Orrin Hatch

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Before the Supreme Court, the administration made the remarkable claim that Federal law authorizes the Federal Government to involve itself in the hiring and firing of church ministers. Specifically, the administration said that Federal antidiscrimination laws override the First Amendment right of churches to select whomever they wish as ministers and instead allow the administration to actually sue a church if it believes a particular hiring or firing was improper. This radical position would allow the Federal Government to insert itself into some of the most important decisions churches make regarding religious doctrine and governance. Thankfully, the Supreme Court rejected the administration's position unanimously. Indeed, in a striking rebuke, the Court called the administration's claim that the First Amendment provides no more protection to a church in selecting its leader than it does to a ``labor union or a social club . . . remarkable.'' The fact that the administration felt comfortable making this argument, and apparently thought it was a correct argument, speaks volumes regarding this administration's dim view of religious liberty. More recently, the administration has signaled that the forced legalization of same-sex marriage will present religious schools and institutions with significant challenges in reconciling school standards with Federal antidiscrimination laws. At oral argument in the Obergefell case, one of the Justices asked the Solicitor General whether a religious school that opposed same-sex marriage would lose its tax-exempt status. The Solicitor General responded that ``it's certainly going to be an issue.'' With those seven words, the Solicitor General made clear that religious institutions that adhere to traditional views regarding marriage and sexuality--such as by providing housing only to opposite-sex couples-- will face potentially staggering financial consequences for their commitment to their religious convictions. The third front in the fight against religious liberty happens to be the State legislatures. In many ways what we are seeing at the State level is a mirror of what the administration has been doing at the Federal level. Just as the administration has stripped funding from religious organizations that refused to follow the administration's liberal social policies, States have withdrawn funding and licenses from groups that adhere to traditional religious views. Massachusetts, for example, passed a law requiring State-licensed adoption agencies to place children with same-sex couples. As a result, Catholic Charities, which had operated adoption services in the State for over 100 years, was forced to shut down its adoption program. That is outrageous. Catholic Charities affiliates in Illinois were similarly forced to close after the State announced it would no longer provide funding to adoption agencies that declined to place children with same-sex couples. Other religiously affiliated groups and schools have lost contracts, faced loss of accreditation, and have been denied permission to use public facilities because of their doctrinally based views on family, marriage, and sexuality. The mayor of Houston even went so far as to subpoena internal church communications as part of an intimidation campaign against churches that opposed a city nondiscrimination ordinance. Far from treating religious liberty as a preeminent value, many States and localities have thrust it aside in favor of other goals. Another disturbing trend at the State level has been the growing opposition to State religious freedom laws. Over 20 years ago I helped lead a broad bipartisan effort in Congress to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act or RFRA. RFRA sought to undo a misguided Supreme Court decision that authorized Congress and the States to abridge religious freedom so long as their actions did not specifically target religion. RFRA says that government may not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion unless doing so is necessary to further a compelling government interest. The coalition that helped pass RFRA included Members as ideologically diverse as Ted Kennedy, Pat Leahy, Strom Thurmond, and Phil Gramm. Groups from across the political spectrum such as the ACLU, People For the American Way, the Traditional Values Coalition, and the Christian Legal Society strongly supported the bill. Given this broad ideological support, RFRA passed the House without recorded opposition and passed the Senate 97 to 3--nearly unanimous. For a major piece of legislation like RFRA to pass Congress with only three recorded ``no'' votes was nearly unprecedented and indicated the breadth of support at the time for the view that religious liberty deserves special protection. Twenty years later, however, the consensus in favor of robust protection for religious liberty has splintered. Whereas the Federal RFRA was able to pass Congress almost without opposition--the whole Congress, that is--recent efforts to enact State level RFRAs have run into substantial resistance. Efforts in Indiana and Arizona are two good examples. They ignited media firestorms and generated strong pushback from groups who mistakenly viewed the measures as discriminatory. It should be emphasized both bills were modeled after the Federal RFRA, but the political dynamics have changed so dramatically over the last 20 years that protecting religious freedom has gone from being the rare issue on which all sides agree to becoming a political hot potato. Some groups that supported the Federal RFRA have even taken the position that future RFRAs must contain carve-outs for particular groups or particular issue areas. Many of these same groups endorsed an effort by Senate Democrats last year to exempt from the Federal RFRA all Federal laws and regulations related to health care. Of course any carve-outs in religious liberty protections undermine those protections because they limit the field on which religious liberty has full effect. For this reason the Federal RFRA contains no such carve-outs. Indeed, opposition to carve-outs was a key element in both assembling and maintaining the RFRA coalition two decades ago. Even if Members had varying views on the merits of certain practices, the one thing all could agree on is that religious liberty is a fundamental universal value that should apply equally to everyone, but the price of admission for many groups today is a willingness to cut back on religious liberty in instances where religious belief conflicts with progressive social goals. Twenty years ago this sort of hostage-taking was nowhere on the agenda, but religious liberty has now become a secondary goal or worse, an impediment, for many liberal groups that value what they call progressive social policy over protecting the rights of believers. I hate the use of that word ``progressive'' because it is anything but. This backtracking by many stalwart defenders of religious liberty represents one of the most serious ways religious freedom is under attack in this great country. I will note one other political sea change that is undermining religious liberty in the United States. For many years, groups on the left have been advocating for laws to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. I am in general agreement with such laws and do not believe that sexual orientation should be grounds for discrimination or mistreatment. Many of the groups advocating for these laws have previously been willing to include exemptions for religious organizations that hold traditional views on marriage and sexuality. I believe such exemptions are appropriate and strike the right balance by protecting rights to nondiscrimination while enabling religious organizations to hold true to their beliefs. Indeed, I believe it is essential for nondiscrimination laws to properly accommodate religious liberty, and I would actively oppose any such law that fails to account for the rights of religious believers. Unfortunately, many groups that were previously willing to support religious exemptions in nondiscrimination laws have reversed course. For example, many groups that supported last Congress's Federal Employment Nondiscrimination Act or ENDA, which would prohibit discrimination in the workplace on the basis of sexual orientation, have withdrawn their support for the act because it contains a robust exemption for religious organizations. This Congress, they are instead supporting the Equality Act, which contains no religious exemption at all. I supported ENDA because I believed it reflected the right balance between nondiscrimination and religious liberty. I took some criticism for doing so. I still believe it does reflect the right balance, but many groups on the left have indicated they are willing to cast religious liberty aside in furtherance of other goals. For these groups, religious liberty no longer deserves special protection. It is no longer a preeminent value. Rather, it should be accommodated only so far as it is convenient and does not interfere with other objectives. This is a sea change and one that bodes ill for the future vitality of religious freedom. I said at the outset that religious liberty is under attack in America in ways that are both surprising and unprecedented. Certainly the willingness of former defenders of religious freedom to turn their backs on believers is both. I would like to close by returning to the New Mexico photographer case I mentioned earlier, for that case contains perhaps the most surprising and unprecedented feature of all. In a concurring opinion, one of the judges in the case called the requirement to violate one's religious beliefs when they conflict with State social policy ``the price of citizenship.'' That statement represents a complete inversion of the relationship between government authority and religious liberty in America. When we are born or become American citizens, we do not surrender our rights of conscience to the government. We do not pledge our allegiance to a secular God. We retain our right to religious liberty. Indeed, not only do we retain our right; our government guarantees our right to freely practice our faith in accordance with the dictates of our own conscience. As the Declaration of Independence instructs, all men--and women--are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and it is the fundamental purpose of government to secure those rights. If there is a price we pay as American citizens, it is not that we give up our God-given rights, first and foremost of which is the right of religious liberty, it is that we agree to work together to promote the common good of our country. Subjugating religious beliefs to government decrees is not the price of citizenship. To the contrary, respecting and honoring the fundamental rights of all Americans is the price our government pays in order to enjoy the continued consent of the American people. Those who attack religious liberty and seek to devalue its place in society fundamentally misunderstands this key point. Unfortunately, too many in America today, from the courts to the Obama administration, to the State legislatures, undervalue religious freedom and view it at best as a secondary goal. People of good will in Congress and across our Nation need to recognize that religious liberty is under attack and that unless we stand up and vocally support the rights of believers to live their faith, we will find much of what we have fought for and much of what our forebears fought for swept away. We must fortify the rights of believers to follow their conscience even when their fellow citizens or elected officials would prefer a different course. I will have much more to say on this topic in future remarks, but with that, I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise today to speak once again on the topic of religious liberty. This is the fifth in a series of addresses I have given on this vitally important subject. In my previous remarks, I have discussed why religious liberty matters, why it is important, and why it deserves special protection from government interference. I have also detailed the history of religious liberty in the United States in order to show that the desire for religious freedom was central to our Nation's founding and to the very idea of America. From the beginning, religious liberty has been a preeminent value in American life. Government accommodates religion--not the other way around. Lastly, in my previous remarks, I have sought to explain how religion has always had a robust public role in our society and to rebut the wrongheaded, ahistorical view that religion is a purely private matter that should be kept out of the public domain. Today I turn to the status of religious liberty in contemporary American life. My argument is straightforward. In ways that are both surprising and unprecedented, religious liberty is under attack here in the United States. I speak not merely of attacks on particular practices but also of attacks on the very idea of religious liberty itself--on the idea that there should be room in society for believers to live and to worship in ways that differ from prevailing orthodoxy. The campaign against religious liberty has three prongs: the courts, the Obama administration, and State legislatures. My goal today is to explain how each of these institutions is undermining the vitality of religious life in our country and why what they are doing is wrong. Many Americans are unaware of the substantial threats religious liberty faces here in the United States. They look abroad to the Middle East or to Africa, where Islamist regimes are killing Christians and other dissenters from religious orthodoxy, and suppose that by comparison, things are not so bad here in the United States. While it is true that religious minorities in America do not face death or serious physical harm for choosing to live their faith, we must not blind ourselves to the ways in which our government institutions are undermining religious liberty itself. We must instead come to recognize that powerful forces in our society are working actively to restrict the ability of religious believers to live out their faith and to foist upon them government mandates that are flatly inconsistent with our most deeply held beliefs. I begin with the courts, which I identified as the first front in the fight against religious liberty. For a number of years now there has been a steady stream of cases in which everyday Americans have been sanctioned--sometimes severely--for adhering to religious tenants that conflict with current political orthodoxy. The examples are myriad. A photographer in New Mexico was fined $7,000 for declining to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony on the grounds that her religious beliefs teach that marriage is a union between one man and one woman and that she could not in good conscience lend her services to the event. A florist in Washington State was fined $1,000 for declining to provide flower arrangements for a same-sex wedding. And a couple in Oregon who owned a cake shop were ordered to pay $135,000 for telling a same-sex couple that they could not provide a cake for their wedding ceremony because the shop owners adhere to the traditional, biblically based view of marriage. The message that these court cases send is clear: If you are a religious individual with religiously rooted views that differ from the current policies of the State, you follow your beliefs at your own peril. Even those who don't endorse the view that it is appropriate for businesses to deny service to customers on the basis of deeply held beliefs must concede that the fines and other sanctions in these cases present a direct threat to religious liberty. Note that there was no suggestion in any of these cases that the defendant's refusal to provide services actually prevented the same-sex couple from obtaining the desired items. In each case, other photographers, florists, and bakers without religious or moral objections stood ready to assist. The State was not stepping in to ensure that the couple had access to needed goods and services. Rather, the injury to the couple in each case was that the defendant would not sanction their ceremony. The State did not like the message the defendant's religious beliefs conveyed and so ordered the defendant to pay a potentially ruinous fine. The notion that government can override or punish individuals for deeply held religious beliefs merely because those beliefs deviate from prevailing views strikes at the very heart of religious liberty. Religious liberty is the right of an individual to practice his or her beliefs even in the face of government, social or community opposition. If all that is needed for government to override a person's deeply held beliefs is a disagreement over whether the person's beliefs send the right message, then religious liberty is weak indeed. It is no longer a preferred value that government must make room for but rather a common, run-of-the-mill interest that government can override essentially at will. Recent court cases have undermined religious liberty and threaten the integrity of our religious institutions in other ways as well. One case, decided by the Supreme Court about 5 years ago, held that schools can require student religious groups to accept nonbelievers as leaders, even though doing so could undermine the group's mission and install as leaders individuals who do not share the group's core beliefs. Other cases have sown confusion about students' ability to express religious conviction in school settings. Teachers and school administrators have barred students from wearing religious imagery, from affirming their faith in essays and speeches, and from performing religious music because they fear running afoul of judicial prohibitions on State establishment of religion. Other officials have denied religious groups access to State facilities to worship or to hold meetings, again fearing potential lawsuits. But courts are not the only places where religious liberty is under attack. I am sorry to say that the current administration has done much to weaken religious freedom and to undermine the rights of conscience. Certainly, the most notorious instance of the administration's efforts to undermine religious liberty is the ObamaCare contraception mandate. This provision requires employers to provide their employees access to contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs even when the employer has profound moral objections to such drugs. There is a narrow exemption for houses of worship, but countless other religious employers--including religious schools, hospitals, and charities--must either comply with the mandate in violation of their religious beliefs or pay substantial financial penalties. The administration has also stripped funding from religious groups that refuse as a matter of conscience to toe the administration's line on abortion and contraception. In a remarkable and shortsighted move, the administration revoked funding for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' relief program for victims of human trafficking because the conference declined on religious grounds to refer victims for abortion or contraceptives. So not only is the administration using the threat of financial loss to pressure religious groups to violate their beliefs, but it is also harming trafficking victims by hindering the ability of religious groups that differ from the administration on matters of conscience to aid victims. The administration, too, has put Federal contractors that subscribe to traditional views on marriage and sexuality on the horns of a terrible dilemma. Last year the President issued an Executive order prohibiting contractors from taking into account sexual orientation or gender identity when hiring employees. The order contains no exemptions for contractors with religious affiliations. Under the President's order, a contractor with a religious mission may be forced to hire an individual who holds views that run counter to that mission in order to remain eligible for Federal contracts. The President's order thus creates the very real possibility that religiously affiliated contractors will have to choose between impairing the integrity of their organization and competing for Federal funds. In addition to pursuing these troubling policies, the administration has also taken extreme and unsupportable positions in court filings that if adopted would undermine religious freedom.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I appreciate the work of the Senator from Delaware on our committee. He is one of the good people around here.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I wish to honor a native Utahn and dear friend on the occasion of her 80th birthday. Carolyn Lucile McDonald Shipp was born on December 5, 1935, in the L.D.S. hospital in Salt Lake City, UT. She is the first living child born to Andrew Melvin and Lucile McDonald. She is the sister to three brothers, two deceased, and two sisters, one deceased. She was born in the midst of the Great Depression and lived through the rationing in World War II. The Utah she grew up in was very rural. The only thing between the house she was raised in and the mountains was a great gully. Carolyn's family home had no TV until she was a teenager, but she loved listening to the radio on Sunday afternoons. Raised with a strong work ethic, daily and weekly chores were a must do before any recreation. Her home had only one bathroom for a family of seven and shared a party line telephone with four neighbors. Carolyn was an accomplished pianist and in the a capella choir, but it was dancing that gave her the greatest joy growing up. She took ballet and excelled at tap dancing. Carolyn was popular in high school and recalls those carefree times very fondly. A classic beauty--many have compared to the movie star Kim Novak-- Carolyn was a natural at modeling and was asked to represent East High in a number of fashion shows during her senior year in high school. Carolyn treasured her time at East High in Salt Lake City and maintains strong friendships to this very day with many of her friends from that time. Her grandchildren are very impressed that their grandmother went to the now famous East High School of the High School Musical movie fame. From high school, Carolyn went to the University of Utah, where she pledged the Alpha Chi Omega sorority, where she was the exchange chairman responsible for planning parties. She dated athletes and majored in elementary education. She recalls that, as soon as she began taking classes in elementary education, she knew she was born to teach children. After college, Carolyn spent a summer working and playing in Hawaii and then settled in as a young teacher back in Utah. During her second year of teaching, she was introduced to Royal Shipp, who became her husband and the great love of her life. They were married in the Salt Lake City Temple. Carolyn has loved being married and has described it as ``having a slumber party every night with your best friend.'' During their early married life, Carolyn continued teaching while Royal continued his education. A few years after their marriage, Carolyn and Royal, along with their two small daughters, Becky and Kristy, moved to Virginia, so Royal could work in Washington, DC. The family stayed in the DC Metro area and added another girl, Julie, and finally a boy, Philip, to the family. The family grew up during a turbulent time in our country: the Vietnam war, Watergate, and the integration of the public schools all contributed to an uneasy climate. But no matter what was going on outside the home, Carolyn and Royal made sure their home was a safe and loving place. Carolyn was a stay-at-home mother until her youngest started first grade. At that time, she began to prepare for her second career, a tutor for children with learning disabilities. Carolyn worked for many years at the Potomac School in McLean, VA. As she raised her family, Carolyn held a number of stake and ward leadership positions in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including Relief Society president and Young Women's president. Her faith has always been an integral part of Carolyn's life. For many years, Carolyn and Royal have served in the Bella Vista Spanish Ward, where they are dearly loved. Carolyn also served with Royal as area humanitarian missionaries in Colombia and Venezuela. Carolyn continues her service as a worker in the Washington, DC, temple. As a mother and a grandmother, Carolyn has worked to create family memories and traditions. She decorates her home for all the holidays and takes great pride in having fresh flowers, candles, lovely dishes, and table arrangements. Every Christmas, her grandchildren put on a Christmas program. Every Easter features an egg hunt at her home. Birthdays and other milestones are always celebrated with a special family dinner. Most years, Carolyn and Royal host the entire family for a weekly trip to the Outer Banks, NC. The family cherishes this time as it has contributed to lasting memories and close ties between siblings and cousins alike. People are the treasures of Carolyn's life. She relishes the company of her friends in her book club and her social group, ``The Times Club.'' She travels to Utah regularly to reconnect with her high school and college friends. Her 12 grandchildren are the lights of her life. She regularly attends school and church function featuring her grandchildren. She never misses a single one of her grandchildren's plays or concerts, and she travels regularly to Kansas to see her grandchildren participate in student government activities, cheerleading, and playing sports. Carolyn helps her grandchildren as they make the transition into adulthood by supporting them on their LDS missions, foreign travel, career development, and assisting with wedding preparations. Carolyn Lucile McDonald Shipp is the embodiment of service, love, and compassion. It is a privilege to help her celebrate her 80th birthday.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the current plan to procure around 2,500 F-35s for our men and women in uniform. Recently, I understand the chairman of the Armed Services Committee called upon Congress to cut the number of F-35s our Armed Forces will produce. Usually, I fully agree with the chairman's astute assessment of national security matters. In fact, I think he is a terrific chairman. In particular, I applaud his vital work in drawing attention to this administration's lack of effective strategies to eliminate the current threats posed by the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the so-called Islamic State. Nevertheless, I must respectfully disagree with his call to reduce the number of F-35s to be acquired by our Nation's military. In doing so, I reiterate my full support for the existing program of record, which calls for the procurement of 1,763 F-35s for the Air Force, 420 for the Marines, and 260 for the Navy. As we assess the question of F-35 procurement, we should remember how the Department of Defense determined the number of aircraft it would purchase in the first place. I can assure you, this decision was neither hasty nor taken lightly. The Pentagon based its estimates on a thorough review of our Nation's airpower readiness and the capabilities needed to deter and defeat future threats to our national security. The Department's procurement request doesn't reflect an arbitrary estimate but the number of F-35s needed to keep our Nation safe. If we reduce the number of F-35s to be acquired by the military, we hamstring our own ability to defend ourselves against America's enemies. Despite the formidable war-winning capabilities of the F-35, this weapon system cannot be in more than one place at once. One F-35 aircraft cannot simultaneously deter Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, patrol free waters in the South China Sea, target the Islamic State of the Middle East, and provide critical air support for our allies in Afghanistan. With every aircraft we cut, we are spreading our defenses thin, putting our national security at risk, and limiting the ability of our men and women in uniform to complete their mission. Now is the worst time imaginable to limit production of the F-35. Not only does the quantity and magnitude of threats facing our Nation continue to increase, so does the number of locations from which these threats emanate. Moreover, when the Department of Defense made the initial assessment for F-35 procurement, we did not face the exponential growth of threats which continue to metastasize under the Obama administration's failed foreign policy. In this sense, the military's request to procure just under 2,500 aircraft is not only reasonable but actually highly conservative. As some of my colleagues discuss reducing the number of F-35s we provide to our Nation's military, they should remember to consider the economies of scale. With every single aircraft we cut, the individual cost of each F-35 actually increases, but if we keep current procurement levels the same, the price of each aircraft remains the same. We should be actively looking for ways to lower costs, not raise them. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of the F-35 Joint Program Office, its program executive officer, Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, and its industry partners, we are finding ways to drive down costs and make the F-35 more affordable. They are doing a terrific job. In fact, the pricetag for the F-35 in our country is actually decreasing. Currently, each aircraft costs roughly $104 million to produce, but with the projected purchase of over 3,500 jet fighters worldwide, I believe that price will continue to fall. At full production, the price of the F-35 will be comparable to the cost of new versions of the aircraft it is designed to replace; namely, the F-16 and the F/A-18, which raises another question. Why is it vital to replace our aging aircraft with the F-35? Why don't we just purchase new and improved versions of aircraft which are already in the fleet? The answer is simple. No matter how many improvements and modifications we make to the design of the A-10, F-16, and F/A-18 aircraft, they will never be stealth aircraft, nor will they ever match the capabilities of a fifth-generation jet fighter. Stealth technology is absolutely critical to the future of our Armed Forces. Stealth fighters are the only aircraft capable of penetrating airspace protected by advanced area denial anti-aircraft systems. Both Russia and China are developing these advanced anti-aircraft systems, and both nations appear willing to sell their technology to potential adversaries, including Iran. Because of Russia's propensity to proliferate weapon systems to rogue regimes and China's startling advancement in technology to include the J-31 stealth aircraft and the PL-15 air-to-air missile, it is all but inevitable that our forces will routinely encounter these sophisticated systems in both the near- and the long-term. Because stealth technology is the most effective means of defeating these anti-aircraft systems, we hold a solemn duty to our servicemembers to provide them with the superior capabilities of the F- 35. I will not deny that the F-35 has had its fair share of problems. Its development program was not well-planned, and along the way there were abundant technical hurdles, cost overruns, and program execution concerns, but as is the case in the development of any breakthrough technology, setbacks are not only probable, they are expected. What matters now is how we react to these setbacks to make the program a success. We have now rounded the corner and are on the cusp of fielding the most remarkable strike aircraft ever developed. The F-35 will help our Nation reclaim its technological edge at a critical time. Our enemies have been working tirelessly to match our military might, and they have made significant progress in achieving parity with our current technology systems, but the F-35 will widen the technological gap once again. Its superior capabilities will put us far ahead of our adversaries, and we can stay one step ahead by keeping procurement numbers for the F-35 at their current levels. In all of my years of public service, the F-35 is the most impressive weapon system I have ever seen. I am convinced this platform will give our Air Force, Navy, and Marine aviators the military advantage they need to protect us against tyranny, deter our foes, and protect our cherished liberties for years to come. I urge my colleagues to support this program, including the military's initial procurement request. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, freedom of religion is one of the foundational principles of the Republic. It has long been central to our identity as a self-governing people, and as a cause, it has long enjoyed wide support across partisan and ideological divides for generations. Recently, however, religious liberty has come under coordinated assault by those who would hastily discard one of our founding principles to serve a narrow, transient political agenda. Given how defending religious liberty has been one of the animating goals in my public life, I feel compelled to speak out against this disturbing development. Since the end of the August recess, I have endeavored to speak regularly on the subject to remind my colleagues of the need to maintain our historic allegiance to this most American of values. So far, I have addressed the first principles of why we should protect religious freedom, as well as the legal and political history of the concept. Today I aim to address the role of religion in public life and its critical contribution to the preservation of freedom of religion. One particular phrase has come to describe the relationship between faith and public life in this country: ``the separation of church and state.'' Over the years, the invocation of this phrase has become so rote that many consider it axiomatic. While the phrase itself is quite terse, it has become shorthand for a particular narrative about the history and status of religion in American life. This narrative traces back to Thomas Jefferson, who famously advocated for a ``wall of separation between church and state.'' Under Jefferson's leadership, Virginia passed the Law for the Establishment of Religious Freedom in 1786, which aimed to end state prescription and proscription of any particular religion. Anchored in a cursory reference to Jefferson, generations of Americans have been brought up to believe that our founding principles demand that faith be driven out of government and kept contained to a private sphere with no role in public life and no semblance of interaction with the state. This narrative is flatly inconsistent with our history and our Constitution. Put plainly, the Jeffersonian model of strict separation was a novel experiment that constituted a decidedly minority viewpoint in the early Republic. The dominant model at the time was embodied by the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution drafted by John Adams, which largely protected religious liberty but also instituted a ``mild and equitable establishment of religion'' that enshrined Christian piety and virtue. In Adams' view, as articulated by one scholar, ``Every polity must establish by law some form of public religion, some image and ideal of itself, some common values and beliefs to undergird and support the plurality of protected private religions. The notion that a state could remain neutral and purged of any public religion was [neither realistic nor desirable].'' Jefferson himself acknowledged that the statute he crafted in Virginia was a ``novel experiment'' that broke with practice not only in the American colonies but also in the United Kingdom and the wider Western world. At the outbreak of the Revolution, the Anglican Church enjoyed official established status in Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, as well as in the New York City area. In Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, the system of municipal government empowered individual towns to choose a church to establish, resulting in Congregationalism as the established religion throughout most of New England. Only Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island lacked officially established churches. Nevertheless, even these states without officially established churches--including famous havens for religious dissenters, such as Pennsylvania and Rhode Island-- maintained significant ties between church and state, including in matters of church finances, religious tests for public office, and blasphemy laws. While the Revolution brought about a number of new state constitutions that officially disestablished a number of state churches--particularly the Church of England after the severing of political ties to the Crown--the advent of the new Republic did not bring about universal disestablishment or adherence to the model of strict separation. At the time of the adoption of the First Amendment in 1791, about half--depending on one's exact definition--of the 14 States then admitted to the Union had an established church or allowed municipal governments to establish such a church. Moreover, every single state sponsored or supported one or more churches at the time. In the words of Notre Dame's Gerard Bradley, even ``Rhode Island, that polar star of religious liberty, maintained'' what would today constitute ``an establishment at the time it ratified the First Amendment.'' My purpose for bringing up this history is not to advocate for states to return to the era of officially established churches or to advocate for any of the restrictive measures of that time. Indeed, as a Mormon, I am keenly aware both of how the machinery of government can be used to oppress religious minorities and of how a faith's flourishing comes not from the State's sanction or promotion but rather from the dedication and devotion of individuals, families, and communities. Instead, my purpose is to note the plain incongruity between the conventional wisdom of rigid separation between church and state supposedly commanded since the founding by the establishment clause and the actual history of religion in public life in the days of the early Republic. This apparent disconnect can be resolved by an examination of the text of the Constitution. The text of the First Amendment reads: ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.'' Note the exact formulation: ``Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion. . . .'' On its face, the language affects only one actor--Congress--not States and local governments and not individual citizens. Put another way, at the time of its adoption, the First Amendment neither created an individual right to be free from religion nor limited the power of the States to establish religion; it simply created a structural limit on Federal power. The debates over the ratification of the Bill of Rights confirmed this interpretation. As a general matter, the Establishment Clause received relatively little attention in the ratification debates in the state legislatures and among the public. Indeed, it hardly seems tenable that States would have adopted a measure at odds with their ongoing practices with little discussion or dispute. What attention the establishment clause did receive made it clear that its language was intended to prevent the Federal Government from choosing a preferred religious secret--a logical move befitting a new nation made up of states with a wide variety of religious traditions and approaches to established religion. Furthermore, the ratification debates clarify that the ratifiers viewed official establishment of a particular church as direct financial support for a preferred sect, wholly distinct from the nondiscriminatory support and establishment of religion in general, which the Establishment Clause was not thought to limit. For a century and a half, this misunderstanding of the Establishment Clause endured with little challenge. Before the Civil War, the Supreme Court decided only three Establishment Clause cases of any significance. Indeed, the major debate on the subject during the intervening years revolved around a proposed change to the Constitution: the 1875 Blaine amendment that sought to extend the application of the Establishment Clause to the states and to ban explicitly any church's access to public funds. This legislative effort, borne largely out of anti-Catholic prejudice, failed--a failure that further underscored the settled nature of the Establishment Clause at that time. Unfortunately, religion was not spared from the destructive judicial activism of a Supreme Court that spun wildly out of control in the mid- 20th century. A new crop of justices, disinclined to follow the traditional judicial role of applying the law as written, instead sought to remake the law according to their left-wing worldview. From inventing new rights for criminals to mandating nearly unlimited access to abortion on demand, the Court in this period left few stones unturned in its radical rewriting of the Constitution. The longstanding understanding of the Establishment Clause was one of the mid-century Court's first victims. Abandoning the understanding of the clause I have previously detailed--an understanding that was clearly supported by text, structure, history, and precedent--the Court turned the Establishment Clause on its head. In the error-filled words of Justice Black, the Court said in Everson v. Board of Education that ``the establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a State nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.'' This pronouncement had no basis in text, history, or law. To the contrary, it was diametrically opposed to the understanding of the relationship between government and religion and between the federal government and the states that had endured for much of America's history. Justice Black justified the Court's entirely novel, ahistorical view by turning to Jefferson: ``In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state.'' Thus was born the now-commonplace view that the establishment clause was meant to create a high wall separating church and state. This decision represents a complete inversion of the previously settled, proper understanding of the establishment clause. The command that Congress should make no law regarding an establishment provision is turned from a structural protection against federal power into an individual right to be free from religion. The text protecting the states' power to decide whether and what church to establish is, in the words of one scholar, paradoxically and perversely transformed into a limitation on states' authority to make such a decision. The critical distinction between official establishment of a particular church and general support of religion without regard to particular sects is casually discarded in favor of a blanket prohibition on religious involvement in public life. In the words of two scholars, throughout its decision, the Court ``not only ascribed to the establishment clause separationist content; it imagined a past to confirm that interpretation. Both majority and dissent treated the history of the United States as if it were the history of Virginia. Despite dissimilarity of language, the justices equated the establishment clause with Virginia's statute on religious freedom, thereby appropriating for the federal provision the separationist message and rhetoric of the state enactment.'' As I have explained, the history of Virginia on the subject of state establishment of religion is not the history of the United States. Rather, Virginia was, as Jefferson said, a ``novel experiment'' on the issue. Other states continued to support state-established churches. The wall-of-separation doctrine, which the Court created out of whole cloth in Everson, was not the American tradition. It was an idiosyncrasy of Jefferson's. Upon this fundamentally flawed foundation, the federal courts have constructed a jurisprudence that threatens any place for religion in the public sphere. Embracing the demonstrably false notion that ``the three main evils against which the establishment clause was intended to afford protection [were] sponsorship, financial support, and active involvement of the sovereign and religious activity,'' the Supreme Court soon adopted the so-called Lemon test for any law to withstand: ``First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion . . . finally, the statute must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.'' In announcing this test, the Supreme Court sounded the note of modesty, noting that the justices could ``only dimly perceive the lines of demarcation in this extraordinarily sensitive area of Constitutional law.'' This admission--though ironic, given the Court's ambition to complete the transformation of the establishment clause away from its historical and textual foundation--was, if anything, an understatement. The Court's efforts to draw a line between the permissible and the impermissible have completely failed. Justice Rehnquist rightly diagnosed the cause of these bizarre results: These difficulties arise because the Lemon test has no more grounding in the history of the First Amendment than does the wall theory upon which it rests. The . . . test represents a determined effort to craft a workable rule from a historically faulty doctrine; but the rule can only be as sound as the doctrine it attempts to service. The Court has responded to these acknowledged difficulties not by abandoning its flawed establishment clause jurisprudence but by inventing new tests while never overturning Lemon or the flawed understanding that undergirds it. By one scholar's estimation, the Supreme Court has employed 9 alternate tests of impermissible establishment of religion; another scholar identified 16. While the exact count understandably varies, the result is the same: muddled law that lacks any principled means of application. This lack of clarity enables judicial activism. By liberating the judiciary from the obligation to apply a clear rule, this muddied framework invites judges and justices to implement their own policy views as law. While this framework shows confusion in marginal cases, its overall effect is clear: to squeeze religion out of government and to deny religious organizations the opportunities afforded to secular counterparts. While the addition of principled jurists to the Court has turned momentum against previous excesses, the thrust of the Court's misguided establishment clause jurisprudence remains dominant. The Court's flawed wall-of-separation jurisprudence has kept religion out of the public square and fed the idea that religion is a private matter to be practiced within the confines of one's church or home. Legal and social pressures have taken their toll, and the results are stark: no prayer in school; no new Ten Commandments displays--or even Christmas or Hanukkah displays--unless carefully secularized; a widespread prejudice in many quarters against public officials talking about God or about their beliefs in public; and even the crusade every December to replace the phrase ``Merry Christmas'' with ``Happy Holidays.'' The conventional wisdom peddled by advocates for stringent exclusion of religion from the public sphere is that aggressive enforcement of their vision of the establishment clause enhances religious freedom. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. The erroneous wall-of-separation doctrine has narrowed the role of religion in public discourse, fueling the view that religion is a private matter rather than a fundamental precept of American civil society. Even members of this esteemed body have fallen prey to the disturbing claim that religious freedom does not extend much further than the church door. Such an approach undermines religious liberty in numerous ways. It counsels government to avoid any perceived entanglement with religion-- even accommodation of religious practice, at the core of the right to free exercise. It tells the religious believer that in order to participate fully in public life, he should cabin and hide his religious devotion: Just abandon your religious affiliation, and the government will partner with your school or charity. Just muzzle your faith, and you can fully participate in representative government and lawmaking. Just keep your religion private, and you won't face a swarm of litigation. Indeed, despite the hard-fought progress in recent years both in protecting religious liberty and in restoring sanity to the courts' approach to the establishment clause, this notion of strict separation continues to exert a pernicious influence, shrinking the sphere of acceptable religious exercise. In so doing, it undermines religious liberty and limits the ways in which faith enriches our society. Restoring a proper relationship between faith and public life must continue to be a top priority as a key component of our broad reference to protect religious liberty for future generations. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I want to once again express my support for the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 and urge my colleagues to vote in favor of invoking cloture on this legislation. As I have said before, this is not a perfect bill, and I haven't heard anyone argue that it is. Indeed, any Senator looking for a reason to vote against this budget deal could easily find one. However, at the same time, this bill will accomplish a number of important tasks and clear a number of hurdles out of our way to allow us to govern more effectively in the coming months. For example, the bill will suspend the statutory debt limit through mid-March of 2017, eliminating the threat of an immediate default and ensuring that conflicts over the debt limit do not get swept up in the politicking and pandering of next year's election campaign. This bill will also extend the life of the Social Security Disability Insurance--or SSDI--trust fund for an additional 6 years, preventing massive benefit cuts to disabled American workers and removing the current uncertainty. It actually goes further than that, putting in place SSDI reforms that are the most significant changes to any Social Security program in more than 30 years--not an insignificant accomplishment. In addition, this legislation will prevent millions from seeing huge premium hikes in the Medicare Part B Program, again ensuring that our seniors don't suffer as a result of political gridlock and grandstanding in Congress. And it will repeal an unpopular and obviously ineffective provision from the so-called Affordable Care Act: the employer auto-enrollment requirement. Finally, the bill will partially lift the budget caps established under the Budget Control Act. And, while I share my colleague's concerns about rolling back real spending cuts, I think that it is important to note that the bill does not add to the debt, nor does it raise taxes. Even more important is the fact that it will increase funding for our military at a time when we face so many challenges and potential conflicts in the world. As I said earlier in this debate, sometimes--many times, in fact-- governing effectively is about the art of the doable. While neither the substance of this bill nor the process that got us here are ideal for anyone, we need to take a close look at where we are and, more importantly, where we want to be in the near future. I won't speak for anyone else, but I personally would rather focus on substantive, long-term solutions to the problems plaguing our country than spending so much time navigating from crisis to crisis. Meaningful and lasting policies are very rarely crafted or enacted when we are speeding toward a cliff, and this bill would eliminate a number of cliffs in our very near future and give us a real chance to do more good for the American people. Therefore, in addition to voting to move this bill forward, I want to call on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--particularly those who have real reservations about the legislation before us today--to work with me on these issues. I currently chair the Senate committee with jurisdiction over many of these areas, and I have been working for a number of years to address these problems. I want to reform our entitlement programs in order to put our debt on a sustainable trajectory. I want to put in place fundamental, long-term fixes for the SSDI program and Social Security more generally. And I want to work to get long-term spending under control. I know many of my colleagues share these desires, and nothing in this bill prevents us from doing more work to get us where so many of us want to be. I am willing to work with anyone--Republican or Democrat-- to get us there. But it will be extremely difficult to do any of this with ticking clocks hanging over our heads. That is why, once again, I urge my colleagues to vote to move this bill forward. This bill has been an important undertaking. And I know that many of our leaders are taking no small amount of criticism for the work they have done to put it together. I want to thank them for their efforts and particularly for their willingness to set aside partisanship and political expedience to do what needs to be done. Most notably, I want to thank Speaker Boehner for his efforts in crafting this compromise and getting it across the finish line. He had a difficult road over in the House of Representatives--being Speaker of the House is never an easy job. Even if you disagreed with Speaker Boehner, which I did from time to time, you could never doubt his commitment to the people he represented in Congress and his courage to always do what he believed was the right thing for the American people. While I have every confidence in the new Speaker of the House-- Speaker Ryan and I have worked well together on a number of issues, and I think we can all acknowledge that he is an effective leader--I have to say that Speaker Boehner will be missed. I also have to once again thank our distinguished majority leader here in the Senate. He also has a difficult job and is no less willing to take a lot of heat and put up with a lot of criticism in order to do the right thing. Under Senator McConnell's leadership, the Senate is finally a functioning body where things actually get done. Things haven't gone perfectly--they never do--but, I expect that, as time goes on, things will continue to get better.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, before we move to a vote on the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, I want to take a moment to discuss the part of the bill that is intended to be an offset for partially lifting the budget caps established under the Budget Control Act. Under current law, large partnerships are subject to a special set of tax procedural rules. They are known as the TEFRA partnership rules because they were included in the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. These rules are complex and unwieldly for both the taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service. Most tax experts agree that these rules are in bad need of reform. I agree. The Treasury Department, former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, and Congressman Jim Renacci have all put forward reforms of the TEFRA partnership rules. And, on the Senate Finance Committee, we have been looking at those reforms and other proposals as well. We have also held discussions with the Ways and Means Committee, as well as tax professionals and members of the business community. These efforts, so far, have been bipartisan. Because any such reforms would have a significant impact on a large number of taxpayers, we were prepared to tackle this problem the same way the Finance Committee has dealt with other widely applicable tax compliance measures. Specifically, we had planned to release various discussion drafts that would be open for public comment and subsequent modification. That is the way the Finance Committee handled issues like stock basis reporting and merchant credit card reporting, and the process has worked well in the past. However, as these efforts were ongoing, bipartisan leaders from both the House and Senate identified TEFRA partnership reforms as a potential offset for this budget legislation. As per usual, the Finance Committee was consulted, and we provided assistance in drafting the offset language. I am pleased to say that many of our recommendations were adopted in the final version of the bill. However, for those who might be concerned about this process, it is important to note that the effective date for the TEFRA partnership reforms in the budget bill is delayed for 2 tax years. In the coming weeks and months, the Finance Committee will treat the TEFRA partnership reforms as a work in process. As planned, we intend to hear comments and will be prepared to address issues raised by taxpayers, especially those issues that may not have been anticipated. As an example, we have heard from stakeholders who were concerned that particular partner-level tax attributes that may be known by a partnership, such as certain passive losses under tax code section 469, should be identified in the legislation for purposes of modifying the so-called imputed underpayment amount with respect to the partnership. In sum, I want the record to be clear: The TEFRA partnership reforms are not effective for a couple of years. We plan to use that window to properly address problems raised by affected parties.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, the legislation that passed in the House last night and that I expect we will be voting on soon in the Senate. Anyone who hasn't been living in a cave for the last few weeks is aware of the controversy surrounding this legislation. However, while the bill is likely no one's idea of an ideal path forward, I believe the controversy stems more from political considerations than from policy or substance. Let me say one thing up front. I don't love this legislation. If we were living in the ``United States of Orrin Hatch'' this bill would look very different, but while I may not like parts of this deal very much, there are other things I like much less, including political brinksmanship on important matters and election-year posturing on complicated issues. This budget deal, while far from perfect, will help eliminate several hurdles that must be overcome in the near term and hopefully allow Congress to function and to actually govern over the next year. That said, there are some very important provisions in this bill that I think will be counted as wins for good government and will help us address some important issues. So I would like to take just a few minutes and talk about some of the specifics of this legislation and why I believe these provisions are important. First, as we all know, the bill would suspend the statutory debt limit through mid-March of 2017. I have heard a number of my colleagues decry this provision, arguing that any increase in the debt limit should be accompanied by fiscal reforms, and on that count my colleagues are right. I think you would be hard-pressed to find many Members in this Chamber who have spent more time than I have talking about our Nation's debt and calling for reforms. I have spoken extensively about the need to rein in our broken entitlement programs, which are the main drivers of our debt. Unlike most Members of Congress, I have actually come up with specific proposals that would help stave off the growing entitlement crisis. On top of that, as chairman of the Senate committee with jurisdiction over the debt limit, I have repeatedly called on the Obama administration to do what past administrations have done, which is to use debt limit increases as opportunities to reexamine our fiscal situation and work with Congress to find a path toward reforms that will improve our fiscal outlook. Unfortunately, these calls and similar calls made by other leaders in Congress have largely gone ignored as the administration refuses to even consider fiscal changes in the context of a debt limit increase. I am as frustrated as anyone by the refusal of this administration to even engage on this issue. However, the President's refusal to be reasonable and to do his job when it comes to our debt is no excuse for Congress failing to do its job and prevent a default. I know some of my colleagues either don't believe a default would be that bad or that the result of hitting the debt limit would even be classified as a default. I will not delve into the semantics of the issue, I will just say that hitting the debt limit would prevent the government from meeting a large number of its obligations. Nothing good and many things that are bad will come from that result. No reasonable person would dispute that. In addition, I don't think any reasonable person wants to see Congress push up against debt limit deadlines multiple times throughout 2016. Mixing a looming possibility of default with election-year posturing--and I am talking about posturing on both sides of the aisle, by the way--is, in my view, a recipe for disaster. This budget bill will suspend the debt limit and spare Congress and the American people the spectacle of ticking debt clocks in the middle of an election season. Once again, this isn't my preferred result, but it is much better than the alternative. In addition to raising the debt limit, the bill would extend the life of the Social Security disability insurance, or SSDI, trust fund through a temporary reallocation of resources from the retirement trust fund into the disability insurance program. As we all know, the SSDI trust fund is set to be exhausted sometime late next year, which would lead to benefit cuts of around 20 percent for disabled Americans. I am not willing to do that. Right now, the beneficiaries in the disability program face enormous uncertainty, and that will only get worse between now and the end of 2016 if Congress fails to act. I have been urging action on this issue for quite some time and have put forward a number of proposals to reform various aspects of the disability insurance program. Sadly, despite many calls for bipartisan cooperation, the administration has decided to remain silent, aside from the very simple and overly broad reallocation proposal. Nonetheless, the budget bill will, as I mentioned, provide an interfund reallocation that will add an additional 6 years of viability to the SSDI trust fund, preventing benefit cuts to disabled American workers and removing the current uncertainty. That is not all. The bill would also put in place reforms to the SSDI Program, including some of the proposals I put forward earlier this year and reflecting a great deal of work between Chairman Paul Ryan of the House Ways and Means Committee and Representative Sam Johnson, who chairs the Social Security Subcommittee, and me. Our work led to a number of features of the budget bill's treatment of SSDI that will help combat fraud in the program, make it easier for those who can and desire to return to work to be able to do so, and improve the overall administration and integrity of the disability program. As I said before, this is not a budget bill that I would have written, and I think there are a number of other ways to improve the SSDI Program and Social Security more generally. However, nothing in the bill prevents us from continuing our work to develop and refine ideas and come up with additional improvements. Given the unsustainability of the Social Security System generally, we will have to continue to work on reforms to ensure these programs are available to future generations. For now, we must be realistic. If we don't act now to prevent next year's benefit cuts, we will create a cliff that will occur right in the middle of an election campaign, when fundamental reforms to an entitlement program will be virtually impossible. Instead of a real debate over the future of this important program, we would see accusations lobbed back and forth about which side is responsible for the impending benefit cuts. Why would anyone want that? What good would that accomplish? I would also like to remind my colleagues that the SSDI reforms in this budget bill represent the most significant changes to any Social Security program since 1983--more than three decades ago. That is nothing to sneeze at. So while critics may be right that these changes aren't the only types of long-term fixes the SSDI Program needs, they should not by any means be overlooked. While we are on the subject of entitlements, I also want to point out that this budget bill will avert an unprecedented and large increase in Medicare Part B premiums for millions of elderly Americans. Under the law, there is a complicated interplay between the Social Security and Medicare Programs, where under what is called the ``hold harmless'' rule, the majority of Medicare beneficiaries cannot see a premium increase greater than their cost-of-living adjustment under Social Security. However, due to very low inflation, there will be no cost-of- living adjustments in Social Security in 2016, meaning there can be no premium increases for the majority of Medicare Part B participants. This means the full amount of what the Medicare system needs to collect in Part B premiums for next year will be charged to the nearly 30 percent of Medicare beneficiaries who do not have their premiums deducted from their Social Security payments. Long story short, absent some kind of action, more than one-quarter of all Medicare Part B beneficiaries will see their premiums go up as much as 52 percent in 2016. This bill is important, with all its faults, and that is a great reason to vote for it. The legislation before us will prevent this increase, once again allowing Congress to avoid a contentious fight and preventing many seniors from becoming pawns in the unending liberal political gamesmanship and demagoguery. Most importantly it would do so in a responsible manner. In addition to sparing our country some needless political fights over Social Security and Medicare, this bill will also repeal the employer autoenrollment requirement under the so-called Affordable Care Act. This provision, once implemented, would require large employers to automatically enroll new employees in health insurance plans, putting the burden on employees who prefer alternative plans to opt out. This provision, like many provisions of ObamaCare, never made sense and ultimately had few champions outside left-leaning think tanks that continually advocate for the government to ``nudge'' citizens into what some technocrats believe are preferred outcomes by removing certain nonpreferred choices. So with this legislation we have bipartisan agreement on the need to remove at least part--and not an insignificant part--of ObamaCare. That is important. That is a good reason to vote for this. Obviously, we need to do more, but in my view any acknowledgement from my friends on the other side that any part of the President's health care law doesn't work is good progress. We haven't been able to get them to admit that in all these years of this failing program that is going on. Finally, and for many most significantly, the bipartisan budget legislation would partially lift the budget caps established under the Budget Control Act both for domestic spending priorities and national defense. While very few people in Congress or elsewhere are big fans of the sequester threat, it did result in the only legitimate measurable spending cuts we have seen in quite some time. It is especially noteworthy, given the current administration's seemingly insatiable desire for more debt-fueled spending. I sympathize with my colleagues who might be hesitant to lift those spending caps. However, I think we need to keep a few things in mind. First, the increase in the spending baseline under this bill is fully offset. That is important. While not all of the offsets are ideal, it is important that the spending cap relief will not result in increased debt or a tax hike. Let me repeat that. It is important to note that the spending cap relief will not result in increased debt or a tax hike. In that sense, the spending caps, even with the relief included in this bill, continue to be successful. Let me repeat that again. In that sense, the spending caps, even with the relief included in this bill, continue to be successful. Second, lifting the spending caps will help us ensure our military is properly funded, although many of us would like to do more with the world in the turmoil it is in. Many Members of Congress, particularly on the Republican side, have expressed concern regarding the impact of the spending caps on our men and women in uniform and our overall military readiness. Make no mistake, these are dangerous times. American generals and military officials have made clear the spending levels under the Budget Control Act are not enough to meet the challenges our Nation faces on the world stage. Between the threat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, and our newly prolonged troop presence in Afghanistan, now is not the time to underfund our military. We need to be sure our troops have all the resources they need to succeed. As we know, President Obama has conditioned any budget-cap relief for defense on similar relief for other domestic spending programs. While I agree with many of my colleagues that this represents an odd set of priorities for a Commander in Chief--his No. 1 duty is to keep us safe--we should not let the President's refusal to do right by our military lead us to do the same. In addition to criticisms of the substance of the bill, some of which I agree with, I have also heard complaints about the process that led us here. On that front as well, I share some of my colleagues' concerns. It certainly would have been better to move this legislation through regular order, including committee consideration and an open amendment process. I can't speak for anyone else, but I would assume that almost everyone involved would prefer to see legislation of this magnitude move through the House and Senate in a more deliberative process and a longer timetable. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, that is not what happened. However, much of the time, effective government is about the art of doing what is doable. Though Republicans control both Chambers of Congress, there is a Democrat in the White House and enough Democrats in the Senate to sustain a filibuster. That is just a fact. We have to live with that. If we want to get anything done around here, we cannot demand perfection, nor can we operate in a zero-sum environment where every victory for the other side, however minor, is considered a loss for yours. I get that there are some who sincerely and truthfully believe that compromise inherently means failure, and I know there are others with different agendas in mind that lead them to oppose anything resembling a concession to the other side, no matter what their side may get in return, but I have been around here long enough to know that such an approach does not often yield satisfactory results. If you are going to wait for that perfect bill to come around, my experience has taught me that you are likely to wait a very long time. The budget bill before us is far from perfect. But, as the saying goes, the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. Under the circumstances, I believe this bill needs to pass so we can solve these problems, remove many dangerous obstacles directly in front of us, and give ourselves a chance to govern effectively without the cliffs, crises, and deadlines that all too frequently dictate what we do around here. For these reasons I plan to vote yes on this legislation, and I urge my colleagues to do the same. Having said that, I would like to compliment our majority leader. He has one of the toughest jobs ever on Capitol Hill. I want to compliment the House as well. I have worked very closely with the distinguished new Speaker of the House. He is a tremendous human being. He does not reject the doable. He is a very strong conservative, one of the strongest people in either House of Congress, as is our majority leader. Both of them are doing what has to be done, and they deserve to have support in doing that. I compliment my friends on the other side for the successes they consider they have made. On the other hand, I wish to pay tribute to our majority leader and the work that he is doing, trying to keep this fractious group of people together in so many ways and to get important legislation like this passed so that we are working on even more important legislation in the future. I want to personally pay tribute to Paul Ryan for his election to Speaker of the House. We have worked very closely together, as he has been chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. We have met almost weekly ever since he took over as chairman of that committee and I as chairman of the Finance Committee. He is one of the truly great people in the Congress, and I personally want to express my view that we are lucky to have him. We are lucky to have our distinguished majority leader as well. I want to compliment my friends on the other side who have been working to do the art of the doable and, though imperfect, have worked with both of these leaders to get this done. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH

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

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, it has been a while since I have come to the Senate floor to talk about the shortcomings of the so-called Affordable Care Act--a few months at least. The last time I spoke about ObamaCare on the floor, I spoke at some length about the ever- increasing insurance premiums that had resulted from the law's draconian mandates and regulations. Sadly, as I rise to revisit this subject, things haven't gotten better for ObamaCare. In fact, if the Obama administration's own estimates are to be believed, things are actually getting much worse. As we all know, this Sunday, November 1, marks the beginning of the 2016 open enrollment period for the ObamaCare health insurance exchanges. This is an important milestone for the health care law in large part because President Obama and his supporters have, since the day the law was passed, repeatedly promised that as Americans become more familiar with how the law works, the more they will grow to love it. ObamaCare proponents wrote off problems in the first year of enrollment as glitches that were to be expected as the country transitioned to a new health care system. Problems in the second year were similarly dismissed as necessary growing pains as everyone learned from the mistakes that were made the previous year. Now, as we approach the third year of enrollment, supporters of the President's health care law are running out of excuses. At this point, most reasonable Americans--including many who may have initially been huge supporters of this endeavor--expect the system created under the law to work the way it was designed to work. You know what? The law is working the way it was designed to work. The problem is, it is not working the way the designer said it would work. At the time the law was drafted, the architects of ObamaCare said they can impose all new mandates and regulations on the insurance market, requiring massively expanded coverage above and beyond consumer demand, claiming that any increased costs that resulted from these requirements would be offset when more young and relatively healthy consumers were forced to buy insurance or pay a fine. Of course, they only called it a fine when they were drafting the law and initially selling it to the American people. Now a few years and a Supreme Court decision later, we were all supposed to call that fine a tax, but I digress. My point is that those who drafted the President's health law and then subsequently forced it through Congress on a strictly partisan basis said their new system would expand health coverage for everyone without increasing costs. In fact, they went further. They claimed that it would actually bring costs down. However, due to the way the law was actually designed, it was never going to work that way. No matter how many ad campaigns the government charged to the taxpayers and no matter how many talk shows the President went on to encourage hip, young audiences to enroll in the exchanges, the numbers were never going to add up. This is true for one simple reason: For all the attention the drafters of ObamaCare paid to expanding coverage and remaking the health insurance industry, they did not do anything to reduce the actual costs of health care in America. The problems with ObamaCare are not due to bad marketing, they are the result of fundamental design flaws. Health care costs are the biggest barrier keeping participants out of the insurance market. Health care costs are among the main factors contributing to wage stagnation for American workers. And health care costs continue to be the single largest problem plaguing our Nation's health care system. Yet despite the obvious problems, health care costs were all but ignored when the so-called Affordable Care Act was being drafted, and the few provisions in the law that were aimed at bringing down costs were either poorly conceived, terribly implemented or both. For example, we had the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan Program, or CO-OP Program, which was created to encourage the development of a nonprofit health insurance sector. Specifically, under the CO-OP Program, HHS dealt out $2.4 billion in loans to 23 nonprofit startup plans. Many of which were headed not by insurance or health care experts but by political activists with no actual business experience. Almost immediately we began to hear reports of mismanagement in the program and poor decisionmaking at the CO-OPs themselves. Earlier this year, the HHS Office of Inspector General reported that 21 of the 23 CO-OPs that received loans under the program--loans that were supposed to last for 15 years, by the way--had suffered staggering losses. This, of course, was not surprising given the inexperience of many of the founders of the CO-OPs and the lack of oversight and accountability at HHS with regard to the program. While a nonprofit insurer may not be focused on avoiding losses, one would assume that, at the very least, staying in business would be a priority. Yet, over the last several months, 10 of the 23 CO-OPs have had to close their doors, with more failures expected in the near future. The latest CO-OP failure was announced just yesterday and took place in my own home State of Utah, hitting pretty close to home for a number of people in my State who are just trying to find affordable health insurance. Every time one of these CO-OPs fails, they leave patients and customers in the lurch. A failed CO-OP in New York that was called Health Republic and was considered by many to be a flagship for the loan program will leave more than 150,000 customers looking for new insurance when its doors close at the end of the year. And, of course, $2.4 billion is hardly chump change. Yet that is how much the American taxpayers have shelled out to these CO-OPs, and as of right now, it is unlikely that any of that money is ever coming back. Despite these obvious problems with ObamaCare, we hear a constant drumbeat from my friends on the other side of the aisle that the law is a smashing success. My friends and colleagues have gotten very good at cherry picking favorable data points to make these types of claims. They will cite an enrollment number out of context or a premium projection that is slightly smaller than one that came before it as evidence that ObamaCare is working and that the only problems with the health care system they so graciously gifted to the American people are the terrible Republicans who have dared to raise objections. I expect that as time wears on and the number of isolated-yet- favorable data points continues to get smaller and smaller, more people will see this ruse for what it is. Case in point, earlier this month the Department of Health and Human Services released its latest projections for enrollment in the ObamaCare exchanges. For anyone who has an interest--political, financial or otherwise--in defending the Affordable Care Act, the numbers are not good, and I am being kind when I say that. The Obama administration projects that in 2016, roughly 1.3 million people will newly enroll in the exchanges. Now, 1.3 million may sound like a big number, however, as always, context is important here. When the law was originally passed in 2010, the Congressional Budget Office projected that we would see an increase of about 8 million enrollees on the exchanges in 2016 compared to 2015. Now HHS is predicting that enrollment will be less than a quarter of that projection. It gets worse. In 2010 CBO also projected that by the end of 2016, roughly 21 million patients would be enrolled in plans purchased on the exchanges. Now, HHS projects that the number will likely be less than half of that, probably a little more than 10 million people. In other words, all the rosy claims and predictions we heard at the time the law was passed about the impact these new exchanges would have on insurance markets and premiums were based in large part on the assumption that twice as many people would enroll. Now, by its own terms, ObamaCare is becoming a bigger failure by the day. Unfortunately, I am not done. HHS also estimates that there are 19 million Americans who earn too much income to qualify for Medicaid but still qualify for ObamaCare exchange subsidies who still have not enrolled. According to their numbers, a little less than half of these people buy insurance off the exchange without getting subsidies, leaving more than 10 million people eligible for subsidies on the exchanges but still uninsured. The administration also says about half of that eligible-but-uninsured population is between the ages of 18 and 34 and that nearly two-thirds of them are in excellent or very good health. In other words, a huge portion of those refusing to purchase health insurance on the exchanges, even though they are eligible for ObamaCare subsidies, are the same young and healthy consumers that the Affordable Care Act was designed to coerce into the health insurance market in order to subsidize all of the new mandates and regulations imposed under this law. The exchanges are failing to attract the very customers they need in order to stay afloat. If they cannot attract more of this prized Democratic base, the ObamaCare exchanges--and with them the entire ObamaCare system itself--will collapse under their own weight. The question now becomes this: What is keeping these young and healthy consumers from enrolling on the exchanges? Why are millions of people opting to pay a fine and forego coverage rather than purchasing health insurance with the aid of a government subsidy? The answer, for anyone who wasn't listening earlier, is costs. According to a recent survey by the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the vast majority--nearly 80 percent--of uninsured Americans who have looked for insurance said that after weighing everything, they could not afford the purchase. Sadly, the cost problem is only getting worse. As we learned earlier this year, insurance plans in markets across the country have been requesting dramatic increases in their premiums, and those increases have been confirmed as the enrollment date has drawn closer. Just yesterday I had a number of representatives from hospitals in New York and around New York City say they cannot continue to handle all of the nonpaying emergency room customers. They don't know what to do, and they are in danger of losing the health care systems they have established. In Minnesota, for example, there are five insurance carriers on the exchange. In 2016, all five will be offering insurance policies with rate hikes in the double digits between 14 and 49 percent. In Oregon, premiums for the second lowest cost silver plan on the exchange, the benchmark plan, will go up by about 23 percent. In Alaska, that hike will be more than 31 percent. In Oklahoma, consumers on this benchmark plan will see an increase of more than 35 percent in their monthly premiums. My own State of Utah will not be immune to this trend, unfortunately. Last week, the Deseret News reported that on average insurance rates for plans on Utah's federally run exchange will be 22 percent higher next year. Keep in mind that these numbers only reflect premiums and do not take into account potential increases in total out-of-pocket costs, which can include things such as copayments or deductibles. In a sense, all of this creates a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle. The plans on the exchanges, even with the ObamaCare tax subsidies, are too expensive for millions of the young, healthy consumers whom the exchanges need in order to keep the costs down. As a result, not enough members of this valuable demographic segment purchase insurance, causing plans to become more expensive and leading more insurers to drop out of the marketplace. None of this should be surprising. From the outset, opponents of ObamaCare, including myself and many of my Republican colleagues, predicted this exact outcome. The cycle moves in only one direction: higher costs, fewer choices, and a health care system that offers poorer and poorer care to the American people. Absent some sort of independent and intervening action to bring costs down, there is no scenario in which this gets better. It will only get worse. I know that some of my colleagues have some specific intervening actions in mind. For example, they would like to see the Federal Government not only regulate the products offered on the insurance market, but the prices as well. And when the inevitable happens--when no private insurance provider can remain profitable in an environment where both product and price are set by the government--these same colleagues will, of course, want the government to step in and provide a plan of its own. In fact, that was what was in many of their minds at the beginning--socialized medicine. They figured this would push us towards it, and it certainly will if we don't change course. Soon enough, because only the government will be able to provide health insurance without the pesky need to turn a profit, the government's health insurance will be the only available option. I don't want to imply base or bad motives on the part of those who supported health care--by the way, it was a totally partisan vote--but let's be honest about what is going to happen here. A vast group of people on the left are really hoping that the government can do it all, and the government will pay for everything. Somebody has to feed the government too. Well, in the eyes of many--including, I believe, a number of my colleagues here in Congress--the only way to end the downward spiral we are currently facing under ObamaCare is, as I have said, to create a single-payer health care system. In other words, socialized medicine-- where the government provides health care for everybody. We can imagine how the costs are going to go up when that happens. I made this very claim back in 2010 when the Affordable Care Act was passed, and left-leaning politicians and pundits said it was a paranoid scare tactic. But now, as ObamaCare's downward spiral is becoming more obvious, I suspect that my argument is seeming less farfetched by the day. Fortunately, the march toward a single-payer system is not our only option. We can take action right now to right this ship. We can control costs. We can take government out of the equation and give patients and consumers more choices. There are a number of ideas out there that would accomplish these goals. One of them, of course, is the plan Senator Burr and I have offered, along with Representative Fred Upton in the House. Our plan is called the Patient CARE Act. I have spoken about it at length a number of times here on the floor and elsewhere. While ours is not the only good plan out there, a number of respected health care experts have analyzed the Patient CARE Act and concluded that it would, in fact, bend the cost curve and make health care more affordable for everybody. Once again, the failure to bring down costs is easily the biggest of ObamaCare's many failures. Our plan would ensure that Congress does not repeat that failure. I am well aware that health care policy is a contentious topic around here. I know there are a myriad of views and no shortage of fierce disagreements on virtually all aspects of our failing health care system, but right now, it should be clear to everyone that the so- called Affordable Care Act was grossly misnamed. The law has failed to make health care more affordable, and it has failed to correct far too many of the problems that have long plagued our Nation's health care system. The sooner more of our colleagues--particularly those on the other side of the aisle--recognize and admit this failure, the sooner we can begin to work together on a plan that will deliver real results for the American people and not continue on this spiraling downward path of moving toward socialized medicine where we have one-size-fits- all medicine for the people in this country and, frankly, government running it. That has never worked, and it is not going to work in this country. We need to revamp this program, and we have needed from the beginning to do so. I hope people will listen. I hope the citizens out there will start to pour it on and let everybody know that this is a disaster and that there are ways we might be able not only to stop the disaster, but also to increase good health care, excellent health care for the benefit of our people. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH

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

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, we are apparently pressing another deadline with regard to the statutory debt limit. I am reminded of the old paradoxical proverb: ``The more things change, the more they stay the same.'' We have dealt with the debt limit here in Congress on numerous occasions, and while there are significant differences this time around, there are some things that just don't change, particularly when we are dealing with the Obama administration. One thing that is different is that our national debt is higher than it has ever been before, more than $18 trillion--an astronomical number, when you think about it. That is $57,000 of debt for every U.S. citizen--every man, woman, and child from age 1 to 101. Just for the people in my State of Utah, which has a relatively small population, that means $167 billion of debt. As a share of our GDP, the debt is higher now than at almost any time with the exception of a brief period surrounding World War II. Yet, even though our debt has gotten further and further out of hand under this President, the administration's approach has not changed. As we all know, Treasury Secretary Lew recently sent a series of letters urging Congress to raise the debt limit. In his latest communication, he projected that on November 3, the Treasury will begin to run dangerously low on cash, creating an unacceptably high risk of having to delay payments. Of course, we don't have an ability to verify that projection. Treasury has long been uncooperative in Congress's efforts to get more information as to how they arrive at those specific dates. Don't get me wrong, I take the November 3 date very seriously. I think we all should, but given the lack of hard data shared by the Treasury regarding those projections and the fact that the date has in just the last few weeks moved around a little bit, I do understand why some people appear to believe this latest best guess from the Treasury is fungible. In addition to providing the November 3 deadline, the latest debt limit letter from Secretary Lew includes what has become a stale set of talking points punctuated by the admonition that ``only Congress can extend the nation's borrowing authority.'' I know no one wants to hear a civics lesson, but given the administration's repeated attempts to assign all responsibility relating to the debt limit to Congress, it means that a short refresher about how a bill becomes law might be helpful. No one disputes that Congress must act to extend the government's borrowing authority, but the President can also sign or veto any debt limit legislation we pass. The same is true of any legislation authorizing or appropriating spending increases or reductions. Congress writes and passes. The President signs legislation into law, and hopefully he does his best to enforce it. In other words, both Congress and the executive branch share responsibility with regard to the debt limit and our Nation's overall fiscal health. Unfortunately, rather than trying to work with Congress on these issues, the Obama administration has repeatedly chosen to try to deflect responsibility with misleading statements about the various burdens borne by the separate branches of government. Sadly, the Treasury Secretary's tired arguments with regard to the debt limit are not the only problem. In fact, when you examine this administration's record, you will find that the problems are much worse than most want to admit. I am talking, of course, about the massive accumulation of debt we have seen under this administration, as well as the lack of leadership and willingness to work with Congress to address what we know are the main drivers of our debt. As the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has repeatedly made clear, the main drivers of our debt are unsustainable promises in the Social Security benefit programs and unsustainable spending on the Federal Government's major health care programs, Medicare, Medicaid, health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and others. True enough, we have seen some deficit reduction in recent years. These days, the President and his allies are always quick to point that out. Of course, we know that these temporary reduced deficits have resulted predominately from increased tax receipts and only modest spending restraint. Still, even with these reduced deficits, our debt remains well above the historic average and is expected to grow even more in the near future as, according to CBO, our deficits will start to go back up in the next few years. Our deficit this next year has been brought down but I would have to say mainly because of the work that we have done in the Congress to restrain the growth, the reconciliation act. Had we not done that, this administration would not have done anything. We would be in worse shape than we are. Simply put, no one in this administration should be bragging about supposed fiscal responsibility. Under this administration, the outstanding public debt has risen by more than an astounding $7.5 trillion, a 71-percent increase just since this person has become President. Once again, as a share of the economy, our current debt remains at levels that, with a very narrow and understandable exception, are heretofore unseen in modern U.S. history. According to CBO, by 2025, Federal debt felt by the public will be roughly twice the average of the past 5 decades. As CBO says, ``Such high and rising debt would have serious negative consequences both for the economy and for the Federal budget.'' Given this risky path of debt accumulation, CBO also warns on increasing risks of a Federal fiscal crisis. Unfortunately, those dire warnings have been ignored by this administration. Instead, the administration seems to believe that a temporary lull in deficits is a good time to accelerate spending, even though spending grew well above growth in the economy last fiscal year, all while they continued to ignore the growing crisis in our entitlement programs. We still have approximately one-half trillion dollars of debt. They are bragging about that. When he was serving in the Senate and a different party controlled the White House, President Obama famously argued that an increase in the debt limit was a sign of leadership failure. Now his definition of leadership is to assign all responsibility to Congress for the debt limit. When he was running as then-Presidential candidate Obama, he pledged not to kick the can down the road on reforming entitlements, particularly Social Security. Now, he shirks responsibility and his proposed solution to the most immediate problem with Social Security-- the Disability Insurance Trust Fund--is to kick the can much further down the road without any changes or reforms to the program. We are just going to borrow from the already dysfunctional general Social Security fund to pay for Social Security disability insurance. My gosh, when does it stop? I believe that the debt limit has and can play a role in promoting fiscal discipline. Historically, debates over the debt limit have provided opportunities to reexamine our fiscal outlook and, where necessary, make corrections. Debt limit votes give a voice to Members of Congress who do not serve on committees that make the spending and tax decisions. Unfortunately, as we contemplate another debt limit increase, President Obama does not see the need to even talk to Congress about our fiscal future. In fact, the administration won't even take a clear position on how much of an increase it believes is appropriate or how long it should last. Common sense would indicate that the President would like Congress to extend the debt limit past next year's election. That would be a debt limit hike of about $1 trillion, and $1 trillion would mean more than $3,000 per person in the United States just to get us through next year. Utah's share of that would be about $9 billion. Yet while the President undoubtedly wants at least that much of an increase, he refuses to make any such desire known. Instead, we have gotten vague demands that borrowing authority be extended by certain dates and threats to veto any such extension that comes with even modest spending reforms. Essentially, President Obama's position is it's my way or the highway, but oddly enough, he does not want to explicitly define what his way is, and he repeatedly argues that he plays absolutely no role and bears no responsibility in getting us there. It is absurd, absolutely absurd. Make no mistake, I don't want to see a default. Default on U.S. Treasury securities and failure to pay Federal obligations, which, by the way, are two separate things, is not a desirable or acceptable outcome. Ultimately, I don't believe Congress should shirk its responsibilities, even if President Obama refuses to acknowledge his. Let's be clear. Neither the administration's uncompromising stance on fiscal reforms nor its selective use of information about our Nation's debt are productive. The President's refusal to work with Congress on a path forward and to share information about our Nation's finances is irresponsible brinksmanship. I want to talk about that information sharing for a few minutes because it is an important part of this continual impasse between Congress and the administration when it comes to the debt limit. When we talk about our Nation's debt, there are other policy matters in play besides the periodic actions taken to raise the debt limit. The administration is charged with managing the debt in a responsible and effective manner. Toward that end, it has the obligation to preserve the integrity of Treasury securities markets. Congress has the duty to exercise oversight of these activities. As chairman of the Senate committee with jurisdiction over these issues, I have to say that when it comes to accountability and transparency on these matters, a great deal of improvement is necessary. That is putting it kindly. For example, each time the debt begins to approach the statutory limit, the administration makes a lot of noise about how it is difficult to deal with delayed payments on Treasury securities. Please note that I am talking about payments on securities, not general payment obligations of the Federal Government for spending programs, which is all together a separate matter. A number of scenarios could give rise to delayed payments on Treasury securities. One of those scenarios is a debt limit impasse between Congress and the administration, but there are others, including weather events, cyber or terrorist attacks, or any number of known risks, that responsible debt managers must take into account. We know for a fact that the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have developed contingency plans for these types of risks. The existence of such plans has been made public in minutes of the Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee and in minutes of meetings involving Fed and Treasury officials and representatives of large financial firms. However, the administration has flat out--flat out--refused to share those contingency plans with Congress or to even openly acknowledge their existence. I have been the lead Republican on the Senate Finance Committee since January 2011. I have been asking to see those plans since the summer of 2011. Over more than 4 years and through multiple requests for information, I have been told a number of things, usually stories that end with the claim that, even though plans have been discussed, nothing has ever been formalized. So there are really only two plausible conclusions to be drawn: Either the administration is being dishonest with Congress and they have contingency plans in place, or the administration is being irresponsible by failing to account for the obvious potential risks. Apparently, they are comfortable with Congress, not to mention the American people, reaching either one of those conclusions if it means they don't have to share more information. Simply stated, there is no reason for Treasury and the Fed, along with large financial firms participating in the Treasury securities markets, to formulate contingency plans for these markets without reporting them to Congress or sharing them with the Senate Finance Committee--no reason whatsoever. Yet here we are. Sadly, this lack of transparency does not end with obviously needed contingency plans. As I alluded to earlier, Treasury also shares very little information with Congress concerning cash forecasts, particularly as we approach the debt limit. I have asked for detailed, contemporaneous updates of cost forecasts in order to, among other things, properly verify Treasury's debt limit projections. In response, Treasury officials have told me that those projections are ``highly market sensitive'' and, at times, cannot be shared with Congress. Yet I have to assume that a number of officials at Treasury and probably the Fed have access to this sensitive data. I am not aware of any special security clearance assigned to these individuals. It is evidently the position of the administration that there are times where it is neither Congress's nor the American people's business to know how much cash Treasury expects to have in the Federal till. This needs to change. Given my oversight responsibilities as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, I am always interested in preserving the integrity and efficiency of markets for Treasury securities. Unfortunately, under our laws, regulatory and oversight authority with respect to those markets spreads far and wide with responsibilities spanning across the Treasury, the Fed, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodities Future Trading Commission, and an alphabet soup of other groups. As we saw with the most recent financial crisis, this type of balkanization of authority inevitably leads to ineffective oversight and regulation. When problems arise, all the various parties point their fingers at each other. Everyone has authority, yet no one ends up being accountable. Unfortunately, the so-called Dodd-Frank legislation did not fix any of these problems. In fact, I would argue, all it did was give existing regulators yet more authority and of course added a few more acronyms into the mix. All of this is relevant to current discussion about the debt limit because it speaks to the overall management of our Nation's debt and the lack of transparency among all these agencies. I can cite numerous examples where a lack of communication and accountability has been problematic. For now, I will briefly mention three such instances. First, in 2013, Treasury began auctioning something called a ``floating rate note,'' the first new Treasury security since inflation protection securities were introduced more than 15 years ago. This was a significant debt management decision. Yet very little information was shared with the Senate Finance Committee, even though Treasury had many discussions about the new note with representatives from large financial firms. Second, Treasury recently decided again--after several meetings with large banks--that an average cash balance for the Federal Government of around $50 billion per day was too low and that going forward the balance would need to be $150 billion or more. Once again, prior to that decision being finalized, there was no communication from Treasury to the Senate Finance Committee. Third, on one particular day in October of 2014, there were unusual and difficult-to-explain events in markets for Treasury securities. While all the various regulators and interest groups have issued staff reports and have held meetings and seminars relating to the apparent volatility demonstrated by these events, I am not aware of any outreach or information sharing with the members or staff of the Senate Finance Committee. Again, these are just three examples. There are certainly others, and all of them demonstrate that this administration is far too often unwilling to even provide simple updates about its debt management policies--all while insisting that Congress repeatedly raise the debt limit without asking questions or attaching reforms. This also needs to change. If the administration is going to continue to demand that Congress act to increase the debt limit, then it should, at the very least, be more forthcoming about its policies and decisionmaking when it comes to managing our debt. While I agree we cannot and should not risk defaulting on our debt or obligations, it is essential that Congress receives a complete picture from the administration about its debt management policies. Therefore, I want to make clear to Treasury--and other agencies with responsibilities in this area--that there is an imminent need for improved communication and increased transparency on these matters. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, I intend to do all I can to ensure greater accountability. That may include more hearings with officials brought before the committee or legislation to require more information flows between the administration and Congress. Ultimately, what specific actions we take will depend on the administration's ability to cooperate. I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, as the Senate turns its focus to legislation related to the critical issue of our Nation's cyber security and in the light of Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit last month, I would like to reflect on America's security in cyber space. As the global economy becomes increasingly dependent on the Internet, the exponential increase in the number and scale of cyber attacks and cyber thefts are straining our relationship with international trading partners throughout the world. This is especially true for our important trade relationship with China. This year alone, the United States has experienced some of the largest cyber attacks in our Nation's history--many of which are believed to have been perpetrated by the Chinese. Just last February, hackers breached the customer records of the health insurance company Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield. Many news sources reported that China was responsible for the attack. This cyber attack resulted in the theft of approximately 80 million customers' personally identifiable information, including Social Security numbers and information that can be used for identity theft. In the early summer, cyber criminals also hacked United Airlines, compromising manifest data that detailed the movement of millions of Americans. According to the news media, China was again believed to have been responsible. But the most devastating cyber attack this year was on the U.S. Government's Office of Personnel Management. This past June, sources report that the OPM data breach, considered the worst cyber intrusion ever perpetrated against the U.S. Government, affected about 21.5 million Federal employees and contractors. Hackers successfully accessed sensitive personal information, including security clearance files, Social Security numbers, and information about employees' contacts and families. Again, China was the suspected culprit. Most troubling, the OPM breach included over 19.7 million background investigation records for cleared U.S. Government employees. The exposure of this highly sensitive information not only puts our national security at risk but also raises concern that foreign governments may be keeping detailed databases on Federal workers and their associations. I was pleased during the Chinese President's visit to Washington last month that President Obama expressed his ``very serious concerns about growing cyber threats'' and stated that the cyber theft of intellectual property and commercial trade secrets ``has to stop.'' President Obama and President Xi Jinping came to an agreement not to ``conduct or knowingly support'' cyber theft of intellectual property or commercial trade secrets. Even so, Director of Intelligence James Clapper expressed doubts about the agreement in a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. When Chairman McCain asked Mr. Clapper if he was optimistic about the deal, he told members of the committee he was not. I add my skepticism of this agreement to the growing chorus of lawmakers, military leaders, and intelligence community personnel who have voiced similar concerns. As Admiral Rogers, head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, has said, ``China is the biggest proponent of cyberattacks being waged against the U.S.'' We must do more to defend ourselves against this growing threat. Unfortunately, I have been disappointed in this administration's inability to protect our Federal computer systems from cyber intrusions and to hold criminals accountable for their participation in cyber attacks committed against the United States. Sadly, the cyber threats facing our Nation are not limited to China. Investigators believe Russia, North Korea, Iran, and several other nations have also launched cyber attacks against our government, U.S. citizens, and of course companies. These attacks are increasing both in severity and in number. In April, Russian hackers accessed White House networks containing sensitive information, including emails sent and received by the President himself. In May, hackers breached IRS servers to gain access to 330,000 American taxpayers' tax returns. That same month a fraudulent stock trader manipulated U.S. markets, costing the stock exchange an estimated $1 trillion in just 36 minutes. In July, it was reported that a Russian spear phishing attack shut down the Joint Chiefs of Staff email system for 11 days. Just 1 month ago, hackers stole the personal data of 15 million T-Mobile customers by breaching Experian, the company that processes credit checks for prospective customers. This stolen data includes names, birth dates, addresses, Social Security numbers, and credit card information. These breaches have a serious and real cost for the victims. According to the Federal Trade Commission, the average identity fraud victim in 2012 incurred an average of $365 in losses. Incredibly, all of these high-profile breaches have occurred this year, making 2015 perhaps the worst year ever in terms of attacks on our national cyber security. Prior to 2015, we also saw several high-profile breaches at large American corporations, including Target, Home Depot, Sony, and others. Our lack of effective cyber security policies and procedures threatens the safety of our people, the strength of our national defense, and the future of our economy. We must be more vigilant in reinforcing our cyber infrastructure to better defend ourselves against these attacks. In doing so, Congress must create a deterrent for those who seek to commit cyber attacks against our Nation. Our adversaries must know they will suffer dire consequences if they attack the United States. Finding a solution to this critical problem must be an urgent priority for the Senate. I agree with Leader McConnell that we must move forward in the Senate with legislation to improve our Nation's cyber security practices and policies. I am supportive of the objectives outlined in Chairman Burr and Vice Chairperson Feinstein's bipartisan Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, CISA. I was pleased to see the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence pass the Burr-Feinstein CISA bill out of the committee by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 14 to 1. This important legislation incentivizes and authorizes private sector companies to voluntarily share cyber threat information in real time that can be useful in detecting cyber attacks and in preventing future cyber intrusions. I also commend Chairman Burr and Vice Chairman Feinstein's efforts to include provisions in CISA to protect personal privacy, including a measure that prevents a user's personally identifiable information from being shared with government agencies. Additionally, CISA sets limits on information that can be collected or monitored by allowing information to be used only for cyber security purposes. As the American economy grows ever more dependent on the Internet, I believe CISA represents an important first step in protecting our Nation's critical infrastructure from the devastating impact of cyber attacks. Congress must do more to adequately protect and secure America's presence in cyber space. In light of recent revelations highlighting our Federal Government's inability to adequately protect and secure classified data and other sensitive information, I joined Senator Carper, the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in introducing the Federal Computer Security Act. The Hatch-Carper bill shines light on whether our Federal Government is using the most up-to-date cyber security practices and software to protect Federal computer systems and databases from both external cyber attackers and insider threats. Specifically, this legislation requires Federal agency inspectors general to report to Congress on the security practices and software used to safeguard classified and personally identifiable information on Federal computer systems themselves. This bill also requires each Federal agency to submit a report to each respective congressional committee with oversight jurisdiction describing in detail to each committee which security access controls the agency is implementing to protect unauthorized access to classified and sensitive, personally identifiable information on government computers. Requiring an accounting of each Federal agency's security practices, software, and technology is a logical first step in bolstering our Nation's cyber infrastructure. These reports will guide Congress in crafting legislation to prevent future large-scale data breaches and ensure that unauthorized users are not able to access classified and sensitive information. Agencies should be employing multifactor authentication policies and should be implementing software to detect and monitor cyber security threats. They should also be using the most up-to-date technology and security controls. The future of our Nation's cyber security starts with our Federal Government practicing good cyber hygiene. In strengthening our security infrastructure, the Federal Government should be accountable to the American people, especially when cyber attacks affect millions of taxpayers. I have heard from many constituents who have expressed concerns about the state of America's cyber security. I am honored to represent a State that is an emerging center of technological advancement and innovation, with the growing hub of computer companies expanding across a metropolitan area known as Silicon Slopes. The people of Utah recognize that our Nation's future depends on America's ability to compete in the digital area. They understand we must create effective cyber security policies so we can continue to lead the world in innovation and technology advancement. I am pleased to announce that an amended version of the Federal Computer Security Act is included in Chairman Burr and Vice Chairman Feinstein's managers' package. I wish to express my appreciation to both the chairman and vice chairman for their willingness to work with me in fine-tuning this legislation. I appreciate it. I wish to also thank Chairman Ron Johnson and Ranking Member Tom Carper of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for their efforts in this endeavor as well. In addition to broad bipartisan support in the Senate, the Federal Computer Security Act enjoys support from key industry stakeholders. Some of our Nation's largest computer security firms support the bill, including Symantec, Adobe, and CA Technologies. Several industry groups have also voiced their support, including the Business Software Alliance and the IT Alliance for the Public Sector. I commend Intelligence Committee Chairman Burr and Vice Chairman Feinstein for their leadership in managing this critical cyber security legislation. As Leader McConnell works to restore the Senate to its proper function, I am grateful we have been able to consider this legislation in an open and transparent fashion. By reinstating the open amendment process, we have not only been able to vote on dozens of amendments this year, we have been able to refine legislation through robust consideration and debate. I think we voted on approximately 160- plus amendments so far this year, and they are about evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. With the renewal of longstanding Senate practices, we are passing meaningful laws that will better serve the needs of the American people. May we build on the foundation of success as we work to improve this critically important Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act. I wish to again thank the distinguished leaders of this Intelligence Committee. Having served 18 years on the Intelligence Committee, I really appreciate the work that both of them have done, especially on this bill, and I look forward to its passage. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. I graduated from high school in 1952. I was the captain of the high school basketball team. I followed this Crispus Attucks team. It was fantastic, almost every player.

Mr. HATCH. They were extraordinary, and they inspired all of us, especially in the way they conducted themselves and carried through. What a bunch of great athletes they were.

Mr. HATCH. Thank you. They were all winners, I will tell you that.

Mr. HATCH. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about an important form of intellectual property: trade secrets. I am pleased to be participating in this colloquy with my friend from Delaware, Senator Chris Coons. Earlier this year, we introduced the Defend Trade Secrets Act, a bill that will create a harmonized Federal standard for protecting trade secrets. Trade secrets such as customer lists, formulas, and manufacturing processes are an essential form of intellectual property, yet trade secrets are the only form of U.S. intellectual property where misuse does not provide the owner with a Federal private right of action. Instead, trade secret owners must rely on State courts or Federal prosecutors to protect their rights. The multistate procedural and jurisdictional issues that arise from such cases are costly and complicated, and the Department of Justice lacks the resources to prosecute many trade secret cases. Those systemic issues put companies at a great disadvantage since the victims of the trade secret theft need to recover information quickly before it crosses State lines and leaves the country. At a time when cyber theft of trade secrets is at an alltime high, particularly as it involves Chinese competitors, it is critically important that U.S. companies have the ability to protect their trade secrets in Federal court. Senator Coons, trade secret theft has hit some of the nation's best known companies, including Delaware-based DuPont and its popular Kevlar synthetic fiber products. I would like to ask how trade secret theft has impacted DuPont.

Mr. HATCH. Well, of course it would. I thank Senator Coons. He has asked what really is the critical question. If I were a CEO responsible to my shareholders, I could not, according to my fiduciary duties, make those investments if rogue employees could just take off and render those investments worthless. Trade secret theft does not just affect manufacturing. I read recently an interesting article in the New Republic titled ``Corn Wars'' that provides a detailed account of how China is stealing proprietary corn seeds from America's farms. Most corn in China is used as a feed for livestock. That was not a problem until the country's middle class acquired an appetite for meat. Given this new demand, China is trying desperately to increase corn production amidst its water shortage and lack of arable land. That is where our country's intellectual property comes in. Rather than spend the time and resources to develop a hybrid corn seed of its own, China would rather steal, literally right out of the ground, America's high-performing seeds. Experts from America's top seed producers confirmed that acquiring the technology behind a specially designed line of seed is equivalent to 5 to 8 years of research and at least $40 million. You better believe the Chinese know the value of the seeds they steal and the numerous crimes they are committing while in our country. Let me read an excerpt from the New Republic article that details an encounter a DuPont Pioneer field manager had with industrial spies from a Chinese agricultural company: It was early May 2011 and Mo [Hailong] and Wang Lei, vice chairman of Kings Nower Seed at the time, were driving roads in Tama County, Iowa, allegedly searching for a DuPont Pioneer test field. But apparently uncertain if he was in the right place or unsure of what kind of seed DuPont Pioneer was testing, Mo had Wang pull to the edge of the field, so they could question a farmer in the midst of spring planting. . . . How had these two men chanced upon his field on the very day he happened to be planting an experimental and top-secret seed under development by DuPont Pioneer? The next day, a DuPont Pioneer field manager spotted the same car. He watched Mo scramble up a ditch bank, and then kneel down in the dirt and begin digging corn seeds out of the ground. When confronted by the field manager, Mo grew flustered and red-faced. . . . But before the field manager could question him further, Mo fled. There is no doubt that China and other foreign competitors are working furiously to steal American innovation not just from manufacturing and agriculture but from all sectors of the economy, including high-tech, life sciences, aeronautics, financial services, and the energy sector. That is why Congress must act now to pass the bipartisan, bicameral Defend Trade Secrets Act. I ask Senator Coons, what exactly does this bill that you and I are cosponsoring do?

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, a previous President of the United States once wrote that if he could add one amendment to the Constitution, it would prohibit the Federal Government from incurring more debt. That President's name was neither Bush nor Reagan but Jefferson. The 217 years since then have proven three things: The national debt crisis is growing, it is dangerous, and only the Constitution can compel Congress to act. We must act before it is too late. The national debt was 19 percent of gross domestic product when Thomas Jefferson called for a balanced budget amendment. President George Washington told the House of Representatives that the regular redemption of the public debt was the most urgent fiscal priority. In his first report on the public credit in 1790, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton warned that continuously accruing national debt interest would be a signal ``either of inability, or of ill faith, and will not cease to have an evil influence on public credit.'' The commitment to fiscal balance over the next 150 years was so strong that many referred to it as our unwritten fiscal constitution. Unfortunately, that commitment did not last. The national debt topped 40 percent of GDP for the first time in 1934, and 2 years later the first balanced budget amendment was introduced in Congress. Eighty years ago, Members of Congress began to realize that an unwritten constitution was no longer strong enough to limit the national debt. Good intentions are not enough to balance the Nation's checkbook. Senator Millard Tydings, a Maryland Democrat, introduced the first balanced budget amendment to reach the Senate or House floor. The 1947 Appropriations Committee report on his proposal, S.J. Res. 61, opened with these words: ``In no other way except by an amendment to the Constitution can Congress be compelled to balance its budget in peacetime.'' The Judiciary Committee held its first balanced budget amendment hearing in 1956 on amendments introduced by Senator Harry Byrd, a Virginia Democrat, and Senator Carl Curtis, a Nebraska Republican. In current dollars, the national debt today is nearly five times what those distinguished Senators denounced as astronomical and staggering. Here is where the national debt has gone as Congress has failed to propose a balanced budget amendment. Let me refer to this chart. As we can see, the national debt as a percentage of GDP is going up the charts today to the highest ever. The national debt was 32 percent of GDP when I first introduced a balanced budget amendment in 1979. It climbed to 34 percent of GDP in 1982 when the Senate--but not the House--passed a BBA; more than 62 percent of GDP in 1997 when we came within one vote of approving a BBA that I introduced; and 95 percent of GDP when the Senate voted on a BBA that I introduced in 2011. Today the national debt stands at 103 percent of GDP, literally swallowing the economy. They say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. As the national debt continues to change in the wrong direction, BBA opponents make the same arguments they always have. First, they say the national debt is simply not a problem that needs a solution. The evidence, however, is all around us. In a July 2010 policy paper, for example, the Congressional Budget Office outlined what it called the significantly negative consequences of our rising national debt and repeated those warnings in its latest budget outlook. Here are the consequences of a rising national debt-- this is the Congressional Budget Office in 2015--reduced investment, resulting in lower national income and higher interest rates; Federal spending on interest payments would rise; less flexibility to address financial and economic crises; and increased likelihood of a fiscal crisis in the United States. ADM Michael Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says this national debt crisis is a serious threat to national security--a conclusion echoed by experts from the Brookings Institution to the Heritage Foundation--or we can listen to the Government Accountability Office, which warned in 2009 that every year since that ``the long-term fiscal outlook is unsustainable.'' A recent study published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives looked at periods in different countries over the last two centuries when national debt exceeded 90 percent of GDP for more than 5 years. The authors found that these periods not only lead to ``substantially slower'' economic growth but that ``even if such episodes are originally caused by a traumatic event such as a war or financial crisis, they can take on a self-propelling character.'' These findings are very important for us today because the national debt has been more than 90 percent of GDP since the recession ended in 2009. In fact, we are entering the longest period in American history with the national debt above this toxic level. CBO projects exactly what this study predicts--that the national debt will remain above 100 percent of GDP and that GDP will grow at a rate ``notably less'' than in the past. Our own actual experience already proves the same thing. In the 6 years since the recession ended, debt has been twice as high and GDP has grown at half the rate as during the same period after previous recessions. This really does look like a self-propelling crisis. The second argument by BBA opponents is that even if the national debt is a problem, Congress can solve it by willpower. That willpower once existed, but it is long gone. The Federal budget has been balanced in only 7 of the 80 years since a balanced budget amendment was first introduced in Congress and total deficits over those years dwarf total surpluses by 23 to 1. The third argument by balanced budget amendment opponents is that even if Congress won't solve the national debt by willpower, it can do so by legislation. In 1985 we enacted the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 when the national debt was 42 percent of GDP. We have enacted one law after another as the national debt has continued to climb. Most recently, we enacted the Budget Control Act of 2011 when the national debt had swelled to 95 percent of GDP, but it failed, as did all the others. Willpower and legislation have both failed to tackle this crisis. The national debt today stands at nearly $18.2 trillion. In its most recent budget outlook, CBO projects that under current law the national debt will swell to more than $25 trillion in the next decade. GAO issued its latest ``Federal Fiscal Outlook'' report in August. Without significant action by Congress, GAO says, Federal debt as a percentage of GDP could in the next 25 years climb to four times its historical average. New data show that the deficit for fiscal year 2015 will likely be lower than expected. If the best thing to say about our current fiscal condition is that it could be worse, we are really in trouble. In its June long-term budget outlook, CBO says that after a few years at a more modest level, deficits will once again increase, especially when interest rates start to rise. Since President Obama took office, we have seen both the greatest buildup of debt and the lowest interest rates in history. This is the perfect fiscal storm. Even a small rise in interest rates will explode the cost of servicing this massive debt and contribute to higher deficits and greater debt. CBO projects that interest rates will indeed rise, and, as a result, ``the government's net interest costs are projected to more than double relative to the size of the economy over the next decade.'' Both CBO and the Concord Coalition anticipate that over the next decade, interest costs alone will approach $1 trillion a year--that is with a ``t''--$1 trillion a year. The fourth argument by BBA opponents really amounts to plain old scare tactics. They figure that Americans may want a balanced budget but only if their own favorite spending continues. So BBA opponents claim that a BBA will automatically cut this or that program. Not only is this a cynical approach to a very serious problem, but it is not true. A balanced budget amendment will require that Congress finally get serious about priorities and decide which spending is the most important and the most cost-effective. Long-term fiscal responsibility is more important than any one spending item in the budget. I introduced my first balanced budget constitutional amendment in June 1979. I said then and I repeat today that a balanced budget amendment ``requires that Congress think in order of budget priorities.'' Nothing short of the Constitution will make that happen. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Neither willpower nor legislation can tackle the growing national debt crisis. It has been nearly 70 years and more than $15 trillion of debt since the Appropriations Committee declared in 1947 that only a constitutional amendment can compel Congress to balance its budget. That is the only option left. The last gasp of BBA opponents isn't really an argument at all. They say that adopting a balanced budget amendment will not by itself solve the debt crisis. I have introduced 7 and cosponsored 20 balanced budget amendments since I was first elected. In all this time, during all the hearings and floor debates, I have never once heard anyone claim that adopting a balanced budget amendment will, by itself, magically make the debt disappear. Of course it won't. Neither did enacting all of those so called budget control acts. Congress will still have to make the decisions to determine whether we continue drowning in debt or chart a different course. Congress cannot amend the Constitution by itself. Article V of the Constitution provides that constitutional amendments may be proposed by either two-thirds of Congress or by a convention called at the request of two-thirds of the States. In either case, a proposed amendment does not become part of the Constitution until at least three-fourths or three-quarters of the States ratify it. Congress can do nothing more than propose a balanced budget amendment so that the American people may decide whether they want to add it to their Constitution. Government does not get to set its own rules. The Constitution is the law that governs government, and it belongs to the American people. It is the primary way the American people set rules for how their government must operate. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to finish these remarks.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, Congress has proven, over decades of failure resulting in trillions of dollars of debt, that it will not exercise its fiscal authority properly. The American people must be given a chance to decide whether to make fiscal responsibility mandatory. It is the American people who ought to decide this. The only way they can is to propose a balanced budget amendment and send it to the States for consideration. I have looked at dozens of national polls since I was first elected to the Senate conducted by major polling firms or national news organizations. Three-quarters of Americans supported a balanced budget amendment in 1976 and three-quarters supported it last year. Is it possible, however, that all of those polls over all those years are actually wrong? The American people might be content with the national debt swallowing the economy. They may not be bothered by being on an unsustainable fiscal path. Who knows, they might welcome soaring national debt interest payments crowding out other budget priorities. They might be OK with slower economic growth and a greater threat to national security. The American people might believe, with balanced budget amendment opponents here in Washington, that the national debt is no big deal or that Congress can solve it on its own. If so, then the American people will decline to ratify a balanced budget amendment, but the choice has to be theirs, not ours. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation also does polling, each month compiling the Fiscal Confidence Index of Americans' opinions about the national debt. The results are both clear and consistent: 71 percent of Americans are concerned about national debt, as seen here--let me just define it a little bit--71 percent say their concerns about the national debt have increased; 63 percent say addressing the national debt is on the wrong track; 81 percent say addressing the national debt should be among Congress's top three priorities; 83 percent say Congress should spend more time addressing the national debt; 62 percent expect the national debt crisis to get worse in the next few years. Some of my colleagues may believe we have no obligation to handle the American people's money responsibly. They might still claim that Congress can get its fiscal act together on its own or they may deny that the American people should be able to set the fiscal rules for the government they elect, using the Constitution that belongs to them. Those colleagues should remember what the American people think about Congress. Disapproval of this institution is 83 percent today, higher than 98 percent of the time since the early 1970s. The percentage of Americans with very little or no confidence at all in Congress is the highest since Gallup started asking in May of 1973. I am continually amazed at the wisdom and foresight of America's Founders. Thomas Jefferson was right in 1798 that one of the most effective ways of keeping the Federal Government within constitutional principles is to require a balanced budget. The Appropriations Committee was right in 1947 that Congress will not balance its budget unless the Constitution requires it. After seven more decades of attempting to tackle the debt by willpower or legislation, the crisis is worse than ever. Continued failure is not an option, and there is only one solution. We must act before it is too late. Mr. President, I yield the floor.