Ron Johnson

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I guess today is my day to refute the Democrats' false assertions and claims. Earlier today, when chairing the Budget Committee hearing and Democrats falsely accused the Republicans of cutting and slashing Medicaid, I repeatedly had to remind them that the year that ObamaCare kicked in, in 2014--the first year of Medicaid expansion--we spent $300 billion on Medicaid. Five years later, which was the year before the pandemic, in 2019, we spent $400 billion on Medicaid. This last year, we spent $668 billion on Medicaid. Medicaid spending is up 10 percent, year on year, and we will probably spend about $735 billion. That is more than double the amount we spent the year that Medicaid expansion kicked in. They apparently didn't like my correcting the record and refuting their false assertions; so they complained in the Budget Committee hearing that I was turning the committee into a debate society. Well, I don't know. I thought this was supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body. So now I have come to the floor to rebut, once again, the false claims of the Senator from Rhode Island. He said he is making two true assertions here: that climate events are worsening because of climate change. First of all, I will state that I am not a climate change denier. The climate has always changed, and it always will. The last time I was objecting to one of his false assertions--again, to one of his resolutions--I pointed to the Vostok ice core sample, which were four or five distinct cycles over 440,000 years of 22.7 degrees Fahrenheit variation. Yes. So climate has always changed. The question is, To what extent does mankind cause it? But the assertion that these climate events like hurricanes or wildfires are being driven to greater extremes because of climate change is just false. I mean, there is reputable science that completely debunks those claims. The Senator from Rhode Island talked about billions of dollars' worth of property damage. Well, when you build multimillion-dollar homes right on the coast of hurricane regions, you are going to have higher dollar losses with normal hurricane activity. When you are as sloppy as California is at wildfire mitigation--there is an excellent article written by Representative McClintock, from California, saying that, back in the 1800s, I think it was like 2\1/2\ million acres of California that routinely burned, but through proper mitigation efforts, they reduced that to, I think, 250,000 acres per year; but then they stopped doing them under Democrat governance, and they are back up to over, you know, millions of acres burning a year. That is not because of climate change; that is just because of bad Democrat governance, bad Democrat policies. So that is the first assertion. The second assertion is easy to rebut, which is that we are not funding the National Weather Service. I mean, again, here are the figures. I know they don't like facts, and they don't like figures, but here are the facts: In 2014, the budget for the National Weather Service was $1.34 billion. The next year--again, when Joe Biden was President still for fiscal year 2025-- he did only increase it by 0.7, but it increased to $1.35 billion. In fiscal year 2026, it is up 8 percent to $1.46 billion. In the House, I think the President's budget calls for the fiscal 2027 spending of $1.6 billion. That will be a 9.5-percent increase. So, again, we are not cutting or slashing Medicaid. We are not cutting or slashing the National Weather Service. Both claims in this resolution are false. I also have to quote Secretary Chris Wright: ``We are in the midst of the greatest malinvestment in human history''--$10 trillion on a global basis has been invested nominally on fighting climate change. What do you get for $10 trillion? Well, to be very specific on energy sources, you get solar up to 1.2 percent of global energy and wind at 1.4. As a quick aside, in 1973, global oil, gas, and coal energy consumption was 84 percent. In 2024, it was 83 percent. We spent $10 trillion on all of this renewable energy, and the mix hasn't changed at all. And we certainly haven't satisfied the Chicken Littles claiming disaster. I have actually got a long list of these experts. By the way, I think last week in Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, we tried to get answers out of one of these experts, Dr. Fauci, who directed our miserably failed response to COVID. He won't answer my questions. But I have got a long list of these experts going back to the seventies, you know. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated: Civilization will end in 15 to 30 years unless immediate action was taken. Let's go up to climate change, 1980, ecologist Kenneth Watt predicted the world would be 4 degrees colder--colder--in 1990 and 11 degrees colder in 2000. That didn't happen. No, this then started--this global cooling, right? That was the fearmongering. Then it was global warming. Then when they couldn't decide, they just turned it into generic climate change. In 1989, Noel Brown, a U.N. environmental official, said entire nations would be wiped off the Earth if rising sea levels from global warming were not reversed by the year 2000. It is 26 years later; I haven't seen these entire nations wiped off the Earth. In 2007, head of the U.N. climate panel claimed it would be too late unless drastic actions were taken by 2012, and that is 14 years ago. In 2004, a Pentagon climate change report said Britain will be Siberian in 2020. Didn't happen. In 2008, Al Gore cited a claim from another climate researcher that the North Pole may be ice free by 2013. Again, there are literally dozens of these Chicken Little scaremongering claims. Just not buying them. These resolutions aren't harmful. There is a point to them. They are trying to lay a documentary record to promote more of this malinvestment--$10 trillion. Just think of what we could have done with $10 trillion that we just frittered away on climate change alarmists. So, Mr. President, I object.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I only stand to point out that Wisconsin DNR is not exactly an organization that is not willing to protect wildlife. It certainly is. It set the delisting baseline at 250. We are at five times that level. From my standpoint, whether this legislation affects other States-- this ought to be looked at State by State and allow States to decide that. Wisconsin would certainly like this delisted, and it is just regrettable that my unanimous consent request was objected to. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, my fine State of Wisconsin has a gray wolf population problem, but that was not always the case. Back in the eighties and nineties, we had the opposite problem. We had an endangered wolf population, as probably most of the lower 48 States did. So back in 1978, under the Endangered Species Act, the gray wolf was listed as one of those endangered species. The good news is, it worked. You can see from the chart here--that starts in 1980 to about the year 1999--our wolf population slowly started coming back, to the point that in 1999, the Wisconsin DNR agreed that once we hit 250 gray wolves in Wisconsin, that would be the point at which we could delist the gray wolf as no longer an endangered species. We didn't delist them. The population continued to grow and grow, and unfortunately, as much as we all value a healthy and sustainable gray wolf population, there is a point at which it gets too large and it starts threatening livestock, starts threatening people. I think the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recognized that fact, and so in 2007, the gray wolf was actually delisted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The problem is, in 2008, it was relisted by a Federal court here in DC. So in 2009, we took action once again. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted the gray wolf. That same year, that same court relisted it. Three years later--again, looking at the science, looking at the growing population--in 2012, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted it. Three years later, the same DC court relisted it. In 2021, again, you can start seeing the explosion, quite honestly, in population. Our Wisconsin DNA states that about 1,250 is really the most population of gray wolf that the State can sustain. We had already hit that level, so U.S. Fish and Wildlife delisted it again, only to be overturned in 2022 by a Federal court decision in California this time, not DC. Why is this a problem? We get report after report of families, farmers in Wisconsin who are bearing the burden of this back-and-forth, of the fact that the gray wolf is protected and the populations are really at the maximum level right now. It is threatening livestock. I mean, throughout Wisconsin, wolves are killing cows, horses, goats, sheep, cats, dogs. We have a sheep farm in Wisconsin, and a multigeneration herd of sheep was all wiped out except for one sheep, in one night. In Price County, a dairy farmer had to sell his entire herd because the wolves kept killing his cows. Wisconsinites have to carry firearms just to walk their dogs. A Wood County resident was forced to drive their children to school because the bus route changed because wolf tracks were there at the bus stop. So, Mr. President, you know, I am just asking what makes sense when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has--one, two, three, four, five-- four times taken the gray wolves off the endangered species list, which, again, we all agreed was required. We should have all agreed it was successful. We are way past the delisting baseline established by the Wisconsin DNR. We are at the maximum sustainable limit here. I am asking consent to pass a bill that would simply delist them so that Wisconsin farmers, Wisconsin families, and Wisconsin children can feel safe in their residences, in walking about their properties. So, Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be discharged from further consideration of S. 1306 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table

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

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am down here now for the third time with a smile on my face. This is humorous. It would be humorous if it weren't so tragic. The good Senator from Rhode Island, when he was chairing the Budget Committee, held hearing after hearing about these enormous costs caused by manmade climate change. But what he refuses to acknowledge is the fact that the reaction of the scaremongering, of this alarmism, has been that somewhere between $6 to $10 trillion is what we have spent globally trying to hold back the tides--$6 trillion to $10 trillion. The costs he is talking about pale in comparison to that massive--the largest malinvestment in human history. So make no mistakes. The simple resolution--by the way, I don't deny climate change. Climate change is real. It has always changed; it always will. The debate is to what extent does man cause it, and I would argue that an even greater debate would be: What can we do about it? I mean, he is down here, again, scaremongering and--in an alarmist fashion--obviously acknowledging that the $6 trillion to $10 trillion we have already wasted in this greatest malinvestment in human history hasn't even made a dent. But I want to point out--I am glad he talked about measurements, about science, about a long dataset. Here is a long dataset. These are charts of the Vostok ice core sample. This is about 400-some-thousand years of climate history. I don't know how they do it, but they know how to measure different gas percentages in the atmosphere. They can calculate temperature going back actually more than 800,000 years. This one is 400,000. The most famous dataset from this occurred in 1999--Petit, et al. But as you can see--this is in Celsius. But these--it is hard to call them cycles, but we will call them cycles of temperature variation. We have had one, two, three, four of them in 400,000 years. They are approximately 100,000-year cycles. Almost a 23-degree Fahrenheit change in temperature. Now, what the Senator from Rhode Island is all concerned about is a little moment in time here. Take a look at charts and blowing them up and doing the hockey stick effect and then freaking out about little, minute movements over geologic time. Now--then he--then he--and all the climate alarmists do this, they blame it on us, fossil fuels. We weren't burning fossil fuels 400,000 years ago. Somehow, temperatures rose and temperatures declined four times over 400,000 years, almost 23 degrees. That is why I am not freaked out about this. That is why I am not a Chicken Little. That is why I oppose this simple resolution that has all kinds of ideas behind it, all kinds of policy implications, all kinds of new proposed malinvestment, trillions of dollars' worth to try and hold back the tide. You see this red line underneath here. Not only do they measure temperature over time, they measure CO2 levels over time. There is no doubt about it, it tracks very closely with temperature. Within that dataset of Petit, et al., not very well publicized, kind of understated, they say, well, this doesn't really mean anything is the fact that CO2 isn't the leading indicator; it is the lagging indicator. First, temperature rises or falls, and then CO2 either rises or falls. There is approximately about an 800- to 1,000-year lag. So again, they try and--you know, the climate alarmists try and put this--oh, look, the CO2 is up causing temperatures--no. Temperatures rose and then CO2 rose. And there is actually a pretty easy explanation for it. Most CO2--CO2 is a trace element in our atmosphere, a trace element--not even a percent, a fraction of a percent. Most CO2 on Earth is locked up in our oceans. So as the temperature rises probably because of solar activity, wobble in our axis, these macrotrends that actually cause climate change, the massive--the majority of climate change, as those factors cause temperatures to rise, temperatures of the ocean rise releasing CO2 and then CO2 raises. It is not the other way around. It is not: CO2 went up causing temperature to increase. Temperature increased to cause CO2 to rise. These are measurements. This is science. This is a very long dataset. It just shows why--again, I don't know exactly to what extent man certainly can impact the environment. We all want a clean environment. But the extent that man has caused climate change, obviously we weren't around back here to cause this climate change. Something else was doing it. So again, I just don't freak out about it, and I certainly am not going to subscribe to any resolution that would cause policy here to spend trillions--misspend, waste, trillions of dollars on a fool's errand trying to hold back the tides. Therefore, I object.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. I am here to object. I will keep it short. I was down here a couple weeks ago when the Senator from Rhode Island had a similar type of what he called a simple-truth resolution, but it is not that simple. The purpose of his putting forth this resolution is he wants to do something about it. I am not a climate change denier. I am just not a climate change alarmist. I am not subscribing to Chicken Little scare tactics here. The problem with trying to do something about climate change is there is nothing we can really do to impact it. We have spent, according to testimony in the Budget Committee when the Senator from Rhode Island was chair, $5 to $6 trillion globally. I saw a recent speech given by Secretary of Energy Wright saying that we had spent about $10 trillion trying to hold back the tides, trying to address this climate change emergency--which, by the way, two Nobel laureate physicists, Dr. Ivar Giaever and Dr. John Clauser, signed on to a ``World Climate Declaration: There is no Climate Emergency.'' There isn't. What we have done, though, is we have taken a $6 to $10 trillion cost--the largest malinvestment in human history--and we obviously haven't even dented climate change because we still have the Chicken Littles here claiming a climate change emergency. So, again, this isn't a simple truth. The simple truth is, yes, climate has always changed. It always will. And I would argue the simple truth is there is not much we can do about it. There is no consensus in terms of the extent that man may impact the climate. We certainly can impact the environment, and we all are--from my standpoint, we are all environmentalists. We want a clean environment. But just think what we could have done with that $6 to $10 trillion rather than spending it--wasting it--trying to hold back the tide. So for those reasons, I object.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Great. Listen, listen, I have barely spent any time here, OK. The bottom line is, in those hearings, I asked witnesses: How much have we spent combating climate change? Five to six trillion dollars. Our Energy Secretary puts the number at $10 trillion and calls it, correctly, the largest malinvestment in human history. This isn't some simple resolution. This is setting up trillions of dollars of malinvestment, up to $50 trillion in testimony. So, again, we can't afford this climate alarmism. We can't cave to the Chicken Littles of the Senate. So I object.

Mr. JOHNSON. I am almost done. Do you want me to just object?

Mr. JOHNSON. I suppose if it is procedural.

Mr. JOHNSON. Reserving the right to object, I have got a smile on my face here. First of all, let me state that I am not a climate denier. I am just not a climate alarmist, like the Senators from Rhode Island and Massachusetts. So I am thinking of Chicken Little: ``The sky is falling.'' I am not sure how I am going to be able to sleep tonight. I always found it very interesting when the Senator from Rhode Island was the chairman of the Budget Committee and we held numerous hearings on climate change with some tenuous connection to the budget. Again, very similar, ``the sky is falling,'' whether it is on insurance or housing costs or whatever. During those hearings, I spoke about, probably a couple of times, and entered into the record the ``World Climate Declaration: There Is No Climate Emergency,'' signed by two Nobel Prize-winning physicists Dr. Ivan Yaeger and Dr. John Clauser, joined by about 25 other businesses, researchers, and scientists, and signed by a bunch of other people as well. It was a commonsense document. The Senator from Rhode Island was talking about simple truths. Well, again, the simple truth is there is no climate emergency. The climate has always changed. It always will. CO2 is plant food. More people die of extreme cold than of extreme heat. I mean, these are things that are brought out in these hearings, generally by the minority witnesses.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I would just like to offer a few words of rebuttal for the Democratic leader. He talked about high oil prices. He didn't mention the fact that when President Biden was in office and Democrats were in charge, in June of 2022, the national average gas price reached almost $5 a gallon. That same month, inflation was 9.1 percent, a 40-year high. That wasn't because President Biden was having to do something hard, to take care of the menace that Iran was. President Biden was coddling Iran, pumping billions of dollars into their economy, into their military, into their proxies. Gasoline was $5 a gallon because of their war on fossil fuels, because of Democrat policies. So I need to correct the record there. The second point I want to make is, I heard the Democrat leader say that Democrats are--I think this is what he said--are in favor of commonsense voter ID. Well, if that is the case, I am sure we would be happy to work with them to deliver that, because 80 percent of the American people agree with the picture ID to vote--80 percent. It is the Democrats who refuse to put any kind of controls to ensure the security of our elections. But I think he completely mischaracterized what the Senator from Utah's bill, the SAVE America Act, actually does. It is not going to make it harder to vote. It is going to make it harder to cheat, because Americans do not want their legitimate vote canceled by a fraudulent one. But we are going to actually--we have got this bill on the floor. We are going to be debating it. The way the Senate debates things is we offer amendments. Republicans are going to be offering amendments to add to it things, again, the American people support with 60, 70, 80 percent majorities. But if Democrats actually have a constructive approach to a commonsense idea that 80 percent of Americans would agree with, talk to us. My guess is Senator Lee would be happy to clarify the legislation to prove the fact that we are not going to make it harder to vote; we are just going to make it more difficult to cheat. Again, this ought to be, from my standpoint, a very instructive-- hopefully, a very productive--debate over the next number of days, maybe number of weeks. This is important. In 2016, Democrats were the ones that said it wasn't a legitimate election when Donald Trump first got elected. Four years later, the tables were turned. All of a sudden, the other half of America said it was not a legitimate election. This is an unsustainable state of affairs. The only way to cure it is for commonsense election controls to make sure that we have the integrity so that, no matter who wins the election, both sides agree that that is a legitimate result. That is what we are trying to achieve as Republicans. Again, we don't want to see somebody's legitimate vote canceled by a fraudulent one. I think the fact that Democrats are opposed to virtually any-- probably all--election integrity measures just proves they want to make it easy to cheat. I will throw in one final comment. The Carter-Baker Commission--I would call it a completely nonpartisan Commission--looked at our election system and tried to identify, you know, how can we make it as secure as possible. The one area of our elections they thought was the greatest opportunity for fraud was absentee mail-in balloting. So in light of that fact, what did Democrats do during COVID? They took advantage of that situation and literally doubled the number of absentee ballots while--certainly in my State, the State of Wisconsin, there were all kinds of irregularities in terms of ballots being cured by election clerks, which is not lawful, balloting in the park, improper assisting of seniors in nursing homes. There were all kinds of irregularities that in the end were never adjudicated. Like some of the court cases in the 2020 election, they were just thrown out of court, dismissed, because, let's face it, our judicial system really doesn't want to get involved in elections. I don't fault them for that, but it is just the reality of the situation. So, again, what this debate is about is making sure that every American has the confidence that their legitimate vote will not be canceled by a fraudulent one. That is what Republicans want to do. We want to make it easy to vote but almost impossible to cheat. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the Senator from Connecticut said we need to do our job. I agree. Our job is to recognize the fact that we are $39 trillion in debt on the back of $60 trillion, with the Social Security trust fund running out during that timeframe. Our job would be, then, to go through the regular order process of taking this before the committee. If it has such broad bipartisan support, fine, but, again, similar efforts along these lines have failed in the past with Democrat majorities in both the House and the Senate. There is something about this that concerns people. So vet it out in the committee process. We are trying to bypass that process by unanimous consent requests. This is not the way to produce good legislation, not when we are $39 trillion in debt. So for all the other reasons I mentioned in my previous objection, Mr. President, I object.

Mr. JOHNSON. Reserving the right to object. Mr. President, first of all, let's--since I have the opportunity: We all revere and respect those men and women who have served and sacrificed to defend our liberty. That is completely nonpartisan. We prove it day in and day out. We prove it by how much money we spend on veterans' benefits. So I certainly appreciate the Senator from Connecticut, his advocacy. I advocate for veterans as well. It is interesting, though, this unanimous consent request is very similar, if not identical, to the same unanimous consent request offered on October 9 of 2025 by the Senator from Connecticut. At that point in time, responding to it, that unanimous consent, the Senator from Mississippi--the then- and now-current chair of the Armed Services Committee--stated, and I quote: [M]y colleague is asking for an entitlement that does amount to a double benefit and that we cannot afford. We are talking between $9 billion and $10 billion on the Department of Defense authorization act. And we are talking about . . . a bill, a piece of legislation, that really belongs in another jurisdiction. I am assuming he was talking about the Veterans' Affairs Committee. We cannot possibly add another 9 billion to 10 billion of entitlement money to this Defense Authorization Act. And that is the reason that in Democrat majorities and Republican majorities, House Democrat majorities and Senate Democrat majorities, and in Democrat administrations, this legislation has never been accepted because we simply cannot afford it. The chairman of Armed Services went on to say: Historically, Congress has provided permanent new benefits only after we have identified an offset, savings of a similar amount. There is no such offset identified in this unanimous consent request. And when we do not identify offsets, that means $10 billion has come out of readiness, out of the strength of our military to defend ourselves during the most dangerous time we have had since World War II. And with that logic, the chairman of Armed Services, the Senator from Mississippi, objected to the Senator from Connecticut's unanimous consent request. Now, what has changed is we now have a score on this specific bill. When the Senator from Mississippi was objecting last time, he was quoting a $9 billion to $10 billion score. We just got the score on this one. Now, it is $70 billion to $75 billion. Again, we all revere the finest among us. The men and women of the military that I know didn't serve and sacrifice oblivious to the fact that we are mortgaging our children's future. They served and sacrificed to secure our children's future. So we can't just come down here and talk about how much we love vets and how we want to support them. We also have to look at the reality of the situation in dollars and cents. We are $39 trillion in debt. Over the next decade, it will be $60 trillion. We have to look at the dollars and cents. So, again, this unanimous consent request went from an assumed cost of 10 billion to now 70 billion, which reminds me an awful lot of the PACT Act, which I voted for and supported. But when that was first being discussed, it was called the burn pit legislation. My former chief of staff served in Iraq; he was impacted by it. But I remember discussions--these were informal. I don't have anything formally written, but back in early discussions of the burn pit legislation, we were being told it was going to be $1 billion or $2 billion a year. When the House passed their version of the PACT Act, the CBO score was for $322 billion over 10 years. The Senate got its hands on that piece of legislation, and the score was $667 billion. The current window is over $700 billion. That is not chump change. That is approaching a trillion dollars over 10 years. Now, again, it is not like we are spending less on veterans, even though our veteran population is declining. In 2019, we spent $200 billion on veterans' benefits. Again, now, their retirement is through the Defense Department. This is just benefits for VA. Two hundred billion dollars, that equates to about $11,500 per veteran. This was before the pandemic--so $200 billion, $11,500 per vet. This year, we will spend about $435 billion, so it has more than doubled, and our cost per vet is up to $28,000 per veteran. Somebody has got to look at this. We are $177 billion for veterans' benefits above and beyond what we spent in 2019, fully inflated for inflation. There is no other account in the Federal Government that is that out of whack, comparing 2019 fully inflated. So this is not the way to pass this legislation. The Senator from Connecticut has all these cosponsors. Fine. Go through the committee process. Scrutinize this. Take a look at the score, take a look at what the history of this is. It is not like we are the first Congress that reveres the members of the military. For some reason, they differentiate between somebody who has 20 years of service or less than. Let's look at that. Let's debate it. Let's bring it through the committee process, regular order. And then if it has that great support, I might even vote for it. But let's go through the process to see whether these policies make sense, whether there truly is double-dipping, whether there is a better way of handling--by the way, I have been told the Department of War is looking at this exact issue. They have reverence for the finest among us as well. But this is not the way to do this, not by unanimous consent request. It was objected to in October, and I am going to object to it right now. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, as my colleague from Louisiana wishes we were all here voting on the deal and that my colleagues on the other side had taken yes for an answer to open up the government, I wish that is what I was on the floor here today to do. That is not being accomplished. What I was hoping to be able to do is, once again, offer a unanimous consent request to pay the people who are working. I came down to the floor, 2 weeks ago, with the Shutdown Fairness Act to pay the people whom we are forcing to work. It is pretty common sense. It did not include the furloughed workers. The other side objected. I agreed to add furloughed workers. I worked with them over the last couple of weeks, came on the floor yesterday, offered that unanimous consent request, and there were more objections. So we offered a vote, saying: Let's proceed to that bill. Let's work out, literally, clarifications and differences. There is really nothing substantive. We are going to pay all the workers being forced to work. We are going to pay all the furloughed workers. We added contractors. We have done just about everything we could so that we are no longer punishing the people working for our dysfunction, so we are no longer using these individuals as pawns--the American people as pawns in this horrific partisan gamesmanship. Unfortunately, the other side wouldn't agree to get on the bill-- which, by the way, that is how you pass legislation around here. You get on a bill. It may not be perfect. There may be some objections from the other side. You open it up for amendments. You work on those differences. Again, if the other side doesn't particularly like the bill, they can vote no at the tail end. They can block it then. But, instead, they blocked it on the front end. We immediately went into discussions. Literally, about an hour ago, I thought I had a deal, where at least the primary objector of the Shutdown Fairness Act was not going to object. We have hit some snags. So, unfortunately, I don't think in today's session we will be able to offer that for a unanimous consent request. But I do want to tell my colleagues that we are still working hard. I am going to do everything I can to accommodate, to clarify the bill, to let the folks on the other side know, no, we are not creating a slush fund. We are not giving the President discretion to use this money wherever he wants. We are not excluding certain workers. We are not giving the President the ability to include or exclude anyone. We are including all the workers. Again, I will continue. My staff is working overtime--God bless them--doing everything they can to be able to offer this. If we don't have a deal tomorrow, at least--at least--I am literally hoping and praying that folks on the other side of the aisle will, at a minimum, stop using Federal workers--the American public--as pawns in this partisan gamesmanship. But it doesn't look like we are going to be doing that tonight. Healthcare But as long as we have got some time on the floor, I guess what I would like to do is I would like to discuss a hearing we held earlier in the week in my Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It was titled ``Assessing the Damage Done by ObamaCare.'' I hate to report that folks on the other side refused to acknowledge the very obvious damage being done across the board by ObamaCare. I had three witnesses. We kind of did this in three different categories. The first category was talking about the damage done by the consolidation of industries across the board in healthcare. If you want lower prices--I come from the private sector. What the free market guarantees is basically three things: the lowest possible price in cost, the highest quality, and the highest level of customer service. Now, it is not perfect, but there is no economic system that works better than that. The problem we have in healthcare is that we have largely driven free-market principles out of healthcare. We have a third-party payer system. You know, decades ago, patients paid 80 percent--80 cents on the dollar--for the healthcare they received. Today, they pay about a dime. Somebody else is always picking up the tab for their specific procedure. Now, we pay--oh, we pay dearly--in taxes, in insurance premiums. But it is disconnected from the actual point of sale, from the actual cost of the procedure. So there is no transparency. Doctors don't know what things costs. I love accountants. I am one of them. But if some accountant in the provider's back office is dealing with some accountant in the insurance and some accountant in CMS, or whichever third-party payer, so we had a complete breakdown of price transparency--because we don't have free market principles. We don't have consumerism--true consumerism--in healthcare. This was a chart that the Senator from South Carolina put up yesterday--I think others have used it as well--that really makes the point in terms of the consolidation of the industry, which, of course, when you have concentrated power, you have less competitive benefits. This is just the percent increase in the stock price of, I think, seven of the top insurance carriers. UnitedHealth Group, 1,177 percent increase in the stock price since the implementation of ObamaCare; Cigna, 822 percent; Anthem, only 414 percent; Humana, 490; Molina, 859; Centene, 604; Aetna, 595 percent increase. This is a concentration in power, a reduction in competition, and this proves the increase in prices--the trillions of dollars flowing into insurance companies, taxpayer dollars flowing into insurance companies because of the faulty design of ObamaCare; that force that aided and abetted this consolidation and this lack of competition in the healthcare market. The second area of damage, literally, was to Medicaid. I mean, ObamaCare is basically providing insurance through two mechanisms: Medicaid and the individual exchanges. Medicaid--of course, we talked about this in our One Big Beautiful Bill, the whole reconciliation package. The harm caused to Medicaid is profound. By allowing States to sign up able-bodied, single, working-age adults into Medicaid--that wasn't the main abuse. The main abuse is we reimbursed those States. For every dollar they spend for a single, able-bodied adult, they get $9 as a Federal reimbursement. That compares to, for every dollar spent on a disabled child, the States get $1.33. So that has led to rampant abuse. I would call it legalized fraud-- provider taxes, provider fees. That is not healthcare, but the American taxpayer is picking up the tab at a ratio of 9 to 1 for those State- directed payments and, again, provider fees, provider taxes. It has also crowded out services for the disabled. There was an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal written by the father of a 17-year-old severely autistic child. And God bless this family. They are taking care of this child at home. But they could use help. So what they were hoping for is to be able to have access to home healthcare. They were on a 10-year waiting list because those providers would much rather service an able-bodied Medicaid Advantage adult as opposed to that disabled child. So, again, we have crowded out those disabled children from Medicaid providers. And, of course, we have cost the American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars--provider fees, provider taxes--which, unfortunately, we weren't able to fix. The third area of damage done by ObamaCare is in the individual markets. Now, I bought healthcare for 30 years. Every year, we would negotiate with the insurance carriers. I remember early on when we didn't have 100 employees even, so I am very familiar with the small employer group markets. Probably about 3 or 4 years into my buying healthcare, because of competition, we had an insurance carrier come in and say: You don't even need to have deductibles for out-of-pocket maximums. We are going to match your insurance rate--zero deductibles. We thought: Great. What a great year for our employees. They didn't pay a dime for anything. And the insurance rate was what we had the previous year. Well, of course, the next year, they jacked up our rates 40 percent, so I had to go back into the market. That is just an anecdotal story of how competition actually worked. Now, again, I don't have the exact figures, but in the 30 years of buying health insurance, ending in about 2010, I don't ever recall a per-person deductible. Generally, the way a family plan would work is to have a number of deductibles, two or three per family. I don't recall one ever higher than $2,500, with an out-of-pocket maximum--with the copays, the 28 percent copay. So a family would maybe have one person with an illness. They would go through their $2,500 deductible, and then, if they were charged above that, 80-20 split, up to a maximum out of pocket of $5,000 per year. That is it. That is the most. Again, back in the early eighties, it started out with maybe a $100 deductible with a maximum out of pocket of $1,000. But again, because of inflation, by the time I left, it was about $5,000 maximum out of pocket. What has happened because of ObamaCare? The faulty design of it is forcing the small percentage of people on the individual exchanges to pick up the full cost of preexisting conditions. Back when I was buying insurance, we had something called high-risk pools. They weren't perfect. With some modifications, we could have completely covered people with preexisting conditions. But the way they worked is every insurer that sold products in the State had to basically take on people of high risk. So as I am buying insurance--let's say I had somebody who was diagnosed with cancer. The insurance carrier would come in and do something they would call laser out that individual--not a problem because that person right away would go into the high-risk pool. And there are so many different options in terms of deductibles, that type of thing, that we could buy a plan for that individual from the high- risk pool at pretty much the exact same rates as we were getting and the exact same deductibles. If that person had a remission of cancer, was no longer lasered out, he came back into our plan. It worked beautifully. It was funded by everybody. Everybody that had employer-sponsored care, anybody that had an insurance policy, a very small percentage was assessed to pay for the high-risk pool. Now, every State was different. Some States were adequately funded; some weren't. I think Maine had an excellent high-risk pool. But ObamaCare dismantled all of that and put the cost of those people with preexisting conditions that are high risk on the backs of a single-digit percentage of the American population, causing insurance rates to skyrocket. We hear our Democratic colleagues come to the floor and say premiums are going to double and triple. Well, first of all, that is not true. Gross premiums are going up an alarming 26 percent nationally, but they are not doubling and tripling--not on employer-sponsored care and not for most people on the exchanges. What is happening is the net premium after subsidies for people over 400 percent of the poverty line that no longer can get a subsidy--those people could be experiencing a doubling or tripling of rates. Quite honestly, from my standpoint, those are people I have a great deal of sympathy for that I would like to do something for, but we are not going to enter into a negotiation until Democrats open up the government. OK. But again, I have said this repeatedly: I am happy to work with Democrats who will work in good faith, who will acknowledge the problem and repair the damage done by ObamaCare and transition to a system that actually works. I think all Republicans are eager to do that. I know President Trump just had a tweet today. What we should be doing is we should be giving--the hundreds of billions we spend on this, give that to the American public, and let them buy insurance policies that fit their needs, not the highly restrictive ones in ObamaCare that have caused premiums to skyrocket. So what this chart shows--the red line here is the increase in the CPI; in other words, total inflation since the inception of ObamaCare was 39 percent. All these blue bars--I know it is hard to read. This is every State, the percent increase in their premiums for a 40-year-old enrolled in the silver benchmark. Again, averages are very difficult here because you have every State different, all these different plans. But we picked one. This is pretty typical. So the average percent increase by State, over all the States, is a 169-percent increase versus a 39-percent increase in inflation. That is 4.3 times the rate of inflation. This is what has been happening to the 20-some million people on the individual exchanges. It is because of the faulty design of ObamaCare. It has to be fixed. We can fix it. We know how to do it. You reinstitute high-risk pools. You give consumers a choice of all kinds of different options: short-term plans, catastrophic--by the way, ObamaCare insurance is what catastrophic plans looked like in the past but only orders of magnitude more expensive. So, again, this is the gory snapshot of what ObamaCare has done to the individual premiums. Now, I have another chart that shows you what has happened in the marketplace for employer-sponsored plans. You don't see anything up here at the over 300 percent level. You see really quite consistency because ObamaCare didn't impact employer-sponsored care anywhere near to the extent they did--now, it is still way too high. On average, employer plans increased 74 percent since the inception of ObamaCare. A lot of this is driven because of what ObamaCare has done in terms of consolidation of every part of the healthcare industry. So there is no reason for these insurance rates to be almost double the rate of inflation, but it is a huge difference. It is a huge difference because there is greater freedom in the employer-sponsored insurance plans than there is in the very prescriptive ObamaCare. This last chart--I am glad I had it because in the hearing, my ranking member, the Senator from Connecticut, made the statement: I don't know anybody who has been harmed by ObamaCare. Huh? What? I mean, I already mentioned there was a consolidation of the industry. I mentioned the disabled child who is being crowded out by an able-bodied, working-age, childless adult. I already talked about the dramatic increase in premiums for everybody. But the Democrats' own witness, a mom from Wisconsin, was a victim of ObamaCare. This isn't exactly what her premiums are because she, quite honestly, didn't have all the information, but she had a few key pieces of information, and we could go look at the ObamaCare exchanges and come up with the premiums. But this is showing you what is actually happening, OK? This individual--a mom, two kids, great person--is a victim of ObamaCare. In 2016, her employer dropped coverage because ObamaCare gives small employers a great out of not having to put up with the rising healthcare costs by just saying: We are not going to buy group insurance anymore. Trust me, I never liked having to buy group insurance for my employees, but you had to do it. To be competitive, you had to provide insurance. Again, I would never want to see any of my employees go uninsured. But now you have an option, and so a large number of particularly small employers are dropping coverage and forcing their employees into the exchange. So in 2016, she got forced into the exchanges. Now, she initially bought a silver plan. It cost her $1,000 a month. Again, to me, somebody who had bought insurance 15 years ago-- unbelievably high insurance rate. A thousand bucks a month? Unheard of back when I was buying insurance. Anyway, that was too expensive for her, so a couple years later, she actually transferred to a bronze plan that she could afford. It cost her $250 a month, but it had a $14,000 deductible. Again, as I said earlier, when I was buying, an out-of-pocket maximum for families was like 5,000 bucks. A $14,000 deductible--that was a catastrophic care plan; they were dirt cheap. So, anyway, they signed up for that plan. Unfortunately, they had some big healthcare bills, and her and her husband had to take out an $18,000 home line of credit--18,000 bucks. This is the Democrat witness--a true victim of ObamaCare. Now, of course, she is coming in very sympathetically, asking us to extend the temporary enhanced subsidies. But this is what people need to understand. They obviously are under 400 percent of the poverty line because she is still getting subsidies. So look at the annual here. In 2025, with the subsidy, her gross premium--again, when the Democrats say ``They are doubling premiums,'' they are talking about the net premium. But the gross premium was $15,000. She got a subsidy of almost $10,000, so she is paying $5,500 a year. Now, remember, in 2019, she had a silver plan, and she was paying $12,000 a year. So now, with the enhanced subsidy, the temporary COVID one--again, remember, Democrats are the ones that chose it to expire-- she is paying about $5,500. Fast forward, if she loses that enhanced subsidy, she still gets a higher subsidy. She is still going to get $10,000, but because her gross premium because of the faulty side of ObamaCare is going from $15,000 to $19,000, she is going to experience almost a $3,000 increase in her premium, not because the enhanced subsidy went away. She is getting an increased dollar amount of subsidy. It is the dramatic increase in premiums that is driving this. And I will close on this point because I see the Senator from Florida, who, by the way, knows more about healthcare probably maybe than anybody in America, certainly in this Chamber. And he has got some great ideas on how to fix and repair the damage done by ObamaCare and transition to a system that will actually work based on a competitive model. But the other point I want to make because of the rhetoric, because of demagoguery, Democrats have pretty well, I think, scared--of course, that is their tactic, right, let's scaremonger--scared Americans into believing that everybody's premiums are going to double and triple. First of all, we are talking about the ObamaCare exchanges, which they say they got about 24 million people but because of the no-premium policies with these enhanced subsidies, there are probably about 6 million people with phantom plans. They don't even know that have coverage. Unscrupulous agents have signed them up. They get the commission. The premium goes right to the insurance company. They are none the wiser, and they make no claims. So we have gone from, I think, 4 million no-claim policies on the exchange to 12 million. So, obviously, a lot of phantom policies here. But the point I wanted to make is out of whatever the number is--it is really not 24 million. It is probably under 20 million, but I will use that as a figure--of the supposed 24 million people on the ObamaCare exchanges, almost 22 million are going to continue to get their subsidy. They are under 400 percent of the poverty line You have got about 1.6 that we know are over 400 percent. Their subsidy is going away. So they were at 15 going up to 19, instead of paying--they are going to have to pay 19,000. Those people I have a great deal of sympathy for. They were kind of duped into thinking that they could retire early. And now they are getting the rug pulled out from under them because the Democrats chose this plan, and now it is expiring. So I have got some ideas. I have actually shared them with our Finance chair; I have shared them with Senator Scott. I am not going to talk about it now because we need to open up the government first. Personally, I am sympathetic to this. But we don't need to spend $20 billion, $30 billion to address that small slice of the American population whose subsidy is totally going away. The main point, and then I will turn it over to the Senator from Florida--my main point is, almost 22 million Americans on the exchanges will continue to get subsidies, and because insurance rates are going-- those subsidies on an annual basis are going to increase. They are not even going to decrease. The dollar amount will be increasing for most of those 22 million Americans. They are going to go back to the way ObamaCare was originally designed. So if they can't afford the healthcare based on going back to the way ObamaCare was originally designed, it is not because the enhanced subsidy is going away; it is because of the way ObamaCare was originally designed. It has failed miserably. It has damaged millions of people, and I am happy to sit down with the other side, if they are willing to acknowledge the truth, admit they have got a problem, define the problem properly, do a root-cause analysis, and actually enact reforms that will lower or certainly keep in check the cost of healthcare. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. I want to thank the Senator from Utah for his remarks. Mr. President, I don't want to spend time refuting all of the misrepresentations from the Senator from Michigan in terms of what phantom provisions he claims are in my bill. There is no slush fund. It is completely silent on Presidential authority. I know some people want to reduce authority, but that is a bill that won't be signed. If you want to pay the Federal workers, if you want to stop punishing them for our dysfunction, if you want to stop using them as pawns in this political game, that is a demand you have to drop. The money appropriated in this bill will go to pay workers. That also is a false argument. But if you are not quite satisfied with the language, which has been out there--and we have been trying to work and get feedback for 2 weeks, and we have gotten excellent feedback from leadership, from discussions on both sides of the aisle, from OMB, trying to perfect this thing--the solution is get on the bill. Get on the bill and offer an amendment. Keep talking to us. Don't close it down. We heard from a number of our Republican colleagues. We heard from the Senator from Michigan. Obviously, passions are running high. But there is a great deal of frustration, certainly, on our side when the other side simply won't take yes for an answer. I came down here 2 weeks ago in as nonpartisan a stance as I possibly could be because, as the Senator from Michigan stated, we all agree that these people ought to be paid. So the way to do that is not to offer a bill on unanimous consent that has no chance of being signed into law; the way to do that is to vote to proceed tonight to this bill. If we could iron out our differences, we could yield back time and get this thing passed that the Speaker of the House has already said he would come back and pass. We are so close. I realize there may be hard partisans. I know there are liberal unions that have now come out against us. But the bulk of the public sector unions are for it. They prefer my bill over anything else. They may also support it because this is permanent. This ends using the Federal workforce and, quite honestly, the American public as pawns in these partisan games for all time. Again, the American Federation of Government Employees, the Federal Managers Association, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association--again, I hope our Democratic colleagues listened to Senator Cruz's chilling and sobering remarks just a few minutes ago; the International Association of Fire Fighters; and the Association of Flight Attendants. This bill has support because it makes so much sense. It is fair. We had three Democrats join us 2 weeks ago. There are two other Democrats who have voted for the House CR. That brings us up to a total of 58. Now, we voted against this because we didn't have furloughed workers. We have added furloughed workers. So hopefully those two will join us. I have talked to enough Democrat Senators trying to get their input, trying to get this passed. I know there are Democrat Senators who want to vote for this bill, who can vote for this bill. So putting all partisanship aside, again, I want to appeal to your better angels. Search your conscience. Sign on to the bill. Vote for a bill that ends using Federal workers and the American public as pawns. The Senator from Maryland said last week: Let's not punish Federal workers for our dysfunction. I think my closing argument has to be to go back to what the Senator from Texas was talking about--the air traffic controllers and that situation. Five hundred safety issues were reported recently in our skies. Search your conscience. Can you imagine--I mean, honestly, think about it. Imagine what the one Democrat staffer said: We are going to cling to this until planes fall out of the sky. Think about how you would feel if, God forbid, a plane--another plane--fell out of the sky and people died. How could you live with yourself? Now, again, you can continue the shutdown. I mean, that is your political choice. You can continue to vote against the very reasonable House continuing resolution. But you can still vote to pay Federal workers. You can vote to make sure that air traffic controllers get back to their stations and keep our skies as safe as possible. You can vote to dramatically reduce the chance that a plane will fall out of the sky. We just need two more of you; two more of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are working with, quite honestly, folks on this side, trying to end the shutdown; just two of those whom I spoke to that I thought would vote for this. I am begging you--two more. Let's get on this bill. Let's pay Federal workers. Let's make our Nation safer. Let's do the fair thing. Let's do the right thing. Let's vote to proceed to this bill and get it passed. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments from the Senator from Nebraska. I think the Senator from Utah would also like to speak to the bill.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I am not quite sure what planet the Senator from Michigan comes from, but here on planet Earth, when you read the actual language of the bill, none of these phantom provisions exist in there. But I will go through those point for point before we call for the final vote. Right now, I think the Senator from Nebraska has a few points he wants to make.

Mr. JOHNSON. I want to thank the Senator from Florida. I see the Senator from Michigan. I believe he wants to speak to this bill. We will have the last word.

Mr. JOHNSON. I thank the Senator from Alaska and yield to the Senator from Florida.

Mr. JOHNSON. I want to thank Senator Cruz for his sobering remarks. This Chamber should be full. It would be nice if our Democratic colleagues were here to listen. I hope they are listening on their TVs in their office. God, I hope it literally doesn't take planes falling out of the sky. Tonight, you can continue your shutdown, but you can vote to pay the air traffic controllers so that is far less likely. If you vote no and, God forbid, it actually happens, can you live with yourself? I came to the floor 2 weeks ago in as nonpartisan a fashion as I possibly could, begging Democrats to pay people that are forced to work that are keeping our skies safe, that are keeping our Nation safe. Two weeks later, we haven't done it. This isn't partisan. Search your conscience. Ask yourself, honest to God, if a plane, another plane--a plane has fallen out of the sky. I am not saying it is because of air traffic control, but you heard of 500 safety instances. Our air traffic control system is already antiquated. Can you live with yourself if another plane falls out of the sky and more people needlessly die because we are short of air traffic controllers? I know the Senator from Alaska has a couple more comments. Then we will turn it over to the Senator from Florida.

Mr. JOHNSON. I appreciate the remarks from the Senator from Wyoming. I know people are coming down here to vote, but there are no time restrictions, and this is extremely important. We have a number of Senators who want to speak to this issue. We should give them time to speak--hopefully, to convince our colleagues on the other side to, again, be fair: Think about what your vote means to people that don't want to be used as pawns. I believe, again, that the Senator from Texas, our chairman of the Commerce Committee, he has got some pretty, as I said, chilling information to relate to the American public, based on what is happening, if we do not pay air traffic controllers. The Senator from Texas.

Mr. JOHNSON. I want to thank the Senator from Alaska. He has been so dedicated. He has been so tenacious in making sure that the finest among us, the men and women of our military, get paid and then, you know, signing on to my effort to broaden this to all Federal employees. Again, as he said, they shouldn't have to go to food banks and they shouldn't have to go to DoorDash to pay their child's tuition or feed their family. But we had a chilling report from the Senator from Texas, the chair of the Commerce Committee, in terms of what is happening with air traffic control in terms of our skies. But before we turn to the Senator from Texas, the Senator from Wyoming has a few words to speak on this bill.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I came to the floor 2 weeks ago with a completely nonpartisan, very sincere attempt with a bill that we call the Shutdown Fairness Act to simply pay the Federal workers whom we were requiring to work, the finest among us: the members of our military, people in Federal law enforcement, TSA, and air traffic controllers to keep our skies safe. Now, when I was asking the Senate to proceed to that bill, the Senator from Maryland offered an alternative. He called it the True Shutdown Fairness Act. The main difference is that his was only going to be for 1 year. My bill is permanent--permanently stops using Federal employees and the American public as pawns in these sick partisan games. The other difference was my bill is focusing on the people we are forcing to work. His bill added furloughed workers. So on the floor 2 weeks ago, I said if you are serious about passing this bill, if you are serious about stopping--he said, he can't punish Federal employees for our dysfunction. If you are serious about that, I told the Senator from Maryland, vote to get on the bill. I will include that; I will convince our conference to include furloughed workers. Get on the bill. We will amend it. We will get this passed, and we will start paying people. He rejected that offer. Now, we started having discussions. His staff immediately acknowledged the fact that my bill did not in any way, shape, or form impact the President's authority in terms of determining who was furloughed, who gets included in a reduction in force. It was silent. Even though they falsely accused my bill of giving the President greater authority, it didn't. I came to the floor again today to pass an amended bill with furloughed workers--by the way, a bill that is now supported by the American Federation of Government Employees--I believe that is the largest public employee union; the Federal Managers Association; the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association; the National Air Traffic Controllers Association--and we are going to have the Senator from Texas come down and talk about what is happening with air travel as we speak; the International Association of Firefighters; and the Association of Flight Attendants. These are public sector unions that generally don't support Republican legislation. What they particularly like about my bill is the fact that it is permanent. It prevents Federal workers and, quite honestly, the broader American public from being used as pawns again in these sick political games being played right now with their lives. So, in a few minutes, we are going to proceed to vote on a motion to proceed to my original bill. That is how this works. The leader voted no so he can bring it up for reconsideration. So we have to bring that bill up. We already have the language for the substitute amendment, which includes furloughed workers, that has been vetted by, quite honestly, both Democrat and Republican Senate offices, by the Office of Management and Budget, and by the public sector unions, which have come out in support for it. This is a bill that is ready for prime time. This is a bill that is ready to be passed tonight. Now, it is unfortunate that we couldn't pass it by unanimous consent because had we done that, the House is on a 48-hour callback, and they will come back. The Speaker has already said they will pass this in the House. And we get our military members, air traffic controllers, these Federal workers who keep us safe--we can get them paid. So again, I am just asking--I am actually pleading with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to please vote to proceed to this bill. We will substitute an amendment that includes furloughed workers. We can pass this tonight. If we vote to proceed, we can then vote for unanimous consent to waive all time agreements, and we could even pass this yet tonight. Make our skies safer. But I know the Senator from Alaska has a few words to say, and I know the Senator from Texas will as well. I yield to the Senator from Alaska.

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

Mr. JOHNSON. Again, let me correct--I hate to say--falsehoods that were presented here in the Chamber. My bill is completely silent in terms of Presidential authority. To the Senator from Michigan, I know they want to put language in there to restrict Presidential authority, but the fact of the matter is--and I made him well aware of this--that it is a bill that would never be signed into law. So if the Senator is serious about actually paying the workers, he will recognize that fact and admit that my bill is completely silent. It does not add and it does not detract from Presidential authority. There is nothing in the bill that does that. Secondly, we have tried to come to accommodations with a number of Senators on the other side for a couple of weeks, but they have pretty much fallen on deaf ears. Again, I know it is unfortunate that he objected right now. If we proceed and vote and actually get on the bill--and I hope, at least, we do that--that will take quite some time. So it seems he has already objected. What I am happy to do--not happy; I am very disappointed I am going to have to do this--is to look at their language. If it is acceptable-- again, if he is doing anything with Presidential authority in the way of adding or detracting, it won't be signed into law; it will be a fruitless exercise. But if we accept their language--we will look at it, and then maybe--maybe--we can come back down here and do another unanimous consent request and pass this today. That is what I hope we can do. So we will look at the language. It is very unfortunate we didn't pass it right now, but maybe later this afternoon, we can do so. I yield the floor.