Mike Lee

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we are better than this. This farm bill is a monument to every dysfunction Washington indulges in to defend our policies and twist our economy to benefit itself at the expense of the American people. The top-line talking point among defenders of this bill is ``compromise.'' The farm bill, we are told, may be imperfect, but it is a compromise we can all live with. They said negotiators from both Houses and both political parties came together and hammered out a deal. They said: This is just how you have to act to get things done in Washington. There is, of course, some truth to this, but it is more of a half truth. There absolutely is compromise in this thousand-page $1 trillion mess. But it is not a compromise between House Republicans and Senate Democrats. No, it is collusion between both parties against the American people. It benefits special interests at the expense of national interest. This bill does not demonstrate how to do things in Washington but instead demonstrates how to do things for Washington. The final product before us is not just a legislative vehicle, it is a legislative getaway car. And what did they get away with? Well, the farm bill is really two bills--one that spends about $200 billion to subsidize the agricultural industry and another that spends $750 billion on the public assistance program previously known as food stamps. The farm bill is, thus, a beltway marriage of convenience between welfare and corporate welfare, ensuring the passage of both while preventing reform in either. Instead, Congress broke out the neck bolts and sutures and put Frankenstein's monster back together. This was the year the farm bill was supposed to be different. This was supposed to be the year when we would finally split the bill into its logical component pieces and would subject them both to overdue scrutiny and reform. This was the year we might have strengthened the Food Stamp Program with work and other requirements for able-bodied adults, to help transition beneficiaries into full-time jobs. This was the year we might have added an asset test, to make sure wealthy Americans with large personal bank accounts were no longer eligible for food stamps. But those reforms aren't there. Those reforms aren't here--not in this bill. Under this legislation, the Food Stamp Program is not really reformed, it is just expanded. Once again, the give and take of compromise in Congress boils down to the American people give and Washington takes. Yet, if anything, the other side of this bill is even worse. Not only did the conference committee fail to reform programs subsidizing agricultural businesses, the conference committee removed many of the few improvements the House and Senate tried to include in the first place. For instance, the original Senate bill, for all its faults, included a novel provision to limit farm subsidies to actual farms, actual farmers. The Senate bill was also going to phase out crop insurance subsidies for wealthy Americans with an annual income of more than $750,000; farmers who made three-quarters of a million dollars a year, after all, should not need taxpayer assistance to keep their farms afloat. The House bill included a transparency reform requiring Members of Congress to disclose any subsidies they personally receive under the crop insurance programs. Yet all of the above reforms mysteriously disappeared from the final legislation now before us. It is not as though the farm bill was a paragon of accountability and fairness to begin with. Agricultural policy follows a troubling trend in Washington, using raw political power to twist public policy against the American people to profit political and corporate insiders. For instance, under this legislation, the Federal Government will continue to force taxpayers to subsidize sugar companies, both in the law and in the grocery store. The bill maintains the so-called ``dairy cliff,'' keeping dairy policy temporary. This will create an artificial crisis the next time we take up the farm bill, which will once again undermine thoughtful debate and reform. Perhaps of all the shiny ornaments hung on this special-interest Christmas tree, the shiniest may be the actual croniest handout to the Christmas tree industry itself. Under this farm bill, small independent Christmas tree farmers will now be required to pay a special tax to a government-created organization controlled by larger corporate producers, like some medieval tribute to feudal lords. These costs will, of course, be passed on to working families. So every December, Washington will, in effect, rob the Cratchits to pay Mr. Scrooge and his lobbyists in Washington. Yet, even all this is squeaky-clean legislating compared to this farm bill's most offensive feature--its bullying, disenfranchising shakedown of the American West. Most Americans who live east of the Mississippi have no idea that most of the land west of the great river is owned by the Federal Government. I don't mean national parks, protected wilderness, national monuments, and the like. We have a lot of those and we love them. But that is a fraction of a fraction of the land I am talking about. I am just talking about garden-variety land--the kind that is privately owned in every neighborhood and community across the country. More than 50 percent of all of the land west of the Mississippi River is controlled by a Federal bureaucracy and it cannot be developed: no homes, no businesses, no communities or community centers, no farms or farmers markets, no hospitals or colleges or schools, no Little League fields, no playgrounds, nothing. In my own State, it is 63 percent of the land. In Daggett County, it is 81 percent. In Wayne County, it is 85 percent. In Garfield County, it is 90 percent. Ninety percent of the land in Garfield County isn't theirs. In communities such as these, financing local government is a huge challenge. There, as in the East, local government is funded primarily by property taxes. But in counties and towns where the Federal Government owns 70, 80, or even 90 percent of the land, there simply isn't enough private property to tax to fund basic local services: another sheriff's deputy to police their streets, another truck or ambulance to save their lives and protect their property from fires, another teacher to educate their children. To compensate local governments for the tax revenue Washington unfairly denies them, Congress created--as only Congress could--the PILT program. PILT stands for Payment in Lieu of Taxes. Under PILT, Congress sends a few cents on the dollar out West every year to make up for lost property taxes. There is no guaranteed amount. Washington just sends what Washington feels like sending. Local governments across the Western United States, and especially in counties such as Garfield, Daggett, and Wayne County, UT, completely depend on Congress making good on this promise. Given this situation, there are three possible courses of congressional action: First, Congress could do the right thing and transfer the land to the States that want it. Second, Congress could compromise and fully compensate western communities for the growth and opportunity current law denies them. But in this bill it is neither. Congress instead chooses option three: lording its power over western communities to extort political concessions from them, like some two-bit protection racket. ``That's a nice fire department you got there,'' Congress effectively says to many western communities. ``Nice school your kids have. It would be a shame if anything should happen to it.'' These States and communities are looking for nothing more than certainty and equality under the law. Yet Congress treats these not as rights to be protected but as vulnerabilities to be shamelessly exploited. For weeks I have been on the phone with county commissioners who feel they have no choice but to support a policy they know doesn't work. This bill takes away their ability to plan and budget with certainty and forces them to come back to Congress, hat in hand, every year. County commissioners know this is no way to run a community. I share their frustration, and I applaud their commitment to their neighbors and their communities. I am convinced that in the long run, the best way to protect these communities is to find a real permanent solution--one that gives them the certainty and the equality under the law they deserve. My vote against the farm bill will be a vote to rescue Utahns from second-class citizenship and local communities in my State from permanent dependence on the whims of faraway politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, DC. For all the talk we hear in this Chamber about inequality, we nonetheless seem oblivious to its causes. This bill--and thousands of other bills, laws, and regulations like it--are themselves the root cause of our shortage of opportunity in America today. The end result of this legislation will be to disenfranchise and extort the American people to benefit special interests, to enrich the well-connected at the expense of the disconnected. The true cost of that transaction--just another forced deposit and withdrawal from Washington's dysfunctional favored bank--is a lot more than $956 billion. The true cost of this kind of unequal cronyist policymaking is the trust of the American people in the legitimacy of our political institutions, in the fairness of our economy, and in the good faith of their countrymen. Our constitutional republic, our free enterprise economy, and our voluntary civil society depend absolutely on the equality of all Americans under the law, the equality of all citizen opportunity to pursue happiness in their own communities, according to their own values, each on a level playing field with everyone else. This legislation dangerously subverts that principle and mocks any patriot who still holds it dear. All Americans may be equal but--as George Orwell might put it if he were here today--under the farm bill some Americans are simply more equal than others. I will not be a part of it, and I encourage my colleagues to recognize that there is another way, there is a better way, a new approach that remembers what--and whom--we are supposed to really stand for. What we are supposed to stand for is deliberation--open debate and transparent amendments on this floor, in this Chamber. These programs should not be coupled to shield them from scrutiny and protect them from reform. If we need food stamps to fight poverty and farm subsidies to maintain our food supply, let those programs stand on their own merits or not at all. Furthermore, the land out West is not going anywhere. This should be an opportunity for us to bring our people together, not turn our regions against each other and turn the right to local government into a dangerous political football. It is time to have a serious debate about a permanent solution to federally-owned lands which can improve economic opportunity and mobility while reducing the national debt and deficit. All the evidence in this farm bill to the contrary, I believe we are capable of finding such a solution. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I stand before this body today to talk about the omnibus spending package the Senate will be considering over the next few days. I have some concerns related to this omnibus spending package that relate to a program called PILT. It is an acronym with which most Americans and probably even most Members of Congress are not familiar. It stands for payment in lieu of taxes. The program was developed to help those States, including my home State of Utah, in which the vast majority of the land is owned by the Federal Government. Beside me is a map of the United States. In red we can see all of the land that is owned by the Federal Government. As we can see by looking at the map, most of the land west of the Rocky Mountains--more than 50 percent, in fact--is owned by the Federal Government. Very little of the land east of the Rocky Mountains is, by contrast, owned by the Federal Government. Being from a public land State presents some interesting, very significant, very substantial challenges. Among those challenges is the fact that the Federal Government has deemed this land, has legislated this land as being beyond the ability, beyond the authority of States and their political subdivisions--including counties and local taxing jurisdictions--beyond the ability of the States and their subdivisions to tax. So we can't collect property tax revenue from any of that land. As a result, a lot of our communities in public land States are impoverished--at least impoverished relative to what they might otherwise face. They are impoverished relative to what their ability would be to collect revenue through property taxes in public land States. For that reason, this PILT Program was created to try to offset--at least to some degree--the heavy cost, the disproportionate burden that is placed on the shoulders of public land States and communities. So each year Congress funds this program, and that program then partially offsets the lack of property tax revenue flowing through these public land States and communities. Here is the problem I wish to focus on today: The omnibus spending package we are considering this week contains no funding for PILT--no funding whatsoever. This is potentially devastating to public land States, including Utah, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and many other States, especially those throughout the West. The problem is that America's public land States and counties can't wait any longer. This program must be funded, and it must be funded in this bill. Here is a letter from a commissioner in Piute County, UT. This commissioner states: PILT not being funded in 2014 will have a devastating impact on all counties in the West, but it is particularly devastating to a county the size of Piute. With 74 percent of Piute County under Federal control, $225,000 of our $1 million budget--almost one-fourth--comes in the form of PILT payments from the Federal Government. Without this funding, we will be in the midst of one of the biggest disasters to hit Piute County in years. We have been scraping and scraping to try to figure out how to fund a fourth deputy sheriff in our county and thought we had it figured out until this $225,000 evaporated from our county's revenue. At the present time it is virtually impossible to staff all of the police, search and rescue, and emergency services we need. With this cut, it will be impossible. The Piute County commissioner continues: We will be forced to abandon services, including all services on public lands. It will be sad to have our public lands left without police, search and rescue, and emergency services. I think it is critical to understand that the loss of PILT funding cuts clear to the bone and will be devastating to counties such as Piute. Now, some argue--some insist when faced with arguments such as these--that this is all OK and we can just wait to make PILT funding available, that we will make it available through another legislative vehicle we will supposedly pass later this year. In fact, some of these same people maintain that we will make it better, we will make it automatic, we will make it mandatory spending when we actually do this later this year. It is true that between 2008 and 2013 PILT was funded through a mandatory spending mechanism. That has now expired. But it is important to remember that there is nothing mutually exclusive about these ideas; no reason why we can't go ahead and fund PILT now with discretionary spending and then adopt something later to restore the mandatory nature of funding for PILT. We can fund PILT now in this bill, and then we can make it mandatory later. We can and we should. This would give States and counties the certainty they need, the certainty they have been waiting for, the certainty that will allow them, finally, to plan their budgets. Remember, for many of these counties, such as Piute County, UT, PILT is a substantial portion of their annual revenue stream. It is about one-fourth of the money that Piute County, UT, has to spend every single year. Importantly, I offered an amendment to last year's budget that would build a deficit-neutral reserve fund to make sure PILT continued to be fully funded. That amendment passed. Unfortunately, the fact that it passed has apparently not been enough to make sure it continued to be funded. Now we have a major funding bill before us. This spending bill occupies no fewer than 1,582 pages. It spends in excess of $1.1 trillion. Yet PILT still isn't funded. It is important to point out that even if we do the right thing and even if we fully fund PILT in this program this year, the PILT Program is itself still not adequate. It is still in need of reform. PILT payments are quite insufficient. PILT was intended to soften the economic impact associated with the Federal Government owning so much of the land in the United States. In the case of Piute County, it is about three-fourths of the land. It is about two-thirds of the land throughout the State of Utah. In some counties in Utah, it is well in excess of 90, sometimes 95 percent of the land in a county. PILT was designed to soften that economic impact. But, regrettably, the Federal Government gives States, through the PILT Program, what amounts to in many instances only pennies on the dollar of what the taxing jurisdictions would receive if they were to tax that land, if they were to collect taxes--even if they were to collect those taxes at the lowest property tax rate, let's say the Greenbelt rate in many counties. We must correct that imbalance. In the coming days I plan to introduce legislation to begin the process of doing precisely that. After all, it makes no sense to have a program that some would argue is deceptively entitled ``Payment In Lieu of Taxes'' if, in fact, the payment in lieu of taxes doesn't even closely approximate the value that counties would receive if they were actually allowed to tax that land and collect that revenue as taxes. If an American citizen, a U.S. taxpayer, for example, decided to adopt his or her own PILT Program and on April 15 of each year just sent a check to the IRS saying: These are not my taxes, but this is my payment in lieu of taxes; I am just paying what I feel like paying, that would cause problems. The taxpayer in question would probably end up in prison. In any event, it wouldn't end well for the taxpayer. Yet we have allowed the Federal Government to get away with this over and over, often to the detriment of vulnerable communities, of poor communities, of communities that rely on the Federal Government's unsteady stream of revenue--a stream of revenue that, insufficient as it is already, is now being threatened altogether. In a sense the problem we face with the Federal Government owning all this land is not new. It is a problem that has been around for a long time. In many respects it was a problem envisioned by some of the Founding Fathers. In fact, we can go all the way back to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and see that it was on the minds of some of the Founding Fathers. On September 5, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention they were discussing the public land-related authorities in the Constitution, including the authority that has now been included in what is often referred to as the enclave clause--article I, section 8, clause 17. One of the delegates to the Federal Convention of 1787, Elbridge Gerry, the delegate from Massachusetts, stood before the Convention and made an astute observation. Mr. Gerry said as follows. He expressed concerns that ``this power''--that is, the power of Congress over Federal public lands--``might be made use of to enslave any particular State by buying up its territory, and that the strongholds proposed would be a means of awing the State into an undue obedience to the General Government.'' Then, as now, wise observations often came from the State of Massachusetts. Then, as now, we have a grave risk associated with the fact that when the Federal Government owns this much land, the Federal Government has this much power. It was on the minds of the delegates to the Convention of 1787 that one of the things they needed to protect against was the concentration of too much power in the hands of a few, especially the concentration of too much power within the Federal Government. Each of them had a mission to protect the sovereignty of their respective States. And they understood that if Congress had too much power to simply buy up too much land in any one State-- disproportionately in some States--the Federal Government would have too much influence within that State. I would ask you, when you look at this map I have in the Chamber, does that look equitable? Does that look like an equitable distribution of Federal land ownership? We have to keep in mind that, just as there are benefits associated with some of our public lands, there are also burdens attached to those benefits. When you look at those burdens, it is difficult to say anything other than that they are disproportionately allocated into a certain region of the United States. They are overwhelmingly located within the Rocky Mountains and areas west of the Rocky Mountains. So to the extent these benefits benefit everyone in the United States, then the burdens ought to be shared by everyone in the United States as well. Yet they are not. PILT, again, is woefully inadequate as it is. But now Congress is trying to withdraw funding for PILT. Even though some may say: Well, we will fund it later this year, we have no guarantee of that, and we should be funding it right now. As an interesting side note, in response to Elbridge Gerry's concern on September 5, 1787, the Founding Fathers put a qualifying clause into article I, section 8, clause 17. They said that Congress's plenary legislative jurisdiction over Federal public land lying within a sovereign State's boundaries would exist and could be exercised only if that land--the land in question--was acquired by the consent of the host State's legislature. Some have suggested that this may well mean that when the Federal Government owns land, when it acquires land within a sovereign State's territorial boundaries, that it owns that land just as any other proprietor would own it; that is, subject to the authority of the State and its political subdivisions to tax and regulate that land, unless or until such time as the host State's legislative body parts with that bundle of sovereign rights relative to that land. In other words, the State retains its taxing power over that land unless or until it voluntarily relinquishes it, gives it up, hands it over to the Federal Government. Yet, in nearly all instances where you see red on this map, that has not occurred. Many of these States have been content with the fact that they have been receiving PILT funds, however inadequate those PILT funds may be. But now even those are going away. Even if there is a promise that they might be restored later--later this year--they are still inadequate, and we still do not have the promise that is going to occur now. There is still a lot of uncertainty in a lot of parts of the country--in places such as Piute County, UT, and elsewhere within my State and elsewhere within the western United States. In order to protect against this kind of concern, the kind of concern that the delegate from Massachusetts described on September 5, 1787, Congress adopted a practice, when admitting new States into the Union, of incorporating language into the enabling act for each new State, describing what would happen to public land within the new State's boundaries after statehood. They adopted this practice and this language that would be used each time a new State was admitted into the Union. That language was included in Utah's statehood enabling legislation-- legislation that was adopted about 18 months before Utah finally came into the Union in January of 1896. Section 9 of Utah's enabling legislation says that public land located within the State, lying within the State of Utah, ``shall be sold by the United States subsequent to the admission of said State into the Union. . . . '' Adding to that, section 9 of Utah's enabling legislation said that 5 percent of the proceeds from the sale of that land would be given to the State and would be held in a trust fund by that State for the benefit of the State's public education system. So, as I mentioned, Utah was not the first State to have that kind of language in its enabling legislation. Many of the States that were admitted into the Union much earlier than Utah had similar language in their enabling acts. Missouri had such language. North Dakota had such language. We could name State after State after State that had such language. When you look at Missouri, when you look at North Dakota, and when you look at most of the other States that had language such as that in their enabling acts, you see very little Federal public land. You see because Congress and the Federal Government honored the promises made to those States. Congress followed through with that commitment. Congress did what it was supposed to do. It sold that land subsequent to statehood. Holding on perhaps to a few parcels here and there that it deemed necessary for one reason or another, it made good on that promise. Those States benefited. The Federal Treasury benefited. The American people benefited. It is important to remember that what we are talking about here--when you see all this red on the map, representing Federal land ownership-- is not about national parks. National parks represent a very tiny percentage of Federal land ownership. We are not talking about national monuments, which also represents a very tiny percentage of Federal land ownership. What we are talking about in the context of the PILT program are lands that are managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, an agency that is considered obscure, almost unheard of throughout most of the United States, but an agency that operates with a particularly dominant force in States such as mine, where you see a lot of red on the map. I remember the first time I showed this map to my children, my daughter Eliza, who was about 8 years old at the time, was just barely old enough to understand what I was explaining to her. I told her that the red indicated ownership of land by our national government. And 8- year-old Eliza looked at that portion of the map that represented our State, and she said: Look, dad, they own Utah. I said: You're right, Eliza, they own Utah. They certainly own the overwhelming majority of it. Some of us have not forgotten this promise made in the statehood enabling acts of most of the States admitted into the Union, and yet Congress seems to be determined to overlook it. I am determined not to let that happen. Some of my friends back in Utah are likewise determined not to let that happen. A good friend of mine, Representative Ken Ivory, who serves in the Utah State legislature, has done an amazing job educating people throughout Utah and, in fact, across America on this very subject, on what happened with these statehood enabling acts, and why it is that States in the western United States got left behind when it came to promises made long ago by the Federal Government. I commend Representative Ivory for his work on this issue and pledge to continue working with him on this important project. You see, this is about much more than land. This is about the ability of local communities not only to thrive, but to survive. This is about communities where it is very difficult for people to get jobs. It is very difficult for people, in some instances, even to access their own property, even to access their own farms because it is impossible to get anywhere without crossing Federal public land and in some instances Federal land managers will block access to the only roads they can use to access their own property. This has to stop. In the meantime, it is vitally important that we focus on the issues at hand, that we focus, at a bare minimum, on promises that the Federal Government has extended in lieu of the other promises. That is not to say we are going to forget about the promises made in the statehood enabling acts. We are not. But, for the moment, my attention remains focused on making sure we fund the PILT Program. It has to be funded. In fact, it has to be funded even more than it has been in the past. It ought to reflect at least a rough equivalent of the amount of money the taxing jurisdiction could collect if it were taxing that land at its lowest rate. And, at a bare minimum, even below that, we have to make sure the program continues to exist. We have to make sure the program is funded at least at its current levels. This is not asking much. But it is necessary that we do this. The broken PILT Program is, one could argue, just another example of government applying significant and unnecessary weight to the shoulders of hard-working Americans, many of whom are struggling just to get by, many of whom are barely able to keep food on the table for their families, others of whom are able to provide for the day-to-day needs of their families but they are worried about what happens next. They find that whenever they find a little bit of additional income, no sooner have they earned it than they find it has been swallowed up-- swallowed up by increasing taxes, swallowed up by higher prices for goods and for services, and they do not know how to get out of this rut in which they find themselves somewhat trapped. These are the kinds of people who suffer the most as a result of the Federal Government's failed policies relative to its Federal public land. We have to remember that lifting these weights is not only within the government's power, it is the affirmative obligation of government to lift those weights. In an 1861 address to Congress, President Abraham Lincoln said the ``leading object'' of American government was ``to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life.'' Current PILT policy imposes government waste that makes it more difficult for communities to provide important services such as schools, police, and fire departments. It hampers the ability of States to budget, plan, and provide for infrastructure improvements, make needed reforms to their tax systems, and attract new businesses and new jobs. This policy--and the Federal land management policies that accompany the PILT policy more generously--is broken, and it is imposing a heavy burden on our communities, particularly in rural areas where the Federal Government owns much, most or in some cases nearly all of the land and where needs are at their very greatest. The program is already broken. The program is already causing millions and millions of Americans to suffer. The program is already severely impeding economic opportunity for Americans, deepening the existing crisis of opportunity that we have in this country, which manifests itself on three different levels: immobility among the poor, insecurity among the middle class, and cronyist privilege at the top. If you live in one of these States, it might be great if you are one of those people who owns one of the few parcels of land that is not owned by the Federal Government. It is not so great if you live in one of the areas where the Federal Government owns basically everything, where you can do very little anywhere around you without permission from the Federal Government, where your local government is barely able to survive because it lacks a property tax base, and the Federal Government fails to adequately fund PILT and threatens--in this circumstance--to withdraw funding from PILT altogether. I respectfully implore all of my colleagues to consider the inequities inherent in this map, the inequities inherent in the PILT Program, and, for present purposes, to remember we need to fund PILT. It has to be reformed, absolutely, and we have to examine our Federal land ownership and management policies more broadly. Today we need to focus on making sure PILT is funded. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues from Rhode Island and Iowa for their cooperation in establishing the speaking order this evening. I would like to speak for a moment about the vote we just cast. We just confirmed Judge Wilkins to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. I voted against this judge. In doing that, I joined my Republican colleagues for one simple reason. Several years ago, when President George W. Bush was in the White House, he nominated an eminently qualified lawyer named Peter Keisler who had bipartisan support. He was not a partisan hack; he was a true craftsman in the law. He was someone whom no one had any ideological opposition to, but he was blocked by the Senate Democrats at that time for the simple fact, based on the simple reason, that according to the Senate Democrats the DC Circuit's caseload was not sufficiently robust to justify the filling of this position. Since that time, not very many things have changed. Since that time, if anything, the DC Circuit's caseload per judge has remained about the same or some would argue has gone down a little, depending on which metric you use. One change is that we have now a Democratic President in the White House instead of a Republican President in the White House. Suddenly my friends across the aisle have forgotten about the caseload-based arguments they used a few years ago to keep Peter Keisler off the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. We have now confirmed, just in the last few weeks, three additional judges to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. This has happened against substantial Republican opposition that has been based on the very analysis I have just outlined. This has been facilitated by virtue of the fact that my distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Nevada, joined by his Democratic colleagues, chose a few weeks ago to exercise what has been referred to as the nuclear option. They broke the rules of the Senate in order to change the rules of the Senate, and they did that so they could put more people on the bench, so they could put more people into top-level positions in this administration while more or less squelching the view of the minority party within the Senate. This is unfortunate. The most unfortunate aspect of it is that it is part of a broader strategy that is not limited to the DC Circuit; in fact, it is not even limited to the Senate's confirmation process with respect to these judges or other judges. It extends much more broadly than that. It is part of the same effort that convinced the President of the United States, on January 4, 2012, to make four appointments, three to the National Labor Relations Board and one to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, pursuant to the President's recess appointment power. Citing Article II, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution, the President claimed he had the power to appoint these individuals without going through the Senate advice-and-consent process because, as he asserted, the Senate was in recess. There was only one problem with this. The Senate was not in fact in recess. Under Article I, Section 5, Clause 2 of the Constitution, each Chamber of Congress, including the Senate, has the right to determine its own rules, its own procedures. According to the Senate's own rules and according to the Senate's own Journal, the Senate was in fact in session as of January 4, 2012, the moment these supposed recess appointments were made. This was a problem. Fortunately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit--prior, I would add, to the confirmation of the three recent judges we have confirmed just in the last few weeks--concluded that this was a lawless act; that it was unconstitutional; that the President did not have the right to deem the Senate in recess when, according to the Senate's own rules, the Senate was in session. The Senate was not in recess. That case today was reviewed by the Supreme Court of the United States. I had the privilege of sitting in the courtroom just across the street and watching those proceedings. I was pleased to see the checks and balances within our system were functioning--at least to the extent that we have our court system reviewing this act by the President of the United States. I think it is fortunate we have this kind of judicial system that can review it. Based on what I saw today and the quality of the arguments presented to the Court, I am hopeful the Court will reach the same conclusion. I am hopeful the Supreme Court will affirm the judgment entered by the DC Circuit. In a broader sense it is sad, it is disappointing that it even had to get that far, and it is disappointing that the President of the United States was willing to engage in such a lawless act; that the President of the United States was willing openly to flout the plain text, history, tradition of the U.S. Constitution. Ours is not a government of one. It was with good reason that the Founding Fathers split up the power, including the power to appoint people to high Federal office such that the President could nominate but the Senate got to confirm. By the President's approach, pursuant to which the President of the United States could himself deem the Senate in recess if he did not think the Senate was doing enough when it went into brief sessions, the President himself could substantially circumvent the advice-and-consent role the Founding Fathers and the Constitution wisely placed in the hands of the Senate. The reason I said it is unfortunate it had to get to that level, it is unfortunate, first of all, the President felt it was OK, it was acceptable do this. He, of course, took an oath, not once but twice, to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. It is unfortunate, secondarily, that there was not more of an outcry from this body. Sure, there were a lot Republicans who joined me in calling this action lawless, because it was. It was sad that none of our colleagues from the other side of the aisle--at least not publicly--were willing to acknowledge the lawlessness of this act. Some acknowledged to me in private that it was problematic. Some acknowledged to me that there were some implications behind this that threatened the Senate as an institution. But I think we need to be more open, more faithful, more forceful, and less partisan about the way we defend the Constitution of the United States. To me it would not matter--if this were a Republican President I would be arguing with equal strength on this issue. In the future when we have a Republican President, if any Republican President is lawless enough to try this, I will oppose it with everything within me. We ourselves take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. I think that involves doing more than simply leaving it to the courts to iron out the details. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, this week marks the 125th anniversary of the first week of classes at Weber State University, and I would like to take a moment to officially recognize this valued Utah institution. In the mid-1800s, pioneers from the Mormon Church, also know as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, settled an area 35 miles north of Salt Lake City, known as the Weber Valley. The surrounding area, including the Weber River, was earlier named in honor of John Henry Weber, a noted frontier trapper with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. As our country continued westward expansion, it became necessary to create territorial governments. During this expansive period, Congress passed the Compromise of 1850, part of which created the Utah Territory. The territorial government oversaw general administrative matters, including the establishment of schools, during the latter half of the 19th century. The region experienced an increase in population, as Mormons and non-Mormons alike came to further settle the West. With the driving of the golden spike at nearby promontory summit in 1869, the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad brought tremendous economic growth to the Weber Valley. As the Mormon settlers grew in numbers and cultivated the land, they also created institutions of learning for themselves and their children. In 1888, members of the Mormon Church were encouraged by their leaders to institute local boards of education to oversee the creation of schools that could teach the principles of religion in conjunction with the standard curriculum of the day. In 1889, the regional group of Mormon congregations, known as the Weber Stake of Zion, started the Weber Stake Academy for the education of local students who had passed the sixth grade. The school was ``open to students of either sex, and of any religious denomination or nationality.'' The mission of the academy was ``to provide an education which includes moral culture, as well as mental and physical training.'' Courses were offered in theology, business, pedagogy and psychology, languages, English and literature, natural and physical science, mathematics, history, and political science. The school grew in notoriety and enrollment over the following 20 years. In 1918, it was renamed ``Weber Normal College'' and subsequently ``Weber College,'' as the institution eventually dropped all preparatory and high school education to focus on college-level education. During the first few decades of the 20th century, the famed purple and white were chosen as school colors, and the wildcat was apparently adopted as the school mascot after a reporter dubbed the football players ``scrappy as a bunch of wildcats.'' As the 1920s closed, the Great Depression began to take shape and Weber College, like all other institutions at the time, did not foresee the financial calamity that would befall her. After a few years of struggle, the Weber College Board, in conjunction with the church's Board of Education, transferred the school to the State of Utah in 1933. The subsequent years were very difficult for faculty and students, but the junior college persevered and continued to mold good citizens. The school carried along and grew in size as the Depression subsided. With the attack on Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into World War II, Weber College's faculty and students did all that they could to support the war efforts. Many students joined the armed forces, and the school helped in training naval cadets and radio operators for the military. Because of the war, mostly women attended the school, and they ``had to hold things down until the fellows returned to campus,'' as one alumna recalled. In 1945, the school even held a dance called the ``Polygamist Prance,'' which was girl's choice. To make sure that all the girls could attend, the boys were to accept all requests for a date. Many boys showed up at the dance with 5 or 10 dates, and even though such a ration was unfair to the girls, the students had a great time. Although it was a tremendously difficult time for the entire country, Weber College students, showing the spirit of America's greatest generation, exhibited principled leadership and courage through the storm of World War II. In all, 82 faculty and alumni did not return from Europe or the Pacific, and all were profoundly affected by the great and terrible conflict. As the war came to a close, Weber prepared for the return of many soldiers who were anxious to go to college. Enrollment exploded from 465 students in 1945 to over 2,000 students in 1959, and 3,000 students in 1962. During this time of expansion, the Utah Legislature directed the State board of education to find a new place for the burgeoning school. The college was subsequently moved from downtown Ogden to Harrison Boulevard, where it currently resides today. In 1959, the men's basketball team, an ever-formidable force, won the Junior College National Championship. In that same year, the Utah Legislature passed a bill allowing Weber College to become a 4-year senior college, and the first courses contributing to 4-year degrees were offered in 1962. The next year, Weber College became Weber State College, and the campus was greatly expanded during this time. Weber continued to grow and progress as Weber State College over the subsequent 30 years, and in 1991 Weber State College was made Weber State University. The university now has more than 26,000 full- and part-time students and offers more than 250 undergraduate degrees and 11 graduate degrees. The athletic programs continue to be ranked among the best in their divisions, and the arts at Weber State continue to enrich the lives of many Utahns. President Charles A. Wright now continues the tradition of excellence in leadership, which has been passed down for 125 years. Weber State boasts many notable alumni, and the institution continues to fulfill its mission to serve ``as an educational, cultural, and economic leader for the region.'' Although I normally bleed blue, I have set aside this week to bleed purple with my Wildcat friends and colleagues. I congratulate the countless students and faculty members who have worked hard to make Weber State University what it is today. May the next 125 years be as tremendous as the last, and may the ensign of truth and right continue to proudly wave o're ole Weber.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I first thank my distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Wyoming, who is a good friend and a fine example to all those who know him. People from both sides of the aisle can learn and benefit from my friend from Wyoming who, as a businessman, later as a mayor, as a devoted husband and father, has served his country well and has served his colleagues in the Senate well. His remarks on the Senate floor tonight have been especially insightful, and I have learned something from him this evening as I do every time he speaks. He is one who reached out to me shortly after I arrived here in the Senate and has always shown to me great kindness. I have always been grateful for that, and I look forward to continuing to work with him in the Senate. What is happening in the Senate right now is more than just an attempt by the majority to end debate on nominees. It is an attempt to shut out the American people from the political process. President Obama and the majority party in the Senate are so dedicated to enacting their progressive agenda that they will do anything, even if it means running roughshod over the minority and ignoring the will of the people. Our Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution to prevent this sort of thing from happening and to protect the rights of all Americans. They devised a constitutionally limited government, with a system of checks and balances, so that no one branch of government would wield unlimited power. The whole idea of this system was to prevent the excessive abrogation of power, the excessive accumulation of power within the hands of a few. Under our Constitution, the President's representative function is to faithfully execute the law and not to make it. Congress as a whole alone makes the laws, including a deliberative Senate whose majorities reflect minority views. Senate Democrats' recent actions are an assault on republican institutions and on the protections that they provide to all Americans. The current administration and Senate Democrats view the Constitution as an impediment to the enactment of their agenda. This is why the President illegally amended the Affordable Care Act--a law passed by Congress--through executive action instead of asking Congress to amend it. It is also why Democrats are willing to break the rules of the Senate in order to change the rules of the Senate so that they can more quickly, more easily confirm the President's nominees. Make no mistake. The executive and judicial nominees we are considering will be tasked with implementing and upholding President Obama's agenda. Congress is a representative body and is the only branch of government given the constitutional authority to make laws. We represent the people. When the President illegally changes the law or when he tramples on the rights of the minority in the Senate, he guarantees that the people will have no voice and no representation. These are not trivial matters. These are not matters that we can casually cavalierly cast aside. These are matters of great importance. We have to remember what happened just a few short months ago, when we were told on July 2 of this year that President Obama had decided to change the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in several meaningful ways. This of course was a law that was passed without consensus. It was passed without any semblance of bipartisanship. It was a law that was passed without a single Republican vote. Not a single Republican voted for it in the Senate; not a single Republican voted for it in the House. All 2,700 pages of this law--a law that wasn't read before it was passed, a law that we were told Members would have to pass in order to find out what was in it--this law took effect. Over time, as the American people learned about the law's contents, they didn't grow more favorably predisposed toward the law. The law has in fact never enjoyed the support of a solid majority of Americans, but over time its popularity has tended to diminish. Perhaps seeing this, President Obama on July 2 of this year chose to wield his executive pen in such a way as to amend that law. He chose, among other things, to announce that although the law contains a number of deadlines, a number of start dates, that he would not be enforcing the employer mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He would of course still be enforcing, as of the January 1 start date, the individual mandate. But he would not be implementing or enforcing, at least for the first year of the law's full operation, the employer mandate. Of course, he had no authority to do this. The Constitution sets in place a system for making law. In order to become law, a legislative proposal has to make its way through the House of Representatives, has to make its way through the Senate, has to be passed by most of the people in the House and in the Senate, and then it has to be presented to the President consistent with article I, section 7, clause 2 of the Constitution before it may become law. But of course, once it is law, it is law; and a law passed under one administration can't simply be vetoed or fundamentally altered by a subsequent President. In fact, it can't be vetoed or subsequently altered by even the same President who signed it into law in the first place. And yet, that is in some respects exactly what happened here. The President modified the law. He was too impatient, too unwilling-- too unwilling to defer to the legislative branch, too unwilling to respect the oath that he took to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, too disrespectful of that very document, our founding document that has fostered the development of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. Too unwilling to defer to that document in order to follow its most basic precepts and its most basic commands. He suggested that he needed to do this because the law wasn't ready to be implemented. He later suggested that he did this because he had to do it because, as he put it: Under normal conditions, under more ideal conditions, obviously the thing to do if you wanted to change the law would be to go back with that branch of government charged with making the law--that branch of government which passed it into law in the first place--Congress. But, as he pointed out, these are not ideal circumstances. No, they are not ideal. Not ideal, because he controls only one division of the legislative branch of government, the Senate. The Senate is under the control of his party and the House of Representatives isn't. This can hardly justify this kind of blatant usurpation of legislative authority. This can hardly justify a President taking upon himself the sole task of changing legislation. It is in fact an act of legislation unto itself. Yet this is what he did by a stroke of the executive pen. This is exactly what the Founding Fathers tried to protect against, this kind of unilateral action by the executive, this kind of accumulation of power in the hands of the few--or, in this case, the hands of one person. Yet this is what he did, and he has done it on several occasions. Some people have suggested that if what the President did was wrong, if it was unconstitutional, if it wasn't authorized by the Constitution--which it wasn't--if it wasn't authorized by an act of Congress, either the Affordable Care Act or some other statute--and it wasn't--then perhaps the courts can and should and must and will remedy the constitutional problem embodied in that act. There are some problems with that. First of all, as we all know, not every unconstitutional act can necessarily be remedied in court. Many unconstitutional acts are themselves outside the purview of the Federal courts' ability to review. In some cases, an unconstitutional act might be something that the courts consider a nonjusticiable political question, not subject to the court's authority, or something that the courts aren't willing to wade into. In other circumstances, an unconstitutional act might occur in a situation in which no one party is likely to be able to develop and establish article III standing in order to challenge that unconstitutional act. In order to establish article III standing--in other words, in order to establish the right to sue in Federal court--article III of the Constitution requires that the plaintiff be able to establish that the plaintiff has suffered an injury in fact, an injury in fact that is fairly traceable to the conduct of the defendant, and, thirdly, that it is subject to redress by the authority of the court. In this circumstance, one must ask the question: Does anyone really have standing? Can anyone really establish the kind of standing in order to challenge the President's refusal to implement and enforce the individual mandate while refusing or declining to enforce and implement the employer mandate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? Who has standing to do that? Who has been harmed by that? One could suggest, I suppose, that an employer might want to look into that. But when they would examine the situation, most or all employers would probably have to acknowledge that they have been given a reprieve. So employers, No. 1, are not likely to be aggrieved by it in the sense that they are not likely to feel the need to sue; and, No. 2, if they were to try to sue, it seems to me they would have a very difficult time establishing in a court of law the fact that they had suffered an injury in fact. Who else might do it? Most constitutional scholars would conclude-- probably correctly--that a Member of Congress would lack article III standing under the applicable Supreme Court precedent, Flast v. Cohen and other Supreme Court precedents. Merely being a Member of Congress is not necessarily enough to give a person article III standing. So I think it is very difficult to reach the conclusion that anyone-- at least obviously--has article III standing to sue. So we cannot necessarily rely on the courts to be able to undo this constitutional damage, to be able to seek an adequate remedy in a court of law for this blatant insult to the U.S. Constitution. Even if they could, moreover, even if somebody could establish article III standing, even if somebody could come before an article III Federal judge and convince that judge that they have standing, would that Federal court be in a position to dispose of this case within the roughly 1-year period in which this provision of the law is effectively suspended? It takes a lot of time to litigate a case all the way through to completion, and I think it is doubtful whether somebody would be able to bring an action in Federal court and have it be fully litigated all the way through to judgment in the roughly 1-year period in which it would still be relevant. If you could not get it done in that time period, then it would appear very likely that the case would be rendered moot at that point. So this, quite simply, is the kind of case in which no Federal suit is likely to be brought and if one is brought it would likely fail. So that is yet another reason why we as a Congress ought to be looking very closely at this, you see, because this is one of those many instances in which it is possible that someone can violate the U.S. Constitution, here the President of the United States, without the courts being in a position to effectively remedy that constitutional defect. We too as Members of this body have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. In my mind, that means doing more than simply refraining from that which the Supreme Court of the United States would obviously invalidate. To my mind, that means more than simply saying: If someone has violated the U.S. Constitution, then I am sure the courts will take care of it. We simply know that is not true. We know that in many circumstances--and I have just outlined a couple of them--the courts are not in a position to be able to remedy a constitutional defect, to be able to remedy a blatant insult to the Constitution and an absolute violation of the Constitution's provisions. So we need to continue to hold this President accountable when he fails, quite blatantly in this circumstance, to do that which the Constitution requires. This is a question that I think is particularly important, not only in light of how this particular act of Congress came to be, not only in light of how it was enacted and the fact that it is 2,700 pages long, that it has now resulted in 20,000 pages of regulatory implementing text but also in light of the fact that it was challenged in court; that is, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was challenged in court as to its constitutionality, but it was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in a most unusual fashion. Let's talk about that for just a moment. A number of States and a few others banded together and challenged in Federal court a few years ago Congress's power to enact certain provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Among those provisions that they challenged were the individual mandate. The argument was Congress lacks the power asserted by Congress in the Affordable Care Act, pursuant to article I section 8 clause 3, the commerce clause, to tell individual Americans that they must buy a product--health insurance; not just any health insurance but that specific kind of health insurance that Congress in its infinite wisdom deemed absolutely essential for every American to purchase. The challenge asserted that Congress lacks this power under the commerce clause. The lawsuit also alleged among other things that Congress lacked the power to tell States that the States had to expand their Medicaid Programs and gave the States no choice; that this, too, violated the Constitution, that it exceeded certain limitations on Congress's power because the courts have long recognized that Congress lacks the power to commandeer the States' legislative and administrative machinery in order to carry out a Federal program. Congress has the power to encourage States, to ask States to do this, but it lacks the power to direct a State to do X or Y or Z. We cannot just tell a State to do something just because we want it to be done. We might be able to persuade the State to do something. We might even be able to fund the State, to offer funding in case a State wants to participate in a given program, but we lack the power to dictate to States that they do such a thing. In this circumstance, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was unmistakable in its clarity. It simply told the States they had to expand their Medicaid programs in the fashion outlined in the Act itself. So these two core pieces, these two core aspects of this judicial challenge made their way up through the Federal court system, made their way up to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court decided these two issues, as I said a moment ago, in a most unusual fashion. Turning to the commerce clause issue, the Court addressed that issue right after addressing another issue that was sort of a jurisdictional question, an introductory question. The Court had to determine first of all, before it even got to the merits of the constitutional challenge as to the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act--it had to address the question of whether the individual mandate and the enforcement mechanism attached to it could fairly be characterized as a tax, for purposes relevant to the so-called anti- injunction act, a Civil War-era statute that basically says that any time someone wants to challenge a tax in Federal court they have to wait until such time as that tax is actually being collected. Then that challenge is brought as against the attempted enforcement of the tax statute. The Supreme Court of the United States, using centuries' worth of jurisprudence, looked at the language of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, it looked at the manner in which it was written, and easily concluded, no, this is not a tax. This is a penalty. Because it is a penalty and it is not a tax, we, the Court, may proceed to consider the merits of the arguments brought up in this case, the merits of this challenge brought as to Congress's authority, vel non, to enact something like this, the individual mandate under the commerce clause. So the Court quickly dispensed with that issue and reached the merits of the constitutional question before it. The Court then went on to conclude that Congress does, in fact, lack the power under the commerce clause, under article I, section 8, clause 3 of the Constitution, to tell individual Americans they must buy a particular product, health insurance; not just any health insurance but the specific kind of health insurance that Congress told the American people they have to buy in the Affordable Care Act. The Court fairly easily and, in my opinion, correctly, decided that Congress lacks that power because of the fact that the power Congress has to regulate interstate commerce is meaningfully different than the power to compel individuals to enter into commerce, to regulate inactivity, to punish inactivity, to punish the failure to buy a particular product that the people might not want to buy. You see, for a long time we had this understanding as Americans that the power given to Congress was in fact limited. We look at all the authorities granted to Congress under the Constitution, the overwhelming majority of which can be found in article I, section 8. All of these were limited and they were limited with good reason. They were limited with good reason because that played a very large part, that played a very significant role in how and why we became a country. We broke away from Great Britain, not just because we grew tired of having a monarch but because we grew tired of the authority of a parliament--a parliament that not only refused to grant us any representation but also a parliament that refused to acknowledge any natural limit on its power to regulate us, and it did in fact regulate us and it regulated us heavily, mercilessly. It taxed us overwhelmingly and it refused to recognize any meaningful--failed, refused to recognize any meaningful limit on its own authority. That is one of the reasons we became our own country. That is one of the reasons the Founding Fathers put in place this system in which our national legislative body would be vested with only a few specifically listed or enumerated powers. The founding generation understood that each of those powers would in fact be limited, so much so, in fact, that James Madison described the powers given to Congress as few and defined and characterized those reserved to the States as numerous and indefinite. During the first 140, 150 years or so of our Republic's existence, we as a people continued to recognize the necessarily limited nature of Congress's power. Much of that started to change during the New Deal era in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with the assistance of Democratic majorities in the House and in the Senate, pushed forward with a very progressive agenda, one that expanded not only the role of government in general but also the role of the Federal Government in particular. Initially, the Supreme Court resisted and the Supreme Court acknowledged the fact that the powers granted to Congress under the spending clause and the commerce clause were, in fact, limited. But the more FDR and the more Congress pushed back against the Supreme Court, the more the Supreme Court seemed inclined to relent. Ultimately, we saw the Supreme Court of the United States back down in the late 1930s from its what had been previously more rigorous, more restrictive interpretations of the spending clause and of the commerce clause. The Supreme Court ended up adopting a set of rules that would basically say that as long as Congress was acting broadly within the field of what could be loosely considered a regulation of interstate commerce, that the courts would stay away in second-guessing Congress's determinations. The Court, starting out with a case called NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel in 1937 and culminating in another case 5 years later in Wickard v. Filburn in 1942, ended up concluding that Congress may, without interference from the courts, regulate any activity that when measured and evaluated in the aggregate, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Regardless of whether the discrete activity in question might actually occur entirely intrastate, Congress would be able to regulate that activity pursuant to its commerce clause authority, regardless of how intrastate that activity might be when viewed in isolation. Under this very broad interpretation, Congress's power could, in a sense, be viewed as extending to virtually every aspect of human existence because, after all, almost everything we do when measured in the aggregate might well be understood to have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Yet even under that broad analysis, that couldn't extend to what was being regulated in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--in the individual mandated provision, which was inactivity. Remember, this is an enormous breadth that the Supreme Court said Congress could, without interference from the courts, regulate under its commerce clause authority. In Wicker v. Filburn what was at issue was the cultivation of wheat. Congress adopted a statutory framework in which farmers would be severely restricted in how much wheat they could grow--how much they could produce of this or that agricultural commodity. There was a farmer named Roscoe Filburn who committed a grave offense against the Republic. His offense did not involve dealing drugs; it didn't involve murder or kidnapping. His offense involved growing too much wheat. Roscoe Filburn grew more wheat than Congress--in its infinite wisdom--viewed appropriate for any American to grow. He was fined many thousands of dollars, which during the New Deal era was an enormous amount of money because of the fact that he grew too much wheat. Roscoe Filburn was fortunate in that he had access to some good lawyers, and his lawyers advised him on this. They represented him aggressively and competently in court. What they argued, relying on true facts, was that, yes, our client Roscoe Filburn did, in fact, grow wheat in excess of the limit imposed by Federal law, but the amount of wheat he grew in excess of the grain production limit applicable to his farm that year was grain that never entered interstate commerce. In fact, it never entered commerce at all. You see, that grain never even left Roscoe Filburn's farm. He used it on his farm to feed his family, to feed his livestock, and he held on to the remainder of it to use as seed for a subsequent planting season. In a very real sense that wheat was not part of interstate commerce at all. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court of the United States, lacking nothing in imagination, said that even that wheat was within Congress's almighty grasp--within the all-knowing, wise reach of the Federal sovereign. What the Court said was that the wheat grown by Roscoe Filburn in excess of the grain production quota was itself something that when viewed in the aggregate, could substantially affect interstate commerce. In other words, if lots of farmers everywhere--just like Roscoe Filburn--grew too much wheat, even if their wheat never entered instate commerce, the growing of all of that excess wheat would inevitably have an impact on the supply and demand and ultimately the price and availability of wheat on the interstate market. Therefore, even that wheat which was entirely locally grown and locally consumed would be subject to Congress's reach. Wicker v. Filburn thus erected an extraordinarily low barrier for Congress to clear in establishing that it had properly invoked its authority under the commerce clause. Yet even that extraordinarily low barrier was high enough to stop Congress from acting pursuant to the commerce clause in enacting the individual mandate under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Thus ended the Supreme Court's analysis in June 2012 when it ruled that Congress had exceeded its constitutional limits under the commerce clause in enacting the individual mandate. Significantly, this was only the third time in about 75 years--only the third time since NLRB v. Jones and Laughlin Steel and Wicker v. Filburn--in which the Supreme Court of the United States recognized Congress had overstepped its limits under the commerce clause. This was a rare thing for the court to do. It was foreseeable because the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act went so far beyond anything that had ever been seen before. Yet it was only the third time in the last 75 years in which that had happened. Then something different happened--something very few people on either side of the aisle in this body or on either side of the political divide in America generally had seen. After concluding that Congress lacked this power under the commerce clause, the Supreme Court, under the pen of Chief Justice John Roberts, proceeded to analyze the government's backup argument; that is, the argument that even if, as the Court had now concluded, Congress lacked the power to do this under the commerce clause, Congress still had the power to do this consistent with its power to impose taxes. The Court went on to conclude that Congress did have this power. Strangely, the Court also went on to conclude that is essentially what Congress had done here. This was odd on many levels. No. 1, the Court had already concluded, as it had to conclude in order to proceed to the case--as it had to conclude in order to exercise jurisdiction over this case--prior to the implementation of the law, prior to the collection of this alleged tax, that it was, in fact, not a tax but a penalty. It was very strange that the Court was now basically saying: OK, it is a penalty and not a tax for some purposes, but it is a tax and not a penalty for other purposes. Yet that is what the Court did. It was also strange that the Court did this for the additional reason that Congress had considered legislative proposals in a different, earlier iteration of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that would have enforced the individual mandate by means of a tax. Congress considered language that would have done that. Congress knew, and still knows, how to enact legislative language that imposes a new tax. Yet when it tried to use that language, language that under 100 years' worth of jurisprudence everyone understands would have imposed a tax, Congress could not get the votes to pass it even in what was then a Congress in which the Democratic Party dominated both Houses. Even in that Congress they tried but failed to get the requisite number of votes to pass the individual mandate enforced by means of a tax. They could not do it. It was therefore very odd that the Supreme Court of the United States would interpret what Congress couldn't pass as a tax in such a way as to make it a tax for constitutional purposes when Congress itself didn't have the votes to do it. In order to pass legislation raising revenue--in other words, in order to pass legislation imposing a new tax--the Constitution requires that legislation of that sort originate in the House of Representatives. Why is this? I think most who looked at the issue would agree it has do with the fact that the House of Representatives is the entity within our Federal Government structure that is, by design, most representative of the people. In the Senate we have elections every 6 years. In the House it is every 2 years. From the outset the House was the body in which the people were represented because, of course, at the outset the Senate was the body in which the States were represented. That is no longer the case. We are directly elected by the people. But it was always the case, and still is the case, that tax legislation must start in the House because it is the body closest to the people and most responsive to the needs and the desires and the concerns of the people. It is therefore quite ironic that this law-- this tax, as the Supreme Court called it--was put into place as a tax, not by the body within the Federal Government that is most accountable to the people, the House of Representatives, but instead by the body within the Federal Government that is the very least accountable to the people, the Supreme Court of the United States. I believe this amounted to a usurpation of constitutional authority. I believe this amounted to a betrayal of the judicial oaths of the five robe-wearing men and women who signed on to that opinion. They did not have the power to legislate. They did not have the power to create a tax. They did not have the power to create out of whole cloth tax language out of penalty language--language that under a century's worth of jurisprudence, the Court's own precedence carrying stare decisis effect made clear it was a penalty and not a tax. Yet that is exactly what the Court did. When people discover this--when they learn about and hear about it and dare to plow through the Supreme Court's opinion so they can understand what happens, they will inevitably ask: How can the Court do this? Does the Court have that power--the power to legislate, the power to impose a tax where Congress has not chosen to impose a tax? No, the Court doesn't have that power. Then how can the Court do that? How could the Court do that? Why did the Court do that? The Court did that because it could, not because it could in the sense that it had the constitutional power to do it but because the Court has an exercise of raw political power. It chose to do so and did do so. This was a tragic day in American history. It is a day we should not soon forget and a day we should do all in our power to remedy. This decision was wrong. It was unconscionable. As a matter of jurisprudence, it was unforgivable. The Court then went on to address the challenge related to Congress's power to compel the States to expand their Medicaid Programs. Medicaid, as we all know, is a program that is partially funded by the Federal Government but administered and partially funded by the States. In the Affordable Care Act, Congress directed the States--whether the States were so inclined--to expand their Medicaid Programs. It gave them no choice but to expand them and to expand them to a very significant degree. It expanded them in a way that would bring about not only significant costs to the States over the years but also very substantial administrative burdens as well. Yet the Affordable Care Act left the States with no choice. You must do this. Just do it because we are Congress and we are all powerful. You have to do it because we say so. There is this anticommandeering principle embedded within our constitutional jurisprudence, rooted in the enumerated powers doctrine and rooted partially in the Tenth Amendment as well. It says that Congress lacks the power to commandeer States' administrative or legislative machinery to put in place, to carry out the legislature, to administer a Federal program. The Supreme Court of the United States concluded that Congress had violated this anti-commandeering principle in passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and in doing so in a way that left the States with no other alternative. So this was the second constitutional defect in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. But, here again, the Supreme Court chose to rewrite the law a second time in order to save it. Ordinarily, what the Court would do in this circumstance--in that circumstance, after concluding that Congress had violated this anti-commandeering principle and that this aspect of the Affordable Care Act was, in fact, unconstitutional--the Court would be under an obligation to go into what is called severability analysis, to analyze whether or to what extent or in what way Congress might have intended to allow the rest of the statute's provisions to operate independently, notwithstanding the unconstitutionality of the provision deemed invalid by the court. In this case, quite steadily, the Supreme Court engaged in no such analysis. It never reached the severability question, even though it had been the discussion of extensive briefing and conversation and oral argument. The Supreme Court didn't get into severability at all. The Court decided it just didn't need to. It didn't need to because the Court rewrote the statute in order to make it constitutional. The Court wrote into the law a carve-out provision. It simply said, We are going to read this law as though it gave the States an opt-out provision, as though it gave the States an option of deciding whether or not to expand their own Medicaid programs. The only problem is the text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act contained absolutely no such language. We can read through all 2,700 pages of that law, and we won't find any opt-out provision such as what I just described. No, the Court created this too from whole cloth. The Court did this in the absence of any text. This too amounted to a betrayal of the judicial oaths of those who signed their names to that opinion. This too was a blatantly unconstitutional act that was an insult to the high judicial office that those individuals occupy. That too is an insult to the constitutional system, which has fostered the development of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. We can't likely overlook crimes against the Constitution. We can't likely overlook the usurpation of authority by the few. We can't likely overlook the fact that laws--our most fundamental laws--have been openly flouted in this case, nor will we soon forget the fact that it has occurred here. So here are all of these reasons why some of us feel so strongly, so passionately that this law started with some unconstitutional premises and has had its constitutional defects compounded over and over and over, as we have had the Supreme Court of the United States rewriting it, not just once but twice, in order to save it. We have the President of the United States rewriting it, in effect, legislating through the stroke of the executive pen several times now, because, among other things, he says the law is not ready to implement. He doesn't have the power to legislate on his own any more than the Supreme Court of the United States has the power to legislate, any more than the Queen of England has the right to legislate for the United States of America. The legislative power belongs here. It belongs here in the Congress of the United States, and we must exercise that power. When someone else takes that power from us, when someone else independently exercises the legislative power, we must guard it jealously. We must protect it. I don't care whether one is a Republican or a Democrat, and I don't care whether one is President Obama's biggest fan or his most aggressive critic. The office we occupy here requires us, compels us to defend our institutional prerogative as Federal lawmakers. When someone else exercises that power--a power that does not belong to them but to us--we must protect it, not because it is ours but because it belongs to those we represent. It belongs to those who elected us to serve here, those who elected us and not someone else to make the laws. Whenever--to any degree--we overlook the fact that someone else has legislated, someone not vested with lawmaking authority, we do ourselves and our country a disservice and we reflect a certain cavalier disregard for the oath we have taken to uphold the Constitution of the United States, which was put in place to make the men and the women of the United States of America free. There is another issue related to all of this that I think we need to touch on, which is the issue of excessive delegation of legislative authority to the executive branch. In some circumstances, we have a situation in which Congress may voluntarily relinquish some of its lawmaking power to the executive branch. I say it may do that, that it can do that, but that is not necessarily saying that it should do that. Perhaps the most influential political philosopher in America's founding era was Charles de Montesquieu. Charles de Montesquieu wrote that the power to legislate is the power to make laws, not the power to make legislators. He recognized, I think, that there was a natural temptation among elected lawmakers to want to pass the buck along to someone else, to want to give to someone else the task of making law. We do this sometimes when we pass an extraordinarily broad law and then we direct some executive branch agency to simply fill in the gaps, to effectively make the laws. The Affordable Care Act is replete with instances in which this kind of thing occurs, in which certain broad parameters are spelled out and in which we then say to this department or that department that it will have the power to promulgate rules carrying the force of generally applicable Federal law, which that same department or that same agency will then have the power to enforce. So that is part of how we end up with 20,000 pages of implementing regulations already under ObamaCare--20,000 pages and counting--because we have a lot of instances in which we have delegated de facto lawmaking power. That too presents its own kind of constitutional problem--not necessarily a constitutional problem that the courts are inclined to recognize, but a sort of constitutional problem nonetheless, because the more we delegate de facto lawmaking power to an executive branch agency, the less we see that anyone is accountable to the people for our laws. One can imagine, for example, if taken to an extreme, what this could look like. Let's suppose one day we just decide we are tired of debating and discussing and voting on and having to pass laws that are controversial, laws that are specific, laws that require us to get our hands dirty, laws that require us to make difficult decisions, so, once and for all, we are going to pass a law that everyone can get behind. It will be called the law of good laws. A law that says we shall have good laws and we hereby delegate to the herewith created U.S. Department of Good Laws the power to make and enforce good laws. We then pass that and we give this Department of Good Laws the power to issue regulations and to enforce those regulations. This is actually not all that different from what we do all the time and what has been done under ObamaCare to a very significant degree--about 20,000 pages of regulations so far, and that is still building. One of the reasons this is a problem is because when the people don't like our laws, they can come to us and they can hold us accountable for laws that we may have voted to enact. They can choose to replace us with someone else, someone who wouldn't vote for that kind of law the next time they have the chance. But when the law that they don't like is not one that we have enacted but instead one that has been promulgated by an executive branch agency, the people come to complain to us and, in that circumstance, we say: Don't look at me; go to the executive branch agency; they are the ones who did it. They go to the executive branch agency, and they see that the people occupying the executive branch agency, as well mannered, well educated, well intentioned, and well groomed as they might be, are not subject to elections, so they can't be voted out. They can't be fired by the people. That is why we are entrusted with the lawmaking power. It is not necessarily that we are the best equipped in every way to do it; it is that we stand subject to elections in 6-year intervals in the case of the Senate, and in 2-year intervals in the case of the House of Representatives. It is yet another reason why we ought to be more resistant, more concerned when it comes to enacting legislation that delegates an excessive amount of de facto law-making power to an executive branch agency. It is yet another reason why I think we need to pass something akin to the proposal that has been introduced as the REINS Act, which would say anytime an executive branch agency issues a new rule, a new regulation deemed by the Office of Management and Budget to constitute a major rule, that major rule will take effect if, and only if, it is first passed into law by the House and then by the Senate and then signed into law by the President. Then and only then do I think we will be able to start to reclaim that legislative power which is rightfully ours, and that, more importantly, the American people will be able to hold Congress accountable for the responsibilities properly given to Congress under the Constitution. This is about allowing the people to be governed by those they choose. When we delegate excessively our own lawmaking power to executive branch agencies, we deprive the people of their right to have their laws written and enacted by men and women of their own choosing. This is important, and it should be important to people of all political backgrounds, to people at every end, at every step, at every stage along the political continuum. This is an issue this is neither Republican nor Democratic, it is neither liberal nor conservative, it is simply American. When we pass laws, we pass laws through democratically elected Senators and Representatives. We do not do it through nameless, faceless bureaucrats who, regardless of how well-educated and well- intentioned they may be, do not serve the people in the sense that they are not elected by the people. They are not subject to reelection. They are not subject to dismissal by the people. We must hold that power here. That power belongs to us, not to bureaucrats. It belongs to us, not the President. It belongs to us and not to nine Justices wearing black robes across the street in the Supreme Court of the United States. These are some of the things that are at stake. These are some of the reasons it is so significant that we have this prolonged, protracted effort by the President of the United States to usurp power that is not his own. We must not facilitate the President in his ongoing effort to aggregate power, to accumulate power within the executive branch of government that is not his own. That is why we need to stand up to the President. I am against some of these nominees he has pushed forward again and again and again trying to trample over the rights of the minority. We have to do that. We have an obligation to stand up to the President, especially because he is taking power that is not his own, and he is doing it, among other things, to move forward with ObamaCare, a law that a majority of the American people have never approved of and a law the American people are growing steadily more against every single day. I see my time is expired. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, in Utah I have a program that I call the Mobile Office. It is a way for many of my constituents, many of whom live some distance from my two offices in the State, to meet with members of my staff in order to discuss various concerns they have with the Federal Government, concerns that arise from their interaction with any of various Federal programs and agencies. It allows us to help these constituents, and it provides vital information that I can use to better represent them back here in Washington. At one meeting in Davis County, a man attended who wanted to tell us about his experience with ObamaCare. He owns two small food stores and a 7-Eleven. He is also an immigrant, having come to the United States just 12 years ago to seek a better life for himself and for his family. He gives back to his community. He contributes to his economy and provides jobs for people who live in his town. Now ObamaCare is threatening all of that. His insurance premiums for his family are going to be rising by $200 a month. This cost will destabilize his personal finances and may well force him to make cutbacks or to let some of his employees go. These are the real human costs of ObamaCare. It is not what the President promised, and it is turning out to be an absolute, unmitigated disaster for families all across this country. It is time to start over and develop a health care system that works for everyone. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, the President of the United States promised: If you like your plan, you can keep it. We all know now that simply wasn't true. Though many of us have been saying this for years, many Americans, including many in my State, are realizing the pain of the President's false statement. Dave from Utah says: My company just dropped the good insurance plan we have had for years due to ObamaCare. The Affordable Care Act is costing me more money. I am barely able to keep my family out of poverty, and now health care is going to cost me even more. Please do something to change this. Marcy from Utah says: We own a small business in Utah and we will be forced to cancel our insurance and ourselves go on ObamaCare. We can start over with a new way to fix our health care system, but starting over doesn't necessarily have to mean starting from scratch. We should take those lessons we have learned and we should build around the concept of a market-driven, patient-centered health care system, one that empowers individual Americans to choose their own health insurance based on their own personal needs and based on their own preferences. I thank the Chair.

Mr. LEE

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

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, here we are again: Another unnecessary crisis; a proposal that maintains the status quo; very little time to read and evaluate the bill. In fact, we still don't have a final version of the text. No time to explain it to our constituents. This is Washington at its worst. It is exactly the kind of thing the American people are fed up with and exactly why several colleagues and I began this effort to delay and defund ObamaCare back in July. It appears this particular fight will end much the same way ObamaCare began: in a last-minute deal, negotiated in back rooms, then forced on Congress and on the American people. The Washington establishment can't bring itself to believe this is why Congress's approval rating is so low--because Washington doesn't listen to the American people. It ignores them. And when the American people can no longer be ignored, the administration shuts down national parks, blocks veterans from going to their own memorials, uses the IRS to target certain groups, and holds hostage critical funding for cancer research, low-income women and children, veterans' health benefits, border security, and our National Guard. It is shameful how Washington treats the American people, and the people are right to be upset about it. The media keeps asking, was it worth it? My answer is it is always worth it to do the right thing. Fighting against an abusive government in defense of protecting the individual rights and freedoms of the American people is always the right thing. Some say we shouldn't have fought because we couldn't win. But this country wasn't built by fighting only when victory was absolutely certain. In fact, some of the most important victories in our history were the result of fighting battles against significant odds. And even if victory seemed difficult or impossible, that wouldn't excuse me or anyone else from doing the right thing. Avoiding difficult battles, after all, is how we ended up in this kind of mess--a government with $17 trillion in debt which we add to at a rate close to $1 trillion a year, out-of-control spending, a broken entitlement system, a Tax Code no one understands--all because Washington is willing to act only when there is guaranteed political gain. When the avoidance of political risk becomes our dominant motivation, only the Washington establishment wins the American people lose. Furthermore, in Washington, victories are rarely immediate and very few end up being permanent. ObamaCare wasn't enacted overnight and it won't be repealed overnight. We must remind the American people of the harmful effects of this law at every opportunity if we are ever going to see it repealed. We have repeatedly warned the American people will be shocked when they realize the way the President has misled the American people about ObamaCare. The embarrassing rollout of the exchanges doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. Every day brings a new story of a family whose deductible has doubled or a married couple who can't keep the plan they have or a business that can no longer provide health insurance for its employees or workers who are seeing their hours cut or losing their jobs altogether. The realization that the administration has either been dishonest or incompetent--or perhaps a combination of both--is just starting to dawn on the American people. Even the President's friends in the media are watching this slow-rolling train wreck and are demanding the President do something to stop it. The Chicago Tribune, the President's own hometown newspaper, puts it this way: Last spring, President Barack Obama said, ``there will still be, you know, glitches and bumps'' in the rollout of the new system. But what we're seeing now is no glitch or bump. There is a growing mountain of evidence that Obamacare has fundamental problems in design and implementation. The Tribune goes on to say: We encouraged a one-year delay in the law. We recognize that's not going to happen. Obamacare is here. It's time, though, for the Obama administration to level with Americans about what's happening here. It's time to stop blaming Republicans and start talking about what needs to change. So it is interesting to see that the Chicago Tribune, the President's own hometown paper, is calling to a significant degree for exactly what I have been calling for since July--for a 1-year halt, a 1-year delay, a 1-year timeout to protect the American people from the harmful effects of this law, a law the President himself has acknowledged isn't ready for prime time, a law the President himself has indicated he is not willing to follow as was written. Incidentally, this again was exactly what we were arguing for all the way back in July and it now appears that the President's hometown paper was with us. Almost everyone but the President seems to recognize this law is going to be terrible for the American people. It is costing jobs. It is hurting families. It is making people's health care situation worse, and it won't solve the problems in our broken health care system. And let me be clear. There will be very real consequences for people in both parties as a result of the implementation of this law. Today Washington has the upper hand, but the American people will always have the last word. This is not over. We have an obligation to fight for the American people, and I do not intend to let the American people down.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, there can be no doubt that no one wants to be here. Not one Member of this body wants to be in shutdown. We all may have different reasons, different explanations as to why we are here. We might differ with regard to our own beliefs as to how best we should get out of this. But not one of us wants to be here. Every one of us recognizes how awful it is to be in a shutdown posture. I would like to take a few moments and explain my thoughts on both of those two points. I believe perhaps the single most important reason, single most undisputable reason why we are in a shutdown posture has to do with the fact that for a variety of reasons we have been operating on the basis of continuing resolutions for several years in a row. A continuing resolution, of course, is a bill, a legislative vehicle through which Congress may choose to keep government programs funded at current levels. It is kind of a reset button. It propels us forward on the basis of our current spending pattern, rather than on the basis of an independently, freshly negotiated set of priorities. This is a different way of running government. Normally this is reserved for unusual circumstances. It usually does not last as long as we have been going this time around, for about 4\1/2\ years this way. But this causes us to do things in a way that is different than one would otherwise choose to do them. It is certainly very different than the manner in which we would operate in any other aspect of our lives. To use one familiar example, let's analogize Congress's spending pattern, its spending decisions, to a consumer going to the grocery store. Suppose you went to the grocery store having been informed by your spouse that you need to bring home bread, milk, and eggs. So you went to that grocery store, you put bread and milk and eggs in your basket. You go to the checkout counter. You place the bread, the milk, and the eggs on the counter. The cashier rings you up. The cashier at that point says: Okay, here is what you will owe us for these items, but we will not allow you to buy just bread, milk, and eggs. In order to buy these items at this store, we will also require you to purchase a half ton of iron ore, a bucket of nails, a book about cowboy poetry, and a Barry Manilow album. Of course, anyone being told that would be a little surprised. Anyone being told that would be reluctant to shop at that same store in the future. And if another store existed, another alternative, very few, if any, consumers would continue shopping at that institution. Yet that in some ways is the way we are asked to spend money here in Congress when we are operating on the basis of back-to-back continuing resolutions, just pushing reset on our spending button, keeping a Federal Government that spends about $3.7 trillion a year operating sort of on economic autopilot. It would actually be a little bit closer analogy if we changed the hypothetical to a circumstance in which the cashier said not just that you have to buy half a ton of iron ore, a bucket of nails, a book about cowboy poetry, and a Barry Manilow album, but you also have to buy one of every single item in the entire grocery store in order to buy anything--no bread, no milk, no eggs, nothing unless you buy one of everything in the entire store. That would bring us a little closer to the analogy we are dealing with here where we have to choose to fund everything or alternatively to fund nothing. Neither one of those, it seems to me, is a terribly good solution. Neither one of those fairly represents good decisionmaking practices. We ought to be able to proceed, as past Congresses have historically, passing a dozen or so--sometimes more--appropriations bills and going through our Federal Government category by category debating and discussing each appropriations measure, discussing the contents of that measure to make sure there is sufficient agreement within this body and within the House of Representatives to continue funding the government function in question. We have a new item in the store, so to speak, as we are shopping this year. This new item in the store is called ObamaCare, one that is about to take full effect on January 1, 2014. Yes, it is the law of the land, but we do have the final choice, the final option, the final authority to choose whether to fund that moving forward or, alternatively, to defund it. We can take that out of the grocery cart. It is a new item that has caused a lot of people a lot of concern. A lot of people are fearing and experiencing job losses, cuts to their wages, having their hours slashed and losing their health care benefits as a result of this law, and they see more of these disturbing trends coming in the near future. So they are asking for Congress to help. They are asking for Congress to defund the implementation of this law. A lot of people and many of my colleagues in this body have responded by saying: Yes, but it is the law. That is true. It was passed by Congress 3\1/2\ years ago and signed into law by President Obama. It is important to remember two facts about this, however. First of all, the President himself has announced that he is not following the law. He himself says the law is not ready to implement as it is written. He himself has refused to follow it as it is written. Secondly, it is not unusual, it is not unheard of by any means to have a law that puts in place one standard, one program, and then have a subsequent appropriations decision made by Congress that results in the defunding of that very program. Let me cite one of many examples I could point to. Under Federal law, currently there is designated something known as the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. That is our official nuclear waste repository. Yet for many years it has been defunded by the Congress. That is Congress's prerogative. Congress holds the power of the purse. Congress may decide to do that. It is also important to remember that this was by design that it would work this way. Our Founding Fathers understood and set up the system so that it would work this way, and they put the power of the purse in the hands of the House of Representatives, understanding the House of Representatives would act first when exercising the power of the purse. James Madison acknowledged this fact in Federalist No. 58, and if I can quote from that in pertinent part, James Madison wrote: The House of Representatives can not only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of Government. They, in a word, hold the purse; that powerful instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British Constitution, an infant and humble representation of the People gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the Government. This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any Constitution can arm the immediate Representatives of the People, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure. So we find ourselves now in a position in which the House of Representatives is wanting to get the government funded again and is acting to keep the government funded on a step-by-step basis, starting with those areas as to which there is the most broad-based bipartisan support, those areas of government that have nothing to do with the implementation and enforcement of ObamaCare. Moving step by step in this fashion, we can get the government funded again. We should be getting the government funded again. In many respects, what we have seen over the last week--the conduct of the Obama administration during the first week of this shutdown--may well serve as the single best argument against ObamaCare. What we have seen is a willingness of this President and his administration to utilize the already vast resources of the Federal Government to make it hurt--to hurt families, to hurt businesses, to hurt those who depend on their access to Federal lands, to national monuments, national parks, and other Federal installations. This itself is evidence of the fact that when we give government too much power, that power may, and ultimately will, be abused. I want to be clear that this is not a problem that is distinctively Democratic. It is not something that belongs uniquely to liberals. This is equally a Republican problem. Republican and Democratic administrations in the past and in the future will have chosen at times to abuse power when it suits their interests in order to get their way politically. We need to not give yet another source of power to the Federal Government--a source of power that intrudes into one of the most personal aspects of human existence. When we give the Federal Government control of our health care system, we give them control of aspects of our lives that are intensely personal, very intimate, and, frankly, not the business of the Federal Government. We don't want to give that power to a government that may one day be used against us for someone's partisan political gain. It is for that reason we are having this discussion. It is for that reason we need to keep the government funded. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. That is not accurate. The House of Representatives has voted on things, sent them back in the form of messages, with some of those messages carrying two amendments that we considered. I see the Senator's point. It is a valid one in that we have had action taken in both Houses. We have had votes cast in both Houses. It is important, however, to recognize that Republicans have offered significant elements of compromise in all of this. Republicans started from the standpoint that what they would like is repeal of the law. Understanding that is not possible under the current circumstances, they sought first to defund ObamaCare indefinitely. They sought that first. That was stripped out. That went back to them. They responded with a significant compromise offer in the next go-around to defund it for a period of 1 year. That was send back, that was rejected. There have been other elements since then that have been passed to fund parts of government. Recognizing there are a lot of areas in government spending as to which there is broad bipartisan, basically unanimous consent in both Houses, in both political parties, that we ought to be continuing to fund those things at those levels, they have acted in those areas, and the Senate has so far refused to go along with those. So, in the spirit of compromise, it would be helpful if we act on those. In the spirit of compromise, it would be helpful if the Senate would act on those aspects of legislation as to which there is broad-based bipartisan support.

Mr. LEE. The House has not voted on all the things passed by the Senate just as the Senate has not voted on all the things passed in the House.

Mr. LEE. In response to the question posed by my distinguished colleague, my friend from Rhode Island, yes, I will acknowledge that we have taken votes--some votes in response to many of the pieces of legislation enacted within the House of Representatives.

Mr. LEE. Yes.

Mr. LEE. Madam President, someone wisely declared: After all is said and done, much more is said than done. A lot has been said in the well of this Chamber this week. Unfortunately, not much has been done. On the other hand, Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor and the Members of the House of Representatives, including Members of both political parties, have done much to end the shutdown and to protect the American people. The House has passed bills that would fund veterans' benefits and fund the National Institutes of Health. The House has also approved measures to make sure our National Guard gets paid and to keep our national parks open. The House funded WIC, the program that provides health care and nutrition for low-income women and their children. The House has funded FEMA. Moreover, all of these bills have been passed with significant bipartisan support in the House of Representatives. At the risk of overstating it, I am still frankly stunned at what we are hearing from some of my colleagues. It is difficult for me to understand their objections to passing these bills in the Senate. First, none of these bills is controversial--not one of them. The bills provide funding for noncontroversial things such as veterans' disability payments, the GI bill, and cancer research. These bills keep our national parks open and make sure our National Guard personnel get paid. There are many things on which Republicans and Democrats disagree, but whether to take care of our veterans should not be one of them, and the last I checked it was not one of them. Second, the President himself asked Congress to do this. Republicans in the House took the President at his word and acted immediately to draft bills that would make sure his priorities and the Nation's priorities would receive funding. In response, Senate Democrats said that this plan to fund veterans, national parks, and other priorities was unserious. They said Republicans were playing games. The biggest head-scratcher of them all: the President issued a veto threat for bills that fund the very things he said he wanted funded. Why will the President and why will Senate Democrats not take yes for an answer? Why are they demanding that we fund everything? They tell us: You have to fund everything or we will allow you to fund nothing. Third, all of these bills received significant bipartisan support in the House. In the middle of a government shutdown, surrounded by all this divisive rhetoric, Republicans and Democrats came together in the House overwhelmingly to approve these bills. I think we owe it to the country to show we can do the same in the Senate. Fourth, this approach, the approach that has been advocated by the House of Representatives, represents a path forward that was first introduced by none other than the distinguished Senate majority leader himself. On Monday afternoon Senator Harry Reid asked for unanimous consent to pass a bill that ensured that our Active-Duty military personnel would be paid in the event of a government shutdown, and in a matter of minutes it was passed. I ask my friends across the aisle: Was Senator Reid playing games? Was that unserious? Of course not. So why is it unserious when we try to fund veterans' disability payments or cancer research or the National Guard or national parks? Why is it all of a sudden playing games to keep our national parks open? What exactly has changed since Monday? Why can we come together to pass a bill funding military pay but not to fund veterans' disability payments? Finally, none of these bills have any connection to the implementation of ObamaCare. I understand my friends across the aisle support that law despite its numerous and harmful failings. I understand they want to protect it. But none of the bills we are considering relate in any way to the implementation of ObamaCare. I am concerned that my friends across the aisle cannot see this law for what it is and what it is already doing to American families all across the country. Now the government is shut down because Democrats have refused to work with us to do anything to protect the American people from the harmful, potentially devastating effects of ObamaCare. They will not even consider passing bills to fund veterans' benefits, cancer research, or national parks unless ObamaCare is fully funded and fully implemented. We have an obligation to address the negative effects of this law, but the Democrats refuse to negotiate. The President has issued a veto threat on funding for things that he himself asked Congress to fund because the bills do not include ObamaCare funding, even though the programs funded in these bills have nothing to do with ObamaCare. I fear that the Democrats are now simply the ObamaCare party. It is the only thing that matters to them even though it is hurting people throughout the country already and threatens to do so far more in the coming months. A recent report included a story of a man named Tom, Tom from Seattle, who signed up with the exchanges only to find out that his health care costs were going to skyrocket under ObamaCare. I will quote from the story. Tom of Seattle, who is self-employed, said, ``My premiums would increase approximately 61 percent. I went from $891 a month to $1,437 a month. And also my deductibles all doubled.'' The letter from his insurer said his current deductible for his family of five would double from $4,000 a year to $8,000. Even though that is for the Bronze Plan, the least expensive option under ObamaCare, he says his additional payment of $550 a month will give him a plan that is no better than what he already has. What's more, it also carries a benefit his family does not need: maternity and newborn care. ``My wife is 58 years old and our youngest child is soon to be 18,'' says Tom. ``We'll be having no more children. That is not a benefit that we would ever purchase nor need or be able to use.'' These are the kinds of people we are trying to protect from this law. This is just one story among many stories. I ask my friends: Join us in ending the shutdown. Join us in protecting the country from ObamaCare, and let's do the right thing for the American people. Leadership is not about what is said; leadership is about what is done. So I invite my colleagues to join House Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor and the other House Members who are leading. They are leading by doing. We can and must lead. We can end the shutdown and simultaneously protect the American people from the harmful effects of ObamaCare. We can do this. We must do this. If we stand together in support of the American people, we will do this.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate receives H.J. Res. 72, making continuing appropriations for veterans' benefits for fiscal year 2014, the measure be read three times and passed; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LEE. Madam President, what we are being told by the majority is that we have to vote for everything in order to fund anything. Moments ago, I proposed a unanimous consent request that if approved would provide for the immediate availability of mandatory funds generally controlled through the annual appropriations process for the Department of Veterans Affairs. I thank the Republican leader for making similar requests earlier today and other Republican colleagues for joining him. I look forward to making other similar requests in the coming hours. Frankly, I am a little stunned at some of the things we are hearing from the other side of the aisle. It is difficult for me to understand the objection to bills the House passed last night and the ones Senate Republicans are trying to pass today. First, this legislation does not fund anything that is controversial. None of the pieces of legislation being worked on and passed by the House right now and last night can be considered controversial. These bills provide funding for things such as veterans' disability benefits, the GI bill, and cancer research. These bills keep our national parks open and they make sure our National Guard personnel get paid. There are many things on which Republicans and Democrats do not agree, but whether to take care of our veterans should not be among those things. Second, the President himself has asked Congress to do this. I remind my friends exactly what he said a few days ago, speaking to what might happen during a government shutdown. He said: Office buildings would close, paychecks would be delayed. Vital services for seniors and veterans, women and children, businesses and our economy depend on would be hamstrung . . . Veterans who've sacrificed for their country, will find their support centers unstaffed . . . Tourists will find every one of America's national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, immediately closed. And of course the communities and small businesses that rely on these national treasures for their livelihoods will be out of customers and out of luck. The Republicans in the House of Representatives took the President of the United States at his word and started acting immediately to draft bills that would make sure these priorities received funding. In response, Senate Democrats have said this plan to fund things such as veterans, national parks, and others was fundamentally unserious. They said Republicans were playing games. The biggest head-scratcher of them all, the President issued a veto threat for bills that fund the very things he said he wanted to fund, that he would like Congress to fund. It makes me wonder, why is it that the President of the United States and the Democrats in the Senate are having such a hard time taking yes for an answer. The fundamental objection, as I understand it, has been that because these bills, passed by the House of Representatives last night, and those being passed today, within the next couple of hours, because those bills do not fund everything, they are objectionable; in other words, we have to fund everything or we may fund nothing. I have to remind my colleagues that normally, under regular order, Congress will vote on and ultimately approve a dozen or so separate segmented appropriations measures, making sure we address each year within our Federal Government what it is that we are spending money on. This is a big government, one that expends between $3.5 and $4 trillion a year. It is appropriate that we break this up into pieces. But over the last 4\1/2\ years or so, we have been operating on the basis of back-to-back continuing resolutions, measures that basically require us to fund everything or fund nothing. So what this proposal does, what the Republicans in the House of Representatives are quite wisely doing is saying let's start with those areas as to which there is the most broad-based bipartisan consensus, and let's keep government funded at current levels, as the continuing resolution would do within those areas, and let's build consensus and let's start funding the government in those areas where there is not significant objection. What I do not hear from my colleagues is a substantive objection to what it does fund. What I hear is they are objecting to what it does not fund. So let's pass those things we can agree should be funded, and let's move forward. I think we can get most of this resolved fairly quickly. Two of the bills in the House of Representatives that have been passed in this fashion have, quite significantly, received substantial bipartisan support. I expect that the rest of them will receive bipartisan support as well. In the middle of an unfortunate government shutdown, surrounded by all of this diverse rhetoric, Republicans and Democrats came together in the House, overwhelmingly, to approve these bills. I think we owe it to the country to show we can do the same in the Senate, acting upon the advice of our better angels and acting in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation to keep our government funded. Fourth, this is a path forward that was first introduced by none other than the distinguished majority leader himself. On Monday afternoon, Senator Harry Reid from Nevada, the Senate majority leader, asked for unanimous consent to pass a bill that ensured our Active-Duty military would be paid in the event of a shutdown. In a matter of minutes it was done. So I ask my friends across the aisle: Was Senator Reid playing games? Was that unserious? We did that then. Monday, just a few days ago, we passed something that did not fund everything, but it did fund something. It funded the government to the extent necessary to allow us to continue paying our Active-Duty military personnel. Was that unserious? Well, of course not. Why is it unserious when we try to fund veterans' disability payments, cancer research, or our National Guard? Why is it all of a sudden trying to play games trying to keep our national parks open? What exactly has changed since Monday? Why can we come together to pass a bill funding military pay but not to fund veterans' benefits? Finally, none of these bills has any connection to the implementation of ObamaCare. I understand that my friends across the aisle support that law despite its numerous failings and indications that it is harming the American people and the economy, that it is hurting jobs and threatening the affordability of health insurance. I understand that some of my friends across the aisle want to protect that law. We are going to continue to have that debate about that law, especially in light of all of the problems people are having signing up with the exchanges, not to mention the ongoing problems of job losses, wage reductions, hours lost, and people losing their health coverage because of ObamaCare. Especially in light of all of those problems, we should continue having that debate, but that debate isn't essential to every aspect of our government's funding. Let me be clear. We will do everything in our power to protect the American people from the harmful effects of ObamaCare. That fight will most certainly continue. My friends across the aisle are welcome to join that debate, as I am sure they will. But none of these bills, none of the bills that we are considering today relate in any way to the implementation of ObamaCare. For this moment, at the very least, we should focus on keeping our promise to the people, those who have sacrificed the most to keep this country free. I applaud the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives. I applaud the Republicans and the Democrats who have supported legislation to help keep our government funded in these critical areas. We can come together if we act in a step-by-step process, if we pursue a step-by-step process for funding our government. It more closely resembles the way we should have been appropriating in the first place. This is the best way forward. It is the way to help minimize the pain that Americans are experiencing as a result of this unfortunate shutdown.

Mr. LEE. I object to the proposed modification.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, yesterday when the President of the United States addressed the American people, he was very clear about what a shutdown would mean. He said: Office buildings would close. Paychecks would be delayed. Vital services that seniors and veterans, women and children, businesses and our economy depend on would be hamstrung. Business owners would see delays in raising capital, seeking infrastructure permits or rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy. Veterans, who have sacrificed for their country, will find their support centers unstaffed. Tourists will find every one of America's national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, immediately closed. And of course, the communities and small businesses that rely on these national treasures for their livelihoods will be out of customers and out of luck. I share the President's concerns about what will happen to the American people--about ``real people,'' as one of my colleagues put it yesterday--during and in connection with a government shutdown. I wish to focus our attention in the coming hours and days on these people. I think it is also important that we continue to focus as well on those who are already hurting--hurting for reasons that don't have to do with the shutdown. So I would like to turn for a moment to people who are and for a number of months have been already feeling the negative effects of another government policy the President and his allies in Congress staunchly defend. ObamaCare happens to be the No. 1 job killer in the country. A recent analysis documented hundreds of businesses that are cutting back hours to avoid the crushing cost of ObamaCare's severe mandates. As a result, major unions have said ObamaCare could destroy the 40-hour workweek-- the backbone of the American economy. People are losing their health insurance. Just a week ago Friday, 20,000 people--employees of Home Depot--were informed they would be losing their health insurance. UPS is no longer going to provide health insurance for spouses of employees. The grocery store chain Trader Joe's has dropped health care coverage for part-time workers altogether. For everyone who has been furloughed by the government shutdown, the change hopefully will be temporary--perhaps lasting a few days, maybe even a few hours--if the Democrats decide to negotiate. For everyone who has lost a job, had their hours cut, their wages reduced, or who no longer receives health insurance, the change could well prove to be far more permanent. Do we not have an obligation to do something for those people? I think we do. So let's look for the path forward. Let's return to the President's concern about those who are hurt by a government shutdown. One positive and encouraging step was taken yesterday in response to action taken by the House of Representatives late Saturday night. Late Saturday night, of course, the House of Representatives passed a bill to ensure that all Active-Duty military personnel--the brave men and women in uniform who serve us bravely--will continue to get paid. Yesterday the Senate took up that measure and passed it unanimously. It did so in a matter of minutes, in a seemingly effortless legislative act. I think we can do the exact same thing with a number of noncontroversial spending bills that fund aspects of government that Americans overwhelmingly support, that Americans acknowledge we need, and that are completely unrelated to ObamaCare. My plan, in other words, would involve setting up segmented continuing resolutions, appropriations measures that would keep the funding going at current levels to various areas within government, including the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, military construction, CJS, which includes funding for the Department of Justice, the Federal Court system, the FBI, NASA, the National Weather Service, for example, and also the U.S. Department of the Interior, which includes our national parks. I mention national parks with special interest because today is the first day of what we hope will be a short, quickly resolved government shutdown. We have at least two Honor Flights coming in from around the country bringing World War II veterans--members of the ``greatest generation''--to Washington, DC, who plan to visit the World War II veterans memorial, a memorial designed specifically for them. When they arrive, if nothing changes between now and then, they will painfully discover what we have learned this morning, which is that those parts of the National Mall have been fenced off and barricaded. They will not be able to get in. They will not even be able to get very close. This is unfortunate and, just as important, it is unnecessary. We can act. We should act. We must act today to resolve this. There is absolutely no reason this noncontroversial aspect of our Federal Government's operations should continue 1 more day or even 1 more hour, for that matter, without being funded. This is an effort to compromise, an effort that is badly needed, an effort that comes in the wake of other efforts to compromise that have for the most part failed. The House of Representatives has tried now three different times to avoid a shutdown, passing three different measures to make sure our government would continue to be funded. Senator Reid and those Members of his conference who support him have rejected all three plans, rejected all three offers to keep the government funded, accusing Republicans of playing games with ObamaCare. In light of that, let's leave ObamaCare for another day and not hold the vast majority of government functions hostage when the vast majority of government functions do not have anything to do with the implementation and enforcement of ObamaCare. We did it yesterday. We did it. It worked well. It was seamless. It was done with absolute unanimous consent. We did it with respect to Active-Duty military pay yesterday. We can do it for veterans benefits, for border security, for national parks, and for many other government agencies. We can keep government open. We can keep those aspects of our Federal Government funded. We can do so. We should do so. Together, we will do so. I look forward to having these discussions in the coming hours to make sure we can continue to work together as colleagues. We may not agree on everything, but in those areas where we should agree and where we in reality do agree, let's keep the government funded. I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that the time during any quorum call be equally divided between the two parties.

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

Mr. LEE

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

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, everyone knows that the vote we are about to take--cloture on the House-passed continuing resolution--is essentially a vote to allow the Democrats to gut the House bill. That is why the Senate majority leader, the Senator from Nevada Mr. Reid and every other Senate Democrat are supporting it. Twenty-one House Members know this is a vote to gut the bill that they passed, that they worked so hard to pass out of the House of Representatives. That is why they signed a letter yesterday asking the Senate Republicans to stand united and vote against cloture on this bill. You see, what happened was the House of Representatives, acting boldly and nobly and in response to a growing cry from the American people--a cry for help--acted to keep the government funded, to fund government while defunding ObamaCare, protecting the American people from a law they are becoming increasingly aware of; a law that was passed 3\1/2\ years ago without Members of Congress having read it and all of its 2,700 pages; a law that has since led to the promulgation of 20,000 pages of implementing regulatory text; a law that has since been rewritten not just once but twice by the Supreme Court of the United States, which, having concluded that the law as written was constitutionally deficient in two respects, became convinced that it was its duty, its prerogative, and within its power to rewrite the law in order to shoehorn it within the provisions of the U.S. Constitution; a law that has since then been rewritten three or four times by the President of the United States without any statutory or constitutional authorization to do so--a President who has acknowledged that the legislation, this law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is not ready to be implemented. If the President of the United States is convinced this law is not ready to be implemented, if the President of the United States, who pushed this law through Congress 3\1/2\ years ago and counts this as his signature legislative accomplishment--if this same President is unwilling to follow the law and is convinced it is not ready to be implemented, Congress should not fund it, and Congress should keep the government funded while protecting the people from ObamaCare. Millions of Americans are concerned about what this law will do for them. We have seen millions of Americans worried about keeping their jobs, noticing that jobs are becoming harder and harder to find. Many are losing their jobs. Others are seeing their wages cut. Others still are seeing their hours cut. Many, including those 20,000 Americans who work for Home Depot who were informed last week--like many other Americans, they will be losing their health coverage. This is why the House of Representatives acted. This is why what the House of Representatives did by passing this continuing resolution is such a good thing. It keeps the government funded, and it protects the American people from the harmful effects of ObamaCare. Now we get over to the Senate. When it came to the Senate, we saw that the Senate really had a couple of options--a couple of very legitimate options--upon receiving this legislation from the House. The Senate could take up this legislation and subject the legislation to an open amendment process, allowing Democrats and Republicans to submit amendments as they deemed fit, to debate those amendments, discuss their relative merits, their pros and their cons, and ultimately vote on them, making compromises and adjustments along the way, in the forum that has long been honored and revered in this institution, which heralds itself as the world's greatest deliberative body. Another option, of course, would be to bring it up for a vote as is, an up-or-down vote based on what the House passed. You can vote on it as it was passed by the House or you can subject it to an open amendment process. Either one of those would be fine. If that is what we were looking at, I would be voting yes on this cloture vote on this resolution. That, however, is not the option majority leader Harry Reid selected. Instead, what he chose was a different procedure whereby he would select a single amendment--one that guts the House-passed bill of its most important provisions--without allowing anyone else the opportunity even to present an amendment and have that considered for a vote. The American people are tired of the games that hide the true meaning of this kind of tactic, of this kind of vote. So it is incumbent upon us to try to explain them as best we can. The people who elect us do expect us to do what we say we are going to do--not sometimes, not just when it is convenient. In fact, they expect us to do what we say we are going to do especially when it is inconvenient. That is really what this first vote is about. Cloture on this resolution is about showing the American people that we will do what we say we are going to do even when--especially when--it is inconvenient. We have the ability to prevent the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, from unfairly gutting the House continuing resolution. If we all vote no, that is what we will achieve. It is what many of us have told--have promised--the American people we will do. I, along with several of my colleagues, including Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and several others, have promised to do everything in my power to bring the message that we have received-- received overwhelmingly and repeatedly--from the American people, to bring that message inside this Chamber, inside these halls. That is what this effort has been all about. We promised to do everything we can to improve the procedure and improve the outcome for the American people, taking their message to Washington, incorporating their message into our legislative strategy. Across this great country, Americans stayed up with us this week. They stayed up with us even overnight, choosing to forgo sleep, just to show they were supportive in this effort, and we greatly appreciate that. I want you all who have participated in this effort in one way or another to reflect on how you feel at this very moment. It has been said that opportunity looks a lot like hard work, how change is hard work, especially here in Washington. This is what it feels like to take on Washington. This is what it feels like to take on the immense and intimidating inertia of big government. This is what it feels like to do what the American people ask and expect and demand. Those of you who have been involved in this effort should be proud, should feel energized and motivated to take on the next big challenge. The American people, of course, expect more and deserve better than what they frequently get from Washington. I wish I could say that the fight that has ensued over the last few days was just about ObamaCare and nothing more. Sadly, ObamaCare is just one symptom of a much larger problem. It all stems from the syndrome of self-importance that the political ruling class in Washington tends to feel. The bigger problem in Washington is that the bigger the problem the American people face, the more people in Washington tend to think Washington has all the answers. ObamaCare, like the fiscal cliff, like our $17 trillion debt, like our almost $1 trillion annual deficit, like our $2 trillion annual regulatory compliance costs in this country, all are the natural, inevitable results of a Federal Government that is simply too big and too expensive, that delves far too deeply into the lives of the American people, delves far too deeply into everything from our communications to our health care decisions, into everything from what kind of light bulbs we use, to how much water our toilets flush. These are deep and personal decisions that are getting deeper and more personal every single day. The American people understand that they are the sovereigns in this country. They are not subjects. We the people are citizens. The government works for us, even though it has started to feel as though it is the other way around. All these things show what happens when the political elite, not we the people, pretend to be in control. This is not about any one person or even any one policy or even one political party. This is about this town and it is about the American people, what they deserve, what they demand, what they expect, and what they have a right to, which is the right to live free of undue interference from their national government. This vote is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. This is simply the end of the beginning. Washington may appear to have the upper hand at this moment, but it is essential that we remember that the American people will always have the final word.

Mr. LEE

Mr. LEE. Madam President, reserving the right to object, if we were to vote tomorrow, if we were to have these votes tomorrow, that would represent the product of waiving two separate 30-hour periods--one in connection with the motion to proceed, the other in connection with the cloture vote on the bill. The American people are paying attention to this. The American people are watching this. A lot of them have expected this might occur Friday or Saturday. So I ask the question, would the majority leader be willing to modify the request slightly, with the same provisions in place but with the votes to occur during tomorrow's session of the Senate?

Mr. LEE. Madam President, reserving the right to object.