John Thune

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, we are now in the third week of government shutdown. We are facing an imminent debt limit crisis. It seems that it has become a pattern around here that we live from crisis to crisis. I hope we do something about that. We obviously have to deal with the immediate issues in front of us in the next day or so, hopefully no more than that. There have been a lot of discussions that have occurred over the course of the weekend and the last few days to try to bring to a conclusion at least this chapter of this particular crisis we are dealing with. I am encouraged when I hear our colleagues on both sides of the aisle are meeting and having discussions. We have had a number of those that have gone on, I think so far without result. There have been meetings that have occurred between our two leaders. Also I have been working very hard to try to get a result, something they could take back to their respective caucuses and present, that could ultimately be voted on. There are also discussions going on in the other body, in the House of Representatives, and have been for some time, trying to find a pathway forward that could get the necessary votes to pass in the House of Representatives and then ultimately here in the Senate. I heard some of my colleagues in the Democratic leadership on the floor this morning denouncing some of those efforts in the House of Representatives, which came as a surprise to many of us because I do not think it should be any shock to anyone that the House of Representatives, created in article I of the Constitution, might decide to perform some things that are consistent with its constitutional role. They have been working on legislation. We had the leader get up this morning and make some comments on the floor with respect to what was happening in the House of Representatives. He described it as a partisan attempt to appease a small group of tea party Republicans. He described it as an extreme piece of legislation, most of the elements of which, by the way, have been part of the bipartisan agreement here in the Senate. He said it was a blatant attack on bipartisanship. He went on to say he felt blindsided by the news from the House and that extremist Republicans in the House of Representatives were trying to torpedo the Senate's bipartisan progress with a bill that cannot pass the Senate. He went on to lament the fact he was disappointed in the Speaker of the House. Again it was a big surprise to many of us. I don't think we should feel blindsided when the House of Representatives tries to find the necessary votes to move legislation that is so important to this country. In fact, it would appear at least that perhaps Democrats here in the Senate and the White House--which, by the way, came out and said it was going to veto the proposal from the House of Representatives, of course before it had ever seen it. There had never been anything in print with respect to that. So the Senate Democrats hadn't seen it, the White House hadn't seen it, but the President came out and said he was going to veto it and the Senate leader said he was blindsided on this, it was extreme, it was an attempt to torpedo bipartisan discussions. It would appear at least that some of the Democrats around here are a lot more concerned about the political consequences and having the opportunity to dance on the political graves of Republicans than in actually solving a problem that is important to the future of this country and the American people. I think it is unfortunate that is where we are. I hope in the course of the next few hours--that is about all we have left--we will come to some agreement. Whether that originates in the House of Representatives or originates here in the Senate, one way or the other both are going to have to vote on it. Both are going to have to find the necessary votes to pass something that will avoid the disaster that is facing us if we do not take steps to do that. I guess I am one of many who, when I heard those comments this morning, was more than a little bit surprised to think that we here in the Senate would be shocked and surprised and disappointed and blindsided that the House of Representatives would decide to do some work and try to solve this problem as well. Ultimately we have to have the House and the Senate agree and concur. I am glad to see the House of Representatives is proceeding in a way that will solve this problem. I hope we will continue in the Senate to try to find a solution in the next few hours, something we can actually pass through both Houses of Congress and put on the President's desk and something he might be able to sign into law. But when you talk about the various elements of those proposals, most of those things that were denounced and rejected here this morning by the Democratic leaders when they came to the floor were the very things that a bipartisan group here in the Senate had been working on for several days. I hope when we get through this immediate crisis and hopefully create the process by which we might address the real problems the country faces--because this living from crisis to crisis is not a way to govern the country. It is not a way to provide certainty to our economy. It is certainly not a way to get the economy growing and expanding. Many of us on this side of the aisle think we ought to have a discussion, when we are raising the debt limit, about how we are going to fix the debt, what are we going to do to reduce the debt, what are we going to do to ensure that we don't continue to pile trillions of dollars of debt on the future generations of this country. We do not seem to get serious about that. I hope we will. I hope when we get past the immediate crisis we will take a look at the long term and say what can we do to put this country on a more sustainable fiscal path? I think we all know what that entails. It means we have to get spending here in Washington, DC, under control, particularly in the areas of some of the mandatory spending parts of the budget. If you look at what the Congressional Budget Office says, over the next 10 years, discretionary spending--which is that small part of the budget that is impacted by the sequester--is going to grow roughly 17 percent. During the same period mandatory spending is going to grow approximately 79 percent or $1.6 trillion over the course of the next decade. So spending on mandatory programs continues to grow. This CBO report underscores that reforming entitlements is absolutely necessary if we are going to get spending under control. We know what the issues are. It is not like it is a big secret. The Congressional Budget Office gives us insight on regular basis. We have had lots of commissions that have studied these issues, they presented their findings, they put forward recommendations about how to address these long-term crises the country faces, and yet there seems to be the lack, if you will, of political will to try to actually solve the problem. My own view is that if we can get through this immediate crisis, over the course of the next couple of months, which is basically what we have to work with, we can actually sit down--hopefully with the President engaged in this process--and negotiate in a way that will allow us to put in place solutions that actually do put us on a more sustainable fiscal trajectory for this country's future. Over the course of the last 4\1/2\ years we have seen the publicly held debt of this country double. It took 230-some years of American history and 43 Presidents to get to the first $6.3 trillion in debt, and that has literally doubled in the last 4\1/2\ years under this administration. We have a huge debt problem. We added $1 trillion a year for the first 4 years. This year everybody is patting each other on the back and saying: Gee, the deficit is down to $650 or $700 billion, as if that is some sort of major accomplishment. That is literally the fifth largest deficit in history behind the first 4 years of this administration, which were the four largest deficits in American history. We have an out-of-control debt. We have an out-of-control deficit that is growing as a percentage of our economy and getting to the point where it is literally going to drown our economy if we don't do something about it. Controlling the spending part of the equation is essential. The other part that is essential is getting the economy growing and expanding. When the economy is growing and expanding, it means that people are working, people are investing, people are making money, people are paying taxes, government revenues go up, and that makes a lot of these problems look much smaller by comparison too. We can't have an economy growing at 1 to 2 percent and an unemployment rate that is chronically at about 7\1/2\ percent. When we factor in the people who have quit looking for work or are working part time who would rather be working full time, that unemployment rate gets up into the double digits. We have chronically high unemployment, massive amounts of debt, and a sluggish economy. Those are all things on which we should be focused. In order to get the economy growing and expanding again, we have to create the economic conditions for small businesses to invest, hire more people, put their capital to work, and try to get that economic growth rate back up to where it would allow us to deal not only with our deficits but also to do something that would really improve the quality of life and the standard of living for people in this country. A growth rate in the 3- to 4-percent range is significantly different-- dramatically different than a growth rate in the 1- to 2-percent range, and that means a big difference in the take-home pay of middle-class Americans. If we want to see middle-class Americans do better in this economy, we have to get the economy growing again, and that means reforming our Tax Code, broadening the tax base, and lowering those marginal income tax rates. We have the highest business tax in the world. It makes us noncompetitive in the global environment. We lose jobs every single day to other countries around the world. We need to do things that would lessen the cost of doing business in this country. We need to make it less expensive and less difficult to create jobs, not more expensive and more difficult. One of the concerns many of us have with respect to ObamaCare is that it is making it more expensive and difficult to create jobs. It has higher taxes. There are higher insurance premiums. Obviously, that translates into fewer jobs. Getting the cost of regulation to a more reasonable level, keeping the tax rates at a more reasonable level, and doing what is necessary to unleash this economy is the way we will improve the fiscal picture in this country, coupled with good fiscal discipline and constraints on Federal spending, and that means we have to tackle the mandatory part of the budget. That part was not affected--or at least not affected very much--by the sequester. Those are the ingredients, components, and elements, if you will, that will lead us to a situation where we are not having a crisis every few months where we are worrying about a debt limit increase or how we are going to fund the government. We ought to get to a place where we are in a more systematic way doing what we should be doing in the first place. We should be passing appropriations bills. We didn't pass a single appropriations bill this year, which is why we are here at the eleventh hour trying to come up with a continuing resolution to fund the government. Those are the things we need to do if we are going to get this fiscal situation improved for our country and get the economy up and growing again and creating jobs and doing what is necessary to improve the lives of the American people. That is what I think the public wants to see. Actually, if we look at public opinion polls--and there has been a lot of discussion about that lately--by a 2-to-1 margin, people in this country believe that if you are going to raise the debt limit, you ought to do something about the debt. I saw a survey just last week by CBS News that said 55 percent of the people in this country believe that when you are going to raise the debt limit, you ought to do something to reduce spending. I think that only 23 percent of the people surveyed said they supported a clean debt limit increase. The American people get it. The people in my State of South Dakota understand that you can't spend money you don't have. You have to live within your means, and we have to, as a Federal Government, do the same families across this country have to do on a regular basis. They get this. They understand what this is about. I hope that in the next few weeks and months we will be able--with the involvement and engagement of the President of the United States-- to sit down and negotiate the resolutions, if you will, and proposals and solutions to this debt crisis and get this country on a more sustainable fiscal path and at a place where the economy is growing at a faster rate and creating the types of good-paying jobs that will help middle-class Americans in this economy prosper. If we look at what happened to take-home pay or household income over the past several years, it has gone down, not up. We have seen the average household income go down by $3,700 since the President took office. It is time we changed that and got the American people back to work, incomes coming up, and jobs that will keep the young people in this country not only employed but looking with confidence and optimism toward their future, which is something we don't see today. Let's deal with the immediate crisis, but let's work together on that. Instead of coming over here and denouncing what is happening in the House of Representatives or using extreme language to characterize what is happening in the House of Representatives, understand we have to function together. We are the Congress of the United States, and in order for anything to get done here, we have to move legislation through both the House and Senate. It seems to me, at least, that there ought to be a recognition of that in the Senate. As I listened this morning to the comments of some of our leaders on the other side when they came down here and denounced what was happening in the House of Representatives, it struck me that that is not a productive or constructive way to get where we need to go in the next few hours. I hope we can do that, and I looking forward to the kind of bipartisan cooperation that will solve this problem. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. THUNE. I ask consent to talk for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, a week ago today western South Dakota was preparing for a coming storm, but no one had any idea it would be one of the worst and most devastating snowstorms in that area's history. I grew up in western South Dakota. I was born and raised there. We saw a lot of nasty blizzards over the years--storms that swept through the middle of our State and all across our State, with the destructive impact that can have, the way it would close down roads, the difficulty it would create for people and, obviously, the loss of livestock that comes with that. We have seen over the years blizzards that have taken their toll on one of our State's most important industries. But the storm damage I saw yesterday when I toured western South Dakota was epic, looking at the mountains of branches that were piled high waiting for disposal, or the gut-wrenching scenes of fence lines, draws, and pastures that were scattered with dead livestock. This snowstorm started out as heavy rain--and I know the distinguished Presiding Officer had much of this in her State of North Dakota as well--but that soaked the livestock. Then it turned into a raging blizzard, with heavy snow and sustaining winds of 60 to 70 miles an hour. These winds drove livestock for miles--some more than 12 miles from their pastures. The fortunate ones lasted through the storm, miles from their origination, but still alive. As I speak, South Dakota ranchers are still assessing their losses, trying to determine ownership of those that survived but are miles away from home, and hauling away or burying the tens of thousands of dead livestock. To add even more challenges to an already devastating situation, this area is now experiencing heavy rains. Flash-flood warnings have been issued this morning for areas of the Black Hills, with an additional 2 or more inches of rain in the forecast. This storm-damaged area of 17 counties in western South Dakota contains more than 6,000 ranches and more than a million cattle and sheep. For most of these ranchers, their livestock is their sole source of livelihood. These ranchers have a 365-day-a-year obligation to care for their livestock, which they have done for generation after generation. Madam President, I want to show you the impact of this storm and what it did to some of these livestock. As shown in this picture, this is an area we saw from a helicopter yesterday--a low-lying area where there was some water. As you can see, there are upwards of 40, 50 head of livestock that are lying there dead in that area. We saw numerous examples like that yesterday. This is another photo we took yesterday of trucks, rendering trucks that were coming to pick up some of the dead livestock. As you can see, not only are the trucks filled, but there are livestock along this road. We saw that situation, that image, over and over yesterday, as well, along highways in western South Dakota. The point I am simply making is, this was an incredibly powerful impact--this storm--that created an enormous amount of damage to the No. 1 industry in western South Dakota. The people who work the land, the people who raise these animals, they are independent, they are hard working. These ranchers are the best friends and neighbors anybody could have, all willing to lend a helping hand. They are first to provide assistance and the last to seek it. The best thing we can do right now, the most effective assistance we can offer them right now is found in the livestock disaster section of the farm bill, which has passed here in the Senate, is now passed in the House of Representatives, and is awaiting action by a conference committee. The Livestock Indemnity Program, known as LIP, was something Senator Baucus and I authored as part of the 2008 farm bill. It provides much- needed financial assistance to these livestock producers. But in order to get this assistance to them, a new farm bill has to be passed. This program, the Livestock Indemnity Program, or the LIP program, in the farm bill is fully paid for with cuts in other farm programs, and it has eliminated the need for ad hoc disaster assistance that was the standard emergency assistance in past years. I remember past years, when I was a Member of the House of Representatives, something like this would happen, and we would have to come to Congress for ad hoc disaster assistance, emergency assistance. The whole point of getting a disaster title in the farm bill was to eliminate the need for that ad hoc disaster assistance on an annual basis sometimes. So this title was put in the farm bill back in 2008. It created a permanent program, paid for. As I said, the one in the farm bill that is being considered now is offset by cuts in other areas of the farm bill. What we are waiting for is for the conferees to get together in a conference to work out the differences between the two bills and to report them back to the House and to the Senate, where they can be voted on, hopefully, passed and put on the President's desk. That is what it is going to take to get assistance back to these livestock producers, because the existing disaster title, as I said--the Livestock Indemnity Program in the disaster title of the farm bill-- expired. It expired at the end of 2011. When we passed a bill in the Senate in 2012, it reauthorized it, and in the farm bill that passed this year it has been reauthorized. But until we get the farm bill passed, that authority that can help producers in circumstances like this no longer exists. That is why we have to get conferees together in a conference committee and, ultimately, a bill on the President's desk that can be signed into law that would allow the Department of Agriculture to issue the regulations that are necessary to put this program back into effect. I have been encouraged by reports I have heard that they are going to soon name conferees to move a farm bill forward in the House. I wrote a letter earlier this week to Speaker Boehner asking him to name conferees so the conference committee could begin its work and make this assistance available to livestock producers. I have also sent a letter to Secretary Vilsack asking him to determine that the Farm Service Agency personnel in the impacted counties are essential so they can open these offices and begin the process of preparing damage assessment reports that are going to be needed for Federal disaster declarations. The distinguished Presiding Officer mentioned in her remarks the impact this is having in western South Dakota. In western North Dakota, the Farm Service Agency personnel are not working, and in this circumstance they are the ones to whom the producers would go and the States and affected parties would look to to do the damage assessments. So I am hoping Secretary Vilsack, who has that authority, particularly in this sort of a situation where you have an emergency, will declare these people as essential and get them back on the job so they can begin those damage assessments and prepare the way for, hopefully, when a farm bill passes and the disaster title is authorized again. So those are a couple of things that have to happen, in my view, fairly quickly. And I will be the first to say that I have had concerns about the farm bill as it worked its way through the process here. There were some things in the commodity title that I thought could have been done differently--perhaps a better policy approach and, arguably, something that is more compliant with our World Trade Organization obligations and less market distorting. There were a number of things in the commodity title, there were some things in other titles of the bill that we had some concerns with, but there were a number of things in the farm bill that we worked very hard to have included, and the disaster title was one of those. I am hoping as this farm bill works its way through the process, and hopefully as conferees get named by the House of Representatives, they can begin their work, work out some of those differences, and I will continue to be a strong proponent of the livestock disaster assistance that was created in the 2008 farm bill and was included in both versions of the 2013 farm bill--both the one that passed the House and the one that passed the Senate. I appreciate the work Chairman Stabenow has done, and our ranking member Senator Cochran. I thank them for their tireless efforts to try and get a new farm bill enacted as soon as possible. This past week's snowstorm is only one example of the urgency behind that to get it done so the programs can once again support our farmers and ranchers and the millions of others whose jobs rely on agriculture. Again, in my State of South Dakota, it is our No. 1 industry. It always has been and it probably always will be. We have so many farm and ranch families who look to their leadership here in Washington, DC, to provide some certainty with regard to the rules they are going to play by. When we do extensions such as the one we are in the middle of right now--we did a 1-year extension last year of the old farm bill--but we do not make the reforms, some of the changes that are necessary to update farm policy, then we do not give producers the certainty they need as they make their planning decisions for the future. So getting a 5-year, a multiyear reauthorization in place is important, and it is timely. My hope would be that in the very near future the conferees can sit down, they can work out the differences between the two bills-- reconcile those differences--and get this thing moving again. I say that not only because it is critically important to these livestock producers in western South Dakota but because it is critically important to all producers across South Dakota. The farmers in the eastern part of my State, the people in the entire farm belt and the regions of this county who depend upon agriculture for their existence need to know what the policies are going to be, what the results are going to be, so they can plan and plan effectively, and so we have the mechanisms in place, so when something like this happens--like happened in western South Dakota this past week--there is a mechanism in place, there is a way in which we can respond and provide support for the hard-working farmers and ranchers and the millions of people whose jobs rely on agriculture. Looking at those images yesterday was very gripping, in many ways very disturbing. As you fly over these areas and you see these massive losses of livestock, you realize what that means for the people who are out there every single day, who for generations have made their living on the land by raising these cattle, and it has contributed in such an enormous and significant way to the economy not only of western South Dakota but of this entire economy--people who literally every single day are out there feeding not only America but feeding the world. Agriculture has a tremendous impact domestically, obviously, but it has a profound impact around the world, and it is something that from an economic standpoint creates thousands and thousands and millions of jobs here in this country. I hope we can get the farm bill done. I hope the conferees will get named soon by the House, and that we will be on our way toward passage of a farm bill and, hopefully, the certainty that producers across this country need and the ability to respond to this type of emergency. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded and I be allowed to speak for up to 12 minutes.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, we are in the eighth day of a completely unnecessary partial government shutdown. Last week there was an official at the White House who said they were winning the shutdown debate and they were not concerned about how long the shutdown lasts. Well, there may be Democrats and folks at the White House who are content with the current situation, but Republicans remain focused on finding a solution to reopen the government. The Republicans have offered multiple solutions to fund the government and will continue to work to find common ground while providing ObamaCare relief for middle-class Americans. Middle-class Americans deserve the same relief from ObamaCare the Democrats have already given themselves and big business. Senate Democrats even had the opportunity to give the same 1-year relief from ObamaCare to their constituents that President Obama has already given to big business. We believe this is an issue of basic fairness. We believe this law should be delayed--not just for big businesses and not just for the favored constituencies but for all Americans because of the harmful impact it is having. In fact, there is bipartisan support for giving individuals and families relief. A colleague of ours on the other side of the aisle--a Senate Democrat--recently said a delay for individuals would be very reasonable and sensible. There have been a number of votes in the House where Democrats have voted with Republicans in support of providing that delay to middle-class Americans. With regard to where we are right now, we have a near-term issue and we have a slightly longer term issue. The near-term issue has an awful lot of folks increasingly concerned about the impact the government shutdown is having on people across this country. The House of Representatives has passed nine bills that have been sent to the Senate which are sitting here at the desk that would provide funding for some of these programs and services which impact people across this country that could be picked up today and passed by unanimous consent. And, by the way, many of those have passed with bipartisan support. As recently as Saturday the House passed a bill that would provide back pay for Federal workers. There were 189 Democrats in the House of Representatives who voted in support of that bill. There have been up to 57 Democrats in the House of Representatives who have voted to give pay to our National Guard and Reserve, the same thing we have done for our active-duty military. They have also voted to provide relief to our national parks so they can open again. They have voted to provide funding for the National Institutes of Health so that those lifesaving medicines can continue to be provided. They have voted to provide funding for FEMA so FEMA can respond to the natural disasters that are occurring across the country. There are nine bills sitting at the desk of the Senate that could be picked up and passed today by unanimous consent. There wouldn't be a single Republican that I know of who would object to any of those measures being passed that would provide funding and relief in support of the services and programs which impact people across the country. The House will pick up a couple of more bills today. They will do one that funds Head Start and will then send it over here, so that will be the tenth bill that will be sitting at the Senate. They will pass a bill that funds Impact Aid, something which is very important to the people I represent in South Dakota. That will be the 11th bill that will be sitting at the desk in the Senate awaiting action. As I said, they could all be passed by unanimous consent. There would not be a single Republican that I know of who would be opposed to any of those being moved forward. It is not a question of addressing the funding concerns and making sure the programs and services which impact people across this country are being funded; that can be done. It has been done by the House, and those items have moved over here to the Senate. All that is necessary is for the majority leader to come over, pick them up, ask for unanimous consent to pass them, and those items would pass. I see the near-term issue as being one that is very easy to solve, and all that it entails is for the leadership in the Senate to pick up those bills and pass them. The other issue I mentioned that is a little bit longer term, but not much, because it is about 9 days away, is we are going to hit the debt limit, which means the United States of America will no longer have borrowing authority. We will hit up against the amount we are able to borrow on our credit card to fund the services of our government. There is a request obviously to increase the debt limit to allow the Federal Government to borrow more money. I have had private conversations with members of the administration's team. They said they would like to see a debt limit increase that would take us through the next election-- through November of 2014. To do that we would be looking somewhere in the trillion-dollar range. It strikes me that--and I think it is something supported by the American people--if we are going to have a debate about increasing the debt limit, we ought to do something about the debt. I think that is a sensible position to take. By a 2-to-1 margin, polls show the American people believe if we are going to raise the debt limit, we ought to do something to fix and address the debt. What we are simply saying is: Let's sit down and have a discussion about things we can do that will put us on a different and sustainable fiscal trajectory for this country that won't saddle future generations of Americans with massive amounts--trillions and trillions of dollars-- of additional debt. That issue is looming out there and it is not very far away. We don't have a lot of time to deal with that. It is not, as I said, as immediate as the government shutdown, which can be addressed by the majority of the Senate. I think the debt limit is going to require both parties here in Congress and the President and his team to get together and figure out what it is we can do that would not only raise the debt limit--the amount we can borrow--but address the underlying fundamental problem, and that is the fact that we have a $17 trillion debt. There has been a lot said about things that various Senators have said in the past on the floor and in the course of these various debates we have had about debt limit increases, and I wanted to point out that the President of the United States, President Obama, when he was here in 2006, said raising the debt limit is a failure of leadership. He said it is a failure of leadership and described it as unpatriotic. Unpatriotic--failure of leadership to raise the debt limit. Now he is saying he wants a clean debt limit increase--no negotiation, period. No negotiation on the debt limit. Well, at the time when he said that raising the debt limit was a leadership failure, the total Federal debt was $8.3 trillion. Today it is $16.8 trillion, $16.9 trillion. So the Federal debt, literally, is double what it was when the current President said back in 2006, as a Member of this Chamber in the Senate, that raising the debt limit would be a failure of leadership. Now it is twice that amount. It was $8.3 trillion in 2006, and now we are going on $17 trillion. It seems to me the President of the United States--who described raising the debt limit in 2006 when the debt was half of what it is today as a leadership failure--ought to be willing to exercise some leadership and engage himself in a process that would allow us to sit down and talk about what we can do to get this debt under control. There is a series of spending reforms that have been put forward by many of my colleagues on this side of the aisle that would deal with the out-of-control spending, particularly on what we call the mandatory spending part of the budget, those entitlement programs that currently are on an unsustainable path. We would like to try and get that spending under control. There are a number of other things that have been proposed that, frankly, would be good for the economy. One of the best ways to get our fiscal house in order is to get the economy growing and expanding at a faster rate. When the economy is growing and expanding, more people are working, more people are investing, more people are paying taxes, and government revenues go up. When we have an economy growing at 3 to 4 percent instead of an economy growing at 1 to 2 percent, which is what we have today, the result is a dramatic increase in the amount of tax revenue that comes into the Federal Treasury. When they are talking about raising the debt limit, we should look at what we can do in association with that discussion to actually reduce the debt. One would be to put spending reforms in place, and the other would be growing and expanding the economy. One of the things that has been proposed that would grow the economy is tax reform. I happen to believe, and I think a lot of us do, that the best thing we can do to get the economy growing at a faster rate is to reform our Tax Code in a way that makes us more competitive in the global marketplace. That would mean reducing the tax on business, which is the highest in the world. The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the entire world. Lowering marginal income tax rates, broadening the tax base, doing away with many of the loopholes, deductions, exemptions, and preferences that are in the Tax Code today that benefit particular constituencies and going to a broader based tax base, but one that has marginal rates that are significantly lower than where they are today-- I think that would dramatically unleash economic growth in this country and get people back to work so they can pay taxes and get government revenues up. In the context of raising the debt limit, we ought to do something about the debt, and as I said, that is fairly straightforward. One of the ideas that has been put forward here is that we need a clean debt limit increase; we can't have any discussion or negotiation about this. If we look at history, it has been the case that many of the big accomplishments, if you will, when it comes to deficit reduction, when it comes to fiscal plans being put into place, occurred in the context of increasing the debt limit. In fact, throughout our history, going back to 1978, the debt limit has been raised 53 times in those 35 years. Of those 53 debt limit increases, 27, or more than half, were done around other policy considerations and policy discussions and legislation that was put forward to address issues--in many cases to address the out-of-control spending and debt we have in this country. For 35 years now, with 53 debt limit increases, more than half have involved discussion of other matters. In fact, some of the biggest accomplishments we can point to in the history of the last 30 years occurred at a time when we had both sides trying to figure out a path forward for dealing with fiscal imbalances our country faced. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings legislation passed in 1985, the Budget Acts in 1990 and 1993 and 1997, and more recently in 2011. All occurred in the context of a debt limit increase. So there is ample precedent in history for doing big things that are good for the country and good for future generations around the debt limit increase. It defies history to suggest we cannot come to the table and cannot negotiate in the context of a debt limit increase. As I look at these issues that are converging on us now and what they mean for our children and our grandchildren and for future generations, it seems to me that taking a position of we will not negotiate, period--which is essentially what the President has said and what has been echoed here by the Senate majority--is not only wrong in terms of what we need to do to fix the debt and to get our country on a more sustainable fiscal path, but it is also completely at odds with what we know to be the case throughout our history. We can do better by the American people. We should do better by the American people. It requires leadership. The President of the United States, President Obama, as Senator Obama back in 2006, said at that time that raising the debt limit would be a leadership failure and described it as unpatriotic. Here we are these many years later, with double--double--the amount of debt we had back when he made that statement. This situation we are in today cries out for leadership. It cries out for leadership from the President and from those of us in Congress. I hope we can find our way to get together, to sit down, to negotiate, to come up with solutions that are good for the future of this country that would deal not just with raising the borrowing limit so we can borrow more money to fund government, but to address the underlying problem, and that is the fact that we have a $17 trillion debt that continues to grow at $600 billion, $700 billion a year. We continue to have a chronically high unemployment rate. We continue to have a labor force, a workforce that is at historically low levels; in other words, the number of people who are working today as a percentage of those who could work is at the lowest level it has been in 35 years. We have a sluggish economy that is growing in the 1- to 2- percent range. Take-home pay for most Americans has gone down since the President took office by about $3,700. We need to get middle-class Americans back to work, middle-class Americans earning more, being able to provide for their families, increasing family household income and take-home pay in this country, and the way to do that is to get the economy growing and expanding. The other way to do that, I would argue, is to get spending here in Washington under control so we are not out there borrowing more and more money all the time, so that more and more of our country's assets and resources can be deployed toward things that will yield a return, that will put more people to work, that will grow the economy, and expand the standard of living and the quality of life for people across this country. Time is short. The clock is running. Time is a-wasting. We need to get this done. In the near term we need to bring up the nine bills sitting here in the Senate that were passed by the House. That would put funding for a lot of these services and programs that impact people--which has been expressed so many times by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--back in place. Secondly, let's get together--the President, Democrats, and Republicans here in Washington, DC--to talk about not only raising the debt limit but what we are going to do to address the underlying debt. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. I would be happy to yield when I have concluded my remarks, on the time of the Senator from Rhode Island.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I think the reason Republicans here in the Senate find this stance so perplexing is that the characterization we have never negotiated around a debt ceiling is absolutely not true. Deficit reduction measures over the last several decades have been paired with increases in the debt ceiling. Almost 30 years ago, we had the Balanced Budget Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, otherwise known as Gramm-Rudman-Hollings. I was a staffer here at the time. That was done in the context of the debt ceiling. We had several measures in the 1990s that reduced our deficits that were done in association with an increase in the debt ceiling. Most recently, we all remember the Budget Control Act of 2011, which resulted in restraint largely on the discretionary side of the budget, which many of us would like to change; but it has also resulted, for the first time since the 1950s, in 2 consecutive years where the Federal Government spent less than it spent the previous year--the first time since the Korean war. The common denominator is that these deals were paired with an increase in the debt ceiling. The point I am trying to make, for those of my friends who are arguing that negotiating around our debt ceiling is unprecedented, is perhaps they ought to take a closer look at history. This week, Kevin Hassett and Abbey McCloskey of the American Enterprise Institute wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled ``Obama Rewrites Debt-Limit History,'' which I think characterizes the history of the debt limit in a more accurate way. They write: According to the Congressional Research Service, Congress voted 53 times from 1978 to 2013 to change the debt ceiling. So 53 times in those 35 years of recent history. They go on to write: Congressional Republicans who want legislative conditions in exchange for a debt-limit increase are following a strategy that has been pursued by both parties the majority of the time. Of the 53 increases in the debt limit, 26 were ``clean''--that is, stand-alone, no strings-attached statutes. The remaining debt-limit increases were part of an omnibus package of other legislative bills or a continuing resolution. Other times, the limit was paired with reforms, only some of which were related to the budget. To reiterate, out of 53 increases in the debt limit, less than half were what we say are clean or stand-alone measures. The others had other legislation associated with them, in many cases an omnibus package of legislative bills or continuing resolutions or deficit reduction measures. To make that happen again, what we need is leadership. We need leaders on the other side of the aisle, including the President, to come to the table in good faith to make the tough decisions. I have to say I find it concerning that instead of coming to the table this week, the President has embarked on a media blitz suggesting Republicans in Congress want to default on the debt. In an interview this week with CNBC's John Harwood, the President stated that he recently told representatives from the financial services sector visiting Washington that they should ``be concerned.'' They should be concerned over a faction of Congress that is willing potentially to default. In my view, these statements are both unproductive and misguided. Nobody wants default. Nobody wants a government shutdown. I can assure the President and my friends on the other side of the aisle that Republicans here in the Senate couldn't agree more that those are things we need to avoid. What I would suggest is that instead of simply kicking the can down the road, instead of pushing the difficult decisions off until tomorrow, we have to get serious about the long-term fiscal health of our country so we can grow our economy and help strengthen our middle class. Rather than stoking fears that rankle financial markets and damage the economy, now is the time to move beyond politics and to work with congressional Republicans to make a significant downpayment to address America's long-term debt problems. Republicans are seeking responsible and reasonable solutions. South Dakotans, and I think the American people, understand that choosing to do nothing when it comes to the debt while piling it on the backs of future generations is not a responsible way to continue to govern our country. I would pose to my Democratic colleagues that Republicans stand ready to come to the negotiating table and act in good faith to get the government up and running again and to make responsible spending reforms that address the true drivers of our debt. I hope our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will take a lesson from history and not suggest they are not going to negotiate. That is not a viable position in the eyes of the American people, and it is not a viable position if we want to work in a way that is going to lead to an accomplishment and a result here in Washington, DC, on these issues and matters that are of great importance not only to today but to the future of this country. I would simply say again, as I said when I began, having a position that we are not going to negotiate on a government shutdown and we are not going to negotiate on a debt limit increase is inconsistent with what the American people have said they want to see done. The latest poll I saw shows that by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans think we ought to be around the debt limit increase figuring out what we are going to do about the debt. That is what the American people think. It is also unrealistic to think we are going to be able to solve our problems, and it is inconsistent with what history has shown us in the past, that when we have been able to accomplish something, we have been willing to sit down together in the context of raising the debt limit which, by the way, will be over $17 trillion when this is all said and done. I think the American people believe we are going to ask for another debt limit increase to raise that by perhaps another $1 trillion, borrowing limit. They would like to see us do something meaningful to address the incredible, burgeoning, exploding Federal debt we are putting on the backs of our children and grandchildren. I see the Senator from Rhode Island is up next, and if he would like, on his time, to ask a question, I would, through the Chair, entertain it.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, yesterday the White House said it is ``winning'' the shutdown debate, and that it is ``not concerned'' how long the shutdown lasts. The Democrats may be content with playing political games. The Republicans remain focused on finding a solution to reopen the Federal Government. When the White House says it is winning--maybe winning the political debate or winning the political game, if you will--it is the American people who are losing. The Obama administration said yesterday it would support a measure providing retroactive compensation to furloughed Federal workers. Yet it continues to oppose funding for the National Guard and Reserve, veterans services, nutrition assistance for low-income Americans, FEMA, lifesaving medicines and cures at NIH, and the national parks and museums. What I would simply say is that there are bills that have been sent here by the House of Representatives that are available to be picked up by the Senate at any time. We could fund all of those various things right now. The bills are from the House. All we have to do in the Senate is to pick them up and pass them, and there wouldn't be any objection on this side of the aisle. We could fund the National Guard and Reserve, we could fund veterans services, we could fund nutrition assistance for low-income Americans, we could fund FEMA, we could fund lifesaving medicines and cures by funding NIH, and we could fund the national parks and museums. It is that simple. Our colleagues on the other side consistently talk about this particular program that is not being funded or this particular Federal issue that is not being addressed right now in terms of funding. It can all be solved that easily. All they have to do is pick up the bills that have come over to us from the House of Representatives and pass them right now without objection on the Republican side, and all of these things that are being talked about could be funded. It is that simple and that easy. I hope in the end there would be some colleagues on the other side who would agree with us that that is the simplest way to deal with the immediate crisis. We obviously have other issues at work and at play that will be discussed. I wish to talk about one of those in just a minute, but in the meantime, if we are concerned about some of these important programs that are not being funded, we can do that right now. We can take care of the things that benefit people in this country, such as, the people who defend us, the National Guard and Reserve, and the people who want to see our national monuments and parks open. We have heard stories about how those are not available to people across the country. It is very simple. Pick up the bills and pass them right now. What I would like to talk about, in addition to getting the government back up and running, is doing something to address our Nation's debt. We find ourselves now on the fifth day of a partial government shutdown that--from my perspective--was completely avoidable. We know the government shutdown is only one of the challenges we are currently facing. The Treasury tells us we are going to be reaching our debt limit in the coming days, which astonishingly stands at almost $17 trillion. As we look at the near future, we need to address the debt limit, and we need to end this partial government shutdown. I think it is unavoidable. Those two issues have sort of converged and come together. At one time, we were going to be talking about addressing one and then subsequently dealing with the debt limit. Now it looks as if those are all going to be one big debate and discussion. What I am perplexed about is our friend on the other side of the aisle and the President who continue to insist they are not going to negotiate on those issues. When the people of South Dakota sent me to Washington, they did so with the expectation that I will continue to stand for their values. They also know that when it comes to governing, there will be differences of opinion. Oftentimes that means we are going to have to sit down together with people on the other side of the issue to find common ground. But to say it is my way or the highway is not the way to approach these issues. These are issues that are important to both individuals and our economy, and they just can't say we are not going to negotiate. That is not a viable or a reasonable position in the eyes of the American people. To put a fine point on that, earlier this week the majority leader was quoted as saying: The president said he's not going to negotiate on the debt ceiling. He's not going to negotiate, we aren't either. It has never happened in the history of the country. At the end of last week while the President was out giving political speeches, instead of engaging with Congress to solve these issues, the President made this statement: And that's why I said this before. I am going to repeat it. There will be no negotiations over this. That is the President of the United States. There will be no negotiations over this, reiterated by our friends on the other side of the aisle in the Senate.

Mr. THUNE. I would say through the Chair, to my colleague from Rhode Island, that I think what makes a negotiation successful is when both sides are sufficiently motivated. It strikes me, at least, that if we are going to have a successful outcome, both sides have to have incentives to be at the table. I think Republicans have indicated very clearly that we believe one of the ways in which we get legislation, policy put in place that is good for the future of this country is to do it around a debt limit increase. Historically, that has been the case. That has been a precedent. It has been very clear, as I mentioned, throughout the course of modern history that many of the big budget agreements we have reached have been done in the context of a debt limit increase. So I would suggest to my colleague from Rhode Island that whatever the motivation is for getting people to the table, we just need to get to the table. We have had a lot of, on both sides of the aisle, I would say, in fairness, people questioning each other's motives. But we are in a pretty tough spot right now. We have a government that is shut down that we need to get reopened. We have a debt limit we are going to hit in the next couple of weeks. I hope we can sit down in good faith and figure out where we can find a common path forward that will allow us to govern in a responsible and a reasonable way, but to address what I think are the big issues facing the future of this country.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, what came out of that was now, for the first time since the 1950s, literally since the Korean war, government spending has gone down for 2 consecutive years. It can be done. It can be done when reasonable people are willing to sit down and negotiate, but that requires the engagement of the Chief Executive, of the President of the United States, and it requires the good will of the people here in the Senate. It does not entail taking a position that ``we will not negotiate.'' That is not a position. What we need is an opportunity where we can sit down together and focus on these big challenges we have. In the meantime, we continue to have opportunities to vote to fund veterans programs, to vote to fund our National Guard and Reserve, to fund the National Institutes of Health-- important priorities many of my colleagues on the other side have talked about. We have bills coming over from the House of Representatives. We could do like we did with the military pay act--pick them up and pass them by unanimous consent so we do not have to worry about any of these issues not being addressed and important programs and projects not being funded. That is all it takes. I hope that can happen. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, like many other Members who spoke on the floor today, I too want to acknowledge the extraordinary work that is done by the Capitol Police officers. Every single day they work around here protecting the people who work and visit here. Yesterday was another great example of the skill, the professionalism, and the courage that they display on a daily basis in a very quiet and humble way, and I wish to express--on my own behalf and for the people that I represent--our appreciation for their extraordinary work and the remarkable way in which they go about their jobs and express how very grateful we all are for that. I wish to talk about what is happening here in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, we find ourselves on the 4th day of what is a completely avoidable partial government shutdown. It is not like we didn't see this coming. The fiscal year ends every year on September 30. So it wasn't a deadline that we didn't know was coming. In fact, as I pointed out before, the House of Representatives completed work on four appropriation bills. Unfortunately, here in the Senate we didn't move appropriation bills across the floor to comply with the Budget Control Act. We didn't pass a single one this fiscal year. Then recognizing the need to act at the end of the fiscal year as it approached, the House passed and sent to the Senate a continuing resolution on September 20--2 weeks ago. Instead of acting quickly to bring us to a resolution to keep the government funded, Senate leadership continued to stall, unwilling to negotiate. The House has now sent us four comprehensive proposals to fund the government and to provide fairness under the law when it comes to ObamaCare. One of these proposals included a request for a conference committee so we could get to work resolving our differences. It was a very straightforward request. The other proposals that had been sent over here--which had other elements in them dealing with ObamaCare, as well as government funding--were rejected by the Senate. They were tabled here. So this was a proposal that was very simple and straightforward. All it asked was, let's have a conference. Let's sit down and try to work out our differences. Unfortunately, the Democratic majority here in the Senate insisted that they will not negotiate. They tabled the motion--the request to go to conference with the House of Representatives. So far this week the House of Representatives has sent us five bills to fund various parts of our government. I understand they are continuing to work on additional bills today. These are bills that would ensure that our veterans get paid and that children can continue to have access to life-saving treatments. Yesterday morning my Republican colleagues and I came to the floor and requested that several of these commonsense bills that the House has sent to us be agreed to by unanimous consent here in the Senate. Specifically, I asked for a unanimous consent agreement for the Pay Our Guard and Reserve Act. This bill would ensure that the men and women who proudly serve in our National Guard and Reserve--those who have bravely answered the call to protect and defend our country-- continue to train and to get paid for their service. Congress should send a clear message to these men and women who stand ready to serve in overseas conflicts or to respond to domestic disasters, that they will not be impacted by the spending disagreements here in Washington. Unfortunately, our friends on the other side of the aisle objected to these requests and, unbelievably, the President of the United States has actually threatened to veto those very measures. Congress has already passed by unanimous consent a bill to ensure that active duty military personnel are paid during this lapse in government funding. It is unclear to me why Senate Democrats wouldn't pass similar measures to fund these important services. After all, taking care of active duty military personnel is something that everybody agreed to here by unanimous consent. That rarely happens around here in the Senate. But Democrats and Republicans agreed that this is a priority. We have to make sure the active men and women in our military who defend this country on a daily basis get paid despite the dysfunction here in Washington, DC. All the bill I offered yesterday simply would have done is to apply that same treatment to our Guard and Reserve. In my State of South Dakota, we have about 4,300 members of the Army and Air National Guard--a couple hundred of which are deployed right now, and the remainder have training functions that they perform on a regular basis. If we don't get this issue resolved, they are not going to be able to meet those training requirements. As we all know, they respond to domestic disasters, to emergencies that require their assistance here at home, as well as on a regular basis are now being deployed to meet the military requirements that we have in many of the conflicts in which we are involved around the world. So it strikes me as very strange that Democrats would refuse to act or engage in a meaningful debate in order to find common ground on issues like this and to get our government back up and running. I think the people I represent in the State of South Dakota, like a lot of other people across the country, expect their leaders to work together to resolve their differences. The position of the Democratic leadership is that they will not negotiate and simply work together. That is not a position I believe is reasonable. We have heard it from the President; we have heard it from the Democratic leaders here in the Senate: We are not going to negotiate. I think most Americans believe they sent us here to Washington, DC, to work together, realizing there are differences--legitimate differences--about how to solve problems and how to approach issues. But they believe, on a very basic level, that the responsibility we have as their elected officials is to sit down and to try to figure out how to solve these problems. To say that we will not negotiate as a starting position is a completely unreasonable position to take, in the eyes, I believe, of the American people. The dysfunction and the gridlock that we have here in Washington, DC, is simply unacceptable. On Wednesday, the President invited congressional leaders to the White House for what, unfortunately, turned out to be yet another photo opportunity, a publicity stunt. The President waited until after the 11th hour, 2 days into a partial government shutdown, to even engage in a face-to-face way with congressional leaders. It strikes me that when you invite people to the table and in the same breath make explicit that you are not willing to negotiate, that very little work is going to get done for the American people. I hope we would see better from our President and better from our leaders in the Senate. It seems like the Democrats are very content to take their ball and go home. Four days into a partial government shutdown, they still refuse to negotiate. We haven't experienced a government shutdown for nearly 20 years. I pose to my friends on the other side of the aisle that the willingness of leaders in both parties to negotiate in good faith during previous negotiations is something from which we could take a lesson. Going back to 1995 and 1996, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, when he was talking about the shutdowns in that period, said: Bill Clinton and I would talk, if not every day . . . we would talk five days a week before the shutdown, after the shutdowns. We met face to face for 35 days in the White House trying to hammer things out . . . As we know, ending this unnecessary shutdown is not the only challenge we are dealing with here in Washington. But when it comes to the debt ceiling--which Treasury tells us will be reached in the next few weeks--Democrats refuse to come to the table to enact responsible spending reforms as part of that package. The American people disagree. According to a recent Bloomberg poll, Americans by a 2-to-1 margin disagree with President Barack Obama's contention that Congress should raise the U.S. debt limit without conditions. The American people understand that if we continue to borrow and borrow like there is no tomorrow and pile that burden on the backs of our children and grandchildren--they understand that if you are going to increase the debt limit, if you are going to ask for a bigger credit card limit, that you ought to be doing something about the debt. That is why, by a 2-to-1 margin, they believe that if you are going to raise the debt limit, you ought to do something to address the underlying debt. In fact, 61 percent of Americans, according to that poll, believe it is right to require spending cuts when the debt ceiling is raised even if it risks default. I do not believe we ought to have a default, but I believe a negotiation on the debt limit makes sense if we are serious about doing something about the debt. Every time in the past when we have had major budget deals--when we go back to the Gramm-Rudman deal in 1985 or the 1990 budget agreement or the 1993 budget agreement or the 1997 budget agreement or the one more recently, in 2011, the Budget Control Act, it was always done around and in association with an increase in the debt limit. There is a clear precedent, clear history, when we are facing an increase in the debt limit, of having a serious substantive debate in this country about how to address the debt. In many cases, those led to some of the few times in our Nation's history when we have actually gotten budget agreements that did something to reduce spending. It might come as a surprise to some of my colleagues here also that inasmuch as many of us do not like the sequester that came out of the Budget Control Act of 2011----

Mr. THUNE. I ask unanimous consent for an additional minute.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, as the Senator from Illinois has already pointed out, that has already passed in the Senate. What he is suggesting is already in the House, not being acted on. What the Senate can act on is legislation that is being sent from the House that would ensure that our National Guard and Reserve troops are treated the same way as our Active troops are treated. I think that is only fair and only fitting. These are people who not only respond to domestic disasters but are also involved in conflicts overseas on a regular basis. So I would object.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, the men and women who serve our Nation in the Guard and Reserve shouldn't be impacted by a partial government shutdown. Recently, the House and Senate unanimously passed the pay our military first act, which was signed into law by the President this past Monday. That bill ensures that Active-Duty military and those who support them stay on the job regardless of the dysfunction in Washington. Congress was right and passed the legislation, and President Obama was right to immediately sign it into law. Today, the House of Representatives is going to pass H.R. 3230, the Pay Our Guard and Reserve Act. This bill provides funding to pay Guard and Reserve troops who are not currently on Active Duty. Although these men and women currently don't have Active-Duty status, they have regularly scheduled training requirements. They stand ready to serve in overseas conflicts and to respond to domestic disasters if called upon by their country. These men and women proudly serve this country, and they should not be impacted by spending disagreements in Washington. Today the Senate has a chance to give these individuals and their families greater certainty by passing H.R. 3220, as soon as it is received from the House. I am sorry to hear that the majority and the President have already indicated they are going to oppose this and that the President has threatened to veto this legislation. I can't imagine that we would not do for our Guard and Reserve troops what we have already done for our Active-Duty troops. I think that is a big mistake. So I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate receives H.R. 3230, making continuing appropriations during a government shutdown to provide pay allowances to members of the Reserve components of the Armed Forces; that the measure be read three times and passed; and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. THUNE. I say to the distinguished whip, the Senator from Texas, he is exactly correct. The House of Representatives has moved several pieces of legislation--and will this morning--that address some of what we think are the real needs out there in the midst of a very unnecessary government shutdown. Some of those have been mentioned here on the floor this morning. I would point out two in addition: taking care of our Guard and Reserve troops as we have our Active-Duty troops--it is really important. All of us have Guard units with families that have been impacted. The House of Representatives has given us an opportunity to do that. The other thing I would mention, I spoke yesterday about President Obama's refusal to open the World War II Memorial for veterans on their Honor Flight. He rejected their appeal to visit the memorial dedicated to their service, an opportunity to honor their brothers in arms, many of whom died in that great war. I am pleased that the veterans--not ones to be defeated--breached the barricades and took their memorial. I have had the opportunity--my father is a World War II Navy fighter pilot--to be able to show him some of these memorials we have, monuments here in Washington, DC, particularly the one that was erected in honor of his generation. They should not be denied the honor of visiting these monuments to their service. When we are thinking about that generation of Americans, we had Senator McConnell put forward an opportunity today to address the needs of our veterans. We found out that even though the veterans budget is advance-funded by a year, there are certain elements of that budget that are going to run out of money. We want to make sure those of the great generation that served our country, defended our country around the world, have access to the programs and the benefits that have been assured and promised to them. I think it is unconscionable, unacceptable that we not agree to allow those services to continue to be funded. I am very disappointed to see our colleagues on the Democratic side resist and object to that motion here this morning. If anything, if any group of people in this country deserves to have the respect and also the promises honored, the promises we made to them, it is those American veterans. If we look at the last shutdown in 1995 and 1996, President Bill Clinton came to the table and supported legislation to protect veterans programs. I hope we could get some cooperation from our colleagues on the other side to do that today, I say to my colleague from Texas.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, today we continue to find ourselves in the unfortunate position of a partial government shutdown. Following a veto threat from the President, last night Democrats in the House of Representatives killed three spending bills that would have funded parks and monuments, veterans programs, and the DC government. Senate Democrats have already rejected four House-passed proposals that would have provided Americans with relief from ObamaCare while ensuring that government operations continued. Senate Democrats even rejected one proposal that would have sent the two Chambers to conference--the House and Senate--to work out some sort of a solution to this standoff we find ourselves in, but they haven't even been willing to talk. In fact, when that request from the House came to the Senate to create a conference that would allow the House and Senate to come together to try to find a solution, it was tabled. It was soundly rejected--tabled--by the Democrats here in the Senate. So we are continuing in this holding pattern as the House continues to send proposals over and they continue to be rejected by the Senate, with Senate Democrats not even wanting to sit down and talk with the House about how we might resolve this. I am happy to hear the President has, after a week of essentially ignoring congressional Republicans, called the leaders to the White House tonight. I am a little confused, however, about the purpose of the meeting, as the White House continues to say they are not going to negotiate. I hope the President does change his mind on that, that he is evolving on it, and that he will at this meeting express a willingness to work with Republicans because it really is important for the President to be engaged in this process. I can't imagine a scenario where we have consequences such as these, with a continuing funding resolution still not approved, a partial government shutdown, a debt limit coming up in the middle of the month, and the President essentially saying: I am not going to negotiate. I am not going to negotiate on any of this. I think that is a position that is completely unreasonable, and I think the American people find it to be completely unreasonable as well. In the meantime, we have an opportunity now to address some of the concerns that have been raised by people about various parts of our government that as a result of this unnecessary shutdown are not open. So Republicans continue to try to work to open government and at the same time to provide ObamaCare fairness for all. I have said this before, but I get the sense some of our colleagues on the Democratic side and the President seem to be content with shutting down the government. Well, we Republicans are not. We are consistently trying to come up with solutions. The House of Representatives will be meeting today, and they are going to be voting again on some of the same proposals that were voted down last night by House Democrats. They are commonsense spending bills that would ensure that important functions of government can resume. These bills would ensure that benefits for our Nation's veterans continue uninterrupted, they would allow our members of the National Guard and Reserve to be paid, and they would provide funding for the National Institutes of Health to ensure this senseless shutdown does not prevent patients from receiving lifesaving treatments. I will explain briefly what some of these bills would do that are going to be coming over later today from the House of Representatives to the Senate, where, at least to date, none of the proposals that have been advanced by the House of Representatives have been accepted here in the Senate. They have been tabled by the majority leader. That is unfortunate because it is the essence of what the American people believe we ought to be doing, which is working together, coming together to find a solution to some of these big problems. Unfortunately, as I said before, when the request came over to go to conference with the House, that was tabled as well. So there has been no discussion, no willingness to talk, no willingness to think and cooperate in a way that would help us get the fundamental operations of government up and running again. Anyway, these bills are going to come over from the House today, and they follow, as I said, the same track they tried to get approved last night. One deals with the availability through the annual appropriations process of the Department of Veterans Affairs to continue to serve veterans--namely, veterans' disability payments, the GI bill, education and training, and VA home loans--under the same conditions that were in effect at the end of the just-completed fiscal year. In other words, it would take all those programs that benefit veterans and make sure they continue uninterrupted and are funded just as they were at the end of the fiscal year until such time as Congress can come up with a longer term solution. That might be an appropriations bill--which, frankly, should have been passed much earlier this year and wasn't because none of the appropriations bills were moved here in the Senate--or another temporary funding measure, such as a continuing resolution, that is put forward. A similar proposal was introduced by a number of Senate Democrats. So when it comes over from the House of Representatives today, I hope we will have broad bipartisan support in the Senate for making sure veterans programs are continued and are funded. There is also going to be a bill coming over that deals with national parks and museums, and it would provide immediate funding for National Park Service operations, the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Art, and the U.S. Holocaust Museum at the same rate and under the same conditions as were in effect at the end of the just-completed fiscal year. So the same thing I mentioned with regard to the veterans programs--these functions of government would be funded at the same level they were at the end of the year we just completed until such time as an appropriations bill is passed or a temporary funding measure is put in place. That was something the House voted on yesterday, and it was defeated. I shouldn't say Democrats universally defeated it, but almost so when that measure was brought up yesterday. Hopefully, today they will get a different outcome in the House. I think they will, and it will come over to the Senate. Another bill the House will move today will provide for the immediate availability of local funds--which are subject to the control of Congress through the annual appropriations process--for the District of Columbia, again under the same conditions as were in effect at the end of the just-completed fiscal year. Finally, there will be a bill that comes over from the House that provides funding for the pay and allowances of military personnel in the reserve component who are in active status. So it will fund the Guard and Reserve. Those funds would be made available at the same level as the just completed fiscal year until such time as Congress takes more formal action. Finally, there will be a fifth bill coming from the House that will provide immediate funding for the National Institutes of Health at the same rate and under the same conditions as in effect at the end of the just completed fiscal year. So the important work done by the National Institutes of Health will continue--if the bill is enacted here in the Senate--and go on even in the midst of a partial shutdown. What I am saying is Republicans are trying to address all of these concerns that we have about various elements of our government that are not functioning today because of this partial shutdown. Last night they were met with resistance in the House of Representatives and they were voted down by Democrats. We are hoping for and I think we will have a different outcome today in the House of Representatives, at which point those bills will come here to the Senate. So if the Senate is interested in going on the record and making sure there is funding available for veterans programs, for the museums and our monuments, for our Guard and Reserve, for the National Institutes of Health, and for the District of Columbia--which is under the jurisdiction of the Congress when it comes to funding--the Senate should vote affirmatively and actually ensure that those important functions of our government are addressed and funded. What I am simply saying is that time and time again the House of Representatives has sent to the Senate legislation--measures--that would continue to fund the government, and in earlier cases when they came over here addressed what I think the American people have said they want to see addressed in ObamaCare. The President of the United States has granted a 1-year delay to employers in this country from the employer mandate. So essentially he gave a delay--a waiver--to big business. The House of Representatives in one of the bills they sent to the Senate said we ought to in fairness give the same break to individuals. There is an individual mandate in the ObamaCare law that kicks in, and we ought to be able to give individuals in this country the same treatment that we give to big businesses. So as a matter of fairness that was proposed by the House of Representatives. When that bill came over, it also included a provision that would ensure that Members of Congress and their staffs and the staffs at the President's office and in the executive branch of the government are all subject to the same law and to the same provisions--that the ObamaCare law is applied in the same way as to other Americans. So we had a 1-year delay--a temporary relief from the individual mandate-- included in that, and a provision that ensured that those of us here and our staffs and members of the executive branch are treated the same way as are other Americans. That too was tabled in the Senate. It strikes me that as we think about the impact of this law, we ought to ensure that middle-class Americans deserve the same relief that the President and Democrats here in the Senate have already given to Members of Congress and to their staffs, as well as to big businesses in this country. We had an opportunity to do that the other night. That was rejected by the Senate. I think the question that every American ought to be asking is, Why wouldn't Democratic Senators give the same break to the American people that big businesses have received? I would again argue this is an issue of basic fairness. We think it ought to be delayed for all Americans, not just for the favored few. There is bipartisan support for this. I mentioned before that we have a Democratic Senator in the Senate who has said a delay in the individual mandate is a very reasonable and sensible approach. I hope at some point that view will start to spread to others, and we will be able to actually provide some relief to the American people from the harmful effects of ObamaCare. But at least while we are in this period, as this continues to be discussed and hopefully, eventually a solution reached, we ought to be protecting those Americans who are being hit by the shutdown. When these bills come over from the House of Representatives today, I hope the Senate will pick them up quickly and act on them. We had an example or incident yesterday where a number of World War II veterans came here to Washington, DC, as Honor Flight guests. This is an organization that brings World War II veterans here to see their monument--the World War II monument--here in Washington, and they couldn't get access to it because of the shutdown. That should be unacceptable to every American. We need to ensure that never happens again. There was even reporting that they had made a request of the administration to be able to go there and they were turned down. I can't imagine turning down a group of World War II veterans who simply wanted to see and have access to the very memorial for which they fought and defended our country. So those are the types of things that action taken by the Senate here could prevent, if in fact when these bills come over from the House of Representatives the Senate will act in an expeditious way, pick up those bills and pass them, so we can ensure that people have access to those types of monuments and memorials. We can ensure that veterans programs continue to be funded and operational. We can ensure the National Institutes of Health and the important work that it does continues, and we can ensure that our National Guard and Reserve also are funded through this time. It strikes me that is a very commonsense way to approach the situation in which we find ourselves today. I hope that at the end of the day we can come to some resolution that would allow the government to be funded on a more sustainable basis. I think when we continue to do these things on a short-term basis, it is not a good way to govern a country as large as ours. We can do better. The American people deserve better. But at least, at a minimum, until we get that broader issue resolved, we ought to work and ensure that veterans and members of the Guard and Reserve, people who are visiting our country wanting to see the memorials and museums and that sort of thing have the opportunity to do that. We can do that today by picking up and passing the bills coming over from the House of Representatives. Madam President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I think the American public overwhelmingly opposes ObamaCare. Every survey shows that, and all of us traveling back and forth to our States hear it. But they also support keeping the government open. We have had an opportunity over the course of the last several days to deal with both of those issues. In fact, in order to avoid a government shutdown, you have to have people who are willing to work together and come to a solution. The House of Representatives has not once, not twice, but three times sent to the Senate proposals that would fund the government and that would make some changes to ObamaCare that would provide the same sort of relief to every American that big businesses have received from the President by virtue of some of his waivers and exemptions. On all three occasions that was turned down-- tabled--when it got to the Senate. So what did the House of Representatives do? Their most recent proposal advanced to the Senate was to allow the House and the Senate to go to conference, to work out the differences. They asked the Senate to appoint conferees to a conference committee, where Senators and House Members might be able to sit down, Democrats and Republicans, and actually hammer out some sort of solution to the challenge we face in front of us. That got tabled this morning. That is the first time I have ever seen that happen in my time in the Congress--and maybe the first time it has ever happened--where one body has asked for a conference and asked for appointing of conferees and it was tabled. It was not just turned down. We didn't say: No, we are not going to do it now; we will do it another time. But we actually tabled the motion--tabling a motion of the House of Representatives to have a conference on how to work out the situation and in a way that will allow us to keep the government open and hopefully provide middle-class Americans some relief and the economy--the taxpayers and employers across this country--some relief from ObamaCare. So we are where we are now--with the House of Representatives having suggested to the Senate that we sit down together in a conference committee and work out our differences--and the Senate having rejected that. We could all argue about how we initially got where we are. I think it all starts when we don't do things the way they are intended to be done around here--in other words, taking the appropriations process and moving those bills forward. Here in the Senate we had an opportunity, as we do every year, to move the individual appropriations bills. There are 12 separate appropriations bills that historically have been the way in which we have funded the government. This year we didn't move a single appropriations bill through the Senate. The House of Representatives moved four of the bills through the process. They didn't get through all of them, but at least they got some of the appropriations bills completed. But here in the Senate, we didn't do a single appropriations bill. We all saw this coming. It is not as if there is any secret or surprise. So what happens is there is a calendar, and when those deadlines aren't met, we get up against the end of the fiscal year, the way we are right now, and we have this huge push to try to keep the government from shutting down, and we generally do it in the form of a continuing resolution. But the fact is, if the Senate had done any of its work earlier this year, if we had taken up any of the appropriations bills and passed them, we wouldn't be in this crisis moment we have in front of us now. Why is it that so many Republicans in both the House and Senate--and, I would daresay, Democrats as well, although they haven't demonstrated it with their votes--are concerned about what is happening with ObamaCare? Obviously, as more information becomes available about ObamaCare, the more concerns, the more frustrations, the more questions the American people have. I mentioned this previously, but in my State of South Dakota, according to the report put out last week by the Health and Human Services Department, if you compare the premiums that a 30-year-old male and a 30-year-old female would pay in the State of South Dakota for a bronze plan in the exchanges, the increase in premium for people in that age category would be for a man 393 percent and for a woman 223 percent. So for a 30-year-old female in the State of South Dakota, the annual increase in insurance premiums would be $1,500, and if you are a male in the State of South Dakota, the annual increase would be $2,000. So there is a real concern about the impact this will have, as these exchanges get up and running, on what people are currently paying for health care coverage. There is also a lot of evidence and data out there now that suggests it doesn't apply just to a 30-year-old male or female in my State of South Dakota, but it also applies to families. There are many families across this country who are obviously concerned about how this is going to impact the cost of health insurance for them. If we look at what health insurance costs have done for families since the President took office, they have gone up on average about $3,000. Since ObamaCare passed, those premiums have gone up for families by about $2,500. So we have seen premiums going up already. We have a lot of concerns as these exchanges get up and running starting today about what impact they will have on premiums for middle- class Americans. That is why there is a lot of concern and anxiety across the country today with regard to the impacts of ObamaCare. We also have a lot of concerns about how this will impact jobs and the economy. We have already seen that a majority of the jobs created this year are part-time jobs. There are many reasons for that, but if we talk to employers, one of the things they will point out is that the requirements in the new health care law are that if they have 50 or more employees, they have to offer government-approved health care or pay a penalty. So a lot of employers are trying to stay under that 50- employee minimum or threshold so they don't have to face that requirement. So what happens? They either don't hire people they were otherwise going to hire or they look at ways to reduce their workforce. It applies in another way because the definition of ``full-time employee'' in the law is 30 hours per week. Again, employers will be subject to the same sorts of penalties, so what many are doing is instead of hiring full-time workers, they are hiring part-time workers, 29-hour-a-week workers. Obviously, 29 hours a week doesn't give you the kind of pay that would allow you to meet the needs your family has. So more and more people are working two jobs, and we see the impact and the distortion this new law is creating in the workplace and for a lot of employers. There was a lot of anxiety and angst about that, which I think was voiced to the President and to his administration. So what does the President do? The President decided to delay the employer mandate in the law for 1 year. I think employers took great comfort at least in knowing it is not going to be there for this year, but they are also still very worried about what will happen when it does kick in in the following year. But there are all these employers, and people may say: Who are these people? I don't know how one can travel their State or anywhere else outside of their State and not hear from employers who are expressing concerns and asking questions about what this is going to mean for them and expressing grave reservations about the impact it is going to have on their ability to create jobs. So as we speak with these various employers and get lots of anecdotal evidence--last week there was an interview done with employers in my State of South Dakota. A person was asked about how this would impact them, and he said: I guess we are probably not going to hire as many people as we otherwise would have hired. He said: I think that is going to be happening with businesses all over the country. That is one example from my State of South Dakota, but if we look at sort of the aggregate, according to Investor's Business Daily there are some 300 businesses that have said they are going to reduce the size of their workforce or not hire people they otherwise might hire as a result of the impact of ObamaCare. So we see more and more of the experience, the evidence that we get day to day speaking with employers in our individual States, but we also start seeing this cumulative effect and more and more businesses expressing those concerns. When we look at the economy today and where we are, we find out very quickly that the unemployment rate, which has been at north of 7 percent, 7.5 percent for a long time now--when we add back into that equation the number of people who have either stopped looking for work or who are working part time when they would rather be working full time, the actual number is much higher. We have about 22 million Americans, and the unemployment rate climbs quickly into the double- digit territory when we add those people back. The labor participation rate--which is the number of people in the workforce relative to the number of people who could be--is at the lowest level literally in 35 years. So we have a historically low labor participation rate, fewer people actually looking for work, some just flat having given up on it. We have a very soft economy. I don't think anybody would describe the economy today as being robust. We have a chronically high unemployment rate, jobs that are being created being part-time jobs, and so we have the overall average household income in this country actually going down. In fact, if we look at the statistics since the President took office, the average household income has gone down by about $3,700 per family--$3,700 less income for the average household--$3,000 higher in health care costs, and we can see how middle-class families are getting increasingly squeezed by what is happening as a result of ObamaCare. One of the more recent suggestions that came over from the House of Representatives last evening came back with a funding resolution to fund the government and there were a couple of provisions that dealt with some of these more onerous provisions in the ObamaCare law. One had to do with the individual mandate. The whole theory behind giving people relief from that is to give them the same treatment, to be fair, that employers get. If the President has chosen to waive the employer mandate for big businesses-- which he has for 1 year--why then require individuals to have insurance? There is going to be a significant cost associated when everybody has to buy insurance. It is about a $12 billion cost to people across this country. The question then is, If you are going to give the temporary relief to the business community, why would you not in a fair way at least make sure individuals are treated the same way? That seemed to be a pretty compelling argument. If you are going to do something that actually does impact in a favorable way people across this country who are going to be suffering even more from the harmful effects of ObamaCare, it would strike us as at least reasonable to suggest giving a 1-year delay to people under the individual mandate-- the same delay the President has given big businesses under the employer mandate. The other provision attached to the continuing resolution proposal advanced by the House last night had to do with treating Members of Congress, their staff, and people here in Washington, DC, the same as everybody else. It strikes me again, at least, that if we are going to have these policies, everybody ought to be treated the same way. Frankly, my hope would be that we could relieve everybody. I would love to see us permanently delay this so that no American would be subject to the harmful impacts and effects of ObamaCare. But for sure, for certain, people here in Washington, DC, should not be exempt. There should not be a separate carve-out or separate treatment for people here in Washington, DC, compared to other people around the country. So the legislation that came over from the House last night included a 1-year delay in the individual mandate--trying to treat individuals and people across the country the same way as businesses are being treated in terms of the way the law is being applied--and secondly, make sure people here in Washington, DC, Members of Congress and their staff and others, are treated the same way as everybody else around the country. In other words, there is no exemption, there is no carve-out, there is no preferential treatment for people here in Washington, DC. Those were the two things that were attached to the funding resolution last night. That got tabled here in the Senate. So having sent now three different proposals over, I think the House of Representatives has decided, OK, clearly the Senate doesn't like any of our ideas. Let's get together and have a conference committee. So that was proposed, and--again, something I have never seen done before--there was a motion to table a request to go to conference. We get a lot of requests to go to conference. Sometimes those are not adhered to, and you have a debate about various conference meetings on various pieces of legislation that we deal with here in Congress. But I have never seen a tabling motion on a request to go to conference. It is a pretty clear indication that the Senate has no interest in resolving this matter; otherwise, they would at least sit down with our counterparts in the House of Representatives and say: What can we do to find that middle ground? What can we do to find that consensus? How can we resolve the differences we have here in a way that will keep the government up and functioning and hopefully provide some relief for people who are struggling under the impacts of ObamaCare? So that is where we are today. What is interesting about it is our colleagues on the other side, the Democrats--not all of them because they weren't all here at the time, but those who were all voted in favor of ObamaCare. There isn't a single Republican who was here at that time who did, nor are there any here today who would. In fact, every time we have had an opportunity to vote to repeal all or parts of it, everybody on this side of the aisle has voted for that. Now, our colleagues on the other side continually hold out this argument that, after all, this is the law of the land. Frankly, they are right. It is the law of the land. But it is pretty obvious that at least in the President's view there are parts of the law that don't need to be applied right away; otherwise, he wouldn't have extended a 1-year delay or a 1-year waiver under the employer mandate. So it is pretty clear that the President has a different view than perhaps his allies here in the Senate with regard to what that law actually means. He has been perfectly willing on not just that occasion but on other occasions to take portions of a law and not apply them, to waive them and provide exemptions for particular groups of people-- namely, those here on Capitol Hill and also big businesses around the country. So there is a very discriminate way in which the President is approaching this law. It seems to me, at least, that in fairness he would give the same favorable treatment to individuals that he has given to big businesses. The other thing that is really interesting about the folks on the other side of the aisle saying this is the law of the land is that there are many things that are the law of the land. The Budget Act is the law of the land. The Budget Act, which was passed back in the 1970s--1973 or 1974--is the budget law that Congress has been under now for the past almost 40 years. Yet for 3 consecutive years in a row the Democratic majority didn't even pass a budget, didn't move it through the committee, didn't bring it to the floor, just said: We don't need to do it. We will just ignore the law. That happened for 3 years in a row. So I would suggest that our colleagues on the other side who are quick to say that ObamaCare is the law of the land are very willing, when it serves their purposes or they find it convenient, to completely ignore other laws that have been on the books for a much longer period of time. So that argument really misses the point. I guess what I would say is that I hope this can be resolved. It needs to be resolved. I think we need to provide some relief for the American people from the impacts of ObamaCare. Clearly, our economy needs a break. The American workers and middle-class families need a break. Employers have already been given a break--big businesses, by the President, have been given a 1-year delay under the law. Why not apply that to others who are going to be hurt in an equal fashion. Just to put a fine point on why it is important, we think, to have some delays--today is the day they roll out the exchanges. But if you look at what the reports are about, whether or not those things are ready, up and ready to go, it is pretty clear they are not ready for prime time. We hear about glitches, which is the President's word--I think that is a kind word-- malfunctions, inaccuracies, bumps in the road. We have heard them described all those different ways. But the clear reality is that this thing is not ready for prime time. Why would we not delay it? There was a story yesterday in the Wall Street Journal and the headline was ``Late Snags on Eve of Health Rollout.'' Nonprofit groups and brokers that will help enroll consumers in the marketplaces, known as exchanges, say they haven't yet had a chance to preview the systems. Technical problems have limited certification for some nonprofit workers involved. And some of these groups say they haven't fully staffed up for the influx. The exchange software that determines whether people get . . . subsidies was returning accurate determinations about two-thirds of the time late Friday, up from less than 50 percent earlier in the week. At least they are trending in the right direction. Additionally, one Web broker agreement with CMS to sell Federal exchange health plans, announced that it will not be able to offer those plans on October 1, blaming CMS delays. The point is this is clearly not ready for prime time. Last week the District of Columbia said they are experiencing a very high error rate. Error rates, malfunctions, inaccuracies, bumps, glitches--these all seem to me to suggest that this is something that needs to be delayed. I think that would make the most sense, given the President has already acknowledged that for big businesses, for employers. It ought to be delayed for a year. I think there is bipartisan support for giving individuals and families relief just like businesses have been granted. We have a Democratic Senator, a colleague from West Virginia, who said last week a delay for individuals would be very reasonable and sensible. But this week Senate Democrats voted in lockstep with the President and refused to give low-income and middle-class families that same relief that has been provided to big businesses and to some of the President's allies. We are now in a holding pattern. It seems to me at least that the ball is in the Senate majority leader's court. The House of Representatives has asked for a conference, which has been rejected. The response was we are not going to sit down, we are not going to negotiate this. The President has said we are not going to negotiate. We are not going to sit down. We do not believe there is any room here for negotiation. I think the American people are going to perceive that to be an unreasonable position because I think most people understand when we come here we have differences of opinion. But the way you resolve those is you sit down and work out those differences. You try to come to some resolution that would allow everybody to move forward. What we have seen here is that time after time, the House of Representatives has sent to the Senate proposals. Those have been tabled here, and the House has sent back another one. I said three times now that has happened. Finally, the House of Representatives said: OK, we get it. You do not like what we are sending you. Let's sit down and see if we can work this out. Let's have a conference and see if we can work out our differences. That was tabled by the majority leader earlier today. What is coming out of the White House, what is coming out of the Democrat majority is: Sorry, we don't negotiate. We are not going to sit down. We are not going to try to find common ground. We are not going to try to find a bipartisan solution to this. We are going to have it our way, and you can take it or leave it. I don't think that is what the American people sent us here to do. I think they sent us here to do the people's business. I said before, when I started my remarks, I believe the American people overwhelmingly dislike ObamaCare and the effect it is having. I think they overwhelmingly believe the government should stay open. I think we can accomplish both of those objectives, hopefully sooner rather than later, if both sides will sit down in good faith and actually try to work out a solution. That is certainly not going to happen as long as the President continues to stay dug in. It appears he has drawn a line in the sand. That seems to be the tactic and the approach that is being taken by the Senate majority, by the Democratic leader. That is not going to get us to an answer. That is not going to get us to a solution. All that is going to do is to provide even more frustration, even greater disdain and cynicism from the American people when they see the in-fighting that is going on here and a lack of a willingness on the part of the Democratic majority to sit down with House Republicans and figure out what is in the best interests of the American people as we move forward. I hope we can do better. The American people deserve better. Future generations deserve better from us. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, we are going to have the opportunity to vote today to reverse course. I think most people agree that ObamaCare is not working out as it is intended. In fact, we had a Democrat recently say that when it comes to the implementation of ObamaCare, it is a train wreck. Whether one believes it is a train wreck, which is what I happen to believe, or whether it is a slow motion derailment, it is time for us to reverse course. We have an opportunity to go in a different direction with the vote we are going to have here in about an hour on whether or not to defund ObamaCare. I think the overwhelming opinion across this country--an overwhelming number of Americans--believe that this is not working. It is hurting middle class families. It is costing us jobs. It is driving up health insurance premiums for people across this country, and we need to do something to reverse course. For example, when we look at how this impacts average people in my State of South Dakota, we have young people today who, when they look at what they are paying in terms of health insurance premiums this year and what they are going to pay under the exchanges when the exchanges kick in, are seeing that a healthy 30-year-old woman in South Dakota is going to be faced with a 223-percent premium increase as a result of ObamaCare. A healthy 30-year-old man living in South Dakota is facing a 393-percent premium increase, when we compare the data being put out by the Department of Health and Human Services of what people in my State of South Dakota are paying today for similar coverage. I am using the bronze plan under the exchanges as a case in point. For a young person in South Dakota, we are talking about $1,500 more a year to pay for health insurance for a young woman, and $2,000 more for a young man. This money is money that could be used to pay off student loans, save for a home, maybe start a family. It is not just young adults who are going to be faced with making tough budget decisions between having health care and paying for other items. We know also that families are seeing health care premiums skyrocket, since the President took office, by about $3,000, or by about $2,500 since ObamaCare became law. That is happening at a time when average household income is going down. If we look at the average household income since the President took office, it is down by about $3,600. So families are seeing health insurance premiums go up by $3,000 while average household income is going down by $3,600. As we can see, middle class families in this country are being squeezed from both ends. We have an opportunity to correct that. The vote today is a vote to defund ObamaCare. I have been a big advocate for delaying, defunding, replacing, repealing. When it comes to this issue, count me as one of the ``all of the above''--anything we can do to get rid of this bad law and the harmful impacts it is having on the American people. The vote today is going to be on defunding. I would daresay that every Republican in this Chamber--all 46 Republicans--will be casting a vote to defund ObamaCare. There is not a single Republican in the Chamber today or when this law was passed back in 2009 who voted for it. Since that time, we have had numerous votes--I think 29 or 30 votes--here in the Senate on repealing all or parts of ObamaCare. So everybody on our side is going to be on the record today in favor of defunding this bad law. All it will take is 5 Democrats--5 Democrats--to get us to the 51 votes necessary to change the direction, change the course, turn this train around, and head it in a different direction. Republicans are going to be united on that point. There is sometimes a difference of opinion on tactics, about the best way to reach the goal, but one thing that unites all Republicans is the goal, and that is doing away with this bad law and its harmful impact on the American people, on middle-class families, on jobs, and on our economy. The question before the House is, Are there going to be Democrats, a handful of Democrats--five is all it takes--to stand with Republicans today and help us defund this law? Nearly 60 percent of Americans say they oppose ObamaCare. We can stop it. We can start over and do this the right way. We have talked about, many times, the things we would do differently if we had the opportunity to write a law that actually would address the health care challenges people face in this country, that would create greater competition in the marketplace by allowing people to buy insurance across State lines, by allowing small businesses to join larger groups in pools so they get the benefit of group purchasing power, by reducing the cost of defensive medicine, by ending a lot of the junk lawsuits that clog the system today, by allowing people to have a refundable tax credit where they can buy their own health insurance and they have more choice, more competition. These are all approaches we think make sense and would provide a positive alternative to the American people that would not cost us the jobs, that would not be driving up health insurance premiums by 393 percent for a 30-year-old man in the State of South Dakota or 223 percent for a 30-year-old woman, and that would give American families an opportunity to save more for their future, to provide for their families, and hopefully to invest in what is a better and a more prosperous future for their children and grandchildren. That is the vote before us today. Again, I do not have to belabor the point when it comes to the harmful impacts this has had if you look at what it is doing to jobs, if you look at what it is doing to employers. We talk to people all the time. I doubt there is a Member here in the Senate who, when they go home to their State on weekends, does not have conversations with small businesses, with employers who are talking about what this is doing to their ability to create jobs, to put people to work, to raise salaries, to make sure the people they employ have a better future for their families. But, clearly, as long as this bad law stays in place, it is going to be more expensive and more difficult for businesses in this country to create jobs; it is going to be more difficult, more expensive for middle-class families to make ends meet; it is going to create a much bigger, more expansive government that is going to cost the American taxpayer way more than I think was originally promised; and certainly it is going to add significantly to the massive amount of debt we are passing on to future generations. We have an opportunity to get a do-over today. There has been talk during the implementation of this that it has glitches and bumps and inaccuracies and malfunctions. This is not ready for prime time. I think we can all acknowledge that. At a minimum, we ought to figure out a way to delay this and change course, change direction, and go in a better direction for America's future.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I would like to elaborate on the comments from my colleague from Texas who I think laid out in very clear terms what is at stake and the debate we are having and really what the vote that we are going to have here in the not-too-distant future means. I think it is pretty clear--if we look at any objective measurement or metric--ObamaCare is a huge disaster, and obviously we have seen tremendous anecdotal evidence of that. Anybody who travels in their State or around the country or talks to anybody who is in business, the message comes back very clear that ObamaCare is making it more difficult and more expensive for them to create jobs. It is creating uncertainty; there are mandates and requirements associated with the new law because employers are being forced to provide a government-approved plan, and so costs go up. As a result, that means there are people who are not getting hired who otherwise might have gotten hired. Companies are looking at reducing their workforce and obviously creating a tremendous amount of disruption in our economy. I think it is pretty evident that the middle class in particular is being crushed by the President's policies, and ObamaCare is certainly no exception. Yesterday, in Forbes magazine, Avik Roy reported on a recent study done by the Manhattan Institute that ObamaCare will increase insurance rates for younger men by an average of 97 to 99 percent and for younger women by an average of 55 to 62 percent. In my home State of South Dakota, that is more than just a statistic, it is a grim reality facing thousands of young men and women. By comparing a typical low-cost plan for a healthy 30-year-old in South Dakota this year with a bronze plan in South Dakota's health care exchange next year, the premium increases are staggering. Younger women are going to face a 223-percent premium increase and younger men are going to face a 393-percent--393-percent--premium increase when comparing new data from the Health and Human Services Department with data that came out from the Government Accountability Office about premiums in my State just this year--earlier in January. For those millennials in South Dakota, that is a $1,500 increase in health care premiums each year for women and a more than $2,000 increase in health care premiums for men. So the money that could be used for other things will now be put toward this increase in health insurance premiums that people are going to have to pay to get covered. They could have used that money to pay off a student loan. They could have used it to save for a home or to start a family. So this has a tremendous impact on the economy and particularly on those who are going to get hit hardest, and in my State of South Dakota, not unlike other States around the country, it is young people, younger men and younger women. Interestingly enough, the President is talking about how the HHS study or report confirms what they have been saying, which is that somehow premiums are going to go down. The reason they are saying that is because they are comparing the exchange premiums--what they think people are going to pay--with what the Congressional Budget Office predicted they might pay earlier this year. So it is a hypothetical. It is a mythical comparison. There is nothing to it. It is fiction, if you will. What we have to do is make this real for people. When we make it real, when we compare it to what they are paying today, young people in particular are going to see dramatic increases in their premiums. So the report was a complete fraud in terms of informing people with real information about what their health insurance premiums are going to be under these exchanges. As I just pointed out, when we compare what they would be paying in the exchange in my State with what people are paying today with similar-type coverage, the increases are staggering--a 223- percent premium increase for younger women and a 393-percent increase for younger men. They are saying that some of these individuals are going to be eligible for premium tax credits to help cover the increased costs, but not everyone is eligible for those premium tax credits. A lot of people are not going to be eligible for the credits, and they don't cover all the costs. According to a new analysis by Avalere Health, Americans could face steep cost-sharing requirements, such as copayments, coinsurance, and deductibles, layered on top of the monthly premiums, which are going to increase dramatically. It is clear that health care costs are going up, particularly for younger Americans. President Obama promised that health care premiums would go down by an average of $2,500 per family. If we look at what the real situation is with regard to families, those premiums have actually jumped by more than $2,500 since the President took office and since ObamaCare became law. So we have costs that continue to increase despite the President's promises to the contrary, and household income has been dropping since the time the President has been in office--about $3,700, according to a recent study. So when an American family is looking at their economic situation, they are saying: Let me get this straight. I have higher costs and lower income. How does the President expect that we are going to be able to cover these higher costs? That is the reality, as I said, that most Americans are dealing with and that people in my State of South Dakota are dealing with, particularly millennials, who are going to be most adversely and harmfully impacted by the new plan. With respect to jobs, the other thing I wish to point out--obviously the cost of health care is a very important situation and something every American has to think about as they think about their own personal economic circumstances, but we also have to have jobs, and most people get health insurance coverage--a lot of them do--through their job. Well, what is the ObamaCare legislation doing to our jobs and to our economy? Nearly three in four small businesses plan to fire workers or to cut hours as a result of ObamaCare. According to Investor's Business Daily, more than 250 employers have cut jobs or slashed hours as a direct result of ObamaCare's high cost and job-killing regulations. Another thing that is important to point out is that 60 percent of the jobs created this year are part-time jobs--not full-time jobs, part-time jobs. The way the ObamaCare legislation and the law is structured, there is a disincentive for companies to grow because if they get bigger, if they get more than 50 employees, they will be subject to a lot of new regulations and mandates when they provide government-approved health care. There is also a definition in the law of what a full-time employee is. If someone works more than 30 hours, they are a full-time employee. So what are companies doing? What are businesses doing? They are hiring more and more people to work 29 hours a week. The President is probably going to go down in history as the President who created the most part- time jobs. But Americans want full-time jobs, they want to be able to have a job that allows them to make ends meet for their families, to plan for their children's education and for their own retirement, and having to work more than one job--multiple part-time jobs--just doesn't get it done for them. So this trend we are seeing occur of part-time jobs being created is largely because of mandates imposed in ObamaCare. The middle class is being squeezed from both ends. Americans' premiums are going up, while their hours and take-home pay are going down. The job impacts are as clear across the country as they are in my State of South Dakota. I wish to give one example of a South Dakota business owner who was recently interviewed. He was asked in that interview about the higher costs and mandates of ObamaCare, and this is what he said: You'll just have to adjust accordingly and you'll have to cut jobs, and you probably won't hire as many people, and I think you'll see a lot of that. That is a small business owner in my State of South Dakota responding to a question about the impact of ObamaCare on his ability to hire people, to create jobs, and to help expand his business and grow the economy in my State. It is no wonder the President's approval rating is underwater. Nearly 60 percent of Americans say they oppose ObamaCare, the President's signature accomplishment. So while support for the President's signature law continues to fade, we are also seeing an impact on the President's personal approval rating. For the first time, more Americans view the President unfavorably than they do favorably. According to yesterday's Gallup poll, the President is struggling with his own base. Support among Democrats has dropped 13 points since December of 2012. I say all that to point out that the effects of these policies-- particularly ObamaCare in the specific--are having an impact on the President's standing. I think people are understanding what the impacts are, what the effects of this are, what the results of this are, and they are starting to react accordingly. What is also of great concern to anybody who is thinking about going into an exchange or looking to do this next week when the exchanges ``go live'' or go online is that there are an awful lot of glitches and bumps. As I said, premiums are on the rise, workers' jobs, wages, and hours are being cut, and now we have glitches and bumps when it comes to implementation. The latest example of an ObamaCare glitch comes from the District of Columbia exchanges. A report that came out just yesterday said the District of Columbia ObamaCare exchange is experiencing ``a high error rate'' in calculating the tax credits that low- and middle-income people are going to receive. You can't make this stuff up. The government-run exchange is experiencing ``a high error rate'' in handling health care. Who would have thought that would be the case? These exchange shoppers are not going to have access to the premium prices now until mid-November. This is according to the recent report on the District of Columbia. There are similar glitches happening at the Federal level as well and in other States. Oregon and Colorado have faced setbacks. Reuters reports: On Monday, employees running Connect for Health Colorado told board members that the exchange would not be able to calculate federal subsidies either, at least for the first few weeks. Inaccuracies, glitches, and malfunctions mean this law is not ready for prime time. Meanwhile, we have top Democrats here in the Congress who I think are in complete denial. The President said earlier this summer, ``I think it's important for us to recognize and acknowledge this is working the way it is supposed to.'' Representative Pelosi on the House side said, ``The implementation of this is fabulous.'' Senator Reid said on ``Meet the Press'' not too long ago, ``ObamaCare has been wonderful for America.'' Well, that message is being lost on Americans. We have an opportunity to correct that. We get a chance at a do-over. We can fix this. We can correct this wrong. We can do this in a much better way. It doesn't take a 2,700-page bill and 20,000 pages of regulations to fix the problems we have in our health care system today. What we have now is a government takeover of one-sixth of our economy, and we are seeing what that means for many Americans: higher premiums, higher costs, fewer jobs, lower take-home pay, and glitches and bumps when it comes to implementation. At a minimum--at a minimum--we ought to delay the implementation of this not just for a favored few, not just for those select constituents the President wants to grant waivers and exceptions for, but we should allow a delay of ObamaCare for all Americans because it is not ready for prime time. I think ultimately what maybe drives or motivates people to stay with this in spite of all this--every day, news stories, news organizations talking about the flaws, the errors in implementation; the, I guess, overpromises made by the administration when it comes to what costs were going to be for people and whether they would be able to keep their old insurance--but when we look at all that, the cumulative effect of all of that, the wise thing for us to do is to recognize that this was a mistake and, at a minimum, delay its implementation. At best, my favorite scenario would be to repeal it and start over. I think we have a lot of people here, as was mentioned by Senator Reid not too long ago, whose goal really is to get to a single-payer system. If that is the goal, then people want this thing to muddle along and get so bad that the only thing people are left with is a single-payer system--in other words, socialized medicine. I don't think that is consistent with what the American people want. It is certainly not consistent with our history and heritage of freedom and competition and giving people in this country more choices. That might explain why many of the things we have proposed, alternatives we have proposed on this side of the aisle, consistently get voted down. Why don't we allow people to buy insurance across State lines and create interstate competition that drives prices down? Why don't we allow pooling for small businesses so they can get the benefit of group purchasing power? Why don't we reduce the cost of defensive medicine by ending junk lawsuits in this country? Why don't we allow people to have their own refundable tax credit so they can buy their own health insurance? We want to come up with a system that is portable, that creates competition, that allows people to have more choices, and that is based upon market impulses and market principle. When we have a free market and it is working, we get much lower costs because competition brings that about. I hope we can get to the point where we acknowledge that this was the wrong direction. We are going to have a chance to vote on that later today. The vote that is going to be before us--and I am not aware of any Republican in this Chamber who is not going to vote to defund ObamaCare--will present us with an opportunity, as Republicans and Democrats, to acknowledge what the American people have already recognized, which is that this is not working. It is not working as it was intended, it is not working as planned, and the best thing we can do is acknowledge that and give the American people a break and give the American economy a break by delaying its implementation or, more importantly, just repealing it and starting over and doing this the right way by building upon the strengths we have in our health care delivery system today, acknowledging the challenges and weaknesses but things that can be fixed without passing a 2,700-page bill and 20,000 pages of regulations. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. We are going to have a vote here in the next few days, depending on how the schedule and the calendar works out, on whether to defund ObamaCare. That is a vote that I think many of us in this Chamber want to have. I know many of our colleagues on the other side, the Democrats, would prefer not to have that vote. But it is time for us to go on the record and to indicate to the American people, who are very fed up with this law, and frankly have not had a good opportunity yet to see much of it being implemented, because much of the implementation will occur in the next few months--but we are going to get to that vote here in the next few days, one way or the other. The pressure is on. The pressure is on Republicans and Democrats to stand and to indicate one way or the other about whether they are willing to stand with the American people and against ObamaCare, which is having a harmful impact on so many different levels across the country. I want to point out, if I might, a few of those impacts. Obviously, many of us here in the Chamber are very concerned about the economy, about jobs and about creating a better economic future for the people we represent. We are suffering through a very sluggish, anemic economy, with growth rates that are hovering in that 1 to 2 percent range, but certainly not a range that gets Americans back to work or increases the take-home pay for middle-income Americans. If you look at the economic data, it is pretty sobering. We have had this chronic high unemployment rate that has been sustained for several years in a row, 7.5 percent. If you add in the number of people who have quit looking for work or are underemployed, in other words they want to work full time but they are working part time, the real unemployment rate is much, much higher. There are about 22 million Americans who are unemployed today. If you factor in those who have quit looking for work and those who are underemployed--who are working part time instead of full time--the unemployment rate goes up to well over 10 percent. You have a lot of Americans looking for jobs. At the same time, the jobs that are being created in the economy are part-time jobs. What is happening? A lot of Americans, who would love to be working full time to be able to provide for their families, are now being forced into part-time jobs. In fact, 60 percent of the jobs created this year are part-time jobs, not full-time jobs. If you look at the labor participation rate, it is at the lowest level that we have seen in 35 years. You have to go back to the administration of President Jimmy Carter to find the time when the number of people in the workforce, as a percentage of those available to be working, is as low as it is today, 63.2 percent. The economic data just rolls on and on. This is a very sluggish, very weak, very anemic economy. When you ask people and ask businesses why that is, why are you not hiring full-time workers, why are you hiring part-time workers, why are you reducing the size of your workforce or not hiring people that you otherwise might hire, why is this issue of take-home pay going down relative to what it was when the President first took office, the answer, in most cases, comes back pretty simple: It is ObamaCare. It is the cost, the mandates, the requirements, and the uncertainty associated with the President's health care law, and some other concern, I might add--government regulations. But policies coming out of Washington, DC, are making it more difficult and more expensive for our small businesses and job creators to create the jobs that are necessary to keep our economy going. This is why you have this sluggish economy and this chronically high unemployment rate, part-time jobs rather than full-time jobs, and lower take-home pay. This is the slowest recovery we have seen, literally, in the last 50 years. This is the economy that we are in the midst of right now. As we talk about ObamaCare--and my colleagues and I come down here, and I was here when we voted on it back in 2009 and 2010--I was on the floor on a regular basis talking about why I thought this was going to be a disaster for jobs, for the economy, for health care costs. I was offering up amendments, alternatives that we thought would be better. We think there are many that would work much better in terms of actually making health care more accessible and more affordable to more Americans, but we were unsuccessful. They had the votes. They passed it. It was a partisan vote. It was without a single Republican vote here or in the House of Representatives. It was a party-line vote. I think that is now why the American people have rejected it. They know that it was a partisan piece of legislation passed without any input from the other side and without the ideas and alternatives that might have made more sense in terms of addressing the health care needs the American people said they wanted to see addressed. But that being said, it is not only us who come down and talk about this. We have now seen, as this thing has been slowly implemented, some of the impact. Some of the taxes have kicked in. You are starting to see some of the additional costs that we said would impact middle- income families in this country when it comes to the cost of their health insurance. You don't have to look very far to see the people who are writing stories about that. In fact, instead of listening to only Republicans who come down here on floor and talk about this, you can look at the headlines of the newspapers across this country. These are just this last week. We are not talking about a long period of time, these are headlines from the last week. The National Review Online: ``Sorry, Mr. President, There Is `Serious Evidence' Obamacare Is Bad For Economic Growth.'' The Associated Press: ``Census: No sign of Economic Rebound for Many in the U.S.'' The Hill: ``Franchise owners come to the Hill to plead for ObamaCare relief.'' Washington Times: ``Georgia Health Care Company Cuts 101 Employees Due to Obamacare.'' Reuters: ``Cleveland Clinic announces job cuts to prepare for Obamacare.'' WSB-TV: ``Emory Healthcare to cut 100 jobs partly because of Obamacare.'' Lancaster Online: ``How part-time workers are feeling the pain of Obamacare.'' You can go on and on with only the headlines talking about the impact on jobs and the economy of this ObamaCare legislation, which is in the process now of being implemented. I think the other thing that we have said all along would happen--and that is what we are seeing happen as well--is that health insurance costs are going up, not down. If you look at the data--and these are some of the news stories that I have mentioned, these are headlines from just the last week. National Public Radio: ``Health Care Costs Are Projected To Outpace Economic Growth.'' Associated Press: ``Premium concerns lead some small businesses to temporarily sidestep health law.'' I could go on. But the point, very simply, is that the validators of the things that we are seeing here are out there every single day in the media. There is a study that came out, or I should say a report that came out from HHS, which was supposed to give us a new idea, or a glimpse of what the premiums are going to be under the exchanges when they are fully up and running. That is supposed to be sometime next week. The Health and Human Services department issued some information about that yesterday. What is ironic about it is that with less than a week to go before these exchanges are supposed to go online, it is a 15-page report and a press release that summarizes some of the premium data. What they did is HHS compared what the Congressional Budget Office projected rates might look like in 2016 to its own findings. It didn't compare it to what it cost last year. It didn't compare it to the reality that most Americans are experiencing in terms of the health care costs that they deal with on an annual basis. We are not getting any information that gives us any insight into what these costs are actually going to be. Fortunately, there are others who have looked at this same information, the data dump that was released yesterday by the Health and Human Services department, and compared it to what insurance costs before the Affordable Care Act passed. In other words, we heard the promises from the President when this was being debated, that health care costs were going to go down by $2,500 per family. Obviously, we are seeing the exact opposite. There was a CMS study that came out just a few days ago that said health care costs, because of ObamaCare, actually are going go up by $621 billion. If you divide that by the number of families in this country, a family of four, that is $7,450 per family of four increase, not decrease, in health care costs. That is the estimate of the CMS actuaries. When you look at what the information coming out of HHS suggests, and you compare it to a baseline of what health care costs are before this becomes implemented, you get a very different picture. Some of the analysis that has been done suggests that ObamaCare is going to increase underlying insurance rates for younger men by an average of 97 to 99 percent and for younger women by an average of 55 to 62 percent. It says the worst off is the State of North Carolina, where individual market rates are going to triple for women and quadruple for men. We can go down the list State by State, and we get sort of a detailed explanation of people at various stages in life, such as a 40- year-old woman. I am looking at some charts here comparing my State of South Dakota. This is the Affordable Care Act bronze premium versus the pre-Affordable Care Act health care premiums that people in similar circumstances were faced with. For a 40-year-old man in my State of South Dakota, it says that this is going to increase his premiums by 146 percent and for a 40-year-old woman 96 percent. The evidence keeps piling up out there. It is in the news stories, from the people, and the businesses who were talking about the impact that it is going have on them. The analysis that is being done actually compares what this is going to do in the exchanges--the premiums are going to be at the exchanges--with what people are actually experiencing today. It is not some hypothetical like the HHS numbers suggested; you find that it is like a picture. A picture is being painted of a very serious situation for middle-class families who were hoping, hoping, when all the promises were made, that they were going to see their health insurance costs go down, not up. An exact opposite effect is happening. We can go through, again, State by State and look at the various analyses. But I think the point is that instead of having health insurance costs go down as a result of ObamaCare, they are going up, and they are going up dramatically. In this CMS estimate by the actuary, that just came out a few days ago, there is a $621 billion increase in health care spending in this country attributable solely, singularly to ObamaCare. Divided by the number of families in the country, as I said, that is a $7,450 increase. Why are people rejecting this? Well, I think that is the obvious reason. They realize, most people do, at least, that these are pocketbook issues. These are kitchen table issues. These are the types of things that as Americans they are trying to figure out, how to pay their bills and how to keep their family covered. They want to figure out how to save a little money for their children's college education, how to make ends meet, and how to keep things afloat. They are very concerned about what they are seeing and the impact of this legislation on what they are having to pay for health care coverage. They are also very concerned about what it might mean for the jobs that they have today and hopefully aspire to in the future. Many of these are in jeopardy, because businesses who are hit with these new mandates, these new penalties, these new requirements under ObamaCare. Businesses are finding it more and more difficult and more expensive to create the jobs that will help these middle-income families meet the needs of their families and try to provide a better future for their children and grandchildren. One of the reasons is, at the end of the day, as people are assessing this, there is so much information, polling data, and survey data that corroborates the anecdotal information we are hearing from individuals and businesses out there. People are increasingly skeptical, increasingly suspicious, and increasingly frustrated with the ObamaCare legislation. They want to see a do-over. One of the biggest examples of that--and they probably were the biggest advocates of this--were the labor unions. If you look at what the labor unions are now saying, there was a letter a few weeks back from three of the largest unions in the country, including the Teamsters union, led by Jimmy Hoffa. They said that ObamaCare would shatter benefits for their members. They said it would create nightmare scenarios. They said that it would destroy the foundation, the backbone, if you will, of middle-class families, and that is the 40-hour work week. The reason they are saying that is because, as I mentioned, the number of jobs that are being created in America today are primarily part-time jobs. Why? Because small businesses have incentives to hire part-time workers. One, if they hire above 50 employees, they are covered by the mandate that says they have to provide government-approved health care to their employees. Two, the full-time employee hour limit is 30 hours. More and more, employers are trying to stay under 50 employees and trying to employ people for fewer than 30 hours a week so that they are not hit with these mandates under the ObamaCare legislation. This is not a good scenario for someone who is out there looking for a job and for someone who is looking for a better job. It certainly isn't going to help Americans improve and increase the amount of take- home pay that they receive on a weekly to monthly basis. That is why, if you look at again, some headlines from newspapers. The Washington Examiner says: ``Just 12 percent think Obamacare will have a positive impact on their families.'' Fox News poll: ``68 percent concerned about their health care under the new law.'' NBC News poll: ``Obamacare remains highly unpopular as implementation looms.'' Washington Post poll: ``Many Americans confused about the health-care law.'' CNN Money: ``Most employees still in the dark about health care reform.'' There is anxiety, there is frustration, there is skepticism. I think most of these folks share the view that was expressed by the unions, perhaps the biggest advocates of the health care law when it passed. What we would like is a do-over. It either needs to be fixed or it needs to be repealed. That was essentially the message that was coming from the unions at a meeting they had in California a week ago. It goes on and on. We are going to have an opportunity to right that wrong. We are going to have an opportunity to get that do-over and to have a vote. The vote is going to occur in the next few days, and it is going to give us an opportunity to go on the record about whether we ought to continue to fund a program that we now know is not working. And all the evidence that I mentioned here today, all the conversations we have with businesses in our home States, with hospitals--I mentioned earlier Cleveland Clinic, which is reducing its workforce to prepare for ObamaCare. That is going on all across this country. It is not too late for us to get this right. We can correct this. There is a better way to do this. It didn't take a 2,700-page bill and 20,000 pages of regulations to fix the things that were wrong with the American health care system. But now we have a government takeover of literally one-sixth of our economy, massive amounts of redtape and bureaucracy and regulation and the uncertainty associated with that, higher cost for individuals, much higher costs--dramatically higher costs, as I pointed out--and fewer job opportunities for families around this country, at least for full- time jobs, and lower take-home pay and a lower labor participation rate and sluggish economy. That is what this has wrought. That is what we need to correct and fix, and we are going to have an opportunity to do that with a vote later this week. So, Mr. President, I know it is very hard to acknowledge sometimes when something is not working, and it is something you have invested in, something that in this case a number of our colleagues voted for when it was passed here several years ago. But in the interest of the American people, in the interest of doing what is right for jobs, for our economy, for the health care needs of American middle-class families across this country, it is time for us to fix this, to right this wrong, and to move in a different direction. So I hope we will have the votes. There will be some of our colleagues on the Democratic side who will vote with us when we get to this vote here in the next few days and may send a very clear and loud message to the American people that we are listening, that we hear you, we understand your frustration, we want to fix this and get it right, and we want to go in a different direction. And I think that will be a welcome relief to Americans, who in overwhelming numbers are finding this less and less to their liking. The more they find out about it, the less they like it and the more concerned they are about their future and their families. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my remarks, the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Blumenthal, be recognized.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the economy generally and the negative effect President Obama's policies are having on the economy and its health and particularly on middle-class families. I do not think we have to look very far to see that impact; in fact, this economy, which is growing at a very sluggish rate, the slowest recovery in 50 years. In other words, the economy, in terms of coming out of a recession that we had a few years ago, is recovering at a slower rate than in any recession in the past 50 years. The labor participation rate--in other words, the number of people in the workforce--is at a lower level, percentagewise, than it has been in 35 years. We have to go back to the administration of Jimmy Carter to find a time when the labor participation rate was at a lower level than it is today. In fact, in the last year, of the jobs that have been created, 60 percent of those jobs are part-time jobs. We are not creating full-time jobs, we are creating part-time jobs, meaning that American workers are having to work more than one job to make ends meet and are having lower take-home pay. In fact, the take-home pay, the average household income, is down by about $4,000 since the President took office. So we have lower take-home pay, fewer jobs, at least fewer full-time jobs, a slow, sluggish economy. Why is that the case? Frankly, it is because the policies the President is putting in place are making it more expensive and more difficult to create jobs. Obviously, one of those policies that is having a profound impact on the economy is the President's health care law, which we refer to as ObamaCare. Since that bill was debated, going way back many years ago in the committees in the House and the Senate, a number of my colleagues and I have been raising concerns about the impact it would have. For 4 years we have warned about the negative effects, such as increased premiums, which we are now saying is actually the case, reductions in jobs, fewer jobs. We have fewer jobs being created out there. More and more businesses are saying the reason they are not hiring people, the reason they are reducing their workforce is because of the mandates, the requirements, the uncertainty associated with ObamaCare. People are losing access to health care that they like and were promised they would be able to keep, but for 4 years this President and his administration have looked the other way. Today, it seems that even the organizations that strongly supported the health care changes are coming to terms with their impact. In fact, in 2009, the Cleveland Clinic hosted President Obama during the height of his sales pitch to the American people. That same Cleveland Clinic last week announced plans to cut some of its 44,000 employees because of ObamaCare. The Cleveland Clinic is the largest employer in Cleveland and the second largest employer in Ohio. They are the premier hospital and medical research center that is now paying for the consequences of ObamaCare. The Cleveland Clinic is not the only company cutting jobs or wages in order to deal with increased costs due to ObamaCare. According to Investors Business Daily, more than 250 employers have cut jobs or slashed hours as a direct result of ObamaCare's high costs and job- killing regulations. That should not come as any surprise, when a 2,700-page law has already yielded 20,000 pages of regulations. Democrats overpromised on ObamaCare. Now their signature piece of legislation is underdelivering. It turns out, if you like your health care plan, you do not necessarily get to keep it--just ask the employees at GE or at IBM or at UPS or at Walgreens or at Home Depot. Not only has ObamaCare failed to make health care more affordable, but family premiums have actually jumped by more than $2,500 since ObamaCare became law. According to the Chamber of Commerce, nearly three in four small businesses plan to fire workers or cut hours as a result of ObamaCare. All of these negative effects are shaping public opinion of this law. ObamaCare continues to be a gut punch to middle-class families who are already struggling and public opinion is at an alltime low. In a recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, 12 percent of Americans believe the Democrat's signature law will have a positive effect on their families. According to a recent CNN-ORC International poll, nearly 60 percent of Americans now say they oppose ObamaCare, which is up 17 percent since January. Americans are opposing this law for good reasons. There is a CMS Actuary report that says: Health care costs are going to rise by $621 billion. Just yesterday, Forbes published an article. The title of the article was ``ObamaCare Will Increase Health Spending By $7,450 For A Typical Family of Four.'' By taking information from the nonpartisan Medicare Actuary report which was published last week, Forbes concluded that ObamaCare will boost health care spending by roughly $621 billion above amounts that would been spent without the law. By spreading across all American families, the increase in health care spending between 2014 and 2022 will amount to $7,450 per family of four. Juxtapose that against President Obama's promise that premiums will go down by $2,500 per family. A critical component of the health care law is the exchanges, which are scheduled to open for enrollment a mere 7 days from today. Yet it appears the administration is unprepared, yet again. In fact, recently the Congressional Research Service reviewed the administration's missed deadlines during the first 3 years of the health care law's implementation. As of May 31, the administration has failed to meet a total of 41 out of 82, 50 percent--41 out of 82, 50 percent--of the law's deadlines. So it should be no surprise these exchanges aren't ready, which I find particularly concerning given the amount of personal information Americans will be required to provide to the government in order to apply for ObamaCare coverage through the exchanges. Personal data such as Social Security numbers, household income, and other tax return information will be entered into a Federal data services hub. CMS recently signed a $1.2 billion contract with a British company to sort and evaluate exchange applications containing personal financial data. According to the New York Times, the company ``has little experience with the Department of Health and Human Services or the insurance marketplaces.'' Last year, congressional hearings uncovered that the company exposed more than 120,000 Federal Thrift Savings Plan enrollees to identity theft when personal financial data, including Social Security numbers, was stolen from a compromised computer. This is not exactly a track record that inspires confidence. Only last week the Wall Street Journal reported a pricing glitch is affecting rollout of the exchange. This pricing glitch is producing wrong pricing information. To me, this is further evidence ObamaCare is not ready for prime time. Unfortunately for the American people, when it comes to ObamaCare, the worst is yet to come. I would argue that it is time to give the economy--the American economy, middle-class families, middle-class workers--a break by permanently delaying the law for all Americans, not just a select few such as some of the waivers the President gives to his favorite constituencies but for all Americans so they are not subject to the harmful impact and harmful effects of this law. ObamaCare is not the only one of President Obama's policies that is hurting the middle class. President Obama's war on affordable energy is also driving up energy costs and destroying jobs. During his first Presidential campaign, the President promised that under his energy policies, ``electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.'' Maybe people remember that statement, but he said ``electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket'' if he were elected President. Unlike his campaign promises to lower health care premiums and allow families to keep their health care plans, this is one promise the President has kept. Last week the administration rolled out a new energy tax that will slash jobs, restrict access to abundant domestic energy, and make electricity rates skyrocket. When combined with other EPA regulations, the President's policies will destroy more than 500,000 jobs, cause a family to lose more than $1,000 in annual income, and increase electricity prices by 20 percent. These burdens hit lower and middle-income families the hardest. These families pay a much higher percentage of their income on energy costs. Forcing these families to pay an additional $1,000 in energy costs each year reduces what they have available to buy a home, pay for their children's education, or simply make ends meet each month. Even union laborers have expressed concern that the new energy tax is going to have a harmful impact on them and on their families. The head of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers said the tax will ``threaten economic growth and America's energy future.'' I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the IBEW article.

Mr. THUNE. The middle class has been hit hard by the Obama economy. Unemployment remains above 7 percent. Middle-class incomes have fallen, as I said, by over $3,000 since the President took office. Unfortunately, the President's health care and energy policies not only destroy jobs but hit the middle class with higher health care and higher energy costs. It is time for Congress to act as a check to the President's agenda and to stop these policies before more hard-working families are further harmed. I yield the floor.