State Exchange Accountability Act

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

Mr. President, first of all, I wish to thank my colleague Senator Warren, who is joining me on the floor. We are here together to talk about a question that could not be more critical to family budgets and to our economy as a whole; that is, what can we do to break down the barriers that women still face in our workforce and make sure women and their families have the fair shot they deserve. This is a question I know Senator Warren cares very deeply about. She has brought an enormous amount of leadership and focus to this debate. I am very appreciative that she is here to speak. So I would yield to her first and then I will finish speaking when she gets done.

I thank the Senator from Massachusetts again for all of her extremely hard and important work to expand economic opportunity and security for women and their families.

She has been an extremely important voice in this debate, and I am delighted she is joining us today.

Yesterday I held a hearing on this topic in the Senate Budget Committee. We invited a working mother, whose name was AnnMarie Duchon, to testify about some of the challenges that she had faced. AnnMarie told us that she loves her job at the University of Massachusetts- Amherst, but since the day that she started, she made a lower salary than her male counterpart who was doing the exact same job. They had the exact same responsibilities. Both of them had taken a pay cut to accept that job, and they both graduated from the same university in the same year.

When AnnMarie found out that he was making more than she was--even though they had the exact same resume, qualifications, and years of graduation--she went in and asked for a raise. She was told that she couldn't have one.

She stayed on that job and continued to work hard. It wasn't until her husband's job was at risk that she started thinking about how much those lost wages meant to her and her family.

She ran the numbers, and she found out that over the years she had missed out on more than $12,000 in wages compared to her male counterpart who was doing the exact same work.

AnnMarie and her husband are first generation college graduates. They have a 5-year-old daughter who is in full-time daycare because both AnnMarie and her husband have to work.

AnnMarie told us yesterday that when she realized her lost income amounted to 1 year's worth of child care or 10 months of payments on their mortgage or student loans, she said that was heartbreaking. AnnMarie was ultimately able to go back and convince her employers--by showing them the math--to give her equal pay.

But as we know, unfortunately, most women are not able to do that and many don't even know that they are

earning an unfair wage. That is a real loss, both for our families and for our economy as a whole.

We heard what $12,000 could have meant for AnnMarie's household budget, but women's contributions in the workforce have also made a huge difference to our overall economic strength.

As working families have felt more and more strained by the rising costs for everything from college tuition to childcare and health care, and an economy in which the gap between those at the top and everyone else seems to be getting wider and wider, women's economic contributions have helped ease the burden.

Economist Heather Boushey, who also testified yesterday at our hearing, found in a recent study that between 1979 and 2012 the U.S. economy grew by almost 11 percent as a result of women joining our labor force. As we think today about ways to support growth in the 21st century, it is absolutely clear our country's economic success and that of our middle-class families go hand-in-hand with women's economic success.

So we have a lot more work to do because despite all the progress we have made and all the glass ceilings that have been broken, women still face barriers that are holding them, their families, and our economy back.

Stories such as AnnMarie's--stories of women who received lower wages for the same exact work as men--are still far too common. Because women are more likely to be the primary caregiver in a family, the lack of paid leave at most jobs means women today experience higher turnover, lost earnings, and are more likely to be passed over for promotions that would help them advance.

In addition, our outdated Tax Code works against married women who choose to go back to work as a second earner because their earnings are counted on top of their spouse's. They can actually be taxed at a higher rate, and that deters some mothers from choosing to re-enter the workforce, especially when you consider the high cost and lack of access to high-quality childcare.

Those kinds of challenges are especially pronounced for women and, in particular, mothers, who are struggling today to make ends meet. We know that two-thirds of minimum wage earners are women. Their jobs are disproportionately unlikely to offer any flexibility when, for example, a child gets sick or needs to be picked up early from school. And their earnings are quickly swallowed by costs associated with work, such as childcare or transportation.

It is also important to note that our outdated policies disproportionately affect women when it comes to their retirement security because, on average, women earn less than men, accumulate less in savings, and receive smaller pensions. Today nearly 3 in 10 women over 65 depend on Social Security for their only income in their later years.

All of my colleagues and I should be alarmed that the average Social Security benefit for women over 65 is just $13,100 per year. Imagine living on that. That is not enough to feel financially secure.

The impact of these barriers is increasingly clear. Over the last decade the share of women in the labor force has actually stalled, even as other countries have continued to see more women choosing to go to work. Experts believe that a major reason for that is that, unlike in many other countries, in the United States we have not updated our policies to reflect our 21st century workforce and help today's two- earner families succeed.

At a time when we need to be doing everything we can to grow our economy and strengthen our middle class, that is not acceptable. Women have to have an equal shot at success. First and foremost, that means we need to end unfair practices that set women back financially.

We took a very good step forward with the Affordable Care Act, which prevents insurance companies today from charging women more than men for coverage--which they did before that Act. But we need to do more to make sure women are getting equal pay for equal work.

My good friend and colleague Chairman Mikulski has led the way on the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would provide women with more tools to fight paycheck discrimination. Giving the millions of women earning the minimum wage a raise--as Senator Warren just talked about--would also go a long way toward that effort. Of course, we have to update our Tax Code so that mothers who are returning to the workforce do not face a marriage penalty.

In addition to expanding the earned income tax credit for childless workers, the 21th Century Worker Tax Cut Act that I introduced would provide a 20-percent deduction on the second earner's income for working families with young children to help them keep more of what they earned.

As we get rid of these discriminatory practices, we should also recognize the challenges that working parents face, and we should put in place a set of policies that help them at work and at home. A big part of that is investing in expanded access to affordable, high- quality childcare. When parents go to work, they deserve to know that their child is safe and thriving while they are at work. There are many steps that this Congress could and should take through our Tax Code and by building on successful programs, such as Head Start, to help give working parents the peace of mind they deserve.

Finally, we need to build on and strengthen Social Security with policies that make it easier for women and their families to build a secure retirement. There is, of course, a lot more that we can do in addition, but I believe any one of those changes would have a real impact.

As the Presiding Officer knows from our Budget Committee hearing yesterday, AnnMarie testified and told us that she hopes when her daughter enters the workforce, pay inequity will be just as much of a relic as the days before the iPhone.

I could not agree more.

Acting to expand economic opportunity for women is the right thing to do. It is part of our ongoing work to uphold our country's most fundamental values. But as our country's recent history shows, it is also an economic necessity--both for our families and for our broader economy.

That is why it is so disappointing to see that when it comes to issues affecting women. Some of our Republican colleagues are laser- focused on turning back the clock. We saw this just yesterday when the senior Senator from South Carolina came to the floor and tried to pass an extreme bill that would severely limit women's reproductive rights.

Women today would much rather see Congress focusing on expanding opportunity and helping working families than on getting in between a woman and her doctor.

Over the next few months, we are going to see Democrats continuing to fight for goals such as achieving pay equity, providing access to affordable childcare, and raising the minimum wage--all of which would move women, families, and our economy forward not backward.

I hope that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will be willing to join us in this very important effort.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, a number of people have asked me to comment about the situation since President Putin has moved aggressively with regard to Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, which has therefore brought about some retaliation of sanctions by the United States against Russia.

We are now hearing comments--a number of troubling statements--coming out of Russia by the Deputy Prime Minister, who has the responsibility for defense and aerospace, regarding the U.S. development of rockets that can again take Americans, on American rockets, to and from the International Space Station. He has made a sarcastic comment, something to the effect of, well, how do the Americans think they are going to get to the space station--on a trampoline? And then most recently a statement having been issued in his name that the Russian rocket company will not sell the very efficient and very energetic Russian rocket engine, the RD-180, to the United States for military purposes.

This is a very complex issue. It affects not only our military access to space, it affects our civilian access to space. I will see if I can dissect this in about 4 minutes, as a number of people have asked me about this. This will be an issue, for example, next week in the markup in the Senate Armed Services Committee of the Armed Services Defense authorization bill.

First, let's go back and see the history. How do we have this relationship with Russia and what is it?

In the midst of the Cold War, when there were the two super powers, the Soviet Union and the United States decided to cooperate in space in the civilian program. In the midst of the Cold War, a Russian Soyuz and an American Apollo spacecraft--Apollo-Soyuz as it is known-- rendezvoused and docked, and the crews lived together in space for 9 days in 1975.

By the way, those two crews led by General Alexsei Leonov of the Soviet Union and Gen. Tom Stafford, U.S. Air Force, NASA astronaut, Apollo 10 that went to the Moon--they are close personal friends and have seen each other over the course of the years many times.

In 1985 I had the privilege as a young Congressman to take a delegation to the Soviet Union on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Apollo-Soyuz, with our Apollo astronauts joining in Moscow with the Soviet cosmonauts. So there is a long history.

But now fast forward to, I believe, the year 1991 and the complete destruction of the old Soviet Union. All the satellite states went elsewhere. By the way, this was in August and September of 1991, interestingly, after a delegation of American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts in April of 1991 all joined together out at Star City where they train their cosmonauts, and then we all went in a Soviet military plane out to Kazakhstan to the launch site on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the launch of the first human into space--a Russian, Yuri Gargarin. A few months later, the Soviet Union disintegrated.

So the United States had a choice to make: All of those very bright, very effective Russian scientists in their defense program and in their space program--and often their civilian space program was directly linked to their Soviet military program--where were all those scientists going to go? We didn't want them to go to Iran, North Korea, and China.

So I believe Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat, and Senator Dick Lugar, a Republican, led the effort to put together the Nunn-Lugar bill, which started sending American assistance to try to stop the scientists from fleeing into other hands and especially to corral all of the nuclear weapons the Soviet Union had, and that was done very effectively.

Then when Russia opened its former Soviet closed doors, we found out Russian scientists and engineers had manufactured this exceptionally efficient and powerful engine, kerosene and LOx--liquid oxygen--called the RD-180. As a result, we worked out a deal between American aerospace companies and the Russian company Energomash, where instead of these engines going all across the world, we were going to use them together. So the United States through its rocket manufacturers--I believe Pratt & Whitney--got the license to this and the plans to the engine, but they also had an agreement that they would buy these from the Russian rocket manufacturer.

Today that engine is a staple and necessary engine in our stable of horses to get into space, both military and civilian, because it is the main engines on what we use today, the Atlas V rocket. This is a proven rocket. It has had an unblemished record, and that unblemished record has been something close to, if not over, 100 straight flights without a flaw. It is being planned in the future by Boeing to put a Boeing spacecraft on top of that rocket for humans to go to and from the space station. Another company called Sierra Nevada has created a smaller winged spacecraft also for humans--not unlike the space shuttle but much smaller--that will go on top of the Atlas V. They, along with a third competitor, SpaceX, which has built its own rocket called the Falcon 9, with its spacecraft the Dragon capsule--those three will compete to see if one or all three will deliver humans--American and Russian--to the International Space Station in the future instead of us having to rely, after we shut down the space shuttle, on the only manned, human-tested rocket to get us to and from the space station now, which is the Soyuz, the Russian rocket that launches from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

If this isn't confusing enough, the Deputy Prime Minister--provoked because the United States has responded to President Putin's aggression--says he is going to stop selling the Energomash rocket to the United States for military purposes.

The question is, Is he going to continue to sell that rocket engine for civilian purposes--which I just outlined in this competition that is coming up--and if this is accurate and it holds, what to do for the United States?

We have several options.

First of all, we have a 2-year supply of these engines on the shelf. If in 2 years we think the Russians are not going to continue to sell this--and, by the way, this is a real jobmaker for Russians and a moneymaker for them. The aerospace industry in Russia wants to continue to sell this engine, but if the politics get in the way and they cut it off, then what is the United States to do? We have to figure that out. Right now there is a study going on in the Department of Defense as to how we would handle it. We have a 2-year supply. One of the options they will look at is stretching that out over time, putting some of those payloads on other rockets. Some of those payloads can go on the very successful Falcon 9, but there are heavier payloads that cannot go on the Falcon 9 that could go on the Atlas V. But if the Atlas V is not flying, they will have to go on a more expensive and heavier lift, Delta IV Heavy. So we see how complicated this gets.

Then the question is, If they are not going to sell these engines for military purposes, can we bank on it that they would sell these engines for NASA civilian purposes? That is a big question mark.

So one of the issues in this DOD study is going to be can we manufacture since we have the plans. We don't know the answer at this point. It is an extremely complicated metallurgy process which they have perfected in all of those years in the old Soviet Union. We would have to start flat-footed, even though we have the plans,

and figure out how to do all the design equipment, all the processing equipment, and then try to get the engines ready--and at some point what would a follow-on engine look like?

That is about the best I can summarize the situation, and we are going to have some major decisions to make, depending on what we see in the DOD study.

First of all, we are going to have to know how we have assured access to space for defense purposes for the national security of this country.

Secondly, we are going to have to have assured access to space for the civilian program so this incredible International Space Station that we have built with 15 nations, including the Russians, who have been a major part--how we are going to keep that operating and get Americans to and from it because the Russians cannot operate the space station by themselves.

In the first place, a lot of the Russian commands to their own modules actually are commands that go through the Johnson Space Center in Texas. Secondly, the Russians depend on all the electricity that is generated on the International Space Station from the American electrical systems. So we are going to have to continue to operate it together. The Deputy Prime Minister implied that; that he would continue to do that through year 2020, but the space station is going to have a life--and should have--well into the decade of the 2030s.

These are the questions we are going to have to answer and they are going to have to be answered in the near future. In part, some of them are going to have to be answered next week as we start to mark up the Defense authorization bill.

I wanted to give the Senate, and all of those in the press who have been asking me, the best of what I could conclude at this point and then we will see what develops. There was the new development, as I mentioned yesterday, where the Deputy Prime Minister said they will not sell the RD-180 to America for military purposes. If that holds, then we have to swing into action pretty quickly.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the unfortunate allegations of mismanagement and neglect that have been leveled against the Phoenix VA health care system.

By now we have all seen the headlines highlighting unsettling allegations that veterans may be dying while awaiting care in Phoenix. These revelations have come to light after whistleblowers in Arizona have suggested that Phoenix VA officials were manipulating appointment requests and waiting lists.

Recent reports suggest that some veterans may have been placed on an unofficial waiting list outside of the VA's official electronic waiting list, which exists to calculate how long a veteran has to wait for care.

The alleged reason for the existence of this secret--or unofficial-- list was to keep officially reported wait times down and to disguise longer actual waiting times. This apparently would help the Phoenix VA save face and reflect more positively on the VA's system as a whole. As a result, as many as 1,400 veterans' actual wait times may have been significantly longer than what was reported by Phoenix VA officials.

Now the VA's inspector general's office has launched an investigation, and senior officials with the Phoenix VA have been placed on administrative leave.

At a recent hearing in the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, after cautioning that there should be no ``rush to judgment,'' a senior VA official indicated that after a preliminary review they found no evidence of a ``secret list.''

Nothing would make me happier than to believe the allegations that were leveled were just as a result of sour grapes from some unhappy current or former employees. But, sadly, similar allegations surrounding delayed care have also surfaced elsewhere in the country.

Just this week, CNN has reported that two VA officials in North Carolina have been placed on administrative leave because of ``inappropriate scheduling.'' CNN also reports that a scheduler at a VA facility in San Antonio suggested there had been some ``cooking [of] the books'' there to hide lengthy wait times.

Will it be any surprise if more VA health care facilities share these issues? We have all heard about the backlog of more than 300,000 claims made by veterans to the Department of Veterans Affairs. This backlog has resulted in a wait time for compensation for disability claims that reportedly averages a dismal 5 months.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in greater numbers of veterans seeking treatment in VA facilities. As more and more servicemembers leave the Armed Forces, these numbers are sure to increase.

Clearly, the VA is having a hard time providing adequate and timely care to veterans. This is and should be a nationwide concern.

While backlogs are one thing, efforts to obscure or hide them is something else entirely, and a disturbing pattern of allegations to that end are coming into focus.

What is alleged to have gone on just in the Phoenix VA system demands an honest, independent, and timely investigation. If these allegations are confirmed, anyone behind an effort to cover up these wait times or interfere with the truth coming out needs to be held accountable. Heads should roll. Veterans and families impacted by any sort of neglect and mismanagement in the Phoenix VA system deserve nothing less.

In addition, an apparent pattern of similar problems around the country would suggest that Congress needs to ensure that its own role in substantive, rigorous, and effective oversight has not been blatantly ignored.

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki will be testifying before the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs later this week to answer questions about the ``state of veterans health care.'' Given what appear to be pervasive failures at a growing number of VA health care facilities, he will have more than a few questions to answer. I look forward to the results from that hearing.

This situation cannot go on. In Phoenix and around Arizona people are concerned. We are receiving a record number of calls to our office from veterans who are concerned who want to tell their story of the care they are receiving or not receiving on a timely basis. This is something we cannot countenance in our oversight responsibilities here in Congress.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Alexander and I be permitted to engage in a colloquy.

We come to the floor today to call attention to the tax extender bill currently being debated before the Senate. Included in this legislation is a provision extending the wind production tax credit, known as the PTC, for 2 additional years. This would be the ninth extension of a supposedly temporary tax credit.

The PTC was first enacted in 1992 to jump-start the nascent wind industry. It was meant to expire in 1999, 15 years ago. But this one- time stimulus has turned into a never-ending tax subsidy that has been extended eight times,

and the prospect for a ninth extension seems likely.

The PTC spends precious tax dollars subsidizing a very mature industry and distorting our energy markets.

My friend from Tennessee, Senator Alexander, and I have been vocal opponents of this Federal subsidy for years. Unfortunately, this credit has survived under the canard that wind power is an infant industry in need of Federal support.

With the PTC's expiration on January 1 of this year, wind producers are once again igniting the rallying cry to continue their taxpayer- funded handout.

I ask my friend from Tennessee, for those taxpayers who may not be familiar with this use of their hard-earned dollars, what is the PTC and why is it so valuable?

I thank the Senator. I don't think there is justification.

The justification that often is given is that we have to give some kind of surety moving ahead, and people won't invest in this industry if they don't know that the subsidy is there.

Again, this has been around since 1992. It was meant to expire in 1999. But it has been extended eight times. If anything is unsure, we are creating that unsurety--or insecurity--when Congress simply goes again and again and renews it.

The Senator from Tennessee had a great column in the Wall Street Journal talking about part of the problem we have when we subsidize this kind of industry and what that does to baseload power--nuclear and coal--in the interim. Does the Senator wish to talk about that?

In that same column, the Senator also talked about the environmental impact. It is often thought that these renewables are all the same in terms of their impact on the environment. But the Senator points out where these need to be built generally, and they are not your typical picturesque windmill somewhere in Holland but something quite different.

He also mentioned what it would take to generate the same amount of power that perhaps eight nuclear powerplants generate, what it would take in terms of these wind units. Does the Senator want to talk a bit about that?

Yes. And I want to point out as well that neither of us is saying there is no place for wind energy.

It is an increasing part of our energy load. In fact, the most new capacity actually went to wind as a percentage of the current output. There is an important place for it. It can and is being done in environmentally sensitive ways around the country. But it is time for the Federal subsidy to end.

The problem is, when we distort the market the way we do--when at times you can actually pay a utility to take your power because that is the only time the wind is blowing, at night, and still make a profit from the Federal subsidy--there is a distortion in the markets we just shouldn't have, and we ought to let capital flow where it is most needed.

So neither of us is saying there is no place for wind energy, but there is no place now or no reason to continue for the ninth time an extension of this Federal subsidy for wind.

I thank the Senator.

Senator Alexander and I are introducing an amendment to the tax extenders bill currently on the floor. This

amendment would simply strike that extension, do away with it completely.

We also have another amendment as to when producers of wind energy claim the subsidy right now, they can claim it now but not have the clock start until they start producing. So if they do not start producing for another 10 years, the end point of that subsidy is a full 20 years from now and taxpayers are on the hook much longer than was anticipated. So this would simply say that the point at which the subsidy begins has to be immediately so we won't go too far in the future.

Those amendments will be introduced tomorrow, and we hope to be able to debate those on the floor with this bill.

I thank the Senator.

I have just one other point. The second amendment, as I mentioned-- and the Senator mentioned that this 2-year extension leads to another 10 years in subsidies. Depending on when they actually start production, it could be another 20 years. So it really distorts our budget process, our appropriations and authorizations and everything else, for a longer period of time than it should.

I thank the Senator for his work and look forward to hopefully seeing these amendments debated.

I yield the floor, unless the Senator has any closing remarks.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Madam President, I come to the floor today, as my colleague from Indiana has, because the same things he is hearing about at home in Indiana--stories from real people and how their lives have been impacted by the health care law--are stories I am hearing at home every weekend in Wyoming.

I think it is astonishing that the majority leader would come to the floor of the Senate and say these stories we are coming to the floor with are made up, he said, out of whole cloth. These are real people in our communities who have been impacted by the health care law in ways that have been very detrimental to their lives, their livelihood. People have had their hours cut. Their take-home pay is less. They are finding they are having to pay a lot more for insurance. A lot of times it is insurance they don't really want or need or will ever use but the President says they have to buy. They have lost policies that have worked well for them.

I got a recent email from a gentleman, a family in Powell, WY, a community in Park County. He writes: Now that ObamaCare has been deemed to be the most successful government program of all time, let me tell you what it has done for retired middle-class Wyoming citizens like myself.

Of course, he said he was not serious when he said ``the most successful government program of all time.'' He probably heard the President talking about it. He probably heard the President of the United States tell Democrats who voted for this health care law to forcefully defend the law and be proud of it. I haven't heard Members who voted for this actually come to the floor to any degree to forcefully defend and be proud of the law because they know the side effects of the law have been devastating--devastating to families, devastating to people and their paychecks, and devastating to health care in this country.

So back to what my constituent from Powell, WY, said: Health care premiums of nearly $2,000 a month.

The President said: Oh, no, premiums will drop by $2,500 a year.

This gentleman said: Health care premiums of nearly $2,000 per month, scheduled to go to at least $2,000 or more per month in July--in parentheses, ``unbelievable.''

He then says: Middle-class citizens like my wife and myself, not qualifying for ObamaCare subsidies, having to consider becoming lawbreakers by forgoing health insurance for ourselves or at least one of us--in parentheses, ``probably myself because I am the healthier of the two''--and paying the fine.

He then said: If we do No. 2 above--about disobeying the law and paying the fine--we will have to look into seeking cheaper care outside the United States, probably Mexico, for serious problems.

Is that what the President of the United States intended, to have people seek care in Mexico because they can't afford the Obama health care law and the mandates and all of the insurance that they don't need, don't want, won't use, and can't afford? It is not what the President promised the American people. He said if they like what they have they can keep it. But, of course, that was deemed the lie of the year.

So I guess that is how the American people view the President of the United States now and can't really consider his comments to be credible. So when he says forcefully defend and be proud of the health care law, I think the American people realize that the President has sold the law to them under false promises and the Democrats are clearly not standing up and defending what they know is hurting their constituents. The President is in his bubble, and he hears only what he wants to hear. But I think Members on the Democratic side of the aisle, who go home and listen to people, know these stories are true, unlike what the majority leader says--that they are just made up.

The gentleman goes on to say: I could look into residence in another State to see if health care insurance is available cheaper. I don't know if it is or not, but I understand that Wyoming has the highest or near highest health insurance premiums.

Then he ends by saying: Is this what Obama and the Federal Government consider fair?

The President goes on TV and says that everybody ought to have a fair shot. Is this what the President of the United States considers fair? Is this what he means by a fair shot? People all across the country are going to be asking themselves that question as they take a look at the impact of this health care law on their own lives, their own families, the ability to keep their doctors. We know many people have lost the doctor they like in the sense that they can't go to that doctor. They know they can't go to the same hospital. We know many were not able to keep the insurance they had. We know many have had hours cut.

In an effort to try to help people who didn't have insurance, I think the President of the United States and Democrats should not have hurt so many individuals across the country, so many people who already had insurance. There may be people who are newly insured, but there are also people who are newly uninsured, and it is because of the President's health care law. Are there side effects? You better believe it. They are harmful. They are costly. Many families have been devastated by the health care law.

I have another letter from a family in Lingle, WY. This is somebody who knows I am a doctor, knows my record of treating patients around Wyoming and working with families all across the State. She said: I know you're interested in the number of people who are uninsured after the rollout of the ACA. She said: My husband and I started investigating the ACA in October. The Presiding Officer will remember they opened the exchanges in October. The President, right before that, said it was going to be easier to use than Amazon and cheaper than your cell phone bill. She said: So we started investigating in October, and we were finally able to establish an account in March.

That is what the American people think about the capability of this government and this administration. You start working on something in October, and you finally establish an account in March because of the incompetence of a bureaucracy and an administration that says one thing, does another, promises something, and delivers something very different.

She said: We found that our premiums would be one-third of our annual income--one-third of our annual income--with a $6,000 copay and a $12,000 deductible.

Those are the numbers--one-third of their annual income, a $6,000 copay, a $12,000 deductible--and the majority leader comes to the floor and says we are making this stuff up. These are letters from our constituents, people who live in our States, people whom we see on weekends when we go home.

She goes on to say: We have been uninsured for 7 years due to the costs, which we are told is due to our age, even though we are in good health. So as of today we are still uninsured.

So they started in October, finally established an account in March, and as of the date this was written in April, they were still uninsured.

She said: We don't have any idea what will happen if one of us gets sick or has an accident. How will we pay the bills?

Then she finishes by saying: Keep fighting for the people of Wyoming. As a doctor, you know what a precarious position we are in.

I wish the President of the United States and the majority leader would realize what a precarious position they have placed the American public in--an American public who knew what they wanted with health care reform. They wanted the care they need, from a doctor they choose, at lower cost. That is not what they got. They got more mandates, more expensive care, higher deductibles, higher copays. Many people had their policies canceled.

We know with the 30-hour work rule communities are cutting the hours of workers so their take-home pay goes down. We are not talking about businesses here, although it is happening in the business world as well. It is also happening in communities--school districts that are saying: Well, we are going to have to cut the hours of substitute teachers, we are going to have

to cut the hours of the school bus drivers, of the coaches, of a number of part-time workers. Why? Because of the health care law.

These are side effects of the law. They are harmful. They are expensive. They have an impact on people's lives to a point that I think the President wants to ignore because the President is hoping people on his side of the aisle will forcefully defend and be proud of a law that there is little to be proud of that really is not able to be defended because the implications of the side effects have been devastating to many, and especially to Americans who have gotten their insurance canceled and find their only choice is more expensive insurance, higher copays, and higher deductibles. But for families all across the country, when a mother finds she cannot take her child to that pediatrician--the one who has known that child since the baby was born--now, because of the health care law, she cannot take her child to that pediatrician, they cannot go to the hospital in their community; they have to drive distances, instead, because of the health care law, which was intended to help people but has ended up hurting, in my opinion, more people than it has helped.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, according to a recent National Federation of Independent Business study, ObamaCare and its tax increases will result in the reduction of up to 285,000 private sector jobs. Let's say they are wrong. Let's say they are exaggerating. After all, the NFIB has not exactly been supportive of ObamaCare. Let's say it is 250,000 or 225,000. Let's say it is 200,000. I think that any piece of legislation that causes one job to be lost is something we should take a second look at, let alone 285,000 jobs.

Even though the administration has moved the goalpost more than 20 times in terms of how Obamacare is enacted, it clearly has hurt far more than it has helped. The majority leader famously said that all the stories that have been stated on this floor have been horror stories that are not true, but these are

real stories. These are people who have contacted my office and talked to me personally. They have written letters and sent emails. They are simply saying: Here is my experience.

Once in a while I come to the floor so I can verbalize the experiences of the people I represent.

Kelly from Fort Wayne, IN, received a letter from her insurance company that said her provider would change her policy due to the Affordable Care Act. Her new policy failed to cover her lifesaving medication, increasing her monthly costs by over 400 percent compared to what she had paid with her previous plan. She said: What am I supposed to do? This medication I have is lifesaving. It is no longer covered by my insurance plan. And the insurance company has indicated that this is the result of the implementation of ObamaCare.

Bruce from Jasper, IN, had to drop his insurance policy and enroll in a new plan that increased his monthly premium by 70 percent. Bruce said: I can't afford this. I am paying a lot of money already. Seventy percent. I thought the President said this won't cost me a penny more, period. I am sure the President regrets using ``period'' because period means final, no discussion, no debate--trust me, you won't have to pay one penny more.

I talked to Bruce in Jasper, and he is paying 70 percent more.

Traveling across Indiana, I hear these stories from Hoosiers over and over, men and women business owners who are reducing hours, laying off hard-working employees, or closing the doors because of this law's costly requirements. Most importantly, they are very seriously considering dropping any employer-offered coverage whatsoever. They are reducing their workforce, if it is possible, to below 29 hours a workweek so they don't have to provide insurance.

At one national chain, they have stated publicly that they have put all of their thousands of employees on 29-hour workweek schedules so they don't have to subject them to the restrictions imposed upon them under the ObamaCare act.

I don't know how many of these stories we have to share before we try to make some reforms, replacements, or find positive solutions to the problems we face. Republicans have met in caucus. We have some alternatives. We would like to have them considered.

This leads me to my second point. It is clear now that we are not going to be allowed to offer any solutions, any reforms, any changes to any legislation as long as we are here in this session of Congress. We have been allowed nine amendments in the last 10 months. The minority in the House of Representatives has been allowed to offer over 125 amendments in the last 10 months.

People are saying: Wait a minute, I thought in the House the majority rules.

They have a Rules Committee. They decide that maybe they will get one amendment or two amendments. Don't expect to be able to offer amendments if you are in the minority in the House of Representatives.

They say: We won the election. We are the majority.

That is how the House works. I served in the House. I served in the minority for 8 years. I am trying to remember if I was ever allowed amendments. Sometimes our caucus was allowed an amendment.

I came to the Senate and people asked: What is the difference?

I said: The difference is night and day. Any Senator can offer any amendment to any bill at any time.

Then Democratic majority leader, George Mitchell, was following a precedent that had lasted for more than 200 years. The greatest deliberative body in the world deliberated. And, yes, we were here late hours in the evenings sometimes when a Member said: Wait a minute, I have one more amendment. That person was allowed to offer that amendment. We spent many nights into the dark hours working through a bill, but the process worked. That was honored by Republican leaders and Democratic leaders. Only now, at this second iteration of mine--it seems like a bad dream, actually--do we have a leader who has basically said: I am not allowing you any amendments. I don't want to force any votes.

That is not what the Senate was designed to be. That is not what it has been traditionally. Yet here we are facing yet another piece of legislation that looks the same as every other piece of legislation we have been faced with this year. The majority leader will use a procedure called filling the tree. The majority leader is using procedures to shut down the minority, to gag us. It is a gag order by the majority leader. He is basically saying: You don't have the privilege under my leadership of representing the people in your State who voted for you to come here to offer their wishes and their desires and amendments to reform a piece of legislation. I am not giving you that opportunity.

That is what the majority leader is saying over and over.

Now, if a Member is in the majority, I suppose he or she can get their changes modified and moved into the bill that the majority leader brings to the floor. But then he turns to the other side and says: You don't count, none of you. All 45 of you, all 45 Republican Senators here, don't count.

This is a Senate run by 55 people under the dictatorship of the current majority leader, who simply has thrown a gag order on any Republican because they are afraid to debate and vote on measures they think might negatively impact them, even though they are many times bipartisan-led amendments--amendments supported by Members on the other side of the aisle.

We said: OK, he is turning down anything we offer, but what if we offered it with the support of a Member from the other side?

He turns that down too, so he shuts down his own Members.

It is beyond my comprehension, having served here before and seen the Senate under the leadership of Democratic leaders who caused this body to function in a way where everybody had a voice. We didn't always win our amendments. We were in the minority. We mostly lost our amendments, but we had a chance to offer them. We had a chance to debate them and to try to persuade Members to join us. Sometimes we were fortunate to persuade those Members. Other times they were bills and amendments fashioned together with Democrats and Republicans, brought to the floor in tandem, voted on, and passed, and they were constructive changes. Today, it is, shut up, sit down, don't offer amendments, I am not giving you anything. It defies the history of this place, the tradition of this place, and it has turned us into the world's least deliberative body, not the most deliberative body. There is no deliberation here.

It appears the only way to change this is for the voters to go to the polls and say: Let's get the Senate back to what it is supposed to be.

Let's get to a place where we are not afraid to stand up and take a stand. Let's not be afraid to consider amendments and to say if it passes, it passes, and if it loses, it loses, but at least Members had the opportunity to state their positions and the opportunity to represent the wishes of the people who sent us here.

We are sitting around here being able to do nothing--nothing--because the majority leader said: You are in the minority. I am running this place. It is a one-man show. I am throwing a gag order over all of you, and we are shutting it down.

Now we are coming to the tax extenders. There are good provisions in the bill, there are mediocre provisions, and there are some that probably shouldn't be in there. But shouldn't this be debated? This impacts our economy and impacts our future. There are many things in the tax extenders bill that is coming before us--including research credits and other things that stimulate the economy--some that I think are good and some things that I think are bad. Shouldn't we have the opportunity to try to support the good or eliminate the bad or at least make an effort at that? Yet once again it hasn't happened yet. The pattern has been laid. The majority leader will say: No, you are not going to have any amendments. We are going to shut this down, and you are going to do it our way.

Apparently, that is the way the majority leader has decided he is going to run the Senate. He makes all kinds of false excuses as to why he has to do what he does, but none of them hold water. I regret that. I think it has turned this place into a dysfunctional

body, and I think the burden of responsibility for that falls directly on the shoulders of the majority leader.

With that, I yield the floor.

Thank you, Madam President. I rise to talk about the legislation we are considering, the so-called EXPIRE Act, and we want to make sure that as we are focusing on the policy--and I will get to that in a moment--we highlight for emphasis that this was a measure that came out of the Senate Finance Committee in a bipartisan fashion. In fact, it was unanimous coming out of the committee.

We had a good discussion and debate about various tax provisions that we wanted to extend for 2 more years, and because of that there was a great interest in the subject matter. Rarely have we seen the kind of bipartisan support that we have seen in the committee for these tax provisions, and I think that bipartisanship will continue as we move forward with the legislation on the floor.

The bill came out of our committee recently and it does enjoy bipartisan support. I wish to concentrate on the small business provision. As you know, if you went down the list of these extensions of tax provisions generically known as tax extenders, you could cover a huge array of subjects by virtue of the whole bill. I am going to focus for a couple minutes on the small business provisions.

We often hear from small business owners--and I hear it all the time in Pennsylvania and I am sure others hear it in their home States as well--about the lack of certainty. Frequently, business owners say they don't have certainty about where their business will go next because of what Washington has not been getting done. One of the reasons it is so important to get this bill passed in a bipartisan fashion--that alone is a measure of certainty for folks seeing so much partisanship here, but also giving a timeframe of 2 years helps alleviate uncertainty as well.

It is an especially urgent issue when it comes to small business owners. They don't often have the capacity to go out and hire a lot of experts to help them with compliance, to help them understand or deal with on a regular basis tax provisions or substantial changes in health care and public policy. So having a measure of certainty is a significant issue in the life of a small business owner.

All too often we minimize the impact of tax incentives by failing to renew critical provisions in a timely manner. Business owners need that basic certainty, which is why the work we have done on small business issues is particularly significant. I am proud of the work Senator Collins of Maine and I have done to introduce legislation which would allow small businesses to plan for capital investment that is so vital to job creation. This commonsense proposal would introduce certainty to businesses, especially small businesses, increase economic activity and the pace of job creation. A number of the provisions in the bill that I have worked on with Senator Collins are in the EXPIRE Act, the legislation we are dealing with on the floor.

I believe we have to create a favorable environment in order for businesses to make investments that create jobs and grow the economy. Small businesses are vital to our economy. That said, I am not sure we often fully understand how significant an impact small business has on the country, when we consider that small firms comprise more than 98 percent of all employers. Nearly half of the Pennsylvania workforce is on their payroll, to get a sense of the dimensions, reach and scope of small businesses in a State such as Pennsylvania, but of course that is true across the Nation.

Small firms nationally employ just over half of the private sector workforce, according to the Small Business Administration. Small businesses also have led the charge to put America back to work. According to the SBA, small businesses have created 64 percent of the net new jobs over the past 15 years. Again, we sometimes don't fully appreciate the impact of small business. The most recent monthly employment report by the payroll processor ADP showed that small- and medium-sized firms accounted for more than 80 percent of the job growth in January of this year. So a short-term recent number of job creation, small business is accounting for 80 percent of that, but even when we look at a longer period of time, over the past 15 years, small business is creating 64 percent of the net new jobs. So we need to do everything we can in the Senate and the House to invest in strategies that will help small businesses so they can grow and invest.

Unfortunately, many tax provisions affecting small businesses have recently been enacted on an unpredictable and temporary basis. That is an understatement. When we talk about certainty or uncertainty, this is part of what we are talking about. This uncertainty directly and substantially hinders economic growth and job creation. When businesses don't know how their investments will be taxed, they cannot make long- term planning decisions with confidence. You don't have to be a small business owner to understand that it is especially difficult for a small business owner to hire a legion of lawyers, accountants or other professionals to help them. Sometimes a small business owner does everything. You know the old expression ``chief cook and bottle washer.'' They do everything. They don't have the luxury of hiring a compliance team for every issue, and it is especially difficult in this uncertain environment. So this uncertainty about tax policy disproportionately harms these small businesses.

We often say these are the firms that are the backbone of the American economy. Yet they don't have the luxury that larger firms do to have a team of experts around them or a team they can retain. The National Federation of Independent Business says that compliance costs are 67 percent higher for small firms than larger ones. The Small Business Administration claims that tax paperwork is the most expensive paperwork burden on small businesses, at $74 an hour. So they are paying $74 an hour in terms of tax compliance paperwork, and their overall compliance costs are 67 percent higher than large firms.

This legislation includes several provisions intended to immediately reduce the uncertainty about the Tax Code and encourage businesses to grow and invest and hire. These measures have bipartisan support and adopt proposals

from both parties. One measure includes a 15-year straight-line depreciation schedule for restaurant leaseholds and retail improvements. In April last year Senator Cornyn from Texas and I introduced a bill that contains this provision which has bipartisan support. If a restaurant wanted to add a new room with 5 or 10 tables in a service space, that is a pretty big investment. They have to build, grow, and spend a lot of money to do that. There is a depreciation benefit provided to that business which historically has been over the course of 39 years. Recently we shrunk that timeframe down to 15 years. Instead of giving little, tiny slices of depreciation, the benefit is more substantial over the course of 15 years, and the bottom line is we want it to stay at 15 years and not go back to the 39 years. I am not sure what the benefit would be if someone added a couple of tables to their restaurant in 2014 and had to wait 39 years to reap that benefit.

So the legislation Senator Cornyn and I have would maintain that 15- year cost recovery provision and make it permanent. The bill addresses this, albeit for a 2-year timeframe instead of the current year. We know this faster so-called cost recovery is directly reflected in the company's bottom line and frees cash that can be used to expand operations and hire more workers. It stands to reason if you have a greater tax benefit, you have more dollars in your hand, so to speak, and as a restaurant owner you can hire more workers in the near term. So maximizing certainty within the Tax Code is an expressed benefit for these small businesses.

A study from the National Restaurant Association found that uncertainty over depreciation and other tax provisions forced restaurants to forgo improvement projects that would have produced approximately 200,000 jobs nationwide. I would submit that if that number were cut in half it would be a significant number, but their estimate is that in essence we are forgoing 200,000 jobs because of tax uncertainty.

Another provision of the bill that we are debating and discussing would make permanent the maximum allowable deduction under section 179, expensing rules. Section 179 allows taxpayers to deduct certain capital asset purchases in the year they make the purchase. This type of expensing provides an important incentive for businesses to make capital investments. Without it taxpayers would have to depreciate those asset purchases over multiple years, getting a much more short- term benefit because of that tax provision. This maximum allowable deduction under 179 has changed three times in the past 6 years. That is one of the best examples of uncertainty, when things keep changing and the numbers keep changing. One year they can take advantage of one- half million dollars of benefit if they bought new equipment, for example.

What we want to do--I think what is the best policy is to set it at a fairly high level, I would argue one-quarter of a million dollars----

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 2 more minutes.

I thank the Senator from Arizona for his leadership over the years and for pointing out the flaws in this proposal. It wastes money, it undercuts reliable electricity--like coal and nuclear electricity--and, in my view, it destroys rather than saving the environment.

But let's say exactly what we are talking about. This was a tax credit that was first passed in 1992, as the Senator from Arizona said, to help an infant industry. It has been renewed eight times. If you are a wind developer, it pays you 2.3 cents for every kilowatt hour of wind that you produce--which in some markets is about the cost of the wholesale value of each kilowatt hour of electricity.

In fact, the subsidy is so great, sometimes in some markets, wind producers can actually give away their electricity and still make a profit. At other times--in the middle of the night in Chicago--they can actually pay utilities to take their wind power and still make a profit. That is what the wind production tax credit is.

As the Senator says, this is a mature industry. I support jump- starting certain types of energy for a limited period of time.

But Steven Chu, President Obama's Nobel Prize-winning U.S. Energy Secretary, in 2011 in response to my question--Is it a mature technology?--said: Yes, it is a mature technology.

I would ask the Senator from Arizona, what is the justification for spending over the next 2 years $13 billion of taxpayer money? It is the most wasteful, conspicuous, taxpayer subsidy that I know of in Washington, DC. It proves Ronald Reagan's statement that the only thing in life that is eternal is a government program.

Yes, and I thank the Senator from Arizona.

The United States uses almost 20 percent of all the electricity in the world, and we need electricity that we can rely on. We don't want to flip the switch and have the lights not come on. We don't want to go to work and have the generators not working. So we use a lot of electricity, and that comes from baseload power. That is typically, in our country, coal, nuclear, and now natural gas.

Wind is intermittent. It usually blows at night. Usually it blows only about a third of the time, and you either use it or lose it. So relying on wind power to run a country that uses 20 percent of all the electricity in the world is the energy equivalent of going to war in sailboats when nuclear ships are available.

Baseload power is undercut by this intermittent wind power because of this subsidy. This subsidy is so large that wind developers can, in some cases, give away their electricity and still make a profit. And in some cases they pay the utilities to take their wind power, making the baseload power that we need to rely on for the long term less economical. This leads to the closing of nuclear plants and coal plants.

Well, the Senator from Arizona is from the West and I, of course, am from the East. In the Eastern United States, the wind turbines really only work well on ridgetops. I live near ridgetops around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. If we ran wind turbines from Georgia to Maine along the Appalachian Trail, we would only produce about the same amount of electricity that eight nuclear power plants would produce. And we would still need the nuclear power plants or the coal plants or natural gas plants to produce electricity when the wind isn't blowing. We don't want to see those 20-story towers on top of our ridgetops. You can see the blinking lights from 20 miles away. I think they destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment.

There are appropriate places for wind power, and it has an appropriate place in the market. I would ask the Senator from Arizona, isn't it time for wind to stand on its own in our marketplace and compete with other forms of electricity?

Correct.

I would say to the Senator from Arizona, just to be specific about this--negative pricing, as we call it--the opportunity for a wind developer at, say, 3 o'clock in the morning in Chicago to literally pay the utility to take the wind power, thereby causing the nuclear plant or the coal plant to be less useful, is contributing--it is not the whole reason, but it is contributing to the closing of nuclear plants.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies said that because of the low price of natural gas and this subsidy for wind, we might lose as many as 25 percent of our nuclear plants in the next 10 years. Nuclear power produces 60 percent of the carbon-free, sulfur-free, nitrogen-free electricity--air pollution-free electricity. A number of environmental groups have begun to point out their concern for what would happen to our air, if we lost this important source of clean generation of electricity.

This is just one more reason we should let wind take its natural place in the marketplace. Wind is now 4 percent of all the electricity that we produce. It was, as the Senator said, the fastest growing form of generation, so let it compete. Let it go where it should go. Offshore is another place it could go. But it is time to end the subsidy and let wind stand on its own.

I thank the Senator for his leadership. And when we talk about a 1-year or 2-year extension, it is important to note that we are talking about the next 10 years. Let's say I qualify for the production tax credit--I am a wind developer this year, which means I get that credit for the next 10 years. That is why the 2-year extension of the wind production tax credit really spends tax dollars over the next 11 years when you count both those years. It totals $13 billion. We throw dollars around so much here, it is hard to get a sense of how much $13 billion is. In 2012 we spent $10 billion government-wide on all of energy research. It would be much better to use these dollars to reduce the debt or to use some of it for clean energy research. We need low-cost, clean, cheap energy. In my view, energy research is a much better use of taxpayer dollars, when they are available, than long-term subsidies. After nearly twenty-two years and eight renewals, the wind PTC has been around for far too long.

Ronald Reagan was right. I hope to prove him wrong on this one--that the wind PTC finally comes to an end.

No, I do not. I guess, in summary, after nearly 22 years, it is time for wind production to step out on its own in the marketplace. Let's save $13 billion, and let's stop distorting the marketplace and undercutting nuclear plants as well as coal plants, and let's stop destroying the environment in the name of saving the environment.

I thank the Senator from Arizona for his leadership.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following our colloquy an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal of May 7, 2014, entitled ``Wind-Power Tax Credits Need To Be Blown Away.''

Madam President, the so-called tax extenders bill is the subject of discussion--55 provisions in the Tax Code to be extended that have expired or are expiring. The wind production tax credit is one of those. I hope the majority leader will do what the Senate should do, which is to allow those of us who have amendments--like the Senator from Arizona and I, who have offered two amendments related to the wind production tax credit--to have our say on behalf of the people of Tennessee and Arizona and the American people and to not impose the gag rule on the American people, which has become the practice here in the Senate.

The only reason we are really here is to have a say and to have a vote on behalf of the people who have elected us. If an important bill, such as the tax extenders bill, comes forward and we have a $13 billion expenditure that Americans feel strongly about, we ought to have a vote. We ought to have a say.

So I hope very much, as we move forward, the majority leader will bring us back to the time when the Senate offered a chance to have a vote, to have a say on behalf of the people of the United States. We might not win our vote, we might lose our vote, but we will have had our say.

This is the body in the American constitutional framework that has been described in the most recent history of the Senate as the one authentic bit of genius in the American system of government. That is because we have to have consensus before we move ahead,

and you only govern a complex country such as this by consensus. That is what 60 votes is about. That is what debate is about. We have gotten far away from that--far away from that.

So this would be a good time to drop this notion of the gag rule on the American people, this business of cutting off amendments, cutting off debates, and say: We welcome amendments. We welcome debate. We will vote them up, we will vote them down, pass them in a responsible way, and we will go on to the next one.

So it is my hope that Senator Flake's amendments, which I am proud to cosponsor--both of them--will be one of several amendments on the tax extenders bill to be allowed a vote when that bill comes up.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, yesterday I came to the floor to address remarks made by the majority leader. Just yesterday the majority leader came to the floor and said the Republicans were ``going quiet'' on health care. Senator Reid said ObamaCare is no longer high on the Republicans' radar screen. Yesterday I said that it was certainly still very high on my radar screen and that Republicans have every intention of continuing to focus on the Democrats' health care law and all of its harmful side effects.

Americans all across the country have been feeling those damaging side effects of the President's health care law, and the side effects are getting worse. Hard-working middle-class families who didn't want this health care law in the first place are facing higher premiums. They are facing smaller paychecks. They are facing fewer jobs, fewer doctors, and many other problems as a result specifically of the President's health care law.

Today I want to talk about another side effect of the law; that is, the millions, if not billions, of taxpayer dollars that have been absolutely wasted by bureaucrats who set up State health insurance exchanges that have failed. Under the health care law, States could choose to set up their own exchange or to use the Federal exchange. States got Federal grants to help plan which one they would do. If a State decided to set up its own exchange, it got even more money from Washington to cover the costs.

So how much money are we talking about? Well, according to the Congressional Research Service, the Federal Government has awarded grants of over $7.4 billion as of this March.

People all across the country know the Federal exchange was an absolute train wreck when it was launched. In one State after another, the State exchanges also have been collapsing and costing taxpayers a fortune. Now some of those States have absolutely given up. They have decided they want to scrap their own systems and go into the Federal exchange after all--an option they had at first, but they decided to go first to the State exchange and now it has failed. What they have done is they have spent a lot of taxpayer money--money Washington sent to them. Where is the money? The money is gone. Their system doesn't work, and now what they want to do is have a fresh start.

President Obama says Democrats should forcefully defend and be proud of the law. I want to see where the people are now coming to the floor to forcefully defend and be proud of this health care law.

I ask the President--is he proud that these ObamaCare exchanges are failing all across the country? Are Democrats who voted for this health care law ready to forcefully defend all the taxpayer dollars that we now know have been wasted? Democrats don't want to talk about the law's expensive side effects or about the Americans harmed by the law.

Republicans have been offering solutions. Today Senator Hatch and I are introducing legislation that would address these State failures and protect taxpayers. After all, that is what Americans want. They want accountability for their hard-earned taxpayer dollars. This bill, called the State Exchange Accountability Act, says that if the State got Federal money to set up its own exchange and later decided to give up and move back on to the Federal exchange, it would have to pay back the money. It is that simple. Taxpayers shouldn't have to pay twice for the mistakes of incompetent State bureaucrats who couldn't set up a working health care exchange. States would have 10 years to pay back the grants. They would have to pay them back in full. I know State budgets are tight, so they wouldn't have to come up with the whole amount all at once. They would pay back 10 percent of the total each year for the next 10 years. These States that walk away from their exchanges are conceding that they wasted the money they received, and it is only fair that these States should repay the American taxpayers.

The failure of these exchanges and the money squandered on them was a side effect of the health care law. Democrats told States they could set up these exchanges and Washington would pay the bill. So some States didn't really care what it cost. They didn't care if the work was being done well or even done at all. As far as they were concerned, don't worry, whether it works or not it is somebody else's money.

Well, this bill I am introducing today tells these State bureaucracies that it is time for them to care about the money they have wasted. This won't fix all of the harmful side effects the Democrats created with the health care law, but it is a start, and it is the right thing to do.

If you want a sense of how big the problem is, look at an article that ran in Politico on Monday this week. The headline is ``Four States in a Fix Over Their Troubled Exchanges.'' The article talks about four State exchanges

that basically embraced ObamaCare: Massachusetts, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon. It says that these four State exchanges spent at least $474 million and ``are now in shambles.''

Look at it--Maryland, $118 million; Massachusetts, $57 million; Nevada, $51 million; for Oregon, $248 million of taxpayer money from around the country was sent to Oregon for programs that are now in shambles. So now some of these States want even more money to fix what has gone wrong in the first place.

According to Politico, Maryland spent $118 million to set up its own exchange, and State officials did such a bad job that they are now planning to scrap the whole thing and use software from Connecticut's exchange. Massachusetts spent $57 million. Politico called the program in Massachusetts ``fatally crippled.'' Nevada spent $51 million. Politico says salvaging that exchange ``would be a huge feat.'' Oregon spent $248 million to set up its own exchange. It was such a spectacular failure that CNBC ran a headline on May 5 stating ``FBI probing Oregon's ObamaCare exchange.'' The FBI is probing the exchange. The State plans to use the Federal exchange from now on, getting rid of their State exchange. That is the kind of double-dipping our bill goes after.

Why should Democrats in Washington, DC, be telling taxpayers across America that they have to pay for the failures of State officials in Massachusetts, Nevada, Maryland, Oregon, and other States that may find themselves in the same situation?

Democrats have said and the President continues to say that he wants everyone to have a fair shot. Are Americans from other States who have to pay higher taxes because of these failed exchanges getting a fair shot? Well, they are not.

Our bill will start to give a fair shot to Americans who don't want to pay twice to bail out incompetent State bureaucrats. It will give a fair shot to Americans who want to reclaim some of their hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

This is just one of many ideas Republicans have offered and will continue to offer to create a patient-centered approach to health care. The plans we have offered will solve the biggest problems families face, which is the cost of care and access to care, problems that seem to have been ignored when Democrats forced this law through Congress. That means measures that would allow small businesses to pull together in order to buy health insurance for employees. Small businesses deserve a fair shot. It means letting people shop for health insurance that works for them and their families--not what the government says is best for them but what they say is best for themselves and their families. People deserve a fair shot at buying a plan that is best for themselves and their families. It means adequately funding State high- risk pools that help people get insurance--people who have disease, people who are sick--without raising the costs for healthier people. These are just a few of the solutions Republicans have offered and continue to offer to give Americans real health care reform and a real fair shot, health care reform that gives people the care they need from a doctor they choose at lower costs, without all of the harmful and expensive ObamaCare side effects.