Orrin Hatch

Mr. HATCH

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be given enough time to complete my speech.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, it is no secret that our Nation faces a number of critical problems. We have a national debt that currently stands at $17.4 trillion. We are in the midst of an entitlement crisis that threatens to balloon our debt and swallow funding for the rest of our government. We have a still-struggling economy, which was once again confirmed last week with the announcement of lackluster growth numbers. These are just some of the problems we are facing. There are numerous others. With all the challenges in front of us, you would think the Senate majority and the President of the United States would be focused on solving at least one or two of these problems. Sadly, that is not the case. In this heightened partisan climate, my friends in the majority are far more often than not focused on two things: shoring up their political base and marginalizing their political critics. In other words, it is all politics all the time. It is pretty easy to find examples of the Democrats' efforts to solidify their progressive base. Indeed, we have seen it in just the last few weeks. Why else do you think we have had show votes on bills such as the so-called Paycheck Fairness Act and minimum wage, especially since we already have laws that say women should be paid fairly? Why else did we have to endure the all-night speech fest on climate change a few weeks back? None of these efforts were rooted in any kind of policy justification. They certainly weren't aimed at benefiting our economy or creating jobs. If anything, they would do exactly the opposite. In fact, the CBO confirmed that the Democrats' latest gambit here on the floor--the minimum wage--would actually cost our economy somewhere upward of at least half a million jobs. All of these endeavors were aimed at driving turnout for the Democratic base in November, but that is just half of the Democrats' equation. The other half is silencing their critics. Indeed, over the past few years we have seen a pattern coming from the other side--both in the Senate and in the White House--of using whatever tools are available to intimidate critics and marginalize opposition. It started, of course, with the IRS targeting scandal. I know a little bit about it, being the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee. The IRS has admitted that in the runup to the 2010 and 2012 elections it was improperly targeting conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status by harassment and intimidation. Now, for obvious reasons, President Obama has tried to sweep this scandal under the rug, but the record is pretty clear on the matter. The IRS singled out conservative groups--groups that were critical of the President and his policies--for extra scrutiny. These conservative groups were subjected to delays in their applications. Some still haven't gotten their approval after years of trying. In several cases they were asked a number of intrusive and harassing questions about their activities and goals. There is no getting around this; that is exactly what happened. This turn of events has left a black cloud over the IRS as an agency and seriously damaged the public's trust in government. Let's be clear. The IRS did not engage in these activities in a vacuum. On the contrary, they were cheered on by some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who, rather than simply dealing with criticism they didn't agree with, urged the IRS to apply more scrutiny to these conservative organizations. Unfortunately, after the political targeting scandal, the IRS wasn't finished. The pattern continued. Late last year the agency unveiled a regulatory proposal designed to limit the ``political activities'' of 501(c)(4) organizations. If finalized, these regulations would effectively silence grassroots organizations across the country. They would no longer be able to engage in activities as innocuous as voter registration drives or candidate forums without those activities being labeled ``political.'' The purpose of these regulations is very clear. The administration does not want grassroots organizations educating the public on the issues of the day. They certainly don't want them informing people about candidates' positions on matters of public policy. This regulation is designed specifically to put a stop to all of that. It is no surprise that this proposal has been condemned by groups across the political spectrum. Indeed, any objective observer would call this what it is: an affront to free speech and fair debate. But, as I said, there is a pattern here. It is an ongoing effort on the other side to undermine free speech and impose limits on Americans' participation in the political process, and it has not stopped with the IRS regulations. Just last week it was announced that the Senate majority plans to hold a vote on a constitutional amendment that would limit the scope of the first amendment and allow Congress to impose limits on political speech--just last week. It is difficult to imagine that we have come to that, but here we are. Political speech is critical to our democracy. Indeed, this principle is at the very foundation of our Republic. It is one the Supreme Court has upheld time and time again, including very recently. Yet, when confronted with speech they don't like, my friends on the other side of the aisle are willing to use every tool at their disposal to even change the text of the Constitution itself in order to silence it. In a marketplace of ideas like the one the Founders intended, disagreeable speech can easily be met with additional speech, and in the end the truth will almost certainly prevail. But, alas, my friends don't appear to be interested in the truth or a marketplace of ideas. They only want one store that will only sell ideas with which they happen to agree. It is truly mind-boggling, but that is where we are. This isn't the end of the pattern. In fact, the pattern of hostility toward free speech and the effort to intimidate and silence critics continues virtually every day here on the Senate floor. Almost every day Democratic Senators, including members of the Senate Democratic leadership, come to the floor to call out American citizens by name and demonize them for having the audacity to participate in the political process. They use the Senate's time and resources to single out individuals whose only crime is that they happen to have different views on public policy. I suppose their other crime is that they are successful, which is more often than not enough to draw the ire of my friends on the other side. When you couple success in the economy with criticism of Democrats and their policies, it is apparently too much for my colleagues to bear. Day after day Democratic leaders come to the floor to call out these Americans by name in order to attack them. They spread falsehoods about these Americans and their intentions, and they malign the entire conservative movement and Republican Party as guilty by association. Even if this type of demagoguery weren't unbecoming of the Senate-- which it is--these attacks would be shameful in their own right. After all, how are these unjustified attacks on American citizens going to help our struggling economy? How are these attacks going to create jobs for the middle class? And, how are these attacks on American citizens going to rein in our already out-of-control national debt? They are not, and they are not intended to. As I said, these days Democrats have two missions: No. 1, to solidify their base and, No. 2, marginalize their opposition, and when they come to the floor every day to make bogeymen out of individual Americans, they are doing both. They are not, as they claim to be, trying to take money out of the political equation. If they were, they would be just as concerned with those on their side who spend millions bankrolling liberal causes and Democratic candidates. I am talking, of course, about the labor unions, trial lawyers, and billionaire environmentalists who have pledged to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in this campaign cycle alone. Instead, they are trying to scare up votes. Apparently they believe if they can make scapegoats out of those who choose to participate in the political process, they can cover up the fact their policies have failed to get our economy moving and that they don't have any real answers to the real problems plaguing our country. Perhaps more importantly, they think if they can attack certain individuals for their political activities, others will be afraid to get similarly involved. Once again, this is a pattern of hostility against both free speech and against any Americans who speak out against the policies of the Democrats. Quite frankly, it is simply shameful that it has gone this far. We need to have a different conversation. We need to talk about ideas and proposals that will actually help the American people. I hope in the coming months my friends on the other side of the aisle will be willing to have this conversation rather than simply relying on underhanded tactics that, in the view of many, demean our government and the Senate in particular. That is the type of debate the American people want to see, and I think they are smart enough to see through anything the other side wants to offer in its place. I have never seen it this bad in the Senate. I have never seen this body so ineffectual in my 38 years in the Senate. I have never seen such politics played in this awful manner. I have never seen people's free speech rights being criticized and demeaned as is going on right now. That is not to say we have not had some faults on our side too, but I do have to say what is going on here is unbelievable. Since they broke the rules to change the rules, the Senate has not functioned as a great legislative body at all. It won't be functioning until we get those rules back. I believe when some of our colleagues on the other side, many of whom have never been in the minority, finally get in the minority--and I believe that is going to happen sooner rather than later--they are going to realize these rights are very important. They are going to realize we should be doing more in the Senate than trying to protect our side from any possible repercussions that could occur, which seems to be the major aim of our colleagues--or at least the leadership--on the other side at this time. This is a great body. We have great people whom I deeply admire on both sides of the floor. There were Senators, who are now gone, on the other side of the floor whom I deeply admired. Never have we had, as far as I can remember in my 38 years, this type of stultification of free and fair and open debates. It is a disgrace. I think they know it is a disgrace, but they don't care; they are more interested in power than they are in doing what is right. The way they have singled out various conservative individuals by name on the floor is deeply troubling to anybody who is fair. The fact is the Democrats have never liked money. They try to blame Wall Street for everything, but Wall Street is run primarily by Democrats. We do have an occasional Republican up there, but an awful lot of them are Democrats who are giving big dollars to the Democratic side. They have a right to do it if they want to without being demeaned on the Senate floor. I hope we will have not only free and open debate, but that we will have better and more honest debate in the future. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH

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

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I rise today in defense of the U.S. Constitution, the separation of government powers it established, the rule of law it enshrined, and the legitimate prerogatives of the legislative branch--and this body in particular--under our constitutional system of government. I am very concerned about what has been going on. Last week the Justice Department announced their plan to extend clemency consideration to a large new class of drug offenders. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post estimate that the Department's new guidelines will potentially apply to tens of thousands of cases, with clemency likely to be granted to perhaps thousands of current Federal inmates. This surprise announcement by the administration marks a worrying shift away from the longstanding norm requiring individualized determinations based on the particularly compelling circumstances of specific cases. Instead, the Justice Department has laid the groundwork for mass clemency based on a few widely shared and broad criteria. Of course, the Constitution gives the President the power to grant clemency in individual cases. No one disputes this authority. It has been exercised by Presidents throughout our Nation's history, and it is properly used on a limited, case-by-case basis to ameliorate specific instances of injustice experienced by particular individuals. By contrast, it is the rightful province of the legislative branch to establish broader sentencing policy through duly enacted Federal statute. There is sentencing law on the books and Congress periodically revisits and revises this sentencing policy. But in our constitutional system, changing the law requires legislative action by Congress. In the face of this most basic constitutional requirement, the President has apparently instead decided to use--or, rather, abuse--the clemency power in an attempt to rewrite sentencing law unilaterally. His invocation of clemency is merely a fig leaf to disguise a blatant effort to usurp legislative authority. The President's clemency power is not a vehicle by which the executive branch may effectively revise or discard lawful statutes with which the President disagrees. But that is precisely what President Obama and his Justice Department have promised to do. The amount of time that entire classes of drug offenders spend in jail will no longer be based on uniform sentencing law passed by Congress and administered by the Federal court and Judiciary. Instead, it will be determined by the President's personal views of ``justice,'' by the Attorney General's subjective notions of what he considers ``fair,'' and by some Justice Department bureaucrat's sense of ``proportionality.'' Such a result turns our system of government on its head, and it represents an abdication of the President's core constitutional duty. Instead of faithfully executing the law, President Obama is simply seeking to enforce his personal ideological preferences. It is precisely this sort of unchecked and unaccountable rule that our Nation's Founders sought to prevent. The Obama administration's unilateral action on drug sentencing is especially troubling since Congress is actively considering a number of potential sentencing reforms. Indeed, an ideologically diverse, bipartisan group of Senators has demonstrated they are eager to legislate on this issue. Several sentencing reform bills have been drafted and introduced. Legislation has been considered and reported by the Judiciary Committee. Although a President should never expect to get every single idea he wants through the legislative process, bipartisan agreement here seems well within reach--especially if the administration chose to focus on working with Congress to change the law rather than acting alone to undermine it. Yet even in an area where constructive action is achievable, the President has decided to go it alone, and in doing so he violates the most basic constitutional principles he once taught to his law school students. Examples of such executive abuse have become all too common under this administration, especially since President Obama announced his new ``pen and phone'' strategy of unilateral action specifically designed to bypass Congress and evade constitutional restraints. Just last week the Associated Press reported that, under orders from the White House, the Department of Homeland Security is considering limiting deportations to only criminal aliens with felony convictions. Using the excuse of prosecutorial discretion--another executive tool limited to individual cases and particular circumstances--the administration is seeking to frustrate duly enacted immigration law and instead implement its own broad immigration policies. Whatever our thoughts on the sensitive questions of immigration policy, everyone can agree that such an act requires legislative action and should not be brought into effect through executive fiat. I am struck by how far this approach contrasts with the President's own judgment as recently as last fall. If the administration continued broadening enforcement carve-outs, he said, ``then essentially I'll be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally.'' Given the lawlessness of broad enforcement carve-outs, the President stated flatly, ``that's not an option.'' President Obama went on to acknowledge that he does not in fact have the authority to halt most deportations. In his own words: If in fact I could pass all these laws without Congress, I would do so. But we're also a nation of laws, that's part of our tradition. The easy way out is to . . . pretend that I can do something by violating our laws, but what I'm proposing is the harder path, which is to use our democratic process to achieve the same goals. I wish to associate myself wholeheartedly with President Obama's exhortation last fall that we are a nation of laws, and that substantive changes to the law must come about through the democratic process. As public servants, our common allegiance must first be to the rule of law under the Constitution, as it--more than anything else--is what secures the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. I fear that President Obama's frustration with an inability to win broad support for every aspect of his legislative agenda has caused him to ignore clear legal and constitutional obligations. He now seems to view the longstanding rules, requirements, and traditions central to our system of republican self-government as irritants--mere suggestions that he is willing to bend past their breaking point in order to advance his controversial agenda. Concern about the potential for executive overreach has animated American political life from the very beginning. Indeed, it predates our Republic, and shaped its founding. Centuries ago, absolutist monarchs such as the Stuart dynasty of England, seizing on the powers of the medieval popes as a model, claimed a ``royal provocative'' to suspend the application of the laws, and used this power to justify their oppressive rule. The Stuarts' unchecked reign in England--the nation that pioneered the modern conception of the rule of law--ignited a long and bloody struggle that eventually brought about the Glorious Revolution. Thereafter, the 1689 English Bill of Rights confirmed the ``ancient rights'' of Englishmen and enshrined the notion that the monarch had no ``dispensing power'' to waive the application of the laws of the realm. As many noted historians and legal scholars have observed, the American Founders were well versed in these 17th century English constitutional struggles. Viewing themselves as heirs to the English political tradition, the Framers of our new Nation set out to establish a system of government with an eye toward preventing similar abuses. With the old monarchy's abuse of the claimed dispensing power fresh in their minds, the Founders' initial plan of government in the Articles of Confederation did not even include an executive. When that framework proved unworkable, the Framers drafted and the States ratified a constitution that avoided either historical extreme: an all- powerful executive that claimed the power to dispense with the bounds of law or a powerless executive lacking the capacity to govern effectively. The structural features of our Constitution navigate between these two poles, creating an energetic executive but carefully cabining his power. It vests legislative authority in Congress, not the President. While the precise line between enforcement discretion and lawmaking may sometimes seem blurry, the Constitution makes clear that changes to the law are the province of the legislative rather than the executive branch, and that when Congress and the President have enacted statutory laws, the executive cannot unilaterally displace it. The Constitution also requires the President to ``take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.'' This clause does not suggest or invite the President to enforce the law--it obligates him to do so. And he is bound by the text of the Constitution to do so ``faithfully.'' To execute the laws faithfully, as defined by the great Samuel Johnson, author of the most definitive dictionary of that age, is to do so ``honestly, . . . [w]ith strict adherence to duty and allegiance, . . . and [w]ithout failure of performance.'' As a diverse array of legal scholars have noted, it is ``implausible and unnatural'' to read this clause to allow the President authority to deviate from the loyal enforcement of Federal statutes. James Wilson, the original proponent of the take care clause, put it this way: [The President has] authority, not to make, or alter, or dispense with the laws, but to execute and enact the laws, which [are] established. He continued: To contend that the obligation imposed on the President to see the laws faithfully executed, implies a power to forbid their execution, is a novel construction of the constitution, and entirely inadmissible. There are certain situations in which the Executive may in fact legitimately ignore or even contravene a duly enacted Federal statute. But such circumstances are few and far between. The Presidents of both parties have long claimed authority not to enforce unconstitutional statutes. According to this view, if the considered view of the executive branch determines that a statute clearly violates the Constitution, the highest law, then that statute is no law at all and does not warrant enforcement. Presidents have also sought to justify partial nonenforcement based on a lack of sufficient resources. As the Supreme Court has explained: The President performs his full constitutional duty, if, with the means and instruments provided by Congress and within the limitations prescribed by it, he uses his best endeavors to secure the faithful execution of the laws enacted. In other words, the Constitution still obligates the President to do his best to ensure that duly enacted laws are faithfully executed, even when he and his subordinates are working with limited resources. In such cases he is obligated to ensure that those resources are optimally allocated to achieve as faithful execution as is possible. Sadly, political expedience and ideological fervor has led our current President to disregard his fundamental obligations to `` . . . take care that the laws be faithfully executed.'' Take, for example, the Nation's drug laws, an area where the Obama administration has decided it disagrees with the criminal statutes on the books and wants to implement a different policy, no matter the governing Federal law. As I noted earlier, the administration's massive clemency push seems to employ the President's specific constitutional power--one limited to relieve individual instances of injustice--to provide relief to large swaths of criminals who fit a few broad criteria. The President also directed major changes over which Federal drug crimes are charged and at what level, citing prosecutorial discretion, a limited authority derived from the power to adapt enforcement to an individual's specific circumstances, to implement broad criteria affecting thousands of prosecutions. Given the scope of this Executive action, compared to its narrowly tailored authority, the administration's invocation of prosecutorial discretion has become a transparent excuse used to try to justify flouting existing Federal law. Much of the same is true in the context of immigration. The administration has advanced a growing number of enforcement carve-outs to increasingly expansive classes of illegal immigrants. First, the administration exempted those brought here as children, then veterans, then their families. Now the administration may seek to exclude from application of duly enacted immigration law anyone who has not committed serious felonies. While, of course, no one disagrees that violent criminals should be our highest priority, the administration has come much further and essentially made current immigration law a dead letter for virtually everyone else. Last week I joined 21 of my colleagues in a letter to the White House highlighting this Executive abuse. How can the administration even claim it was attempting to faithfully execute immigration law when almost all deportations last year were limited to convicted criminals and recent border crossers, when ICE agents were forced to release 68,000 potentially deportable aliens last year alone? Think about that. When the administration took disciplinary action for ICE officers for making lawful arrests, when the President of the National ICE Council felt compelled to testify before Congress that although `` . . . most Americans assume that ICE agents and officers are empowered by the Government to enforce the law, nothing could be further from the truth.'' Another egregious example of this administration's willful failure to faithfully execute the law involves education. The Department of Education has given 42 of the 50 States waivers from application of No Child Left Behind. Rather than seek a legislative reauthorization of the statute to set realistic goals going forward, the administration has chosen simply to establish their preferred education policy by attaching their own conditions to the waivers that the States need to receive Federal money. Recently, the State of Washington became the first to lose its waiver, primarily because it did not meet the administration's mandate for teacher and principal evaluation--a mandate that has no grounding in the actual statute. When the vast majority of States receive waivers by meeting conditions that bear little resemblance to provisions of the law itself, is the administration faithfully executing the law as required under our beloved Constitution? To the contrary, the President is using waiver conditions to bring about an entirely different set of education policies, and he is doing so to avoid spending his energies and political capital on a legislative process that might expose divisions within his own party or force his administration to compromise with those who do not share all of his policy preferences. Of course any discussion of Executive overreach by this administration must include ObamaCare. Back when the administration was writing that 2,700-plus page monstrosity, the bill's proponents argued that its length and complexity were necessary evils, that its many intricate parts were essential to achieve the bill's promised objectives. The individual mandate, the employer mandate, the minimum coverage requirements, the cuts to Medicare Advantage, and the limits for subsidies to State-run exchanges--we were promised that these provisions and others were both critical and carefully timed to expand coverage and rein in costs. Yet when the time came to implement the law, the administration's tune changed. To justify violating a number of clear statutory mandates, the administration has mustered a weak and unconvincing hodgepodge of legal acrobatics all for the purpose of allowing the administration to avoid enforcing the central provisions of its own signature law. When we in Congress adopted legitimate legislative fixes to provide hard-working Americans relief from ObamaCare's disruptive effects, the White House displayed shocking audacity in threatening to veto lawful delays to some of these cuts and mandates. I don't know if anyone could imagine a better example of an administration allowing political expediency and ideological commitments to trump the President's constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Equally troubling, where the President's legislative efforts have failed, he has decided simply to regulate, seemingly undeterred from stretching his existing statutory authorities past their breaking point. Again, this is the very definition of Executive abuse. For example, a hallmark of the President's so-called pen-and-phone strategy was to sign an Executive order forcing Federal contractors to raise their minimum wage. He issued this directive despite the fact that there is already a Federal statute that governs the minimum wage for Federal contractors. Although a different statute gives the President some discretion in the area of Federal procurement, its plain language demands--as courts have long held--that there be a sufficient nexus between the President's orders and the statute's stated goal of efficiency and economy in Federal procurement. Increasing a contractor's labor costs by hiking their minimum wage is wholly inconsistent with this statutory goal, demonstrating there is no legal basis for the administration's Executive order. Yet another area of grave concern is the effort by this White House to establish new institutional arrangements that fail to respect the separation of government powers and the basic principle of checks and balances enshrined in our Constitution. Take the Dodd-Frank bill, another signature piece of the President's agenda. All Americans should be concerned with the unchecked institutional form of the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This administration's unwaivering devotion to expanding the scope and reach of Federal regulation was made manifest in efforts to place the CFPB beyond Congress's constitutional power of the purse. The CFPB Director is empowered to collect a certain percentage of the Federal Reserve's operating expenses, indexed to inflation, thereby denying Congress its rightful authority to allocate Federal spending and keep the agency in check with respect to its overweening regulatory ambitions. What the White House sought was unaccountable Executive power, a CFPB that could regulate with virtually no meaningful restraint. When a number of my colleagues and I expressed a desire to address the serious objections to the CFPB structure before confirming the President's choice to lead the agency, the White House decided that abiding by the appointments process established by the Constitution was too inconvenient. Determined to press forward with the administration's agenda at all costs, the President simply installed his choice for CFPB Director as well as other key Federal officers without the advice or consent of the Senate--again, the height of Executive arrogance. The administration sought to justify this move by citing the President's power under the Recess Appointments Clause, but all the relevant legal authority suggested otherwise. The original public meaning of the clause, well-established historical practice, the constitutional requirement for the House of Representatives to consent before the Senate may adjourn for more than 3 days, the Senate's constitutional authority to set its own rules, and the Senate's own determination that it was not in recess at the time, all of this made clear that the President had no authority to make the appointments unilaterally. Yet as an indication of its willingness to simply ignore the law and Constitution, that is precisely what the President did. This brazen lawlessness cannot stand, and it will not. Already several Federal appeals courts have ruled that these appointments were unconstitutional, and most observers expect the Supreme Court to agree. Yet the Obama administration remains undeterred. Having decided to bypass Congress and go it alone, the White House has likewise sought to remove meaningful accountability by means of the Federal judiciary. As in the recess appointments cases, Federal courts have rejected a variety of this administration's lawless actions and vindicated critical constitutional rights. No court has served as a greater check on Executive overreach than the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees most Federal regulatory actions. So the White House has sought to remove even this modest restraint. After the DC Circuit rightfully invalidated several key administration actions as outside the bounds of Federal law, the President then sought to pack that court with compliant judges in order to obtain more favorable decisions. The President's allies in this body, in their own words, ``focused very intently on the D.C. Circuit'' determined to ``switch the majority'' on the court, and were willing to ``fill up the D.C. Circuit one way or another.'' In the rush to eliminate any possible judicial obstacle to unilateral progressive advances, they ran roughshod over the rules and traditions of this body, working untold and permanent damage to two venerated institutions of our constitutional system. This whole episode demonstrates a brazen willingness on the part of this administration to ignore virtually any legal or constitutional constraints and even tamper with the judiciary simply for the sake of advancing its own ideological goals or objectives. I have only had time today to scratch the surface of the pattern of Executive abuses in areas as diverse as EPA, and NLRB regulatory actions, inappropriate IRS targeting, net neutrality rulemaking, and the refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. Such executive lawlessness should be troubling to all Americans regardless of political stripe or partisan affiliation. It is the Constitution, the political institutions it established, the legal framework it enshrined, the checks and balances it requires, that ensures we remain a government of laws and not of men. Absent these essential restraints, we will all become subject to increasingly arbitrary rule, a government that knows no bounds and seeks to regulate and control virtually every aspect of our lives. President Obama once spoke of the necessity for such restraint. He warned of the dangers associated with unilateral executive action, and he highlighted the critical importance of adhering to constitutional procedures. While campaigning for President in 2008, he said: I taught constitutional law for ten years. I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems we're facing right now have to do with [the President] trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all, and that's what I intend to reverse when I am President of the United States. How far we have come since Candidate Obama made those empty promises. I have been a Member of this body for nearly four decades. I have worked with half a dozen Presidents. On many occasions we have been able--working together--to accomplish great good for the American people. My concern today is not partisan. My criticisms are not ideological, nor is my interest as a Member of the Senate simply institutional. Throughout my years as a Member of this body, I have acknowledged and defended the power of the President when he acts lawfully--he or she. In the national security context in particular, where the President is at the height of his constitutional and statutory authorities, I have defended the prerogatives of the President no matter the party occupying the White House and no matter the political unpopularity of doing so. The concerns I have expressed today are about legitimacy. What authority to govern does the President or any of us have except that which we derive from our Constitution? My criticisms are about restoring accountability. How are we going to keep this or any administration honest when it seeks to cut out Congress's legitimate role in the governing process? Above all, my observations today are about liberty. Yes, that is right--liberty. If we are to maintain our freedoms, which so many of our fellow citizens have fought and died to preserve--including my own brother and two brothers-in-law--we must always remember to heed James Madison's warning in Federalist 47: The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. It is essential to the continued well-being of our Nation, to the legitimacy of our government, and to the liberties of our citizens that the exercise of Executive power is kept within lawful bounds. Doing so requires continual vigilance by the court, by Congress, and by the American people to uphold the standards of the Constitution, and that includes the President as well. I will close with a word of warning from President George Washington which is perhaps even more true today than when President Washington spoke it way back when. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. I thank the Presiding Officer and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH

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

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I rise today to take a look back at the evolution of our Federal budget over the past few years, as we moved from deficits and debt not seen since the years surrounding World War II to our current budget predicament, which still involves deficits and debt that are far too high. The Federal deficit in fiscal year 2009 was nearly 10 percent of our economy. This was due partly to efforts to battle the financial crisis and partly to ineffective and reckless spending measures like the so- called stimulus. Since then, the deficit has fallen. From the rhetoric of the administration and its allies here in Congress, you would think that deficit reduction has been accomplished almost exclusively through spending cuts. Indeed, in an effort to demonstrate his reasonableness in calling for even more tax hikes, President Obama often touts the ``tough spending cuts'' that have taken place under his administration. Of course, after spending ballooned in fiscal years 2009 and 2010 to almost a quarter of the size of our entire economy, it eventually had to be curtailed. With a recovering economy, along with tax hikes engineered by the administration and its allies in Congress, deficits have admittedly come down. Unfortunately, however, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has told us, the deficit reprieve will be short lived. The CBO tells us clearly that after 2015, the deficit will rise again and, as a consequence, the Federal debt remains on an unsustainable path. As the CBO and every credible budget analyst has made clear, our fiscal path is unsustainable because our entitlements are unsustainable--that means Social Security, that means Medicare and Medicaid, and that means the Affordable Care Act. We know those programs cannot be sustained on their current trajectories. Yet the administration and its allies refuse to do anything about it. The Senate Democratic budget left entitlements virtually untouched. The President's budget offers little in the way of structural entitlement reforms necessary to put these programs on sound fiscal footing. In fact, with his latest budget, President Obama has even retreated on reforms that he has offered in the past. But let's look back on how our budget has evolved over the last few years. If you listen to my friends on the other side of the aisle and their supporters, the Federal Government has significantly scaled back on spending which, they say, is responsible for almost all the changes in the Federal deficit since the outsized deficits in fiscal years 2009 and 2010. We hear from our friends on the other side of the aisle about how they have ``slashed'' spending. We hear about ``austerity,'' as though it is something inherently evil. For example, in June of 2013, the leftwing Center for American Progress said that ``we have enacted about $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction with about three-quarters coming from spending cuts.'' In March of this year, Vice President Biden's former aide Jared Bernstein wrote in the New York Times that we have generated $2.5 trillion in deficit savings, with 77 percent coming from spending cuts. In February of this year, the Senate Budget Committee chairman wrote to her Senate Democratic colleagues that since August 2010, we have had ``$3.3 trillion in deficit reduction put in place over the last few years'' with 77 percent claimed as coming from spending reductions. Depending on who you listen to, deficits have been reduced by $2.5 trillion or $3.3 trillion or maybe more. No matter the number, the claimed reduction stemming from spending cuts usually ends up at around 75 percent or more. That would mean that deficit reduction has been accomplished by a 3-to-1 or higher ratio of spending cuts to tax highs. Of course, all of those deficit reduction and spending reduction claims represent promises for the future. They are measured relative to some artificial so-called budget baseline or yardstick, which can pretty much be anything that you want it to be. Pick one yardstick and you get one result. Pick a different yardstick and you get a different result. But it has been recorded that in fiscal year 2009, the Federal deficit was more than $1.4 trillion or almost 10 percent of GDP at the time. Also on the books is that in fiscal year 2013, our most recently closed fiscal year, the deficit was around $680 billion or just over 4 percent of GDP at that time. Therefore, deficit reduction we have seen between fiscal years 2009 and 2013, which is a 4-year period, has been about $735 billion. That is not $2.5 trillion. That is not $3.3 trillion. The larger deficit reduction numbers are derived almost entirely from future promises to reduce spending, promises that we are pretty darn sure are never going to be kept, based upon all of the past history of this country and the Democratic Party, by the way. Once again, in terms of real actual deficit reduction, the number comes in at roughly $735 billion. Keep in mind all the rhetoric about deficit reduction consisting of 3-to-1 spending reductions to tax hikes. Well, if that is what we would have enacted, we would imagine those ratios would have been at least somehow reflected in the deficit reduction realized over the past 4 years or so. If not, then, let's be clear that they are only promises to reduce spending, promises that the current and future Congresses can undo with the stroke of a pen. If past experience is the norm, you can count on it. You can count on undoing those promises. I have been in the Senate--this is my 38th year. I have heard countless promises to rein in spending in the future. The fraction of those promises that have ended up being kept is very small. Promises notwithstanding, let's go back over the past 4 fiscal years and see what has happened. As I said, from fiscal year 2009 to 2013, the deficit has gone down by $735 billion. No one disputes this, certainly not my friends on the other side of the aisle, who have used this number as justification for turning their spending engine back to full throttle. Given all that they said about spending cuts having been responsible, on a 3-to-1 basis for deficit reduction, the question becomes: Is 75 percent of the deficit reduction we have seen over the last 4 years attributable to spending cuts or austerity? The answer is not even close. The $736 billion of deficit reduction has been accomplished with $670 billion of increased revenues, and only $65 billion of spending reductions, which on a basis of around $3.5 trillion of annual spending is a reduction of below 2 percent. I will say that again. The $735 billion of deficit reduction from fiscal year 2009 to 2013 has been accomplished by and large through higher tax revenue. Specifically, more than 91 percent of the deficit reduction has stemmed from higher taxes, and less than 9 percent from reductions in spending. Less than 9 percent of deficit reduction stems from spending cuts is a far cry from the 75 percent or more that my friends on the other side of the aisle claim. Those claims are based on promises of future spending reductions and budget projections. Yes, those claims are based on carefully crafted budget baselines or yardsticks that my friends creatively construct. All of this is future, which we all know will never come to pass. But if we had enacted budgetary changes aimed at reducing deficits that involved anything near a 3-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases, then you would think it would have at least started to slow up over the past 4 fiscal years. As I said, however, it is not even close. Of course, some of the revenue increases have reflected the economy recovering from the recession to its current state, which by the way remains sluggish. But the 2013 numbers begin to reflect recent tax hikes, engineered by my friends on the other side of the aisle. Moving forward, we can expect even more revenue to be extracted from economy from tax hikes, including the higher tax rates that were passed last year in the fiscal cliff deal, along with the myriad of taxes included as part of the Affordable Care Act. We have already seen in fiscal year 2014 through February Federal tax revenues hitting a record high for the first 5 months of the fiscal year relative to a similar period of any past fiscal year. Yet, even as the revenue gushes in, my friends on the other side of the aisle want to double down with even more tax hikes. Let's not think for a minute that their demand for higher taxes has anything to do with reining in the deficit or reducing our debts. Instead, the proposals from Democrats are for even more spending, more redistribution, and an even more bigger government. The President's recent budget is exhibit No. 1. Of course, you will not hear it being called ``inefficient and wasteful government spending.'' No, you will hear about investments. You will not hear the term ``redistribution.'' No, you will hear about the wonderfully egalitarian goal of fairness, as judged by the norms of Democrats. You will not hear about big government controlling an outsized and increasing share of economic activity in our country. No, you will hear about how virtually every private sector company in virtually every sector of the economy acts abusively or out of greed, without regard for others, in search of tax loopholes to exploit to the detriment of the middle class. Once again, it is clear from the budget data already in the books over the past 4 fiscal years that the vast majority of deficit reduction, more than 91 percent of it, has come from increased revenue extracted from the private sector. Less than 9 percent has come from any kind of spending restraint. Those are facts. Those are the numbers on the books. Those data do not depend on CBO projections. They do not depend on picking a baseline. They do not rely on budget assumptions. What these numbers tell us is that virtually none of the so-called austerity or slashed spending that my friends on the other side of the aisle have pretended to endure have occurred in the real world. As we continue to hear from my friends on the other side of the aisle about how our budget challenge has faded away, and about the trillions and trillions of deficit reduction that has been accomplished through spending cuts, let's keep in mind our recent track record. That record is clear. I will say it again just to make sure the point is not lost on anyone. The spending restraint we have seen since the outside spending sprees in fiscal years 2009 and 2010 has been minor. The vast majority of deficit reduction we have seen to date, more than 91 percent of it has resulted from increased revenue. The past 4 fiscal years have shown no evidence of the ongoing promises of 3-to-1 spending cuts to tax hikes. We do not need to increase taxes yet again. We have already done that. We do not need to declare deficit and debt victory and turn the speeding spigots back on to maximum flow. Our fiscal challenge remains where it has been for some time now. We have unsustainable growth in our entitlement spending and we need to discuss and enact structural reforms to our entitlement programs in order to put them and our fiscal position on a more sustainable course. Democrats, of course, have other ideas. For instance, take a look at page 33 of the President's budget. The document discusses the future unsustainable deficits and debt and alludes to a large tax increase that is undefined. Here is what it says, ``Even with reforms to Medicare and other entitlements and tough choices . . . we will need additional revenue to maintain our commitments to seniors.'' As I said, my friends on the other side never tire of asking for more money from our American people--never tire of it. For example, both the President's budget and the budget proposed by Senate Democrats last year envisioned revenue increases of over $1 trillion. That apparently is their answer to the entitlement question--not reforms, not structural changes, but ``additional revenues.'' If you are going to try to fix our entitlement problems entirely on the revenue side of the ledger, it is going to take far more revenue than what my friends on the other side of the aisle have previously proposed. If that is the route they want to go, they should at least be honest with the American people about where the revenue will come from and who will be paying for it. The American people deserve to know. I think it is about time our friends on the other side explained it to them. Do not count on that. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. I rise to speak once again about the process we have been following in the Senate when it comes to major pieces of legislation. The Senate has been called the world's greatest deliberative body. However, if you look at how it operates these days, I don't think anyone would say that anymore unless they were being sarcastic. We no longer have real debate. Most bills don't go through committee, where they can be refined and improved. When the Senate Democratic leadership decides to bring a bill to the floor, far more often than not we are blocked from offering any amendments. The unemployment insurance legislation before us today is a good example. Republicans have filed dozens of amendments to this bill. Some of them would definitely improve the UI legislation. Others would address the underlying problems that have led some to call for another extension of Federal unemployment benefits--namely, the stagnant growth in our economy and jobs. Yet it appears that none of these amendments will get a vote because the Senate Democratic leadership has decided it is more important to protect their Members from having to take difficult votes than it is to actually legislate. I filed several amendments. Two of them in particular would help to create jobs and prevent further job losses. One of those amendments would repeal the ObamaCare tax on medical devices. We had 79 votes for that. Yet we can't get a vehicle that will put it through. The House will overwhelmingly vote for it. Yet we can't even get time on the floor to take care of it. That shouldn't even be considered controversial. Indeed, a large majority of Senators have already voted in favor of repealing this job-killing tax and protecting an important American industry--I should say important American industries because there are a lot of industries in this area. Repeal of the medical device tax has bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate, as I have mentioned. I have another amendment that would repeal the ObamaCare employer mandate. On the face of this, this may seem more controversial, but it shouldn't be. After all, the Obama administration has already delayed the mandate for 2 years. If the mandate is so harmful that the administration is afraid to let it go into effect, why don't we simply do away with it altogether and ensure that it doesn't kill any more jobs? These are reasonable amendments. They deserve a vote. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order for me to offer my amendment No. 2905.

Mr. HATCH. You can imagine how disappointed I am in that. I ask unanimous consent that it be in order for me to offer my amendment No. 2906.

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, the Senate didn't used to operate this way. I have been to the floor many times over the past few years to talk about the deterioration of the Senate procedures under the current majority and to call for a return to the deliberative traditions of this Chamber. Many of my colleagues on this side of the aisle have done the same. Sadly, it appears our calls have fallen on deaf ears. I have been in the Senate a long time, and I have never seen it worse than it is right now. There have been some very rough times in the Senate over the years, but I have never seen it worse. Over the past number of years, the majority has called up a bill and then immediately filed cloture as if we were filibustering, when we don't have any intention to filibuster. All we want is to be able to call up amendments. But, in addition to filing cloture, the majority will fill the tree, making impossible for anyone to call up an amendment. Frankly, this is not the way to run the Senate. All I can say is that the Senate is not being run the way it should be run. I have no objection to filling the tree after a full and extended debate when people have an opportunity to bring up their amendments, full-blooded Senators here on the floor, who have the right to bring up those amendments. I have no problem with amendments that I totally disagree with being brought up, but you can't even do that most of the time on these bills unless, basically, the leadership on the Democratic side approves. Until recently, this body has always had the position that we can call up germane and nongermane amendments. That is what makes this body great. It is what has given it such prestige over the years. Now, with it being run this way, we've just become a rubberstamp for the leadership. That can work both ways. I think it is a bad thing to do. However, the principle has been started and the precedent has been set. I lament this because I have been here long enough to see some of the greatest debates in the history of the Senate done right here on this floor. Some were initiated by Democrats who wanted their right to be able to bring up everything and to really have it debated--whether it was germane or nongermane--and assert their rights on the floor. Others were brought up by Republicans filing amendments that Democrats didn't like. But the Democratic leadership in the past acknowledged that, my gosh, you have the right to do that in the most deliberative body in the world. But we have made it anything but the most deliberative body in the world with this type of procedure. It is my hope that the Republicans will be able to take over the Senate in 2014. Perhaps that won't happen, but I would like to see it happen. If it does, I think my friends on the other side are going to feel very badly if this same type of maneuvering is done to prevent them from bringing up the amendments they would like to bring up. But, I personally believe that, with Republicans in the majority, we would get back to the regular order that the rules were before these types of shenanigans took place. This is important stuff, and there is a lot of concern on our side regarding how the Senate is currently being run. As the most senior Republican in this body, I understand those feelings. I have them too. It is wrong, certainly not right, and we need to change this. We need to make it back to the most deliberative body in the world. Should we do that, I think everybody here will breathe a sigh of relief and say: My gosh, each side will have these rights restored that have been so distorted during the last number of years. I am sorry I couldn't get these two amendments. One of them was the medical device tax repeal. We brought it up before during the debate over the budget. Seventy-nine of our colleagues--79 of us--voted for that amendment. It was a bipartisan vote, a vote that had tremendous leadership on the Democratic side through the distinguished Senator from Minnesota, Senator Klobuchar, who has been a wonderful leader on that issue. If it wasn't bipartisan, maybe I would understand it, but it is not only bipartisan, it is crucial to all of the medical device companies throughout the United States that have set the standard for the whole world. We are going to get that passed sooner or later, but in the meantime we are having medical device companies leaving the United States because of that stupid gross tax on gross sales, if you can believe it. There is only one reason it was put into the health care legislation, and that was because they needed about $30 billion--with a ``b''--for ObamaCare. It was basically a phony approach to come up with $30 billion that has deliberately hurt one of the greatest budding industries in America. I can't think of a more stupid tax than one that taxes the gross sales of these companies. That is a dangerous, debilitating, disgusting, wrongful tax. Yet we can't even get a vehicle over here to put it on--the other body would pass it quickly--so that we can get rid of it. All I can say is that I am very disappointed, but I do understand how this body works. With that, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. I ask unanimous consent that after the completion of my remarks, the distinguished Senator from Kansas then be able to give his remarks.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2014. In my view, this legislation is flawed in many respects, and that being the case, I intend to vote against it. First and foremost, it needs to be said that the fact that we are even having a debate about extending unemployment benefits is unfortunate. Throughout the Obama administration, our Nation has been plagued with lackluster job growth, lower and lower rates of labor force participation, and high levels of long-term unemployment. Indeed, under this President it has been harder to find a job than at any other point in our Nation's recent history. But, as has been said before, these are just symptoms of a much larger problem. The plight of the long-term unemployed--which this bill is supposed to address--is not the major problem facing America today. Instead, the major problem is that despite the best efforts of many of us in Congress, our government hasn't done enough to foster economic growth. In fact, more often than not in recent years government has stood in the way. It has been an impediment. We are now more than 5 years into this administration, and it is becoming increasingly clear that President Obama does not have a plan to address these problems. True enough, he has proposals that would expand the government and redistribute income but nothing resembling a plan to promote growth in the private sector or to actually put people back to work. Many of the President's redistribution schemes end up costing labor supply and jobs, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has made clear with respect to ObamaCare and the President's proposed minimum wage hike. Growth is what we should be debating, ideas and proposals that would actually grow our economy and help people find jobs. But instead we are here once again to debate an extension of the emergency unemployment compensation program, or EUC. Let's talk about the EUC program for just a few minutes. The proponents of this legislation have told us that extending ``temporary'' unemployment benefits is vital to our economy, but I think the facts tell a much different story. Between July 2008 when the program started and December 2013 when it expired, we spent roughly $265 billion on EUC benefits. That is more than a quarter of a trillion dollars on a temporary Federal benefit program. For much of that time the program paid up to 73 weeks of Federal benefits, amounting to a record total of 99 available weeks of unemployment benefits when you add the State and Federal benefits together. All told, we have paid EUC benefits for 66 months, which is 2\1/2\ years longer than any similar emergency unemployment program in U.S. history. In other words, EUC is a program with a long track record, and when we look at the record, we see that it hasn't had the positive economic impact proponents of the program often claim it has. Indeed, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars in benefits we have already paid under this program, we have suffered through the worst jobs recovery in our Nation's history, and the long-term unemployed have suffered the most. There is evidence to suggest this program has actually made the recovery worse. For example, according to recent research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, ``unemployment benefit extensions can account for most of the persistently high unemployment after the Great Recession.'' So while some Democrats have claimed that extending unemployment benefits is the best way to create jobs, the facts certainly tell a different story. I am not going to condemn anyone for wanting to extend a helping hand to those who continue to face difficulties under the Obama economy, but if we are going to debate yet another extension of Federal unemployment benefits, we should at the very least get our facts straight. So with all this in mind--the cost of the EUC program and the questionable benefits--let's take a look at the legislation before us now. One thing I would like to point out is that with this legislation we have once again abandoned regular order and bypassed the committee process entirely. I have remarked on this problem here on the floor several times before. When we ignore the traditional role of the Senate committees, we short-circuit the legislative process, and more often than not we end up with an inferior product. This bill is certainly no exception. We learned this last month when the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, NASWA, sent a letter to the Senate outlining its concern with this bill. Chief among these concerns was that it would be extremely difficult for States to retroactively pay unemployment insurance claims, as this bill would require. Indeed, according to NASWA, backdating EUC claims ``would make it nearly impossible'' to apply individual State work search requirements, which is a key factor in determining eligibility for unemployment insurance. In addition, the letter indicated that there would likely be a large increase in new EUC overpayments as a result of this retroactivity requirement. Due to these concerns and others, NASWA concluded that it would take States up to 3 months to implement this legislation, which is problematic because although the bill before us is technically for a 5- month extension, only 2 months of benefits would be paid prospectively. In other words, many States would not be ready to implement this legislation by the time it expires. This is more than a glitch or a bump in the road; it is State workforce agencies--the very people who will have to implement this legislation on a day-to-day basis--telling the Senate that this bill is unworkable. According to the NASWA letter, there are a number of States that would consider not participating in the program due to these problems and the short time available to address them. Labor Secretary Perez sent his own letter in response to NASWA's statement, promising to help States address these concerns. Oddly enough, however, this letter was very short on actual details as to how that assistance would be offered. All of that said, these are the kinds of problems I was talking about--problems which can be addressed if committees are given an opportunity to operate. Had the committee had an opportunity to vet this legislation, we could have also fully examined the offsets my colleagues are using to pay for this EUC extension. These are also problematic. The main pay-for in this bill is the use of what is called pension smoothing, which is little more than a budget gimmick but an especially pernicious budget gimmick when repeated. It has the potential to do real harm to pension plan funding levels, threatening the future retirement security of American workers. Since the great recession of 2008, pension plans have struggled to regain their footing financially. The drastic drop in interest rates forced many plans to dramatically increase their pension contributions to keep pace. In 2012, at the historic low point for interest rates, Congress essentially gave pension plans 4 years of funding relief to get through the worst period of low interest rates. Congress did this by allowing pensions to fund their plans as if interest rates were higher than they really were. But we can't indefinitely pretend that interest rates are artificially high and contribution levels artificially low. Reality still matters. The reality is that, although still low by historical standards, interest rates are no longer at rock bottom and pension funding needs to gradually adjust to market rates just as current law provides. Put simply, we should avoid additional pension smoothing because it permits lower pension funding, and poor pension funding is bad pension policy. Pension funding remains a serious concern, and this is not the time to make it easier to underfund pensions. Doing so is worse than just kicking a can down the road. This can of pension underfunding will explode on American workers in the form of underfunded pensions that will somehow have to be rescued either through painful cuts in benefits, much higher PBGC premiums, or taxpayer-funded bailouts. There is no other way around it. The other major offset in this bill is the extension of customs user fees. This is also problematic. Traditionally speaking, offsets in the trade space are reserved for legislation that actually extends trade programs, such as the Generalized System of Preferences or the African Growth and Opportunity Act. If we start using these offsets in other areas, we won't have anything left over when it comes to extending these important programs. Both of these offsets--pension smoothing and customs user fees--fall under the jurisdiction of the Senate Finance Committee, just like the underlying UI extension. Once again, had the committee been given an opportunity to consider these issues, it is likely that these offsets would not have been used. As we can see, there are a number of problems with this bill that could have been considered and addressed had the Finance Committee been allowed to do its work. And it should have been allowed to do its work. Other problems could be addressed if there were a fair and open amendment process here on the floor. Sadly, it doesn't appear that we are going to get that either as the Senate Democratic leadership appears poised to once again try to force a major piece of legislation through the Senate without giving the minority an opportunity to offer amendments. Before our next vote on this legislation, I think we will see a number of amendments filed, many of which would likely improve the bill. Others would address the more pressing need to stimulate the economy and create jobs. I personally have amendments that would do both. For example, I have an amendment that would repeal the ObamaCare tax on medical devices, which enjoys bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate and would prevent further job losses in one of our most important U.S. industries. I have another amendment that would repeal the ObamaCare employer mandate. I am sure my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would deem this out of bounds, but they shouldn't. After all, the Obama administration seems pretty intent on delaying the employer mandate; it has already been delayed for 2 years. If the mandate is that harmful to implement, why don't we do away with it altogether and ensure that it doesn't cost us any more jobs and further requests for unemployment benefits? One amendment I have would help to ensure that the retroactive EUC benefits do not threaten program integrity. Specifically, it would require States, as part of their EUC agreements, to certify that paying retroactive benefits will not lead to an increase in fraud or overpayments. These are just some of the amendments I may offer to this bill, and all of them, in my opinion, would be improvements. But it doesn't look as though we are going to be able to offer amendments in the greatest deliberative body in the world--and I am saying that pretty sarcastically at this time. I know many of my Republican colleagues have amendments they would like to offer as well. Yet my friends on the other side of the aisle don't want to have a real debate about these issues. Instead, they are content to let the majority leader fill the tree and block any and all Republican amendments from coming up for a vote. One can only wonder what they are afraid of. Presumably the majority has the votes to defeat any amendments the minority wants to offer. Where is the harm in having a real debate? Where is the harm in having an open amendment process? I can only conclude they are worried that some of the votes they would have to take would be difficult politically. Indeed, preventing difficult votes seems to be priority No. 1 for the current Senate majority. At this point, it appears they have the votes to pass the bill. I assume we will be through with this process this week. Yet, while the Senate debate over unemployment insurance may be coming to an end, I can only conclude that the process failures we are seeing in this Chamber will continue as we move on to the next item of business, which is, in my opinion, very unfortunate. This week's debate over EUC is just the latest example of what is wrong with the Senate these days. Sadly, it doesn't look as if things are going to get better under the current leadership. These are important issues. We really need to let the Senate operate the way it always has, and let's quit playing these games of power play. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH

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

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I have to raise some objections, so I object.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 330, S. 2122, a bill to repeal the Medicare sustainable growth rate offset by repealing the ObamaCare individual mandate. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on H.R. 4302. This is a bill that will extend for 1 year the so-called doc fix relating to the sustainable growth rate--or SGR--formula. Patching the SGR has become a regular item of business here in the Congress. Indeed, it is basically an annual ritual that we have to go through. From the first day the SGR went into effect in 2002, Congress has acted to prevent its reimbursement cuts to physicians from going into effect in order to ensure that Medicare beneficiaries continue to have access to quality care. More often than not, SGR patches have been cobbled together at the last minute between the leadership offices of both parties. They are usually tacked on to larger pieces of legislation without the input of Members and without the benefit of going through a committee. For years this process has bothered Members of Congress who, like me, want to see transparency and regular order returned to the legislative process. It has also bothered seniors and physicians who are constantly worried about whether the gridlock in Congress is going to finally send them over the SGR cliff. There is bipartisan support for repealing and replacing the SGR, or the sustainable growth rate, and, to the surprise of many, progress has been made to do just that. For more than a year, a bipartisan, bicameral group of Members of Congress worked to fully repeal the SGR and replace it with more reasonable reforms that move Medicare's antiquated fee-for-service reimbursement system for physicians toward a system that rewards doctors for providing quality care based on health outcomes. I was part of that group, as was former Senator Max Baucus. Chairman Baucus and I worked for months to produce an SGR repeal bill here in the Senate. Eventually, that bill sailed through the Finance Committee with broad, bipartisan support. At the same time, the two relevant House committees--the Ways and Means Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee--also reported a bill to repeal the SGR. That, in and of itself, would have been quite a feat. However, we were not done yet. Realizing that we were close to achieving our goal, the chairmen and ranking members of all three relevant committees--that is three Republicans and three Democrats--decided to come together to find a single unified approach that both parties in both Chambers could support. At the time there were a lot of naysayers. Indeed, given Congress's recent track record, there were reasons to be skeptical. However, by consulting with all the relevant stakeholders and hearing their recommendations and concerns, we were able to craft a policy that has near unanimous support across the health care community. That is right. For the first time since the SGR was enacted in 1997, Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate are united behind a policy that gets rid of this flawed system once and for all. However, we cannot get ahead of ourselves. From the outset of this process, Chairman Baucus and I, along with our House counterparts, agreed that any legislation to repeal and replace the SGR must be fiscally responsible. Without any offsets, this policy would add roughly $180 billion to the deficit--if we do not have offsets. If it is going to pass in both the Senate and the House of Representatives--and if we are going to maintain the same level of bipartisan support for the package--we need to find offsets that both parties can support. It is kind of miraculous we have come together, but both the bilateral and bipartisan people who have worked on this have agreed that we have to have solid offsets. In the months since we reached an agreement on the underlying policy, all the parties involved have been working to find suitable offsets. I am not going to disparage anything. This is a difficult process. But it has to be done. Despite the bipartisan good will this process has engendered, there have been some who were not satisfied with our progress. With today's SGR deadline looming, there was an effort to hijack this bipartisan process and turn it into yet another partisan sideshow. With an agreement in place and with parties still at the negotiating table, some of my friends on the other side of the aisle thought it would be preferable to simply bring our bill to the floor and demand a vote either without offsets or with offsets they knew Republicans would not be able to support. In other words, they wanted to force our bipartisan policy through the Senate on a partisan basis and then jam the House with it. This was, to say the least, disappointing to me. Here we have a historic opportunity to do something that will help people throughout this country and do it with the type of broad, bipartisan consensus that is all too rare in Washington these days. Yet there were still some who would prefer to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and set up yet another political showdown destined to end in a partisan stalemate. Needless to say, I am glad that eventually cooler heads prevailed, which brings us to today's vote. The SGR patch that we will be voting on today is not perfect. However, I am not going to make the perfect the enemy of the good. The bill before us today is a good-faith effort to move the ball forward, thanks to the good work of Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Reid. What we need now is time to get this done in the right way. This bill will give us that. So for these reasons, I plan to vote in favor of the SGR bill before us today. I urge my Senate colleagues to do the same. Once this legislation is signed into law, we need to get back at the negotiating table. I have no doubt that my friend, the distinguished Senator from Oregon, as he always has, will work with me and others in order to resolve these problems that have arisen. Like I said, there are three committees with jurisdiction over the SGR issue. We all need to work together to find a responsible path forward. Hopefully, the bill that we will vote on today will put an end to the unnecessary distractions and roadblocks that have been thrown in our path. This is an important vote today. I am very grateful for those who are willing to support what we are at least trying to do. I want to thank all concerned. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. HATCH

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

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I rise today to discuss my disappointment in the recent turn of events involving the sustainable growth rate formula, or what we call the SGR or the doc fix. Enacted in 1997, the SGR was conceived as a means of trying to balance the budget by restraining health care costs in Medicare, but it was deeply flawed from the start. Its reimbursement cuts to physicians would cripple seniors' ability to get the quality health care they deserve from their doctors. Consequently, since 2002, when the SGR came into effect, Congress has patched it on a regular basis, and there has been bipartisan support for doing so. These ``patches'' have frequently been cobbled together at the midnight hour between leadership of both parties and included in larger legislation, without the input of the Members or even going through the regular legislative process. Now, this perverse annual dark-of-night ritual has to stop. Seniors and physicians understand that. Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate understand that. For the better part of a year, Congress--to the surprise of many-- worked to fully repeal the SGR and replace it with more reasonable reforms that moved Medicare's physician fee-for-service reimbursement system toward a system that rewards doctors for providing quality care based on outcomes, and we have made tremendous progress. Senator Baucus and I worked for months on a bill that sailed through the Finance Committee on a bipartisan basis. The two relevant House committees passed bipartisan legislation repealing the SGR as well. Then, in a turn of events that is all too rare these days, the chairman and ranking members of the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee worked tirelessly to come up with one unified policy that House and Senate Democrats and Republicans could all support. Believe it or not, we succeeded. We succeeded by involving all stakeholders, including the influential American Medical Association, in a fair and equitable manner that resulted in near-unanimous support across the health care community. For the first time since its enactment in 1997, the House and Senate united behind a policy that gets rid of this flawed Medicare reimbursement system. So, Madam President, if we have moved this far, what is the problem? Why am I disappointed? Well, I am going to tell you. Last night I was informed that the majority leader is bringing straight to the floor of this body the very policy we successfully negotiated--tacking on what are known as the health care extenders which the Finance Committee passed but which were not included in what the House and Senate agreed upon with the SGR. But--and here is the problem--the Democrats have no plans whatsoever to pay for it. So Senate Democrats want to pass a bill that has a roughly $177 billion price tag without even trying to offset any of the cost. Sadly, these same Democrats don't seem to care that they have quickly turned what was a true bipartisan accomplishment into another partisan political ploy. This is deeply disappointing. I am very sympathetic to those who say that since Congress has never let the SGR go into effect, we should not have to pay for it. But let's be honest--there is no way that right now a bill that would add close to $200 billion to the deficit is ever going to pass the House. And I don't blame the House. This is reality. Democrats in the Senate have blasted the House SGR repeal bill that is paid for by repealing ObamaCare's individual mandate. The Senate majority leader has said that what the House is doing has ``no credibility'' and that House Republicans ``gotta find something else'' to pay for it. But can't the very same thing be said of what the Senate Democrats are doing--that their plan has ``no credibility'' and that they have to find a way of paying for this if they are going to do it? I think we all know the answer to that. I just don't understand how we have gotten here. I don't understand why there are these unfortunate attempts to poison a bipartisan product with needless partisanship. We all want to repeal the SGR, so let's dispense with the games and get back to work figuring out a real path forward and one that involves an offset. What is even more astonishing is that Senate Democrats are proceeding in this manner on the very week some of my colleagues are trying to make the Senate work. Senators Burr and Mikulski have put forward a bill that the Senate is set to consider to reform the Child Care and Development Block Grant Program. That is an important bill--certainly to me because I was one of the few who rammed that through way back when and took a lot of flak in the process. But it has worked amazingly well. Now Senators Burr and Mikulski have put forward this bill, after a lot of work by Senator Alexander and Senator Schumer to get the Senate working again, to allow amendments and debate, and I have to say I commend them, and I think Senators Burr and Mikulski deserve great applause and commendation, as do Senators Alexander and Schumer. That is what I don't understand. Everybody here knows I have a record of working across the aisle, sometimes to the chagrin of Members of my own party and certainly sometimes to the irritation of some of our very far-right people in Utah. Why turn this bipartisan proposal into a partisan exercise when so many Senators want to work together to fix the problems the American people face each and every day? Let me be clear. I support what House Republicans have proposed. It is a reasonable approach to paying for a full repeal of the doc fix. Almost every week, the White House delays or repeals another part of ObamaCare, so it is time for the American people to get a reprieve as well. It is the right thing to do. But I am interested in a result. I want to fix the SGR system once and for all, and I hope that after this pointless exercise designed for political cover we can come together to do what is right. Let's go back to our winning formula and get our bipartisan, bicameral negotiations underway to find a responsible path forward. Look, I like both of our leaders. They are strong people. They have differing philosophies. There is much to commend both of them and I suppose some would say much to criticize in each case. But there is no reason for this type of ramming something through that has no chance of passing the House. Frankly, it doesn't have much chance of having any Republican support at this point because we believe this kind of a program has to be offset to literally be valid and to be viable. I think everybody here knows that, and so we have to find an offset to do it. If we can't find an offset, we have to keep the SGR alive until we do. But to make it into a partisan game at this point, after all the bipartisan work that has been done, is really a tragedy. We were on the verge of getting this solved. I hope that doesn't happen this time because a lot of us have worked our guts out to get this to this point, on both sides of the aisle. It would be an absolute tragedy if we can't get the cooperation to get this through. The Democrats, if they do not like the offset the House has come up with, although it seems to make sense to me, they control this body, can come up with an offset both sides can agree to. But we have to have an offset and we have to do this the right way or we will be right back at base one after all the work that has been put into it in a bipartisan way to get this done. Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. I express my strong support for the nomination of Carolyn B. McHugh to the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. Judge McHugh received her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Utah. She is exactly the kind of outstanding nominee of varied legal experience that I set out to find to fill this vacancy. She has both practiced and taught law. She has practiced in both State and Federal court. She has extensive experience both before and behind the bench. She has served the county and State bars, as well the State judiciary on committees and on commissions. She has been widely recognized and awarded for her distinguished legal career. Somehow, along the way, Judge McHugh has found time to serve her community with groups such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, Voices for Utah Children, and Catholic Community Services of Utah. Judge McHugh's 22 years of litigation experience were almost evenly split between State and Federal court. In nearly a decade on the Utah Court of Appeals, currently as the presiding judge, she has heard more than 1,100 appellate civil and criminal cases that ultimately reached judgment. When she is confirmed to the 10th Circuit, I think Judge McHugh may have one of the shortest learning curves on record of any judge in any circuit court of appeals to this country. When we have a judicial vacancy in Utah, I spend a lot of time talking to lawyers and judges throughout our State's legal community, and so does Senator Lee. We both work together on these nominations, and I appreciate the input that he has and what a great deal of legal expertise and understanding he brings to these matters. Judge McHugh received much praise, but perhaps the most common description was simply that she works harder than anyone else. Her former law partner said it, judges said it. Over and over the same comment came up: She works incredibly hard. I have been doing this a long time and have participated in the nomination or confirmation of more than half of the judges who have ever served on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. I know a first-rate nominee when I see one. Judge McHugh's varied experience, her personal character, intelligence, and her work ethic make her one of the best. The Judiciary Committee approved her nomination without opposition, and I expect the same result in the Senate. I do have to say that this nomination could have been confirmed months ago. Despite some controversy over a few nominees, the confirmation process was working well. In his first 5 years, President Obama appointed 24.6 percent of the Federal judiciary, compared to 25.8 percent in President George W. Bush's first 5 years. The Congressional Research Service says the Senate confirmed a higher percentage of President Obama's appeals court nominees than it did so for President Clinton and did so faster than it did for President Bush. In President Bush's first 5 years, Democrats conducted 20 filibusters of appeals court nominations, compared to only seven in President Obama's first 5 years. Filibusters were much less of a factor in the confirmation process under President Obama than they had been in the past, but that was not good enough. Last November, Democrats abolished nomination filibusters altogether. For more than 200 years the minority in the Senate, no matter what their political party, had a real role in the confirmation process. The possibility of a filibuster had two effects. First, it suggested to the President that he might want to send more moderate nominees to the Senate. Second, it prompted the minority to cooperate with the majority in confirming noncontroversial nominees. The new confirmation process that Democrats created has no real role for the minority. As a result, neither of those positive effects exists anymore. The President has no incentive to choose more moderate nominees to consult with home State Senators or to look for a consensus, and the minority in the Senate no incentive to waive rules or to agree to shortcuts. There used to be balance in this process. The minority could filibuster a few of the more extreme nominees and so the minority helped process the large majority of noncontroversial nominees. That balanced approach was apparently unacceptable to the current majority. Democrats took that approach away, leaving a process--it can be called that--that only the majority controls. Democrats did not want the minority's cooperation. They did not want a process that has some give-and-take in it. Democrats wanted a process that is all take and no give, and so here we are. Part of the process we used to have would have been confirming additional nominations before adjourning the first session of the Congress. The nomination before us would have been confirmed that way months ago--as well as a whole raft of other judges that we are now voting on ad seriatim. Instead, we are forced to do things in this new way. Judge McHugh is the same highly qualified, noncontroversial nominee. There is no good reason why the majority will want to take months longer to confirm a nomination such as this. But this is the confirmation process the Democrats created. They got the control they wanted, and I believe this distortion of the process harms the Senate as an institution. By creating unnecessary controversy and delay, this new process also harms the other branches to which nominations have been made. It did not have to be this way. It should not have been this way. I might add that I wrote a Law Review article a number of years ago that I did not believe we should filibuster judicial nominations at all. That is why I voted ``present'' on so many of the President's judges, but there is no reason for me to do that anymore because the Democrats have changed the rules. They have broken the rules to change the rules, and so I might as well vote no along with the rest of the Republicans on some of these nominees--just as an expression that we don't like the way the Democrats are handling this matter. I have been, in the last few days, changing from ``present'' to no or yes depending upon the person. Climate Change I will take a few minutes to talk about the Senate Democrats' latest effort to grab headlines and energize their base. Although the business on the floor has officially been nominations, my friends on the other side of the aisle came in overnight to talk about climate change and the supposed need to change the way we produce and consume energy in this country. We have heard a lot of talk about science and its supposed refusal on the part of Republicans to acknowledge the ``truth.'' What we haven't heard is a plan for lowering energy costs or for putting Americans back to work. The fact is, when the Democrats talk about climate change, more often than not they are advocating policies that would do exactly the opposite. The funny thing is they have to know it by now. They have to know that is what they are doing. They are talking about proposals that would increase energy costs for American families and businesses. They have to know that, and they are pushing policies that will put even greater stress on our economy and make it more difficult for our citizens to find and even keep a job. That is why we have an underemployment rate of over 12 percent. For example, last year, the President announced his Climate Action Plan, which directs the EPA to implement and impose new oppressive regulations on the energy industry that will have a significant impact on jobs and the pocketbooks of the American people. Increasing the cost of energy, which this plan would surely do, will not only make our struggling manufacturing sector less globally competitive, it will impose costs directly onto the American people in the form of higher prices on electricity and other costs as well. Put simply, in order to create jobs and improve our global competitiveness, we need to find ways to help businesses reduce the amount of money they spend on energy. Unfortunately, this President is trying to do the exact opposite. At the same time, we should be exploring ways to make raising a family more affordable. Unfortunately, the President's plan would increase the cost of living for every household in America. Talk about inequality. I was very interested that one of the leading unions--one of the first to support the President--said that he has caused more inequality than anybody. When I say ``he,'' they mean the President. Unfortunately, the President's plan would increase the cost of living for every household in America. This is the height of irresponsibility. At a time when so many people are still feeling the impact of the great recession, the administration, not to mention its allies in Congress, wants to put in place regulations and mandates that will cripple American businesses and cause direct harm to American families trying to make ends meet. I find it striking that throughout all the lectures we have seen on climate change science on the floor over the past 2 days, none of my colleagues appear to be willing to acknowledge the very real impact of their preferred policies. Thousands of communities across the country depend on the responsible development of our Nation's natural resources for a living. Access to abundant and affordable energy is attractive to domestic investment and provides high-paying jobs in our local economies. We can develop these resources in an environmentally friendly way. But my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't appear to be willing to have that conversation. Instead, they want to demagogue the use of fossil fuels and impose costly mandates and regulations on the harvesting of our resources and on the production of our energy. What is interesting is they are doing it to a lot of the people in a lot of the States that used to support them. We need to be pushing an ``all of the above'' inclusive approach to the development of energy if we are going to improve our energy security and become a global leader in energy production. It is not the job of the government to pick winners and losers. Yet with all their talk about climate change and the need for Republicans to ``wake up,'' that is precisely what my friends in the other party want to do. I would hope, given all the challenges facing our Nation--from sluggish economic growth to lackluster jobs creation, to jobs providing less than 30-hour work weeks and on and on and on--my colleagues would devote more of their time trying to find real solutions for the American people instead of trying to please their liberal base with alarmist rhetoric about climate change and false promises about the future of energy production in this country. We all know that some of their preferred production of energy is not producing. We all know it never will produce enough to solve our problems. We all know people have lost jobs time and time again in this country because of the lack of energy. We all know it has made us a weaker country. Yet we have this blind faith that they are right and everybody else is wrong. I think jobs are the conversation the American people want us to talk about. Yes, we would like to keep things clean and good and orderly. On the other hand, you can't do that without jobs. You can't do that without people being able to earn a living. You can't run our inner cities and towns without energy. We are giving in to some of the most radical theories I have ever seen in the whole time I have been here. We ought to get rid of these false promises and we ought to do the very best we can to clean up our environment in every possible way we can without destroying the energy and the energy capacities we know we have and loosen all the jobs that would come with that. That is the conversation the American people want to hear, and I hope eventually that is a conversation we can have in the Senate. This is an issue where my colleagues are very sincere. I don't want to disparage any of them. On the other hand, in many respects they are sincerely wrong and they are costing America its greatness. One of the problems I have with our current President is that I don't believe he believes in American exceptionalism, and he is doing so many things that are destroying our exceptionalism. The rest of the world knows it, but our folks here in America are having a rough time grasping it. I think it is a desire to always treat everybody well, to try to support our Presidents, which certainly we ought to try to do, but there is a reason we are starting to slip. There is a reason the average wage in this country has gone down $4,000 to $5,000. There is a reason why, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation of just a few years ago, 51 percent of the American people are not in the process of paying one dime of income taxes. I am the last one to want them to pay income taxes, those who shouldn't, but, my gosh, you can't run a country this way. We are going to have to start facing the music that the greatest country in the world is losing its nerve, it is losing its verve, and there is no excuse for it. No other country in the world can even compare with us. So why are we doing things that are making us less and less and less and less? I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President. I am grateful for the opportunity to pay tribute to a truly extraordinary public servant, father, grandfather, and neighbor--Mr. John S. Williams. Sadly, John passed away this week leaving behind a legacy of dedication and service. John worked for an unprecedented 27\1/2\ years as the executive director of the Five County Association of Governments, AOG; only the third person to serve in that position since the association's inception. This association was formed to address the needs and challenges facing the southwest region of Utah--Beaver, Garfield, Iron, Kane, and Washington Counties. As the director, John set a tone of hard work, commitment, and a belief in the greatness of southwest Utah. He was comfortable not only in the director's chair--but rolling up his sleeves and getting the hard work done. He was a key figure in promoting economic development in southwest Utah, as well as the whole State. He helped formulate policy and address issues facing an increasingly expanding region including: infrastructure, public lands issues, population growth, and quality of life. The Five County AOG has a reputation throughout Utah as an association that makes a difference and helps forge the way, largely in part because of the strength of John's leadership for almost three decades. While working with John on many occasions throughout my Senate service I have always found him as someone who deeply cared about those he served, and had ideas and solutions to address the challenges facing a very important region of Utah. The example he set will be felt for generations to come; and the five counties he served are better prepared for the future challenges and triumphs they will face in the coming years. Elaine and I convey our deepest sympathies to John's wife Jamie, his five children, and many grandchildren. May our Heavenly Father bless them with peace and comfort at this time. The contributions and impact John made on his family, his community, and our State will be felt and appreciated for generations to come. Utah is a better State because of the service John rendered throughout his life and his strong advocacy of southwest Utah.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I wish to pay tribute to Antonia Ferrier on my staff. After 4 years of trying to keep this tough old bird in line, she'll be leaving my office in the coming days. She will most certainly be missed. Antonia first came to Capitol Hill to work for the former distinguished majority leader and my good friend, Bill Frist from Tennessee. After that, she went on to serve on the staff of another one of our former colleagues, Olympia Snowe. Now, Maine is pretty different from Tennessee, but I'm sure it felt like a bit of a homecoming for Antonia, who is from Massachusetts. After more than 3 years with Senator Snowe, Antonia made her way across the Capitol Rotunda to work for Senator Roy Blunt during his time as the House Republican Whip. For a Senate purist like Antonia, one House Member probably felt like enough, but she then went on to serve John Boehner during his time as the House Republican leader. Finally, we were able to woo her back on this side of the Capitol to come be a member of our team. As I said, Antonia is a Senate purist. She understands the Senate's role in our system of government, she appreciates the personalities and complexities of those that are honored to serve here, and she knows how much the work we do here impacts the lives of Americans from Tennessee to Maine, and Ohio to Utah. And, given her experience, she understands the House very much as well. I'll deeply miss having Antonia around, not only for her sage advice and counsel, but also for her wit and sense of humor, and her willingness for straight-talk. I think she would say that the hardest part of her job is protecting me from myself. That's a tough job for anyone. And, I have to say that she's been up to the task, even during those times when I've made it particularly difficult. I want to thank Antonia for her service to me, to Utah, and to the Senate over these last several years. She has been an amazing asset, and I wish her all the best in her future endeavors.

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, I rise to offer some remarks on President Obama's fiscal year 2015 budget proposal, some of which was released yesterday. As we all know, the release of the President's budget is an annual event here in Washington. It sets in motion a chain of processes and events that drive much of what we do right here in Congress. Unfortunately, with President Obama's budgets in particular, this annual chain of events, for the most part, becomes an empty, almost meaningless exercise. The first problem with this year's budget is that we received it just yesterday, a full month past the statutory deadline. What budget information we did receive yesterday is certainly incomplete. For example, when you look at the appendix of the budget, there is often reference to a section called ``analytical perspectives.'' But those perspectives are nowhere to be found. I assume the rest of the budget information is forthcoming. Still, we can only wonder why it is being released a few pieces at a time. Of course, the problems with this budget go well beyond the delays and the sporadic release of information. Put simply, no one in their right mind would say the substance of this budget was worth the wait. Despite the fact that they took an extra month to put this budget together, the most striking thing about it is how little there is in the way of new ideas and proposals. Indeed, when you look for the substance of the budget, you will see the administration appears to be short on new ideas. President Obama's new budget consists largely of proposals from his past budgets, which is surprising, given that none of them have received a single affirmative vote in Congress. Let me repeat that. None of his past budgets have received a single affirmative vote in Congress. These proposals center on three familiar themes, all of which we have seen in past budgets, and in virtually every policy proposal from this President. First, we see the administration's continued insistence that we can tax and spend our way into prosperity, and that growing the Federal Government is the same as growing our economy. Second, there is the effort to further redistribute income and the notion that this will, on its own, somehow lead to economic growth and job creation. Finally, we see another attempt to define ``tax reform'' as a process of closing whatever the administration deems to be a ``loophole'' in the Tax Code, and using the resulting revenue not to reduce the deficit or lower tax rates but to fuel even more Federal spending. Using overly optimistic economic assumptions, the administration claims this budget will reduce our high debt-to-GDP ratio. However, to get there, and to help fulfill its tax-and-spend objectives, the budget envisions well over $1 trillion of additional taxes in the face of a persistently sluggish economy. That bears repeating. President Obama's latest budget contains more than $1 trillion in proposed tax hikes. No one should mistake the President's intentions. Indeed, this budget is the outline of his domestic policy priorities for the future. Once again, chief among those priorities is another massive tax increase which, if the President had his way, would come on top of all of the tax increases we have seen already under this administration. This is hardly what our struggling economy needs. Let's talk about the economy for a moment. Someone certainly should, so I will. If this economy is any indication, President Obama certainly is not interested in that conversation. Currently we have an economy in which labor force participation has fallen from around 66 percent, prior to the financial crisis, to 63 percent with no recovery in sight. This is the lowest labor force participation rate we have seen since the Carter administration, and it is holding back our country's economic growth. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has noted that a decline in the growth of the labor force is a principal reason that potential growth in the economy will decline in the coming decade. No one seriously disputes that there is a problem except, of course, when such declines can be attributed to ObamaCare. We all remember last month when the CBO found that, as a result of the generous subsidies and the not-so-generous taxes in ObamaCare, millions of workers would either reduce their hours or leave the workforce entirely. Virtually every objective observer saw this as a bad thing. Yet in response to these numbers, the administration and its supporters took to the airwaves to applaud the fact that ObamaCare would ``free'' people from their jobs and allow them to, in the words of the White House Press Secretary, ``pursue their dreams,'' courtesy of their fellow taxpayers. While the economists in the administration and liberal pundits might applaud the reduced labor supply resulting from ObamaCare, it is, to say the least, difficult for me to find merit in the resulting reduction in economic growth. Of course, there is nothing in the President's budget that would address this issue. If anything, the policies contained in this new round of proposals would make all of this worse. Returning to the latest call for well over $1 trillion of new revenue, the administration claims--as it has for years now--that these tax hikes are needed to restore fiscal responsibility and reduce the deficit as part of a ``balanced approach.'' However, we need to look at the facts. If we look at the deficit reduction that has taken place over the past 5 years, we will see just how unbalanced this approach is. In fiscal year 2009, we achieved a high deficit watermark of $1.4 trillion. That number fell to a still high $680 billion in fiscal year 2013. Of the $736 billion of deficit reduction over that 5-year span, $670 billion came from increased revenue or taxes and only $66 billion came from reduced outlays. In terms of budget realizations, rather than promises for the future, less than 9 percent of the deficit reduction between 2009 and 2013 came from reductions in spending. The vast majority came from increased revenue. Yet the mantra from the administration continues--more revenues and higher taxes, along with ever more spending. One can only wonder where job creation falls into the mix, if it does at all. Since President Obama came into office, we have heard a lot of talk about his laser-like focus on job creation. However, the record of this administration suggests that his focus is more on growing government than on growing our economy. We have seen the failed stimulus, ObamaCare, and initiatives such as Dodd-Frank, all of which have expanded the size and scope of the Federal Government without laying any foundation for economic growth. Sadly, the budget offered this week does not present a vision for such growth in the future. This budget is, instead, a political document. Its purpose is to galvanize support from the President's left-leaning base in an election year. Nothing more; nothing less. This is disappointing, to say the least, particularly when we look at the challenges our Nation is currently undergoing and facing. One such challenge is our Nation's broken Tax Code. While this budget comes close to acknowledging that the Tax Code is a problem, it misses an opportunity to actually do something about it. Tax reform, if it is done correctly, would promote growth and competitiveness in jobs, the economy, and provide greater economic efficiency, simplicity, and fairness. However--as I said earlier--in the administration's review, tax reform is guided primarily by a desire to obtain more tax revenue to fund yet more expansion of the Federal Government, along with an insistence on unilaterally picking winners and losers. The ``tax reform'' outlined in the President's budget uses a corporate-only approach. In other words, it would amend the business tax system and leave the individual Tax Code largely as it is. That approach is different from the ideas outlined by the two chairmen of the tax-writing committees, both of whom have proposed detailed comprehensive tax reform plans. While I haven't endorsed either Chairman Camp's or Chairman Wyden's plan, they both recognize that the noncorporate business sector, which makes up over half of all U.S. businesses, is also in need of tax reform. This sets them apart from President Obama and the proposals in his latest budget. Of course, let's not forget hardworking individual Americans, far too many of whom need assistance in filling out their tax returns. These people would be left behind under the President's proposal. The President's proposal looks to raise tax revenue largely to increase more spending in what it calls ``investments'' in infrastructure. That sounds wonderful. However, what is taken to be infrastructure in the minds of the Federal bureaucrats--who the President would empower to spend hard- earned taxpayer money--is sure to be guided more by politics than by economic efficiency. The so-called infrastructure bank or infrastructure finance authority--or whatever is the label of the day-- that the President has continually called for would surely become the next Fannie and Freddie, putting innocent taxpayers on the hook for any losses resulting from the large Federal contractors rolling the dice on building projects. As I said, our Nation and our economy face a number of challenges. Ongoing sluggishness threatens to become a permanent fixture on our long-term economic path. Indeed, as I referred to earlier, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has already ratcheted down its estimate of the long-run growth path of the economy--partly because of the negative effects of the ever-evolving health care law that Democrats unilaterally enacted and that the President seems intent on unilaterally implementing. I don't think that any Member of this body would argue that the status quo in our economy is acceptable. We have a lot of work to do when it comes to creating jobs, economic growth, prosperity, and opportunity in this country. Unfortunately, the President's recent budget does not, in my view, add to the intelligent discussion. Rather, it returns to already- rejected ideas and appears to be aimed at the politics more than the need for proven private-sector jobs. At this critical time in our Nation's history, the American people are demanding leadership. Sadly, they aren't getting it with President Obama's latest budget, and I think that is a catastrophe. We need to change it in Congress. Of course, the Senate seems to be slow in wanting to make any changes for the better. In fact, we hardly ever really debate legislation anymore--and, by the way, we will probably be voting on eight different votes this evening on various judges, all of whom would have been passed by unanimous consent in December had it not been for the majority breaking the rules to change the rules. It is pathetic, really. It is pathetic what this body hasn't done, and it is time for us to bring it into account. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I understand Senator Schumer wants to speak in a little while, so I will try to hurry my remarks as quickly as I can. I rise today to speak once again on the proposed IRS regulations targeting grassroots 501(c)(4) organizations. I have already come to the floor to discuss this issue, and I expect I will be here several more times in the coming months as these proposed rules continue to move through the regulatory pipeline at the IRS. The public comment period for these proposed regulations ends today. As of this morning, the IRS had received over 100,000 comments on this proposal, the vast majority of them negative. This is an all-time record. In fact, the number is more than five times greater than the previous record for comments on a proposed IRS regulation. By contrast, the Keystone XL Pipeline--another item of enormous public interest-- received just over 7,000 comments. With all this public attention, the obvious question is, Why? Why has this proposal generated so much criticism from the American people? I think the answer is quite simple: The American people see this proposal for what it is--an attempt to silence this administration's critics and keep them on the sidelines of the democratic process. I would like to take a few minutes to describe in detail just what this regulation does. Under the Internal Revenue Code, a 501(c)(4) organization is a nonprofit organization, the exempt purpose of which is the ``promotion of social welfare.'' The phrase ``promotion of social welfare'' has long been defined as ``promoting in some way the common good and general welfare of the people of the community'' or ``bringing about civic betterments and social improvements.'' Such organizations may engage in political activity for or against candidates for public office so long as their primary activity falls under the category of promoting social welfare. Under current regulations, activities such as voter registration or ``get out the vote'' drives are correctly treated as promoting social welfare, just like the distribution of voter guidelines outlining candidates' positions on issues that are, in the view of the organization, important to the public. The proposed regulations would re-categorize these types of candidate-neutral activities as not consistent with the exempt purpose of promoting social welfare. This is important because over the past few days, in an effort to justify these regulations, the administration has communicated to Members of Congress that they are not banning these types of activities; they are just putting them in different categories. But lost in their justifications are some important distinctions. It is easy to get lost in the weeds, which is probably what the administration is hoping for. So let's break this down. Traditionally speaking, in order to keep their tax exemption, 501(c)(4) organizations have had to limit their involvement in ``political activities'' to around 49 percent or less of their overall activities. In other words, they can be directly involved in the political process so long as the majority of their activities are devoted to social welfare. What this proposed regulation would do is redefine the parameters of what is considered political activity, moving a number of activities from the social welfare category to the political category. As I said, under this regulation, simply stating where candidates for public office stand on issues important to a specific 501(c)(4) organization would be considered political activity. In fact, even mentioning a candidate's name in a communication within a specified period before an election--even if the communication does not say whether the organization supports or opposes the candidate--would be considered political activity. As I mentioned, the same could be said for voter registration drives or ``get out the vote'' initiatives even if the efforts are obviously and legitimately nonpartisan. Basically, this proposed regulation would instantly categorize so much run-of-the-mill behavior as partisan political activity that many existing 501(c)(4) grassroots organizations would have to stop promoting their causes altogether. And that is precisely what the administration wants. They do not want 501(c)(4)s educating the public on the issues of the day or telling voters where candidates stand on political issues. Sure, they are fine with these groups promoting social welfare so long as that promotion does not include criticism of this administration or its policies that are harmful to the general welfare of their communities. It would be one thing if the IRS was an agency with clean hands when it came to dealing with critics of this administration. But, as we have seen, that is simply not the case. Indeed, over the last few years we have seen a record of harassment and intimidation of conservative groups applying to the IRS for tax-exempt status. The agency is under investigation in three separate congressional committees for its actions in the run up to the 2010 and 2012 elections. Put simply, the credibility and the political independence of the IRS are very much in question. A reasonable person would think that, rather than further damaging the IRS's reputation, the administration would instead focus on rebuilding it in the aftermath of the targeting scandal. Sadly, there don't appear to be too many reasonable people working in the Obama administration, at least not when it comes to this set of issues. We need to call this what it is: an affront to free speech and the right of all American citizens to participate in the democratic process. This is an attempt by the administration to marginalize its critics and silence them altogether. Republicans have been very vocal in our opposition to this proposed regulation. We have spoken out in a variety of venues. But make no mistake, it is not just Republicans and conservatives who oppose this new rule. A number of left-leaning organizations have spoken out against it as well. The ACLU, for example, submitted a scathing comment letter to the IRS arguing that the proposed regulation would ``produce the same structural issues at the IRS that led to the use of inappropriate criteria in the selection of various charitable and social welfare groups for unfair scrutiny.'' The ACLU argued further that social welfare groups should be free to participate in the political process because that kind of participation ``is at the heart of our representative democracy. To the extent it influences voters, it does so by promoting an informed citizenry.'' We have seen similar comments from groups such as the Sierra Club. Leaders of labor unions have also publicly weighed in about the overly broad nature of the proposed regulation. Put simply, when you have a proposal that is drawing unanimous opposition from Republicans in Congress and is being criticized by the ACLU and Big Labor, there is a pretty decent chance it is not good policy. Quite frankly, that characterization is probably too charitable for this particular proposal. This proposed regulation needs to be stopped in its tracks. Yesterday the House of Representatives passed legislation that would do just that. If enacted, the House bill would delay the implementation of the proposal for one year. I am an original cosponsor of the Senate companion bill to this legislation, which was introduced by Senators Flake and Roberts. Sadly, I think I know where my colleagues on the other side of the aisle stand on this issue, and I expect those of us here in the Senate who support the right of all Americans to participate in the political process are likely to be disappointed with regard to this particular legislative effort. Still, even if this legislation dies here in the Senate, that will not be the end of the line. Earlier this month, when I came to the floor to talk about this issue, I called on IRS Commissioner Koskinen to use his authority to block these regulations. I expect him to do so. When questioned about this proposal, he has consistently deferred, usually saying he was not the Commissioner when it was drafted and published. Fine. But he is the Commissioner now, and now that he is the Commissioner, he is in a position to stop the proposed regulation from going final and acquiring the force of law. This proposal cannot take effect unless Commissioner Koskinen personally approves and signs the final regulation clearance package. That being the case, I call on him today to do the right thing--to not sign it when it reaches his desk. In fact, he ought to decry it for what it is. In an ideal world, the administration would simply withdraw this proposal and leave this issue alone. However, we are not living in such a world. That being the case, if the administration continues its effort to push through this proposed rule, the IRS Commissioner can and should use his authority to stop it from taking effect. After all, that is one reason Congress gives the IRS Commissioner a 5-year term. The Commissioner is supposed to be free from political pressure when making decisions and implementing our Nation's tax laws. In light of that fact, I want to implore Commissioner Koskinen to use the power he has been granted to restore the IRS's credibility and make it clear to the American people that his agency, the IRS, will no longer be used as simply another political arm of this or any future administration. I hope he will do so because it is the right thing to do, and I am calling on him to do it. I have faith in Commissioner Koskinen. I believe he is an honest man. I don't think he has any other choice but to stop these obnoxious regulations which people from the left to the right consider to be breaches of free speech and are wrong. I yield the floor. Affordable Care Act