Michael Enzi

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the remaining votes be 10 minutes in length and that the following amendments be in order following disposition of the Johnson amendment: the Brown-Wyden amendment No. 2883 and the Collins amendment No. 2885.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the next amendments in order be the following: Cornyn amendment No. 2912 and Feinstein amendment No. 2910.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, for the information of my colleagues, I expect the amendments next in order after those will be Grassley amendment No. 2914, followed by Manchin amendment No. 2908, but that is not locked in yet.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the next amendment be Paul amendment No. 2915 and that it be subject to a 60- vote affirmative threshold for adoption.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, this week we have been debating the future of ObamaCare, which still remains unworkable, unaffordable, and more unpopular than ever. For millions of Americans, the law today represents nothing more than broken promises, higher costs, and fewer choices. Recent polling shows that most Americans still oppose this unprecedented expansion of government intrusion into health care decisions for hard-working families and small businesses. That is why Leader McConnell promised that we would send a bill to the President's desk repealing ObamaCare using budget reconciliation, and that is exactly what we are doing. There is a special provision under the budget that allows us to send a bill to the desk with a majority of votes in the House and a majority of votes in the Senate. The majority of votes in the House has occurred, and now we are debating changes to that bill. The amendment's repeal of ObamaCare allowed under the rules of reconciliation--including its taxes, regulations and mandates--sets the stage for real health care reforms that strengthen the doctor-patient relationship, expands choices, lowers health care cost, and improves access to quality, affordable, innovative health care for each and every American. As I noted at the start of this debate, ObamaCare will crush American households with more than $1 trillion in new taxes over the next 10 years. This means ObamaCare will cost taxpayers more than $116 billion every year and result in smaller paychecks for families while holding back small businesses from expanding and hiring new workers. For hardworking taxpayers, ObamaCare has meant more government, more bureaucracy, and more rules and regulations, along with soaring health care costs and less access to care. By the time we are done, the Senate-passed ObamaCare repeal will eliminate more than $1 trillion in tax increases placed on the American people, while saving more than $500 billion in spending. Lifting the burdens and higher costs the President's law has placed on all Americans will help the Nation move forward from ObamaCare's broken promises to a better health care system for hardworking families across the country. ObamaCare contained more than $1 trillion in tax hikes from over 20 different tax increases. These tax increases included a new excise tax on employer-sponsored insurance plans, the so-called ``Cadillac tax,'' taxes on insurance providers, prescription drugs, medical devices, a new tax on investment income, and additional taxes and other restrictions on Health Savings Accounts, among others. Eliminating these taxes can help boost economic growth. The Senate bill repeals $1 trillion in tax increases included in ObamaCare: Cadillac tax, which would force companies to shift costs to employees or to reduce the value of the health care benefits they provide; medical device tax, which would harm healthcare innovation, stifle job creation, and increase the difficulty of delivering high quality patient care; health insurance tax, which would increase health insurance premiums; individual and employer mandates, which forced people to purchase a government defined level of health insurance; prescription drugs taxes, which would make critical medication more expensive; and health savings accounts tax, which would essentially make over-the-counter medicines more expensive by making them ineligible as qualified medical expenses. According to the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, repealing ObamaCare would raise economic output, mainly by boosting the supply of labor. The resulting increase in public and private sector growth, GDP is projected to average .7 percent over the 2021 through 2025 period. Alone, those effects would reduce Federal overspending by $216 billion over the 2016 to 2025 period according to the CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation, JCT, estimate. ObamaCare included over $800 billion in Medicare cuts. Instead of using those savings to strengthen and secure Medicare, the President, along with Congressional Democrats, took those funds and used them to create new entitlement programs. This bill ends the raid on Medicare to pay for ObamaCare and puts those funds back into Medicare, where they belong. State exchanges were almost exclusively financed through $5.4 billion in grant money from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS. While costing billions of taxpayer dollars from hardworking families, most State exchanges have dramatically underperformed or failed. Some exchanges have received hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal grants, yet are or were unable to accomplish their stated goal. In fact, recent news reports highlight more than $474 million of taxpayer funds were spent on failed exchanges for Massachusetts, Oregon, Nevada, and Maryland. Our measure ends this waste of taxpayer dollars. Medicaid spending currently consumes nearly a quarter of every State dollar, passing education as the largest state budgetary commitment. This expansion under ObamaCare includes an unsustainable and costly guarantee of 90 to 100 percent Federal funds that will likely be shifted back to the States as the Federal Government begins looking for ways to cut spending and addressing its almost $19 trillion national debt. Most importantly, the bill provides for a transition to a more sustainable State partnership. As I noted earlier, our Nation has made great strides in improving the quality of life for all Americans, but these transformative changes were always forged in the spirit of bipartisan compromise and cooperation. We still need health care reform, but it has to be done the right way. The bill the Senate will approve can help build a bridge from these broken promises to better care for each and every American. I yield the floor to the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that during the vote series related to H.R. 3762, there be 2 minutes equally divided between each vote and that the first votes in the series be in relation to the Murray amendment No. 2876 and the Johnson amendment No. 2875, with a 60-vote affirmative threshold required for adoption.

Mr. ENZI. I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. Senator Murray proposes to establish a new women's health care and clinic safety and security fund to ensure that, among other goals, all women and men have access to health care services without threat of violence. No one disagrees with the goal of making sure all Americans have access to health care without fearing threats or violence. We certainly don't condone any of the violence anywhere in the United States. The best way to ensure that women and men have affordable health care is to pass this repeal bill and repeal ObamaCare. For every American, ObamaCare has meant more government, more bureaucracy, and more rules and regulations, along with soaring health care costs and less access to care. The most effective solution to improving the quality of and access to women's health care is to lower the cost and provide access to health care, not to create another fund with another new tax. ObamaCare already contains more than $1 trillion in new taxes, funding new and duplicative programs.

Mr. ENZI. I yield back any time, although evidently there is none. Mr. President, I move to table the Murray amendment No. 2876 and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. I refuse to ask more American taxpayers, who have sacrificed so much already, to satiate the boundless Washington appetite for spending. Spending on Medicaid has experienced a 137 percent increase from $200 billion in 2000 to $476 billion in 2014, and many expect those figures to increase. We all want individuals to have access to high quality health insurance. However, a 2011 study found that 31 percent of doctors are unwilling to accept new Medicaid patients. How can Americans access quality health care if doctors will not treat them? Most importantly, adding more people to Medicaid will lead to a loss of jobs. A 2013 study concluded that for every 21 million adults who joined Medicaid, the economy will employ 511,000 to 2.2 million fewer people. The Obama recovery is a jobless recovery, and I refuse to exacerbate the unemployment. Instead of adding more and more people to the rolls of a failing Medicaid program----

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, the pending amendment No. 2883 offered by the Senator from Ohio would cause the underlying legislation to exceed the authorizing committee's 302(a) allocation of new budget authority or outlays. Therefore, I raise a point of order against this amendment pursuant to section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the next amendments in order be the following: Casey, No. 2893; and Heller, No. 2882.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. Senators Casey and Baldwin have proposed an amendment to further shift the tax burden onto high-income taxpayers. It would pay for new tax credits with the Buffett tax through taxing foreign inversion corporations as domestic and by expanding limitations on executive compensation deductibility. This legislation is not the place to add one-sided cuts that have not been included in regular order negotiations going on between Congress and the administration and in the Finance Committee. Further, passing this reconciliation legislation will repeal a dozen new taxes used to offset the cost of ObamaCare. Comprehensive tax reform is needed to examine our system of credits and deductions to create a pro-growth tax policy across income spectrums, but not in this bill. Washington already takes over $3 trillion per year from the American public, which is more than enough to fund necessary government functions. Increasing the tax burden on the most successful Americans discourages the work and jobs and investment necessary to grow America's economy.

Mr. ENZI. I ask my colleagues to oppose this amendment. Mr. President, the pending amendment No. 2893 offered by Senator Casey would cause the underlying legislation to exceed the authorizing committees's 302(a) allocation of new budget authority or outlays. Therefore, I raise a point of order against this amendment pursuant to section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, continuing this advanced notice of what is coming up, I ask unanimous consent that the next amendment in order be the following: Shaheen amendment No. 2892.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. I share my colleague's concern with the current state of mental health and substance abuse policies in the United States. Our health care system in many ways has failed to treat those who need care most desperately. However, as deeply as I believe we must strengthen mental health, I believe we have to do it right. Consideration of mental health legislation should be thoughtful and should examine the real barriers to appropriate treatment. Simply throwing more money at the problem has proven time and again to be ineffective. That is why I am proud of the work being done by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, and 26 other Senators, including me, support the Mental Health Awareness and Improvement Act. That bill takes important steps to increase mental health awareness, prevention, and education; encourages the sharing of relevant mental health information; and assesses the barriers to integrating mental and behavioral health into primary care. It is a good step and should be done through the committee process. I thank Senator Shaheen for offering this amendment and support the intent, but it has to be done right. And this increases taxes. Mr. President, the pending amendment No. 2892 offered by Senator Shaheen would cause the underlying legislation to exceed the authorizing committee's 302(a) allocation of new budget authority or outlays. Therefore, I raise a point of order against this amendment pursuant to section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, continuing to march through the amendments, I ask unanimous consent that the next amendments in order be the following: Grassley amendment No. 2914 Manchin amendment No. 2908.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, the pending amendment No. 2910, offered by Senator Feinstein, contains matter that is not within the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee or the HELP Committee, and it is extraneous to H.R. 3762, a reconciliation bill. Therefore, I raise a point of order against the amendment pursuant to section 313(b)(1)(C) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, after we finish the Grassley amendment and the Manchin amendment, I ask unanimous consent that the next amendments in order be the following: Bennet No. 2907 and Paul No. 2899.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. I commend my colleague from Colorado for working to advance the needs of veterans. However, Senator Bennet proposes a $20-billion increase in spending paid for by a tax increase. I believe the problem with Washington's finances is that our government spends too much and lives outside its means. I am continually working to put our country's finances on a sustainable path so that more Americans can keep more of their hard-earned money. What we don't need are higher taxes, and we do need bills that go through the proper committees. Congress has continually rejected this one-sided tax policy. Comprehensive tax reform is needed to examine our system of credits. Washington already takes $3 trillion per year from the American public, which is more than enough to fund necessary government functions, provided we get through the regular process. So I urge my colleagues to oppose this. Mr. President, the pending amendment No. 2907 would cause the underlying legislation to exceed the authorizing committee's 302(a) allocation of new budget authority or outlays. Therefore, I raise a point of order against this amendment pursuant to section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, next up of course will be the Paul amendment. I ask unanimous consent that following the vote on that amendment, the next amendments in order be the following: Cardin amendment No. 2913 and Coats amendment No. 2888.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be a 60- vote threshold for adoption of this amendment.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator McCain be recognized to offer amendment No. 2884.