Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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

Mr. President, to her high school classmates it was pretty clear what kind of person Kayla Mueller was going to turn out to be. As a teenager she took up the causes of the disenfranchised and the dispossessed, such as when she joined a campaign to stop the city of Flagstaff from using recycled wastewater to make snow on a set of peaks the Hopi people considered to be sacred. She later went to the most dangerous place on Earth because people there needed help. She saw suffering on an unimaginable scale, brought on by a vicious civil war inside Syria and Iraq, and she wanted to make it better.

No one is responsible for her death except for ISIL. They killed her, as they did James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Abdul-Rahman, Peter Kassig, and thousands of individual innocent Iraqis and Syrians over the course of the last year.

It has been a long time since the world has seen such evil. This is a brutal inhuman terrorist organization

that today is a threat to the region in which they prowl, but without question could pose a threat to the United States if their march is allowed to go unchecked.

Like the Presiding Officer, every time I hear of a new attack or a new execution carried out by ISIL, my blood boils, I get furious, and I commit myself to doing everything within our power to stamp them out. But I also remember that as justified a response as it is, fury is not a strategy; revenge is not security.

If we are going to defeat ISIL, we need to act with our heads, not just with our hearts. And that means Congress needs to pass a war authorization that includes a strategy for victory--a strategy that learns from a small little creature called the planarian flatworm. I want to tell you about flatworms for a second. This is going to sound a little strange, but I will bring it back here.

These flatworms are extraordinary little things that live in ponds, under logs, and in moist soil. What is amazing about these flatworms is that if you split one of them in two, if you cut it in half, both halves regenerate into new flatworms. In fact, if you cut it into four pieces, all four pieces can regrow into new flatworms. It means if for whatever reason you are trying to get rid of flatworms, cutting them into pieces does more harm than good. If you take a knife to it, you actually create more flatworms than you destroy.

So why am I talking about this? Because they are a perfect object lesson of the simple truth that if you attack a problem the wrong way, you might not just leave the problem unsolved, you might actually make it worse. If you use the wrong tool to try to eradicate flatworms, you just end up with a lot more of them.

In the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, we were told we were going to be treated as liberators. We were told we would be out of Iraq in a few years. When that failed, our invasion turned the one-headed monster of Saddam Hussein into a two-headed monster of competing Sunni and Shiite insurgencies.

Then we were told more troops would do the trick. And it worked, for only as long as tens of thousands of Americans were patrolling the sands of Iraq. But ultimately our occupation was quietly breeding a new brand of an even more lethal insurgency, one that turned into the terrorist group we are fighting today.

Put simply, ISIL in its current form would not exist if we had not put massive ground troops into the region in the first place. Our presence in Iraq, our mishandling of the occupation, became bulletin board material for terrorist recruiters. Iraq became, in the CIA's words, the ``cause celebre'' of the international extremist network. We killed a terrorist, and the next day two more showed up.

Let me be clear, because I don't want people to twist my words here. America is not responsible for this evil ideology, and our troops are not to blame for ISIL. No one forgets that Al Qaeda attacked us and killed 3,000 of our people before we invaded Iraq. But do we believe having hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers occupying territory in the Middle East since then has succeeded in making us safer?

We have killed a lot of terrorists over the last 13 years, and yet there are more of them, in more places, with an even more radical agenda today than ever before.

Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates understood the lesson of the flatworm when he said, upon his departure from the Department of Defense, any future Secretary who proposed putting ground troops back into the Middle East should ``have their head examined.''

So for me, as we debate this new war authorization against ISIL, I have a bottom line: We cannot authorize a strategy that could result in American combat troops going back to the Middle East.

If this President or the next President puts our soldiers into the Middle East to fight ISIL, they would serve with bravery and honor. But an intervention of this scale would ultimately create more terrorists than it destroyed. And to the extent we drove back ISIL, it would only be temporary, lasting only as long as our troops were there.

Why? These extremist groups such as ISIL exist not because of a military vacuum but because of a political and an economic vacuum. They prey upon disenfranchised young men who see no future for themselves in societies with massive, crippling hunger, poverty, and destitution.

These groups work best when autocratic or sectarian governments marginalize and dispossess specific ethnic or religious groups, pushing them into the arms of extremists who pledge to fight the corrupt and dehumanizing status quo.

Foreign ground troops do nothing to address these underlying issues. But worse, more often than not, foreign ground troops exacerbate these motivating forces. Bloody ground wars make more economic dislocation, not less. Foreign occupations often empower divisive local leadership, such as the former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki, who pushed people toward--not away from--extremist groups. Then groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIL use this misery to brainwash young men into believing America is to blame, that we are the enemy they are yearning to fight.

That doesn't mean there isn't a role for military force in the Middle East. I have voted for an authorization in the Foreign Relations Committee that allows for the United States--our military--to go in and kill terrorists, but we simply need to understand that ultimately what military force is in the Middle East is a shaping mechanism to give us space in order to achieve the political and economic reform on the ground with our local partners such that those root causes of terrorists disappear.

American military force is useful in this fight, but it has limits. There is a decreasing marginal return and then a point where it actually flips on its head and begins to actually create more of the people we are seeking to destroy.

I have heard two arguments over the past few days as to why this AUMF shouldn't have a limitation on ground troops. First, some of my Republican friends say this kind of prohibition on ground troops would be unwise because it would telegraph to our enemies a critical tactical limitation. My response: Good.

Why do we think ISIL puts up these execution videos? Because they know the best long-term play for their desired caliphate is predicated on the United States making a mistake and rejoining a ground war in the Middle East. Recent history has taught ISIL that the best tool by far to recruit terrorists--and estimates are there are as many as 20,000 foreign fighters who have joined ISIL--is the U.S. Army in the Middle East. Thus, I have no problem being transparent with our enemy by signaling this to them; that we are going to learn from our mistakes and we are going to fight this war with tools that result in victory, not defeat.

The second argument I hear is that Congress would be overstepping our constitutional bounds by limiting the power of the President to prosecute a war. But first let's note that over and over again, starting with Congress's very first authorizations of military force passed in early American times, we have put restrictions consistently on war declarations and AUMFs. Most recently, Republicans and Democrats in the Foreign Relations Committee voted to put some pretty serious limitations on our authorization for the use of military force in Syria in the wake of chemical weapons usage. Frankly, regardless of the precedent, I would argue Congress has a constitutional responsibility to help set the strategy for war, to help guide the Nation's foreign policy.

Let's be honest. This AUMF is going to go on for 3 years, according to the limitations the President proposed, well into the next President's term. As someone who believes combat troops in the Middle East would be a mistake, I simply can't rely on President Obama's promise that he will not use ground troops against ISIL because he only has 2 more years left, and many leading Republicans have made it perfectly clear they would push a President from their party, if that is who comes next, to put troops back into the fight against ISIL. As an elected representative of the people I serve, I should get a say as to whether we have learned from our mistakes of the past 10 years.

I remember my first visit to Iraq. I was there in the bloody spring of 2007. I remember being absolutely blown

away by the capability and the bravery and the capacity of the young U.S. soldiers whom I met in places such as Baghdad, Tikrit, and Baiji. So I can understand why it is easy for some people to believe there is no enemy our soldiers can't beat, that there is no challenge they can't meet, that there is no threat they can't eliminate. I believe in American exceptionalism in my heart, but I don't think it allows us to ignore history, to avoid facts, to deny reality, and the reality is extremists in some parts of the world are like flatworms. If we come at them with the wrong weapon, we may kill one, but we will create two more.

I am pleased the Senate is finally able to debate a new war against ISIL. This debate is past due. ISIL needs to be defeated, and we deserve to honor the U.S. Constitution and step up to the plate and debate an authorization.

Make no mistake, we should pass an AUMF. ISIL is evil personified, but for us to beat them, we need an AUMF that makes it totally clear we will not simply repeat the mistakes of the past that got us into this mess in the first place.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, this is the first time I have come to the floor to speak on this issue while the Senator from Iowa has been presiding. Over the last 2 years, since the mass tragedy in my State, in Sandy Hook, CT, I have come to the floor once every week or so to give voice to victims of gun violence all across this country. I have told the story of the beautiful 6- and 7-year-olds as well as the teachers and professionals who were killed that day.

The fact is that every day across this country there are two to three Sandy Hooks that happen. There are 86 people killed by guns every day in this country, 2,600 a month, and over 30,000 a year. The statistics, unfortunately, have not compelled this body to action. We have done nothing--zero--about this national tragedy since Sandy Hook. That is a stain upon the conscience of this body that is impossible to erase. My hope is that by coming to the floor and speaking about who these people actually are, maybe it will prompt us to have a conversation about how we can make sure these numbers aren't eliminated; they are never going to go away but to make sure they are lower, that they are less than these numbers, the highest in the developed world.

Let me speak first about an extraordinary young man, 44 years old, who was killed on January 20--just about 2 weeks ago--in Boston, MA. His name was Dr. Michael Davidson. He was shot by a gunman who walked into Brigham and Women's Hospital. The gunman was the relative of someone who had been under the care of Dr. Davidson who clearly had some major illness that prompted him to think he could solve his grief by shooting the doctor who had cared for his loved one. Dr. Davidson was known at Brigham and Women's Hospital for his gentle way

with patients and their families and his willingness to operate on the most delicate hearts. He used to lie awake at night worrying about his patients. He was always receiving letters about the great care he provided. He wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon from the time he was a little boy, which is a pretty exceptional thing. As renowned as he was as a physician, what he truly will be remembered for was for being a father to three children, and he and his wife were waiting for their fourth to arrive, due this April.

At his funeral nearly 1,000 people were there to hear his wife say:

By now, you've all heard that my husband, Michael Davidson,

was a superb physician. Perhaps, most importantly, he cared

immensely for his patients and their families. That is why

the fact that a patient's family member would take Michael

away from us makes it all the more devastating.

A brilliant surgeon and a wonderful father taken away from us at age 44 in Boston, MA.

Everyone by now has heard the story from December 20, where two New York City police officers were killed by a mentally ill man who drove to New York with the intention of killing police officers. Wenjian Liu had been in this country almost 20 years to the day--an American dream story personified. His family came to this country from China to seek a better life. He came here on Christmas Eve, 1994. He wanted to be a police officer because he wanted to give back to his community. Liu once said:

I know that being a cop is dangerous but I must do it. If I

don't do it and you don't do it, then who is going to do it?

It is that kind of commitment that was shown by him that day by the very fact that he was in the car. He wasn't scheduled to work, but he volunteered to work a fill-in shift when a fellow officer was late. That is just how he was.

Rafael Ramos, otherwise known as Ralph Ramos, was in that car as well. He wanted to be a police officer so badly that when he was preparing to join the police academy, he took a petition door to door throughout his whole neighborhood asking for his neighbors to testify to his character. He is remembered as a good police officer but also as someone who shoveled all the sidewalks in his neighborhood, took his two boys to a nearby park over and over to play basketball, always with a smile on his face. He was hours away from becoming a lay chaplain. One of his dreams was to go into the ministry. He is remembered by friends and family as someone committed to his family, committed to his job, but also committed to his faith.

These two police officers were killed by a man named Ismaaiyl Brinsley. He was a deeply mentally ill man, someone who had tried to commit suicide and who had become completely isolated from his family and from his peers. When I read his story, it struck me as not completely dissimilar from the story in Newtown, CT, Adam Lanza. Adam Lanza was a deeply troubled, deeply mentally ill young man who became isolated from his peers and from his family. We can't completely understand what caused him to do what he did that day, nor what Mr. Brinsley was thinking in his head when he drove to New York to carry out those heinous murders.

What we know is we have largely abandoned the mentally ill in this country. We lock them up in prisons rather than treating their underlying illnesses. Over the course of the last half a decade, 4,000 inpatient psychiatric beds have been closed all across this country, forcing more of the mentally ill out on the streets and into prison and into crisis. You know, the Federal law authorizing the funding we send to mental health work in this country--SAMHSA, that is the agency--has not been reauthorized in a decade. We haven't even debated mental health policy on the floor of this Senate for a decade. No wonder we have a system that is in crisis.

It means in the absence of Federal leadership, private organizations are stepping up to the plate. Sandy Hook promised--the group of parents of many of those children who were killed has taken up a cause called No One Eats Alone. It is a wonderful cause in which students in high school, middle school, and elementary school cafeterias are asked to seek out one or two children who often eat alone, who are socially isolated at school, and to reach out and do small things such as sitting with them during lunch to remove some sense of social isolation that comes often with children who bring mental illness or learning disabilities to school.

That effort is admirable, and it will make a difference. But it speaks to the fact those groups have to step in and do things such as the No One Eats Alone campaign because Congress isn't stepping up to the plate and doing anything about these numbers: 31,000 a year, 2,600 a month, 86 a day. You know what my feelings are on this. I don't think it is just about mental health programming and funding. I think it is ridiculous 90 percent of Americans think you should have to go through a background check in order to buy a gun, yet we still won't move forward with expanded background checks, and the majority of Americans think that dangerous assault weapons should be for the police and for our military and not be able to get into the hands of young, troubled men such as Adam Lanza to be used in mass murder.

In the absence over the next 2 years of our ability to come to an agreement on changing our gun laws so they reflect where the vast majority of the American public is, let's at least take on the mental health crisis in this country. Let's at least decide we are going to plus-up resources for community mental health providers. We are going to rebuild inpatient capacity. We are going to recognize that as angry as we are at people such as Ismaaiyl Brinsley and of young men such as Adam Lanza, there is a story there of neglect that if we address we can lower these numbers even without changes over the next 2 years in our-- I would argue--very backward national background check laws.

I thank you for listening and some of my colleagues for being on the floor today. I know we have a number of people who want to speak. I will continue to come to the floor so my colleagues can hear the stories of people such as Officer Ramos, Officer Liu, and heroes such as Dr. Michael Davidson so that maybe the voices of these victims can prompt us to action.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Affordable Care Act is working. It is working better, frankly, than many of us who were there at its inception believed it would at this early stage in its implementation. The numbers are pretty hard to argue with. You have got now upwards of 10 million people who are on either private insurance with tax credits to help them get that coverage, or are on Medicaid through different State plans.

That is a big deal, because in just about 1 year, we have reduced the number of people without insurance by 25 percent in this country. In my State of Connecticut, which probably has the best-run exchange in the country, we have actually reduced the number of people without insurance by 50 percent.

Better news is the quality is getting better. Some of the measurements we most closely watch to decide whether people are getting better care--things such as hospital-acquired infections and readmission rates after surgery--are going down. That is really good news. Of course, maybe the best news of all is the taxpayers are saving money, an extraordinary leveling off of health care inflation.

Health care spending never goes down from year to year. We used to have 7-percent to 8-percent increases in spending on an annual basis. We are now seeing 2-percent or 3-percent increases. In fact, the lowest rate of increase since we started tracking health care spending happened in this last year. Federal taxpayers are saving, on average, $1,000 per Medicare beneficiary compared to what the Congressional Budget Office thought we would be spending when we passed the Affordable Care Act.

That does not mean we do not have a lot of work to do. But it does mean the conversation we should be having today is about perfecting the Affordable Care Act, making it work even better, not repealing the Affordable Care Act.

It is not just me. I have been down to the floor over and over again to make this case, that the numbers simply do not lie. The press, universally, perhaps, reporting on this overwhelming avalanche of data, tells us that the Affordable Care Act is working. I literally in the 5 minutes before I came to the floor did a quick search to see what people were saying. New York magazine: ``Four new studies. ObamaCare is working incredibly well.''

Forbes: ``More solid proof that ObamaCare is working.''

Washington Post: ``Despite the critics, ObamaCare works.''

Business Insider: ``Major new study says ObamaCare is working.''

Rolling Stone: ``ObamaCare: It's working.''

I could do a full 10 minutes just on the headlines that tell you the Affordable Care Act is working. But instead of talking about making it work better, today we are talking again about repealing it. The House took, I think, their 56th vote to repeal all or part of the bill. This morning several of our colleagues unveiled a proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act.

Now I give my colleagues credit. It has been 5 years. This is the first time we have seen even a memo on what would be this replacement we have been hearing a lot about. But it is still a memo, as far as I can tell. We do not have any legislative text or any CBO score. But I wanted to come to the floor and talk for a minute about what this replacement would mean.

The replacement memo we looked at this morning, offered by two of our Senate colleagues and one of our House colleagues, all really thoughtful legislators on this issue--I want to give them credit for putting this on the table. It would really mean the retraction of health care coverage for millions of Americans. People who have finally been able to afford health care because of the Affordable Care Act now would go back onto the rolls of the uninsured.

Why? Well, for two major reasons. Their plan reduces the number of people who would be eligible for the subsidies by millions, and then greatly reduces the amount of the subsidy. They admit that is the best way to get coverage, so we are not arguing any longer, at least, over whether providing tax credits in order for people to buy private insurance is the right way to go about expanding coverage. They want to lessen the amount of money we are providing in tax credits, meaning a lot less people are going to get insured. So you would have millions and millions of people who would go back onto the rolls of the uninsured, people who would once again be at the mercy of insurance companies, would lose everything, their house, their savings, their car, just because their kid got sick.

But the second thing it does is really puts insurance companies back in charge of our health care. It gets rid of the prohibition on gender rating, which is a complicated way of saying that in the old system, insurance companies charged women more just because they were women. The Affordable Care Act does not allow that any longer. But that is what we would go back to under this alternative. It used to be that insurance companies would say: You are only going to get a certain amount of insurance per year and then we cut you off. Well, for a family I know in Simsbury, CT, whose son has a fairly rare blood disorder, that meant they had to pull out of their savings every year in order to afford his expensive drugs. That discriminatory treatment would come back.

While the bill tries to address the issue of preexisting conditions, it seems to say that you would have a one-time chance to get on an affordable care policy if you had a preexisting condition. But if you did not sign up in that opening moment, in that special offer, then you would not be able to sign up later on. So if you got sick later on, it would be too late for you, or if you lost your coverage at any point, like, on average, 89 million Americans have over the last 3 years, you would not get the chance to have insurance with a preexisting condition at the same rate as people without preexisting conditions.

What this bill is about is people paying more and getting less. It is about going back to the day when people could not afford health care and they lost everything simply because they or a loved one, a spouse or a child, got sick. Never mind the fact that some of the pieces I thought we all agreed on are repealed in this proposal. The doughnut hole is an outrage, the idea that seniors who are trying to buy prescription drugs on Medicare get a little bit of coverage, then no coverage, then a lot of coverage. Middle-income seniors cannot afford that gap in coverage.

Well, the Affordable Care Act effectively eliminates the doughnut hole. That has saved seniors $11 billion since 2010. This memo we have seen from the Republican side would apparently get rid of those savings, putting the doughnut hole back, putting millions of seniors back on the hook for all of these costs when they lose coverage. This effort to replace the Affordable Care Act is a giant step backwards for millions of American families.

Here is the conversation we should be having: We should be talking about how to make this law work even better. It is a major concession, frankly, from the Republicans that tax credits are the appropriate way to get people more insurance. It is a concession that we should be at least addressing the issue of discrimination against sick people. But the protection they are offering is minimal, and the expense that would be passed on to seniors, families, hard-working Americans is immense.

So I am looking forward to seeing this introduced as a piece of legislation. I am looking forward to seeing the CBO score on it. Clearly the American people do not want us to have this debate over repeal any longer. They are sick and tired of it. They want us to be talking about creating jobs, protecting this country, making college more affordable, and making small, meaningful changes to the Affordable Care Act to make it work even better.

The data does not lie. The numbers do not lie. The increasing stories of people all across this country who are benefitting from the Affordable Care Act do not lie. The Affordable Care Act is working. We should stop having this tired debate over repealing it and replacing it with something that is much lesser coverage for much more cost and invest in a conversation about how to make sure the good news continues about the Affordable Care Act working for millions of Americans.

I yield the floor.

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 know we are about to bring some final votes on Keystone to the floor, but I want to take a few minutes to speak on the topic we will be focused on next week, and that is the impending crisis at the Department of Homeland Security should we not continue to fund their operations, which matters greatly to a State such as Connecticut--a State with expansive coastline, with natural disasters as part of our recent history, and with a close connection to some of the potential epicenters for terrorist activity and attacks, New York City being at the top of the list.

It was just 3 weeks ago that terrorists staged a horrific attack in downtown Paris. Before they were stopped by law enforcement, dozens of people were killed or injured and the world was given another reminder of the threats that exist all around us. Across Europe countries stepped up their alert, increasing their law enforcement presence, raiding suspected terror cells, and requesting the assistance of the United States to help track down the people who carried out the attacks.

Astoundingly, though, here at home, it seems as though there are a lot of Republicans in Congress who would rather talk about deporting children who were brought to this country without documentation rather than talk about funding the very agency that every day seems to keep our homeland safe from threats.

Even as our allies in Europe look for ways to improve their security, the House of Representatives, in particular, has told us that the only way we can fund the Department of Homeland Security--keeping this country safe--is to start deporting young boys and girls who are here trying to make it in the United States.

The United States is no stranger to the types of attacks that happened in France. An Ohio man was arrested 3 weeks ago when it was discovered he was plotting to blow up the United States Capitol. I am certain we have not already forgotten about the Boston marathon bombing or what happened before that in Oklahoma City. The threats against this country continue to evolve.

Why should we play politics with the agency that is most responsible for responding and getting this country ready for those threats? It is the height of irresponsibility to suggest, as some of my colleagues have, that shutting down the Department of Homeland Security--the Department responsible for protecting the United States from terrorist attacks--would be no big deal.

This is what the Secretary of Homeland Security has said. Last week he said:

. . . as long as we are on a CR, we cannot engage in new

starts, new spending, new initiatives, new grants to state

and local law enforcement to fund homeland security missions.

We can't put in place the independent panel that recommended

changes to the secret service. We can't do a lot of things

for border security. Our counterterrorism efforts are

limited.

In 28 days, the Department of Homeland Security, the agency charged with border security, aviation security, cyber security, Presidential security, and counterterrorism efforts, is going to run out of funding. Instead of working with the Senate, which overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill to fix our immigration system and secure our border, Republicans are willing to hold up this funding bill so they can deport DREAMers against the President's Executive order. It is not just irresponsible, it is dangerous.

In my State, as I said, it matters greatly. Over the past several years, we have seen, as the northeast has been battered by hurricanes and superstorms and blizzards, the indispensable nature of agencies funded in the Department of Homeland Security budget. Failing to pass this bill would delay upgrades to critical and necessary emergency communication systems for first responders in my State that are responding to emergencies and disasters. Whether we like it or not, they are happening with greater frequency.

Fortunately, thanks to the leadership of Senator Mikulski and Senator Shaheen, there is a path forward. Yesterday they introduced a clean, full-year funding bill that has been endorsed by every Democratic Senator. This is the same bipartisan, bicameral bill that was negotiated by the House and the Senate last year.

This agreement includes critical assistance, critical increases in funding for our border security, cyber security, air and maritime surveillance, and biological and explosive detection at our borders. All of these things keep us

safe at a time when we know that terrorism is a more real threat than ever, not just to the United States but to our partner countries all around the world.

Last week, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution I was proud to have written, declaring that we stand in solidarity with the people in France, that we mourn the loss of innocent victims and condemn the atrocity of these attacks.

I submit that just as important as our words, which we all came together to support, are our deeds. Will our response now be to engage in a partisan fight over immigration or do we come together as Republicans and Democrats to fund the law enforcement personnel who are charged with keeping our citizens safe?

Next week when we return to this body, I strongly urge my Republican colleagues to quickly bring a clean, bipartisan Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill to the floor.

I yield the floor.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

I come to the floor to support the amendment which is the pending business on the floor today.

This is only my second session in the Senate, but I imagine that it means something to be Senate bill 1. It probably means something even more to be Senate bill 1 in the new Republican-majority Senate. Why? Because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle had 8 years in the minority to think about what should be the first bill, the No. 1 priority of this new Republican Senate, 8 years to think about every problem American families are facing, to vet every possible solution to these problems and decide what is going to be the first bill we are going to debate to make this country a better place. There were a lot of measures the new majority could have chosen. We could have been sitting here talking about a tax cut for the middle class or we could have been talking about a proposal to make college more affordable. We could have been talking about a proposal to grow small businesses all across the country. But we are not talking about those things. After 8 years of stewing over the problems America faces, Senate bill 1 is an oil pipeline.

As my colleagues who are in opposition to the underlying bill have said, this isn't just any oil pipeline; this is a pipeline to ship foreign oil right through the heartland of the United States, most likely on its way to foreign customers. And it is not just any oil; it is the dirtiest oil you can dream up.

Building this pipeline and increasing the development of tar sands in Canada is the pollution equivalent, according to one study, of putting 4 million new cars on North American roads. But not to worry, say many of the proponents of the bill. Admittedly, many dispute some of those underlying studies. But the real point here is jobs. It is about creating jobs here in the United States.

This is a sight which is familiar to every single American. It is a McDonald's franchise. On average, a McDonald's franchise employs about 30 to 40 people. That is nothing to sneeze at. Thirty to forty people having jobs is a big deal. But the Senate doesn't normally worry itself with debating the establishment of a new McDonald's franchise. It is a big deal to a local community, but it is not something that necessarily moves the needle in terms of the national economy. Yet the Keystone Pipeline would create the same number of permanent full-time jobs as the average McDonald's franchise. Yes, it creates construction jobs, and I don't want to discount the fact that it puts a lot of people to work building the pipeline. But do you know what also puts people to work? Building a new high school. Building a new rail line. Improving our crumbling infrastructure. That puts a lot of people to work as well. In the end, the added value to the economy of a new school or a new bridge or a new rail line dwarfs that of a pipeline which, without the adoption of the Markey amendment to be offered later, will quite possibly just take the oil from one country and send it through the United States to another country--never mind all of the environmental side effects of continuing to develop this oil.

So I am going to oppose the underlying bill, but I am here to support Senator Franken's amendment because if we are going to approve this pipeline, let's do everything we can to ensure that even though we are only going to create 40 full-time jobs, that we are creating as many part-time jobs as possible. That is why it makes sense to require that the iron and steel that are going into this pipeline come from America. And we know we need to pass this amendment because Keystone has already promised that half of the steel and half of the iron is going to come from overseas companies. Mr. President, 330,000 tons of pipeline is going to come from overseas companies.

This concept is not new. We do it all the time. We just passed the WRDA bill with bipartisan consensus. ``Buy American'' provisions were in there. The American Recovery Act--``Buy American'' provisions were in there. We have had laws on the books for a long time that apply ``Buy American'' provisions to private companies that are doing business in and around industries regulated or funded by the U.S. Government.

So this amendment will just make sure that at least in the short-term we are going to put a few more Americans to work, even if we are not going to do anything about the rather paltry economic numbers in the long run.

I am supporting the Franken amendment, and I encourage my colleagues to support it as well.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his advocacy on this issue. I know we are approaching a vote, so I will be brief in my comments. Not to repeat those of Senator Blumenthal, but he is exactly right--there are absolutely no questions about the qualifications of Dr. Vivek Murthy to do this job.

In addition to his professional background and his teaching responsibilities, he also has a very impressive history of commitment to international public health--building two international organizations, one that empowers hundreds of youth in the United States and India to educate over 45,000 students on HIV prevention and another one which works in rural health partnerships in India training young women to be health educators and counselors for thousands of patients.

That is a pretty impressive record, when you combine it with what Senator Blumenthal already laid out, for a still fairly young physician, someone who will bring an enormous amount of energy to this job at a moment we need it. Ebola is at the top of the list as to the reasons why we need a Surgeon General now, but we are in a remarkable period of contraction when it comes to health care spending increases. Health care costs grew by 3.6 percent in 2013, which is the slowest rate on record since the government started keeping track in 1960.

Frankly, a sound, good, sensible public health policy has a lot do with our

ability to continue curtailing the rate of health care spending increases. Why? Because obesity rates in this country--even if they were just trimmed by 5 percent, that could save $160 billion over the next 10 years. Smoking, which will hopefully be a centerpiece of the Surgeon General's advocacy plan, contributes about $133 billion in direct costs.

If we want to do something about the size of the health care budget in this country--which is something the Republicans and Democrats believe in--then we need a Surgeon General because that is the person who is leading our public health conversation all across the country, eminently qualified and desperately needed. I am glad we are having a vote here today.

Let me say just a few words about this controversy that has surrounded his choice. The criticism effectively amounts to comments that Dr. Murthy made saying two things, generally--one, that he thinks gun violence is a problem; two, that he generally agrees with where the President stands on this issue.

Let's take the second first. It is not surprising that the President is choosing people to be part of this administration who agree with him on a variety of issues. But, as many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle have said, the Surgeon General doesn't set gun violence policy in this country, and so there shouldn't be a question as to whether he can separate his views on guns from his job, just as there is not a question as to whether Secretary Castro or Secretary Burwell can do the same. But it is also not surprising that he has those views because the President is entitled to pick people for important positions who generally think the same way he does on issues that are relevant to the job they are taking but also on issues that aren't in that particular appointees's responsibilities.

But let's take the first criticism--that he made these statements about guns being a public health problem, gun violence being an issue that we should confront. If a nominee for Federal office is unqualified simply because they have pointed out that gun violence is an issue we should work on, then this debate is so far removed from what is happening on the ground floor of this country as to possibly be irretrievable for the purposes of commonsense debate. That is what Dr. Murthy essentially said, that gun violence is a problem we should be working on. If we can't even get to point where we all agree on that general notion, separate and aside from whether you agree with what he thinks we should do about it or what somebody else thinks we should do about it, well, maybe this is more hopeless than I thought.

I am glad we are going to move forward on a vote on Dr. Murthy today. He is qualified to do this job, and he has an admirable background in public health policy, in the practice of medicine, and in the teaching of medicine. We need a Surgeon General right now, whether it is to confront Ebola or to help us continue on a path toward controlling health care costs.

Separate and aside from this nomination, let's agree to agree that Dr. Murthy is right that gun violence is a problem that this country should be addressing. No matter what your view on how we get there, that is something we should all be able to unite around.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum

Mr. President, in January of last year, I walked onto the Senate floor for the second time in my life. The first time that I got to be on the Senate floor was in 1995 when I was an intern for my Senator, Chris Dodd. Back then it was a little bit easier for interns to come here, and he brought me down to the Senate floor one afternoon.

I knew what I wanted to do. I had a small handful of people I wanted to meet. I don't know if I ever told this to Tom, but I wanted to meet Tom Harkin, and I got to do that. Twenty years ago he was a giant in the Senate. The one point I wish to make is this--I had the chance to serve with Tom on the HELP Committee and I have seen his legislative ability and the respect he commands here, but I have only known him for 2 years.

Anyway, the point I want to make is that the effect he has had on the legislative process stands as an achievement in and of itself. I would argue that I am one of tens of thousands of public servants who decided to go into this line of work, decided to care about the kind of things I care about because I watched Tom Harkin on TV growing up.

I came from a family that was nonpolitical. My parents were both registered Republicans. There is no genetic reason why I do this other than seeing people like Tom fight on behalf of the disabled and the disenfranchised and the dispossessed. He gave me the idea that there was some worth to being in this line of work. If you grew up after Vietnam, you were taught this was crooked or not worth being a part of, and then there was a handful of people like Tom Harkin who told you it was worth being a part of.

The legacy that Senator Harkin will have--whether it is the farm bill, the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the Workforce and Investment Act, that is all you need to leave this place fulfilled. But to think there are tens of thousands of people who, like me, are doing this kind of work and trying to keep up the legacy you are going to leave is something to be proud of as well. I feel lucky to be a Member of this body in part because I got to meet Tom Harkin 20 years ago, I was able to follow his lead, and I was able to be inspired by him.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I add my congratulations to Senator Chambliss. It is strange, coming here in the last 2 years and getting to serve only 2 years with giants in the Senate like Saxby, like Tom Harkin, and like Senator Rockefeller, whose legacies will live on.

Knowing what a good soul Senator Chambliss is, I bet he would enjoy the Newtown Labor Day parade. I have a picture of it here.

We had the 53rd annual Newtown Labor Day parade this last year. This is the biggest event that happens in Connecticut on Labor Day. It is a celebration of the town. There are 120 different groups that make up the parade. There is the Newtown High School marching band. This year Grand Marshall Sydney Eddison was proudly marching at the front. The Litchfield Hills Pipe Band and newer groups such as the Marching Cobras of New York were there this year. It is a must-stop if you are a Senator, Governor, or Congressperson. We all march together at the front of the parade regardless of party. It is a really fantastic and wonderful place.

This year there were marchers from the Avielle Foundation; a truck decorated in pink promoting a culture of

kindness. Sandy Hook Elementary School had a float called ``The Magic School Bus to Sandy Hook School.'' It had a positive message of ``Think You Can, Work Hard, Get Smart, Be Kind,'' and the judges selected Sandy Hook School's float as the winner in the best school category.

It is a reminder that Sandy Hook is a positive place; Newtown is a positive place--a place that is rebounding as we come upon the 2-year anniversary, the 2-year memorial of the tragic shooting in that town that took the lives of 20 6- and 7-year-olds, and 6 of their teachers who were sworn to protect them.

Senator Blumenthal and I have come to the floor today to mark that 2- year anniversary and to talk for a brief few moments about what has happened over the last 2 years--what has happened that has been positive, and the work that is left to still be done.

There are a lot of positive things that have happened. It is impossible to try to find any good that comes out of this, but the foundational work that has happened in the memory of these children is remarkable.

The Jessica Rekos Foundation was formed in an effort to pay homage to Jessica's love of horses and her love of whales. They opened up a summer camp where kids ages 6 to 10, the age that Jessica was when she passed, could be able to enjoy horses, learn how to ride and take care of them. They raise money to sponsor the Orca Fellowship, which is dedicated to conservation initiatives for the orca whale.

I mentioned the Avielle Foundation. Avielle's brilliant parents started a foundation seeking to do new research into brain activity. They have a new PSA video to highlight the need to understand the aspects of the brain that can lead to aggression and violence.

Ana Grace Marquez-Greene. Her family is a musical family. They started a foundation which tries to identify ways to build stronger communities. Her father is a wonderful jazz musician, and he recently released an album called ``Beautiful Life.'' The proceeds all go to this effort.

Sandy Hook Promise, a group of families, is asking schools and communities to take a simple first step to ending violence. That first step is to talk to children and teens about how to be a good bystander--to look out for those first signs of trouble, and to report anything that may seem out of the ordinary.

We frankly have seen how that small act can make a big difference. Just last week a young man was arrested in Utah after he admitted he had brought a gun to school with the intent to shoot a girl he had a falling out with and then his plans were to open fire on the rest of his classmates, but a student heard about it and tipped off authorities so he could be stopped before he carried out his plan. That is what Sandy Hook Promise is trying to do in the wake of this tragedy, to spread the word that those small acts can make a difference.

I will talk for a few minutes about what hasn't been done when it comes to policy changes, but there is a lot that has happened when it comes to policy as well. In Connecticut we passed the strongest antigun violence measure in the country. It cracks down on illegal guns and invests more resources into identifying trouble spots before they happen. Washington State just passed a new referendum with 60 percent of the vote that extends their background check systems to private sales and to transfers. In Colorado they passed a strong new law as well. On the private sector side retailers are stepping up. Big retailers from Starbucks to Chipotle, to Target have taken proactive steps, separate and aside from anything government has done, to keep firearms out of their stores. So there are a lot of positives that have happened in the private sector and in the public sector, and hopefully we can build on that work. Hopefully Congress can recognize that our silence, our inability to pass anything in the 2-year period of time since Sandy Hook passed, effectively makes us complicit in the continuing assault on students all across this country.

Here is the map. In the 2 years since Newtown, there have been 95 different school shootings all across the country. Ninety-five different school shootings have occurred. During the last 3 months alone, there were 17 school shootings, including a single week where there was one every day, five events over the course of 5 days. This is an absolute epidemic that is happening all across this country since Sandy Hook. Why I say we are complicit is that when there is no response from Congress, when there is not a single legislative act passed to try to do something about this, it sends a message of quiet endorsement of what is happening. I know that is not our intent. I know that is not in the hearts or minds of any of our Members, but people notice when every week there is a new story of a school shooting all across the country and Congress does absolutely nothing about it while the private sector and State legislatures step up to do something about it. So this is a day when we remember what happened 2 years ago, but it is also a day in which we should feel ashamed that we haven't done a single thing to try to stem this tide.

I get it that we are not going to get a background check bill passed in the next 2 years, but why not work on mental health funding? Why not have everybody in this Chamber spend 5 minutes of your time reading the report that was just released by the Connecticut child advocate detailing the history of Adam Lanza's intersection with the mental health system during his early years and adolescence and how it failed step after step, year after year, month after month--a lack of followup, a lack of coordination, a lack of diagnosis. We have a mental health system in this country that is broken and can be fixed--yes, with some more resources but just with better coordination. That is something we can work on together over the next 2 years. So we can say when this chart gets peppered with another 50 dots by this time next year that we didn't just stand silent.

Nobody is more articulate than Senator Blumenthal in talking about that day, and I don't want to relive it on this floor, except to share the most powerful testimony I have heard about what happened that day.

This is a community that is recovering, but it is still a community in crisis. We don't lose 20 little boys and girls and just come back to life in 2 years. It is a resilient community, but it is a community that still hurts, and it hurts in part because they don't see us doing anything about it.

So before I yield the floor to Senator Blumenthal to say a few words, I wish to close with somebody else's words. I have shared these words on the floor before, but they are just as powerful now as they were the last time I read them.

This is Neil Heslin testifying before Congress in February of 2013. He is still Jesse Lewis's father, one of the little boys who was killed that day. So as we think about what happened 2 years ago in Sandy Hook and we think about the charge we have before us and we think about the fact that there are those of us such as myself and Senator Blumenthal and others who will not rest until we honor their memories by our actions, let me give you these words:

On December 14, Jesse got up and got ready for school. He

was always excited to go to school. I remember on that day we

stopped by Misty Vale Deli. It's funny the things you

remember.

I remember Jesse got the sausage, egg and cheese he always

gets, with some hot chocolate. And I remember the hug he gave

me when I dropped him off. He just held me, and he rubbed my

back. I can still feel that hug.

And Jesse said, ``It's going to be alright. Everything's

going to be okay, Dad.'' Looking back it makes me wonder.

What did he know? Did he have some idea about what was going

to happen? But at the time I didn't think much of it. I just

thought he was being sweet.

Jesse had this idea that you never leave people hurt. If

you can help somebody, you do it. If you can make somebody

feel better, you do it. If you can leave somebody a little

better off, you do it.

They tell me that's how he died. I guess we still don't

know exactly what happened at that school. Maybe we'll never

know. But what people tell me is that Jesse did something

different.

When he heard the shooting, he didn't run and hide. He

started yelling. People disagree on the last thing he said.

One person who was there said he yelled ``run.'' Another

person said he told everybody to ``run now.'' Ten kids from

my son's class made it to safety. I hope to God something

Jesse did helped them survive that day.

What I know is that Jesse wasn't shot in the back. He took

two bullets. The first one grazed the side of his head. . . .

The other hit

him in the forehead. Both bullets were fired from the front.

That means that the last thing my son did was look Adam Lanza

straight in the face and scream to his classmates to run. The

last thing he saw was that coward's eyes.

Before he died, Jesse and I used to talk about maybe coming

to Washington someday. He wanted to go up to the Washington

monument. When we talked about it last year Jesse asked if we

could come and meet the President.

. . . Jesse believed in you.

This is Neil Heslin, his father talking.

. . . Jesse believed in you. He learned about you in school

and he believed in you. I want to believe in you, too. I know

you can't give me Jesse back. Believe me, if I thought you

could, I'd be asking you for that.

But I want to believe that you will think about what I told

you here today. I want to believe you'll think about it and

then you'll do something about it, whatever you can do to

make sure no other father has to see what I've seen.

That is a pretty powerful message, a message that on the 2-year anniversary mark of that horrible tragedy we would be wise to listen to.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, this is a picture of Wike Brothers' Farm in Sharon, CT. Sharon is located in the very northwest portion in the great State of Connecticut. It has been an active farm held by the same family, the Wike brothers, for about 150 years. It is about 144 acres. It is a pasture now for free-range chickens, pigs, and cattle.

The farm's roadside store, which is used by people from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York--given that it sits right at the crux of those three States--sells beef, pork, sausages, eggs, apple-smoked bacon, and maple syrup, to name a few.

We are able to know, confidently, that this piece of iconic farm land that is producing for the neighboring farms and States is going to be able to continue as a farm because of something that Congress did.

Congress passed, enacted in 2006, a land conservation incentive in our Tax Code that gives a small tax incentive to farmers who decide to put a conservation easement on their land to make sure it doesn't fall into the hands of developers. Further, we provide a slightly smaller discount, a slightly smaller tax incentive to private nonfarm, nonagricultural landowners who want either to donate their lands or who want also to put a conservation easement on their land to make sure that it doesn't get developed.

This has been of enormous benefit in the State of Connecticut. We have preserved 11,000 acres of land in Connecticut just since this tax incentive went on the books. That is a 45-percent increase over the previous period of time before we put that tax incentive on the books.

It is a wonderful bipartisan policy because we are able, by discounting people's taxes, to keep land as open space without it, frankly, going into the hands of public land owners, which is often met with resistance from a lot of Members from our Western States.

Land stays in the hands of the private landowner or, in this case, in the hands of the Wike brothers, who have been farming it for a century and a half. But we know, because of that conservation easement, it will be maintained as open space.

As bipartisan as that idea is, the entire genesis of land conservation is a bipartisan idea, and maybe even to an extent it is a partisan or Republican idea. It was Teddy Roosevelt who quadrupled the acreage in our national forests, invented the National Wildlife Refuge System, and proclaimed 18 national monuments. He said in 1910: ``Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.''

It was Richard Nixon who created the EPA and signed into law the Clean Water Act. In 1970 he said: ``Clean air, clean water, open spaces--these should once again be the birthright of every American.''

While there aren't a lot of Democrats coming to the floor and quoting Ronald Reagan, he had some very impressive things to say about this country's commitment and his movement's commitment to conservation, as well.

Ronald Reagan said:

What is a conservative after all but one who conserves, one

who is committed to protecting and holding close the things

by which we live. . . . And we want to protect and conserve

the land on which we live--our countryside, our rivers and

mountains, our plains and meadows and forests. This is our

patrimony. This is what we leave to our children. And our

great moral responsibility is to leave it to them either as

we found it or better than we found it.

I am on the floor to speak in favor of the continuance of the land conservation tax incentive program that we hope will be in whatever tax extension deal gets passed by the Congress, as many proponents of the provision in that tax extension package would like.

It would be better if this were permanent. It is very difficult to do long-term planning for owners and operators of big farms such as the Wike Brothers' Farm if they don't know the tax incentive is going to be there for them. It is very difficult to do this retroactively, but it is important, nonetheless, to get this extended because this isn't the only property in our State that has been affected.

The Towner Hill Farm in Sherman, CT, is an 80-acre property that would not have been protected if it weren't for the Federal tax deduction which was available to the owner in 2008. He offered it to the town of Sherman at less than the value that he might have gotten at a private land sale because he knew he was going to be able to get this tax incentive. Now it is home to one of the most popular hiking areas in all of that area in Sherman, CT.

The Vanishing Geese Farm in Durham, CT, the center of the State, has a 42-acre farm that has been in the Scott family since the 1970s. They desperately wanted to continue farming, but the ability to have a conservation easement purchased from them put money in their pockets that allowed them to continue to farm but also gave them piece of mind, knowing that this piece of land that they love is going to be able to stay as open space.

Mr. Scott said, in his own colloquial way: ``Having worked the land, cut my firewood from it, raised sheep on it, and hayed it, I have developed a lot of affection for it.''

In regard to the donation of the easement on his family's property, he said:

I told my kids that my chest was puffed out a little more

and when I walked out in the snow, it was nice to know that

this land will never be developed. I feel that I've kind of

kept faith with the land and with the critters on it.

This is a very important tax incentive that, as I said, has resulted in tens of thousands of acres being preserved in the State of Connecticut. It is maybe the most important legacy that we leave--to recognize that part of the true greatness of this country is the land upon which we live, the open spaces that define what it is to be an American.

I mean, the Industrial Revolution powered us to global greatness but

we--maybe better than any other nation in the world--have found this miraculous way to marry together development and conservation, to decide that there are going to be places that we are going to develop for their natural resources or for their industrial capacity. But then there are going to be these magical places, like this beautiful farm in northwestern Connecticut, where agriculture is happening and which to many of us defines the character of the place in which we live-- practical reasons why we should conserve a place such as the Wike Brothers' Farm to continue agriculture. But I would also argue there are spiritual reasons as well--reasons having to do with what it is to be a citizen and inhabitant of this great Nation.

Republicans and Democrats, over the course of our congressional history, have come together to protect open spaces. Since 2006 Republicans and Democrats have come together to protect this important tax incentive; 221 House Members have cosponsored the legislation and 27 Senators.

I will leave with this statement. It is a bipartisan legacy for me as well.

I ran a spirited race for the U.S. Congress in 2006, beating a 24- year incumbent, Republican Nancy Johnson. There were places where I departed from her legacy and there were places where I inherited it. Nancy Johnson was one of the authors, one of the creators, of this important conservation tax incentive. So in my corner of the world there is a legacy of standing up for it, which is why I come to the floor today.

I thank the body for the time, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, this past Saturday, open enrollment began for the second round of State-based and Federal exchanges all across the country.

We can think about where we were a year ago today: The government was in shutdown. The Federal Web page where people went to enroll was a blank screen for many. There was frustration all across the country, and a lot of our friends on the other side of the aisle were claiming that this was proof the health care reform law could not work. They claimed it was a failure from the beginning.

Well, a year makes a big difference. It is a year later, and we have 7 million, 8 million people who have insurance on these exchanges across the country. We have lowered the number of people without insurance by 25 percent in a year's period of time. That is remarkable. In my State of Connecticut, where we run the best exchange in the entire country, we have cut the number of uninsured in half in

just a year's period of time. That is an even more stunning number. Health care rates of inflation are as low as they have been in most of our lifetimes. The State of Connecticut is actually spending less on Medicaid than it was a year or two ago, and quality is getting better. By most all of the indices that we follow, the number of people who are readmitted to a hospital after a surgery or the number of infections people get while they are in the hospital are all lower than they were when the bill first went into effect.

While a lot of my Republican friends come to the floor with stories about people who have bad insurance with the health care bill, the data clearly is on our side. The data tells only one story that the Affordable Care Act is working. But we have a lot of stories, too-- millions of them, as it turns out. I have never denied that there will be people who have bad experiences with the health care system, with the Affordable Care Act, and with the exchanges. But they are in the vast minority. The majority are people such as Christina who is a small business owner from Stratford, CT. Several years ago, she left a job that provided employer-based coverage to start her own business in Bridgeport. It was her dream to start her own business. But as with a lot of Americans who have a dream to start their own business, she was reticent about doing it because she was worried about losing her health care insurance. She stayed insured on COBRA until it expired, and then she went on the individual market. She recalls having to fill out a 15- page questionnaire asking, as she says, ``anything that I had ever remotely discussed with my doctor.'' Unfortunately for her, she got a rejection notice from a carrier that basically just copied and pasted what she wrote in the application and said: Here is your preexisting condition, and that is why you are uninsurable. Her only remaining option was to go into Connecticut's high-risk pool.

While she was shopping around for insurance, she decided to get her annual mammogram at age 40, and the hospital told her they found something suspicious on that mammogram.

Facing a potential cancer diagnosis without health care coverage created an enormous amount of anxiety for her. It was at that moment that it struck her how important it was for people to have coverage. So she went to Access Health, which is our State-based exchange, to look at plans, and she realized she had another option. She found a gold exchange plan. It asked her to pay $430 a month, which was a big difference from the $1,200 per month that she was paying under the high-risk pool. By the way, a lot of the repeal-and-replace crowd say we should replace the exchanges with high-risk pools. Well, for Christina, that was a big financial risk to her. She went from $2,500 a month down to $430. She says: I am thankful that there was a solution for me to be able to keep my business and to have affordable health insurance that can't be taken away.

Now, Christina hopefully is going to be what a lot of people call job creators. She is hopefully going to hire a lot of people for her new business. She is going to do it because she was able to start that new business because of the Affordable Care Act.

On Saturday, the first day of enrollment, HHS said that 100,000 people submitted applications for coverage, and more than 500,000 people were able to log on to healthcare.gov. And more than a million, just since open enrollment has begun, have been window shopping for insurance options. By and large, Web sites across the country are working, and they are allowing people to come back and shop for plans. It is really important that people do come back and shop for plans, because what we know is that the insurance industry likes this bill as well. Now, a lot of people on our side of the aisle don't like the fact that the insurance industry likes this bill so much, but they like it so much that there are about 25 percent more insurers that are offering plans on these exchanges. So if a person is on a plan for a year, they should know there are likely more options out there for them. They should go on the State exchange or Federal exchange and check it out. There are going to be more options with potentially better fits for people.

That is not to say that people haven't been really happy with the insurance coverage they have. Here is some other news we have gotten in since the last time I was on the floor. The Gallup poll surveyed Americans who had bought insurance in the first year on these plans, and what they found is pretty remarkable. Seventy percent of the people who bought insurance in the new marketplace last year rated it as good or excellent. Would that we had the same ratings for the Senate. Seventy percent of the people say the coverage they got was good or excellent. Three in four of the newly insured say they are satisfied with this aspect of their health care insurance. That is compared to 61 percent among the general population with insurance.

So people are actually more satisfied on the exchange-based plans than they are on nonexchange-based plans. If people are satisfied now, they may be able to get an even better deal because more insurers are now signing up.

The other good news is that premiums are going to be, on average, lower. Now, that is an impossible thing to say in the current health care environment. People are just not used to hearing that premiums from year to year are going to be lower, but that is the truth. A study from Kaiser and a study from the Wakely Consulting Group--Kaiser looked at the second lowest-cost silver plan in 49 cities around the country and found the premiums are going to be decreasing slightly from last year. Wakely looked at the largest county in each of the 34 States with marketplaces run by the Federal Government and found on average that the rate decrease was going to be 1 percent. We, frankly, would be happy if rate of increase was only 2 or 3 percent, because on average in 2008, the premium increase was 10 percent. In 2009 it was 10.8 percent, and in 2010 it was 11.7 percent. We are having an average premium decrease in the exchanges this year. That is more proof that as folks get more coverage, as people get access to preventive care, they are driving down overall health care costs because less people get into crisis, less people have to run to the emergency room, and they get cheaper cost care earlier on. That is better for them, better for the taxpayers, and better for their bottom line.

Kara from Granby, CT, has this story. When Kara was born, the doctors immediately told her parents that she was going to face a lifetime of obstacles because she was diagnosed with only one ailing kidney and a slight hearing impairment. Lucky for her, her parents found a great doctor at Connecticut Children's Medical Center.

About the time she was 1 year old, her kidney had started to fail, and a kidney transplant was recommended. Her father gave her one of his, and she was able to graduate from high school and college without having any major health problems. But she remembers always being warned by her parents about how difficult her life was going to be because of her health ailment but also because of the fact that her life decisions were going to be dictated by whether she could get health care. So she was so relieved when she found out she could stay on her parents' plan until she was 26, under the new health care law. That was critical to her because her health, after she graduated college, took a sudden downward turn. She began having frequent headaches, and her voice became really hoarse. What she thought was a virus ended up to be diagnosed as a brain tumor.

Because of the ACA and her parents' insurance, she was able to get great coverage. She went out to go look for a job but wasn't able to find one that offered health care insurance, and she went on Medicaid before she could sign up for health care insurance herself. Her tumor reappeared, but even despite this latest setback, her doctors still believe they can extract the tumor, and her prognosis is good. But she has health care, and she has had continuous health care because of the Affordable Care Act, because of Medicaid's being expanded throughout the States.

Kara says that I know for sure that I wouldn't have made it this far in life without health care. It is incredibly essential to have it. You never know what is going to happen to you. Don't take your health for granted. Kara, from Granby, has health insurance continuously because of the Affordable Care Act. Differences are being made all over the country.

I will tell just one more story. That is one from the middle section of the State from Ohio. Jim worked for 37 years for the same company. He was typically putting in 50-hour workweeks that included travel and working weekends. It started to take a toll on his health, and he knew he had to retire. If he wanted to live longer, if he wanted to enjoy his years in his sixties and seventies, he had to retire, but he couldn't do it because he needed health care for him and his family. His wife is a cancer survivor. She had been diagnosed with leukemia 15 years ago. The only way she was going to be able to get insurance was through his employer. He had to keep working even though it was the wrong thing for his health because of his job lock caused by his necessity to get health insurance from this job he was connected to.

The Affordable Care Act changed all of that. He retired in March of this year. He went and did his home homework on healthcare.gov. The plan he chose would have cost him $1,200 per month to cover him and his wife, but with the subsidy he received, with the tax credit he received, their premium costs were $127 a month. Jim is shopping as we speak for plans in 2015, but he knows he is going to live a longer life, and he will be able to be there for his wife and for his family because of the Affordable Care Act.

Jim has a pretty interesting take on all of this. He says he got to leave his job and spend more time with his family and spend more time concentrating on his health. He says: ``I am much healthier and happier than I was before. Plus,'' he adds, ``I am helping the economy. When I left my job, they had to hire someone else, so I am a job creator too.''

This is one of the great benefits of the Affordable Care Act. It reduces job lock. People who have to stay in jobs, people such as Jim but also people such as the first woman we talked about, Christina, who was able to start her own business because of the Affordable Care Act.

Open enrollment is upon us. People have 25 percent more options. On average, people have premiums that are lower than they were last year. People can sign up for something better than they had or they can join the 8 million people who have signed up on the exchanges and participated in Medicare expansion all across the country. People can be part of this pretty amazing story that is being told all across the country.

An Affordable Care Act that is insuring more people than ever before in this country, contributing to a stabilization of health care costs across this country, that still leaves us with a lot of room to go. There are still way too many people paying way too much for health care, but it at least charts us in the right direction and is making people healthier all at the same time, which is what this is all about. It is not just about saving money. It is about allowing people a better quality of life, and it is doing that as well.

As we mark the coming second week of open enrollment, it is important again to point out a very simple fact, which is the Affordable Care Act works.

I yield back and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Stamford Jewish Community Center for being the 2014 S.T.R.I.V.E., Sports Teach Respect Initiative Values and Excellence, Organization of the Year. Each year the National Council of Youth Sports, NCYS, recognizes five finalist organizations that most meet the ``kids first'' approach, evidenced by their implementation of best practices and policies that protect kids and promote safety. Those five finalist organizations are then put on the NCYS website for voting by the public. The award, sponsored by AIG, is presented to organizations that exhibit heartfelt passion and show a committed spirit to helping kids succeed in sports, while maintaining a commitment to safety procedures.

Since opening its doors in 1916, the Stamford JCC has become a valuable community resource, especially well-known for its continuum of safe, supportive, and inclusive health and fitness programs for children and youth

of all abilities, backgrounds, and financial circumstances. This year, more than 1,500 kids, ages 3 to 16, have taken part in their ``kids- first'' recreational activities, created to promote such attributes as teamwork, community engagement, and sportsmanship.

NCYS is the largest known organization in America representing the youth sports industry, and this award is an important recognition that the Stamford JCC is excelling at helping kids in our community. Comprised of the who's who in the youth sports industry, NCYS was founded in 1979, and its membership represents more than 200 organizations/corporations serving 60,000,000 registered participants in organized youth sports programs. Its members include organizations such as the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators--Cheer Safe, American Legion Baseball, American Youth Soccer Organization, Jewish Community Centers Association of North America, YMCA of America, Pop Warner, Special Olympics North America, and the U.S. Tennis Association.

Again, I commend the Stamford JCC for this wonderful achievement, and the great work they are doing in the city of Stamford.