them. Let me close on one last issue. The President has also said: First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits--either now or in the future. Period. Unfortunately, because of this cynical attitude of Washington and of the political class in Washington toward the public generally, 74 percent of voters said they don't believe that. Seventy-four percent of voters, including 82 percent of Independents, are saying: We don't believe the President of the United States when he says the bill will not add one dime to the deficit. One reason they might think that is because of what this Reid bill-- at least the 2,000-page variety--says. The Chief Actuary for CMS says that pledge is ``unrealistic and doubtful.'' David Broder, one of the deans of the Washington press corps, said: These bills, as they stand now, are budget-busters. I don't know what it is going to take before Congress wakes up and listens to our constituents and the American people. I guess it is going to take another election in 2010 or in 2012 where the American people get to hold us accountable because in the end the American people will get the kind of Congress they want and the kind of Congress they deserve. I hope it will be the kind of Congress that embraces the transparency pledges the President has made and, in reality, lets the American people know what we are doing here and asks whether they approve. Mr. President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the Congressional Budget Office has said-- this, of course, is the nonpartisan office which is tasked with the job of scoring or determining the cost of these bills before us--the CBO has opined that the Reid bill will result in 90 percent of Americans seeing the same unsustainable premium increases as they currently do year after year or, in some cases, even higher. If we are going to spend $2.5 trillion over 10 years, if we are going to cut Medicare by half a trillion dollars, if we are going to raise taxes by another half a trillion just to have no impact for 90 percent of Americans and for the others to actually see premiums go up, it strikes me that this is a solution in search of a problem. The problem is, we know the premiums are too high, costs are too high, and we need a better answer than is being proposed by the Reid bill. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that families who get their health care through small businesses or large employers will see their premiums go up under this bill. The new ideas we have seen offered by our friends on the other side are designed to score political points but are not aimed at solving problems. For example, one of our colleagues, the Senator from Arkansas, offered an amendment to cap compensation for insurance executives and argued that it would actually lower premiums somehow miraculously. We asked the Congressional Budget Office whether that would have any impact on premiums. It said the impact would be negligible. So what is the point? We have heard a lot about repealing the antitrust exemption for health insurers. The CBO said while that may be a feel-good sort of provision, that it would actually make premiums higher and make things worse. The CBO concluded that by enacting the legislation, it would have no significant impact on the premiums that private insurers would charge for health insurance. They also noted that to the extent insurers would become subjected to additional litigation, their costs and their premiums charged to consumers might increase. We have also heard from some of our colleagues about their cost containment ideas, a group of Democratic Senators who offered an amendment. I think it does have some good ideas in it, but it only saves $200 million, not an insignificant amount of money, but in a $2.5 trillion bill? So the bottom line is, this bill spends $2.5 trillion to increase premiums or, at best, maintain the status quo. That is not health care reform. We should reject this bill and start over with a step-by-step approach that will actually solve the problems confronting the American people. We should not accept, no matter what the crush is before the Christmas holidays--these last 8 days of this year--we should not accept a bill that cuts $\1/2\ trillion from Medicare, which cuts benefits from Medicare Advantage beneficiaries--one-half million of whom live in Texas; there are 11 million total--we should not accept a bill that raises premiums for many Americans, and we should not accept a bill that puts crushing new taxes on small businesses when unemployment is at 10 percent. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, we are now considering a bill that represents a dramatic expansion in government spending, as the Senator from Arizona has so eloquently stated. This Omnibus appropriations bill represents a 12-percent increase over last year--a fiscal year that ended with the largest deficit in American history of $1.4 trillion. I do not know of any other area in the economy where people are spending 12 percent over what they spent last year. Certainly no family budget in America, no business in America is spending 12 percent more this year than they did last year--while we see 10 percent of our people unemployed. Millions of families across the country and small businesses are, in fact, tightening their budgets. But the budgets of these Federal agencies and of the Federal Government itself keep expanding. There is a 33-percent increase in spending for foreign operations, a 23-percent increase in Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development. One of the worst things this spending is doing is creating tremendous uncertainty, both here at home and in other places such as China which are buying our debt, about whether we are ever going to get serious about our fiscal responsibility. The President asked last week why job creators were not stepping up and creating jobs. Well, the fact is, people are watching what we are doing in Congress, and they do not know what the rules will be 6 months from now or a year from now or whether Congress will ever recover from this binge it has been on when it comes to spending. But it is clear we cannot spend--we cannot spend--our way out of this recession. Job creators are scared. They are scared, and they are sitting on the sidelines because all of the spending, all of the tax increases, all of the government takeovers coming out of Washington, DC, these days leave them with the sense that they do not know what the rules are going to be. And why in the world would you want to create a job, expand your business, or make an investment when the very premise upon which you did so would change because of all the chaos in Washington? The facts of our debt crisis are not in dispute. The total public debt stands at about $12 trillion. We have, in 2009, a $1.4 trillion fiscal deficit. In other words, we have spent more than $1.4 trillion than the Treasury brought in in fiscal year 2009. Then we are accumulating debt even faster during this year than we did last year. According to the Treasury Department, the deficit for the first 2 months--2 months--of the new fiscal year was almost $300 billion--$300 billion for 2 months--a total larger than the full-year deficits in 2002, 2006, or 2007. So in 2 months, the deficit was worse than it was for the entire years of 2002, 2006, and 2007. Our deficits will average nearly $1 trillion every year for the next decade--$1 trillion every year for the next decade--according to the administration. This ought to be a shot across our bow. Moody's Investors Service said its debt rating on U.S. Treasury securities may ``test the Triple-A boundaries.'' The translation of that is they are beginning to doubt whether at some point the U.S. Government will be able to pay its bills or will default on those bills at some point hopefully not any time soon. But this is the sort of pressure we are putting not only on our ability to create jobs but on our future and particularly on our children's future, if we cause Moody's Investors Service and others to rate U.S. Treasury securities less than a Triple-A rating. Well, we know soon our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are going to ask Congress to vote to lift the debt ceiling. In other words, this is like the credit limit on your credit card. Once Congress is bumped up against that $12 trillion debt ceiling, Congress is going to have a vote on whether to ask the American people and people buying our debt whether we can increase the limit of our credit card because we have maxed it out. Media reports indicate that the majority intends to slip this provision into a bill on funding our troops in Afghanistan because, frankly, they are embarrassed to have a stand-alone vote on raising the debt ceiling, especially because they know there are many of us on both sides of the aisle who will insist on some measure to effect some discipline on this spending binge as a condition to voting on the debt ceiling. But whatever the vehicle the majority leader decides upon, they cannot hide the fact that we are borrowing money so fast that we will have to raise the debt ceiling another 15 percent. Conveniently, this increase will get the government through the next midterm elections, it is reported according to some experts. Not a coincidence. No one, particularly those in control of the Congress, wants to have another vote on lifting the debt ceiling or asking the American people to raise the credit card limit before the next election because they know the American people are increasingly angry and frightened by the spending binge they see here, and particularly the accumulating debt. That is not even getting to the financial crisis that entitlement programs are facing, such as Medicare and Social Security. We know Medicare's unfunded liabilities are roughly $38 trillion. I realize that number is so big that there are perhaps none of us who can fully comprehend how much money that is--but $38 trillion in unfunded liabilities for Medicare alone. Yet the proposed Medicare ``compromise'' among 10 Democrats would roughly double the burden of Medicare and not fix it but actually make things worse. Well, I want to mention one other item of fiscal irresponsibility I have witnessed. I think we need to cancel one of the credit cards that has been used by the administration--not just this administration but the past administration--and Congress for purposes Congress never intended when it authorized this program, the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP. I know the Senator from South Dakota is on the Senate floor. He has been one of the leaders in this effort because he believes, I think, as I do, that we cannot amend it, so we need to end it. We need to cut out this revolving credit account that is being used for inappropriate purposes known as TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Let's go back and look at why TARP was authorized by Congress in October of 2008. It is important to remember what the situation was at that time. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had many conversations with legislators on both ends of the Capitol on both sides of the aisle, and they said in their public testimony--on September 23, Secretary Paulson said that Congress must act ``in order to avoid a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets that threaten . . . the very health of our economy.'' In private, their diagnosis was even more dire. We were told ``that we're literally maybe days away from a complete [financial] meltdown of our financial system'' in the United States unless Congress acts to authorize the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Many of us, including myself, voted for TARP because we were told by the smartest people on the planet that unless we did this, our economy would suffer an economic meltdown. But I must tell you, I am extremely disappointed that the very nature of the program was changed after Congress authorized it. For example, we were told by Secretary Paulson and others that the money would be used for one purpose, and one purpose only; that is, to purchase toxic assets. Well, there is a saying that says: ``Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.'' And we were fooled into believing that the TARP would be used to purchase these toxic assets and get them off the books as a way of protecting pensions, savings, and investments of hard-working American taxpayers. Unfortunately, the very people who promised us and told us what purpose the TARP would be used for misled us because two administrations now--the previous administration and this administration--have used TARP as if it were a big government slush fund. They ignored the clear language of the TARP legislation, and they have repeatedly defied the will of Congress. Let me briefly mention how the TARP funds have been used in a way that Congress never authorized and never intended. Only weeks after TARP was enacted, the Bush administration abandoned this stated goal of purchasing toxic assets. Instead, the administration funneled billions of dollars directly into some of the Nation's largest financial institutions, making huge purchases of stock and warrants of some of the Nation's largest financial institutions. The Federal Government, in other words, began acquiring ownership, stakes in banks, financial institutions, and, yes, even car manufacturers, with the full support of the Obama administration. In fact, the Obama administration has even gone so far as to use TARP to set executive pay at several companies. During the reorganization of General Motors, the Obama administration has used that leverage to benefit its union allies over the rights of secured bondholders who had loaned their money to these companies. I have been a vocal opponent of this misuse of TARP by both administrations. In December 2008, I joined my colleagues in voting against the government bailout of the auto industry, a vote ignored by both the previous administration and the current administration. Earlier this year, I supported a TARP disapproval resolution that would have stopped the program dead in its tracks because of this misrepresentation of the purpose for which these funds would be used. I have also supported several initiatives that would have increased TARP transparency and congressional oversight. Then, in September, I joined many of our colleagues in sending a letter to Secretary Tim Geithner, at Treasury, asking him not to extend his TARP authority beyond the end of this year, as the law allows him to do. This would have eliminated the need for the government to borrow more money through this program. But, unfortunately, Secretary Geithner notified Congress that he has extended TARP authority until next October. Now we read that the administration is proposing using repaid TARP funds; that is, money that was loaned to these large financial institutions that is now being repaid--that Treasury anticipates using this for a second stimulus plan. Well, I guess that is because they think the first stimulus plan worked so well. You will recall, the stated objective was to hold unemployment below 8 percent. Well, it has gone above 10 percent and, frankly, I think we need to learn from our mistakes as well as things we have done right. It would be a mistake to put more money, particularly TARP money, into a new stimulus plan and have it work so ineffectively, as the first stimulus plan did. Repaid TARP dollars cannot pay for anything. TARP is like a credit card. Every dollar spent is a borrowed dollar, adding up additional deficits, additional debt. Using TARP on new spending would break the promise the President made when he voted for TARP in this very Chamber. At that time, then-Senator Obama said: [I]f American taxpayers are financing this solution, then they have to be treated like investors. They should get every penny of their tax dollars back once the economy recovers. That was then-Senator Obama, now President of the United States. I would just conclude by saying, Congress should help the President keep his promises, even when it seems he has changed his mind now, by suggesting that we extend TARP and use TARP on a purpose that Congress has never authorized and never intended. It seems like the bad ideas never end when it comes to spending and debt out of Washington, DC, these days. In addition to all of these other problems I have mentioned, I have not talked about this health care bill, which would exacerbate and make much worse the deficits and debt situation, and not make it better--all the time while not bending the cost curve down but making things worse, raising premiums, raising taxes, cutting Medicare. We need to end TARP because, frankly, it is being misused in ways that Congress has never authorized and never intended and, indeed, over the very objections of Congress. We need to learn from our mistakes. Frankly, the stimulus spending, which I voted against because I thought it was based on an academic theory which had not been proven, which was that Congress knew better than the American people how to get the economy working again--by direct spending, by spending borrowed money, the $1.1 trillion in the stimulus plan--we need to end these free- spending ways and show some fiscal responsibility. The best way we could do that, in my opinion, would be to end this program which has been the subject of so much abuse and misuse. I ask unanimous consent that the following letter, dated January 15, 2009, from then-Director-Designate of the National Economic Council, Lawrence H. Summers, be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to speak briefly about keeping President Obama's promise to the American people when it comes to tax increases in this health care bill. You will recall on September 12, 2008, he said: I can make a firm pledge: Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase . . . not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes. The problem we see, though, is this bill, as proposed, increases taxes for 25 percent of taxpayers earning less than $200,000 a year. That is 42 million individuals and families who will be taxed in a way that violates President Obama's pledge. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Internal Revenue Service will need many more agents and workers in order to enforce the Reid bill. It will essentially need to double in size the Internal Revenue Service just to be able to raise those taxes called for in this big job-killing bill. The possibility of higher taxes is one reason job creators are currently standing on the sidelines. The President had a job summit. Yesterday he spoke at Brookings Institute and talked about initiatives he was going to undertake in order to help create jobs in this country. But the fact is, government doesn't create jobs except to the extent we grow the size of government. What we need to do in this country is to get out of the way, reduce the burden, and limit the uncertainty for the private sector--small business that is the primary job-creating engine in this country. But the fact is, job creators are nervous--I would strike that; they are not nervous, they are scared--about one job-killing proposal after another coming out of Washington. Not just the spending, not just the debt, but they see things such as this big health care bill and the increase in taxes that go along with it. Then they see the President going to Copenhagen and perhaps trying to obligate our country to some additional financial burdens that are going to make it harder for these job-creators, not easier. The debt, for example, is one looming disaster. The total public debt now stands at $12 trillion. Before the end of the month, the majority leader is going to come to the Senate floor, presumably on a Defense appropriations bill or some other vehicle, and ask us to lift the debt limit because Congress has maxed out the American people's credit card, and we can't keep running the government unless we increase the debt limit. Well, a number of us are not going to vote for that increase in debt limit until we receive firm assurances that the administration and the majority are going to get real about this increasing debt and unfunded Federal liabilities in Medicare, in Medicaid, and other entitlement programs. We are accumulating debt even faster during this fiscal year. For example, in just 2 months--2 months of this year--the Congressional Budget Office says an additional $292 billion in deficits were accumulated. Our deficits will average nearly $1 trillion for every year during the next decade, according to the Obama administration itself. Of course, I mentioned the other unfunded liabilities out there--things such as Medicare. I understand the majority has somehow cut a tentative deal to try to grow Medicare. Well, if you grow Medicare and grow Medicaid, what does that do to the already $38 trillion in unfunded liabilities? This $38 trillion is three times our national debt. It means, in essence, a debt burden of $32,000 for every U.S. family. Yet my colleagues don't seem desirous of fixing this problem. They seem determined to make it worse. Yesterday the Washington Post reported on our Nation's deteriorating fiscal situation. They said: The problem is that, if investors think the United States isn't fiscally responsible-- I wonder why they would conclude that? But they go on to say-- they could start demanding much higher interest rates when they bid on Treasury securities. That is, when they start buying our debt, as a result of all of this spending and the money we have to borrow from China and other countries that buy our debt, those countries could begin to demand higher interest rates. The Washington Post goes on to say: The feedback loop could get ugly. The Nation could have to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars just to pay interest on what it owes. This has been touted as a classic path to irreversible national decline. The Post cited Leonard Burman, an economist at Syracuse University, who said: Right now, this year, we have $1.6 trillion in debt coming due-- And that is before we pass this ill-conceived health care bill. He said: That's roughly twice individual income tax revenue. Our only plausible strategy for paying that back is to borrow more money. The Post also cited David M. Walker, a former Comptroller of the United States, who recently testified: Our total Federal financial hole is about $10 trillion more than the current estimated net worth of all Americans and the gap has been growing. Then, adding insult to injury, yesterday Moody's Investors Service said its debt ratings on U.S. Treasury securities ``may test the Triple-A boundaries'' because the government's fiscal status is worsening. Well, the fact is, this Reid health care bill makes this much worse. My colleagues say the CBO--the Congressional Budget Office--has scored the bill as deficit-neutral. Well, any bill can be called deficit- neutral if you are willing to raise taxes enough and cut programs such as Medicare, both of which this bill does. The Congressional Budget Office said in their score of the Reid bill: The long-term budgetary impact could be quite different if key provisions of the bill were ultimately changed or not fully implemented. Well, what could they mean by that? What they mean is some of the assumptions about the cuts and other things that range over a 10-year budget window, if they don't come true, then all bets are off. We know the Reid bill relies on budget gimmicks to hide the true cost of this Washington takeover. One gimmick is, for example, not including the Medicare provider fix, the so-called doc fix, which costs $210 billion over 10 years. In other words, this bill leaves that out entirely. I know--I am confident because Congress has only failed to act to reverse those cuts on one occasion--that if we let this cut in provider payments to physicians be fully implemented--a 23-percent cut come January--then many Medicare beneficiaries, including the vastly expanded rolls that would be included under this deal we have read about in the paper, patients will not be able to find a doctor to see them because doctors will not be able to continue seeing patients with a 23-percent cut in the payments they are entitled to under Medicare. The other issue is the time shift. This is really sort of the classic shell game. The Reid bill starts the tax increases and the Medicare cuts in 2010, but as we know, the expanded coverage doesn't start until 2014. Someone said that is like buying a house, closing on the sale of a house, and being told: Well, you can't move in for 4 years. You have to start paying the bill today, but you don't get the benefits for 4 years. The Congressional Budget Office score focuses on the budgetary impact to the government, not on the total cost to the American people. The CBO said the Reid bill increases the Federal budgetary commitments to health care. In other words, rather than trying to bend the cost curve as we have heard should be the goal, this makes it worse. We end up bending the cost curve in the wrong direction. The Reid bill will increase premiums for American families purchasing insurance in the individual market. The Congressional Budget Office hasn't yet been given time to estimate the total cost on the economy as a whole. David Broder, one of the deans of the Washington Press Corps, did a nice roundup of nonpartisan experts last week. He cited Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition, Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and he concluded this: Every expert I have talked to says that these bills as they stand are budget-busters.

Mr. CORNYN. So I hope my colleagues will pass the Crapo motion to commit this bill to the Finance Committee so the President can keep his commitment not to raise taxes on the American people.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I agree with the distinguished Senators from Tennessee and Arizona, that what is good enough for the seniors in Florida ought to be good enough for all seniors. In my State of Texas, we have 532,000 seniors on Medicare Advantage, and they like it, for the reasons that the Senator from Tennessee mentioned. They do not want us cutting those benefits. But I say to the Senators from Arizona and Tennessee, I seem to recall that we had amendments earlier which would have protected everybody from cuts in Medicare benefits, and now we have a targeted effort, negotiated behind closed doors, to protect States such as Florida and Pennsylvania and others, and I wonder whether the Nelson amendment to protect the seniors of Florida would even be necessary if our colleagues across the aisle had agreed with us that no Medicare benefits should be cut.

Mr. CORNYN. If the Senator would yield for a question, if this motion is not agreed to, which protects all Medicare Advantage beneficiaries-- all 11 million of them, 532,000 in my State--and as a result of not only these cuts but perhaps additional cuts to come in the future to Medicare Advantage, which will make it harder for Medicare beneficiaries to get coverage, I ask particularly my doctor colleagues, what is the impact of eliminating Medicare Advantage and leaving people with Medicare fee for service, which is, as I recall, the Bennet amendment earlier? You have to parse the language closely, but it talked about guaranteed benefits. I think the Senator from Oklahoma makes a good point. Right now, Medicare Advantage has guaranteed benefits.

Mr. CORNYN. What is the consequence of seniors losing Medicare Advantage and being forced onto a Medicare fee-for-service program?

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I would ask our Senators to expand in the brief time we have. It seems as if all of the discussion about health care reform is a bit about accountable care organizations, coordinating care, particularly in the later part of life, avoiding chronic diseases in life. When I was at Kelsey-Seybold Clinic in Houston, TX, they told me it is Medicare Advantage that allows them to coordinate care, to hold down costs, to keep people healthier longer. Yet the irony, to me, it seems, is that by cutting Medicare Advantage benefits, we are going backward rather than forward when it comes to that kind of coordinated, less expensive care. Would the Senator concur with that?

Mr. CORNYN. May I ask my colleagues a question--maybe starting with the Senator from Arizona--on a related issue. Medicare Advantage is a private sector alternative or choice to Medicare, which is a government-run program. I am detecting throughout all of this bill sort of a bias against the private sector and wanting to eliminate choices that aren't government-run plans. Am I reading too much into this or do any of my colleagues see a similar propensity in this bill?

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, this last Thursday was one of those days in Washington where the left hand of government didn't know what the right hand was doing. On one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the President was hosting a jobs summit. But here on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, we continued debate on a health care bill which will, for reasons I will explain, be a job killer and will discourage small and large businesses from hiring new people, even though unemployment exceeds double digits. The November jobs number shows the economy is still hurting. Not only is the unemployment rate at 10 percent, 11,000 more families have lost a breadwinner. More than 15 million Americans remain unemployed, and more than 3 million Americans have lost their jobs since Congress passed the stimulus bill in February, which failed in its essential purpose--to keep unemployment under 8 percent. According to an article by Mort Zuckerman in U.S. News and World Report, 21 percent of all families have an immediate family member who has lost a job. My family is one of those. My daughter has lost a job. And, according to the article, 33 percent--a third--of U.S. families have an immediate family member or a close friend who has lost a job. But the President, during the jobs summit, seemed to be completely unaware of the impact that policies here in Washington have on the desire and willingness of job creators to actually re-hire laid-off American workers. He seemed to be oblivious to the role of the private sector in creating those jobs. If you look at the States that have been most successful in creating jobs, it is clear that jobs-friendly policies can actually lead to better results. I don't want to brag, but Texas has been one of the best economies we have had, even during this tough recession. Many analysts have wondered why that is--from the Wall Street Journal to The Economist. But it is clear to me that the Texas economy has been doing better than other States because our laboratory of democracy has embraced better policies--things such as growing jobs in the private sector over government, lower taxes, fiscal discipline, right-to-work legislation, and commonsense civil justice reforms, to mention a few. But my State isn't the only State that has been successful in embracing these sound job-creating policies. Other States have adopted similar policies and they have seen similar results. That is why it is so frustrating to many of us to see the White House ignore these results and focus on policies that will actually kill jobs, not encourage job creation. For example, cap and trade. In Texas alone, according to the State comptroller, more than 300,000 jobs would be lost in the State of Texas if we embrace the ill-considered and misguided cap-and-trade legislation that has passed the House and which we will consider later--perhaps next year. Here is a quote from economist Anne Layne- Farrar regarding card check--eliminating the secret ballot: For every 3 percentage points gained in union membership through card checks and mandatory arbitration, the following year's unemployment rate is predicted to increase by 1 percentage point--and job creation predicted to fall by about 1.5 million jobs. So cap and trade is a job killer and card check is a job killer. Then there are higher taxes. Small businesses, which are America's best job creators, may soon face the highest marginal tax rate in a quarter of a century. And still the White House wants to raise taxes higher on energy producers right here at home as well as companies that sell American products in foreign markets. The biggest job killer of all, of course, is the bill that is presently on the Senate floor. This is a $2.5 trillion expansion of government, and it will cost Americans jobs in a number of ways. We will recall the President's pledge on September 12, 2008. He said: I make a firm pledge under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase--not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes. But yesterday the Joint Tax Committee came out with a new score or analysis of what the impact would be of the Reid health care bill. They said the Reid health care bill increases taxes for 25 percent of taxpayers earning less than $200,000. That is even after the subsidies that are provided for in this bill are applied. Without those subsidies about 42 percent of taxpayers would see an increase in their taxes. There are nearly $\1/2\ trillion of higher taxes in this bill, including things such as $149 billion in excise taxes on Americans who have certain types of health plans, a $15.2 billion tax on all taxpayers with catastrophic medical costs, and $14.6 billion of additional taxes on workers who use FSAs. There are also taxes that allegedly target only the rich. But you know what. These taxes hit thousands of small businesses. That is right; the very job creators we are trying to encourage to create new jobs and retain new jobs, particularly those who file as sole proprietors or partnerships or subchapter S corporations that pay flowthrough income on individual tax returns at individual rates. For example, a $54 billion increase in the Medicare payroll tax would be used not to pay for Medicare but to pay for yet a new entitlement spending program. The Reid bill also adds $100 billion in new taxes and fees on the health care industry which will, of course, be passed down to consumers, which is one reason insurance premiums are calculated to go up under this bill, not down. The Reid bill would create new punitive taxes on businesses that do not offer a Washington-approved health care plan. Then there is the employer mandate. The employer mandate will kill jobs because the additional cost of insurance will be passed along to workers in the form of lower wages or result in reduced hours or layoffs. Harvard Professor Kate Baicker said this: Workers who would lose their jobs are disproportionately likely to be high school dropouts, minority and female. . . . Thus, among the uninsured, those with the least education face the highest risk of losing jobs under employer mandates. I mentioned the Reid bill would raise premiums for small businesses. Under one study those premiums in the group market would rise by 20 percent. I thought the purpose of health care reform was to lower and make more affordable health care, not to make it more expensive. But the Reid bill does the opposite of reform and makes it worse, not better. Then, of course, the Reid bill would kill jobs by increasing the cost shifting due to low Medicaid reimbursements. Of course, cost shifting occurs because Medicaid pays a fraction of what private insurance pays. Medicare pays about 80 percent, and so in order to make up the difference, those with private health insurance have to pay an additional cost in the form of cost shifting. Fifteen million more Americans on Medicaid would make this worse, not better. The Reid bill would kill jobs by raising State and local taxes because of unfunded mandates. Because of the expansion of Medicaid, which is not paid for by the Federal Government, over 10 years the State of Texas alone would see $20 billion more in Medicaid spending because of this unfunded mandate--$20 billion. We are a big State, but we can't afford $20 billion more in an unfunded mandate because of the Medicare expansion under this bill. It should not be any surprise that the Reid bill and these other job- killing policies are the reasons the private sector is not hiring. Again, according to Mort Zuckerman of U.S. News and World Report, businesses ``are holding back in hiring because of anxiety over the administration's policies on such matters as increased health care costs . . . higher taxes . . . more corporate regulations . . . and disaffecting labor policies.'' These policies are causing the greatest anxiety among small business owners. Firms with fewer than 20 workers employ a quarter of the workforce. In the last economic expansion they accounted for 4 out of 10 new jobs. I hear this from my constituents in Texas, people such as Richard Belden who owns a small retail grocery business that has been in the family for 54 years and employs 75 people. He files as a subchapter S corporation, so he pays taxes according to the highest marginal tax bracket. He is going to get hit by these taxes. Do you think that is going to make it easier for him to hire more people and keep the people he has or make it harder? I think the answer is self-evident. This is from Nathan Avard, who owns and operates five Burger King restaurants in northeast Texas and employs more than 100 people. He said the employer mandate included in this bill will make it harder, not easier, for him to keep the employees he has. He believes the employer mandate would cost him thousands of dollars per restaurant, effectively eliminating much of his profit and making it exceedingly difficult for him to operate and improve his business in this economy. I have heard the same story from the Chamber of Commerce in Lubbock, TX, that represents more than 2,100 businesses that employ more than 57,000 workers. But it is not just the Lubbock, TX, Chamber, but the Greater Irving-Los Colinas Chamber, the Greater Austin Chamber, the Rosenberg-Richmond Area Chamber, the Harlingen Area Chamber, the Liberty-Dayton area Chamber, the Tyler Area Chamber, the Bryan/College Station's Chamber, the Port Aransas Chamber, the Northwest Houston Chamber, the Odessa Chamber, the Deer Park Chamber, the Henderson Area Chamber, the West I-10 Chamber, the Crowley Area Chamber, Marble Falls/ Lake LBJ Chamber, Granbury Chamber, McAllen Area Chamber, and the Washington County Chamber. You get the idea. These are job-killing policies, and this bill is perhaps the biggest of them all. Of course, a few enterprises will get bigger under the Reid bill; namely, the Internal Revenue Service. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the IRS will need a budget nearly twice its current size to enforce the Reid bill. The IRS will need more agents and more bureaucrats to collect the new taxes, enforce all of the new mandates, and apply all the additional redtape. I think we should be about facilitating the creation of new jobs not killing jobs through ill-considered policies such as this bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the President of the United States is reportedly traveling to Capitol Hill to meet with Senate Democrats in a few moments. Unfortunately, Republicans are not invited, which follows an established pattern, where notwithstanding the public statements that Republican ideas are welcome, they have been rejected at every stage of the development of this 2,074-page bill. There were party line votes in the HELP Committee and the Finance Committee and virtually every Republican idea was rejected. The President is coming to rally our Democratic friends to basically do it in a ``my way or the highway'' sort of way. They are going to own it 1,000 percent. I think it is perhaps very timely to recall some of the President's promises because, frankly, if the President follows the promises he made to the American people, he will not be able to sign this bill or anything similar to it. First of all, talking about transparency, he said we are going to have negotiations around a big table on C-SPAN so people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. The reality is, this bill was merged between the Finance bill and the HELP Committee bill--merged behind closed doors, with only three Senators present and presumably their staffs. Another promise the President made was this: The plan I am announcing tonight-- This was during the joint session of Congress, I believe, we attended. --will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government. This is a pledge the President made to the American people. That was his stated goal for this bill. We see something very different in this 2,074-page bill, a different reality. We see that premiums for those in the individual market--families--will be increased by 10 percent by 2016, according to the CBO. You don't have to take my word for it. It is not some insurance company talking. This is the Congressional Budget Office. Businesses that fail to comply with the job-killing mandates in the bill will face additional taxes of $28 billion--yes, during a recession when unemployment is at 10 percent. That is according to the CBO. They also say taxpayers will see Federal outlays for health care coverage increase by $160 billion over 10 years. This is from the dean of Harvard Medical School. He said: In discussions with dozens of health care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health care spending. So much for bending the proverbial cost curve. Then there is this promise--another solemn promise. The President said: I have made a solemn pledge that I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as President that will cover every American-- This bill obviously does not. --and cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year. As I mentioned, under the CBO score, the average premium for families in the individual market will go up by $2,100, not go down by $2,500-- another promise made that will not be kept if this bill is passed into law. Then the President talked about deficits. There has been a lot about this bill being so-called deficit neutral. If you cut enough benefits for seniors and raise taxes enough on everybody, you can produce a deficit-neutral bill. This bill will spend $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years with full implementation. President Obama's chief actuary at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services called the ability to sign a bill such as this, without raising the deficit, ``unrealistic and doubtful.'' David Broder, the dean of the Washington press corps, said: While the CBO said that both the House-passed bill and the one Reid has drafted meet Obama's test for being budget neutral, every expert I have talked to says that the public has it right. These bills, as they stand, are budget busters. Then there is the promise of choice. The President said the American people ought to have choice when it comes to health care, their choice of their doctors and health plans. The fact is, this bill would consign 60 million Americans to a health care ``gulag'' called Medicaid. I say that because, although Medicaid provides what some people would say is coverage, it certainly doesn't provide access. In the metroplex of Texas, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, 38 percent of doctors will not see a new Medicaid patient because of Medicaid's low rates. Then there is this claim that it will not raise taxes. Well, the Joint Committee on Taxation indicates that 38 percent of the people earning less than $200,000 a year will see a tax increase under this bill. In other words, this is another promise the President made that will be violated if this bill is passed into law because taxes will go up for 38 percent of the people. As a matter of fact, out of that 38 percent, 24 percent of them will experience a tax increase, even after taking into account the premium tax credit that is being paid under this bill. Another promise made, another promise that cannot be kept if this bill becomes law. Then there is this one. The President said: So don't pay attention to those scary stories about how your benefits will be cut. That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare. Dr. Elmendorf, the head of the CBO, said Medicare's managed care plans would see reduced benefits--I am sorry, that is according to CBS News. The chief actuary said: Providers might end their participation in the program, possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries. Dr. Elmendorf said you would see additional benefits that seniors get under Medicare Advantage cut by about half. Another promise, another promise broken if this bill becomes law. There is this, which pertains to the Ensign amendment pending on the floor. The President said: I want to work with the American Medical Association so we can scale back the excessive defensive medicine that reinforces our current system, and shift to a system where we are providing better care simply--rather than simply more treatment. So this is going to be a priority for me. If this is a priority for the President of the United States, it is apparently not a priority of those who have authored this bill because all that is contained in the bill is a nonbinding sense of the Senate. We have heard that medical liability reform laws, such as those that have been passed and implemented in Texas--if passed nationwide, this bill could bend the cost curve by $54 billion over 10 years. Yet all we get is a watered-down sense of the Senate that has no binding effect at all. If the President was sincere about making those promises to the American people, then this Congress ought to be sincere about helping him keep that promise. The fact is, time after time, this bill breaks the promises that President Obama made to the American people. It is not too late to change that. I hope that, today, when he meets with Senate Democrats behind closed doors, to the exclusion of Republicans, there will be some discussion of how can we help you keep those promises to the American people because this bill does not.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. There is just one job-killing policy after another in this bill, and this is the latest.