Michael Enzi

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I have five requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to Rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: committee on armed services Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 10, 2017, at 9:30 a.m. committee on homeland security and governmental affairs Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 10, 2017, at 3:30 p.m. committee on the judiciary Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 10, 2017, at 9:30 a.m., in room SR-325 of the Russell Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Attorney General Nomination.'' select committee on intelligence Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 10, 2017, at 1 p.m. in room SD-106 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building. permanent subcommittee on investigations Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 10, 2017, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Backpage.com's Knowing Facilitation of Online Sex Trafficking.''

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 12 noon, Wednesday, January 11; further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; finally, that following leader remarks, the Senate resume consideration of S. Con. Res. 3, with 3 hours of debate remaining on the resolution for the majority and 3 hours for the minority.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Brown.

Mr. ENZI. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of the quorum.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, it is my understanding there is 2 minutes equally divided between the proposer and the opposition.

Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Texas for his comments about the Senator from Alabama. Senator Sessions has been an outstanding Senator. He came to the Senate at the same time I did. He has served for 20 years. That is a lot of votes that a person can pick apart, if they want to. But here is how it came out. I don't think we have emphasized enough that Senator Sessions didn't have a primary opponent in Alabama. I don't know how many Senators in the Senate haven't had primary opponents. Even more unusual, he didn't have a general election opponent. I am not sure if that has happened before. I know it hasn't happened for a long time. But that says something about the kind of respect he has in his home State, which has a wide variety of people. So I thank the Senator for his comments on that. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that following disposition of the Paul amendment, there be 2 minutes of debate, divided in the usual form, and that the Senate then vote in relation to the Hirono amendment No. 20.

Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, this amendment is corrosive to the privilege in the budget resolution, meaning that it is outside of the scope of what is appropriate for a budget resolution. Any inappropriate amendment could be fatal to the privilege of this resolution, which would destroy our efforts to repeal ObamaCare. In other words, a vote in favor of this amendment is a vote against repealing ObamaCare. In addition, this amendment is not germane to this budget resolution. This budget resolution is much more focused than a typical budget resolution. The Congressional Budget Act requires that amendments to a budget resolution be germane. Since this amendment does not meet the standard required by budget law, a point of order would lie against it; as such, I raise a point of order under section 305(b)(2) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at 2:45 p.m. today, the Senate vote in relation to amendment No. 8.

Mr. ENZI. I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI. Madam President, today I have been listening to the diatribes against the repeal resolution we are working on, and I think some things need to be answered. The Republicans are not trying to throw 30 million people off of their insurance. What we have seen over the time of ObamaCare is that there were 30 million people who were uninsured when we started that debate, and today there are 30 million people who are uninsured. Now it is a different 30 million people. The 30 million people who couldn't get insurance have insurance, and we want them to have insurance. And the 30 million people who are now off insurance used to have insurance, but they can no longer afford it. There has been a huge increase in the cost of health care. That is not how it was supposed to be. The prices were supposed to come down. Yesterday we took the first step in fulfilling the promise of repealing ObamaCare, which will pave the way for real health care reforms to strengthen the doctor-patient relationships, expand choices, lower health care costs, and improve access to quality, affordable, innovative health care. As I discussed yesterday, while Republicans will start by repealing ObamaCare immediately, we will ensure a stable transition in which those with insurance will not lose access to health care coverage. This will allow us to move step by step to a new set of reforms, listening carefully to the advice of millions of Americans affected and making sure we proceed wisely, doing no harm. There is a common misconception that some of my friends across the aisle have promoted. It is the idea that ObamaCare was a success and that repeal will be tearing down a functioning program. That is not true. ObamaCare has put our health insurance markets on the brink of collapse in many parts of the country. And what Republicans face now is an imperative to do something that the Democrats couldn't bring themselves to do when they had control, and that is to fix the problems they created. ObamaCare became the epitome of a sacred cow for them, and any changes, as you can see, unless done by Executive action, were out of the question. Interestingly, President Obama recently admitted in October 2016 at Miami Dade College that the law has real problems and that, in his words, ``There are going to be people who are hurt by premium increases or a lack of competition and choice.'' That is the President of the United States talking about ObamaCare. In that same speech, he went on to call these issues ``growing pains.'' I think that is a troubling blind spot about this law that he and many of my Democratic colleagues share. Millions are facing impossibly high health insurance premiums for plans they may not even want to have. Costs are going up, and they can't afford it. Somehow these casualties of ObamaCare don't deserve relief, apparently; they are just written off as growing pains by the authors of the law. My colleagues will recall ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber, who was paid in a number of different ways, who was famously exposed in 2014 for stating, amongst other things, that while crafting this bill, he believed that ``the lack of transparency is a huge political advantage'' and that it ``was written in a tortured way to make sure the CBO did not score the mandate as taxes.'' Mr. Gruber may have succeeded in masking the consequences of ObamaCare to obtain passage, but there is no way to hide the results. A recent poll by the Gallup organization showed that more Americans continue to disapprove--53 percent--than approve--42 percent--of the law and that a majority of Americans want to see the law changed. Let me highlight that point again. A majority of Americans want to see ObamaCare either changed or replaced altogether. In fact, since passage of ObamaCare in 2010, there has never been a majority of Americans supporting the law. A quick glance around the Nation quickly explains why. For more and more Americans, there is only a single insurer from which they can select health plans, a monopoly. In fact, on Federal exchanges, one in five consumers will only be able to select plans from a single insurer. Many residents across the country only have one choice of health insurer. That is including my home State of Wyoming as well as the entire State of Alaska. What does this lack of competition mean? Prices are surging for hard- working families who now have to choose between unreasonable insurance rates or an unreasonable fine. That doesn't even include the deductible problem we have. That doesn't even include the additional taxes and prices people are paying as a result of other things that are built into the law, which I will go into later--not in this speech. The irony of a Democrat-led effort to help resulting in the creation of a lose-lose proposition for families ran true to voters in the most recent election when they voted for change. In Wyoming, some families would be forced to pay more than 30 percent of their total income on premiums to obtain health care coverage, which often includes deductibles of over $1,000. One family faced premiums of more than $1,600 per month. That is one family, $1,600 a month. As an alternative, their tax penalty for not carrying coverage was only $1,700 for the whole year. So guess what they did. They paid the fine because they couldn't afford the insurance premium. They could also see no way that they were going to be able to get a benefit from that. For those lucky enough to be able to afford insurance, particularly in the individual market, under the new health law, premiums are expected to increase faster in 2017 than in previous years. Some States will see insurance premiums rise by as much as 53 percent. I think that makes it truly an emergency. After discussing the why, it is important to talk about how we are going to do this. Passing the repeal resolution we are currently debating today will allow Republicans to use the budget reconciliation process to untangle the country from this unworkable, unpopular, and unaffordable law. This is the exact same procedure congressional Democrats and President Obama used to secure passage of portions of ObamaCare. Let me say that again. This is the exact same procedure congressional Democrats and President Obama used to secure passage of portions of ObamaCare. After Congress passes this repeal resolution, it can then move forward on reconciliation legislation that will provide for the repeal of ObamaCare and pave the way for real health care reforms. I think Members are looking forward to an open and serious debate about the future of America's health and its health care system and the importance of restoring the trust of hard-working taxpayers. I think that is something both sides can agree on, and that is what will happen. This resolution we are debating does two things. It recognizes the point in the budget we are at considering the points of order and things that happened up to this point in time. We are just recognizing that is where this budget is. It still keeps in place the points of order to maintain some control over our spending, but the significant part is the repeal part. That is where we institute the reconciliation, and all that is, is an instruction to two committees on the Senate side and two committees on the House side. The two on the Senate side were the Finance Committee--they are the ones who deal with all of the taxes and the finance and the Medicare and the Medicaid, and they need to save $1 billion over 10 years. That is peanuts around here. They will do much better than that, I am certain. And then the HELP Committee-- Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions--also has an instruction to save $1 billion. That is it. This isn't a debate over what the changes are going to be to ObamaCare; this is a debate about whether we are going to give two committees, which have jurisdiction over this situation, the ability to consider it and bring us something. It has to conform with the budget requirements, and that is going to save some money. That is why we have a very low threshold, each of them saving $1 billion. That is the time when we will have the debate on what is happening with health care. If somebody wants to raise the threshold of the $1 billion for each of the two committees, that would be perhaps acceptable--unnecessary but perhaps acceptable. If somebody wants to change the budget, we are going to have an actual chance to change the budget right after we finish this process because there is a budget for 2018. We are already a third of the way through 2017, and there are no spending bills approved. That is wrong, but that is what this budget reflects. That is where we are at this point in time on our spending. Hopefully, we will do well on the new budget and come up with a plan that is going to pull the United States out of the hole that we are in on our deficit spending, which results in huge debt. I would like to make that distinction. Deficit is our overspending. Debt is the amount that we owe that we have to pay interest on--like pouring money down a hole--and that interest rate is going up. We get to make decisions on about $1 trillion each year, and the interest rate right now spends $200 billion right now by itself--that is at about 1 percent. If it goes to 5 percent, which is the norm for the United States, that would be $1 trillion dollars. That is the amount we get to make decisions on. What shape will our country would be in if we have to spend $1 trillion dollars on interest and that is all we have to make decisions on? We have to do something. Health care is affecting more people in this country than anything else. So we will start immediately. We normally have a recess that would begin from the time we reorganize until the time the President is sworn in, but Republicans recognize that this is an emergency. This is something that needs to be taken care of. So we are going to stay around and get it solved. We are going to do the processes we have to do. This is the first of the processes. There is another more important step, which has to be the actual savings part in order to do the reconciliation, and we are going to do that. We will hear all kinds of stories of ways that people have been helped by health care, and we will hear stories about how people have been hurt by this health care. We need to fix it for both of them. So I think Members are looking forward to an open and serious debate--I hope, a serious debate--about the future of America's health care system and the importance of restoring the trust of the hardworking taxpayers. I hope that is something we can both agree on. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 2:45 p.m. there be 2 minutes of debate, equally divided in the usual form, prior to the vote in relation to Kaine amendment No. 8.

Mr. ENZI. I yield the floor. Amendment No. 8

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all time be considered time on the resolution.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that during the periods of a quorum call, the time be equally divided between the two sides.

Mr. ENZI. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, this amendment is corrosive to the privilege of the budget resolution, meaning that it is outside the scope of what is appropriate for a budget resolution. Any inappropriate amendment could be fatal to the privilege of this resolution, which would destroy our efforts to repeal ObamaCare. In other words, a vote in favor of this amendment is a vote against repealing ObamaCare. In addition, this amendment is not germane to this budget resolution. This budget resolution is much more focused than a typical budget resolution. The Congressional Budget Act requires that the amendment to a budget resolution be germane. Since this amendment does not meet the standard required by budget law, a point of order would lie. As such, I raise a point of order under section 305(b)(2) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1 and ask unanimous consent that it be reported by number.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, would the Senator mind if it comes off of the resolution time?

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time in the quorum call be equally divided between both sides.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time be equally divided between the two sides during quorum calls.

Mr. ENZI. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Tara Shaw and Matt Giroux from my staff be given all-access floor passes to the Senate floor during consideration of the budget resolution, S. Con. Res. 3.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess until 2:15 p.m. for the weekly policy lunches.