Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, hopefully, we can move on. After a Presidential election, two Supreme Court cases, 60-plus votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act in the House of Representatives, and endless debates here in the Senate, maybe now is the moment where Republicans will choose to close the books on trying to strip away from millions of Americans the benefits they have received from the Affordable Care Act. This is an important day for over 10 million Americans who have health care right now because of the Affordable Care Act. I would argue it is an important day as well for the separation of powers and the recognition that it is the legislative body that sets the policy for this country. I just wanted to come down to the floor for a few minutes to express my hope and my desire that proponents of the Affordable Care Act--such as myself, Senator Stabenow, and Senator Baldwin--who have come down to the floor over and over during the course of the last 3 years don't have to do it anymore. I would love to come down to the floor and talk about the need to fix our transportation system or the need for mental health reform. I would love to talk about tax reform. I have come down to the floor over and over to defend the Affordable Care Act simply because it has been perpetually under attack despite the fact that its successes are now unparalleled. Justice Roberts, in the decision today--I won't quote from it at length--said: ``Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them.'' That is essentially the operative phrase in today's decision. We passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance marketplaces, not to destroy them, and that is what it has done. It has improved marketplaces all across the country. Why? Because people have voted with their feet. The 10 to 11 million people who signed up for either expanded Medicare, Medicaid coverage or these exchanges have shown us that the law works as intended because they didn't stay out or deem it to be unaffordable. They stepped in and bought coverage. We should now be in the business of perfecting this law. None of us, frankly, think that this law is perfect. Many of us are open to conversations about how to make it better and how to perfect it. Now that the Supreme Court has completely shut the door to a judicial repeal of the act, and after having debate after debate, hopefully it is clear that there are not the votes--nor the support, obviously, in the executive branch--to repeal the act, and we can move on to something else. This is an old chart of mine that I have in the Chamber. I brought this down to the floor several months ago when a colleague of ours suggested that the administration shouldn't be celebrating the successes of the Affordable Care Act, as if people receiving health insurance for the first time in their life wasn't something to celebrate, as if 17 million children with preexisting conditions who will never have their health care taken away from them wasn't something to celebrate, and as if 9.4 million senior citizens who are saving $15 billion on drugs isn't something to celebrate. I get excited when I talk about the Affordable Care Act not only because it is a really sober and important topic but because when I talk to my constituents back home, they are excited. They are bubbling over with enthusiasm. Those of them who never had the chance to get health coverage before the Affordable Care Act and those who worried every single night, sick that their child wouldn't be able to live a normal life because their existence would be obsessed with whether they were able to cover their complicated illness with insurance, are bubbling over with enthusiasm. There are millions of people who are celebrating this decision today, and it is a sober day because, hopefully, we will be able to have a conversation about how we can move on to another topic. But it is a day to celebrate, not only for the 6.4 million Americans, first and foremost, who would have had their insurance taken away by an adverse decision, but for all Americans who would have been caught up in an insurance death spiral had the decision gone the other way. I hope we can limit our discussions about the Affordable Care Act to ways in which we can make it work better. So I hope we can now spend more time talking about other topics that matter to this country. I hope the House of Representatives decides to give up this obsession with repealing the Affordable Care Act, which is something that is simply not going to happen. And for its opponents out in the field, the Supreme Court has shut the doors to a judicial repeal of the Affordable Care Act today. I think of a lot of stories when I think about what the Affordable Care Act has meant to the people of Connecticut. We have cut our uninsurance rates in half in Connecticut. We have one of the best running exchanges in the country. But one of the simplest stories is the only one I will convey as I wrap up this morning. I was at the community pool that my family goes to in Cheshire, CT, and I was in the pool with my then 2-year-old just shortly after passage of the Affordable Care Act. A young man about my age came up to me, and he said: Listen, I am sorry, Mr. Murphy, to disturb you; I know you are here with your son, but I have a little boy, too, and he has a congenital heart problem. Every single day since he has been born, I have worried that he wouldn't get to live out his dreams because his life decisions would be dictated by whether or not he could get insurance to cover all of the complicated health care needs he is going to have and that would be determinative of his path in life, not his dreams, his desires for himself. He said: I get it that this is going to help a lot of people in very practical and economic ways, but I just want to thank you because now I sleep better at night knowing that my son is going to be able to get covered, that my son is going to be able to lead a relatively normal life, and that he can be whatever he wants to be. That is the benefit the Affordable Care Act brings people. It is not just practical. It is not just economic. It is not just the battle over whether somebody has health insurance. It is psychological. It is peace of mind. The Supreme Court protected 6.4 million people from losing their health insurance today, but they also protected tens of millions of patients and parents and sons and daughters and grandparents from losing that peace of mind that comes with the protections from an Affordable Care Act that is working. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MURPHY

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

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, we had a wonderful event last night here in Washington that I was able to attend. It was a night honoring champions for anti-gun violence measures across the country. It was put on by Sandy Hook Promise, which is an organization that has grown up out of the tragedy in Sandy Hook. A number of parents have become the organizers of an effort to try and learn from what happened at Sandy Hook and make sure we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. We actually got to honor two of our colleagues there. We honored Senator Pat Toomey for his work 2 years ago on the background checks bill, as well as Senator Stabenow, who, of course, has been a great advocate for increasing resources in our mental health system. And as wonderful a night as it was to honor these champions of change, it also was a night in which we were reminded about that terrible morning in December of 2012. We watched a short video of the news coverage, and we listened to the parents of Daniel Barden and Dylan Hockley. The husband of Mary Sherlach talked to us about what their lives have been like in the years since that shooting at Sandy Hook. I remember the hours and days after the shooting. I remember feeling like I needed to be really restrained about talking about the obvious policy issues that, to me, were due for airing and that sort of tumbled out of the facts surrounding that tragedy. I mean, this kid--this really troubled young man--walked into a school with a semiautomatic weapon designed for the military and shot 20 kids in less than 5 minutes. This gun was designed for the military, designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible, and it killed every single kid it hit. There were 20 kids shot. Twenty kids were dead in a matter of minutes. So it seemed to me we should have an immediate discussion about why this kind of gun is still legal. But I held back because it felt like the mourning and the grieving should take precedence over action. It took me only up to the first wake that I attended to realize I was wrong. Senator Blumenthal and I went to every single wake and every funeral we could over the course of that first week--and there were dozens. At first, I remember waiting in a really long line, standing next to Senator Blumenthal. I remember as if it were yesterday, talking to a sobbing mother, who was standing in front of us waiting in that line and telling us about how her child survived the shooting only because she had been sick that day and she stayed home from school. But all her daughters' friends were dead. As we approached that family, I remember struggling with what to say. I am lucky that the senior Senator from Connecticut, who sits behind me in the Chamber, had the right words ready. He said to the parents something like this: If you are ever ready or willing to talk about how we make sure this doesn't happen again, we will be waiting. The dad didn't pause more than a few seconds before he said, clear as day: We are ready now. In the years since, these mass shootings have become as commonplace as rain storms. Since 2011, the number of mass shootings in the United States has tripled--tripled. After each one, the forces of the status quo--the defenders of the gun industry--tell us we can't talk about policy reform in the days after a shooting. One prominent commentator called those of us who dared talk about change in the wake of Charleston ``sick.'' How convenient that is. How convenient that, at the moment when the world is watching, when the country is asking itself what we can do to make sure another mass slaughter doesn't happen again, the rules say we can't say a word. But think about how these rules would work, because Charleston happens 10 times over, every single day, across this country. Eighty- six people die, on average, every day because of guns. Last Thursday the families of Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Tywanza Sanders, Sharonda Coleman Singleton, Myra Thompson, Ethel Lee Lance, Susie Jackson, Daniel Lee Simmons, Sr., and DePayne Middleton- Doctor mourned the loss of their loved ones in Charleston. But the day before, on Wednesday, the families of Angel Feliciano, Malik Mercer, Eric Ferguson, Michael Kidd, Jr., Thomas Whitaker, Roy Brown, Martarese Gentry, Keith Battle, and Ronald Collins mourned their loss. And those were just nine. There were dozens more on Wednesday, the day before the Charleston shooting, who were killed by guns. If we can't talk about anti-gun violence policy the day after a large number of Americans are shot, then we will never talk about anti-gun violence policy, because on average 86 people die from gun violence every single day. But even if we accept that there is never a bad time to talk about how we can end this carnage, then we also have to have the courage to take on all the other ridiculous arguments about why we can't act. Now, the first one is familiar because it comes right after the mass shooting happens. A former NRA board member trotted this one out within hours of Charleston: He said that the solution was to just arm more pastors and parishioners in churches so they can defend themselves. The more there are people who have guns, the less people will die from guns--so goes this logic. So don't act. The simple argument is that more good guys with guns equals less gun deaths. The problem with that argument is it is a boldfaced lie. Study after study shows that the more guns there are in a community, the more crime there is. The more guns there are, the more gun homicides there are. New evidence makes the case even clearer. As States more clearly separate between those with lax gun laws and those with stricter gun laws, we can look to see what happens. The second argument is one that I have heard from my Republican colleagues in the Senate just in the last few days--that these laws can't stop a madman such as Dylann Root or Adam Lanza from perpetrating violence. Some of my colleagues say the only recourse is to close our eyes and pray this doesn't happen again. But again, these stubborn facts betray that argument. As I said, now that we have States that have loose gun laws and States that have tougher gun laws, we can see what happens. Over and over research shows us that jurisdictions that make it a little bit harder for bad guys to get guns have less gun deaths. In my State of Connecticut, Johns Hopkins researchers concluded that our permit-to-carry laws have reduced gun crimes by 40 percent. Similarly, they concluded that in Missouri, the repeal of a similar law increased gun homicides by 25 percent. Now, both studies controlled for all other possible factors influencing gun crimes, and they still found these shocking results. While the facts are still fresh out of Charleston, there is evidence that a different set of laws could have--not would have--stopped Dylann Root without having any effect on law-abiding gun owners in South Carolina. Root had charges pending for trespassing and drug crimes. Alone, neither would have disqualified him from owning a gun. But what if our laws were different so that multiple misdemeanors--a pattern of criminal behavior--disqualified you from buying a firearm? Or what about a permit-to-carry law? Maybe local law enforcement knew enough about Root--his criminal past or his association with extremist rightwing organizations--to know he shouldn't carry a weapon. Now, maybe not, but if South Carolina had a permit-to-carry law, at least there would have been a chance law enforcement would have withheld a permit from a young man as plainly unstable as Root. But even if you don't believe that any specific law could have prevented the tragedy in Charleston or in Newtown, I am not sure that it matters, because separate and aside from the specific case-by-case impact of any law is the collective moral and psychological effect of nonaction. No matter how maligned Congress becomes, we still set the moral tone for the Nation. When we declare something to be morally out of bounds, especially when we do it in a bipartisan or nonpartisan manner, Americans listen. They take cues from our endorsements and from our approbations. That is why, in my heart of hearts, I believe that our silence has made us complicit in these murders. I don't care that an assault weapons ban or universal background check maybe wouldn't have stopped the slaughter in Charleston. When we do nothing year after year, our silence sends a silent message of endorsement to the killers. I am not saying we are in conscious alignment with these assassins, but when all we do in the wake of Newtown, Tucson, Aurora, and Charleston is rhetorical, then those on the fringe, those hanging on the edge of reason, those contemplating the unthinkable take a cue that we don't really mean it when we condemn mass violence, because if we did, we would, at the very least, try to do something--anything--to stop it, and we don't. Quite frankly, removing one flag from one building in South Carolina doesn't cut it, and neither does a handful of retailers ceasing to sell Confederate flag paraphernalia. Don't get me wrong. I actually think the tidal wave of sentiment to remove the last vestiges of this symbol of slavery and racism is significant. That flag has quietly endorsed conscious and subconscious racism, particularly in the South--but really all across the country--for as long as it has continued to be perceived as a mainstream American symbol. The events of the last few days are also important because they show that people of all political stripes--conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans--have been so emotionally moved by the shooting in Charleston that they were inspired to some sort of action. That matters. But removing the Confederate flag is a necessary but totally, completely insufficient response to Charleston. Taking down a flag from a building is a pretty easy giveback. Deciding to spend billions of dollars to make sure that troubled young men get the help they need for their sickness is harder, and so is taking on the gun industry and listening to the 90 percent of Americans who want to make sure criminals aren't a continued profit center for the gun makers and sellers. Now, Walmart should be congratulated for ceasing sales of the Confederate flag, but they still advertise an assault weapon online that even their description concedes is designed for use by law enforcement and the military. Did you know that last year there were at least 92 shootings in Walmart? Some 16 people died, and 42 people were injured by guns in Walmart. Getting rid of the Confederate flag from their shelves isn't going to help that unbelievably disturbing trend. So we need real action, a real debate. We need a real, honest policy to happen here. And, no, it is not all about guns. It is about mental health, it is about law enforcement, and it is about a culture of violence and hate that we have just become immune to. In South Carolina, Reverend Pinckney knew something about real action. He supported things like expanded background checks and body cameras for police, maybe because he came from a family of action. His father and grandfather were both pastors who fought to end White-only political primaries and segregated school busing. He wasn't just about condemnation. He lived his life to effectuate political change. Last night, at the Sandy Hook Promise dinner, I chatted with my friend Mark Barden. His son, Daniel, massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School by a young man wielding a military-style assault weapon with cartridges of 30 bullets apiece, would have just finished third grade last week. Mark recalled how special Danny was and how Daniel, just 6 years old, lived a life of action, too. Daniel was that kid who sensed when other children were hurting. His dad told me last night how Daniel would see little kids sitting alone at lunch with no one to talk to, and Daniel would go over, sit down next to them, and make a new friend, just because it was the right thing to do. Reverend Pinckney and little Daniel Barden knew the difference between words and actions. They understood that actions are what really count. The U.S. gun homicide rate is 20 times higher than that of our 22 peer nations. And 86 people die every day from guns--that is 4 Sandy Hooks, 10 Charlestons every day. Since Sandy Hook, there has been a school shooting, on average, every week. How on Earth can we live with ourselves if we do nothing or, worse, if we don't even try. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, let me say, before turning to the topic at hand, those of us from Connecticut--especially those of us in and around Sandy Hook, CT--our hearts go out to the community in Charleston. The grief and tragedy they are working and sifting through today is hard for anyone to imagine. All I can say is I hope they will find, as we did in Newtown, CT, that an internal strength over time comes from unlikely spots; that friends arrive from far-off places; that there is a community that is much bigger than one church or one city that is going to wrap its arms around families and friends of the victims during this terrible time.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I was so glad to see Senator Stabenow down on the floor a week ago talking about a pretty simple issue, which is the tax increase that is going to occur to 6.4 million Americans if the Supreme Court rules this week, next week, for the plaintiffs in the case of King v. Burwell. We wanted to come down to the floor and accentuate this message so people all around this country know what is at stake. What is at stake is 6.5 million people losing their health insurance. That maybe gets the headlines. But the way in which people get affordable health insurance under the Affordable Care Act is by tax credits. So the immediate effect of a reversal of subsidies for Federal exchange States is that 6.5 million Americans are going to have their taxes dramatically increased by thousands of dollars if this body refuses to act in the face of a Supreme Court finding for the plaintiffs. So we wanted to come down to the floor just to talk a little bit about what the stakes are for people's tax bills and how this is going to be a gut punch for millions of American families if the Supreme Court rules the way we hope they don't. I think it is, first of all, important to say at the outset that most of us who have followed the Affordable Care Act and its legal interpretation think this is a sham of a case. This is a political attack on the Affordable Care Act masked as a legal case. There is absolutely no question that the Affordable Care Act is built in a way to deliver subsidies to both State exchanges and Federal exchanges. I will not go into all the details as to why that is the clear case. But though we are talking about what might happen if King v. Burwell comes down for the plaintiffs, many of us think that would be an absolutely ludicrous legal result, one that would be a stunning act of judicial overreach, essentially a political substitution of the Court for the legislature. But I want to talk about a couple case studies and then turn the floor over to my colleagues. I have come down and talked about people from Connecticut. I talked about Christina, a small business owner from Stratford; Susie, a two- time breast cancer survivor from North Canaan, CT; and Sean and Emilie, two freelancers from Weston. All of these people have gotten tax credits through the Affordable Care Act, and it has allowed them to have a lower tax bill but also get insurance. Many of them, it was the first time in their lives or in recent history that they have been able to afford insurance. But there are stories all over the country that are parallel to the stories from Connecticut I have been telling on the floor of the Senate over the course of the last year. For instance, there are 832,000 Texans who are receiving an average tax credit of $247 a month. If the Supreme Court strips away these tax credits, those 800,000 people in Texas are going to see a tax increase of around $3,000. People like Aurora, a 26-year-old from Houston, got health insurance coverage through Texas's Federal marketplace. She works at a small nonprofit where she helps her LGBT peers get the coverage they need. She is saving $1,500 a year getting insurance she would have never been able to afford. She says, quite simply: I wouldn't be able to afford my policy otherwise. It has really helped me be able to get my well person exam and other preventions screenings that I'd not had in years. She is one of 832,000 people in Texas who are going to have their taxes increased, their insurance stolen away. I am a big New York Giants fan, so I get to watch a lot of games in which the Giants are playing in this stadium, which is, as Cowboy fans know it, AT&T Stadium. You could fill AT&T Stadium 10 different times. This is a huge stadium. People see the giant jumbotron on the roof of this stadium. You could fill AT&T Stadium 10 times with the number of people in Texas alone who could lose their health care and lose their tax cut--$3,000, on average, per person a year in Texas--if King v. Burwell is decided in favor of the plaintiffs. But I will tell another story of a young woman named Celia. She is a self-employed Pilates instructor in Florida. Since 2005, she hasn't been able to find health care coverage. Since 2005, she has been uninsured. Now, she has been lucky because she didn't get really sick during that time, but she only had a $900-a-month plan that she could find. That was the cheapest. With the Affordable Care Act, Celia finally has insurance. Celia is able to finally sign up for a health insurance plan that has meant something to her because last year she had a minor accident in her home. She had to go to the emergency room. With her insurance, she received a bill of $57. She said, ``I couldn't have even imagined what that would have cost me out-of-pocket--more than I could ever afford.'' This year, Celia has reenrolled in another silver plan, and for around $200 a month she knows that she is going to be covered if she gets sick or if she has another minor accident. In Florida--we think this is a lot of people, 832,000. In Florida, there are 1.3 million people who are receiving health care tax credits right now. Now, I root for the University of Connecticut Huskies, and so we don't necessarily get to play in stadiums this big when you are playing out of the American Athletic Conference. But everybody in Florida knows The Swamp, and you could fill The Swamp 15 times over with the 1.3 million people who could lose their health care tax credit. Those are more people than attend Gator football games on an annual basis. Those are more people than attend Gator football games over a 2-year period of time. So 1.3 million people are going to lose their coverage in Florida alone. So let's call a spade a spade. This is about health care. It is about our belief that for people who are working hard and playing by the rules, they should have a shot at being healthy, but it is also about keeping people's tax bills low. If we ever contemplated a bill on the floor of the U.S. Senate that raised 1.3 million people's taxes in Florida by an average of $3,500, my friends from the Republican side of the aisle--our friends would be screaming bloody murder that this was an unjustifiable, unconscionable, unworkable tax increase on the American people. But there is largely silence or temporary fixes and patches that are proposed. So I am glad to join my colleagues to talk about what this means. Now, I am from Connecticut and we have a State exchange. We have a State exchange. Conventional wisdom is that those of us who have State exchanges are going to be protected because we will continue to get subsidies. But this is going to be a death spiral nationally. We have no idea how this will actually play out. When you have all of these subsidies ripped away with the insurance reforms still baked in, even in States such as Connecticut, where you have a State exchange, we are not immune. Nobody is immune. The primary victims here are going to be the people in States such as Florida and Texas, as I mentioned. But this is going to be a national catastrophe. We hope we don't ever have to have a conversation on the floor of the Senate as to how to fix this. But we better be clear ahead of time as to what the implications are. I yield the floor. I know my colleague will seek recognition.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am coming to the floor to speak on behalf of an amendment I am offering, along with Senators Schatz, Udall, Blumenthal, Heinrich, Tester, Merkley, and Baldwin. Today, it was announced that President Obama is going to be sending another 450 troops to Iraq to help assist in the fight against ISIL. That will mean we now have 3,500 troops in position throughout Iraq assisting in the battle against ISIL within those borders. This marks also nearly a year since we have reengaged in military activities in Iraq and in Syria, both with support forces for the Iraqis, with training for those who are fighting in Syria, and major air operations targeting ISIL. I think there is broad bipartisan consensus here that the United States needs to take the fight to this enemy--an enemy that is seeking to occupy an enormous amount of territory in a very dangerous region from which it can plot attacks against the United States. But I also think there is bipartisan agreement that we should do our constitutional duty; that we should authorize this war against ISIL. My hope is the Foreign Relations Committee--of which I am a member, of which the Presiding Officer is a member--will have that debate in the upcoming months. But given that we are authorizing hundreds of millions of dollars in this bill in order to take the fight to ISIL, I think it makes sense to have some commonsense limitations on the use of that money that are in keeping with the very public promises the President has made. President Obama has stated very clearly that he does not think it is a wise strategy to reinsert major combat troop operations into the Middle East. I agree with him. I think many of us agree with him. There is nothing about the last 10 years of American occupation in Iraq that tells us that U.S. troops inside Iraq can have the effect of killing more terrorists than are created, in part, through the recruitment benefit of major U.S. combat operations. So the amendment we are offering today is a fairly simple one. It would prohibit the use of major combat--of large numbers of combat troops in the fight against ISIL, with certain commonsense exceptions: an exception for rescue operations, an exception for intelligence- gathering exercises, and an exception for special operations in and throughout the region; special operations like the one we used to kill a high-ranking ISIS commander just within the last several weeks. We think it is important that Congress weigh in and state what we believe to be the desire and imperative of our constituents; that we learn from the mistakes of the Iraq war; that we don't repeat them by inserting thousands of American ground troops back into Iraq or perhaps Syria. ISIS was created, first and foremost, primarily by a political vacuum inside Iraq, not a military vacuum. We need to acknowledge that any strategy to ultimately defeat ISIL, as we are all committed to, has to first and foremost have a realistic political strategy on the ground to divorce Sunni populations from this death cult that is ISIL. Sunni grievances grew throughout Nouri al-Maliki's reign. They were denied an equitable share of oil revenues. They were excluded from government jobs. There were real atrocities committed against Sunni communities--mass incarcerations, torture, extrajudicial killings. If we don't have an Iraq Government that is committed to being inclusive of Sunni populations, there is no amount of American troops on the ground that can heal those divisions. In fact, what we know about the Iraq war is that major American combat operations on the ground in Iraq have an effect of exacerbating those divisions rather than healing them. They give space for people like Maliki to try to marginalize these populations. They increase suffering on the ground, especially for these populations that aren't represented effectively within the reigning Shiite government in Baghdad. So if we really want to learn lessons from the past, then let's take President Obama at his word. Let's include in the NDAA a commonsense limitation, with exceptions, with respect to the deployment of major ground operations inside Iraq. Now, there are some people who will say this isn't the role of Congress. I would just state for the record that there are a litany of examples in the past in which Congress has placed commonsense limitations on our authorizations for military force. In fact, the President, in submitting a proposed AUMF to the Foreign Relations Committee several months ago, in fact, included in that authorization of military force a limitation on ground forces. So this would be entirely consistent with the history of this body but also with the proposal the President has made. I know, from having visited our troops in Iraq and in Afghanistan, that it is easy for us to believe there is no mission that U.S. soldiers can't take on; that their capability, that their bravery, that their courage, that their adaptability knows no bounds. They have done admirable work inside Iraq over the course of the last 10 years, but what we know is that those troops inside Iraq also made Iraq what our own intelligence community called the cause celebre for the international terrorist movement, drawing in thousands of would-be terrorists to fight the Americans. What we know is that the ISIS we are fighting today is a follow-on organization from Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was created because of the American invasion and occupation--maybe not in whole but certainly as the primary influence. So we hope to be able to have a full debate on an authorization of military force. But with the inability to move that piece of legislation through the Foreign Relations Committee, we think it is proper on the NDAA to hold the President at his word, place a commonsense limitation on the use of ground troops and learn from the mistakes of the last 10 years inside Iraq. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, we are hopefully going to be able to vote very shortly on an amendment to the NDAA that I have submitted, No. 1901, which speaks to a pretty simple concept that when we spend taxpayer money and 70 percent of the goods that we purchase with taxpayer dollars come through the Defense Department, we should be spending that money on American companies. We should be using our resources as a nation to purchase things from companies here in the United States. That has been the law on the books since the 1930s. The Buy America Act, for economic and national security reasons, directs the U.S. Government to buy at least 50 percent of the components of any good from U.S. companies. The problem is that over time, loophole after loophole and exception after exception have been built into the Buy America Act, such that today the exceptions really are the rule. The consequences are pretty dire for American workers. It means that thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their job because work that should have gone to American companies to build components for jet engines, tanks, and submarines are going overseas. But for our national security, we also are faced with issues as well, given the fact that as our supply chain becomes much more internationalized, we are relying on countries that today might be our allies to supply parts but that tomorrow might not. It puts us at risk potentially down the line. So I am proposing a pretty simple amendment here, which is really just about sunlight. I had previously hoped to push an amendment that would have actually cut down on one of the waivers that is the most egregious. But I am hoping for a consensus on an amendment that would just make clear that we have to get some more information about some of the worst loopholes to the ``Buy American'' law. The worst of them, and, in fact, the majority of the waivers for the Buy American Act come through one specific waiver. There are about eight ways to get around buying things in the United States for the U.S. military. But one of them is that if you can prove that the usage of the good is going to be primarily overseas, you can buy that good overseas. Now, that is an understandable exception if you are talking about the purchase of something such as fuel or food that simply does not make sense to import from the United States. But because there is really no oversight at all on this waiver and because over the last 10 years, having fought two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, this relatively small loophole, as it appears on the written page, has become an enormous loophole. So $17 billion in goods were made overseas, and in 2014, 83 percent of them were done through this particular ``Buy America'' loophole. So I want to just talk for a second about what some of these waivers are being used to purchase. This is an Opel light-duty cargo van that has been purchased by the U.S. military for a variety of activities. This was not an emergency expenditure. Very clearly, you are buying this van for activities that you can plan for. It is not something that you could not import from the United States. This contract, which was entered into at the height of the auto crisis, was $2.9 million in total--$2.9 million that went to a foreign auto company instead of going to a company in the United States. This is clearly something--a cargo van--not being used on the frontlines of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that could have been bought from an American auto company. Ford, Chevrolet, and Chrysler make versions of this van that are produced by American workers. There were $39 million worth of waivers for jet engines and gas turbines. There was $28 million worth of waivers simply for men's clothing. There were $11 million of waivers that were used for shoes, for men's footwear. So it is clear that these waivers are being used not for goods that are urgently needed in the field that had to be purchased in a place such as Afghanistan or Iraq or in the region but simply to avoid the ``Buy American'' law. I want to amend my previous statement. It was not $17 billion in goods that were bought from foreign firms, it was $176 billion in manufactured goods that were bought--and services--from foreign firms. So if it were up to me, we would tighten this loophole. We would bring billions of dollars of work back to the United States simply by saying that you have to have an urgent national security need in order to buy the good overseas. But if it is not urgent, if you are just buying some vans to cart around equipment or people, then you should buy them from the United States. But amendment No. 1901 is a little bit simpler, in that it just requires that we continue to get reports from the Department of Defense detailing the waivers that they have been granted for the ``Buy American'' law, so that we have a pretty good idea as to how much work we have lost to foreign firms, how many U.S. workers have lost their jobs because taxpayer dollars are going overseas. It adds a little new wrinkle to these reports so that when it comes to these waivers, the waiver for goods that are primarily used overseas, which was 83 percent in 2014 of all of the waivers that were granted, we get a little bit more information so that for waivers for contracts over $5 million--these are pretty big contracts--we know what you are buying, why you need it, and why you are required to buy it overseas. I think that this information is just sunlight on the waiver process. Again, a waiver process which is sending overseas $176 billion worth of American taxpayer paid-for jobs should have more information so that we can make decisions. It is funny, when I talk to my constituents and I tell them that I am fighting for the ``Buy American'' law and that I am fighting to make sure that at least 50 percent of their dollars get spent to buy things from American companies when they are used by the U.S. military, they have a bewildered look on their face because they assume that is the policy of the U.S. Government to begin with. Why on Earth would our taxpayer dollars be used to buy things overseas? There are some commonsense reasons why that happens. Obviously, as I said, when you are buying something like food or fuel for the military's use in Afghanistan or in Iraq, it makes sense to buy that overseas. If you can't find it in the United States, if there is not a single contractor that makes what you are looking for in the United States, then, by all means, you are going to have to buy that overseas. If there is such a price differential, such an enormous price differential that it is a waste of taxpayer dollars to buy it from American companies--and, frankly, those are fairly minute exceptions--then it makes sense to do a work-around on the ``Buy American'' law. But we have seen hundreds of billions of dollars in waivers, waivers that are being used for reasons that you just can't justify but also through a process that includes really no oversight. On that waiver that allows for goods to be purchased overseas when you can't find it in the United States, there are examples where a simple Google search could have found the item in the United States, but a waiver was still signed, allowing it to be bought overseas because it wasn't available here--just no oversight, making sure we are only giving these waivers in the right circumstances. I have talked a number of times on this floor about a company that folded up shop in Waterbury, CT, a legacy company in the Naugatuck Valley, Ansonia Copper & Brass. It made the copper nickel tubing for the American submarine fleet. It was the only company in the United States that made this particular item. It is out of business today because of the loopholes in the ``Buy American'' law. We are now buying our copper nickel tubing from a foreign company. Now, that put dozens of people out of work in Connecticut, but it also put in jeopardy our national security. If the supplier of this copper nickel tubing, which is not something you can make easily--it requires incredible expertise, complicated machinery. If the country we are getting it from today decides they are not going to supply it to us because they oppose the way in which we are using it, we can't make it in the United States any longer. You can't just reassemble the ability to make that particular good, complicated tubing that goes inside one of the most complicated pieces of machinery in the U.S. Navy, a submarine. You can't just do that overnight. So at the very least, we should be getting all of the information we need to do proper oversight on this process of granting waivers. I have been pleased at the willingness of Chairman McCain and his staff, along with the ranking member Senator Reed, to work with us on this amendment, this sunlight amendment, this disclosure amendment. Hopefully, over the course of today or tomorrow, we will be able to include this in one of the managers' packages that we adopt on the Senate floor, and it will allow us to have a more robust conversation as to why on Earth we spent U.S. taxpayer dollars on this van, when $3 million--at the height of the auto crisis--could have gone to an American company making a similar vehicle. That is a conversation that on behalf of the literally hundreds of thousands of American workers who don't have jobs today because we are spending taxpayer dollars overseas--for their sake, they deserve for us to have that debate. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, shown in this picture I have in the Chamber is Christina from Stratford, CT. She is a small business owner, and she has a story that is becoming pretty familiar all across the country. She left a job a couple of years ago that provided for employer-based health care, and she wanted to start her own business in Bridgeport, CT, right next to Stratford. So she stayed insured through COBRA for a period of time until it expired, and then she had to go out into the individual market. She recalls having to fill out a 15-page questionnaire when she was applying for individual coverage. She said it asked about ``anything that I had even remotely discussed with my doctor.'' Unfortunately for her, some of those things--preexisting conditions--meant that she was denied health care coverage. So she had to go into Connecticut's high-risk pool, which meant she was paying $1,200 per month. Anybody who has started up a small business from scratch knows that can be pretty prohibitive. Her salvation came through the Affordable Care Act. When it went into effect and Connecticut's exchange was established, she was able to find a plan that cost her $430 per month, which is frankly on the high end of plans but it was much more affordable than the one she had. She said: ``I'm thankful that there was a solution for me to be able to keep my business [and] have affordable health insurance'' that can't be taken away. Similar stories can be told all over the country, but it is not just anecdotes that we have to rely on any longer to talk about the success of the Affordable Care Act. I know that we are obsessed this week, appropriately so, with the PATRIOT Act, the transportation reauthorization, and the free-trade agreement, or the fast-track agreement. But the Supreme Court is likely upon our return after the Memorial Day recess to rule on one of the most important cases that it has heard during most of our tenures, and that is the King v. Burwell case. It is important to spend some time before we break talking about the subject of that case, the Affordable Care Act. Christina's story is miraculous--somebody who was able to start a business and keep that business open because of the Affordable Care Act. But she is one of 16.4 million people all across this country who now have health care because of the Affordable Care Act--most through Federal and State exchanges but some because they were able to stay on their parents' plan until age 26 or are able to access Medicaid. Last month's Gallup poll showed that the uninsured rate in this country has declined by 35 percent over the course of the last year and a half, or since 2013. That is a remarkable number. We shouldn't hesitate from noting that it is just absolutely exceptional in the history of this country to have a one-third reduction in the number of people who don't have insurance in such a short period of time. The good news is that most of the folks who have insurance are satisfied, just as is Christina. Opponent after opponent of the ACA tells us this is going to be terrible health care and that there is no way the government could have anything to do with a health care plan that people want. Of course, it is not government-run health care. It is subsidized by tax credits from the government, but it is private health care insurance, with the exception of those Medicaid plans. J.D. Power surveyed thousands of ACA enrollees and found that they like their exchange plans more than people like their nonexchange plans. So health care on this exchange is more popular than health care off of the exchange. The good news isn't just about the number of people who have coverage; it is that costs are coming down. For the accountable care organizations, which are an innovation in the Affordable Care Act to try to build big integrated systems of care, the pilot program just came in with their savings numbers, and $384 million were saved just on this one innovation alone. That is $300 per patient. That is a big deal because it speaks to a larger trend line in which we are for the first time in a very long time able to control health care costs. On an annual basis, last year we saw the lowest increase in medical costs, the lowest medical inflation number in a generation. But costs are coming down in part because of things that we put into place through the Affordable Care Act. My colleague Senator Barrasso was down here yesterday with a wonderful chart about Connecticut. I appreciate his giving Connecticut a little bit of extra publicity, but his speech really was a wonderful advertisement for the Affordable Care Act. He noted that several insurers in Connecticut just came out with rate increase requests, and he had the numbers up there. They were 8 percent and 10 percent. They were substantial increases. They were not unfamiliar, because prior to the Affordable Care Act, that is what individuals and businesses were facing every single year. They were double-digit increases. The rate increases that Senator Barrasso was referring to were completely in line with what those same insurance plans requested last year in Connecticut. Last year Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield requested a 12-percent rate increase. ConnectiCare requested 12 percent. Because of the Affordable Care Act, which allows States to do reviews and amendments to those rate increases, Anthem's request last year went from 12 percent to 0 percent, and ConnectiCare's request went from 12 percent to 3 percent. We had in Connecticut one of the lowest increases in health care premiums on record because of the Affordable Care Act. So it is right that these health insurers are requesting big rate increases. But now, because of the law we passed, they don't get those rate increases in States such as Connecticut. They actually have their numbers vetted. They have their actuarial analysis reviewed, and they get a better number to the benefit of my constituents. But this Supreme Court case that is going to come up is important because it puts millions of Americans at risk for losing many of the protections that I just talked about. It basically says that the Affordable Care Act was designed in a way to only provide these subsidies to help people get insurance on State-based exchanges, and if they were on a Federal exchange, they, by design, weren't supposed to get these subsidies. Well, a lot of people talk about what the intent of the law is, but you don't even have to get into the intent of the law. On its face the text of the Affordable Care Act is absolutely clear, because, yes, there is a reference--one line to the fact that subsidies will flow to the State exchanges. But the plaintiffs' case completely ignores another section of the Affordable Care Act which gives the Secretary the power to establish exchanges in States that don't do it themselves. That is what has happened by the substitution of Federal exchanges for State exchanges. And, of course, the text of the bill just does not work if you believe the plaintiffs' analysis. The plaintiffs say this is supposed to be a penalty. If you didn't set up a State exchange, we are penalizing your constituents by withholding subsidies. Well, there is not a single line in the Affordable Care Act that suggests that this is a penalty. And there is the fact that the Supreme Court has said that if you want to do that, you have to make it explicit and you can't have guesswork involved as to the carrot-and-stick approach afforded to a State. Doug Elmendorf, who was the head of CBO at the time said: I could remember no occasion on which anybody asked why we were expecting subsidies to be paid in all states regardless of whether they established their exchanges or not. And if people had not had this common understanding about what the law was going to do at the time, I'm sure we would have had a lot of questions about that aspect of our estimates. Finally, the bill doesn't work on its face if you believe the plaintiffs' argument. Why? Because the insurance reforms are national. And yet the subsidies, according to the plaintiffs, are only for States that established their own exchanges. Well, the insurance reforms don't work if everybody doesn't have insurance in those States. You can't say that folks who have preexisting conditions can't be discriminated against if people in those States don't all have insurance. That actuarially doesn't work. So the whole bill falls apart if you believe the plaintiffs' case. I am, frankly, totally confident that the Supreme Court is going to find in favor of the government because there is no other way to read the Affordable Care Act other than to believe that subsidies go to both State and Federal exchanges. It is plain on the face of the statute, but certainly you have to get to it in the intent as well. We are starting to see that Republicans are thinking they are going to need to have an answer if--in the unlikely case, as I believe--the Supreme Court decides in favor of the plaintiffs. But this is a pretty good summary of what the Republicans' plan is to respond to King v. Burwell. The Republicans' plan, if King v. Burwell goes in favor of the plaintiffs, is essentially a shrug of the shoulders. The predominant bill on the Republican side is offered by my friend Senator Johnson from Wisconsin. He claims that this bill is going to fix the problems in the Affordable Care Act if the King v. Burwell decision is decided in favor of the plaintiffs. But it is nothing except for just another attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It is disguised as a way to address King v. Burwell, but it is simply an effort to repeal the law. You don't have to read too deeply in the bill to figure that out. It preserves the subsidies for about a year and a half, but after that period of time it ends subsidies in the Federal exchanges and then it also ends subsidies in the State exchanges. Let me say that again. The Johnson bill doesn't just end the subsidies that the Court might rule unconstitutional; it also ends the subsidies in the exchanges that the Court won't rule as unconstitutional if King v. Burwell is decided in favor of the plaintiffs. Thus, it is a repeal of the bill. It goes well above and beyond what would be necessary to address an adverse decision. It then goes even further. The Johnson bill then repeals the individual mandate. It repeals the employer mandate, and when you do that, the insurance reforms fall apart. Even Senator Cruz on the floor during his filibuster conceded that you can't protect people with preexisting conditions unless you also require people to get insurance. Lastly, the Johnson bill ends the essential-benefits packages. So this guarantee, that if you buy insurance you are going to get a basic floor of services, is no longer. The Republican response to King v. Burwell is simply to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and I hope we never get to the point where we have to debate how we address an adverse decision in the King v. Burwell decision, but this is a nonstarter. Everyone inside and outside of this building should understand that. I don't think it is coincidence at all that over 30 cosponsors of the Johnson bill also support repealing the Affordable Care Act. One cannot deny that it is working. From the New York Times to the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal, people understand that the Affordable Care Act is changing people's lives--16 million people with insurance, health care costs stabilized for the first time in many of our lifetimes, and quality getting better. The Affordable Care Act works, and I hope that our colleagues will come together, no matter the decision in King v. Burwell, to make sure that it continues to work for Americans all over this country. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Amanda Clinton, a fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the calendar year.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, this is an exceptional thing we are debating right now. We are talking about limiting our own constitutional power. We are talking about a trade promotion authority act that would restrict our ability to offer and debate amendments on free-trade agreements. We have been told this is the only way we can move forward on things such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the soon-to-be-completed European free-trade agreement. There are great disagreements about whether that is necessary. It is hard to understand why we hold trade to a fundamentally different standard than so many other things that are vitally necessary for our economy to move forward. Why not have a different process to pass immigration reform or energy reform or tax reform? Those are just as, if not more, necessary to economic growth than trade. But in that we are talking about limiting our ability to offer amendments to a trade agreement, it would be the height of irony if we were to conduct that debate in a way that limited our ability to also offer amendments on the very act that takes away our power to amend the trade agreements. So here is just a point on process. I am fairly new to this body. This is the first time I have been in the Senate debating a trade agreement. Certainly, it is the first time I have been in the Congress to debate a fast-track bill, a trade promotion authority. I think we can take our time to allow this body to work its will, to make sure we vote on more than a handful of amendments to a piece of legislation that takes away our power to offer amendments on the final trade bills. We took 3 weeks to debate the last fast-track bill. Now, I don't think anybody is asking for 3 weeks, but we are asking for more than a few days, given that many of us think we have amendments, such as the one Senator Portman is offering, that can make this bill a lot better. So I am coming to the floor today to ask for that time to get to a better place on this bill and, specifically, to ask for this body to take up a series of amendments surrounding one vital issue, and that is the issue of protecting the American supply chain on products bought by the U.S. Government. It is commonly referred to as the ``Buy American'' law. It has been on the books for decades. It is a pretty simple premise. When we are buying things for the U.S. Government, we should buy them from American companies, by and large. It is a pretty meager requirement. At the start, it just says that when you buy stuff for the American Government, primarily for the Defense Department, you should buy 50 percent of it from U.S. companies. That makes a lot of sense to people in the United States. In my State of Connecticut, we believe that is just good economics, but it is also good national security policy, because if you are not making things for the Department of Defense here, you are making them abroad, and you become reliant on a supply chain that is increasingly internationalized and puts you at risk when one of those companies that is supplying parts for a jet engine, for a tank, for a weapon all of a sudden isn't your ally any longer. The ``Buy American'' law has been riddled with loophole after loophole, exception after exception, such that the exception is now the rule. I won't go through the litany of ways you can get around the ``Buy American'' law, so that sometimes today items being bought by the Department of Defense are majority made outside the United States and frankly, often by countries that we may not be in total alignment with when it comes to our security policy. I want to talk about one waiver, one way around the ``Buy American'' law, and that is a really big one. There is a waiver to the ``Buy American'' law for any country that we have entered into a free-trade agreement with. So if you have signed a free-trade agreement with the United States, you can supply content to goods made for the U.S. military and have it count as made in America. Now, that is a pretty limited exception when you have only a small number of countries you have signed free-trade agreements with. But the two regions we are talking about adding to the ranks of those that have trade agreements with the United States would represent the bulk of the global economy. We are talking about a swath of countries in Asia with very low wages and then, ultimately, with the European trade agreement, the whole of Europe. All of a sudden, we don't have a small exception to the ``Buy American'' rule, we have a truck-sized exception to the ``Buy American'' rule, rendering it almost obsolete and unenforceable at that point, because then almost any country that is producing a good can apply for the trade-agreement waiver. So we have a series of amendments that would try to tighten up this particular waiver, this particular option built into trade agreements. The amendment I hope to offer simply says that if you want this waiver around the ``Buy American'' law, then you have to show that, No. 1, the result of moving the work overseas won't cause a U.S. company to go under--and I can give examples of when that has happened--and, No. 2, you have to prove it you can't find it in the United States--that your only option is to go overseas because you can't find it in the United States. If there is an American company making it for a reasonable price, then that company should be able to get that waiver. Now, it doesn't take away all the other waivers. There is a waiver, for instance, that says if you can get it much cheaper overseas, then you can go overseas. We don't eliminate that waiver. We just say you have to prove you can't get it in the United States and you can't get it for a reasonable price in the United States, and then this waiver would apply. I think all of our constituents would support trade agreements that make sure our taxpayer dollars being used to buy goods for the United States get used, preferentially, on American companies. And simply by tightening up this loophole in the ``Buy American'' law, we will protect a lot of jobs. How do we know that? Because in 2013, the last year for which we have records, there were 1,200 of these waivers approved--1,200 waivers for existing countries with free-trade agreements--worth $500 million worth of goods. That is $500 million worth of work that would have gone to U.S. companies that went to foreign companies because of this waiver that said that any country that has a free-trade agreement just doesn't have to worry about the ``Buy American'' clause. That is 1,200 today. Imagine how many that will be in a year if we were to add all of the countries in TPP and all of the countries in TTIP. We are talking about factors of two and three and four added to that number. So all I am asking for at this point is a debate. Let us just make sure on this seminal issue, the preference that we give American companies for work paid for by Federal taxpayers, that we have a discussion about that on the floor of the Senate at some point over the course of this week. Members can choose to vote up or down. They can choose to support American companies. They can choose to support the outsourcing of American taxpayer work. But let us have a discussion on it. We don't need 3 weeks, like we did last time, but be probably need a couple more days. This is as big as you get for the Senate. We are debating giving away our power to amend a major trade obligation of the U.S. Government. Let us have a debate about the consequences of that with respect to American companies. It would make a difference to one set of people in my district, and I will end on this--the former workers of Ansonia Copper & Brass. This is a company that made copper-nickel tubing for our submarines. They were the only American company that made this copper-nickel tubing, and they had a competitor in Europe that was trying to take their business away. Because of a waiver to the ``Buy American'' law, the contract was awarded by the Department of Defense to the European firm and taken away from Ansonia Copper & Brass. Because of that waiver to the ``Buy American'' law, Ansonia Copper & Brass went out of business. We now have no ability in the United States to produce copper-nickel tubing. Some of the most important components to the American sub fleet in the United States--gone. Our capacity has ended. And you can't just rebuild this, because this is a really specialized kind of material, a really specialized kind of product. Once that equipment, once that expertise is gone, you can't just start it back overnight. That has real security consequences for the United States. I would argue that, even more importantly, it has serious economic consequences for the men and women who were laid off about a year ago from Ansonia Copper & Brass, because of an ill-thought-out waiver to the ``Buy American'' clause that compromises our economic security and our national security. Let us just pledge to have a debate about that on the floor of the Senate before we come to a final vote on trade promotion authority. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MURPHY

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

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, on May 4, 2015, Officer Brian Moore was killed in the line of duty. This was an exceptional young police officer in New York City. He was young enough that he still lived in his father's home, but he was experienced enough, old enough that he had already become a decorated officer in the NYPD and had made over 150 arrests since joining the department just 5 years ago. Commissioner Bill Bratton said: ``In his very brief career, he already proved himself to be an exceptional young officer.'' We have heard a lot about law enforcement gone wrong, but the reality is that every single day police officers are under threat and they are in danger. All Brian Moore did on the evening of May 2 was pull up behind someone who was acting in a suspicious manner, and as they began talking to him, the man turned and fired at the car. Officer Moore was struck in the cheek. He had trauma to his brain. Ninety minutes after the shooting, officers arrested the man who perpetrated this crime. He did it with a stolen weapon--one of 23 weapons that were stolen in a 2011 robbery at Little's Bait & Tackle Pawn Shop in Perry, GA. Detective Mike Cerullo said of him: He was a great kid. I can't say a bad thing about him. He always had a smile on his face. Officer Moore was an officer who was rising through the ranks very quickly and who was beloved in his community. He grew up on Long Island, tragically and ironically in a town with an athletic field at the high school named after Edward Byrne--another alumnus of that high school who was killed in the line of duty as a 22-year-old rookie in 1988. That name may be familiar to us because we now hand out millions of dollars in Byrne grants all across the country--another alumni of this particular high school shot down. Brian is one of 86 people across this country who are killed by guns every day--2,600 a month and 31,000 a year. Not every single one of these deaths is preventable. I don't know whether Brian Moore's was preventable. But what I know is that many of these deaths are preventable, that there has to be a reason why these numbers are so out of whack with every single other country in the industrialized world. A lot has to do with the reality of this place, that as these numbers continue to go up day after day, month after month, year after year at catastrophic levels, we do absolutely nothing about it. We have to start thinking about not just the cost to the families-- and it is not just the mother and the father and the brother and the sister. If we look at the pictures of Brian Moore's funeral, they are heartbreaking, seeing the tragedy that is washing over the family members. The average homicide by gun has 22 different victims who are affected by it. It often leads to cycles of violence in which there are killings for retribution, in which the trauma spirals lives of children and brothers and sisters downward. Let's look for a second at the cost of one murder. Here are some numbers overall. A recent study showed that the annual cost of gun violence in America is $229 billion with a ``b.'' That is $47 billion more than Apple's 2014 worldwide revenue. But here is the cost of just one murder--$441,000 in direct costs. Eighty-seven percent of it is paid for by taxpayers. It costs over $400,000 to lock up the perpetrator, $2,000 when he is charged and sentenced, $11,000 for mental health treatment for the victim's families, $10,000 for the victim's hospital expenses, $450 just to transport to the hospital, and then $2,000 for police response and investigations. That is not why we should take on the issue of gun violence in this country; we should do it simply to try to stop this scourge of murders. But if we care about being a good steward of the taxpayers' dollars, then $441,000 a year that could be saved just by eliminating one of the 86 a day seems like a pretty good deal. Jose Araujo, from Milford, CT, was working for Burns Construction Company in Bridgeport when he was shot at his job on a construction site after a suspect asked for a job and he was referred to the company office. He started to head for the office, but then he turned around and shot Jose. A family friend said: He was a gentle giant. Wherever he walked in there was a smile on his face. He always gave you a strong handshake. Another friend said: He's nice, generous and a man of peace. Jose's girlfriend said: He was such a great person and if the world had more people like him--oh, what a beautiful world we would live in. Jose leaves behind a 5-year-old son. Sanjay Patel was killed on April 6 in New Haven, CT. He was just working, as millions of other Americans do, putting in his hours as a manager at a CITGO gas station, when he was shot four times by an apparent robber at the station. The perpetrators took money and store merchandise. Specifically, they stole a box of cigars. They killed this guy over a box of cigars. Sanjay's wife was 6 months pregnant at the time. He told her he didn't want her to work while she was pregnant, in part because she had been injured in a house fire last year. In a tearful interview, she said her husband took excellent care of her and the baby. He brought her ice cream and breakfast in bed. ``This is my first baby,'' she said, ``and my husband was so happy.'' The stats are overwhelming, whether it be the number of people who are killed by guns or the cost to U.S. taxpayers. I try to come to the floor every couple of weeks just to give voice to the victims of gun violence, figuring that if the numbers don't move this place, maybe the stories of those who are lost will. I can only tell a few a day, but, frankly, it would take me more time than we have here for debate on the floor to tell 86 stories every single day. This isn't just about the fact that I come from Newtown, CT; this is about the fact that there is a regular drumbeat of gun violence throughout this country. By doing nothing in the Senate and the House week after week, month after month, year after year, we effectively become complicit in these murders. We silently endorse this epidemic of gun violence when we don't even try to make gun trafficking illegal at a Federal level; when we don't stand with 90 percent of the American public and the vast majority of gun owners--80 to 90 percent--and simply say you shouldn't be able to get a gun if you are a criminal and you have to prove you are not a criminal before you get a gun; when we don't endorse simple gun safety technology to make sure the gun that was used to kill Officer Moore can't be used by someone who isn't its intended user, its owner, the technology developing--we could help; we could assist--that would cut down on stolen firearms that are used to kill and hurt people. I will keep coming down to the floor whatever chance I get to tell a handful of these tragic stories from Connecticut, to New York, to Chicago, to Los Angeles, giving voices to the victims of gun violence so that someday, somehow, the Senate will recognize that although we can't eliminate these numbers, although we can't bring them down to zero, with smart, commonsense legislation, we can make sure these numbers are much lower than they are today and that there is much less tragedy visited on American families and much less cost to American taxpayers. I yield back, Mr. President. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, I come to the floor to speak for a few minutes on the bill we are debating to provide some congressional oversight over a potential--though not yet signed--deal with Iran. I wish to start simply with what we all agree on. We all agree we need to do whatever we can to ensure that Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon. I have no doubt that 100 Members of the Senate would agree with that proposition. That is our guiding principle, and it should be our North Star. We may disagree on the best way to achieve a nuclear weapons-free Iran, but we can all agree on our goal. So how do we get there is the question we are debating. I happen to be a member of the camp who believes our best hope of achieving this goal is through diplomacy, through a negotiated settlement that dramatically rolls back Iran's nuclear program in a transparent and verifiable way. While our negotiations still have a long way to go to get to that agreement, we are closer now than we have been in decades. I, and many of my colleagues, strongly believe we should give our negotiators the space to do their jobs and to see if a deal is ultimately possible. That is really what this bill does. It postpones a congressional vote on these negotiations, appropriately, until the negotiations are finished. That makes sense, right? There is no use on voting on a deal when we don't have a deal. And then it sets up time constraints for Congress's review of that potential deal, basically, about 30 days. That is a reasonable period of time for us to debate the agreement, and, if there is one, there is some certainty over our process to those who are at the negotiating table. The President's critics seem to fall into two often overlapping camps. One strain of argument holds that this framework agreement we have right now is just too weak and that our side should walk away from the table, reimpose sanctions, and hold out for a better deal. The second strain of argument--evidenced, frankly, by many of the amendments that have been filed to the underlying bill--holds that our negotiations shouldn't be just about Iran's nuclear program, that we should also be negotiating over all of the other bad things Iran does and supports. Now, I don't think it is worth getting into a defense of a framework today since we are months away from a final deal. But to my mind, if the final deal does look demonstrably like the framework, we would be fools to reject it. Does it allow Iran to do nuclear research? Yes, it does. Does it allow them to keep some centrifuges? Yes. But anybody who thought we were going to sign a deal that would effectively be an unconditional surrender was living in a fantasyland. The framework accomplishes our goal of protecting Israel, the region, and the United States from a quick nuclear breakout. The plutonium pathway at Arak is ended. Their enriched stores basically go down to zero. Fordow and Natanz stay open, but they can no longer do substantial enrichment, and they are going to have international scientists and inspectors crawling all over their capacity. Inspections, on the entire nuclear supply chain, will be at a scale that is totally, completely unprecedented in the history of the nuclear age. It is a good framework. But even if you don't believe this, I just think it belies common sense to think that walking away from the table now would get you a better deal. Yes, we could reinstitute sanctions, the United States could. Perhaps some of our partners would go along, but they would be weaker than before because lots of countries that think this is a good framework wouldn't go along with this. Just look at what Russia and China have announced in the past few weeks. They basically have telegraphed that they are looking to do business with the Iranians, notwithstanding what happens at the negotiating table. We know what happens when we apply weak sanctions against Iran, alongside a policy of isolating. They get stronger. How do we know this? Because in 2002 we had a chance to cap Iran's centrifuges at a few hundred. Instead, after years of relatively weak sanctions and international isolation, Iran built 20,000 centrifuges and put in place a secret nuclear facility. Now, our most recent round of tough international sanctions--in part because of the policies of this Congress--worked to get to the table, to the negotiating table, but only because there was a credible offer of a negotiated solution. We know exactly what happens, what sanctions and isolation get us, because we tried it for years. It gets us 20,000 centrifuges, no international inspections, and an increasingly hard- line and inward-looking regime. This last point and result is important because the people of Iran actually don't think like their Supreme Leader. His grasp on power isn't absolute, in large part because Iranians are much more moderate, much more internationalist, and much more pro-American than their leader, generally. Khamenei knows this, and that is why, when Iranian voters elected a moderate, Western-oriented President, the Supreme Leader allowed his team the space to negotiate this framework. Now, no one can be certain, but it is certainly plausible to believe that moderate forces inside Iran are winning and that our policy toward Iran should consider whether our actions help the moderates or help the hard-liners. We don't want another hard-line administration, but we are going to get one if we walk away from these negotiations now, when thousands of Iranians are cheering the opening of relations with the West. If we walk away, moderate voters are going to feel abandoned. Hard-liners will be proven right. The two groups will be merged. Politics inside Iran will shift inward and extreme again. For all of my Republican colleagues who were so forceful in their criticism of the administration, saying President Obama didn't do enough to support the Green Revolution, you would do far more damage to this cause by ending reformers' hopes of rapprochement with the West right now. Now, for the second argument--that we should settle all of our grievances with Iran in one fell swoop right now, that this agreement is somehow illegitimate unless Iran renounces Hamas and Hezbollah, unless they get right with Israel, unless they end their other nonnuclear weapons programs, unless they release political prisoners, and so on and so on. First, there is not a single person here who agrees with Iran's support for terrorism or its inflammatory rhetoric toward Israel. No one is pleased with the Iranian regime's record on human rights or its funding of Hezbollah. But let's agree that an Iran that pursues these policies and has a nuclear weapon is a far worse outcome, one that should be avoided at all costs. The truth is that adding these issues into the nuclear agreement would mean no deal is possible. In America, we are strong enough to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. We can negotiate with an enemy or adversary on one issue and reserve the right to fight another day or simultaneously on other issues. For evidence of this, I would ask my Republican friends to simply look to their great, romanticized hero, President Ronald Reagan. When he was negotiating a nuclear weapons deal with the Soviet Union, he did not simultaneously try to address the USSR's support for proxies in Central America or the Middle East or their provocative naval activities in the Pacific Ocean, he knew that by taking one issue off the table it would make America and the world safer, even if it didn't address all of our grievances at once. He knew if he did put everything on the table all at once, then there would be no progress. Just as a little kid can't eat a hot dog all in one bite no matter how hard he tries, we all have to make progress one bite at a time. That is often how life and, in fact, negotiations tend to work. So I hope my colleagues will oppose these well-meaning amendments that are being offered. They have laudable goals, but in the real world they are simply unrealistic within the confines of these negotiations, and they will have the effect of killing the deal entirely. On a broader scale, I hope when this debate is done, we can also ask ourselves some bigger questions. Diplomacy is power. It is not weakness. Talking to your enemies has been part of our national security toolbox for as long as we have existed as a nation. This country is tired. It is weary of war for good reason. Ten years of conflict in Iraq didn't make us any safer, and a lot of people-- heroes--died in the process. But when we spend all of this time--the majority of this Congress-- engaged in detailed oversight over the President's diplomatic endeavors and absolutely no time engaged in detailed oversight over a war in Iraq and Syria that is still, months and months later, unauthorized and extraconstitutional, then we send a bad message to America and to the rest of the world. We seem to have a developing double standard when it comes to oversight. We are all over the President when he talks to our adversaries, but we stand down when he fights them--lots of oversight over peace, very little over war. That is not where the American people are. They want their President to take extraordinary steps to avoid war. They don't want us to get dragged back into a ground war in the Middle East. I am supporting this bill today because I will be first in line to reassert Congress's power to set foreign policy right alongside the President, but I don't support Congress sending a message that diplomacy is somehow more worthy of rigorous oversight than military action. I don't think this is where the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee is coming from, but there are certainly some Members of his caucus who view power solely through a military lens. That is dangerous because, as we saw in Iraq, large-scale military operations kill a lot of terrorists, they kill a lot of bad guys, but they often create two for every one they kill. In the end, it is nonkinetic intervention that solves extremism, building inclusive governments, lifting people out of destitution and poverty, countering radical propaganda, and showing an America that backs up all of its talk about American civil liberties with action. I am so thankful to Chairman Corker for taking the time to work on this bill with Senator Cardin, Senator Menendez, and others to make it something we can truly rally around today. That takes guts to show patience, to give ground, and to talk to people whom you don't agree with. It is actually diplomacy that wins the day here more often than not. It is our guiding value as a body, as an institution. It is what makes this place work when it works, and we are best when we recognize that the value of diplomacy and the results we get from it do not expire at the edges of this Chamber. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, Mr. President. Over the course of the next few days, we are likely going to debate a series of amendments relative to the ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran. It is my hope that over the course of this debate, on a handful of amendments that may be offered, that the way in which we conduct this debate and the way in which these votes come out is going to unify us rather than divide us. A lot has been made over the partisan division that has been created over the past few weeks with respect to our support for negotiations, despite the fact that we have all said--Republicans and Democrats--that our priority, our hope, is that we can divorce Iran from a nuclear weapons future through negotiation rather than through military action, despite the fact that historically we have all tried to keep close to the idea that politics stops at the water's edge, that we understand the limitations of our ability to substitute ourselves for the administration when negotiating foreign policy with foreign powers. So my hope is that this debate unites us because there is a lot to be united about. The fact is we all understand the catastrophe that would be wrought if Iran was able to obtain a nuclear weapon. This is a country that has pledged over and over again to wipe Israel, America's sacred ally, off the map. This is a regime that has killed Americans, has sponsored, funded, and organized terrorism all over the world. It is also not just about Iran because we know what would happen in the region. Their Sunni rivals would have no choice but to become nuclear powers themselves. The stakes are high and we are all united around the common belief that it should be the policy of the United States and the policy of the Senate to make sure Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon, but I just want to make a couple of additional points clear that should underscore the debate we are going to have about that simple, unifying principle. The first is that these negotiations that are occurring are about the future of Iran's nuclear program. They aren't negotiations about Iran's support for terrorism or Iran's role in fighting ISIS or Iran's other weapons programs. I know this is hard to hear because the resolution of these other pressing issues is instrumental to preserving the security of America and our allies. But let's all be clear that this set of negotiations is about the future of Iran's nuclear program, and for Congress at this point to step in and essentially move the goalposts and say we will only support the outcome of these negotiations if they satisfy another set of concerns that we have--grave concerns about Iran's policy in the region and the world--is disingenuous because we all supported a sanctions regime intended to get them to come to the table and talk about their nuclear program. Frankly, it becomes easier to solve many of these other vital issues if we remove the question of Iran's potential nuclear weapons program from the laundry list of items with which we have great concerns about. Second, let's talk about the role Congress can play and how, again, that can be unifying if we choose to do it in the right way. If the negotiations fall apart, then we are likely all going to stand together in imposing a new set of sanctions on Iran. I don't think there is disagreement at all within this body about the fact that within days of those negotiations failing, we will be back here imposing new crippling costs on the Iranian economy. If this agreement succeeds and there is ink put to paper, then this Congress reserves the right--has the right, has the ability--to statutorily stop the implementation of that agreement from going forward, once we are able to review it and look at its parameters, conditions, and elements. We don't need to vote on sanctions legislation today. We don't need to vote on legislation establishing our ability to review the agreement because we already reserve those powers. We already have the ability to pass sanctions in the event of failure or to vote on approval or disapproval in the event of success. But we aren't in the room negotiating this deal, so if we want to respect our proper place in the constitutional order, then I think it makes sense for us to look at those who are negotiating who have said that a bright, bold, blinking signal of division within the American political system would be detrimental to negotiations. I want to see the product of these negotiations so I can use my power as a U.S. Senator to vote them up or down, but if we take steps now, if we vote on budget amendments that signal our support to take steps to undermine those negotiations by either precipitously passing sanctions legislation or setting up a process of approval or disapproval before the negotiations take place, then I am limiting and I am decreasing the likelihood that I will see that deal. We have a role to play, but that role comes at the end of these negotiations rather than in the middle. Lastly, if we are serious that the policy of the United States is to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, then we have to be serious about what the consequences of the failure of negotiations truly are. It is disingenuous to suggest that there are credible and likely options other than military action should these negotiations fail, especially if the U.S. Congress takes steps that allow the world community to blame us for the failure of those negotiations. Why is that? Well, because the easy thing to do would be to simply reinstate global sanctions if the negotiations fall apart, try to squeeze Iran even more tightly. But that is unlikely to happen if it is the United States that gets blamed for the failure of the negotiations. Why? Because our partners in those sanctions will not join us. They will walk away and either lift the sanctions or look to cut their own deals with Iran. It is easy to say we will just put the sanctions back in place, but it is impossible, at best very difficult, to do if we are doing that unilaterally. Let's be honest about what military action really means. It means setting back Iran's nuclear program by 3 to 5 years, but it also means setting off a catastrophic series of events in the region that will do great harm to our allies, great harm to U.S. security interests, dragging us into a conflict that in the end will not serve U.S. national security interests, especially given the fact that it will only temporarily halt Iranian nuclear ambitions. Now I still say we should keep on the table the potential of military action, but we should just be honest about the fact that if we take steps to undermine these negotiations today, if we, the U.S. Congress are blamed for these negotiations falling apart, then it becomes virtually impossible to put these sanctions back together; thus, giving us only one option, a military option, one that has grave and consequential aftershocks for the United States and for our allies. I simply come down to the floor knowing we are going to set forth in motion a series of amendments, many of them surrounding the question of Iran's nuclear program, tomorrow. I am hopeful the result of those will be to signal this Congress's unity, a unity that we have expressed many times over that we will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon and that a negotiated settlement is the preferable way to do that, reserving for ourselves all of the inherent powers of this body to pass sanctions if they fail, to approve or disapprove the deal if the negotiations succeed. The best way to disabuse Iran of the notion that they can ever obtain a nuclear weapon is in the next 48 hours for this Congress to stand united--united in our position to guarantee a nonnuclear weapons future for Iran. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. I appreciate my friend's question and I will be quick in the answer because I know we are running short on time. I actually asked the CBO Director a question very similar to the one the Senator from Wyoming proposes. I said: Explain to me why your report actually says the Affordable Care Act is going to cost 10 percent less than you originally estimated and explain to me why the insurance subsidies are going to cost 20 percent less than you originally estimated. His answer was very clear: It is because premiums have come in lower than CBO initially estimated. In fact, this year, Kaiser reviewed premiums within these exchanges all across the country and said the average premium increase from last year to this year is 1 percent all across the country. In Connecticut, our biggest insurer increased their premiums by 1 percent. One of the other offerers on the exchange decreased their premiums by 10 percent. The reason the Affordable Care Act is costing much less today is because our actual experience--not our estimated experience into the future--is that premiums are being stabilized in large part because of the reforms in this act. So if we want to talk about actual experience--what is happening on the ground today--it is that we are seeing premiums coming in almost exactly where they were last year, this year, in comparison to 5 years ago and 10 years ago when we were seeing double-digit increases in premiums from year to year. So part of the reason I am celebrating this law, quite frankly, I say to my good friend, is because the actual experience from this year to last year is that premiums are remaining stable and in some places like Connecticut are actually coming down, and the Affordable Care Act is costing less money than was initially estimated by CBO, in large part because premiums are lower than expected.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for yielding. Affordable Care Act My good friend from Wyoming was on the floor yesterday, I believe. He is a frequent critic of the Affordable Care Act. He made a pretty simple point that was reported in the press yesterday critical of the administration for holding so many events talking about the success of the Affordable Care Act. His suggestion was that we shouldn't be celebrating--the administration shouldn't be celebrating--the success of the Affordable Care Act in terms of the number of people who are gaining access to it, the stabilizing cost curve of health care expenditures all across the country, and the number of people whose emotional well-being is much better today because they don't have to worry about ever losing their health care simply because they get sick, or losing all of their savings simply because their child comes down with an expensive illness. I guess I would beg to differ because I talk to people all across my State of Connecticut who are celebrating today because the ACA works. They are celebrating because their lives have been transformed by the fact that we now have finally made a commitment as a nation to make sure that if someone's son gets sick, they won't lose their savings, their college 529, their house, their car, just because of an illness. I think the Affordable Care Act is something to celebrate because a lot of my constituents believe the same thing. Betsy from Litchfield, CT, said that without the Affordable Care Act, she would not have health insurance at all due to her preexisting condition. One month before the ACA was implemented, she was sick with stage 4 cancer and her insurance company gave her 2 weeks' notice that it was going to end her coverage early. Luckily, Betsy was able to resolve that issue. But she says: ``The bottom line is that before the Affordable Care Act, health insurance could and did kick sick people off of their rolls and `pre-existing conditions' left many uninsured indefinitely.'' She says: If you are not insured and have to pay the outrageous costs of U.S. health care out-of-pocket, you will quickly spend all of your retirement savings. That was the situation I was facing in December 2013 and it was an unsettling prospect. Linda from Winsted, CT, says she is grateful for affordable health care because she has multiple chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, and osteoarthritis. She was unable to buy health insurance at any price because the health insurance companies were charging her more because of her preexisting conditions. In Linda's view, this issue boils down to people having basic rights, the freedom to be healthy, the freedom for her to live a life in which she knows she is going to be able to afford coverage for herself. She said this in an email to me: ``There is no freedom in poverty and certainly none in needless human suffering.'' So Betsy is celebrating today. Linda is celebrating today. There are millions of others like them all across the country who know the Affordable Care Act is working. But it is not just those individuals, it is newspapers, from the New York Times to USA TODAY, and the Washington Post on down, that are saying with a clear voice: ``The Affordable Care Act has achieved nearly all of its ambitious goals,'' and ``11.4 million Americans are now signed up for health care.'' This is a success story all across the country, but a success story that is at risk. It is at risk because of a Supreme Court which is considering an evisceration of the Affordable Care Act that would be a stunning act of judicial overreach if the plaintiffs were to succeed in the King v. Burwell case. Their contention is simply that it was the intent of Congress to only provide insurance subsidies to States that had State exchanges and not Federal exchanges. I haven't found a single Senator or Representative who voted for that law who says it was their intent to punish States that didn't establish State exchanges by withholding subsidies from millions of Americans. In fact, there is no way to plainly read the statute without coming to the conclusion that subsidies were not just intended but written into the law to go to every single State, no matter what kind of exchange they decided to establish. The law says that because it specifically states that States that don't choose to set up their own exchange will have a Federal exchange take the place of that State exchange. The totality of the law is clear as well. If the Federal Government had intended to give subsidies only to States that had State exchanges, they would have also made the insurance reforms contingent upon those State exchanges being established. Instead, the insurance reforms are nationwide, meaning that, clearly, the statute was set up to make subsidies nationwide, because the insurance reforms cannot exist-- cannot exist--without those subsidies being available to people to be able to buy affordable insurance. It is not just the individuals who voted for this law who are clear that subsidies should be available; it is the Congressional Budget Office. The Congressional Budget Office reads statutes we pass, independently interprets them, and then assesses a cost to the laws we pass. Doug Elmendorf was before the Appropriations Committee yesterday and I asked him a simple question: When you independently reviewed the Affordable Care Act, did you come to the conclusion that it allowed for subsidies to go to State and Federal exchanges? His answer was clear: Yes. We read the Affordable Care Act as to provide insurance subsidies to both State exchanges and Federal exchanges and, thus, we priced the bill accordingly. The law is clear. The law's intent is clear. The voices of those who voted for it are clear. The independent Congressional Budget Office is clear. The Affordable Care Act only works if subsidies flow to both States that have Federal exchanges and States that have State exchanges. For families such as those of Betsy in Litchfield, CT, and Linda in Winsted, CT, who continue celebrating the success of the Affordable Care Act on the ground floor for the millions of lives that have been transformed, this body needs to continue to stand up for the premise that the Affordable Care Act continues to work. That is absolutely something to celebrate. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I think I might not be alone, I say to my good friend from Wyoming, in suggesting that most people probably would not suggest that 11 million people signing up for health care means the law is unpopular. Indeed, we have seen a reduction by 25 percent in those across the country who do not have insurance, in a year's worth of time. I think that is a pretty stunning uptake, and it shows how desperately people wanted insurance. But, again, I asked the same question to the CBO head yesterday. His review of why there has been a slight differential--it is a pretty small one between what they initially estimated and why people signed up--is because more companies are maintaining their own health care insurance, less cancellations are happening, and, thus, there are fewer people who are uninsured. So this second argument as to how the sky was going to fall after health care reform, that you were going to see mass cancellations of policies, the CBO Director is saying the reason the number is coming in slightly below where it was initially estimated--albeit 11 million people have insurance because of this law--is because employers are holding on to their insurance, even though we heard from many detractors of the law there was going to be a mass exodus of private insurance plans. Twenty- five percent fewer people have no insurance today. That is the bottom line. In Connecticut, 50 percent fewer people have no insurance. There is just no way to argue that we have not made a big dent in the number of uninsured because of this law's passage.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, today is a make-or-break day for millions of Americans who are better off because of the Affordable Care Act. As we speak, the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments on a case known as King v. Burwell to decide whether Americans have access to health insurance subsidies through their State exchanges or whether opponents of the law--the very same people who continued to push for over 40 votes in the House of Representatives to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act, the same people who shut down this government last year because of their obsession with repealing the law--will win out with a paper-thin legal argument. It would not only be a devastating blow to millions of Americans who are currently receiving subsidies for their insurance, but it would destroy the individual health insurance markets in those States and would represent an incredible power grab by the Supreme Court that would undercut the impartiality of that Court. At the heart of this case is the Affordable Care Act, both the text and congressional intent. The question is, Did Congress intend to allow all Americans to benefit from affordable quality coverage across this country, whether they are in a State exchange or a Federal exchange? To answer that question, you don't have to leaf through many pages of the Affordable Care Act; you can stop at the very first title, which is on the very first page. The first section reads: ``Title I. Quality, Affordable Health Care for All Americans.'' All Americans--not some Americans who live in a State that set up an insurance exchange like AccessHealthCT, but all Americans. Before I go into a little bit of detail on this case, I wish to speak about this little boy. His name is Devin, and I was fortunate to meet with him just this last week. He is 8 years old. This picture is from maybe 1 or 2 years ago during one of his first trips to Washington. He lives with his parents and younger sister in western Connecticut. Devin is one of about 20,000 people with hemophilia in this country. To stay healthy and to support his active life, which includes baseball, karate, and snowboarding, Devin has to take an injection every other day. The injections cost about $4,000 per dose, about $50,000 per month. Despite the challenges his disease presents, Devin was all smiles when we talked about what he liked to do, about school, and about how much you need to walk when you come to the Capitol to lobby, as Devin has the past couple of years. The benefits of the Affordable Care Act are very clear for Devin and his family. His family will never have to worry about annual or lifetime limits on his health care. He won't have to worry, nor will his parents have to worry about him being denied insurance over the course of his life just because of his condition. It isn't hyperbole to say that an adverse decision by the Court would be life-threatening for Americans like Devin who rely on these new insurance protections. Obviously, Devin and his family aren't the only ones to benefit from this law. Just last week HHS released the final report on enrollment and showed that 8.84 million people have signed up for coverage in healthcare.gov States--Federal exchange States. An additional 2.8 million signed up through State-based marketplaces, such as in Connecticut, for a total of 11.6 million people who have private health care insurance because of the Affordable Care Act and its subsidies which are being spread across the country. By the way, add another 10 million people who are on Medicare because of the Affordable Care Act and we see why the uninsurance rate in this country is spiraling downward. The tax credits the law provided for people making less than 400 percent of poverty are critical to the success of this law because they make coverage affordable. According to an HHS report from earlier this month, nearly 8 in 10 consumers are getting coverage for $100 or less after these tax credits. In my home State, we had a goal to enroll 70,000 new individuals through private insurance and Medicaid, and we hit over 200,000. But the good news doesn't stop there. According to a new report since the ACA was passed, 9.4 million people with Medicare saved $15 billion on prescription drugs, an average of about $1,600 per beneficiary. For preventive care, there are 39 million people with Medicare and Medicare Advantage who took advantage of at least one preventive service with no cost sharing in 2014. That is why the Times, USA TODAY, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Politico are saying the simple message that now, more than ever, Americans understand the Affordable Care Act is working. Yet despite the fact it is working, opponents of the law are continuing to try to tear it down. So let us be clear about what a negative decision from the Supreme Court would mean. It would mean that anywhere from 8 to 10 million Americans would lose their health care coverage and another 5 million children could lose their coverage as well. Subsidies are important because the law envisions three interlocking sets of provisions: insurance protections to fix the abuses within our old system, the individual coverage provision to ensure we have a viable risk pool inside insurance, and, finally, tax credits to help people purchase insurance. Subsidies are the glue that holds all of that together. That is why a victory for the plaintiffs would be devastating for everyone, not just those who receive subsidies in healthcare.gov. The individual markets in these States would fall into a death spiral if this law was overturned. If subsidies disappear, then people can't buy coverage. If they can't buy coverage, then the law says the individual mandate in those States has to disappear. If the individual mandate disappears, then healthy people don't buy coverage and the insurance protections, such as the ban on discrimination against people with preexisting conditions, simply cannot work. The insurance reforms either vanish or rates spike to catastrophic levels for people who decide to get coverage. Don't take my word for it. The American Hospital Association warns that ``many more people will get sick, go bankrupt or die''--or die--if the Court finds for the challengers. The health insurance industry says taking away the tax credits would ``create severely dysfunctional insurance markets'' in nearly three dozen States. Frankly, we don't even need to talk about the detrimental effects in these States because this is about congressional intent, and the intent is clear. Sometimes when we try to figure out intent we have trouble because the people who wrote the law aren't here any longer or they have passed away. Well, there are hundreds of people who voted for this law who are still in Congress. All we have to do is ask them. There is not a single person who voted for this law who will tell us they wrote the law in a way that would result in the denial of subsidies to people who are getting health care through the State exchanges. The plaintiffs say this is a carrot-and-stick approach; that the intention was to deny subsidies to people in States that didn't set up their own exchange as a way to force them to set up their own exchange. Well, there is not a single Member of Congress who voted for the law who says that is how it was designed. Frankly, we don't even need to get to intent. We don't even need to survey all the people who voted for it. We just have to look at the law itself. The plaintiffs focus on one line that says that subsidies shall go to State exchanges, but they ignore another line in the law that says if States don't establish their own exchange, then the Federal exchange becomes the State exchange. That is just as plainly written as the one line that is the foundation of the case. But the entire structure of the law relies on States that don't set up their own exchanges getting Federal subsidies. Why would we even set up a Federal exchange if there weren't going to be subsidies associated with it? There would be no customers in the exchange if the intent of the law was to deny subsidies to people who bought into Federal exchanges. We wouldn't even have a Federal exchange. Second, we would have established the insurance protections in a fundamentally different way. We would have said insurance protections apply to States that set up State exchanges and they do not apply to States that don't establish State exchanges, because again, as I said before, without those subsidies, the insurance protections simply don't work from an actuarial basis. But that is not how the Affordable Care Act is written. The act says the insurance protections apply nationally, regardless of whether it is a State or Federal exchange. Why is that? Because subsidies were going to flow to a State no matter what kind of exchange they established. Lastly, when Congress has historically engaged in this kind of carrot-and-stick endeavor with States, we make it totally transparent. We lay out in the statute here is what we expect you to do, and if you don't do it, here are the consequences. We don't hide the consequences to be derived at through a Supreme Court case, as is the stated belief of the petitioners in this case. Lastly, the plaintiffs say: Well, don't worry about it. If the Supreme Court overturns this, we will just fix it. Congress can just come back and fix that line. Well, Congress isn't fixing anything these days. We can't even keep the Department of Homeland Security open and operating. Republicans have had 6 years to provide an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. We haven't seen anything more than a memo or a press release. If the subsidies disappear, they are not coming back. Congress is not fixing this problem, and 10 million Americans will lose their coverage. I want to finish by talking about one more story, and this is the story of a woman who lives in Westport, CT. She works as a massage therapist, but since she is self-employed she was uninsured and couldn't provide insurance for herself. Last year, when the Affordable Care Act was implemented, she found out she qualified for coverage in Connecticut and that coverage finally gave her the opportunity to see a doctor. She wrote the President and said: The cancer has been detected at a very early stage, which, with a 98 percent survival rate, has saved my life. Moreover, the cost of this screening and minor procedure will be far less than the cost of treating a more developed cancer. Thank you, Mr. President, for assuring the passage of this critical legislation. You have profoundly improved the quality of my life. The facts are clear. The Affordable Care Act is working. The intent of Congress is clear: to provide subsidies to all Americans, no matter their ZIP Code. The language of the bill is clear. That leaves us with one conclusion. If the Supreme Court overturns this portion of the law, it will be a plain and simple political power play. It will usher in a new era in which the Supreme Court becomes just another legislative body. They will be calling the authors of this bill liars and replacing the authors' stated intent with their own political judgment. For the sake of Devin and Ann and millions of others who would benefit from the Affordable Care Act and for the sake of American democracy, I hope they uphold the law. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes.

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

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, yesterday marked the centennial of the U.S. Navy Reserve, an indispensable and valuable part of our Armed Forces. The Navy Reserve was established as the Naval Reserve on March 3, 1915, and since then sailors have served in every conflict from World War I to the present. In addition, five U.S. Presidents: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and George H.W. Bush have all served honorably in the Navy Reserve. Today, we have more than 2,000 Navy Reserve sailors deployed around the world and our country is extremely grateful for the contributions and sacrifices that these sailors have made and continue to make to the history of the United States. Lieutenant Michael Grabowski One of those sailors I would like to talk about today is LT Michael Grabowski from Norwalk, CT. Lieutenant Grabowski is a perfect example of the student-citizen-soldier who wears two uniforms, one protecting the people of my State and the other honorably protecting our soldiers overseas. As a civilian, Lieutenant Grabowski serves in the Connecticut State Police and is one of six servicemembers of the Connecticut State Police currently mobilized by our Armed Forces. In addition, he is a first-year law student at Quinnipiac University. Michael is currently mobilized to Qatar supporting Operation Enduring Freedom as a master of arms in the Navy. Michael is a fine example of the courage and sacrifice that citizens of Connecticut and all across the country have made to protect our freedoms. Today we celebrate Michael and every sailor and their families' commitment and service; and encourage all Americans to seize the opportunity to honor and support these brave men and women.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, to her high school classmates it was pretty clear what kind of person Kayla Mueller was going to turn out to be. As a teenager she took up the causes of the disenfranchised and the dispossessed, such as when she joined a campaign to stop the city of Flagstaff from using recycled wastewater to make snow on a set of peaks the Hopi people considered to be sacred. She later went to the most dangerous place on Earth because people there needed help. She saw suffering on an unimaginable scale, brought on by a vicious civil war inside Syria and Iraq, and she wanted to make it better. No one is responsible for her death except for ISIL. They killed her, as they did James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Abdul-Rahman, Peter Kassig, and thousands of individual innocent Iraqis and Syrians over the course of the last year. It has been a long time since the world has seen such evil. This is a brutal inhuman terrorist organization that today is a threat to the region in which they prowl, but without question could pose a threat to the United States if their march is allowed to go unchecked. Like the Presiding Officer, every time I hear of a new attack or a new execution carried out by ISIL, my blood boils, I get furious, and I commit myself to doing everything within our power to stamp them out. But I also remember that as justified a response as it is, fury is not a strategy; revenge is not security. If we are going to defeat ISIL, we need to act with our heads, not just with our hearts. And that means Congress needs to pass a war authorization that includes a strategy for victory--a strategy that learns from a small little creature called the planarian flatworm. I want to tell you about flatworms for a second. This is going to sound a little strange, but I will bring it back here. These flatworms are extraordinary little things that live in ponds, under logs, and in moist soil. What is amazing about these flatworms is that if you split one of them in two, if you cut it in half, both halves regenerate into new flatworms. In fact, if you cut it into four pieces, all four pieces can regrow into new flatworms. It means if for whatever reason you are trying to get rid of flatworms, cutting them into pieces does more harm than good. If you take a knife to it, you actually create more flatworms than you destroy. So why am I talking about this? Because they are a perfect object lesson of the simple truth that if you attack a problem the wrong way, you might not just leave the problem unsolved, you might actually make it worse. If you use the wrong tool to try to eradicate flatworms, you just end up with a lot more of them. In the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, we were told we were going to be treated as liberators. We were told we would be out of Iraq in a few years. When that failed, our invasion turned the one-headed monster of Saddam Hussein into a two-headed monster of competing Sunni and Shiite insurgencies. Then we were told more troops would do the trick. And it worked, for only as long as tens of thousands of Americans were patrolling the sands of Iraq. But ultimately our occupation was quietly breeding a new brand of an even more lethal insurgency, one that turned into the terrorist group we are fighting today. Put simply, ISIL in its current form would not exist if we had not put massive ground troops into the region in the first place. Our presence in Iraq, our mishandling of the occupation, became bulletin board material for terrorist recruiters. Iraq became, in the CIA's words, the ``cause celebre'' of the international extremist network. We killed a terrorist, and the next day two more showed up. Let me be clear, because I don't want people to twist my words here. America is not responsible for this evil ideology, and our troops are not to blame for ISIL. No one forgets that Al Qaeda attacked us and killed 3,000 of our people before we invaded Iraq. But do we believe having hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers occupying territory in the Middle East since then has succeeded in making us safer? We have killed a lot of terrorists over the last 13 years, and yet there are more of them, in more places, with an even more radical agenda today than ever before. Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates understood the lesson of the flatworm when he said, upon his departure from the Department of Defense, any future Secretary who proposed putting ground troops back into the Middle East should ``have their head examined.'' So for me, as we debate this new war authorization against ISIL, I have a bottom line: We cannot authorize a strategy that could result in American combat troops going back to the Middle East. If this President or the next President puts our soldiers into the Middle East to fight ISIL, they would serve with bravery and honor. But an intervention of this scale would ultimately create more terrorists than it destroyed. And to the extent we drove back ISIL, it would only be temporary, lasting only as long as our troops were there. Why? These extremist groups such as ISIL exist not because of a military vacuum but because of a political and an economic vacuum. They prey upon disenfranchised young men who see no future for themselves in societies with massive, crippling hunger, poverty, and destitution. These groups work best when autocratic or sectarian governments marginalize and dispossess specific ethnic or religious groups, pushing them into the arms of extremists who pledge to fight the corrupt and dehumanizing status quo. Foreign ground troops do nothing to address these underlying issues. But worse, more often than not, foreign ground troops exacerbate these motivating forces. Bloody ground wars make more economic dislocation, not less. Foreign occupations often empower divisive local leadership, such as the former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki, who pushed people toward--not away from--extremist groups. Then groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIL use this misery to brainwash young men into believing America is to blame, that we are the enemy they are yearning to fight. That doesn't mean there isn't a role for military force in the Middle East. I have voted for an authorization in the Foreign Relations Committee that allows for the United States--our military--to go in and kill terrorists, but we simply need to understand that ultimately what military force is in the Middle East is a shaping mechanism to give us space in order to achieve the political and economic reform on the ground with our local partners such that those root causes of terrorists disappear. American military force is useful in this fight, but it has limits. There is a decreasing marginal return and then a point where it actually flips on its head and begins to actually create more of the people we are seeking to destroy. I have heard two arguments over the past few days as to why this AUMF shouldn't have a limitation on ground troops. First, some of my Republican friends say this kind of prohibition on ground troops would be unwise because it would telegraph to our enemies a critical tactical limitation. My response: Good. Why do we think ISIL puts up these execution videos? Because they know the best long-term play for their desired caliphate is predicated on the United States making a mistake and rejoining a ground war in the Middle East. Recent history has taught ISIL that the best tool by far to recruit terrorists--and estimates are there are as many as 20,000 foreign fighters who have joined ISIL--is the U.S. Army in the Middle East. Thus, I have no problem being transparent with our enemy by signaling this to them; that we are going to learn from our mistakes and we are going to fight this war with tools that result in victory, not defeat. The second argument I hear is that Congress would be overstepping our constitutional bounds by limiting the power of the President to prosecute a war. But first let's note that over and over again, starting with Congress's very first authorizations of military force passed in early American times, we have put restrictions consistently on war declarations and AUMFs. Most recently, Republicans and Democrats in the Foreign Relations Committee voted to put some pretty serious limitations on our authorization for the use of military force in Syria in the wake of chemical weapons usage. Frankly, regardless of the precedent, I would argue Congress has a constitutional responsibility to help set the strategy for war, to help guide the Nation's foreign policy. Let's be honest. This AUMF is going to go on for 3 years, according to the limitations the President proposed, well into the next President's term. As someone who believes combat troops in the Middle East would be a mistake, I simply can't rely on President Obama's promise that he will not use ground troops against ISIL because he only has 2 more years left, and many leading Republicans have made it perfectly clear they would push a President from their party, if that is who comes next, to put troops back into the fight against ISIL. As an elected representative of the people I serve, I should get a say as to whether we have learned from our mistakes of the past 10 years. I remember my first visit to Iraq. I was there in the bloody spring of 2007. I remember being absolutely blown away by the capability and the bravery and the capacity of the young U.S. soldiers whom I met in places such as Baghdad, Tikrit, and Baiji. So I can understand why it is easy for some people to believe there is no enemy our soldiers can't beat, that there is no challenge they can't meet, that there is no threat they can't eliminate. I believe in American exceptionalism in my heart, but I don't think it allows us to ignore history, to avoid facts, to deny reality, and the reality is extremists in some parts of the world are like flatworms. If we come at them with the wrong weapon, we may kill one, but we will create two more. I am pleased the Senate is finally able to debate a new war against ISIL. This debate is past due. ISIL needs to be defeated, and we deserve to honor the U.S. Constitution and step up to the plate and debate an authorization. Make no mistake, we should pass an AUMF. ISIL is evil personified, but for us to beat them, we need an AUMF that makes it totally clear we will not simply repeat the mistakes of the past that got us into this mess in the first place. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.