Rand Paul

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. I am not opposed to a clean CR. If we want to have a clean CR at a level at which we can balance the budget, I am all for it. If the Senator would accept a modification of a top-line number of $940 billion to replace $988 billion where appropriate throughout the continuing resolution, I can support his unanimous consent for a continuing resolution to go back over to the House.

Mr. PAUL. Reserving the right to object.

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

Mr. PAUL. It is the law.

Mr. PAUL. Yes. And I can go on. I want it to be very clear that the Senator is objecting to funding the national parks, so when people go to the national parks, they know they can call his office. We want to open the national parks, and we want to make it very clear that the Democratic side is objecting to funding the national parks.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, let's be very clear here today. Republicans have come to the floor to reopen the government. We have offered request after request to reopen the government. We have offered to negotiate. From the other side, we hear: We will not negotiate, we will not compromise, and we will not reopen the government. We have offered 13 different compromises today to reopen the government. We are willing to open the government. They say: You must agree to everything or we will open nothing. We will not compromise. We say to them: Why don't we open the parts of government we agree on? Can we not end this farce of putting security guards in front of the World War II Memorial? My goodness, it is an open park. They spent more money closing it than we spend keeping it open. We spend more money guarding the World War II monument than we do protecting our Ambassador in Libya. It has become a farce. Eighty-five percent of your government is open. We have offered today to open another 10 percent. Compromise means coming together and voting on some of the things on which you agree. Every program we have wanted to open today--the national parks, NIH, Veterans Affairs, allowing funerals, for goodness' sakes, for our military heroes who have died in action--they say: We agree to it, but we won't agree to it. So let's be very clear. Republicans have offered today very specific proposals for opening the government. The Democrats have uniformly rejected every appeal to open the government. So when one of our heroes can't have a funeral, when one of our people cannot be buried in Arlington Cemetery, when a World War II veteran goes to the monument and is barricaded and kept from viewing the monument to celebrate their service, be very clear that Republicans have asked to open the government, and the Democrats have rejected opening it at every point. In fact, they are very explicit with their strategy. We will not negotiate, they say. The President says he will not negotiate under pressure. My question is, When will he negotiate? We have had one good thing happen for the American taxpayer in the last 5 years. The bad thing is $7 trillion has been added to your kids' and your grandkids' tab. One good thing happened, and it happened under duress, and it happened with regard to the debt ceiling. The sequester actually cut the rate of growth of spending. It didn't cut spending, but it is cutting the rate of growth of spending. The sequester happened under duress. The other side loves debt, loves spending, and doesn't care how much your kids or grandkids will have. They don't care. They have rejected every compromise. What we are saying is that $7 trillion of debt under President Obama is too much. The country is struggling. Economists say 1 million people are out of work because of the economy and because of the debt and because of the burden. And what do they want to do? Heap more debt on your kids and grandkids. I say enough is enough. Let's reopen the government. Republicans today have said we will open the government. Let's open the parts we can agree to. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to consideration of Calendar No. 207 for H.J. Res. 70 to open the national parks, to make continuing appropriations for the year 2014; that the measure be read three times and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. I met with a group today. I have here today 68,000 American senior citizens who signed a petition from Conservative 50-plus Alliance, saying they want to delay it, dismantle it, defund it, do anything, just try to slow down this monstrosity. We have also heard from folks who work for UPS, one of our biggest employers in Louisville and Kentucky. Some 15,000 spouses are losing their insurance coverage from UPS that they had chosen. It was great coverage. UPS is a great company. Great benefits. But they are forced to cut back because of ObamaCare. We hear from individuals throughout the State. We have received thousands and thousands of letters. One couple I met recently was actually profiled on Fox News, the Anionic family, where they said: We have to buy our insurance. We are self-employed, we do consulting work, we were paying $300 a month, and we are going to $900 a month. This is exactly the opposite. One of the real things that we had that was working in our health care that should be expanded, if we were in charge of talking about this, is health savings accounts. People could save for things that were not covered by their insurance, straightening your kid's teeth, cosmetic, elective kind of surgery, your deductible, meeting a lot of things for your tax-free account. We had made it bigger and bigger over time. ObamaCare makes it smaller. If you have got a kid with autism or spina bifida, or special needs, you need to save that money tax free so you can help your child with all of extra stuff you need to do for your child. The President has narrowed that. Also health savings accounts helped to bid prices down. Because when you have a higher deductible, you call up the doctor and you say: How much will that be? Or you ask the pharmacist: How much does that cost? That simple question, of asking how much something costs is concern on the part of the consumer and drives prices down. But we have gotten rid of that.

Mr. PAUL. Yes. The thing is, there was a French philosopher by the name of Bastiat. He talked about the seen and the unseen. You may be able to--I am sure the President is going to show us the person who gets insurance. That is the ``seen.'' That will be the good effect of this. The unseen will be the person who does not get the job. But you do not know their name because they never got the job--the person that was going to be the 51st employee or the 52nd employee or the part-time worker that had 34 hours going to 29 hours. That is the unseen. I do not question the motives of the President or the other side. I think they want to help people, but they did not think this thing through. So even their side now is scratching their head. The author of the bill is calling it a train wreck. The Teamsters said, ``We did not know we are going to have to pay all of those taxes on our health insurance. Warren Buffet, former President Clinton, all of these people are questioning. This is really going to hurt some of the people you tried to help. That is one of my concerns. I know there has been a lot of talk about procedure around here. So we ought to have the ability to amend this to make it less bad--that is the way I like to describe it--and make this bill less bad for the American people. There has been a lot of dialogue on our side but there has not been much on theirs. Are they willing to talk about fixing ObamaCare and making it less bad for the American people.

Mr. PAUL. I think that is what people see as unseemly. They see: Well, gosh, if there are problems, is it right for him to just give exemptions to his friends? You see a line of people going to the White House that were big contributors of his. It is as if you can buy access to good law. The President changed the law only for people who gave him money. Can he give out grants and loans to people who are his contributors? I think this is what sort of belies this tale when he says: I am for the middle class. Well, I don't see the middle class. I don't see my neighbors or any of my friends getting any special deals at the White House. In fact, I see them bearing the brunt of people who do get special deals. I don't like, if you have really good health insurance, placing a tax on you, a special tax. Many of the unions will get that. I will stand here and fight tooth and nail not to have a special tax on the unions. Some might be surprised by that. It is not for me a union-nonunion thing. It is about is it good for America, is it good for Americans. Some executives have good insurance, too. Should we have a special tax on something that is good? It doesn't seem like the right thing to do.

Mr. PAUL. No. I think once the bill has come due at the State level, you are going to have a real uproar on your hands because there is a printing press in Washington that runs 24 hours a day printing money. In the State capitals they don't have a printing press, they are limited--at least to a certain extent--on their borrowing. When the Medicaid bills come due in Kentucky, our State and other States, I think there will be another war on the question of ObamaCare. The question then will be do we throw out the Governor who increased our Medicaid by 50 percent and bankrupted our State in the process?

Mr. PAUL. Yes. I don't think it has actually fixed the problem. I think we were at 45, so I don't think it fixed half the problem. The other interesting thing is of the people who didn't have health insurance, a third of the people without health insurance were young, healthy, and actually made more than $50,000 a year. They weren't getting health insurance because it was too expensive. What did we do to help them? We made health care more expensive.

Mr. PAUL. I think one of the disappointing things about the debate both then and now is that we are talking about something all Americans want. They want affordable health care. They want most people to have insurance. They want everybody to have insurance if we can do it. But we have made it a partisan battle--not we--but Congress and the deliberative process has become very partisan, when in reality there are probably things on which we could agree, even the problems with ObamaCare. I think half of the other side half agrees that there are problems and they ought to be fixed. Because of some kind of stubbornness that we are getting 100 percent of what we want or we are willing to risk shutting down the government, that is what we get from the other side. It is their way or the highway. They want all of ObamaCare or they want the government to shut down. I think in reality there are a lot of good things that we could actually come together and work on because ObamaCare never addressed price. Eighty-five percent of the public had insurance and their price is going up. We do need to get together and talk about how to try to bring cheaper health care to people in our country.

Mr. PAUL. I think there is also something important about how we change ObamaCare. If a law has problems and we incorrectly pass the law that has the least blemishes, it should come back and we should re- debate and fix it or try to make it less bad. I think it is the best way to put it. The thing is that it is illegal, it is unconstitutional, and it is unprecedented to do this on his own. To my mind, win or lose this week, this is an important philosophical battle, bigger than ObamaCare. It is as big and as broad as the country is. That is whether or not the Congress writes the law and the President executes the law. If the President gets to vote, write, and execute, that is a type of tyranny. Montesquieu talked about the separation of powers. He said when the legislative power becomes the executive power, that is a type of executive tyranny. We have to do something that says to the President--and that is why I think this needs to be pursued all the way to the Supreme Court-- rebukes the President and says you are not a king. You are the President, and the legislation comes from Congress, not from you.

Mr. PAUL. Absolutely. It is the content. But it is because there has been no input. ObamaCare is 100 percent the President's bill, 100 percent the work of the Democrats, with no input from our side. I think people actually do--when you go home, they do want to establish dialogue. They do want us to work together a little bit. There has been no working together on ObamaCare. It is theirs. The President got it exactly wrong the other day. It is hard to inform the people this way. He said: Republicans want 100 percent of what they want or they are going to shut down government. I think it is the opposite. He wants 100 percent of what he wants. He doesn't want any compromise. We have a bill before us. There is a discussion about ObamaCare. Why not? Nearly 80 percent of us voted and said the medical devices tax is going to be a disaster for innovation in the medical industry. It is a bad piece of this bill. We should repeal it. Why not have a vote on that? To my understanding there will be no vote on any amendments to make ObamaCare any better.

Mr. PAUL. No. In fact, I think there were problems in health care. But as a physician for 20 years, what I heard most was about the cost of health care. People came to me and said it is so expensive. Or if they are a small business owner they said: Our insurance costs too much. That was their main complaint. This does nothing to control costs. In fact, Obama does the opposite. ObamaCare is a collection of mandates. I was talking earlier. It is the difference between freedom and coercion. We will coerce insurance companies and customers to buy only certain kinds of insurance. People say: It is good. My kids will be covered when they are in college and when they get out of college. That is good. But it is not free. It is going to cost you more money. So if you are the working class or the working poor, you are struggling to buy insurance, it is going to cost you more. We always hear he is for the middle class. The middle class are going to pay more for their insurance. They already had insurance, and they are going to pay more across the board. So really there are a host of problems and this bill does nothing to control costs.

Mr. PAUL. I talk to a lot of doctors. I have been in town halls with the Senator at the different hospitals. The hospitals are concerned that if everybody goes on Medicaid they will go out of business. Many hospitals' bottom line is driven by--they can take care of the poor through Medicaid, but they rely on private insurance to make a profit. Hospitals in most communities have to make a profit to stay in business. So the rural hospitals, particularly in small areas, some of them have already gone bankrupt in Kentucky. But they are very concerned about people being shifted from private insurance to public assistance. The President said, though, that it will be free, but it has a cost. We all pay for it through higher taxes. The other way we pay for it is we have to ration care or ration what we pay for care, so we have to limit what we pay hospitals. Hospitals are already being forced to see less. They have been for a while. But even more so now. It is the same with doctors. How do doctors respond? Doctors, some respond by saying: I am maybe only going to see a couple of Medicaid patients or no Medicaid patient. Then when everybody is on Medicaid or the vast majority is on Medicaid, they are going to be waiting in to see a doctor.

Mr. PAUL. When you look at the big picture of this, when we say: Well, we want to provide health insurance for everybody, which I think is a noble cause, you look at what we have. The government already provides Medicare for everybody over 65. But Medicare is $35 to $40 trillion short. Why? It is nobody's fault really. We are living longer and a lot of people are retiring. So we have a big baby boomer generation. But Medicare is $35 trillion short. So we are instituting a brand new entitlement. It is very big, the biggest we have had in 50 years. But we are going to pay for it by shifting money from Medicare that is already $35 trillion short. That alone should give people pause. The other thing that I think should give people pause is we cannot get people to sign up for this free program. The President is going to spend tens of millions of dollars on TV promoting it, hiring people to come knock on your door to sign up for something that is free. You know something is disorganized when people will not take something that is free.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Would the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. PAUL. You know, Senators do not always ask for advice from other Senators. I thought I would come down and make sure the Senator had comfortable shoes on, make sure he is getting enough to eat--try not to eat on television. That is a little free advice that sometimes shows up. But my question relates to ObamaCare. I think the Senator has done a good job of bringing attention to something I think is going to be a real tragedy for the country. As we get involved with this, there is so much talk about tactics and this or that, whether now is the right time, when is the right time to do this, but I think the question is, do we need to talk about something that is going to affect 16 percent of our economy, one-sixth of our economy? Do we need to bring up an issue? Do we need to draw attention and try to stop something that could be damaging to the people precisely it is intended to help? I think it is personally not a good idea to shut down government. I think it is also, though, not a good idea to fund ObamaCare. Can they both go together? Can you do one without the other? Some, like the President, have said: Oh, Republicans, they just want 100 percent of what they want or they are going to shut down government. Well, can you say something so patently false and get away with it, is my question. The President wants 100 percent of what he wants. He wants ObamaCare as he passed it with only Democrats. He wants it never to be changed. He wants no compromise. He wants what he wants or he is willing to shut down the government. That is what this debate is about. ObamaCare was passed with only Democrats, no Republican input, no Republican votes. When people are saying there are problems, his own people are saying there are problems. The Teamsters have said there is a problem. Authors of the bill are saying it is a train wreck. The former President came out this week and said: It is going to hurt the people it was intended to help. So we have got all of these people saying: For goodness sakes, slow this train down. Stop this train. Stop this train wreck of ObamaCare. All everybody cries about is: Oh, somebody wants to shut down the government. The President does not want to compromise. What we are talking about is, we do not want to spend money on something that is not going to work and hurt the people--precisely the people it was intended to help. But the thing is, how do we fix it? What do we do? Can we scrap the whole thing? Well, the Democrats control one body, we control the other body, they control the Presidency. Historically what would happen, and what I think the American people would like to see is, we stand up, as the Senator from Texas is, and say what we are for. We are for a different solution. We are for competition. We are for the free markets. We are for bringing health care to everyone with a lower price. We went through this whole debacle of giving people ObamaCare and it is going to be expensive. Everybody is going to pay more. Many people still will not have insurance. The ones who do have insurance are going to pay more. So what would we like? Why are we here today? Why is the Senator from Texas here today? To say to the President: We need to talk. What does the President say? He says: My way or the highway. When the American people said they want dialog between Republicans and Democrats, how do we get there? We have to stand for what we believe in so they will come and talk. Does it mean we are going to get 100 percent of what we want? No. But if we do not stand for what we believe, how will we have any dialog? How will we get to compromise? How do we get them to talk to us? We are not asking for 100 percent of what we want, but we are asking for a dialog. How do we get the dialog unless someone is willing to stand and say: Enough is enough. When we look at this, if we want to ever get to the point of getting to compromise, the only way we get there is by standing and saying we believe in this. It isn't about us demanding 100 percent of what we want. But right now, if you look at this objectively, the President is getting 100 percent of what he wants--ObamaCare passed only by Democrats, not one Republican vote. Really, how do we get to what the American people want, which is dialog and compromise? We have to look at a deadline. We have a deadline. My question to the Senator from Texas is whether he wants to shut down the government. Is that his intention or is it the President's intention to shut down the government or is it that perhaps when deadlines come forward, that is a good time for dialog because no one ever seems to talk at any other time? I would ask the Senator from Texas, what are his intentions? Does he want to shut down the government or would he like to find something to make ObamaCare less bad? I know we would both like to repeal it, but would the Senator accept anything in between?

Mr. PAUL. Would the Senator yield for one quick question?

Mr. PAUL. Since we are making it clear, the Republican message and alternative here is not to shut down the government; our desire is to have no ObamaCare. We desire not to have it. We think he went in the wrong direction. But we don't control the government. We don't control the government. We don't control the Senate. It is controlled by the opposition party. We don't control the Presidency. My question to the Senator is, If he can't get everything he wants, if he can't defund ObamaCare, which is exactly what he and I both agree on, and millions of people across America want us to get rid of ObamaCare, if the Senator can't, if he stands today and argues and cannot get rid of it, will he accept a compromise? Will he work with the President and will he work with the majority leader if they are willing to come and say: You know, you are right. We messed up on a bunch of this. There are a lot of people who are going to be hurt by ObamaCare. A lot of part-time workers are going to lose their jobs or are going to lose hours. There are going to be real workers who are full time who are going to lose their insurance or lose their jobs. Is the Senator willing to work with us? Is he willing to work with the leader, Senator Reid, and with the President to find a compromise?

Mr. PAUL

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

Mr. PAUL. There has been some discussion. The Senator from Kansas recently put this question forward, how we would fix ObamaCare if we were allowed to. I think there are two parts to that. The first part of the question is, will we be allowed to offer any amendments to try to make ObamaCare less bad, to try to fix ObamaCare? Will Republicans, which is virtually half of the country, be allowed to participate in this process at all? ObamaCare was passed with entirely Democratic votes, not one Republican vote. It is a policy that has been very partisan. It is a policy that now even supporters of ObamaCare are saying: My goodness, this is going to really be a problem for the country. But the Senator is exactly right, we are getting ready to go through a process where there are going to be no amendments on fixing ObamaCare. There will not be one thing offered. Former President Bill Clinton is saying there are problems with it, the Teamsters, Warren Buffett, the 15,000 people at UPS who lost their spousal insurance are saying there is a problem with this. Are we going to be allowed to offer amendments? It appears as if there will not be any amendments. It appears there is nothing forthcoming that there will be a need to debate. This is important for the American people because this is being portrayed as the Republicans are obstructionists, that Republicans don't want to do this, Republicans don't want to do this. It is exactly the opposite. The President wants 100 percent of ObamaCare as he wrote it, as the Democrats wrote it, with no Republican input. So when we go around the country and people say why can't you guys get along, figure out some way of making our health care system better, it is because we are getting 100 percent of ObamaCare as written by the President and it is his way or the highway. What he is talking about is really, even though they say the opposite, he wants to shut the Government down. They salivate at shutting the government down. Over the last 3 months as the Senator brought this issue forward, who has been talking about shutting the government down? Has the Senator been talking about it? No. Have I been talking about it? No. We have been specifically saying we don't want to do that. Who talks about shutting the government down, nonstop, every day? The Democrats, the President, and their liberal friends in the media. As I get to my question, what I want to ask is about how we would fix it. I think Senator Roberts is right. The other side says they don't have any answers, they are not willing to fix ObamaCare. The truth of the matter is we have been talking about this for years now but we have been drowned out by the ObamaCare I want everything all the time, everything I want I am going to get. There are many fixes for our health care. I am a physician and practiced for 20 years. I saw it every day. The No. 1 complaint I got: Health insurance costs too much. So what did ObamaCare do for health insurance costs? It drove them up. It did absolutely nothing. Even they are admitting it. But you have to understand why health care costs went up. Health care costs went up because we are mandating what health insurance. People say I would like to have my kids covered. Sure we can cover your kids, but it is not going to be free. It is going to have a cost. So everything the people say they want is not free. It elevates the price of your health insurance. When you elevate the price of health insurance, what happens? Poor people have more difficulty buying their health insurance. What else did ObamaCare do that we did, that is exactly the opposite of what we should do. There is something called health savings accounts that originated about 10 or 15 years ago. They were expanded gradually and they were the best thing to happen to health care probably in the last 30 years. But what happened? We went the opposite way. ObamaCare is now narrowing the health savings account. Why are the health savings accounts important? Because you can save money tax-free, you can carry it over from year to year, and then you can buy higher deductibles. So contrary to what people think, it may be counter-intuitive to some people, the way to fix health insurance is to have higher deductibles, because what does that mean? Cheaper insurance. You want cheaper and cheaper insurance. As you have higher deductibles, you have cheaper insurance. When you have cheaper insurance, you have all this extra money that you can use to pay for day-to-day health care. When you do that, what happens? You drive the price of health care down. I know that is exactly right. As you increase deductibles, as you get the consumer involved in health care, your prices go down. In my practice as an ophthalmologist, there are two things that insurance did not cover at all and the prices were reduced most dramatically in the two areas in which the health insurance did not cover anything. If you want to buy contact lenses, most of the time health insurance doesn't cover it. The price went down every year. Lasik surgery to get rid of the need for glasses, much more expensive but the price went down for 20 years because the consumer paid. What would the consumer do--or the patient? The average patient calls 4 doctors before they have Lasik surgery, so the thing is they drive prices down. People say I don't want to pay more out of pocket, I want to pay less. That is a natural impulse to want to pay less. You may pay less at the door, but you are paying more for premiums. Or if you are not paying it and your employer is paying more for premiums, what ends up happening is there are fewer jobs. I know the Senator from Texas is familiar with philosopher and parliamentarian and French writer Frederic Bastiat. Bastiat often talks about the seen and the unseen. It is the consequences that are visible to the naked eye before you get started, but then there are the things you didn't realize were going to happen, the unintended consequences. It is like saying let's have government build the hospitals. Let's have government hire the doctors. Let's have government build everything. We would see all these bright, shiny things and we would not see where the money came from, where the money was not spent, where the economic growth could have occurred. What we have to think about when we think about ObamaCare is we have to think about do you believe in freedom or coercion? ObamaCare is riddled with mandatory, mandatory this, mandatory that, I think there are several mandates. When you hear the word mandate that is not freedom, that is your government telling you that you have to do something. It should be about mandatory versus voluntary. We should have bills that originate here that say you are free to do things. We have gone the opposite way. We are taking away freedom and we are adding mandates. At its core, ObamaCare is about freedom versus coercion and as you add in these levels of coercion, not only do you lose your freedom, they cost money so it becomes more expensive. We took a health care system where 85 percent of the people had insurance and we made it more expensive for everybody. We made it more expensive by mandating what goes into the insurance. For example, for a 30-year old, or for a 32-year-old, it is illegal to buy a high deductible policy. You will not hear this. ObamaCare has made it illegal to buy a high deductible policy. You can get it under age 30 but not over 30. Why would you want that? Maybe you are a plumber in your own business and you want to have a $5,000 deductible so up can pay $1,000 a year in premiums or $2,000 a year in premiums. But how do you ever get there? You never get there unless you allow freedom. You need the freedom of the marketplace. Instead of limiting it, realize what you are getting. When you ask for ObamaCare you are getting ObamaCare, you are getting mandates, but you are getting limited choices. Freedom means choices. Mandates, coercion, means less choices. The exchanges will be very few choices. I will be on the exchanges. I will have to go to the exchange in Kentucky and buy my insurance. I am not very happy about it. In fact I think if I have to do it I think Justice Roberts ought to have to do it. Justice Roberts loves ObamaCare so much I am for voting to have Justice Roberts trot on down to the ObamaCare registry, the ObamaCare index, and get his insurance like the rest of us. We talked about some amendments to include people, I think everybody, all Federal employees. If ObamaCare is so good, everybody ought to get it. The thing is we would be so fed up that we would rebel in this country. That is what I think the Senator from Texas has started, hopefully a rebellion against coercion, rebellion against mandates, a rebellion against everything that says that big government wants to shove something down your throat, they say take it or we will put people in jail. People say we aren't going to put anybody in jail. The heck they won't. You will get fined first. If you don't pay your fines, you will go to jail. They are telling you that you have to take their health insurance as they conceived of it, with absolutely no Republican input. Not one Republican vote, and they are unwilling to have any amendments. What is this fight about? This fight is about whether or not we are going to have a society or a Congress where we can debate over how to fix things. ObamaCare is a disaster. Even its own authors are now saying it is a train wreck waiting to happen. Even the President, who is in love with this ObamaCare, is saying it is going to be a problem. He is delaying the individual mandate. He is delaying the individual mandate. But realize on another level what some of our complaints are. Some of our complaints are that by making it mandatory, and by him doing it after the fact, he is not obeying the law. This is pretty important. We talk about the rule of law a lot of times around here, but what is important about the rule of law is that Congress passes legislation and the President can sign it and execute it. ObamaCare was passed with only Democratic votes. But here is the thing, he is now amending it after the fact. We saw one of the union officials coming out with a gleeful smile on his face from the White House. Is he going to get a special deal that nobody else gets? Is the President going to come to your town or my town in middle America and meet with me and give people in my town an exemption? No. He has been giving exemptions to his friends. This is patently un-American, and it is unconstitutional. We will fight this through the court cases, but it will take a year or so before we can get to the Supreme Court. Can the President amend legislation? Can he write legislation without the approval of Congress? That is what he is doing. His argument would be: I am trying to fix the problems the legislation created. Yes, the legislation was 2,000 pages and nobody read it, and then they created 20,000 pages of regulations. We have no idea who to call in many of the States. If you do know who to call and there has been an exchange set up, there are limited choices. Where you might have had hundreds of choices, you will now have two or three choices. Where you once had freedom, you are going to have coercion. Where you once had the ability to buy cheaper insurance and pay your out-of-pocket expenses on a day-to-day basis yourself and buy cheaper insurance, it will no longer exist because the government now says they know what is best for you. They know what you should do. Your choices have gone out the window. We talked about amendments. If we were allowed to have amendments and the ability to try to fix ObamaCare, I would try to bring the price down. The best way to bring the price down is not to tell people they have to have a deductible or an HSA, but it is to expand their ability to choose an HSA. An HSA is a health savings account. Before ObamaCare, you could put $5,000 a year in your HSA, and now it has gone to $2,500 a year. If you have a child who is autistic or a child with spinal bifida or a child with a severe learning disability, you can spend $10,000 a year on their health care in trying to help them adapt to life. Right now what is happening is they are limiting that ability. Health savings accounts should be unlimited. We should take them from $2,500, where the President has squashed them, and make them unlimited. If you get lucky and don't get sick, your health savings account should be able to go into your kid's education. Health savings accounts should not be for just the family but for every individual of the family. They should be enormous over time, and then you would buy cheaper insurance. This is also the answer as to how you drive the price down. Here is something, as a physician, people would say to me: I went to the hospital and had heart surgery that cost $100,000. When I looked at my bill very closely, the mouthwash was $50, and I was infuriated. I would say: Did you call? Did you try to negotiate with the hospital? They would answer: No, my deductible is $50. When you have a low deductible and you don't have to pay, you are not connected to the product. Unless you are connected to the product, prices don't come down. This is a fundamental aspect of capitalism. That is why when you go to Walmart or any retail store such as Hobby Lobby, the prices are bid down because there is competition and you ask about the price. Think about it. If you went to Walmart and your copay was $10 every time you went to Walmart, would you ever look at any prices after you paid $10? You can see what would happen to the entire retail world if we had health insurance for buying goods. If you had a health insurance copay of $100 to buy a car, the price of cars would go through the roof because you wouldn't care about the price. This is about having some sense. The people who gave you ObamaCare are not bad people. They have big hearts but not necessarily big brains. They want to help people, but they have not figured out that the unintended consequences of ObamaCare are that part-time workers will have less hours, and full-time workers, who are on the margin, as far as their hours go, with a business that is struggling will lose their jobs. If I have 51 employees, I may go back to 49 employees if I am struggling. If I have 1,000 employees, and I provide health insurance for them but my competitor decides to dump them on the government exchange, maybe I have to do that too so I can compete because maybe I have to offer the lowest price. Maybe the end result of ObamaCare is the people it was intended to help are precisely who it is going to hurt. I think we have to think this through. We have to think as a society whether we are for choice or against choice, whether we are for mandates or for volunteerism. I think it is very important that we look beyond the immediacy of what we are trying to do, and, as I said, I don't discount the motives of the people on the other side. I think they want to help people, but I think they are going to hurt the people they want to help. As we look at this ObamaCare debate and this disaster, there is another question you might ask: If ObamaCare is such a great thing, you would think you could give it away--this is something that will be free. And they are having trouble giving it away. So what have they done? They are spending tens of millions of dollars to advertise to you that it is such a great thing. If you can't sell somebody something that is free, I think there is a problem. ObamaCare is free and they can't sell it. They have enlisted the President now to sell it. They are going to barnstorm all across America selling something that is free. They will have government agents on planes flying hither and yon, knocking on your door, saying: Please take this free health care. Please sign up for free health care. If you cannot sell free health care, there must be a problem with it. We are spending tens of millions of dollars on TV, and millions more having people going door to door to convince people that it is a good idea. Ultimately we should try to help those who cannot help themselves, but in order to figure out how you want to help the 15 percent who don't have health insurance, we should have looked at the problem more carefully. Of the 15 percent who don't have health insurance, one-third of them are young and healthy and make more than $50,000 a year. So one-third of the problem had nothing to do with not being--well, it did have something to do with not being able to afford it. It had to do with the health insurance costing too much. So we should have tried to figure out how we lower health care costs, and if you are a young, healthy person, we should have expanded health savings accounts. There are ways we could fix this. What I would ask the Senator from Texas is: Does he see a way forward? Does he see that we can get the other side to come forward and tell the American people that, yes, we made some mistakes? We made some mistakes, and even our friends are telling us we made these mistakes and we want to work with you. Because I think the problem, the perception out there is that we don't want to work with them, but it is completely the opposite of the truth. The truth of the matter is, as I see it, they won't work with us. They won't open the process and we can't have a debate. We are having a debate, but where is the other side? Why can't we influence legislation? Why can't we be part of trying to fix health care? I don't know if ObamaCare is fixable, but health care is fixable. The main problem of health care is price. It costs too damn much. Can we fix that? Could they come to the Senate floor and say: We are going to have amendments, we are going to have an open amendment process, and we are going to try to fix ObamaCare? Does the Senator see an opening where maybe the President would compromise and come and say: Yes, I am willing to work with you in order to fix health care in this country?

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I have a followup question for the Senator from Texas.

Mr. PAUL. One of the questions that should not only be asked of the Senator but should be asked of the President: Why doesn't the President voluntarily take ObamaCare? It is his baby, and if he loves it so much, why doesn't the President take it? He could voluntarily go on the exchanges. I am sure they would welcome him down at the DC exchanges. In fact, I think that ought to be a question they ought to ask him at the press briefing today: Mr. President, are you willing to take ObamaCare? If you don't want it, why are we stuck with it? So if the President can't take it, if Chief Justice Roberts doesn't want it--here is the thing. If we want to see a rebellion, we should ask Federal employees to take ObamaCare--that is what my amendment says--not just Congress. I am willing to take it. I don't want it. I absolutely don't want it, and I have been frank about it. I am not a hypocrite. I didn't vote for it, I think the whole thing is a mess, and I don't want it. But the thing is, if I have to take it, I think the President ought to get it. He ought to get a full dose of his own medicine. I think Justice Roberts should get it. I think he contorted and twisted and found new meaning in the Constitution that isn't there. So if he wants it so much, if he thinks it is justified, if he is going to take that intellectual leap to justify ObamaCare, he ought to get it. There are millions of Federal employees. They don't want it. Guess who they vote for usually? I think it is a partisan question. I think if we were to put it forward and say ObamaCare is such a wonderful program for everybody, let's give it to the Federal employees, my guess is we wouldn't get a single vote from the opposition party, but we will not even get a chance because they don't want to talk about it: ObamaCare is good. We want to shove it down the rest of America's throat, but we exempt ourselves. I have a constitutional amendment. I frankly think Congress should never pass any law if they are exempted from it. I think there is an equal protection argument for how it would be unconstitutional for us to do so. Yet we have done it repeatedly. But my question to the Senator from Texas is, What does he think? Does the Senator from Texas think maybe we should ask the President to come down today and sign up for ObamaCare? I think we should ask him that today, every day, and henceforth: Mr. President, if it is such a good idea, why don't you get it?