Carl Levin and Howard P. "Buck" McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015

Mr. President, here on the Senate floor we often speak about numbers of great magnitude. Whether we are speaking of the national debt, jobs, or tax dollars, the numbers can be in the thousands, millions, or even billions. Sometimes these numbers are enough to numb even the most policy minded to the sheer volume and amount of people and resources that go into running the Nation's Capital City.

Today, as I bid farewell to Rochelle Eubanks, a diligent, beloved, and loyal staffer for 25 years, there is one number in particular I want to bring to my colleagues' attention. That number is 1,807,181.

For a quarter of a century, Rochelle has been the backbone of my office, in charge of the one critical task that all of us honored enough to be elected to Congress are charged with: to listen, to respond to, and to act on behalf of our constituents.

First as my correspondence mail system, or CMS, operator; and since 1994, as my CMS production manager, Rochelle has been at the front lines of communicating with Kentuckians. CMS is the computerized system Senate offices use to keep track of their letters to constituents. And that number--1,807,181--is the number of letters to the Bluegrass State Rochelle has sent out in her 25 years of service.

It is truly remarkable. If every letter were to go to a different person, then Rochelle has mailed a letter to nearly half the State. No one else on my staff has had more contact with the voters back home than she has. After her retirement on April 4, she will be very much missed by myself and by all of her colleagues in my office.

Rochelle started back in March of 1989. But her Senate service extends back to April of 1982, when she began work as a mail manager for the Republican Conference. She also worked with Senators John East and Jim Broyhill, both of North Carolina, before moving to the House side in 1987. I am very glad we were able to lure her back over to the Senate side to work in my office beginning in 1989.

Most staff offices have two or three staffers working on CMS. But for the majority of her tenure with my office, Rochelle has handled CMS duties on her own. How in the world does she do it? Well, ``I just do what I do,'' Rochelle says, in her usual modest fashion. Perhaps the key to how she does it

is that Rochelle is always the first to arrive in the office, often by 5:30 in the morning. I know for a fact Rochelle can be counted on as the first to arrive at work, because I can recall a time or two when she had to let me in my own office.

I knew I could always count on, as I have called her, the early bird. In fact, that is how I introduced Rochelle to my wife Elaine: This is my early bird. Rochelle could always be counted on to be there.

Because of her long tenure, Rochelle has become almost a den mother of sorts to many of the younger staff members and interns in my office. Rochelle has been with us in three different office locations, all in the Russell Building, and every time her desk has been located near the mailroom and the office interns.

When new interns or mailroom staffers start their first day, they already know who is looking out for them. ``You must be Rochelle,'' many have been heard to say. ``I've heard so much about you.''

One of my longtime staffers who worked with Rochelle for nearly 20 years remembers her fondly.

She interacted with me the same day I came as a staff

assistant, to the day I left as chief of staff. It was the

same way she treated everybody. It didn't matter if you were

a senator or an intern. She was always sweet and pleasant and

positive.

Another longtime staffer recalls:

Rochelle has long been the master of mass mail. Regardless

of how many bins I brought her, she always had a bright

smile, a kind word, a listening ear, and a delightful laugh.

All the things that make a colleague a dear friend--that's

what Rochelle is truly the master of.

Yet another former longtime time staffer says in tribute to her:

Rochelle . . . you were always the sounding board, the

moral compass and the reality check for the people you worked

with, some of whom you may have forgotten, but who will

always count you as a friend. And while your work over the

years was excellent, please know that those you have worked

with will remember you for much more.

The fidelity and loyalty Rochelle has shown to my office is exceeded only by her fidelity and loyalty to her family. Rochelle has two daughters: Rochelle and Endyia, and six granddaughters: Nyla, Jermany, Albany, Liberti, Milini, and little Marlei, who was born just this March 9.

Everyone in the office knows how cute Rochelle's granddaughters are because she proudly displays several pictures of them at her desk. Some former staffers recall years ago when Rochelle would occasionally bring her then-school-aged daughters into the office and they would show off their cartwheels. The tradition continues today with Rochelle's granddaughters. ``Granny, can we come work with you?'' they ask.

Family is also the reason that after 25 years, Rochelle is taking her well-earned retirement and moving into the next phase of her life. I was thrilled to learn Rochelle will be marrying her fiance Kevin Perry. They will soon be moving to New York. Of course, she will be missed by her family here in the District as well as by everyone in the McConnell office, but our loss is Mr. Perry's gain, and I wish the two of them great happiness in their marriage.

Kevin is a professional musician who plays the guitar, and his genre of choice is R&B and funk music. He and Rochelle have known each other since high school and after 30 years recently reconnected. Now they are back in each other's lives and looking forward to starting a new life in Queens--``not Manhattan,'' as Rochelle is quick to point out.

Rochelle is a native Washingtonian, and of course Rochelle's daughters, granddaughters, and other family here will miss her terribly, but Rochelle is reassuring. ``I'm only 4 hours away. And we'll do a lot of Skype,'' she says. ``They don't want me to stop [working] and they don't want me to leave DC. But I'm ready for a change.''

Quite a change it will be. It is hard to imagine the McConnell office without Rochelle. She is the fourth longest serving staffer in the history of my office. When she retires next Friday, she will have 9,140 days of continuous service. In fact, the three longest serving staffers still in my office are all women who have more than 25 years of service each; field assistant Sue Tharp, archivist Nan Mosher, and Rochelle.

For Rochelle it all comes down to family--her own family and the McConnell family which she has formed and grown close to in her time with us. So it is fitting that she is retiring to start a new chapter with her family.

``It's a very close-knit office,'' Rochelle says of her tenure. ``Everybody cares. Everybody helps each other out.'' I am glad Rochelle feels that way, and I couldn't agree more.

Another longtime staffer and longtime friend of Rochelle's sums up the special place she holds in our hearts this way:

For Rochelle, it comes down to family. To her, that's the

unifier. My nephew is 20 years old; she still asks what he's

up to. She's that way with everybody. She's the glue.

Now the McConnell office is going to have to soldier on without the vital glue Rochelle Eubanks has provided for 25 years. It is a great loss not only for us but for the people of Kentucky--for all of my constituents she reached out to, for the recipients of 1,807,181 letters, each letter representing a vital link between them and their elected representative.

So farewell, Rochelle, my friend, and thank you ever so much for two and one-half decades of tireless service. It is going to be a very different office without your welcoming smile and easy laugh.

Congratulations and best wishes on your marriage and the wonderful new life you will begin with your husband. You certainly deserve every happiness.

It would be such a remarkable turn of events and a genuine pleasure to receive a letter from you for a change. I would even settle for a postcard. I hope you will send us one from New York.

Ukraine

Mr. President, I wish to start by acknowledging the majority leader's decision to remove extraneous IMF provisions from the Ukraine bill. As I noted yesterday, no legislation could have passed with those provisions included. So I think it is a positive step forward. We are glad he took our advice, and now Congress will be able to pass an effective bill on Ukraine very soon.

The Economy

Mr. President, President Obama and his Washington Democratic allies are well into their sixth year of presiding over our economy. Yet the jobs recovery they keep promising us just never seems to materialize.

We have to give Washington Democrats at least some credit though. They have tried regulating, taxing, spending, stimulating, just about everything their ideology will allow. The problem is their ideology just simply doesn't work. Many of their policies just end up making things worse. Of course, the best example is ObamaCare.

They promised the Sun and the Moon to sell this thing. They said it would create jobs. They also said it would improve the economy, lower premiums, insure the uninsured, without causing Americans to lose their insurance, their doctors or their hospitals--the kind of claims which would have made Billy Mays blush.

But now Americans know better. Evidence shows that not only will ObamaCare encourage less job creation, but it is also making the economy worse, that it is driving premiums higher, and it will not come anywhere near insuring all the uninsured, while causing millions of Americans to lose the insurance and the doctors they were promised they could keep.

It is also a law which is unraveling before our very eyes. As we read this week, the administration has now handed out so many waivers, special favors, and exemptions to help out Democrats politically that the heart of the law--the individual mandate--may actually no longer even be viable. It has basically become the legal equivalent of Swiss cheese.

There is a broader point. If Washington Democrats think ObamaCare is so bad they need to exempt that many people from its mandates, then why shouldn't we remove the hardship for everyone? Doesn't the middle class deserve a break too?

Why shouldn't we repeal the 30-hour workweek created by ObamaCare, the provision which reduces take-home pay for the middle class.

Why shouldn't we do away with ObamaCare's job-killing medical device tax, something even many Democrats would vote to abolish if the majority leader would allow the vote.

What I am saying is if Washington Democrats are actually serious about

job creation, then it is time to actually show it. Work with us to eliminate the things that hurt jobs, that hold Americans back from a real recovery--such as these job-killing ObamaCare mandates--and work with us to enact things which can actually create jobs.

Approving the Keystone Pipeline would create thousands of jobs right away. Passing trade legislation--legislation President Obama has already endorsed--would help create even more, but Washington Democrats need to work collaboratively with us to make those things happen. Yet this morning's New York Times highlights their strategy for the rest of the year. Here it is summed up in three words, ``political show votes.''

Get this. Their plan is not to pass legislation but to time show votes to ``coincide with campaign-style trips by President Obama.'' Rather than take up House-passed jobs bills which would actually help middle-class Americans, they plan for yet another year of turning the Senate floor into a campaign studio.

I am asking Washington Democrats to put the ideology and political show votes aside for once and finally join us, join us to give the American people what they have been asking for all along--more jobs, more opportunity, and an economy which works for the middle class once again.

I yield the floor.

Reservation of Leader Time

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 30 minutes as if in morning business and to engage in a colloquy with the Senator from Maine.

Madam President, I come to the floor again today to talk about good jobs and how we can work together in a responsible and bipartisan way to create high-quality and lasting middle-class jobs. All of us hear from our home States about how they want us to work together to produce for America today and America tomorrow.

As someone who worked for 8 years for a manufacturing company in the private sector before going into public service, I can tell you we can win in manufacturing. We can learn from our competitors, we can strengthen our workforce, we can strengthen our access to foreign markets, and we can strengthen our access to credit. We can do all of it and we can compete and win in advanced manufacturing in the United States.

One of the aspects of my own experience in the private sector that has stayed with me is that more of our manufacturing employment was in Germany than any other single country, and that often seems unlikely given that Germany actually has higher labor costs, labor protections, environmental protections, and in many ways a higher cost of doing business than almost any other advanced country. So how is it possible they are so successful? In fact, more than twice the percentage of their GDP is in manufacturing than is the case in the United States.

Why would we fight for manufacturing jobs? Why would we fight to emulate Germany's example? Because manufacturing jobs are great jobs. As the Presiding Officer and our colleague from Maine know, manufacturing jobs are high skill, high wage, high benefit, and have a positive impact on their surrounding community. They also need something. They need ongoing R&D, cutting-edge research, continuous improvement and innovations in order to remain at the cutting edge of productivity.

What we are going to talk about on the floor today is a bill that learns from the lessons of our most successful European competitor, Germany. Germany has more than 60 manufacturing hubs located all over their country. These manufacturing hubs are in places where universities are doing cutting-edge technical research and companies are beginning to deploy these new technologies in manufacturing and the workforce that are needed to acquire the skills to be successful in these new areas of manufacturing all work in coordination. That is something we can, by working in a bipartisan way here in this Senate, advance, and advance rapidly, here in the United States.

The Senator from Maine and I are going to talk about a bill--the Revitalize American Manufacturing and Innovation Act--which has 14 cosponsors and is an indication of its broad base of bipartisan support. It has long been led by Senators Brown of Ohio and Blunt of Missouri, a bipartisan team, and to that they have added a great initial leadership team with Senator Stabenow, Senator Levin, Senator Reed, and Senator Schumer, all Democrats, as well as Senator Graham, Senator Kirk, Senator Collins, Senator Wicker, and Senator Boozman, all Republicans. Most recently our wonderful colleague, Senator Angus King of Maine, an Independent, has joined us.

This bill has been endorsed by folks ranging from the National Association of Manufacturers to the U.S. Conference of Mayors to the United Auto Workers, and many more organizations at the national and local level, which is another indicator of how diverse its support is from across the country and many different sectors. This is a bill I have reason to hope can not just get a lot of endorsements from the private sector and not just a lot of endorsements from cosponsors here in the Senate but can actually move through regular order to be taken up and considered by the committee of jurisdiction, to be taken up here on the floor, and actually signed into law by the President of the United States. I am hopeful that could happen partly because this is good policy.

There are already a number of hubs that have been established by Federal agencies spending money that has already been authorized and appropriated for specific research areas where the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense need to do work to develop cutting-edge manufacturing capacity in the United States.

I think if this law gets taken up on a bipartisan basis and is improved, refined, and debated in committee and here on the floor, we actually have a shot at advancing a process that will be wide open and will allow elements of the Federal Government, in partnership with the private sector, to leverage cutting-edge research and deploy whole new technologies across this country.

I am excited by it, and I know my colleague is as well. I will briefly state why Senator King is a great colleague

to join all of us who have served as sponsors on this bill. He has previously worked in the private sector in clean energy. He has previously served as the Governor of the State of Maine and worked closely with the University of Maine and has a sense of how publicly funded research at a cutting-edge university, investment in workforce skills, and the deployment of new and innovative technologies in clean energy can work together to grow manufacturing, grow job opportunities, and grow our economy.

I invite my colleague to address his experience in Maine and why he has joined this broad group of cosponsors on this promising and bipartisan manufacturing bill.

Madam President, I thank my colleague from Maine for sharing his personal experience both as Governor and for his work and partnership with the University of Maine and their composites center and his understanding of the importance of a modern, skilled workforce in order to take advantage of the work we are hoping to catalyze through this bill.

I wish to summarize across three large areas. This bill, if enacted, would take advantage of linkages, leverage, and labor in a way that would grow lasting middle-class jobs. All of us want to work together to find a way to give American workers and families a fair shot, to give them a fair shot at the kind of middle-class quality of life that dominated over the last 50 years. As my colleague said, it was because of the GI bill and its investment in education, it was because of innovation and competitiveness, and it was because of a skilled workforce that we were able to dominate the world in manufacturing for much of the last 50 years of the last century. If we are to seize this moment and regain our global leadership not just in the productivity sector of our manufacturing but also in the base, in the employment of our manufacturing, we have to do the sorts of things this bill imagines.

We have research being done in national labs, in federally funded national labs--fundamental research. That is wonderful. We have applied research on composites being done at the University of Delaware and at the University of Maine and every other State university that does higher research. We have manufacturers trying to take advantage of new technologies and new opportunities. This bill will link them all together to create regional hubs that allow the researchers, the private sector, and the new employees to all come together.

It also, as my colleague mentioned, leverages private sector funds. Every one of the four hubs announced to date is a more than a 1-to-1 match; 2 or 4 or, in one case, 8-to-1 match of private sector dollars to public sector dollars.

Last, it invests heavily in training and in skills and making sure the workforce is ready as these new technologies get out there.

I wish to describe the reach of some of these linkages and partnerships for a moment. Let me take a second and take a walking tour, if I could, of the four hubs that have been finalized so far.

For example, the one in Youngstown, OH, deals with 3D manufacturing. This is a relatively new, cutting-edge technology that radically alters the scale of early stage manufacturing and what is possible in terms of prototyping, and then, I think fairly soon, what is possible in terms of customized, unit-by-unit manufacturing. It has enormous promise. But if we are going to stay competitive globally in manufacturing, when there is something new invented in the United States, we have to also make sure it is made in the United States. So this is the sort of hub that makes that possible.

There are four hubs, and I will mention them briefly: the one in Ohio, the one in Raleigh, NC, the one in Detroit, and the one in Chicago. But they don't just engage the universities and the workforce and the companies right in that immediate community. They benefit from national networks. For example, General Dynamics and Honeywell are two of the very large national footprint firms partnering with the Youngstown hub. Universities from Arizona State to Florida State are collaborating in the wide bandgap semiconductor work in Raleigh, NC. Researchers from the University of Kentucky, the University of Tennessee, Notre Dame, and Ohio State are partners with the hub that is in Detroit. There are researchers from Boulder, Indiana, Notre Dame, Louisville, Iowa, Nebraska, UT, Austin, and Wisconsin that are partnering with the hub in Chicago.

So what are these hubs? Are they just some diffuse academic teams that share names and a little bit of data with each other? No. If there were, for example, to be a hub in Maine on composites, we would find researchers at the University of Delaware who have done great work in composites and companies doing work in composites partnering with the fundamental research being done, let's say, hypothetically, at the University of Maine, and learning about how to deploy that new technology in ways that would benefit the local workforce and the local manufacturers.

That is why there is so much leverage coming out of these linkages. That is why these hubs have been so generative and so powerful in Germany's experience. It is a way to harness our Federal investment in research by the national labs and by State universities with the energy of the private sector and the capacity of our manufacturers to relentlessly innovate.

We have a very broad menu of bipartisan manufacturing bills that have been taken up and discussed in this Chamber. This one--this manufacturing hubs bill--has some of the broadest support and I think some of the best reasons for it to be considered in committee and taken up on this

floor later this spring. It is my real hope our colleagues will join us in doing so.

Let me yield back to my colleague from Maine.

If there is a footnote that says ``and Delaware.''

I thank my colleague for joining me in this colloquy on manufacturing, both broadly and more specifically on this bill. I am grateful for the leadership that Senator Stabenow and Senator Graham, as the cochairs of the Senate Manufacturing Caucus, have shown on this particular bill and the passion and the perseverance that Senators Brown and Blunt have shown in bringing this great idea into legislative form and in advancing it.

There are so many other bills that we can and should take up that will bring strength and vitality to the American manufacturing sector. But it is my real hope that S. 1468, the Revitalize American Manufacturing and Innovation Act will be the next in a series of important bipartisan manufacturing bills that we will take up to make sure we are doing our job to help grow high quality American jobs.

I yield the floor.

Reinstated Amendments

I commend my colleague, the Senator from North Dakota, not only for his leadership on so many energy initiatives, but for the proposal he has put forth this afternoon.

I am pleased to be able to join him in support of those various measures--measures that, as he has outlined, will not only as a nation allow us to move forward and take that leadership role, which we so rightly have and should use as something to benefit not only ourselves and our economy, jobs within the Nation, but to benefit other nations. The proposal he has advanced--again, that I am pleased to join him on-- is one that allows for incredible jobs and opportunities with the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, provisions that will allow for expedited processing of our LNG exports.

It recognizes, again, that when we produce more in this country--when we produce more of a resource that not only allows us to be more energy secure, but that also helps our friends and allies around the world, it also helps to truly effectively reduce the cost of that energy to American consumers.

How can this possibly be a negative? How can this possibly be bad when it adds to jobs, when it strengthens our economy, and when it makes us more secure as a nation.

There are many win/wins that we see in these energy proposals we have in front of us that Senator Hoeven has offered. But, again, if we only have an opportunity to kind of talk aloud about them but never actually have the chance to move them forward through a legislative process so they can actually become law so we can actually see those benefits play out, it doesn't do us much good.

I appreciate what my colleague has outlined this afternoon through his proposals. I know we will have an opportunity to speak further to them tomorrow, and I look forward to doing that as well.

King Cove

I want to take 5 minutes in this late afternoon to continue to educate not only my colleagues but folks within this administration and around the country about an injustice that continues to unfold in a small corner of my State, a very remote part of my State in southwestern Alaska for the small community of King Cove. There are about 950 people who live in King Cove.

I have been fighting since I came to the Senate, and before I came my father took up this fight, in an effort to get a small connector road, a small 10-mile, one-lane gravel, noncommercial-use road that will allow the people of King Cove access to an all-weather airport so they can get out in the event of medical emergencies.

We had another one last night. I had an email saying the weather had completely taken over in the gulf in King Cove, and there was an emergency call that went out. It was for a 58-year-old fisherman who had been injured. He had been out on a Seattle-based processor called the M/V Golden Alaska.

This fisherman happened to live in Seattle, and he was onboard this boat. They were out near Unimak Island, which is out toward the chain in the North Pacific, when this fisherman was accidentally sprayed with a high-pressure hose and it severely injured his eye. It was 1 a.m. when this incident happened.

We have this big vessel, a big processing vessel of 305 feet, heading from Dutch Harbor to Seattle when the accident happened. I don't have a map with me, but if we can envision, there is a lot of big, wide-open ocean, and medical care is a long way away. This fisherman couldn't wait for that medical care. The closest deepwater port was King Cove.

King Cove got the word that they had an injured fisherman onboard and they said: Look, our clinic can't handle somebody who has critical needs. See if you can take the boat over to Cold Bay so that not necessarily he can get medical care, he could get on an aircraft out of Cold Bay that could fly him the 600 miles or thereabouts to Anchorage for the medical care he needed. But the problem they faced was they had wind gusts of up to 60 miles per hour. They had rough seas, very rough seas.

The ship's captain said: I am not going into Cold Bay. I am not going to try to hoist a man who has been severely injured in his eye--I am not going to try to hoist him up a 20-foot ladder at the Cold Bay dock. We are not going to do that.

So they went into King Cove, a safer, more protected cove, and they were able to get the gentleman there at 11:30 a.m. The physician's assistant--we don't have a doctor in King Cove, we have a PA, somebody who basically does a good job in stabilizing folks. She contacted the emergency room in Anchorage.

The ER folks said: Look, you have to get this guy to an ophthalmologist as

soon as you possibly can in order to preserve as much of his eyesight as possible.

As I mentioned, not only does King Cove not have a doctor, they don't have any kind of a eye specialist. The nearest ophthalmologist is in Anchorage, more than 600 miles away.

The PA, Katie Eby, did what health professionals at the clinic always do in an emergency like this. She calls for help to our Coast Guard. She begs the Coast Guard to come. The Coast Guard says they will come, but they can't come now. They can't chance the weather to get in there. They are not going to risk a pilot and his crew to get into this situation where we unnecessarily put even more lives at risk. They said: Look, we are going to have to wait until the conditions improve and the winds die down. So the physician's assistant tries to stabilize the fisherman, manage his pain as best she can and basically she waits, holding the hand of a man and telling him the Coast Guard will come.

The Coast Guard did finally make it in around 3 in the afternoon the next day. So this injured fisherman waited 13 hours for the winds to settle.

The problem with this story, of course, is there were other alternatives for this fisherman who had been injured, who had to wait in pain wondering if he was going to go blind, if he was going to completely lose his eyesight while he was waiting for the Coast Guard helicopter to come in, to pluck him out, to fly him over to Cold Bay, and have a flight take him to Anchorage. The other alternative--the safe, reliable, affordable way out is a 10-mile, one-lane, gravel, noncommercial-use road. If that fisherman could have been put in an ambulance and taken across that road, a dozen hours could have been spared.

Yesterday's medevac marks the fifth medevac by the Coast Guard in this current year. In 2014, we have had five Coast Guard medevacs. Keep in mind, each one of these medevacs costs around $210,000 per flight. So for those who are saying we can't have a road in King Cove because it is going to cost the taxpayers money, it is costing the taxpayers money because we are footing the bill for the Coast Guard.

Thank goodness the Coast Guard is there. But we are also putting the lives of these men and women--our fine coasties--at risk when we are doing this. If we had a road, who is building the road? It is the State of Alaska. Who is maintaining the road? It is the Aleutians East Borough. This is not the U.S. taxpayer who is paying for this, again, 10-mile, one-lane, gravel, noncommercial-use road.

There are options here. But the Secretary of the Interior has determined she wants to look at other options. She wants to find other alternatives. The fact of the matter is we have been looking at alternatives for a long time now, and those alternatives have been tried and failed or studied and reviewed and discarded.

But the one thing we are pretty sure of is that this fisherman from Seattle who was injured and had to wait 13 hours to get out--we are pretty sure we could have put him on an ambulance across that road--if one existed--and he would not have had to wait for 12 hours.

We are pretty sure that the 63-year-old woman who suffered heart issues on Valentine's Day and had to wait hours and hours for the Coast Guard to pluck her out of King Cove before she was able to safely make it to the hospital in Anchorage, we are pretty sure she could have been spared some of that agony.

We are pretty sure that a couple of weeks ago when a father who had been crushed by a 600-pound crab pot--his pelvis crushed and his legs broken--that for hours and hours and hours he waited in the King Cove clinic to get medevaced out, and of the fact that his infant son, a 1- month old baby named Wyatt who was there in respiratory distress also had to be medevaced out on the same day, only that baby had to make it through the night in the arms of the physician's assistant, and the PA knowing and feeling the infant was in distress and actually feeling him stop breathing.

If we had a road in place, with the agony of not only the individuals who have been injured but the loved ones who care about them, there are better alternatives, and, it is very clear to me, alternatives that work for the people who live there and the people who are in the area-- the fishermen.

Maybe I am taking this a little too personally because my oldest son crabbed in the Bering Sea this winter. He was out in those waters. He was out in that foul weather. He was working in a very dangerous industry. Anybody who has ever watched ``Deadliest Catch'' knows what I am talking about. Both my sons fish in these areas. They go through the Gulf of Alaska. They go through Nunivak Pass every year as fishermen. If something should happen to them or to somebody else on their crew, and the closest deepwater port for them happened to be King Cove but the weather was to the ground, I want a road for them.

I want a road for the people in King Cove. I want a road for the Seattle fisherman who is transiting back. It is a lifeline. It is a way to get to help. Right now, the one thing keeping these people from getting help is the Secretary of the Interior because she has concluded that we cannot build a 10-mile, one-lane, gravel, noncommercial-use road without disturbing the waterfowl, the black brant, and the geese that go through the Izembek.

We have all heard my story on this many times before. We know we can build this small road and have it coexist peacefully with the birds that go through there. We know the people who live there will continue to care for the waterfowl and the wildlife just as they have for thousands of years.

I don't want to keep coming to the floor and ranting about why we need this road. I don't want to make it appear we are sensationalizing the injuries of men, women, and children for the purpose of winning this fight. But I am not going to have somebody die out there when we could have found a safer and saner path forward.

So I am going to keep coming to the floor. I hope the Secretary of the Interior is listening, that folks in the administration are listening, and that they understand we in Alaska can be responsible for the lands where we live, and we can provide for the health and safety of those who are out there and those who are transiting through. But we need this Secretary to do the right thing for the people of the State of Alaska and provide for a life-saving road.

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

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

Mr. President, I wish to say a word about our longtime colleague Peter Robinson, who is retiring this week.

Peter joined the Office of the Senate Parliamentarian in 2002 and quickly distinguished himself as a standout talent. He brought a remarkable breadth of knowledge to a job that really requires it and a legendary facility for reading and digesting complex legislation in record time. His colleagues describe him as kind of a genius, actually--somebody who can remember not only where he read something but the exact page on which he read it. According to Senate legend, one staffer actually showed up one day asking for the software program that he just assumed Peter had been using to analyze complex bills. He was that fast. He was that good.

Peter has all sorts of interests and hobbies, so I am sure he will make very good use of his retirement, but he will be missed around here. Pete's colleagues will miss his professional skill and mastery of precedent and procedure, but they will also miss the good humor and the equanimity which have made him such a great colleague and such a valuable and respected member of the Senate family over the years. We wish Peter all the best.

Mr. President, I will start by acknowledging the majority leader's candor yesterday in outlining his party's agenda for the rest of the year--in admitting he actually asked his party's ``political arm,'' the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, to come up with it. Maybe he didn't intend to admit that his party's so- called agenda is actually a political gambit or that it basically has one intent--to bail out imperiled Democrats, Democrats desperate to distract from how ObamaCare is devastating the middle class--but it slipped out anyway.

But that wasn't the only Freudian slip we heard at yesterday's press conference. Here is a quote from one of the majority leader's top lieutenants:

When we play the political games that we're playing here,

[middle-class families] feel that we are detached from their

priorities.

Boy, I couldn't agree more with that. Maybe that is why even the press isn't taking this ``agenda'' seriously. The New York Times reported that helping struggling Americans is ``not really the point'' of Democrats' agenda and that a main goal is actually just ``to motivate the Democratic base'' and drive turnout in places they need to win in November. The Times also noted that the show votes associated with the Democratic agenda ``will be timed to coincide with campaign- style trips [by the President].'' According to the Washington Post, ``Democrats hope to use the votes . . . as fodder . . . in hopes of staving off potential losses in several states.''

Look, it doesn't get any more cynical than that--to demonstrate such a total lack of seriousness in such troubling times for the middle class.

At this point Washington Democrats are in the sixth year of trying to fix the economy, and the middle class continues to suffer. It is just not working.

As I have been saying for months now, this presents Washington Democrats with a choice. One option they have is to try something different. This means coming to the middle and working with us on bipartisan solutions that can create jobs, increase take-home pay, and give a leg up to the middle class. The other option is to double down on failed ideology and political gimmicks--the kinds of things that get the Democrats' leftwing base all excited.

In short, Washington Democrats have a choice between helping the middle class and pleasing the left. So when they release a poll-tested, campaign-crafted ObamaCare distraction ``agenda'' packed to the brim with ``lefty show votes,'' I think middle-class families can tell whose side Washington Democrats are really on. It is certainly not their side.

The people we represent all deserve better than this. They are hurting, really hurting, and all Washington Democrats seem to have for them is a bunch of show votes. I mean, how will show votes help our constituents? How will they help the people who have been writing to me about the impact of ObamaCare on themselves and their families?

One woman who wrote me from Louisville had been enrolled in Kentucky's high-risk pool for people with preexisting conditions. She said she had been battling cancer for years and that in 2012 her cancer metastasized and moved into her liver, pelvis, lung, and diaphragm. Just imagine hearing devastating news like that. Now imagine hearing a year or so later that you are going to lose the insurance you liked too, insurance that had helped you manage your cancer treatment, and, worse, that your new ObamaCare plan was going to classify your chemo medicine as a specialty drug that costs more than $1,000 for a 3-week supply. ObamaCare, this constituent wrote, ``is about as helpful in saving my life as a wet paper sack to help cover me from the rain.''

I would note she contacted me because she wanted me to know that ObamaCare stories like hers are anything but ``lies,'' despite what some in this Chamber might imply.

Does anyone really think constituents like her care about some show vote? No. What she needs is relief from ObamaCare.

So does another Kentuckian, who wrote me from Henderson County, whose premium will jump $400 a month to over $1,100 a month under ObamaCare. He wrote:

Americans were told that we could . . . keep our existing

policy [if we chose]. . . . Not only was [this] a lie--[it's]

a lie that will cost me an additional $700 per month!

How is a political show vote going to help him? Of course it isn't. And there is not a thing the Democratic Party's ``political arm'' can do to fix these problems.

Kentuckians and countless Americans suffering under ObamaCare need real solutions--not gimmicks, not base-pleasing ideology. Solutions are what is needed. Look, Washington Democrats forced America's middle class into this impossible situation. They basically blocked every reasonable attempt to reform this law or to change it in any meaningful way. Yet now ObamaCare is becoming politically difficult for them. They are deflecting blame. Just this morning we saw several imperiled Obama Democrats spin an op-ed that underscores the point, but Americans are not going to be fooled by any of this. Americans agree it is time for Washington Democrats to work with us to remedy the mess they created, and that means repealing this law and replacing it with real reform.

It is time for them to work with us on a real jobs agenda too, and to take up the numerous bills the House has already sent over and get them onto the President's desk.

Americans are fed up with the games and the tricks. They want serious solutions. They don't need a campaign poster to figure that out, and Republicans believe it is about time the American people got those solutions.

Remembering sergeant Michael C. Cable

Mr. President, I want to pay tribute to a Kentucky soldier who tragically has been lost while serving his country. SGT Michael C. Cable of Philpot, KY, was killed by the enemy while guarding American and Afghan officials in Afghanistan on March 27, 2013, exactly 1 year ago today. He was 26 years old.

For his service in uniform, Sergeant Cable received several awards, medals, and decorations, including the Bronze Star Medal, the Purple Heart, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Good Conduct Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal with Bronze Service Star, the Iraq Campaign Medal with Bronze Service Star, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Noncommissioned Officers Professional Development Ribbon, the Army Service Ribbon, the Overseas Service Ribbon, the NATO Medal, the Combat Action Badge, and the Air Assault Badge.

A decade ago as a high school student, Michael was a star on the Daviess County High School cross-country team, and they won many races. ``I sent out an e-mail this morning with this Bible verse,'' says Tony Rowe, Michael's former high school coach.

``Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down

his life for his friends.'' He is a hero. He died fighting

for us and trying to make life better for the people of

Afghanistan.

What Tony Rowe says about Michael is absolutely true, and in fact the most important thing that Michael's family wants the world to understand is that Michael was performing a mission at the time he was attacked, and this important mission was protecting others. It was not only highly important work but highly dangerous.

Before leaving on his final deployment, Michael pulled his family members aside to warn them his mission would be dangerous. ``He was prepared before he left for anything that happened,'' said Raymond Johnston, Michael's older brother. In that conversation Michael described his sisters and a close family friend as the most important people in his life, and he asked his family to take care of them if anything happened to him.

It is very hard. He was my little buddy. He wanted to make sure that no matter what, we continued to enjoy life. And we are trying to do that.

Michael's tragic loss was the first combat death for the 101st Airborne Division, based in Fort Campbell, KY, for that deployment to Afghanistan. He joined the Army in August 2007 and arrived at Fort Campbell in December of 2010. He served as a fire support specialist.

In his family Michael was known as a prankster. His last big prank was pulled on his younger sister Idalis. Michael promised he would buy Idalis a car. He had his older sister Wendy tell Idalis that Michael was determined to make good on his word but that he had bought her a really old and ugly car. Wendy told Idalis she would have to act excited so as not to hurt Michael's feelings. Far from a beat-up clunker, Michael gave his sister his own Jeep Cherokee just before he deployed to Afghanistan.

Michael loved sports of all kinds. He played golf to relax and won a golf tournament at Fort Campbell. His favorite professional sports team was the Green Bay Packers.

Michael had planned to leave the Army after his tour in Afghanistan to open his own home remodeling business. His family remembers Michael as always busy spending time with friends.

We are thinking about Michael's family today, including his parents, Vickie and Raymond Johnston, his siblings Raymond, Lisa, Wendy, Kennedy,

and Idalis, and many other beloved family members and friends.

I would like the family of SGT Michael C. Cable to know this Senate recognizes that Sergeant Cable was doing his job, and we are filled with gratitude. Without the men and women brave enough to wear our country's uniform and do the jobs our country asks them to do, I fear for what would become of our Nation.

I know my colleagues join me in honoring Sergeant Cable for his life of service and for his tragic sacrifice, and I extend my deepest condolences to Michael's family for their loss 1 year ago today.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Reservation of Leader Time

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order for me to offer my amendment on this bill, No. 2885.

Madam President, let me talk about why I think we should have this and other amendments on this bill.

My friend from Colorado just talked about an amendment that he said he supported last week. Of course, none of us got to support it on the Ukrainian bill because it wasn't allowed to come up, just like on this issue of talking about unemployment extension or the other things that our friends on the other side have announced in a pretty aggressive way that they intend to bring up because they just hope to have a political issue rather than a process that will actually work.

I believe we should have these energy amendments such as the one I am proposing on this bill because getting people back to work and being concerned about people's take-home pay, being concerned about what people get to keep of what they earn is an important part of this whole process.

So the amendment my friend objected to would be an amendment that would make it very difficult--it would establish another hurdle before anyone could have a carbon tax. This amendment is similar to the one I offered during the budget debate this year, and 53 of my colleagues supported it, so a majority of the Members of the Senate are for this but just not the majority it would take in the Senate to get it done.

A carbon tax would force families to pay more at the pump. What is a carbon tax? It is a tax on fuels that have some carbon component, and that means fuels such as gasoline, coal-based electricity, and other fossil fuels. For this component, you would have to pay more at the gas pump, you would have to pay more for your heating, more for your cooling, more for virtually every product we make in America.

The energy bill, the utility bill is a big component of what we make in the country today, and it could be one of our huge advantages in manufacturing and job creation, but we are headed in a direction with our view of energy that is not the most focused on more American energy and that doesn't take advantage of the moment we could be in.

Areas where I live in Missouri, people in the South and Midwest-- frankly, from about the middle of Pennsylvania to the western edge of Wyoming--are heavily dependent on coal for electricity. About 50 percent of all the electricity in that vast majority of the land mass of America is from coal. Eighty-two percent of the electricity produced in Missouri is from coal. There are at least five States that have a higher dependency on coal than we do. If we had a cap-and-trade bill, the estimates are that our bill would have gone up about 40 percent since 2013.

A carbon tax is disproportionately impactful on people who are struggling to get by. If you want to really do things that impact the vulnerable in our society, make the utility bill higher. If you want to really do things that impact the vulnerable in our society who are looking for work, make it harder to put those jobs in the United States of America.

About 40 million U.S. households that currently earn less than $30,000 per year spend almost 20 percent of their income already on energy. Why would we want that percentage to be higher. What you make is not nearly as important as what you are able to use to advance your family. If the utility bill is 30 percent of what you make or 40 percent of what you make instead of 20 percent, obviously the other things you would have done with that money could not have been, done.

These are the households that can least afford to have the new energy-efficient refrigerators. These are the last households to get the better windows, the last houses to get more insulation in the ceiling and the walls, the first houses where people have to think about, What room do we shut off this winter because we cannot use all the rooms in the house in the way we would like to? It would be nice to be able to fill up your tank rather than stand at the gas pump and wonder, Can I possibly afford to put more gas in than that pump has already shown on prices that are already too high.

There are lots of amendments on this bill about energy, none of which, I am told, will be allowed, and I think that is a tragedy.

A 2013 study by the National Association of Manufacturers found that the overall effect of a carbon tax on American jobs would be staggering, with a loss of worker income equivalent to about $13 million and 1.5 million jobs. Why would we want to take that out of our economy when we can not only keep it there, but by enhancing more American energy, we could expand it?

The utility bill is an increasingly important part of job creation. Energy-sensitive industries such as chemicals, auto manufacturing, iron and steel manufacturing, cement, mining, and refining sectors are the hardest hit by a carbon tax, and these sectors would see a big drop in their manufacturing output.

So if we had the kind of debate we ought to have, it would be a debate about how we get people back to work rather than how we continue to extend benefits in a policy that was never intended to have never- ending benefits. This system doesn't work. It doesn't work for people who pay into the system or draw out of the system if we abuse it.

I think we all know this is not the debate we should be having this week, and I would like to see us have a debate on how we could improve the economy while we deal with this so-called immediate need that we are talking about on the floor instead of the things we ought to be talking about.

I wish to talk for a few minutes about the announcements yesterday about how many people have signed up for the President's health care plan. As I said when the Web site wouldn't work, it is not about whether the Web site works. Frankly, it is not even about how many people sign up. This is about whether this is the right direction for us to go as a country. Is this health care more affordable, and will more people be insured, and will the people who are insured be insured with policies they can afford and coverage they want?

The President, of course, and everybody understands the Web site had its problems. I think we would be really remiss if we decided--if making the Web site work was the test of the program or, frankly, making people sign up was the test of the program.

This debate is not over. It shouldn't be over. We need to continue to look for ways to try to make this work better because I certainly continue to hear from Missourians who tell me that the course they are on is hurting their families, hurting their job opportunities.

The law of unintended consequences appears to be the law here that is most likely to be applied, the unintended consequences of people who are going to work part time, the unintended consequences of people who are looking at a job that used to be a full-time job but now the government said: You don't have to provide benefits unless somebody works 30 hours a week. I guess what the government really said was that you have to provide benefits when they do work 30 hours a week. But people immediately look at that and the society adjusts to that government determination. So suddenly people are working 28 and 29 and 20 hours without benefits where they might have been working those same hours before with some level of benefits or might have--more importantly for their families--been working full time before.

We are going to continue to talk about this law and how it serves people. Let me give a couple of quick examples as I conclude this morning.

I had a person in the office this morning who was here for another purpose. He is a radiologist from Cape Girardeau, MO, and he said he received notice that his insurance was going to go up $500 a month for the same coverage until the President made the decision to suspend the law, which is a totally different debate topic, whether the President can do that. But when the President suspended the application of this law, which everybody is supposed to be so excited about, they were able to keep the policy they had for another year, and it was $500 a month less--$6,000 a year less for that family.

Here is some information I got today from Sherry in Shelbyville, MO, who said that her 18-year-old son has had cerebral palsy his whole life. They had a medicine that works that allows him to deal with this. Last year a 3-month supply of this particular medicine went from $125 to $1,086--almost a $1,000 increase. But that may or may not be impacted by what is happening with overall health care policies. What was impacted this year was her family's deductible. Their deductible went from $500 to $5,000. They were paying $500 on a 3-month supply of medicine. A 1-year supply of that medicine cost a little over $4,000. They were paying $500 of that, and now they are paying all of that.

Her view--which would be the view of most working families--is: We had insurance we could afford, we had insurance that met our needs, and now we are paying $3,500 more than we were paying. For almost any family, $300 a month makes a big difference. It particularly makes a difference for families who are struggling and already dealing with a health problem.

Pete from Jackson, MO, receives health care benefits through his employer, but his wife and two children had health insurance through an independent carrier. His wife and children's plan will be dropped November 30 of this year. Their new plan will cost $1,200 per month instead of $530 for similar coverage they have right now.

By the way, these are just a few of the letters from the top of the list. If I had more time, I could certainly read more letters.

I have a letter from Greg who is from St. Joseph. His out-of-pocket expenses went from $2,500 per year to $10,000 per year. He is paying that by going into his 401(k) retirement plan. If anybody thinks Greg and his family are better off from this new change in the law by paying $10,000 out of pocket instead of the $2,500 out of pocket--and he is having to dip into his retirement plan to help pay for his health insurance--I would like to hear from them.

There are people who had insurance before this new law, and although they have insurance now through the exchange, they just happen to be paying in many cases a lot more and have a deductible that is a lot higher. I think that would be a great debate for us to have on the floor now that we know, as a country, what is at stake.

What do we do to be sure the best health care system in the world works better for everybody? How do we make changes so that those who are outside of the system have a better chance to be a part of that system rather than penalizing everybody who had insurance they thought was working for them?

I yield the floor to my friend from Rhode Island.

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

Madam President, I rise today to urge the Drug Enforcement Administration to issue the final rule necessary to implement the Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act of 2010. I note that year--2010--because that is the year this bipartisan bill was passed.

What it does is it provides consumers with safe and responsible ways to dispose of unused prescription medications and controlled substances.

I thank Senator Cornyn, who was the lead cosponsor on the Republican side of this legislation, as well as Senator Grassley and Senator Brown, for working with me on the legislation.

The important law expands safe disposal options for individuals and for long-item care facilities, and it promotes the development and expansion of prescription drug take-back programs.

As the Presiding Officer knows, this simply means that when you get prescription drugs and you do not use all of them--or your doctor prescribes something else--you do not just leave them in your medicine cabinet, where someone else might be taking them. Instead, you find a safe place to dispose of them, so someone else does not start taking them and potentially get hooked on the drug.

Why did I mention 2010? Well, 2010 was the year President Obama signed this bill into law. It has now been 4 years--4 years--as we have awaited the rules. I will describe why, but I think it is time to put this law into action.

The DEA issued a proposed rule in December 2012. Unfortunately, that took 2 years. There were some comments then about making sure the rules worked for our long-term care facilities--you can imagine, there are a lot of prescription drugs at long-term facilities--and the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. But these issues should be addressed in the final rule. It is time now to get this rule done so we have more options to easily and safely dispose of our prescription drugs.

I know the final rule is now at the Office of Management and Budget for their approval. I have spoken to them about this rule. I am also aware they have only had the rule for 35 days. So they are not really the ones who have been holding this up. They have 90 days to get this out, and they have pledged that they hope to get that done.

We need to get the rule done, and let me tell you why. As a former prosecutor, I have seen firsthand the devastating impact that drug addiction has on families and communities. During my 8 years as chief prosecutor in Hennepin County--the largest county in our State--drug cases made up about one-third of the caseload.

Most Americans know that we have a problem with serious drugs. But what most Americans may not know is that one of our most serious drug problems is, in fact, drugs that are in the medicine cabinet--drugs that are prescribed legally.

Within those cabinets are some of the most addictive prescription drugs out there--like pain killers and beta blockers. Prescription drugs such as these are some of the most commonly abused drugs--and people are surprised by this, but they are ahead of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines in many States.

Teenagers now abuse prescription drugs more than almost any other drug, and the majority of teens who abuse these drugs get them for free. They get them in that medicine cabinet or, more likely, a friend of theirs gets them from their mom's or dad's medicine cabinet--often without the knowledge of the person who has it.

I think we all know that many leftover drugs are lying around. You go to see the dentist for surgery, and they prescribe you something for pain. You feel OK. You only take 1 or 2, and then you have 10 left, and they are just sitting in the medicine cabinet.

We used to tell people to flush these drugs down the toilet. This is not a good idea for our water supply, and I think most people know that. Some people will tell you that the proper way to dispose of your drugs is to crush up your extra pills, then mix them with--and this is what they say--kitty litter or coffee grounds.

We need to do all we can to keep these dangerous drugs out of the hands of teens, but I am just not sure--especially if someone does not have a cat--that kitty litter is a realistic solution. Not everyone these days makes their own coffee nor has coffee grounds. We are dealing here with a very serious

problem, and all we are hearing about is kitty litter and coffee grounds. That is why we passed this bill.

One option parents have is to dispose of leftover drugs at a National Take-Back Day. Listen to this. Over 3 million pounds of prescription medications have been removed from circulation through seven National Take-Back Days that have been held since 2010. I participated in one of those days in Brooklyn Park, MN, last fall.

While these events have been incredibly successful, one-day events that are held a few times each year do not fully address the problem of how we are going to dispose of our drugs safely.

For instance, let's say you heard about a Take-Back Day right after you had your dental surgery. Great, you can bring over those pills and safely dispose of them, but then you remember your kid has a soccer tournament, and you cannot make it that day to dispose of the drugs. It looks like those pills are going to stay sitting right where they are in the medicine cabinet. I doubt many people have the time right then and there to call and ask when the next Tack-Back Day might be and put it on their calendar in a red pen.

We have to be realistic. These Take-Back Days are great. In my State, especially in the metropolitan area, under the leadership of our sheriff Rich Stanek we actually have some permanent facilities in places where they can be brought permanently--the drugs--in the libraries and places like that, but we really have gone the extra step. The reason our law enforcement is such a big fan of this law is they know we could take so many more drugs in if, for instance, long-term care facilities were able to simply bring the drugs to one location each and every day.

If, for instance--and some of our drug stores have been open to this, some of these national chains--imagine how good this would be if they would just be willing to take these back and then they bring them somewhere. But to do that they need certain legal protections. They need protections about how they transport them. That is why we have been awaiting these rules.

Given the Food and Drug Administration's recent approval of some very powerful drugs, I think it is even more important that we make sure when these drugs are out there that they are able to be disposed of.

Offering more ways for people to dispose of their unneeded prescription drugs is also a crucial component of stopping the recent rise we have seen in heroin. Now, that might seem counterintuitive. You might say: Why would that help with heroin? That is not a prescription drug. How could that reduce the amount of heroin out there when we know we have seen huge increases in the amount of heroin. We have seen it in our State.

The heroin epidemic in Minnesota and all across the country is deadly. In the first half of 2013, 91 people died of opiate-related overdoses in the Twin Cities--in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties--compared to 129 for all of 2012--just to give you a sense of 6 months compared to a year. Hospital emergency department visits for heroin nearly tripled from 2004 to 2011.

In the 7,000-person community of St. Francis, MN, three young people have died of opiate overdoses since May. Another three young people have been hospitalized for heroin overdoses. One was only 15 years old.

Experts blame this rise in heroin use to, first of all, some pure heroin coming from Mexico, but, secondly, an increased use of prescription drugs like OxyContin and Vicodin. That is because, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, as many as 4 out of 5 heroin users got their start by abusing prescription drugs. That is a pretty phenomenal number.

I think people think of heroin like from the 1970s and people shooting up. Well, it is not like that anymore. They can take it by pills. They can take it different ways. What happens is, when they start with these prescription drugs, and they have access to them, they get hooked, they get addicted; and then, when they cannot get the prescription drugs--which does happen--then they turn to heroin, and heroin right now is much easier to obtain.

So the answer here--because those drugs are similar in how they make them feel--the answer is to stop them from getting addicted in the first place. I think often times, when people just see a drug in the medicine cabinet or know that it is OK to take one of these types of drugs--OxyContin and other things for pain--they actually do not intend to get addicted. These are many of the people I just had a roundtable with at Hazelden, one of the Nation's premier drug treatment centers, talking about this. A lot of times the people who end up dying from a heroin overdose actually may even be casual heroin users. They are not doing it every single day. But that is because the heroin was a replacement for the prescription drugs they started getting addicted to when they got them out of a medicine cabinet or maybe they were prescribed them.

We know this is not going to fix everything. But certainly making it easier and empowering people to dispose of these drugs will, No. 1, clearly cut down on the use of these prescription drugs, and then, we believe, lead to less heroin use in the long term.

Americans all across the country--in cities, suburbs, and small towns--need options to get rid of leftover pills before they fuel addictions and claim the lives of their loved ones.

The Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act provides these options. But we cannot take these crucial steps in the fight against drug abuse until the DEA issues its final rule.

After 4 years, it is time to make these rules official--4 years that families and long-term facilities have lost out on safe and easy options to get rid of unused prescription drugs; 4 years that those plastic amber bottles have piled up in medicine cabinets across America; 4 years that dangerous pills have been left vulnerable to misuse, potentially falling into the hands of our loved ones fighting addiction or criminals or being accidentally consumed by an innocent child.

We need the final rules. We must get them done right. But with so much at stake, we must get them done now.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about a whole series of issues--including unemployment insurance and the minimum wage--that are designed to help Americans attain economic mobility and get a fair shot to move up in the way our economy is designed to work.

This morning the Budget Committee had a hearing entitled ``Opportunity, Mobility, and Inequality in Today's Economy.'' We heard from three very strong witnesses, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. We talked about important topics central to understanding the long-held American dream: If you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to support your family, provide an opportunity for your kids, and have a fair retirement. But for too many--as the Presiding Officer knows--opportunity and mobility are especially hard to find and income inequality is growing.

I am an optimist. I know the solutions are here if we work to find them, and I want to take a couple of minutes to talk about some of the solutions. First, let's try to put a human face on the problem of inequality in our economy.

Income inequality in the United States is at a record level. It is higher in the United States than virtually any other developed country. President Obama has called income equality the central challenge of our times. The Presiding Officer and I share a Roman Catholic background. Last week the President was talking to Pope Francis in the Vatican, and they talked about how this is not just an American challenge but a global challenge.

According to the CBO, the average income of a household in the richest 1 percent in this country was nearly 180 percent higher in 2010 than it was in 1979 in real dollars. By comparison, the average income for a household in the middle 20 percent of the income distribution had only grown by about 25 percent--about one in seven--of what the households in the highest income levels had grown.

Since 1979, the top 1 percent of our population's share of national income grew from 8.9 percent to 14.9 percent. So 1 percent has 15 percent of the national income by 2010, but at the same time the bottom 80 percent of our American population saw their share of national income significantly shrink.

For me the issue is not just inequality because there will always be some inequality. Fate, luck, and health will produce some unequal outcomes. But what I think is great about this country is that while we can see inequality and tolerate some degree of it, what we will not tolerate is people being locked into unequal situations.

We want to have a society where people may be born poor or may have an accident or a fate that will have them in a lower economic status but they can still raise their ceiling and achieve all they can. But in the case of social mobility, the United States is now one

of the poorest performing of the developed countries.

Today a child born into the bottom quintile in the American economic life only has a 7.5-percent chance of ever being in the top quintile. In a country such as Denmark in Europe--and we think of Europe as a more stratified society--that number is nearly double what the number is in the United States.

It is not just inequality, it is mobility. We are not giving people a fair shot, to use the words of the great American singer Curtis Mayfield, ``to move on up'' to their destination and that place where their dreams can take them if they work hard enough.

What we need to do is embrace strategies that let people move on up and have a fair shot to achieve. We don't only need to embrace strategies for success, we have to eliminate structures and eliminate barriers that lock people out of economic opportunities that they should be able to achieve similar to anyone else.

One solution is the minimum wage bill that we will start to talk about soon. It is about working Americans who are earning minimum wage or just above minimum wage and how this will affect them.

I think I can safely say the vast majority of Virginians would agree with this proposition: No one who works full time--8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year--should live in poverty. But today someone making the minimum wage earns about $15,000 a year, which is $3,000 below the poverty level for a family of three. If you are a single mom with a couple of kids--and so many people are raising children on their own--and work full time at the minimum wage, you are below the poverty level.

The minimum wage today is at a historic low. The minimum wage has lost 33 percent of its buying power since its peak in 1968. If the minimum wage in 1968 had just kept pace with inflation, it would be $10.71 per hour today and not in the $7 range.

Workers who regularly receive tips are treated even worse. They get paid a subminimum wage--what is called a tipped minimum wage--of $2.13 an hour. As long as you make $30 in tips a month, your company can pay you $2.13 an hour. Overwhelmingly these workers work in restaurants but not exclusively, and similar to other minimum wage workers they are predominately women.

Twenty-eight million Americans will receive an increase in pay if we raise the minimum wage under the bill that is currently before the Senate. It has been reported out of the HELP Committee, and we will take it up soon. More than half of those who will receive a raise are women. The vast majority are adult workers. Over 14 million American children have a parent who will receive a raise if we increase the minimum wage.

The Minimum Wage Fairness Act will boost the minimum wage to about $21,000, lifting families above the poverty line. In total--get this-- the bill we will hopefully debate and vote on soon is estimated to lift nearly 7 million Americans out of poverty and above the poverty level. What could we do, as we debate, that would have more effect on people's lives than lifting 7 million people above the poverty level, which we would do if we pass the bill.

Increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour will increase GDP by nearly $22 billion as workers spend their raises in local businesses and communities. In Virginia about 744,000 of my fellow citizens will receive a raise. For this reason, business owners whom I talk to--not all but a huge number and especially small business owners--know that the minimum wage increase makes good business sense.

Yesterday I visited a supermarket just across the Potomac in Alexandria. It is called MOM's Organic Market. They have 11 locations in the DC metropolitan area and Philadelphia. They are contemplating opening another store in New York City. I met with the owner Scott Nash, and I talked to his employees. I asked the employees: How long have you worked here? The answer I got back was 7 years, 8 years, 10 years. They made it their practice to pay their employees a $10 minimum wage now, and they are going to increase it. They fully support the bill currently pending before the Senate to increase the minimum wage.

Scott Nash is not alone. We are celebrating a very important centennial this year. It is a centennial of one of the smartest things an American employer ever did. I will read a quote.

After the success of the moving assembly line, Henry Ford had another transformative idea. In January of 1914, he startled the world by announcing that the Ford Motor Company would pay $5 a day to its workers. The pay increase would be accompanied with a shorter workday-- from 9 to 8 hours. While this rate did not automatically apply to every worker, it more than doubled the average autoworker's wage. While Henry's primary objective was to reduce worker attrition, newspapers from all over the world reported the story as an extraordinary gesture of good will.

Here is the important part:

Henry Ford had reasoned that since it was now possible to

build inexpensive cars in volume, more of them could be sold

if employees could afford to buy them. The $5 day helped

better the lot of all American workers and contributed to the

emergence of the American middle class. In the process, Henry

Ford had changed manufacturing forever.

This quote is not from some Democratic talking point. This quote is from the Web site of the Ford Motor Company--a press release they issued in January to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Henry Ford's novel decision.

There was an employer who knew the American economy was based on consumer demand and if workers could be paid more, they would buy more, it would help his company, and it would help America. The Senate can take action in this way, and the Senate can take action in other ways to give people a fair shot to move on up in American society.

In fact, we have already acted on a couple of bills I hope the House will pick up. We acted on immigration reform, which strengthens border security, creates a pathway to legal status and citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, and helps businesses and families. This eliminates a barrier that keeps people from moving up, and the CBO estimates it will significantly improve the American economy. Immigration reform is about a fair shot. Immigration reform is about moving up.

We also acted on ENDA, legislation to end discrimination in the workplace against folks based on sexual orientation. A person can't move on up and achieve their economic dreams if folks can fire someone at will if they don't like the kind of person someone is or who they love. So ENDA, which awaits action in the House, is also a bill about making sure people have a fair shot and can move on up.

We can act this week. We are now on the bill to provide unemployment insurance to those who are still struggling in the economy. Soon we will consider paycheck fairness for women. A person can't achieve all they can if they are going to be paid significantly less than their colleagues just because of gender.

In coming weeks we will also consider jobs skills and education legislation, which are real keys to economic opportunity for so many.

What we need to do is pretty simple. What the Presiding Officer did and what so many others in this Chamber did when we were Governors was to try to give individuals the tools to create their own opportunity, to create their own mobility, as well as to take the steps we could when there were barriers or structures in the way to move those out of the way so people had a fair shot to succeed.

With that, I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz).

Before we can have a real debate on how to fix the U.S. economy, which is experiencing the slowest recovery following a recession of any time since World War II, we have to agree on what the problem is and what we are actually trying to solve.

On this side of the aisle, we believe the problem is a shortage of full-time jobs, and we believe our main economic priority should be to facilitate or to create circumstances under which the private sector can create more full-time jobs. That is why we have offered a series of amendments to the pending legislation that would help do that. It would help grow the economy and help get people back to work--not just pay people who are, unfortunately, unemployed but actually help create jobs so they can find work and help provide for their families, which is what the vast majority of people want to do.

Currently, we have pending about 70 different amendments from this side of the aisle that would actually improve the underlying legislation. Among

other things, our amendments would repeal job-killing taxes, improve congressional safeguards against overregulation, and restore the traditional 40-hour workweek, which is a particular subject of concern to organized labor, which recently sent a letter to the White House and said that ObamaCare was incentivizing employers to take full-time work and make it part-time work. They called it a nightmare.

We also need to modernize our work-training programs. I have traveled to a number of locations in Texas, for example, where, as a result of the shale gas renaissance, we have had a number of manufacturing companies move back onshore because of this inexpensive energy supply, creating thousands of new jobs, and there are thousands more to come.

Thank goodness our community colleges are working with industry in these areas because what we find is that when people graduate from high school or maybe even college, they don't necessarily have the skills to qualify for these good, high-paying jobs. If there is one aspect we ought to all be able to agree on, it is that we need to modernize our work-training programs so that we can help people gain those skills so they can earn a good income as a result.

We also need to expedite natural gas exports, and that is not only for economic reasons and job-creating reasons at home. We have seen Russia using natural gas--and the stranglehold it has on Ukraine--as a weapon. One of the things we can do to help the people of Ukraine and to help our allies in Europe is to provide a long-term source of energy through another route other than through Russian pipelines.

We also should approve the Keystone XL Pipeline, which will complete this pipeline from Canada all the way across the United States. The terminus would be in southeast Texas, where that oil would be refined into gasoline and jet fuel and create a lot of jobs in the process. Then we need to consider proposals that would incentivize American businesses, small and large, to hire veterans.

I have been discussing these amendments all week, and I have been calling on the majority leader to allow these amendments to come to the floor and to provide an opportunity for a vote. As I said, there are now currently more than 70 different amendments and ideas that have been filed that are just waiting on the majority leader, who is the one who basically has complete discretion over whether or not those votes will actually occur. We have been imploring him to allow a vote on these amendments, but it appears--and I don't know if there is really any other conclusion you can draw--the majority leader has a different priority. His top priority, it appears, is for show votes on bills that either aren't going to go anywhere, because they are not going to be taken up by the House of Representatives, or that really treat the symptom rather than solve the underlying problem.

As we read in the New York Times and elsewhere, it is the intention of the majority leader and the Democratic leadership in the Senate to schedule a series of show votes that basically are designed to change the subject from the failed policies of this administration--notably ObamaCare. Of course, one of those is going to be to make it easier for the trial bar to file class action lawsuits when it comes to gender pay disparity, something that is already against the law. The majority leader and his allies are going to lift the cap on damages and subject small and large businesses alike to class action lawsuits.

You don't have to take my word for it. All you have to do is read the New York Times. Here is what they reported last week:

The proposals have little chance of passing. But Democrats

concede that making new laws is not really the point. Rather,

they are trying to force Republicans to vote against them.

For that matter, the majority leader himself has acknowledged that these ideas were developed in collaboration with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the political arm of our Democrat friends in the Senate.

So it is pretty clear what is happening here. This is not a majority leader--or a majority, for that matter--in search of solutions to the problems that plague our country, particularly slow economic growth and high joblessness, and the highest percentage of people who have dropped out of the workforce since World War II. This has nothing to do with helping the American people. What it does have to do with is making proposals that would actually make the economy worse.

For example, the Congressional Budget Office said the proposed minimum wage increase--a 40-percent increase in the minimum wage--would likely destroy \1/2\ million to 1 million jobs because the money has to come from somewhere. Small businesses, if they are going to be forced to pay 40 percent more for their workforce, are going to have to cut somewhere else, and what they are going to cut is jobs.

Needless to say, notwithstanding the fact that we are seeing the majority leader and the majority party engaged in pure political posturing, what they are actually proposing is going to make things worse, not better.

There is also the so-called Paycheck Fairness Act, which really should be called the ``Trial Lawyers Bonanza'' bill. This is nothing more than a gift to the trial bar. As I said earlier, gender-based pay discrimination was outlawed a half century ago. It is illegal already. President Obama, more recently, signed something called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act just a few days after taking office in January of 2009. Here is what he said at that time. In 2009, he said that the Ledbetter act ``ensures equal pay for equal work.''

If that is true--and I believe it is--then why offer this additional legislation, unless it is purely a political exercise designed to posture and perhaps distract people from the things they are upset about, such as ObamaCare, leading into the midterm elections. We are now being told that unless we pass the so-called Paycheck Fairness Act, or the ``Trial Lawyer Giveaway,'' employers will be able to discriminate against women. Well, that is nonsense. That is not true. I don't know how you can say it any more strongly other than to call it the lie that it is.

Even before the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act equal pay for equal work has been the law of the land since the 1960s. As the Wall Street Journal once observed, the Paycheck Fairness Act should really be called the ``Trial Lawyer Paycheck Act'' because that is who would benefit from this bill were it to become the law of the land.

Of course, as I mentioned a moment ago, the majority leader doesn't really expect this to pass. It is part of this false narrative we have heard before, and we are going to hear it again, that somehow this is really about fairness and gender discrimination, when it is about nothing of the kind. It is solely about politics. It really is a cynical attempt to distract people from what are the most important things we could do as a Senate, which is, again, to create circumstances under which the economy would grow and jobs would be created by the private sector so people could find work and they could provide for their families. That is what we ought to be doing.

Our Democratic friends claim this political agenda they announced last week, in conjunction with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is all about giving Americans a fair shot. Yet the majority leader is refusing to give them a fair shot at finding a full-time job, and he is refusing to give my constituents in Texas--26 million of them--an opportunity to get some of their ideas heard and voted on on the Senate Floor.

As I said once, and I will say it again, there are more than 70 different amendments that have been filed to this underlying legislation that would actually provide a solution rather than a political stunt which will do nothing to solve the underlying problem. The purpose of these amendments is to help millions of people who remain unemployed or underemployed, including the 3.8 million Americans who have been unemployed for more than 6 months--3.8 million Americans out of work for more than 6 months.

This legislation does nothing to help those people, other than perhaps to help pay them for a period of time they are continuing unsuccessfully to find work. There are also 7.2 million Americans who are working part-time who would like to work full time.

If the majority leader wants to argue our amendments are a bad idea, let him do it. We will have that debate on the

merits. If he wants to promote alternative options for growing the economy and creating jobs, we will be happy to consider those and perhaps even agree with him on some of them. But to simply refuse to allow a vote on these 70-some-odd amendments is a profound insult, not to us but to our constituents and the millions of Americans who continue to suffer through the longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression.

We can do better. We need to do better. The American people deserve better than this cheap political stunt.

Madam President, I am on the floor for the 63rd consecutive week we have been in session to ask my colleagues to finally wake up to the threat of climate change. The evidence mounts of unprecedented and dangerous changes, from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report to the recent warning from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The American people demand action in ever-greater numbers. Yet Congress continues to sleepwalk, lulled by special interest influence and polluter propaganda. The influence and propaganda are spread through an apparatus of denial. This apparatus is big and artfully constructed--phony-baloney organizations designed to look and sound as if they are real, messages honed by public relations experts to sound as if they are truthful, payroll scientists whom polluters can trot out when they need them. The whole thing is big and complicated enough that when we see its parts, we could be fooled into thinking it is not all connected. But it is just like the mythological Hydra: many heads, same beast. And this denial beast pollutes our democracy just as surely as its sponsors pollute our atmosphere and oceans. Some editorial pages spread the polluter party line so consistently that it appears they have gone over and actually joined the apparatus.

The climate denial network controls the political arm of the multinational corporations, the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Polluter-funded super PACs target officials who don't fall in line-- interestingly, often Republicans, in an effort to purify the party in a coal-fired crucible.

The whole deniers' castle can look pretty daunting, but it is based on rejecting science and ignoring empirical evidence. That is a weak foundation. It won't stand. The castle is built on sand and its fall is inevitable. Remember from Apocrypha: ``But above all things Truth beareth away the victory.'' And it will.

There are cracks in the foundation already. Some leading news sources have begun to put climate denial into their policy against printing misinformation and discredited theories. They just won't print that nonsense. Many executives recognize the significance of climate change and are distancing their companies from the policies and politics of climate denial. They don't want any part of that nonsense. Many local officials are doing all they can to protect their communities from the effects of climate change. They know climate denial is nonsense.

It has been wrong that the climate change denial campaign has been so ignored by major media outlets. Media Matters found that all the major network Sunday TV talk shows in all of 2013 discussed climate change for a grand total, all combined, of 27 minutes. NBC News's ``Meet the Press'' mentioned climate change once. When several of the Sunday shows discussed climate change on February 16 of this year for a grand total of 46 minutes combined, it was more climate coverage than in the past 3 years.

It has been wrong that polluters so often got their way on the editorial page. Whether through a desire to appear fair and balanced or a willful effort to help polluters, newspapers still publish editorials or letters to the editor that dispute consensus science, disparage scientists or journalists who report the truth about climate change, and exaggerate the costs of taking action to stop it. Often, their authors have direct ties to coal and oil interests, and rarely is the connection disclosed.

As we can see from this chart, some papers do it more than others. The denier champ is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, with eight denier letters in the first 10 months of 2013. That is one every 5 weeks. I think they have actually joined the denier apparatus and are now a part of the scheme, but they are on the wrong side of history.

On the right side is the Los Angeles Times, whose editorial page last year released a note from editor Paul Thornton announcing they would no longer print climate denial letters.

Thornton's note read:

I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page;

when one does run, a correction is published. Saying

``there's no sign humans have caused climate change'' is not

stating an opinion; it's asserting a factual inaccuracy.

Reddit is one of the Internet's most popular social and news Web sites, ``the front page of the Internet.'' According to the Pew Research Center, 1 in every 17 American adults uses Reddit. Reddit science has 4 million subscribers. That is about twice the circulation of the New York Times. Reddit Science has banned posts on climate denial because, as its moderator, Dr. Nathan Allen, explained, ``We require submissions to [Reddit Science] to be related

to recent publications in reputable peer-reviewed journals, which effectively excludes any climate denial.''

The L.A. Times and Reddit Science are not alone in seeing that the climate denier castle is built on lies. More and more American corporations are responding to the facts, understanding that they are ultimately responsible to their shareholders and customers. Major utilities--for example, PG&E, the Public Service Company of New Mexico, and Exelon--all quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce after a chamber official called for putting climate science on trial like the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. The chamber may have been infiltrated and captured by the polluters, but major corporations get it: Coke and Pepsi, UPS and FedEx, GM and Ford, Google and Apple, Walmart--we can go on and on. The denier castle is crumbling.

Many of the businesses getting serious about reducing carbon pollution are actually based in States that are represented in Congress by Members who won't take the problem seriously at all. Coca-Cola, headquartered in Georgia, says:

We recognize climate change is a critical challenge facing

our planet, with potential impacts on biodiversity, water

resources, public health and agriculture. . . . Beyond the

effects on the communities we serve, we view climate change

as a potential business risk, understanding that it could

likely have direct and indirect effects on our business.

Texas- and Maryland-based Lockheed Martin states:

From 2007 through 2011, Lockheed Martin reduced its

absolute carbon emissions by 30 percent, and continues to

focus on carbon emission reductions by championing energy

conservation and efficiency measures in our facilities.

Sprint, the mobile carrier headquartered in Kansas, gets it.

We understand that climate change is a critical issue and

that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is an important goal.

Because Sprint is a large corporation with thousands of

locations, millions of customers and billions of dollars in

operating costs, we have many opportunities to reduce global

greenhouse gas emissions.

The denier castle is crumbling at the local level too. Scores of locally elected officials are fighting to slow climate change and protect their residents, even if in Congress their Congressman won't listen. One of those local leaders is Mayor Frank Cownie of Des Moines, whom I met on my recent trip to Iowa. Iowans are taking climate change seriously, and Mayor Cownie is one of over 1,000 mayors represented on this map all across the country who have signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. Their pledge is to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol emission reduction targets in their own cities and press their State governments and the Federal Government to enact meaningful greenhouse gas reduction policies.

Seventy-eight current and former mayors from Florida have signed on. With over 1,000 miles of coastline, Florida is at serious risk from sea-level rise. According to the World Resources Institute, of all the people and all the housing in America threatened by sea-level rise, 40 percent is in Florida.

Thirty-one former and current mayors from Texas have also signed on to the climate agreement. Texans are waking up to the threat of climate change. A recent poll showed that roughly 55 percent of Texans say the United States should reduce greenhouse gas emissions regardless of whether other countries do the same.

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, our former Republican colleague from this Chamber, understands the benefits of cleaner energy. He fought to keep in Kansas his State's renewable portfolio standard, which encourages utilities to ramp up generation of renewable electricity. The standard has already helped create thousands of Kansas jobs.

Governor Steve Beshear of Kentucky, a coal-producing State, has taken a commonsense stance on climate change that defends the well-being of his State. He said:

[W]e have to acknowledge our commitment to address

greenhouse gas emissions, while stressing the need for a

rational, flexible regulatory approach.

I have to say I agree with him. I stand ready and many of us stand ready on this side to work with coal-State colleagues to ease their transition away from a polluting fossil fuel economy.

When we think of what the costs are going to be to all of us of failing to address this problem, the cost of easing the transition for those who will suffer from it is easily worth undertaking. But to do any of that, we first have to break through the barricade of lies built around Congress in Washington. We can't keep pretending this isn't real. That is why once a week for over 60 weeks I have come to the floor to press this point. It is real. It is happening. It is not going to go away if we ignore it.

There is one thing and one thing only that prevents our action, and that one thing is the politics of the Republican Party. There is one thing and one thing only that makes this the politics of the Republican Party, and that one thing is the special influence of the polluters. But against the relentless facts and science, against Mother Nature's relentless truth, that castle is built on sand and will fall. But above all things, truth beareth away victory.

For the sake of our democracy, for the sake of our future, for the sake of our honor, it is time for us to wake up.

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

Madam President, I rise to talk a little bit today about the Affordable Care Act and its benefit to America's women. I want to thank Senators Murphy, Boxer, and Whitehouse who have organized a few of us to come to the floor today. They will be on the floor later this afternoon.

But with so much discussion in the news about the recent completion of the March enrollment period--over 7 million people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act through the exchanges--I feel it is a good time to look at some of the benefits of the ACA, but also where there is more work to do.

I know the Presiding Officer has been very focused on ``where there is more work to do.'' I applaud the Presiding Officer for that. I will talk about some of those issues as well. But first, let me start with a couple of Virginia stories because we hear stories from our constituents about the Affordable Care Act.

There is a 27-year-old woman in Charlottesville who was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Before the ACA, her previous insurance plan refused to cover her surgery because cancer was a preexisting condition. She is now enrolled in a health plan under the ACA, and her doctor and hospital where she is planning the surgery were confirmed to be in the provider network.

In Alexandria, VA, there is a woman by the name of Aqualyn Laury. She is 43 years old. She suffered a stroke and a heart attack at a young age and had been on a preexisting condition insurance plan that was extremely expensive for some time. With her coverage scheduled to end, Aqualyn recently enrolled in coverage through the health insurance marketplace. She found a plan through the marketplace with a reputable company with a premium of approximately $245 a month, with copays and deductibles that were easy to understand.

Angelette Harrell from Norfolk was able to purchase a plan on the exchange. Now, she had a problem with ACA because she could not work the Web site. But she did not give up. She called the phone number. She was able to find a plan that is $85 a month with a tax credit. She works in a care facility for adults with autism. She says she could not afford a plan that would have been $280 a month without the tax credit. Because she is under 200 percent of the poverty level, she gets a credit, and she gets a plan for $85 a month. That makes her a more reliable employee. She said: ``It felt great. I finally got insured.''

She was able to enroll. I will tell a story about another great Virginia woman, my wife, and her experience with the Affordable Care Act. We had to buy insurance on the open market for the first time as a family in the summer of 2012. Like any good husband who wants to get something done right, I asked my wife to do it.

My wife comparison shopped with a couple of insurance companies. Two insurance companies told my wife: We can give you insurance, but we can only give you insurance for four of your five family members because of preexisting conditions--one because of me and one because of one of my kids. We have to be about the healthiest family in the United States. The only hospitalizations our family of five have ever had are the three times for child birth for my wife.

Yet insurance companies told her when she called in that we--boy, I tell you, do not tell my wife we can insure four of your five family members--an important safety tip. They told her that. She said: That is now against the law.

The company said: No, it is not. This is what we do.

Well, talk to your supervisor and call me back. It is against the law.

The company had to call back in both instances within a few hours and say: You are right. It is against the law. Here is a quote for your entire family.

The ACA is helping women and families in all circumstances, people who are working in low-income jobs and cannot afford insurance or people who are well off like me but need protection from the former practice of denying people for preexisting conditions.

Here are some ways the ACA works for women in particular. The law eliminates the ability of insurers to charge higher rates due to gender. Do you know that the unfair practice of charging women more, a gender rating system, was resulting in women in this country paying $1 billion more in annual premiums than men prior to the passing of the ACA. That is now illegal. Nearly 30 million women are receiving free coverage for comprehensive women's preventive services, including diabetes, cancer screening, contraception, and family planning. That is an important benefit for women.

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, both women and men are free from lifetime annual limits on insurance coverage in 10 essential health benefits, like hospital visits and prescription drugs. It is not only about health, the ACA is also helping the financial health of women and families. Insurance companies under the ACA are now subject to a national rate review provision if they want to increase premiums higher than 10 percent. In 2012 alone, those rate reviews saved 6.8 million Americans an estimated $1.2 billion in premiums just in 1 year.

Insurance companies are also required to spend their premium dollars in a smart way. They have to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on patient care and quality improvement. That is at least 85 percent for large insurers. In 2013--just in calendar year 2013--8.5 million Americans received rebates averaging $100 per family because of this particular provision.

An estimated 3.1 million young Americans are able to stay on family policies--that is also affecting my family in a positive way--up until age 26. Families with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the poverty line are eligible for tax credits. So as an example, a family of four in Virginia making $50,000 can access a health plan with premiums as low as $48 a month--health care for your family for less than your cell phone bill, for less than your cable bill. This is remarkable. Plans are required to limit family's out-of-pocket health care costs to less than $12,700 a year.

Like the Presiding Officer, I am a fixer; I am not a repealer. I think there are a lot of fixings that are still needed in the Affordable Care Act and, frankly, in our health care system generally, not just in the ACA. There is more that we can do to make the ACA work better for women and families.

Medicaid expansion is an example, a critical step that my State, Virginia, has yet to take. Without Medicaid expansion, uninsured women will face a coverage gap. With Medicaid expansion, over 400,000 Virginians will receive health care coverage. The ACA was designed to provide subsidies and tax credits to individuals and families who are making between 138 and 400 percent of the poverty level. But without Medicaid expansion, it is these families--working people--who remain uninsured.

We also have to work on some proposals to continue to improve affordability and choice for all consumers. The Presiding Officer has led an effort with others to put a number of positive reforms on the table. Let me mention a couple that I am very excited about: The Expanded Consumer Choice Act, S. 1729, would create a new tier of coverage, copper plans, and would give people shopping for health insurance more options to meet their family's needs.

Everybody's financial and health situation is different. So more options are great because that gives people more ability to meet their particular needs. That is a very important piece of legislation. The Presiding Officer played a leadership role in it.

I supported expanding the small business tax credit to incentivize more businesses to participate in the tax credit program, to make it easier to access and easier for the small businesses to use. One I am particularly focused on is that we need to close the family glitch loophole. That is not a technical term, the family glitch loophole. The Affordable Care Act says an employee is eligible for subsidized health coverage through the new exchanges if their employer does not offer ``affordable coverage'', which is defined as more than 9.5 percent of the employee's household income.

But the way the law is written, the affordability definition only applies to the price for the employee, not for the family coverage that an employer may offer. So if an employer does not offer affordable family coverage, there is no eligibility for a subsidy for that particular very important coverage, since most people's families are covered through their employer plan. I think that is an important thing we should fix.

So look. There are plenty of things to fix. There are plenty of things about our health care system outside of the Affordable Care Act that we ought to be focusing on and fixing. But repealing the Affordable Care Act, as some colleagues in this body and in the House continue to advocate, would mean turning back on all of these advances: Letting women be discriminated against because of gender, letting families be turned away because of preexisting conditions, saying to folks: Do not worry, you are not going to get a rebate; we can charge whatever premium we want.

The last thing we need to do is repeal the ACA or to go into the homes of nearly 10 million Americans who have received coverage and yank that coverage back from them and put them back out into the wilderness of the individual market where they were not protected before. What we need to do is to be embrace the good and embrace the fixes to make it better. That is what I certainly intend to do working with my colleagues.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, the numbers are in--over 7 million Americans have enrolled through the health exchanges around the Nation.

When we passed the Affordable Care Act 4 years ago, projections were that we would hit the 7 million mark of enrollees at the close of the first year of enrollment. We have exceeded those numbers. We have exceeded those numbers even though we had a very rough rollout of the exchanges and people were frustrated when they couldn't get information as quickly as they wanted. But Americans wanted insurance, and they knew they could get affordable coverage, so they stuck with it and now we know that, in fact, over 7 million have enrolled.

When we see the final numbers, those numbers are going to go up because there were a lot of people in the process of signing up online on March 31 and the processing has not been completed. So we will see more. Plus, we have the Medicaid expansion, which is going to bring millions more with health insurance coverage than we had before.

Over the last 4 years we have seen incredible progress and help going out to all Americans with their health coverage and their health costs. No longer do we have preexisting conditions. A family who has a child with asthma doesn't have to worry whether that asthma will be considered a preexisting condition to full coverage. A woman does not have to worry about having a child being a preexisting condition to full coverage. Parents can keep their adult children on their insurance policies until the age of 26. There are no longer any caps on insurance. Many Americans thought they had insurance coverage only to go through a serious illness and find their insurance had a cap that did not cover all the expenses. No longer do families have to worry about being forced into bankruptcy because of an illness or an injury.

Our seniors now have much stronger coverage under Medicare, with preventive care covered without any deductibles. Prescription drug coverage is now more complete with that so-called doughnut hole--that coverage gap--being filled. And the solvency of the Medicare trust fund has been extended by a decade.

Small business owners have a choice of the types of plans they want. They do not have to worry about one person in their employment getting sick during the year and causing an astronomical increase in their premiums. They also have help and affordability in paying for their health insurance for their employees.

Community health centers have been expanded and offer such coverage as prenatal care. In my own State of Maryland we are seeing the low birth weight baby numbers declining and infant mortality rates going down. We are now providing more pediatric dental services within the community. That is all as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

So we now have passed the March 31 date and the first year of enrollment. Many Americans now have affordable quality health care and a choice. They have a good product at a reasonable cost.

Everybody hears the numbers, but I want to go through a few--and I have literally hundreds--of the letters I have received from real people whose real lives have been affected. They are one of those 7.1 million people, and we could read millions of accounts just like this. This is from Dr. Michael L. of Cecil County in a letter to the Baltimore Sun. He said:

My wife and I would like to thank President Barack Obama

for helping us save almost $4,000 a year on health care. I am

61 years old with a preexisting condition of asthma, which is

under control with medication. Yet before the Affordable Care

Act, my insurance company felt it necessary to charge me 25

percent more for my insurance coverage. I'm sure there are

many others like myself with preexisting conditions who will

see a savings on their coverage. The public should know that

since Fox News and the GOP would have us believe ObamaCare

helps no one and will cost everyone more.

This is from Colleen F. of Anne Arundel County, and she posted on our Facebook.

Senator--I am 26 years old and have been on COBRA paying

$570 a month for coverage because of a pre-existing

condition--asthma. I want to thank you for fighting for the

ACA!! I applied recently . . . and was accepted into the

program. I now pay $243 a month with a $500 deductible! Thank

you thank you thank you! Affordable health care is a human

right--thank you for fighting on my behalf!

Kelly ``M'' wrote:

I have a new plan. I haven't had insurance for years. When

I applied for insurance before, I was denied for pre-existing

conditions, even for plans with huge deductibles. I signed up

on the Maryland Healthcare Exchange back in October, and by

January 1st, I was holding an insurance card from Carefirst

Blueshield and have already had my first doctor's

appointment. It works. I am proof. And I'm so grateful that I

can take care of myself with dignity without having to go to

the ER whenever I'm sick or have to spend half my paycheck at

an urgent care center. I can do all of the preventative

measures that I have been putting off, and get back on the

road to health. It's a good feeling.

Pam S. of Frederick County, MD, wrote:

My daughter and I met with a Navigator from the ``Door to

HealthCare'' . . . to discuss applying for health care. We

had been having problems with the enrollment process. I had

been paying for a separate plan for her and now she is paying

$55 less per month. Now my daughter gets to have a

comprehensive plan, cheaper than before and without any

interruption on her coverage. Thank you!

Ryan, from Prince George's County, has aged out of her parents' insurance. Ryan was suffering from asthma and a sinus infection, but she was unable to afford a doctor's visit on her own. After attending a local Affordable Care Act information session, she logged onto the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange and was able to go through the entire process and pick an affordable health plan. She is now insured and able to get the treatment she needs.

Ryan is 26 years old. Those under 26 can be on their parents' policy. We talk about young people who think they will never need insurance. I was in downtown Baltimore over the weekend at a fair where we were enrolling people in the Affordable Care Act. I saw many people of Ryan's age--young people over 26 years of age, who were there to find out whether this was right for them. When they left, they held an insurance card. They had enrolled because they found out how reasonable the price was for a young person to get comprehensive coverage.

I have quite a few more, and maybe on a later date I will come back and read some of the other letters I have received. But the point I want to bring up is we have fundamentally changed the health care system from a system that was basically a sick system--only if you got sick, figured out how to pay your bills, maybe you went through bankruptcy--to a health care system where we keep people healthy, where we provide for comprehensive preventive health care so people can stay out of emergency rooms and hospitals.

Yes, we have benefited those who had no health insurance. Millions of people now have coverage who didn't have coverage before the Affordable Care Act. We have brought them into the system. They don't have to fear bankruptcy. They can take care of themselves, and they can do it in a more cost-effective way for all of us.

We have helped our seniors. No question about it. They now have more comprehensive benefits, and they have a system that is on a more stable financial footing.

But we also have helped those who already had insurance. We have helped them by giving them a better product, by making sure the premiums insurance companies charge are used for patients' benefits and not excessive profits. They must spend 80 to 85 percent; otherwise, they have to give a rebate.

We have gotten people out of the emergency room. I was asked on C- SPAN today: Well, aren't we helping the providers? After all, people who go to hospitals now are more likely to pay their bills. Absolutely right. But guess who paid for that uncompensated care. Those of us who had insurance. Our premiums were higher as a result of people not paying their bills. Well, now they are going to be paying their bills. First of all, they are going to stay out of the hospital which will save us all money. But if they need to be in the hospital, they will have the insurance coverage to pay for it.

The Affordable Care Act has worked for all of us by bringing down the growth rate of health care costs, by making the system more efficient. Today I think we can acknowledge the fundamentals are sound. People are taking advantage of it. We hope, as we go forward, more and more will.

One final point. When Medicare Part D was passed and we projected the number of seniors who would take advantage of it, we hit about 70 percent of our projection in the first year. On the Affordable Care Act and the health exchanges, we are over 100 percent. This program is working. People know it. The more they know about it, the more they like what they see.

Madam President, I yield the floor.