Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I am opposed to S. 1569. Our national debt is nearly $17 trillion and has nearly doubled since the beginning of the Obama administration. If we allow the Nation to continue on its current path, it will only lead to economic destruction. Raising the debt ceiling without any strings attached would be irresponsible and reckless. The President has already increased the debt limit five times since coming to office. The first occurred just a month after President Obama took office. At $789 billion, the increase was provided to pay for his massive, unsuccessful stimulus package. With supermajorities in the House and the Senate, the President was able to push nearly everything he wanted into law. Because the stimulus package ended up being more expensive than expected, the President got another increase of $290 billion just 10 months later. Then, just 2 months after that, the President pushed another increase through, this time for $1.9 trillion. Thirteen months into his Presidency, President Obama had already increased the debt limit by nearly $3 trillion. Then, following the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans in Congress welcomed reinforcements, which changed the dynamic. With control of the House and an increased margin in the Senate, Republicans were able to force spending cut concessions from the President before agreeing to any debt limit increase. In August 2010, after nearly exceeding the debt limit, the President agreed to increase the debt limit by $2.1 trillion in exchange for $2.1 trillion in spending cuts, including what has become known as sequestration. While I supported the total reduction in spending enacted by the bill, I voted against it because I believe the cuts should have been allocated in a different way. In total, nearly $1 trillion was cut from national security spending, which is having a very real, hollowing effect on our ability to protect the Nation. Further, these cuts did not include anything from mandatory entitlement programs like food stamps, and too little of it came from other domestic programs that are better suited for the States to run. Earlier this year, the President demanded another debt limit increase. He received it, but only after agreeing to force Senate Democrats to consider a budget, which until this year had never been done during the Obama administration. This bill also suspended Congressional pay until a budget was agreed to. I oppose this bill because I do not believe that simply passing a budget was enough. Real spending cuts with real reforms to our permanent programs are needed. Today we find ourselves in the same situation, and my position has not changed. Spending is continuing to spiral out of control, and if we do nothing to rein it in, our national debt will skyrocket to $25 trillion in the next decade. Even the President agrees with those numbers. We cannot allow this to happen, which is why I oppose S. 1569.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I do have time right now that is scheduled. However, my friend from Alabama had one other point to make. I would like to yield 2 minutes of my time to the Senator from Alabama.

Mr. INHOFE. I agree with my good friend from Alabama. He has done a great job on this subject. I would like to say, one of the things I enjoyed about the presentation that was made by my good friend from Texas Senator Cruz was that we were in a position that is very rare in this body, where we could talk as long as we wanted to. In fact, we actually tried to talk longer. We were looking for different things to fill in. We may have forgotten some. That is not where we are today. We are confined. But I have to share with my good friend in the chair that something I am going to say now is going to be very offensive to a lot of people, but I really don't care. At my age and being here, I think I know what this country is all about and I think I know that we have the obligation to express our true feelings. I have written a speech and have put it off. I am not going to give it today. But I was rereading it this morning. I had no intention of coming down and talking because I talked long enough during the course of the Cruz talk. But I went back and reread the speech I was going to give. What it is is to answer the question one of my sons asked me, and everyone has been saying this over a period of time in Oklahoma. I don't think Oklahoma is that different from other States. But they ask me over and over again, they say: What happened? Why is it that we have an administration--people in government, not just the Obama administration but others--who are praising Islam and trashing Christianity, trashing the Judeo-Christian values and other things that are happening today? We all know it is true. How do you answer that? It is a tough answer. So I am preparing and later on I will give you a little warning, I am going to make a little talk. There is a guy named Paul Johnson who wrote a history of the American people. He talks about how we got to where we are today. This is going to tie into ObamaCare. He says that the Puritans were devoted and single-minded to their ambition of creating a colony that was built on the foundation and teachings of Jesus Christ. The Mayflower compact is evidence of that. Paul Johnson, the guy who wrote the book I told you about, is right to observe the document was not just a ``contract . . . between a servant and a master, or a people and a king, but between a group of like-minded individuals, with God as a witness and symbolic co-signatory.'' Why is this important? It is important because William Bradford and the other Puritans understood that while forming a civil government was fully within their rights, there were limitations to what they could and could not do. Not talking about government here. Those limitations were established by God and enumerated in the Bible. I go on. When I make my talk on this, I quote the Apostle Paul in Romans, but there is not time for that. I go on to say it is within the foundation of Biblical authority that the Puritans crafted the Mayflower compact and their system of government at Plymouth Colony. Paul Johnson rightly observes that this line and model of thinking was critical to laying the foundation for a successful United States of America. Ultimately, it is a morality derived from God that had its strongest enduring influence over the Nation, and this is what has crafted our history as a strong nation. I say all this as a predicate to the answer to the question people ask me: Why is it that we are trashing our Judeo-Christian values in favor of something that was not American to start with? Sadly, our Nation does not have the same belief today that we had during that time in our history. We have become arrogant, inward-focused individuals. Rather than submit to God's authority and definitions of truth, justice, and goodness, as we conduct our government's business, we have replaced them with our own ideals defined on what feels right at the time. As Americans, we now look inward to ourselves to define with fluidity the foundation of truth. We have allowed ourselves to become ultimate arbiters of what is right and wrong instead of the higher moral authority of God. Lastly, what was going to be in this talk, this time getting back to the subject at hand, today, instead of having leaders who are protecting the church from government, we have leaders who believe it is government's job to impose on churches what should be universally upheld as truth. Instead of leaders who are protecting an American's freedom to practice his or her religion of their choice-- here I am not talking about the choice you may be thinking about--they may instead be using government institutions and law to force them to do or buy things that are in very violation to their religious beliefs and conscience. That is the issue we are talking about now. Government has become so strong and influential in our lives that we are losing our powers, and these are our ordained powers that we know are a part of this country. There is not a person in here who didn't study the Pilgrims coming over on the Mayflower and having that meeting in the captain's chamber and making these decisions and now we are where we are today. I have an example. I have a friend in Oklahoma whose name is David Green. David Green started a company called Hobby Lobby. David Green and his wife started this company by making picture frames in their garage. They were able to open their first store, which was 300 square feet, with the profits they made in their little garage operation making picture frames. Over the years their business has grown to 550 stores. It has an annual revenue of $2.5 billion, and David Green has had success despite running his business in a very countercultural way. For instance, all of the retail stores close at 8 p.m. each night and all day on Sunday so employees can spend time with their families. This is appreciated by the company's 16,000 employees--remember, it all started in a garage-- who are paid at a minimum $12 an hour, even though they could be paying a much lower legal rate. At one point, the company was challenged by a competitor who said they would bury Hobby Lobby with their money, so their firm opened their doors on Sunday, ultimately earning the company $150 million in revenue each week. Eventually, David Green said he was challenged by God to trust in him with his business, to go back to his policy of closing on Sundays and he did and his business has prospered. It is one of the largest businesses in America today. David's Christian faith runs deeper than his desire to have a profitable, successful company. When he was faced with a decision to make more money or obey God, he chose to obey God, whatever the consequences. Keep all of that in mind and listen to this. This is what I am getting at. Recently, he was faced with a new test. It didn't come from a competitor. It came from the U.S. Government. Part of the ObamaCare law requires employers not only to provide health care insurance to their employees but also to provide free access to the pills that terminate pregnancies. David, as I do, and many others believe--and some don't believe that we believe--that life begins at conception, and offering an option to end that life would be in violation, in his case, of his moral compass as defined by his faith in Jesus Christ. As a result, he said he would rather pay the $1.3 million a day in daily fines from the Obama administration than comply with the law. Here is a guy who feels so strongly in his beliefs--that I think are consistent with the beliefs that made this country great, but that is just my belief--that he would pay $1.3 million a day in fines from the Obama administration rather than comply with this law. Today the Obama administration is vigorously opposing Hobby Lobby's legal challenge to the mandate, claiming that this privately owned business is waging a war on women for not agreeing to provide these treatments for its employees free of charge. That is just one example of what is happening. By the way, I don't think my State of Oklahoma is that different from most other States. Last week, four universities in my great State of Oklahoma filed a lawsuit against the Federal Government over the ObamaCare mandate to provide certain types of contraception to their employees. These are four universities which are joining with this one great American named David Green. So we have the faith of an individual and what he is willing to do for his faith. He is willing to stand up to this abusive government that we have today and to this ObamaCare law and is willing to pay $1.3 million a day. My feelings are just as strong as his on this issue, but that is a subject for another day. My wife and I have 20 kids and grandkids. Back in the old days, when we were having our kids, there was kind of a rule where you couldn't go into the hospital, I say to my good friend who is occupying the chair. Back then we couldn't see this and we had to wait outside and we didn't have notice of what the baby was going to be and all that. But in the case of my first grandchild, my daughter called me up and said: All right, Daddy. Come on over. It is time. I went over to the hospital delivery room. What a great experience that was. I never dreamed that would ever happen. We are talking about a number of years ago--17 years ago. So I watched this take place, and I honestly--a tear did come out from my eye. At that time we were talking about partial birth abortions and the fact that they could have taken little baby Jase and jammed scissors into his skull and sucked his brains out. That could have happened, but it didn't happen. I feel just as strongly as David Green does. I can make all the arguments I want about this, and I made arguments on the floor during the Cruz debate. I remember Hillary health care, which was about 19 years ago and it was the same thing. It was government taking over the health care system, and I had my friends in Parliament and Great Britain who would call and say: What is wrong with you guys over there? Don't you realize we are just getting away from this thing that hasn't worked? Don't kid yourself and think this is not a road to socialized medicine if we end up not doing something about ObamaCare. It is. I have a great deal of respect for the leader of the Senate, Harry Reid. Senator Reid himself said: Yes, I believe this is leading to--and I endorse it--the single-payer system. So we are talking about socialized medicine. They called and said: What is wrong with you guys? It hasn't worked in Great Britain, it hasn't worked in Denmark, and it hasn't worked in Canada. Yet you think it is somehow going to work there. That is the big issue. We have an abusive government, and this is probably the greatest single step we have witnessed in the last 4\1/2\ years as to the abuse that has taken place. We need to look at the big picture and do something about this. They say it can't be done now. It is too late. They are probably right, but they said the same thing about Hillary health care 19 years ago, and I will never forget it because I was on a plane going back to my State of Oklahoma and had a stop in Chicago. I thought we finally drove the final nail in the coffin and killed Hillary health care. Yet I picked up the Wall Street Journal, and there was a full-page ad by the AMA endorsing Hillary health care. They had given up, and that was the day before they gave them that story. Anyway, it is never too late. This is something that needs to be stopped. I have faith in the American people that somehow we are going to win this thing. I thank the Chair. I know my time has expired.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. INHOFE. A lot of people have forgotten the cost of this. I would like to go over a couple of things if it is all right with the Senator. First, I wonder if the same thing is happening in his State--which is to the south of Oklahoma--of Texas that is happening in my State of Oklahoma. We are just a week away from when people will have to start signing up for ObamaCare. I commend Senator Cruz for reminding the American people that this law doesn't have to be a new reality. It doesn't have to be that way. We can stop it. There are still lingering questions about exactly what this is all going to look like. We do know this reform law, as they call it, continues to be expensive and overreaching. When it started out, it didn't sound too bad to the American people. It is estimated that the program will now cost as much as $2.4 trillion over the years. As I have suggested to my friend from Texas, around here we know what $1 trillion is, but most people don't know what that means. It is hard to understand this as far as what is going on in America. It will cost $2.6 trillion over 10 years once this is fully implemented, assuming they are successful in doing it. The cost estimates have only continued to rise since the law was passed. Most recently the administration asked for another $5.4 billion in discretionary funds next year for implementation. That is $5.4 billion in discretionary funds. Let's stop and think about that. One of the worst things about the Obama administration--and the Senator from Texas understands this since he is on the Senate Armed Services Committee--is how this President has been disarming America. The discretionary money that would be coming out of this is money that otherwise could be used for our systems and to support our warfighters over there. That is just the cost of the Federal Government. It doesn't include the lost hours, wages, and employees who have lost their jobs and the cost it will be to their families. Everyone agrees the premiums will rise. In my home State of Oklahoma we have a guy named John Doak. After talking to the insurance companies, he said Oklahomans' insurance will increase by a minimum of 30 percent and up to 100 percent. He also said that one in four insurers in Oklahoma will have their rates vary from $143 a month for a 30-year-old with basic coverage to $673 a month for a 64-year-old who wants the best coverage. Remember, the President promised to lower the premiums by $2,500. What I want to do, if I could, is share a little bit of good news. I know the Senator from Texas is aware of it, but I don't know how many other people are aware of this. We have a great attorney general in the State of Oklahoma whose name is Scott Pruitt. I suspect the Senator from Texas has met Scott Pruitt. Before we voted on this issue, we had a question on whether some of these subsidies would go any further. Scott Pruitt, through the courts, filed a lawsuit and is leading the charge to dismantle ObamaCare and put an end to it. Last month the judge overseeing the lawsuit ruled against a motion filed by the Obama administration to dismiss the case, which means the case will proceed. That is huge. If this goes through, this whole thing will be dismantled. That is why we need to go ahead and fight this as best we can, recognizing that there are other areas where the American people are speaking. Certainly Scott Pruitt is doing great things. I heard the Senator mention Congressman Louie Gohmert. Congressman Gohmert is a very close friend of mine. We have been together on a lot of things. I was visiting with him. He is in the Chamber right now and would like to share some of the things that are happening in his district, which is eastern Texas. These are some of the letters that he gets from constituents. This says: To get setup on the software was too expensive. She also didn't want to be limited on the time she felt she needed to spend with her patients. Therefore, she stopped taking Medicare. Had to go on strictly cash basis. This text says: My wife's doctor has just retired because he did not want to deal with ObamaCare. This is a letter that came from someone whose name is Katy Smith. She goes through quite a bit, and then says: The explanation from IBM was that they ``projected that health care costs under the current IBM Medicare-eligible retiree plan options will nearly triple by 2020.'' This is another letter from Riverside Cottages. I guess that is someplace in eastern Texas. We were notified July 15, 2013 that my husband's insurance coverage, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana/Montana Comprehensive Health Association will terminate December 31, 2013. When my husband contacted Blue Cross Blue Shield, they told him that this policy will no longer exist due to Obama Care. He will need to find new coverage. And it goes on and on. The interesting thing--and the reason I am reading Texas letters right now--is that we receive a lot of them, and they are up in my office someplace. So this hits home and hits home hard. I ask my friend from Texas if he has received a lot of these anecdotal letters from people who are suffering serious hardships and are now anticipating what will happen when this becomes a reality?

Mr. INHOFE. Before that happens, I think it is important that the people of this country have to know what this is all about. This is socialized medicine. A lot of them didn't believe that. Last week majority leader Harry Reid was on the PBS ``Nevada Week in Review.'' He was asked whether his goal was to move ObamaCare to a single-payer system. His answer was: Yes, yes. Absolutely yes. Do a lot of the people know what a single-payer system is? That is essentially socialized medicine. I was around during the Clinton administration when there was a thing called Hillary health care. Does my friend from Texas remember Hillary health care?

Mr. INHOFE. That is exactly what did happen. I can remember going from Washington to my hometown of Tulsa. Normally I have to go through Chicago. Chicago is where the AMA has their headquarters, and it is probably still there. I will always remember this. I was rejoicing. I was coming back after the long fight against Hillary health care or socialized medicine. I remember saying the question on the Senate floor: Try to explain this to me: If socialized medicine doesn't work in Great Britain, Sweden, or Canada, why would it work in this country? They never said it, but what they were thinking was: If I were running it, it would work. We got that point across. They started way ahead with Hillary health care, and then we started to catch up. Just like now people are realizing this is a failed socialized medicine effort. We had won. That kind of relates to what is happening today. I was on that plane going through Chicago to Tulsa, and I picked up the Wall Street Journal, and there was a full-page ad by the AMA supporting Hillary health care. Of course, when I stopped in Chicago, I went and visited the AMA. This is an organization that represents a lot of real smart doctors and others who were saying that we can't win. We can't win this and therefore let's go ahead with it. We had already won when they ran that ad. I don't know how many days before that they put the ad in, but nonetheless we had won. I don't know if my friend remembers that because my friend was not in the Senate at that time. That is exactly what happened, and it is very analogous to a lot of things that are happening today. The other thing I wanted to mention is that anytime desperation starts to set in, there are a lot of things that go around to confuse people. Let me tell everyone what happened in Oklahoma today. This will surprise my friend from Texas. There are 14 people who started this-- the Senator from Texas, myself, and 12 other people about 6 weeks ago. During this time we have been in lockstep to see what we could do to stop this from happening to my 20 kids and grandkids and the rest of America. People realized I was there from the very beginning, as the Senator from Texas mentioned, and yet we have some of the Obama people who are doing robocalls in my State of Oklahoma posing as tea party people and saying to call Inhofe because he is for ObamaCare. I say to my good friend, I can't believe something like that is happening. It shows a level of desperation where they are trying to get people confused as to what the issue is and want to get to these deadlines so we can get past this and have this thing as a reality. Every liberal in America is probably for it.

Mr. INHOFE. If the Senator from Texas will yield, because he said something that is so profound.

Mr. INHOFE. Of course. The Senator from Texas said if you don't have logic on your side or the facts on your side or the public on your side, what do you do? It is not just pounding the table. It is name- calling. I went through this, I would suggest to my friend, 12 years ago when the Kyoto treaty was up and everyone thought global warming was coming and that was going to be everyone's trip to the White House to support global warming, until we realized what the cost would be. I was the bad guy because I stood and said: No, this isn't true. First of all, it is a hoax; and secondly, even if it is not, we couldn't do it. That is when all the name-calling started. I can remember being called--in writing and by a fairly prominent person--I should be hanged for treason at that time. That is what they get, and that is what my friend is going through right now with a lot of people who don't agree with him. Twelve years later, what has happened? People realize I was right. I am not suggesting it is going to be 12 years before they realize the Senator from Texas is right on this, but it means the behavior of people today is something that has happened many times in the past. So I would just ask my friend to remember that and to realize that quite often, when a person is right on a controversial issue, they are going to be the subject of a lot of criticism, a lot of cussing, a lot of name-calling, and a lot of violence. So this isn't the first time.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a procedural question?

Mr. INHOFE. Last night at 10 o'clock I was privileged to be down here with the Senator and we went over a lot of things. Something happened this morning. I went home, I went to bed, I ate. I am back here now. The Senator from Kentucky has been waiting 40 minutes. I am not going to use his time, but what I would like to do is this. Something happened after I left last night, after a statement I made having to do with Hillary health care. I want to share that with the Senator. But I do not want to do it now on his time. Hopefully, if you are going to be here at 9 o'clock I would like to get back in line and share what happened last night after I left here. Is that all right?

Mr. INHOFE. I appreciate the Senator from Kentucky allowing me to come in front of him.

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. INHOFE. I mentioned a few minutes ago, when I was here last night something was said, and I went back and I got some phone calls because people did not believe it. I say to my good friend Senator Cruz, I think sometimes people like you who are living this issue 24 hours a day--literally 24 hours on this day--may assume people understand the significance of some things that they do not. Because I got these phone calls last night when I was talking about--and I quoted our leader here in the Senate, Senator Harry Reid. A couple days ago on the PBS program ``Nevada Week in Review,'' Senate majority leader Harry Reid was asked whether his goal was to move ObamaCare to a single-payer system, and his answer was: ``Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.'' I know I said this last night. But a lot of people did not realize that because there is--and if the Senator does not mind, I am going to take a few minutes here to kind of set the question up because I think it is important. As the Acting President pro tempore will remember, since he was in the other body when I was elected many years ago to the House of Representatives--I recall at that time nobody thought the Republicans would ever be a majority of anything, the House or the Senate. I know that would have pleased the Acting President pro tempore. It is kind of interesting because we became very good friends, and yet we are philosophically apart from each other. But I observed four things, and I did not think about this until this morning and how this subject fits into this. At the time Republicans were totally insignificant in the House of Representatives, so I spent my time sitting on the floor, and I listened and I observed some things, and I actually wrote a paper about this. I am going from memory now, but I recall in this paper I said there are, in my opinion, four flawed premises on which Democrats' policies are based, and I listed those four flawed premises. They were: The cold war is over. We no longer need a strong military. Punishment is not a deterrent to crime. Deficit spending is not bad public policy. And then the fourth one: that government can run our lives better than people can. Well, I kind of went through that. I remember so well that one time there was an amendment on the floor--and I know those who were there at the time will recall this-- that we were going to take some of these closed bases, because of the cost of incarceration for prisoners, and we were going to take those and take the fences and turn them around to keep people in instead of people out. Well, that made sense. So I had an amendment on a bill, and it was a bill that I remember was a big punishment bill that became very controversial at that time. But I had that amendment to do that, and they defeated the amendment. The reason they defeated it was they said: We cannot expect our prison population to live in such substandard housing. Then I remembered, wait a minute. I was in the U.S. Army. I lived in that housing. I know a little bit about that. So that was kind of the punishment. Then at the end of the Cold War--you know, so we do not need the military--a lot of them were saying: We need to cut back. And we did. We actually cut back, and Republicans and Democrats agreed at that time. But now it has changed because what we are doing now--I call it the Obama disarming of America. I can remember--and a lot of times when you talk about people as being liberals or conservatives, you are not name-calling, you are saying: What is the involvement of government? A liberal believes the government should have a greater involvement in our lives. Conservatives believe the government has too much control and, therefore, we do not need to do that. Anyway, I went to Afghanistan when the first budget 4\1/2\ years ago came out. I stood over there knowing I would get national attention, knowing this would be the first step in what I call the disarming of America by Obama. So I stood over there. I recall in that very first budget he did away with our only fifth-generation fighter, the F-22; he did away with our lift capacity, the C-17; he did away with our future combat system, which would have been the first advancement in ground capability in 50 years; and he did away with the ground-based interceptor in Poland. By the way, we are paying dearly for that now because we realize now, with Iran having the capability they have and our intelligence saying they are going to have a delivery system by 2015, we need to have something to defend that coast. Then we went through, and, of course, if you extend the budget of the President, it took $487 million out of the military. So I just wanted to say that is true. This is after several years, way back when I was in the House of Representatives. Deficit spending, not bad public policy--that is something we have heard quite often from some of our more liberal friends on the other side. But the fourth thing is that government can run our lives better than people can. Now, I tell my friend from Texas, this goes all of the way back to the late eighties; this observation was made by me. That is exactly what we are looking at today--a recognition by some people that somehow government can run this system better than people can. So last night when I was honored to stand with my good friend from Texas--I recall having been here back during the Clinton administration. We had a thing called Hillary health care. That goes right along with the same thing. So a lot of the phone calls I got last night after being on the Floor with you were people saying: Well, I do not even remember that. I did not know we tried that before. The big point here is that they thought it was over, it was done. They were going to have Hillary health care; as Senator Reid said, yes, a single-payer system. This is what they want. That is what they wanted back in the early and middle nineties. So we had Hillary health care. They thought it was over. They said: It is over; we are not going to win this. Consequently, you know, a lot of people actually believed that. Last night I talked about after we finally had victory. It happened that there was a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal by the AMA saying that we embrace Hillary health care because they thought they were going to lose it. That is kind of where we are today. At that time they thought there was no way in the world we were going to win this. They were going to be able to defeat it because it was a done deal. That is why I admire our good friend Senator Cruz for having the tenacity to stay in here and recognize that we went through this once before. If we did it once before, we can do it again. The reason Hillary health care lost way back in the middle nineties was that people realized it as socialized medicine. Again, you ask the question. It does not work anywhere else. It does not work in Sweden, Great Britain. Why would it work here? And the answer? I know they will never say it, but what they are thinking is, well, if I were running it, it would work. It is kind of a mentality that government can run our lives better than people can. So I want to say one thing before I ask my question; that is, I have had a great blessing in my life, which is getting to know a great American whose name is Rafael Cruz. Rafael Cruz came to this country the tough way. He recognized from his past experience what real freedom is. I have some quotes here that I wrote down because I use these quite often. He said: ``Our lives are under attack. ObamaCare is going to destroy the elderly by denying care, by even perhaps denying treatment to people who are in catastrophic circumstances.'' I hear people say all the time that this will never happen in America. It is happening in America. It is happening in America, and our rights are being eroded more and more every day. In one of his speeches he gave not too long ago, he said: I think the most ominous words I've heard was in the last two State of the Union addresses, when our President said, ``If Congress does not act, I will act unilaterally.'' Scarily reminiscent of how things were done in Cuba. A law that no Republican voted for is now the law of the land; governing by decree, by Executive order, just like Cuba, the country he left behind. This is Rafael Cruz, who happens to be the father of our own Senator Ted Cruz. He is one who came over. He escaped the very overbearing power of government to come here for that reason. So I look at that, and I remember one of the greatest speeches--I have said this often. I know a lot of people do not agree with it. Probably the greatest speech I have heard in my life was ``A Rendezvous With Destiny'' by Ronald Reagan. In his speech, he tells the story of someone who could have been Rafael Cruz, someone who was escaping from Communist Castro Cuba to come to this country and risking his life. In his speech ``Rendezvous With Destiny,'' Ronald Reagan said--this is way back when he was the Governor of California. He said: The boat came up. It washed up on the shore in southern Florida. There was a woman there, and he was telling the woman about the atrocities in Communist Cuba. When he was through, she said: Well, we do not know how fortunate we are in this country. He said: No, we are the ones who are fortunate because we had a place to escape to. Does that not tell the story? That was a government running everything. They escaped that and came to this country, risked their lives, and they are over here. I know that my kids--Kay and I have 20 kids and grandkids. I was listening last night when the Senator was reading a bedtime story to his little kids. Ours are not little kids anymore, but my grandkids are. The Senator stopped and said: What kind of America, what kind of America are these kids going to be inheriting? Why is it popular now? Why would someone who believes government should have a larger role in our lives be reelected? What has happened to the American people and the values we held for so many years so close to us? Well, that is a hard thing to answer. But I know there are several of them--people who have experienced that, leaving slavery to come to this country. By the way, last night when I was reading the various things, I did not have any statements from the people from Oklahoma, so I was reading from Louie Gohmert, who represents the eastern part of Texas. He had a lot of anecdotal stories from people in East Texas--just like Oklahoma. We are not that far apart. But since that time, someone called last night and they said: You should use stories from Oklahoma. K. Matheson said: Stand with Senator Ted Cruz. Defund ObamaCare. A single- payer health care system is nothing more than a socialized system. She is from Bethany, OK. I do not want to give her last name. She did not want it given. Sue said: Thank you. What's to protect people from being victims of identity theft with all of these so-called advisors having access to people's financial and health care records? Why aren't members of Congress, the White House and their staffs included? Well, they should be included. We have been talking about that. The Senator from Texas has been talking about that. We had a tweet that came in this morning. It said: What allows the executive branch to pick & choose who must follow ObamaCare & what parts to enforce? So we have got a lot of that stuff. But the thing I wanted to bring up last night--one of the things--is that something really good is happening. We are talking about the bad things, but there is another opportunity. We have a great guy in Oklahoma by the name of Scott Pruitt. He is our attorney general. In fact, I tell my friend Senator Cruz that while he was running for attorney general, I flew him around. Aviation is kind of my thing. I was flying him around the State. I got to know him quite well. He told me at that time that he saw this threat coming. So what he has done is he has filed a lawsuit. I am proud to say that Oklahoma and the attorney general, through the courts, are leading the charge to dismantle ObamaCare and put an end to its onerous taxes. Just last month a judge overseeing the lawsuit ruled against a motion filed by the administration to dismiss the case, which means the case will proceed. Well, that was a major obstacle. No one thought he would be able to overcome this motion to dismiss. So it is still out there. The law is a train wreck. We know that. There have been several proposals to prevent further damage. We need to defund the law. We need to make sure no additional taxpayer money would be used. If he is successful, that will affect some 34 States that are in the same situation as Oklahoma. If he is successful, that is going to pull the funding out of ObamaCare, and it could be that just one guy in the State of Oklahoma will be responsible for that. So this is happening. Yes, there are all of the efforts that are taking place here, primarily by my good friend from Texas, but we are in Oklahoma. We are involved in this too. We are hoping to be able to have that opportunity. I want to mention one other thing because this came in. I am going to read this. It is a letter. It is not all that long, but I think it is really revealing. It says: I cannot tell you how distressed I am with regard to the Affordable Health Care Act-- This came from Lynn in Oklahoma. This came in last night-- Obama-care. I am fearful for my kids, now 18 and 20. There is the effect it is having right now--employers are not allowing their workers to have full-time hours. They are hiring more part-time workers to make up the difference for the company so they won't be penalized for not providing health insurance. Both of my kids are unable to get full-time employment. For a year, my daughter was able to work 40-plus hours a week. Then, with the implementation of the ACA, no one can work over 29 hours a week. Instant pay cut. My son, who just graduated from high school, finally found a job at a restaurant, and they give him 4 hours a day. He is still looking. Additionally, I have adult friends whose hours are being cut at UCO so they don't get penalized for not providing health insurance to their part-time people, adults with families getting their wages cut-- This is just a normal citizen out there. This is not a professional. This is what people are thinking, at least in my State of Oklahoma and I think throughout the Nation. --adults with families getting their wages cut so the employer does not have to pay for health insurance. Did you not think employers would not find a way out of this at the expense of the American people? Is everyone in Washington so blind or is it selfish? My husband's employer now wants to penalize us if I choose to stay on his health coverage rather than take the inferior health care package at my employment. Mr. Inhofe, I dedicated my life to raising my kids and taking care of my family. I currently make $12.25 an hour. I have a bachelor's degree. It would be senseless for me to pay for health care on a salary when my husband's health care is so much better, and I have been on it for the last 13 years. Thirteen years. She would have to give that up. He takes care of me as my husband. I should not be penalized for wanting to work full time at this juncture of my life. If his company pushes the issue, I feel as if I will not be able to stay employed full time, which is a violation of my basic human rights. Now that my kids are grown, I need and want to work. At 52 it is highly unlikely that I am going to make a wage that is going to allow me to pay for health insurance. It is against my constitutional right to force me to purchase health insurance I do not need. The law is unconstitutional and un-American. Please tell me what we can do. The American people deserve to be able to work full time without being penalized. I am tired of Washington and its dirty politics. Everyone in Washington should be held to the same laws it passes for the American people. Amen. Each one of you need to have the same health coverage expenses that we have. I feel as if our country is headed, at lightening speed, for a major breakdown. What are you going to do to stop it and how can I help? I am frightened for the future of my children and the future of America. I am tired of DC politics. That was Lynn from Oklahoma City. This came in last night. I have several others that just came in overnight. But I think the thing that people did not realize and that we were able to talk about last night was the fact that this has happened once before, and they came dangerously close to pulling it off back in the middle nineties. You know, I have to say this. There is a brilliant strategy going on right now. I didn't realize it until yesterday. There are some pro- ObamaCare people who are doing robocalls. I know the occupier of the chair knows what robocalls are, but a lot of people do not. These are automated calls where they call and a voice comes on and it gives a message. People listen to that. Sometimes they believe it, sometimes they do not. Most of the times they do. So there are robocalls that are going on by the pro-Obama health care people, going to the strongest opponents of ObamaCare and trying to make people think they are supporting it. It is to confuse the electorate. When you stop to think about it, that is pretty brilliant, and they did it. All day yesterday there were calls going around my State of Oklahoma by someone. The message was something like this: This is Joe Smith. I am with the ABC tea party--these are not tea party people, but nonetheless that is how they identify themselves--your Senator Jim Inhofe is supporting ObamaCare and you have to call his office. This is what his number is. We started getting calls and people didn't even know there were 14 of us who joined together with Senator Cruz about 6 weeks ago. I was 1 of the 14 and one of the strongest supporters of his cause. Yet they were trying to make people believe something else just to confuse them. Frankly, it is dishonest, but it is brilliant. When we are looking and we are seeing what happened, what is going on today, I do applaud my friend. I feel guilty, I have to say to my friend, Senator Cruz, because I left him last night at 10 o'clock. I went home, had dinner, and went to bed. I got up and he was still talking. That is the depth of his feeling about this. I believe what we learned, a lesson we can remember back in the middle of the 1990s, the lesson we learned there, when it was all over, we had lost, but we didn't lose because the American people came to our aid. We were a minority at the time, but they came to our aid and we turned this whole thing around. That is exactly where we are today. My question to my good friend, Senator Cruz, is I believe that history could repeat itself. Does the Senator?

Mr. INHOFE. Before the Senator continues, would he yield for one followup question.

Mr. INHOFE. It was interesting. I don't think I have ever been referred to as the senior statesman, but I kind of like that. I wondered, when the Senator mentioned the four of us coming down--he put us in that category. We have been here for a while. There is one thing we all four had in common. We all had a career in the real world first. One of the problems we have that I have observed, I say: What do you want to do? The reply is: Oh, I want to be a Member of Congress. So they leave the fraternity house and they move to Congress. They have never been in the real world. People ask me the question: what should I do if I want to get into politics. I say go out for at least 15 years, live under this system, and learn how tough things are. In my case I spent over 20 years, did a lot of building and developing in the State of Texas where Senator Cruz is from. I have talked to his father, Raphael, several times about this. I remember there I was doing things that Americans are supposed to do. I was making money, losing money, expanding the tax base. Yet the obstacle I had all during those years was the Federal Government, and I was doing what Americans are supposed to be doing. I remember that is when I decided. The last thing I did down in Texas, a pretty good-sized development, and I had to go to 25 governmental agencies to get a dock permit. I thought, wait a minute, they are supposed to be on our side. I decided I would run to come to Congress and try to save the free enterprise system. That is what all four of us have in common. We may have been here for a while, but we are here with a cause and here with experience. How abusive government can be. I have not seen a time when the abuse is greater than it is today on what is happening to us, to think that we have a policy by the President, as he has been able to sell the idea, get the votes, get it through, and it is socializing medicine. It is something that has failed year after year after year in every country where they have tried to do it. Does my friend from Texas see anything different about the United States of America, how socialized medicine would work here when it hasn't worked anywhere else?

Mr. INHOFE. Would the Senator yield one last time for a question?

Mr. INHOFE. I hope my wife will forgive me, because I know she is watching, or I suspect she is watching because she has an equal interest in this issue for a totally different reason. Kay and I have been married--our 54th wedding anniversary is coming up. We have 20 kids and grandkids. She went through an experience, and our whole family went through the experience with her a short while ago, less than 1 year ago. She discovered she had a serious heart problem with the aortic valve. I have to praise her for not telling me anything about it for 4 months. She knew she was going to have to have this very serious operation. She is only 1 year younger than I am. She knew she was going to have the operation and she didn't want to say anything because she didn't want to worry me. She was writing things out about what things would go to what kids because she didn't think she was going to make it. She thought there was a good chance she wouldn't. We went through that experience with her. I will tell you what is funny. All our grandkids call us--my name is Inhofe, so ``I'' is for Inhofe so they called us Mom I and Pop I. That is how they have referred to us. Since she had a valve put in her heart that was from a cow, instead of calling her Mom I, they call her Moom I. She went through this very difficult procedure with the best medical care in St. John's Medical Center in Tulsa, Dr. Robert Garrett, all the nurses, all the people all the way down. I was thinking, that is my first experience at my age, my senior age, of seeing this system work. Where would she have been in Canada? I have talked to people and they said: No. At her age she would have waited in such a long line that she probably would not have been able to make it. It is serious things she is going through. I don't think I am the only one who has had this experience, but that was a wakeup call. I would hope and suggest to the Senator that other people speak up, even though it is somewhat uncomfortable. I thank God we had the system that allowed Kay and me to be able to look forward to our next 54 years of marriage.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I can't disagree there is politics here. This is the Senate. But let me say one thing. I strongly support this amendment. Let me ask in the order of things right now, does the Senator from Texas still have the floor?

Mr. INHOFE. Very good. I appreciate that. One thing, as I read this resolution that my good friend Senator Cruz has, I thought it really does not go far enough. I think all that people are talking about now is how can we preclude this from happening again, what happened and all that. To me that is not even the issue. The issue is the coverup. I sat there as the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee. I watched the day that this happened, 9/11, then of course the annex came after that, 9/12, the next day. When that happened there was never any doubt but that it was an organized terrorist attack-- never any doubt. I happened to know Chris Stevens. He happened to be in my office right before he was deployed there. He was telling me in my office how dangerous it was over there. He said, you know, there are threats, there are terrorist threats. Al Qaeda has a presence over there and we do not have a lot of security, and he started requesting security. This is a long time before this happened. I have all the dates. I did not bring them down with me because it would be redundant. It has been in the Record so many times, that he knew this was happening. We knew there was this kind of activity in that part of the world and he wanted to do something about it, offer more security. He is dead now, and he knew what he was getting into at that time. When the threats came for what happened on 9/11, people were aware of that. Remember the Brits, they left and several others just up and left because they knew what kind of threat was out there. Anyway, what we did right after 9/11--and it is just a matter of hours after that they attacked the annex. They cannot say for certain that the original attack was organized. I think it was; it was an organized terrorist attack. But they can say with certainty, and I will not use my words, I will use their words, it was ``unequivocal,'' unequivocal that we knew at that time it was an organized terrorist attack. I remember when Secretary Panetta came forward and he used the same word ``unequivocal.'' Then the CIA Chief Brennan, at that time--that was his job--said, sitting in my office and then again before a hearing, it was unequivocal that we knew it was an organized terrorist, Al Qaeda-related attack. We knew it. The coverup is this. I have studied coverups for a long time. Iran- Contra, I went all the way through that. I remember that well. The Pentagon Papers, Watergate, all of these things were coverups. But this one, where 5 days after all of our people and the top security people knew it was an organized attack, to send Ambassador Rice to the talk shows to say, for purely political reasons and cover up the reality of it, that this was due to some video--I will only say this. I would like to pursue this in terms of the coverup, which is not covered in the resolution we are discussing right now. I think it should be--it should have been. I was not part of drafting it. I strongly support it. I know where we are coming from, and I think we need to get to the bottom of it. All the questions need to be answered. But the big issue that needs to be discussed, that nobody likes to talk about, is the coverup. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be acknowledged as if in morning business.

Mr. INHOFE. I do want to accommodate the Senator from California. I have three different subjects I want to talk about----

Mr. INHOFE. I need 9\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. Is that a unanimous consent request?

Mr. INHOFE. The Senator from California would follow the Senator from Washington?