Mike Lee

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, we have been willing to compromise. The offer that was made by my colleague, the junior Senator from Texas yesterday, from the floor represented a significant compromise. Significantly, I believe it was the Senator from Nevada, the majority leader, who objected to a unanimous consent request made yesterday by the Senator from Texas to proceed with having these votes tomorrow. This still represents a significant compromise offer--a compromise offer that consolidates, collapses two separate 30-hour periods required by the rules. This is not an unreasonable request. Moreover, I am not understanding what it is about having a vote tomorrow morning instead of tonight that would make a difference between being able to get something to them tomorrow, if we pushed it out, versus Sunday.

Mr. LEE. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I requested to modify the request made by the majority leader and he turned that down. In light of the fact that he turned it down, I object.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. I wish to ask the Senator from Texas whether he has received comments similar to those I have received from my constituents and from other concerned citizens from around the country in recent months. I wish to highlight a few and ask whether these are similar to comments the Senator from Texas has heard, concerns he has heard expressed. Let me start by sharing one expressed by Shawn from Utah, who says: I do not like the fact that the President is picking winners and picking and choosing which parts of the law he will enforce. We need the three branches of government to keep freedom alive. Well, Shawn from Utah, I share your concern. I would add to that, to Shawn from Utah, the fact that this is really what started this effort. In other words, during the first week of July 2013, when the President announced there were several provisions in the law he simply would not be implementing, he simply would not be enforcing, along the lines of what Congress enacted with the Affordable Care Act in 2010, it was at that point that I and several others put our heads together and realized that if the President is saying this law is not ready to implement, if the law objectively is not ready to implement; if, as we now understand it, the law is going to make health care less affordable rather than more affordable for so many Americans, perhaps Congress shouldn't be funding its implementation and enforcement. Perhaps that ought to be telling us something. So it is important to remember, as Shawn from Utah points out to us, that we do have three branches of government. This is the legislative branch. Our job is to make the laws. The President does not have law- making authority. The President can seek changes in the law just as other citizens can seek them from Congress, but Congress does have to act. Although the President wields the veto pen, the veto pen is not the legislation pen. He doesn't have the power to legislate on his own without the assistance of Congress. It is one of the reasons we are in this debacle today. It is one of the reasons we have, along with so many millions of Americans, expressed this position that we would like to fund government while defunding ObamaCare. This is something the American people are calling out for. It is something they are requesting. It is something the House of Representatives acted boldly and bravely in doing, in standing behind the American people. This really is what we are doing. This is the whole reason we are concerned about this, because we want to stand with the American people and with the House leadership, Speaker Boehner and the other leaders in the other body in Congress, who bravely put forward this legislation to keep government funded while defunding ObamaCare. One of the things we have been concerned about today and one of the things I think we need to focus on over the next few days is the fact that with the House of Representatives acting last week, passing this legislation, this continuing resolution to keep government funded while defunding ObamaCare, in order for us to stand behind them, we have to monitor the manner in which that legislation is reviewed over here. Now that the House-passed continuing resolution has reached the Senate, we have a few options. There are a few acceptable ways of treating this legislation now that it has been passed by the House. One very acceptable approach would be for us to say: OK, let's bring up the House-passed continuing resolution--the resolution that funds government but defunds ObamaCare--and let's have an up-or-down vote. Let's vote for it as is, the same way it was crafted in the House of Representatives. That would be an acceptable approach. I would be comfortable with that. Another acceptable approach would be to say: Instead of just taking it up and passing it or not passing it as is, let's have an amendment process. Let's allow Democrats and Republicans as they may deem fit to offer amendments. Let's debate those amendments, discuss their relative merits, the pros and the cons. Let's put those before the American people in the few days we have left before the existing continuing resolution expires, let's vote on all of those, and then at the end of it we will get to the bill itself as it may have been amended by that point. That would be acceptable as well. What is not acceptable is what many have suggested will occur. Many have suggested that the majority leader will bring up this bill and instead of saying ``let's vote on it as is'' or instead of saying ``let's have an amendment process,'' he apparently wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to have it both ways. He wants to bring it up and subject it to one and only one amendment--an amendment that would strip out a very critical part of the legislation, a part of the legislation that probably is the ``without which not'' element for many of the House Members who voted for it: the provision defunding ObamaCare. He wants that amendment and no other. That is not acceptable, and under that circumstance, in my opinion and in the opinions of several of my colleagues, some of whom we have heard from today, the appropriate way to register that concern is to vote against cloture on the bill if, in fact, that is what the majority leader chooses to do. That is why we are fighting this particular battle today. That is much of what we are discussing today, is why it is that we should not be facilitating the effort of Senate leadership to, in effect, gut the House-passed continuing resolution of an extraordinarily critical element, an element without which it could never have passed in the House of Representatives and an element which, frankly, the American people expect us to take up and discuss and debate. So either way--an open amendment process, fine; an up-or-down vote on the bill as is, fine. What is not fine is an effort to try to have it both ways. Let me share with the Senator from Texas another comment I received from a man named Michael who is also from Utah: We are getting a bigger and bigger government. They're telling us what we should have, what we are entitled to instead of protecting a free people paving our own path. Government gets bigger while the job market is getting crushed. I work for a company in the middle of layoffs and more are to follow. We can't continue like this. This is an acknowledgment that so many people across our great country are making as they discover the impact of this bill--passed into law some 3\1/2\ years ago--that has not increased in popularity over the last 3 years. Time might not have increased its popularity--in fact, it has had quite the opposite effect--but time has had the effect of expanding its volume. It has gone from 2,700 pages when it was passed to more than 20,000 pages now when we add the implementing regulations. That is quite stunning. The length of it is quite stunning. It reminds me of something James Madison wrote--I believe it was in Federalist No. 62. He said, if I may paraphrase him, it will be of little benefit to the American people that their laws may be written by individuals of their own choosing if those laws are so voluminous and complex that they can't reasonably be read and understood by the American people. Well, 2,700 pages is a little too long. It is a lot too long. And I certainly know that 20,000 pages is much, much, much too long. That brings to mind a comment I received from Marcia, also from Utah, who writes this: However well intentioned Obama care may be, I do not feel this is the best solution. I think something ``less wordy'' and more succinct would be a much better plan. If you can't say it in 5 pages or less, it may be best unsaid! The changes already enacted have made it more difficult for me to get medical care. Not a big help! Well said, Marcia, very well said. When we vote on legislation people haven't read, the American people tend to suffer. When we perpetuate a mistake once made embodied in a 2,700-page bill, things go from bad to worse to much, much worse. What we have right now is an opportunity for us to debate and discuss the merits of something that perhaps was not adequately debated and discussed 3\1/2\ years ago when this law was passed, when Members of Congress were told to pass this law to find out what is in it. Well, we know a lot more about what is in it now. The American people have concerns. It is appropriate to have the discussion now in connection with spending legislation because, after all, Congress does have the power of the purse. Congress is given this power, this responsibility of making decisions regarding taxing and spending. It was for this reason the founding generation wisely put it in the hands of the House of Representatives--the power of the purse--giving the House of Representatives the responsibility to initiate or originate bills relating to this power. It is the House of Representatives that is, after all, the branch of a government and of Congress that is most directly responsive to the needs of the people. It is appropriate that we have this discussion regarding funding or not funding a piece of legislation that is going to require a lot of money and is going to be proven costly to the American people in many, many ways in the coming years--I say ``costly in many ways'' to reflect the fact that it is not just the cost of government money; it costs the American people a lot of things as well. It is costing them jobs. It is costing them wages. It is costing them access to health care in many circumstances. Let me read something I received from Randy. Randy is from my neighboring State of Idaho. Randy writes: My wife and I have a small business with about 20 employees. We struggle to stay in business. We feel that if and when Obamacare is implemented, we will not be able to continue to be in business. Randy, I can't tell you how many people I have heard make very similar comments from one end of my State of Utah to the other and from people across America. You are not alone, Randy. A lot of people out there are concerned as well. That is one thing people lose in addition to wages or jobs or access to health care--some of them lose the opportunity they have to stay in business. We are not talking about millionaires and billionaires; we are talking about hard-working Americans who put a lot on the line in order to make a decent living, in order to provide jobs for their few employees. This is something we need to look out for. This is something we may not, we must not lightly brush aside. Here is something else some Americans will sometimes lose--something they were promised they would not lose--access to a doctor they like, access to a doctor they have come to trust over the years. This one comes from Jack from the State of Texas. Jack says: My family doctor of 25 years is talking about an early retirement because of policies Obamacare is going to require him to follow that will compromise the oath he took when he became an M.D. This is sad, Jack. This is something we were promised would not happen, and it is something that should not happen. This is something that we are told is happening from time to time. Ryan, also from Texas, writes: My mother is a middle-class mortician whose health care coverage is going up by 68 percent for this poorly envisioned law with no other changes. She simply cannot afford to maintain health care coverage without significant changes to her lifestyle, and for what? Sometimes we have to ask that question: And for what? Sometimes we have to ask the question, the same question that physicians are required to ask themselves: Are we doing harm? It is my understanding that when a physician becomes licensed, he or she must take an oath, an oath that involves an obligation to first do no harm. We as lawmakers have to ask ourselves that question from time to time. We as lawmakers have to view ourselves as subject to a similar obligation to first do no harm. (Mr. DONNELLY assumed the chair.) Some have said that when you are carrying around a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. I wonder whether that is sometimes true of Congress and the law-making power. Because of the law-making power we wield, sometimes, when we view problems, we assume we automatically, necessarily, inevitably have the right solutions. Well, in some cases that may be true. In other cases, it might be true in part. But that power might be used incorrectly. Sometimes when legislation is hastily drafted, thrown together in a hurry, rather than for purposes of making sure it is part of a cohesive whole--something that will be a coherent mechanism that can be implemented in a commonsense fashion--sometimes if it is thrown together too hastily and these cautions are ignored, we can end up doing a lot of harm, we can find ourselves first doing harm above all else, and that is not OK. When we look at this law, and we look at the fact that the American people are funding its implementation, we discover it is much deeper than something that deals with an individual mandate or an employer mandate or a set of regulations governing the insurance industry. It is much more than that. It is much more than what people will have to do with regard to the reporting of some fairly personal details about their lives to the IRS, an agency that Americans have come to trust substantially less than they already did, as if that were possible. It is about the fact that the American people--in addition to being made less free by this law, and in addition to being made less prosperous by this law--are also required to fund its implementation and its enforcement against them. That is where the power of the purse must come into play. That is what makes it so appropriate, so essential, so vital that we have this discussion right here and right now as we consider spending legislation, spending legislation that may well represent our last best hope of achieving a degree of delay or defunding of this legislation before its primary operative provisions take full effect. That is why it is important for us to have this discussion right now. Let me emphasize again the importance of the cloture vote and the position we are taking on that. It is grounded fundamentally in the understanding that the House of Representatives acted in a manner consistent with what the American people have been asking. I cannot emphasize enough the fact that House Speaker John Boehner and his leadership team in the House--the House Republicans have supported him in this effort. They did great work. They stood valiantly with the American people who were calling out overwhelmingly for them to take this step, to keep government funded but defund ObamaCare. And that is what they did. Now that they have acted, there are two approaches we could take to this that are perfectly appropriate. We could vote on that legislation as is, up or down, or we could subject it to an amendment process, allow Democrats and Republicans alike to present amendments to make the House-passed resolution better, as they might deem fit. We can debate and discuss and vote on each of those. Sure, it can be time-consuming. Sure, it can be grueling. But that is our job. We took an oath to do that job. We do this all the time--maybe not as much as we should. But a few months ago in connection with the budget resolution, we as Senators stood and sat--a little of both--here all night long. We voted all night long, until 5 o'clock in the morning. People got a little cranky at times, but that is what we are here to do--not to be cranky, but we are here to vote, to cast votes on amendments. That is what we had to do that day because there were a lot of amendments. That is what we should be doing with this if, in fact, we decide we want amendments to the House-passed resolution. So vote on it up or down as is; fine. Subject it to an open amendment process; fine. Trying to have it both ways, the majority leader telling us this will be subject to one amendment, one amendment only--an amendment that would gut and render nugatory the operative provision that was so important to so many House Members--that is not OK. That is why those who agree with us on this point, those who feel that way, those who feel the American people need us to stand up for them, should vote no on cloture when we get to the cloture vote on the bill later in this week. I would ask my colleague from Texas, as to these concerns I have expressed, these statements that have been made from people around the country--some of them my constituents in Utah, some of them from other parts of the country, including a couple from Texas--what similarities does the Senator see between these statements I have read today and comments the Senator has heard from his constituents as he has traveled through his great State, a State of great expanse and a State of close to 30 million people? What similarities does the Senator see between these statements and those he has heard around his State?

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. From day 1, there have been those in the Washington establishment who have been working against this, and it was the American people who stood up in strong support of us. It was the American people who served as the heroes of this story who spoke overwhelmingly to the Congress and spoke overwhelmingly to the House of Representatives and convinced the House of Representatives to pass this great continuing resolution--one that keeps government funded and allows it to avoid a shutdown while defunding ObamaCare. That is what this effort has been all about. It has been all about the people we are trying to protect from this horrible law. Across the country Americans stayed up with us overnight forging this argument, helping us distribute this argument, choosing to forego sleep and to show their support of this effort, and we greatly appreciate that. I want to take a moment to reflect on how all of us who have been up all night feel right now--with dry eyes, with a certain amount of grogginess, and yet ultimately this is an exhilarating moment. It is exhilarating because we are inspired by the American people who have informed this message and who have expressed their views so well and so forcefully, and I am grateful to have been part of this effort. I ask the Senator from Texas: As we come to the end of this uphill climb we have experienced over the past 24 hours, give or take, we see the cards are somewhat stacked against us. Today, although Washington may appear to have the upper hand, in our hearts don't we know the American people are with us, and don't we know the American people will have the final word, and that as George Washington predicted a couple of centuries ago, this country will always remain in good hands--in the hands of its people?

Mr. LEE. Will the Senator from Texas yield for a question?

Mr. LEE. As the Senator was mentioning, the fact that it is time for people to stand for their own rights and it is time for the people's elected representatives in Washington to stand for them reminds me of the fact that sometimes people do take this challenge, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes people will square their shoulders heading into a challenge, and other times people will simply engage in shoulder- shrugging and ignore problems all together. A few years ago I was traveling through southern Utah with my family, and we went to a restaurant. It was sort of a fast food restaurant that had a salad bar. For some strange reason, instead of ordering a cheeseburger, I ordered a salad. I don't know why, but I got the salad bar. I went through the salad bar with my plate, and I was putting all of these horribly healthy foods on my plate--lettuce, vegetables. Then I saw at the end of the salad bar something that I didn't expect, a little bonus. There was a little tub of chocolate pudding, and I thought, this is fantastic. I can feel like I am eating a healthy meal because I am eating a salad, but I get chocolate pudding in with salad, so I put a bunch of that on my salad plate. I sat down a few minutes later, and, of course, rather than eating the salad, I went right for the pudding. There was only one problem: The pudding was disgusting. It was spoiled rotten. It tasted as if it had been left out overnight unrefrigerated for 3 nights in a row, which is not a good thing. I immediately thought, I have to find somebody who works here. I have to tell someone that the pudding is bad so that they don't have to deal with any other customers eating rotten pudding. I found the nearest employee of the restaurant. I said to her in a sort of hushed tone of voice: Hey, the pudding is bad. You need to do something about it. You need to replace it. It is rancid. It is spoiled rotten. Please do something about it. She looked at me with a sort of blank stare. She couldn't have been older than maybe 17 years old, and she just said: I am not on salad. Then she walked away. My response to that was, I am not suggesting that you are on salad. I all of a sudden wondered whether I had stumbled across some rift among the employees of this particular fast food establishment. Maybe she didn't like the implication that she was one of the salad bar attendants. Maybe that was a bad thing. I don't know. All I know is that it was kind of strange because she worked for the same employer who ran the salad bar. I would have thought she would have cared about that. Instead, she said: I am not on salad, shrugged her shoulders, and walked away. I wonder if that is sometimes what we have too much of here in Washington: I am not on salad. I am not on ObamaCare. I am not on excessive regulation. I am not on dealing with a law that is going to result in a lot of Americans losing their jobs, having their hours cut, their wages cut, or losing access to their health care benefits. Well, our problems are acute. Our problems are, in fact, chronic. We have to do more than shrug our shoulders. What we need right now is more shoulder-squaring than shoulder-shrugging. We have to have people who will follow the admonition of Ronald Reagan, who declared more than 30 years ago that it is morning in America again. As it is now morning in Washington again, it is an appropriate time of day for us to bring this up. To paraphrase the words of Ronald Reagan, as spoken in his speech at the Republican National Convention in July 1980, and to apply those same words today, let me just say as follows: Our problems are both acute and chronic, yet all we hear from those in positions of leadership are the same tired proposals for more government tinkering, more meddling and more control, all of which led us to this state in the first place. Can anyone look at the record of this administration and say: Well done? Can anyone compare the state of our economy when this administration took office with where we are today and say: Keep up the good work? Can anyone look at our reduced stand in the world today and say: Let's have more of this? We must have the clarity of vision to see the difference between what is essential and what is merely desirable, and then the courage to use this insight to bring our government back under control and make it acceptable to the people. It has long been said that freedom is the condition in which the government fears the people and tyranny is the condition in which the people fear the government. Throughout the duration of our history as a republic, we have enjoyed liberty, we have enjoyed freedom, and we have had a notable absence of tyranny. Sure, there have been excesses from time to time. We have kept those under control because the government has always been in good hands--in the hands of its people. When the people weigh in from time to time and decide they have had too much of something, it ends up having a benefit for everyone. Everyone benefits when the people speak and are heard. Everyone benefits when the people's elected representatives are willing to square their shoulders and stand up to a challenge rather than shrug their shoulders and walk away saying, as it were, I am not on salad. Today, we are all on ObamaCare. We are all on it in the sense we can't walk away from it. We are all on it in the sense that we have no choice but to confront the many challenges facing our people. There is not widespread agreement as to what we can or should or must or might do. In the absence of consensus, and understanding the widespread disruption to our economy this will create once it is fully implemented, some have suggested that a good compromise position might be to delay its impact. And the best way to fully delay it is to defund it--defund it for at least 1 year. The President himself has acknowledged the law is not ready to be implemented as written. The American people are reluctant to confront the many economic challenges this law presents. It is, therefore, appropriate that we do this, and it is appropriate the House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to keep government funded while defunding ObamaCare. It is for that position we have been speaking, and it is for that position that we continue to insist that as we approach the cloture vote this week, that I and Senator Cruz and a few others will be voting no on cloture on the bill because we support the House-passed continuing resolution--H.J. Res. 59. We support that, and because we support it, we cannot support a process that would enable Senator Reid, the Senate majority leader, to strip out, to gut the most important provision within that resolution--the ObamaCare defunding legislation-- by a simple majority vote without allowing any other votes on any other amendments, without allowing for an open amendment process, without ever allowing Members of this body to have an up-or-down vote on the legislation as a whole, as it was enacted, as is. That is what we are fighting for. Is this difficult? Yes, absolutely it is. Do we have consensus within our own political party? Of course we don't. That is one of the reasons we are standing here today, to persuade our colleagues and to persuade more of the American people to join in with us. No one Senator can do this alone. Not one of us, certainly by means of our persuasive abilities, will be able to do this. But with the American people, we can do a lot of things. It wasn't very long ago, it wasn't even 2 weeks ago when people were still saying it would not be possible to pass a continuing resolution such as H.J. Res. 59--one that keeps government funded while defunding ObamaCare. Yet when the people weighed in strongly in support of this measure, it became possible. I hope and I expect the same can be true in the Senate. So I would ask Senator Cruz: What is the best way the American people, in confronting this challenge and others similar to it, but in particular this challenge confronting ObamaCare, can square their shoulders and avoid the kind of shoulder shrugging that has resulted in so much expansion of government almost as if by default?

Mr. LEE. Will the Seantor yield for a question?

Mr. LEE. My question relates to the nature of our government and the nature of our system which is a system of laws. One of the reasons America has been attractive to so many people over the last few centuries and one of the reasons people have wanted to move here from all over the world is that this has always been a land of opportunity. It has been a place where you can be born into one station in life and die in a much better station. We worry that land of opportunity might cease to be. We worry about the fact that people are being trapped at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder and finding it increasingly difficult to move up along that ladder. One of the reasons this is the case is because the distinction between what is properly within the domain of government and what is properly within the domain of people is sometimes blurred. In other instances, that which is properly within the domain of the Federal Government and properly within the domain of the State and local governments in this country is blurred. On other occasions, it is because what is properly within the domain of the legislative branch is usurped by the executive branch or the judicial branch or a combination of the two. The more our legal system becomes deteriorated, the less faithful it becomes to the blueprint that was created for our government some 226 years ago, and the more we struggle in this country. I quoted James Madison earlier. I referred to something he said in Federalist No. 62. I have the actual text of the language, which I largely paraphrased earlier, and I wish to expand on it a little more and explain some of what he was saying. He writes: It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed? Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uninformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow- citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many. In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy. But the most deplorable effect of all is that diminution of attachment and reverence which steals into the hearts of the people, towards a political system which betrays so many marks of infirmity, and disappoints so many of their flattering hopes. No government any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability. We see in this an age-old warning, a warning about what happens when governments do certain things which tend toward voluminous legislation, excessive regulation, and deliberate manipulation by those who have access to the power lovers of government, whereby they may commandeer the economic machinery of an entire civilization--commandeer it to their advantage, and thereby secure a position at the top end of the economic spectrum of that society. When people do this, they very frequently use really long, really complex laws. They necessarily rely on extensive regulation, the kind of regulation that can be found in a 2,700-page law passed by Members of Congress who have not read it, who pass it after being told they have to pass it in order to find out what is in it, who do so only to discover later that this 2,700-page piece of legislation has become 20,000 pages of regulation. As we stand this evening, or this morning, or whatever we call this time of day as we move forward together on this path toward standing with the American people, I invite my colleagues to join me on a journey back to a place and time not unlike our own. It was a turbulent time of deep division within our young Republic. George Washington recorded the events of March 4, 1797--his last day as President of the United States. Washington wrote: It was with a heavy heart that I left my room today thinking not so much of myself as of our country . . . Walking out onto Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, Washington continued: I was plain George Washington now, neither general nor President. Suddenly I realized I was not alone. People were following me, at first only a few, then a swelling crowd. For a long moment, I stood face to face with them--the young cobbler, the carpenter, the storekeeper, the laborer. All of them stood facing me. They said not a word. I realized that providence was showing me a vision of America, of what it will become. I could feel assured that, come what may, whether it be political bickering . . . or any other evil in government, . . . our country rests in good hands, in the hands of its people . . . A similar crowd we might say gathers every time people converge at a townhall meeting. It is not necessarily a crowd consisting of carpenters, storekeepers, laborers, and cobblers. It might well consist of a crowd including schoolteachers, Web designers, business consultants, mothers and fathers and friends. Every time I hold townhall meetings, as I look around the crowd and I see groups of people represented from those groups I described, I think about the fact that today, as in Washington's time, the hands of our great Nation rest in good hands. It rests in the hands of its people. So hand in hand and acting on the instincts of our better angels and connected in the principle of civil society and in the principles that allow our country to be great, we know that we the people and not we the government will form a more perfect union and help ensure that the vision of George Washington becomes the destiny of the Nation. Our discussions tonight have been about keeping the country in the hands of the people and making sure the government serves the people and not the other way around, making sure the people are in charge of their own government; that whenever the things that government does become destructive of the ability of the people to achieve happiness and secure their own lives and their liberty and their pursuit of happiness, it is important that the people restore to themselves the power which is rightfully theirs. Throughout the history of the world, in many civilizations, people have called that idea radical. They have called it crazy. They have called it insane. Here we call it a very American ideal. Here, tonight, we have been talking a lot about this law. We have been talking a lot about our ability to defund this law which we believe has become destructive of the people. We have been told by some of our colleagues--some from within our own party--that this effort is futile, that we shouldn't fight it because, as we are told over and over, we don't have the votes. Those things can change and they do change when the people speak to their elected representatives and they ask their elected representatives to do that which they were sent to our Nation's capital to do. There is a man named William Morris, a man whose political philosophy I don't share in many respects, but a man who occasionally said things that were profound and reflect broader truths. William Morris once wrote: One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman; two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble; a hundred thousand . . . and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and more . . . ? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question. So when we find ourselves with an idea in our head, when we find ourselves listening to people, people who might begin with a chorus of one calling out for Congress to do something to protect the American people, we might be inclined to dismiss that one idea coming from that one person as the product of madness. When two people join together, when 10, when 100, 1,000, 10,000, and so forth--with each order of magnitude, we find that the idea acquires more potency, the idea acquires more lasting power, the idea moves more and more people. The idea to defund ObamaCare is not new. It has been discussed since 2010, since shortly after the law's enactment, since about the time when many people were predicting that the Republican Party might gain control of at least one House of Congress. That is when it began in earnest. We hoped, we expected, that once the Republican majority took hold, once Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January 2011, in the wake of the 2010 election cycle, that the defunding of ObamaCare would be imminent. In fact, H.R. 1, the continuing resolution, as I recall, was filed at the beginning of the last Congress and originally was written to defund ObamaCare. I am not quite sure why that didn't move forward, but many expected it would happen. It didn't happen. We have continued to pass continuing resolution after continuing resolution since January of 2011 to keep the government funded and we have done so without defunding ObamaCare. There have been reasons for that. There were many who expected the Supreme Court would invalidate ObamaCare, thus obviating the need for Congress to go through the process of defunding it and later repealing it. That didn't happen. There were those who expected that a Republican would be elected to President of the United States in the 2012 election cycle, thereby making it possible for ObamaCare to be repealed or perhaps at least stalled out with the assistance of the President and with the assistance of an Executive order suspending many of its major provisions. That, of course, didn't happen. We are now at the point when we are being asked to fund the operations of government potentially for the last time between now and the time when the law's major operative provisions will take effect. This will not be the end of the debate, assuming this effort either does or doesn't succeed. I have no doubt this debate will continue for some time. If we do not succeed in defunding ObamaCare at this point, it doesn't mean the cause is lost forever. It may nonetheless mean it becomes far more difficult to stop this law. Once a law such as this takes effect, it is frequently suggested it will be much harder to stop, much harder to defund, and much harder to repeal down the road. So before we take this step, I think it is appropriate that we consider very seriously defunding this law's implementation and enforcement, especially in light of taking into account the potentially devastating impact this law will have, could have, and is already having on our Nation's workers, the impact it is having with regard to wages, to employment opportunities, to access to health care, and to the cost of health care. We have to take that very seriously, as the House of Representatives has done in passing this continuing resolution. As we take that up, we have to remember the fate of this Nation lies in good hands. It lies in the hands of the American people--the people who were represented well by the House of Representatives when it passed the continuing resolution funding the operations of government, while defunding ObamaCare. I ask Senator Cruz the question: What can we do as citizens, what can we do as Senators, to make sure the hands of our government will, indeed, remain in good hands, in the hands of its people, rather than in the hands of a perpetual oligarchy, albeit an elected oligarchy, a bipartisan political establishment that might limit the freedom of the American people? (Mr. DONNELLY assumed the Chair.)

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

Mr. LEE. First, by way of clarification, it was not a Buick but an Oldsmobile. Those were not rocks I was purchasing in my hypothetical; it was instead a half ton of iron ore. I am not sure it is critical to the merits of the story, but I did think that deserved some clarification. I am not certain that I would, in fact, do that. I wish to be very clear. I did engage in a transaction like that. It does remind me of how we are often asked to vote here. We tie together program after program. Things are funded not on their own merits but on the merits of other programs. When you tie every single piece of government spending together, then all of a sudden it becomes a must-pass piece of legislation. Everybody sinks or swims together, and it becomes a practice of collusive spending in which Congress funds things not because each program deserves to be funded but because nobody wants to have his ox gored, and that does become a problem. I appreciate the Senator's comments about my late father. He has been dead for the last 17 years. We miss him. We have missed him every day since then. The Journal of the American Bar Association once referred to him as ``Huck Finn in a morning suit,'' referring to the ceremonial dress worn by the U.S. Solicitor General. They regard him as sort of the Huckleberry Finn character. It was not typical that a boy from the Rocky Mountains, as he used to describe himself, ends up in that position, but he loved that position and loved it very much. It is worth noting that I have met the father of the junior Senator from Texas. He is an inspiring speaker. He is a true patriot. Even though he was not born or raised in this country, the Senator's father has a great love of the United States of America that is unparalleled, certainly unexceeded by almost anyone I have ever met. He is one who certainly can understand the angst the American people feel about laws like ObamaCare. He is someone who I think can understand that in many respects the very best kinds of jobs program the Senate could enact, as my friend Jared Stone from Danville, CA, recently told me, would be legislation defunding ObamaCare. As my friend Jared Stone pointed out to me, ObamaCare presents a sort of double whammy for the American people. At once, it imposes a massive new tax on the middle class and at the same time kills job opportunities for the middle class. Most people who work in real jobs or want to have a good job understand this. That is why the overwhelming majority of Americans want the Senate to defund ObamaCare. This is a principle that I think the father of the junior Senator from Texas understands very well. The father of the junior Senator from Texas came here as a young man, initially working at a restaurant waiting tables, as I recall. This was a young man who had escaped tyranny in various forms, originally the form of tyranny Cuba saw under Castro's predecessor, Fulgencio Batista. The Senator's father had quite an experience coming to this country. I was wondering if the junior Senator from Texas would be willing to share a little bit more about his father's story, the story of Rafael Cruz, how he came to this country, and how the Senator's father might look upon ObamaCare based upon his rather unique experience coming to this country.

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

Mr. LEE. It certainly is important that we call something by an appropriate name. It was important back then that the Congress properly name what it was doing. It was appropriate back then for the Congress to say: We are enforcing the individual mandate through a penalty and not through a tax. In fact, it was so important that but for Congress's decision to make this a penalty and not a tax, it would never have passed in the first place. What you call something and what you make of it can mean all the difference between passage and failure of a particular legislative proposal. When you dress something up in different language, something might appear to be more palatable than it actually is. Certainly, it could be argued that if there are people among us--if there are Republicans among us who are saying that if you support the House- passed continuing resolution, then you must vote for cloture on the bill, cloture on the House-passed resolution, that would not be accurate, in my opinion. I would respectfully but strongly disagree with someone who would make that claim. I certainly do not believe it is accurate to say that if you support the House-passed continuing resolution, the one that keeps government funding but defunds ObamaCare at the same time, I think it would be inaccurate to say you must vote yes on cloture on the bill in this circumstance. It is not to say that in every circumstance you would have to vote no. In fact, it seems counterintuitive when you first approach it, say why would you vote no on cloture on a bill that you liked. There is one circumstance where I can see where you would want to do that. It is a circumstance in which the continuing resolution you want to support moves over from the House of Representatives, and there are three alternatives the Senate could consider, but the Senate chooses only the third, three doors the majority leader could choose to open. He chooses only the third. The first door is one in which he says: Okay, we are going to vote on this. We are going to vote on it up or down on its merits as is. We are going to vote on it as it was passed by the House of Representatives. Behind door two is another option. We are going to allow amendments. We are going to allow individual Members, Democrats and Republicans, to submit amendments as they deem fit. We will debate and discuss those amendments. We will consider them. We will vote on them. Some of them may pass, some of them may not pass. But we will get to amendments. Door one is okay. Door two is okay. They are both appropriate. I would be okay with either one. I would vote yes on cloture on the bill if we were going to go through either of those first two doors. But door three is the one the majority leader appears likely to open. And behind door three is a very different alternative, one where the majority leader says: I do not want to vote on it as is. But I also do not want to allow an open amendment process. In fact, I am going to allow one and only one amendment. That amendment will gut the continuing resolution passed by the House of the single most important provision relative to its ability to pass the House, the provision defunding ObamaCare. Door 3 is unacceptable. Door 3 is unacceptable because it allows the majority leader to gut the House-passed continuing resolution funding government but defunding ObamaCare. I find door 3 unacceptable. Because I find door 3 unacceptable, I am not going to help the majority leader get there. If he wants to get there with the help of himself, his own vote, and the 53 Democrats who follow him in his conference, that is fine. Let them do that. If he wants to try to convince some Republicans to join him in that effort to make it easier for him to gut the House-passed continuing resolution, to strip out the language defunding ObamaCare, then that is the prerogative of anyone who may go along with him. I choose not to do that because I was elected to fight this law, not to facilitate its implementation. I don't want to facilitate its implementation. I therefore don't want to facilitate the demise of what I regard as the single most important provision of the House-passed continuing resolution. I will therefore vote against cloture on the bill. I ask Senator Cruz, how does he view the upcoming cloture vote? I am speaking here not on cloture on the motion to proceed but on the cloture on the bill, on the House-passed bill, the continuing resolution.

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

Mr. LEE. It occurs to me, as I think of this question that I am about to ask the Senator, that, inevitably, one constitutional violation facilitates another. It cannot be that you violate one aspect of the Constitution, in this circumstance, especially, where you are tinkering with the lawmaking power in ways that impact both federalism--the relative power of States and localities, on the one hand, vis-a-vis the Federal Government on the other hand--and also when you manipulate the power to legislate, the power to impose taxes. Anytime you distort the operation of the legislative power, anytime you allow the judicial branch to commandeer the legislative machinery from Congress, you are also distorting the accountability you describe. In other words, you have in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act a massive intrusion by the Federal Government into the sovereign authority that is retained by the States and by the people. The bigger the legislative package, the bigger the intrusion, and the greater the potential threat to federalism. The more removed that legislative package is from the people's elected representatives in the House and in the Senate, the greater the potential distortion that is at play in the constitutional system. What we have at the end of the day is a new tax. Nobody knows who to blame. When the people are upset that they are going to be paying this tax, who do they blame? They go to their Members of Congress. You ask any Member of Congress who is still here who was here when this was enacted, any Member of Congress who voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and I can pretty well guarantee you they are going to say: Oh, no, I did not vote for a middle-class tax hike. I did not vote to impose a new tax on middle-class Americans. No. No. I voted for this, but I did not vote for that because this imposed a penalty and not a tax. I know that because even in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in 2012, people who supported this legislation in the House and in the Senate and in the White House continued to insist: No, this is not a tax, this is a penalty. This notwithstanding the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States concluded it could not be upheld as a penalty, that it can be upheld only as an exercise of Congress's authority to tax, an authority which Congress decidedly did not exercise. So the accountability is thrown off severely. This is what prompted me to introduce a piece of legislation, S. 560. S. 560, which stands in rather stark contrast to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act with its 2,700 pages and 20,000 pages of implementing regulations--S. 560, 1 page. Here is what it says, to paraphrase: Section 1501 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the individual mandates provision, is hereby amended as follows: Nothing in this provision shall be interpreted as a tax or as a valid exercise of Congress's power to tax pursuant to article I, Section 8, clause 1, or the 16th Amendment. You see, the part of S. 560 is that it gives those who voted for ObamaCare, those in Congress who still defend ObamaCare, something other than a tax on the middle class, an opportunity to register that belief, to register that belief by a vote, a vote that would say yes, I do not believe this is a tax, and it should not be considered as a tax by the courts, and it should not be upheld by the courts as a tax. It should not be construed under any circumstance as a tax, because we do not regard it as that. The interesting thing, of course, is that that is naturally the way people who are the law's biggest defenders would like to vote in some respects, because they want to tell the American public, and they are still telling the American public: It is not a tax, it is a penalty. But if, in fact, they actually put their vote in that direction, if they put their money where their mouth is and they pass that into law, guess what happens to the Supreme Court's ruling. What would happen to the Supreme Court's ruling in that circumstance, if we were to pass S. 560 into law? Let's assume that somehow magically it passed the House and the Senate and President Obama signed it. Perhaps it united both parties behind this concept that this is not a tax. What then would become of the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on that basis?

Mr. LEE. Will the Senator from Texas yield?

Mr. LEE. Hearing the Senator from Texas, I started humming the theme to ``Jeopardy,'' while stating lots of these things in the form of a question. It does occur to me it is absolutely certain there was a reason why this was not called a tax when it was presented to the Congress. The reason is tax hikes are unpopular. Tax hikes are especially unpopular when they are directed at the American middle class. Tax hikes are especially unpopular when they are directed at the American middle class, when they are presented by a President who ran specifically on a campaign of not raising taxes on the American middle class, which, of course, nearly all candidates for President will promise and in this case did promise. So, no, it is not by any means an accident that this happened--the fact that language, consistent with 100 years' worth of jurisprudence, language that was used in this law, created a penalty. There is a very clear distinction between a penalty under Federal law and a tax under Federal law. A tax under Federal law is something that is an obligation, a generalized obligation to fund government; whereas, a penalty is something that involves both a requirement under Federal law and a provision exacting a payment as something that occurs in response to noncompliance with that requirement. So no, this was not an accident at all. So I would ask Senator Cruz whether this aspect of the Affordable Care Act--and also the fact that ObamaCare is called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--doesn't it strike the Senator that this, in so many ways, is a misnomer in much the same way that the Hundred Years' War did not last 100 years, Chinese gooseberries come not from China but from New Zealand, that the black box is orange, that Panama hats come from Ecuador, that camel hair brushes are made of squirrel fur--by the way, I do not ever want to try one of those; it does not sound pleasant--that the purple finch is actually red and that the Canary Islands are named after a dog? So, too, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a name that does not accurately describe the finished product because this is a law that will make health care less affordable rather than more, and it is a law that subjects patients to a lot of harm rather than protecting them. Does that mean we should think again about ObamaCare in the same way that we need to think again in the answers to some of these questions?

Mr. LEE. Will the Senator yield for question?

Mr. LEE. But the question is, Would any of them be willing to listen to it or interested in it or would most of them consider it a form of torture?

Mr. LEE. There is a chain of islands off the coast of Spain, a chain of islands known as the Canary Islands. Can the Senator tell me after what animal were these islands named?

Mr. LEE. What color is a purple finch?

Mr. LEE. The device known as a camel's hair brush, does the Senator know what it is made of?

Mr. LEE. There is something called a Panama hat. Can the Senator tell me what part of the world the Panama hat comes from?

Mr. LEE. Commercial airplanes, as far as I know, all airplanes in the United States, have within them something called a black box--a black box that records the events of the cockpit. It also records critical operating data from the airplane so that in the event of an accident, the data and the voice recordings can be reviewed to try to figure out what happened. Does the Senator know what color the black box is?

Mr. LEE. If the Senator will yield for another question.

Mr. LEE. Can the Senator tell me, where do Chinese gooseberries come from?