Chuck Grassley

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, it is a great pleasure to thank my colleagues, Senators Warner, Collins, and Kaine, for their partnership in winning this breakthrough in newly-strengthened whistleblower protections for our troops. It is important to be clear about a cornerstone of our amendment, which is the guaranteed right to an administrative due process hearing in all whistleblower retaliation cases. New subsection f(3)(B) provides that if the Secretary does not make a finding of illegal retaliation and order corrective action, the case shall be forwarded to the appropriate Board for Corrections of Military Records to receive a mandatory administrative due process hearing, ``when appropriate.'' There should not be any confusion. It is always appropriate to forward the case for hearing if jurisdiction exists for whistleblower retaliation alleged in the servicemember's complaint. It is only inappropriate if another provision of law provides the relevant rights, procedures and remedies to resolve the complaint, such as when the alleged misconduct is sexual harassment per se as opposed to whistleblower retaliation for disclosing sexual harassment.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise for two purposes. No. 1, to discuss the National Defense Authorization Act and the fact that we cannot offer amendments to it and the process that has deteriorated in the Senate for deliberation. Second, I will speak very shortly about the nomination of Mayorkas, one of the first nominees we will be voting on this week. The Senate is poised to vote on a final National Defense Authorization Act after considering only two amendments. The Senate has not been functioning like it should for some time, and the way that the National Defense Authorization Act has been handled is one example. I have served in the majority and the minority, with Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents. So I have seen it operate from every perspective. What is unique about the Senate is that the rules as well as the traditions force Senators to work together. That leads Senators to understand where the other side is coming from, resulting in mutual respect and scrutiny. I hear from a lot of Iowans who are upset at the tone they hear in Washington and the lack of bipartisanship. I have often said that the Senate functions best when no party has more than about 55 seats. If you have much more than that, there is less of a tendency to want to work in a bipartisan fashion. That was true for most of my time in the Senate but not now. Despite a current margin of just 5 seats in the Senate, there has been very little bipartisan cooperation. I suppose some Democratic Senators really believe it when they say that this is all Republicans' fault. I think anyone who remembers how the Senate used to operate and has paid attention to how the current majority leadership has been running things in fact knows better. In fairness, quite a few Members of the Senate do not remember how the Senate is supposed to operate because it has been dysfunctional ever since they were elected. Some Senators previously served in the House of Representatives, where the majority party controls everything that happens. In the House of Representatives, the Rules Committee sets out the terms of debate for each bill. If you want to offer an amendment in the House you have to go, hat in hand, to the Rules Committee and say: Mother, may I. If the House leadership does not like your amendment, frankly, you are out of luck. If that sounds familiar, that is because it is how the current Senate leadership has been running things lately here in the Senate. We have seen an absolutely unprecedented use--or I should say abuse--of cloture motions paired with a tactic called filling the tree to block amendments from being considered. That not only affects the minority party, but Democratic Senators are affected as well. I would say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: How many times have you had an amendment you wanted to offer, that was important to your State, but you could not do it because amendments were blocked? The Senate majority leader has effectively become a one-man version of the House Rules Committee, dictating what amendments will be debated and which ones will never see the light of day. This strips the ability of individual Senators to effectively represent their States, regardless of party. It also virtually guarantees that any legislation the Senate votes on will be more partisan in nature. I would ask my colleagues across the aisle: Isn't your first responsibility to the people of your State, not to party leadership? Are you really content to cede to your party leader the trust and responsibility placed in you by the voters of your State? How much longer can you go along with this proposition? The people of Iowa sent me to the Senate to represent them, not simply vote up or down on a purely partisan agenda dictated by the majority leader. Everyone complains about the lack of bipartisanship these days, but there is no opportunity for individual Senators to work across the aisle when legislation is drafted on a partisan basis and amendments are blocked. Bipartisanship requires giving individual Senators a voice regardless of party. When Senators are only allowed to vote on items that are preapproved by the majority leader, those Senators lose the ability to effectively represent their State and, in the end, become mere tools of party leadership. It is no wonder Americans are so cynical about government right now. In the last decade, when I was chairman of the Finance Committee and Republicans controlled the Senate, we wanted to actually get things done. In order for that to happen, we knew that we had to accommodate the minority. We had to have patience, humility, and respect for the minority--attributes that do not exist on the other side anymore. We had some major bipartisan accomplishments, from the largest tax cut in history to a Medicare prescription drug program to numerous trade agreements. Those kinds of major bills do not happen anymore. The Senate rules provide that any Senator may offer an amendment regardless of party affiliation. Each Senator represents hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans, and each has an individual right to offer amendments for consideration. The principle here is not about political parties having their say but duly elected Senators participating in the legislative process, as imagined by the Constitution. Again, as part of our duty to represent the citizens of our respective States, each Senator has an individual right to offer amendments. This right cannot be outsourced to party leadership. The longstanding tradition of the Senate is that Members of the minority party, as well as rank-and-file Members of the majority party have an opportunity to offer amendments for a vote in the Senate. That has historically been the case with the annual National Defense Authorization Act, the very bill that we are debating now. But not this year. It typically takes a couple of weeks to consider the National Defense Authorization Act. This year the majority party leadership chose to wait until a week before the scheduled Thanksgiving recess to bring it up, leaving little time for the customary open debate and amendment process. Once the Defense bill was brought up, rather than promptly starting to process amendments, the majority leader immediately blocked amendments so that he could control what came up for a vote. Obviously, the Senate ground to a halt, wasting time that we did not have when we could have been considering amendments from both sides of the aisle. This process, as everyone here in the Senate knows, is called filling the tree, where the majority leader offers blocker amendments that block any other Senator from offering their own amendment unless the majority leader agreed to set aside his blocker amendment so other amendments can be offered. Filling the tree does not appear anywhere in the Senate rules. It is based upon combining two precedents, the precedent that the majority leader has the first right of recognition by the Presiding Officer and the precedent that only one first-degree and one second-degree amendment can be pending at any one time. Basically, the majority leader abuses his prerogative to cut in line and offer an amendment that does nothing more than simply change the enacting date by 1 day, for instance. That then blocks any other Senator from exercising his right to offer an amendment. This so-called filling-the-tree tactic used to be relatively rare, but it has become routine under current leadership. This way the Democratic leadership can prevent other Senators from offering amendments that they do not want to have to vote on. Then, with amendments blocked, the majority leader makes a motion to bring debate to a close. Around here that is called cloture. When cloture is invoked, it sets up a limited time before a final vote must take place. By keeping amendments blocked while running out the clock, the majority leader can force a final vote on a bill without having to consider any amendments other than amendments that the majority leader might approve. It should not be a surprise to anyone that Members of the minority party who wish to offer amendments will vote against a motion to end debate until their amendments have been considered. When Republicans vote against the Democratic leader's motion to end debate, we are accused of launching a filibuster. In other words, unless we give up our right to participate fully in the legislative process, the other side says that we are filibustering. Does that really count as a filibuster? No. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service answers this question, and has a very helpful report on cloture motions and filibusters that make this point very clear. The CRS report is entitled, ``Cloture Attempts on Nominations: Data and Historical Development,'' by Richard S. Beth. It contained an entire section called ``Cloture Motions Do Not Correspond With Filibusters.'' It starts out: Although cloture affords the Senate a means for overcoming a filibuster, it is erroneous to assume that cases in which cloture was sought are always the same as those in which a filibuster occurs. Filibusters may occur without cloture being sought, and cloture may be sought when no filibuster is taking place. The reason is, cloture is sought by supporters of matters, whereas filibusters are conducted by its opponents. It then goes on to explain various scenarios to illustrate this point. Several Members of the majority have made a point of trying to confuse cloture motions with filibusters. We hear constantly that there have been an unprecedented number of Republican filibusters. They often point to a chart that purports to tally the number of filibusters and say that this is evidence of abuse of the Senate rules by the minority. The number they quote is the number of cloture motions, not the number of filibusters. It is true that there have been a record number of cloture motions, and I also agree that the number amounts to an egregious abuse of Senate rules, but, again, there is a very significant difference: Cloture motions do not correspond with filibusters. Cloture motions are filed by the majority party leadership, not by the minority party. This abuse of cloture is a major cause of the Senate's current dysfunction. Again, this abuse of cloture, often combined with the blocking of amendment also prevents all Senators from doing what they were sent here to do, not just Members of the minority party. It has gotten even worse. Even where the majority leader has decided he is going to be open to amendments, he has created out of whole cloth new restrictions to limit Senators' rights. First, he normally only opens the amendment process if there is an agreement to limit amendments. This is usually only a handful or so. Then he has magically determined that only germane or relevant amendments can be considered. Of course, nowhere do the Senate rules require this, other than postcloture. Senators elected in the last few years appear to be ignorant of that fact. You will hear some Senators here argue against an amendment saying it is nongermane or nonrelevant. They have totally fallen for the creative rulemaking of the majority leader, thus giving up one of their rights as a Senator with which to represent their State. I cannot count on how many nongermane or nonrelevant amendments I had to allow votes on when I processed bills when Republicans were in the majority. They were usually tough political votes, but we took them because we wanted to get things done. We wanted the Senate to function. You do not see that nowadays. The current majority leader avoids tough votes at all costs and that is why we don't get much done around here. The American people sent us here to represent them. That means voting, not avoiding tough votes. We sometimes hear this is a question of majority rule versus minority obstruction. Again, that ignores that each Senator is elected to represent their State, not simply to be an agent of the other party. While the majority of Senators may be from one party, they represent very different States, and the agenda of the majority leader will not always be consistent with the interest of their States. When one individual, the Senate majority leader, controls what comes up for a vote, that is not majority rule. In fact, there are policies that have majority support in the Senate that have been denied a vote. What happened during Senate debate on the budget resolution this year seems to prove that point. The special rules of the budget resolution limit debate so it can't be filibustered but allow for an unlimited number of amendments. A Republican amendment to support repealing the tax on lifesaving medical devices in President Obama's health care law passed by an overwhelming 79-to-20 vote, with more than half of the Democrats voting with the Republicans rather than with their party leader. A Republican amendment supported the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline to bring oil from Canada and passed 62 to 37. Those are two examples, because votes such as these that split the Democrats and hand a win to the Republicans are exactly what the majority leader has been trying to avoid by blocking amendments. That is why the Senate didn't take up a budget resolution for more than 3 years. Still, the budget resolution isn't a law, so unless legislation on those issues is allowed to come up for a vote, nothing will happen despite the support of the vast majority of the Senate as demonstrated by those two rollcall votes I just mentioned. As a case in point, now we are on the National Defense Authorization Act, and one of the amendments the majority leader blocked would have imposed sanctions on the Iranian regime. Everyone knew this amendment enjoyed broad bipartisan support and would have passed easily had a vote been allowed to take place. It had majority support. But the Senate was not allowed to work its will. Why? The Iran sanctions amendment was blocked because the President opposed it and it would have been a tough vote that divided the majority party. Is that a valid reason for shutting down the traditional open amendment process for the Defense bill? I don't think so. Until we put an end to the abuse of cloture and the blocking of amendments, the Senate cannot function properly and the American people will continue to lack representation that they are entitled to. Mayorkas Nomination As I said, I have a few short remarks on the Mayorkas nomination. I spoke at great length on this yesterday and I won't speak at great length today, but I have concern with Mr. Mayorkas' nomination, so I have additional information today for my colleagues. Today the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security released an embargoed version of its audit of the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. The report states that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service has difficulty ensuring the integrity of the program and does not always ensure that regional centers meet all eligibility requirements. Specifically, the report said: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service did not always enforce its own regulations and procedures to assist with managing the regional center program. Another quote: Until improvements are made, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service is unable to prevent fraud and national security threats . . . Another quote: [I]t cannot report the results of the program accurately or ensure the EB-5 program is benefiting the U.S. economy and creating jobs for U.S. citizens as created by Congress. We understand Mr. Mayorkas is in charge of these programs. The IG said the agency needed to improve coordination and rely on the expertise of other agencies. The IG had several recommendations for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service that, frankly, should have been in place before now, if the Director was doing his job. In his comments on the draft report, Mr. Mayorkas claimed that he was already addressing the issues the inspector general raised. He said his agency had ``dramatically enhanced collaboration with key government partners,'' meaning he was cooperating with the FBI. He also wrote that when his agency has concerns with EB-5 cases, it doesn't decide the cases until it has ``fully coordinated its approach with enforcement and intelligence partners.'' I have seen examples of this so-called coordination that Mr. Mayorkas talks about. But, again, his words don't comport with the actual practice. When Homeland Security's law enforcement database, TECS, has a hit on someone applying for a regional center, the Citizenship and Immigration Service sends an email to the law enforcement agency that put the record in. But the problem is that the Citizenship and Immigration Service isn't waiting for law enforcement to make an investigation. In fact, information has come to my attention that CIS employees are told to move forward if law enforcement doesn't respond within 5 days. That is just 5 days to find out what sensitive security or fraud information caused that person to be flagged. If law enforcement doesn't get back to the Citizenship and Immigration Service soon enough, then that agency goes ahead and the person's application is approved. That is not coordination. That coordination is a sham. That should be simply unacceptable to any of us who are concerned about the national security of our country. It is not the sort of way to run a program with national security vulnerabilities. Everybody should wait until law enforcement responds. We need to know who is coming into this country and not, and particularly when they are involved in a program where you buy your way into the country by buying a visa because you are supposed to be investing in this country and creating jobs in this country. But for some people who may want to get into this country for ulterior motives, they may violate our national security; they don't care about creating jobs. But if it gets them inside the country, they get here. So we have to know whether they are a threat to our national security. The only reason the Citizenship and Immigration Service even does check on regional centers at all is because of a push within that agency that Mr. Mayorkas and his management resisted. Now they are trying to take credit for it. More important is what his agency has not done. They refused to kick out regional centers that invite national security problems. Mr. Mayorkas claims he doesn't have statutory authority, but the inspector general audit recommended that Mr. Mayorkas should make clear on his own that fraud and national security concerns are a reason for regional centers to be kicked out of the program. The bottom line is Mr. Mayorkas has not taken the steps that were within his power to guard against security vulnerabilities in the EB-5 program. The inspector general's audit report concludes: Currently, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service cannot administer and manage the EB-5 regional centers program effectively. Mr. Mayorkas has had ample notice of these problems for years. He has failed to take adequate action. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, like my colleagues, and as I have done several times before, I come to the floor to share the voice of one of many Iowans who have contacted me over the sticker shock that they are experiencing under the Affordable Care Act. This time I quote a constituent from Sioux County, IA, northwest Iowa. That constituent writes: I am a pastor in rural Iowa and early this past summer, trusting naively in the integrity of our President's repeated promise that ``If you like your health insurance you can keep it. Period[,]'' I made a change in my policy, moving to a higher deductible to save the church money. Now I have been informed that because of that change, my policy is no longer grandfathered and therefore I will be forced out of it in a year and compelled to purchase a much more expense (un)Affordable Care Act-compliant policy. I am young, male, healthy, and will not qualify for any subsidy. In effect, because of legislation Democrats supported, my government is kicking me off from health coverage that I carefully researched, chose and like a lot-- and is forcing me to buy coverage that I do not need at a price I scarcely can afford. And the Government has the audacity to resort to Orwellian doublespeak and call such a draconian policy the ``Affordable Care Act.'' Please convey to your Democratic colleagues that I grew up on a dairy farm and now pastor a church of farmers. I am the epitome of middle class America that they claim to champion. This bill is unjust. It is based on lies to Americans like myself. It hurts real people, including the church I serve. I have done my job. I have shared this constituent's message with my colleagues as he asked me to do. I hope they were listening. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I would like to associate myself with the comments of the senior Senator from Washington and am pleased to know it is her intent that the use of not-for-profit servicers continues and that not-for-profit servicers will be permitted to compete on an equal basis in the future for additional accounts.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, soon we will be voting on the nomination of Mr. Mayorkas for Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. I have concerns about the nomination. First, I will discuss how Mr. Mayorkas has carried out the President's directive giving legal status to thousands of individuals who are in the United States unlawfully. In 2012, Mr. Mayorkas was charged with implementing this President's directive known as DACA--DACA--Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. I have always questioned whether the President's directive is legal. The administration never responded to our requests for their legal basis or opinions. This administration has not been transparent about who is getting deferred action, how they are processing them, and whether those who have been denied have been processed for removal. They may call this program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, but it clearly benefits older adults, and possibly people who intentionally broke our laws. The agency didn't deny any single applicant until after the 2012 election. We still don't know how many people were actually denied. We do know, however, that people were approved despite shoddy evidence, such as an Xbox receipt and Facebook posting. They always seem to find a way to get approval. All denials for DACA have to be run through Washington. Adjudicators on the line were given clear instruction they were not allowed to deny any applicant. Whistleblowers tell me that Mr. Mayorkas himself had to approve all denials. Think about that. No denials were allowed unless the head of the agency personally approved the denial. What kind of message does that send to civil servants, the career employees trying to do their job under the law as the law requires, and to be very impartial. The boss has his thumb on the scales. That isn't the rule of law. Mr. Mayorka's message to adjudicators seems to have been that they had better get to yes or he would personally get involved. This ``get to yes'' philosophy came up time and again with agency whistleblowers. The Office of Inspector General looked into the situation and the inspector general confirmed what employers had said. A quarter of Immigration Service Officers interviewed felt pressured to approve questionable applicants, and 90 percent felt they didn't have sufficient time to complete the interviews of those who seek benefits. The report of the Office of Inspector General clearly showed the agency had been pervaded by this ``get to yes'' culture. Unfortunately, that culture hasn't changed under Mr. Mayorkas's leadership. In fact, based on concerns I heard from whistleblowers who contacted my offices in mid-July of this year, it seems to have even gotten worse. These whistleblowers were aware that Mr. Mayorkas had been nominated to this Homeland Security position by late June. They were also aware that since the fall of 2012, Mr. Mayorkas had been the subject of an Office of Inspector General investigation into allegations of ethical or criminal misconduct. When Mr. Mayorkas's nomination hearing was scheduled, the whistleblowers were very surprised. They wondered why a hearing would proceed while the investigation was still open and pending, and then contacted my office to make sure Congress was told about the investigation. The existence of this investigation was news to me at that time. However, I didn't sit on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. So my staff contacted the staff of the ranking member of that committee, Senator Coburn. His staff was also unaware the nominee was under investigation by the Inspector General. It is extremely troubling that a hearing was scheduled to proceed without the ranking member of the committee knowing about the pending investigation of the nominee within the executive branch. Both my staff and the staff of Ranking Member Coburn contacted the inspector general's office. We told his office about the whistleblower allegations and asked for confirmation as to whether there was an open inquiry. This type of procedural information is routinely disclosed by an inspector general's office to Congress, and rightly so. Further, we asked for an explanation of why that information would be withheld while the committee was considering the nomination. Understand, the Senate has a constitutional function of providing advice and consent on these nominations. In order to do our duty, every Senator who is asked to vote on that nominee needs to have all the relevant information about that nominee, and particularly when there is a pending investigation. To its credit, the Office of Inspector General answered our questions and confirmed there was indeed an open criminal investigation. Their written description stated that the inquiry involves ``alleged conflicts of interest, misuse of position, mismanagement of the EB-5 program, and an appearance of impropriety by Mayorkas and other . . . management officials.'' How was it possible that this information was withheld from staff for the ranking member of the committee considering that nomination? If not for the whistleblowers who came forward, would we have known of the investigation? When a nominee is under investigation, the Senate has no business approving that nominee until the facts are in. Historically, committees have followed this precedent. As ranking member Coburn explained last week, both the President and the Vice President supported this precedent when they were in the Senate. In July 2005, one ambassadorial nominee owned a company under investigation. Then-Senator Biden spoke out and supported delaying the vote on that nomination because of the investigation. Eventually, the nominee's company agreed to settle the investigation against it. Then- Senator Obama's spokesman issued a statement saying that due to the fact that a settlement was reached, Senator Obama would not seek to block the nomination. Like then-Senators Obama and Biden, I believe the Senate should wait for investigations to conclude or, if the executive branch is taking too long, then Congress should do its own fact-finding. But forcing Senators to vote in ignorance is not a legitimate option. In fact, it is irresponsible. Voting to approve a nominee who is under investigation without waiting for the facts is incredibly risky. What if the investigation determines allegations are true? By rushing to approve the nominee, this body would have failed one of our key functions under the Constitution. I pointed this out when the Senate was considering the nomination of B. Todd Jones to become permanent head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Mr. Jones was the subject of an Office of Special Counsel investigation due to allegations he retaliated against a whistleblower in the U.S. Attorney's office in Minnesota. As Mr. Jones' nomination progressed through the Senate, the Justice Department and the whistleblower agreed to try mediation. The majority tried to claim the special counsel's case was, therefore, closed. However, I did state on the floor the special counsel's investigation would continue if mediation failed. Nevertheless, despite the open special counsel investigation, we voted on July 31 to confirm Mr. Jones. In early September, the whistleblower's mediation with the Justice Department did, indeed, fail. The special counsel has resumed its investigation of Mr. Jones, just as the special counsel had told the Senate that it would. So the retaliation complaint against Mr. Jones is still pending this very day. We don't know what the outcome will be because we did not take time to gather the facts, as Senators should. If we are unwilling to wait for an executive branch inquiry, then we should further gather the facts ourselves. Last week, Ranking Member Coburn asked Chairman Levin of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations whether that committee would consider interviewing witnesses in the controversy involving Mr. Mayorkas. While he declined, Chairman Levin rightly noted if the subcommittee were going to launch such an investigation, the vote on Mr. Mayorkas would need to be delayed. I completely agree. This vote should not take place until someone has been able to gather testimony and draw conclusions about these allegations. Whistleblowers have provided my office with very troubling evidence regarding the substance of some of the allegations. Much of the evidence involves the EB-5 regional center program, which Mayorkas is responsible for managing. The evidence appears to support allegations Mr. Mayorkas and his leadership team at Citizenship and Immigration Services are susceptible to political pressure and favoritism. Our immigration system should be governed by equal application of the law, not by who has the best political connections to the director of the agency. I have given Mayorkas a chance to defend himself and explain the evidence, which seems compelling. Back in July and August I wrote several letters to Mr. Mayorkas outlining whistleblower allegations and attaching some of the documents the whistleblowers provided. I asked how he accounted for this evidence, but he has utterly failed to reply to my letters. It has been 4 or 5 months since I sent Mr. Mayorkas these letters. Just like his personal oversight of DACA, these documents show Mr. Mayorkas being much more directly involved in individual EB-5 cases than he has led my staff or the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to believe. They appear to show him intervening in EB-5 decisions involving Gulf Coast Funds Management, an organization run by nobody other than Hillary Clinton's brother Anthony Rodham. This decision benefited GreenTech Automotive, a company run by Terry McAuliffe which was receiving funding from Gulf Coast Funds Management. This evidence about political influence and intervention is particularly troubling because of Mr. Mayorkas' prior history. In 2001 Mr. Mayorkas had a role in a group of pardons and commutations issued by President Clinton in the closing days of the second term. A 2002 House report found that then-U.S. Attorney Mayorkas inappropriately sought to influence a decision regarding whether drug trafficker Carlos Vignali's prison sentence should be commuted. However, my concerns about the investigation pending against Mr. Mayorkas are about more than just improper political influence. Under his leadership over the last few years, the EB-5 Program has grown far beyond its original intent, which I supported. It is intended to be an avenue for foreign investors to participate in new commercial enterprises which actually create jobs in this country in exchange for a U.S. visa. The program was created as a pilot, allowing regional centers to pool funds from investors to create new businesses and jobs. In the process, the centers had to prove they were creating the jobs they promised to create. Skeptics questioned whether the program truly creates jobs. Whistleblowers have expressed concerns that foreign investors are not being vetted carefully enough. They say Mr. Mayorkas is more interested in approving applications quickly than making security checks more robust. Given what we know about these security concerns inside the agency, Congress needs to reexamine this program. It should serve its purpose without compromising our national security. Mr. Mayorkas claims he has changed the program since learning of fraud and security concerns. The only tangible change we have seen is that additional economists have been hired and adjudicators from California were moved here to Washington, DC. Yet moving the EB-5 process to Washington increased Mr. Mayorkas' control over the program, just as he has in the DACA Program. Whistleblowers have provided me with emails from Mr. Mayorkas saying that he wants to keep fraud and national security concerns about GreenTech or the SLS Hotel in Las Vegas ``close hold.'' As I said earlier, the rule of law isn't possible when the boss has his thumbs on the scales. Further, the regional center program has serious national security risks that the Director hasn't addressed. He convened a working group with national security advisers but no formal product was finalized. The interagency collaborations seemed to fizzle. Whistleblowers say the working group was mere window dressing. In the agency, employees received EB-5 applications from individuals with derogatory information about them in classified government files, but they were given little or no guidance about how to make sure that such were denied. Instead, they were pressured to approve applications as quickly as possible. Simply put, the integrity of our immigration system is in question as long as the program continues without needed reforms which could be done this very day. On May 15, 2012, Chairman Leahy and I wrote to Mr. Mayorkas regarding the program and expressed our concerns about the potential for abuse of the program. We asked for his commitment to administratively reform two aspects of the program. He responded that he was interested in the reforms. Yet it has been a long 19 months and he has taken no action. Mr. Mayorkas says he is concerned with fraud and abuse of the program, but actions speak louder than words. Despite my recent letters with questions about fraud and security concerns, not to mention political influence, Mr. Mayorkas is either completely unwilling or unable to respond to the allegations. I sat down with Chairman Carper on August 1, and he agreed that I deserved answers to my questions from the nominee. Now he has pressed forward without getting answers. I am truly surprised that this majority is not interested in getting to the bottom of these allegations--in other words, something that is under investigation--the same way that Senator Biden and Senator Obama demanded that we do during a previous Presidency. If this body is unwilling to await the end of an investigation or if we aren't willing to conduct our own inquiry, one day this whole nomination will come back to bite us. As I said when B. Todd Jones was confirmed, eventually a situation will embarrass the Senate and damage the reputation of the Federal Government. If this majority is determined to ignore ongoing investigations and at the same time ram through nominees, the American people should hold the Senate accountable for not doing its constitutional job--in fact, refusing to do its constitutional job. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, we are in postcloture debate on the nominee for the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia. I want to speak on that nomination, but I am also going to take time to speak on issues dealing with the Defense Department, the farm bill, and the new nominee for the Department of Homeland Security. I will take a few minutes to discuss the President's ongoing scheme to stack the DC Circuit with committed ideologues so that the President's regulatory agenda doesn't run into judicial roadblocks. Yesterday, the Senate confirmed the first of three nominees to the DC Circuit that the court does not need. Let me emphasize that: Does not need. Of course, the Senate denied its consent on these nominees just a few short weeks ago. Some may ask: What has changed during that time? The vote count certainly has not changed. It is not as if Democrats persuaded some of their Republicans colleagues to change their minds. That is what you would expect in a body that operates based upon rules that guarantee the minority a voice. That is what you would expect in what is supposed to be the greatest deliberative body on Earth. That is what you would expect under normal circumstances, but as I explained in an earlier speech this week on another nominee for the same court, these are not normal circumstances. No, today's circumstances are different. Today the President's legislative agenda cannot get traction in Congress. And, no, it is not because Republicans will not negotiate with the President. It is because the President of the United States is out of step with the American people. Today the President's signature health care law, which was passed without a single Republican vote, is becoming more and more unpopular with each passing day. And no, it is not because the administration has not done a good job of ``messaging'' ObamaCare. It is precisely because of that message. Today, the President can't get climate change legislation passed by Congress, and, no, it is not simply because of Republican opposition. It is because the President's agenda is too extreme even for some Senate Democrats. The President and his agenda are out of step with the American people, and as a result, he cannot get his agenda adopted in this Congress. But that doesn't seem to matter to the radical liberal interest groups who support these policy initiatives. They want results--no matter what. These liberal interest groups are not satisfied with constitutional separation of powers. They want the President and his allies in the Senate to do whatever it takes to get the same results they would get if there were 535 Members of Congress just as liberal as the President. Those interest groups want the President to legislate by executive order and by administrative action. They want the President to suspend the law when it suits his purposes, just as the English kings used to do. In fact, the reason our Constitution requires--and let me emphasize requires--the President to ``faithfully'' execute the law is because the English kings would unilaterally--and selectively--suspend laws passed by the parliament. But none of this matters to the liberal interest groups. They want results--no matter what. In fact, the President has made such a practice of legislating by Executive Order and administrative action, that he has created the expectation among his most faithful supporters that there is nothing he cannot do unilaterally. Just a week or two ago, the President was delivering a speech in California when one of his own supporters interrupted and heckled him for not issuing an executive order to stop all deportations. The heckler shouted: Use your executive order to halt deportations of 11.5 million undocumented immigrants in this country. You have the power to stop deportations right now. The President responded: Actually, I don't. We are a nation of laws. I must say, I understand the confusion. The most extreme elements of the President's supporters have witnessed him pick and choose which laws he will faithfully execute and which he will suspend, or as the President likes to say, ``waive.'' So, it is no wonder that those supporters would say: Just issue an executive order. We want results. It is just like King George III. It is no wonder that those supporters would say: We don't care that there isn't support in the Congress to pass legislation imposing cap- and-trade fee increases. We want results Just like King George III. It is no wonder that those supporters would say: We don't care if Democrats block judges to the DC Circuit based on the standards the Republicans are applying today. That was then, this is now. We want results. Just like King George III. It is no wonder that those supporters would say: We don't care about two centuries of Senate history and tradition that has been passed down faithfully from one majority leader to the next. We want results. Just like King George III. Climate change regulations are too important. Salvaging ObamaCare is too important. So as we all know, the majority buckled to the pressure from these extreme liberal interest groups and broke the rules of the Senate to change the rules. They tossed aside two centuries of Senate history and tradition. This history and tradition--until 2 weeks ago--had been carefully guarded and preserved by each succeeding majority leader. Those leaders remembered the history of King George III. They did all of this just so they could install the President's hand- picked judges, so they could hear challenges to his signature health care law and to the rest of his regulatory agenda, such as climate change regulation. But when a President selects a nominee for the specific purpose of rubberstamping his agenda--an agenda that has proven too extreme for even Members of his own party--he needs a judge who can be counted upon to follow through. Given that it is inappropriate to ask prospective nominees how they would rule on particular cases, how would this White House make certain that their nominees would follow through and rubberstamp the President's agenda? Based upon Professor Pillard's record--and that is the nominee we will be voting on tomorrow--apparently the White House looked out over academia and selected the most liberal nominee they could find. Because Professor Pillard fits that bill to a T. I have heard my colleagues come to the floor and argue that these nominees to the DC Circuit are mainstream. Professor Pillard may be a fine person, but make no mistake about it, she is not mainstream. She is the furthest thing from it. I am sure that the White House is confident she can be counted upon to rubberstamp its agenda, but don't confuse her views with the mainstream of American legal tradition. I have a sampling of things she has written and said. I will read some of what she has written, and I then ask you to determine if she is mainstream. She has written this about abortion: Casting reproductive rights in terms of equality holds promise to recenter the debate towards the real stakes for women (and men) of unwanted pregnancy and away from the deceptive images of fetus-as-autonomous-being that the anti- choice movement has popularized. Think of ``deceptive images of fetus-as-autonomous-being.'' Is that mainstream? She argued this about motherhood: Reproductive rights, including the rights to contraception and abortion, play a central role in freeing women from historically routine conscription into maternity. Now, think about that: ``historically routine constriction into maternity.'' Is that mainstream? She has also argued this about motherhood: Antiabortion laws and other restraints on reproductive freedom not only enforce women's incubation of unwanted pregnancies, but also prescribe a ``vision of the woman's role'' as mother and caretaker of children in a way that is at odds with equal protection. Is that in the mainstream? What about her views on religious freedom? This really ought to shock you. She argued that the Supreme Court case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church, which challenged the so-called ``ministerial exception'' to employment discrimination represented a ``substantial threat to the American rule of law.'' The Supreme Court rejected her view 9 to 0. Nine to zero. And the Court held that ``it is impermissible for the government to contradict a church's determination of who can act as its ministers.'' Do my colleagues honestly believe that it is within the mainstream to argue that churches shouldn't be allowed to choose their own ministers? I don't think so. I asked Professor Pillard about Hosanna-Tabor and religious freedom at her hearing. She testified this way: And I have to admit, Senator Grassley . . . I really called it wrong on that case. I did not predict that the Court would rule as it did. In other words, she tried to dodge the question by leaving the committee members with the impression that she had merely taken a stab at predicting the case's outcome and that she had gotten it wrong. Of course, I wasn't troubled that Professor Pillard had wrongly predicted the outcome. I was troubled because she actually argued that a ruling in favor of the church would represent a ``substantial threat to the American rule of law.'' I don't believe that there is a single Member of this body on either side of the aisle who would subscribe to that argument anymore than the nine justices of the Supreme Court did. If I am wrong about that, then I would like to hear the Senator explain how it is mainstream to argue that granting our churches the latitude to choose their own ministers represents a ``substantial threat to the American rule of law.'' These are the so-called ``mainstream views'' the President wants to install on a court that will hear challenges to his most important priorities. Is it any wonder that the President apparently has high confidence will Professor Pillard rubberstamp his agenda? Before I close, let me make one final point. Given the circumstances surrounding how these nominees were selected and nominated; Given all three were nominated simultaneously for the purpose of changing judicial outcomes and rubberstamping the President's agenda; Given they were nominated and rammed through the process, without regard to the fact that there is not even enough work for them to do; Given the President was originally denied consent under the Rules of the Senate; Given that the President and certain far-left liberal interest groups successfully persuaded the majority of the Senate to cast aside two centuries of Senate history and tradition in order to get them confirmed; And given the extremely liberal record I discussed; If you were a litigant challenging the President, or one of his administrative actions and you drew a panel comprised of Professor Pillard, Millett, and Judge Wilkins, can you honestly say that you would be confident you would get a fair shake? Of course not. And that, my colleagues, is a sad commentary on the damage the President and the Senate majority have inflicted not only on the Senate but also on our judiciary and fundamental notions of the rule of law. I urge my colleagues to oppose the Pillard nomination.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. I object, and I wish to state the reason I object.

Mr. GRASSLEY. The reason I object for the minority to moving these votes is we should follow what regular order we have left on nominations, especially after the way the majority changed the rules on nominations 2 weeks ago. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, there is more wrong with the Affordable Care Act than just the Web site not working. In fact, the Web site is just a symptom of bigger problems. Similar to my colleagues, I wish to share the problems Iowans have with the Affordable Care Act. So I come to the floor today to share just one of hundreds of emails, letters, and phone calls from my constituents in Iowa expressing sticker shock about the Affordable Care Act. A working mother in Decorah, IA, who lost her employer-sponsored coverage for her family because of rising costs, wrote to me and said the following: . . . comparable plans do not seem to exist on the healthcare exchange. The closest we can come (and still see our own doctors) cost almost $1050 per month. This represents a 247% increase in cost over our prior employer provided plan--and with much higher deductibles! My husband is a self-employed small business owner. We covered our family of 4 on my group health plan, which includes a 21 year old adult daughter in college, who is not a legal tax dependent. If we receive any `subsidy', it will be insignificant in relation to the total jump in our out of pocket costs related to the so called ``Affordable Care Act''. The general public seems to believe that anyone who does not qualify for premium subsidies can easily afford a premium increase--no matter how outrageous. Yet an increase of almost 250% in our personal cost of providing an inferior policy for our family--which represents an increase in costs of roughly 20% of our gross income--can only be described as an absolute disaster. I think this email from a real person who is really living this train wreck of a health care law speaks for itself. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

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

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I know we are not voting on this nomination today. I think it will be tomorrow. But I do not think there will be time to make remarks tomorrow, so I am expressing not only my opposition to the nominee being confirmed but also the bigger issue of whether or not there should even be any additional judges put on the DC Circuit. Approximately 6 months ago, on June 4, 2013, the President simultaneously nominated three people for the DC Circuit. Everyone knew then, just as they know now, that these judges are not needed. The DC Circuit has the lowest caseload in the country by far, based on the standards that the Democrats established just a few years ago when a Republican was in the White House. In fact, the caseload on the DC Circuit is so low that on April 10, 2013, approximately 2 months prior to these nominations, I introduced legislation together with every Republican member of the committee to eliminate one seat of the DC Circuit and move two others to different circuits where they had bigger caseloads and needed additional help. That would be the sensible way to address this issue. Don't spend $1 million in taxpayers' money, per year, per judge, on judgeships that are not needed. That is common sense, especially when the judges currently on the court say--and I quote one of them--in a letter: If any more judges were added now there wouldn't be enough work to go around. Don't waste $3 million a year. Instead, simply move the seats to where they are needed, where there is a much bigger caseload. That would be the sensible and the good government approach. But being sensible and good stewards of taxpayer dollars is not what the other side had in mind when they hatched this scheme. Far from it. No, the administration's move here was clear from the very beginning. They knew they could not pass their liberal agenda through a divided Congress. The American people had already rejected that agenda at the ballot box. But the administration still runs the Federal agencies, and through the agencies the administration can ignore the will of the American people and continue to pursue a job-killing agenda. It doesn't matter that the American people do not want their government to pass cap-and-trade fee increases. The administration will simply force it upon the American people anyway through the Environmental Protection Agency. It doesn't matter that the employer mandate penalty under ObamaCare does not apply to the 34 States that have not created insurance exchanges. The administration forced the employer mandate upon the American people anyway through an IRS regulation. This has been the plan of the administration. It cannot get its liberal agenda through the Congress, but it has saddled the American people with its job-crushing agenda anyway through agency regulation. But there is a catch to this scheme, a very big catch. Agency decisions are reviewed by the Federal judiciary. That happens to be our very independent third branch of government. So for this scheme to work, the White House needed to stack the DC Circuit with judges who were rubberstamps for its agenda. As a result, the administration decided to ram their agenda through the agencies and simultaneously stack the DC Circuit with judges they believe would rubberstamp that agenda. That is why, on the very same day the President made these three nominations, I said: It's hard to imagine the rationale for nominating three judges at once for this court given the many vacant emergency seats across the country, unless your goal is to pack the court to advance a certain policy agenda. During the last few months we have debated this issue, and throughout the debate the other side has tried their best to obscure the objective. They have manipulated caseload statistics in an effort to deny the obvious: Judges are not needed and will not have enough work to go around as is. They twisted the words of the administrative office of the U.S. Courts. They claimed that the Chief Justice of the United States believes these judgeships are needed, when of course statistics show that is not remotely close to being true. They even stooped so low as to accuse Republicans of gender bias. But no matter how the other side manipulated the data or tried to conceal their agenda, they could not overcome the simple and basic facts everyone knew to be true; that is, that under the standard established by the Democrats under the Bush administration, these judgeships are not needed and should not be confirmed. As a result, when the Senate considered these nominations, it denied consent. The other side lost the debate. Under normal circumstances, that would have been the end of this matter but not this time. This time there is a Democrat in the White House, not a Bush in the White House, and a Republican minority in the Senate. The caseload statistics that carried the day in 2006 when we had a Republican majority in this body no longer matter to today's Democratic majority. This time apparently there are only three Members of the majority who care more for the Senate as an institution than they do for their party or short-term political gain. Of course, the biggest difference is that this time what is at stake is a radical agenda and the other side's effort to remove any meaningful check and balance on that agenda. In short, it is ObamaCare. In short, it is climate change regulation, and the method for doing it is Presidential rule by fiat. The other side decided they were no longer willing to play by the rules they established and pioneered in 2006 when we had a Republican President and a Republican majority in the Senate. They lost the debate, so a couple weeks ago they changed the rules of the game in the middle of the fourth quarter. They triggered the so-called nuclear option because salvaging ObamaCare and insulating cap-and-trade fee increases from meaningful judicial review were just two important ideological battles that this administration wanted to get done one way or the other. But, as I said, the end game for this scheme has been clear ever since it was formulated. So I wasn't surprised to read media accounts confirming the reasons the Democrats broke the Senate rules in order to get these nominees confirmed. For instance, on November 23, The Hill newspaper ran an article with this headline: ``Filibuster change clears path for Obama climate regs crackdown.'' The Hill newspaper had this to say: Green groups might be the biggest winners from Senate Democrats' decision to gut the minority party's filibuster rights on nominations. Their top priority--President Obama's second-term changes on climate change--is likely to have a better shot at surviving challenges once Obama's nominees are confirmed for the crucial U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The Washington Post wrote: Democrats say the shift in the court will be especially important given that Obama's legislative proposals have little chance to prevail in the GOP controlled House. . . . The most contentious issues likely to face the appeals court are climate change regulations being pursued by the EPA. . . . The measures represent Obama's most ambitious effort to combat climate change in his second term--coal-fired power plants are a key source of emissions--at a time when such proposals have no chance of passage in Congress. The same Washington Post article acknowledged the importance of removing the judicial check on ObamaCare. The court is expected to hear a series of other legal challenges as well, including lawsuits related to elements of the Affordable Care Act, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and new air-quality standards. Here is how one liberal environmental media outlet described the change: When the Senate Democrats blew up the filibuster Thursday, they didn't just rewrite some rules. They struck a mortal blow to a tradition that has blockaded effective action on climate change. According to media reports, it was these same liberal interest groups that pressured the majority leader to break the rules in order to change the rules. According to The Hill newspaper: [The] Sierra Club was part of a coalition of liberal groups and unions that pressured Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to limit the use of the filibuster through a majority vote. So if there was any doubt whatsoever about why the other side took such drastic action--changing the very historic process of the Senate-- there should not be any doubt any longer. The other side could no longer stand up to the more extreme wing of their party. Under pressure from those interest groups, the other side willy-nilly tossed aside some 225 years of Senate history and tradition. What is more, by joining the majority leader and voting to break the rules, every Senator who did so empowered the President to install judges whose appointments are specifically designed to rubberstamp the President's regulatory agenda. No one is going to be able to hide from this vote. Not only is this a power grab, it is much more than that. It is the erosion of a constitutional principle which has been established since 1787--and stated very clearly in the Federalist Papers--why the separation of powers is so important to our government. It was to make sure that no one person has all the power. The White House is so committed to a policy agenda that the American people don't want that it co-opted the majority of the Senate in its scheme to remove a meaningful judicial check on the executive branch of government and their agenda. This is about a White House trying to rig the game so it can impose its cap-and-trade fee increases on the American people even though the American people don't support it. This is about a last-ditch effort to salvage ObamaCare and regulations, such as the IRS rule imposing the employer mandate penalty in 34 States, which is in direct conflict with the statute. How will they do it? By installing judges the White House believes will rubberstamp their edict. I urge my colleagues to stand up to this White House, stand up to the radical liberal interest groups. Don't cast your vote for cap-and-trade fee increases and for judges that will rubberstamp that and don't cast another vote for ObamaCare. Instead, vote against this nomination. It is not needed. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. I object.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 3626, which was received from the House. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I don't think I find fault with anything Senator Schumer said, except as a matter of timing and when to consider those things. Before making any changes to current law, Congress needs to gain an understanding of printed gun manufacturing technology and its relation to permanent metal parts. There are other technical issues that should be resolved before any legislation passes that reflects scientific and manufacturing process realities. Today is the day the current plastic gun ban expires. The House had already passed a 10-year extension on a bipartisan vote. The only way to be sure the current ban remains on the books is to pass the House bill, which the Senate just did. Since the Democrats wish to extend current law, there are no current circumstances that demanded immediate changes to the law. Every previous extension of the bill has occurred on a bipartisan basis and has lasted for at least 5 years so that Congress does not need to constantly revisit it. Before Thanksgiving, my colleague, the Senator from New York, offered only a 1-year extension. Ten years is much better, and the 1-year extension proposal contained none of the substantive provisions the Senator from New York offered with mere hours to go before current law expires. After the Senate passes the House bill--which we did--Congress then has a responsibility to review the issue, hold hearings and obtain expert testimony, and consider alternative legislation, including what the Senator from New York has suggested. The date of expiration of the current ban has been set for many years. If anybody in the Senate is so concerned about what they consider to be a loophole in the law, this obviously should have been done through hearings and the introduction of legislation long ago. We did not even see the language of the proposed amendment I objected to until this afternoon. Dropping a bill at the eleventh hour without any investigation into the technological situation demonstrates that their real objectives were things other than just getting an extension. Under current law, ``the Attorney General shall ensure that rules and regulations adopted pursuant to this paragraph do not impair the manufacture of prototype firearms or the development of new technology.'' That is a quote from the proposed language that I objected to--or that is in present law, but the amendment of the Senator from New York strikes that language. It seems to me that the Justice Department's regulations should not impair new technology or firearm manufacturing, so I don't know why that change should have been suggested. I am willing to listen to anybody's arguments to the contrary, but that is the way I see it, and I am glad we have taken the action we have. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, we didn't have a chance to debate the change in rules, and we should have, so I am going to speak now on some things I think should have been said before we voted--not that it would have changed the outcome but because we ought to have known what we were doing before we vote rather than afterward. So I will spend a few minutes discussing what the majority leader did on the so-called nuclear option. Unfortunately, this wasn't a new threat. Over the last several years, every time the minority has chosen to exercise his rights under the Senate rules, the majority has threatened to change the rules. In fact, this is the third time in just the last year or so that the majority leader has said that if he didn't get his way on nominations, he would change the rules. Ironically, that is about as many judicial nominees as our side has stopped through a filibuster--three or so. Prior to the recent attempt by the President to simultaneously add three judges who are not needed to the DC Circuit, Republicans had stopped a grand total of 2 of President Obama's judicial nominees--not 10, as the Democrats had by President Bush's fifth year in office; not 34, as one of my colleagues tried to suggest earlier this week; no, only 2 had been stopped. If we include the nominees for the DC Circuit, we have stopped a grand total of 5--again, not 10, as the Democrats did in 2005; not 34, as one of my colleagues tried to argue earlier this week but 5. During that same time we have confirmed 209 lower court Article III judges. That is a record of 209 judges approved to 5 who were not approved. So this threat isn't based on any crisis. There is no crisis. I would note that today's Wall Street Journal editorial entitled ``DC Circuit Breakers: The White House wants to pack a court whose judges are underworked'' lays out the caseload pretty clearly. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the editorial to which I just referred.

Mr. GRASSLEY. This is about a naked power grab and nothing more than a power grab. This is about the other side not getting everything they want, when they want it. The other side claims they were pushed to this point because our side objected to the President's plan to fill the DC Circuit with judges the court does not need, but the other side tends to forget history. History is something we ought to learn from, so let's review how we got here. After the President simultaneously nominated three nominees who are not needed for the DC Circuit--a blatant political power grab in its own right--what did the Republicans do? Well, we did something quite simple: We said we want to go by the rules the Democrats set in 2006. We said we would hold those Democrats to the same standard they established in 2006 when they blocked a nominee of President Bush's by the name of Peter Keisler. Let's be clear about why the Democrats are outraged. Democrats are outraged because Republicans actually had the temerity to hold the other political party to a standard they established, and because we did, because we insisted we all play by the same rules, they came right back and said: Then we will change the rules. In effect, the other side has said: We don't want to be held to the standard we established in 2006. And not only that, but if you don't give us what we want, we are willing to forever change the Senate. And that is what happened today. We hear a lot of ultimatums around here, but this ultimatum was not run-of-the-mill. It was very different. It was different because this threat was designed to hold the Senate hostage. It was different because it is designed to hold hostage all of the Senate's history and traditions and precedents. It was different because its effectiveness depends on the good will of Senators who don't want to see the Senate as we know it destroyed or function other than as the constitutional writers intended. I would note that today's majority didn't always feel that way--the very way we have seen expressed today. Not too many years ago my colleagues on the other side described their fight to preserve the filibuster with great pride. For instance, in 2006 one of my colleagues on the other side said: The nuclear option was the most important issue I have worked on in my public life. Its rejection was my proudest moment as a minority leader. I emerged from the episode with a renewed appreciation for the majesty of Senate rules. As majority leader, I intend to run the Senate with respect for the rules and for the minority rights the rules protect. In 2005 another of my Democratic colleagues had this to say, referring to when Republicans were in the majority: Today, Republicans are threatening to take away one of the few remaining checks on the power of the executive branch by their use of what has become known as the nuclear option. This assault on our traditions of checks and balances and on the protection of minority rights in the Senate and in our democracy should be abandoned. Eliminating the filibuster by nuclear option would destroy the Constitution's design of the Senate as an effective check on the executive. So here we have two quotes from Democrats in the 2005-2006 timeframe very strongly supporting the precedent of the Senate in using the filibuster to protect minority rights. But that was when they were in the minority. Now they are in the majority, and the tradition of the Senate doesn't mean much. Here is another quote from the late Senator Byrd in 2005: And I detest this mention of a nuclear option, the constitutional option. There is nothing constitutional about it. Nothing. But, of course, that was way back then--just 6, 7 years ago when today's majority was in the minority and there was a Republican in the White House. Today the shoe is on the other foot. Today the other side is willing to forever change the Senate because Republicans have the audacity to hold them--the majority party of today--to their own standard. Why? Why would the other side do this? There clearly isn't a crisis on the DC Circuit. The judges themselves say that if we confirm any more judges, there won't be enough work to go around. And it is not as if all of these nominees are mainstream consensus picks despite what the other side would have us believe, that they are somewhat mainstream. Take Professor Pillard, for instance. She has written this about motherhood: Reproductive rights, including rights to contraception and abortion, play a central role in freeing women from historically routine conscription into maternity. Is that mainstream? She has also argued this about motherhood: Antiabortion laws and other restraints on reproductive freedom not only enforce women's incubation of unwanted pregnancies, but also prescribe a ``vision of the woman's role'' as mother and caretaker of children in a way that is at odds with equal protection. Is that mainstream? What about her views on religious freedom? She argued that the Supreme Court's case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church, which challenged the so-called ``ministerial exception'' to employment discrimination, represented a ``substantial threat to the American rule of law.'' Now, get this. After she said that, the Supreme Court rejected her view 9 to 0, and the Court held that ``it is impermissible for the government to contradict a church's determination of who can act as its ministers.'' Do my colleagues really believe mainstream America thinks churches shouldn't be allowed to choose their own ministers? I could go on and on, but I hope my colleagues get the picture. The point is this: Voting to change the Senate rules is voting to remove one of the last meaningful checks on the President--any President--and voting to put these views on this important court. So I ask again, why would the other side do this? It is nothing short of a complete and total power grab. It is the type of thing we have seen again and again out of this administration and their Senate allies, and you can sum it up this way: Do whatever it takes. You can't get ObamaCare passed with Republican support? Do whatever it takes: Pass it at 7 a.m. on Christmas Eve with just Democratic votes. You can't get all of your side to support ObamaCare? Do whatever it takes: Resort to things like the ``Cornhusker kickback.'' You lose your 60th vote on ObamaCare due to a special election? Do whatever it takes: Ram it through anyway using reconciliation. The American people don't want to be taxed for not buying health care? Do whatever it takes: Tell the American people it isn't a tax and then argue in the court that it is a tax. The American people want to keep their health care? Do whatever it takes: Promise them ``if you like your health care, you can keep it'' and then issue regulations making it impossible. Your labor allies want out from under ObamaCare? Do whatever it takes: Consider issuing them--labor--a waiver from the reinsurance tax. You can't find consensus nominees for the National Labor Relations Board? Do whatever it takes: Recess-appoint them when the Senate is still in session. You can't convince Congress to adopt your gun control agenda? Do whatever it takes: Issue some Executive orders. You can't convince moderate Democrats to support cap-and-trade fee increases? Well, do whatever it takes: Do the same thing through EPA regulation. Frustrated that conservative groups' political speech is protected under the First Amendment? Do whatever it takes: Use the IRS to harass and intimidate those same conservative groups. Frustrated when the court stands up for religious freedom and issues a check on the ObamaCare contraception mandate? Do whatever it takes: Stack the DC Circuit Court in your favor. Frustrated when the court curbs your power on recess appointments? Do whatever it takes: Stack the DC Circuit with your favorite appointees-- people who will rule in your favor. Worried EPA's regulations on cap-and-trade fee increases might get challenged in the court? Do whatever it takes: Stack the DC Circuit in your favor. Frustrated because Senate Republicans have the nerve to hold you to the same standard you established during the last administration? Do whatever it takes: Change the rules of the Senate. That is what we have witnessed today, nothing but an absolute power grab. The majority in the Senate and their allies in the administration are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve their partisan agenda. They know there will be additional challenges to ObamaCare. They know that if they can stack the deck on the DC Circuit they can remove one of the last remaining checks on Presidential power. But make no mistake, my friends on the other side will have to answer this question: Why did you choose this moment to break the rules to change the rules? Why now? Why, when we are witnessing the collapse of this massive effort to centrally plan one-sixth of this wonderful Nation's economy--why, when millions of Americans are losing their health care--why did you choose this moment to hand the keys to the kingdom over to the President, a President with less check on his authority? Because the fact of the matter is this: any vote to break the rules to change the rules is a vote to ensure ObamaCare remains intact. I will conclude by saying this. Changing the rules of the Senate in this way was a mistake. But if the last several years have taught us anything, it is that the majority won't stop making these demands. We can't always give in to these constant threats. Sooner or later you have to stand up and say: Enough is enough. But if there is one thing which will always be true, it is this: Majorities are fickle. Majorities are fleeting. Here today, gone tomorrow. That is a lesson that, sadly, most of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle haven't learned for the simple reason that they have never served a single day in the minority. So the majority has chosen to take us down this path. The silver lining is that there will come a day when roles are reversed. When that happens, our side will likely nominate and confirm lower court and Supreme Court nominees with 51 votes, regardless of whether the Democrats actually buy into this fanciful notion that they can demolish the filibuster on lower court nominees and still preserve it for Supreme Court nominees. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I wish to reiterate my strong support for Senator Gillibrand's reforms to the military justice system. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of this act, and I should add it has been a pleasure working with Senator Gillibrand on the issue. Her passion and commitment to rooting out sexual assault in the military ought to be inspiring to all of us, and watching how she negotiates and how she lobbies for her ideas can teach all of us a good lesson. I should also add that I appreciate the work of the Armed Services Committee, which added a large number of commonsense reforms to the underlying bill. In fact, some of them are so commonsense that one has to wonder why the military hasn't adopted them already or, if need be, asked for legislation to do so before now. For instance, the bill before us provides that people convicted of certain sexual assault offenses may not join the Armed Forces--common sense. It requires mandatory discharge from the Armed Forces of any member convicted of certain sexual assault offenses--common sense. It directs a comprehensive review of the adequacy of training pertaining to sexual assault prevention and response--common sense. The underlying bill also has a number of provisions to address certain concerns about commanding officers not handling sexual assault charges properly but still keeps this judicial process in the chain of command. That is inappropriate; hence, this amendment. We have tried working within the current system. This isn't a new issue. Military leaders have been making emphatic promises about tackling the problem of sexual assault for years and years, but the problem only seems to be getting worse. What is more, the current system appears to be part of the problem. There is a culture that has to change, and it won't change by itself. According to a recent Defense Department report, 50 percent of female victims stated they did not report the crime. Why? Because they believed that nothing would be done with their report. Seventy-four percent of females and 60 percent of males perceive one or more barriers to reporting sexual assault. Sixty-two percent of the victims who reported a sexual assault indicated they received some form of professional, social, or administrative retaliation. This should not happen in a military where everybody ought to be looking out for everybody else. A very cohesive unit is essential for everybody's protection but also for the success of the mission. So it is a terrible deterrent when sexual assaults ought to be reported 100 percent but aren't. If sexual assault cases are not reported, it is quite obvious, common sense tells us they can't be prosecuted. If sexual assault isn't prosecuted, common sense ought to tell us it leads to predators remaining in the military and a perception that that sort of activity will be tolerated or a person can get away with it. Common sense tells us that people get away with it. By allowing this situation to continue, we are putting at risk the men and women who have volunteered to place their lives on the line. We are also seriously damaging military morale and military readiness. Taking prosecutions out of the hands of commanders and giving them to professional prosecutors who are independent of the chain of command will help ensure impartial justice for the men and women in uniform. I know some Senators will be nervous about the fact that the military is lobbying against this legislation. There is a certain awe that permeates among Senators when people with stars on their shoulders appear among us. We are being asked, once again--that environment is here--to wait and see if the latest attempt to reform the current system will do the trick. I respond that the time for trying tweaks to the current system and waiting for another report or study has long since passed. We also hear that this measure will affect the ability of commanders to retain good order and discipline. I would like to be clear that we in no way take away the ability of commanders to punish troops under their command for their military infractions. Commanders also can and should be held accountable for the climate under their command. But the point here is sexual assault is a law enforcement matter, not a military one. If anyone wants official assurances that we are on the right track, we can take confidence in the fact that an advisory committee appointed by the Secretary of Defense himself supports our reforms. On September 27 of this year, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services--and I believe that acronym is DACOWITS--voted overwhelmingly in support of each of the components of the Military Justice Improvement Act amendment. This advisory committee isn't something new. These various advisory committees under different Secretaries of Defense have been around since 1951 when they were created by then-Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall. The committee is composed of civilian and retired military men and women who are appointed by the Secretary of Defense to provide advice and recommendations on matters and policies relating to the recruitment and retention, treatment, employment, integration, and well-being of highly qualified professional women in the Armed Forces. Historically, this advisory committee's recommendations have been very instrumental in affecting changes to laws and policies pertaining to military women. The bottom line is--and, again, this is common sense--this isn't some advocacy group or fly-by-night panel. It is a longstanding advisory committee handpicked by the Secretary of Defense, and it supports the substance of our amendment to a tee. I know it is easier to support incremental reforms. That is even prudent in some cases. However, when we are talking about something as serious and life-altering as sexual assault, we cannot afford to wait any longer than we already have. Our men and women serving in this military deserve bold action to solve this problem--not in a few years or a little bit at a time but right now. So I urge my colleagues to be bold and join us in this effort. It is the right thing to do. It seems to me as though a lot of debates in this body get complicated, and this one seems to be complicated too by some people. But it is really a very simple issue. It doesn't need to be this complicated, because it talks about changing the culture. I know there are cultures in every bureaucracy that need to be changed that affect their operations, but none of them are as damaging as the No. 1 responsibility of the Federal Government. So a culture in the Defense Department has to be taken seriously. We have to change the culture. When one joins the military--and I haven't been in the military so I don't speak with authority, but it seems to me as I understand the military--I have a grandson in the Marines and I had sons in the military. But when a person joins, they join because they feel that everybody in that unit will have each other's back. There should be no fear of anyone--anyone--in the unit. There should be nothing but respect for each other. Members of the military should have confidence in each other and loyalty toward each other. They are all on the same mission. None of them should be considered an enemy. None of them should have any particular power over another. That is what this sexual assault thing is all about--power over weak individuals--not weak because of who they are, but weak because of the power of the people above. This is badly needed legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, today, I am announcing my intention to object to any unanimous consent request to call up and confirm the nomination of Mr. Jeh Johnson to be the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. As ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I, along with other Senators on the committee, wrote a letter to Mr. Johnson last Friday and asked his views on a number of important matters, including our Nation's immigration policies and the fair treatment of whistleblowers. We asked if he would cooperate with us on oversight matters and work with us to improve immigration policies going forward. We have not yet received a response from Mr. Johnson. Because the Judiciary Committee has primary responsibility over immigration matters, it is necessary to know any nominee's position on immigration policies before we can consent to the confirmation of a Secretary to head this very critical department. So, until we receive responses from Mr. Johnson to our letter, I will object to any unanimous consent agreement to move his confirmation. I ask that a copy of the letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I wish to address another round of attacks that have been spearheaded by Big Oil against America's biofuels producers. As its market share for Big Oil dips, Big Oil is doubling down to swat down its perennial pinata. This time around, petroleum producers and food conglomerates are using environmental groups as political cover to gain traction on efforts to pull the plug on the renewable fuel standard that we often refer to as RFS. This is a ridiculously transparent and very much self-serving assault by these special-interest groups. Their relentless campaign to discredit ethanol undermines America's longstanding efforts to diversify its energy landscape, fuel the economy, and, most importantly, strengthen our national security. The predictable efforts to smear ethanol's reputation ignore the renewable fuel's valuable contribution to clean energy, rural development, job creation, and U.S. energy independence. The latest round of misguided untruths disregards the plain truth. The plain truth is ethanol is renewable, it is sustainable, it is a clean-burning fuel, and all this helps run the Nation's transportation fleet with less pollution and less imported oil. Let me remind my colleagues, most of that imported oil comes from countries that hate us and use our money to potentially kill Americans. Yet critics continue to hide behind distortions that claim ethanol is bad for the environment, and those distortions I wish to discuss. I wish to separate fact from fiction regarding ethanol's impact on the environment. Critics say farmers are putting fragile land into production to cash in on higher corn prices at the expense of soil erosion and clean water. That argument is not good under any respects. It may have been better last year and the year before when corn was $7, but corn is about $4 a bushel now--hardly making ends meet. They point out that 5 million Conservation Reserve Program acres are no longer enrolled in the conservation program since 2008. They want to pin the blame on ethanol. But the facts are, first of all, fewer acres enrolled in CRP has more to do with Federal belt-tightening, meaning spending less money here in Congress, than land stewardship decisions made by corn farmers. The 2008 farm bill had a lot to do with it. That farm bill built upon other stewardship incentives for American farmers and ranchers administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, wetland restoration, and wildlife habitat programs. So land put into these programs under the 2008 farm bill takes land out of crop production, but it is not the ethanol industry that has done it. It is Federal policy. For instance, a Wetlands Reserve Program in 2012 had a record- breaking enrollment of 2.65 million acres. The Wetlands Reserve Program lands cannot be farmed for 30 years, so they aren't going to be raising corn on that land to produce ethanol. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, no new grassland has been converted to cropland since 2005. Farmers must make marketing, planting, and stewardship decisions that keep their operations financially sound and productive from crop year to crop year. Even more importantly, these decisions must be environmentally sustainable for the long haul, both from the standpoint of the farmer's economic well-being as well as meeting certain laws that require that. So let me be clear: Farmers simply can't afford to not take scrupulous care of the land that sustains their livelihoods. Fertilizer use is on the decline. Compare application per bushel in 1980 versus 2010: Nitrogen is down 43 percent, phosphate is down 58 percent, and potash is down 64 percent. Ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline. According to the Oregon National Laboratory, corn ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 34 percent compared to gasoline. If the oil industry wants to talk about the environment, we should not forget--and I will remind them and the people behind this move--about the 1989 Exxon Valdez oilspill or the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oilspills in the Mexican gulf. Critics also say that the renewable fuel standard is driving more acres into corn production. Well, the fact is, if facts mean anything, the RFS is driving significant investment in higher yielding, drought-resistant seed technology that very much enhances production per acre. This is a win-win scenario, to cultivate good-paying jobs, mostly in rural America, and to harvest better yields on less land. The total cropland planted to corn in the United States is decreasing. Let's compare this year's crop year when U.S. farmers planted 97 million acres of corn--97 million corn acres. In the 1930s, farmers planted 103 million acres of corn. Farmers have increased corn harvests through higher yields, not more acres. Critics contend the Nation's corn crop is diverted for fuel use at the expense of feed for livestock and higher prices at the grocery store. But what are the facts? In reality, one-third of the corn processed to make ethanol reenters the marketplace as high-value animal feed called dried distillers grain. Livestock feed remains the largest end user of corn. I get so darn tired of hearing people from Big Oil or these environmental groups or these big supermarket conglomerates say that 40 percent of the corn produced goes into ethanol when they don't give credit for the 18 pounds of every 56-pound bushel of corn, 18 pounds, or one-third of it, is used for animal feed. So when coproducts such as the dried distillers grain are factored in, then ethanol consumes only about 27 percent of the whole corn grain by volume. Livestock feed uses 50 percent. Critics have also pursued the false accusation that the increased production of biofuels increases grocery prices. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. The facts are that the U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary has said farmers receive about 14 cents of every food dollar spent in the grocery stores, and the farmers share of a $4 box of corn flakes is only 10 cents. So what is at stake when a coalition of special interests tag-teams to pull the rug out from underneath the Nation's ethanol policy? Well, there is a lot at stake. Unfortunately, these flawed attacks on ethanol and next-generation biofuels undermine America's effort to move forward with an aggressive, diversified energy policy that takes into account global demand, geopolitics, and U.S. economic growth. It has resulted in an EPA that has wholeheartedly adopted this false narrative promoted by Big Oil and Big Oil allies. On Friday, then, the EPA released its proposed rule for the required volumes under the renewable fuel standard for next year. The EPA in this proposal chose to reduce the overall biofuels mandate. Rather than increase the amount of biofuel to be blended as the law requires, the EPA has chosen to waive the mandate and suggest that we use less homegrown renewable biofuel in our fuel supply; hence, more dependence upon foreign sources of energy. It is terribly disappointing that the U.S. biofuels industry is now under attack from President Obama's EPA. This action, which was vigorously pursued by Big Oil, is a slap in the face of our domestic energy producers. Who would have believed that Big Oil found an ally in President Obama's EPA since he has been such a defender of biofuels and all green energy. Who would have expected the Obama EPA to be more harmful to our domestic biofuels effort than President Bush ever was? President Bush was demagoged as an oil man from Texas. But he never undermined biofuels to the extent that this proposal from this EPA would. In making this announcement, the EPA said the challenges to supplying more ethanol to the market are too great because of the so-called blend wall. The fact is the blend wall is a creation of Big Oil. The primary reason ethanol is not blended at levels higher than 10 percent today is because Big Oil has stood in the way. Congress knew in 2007 that the RFS, renewable fuel standard, would require biofuels to be blended at levels higher than 10 percent. But the petroleum companies fought that every step of the way, going back 4 or 5 years, and finally last Friday they were successful. Friday's announcement, by the way, by EPA rewarded them for their temper tantrums. The EPA's proposal puts Big Oil in charge of how we implement the renewable fuel standard. It has rewarded Big Oil for its intransigence. While EPA says its intention is to put the RFS Program on a manageable trajectory that will support continued growth, I want to tell you the exact opposite is true. This proposal is a step back, not a step forward. It undercuts all segments of biofuel--including biodiesel, ethanol, and the advanced biofuels that go by the name of cellulosic ethanol. While this administration claims to have an energy strategy of ``all of the above,'' this decision by EPA proves it is in favor of ``none of the above.'' Ironically, biofuel producers now know what it is like for traditional energy producers with a bureaucracy that impedes domestic energy production at every turn. I find this decision baffling. I hope President Obama will see the harmful impacts of the EPA proposal and fix this mistake during the 60- day period EPA must take to consider opinions on this issue. So there are 60 days to turn this around. I hope we can do that. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. I am going to vote not to bring up the nomination of Judge Wilkins. I have some concerns about his record, but I am not going to focus on those concerns today, because there are a lot bigger issues we are dealing with. I have said it before and I will say it again: By the standards the Democrats established in the year 2006, we should not confirm anymore judges to the DC Circuit, especially when those additional judges cost approximately $1 million per year per judge. The fact of the matter is, this DC Circuit they want to make three more appointments to--and this will be the third of these appointments we have dealt with--is underworked. The statistics make it abundantly clear, but I am not going to go through them all again as I have in the past. I will mention a couple brief points regarding the caseload. The DC Circuit ranks last, for instance, in both the number of appeals filed and the appeals terminated. These are the cases coming to the court and going out. Not only does DC rank last, but it is not even close. To give you a frame of reference compared to DC, the Eleventh Circuit, which has the highest caseload, has over five times as many appeals as are filed here in the DC Circuit. The same is true for appeals terminated. Again, it is not even close. The Eleventh Circuit has over five times as many appeals terminated as the DC Circuit. The bottom line is that the DC Circuit does not have enough work as it is right now, let alone if we were to add even more judges, in this case the President's desire to add three. That is why the current judges on the court, the current judges, have written to me and said things such as: ``If any more judges were added now, there wouldn't be enough work to go around.'' As I said last week, at least some on the other side concede that the DC Circuit's caseload is low, but they claim DC's caseload numbers don't take into account the complexity of the court's docket based upon the number of administrative appeals filed in that circuit. As I have said, this argument doesn't stand against scrutiny. My colleagues argue that the DC Circuit docket is complex because 43 percent of its dockets are made up of administrative appeals. Of course, there is a reason they cite a percentage rather than a number. That is because it is a high percentage of a very small number. When we look at the actual number of these so-called complex cases per judge, the Second Circuit has almost twice as many as the DC Circuit. In 2012 there were 512 administrative appeals filed in the DC Circuit, but in the Second Circuit there were 1,493 filed. Stated differently, in DC there were only 64 administrative appeals per active judge. The Second Circuit has nearly twice as many with 115 files. Again, that is 64 administrative appeals per judge in DC compared with almost twice as many with the Second Circuit at 115. This entire argument about complexity, I hope, comes out to be nonsense to most of my colleagues. To hear the other side, it is an outrage that we would hold them to the same standards they established in 2006 when they blocked Peter Keisler's nomination to the DC Circuit based upon caseload. Since that time, by the standard that the other side established, the court's caseload has declined even further. It has declined so much, in fact, that the number of appeals back then, with 10 acting judges, is roughly the same as there are now with 8 active judges. Again, we didn't set this standard, the Democrats did. That standard may be inconvenient for Democrats today, but that is not a reason to abandon the standard they established. Remember, the other side established the Keisler standard after the so-called Gang of 14 agreement. Even if that agreement hadn't expired by its own terms at the end of the 109th Congress, the Democrats established the Keisler standard after that agreement supposedly took effect. As I have said, the other side has run out of legitimate arguments in support of these nominations. That is why they seem to be grasping at straws. When the other side gasps at straws, they get desperate. When the other side gets desperate, they turn to their last line of defense, accuse us Republicans of bias. Over the last week or so, my colleagues on the other side have argued that Republicans are opposing nominees based on gender. That argument-- as I said last week and I still say--is offensive and patently absurd. It is so absurd, in fact, that even the Los Angeles Times called the Democrats' attempt to play the ``gender card'' a ``pretty bogus argument,'' noting that in the past Republicans have ``happily confirmed female nominees.'' The fact is that the Republicans have supported over 80 women nominated to the bench by this President as well as a host of other nominees of diverse backgrounds. Those are the facts. It is unfortunate but sadly predictable that facts may not mean much. These allegations of gender bias are unfortunate because they represent cheap attacks that the other side knows are untrue. It also is unfortunate because the entire exercise is designed to create the appearance of a crisis where there is no crisis. There is no crisis in the DC Circuit because they don't have enough work to do as it is. There is a crisis occurring now all across the country as a result of the health care reform bill that often goes by the terminology of ObamaCare. Millions of Americans are losing their health insurance, even though the President promised over and over--we know the quote: ``If you like your health care, you can keep it.'' Even though we have a very real and serious crisis facing this country because of ObamaCare, the other side is desperately trying to divert attention to anything but the ObamaCare disaster. This is how the Roll Call newspaper described this strategy: Senate Democrats . . . are readying their next assertive moves on three other issues important to their base: Abortion rights Minimum wage Federal judiciary The goal is to divert as much attention as possible away from the problem-plagued ObamaCare rollout. Let me get this straight. A crisis is unfolding all across this country as millions of Americans are losing their health insurance because of ObamaCare. Yet the Democrats' strategy, according to Roll Call, is to conceal the ObamaCare crisis by using the DC Circuit as a smokescreen. That is breathtaking, even by Washington, DC, standards. The other side is so eager to divert attention from the millions of Americans losing their insurance because of ObamaCare that they are willing to manufacture a crisis in the DC Circuit, even though the current judges say: ``If any more judges were added now, there wouldn't be enough work to go around.'' Not only that, but after running out of legitimate arguments to justify the President's attempt to stack the deck on this court, the other side has resorted to making allegations of gender bias. I have already explained that these allegations are offensive and absurd. But since the other side's strategy is to conceal the ObamaCare train wreck with a DC Circuit smokescreen and on top of that is willing to go so far as to accuse our side of gender bias, then I am going to take the opportunity to share some of the frustrations being experienced by my constituents in Iowa, meaning women in Iowa, as a result of ObamaCare. A woman from Vinton, IA, writes: After 28 days of complete frustration, I got to look at 30 plans on the Iowa health care exchange at healthcare.gov. The CHEAPEST one is $1,886 per year with a $6,300 deductible. Last year, I spent $1,484 on health care. TOTAL. OUT OF MY OWN POCKET. I wouldn't even meet the deductible paying almost $350 a month on the one plan offered. At that rate, what I spent TOTAL last year would be spent on premiums in 4 months. . . . With more and more policies being cancelled by the insurance companies; with more and more doctors refusing to serve patients with Obamacare; and with the increasing anger towards elected officials, including President Obama, how do you plan to fix this mess??? Another woman from Sioux City, IA, writes: My company just had a meeting inform us of the changes to our healthcare plan thanks to ``Obamacare''. It is going to cost me $190 more each month next year for my family coverage. I am going to have to work more overtime, reduce my 401K contributions and opt out of my Flex 125 contributions to try to recover the extra money coming out of my paycheck because of the new laws. . . . While I suppose I should count myself lucky I didn't lose my employer health insurance coverage, I sure don't feel happy about the extra money I am going to have to pay for the same coverage I was getting this year. What a joke. I wish there was something that could be done about this. Socialized health care . . . Then she used a word that I can't repeat in the Senate. From a mom in Dayton, IA: Our family's health insurance agency contacted us last week to set up an appointment to talk to us about the changes in our health coverage due to Obamacare. We went to the meeting and found out that our HSA that we currently have will no longer be available because of Obamacare, plus our monthly rate will go from $350.00/month to $570.00/month. We have no idea how we are going to afford this increase. We feel blindsided. I know that you are committed to helping Iowans, as well as all Americans, so I ask that you keep fighting for affordable healthcare. My final message is from a woman in Melbourne, IA, who writes: I got a full in your face understanding of just how horrible it was today when I went to renew my insurance. I currently pay $110 every two weeks for insurance for my whole family. Next year I will have to pay over $500 every two weeks to insure my family. The healthcare website Obamacare created is no better. I can't even get the website to work properly. It will not allow me to put my husband on a joint policy with me. . . . I actually have to weigh which is cheaper . . . paying the fine or paying for insurance. Sadly it will probably be paying the fine. These are real stories from real women facing a real crisis in only 1 State of the 50 States, my State of Iowa. Of course, this isn't happening only in my State. Far from it. This is happening to millions of Americans all across the country. Rather than focus on this crisis, a real crisis, the other side has developed a strategy specifically designed to divert attention from it. That strategy is to use the DC Circuit as a smokescreen. In summary, the judges themselves say: ``If any more judges were added now, there wouldn't be enough work to go around.'' Even though we shouldn't fill these seats based upon the Democratic standard set in 2006 and even though filling these seats would waste $3 million per year in taxpayers' money that we don't have, the other side seems, in an unreasonable way, bent upon manufacturing a crisis for cynical, political reasons. I urge my colleagues on the other side to come to their senses. Let us start focusing on the real crisis facing this country. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the Wilkins cloture petition. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, if I am in order, I would like to speak on the judicial nomination, the vote we are having.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, if you like your health plan, you can keep it. It is a nice sound bite, isn't it? It is also not true. My constituents have learned that the very hard way. A constituent from Perry, IA, wrote: My husband and I are farmers. For nine years now we have bought our own policy. We recently received our letter that our plan was going away and effective Jan 1, 2014 it will be updated to comply with the mandates of ObamaCare. We did not get to keep our current policy. We did not get to keep our lower rates. I now have to pay for coverage that I do not want or will never use. We are the small business owner that is trying to live the American dream. I do not believe in large government that wants to run my life. This failed promise is hitting home but, more importantly, when the President promises something and doesn't keep that promise, it goes way beyond a promise to hurt an individual. It goes to the lack of credibility of all government. What we need to be doing in this country is building up credibility of government to strengthen our institutions of government. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, Webster's dictionary defines the word success as ``the correct or desired result of an attempt.'' I want to discuss the definition of the word success as we consider the Affordable Care Act. On the day the bill was signed into law, President Obama said the following: Today we are affirming that essential truth, a truth every generation is called to discover for itself, that we are not a nation that scales back its aspirations. Such grand words for where we are today on that piece of legislation. Today the success of the law that now bears his name, ObamaCare, is defined in much more meager terms. Today success is when the folks at Health and Human Services got up this morning, ObamaCare had not shut down, and when the folks at HHS go to sleep tonight, their day will have been a success if ObamaCare did not have to shut down. Think of all that, think of all that we have been through to this point after 4 years, the fight over the bill and the extreme legislative means used to pass it through Congress. Then think about the 2010 and 2012 elections. Think about the Supreme Court decision that effectively repealed half of the law's coverage. Think of all the changes made to the law through regulation to make sure ObamaCare launched. Think of the postponing of the employer mandate. Think of the postponing of lifetime limits. Think of the impact this law has had on our economy. It has had quite an impact on the economy--people losing jobs, people losing health insurance they currently have, because if you like what you have you may not be able to keep it. Let's talk about that issue for a minute. ``If you like what you have, you can keep it'' was the promise the President made to the American people on at least 36 separate occasions. It is a great sound bite. It is easy to say. It rolls easily off the tongue. It is also not true. It was never true. It was obviously not true when the law was written. It was obviously not true when the first proposed regulation came out. This is what I said on the Senate floor September 2010. Quoting myself: Only in the District of Columbia could you get away with telling the people if you like what you have you can keep it, and then pass regulations 6 months later that do just the opposite and figure that people are going to ignore it. It is not that I have some magic crystal ball. Simple--we all knew it. The administration certainly knew the day would come when millions of people would receive cancellation notices of their insurance policy. Now my constituents clearly know it. I have heard from many Iowans who found out the hard way that the President made a bunch of pie-in-the- sky promises that he knew he couldn't keep, constituents such as this one from Perry, IA, saying: My husband and I are farmers. For 9 years now we have bought our own policy. To keep the costs affordable our plan is a major medical plan with a very high deductible. We recently received our letters that the plan was going away. Effective January 1, 2014, it will be updated to comply with the mandates of ObamaCare. To manage the risk of much higher premiums, our insurance company is asking us to cancel our current policy and sign on to a higher rate effective December 1, 2013 or we could go to the government exchange. We did not keep our current policy. We did not get to keep our lower rates. I now have to pay for coverage that I do not want or will never use. We are not low-income people that might qualify for assistance. We are the small business owner that is trying to live the American dream. I do not believe in large government that wants to run my life. Or a constituent living in Mason City, IA: My wife and I are both 60 years old and I have been covered by an excellent Wellmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield policy for several years. It is not through my employer. We selected the plan because it had the features we wanted and needed . . . our choice. And because we are healthy we have a preferred premium rate. Yesterday we got a call from our agent explaining that since our plan is not grandfathered, it will need to be replaced at the end of 2014. The current plan has a $5,000 deductible and the premium is $511 per month. The best option going forward for us from Wellmark would cost $955 per month--a modest 87 percent increase--and have a $10,000 deductible. And because we have been diligent and responsible in saving for our upcoming retirement, we do not qualify for any taxpayer-funded subsidies. These are just two of many letters, emails, and phone calls I have received from Iowans. Thousands have contacted me asking what can be done now that we clearly see that what the President sold the American people was a bag of Washington's best gift-wrapped hot air. I ask the President, I ask my colleagues here in the Senate, to look at all we have been through as a country, all the grandiose talk about the importance of this statute, and what we ultimately have is an optional Medicaid expansion with a glorified high-risk pool and a government portal that makes the DMV look efficient. Americans deserve better. They voted for better. But this administration will somehow trudge ahead; keep the doors open; thousands of people enrolled instead of millions. They just released a number this week for the 36 States using the malfunctioning Federal exchange: fewer than 27,000 people. Including people who have not actually committed to purchase the plans--those who have put it in their shopping cart--less than 27,000 people. That is about 19 people per day per State. So the administration will limp along with this pitiful signup process hoping to get people properly assigned to health plans. If the assignment of individuals to plans fails miserably on January 1, the administration will dig in and sort it out. If the risk pools are a disaster, the administration will use extraregulatory--by any means necessary--tools to keep this program afloat. Because for all the talk of this bill being--as we saw and heard the Vice President on TV--a big expletive deal, success is not defined in the desires of 2010 but in making sure ObamaCare exists in some form or fashion on January 20, 2017. We saw more of this digging in and sorting out on this very day when the President spoke. Insurance companies sent 4 million cancellation notices to comply with the President's law. They did it to comply with the law. Let's be clear about it. In other words, these insurers read the law, and then do you know what they did. They did what every company ought to do: Follow the law. Unfortunately for them, the President did what he has been doing for 3 years: He has taken out his pencil and eraser and rewritten or delayed his law on the fly when it is not working. So what does it now mean for insurers who were simply trying to follow the law as written, as you would expect them to follow the law? Let me tell you what one insurance company had to say: This means that the insurance companies have 32 days to reprogram their computer system for policies, rates, and eligibility, send notices to policyholders via US Mail, send a very complex letter that describes just what the differences are between specific policies and ObamaCare compliant plans, ask the consumer for their decision--and give them a reasonable time to make that decision--and then enter those decisions back into their system without creating massive billing, claim payments, and provider eligibility list mistakes. That was a quote from the consultant who was commenting on what the President did today by delaying or by making sure you could keep your program.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 4 more minutes.

Mr. GRASSLEY. So the only thing the President has accomplished with his announcement today is that he is delaying his broken promise for another year. I have to wonder: What will it take for him to admit his law is not working and at least call for a full delay? Remember how all these big health insurance companies back in 2009 got behind the President's program for nationalizing our health insurance program. They put up a lot of money to sell it. Their lobbyists lobbied for it. What they ought to do is tell the American people what a big mistake they made because they are getting stuck with it right now--as I just quoted from this consultant from an insurance company. It is time for us to admit that ObamaCare has not achieved the correct or desired results of an attempt--in other words, the definition of success as I stated earlier in my remarks. It has not been a success by any measure, unless, of course, you lower your standard to the point that the mere act of keeping the doors open is a success. How sad is it that after all we have been through--and we have been through a lot. Maybe, just maybe, it is time to admit that the massive restructuring has failed. It may be that partisanship has failed. Perhaps it is time to sit down and consider commonsense, bipartisan steps we could take to lower costs and improve quality. Perhaps we could enact alternative reforms aimed at solving America's biggest health care problems, such as revising the Tax Code to help individuals who buy their own health insurance; allowing people to purchase health coverage across State lines and form risk pools in the individual markets; expanding tax-free health savings accounts; making health care price and quality information more transparent; cracking down on frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits; using high-risk pools to insure people with preexisting conditions; giving States more freedom to improve Medicaid, such as Rhode Island got a few years ago and which seems to be a success; and using provider competition, consumer choice to bring down costs in Medicare, throughout the health care delivery system. The American people need to know this failed program is not the only answer. I yield the floor. I thank the Senator from New York for yielding to me. I forgot to say that earlier.