Floor Statements

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, just to make a few brief comments prior to my colleagues speaking on their request on the underlying bill, it is my understanding that the request is to bring a bill to the floor that would create an extraconstitutional process by which the House and the Senate would convene on a possible statement or resolution of disapproval on an agreement that has heretofore not been negotiated between the United States and our allies and Iran with respect to that country's nuclear program and nuclear ambitions.

I think we are all of one mind in that we are hopeful that these negotiations are concluded successfully, that we are able to stand together and say that we have used diplomacy rather than military might in order to dislodge from Iran any prospect of obtaining a nuclear weapon. But we are at an absolutely critical moment in these negotiations, and I believe the underlying bill which is being asked to be brought to the floor today would undermine those negotiations by sending a message that Congress does not stand with the President as he and his team negotiate these final agreements.

There is going to be a legitimate question as to what Congress's role is, but we won't know that until we see the agreement. We won't know whether it rises to the level of a treaty. We won't know whether we need to pass legislation to immediately repeal sanctions versus having them temporarily suspended. This bill has not gone through the committee process.

While it raises, I think, some legitimate questions of what Congress's role is going to be, if there is ultimately an agreement worked out between the P5+1 and Iran, it is premature at this point to set into law a process by which we would vote an agreement up or down until we understand what the agreement is in the first place.

That is my primary reason for standing here and ultimately registering an objection. I do worry as well that it would send a fairly chilling message to our negotiators and to those who are in the room if the signal is that the Congress is not giving the full authority to

this President under the Constitution in order to negotiate an agreement which is ultimately going to be, we hope, to the benefit of the United States and global security.

I know my colleagues have time constraints and want to speak on this underlying bill. So, with that, I object to the unanimous consent request

Reserving the right to object, just bear with me. As the Senator knows, the President set forth a policy to let States, such as Louisiana, take advantage of this opportunity--through the work of the insurance commissioner--to allow those individuals to stay on their plans.

This bill would allow new plans to be offered that do not comply with the ACA--plans that would include the kind of discriminatory treatments that the ACA seeks to cure, such as higher costs for women than men and treatments that are discriminatory against individuals with preexisting conditions. For that reason, Madam President, I object.

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

Madam President, last week the House of Representatives voted for the 53rd time to repeal or undermine all of--or aspects of-- the Affordable Care Act. This is beginning to sound like a broken record. I was in the House of Representatives for a period of time, so I had the privilege to vote on 30 or 40 of those different pieces of legislation.

Republicans, of course, shut down the government a year ago because of their pique over the health care law. There are those who still have a desire to shut down the government again.

The other day one of our colleagues said they were hopeful that among the

Republicans priorities--should they increase their numbers in the Senate this fall--would be, once again, to repeal the health care bill. It is a story we have heard over and over despite an absolutely overwhelming array of data points which tell us only one story, and that is that the Affordable Care Act is working.

I don't deny that my colleagues can come down to the floor of the Senate or House and tell stories of people who have had poor interactions with the health care system. In fact, some people have had poor interactions with the Affordable Care Act. But those are stories. Data and information tell us something fundamentally different.

At the very least, I am glad that our Republican colleagues say they are still focused on this very vague idea of repeal and replace. But here is the problem: We have had 53 votes in the House of Representatives to repeal the law and not a single vote to replace it with anything of any substance. So it is one thing to just say you want to replace the health care law, and it is another to actually put together a plan to do it.

I wish to credit three of our Republican colleagues in the Senate. They are the only ones who have outlined an alternative. It is only an 8-page summary, but it is important for people to know what it would do. It would allow insurance companies to go back to their old ways of imposing annual limits on coverage, charge women more than men, provide little coverage for individuals with preexisting conditions, and effectively charge millions of Americans more by capping the tax exclusion for health care benefits. It is just an 8-page summary, but it is not pointing the way to a better health care reality for thousands of Americans.

Frankly, Republicans are not listening to what the American people are telling us. Over and over polls tell us that the American people don't want this law repealed. They want changes and so do Democrats and Republicans, but they don't want to repeal it.

A recent poll from Bloomberg, which I think is the most recent on this subject, found that two-thirds of Americans want the new law to either be left alone entirely or given the chance to work with small improvements. That is the reality of where people are in this country.

Why is there growing support for the law, and why is there diminishing support for repeal? Well, because 10.3 million uninsured Americans--as outlined by the New England Journal of Medicine--now have insurance thanks to this law. The uninsurance rate among 18-to 64-year- olds, which is our target audience, fell from 21 percent in September of 2013 to 16 percent in April of 2014. I will say that again. In a 6- month period of time, the uninsurance rate in this country dropped by 5 percentage points. That is an absolutely stunning achievement, and there is only one reason for it--the Affordable Care Act. The people who have this insurance are using it.

According to the Commonwealth Fund, nearly 2 in 3 newly covered consumers who went to the doctor or filled a prescription said they would not have been able to afford or access those services if it were not for the new coverage.

In a moment I will talk about what is happening when it comes to rates and health care expenditures. But the theory of the case is this: If you get people insurance, they are going to use it for preventable coverage rather than wait until their illness is so serious that they go to the emergency room, which would require much more expensive interventions. It is bad for them, and it is bad for the taxpayers and ratepayers as well.

We are seeing record low rates of increase in health care spending. Premiums--probably for the first time in my lifetime--are stable from year to year, and that is because the theory of the case is actually working out in practice. People are getting insurance, using preventive coverage, not getting as sick, and as a result health care is costing less.

The Kaiser Family Foundation said that in the 16 major cities they surveyed, families will pay less on average to enroll in a health care exchange in 2015 than they did in 2014. I don't mean they will have a premium increase in 2015. They will actually pay less. The cost of the plan in the exchange will be less in real dollars than they were in 2014.

I will talk about Connecticut in a second. We are an example of that trend line.

It is not just the exchange that has stabilized. Employer-sponsored coverage has stabilized as well.

I get it. There are outliers here. There are examples where health care insurers are still passing along big increases to employers. So the information I am giving is the average across the country. There are always outliers on the high side--but also on the low side.

Kaiser's study also says that the average premium for family coverage through employer-sponsored coverage care increased by 3 percent in 2014, tying 2010 for the slowest rate of increase on record for employer-sponsored premiums. That is the reality of what is happening. More people have coverage, and the growth of health care spending is at a historic low. Medicare's 2019 budget is about $95 billion less than it was projected to be 4 years ago.

We are saving $100 billion a year on just Medicare alone, and that is on top of all the money that is being saved through relatively low rates of increase on exchanges. That $100 billion--just to give you some perspective, because I know it is hard to get your head wrapped around what it means to save $100 billion--is greater than the total amount of money we spend as a country on unemployment insurance, welfare programs, and Amtrak combined. It is a lot of money to save as a government.

The quality is getting better too--because that is what this is really about. It is about delivering a better quality of life and a longer life expectancy to consumers. Hospital readmissions--you go in for a surgery, you go back home, and then you have to come back in--are dropping like a stone. Hospital-acquired infections--one of the leading causes of death in this country--are dropping precipitously. Costs are getting lower, more people have insurance, and the quality is getting better.

Here is the Connecticut story. We have dropped the overall insurance rate in the country by about 25 percent--unbelievable news over the course of 6 months. Connecticut is double that. We cut our insurance rate in half in Connecticut. We are a small State with 3.5 million people and had about 285,000 uninsured individuals. Connecticut has taken the 250,000 people and put them into either the Medicaid expansion or the private health care exchanges and a little more than half of those people were previously uninsured.

A lot of my friends on the other side of the aisle say: That is great, but those numbers are illusory because over time people aren't going to pay those premiums; they are just going to drop off the plans. Well, here is Connecticut's experience: 80,000 people signed up for private plans on the health care exchanges, and 78,000 are still paying their premiums about 4 to 6 months in. Everybody is still paying their premiums. And we know why. Because it is largely affordable and because people need that health care.

People love the exchange and their interaction with the new plan in Connecticut. Tomorrow the Connecticut exchange will release data showing that about 83 percent of people who went through the exchange to buy private health care were satisfied with their experience. Of those who went through the program to get Medicaid expansion, over 90 percent were satisfied as well.

We are saving money. Medicaid in Connecticut is 2 percent lower this year than it was last year. We have cut our uninsured rate by half. We are spending less as a government. People are satisfied with it. Rates are stable.

Here are the three plans in Connecticut that submitted rate increases on the exchange, and, at least for our biggest insurer, they are also going to be the rates of increase outside the exchange. Our biggest insurer, Anthem, which is our Blue Cross Blue Shield: Rates are going down by an average of .1 percent. ConnectiCare is raising its rates by 3.1 percent. Our other insurer on the exchange, Healthy Connecticut, is reducing its rates by 8.5 percent.

Republicans have kind of moved the ball on this a little bit. They now say the way we judge a successful ACA is that health care rates go down from

year to year--not that we are controlling the rate of increase but that the Affordable Care Act isn't succeeding unless rates are going down. I heard my colleague from Wyoming make this claim about Connecticut a few weeks ago in which I was talking about rates going up by 1 percent and the claim was made: Well, that is not good enough.

People have been used to 10-, 15-, 20-, 30-percent increases in premiums in Connecticut. They are pretty happy with a .1-percent reduction. Frankly, they are pretty happy with a 3.1-percent increase. That is because of the Affordable Care Act.

So there is all the data. There it is. That is just the tip of the iceberg. Costs are going down, more people have insurance, and quality is getting better. It seems as though we open the paper every week and there is some new piece of good information.

I get it. This needs to be better. This needs to be perfected. The law still has warts. The Senator sitting in the Presiding Officer's chair is leading the fight to make this law work even better for people. I look forward to being involved in that conversation. But that is where the conversation should be--perfection, not repeal. And we are reminded again that if Republicans were to win control of this body, at the top of their agenda would be this same old fight--53 different votes in the House of Representatives over the past several years--to repeal the law without any real tangible plan to improve it.

This morning I met with a good friend of mine whom I have spoken about on this floor before, but because she is here in town I wish to speak about her one more time, and that is Betty Berger. Betty is here with the American Cancer Society. We will see them all over the Hill today in their light-blue shirts. Betty is arguing for a lot of things to happen here, with research funding increases at the top of the list, but she is also here to make a very personal case to protect the Affordable Care Act.

Years ago Betty's family was faced with a terrible choice when her son was diagnosed with cancer. In the 1-week period of time her family didn't have health care insurance--her husband had one job and he switched jobs--in the 1-week period of time between when he went from the first job to the second job, the diagnosis of cancer came down and it became a preexisting condition not covered by the new employer. Betty's family was left to pay for their son's cancer treatments on their own. They eventually lost their home, they lost their savings, and they had to declare bankruptcy.

Unfortunately, Betty's story is pretty familiar. Half of all bankruptcies in this country are due to stories very similar to Betty's. A mistimed illness at a point where the family didn't have insurance results in them losing everything.

The reality is that the Affordable Care Act makes sure that Betty's story never has to be told again, that no family ever has to make the choice between declaring bankruptcy, saving their home, protecting their savings, or choosing to care for a loved one.

Let's talk about making this bill better, but let's recognize that the data, the numbers tell only one story; that is, the Affordable Care Act is working.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 16, 2014, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 16, 2014, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining the State of Small Depository Institutions.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 16, 2014, at 2:30 p.m., in room SR-253 of the Russell Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Oversight of and Policy Considerations for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 16, 2014, at 10 a.m., in room SD-215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Retirement Savings 2.0: Updating Savings Policy for the Modern Economy.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 16, 2014, at 2:30 p.m., in room SH-216 of the Hart Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Ebola in West Africa: A Global Challenge and Public Health Threat.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 16, 2014, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Health Care of the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 16, 2014, at 2:45 p.m., in

room SD-215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Children's Health Insurance Program: Protecting America's Children and Families''.

Reserving the right to object, the Senate has heard the reasons for these objections before, but the fact is that staff and Senators are covered by the exact same plan that is offered under the exchange to millions of Americans. It works just as it has always worked before for employees here in the Senate, and, frankly, for millions of employees in the private sector. Senate employees, House employees pay their premiums and the employer picks up the employer share--no different than it has always been before.

Specifically, the law doesn't allow for any employees here to take advantage of the tax credits that are available to many other Americans.

This is, of course, just another attempt to undermine the law that is, by every available metric, working. The uninsurance rate in this country is plummeting. Health care inflation is at a record low--

Outcomes are getting better, and for that reason, I object.

Madam President, I haven't watched the gruesome videos of the beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and I have no plans to do so. I don't think I need to do so in order to understand the brutality of ISIS and the threat this radical movement poses to our partners in the Middle East and Europe--and ultimately to the United States' national security interests.

As we stand here in the Capitol today with the flags at half-mast in remembrance of the 9/11 attacks, I think we all understand that we can't just ignore this crisis and hope that it passes. The risks are too high. ISIS presents a new and unique threat to global stability, and it must be met with a robust global response. Whether we like it or not, in today's world of decentralized power, it is still up to the United States to lead this effort.

Last night the President of the United States laid out a strong and compelling case for taking the fight to ISIS. I wholeheartedly agree with the imperative for action he outlined. ISIS represents a serious threat, and we would betray our bond of trust with the world if we ignored it simply because of a wariness here at home with protracted military engagements abroad.

So for me the question is not if or whether we should confront ISIS. Rather, it is about the most effective way to go about this important task, and it is about making sure this debate happens in the proper context.

Americans today, more than ever, feel like they have lost control of their lives, of their ability to feel financially and economically and even physically secure. These videos and reports of ISIS's unconscionable brutality add to this feeling of insecurity, and they invoke rage--justifiable, appropriate rage--about those who would carry out such acts.

In this case this fear and anger we feel about ISIS's actions is complemented by the legitimate threat this group poses. So we shouldn't hesitate to act simply because our desire to do so is fueled by the intense emotion this enemy engenders in us. But our response--the details of our strategy--cannot be dictated by these impulses.

Our plan of attack against ISIS needs to be well thought out, nuanced, not rushed into because we feel an emotional compulsion to do something--anything--right now. We made that mistake in the past as a nation, and we shouldn't misstep again. We certainly shouldn't allow election-year politics to play into our calculations.

This is a debate about ISIS, but it is also a debate about how we are going to meet a potential plethora of anti-Western extremist groups that are organized and will organize against us throughout the world. We are creating a precedent for action, and we shouldn't rush into war simply because we feel pressured to get something done before an election.

As the President noted last night--and it is important to repeat-- ISIS today does not have imminent plans to attack the United States. That doesn't diminish the necessity of taking them on. It simply means that we don't need to engage in a panicked response.

So today I will lay out four principles that I believe should serve as the foundation for action against ISIS.

First, our strategy needs to be guided by the recognition that ISIS's power comes in the first instance from a political vacuum in Iraq and Syria, and, second, from a military vacuum. Any strategy must lead with economic and political tactics to undermine ISIS's legitimacy, using military power as a tool to create the space for those efforts.

We can't defeat an ideology of extremism with an air campaign. Bombs and drone strikes will not help win the hearts and minds of Sunnis who currently feel disenfranchised or ostracized by the Iraqi Government. As with any conflict, the real solution has to come from the people of the region. Elements of Iraq's Sunni population will continue to support radical Islamic insurgents--or, at best, just passively allow them to operate--as long as they see no future for them in their country.

So I applaud President Obama for making the centerpiece of his speech last night a call for continued efforts to create a truly inclusive political process in Iraq. The new Prime Minister has a difficult road ahead, and both Congress and our regional partners should do our part to support this tough political work.

For instance, as a complement to new military funding for operations in the Middle East, we should be debating funding a surge for political and economic work in the region. If we are going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars dropping bombs inside Iraq, we and our allies should commit to double that amount to support political efforts to empower moderates in the region.

Second, we will fail if we do not unite Shiite and Sunni nations in the region behind a military plan to confront ISIS.

I agree with the President that in the short term the United States is going to need to step up its military operations in Iraq, and I cannot disagree with the President that there may be limited imperatives to use the Air Force inside Syria should we have intelligence that ISIS there poses a threat to the United States. But any military campaign has to be fully cloaked in the legitimacy of a true regional coalition with Sunni partners front and center.

Further, it is clear that ISIS is getting funding and a flow of equipment and recruits from countries in the region. We need to turn off this spigot immediately. We need to hear from our partners in the region that ISIS does not truly represent Islam, that they do not condone the slaughter and rape of other innocent Muslims, Christians or Yazidis, for that matter. The United States needs to lead the effort to combat ISIS, but we must do so as part of a broad international coalition.

Third, a strategy to confront ISIS does not require America to become fully and overtly enmeshed in the increasingly complicated civil war in Syria. Over the last 2 years I have consistently opposed arming and training the Syrian rebels. Since the last time Congress debated this subject, the prospect that this intervention could be counterproductive to our national security interests has only increased. To begin with, it will be very difficult to thread the needle of supporting a Shiite regime against a Sunni insurgency in Iraq while at the same time supporting a Sunni insurgency against a Shiite regime in Syria. That inconsistency is going to make it difficult to put together lasting regional coalitions.

More importantly, it is increasingly impossible to sort out the so- called vetted moderate rebels from the truly bad rebels. All of our focus on ISIS over the past months has diverted our attention from the fact that, increasingly, some moderate Syrian rebels are openly collaborating with Jabhat al-Nusra, a wing of Al Qaeda, inside Syria, and there are even reports that ISIS itself is working with elements of the moderate rebels.

Our goal would be to support the rebels and simultaneously defeat ISIS and Assad. But the very real possibility exists that the rebels could align with ISIS to defeat Assad or our military campaign against ISIS allows Assad to prevail. Both are plausible and unacceptable options.

I want ISIS defeated in Syria. I want Bashar Al-Assad to pay for his crimes against humanity. But too much can go wrong for not enough possible gain for the U.S. to increase our involvement in the Syrian civil war--if necessary, using limited counterterrorism measures to attack ISIS in Syria, but leave the civil war inside Syria to parties that, whether we like it or not, have much more at stake in the fight than we do.

This brings me to my fourth point. All of this should be done with congressional authorization. There is no viable excuse for Congress to abdicate its constitutional responsibility to authorize war.

President Obama finished his speech last night with a spectacular charge to the American people, and few can disagree with it: America is exceptional.

We continue to stand as a symbol and a beacon of freedom and democracy to the world. Because of that standard that we bear, we should respect the version of democracy that our Founding Fathers granted to us by having a debate in Congress about the policy that the President has proposed.

Respectfully, I disagree that the authorization for military force passed in the days following September 11 grants the President the power to conduct an open-ended, long-term war against ISIS. If that were to be the case, then there is absolutely no congressional check upon the Executive's power to open military fronts against extremist groups anywhere in the world at any time.

The 9/11 AUMF was not intended to be perpetual, but it would transform into a permanent, easily manipulated authorization if we interpret it to cover ISIS, a group that specifically disavows an association with the only named group in the 9/11 AUMF.

Frankly, I believe a well-crafted, limited authorization of military force against ISIS could pass the Congress. I also believe the Constitution requires us to find out if it can.

I commend the President for having the courage to refuse to rush to rash judgment. We need to build a strategy that uses military action as a complement to political reform--not the other way around. We need to build a real sustainable regional coalition to support any military action, with Sunni nations as the lead. We need to recognize the limits of American power and stay out of the Syrian civil war. And we need to unite the Nation by a congressional authorization of a sound plan to take on ISIS.

I am glad my Commander in Chief made his case last night, understanding the foreign policy mistakes of the past decade and with a willingness to learn from them. I am confident that if we get this strategy right, the American people will stand squarely with him as we fight back against an enemy like few we have ever faced before.

I yield the floor.

I object.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business.

Madam President, before I speak on the topic of Affordable Care Act, reports are emerging that the House of Representatives is going to adjourn without taking any votes on a border supplemental that would allow this country to humanely deal with a crisis of epidemic proportions on our border as over 50,000 children right now are being warehoused, shoulder to shoulder, without any sign from the Congress of help coming.

There are legitimate differences in what manner we provide this emergency funding to try to deal with this humanitarian crisis, but shame on the House of Representatives as they leave town today without even having attempted to take a vote on a supplemental appropriations bill for the border.

I was in the chair yesterday as I listened to about three or four of our Republican colleagues come down to the floor, as they often do, and register their ongoing complaints about the Affordable Care Act. As has been the trendline over the past 4 months, those complaints have moved from those rooted in data to those rooted in anecdote.

There is no doubt that there are people in every single State in this country who continue to have poor interactions with the American health care system. It is one-sixth of our economy, and as was the case before the Affordable Care Act, it will be the case after the Affordable Care Act. There are many people who will still pay too much, and there are still plenty of people who will not get enough in return.

But I wanted to spend a little bit of time on the floor today talking about what the actual data shows us, what the empirical evidence shows us. It is overwhelming in its conclusion that the Affordable Care Act is working--in many respects working better than anybody thought it would. So I want to take my colleague's arguments one at a time.

The first is a pretty simple one. Every bad interaction that happens in the American health care system is not the fault of the Affordable Care Act. I woke up a couple of days ago with a sore throat, but that wasn't President Obama's fault. That wasn't the fault of the Affordable Care Act. I had kind of a rough day. But I understand there are bad things that are going to continue to happen to me--especially when it comes to health care--that cannot necessarily be fixed by the Affordable Care Act. So one of the ongoing statistics that is used is the number of people who had their plans canceled. Well, most of the nonpartisan medical journals that have surveyed the number of cancellations before the Affordable

Care Act and the number of cancellations after the Affordable Care Act suggest this has been a problem that has been ongoing for years, that there is substantial churn every single year in terms of the number of plans that were offered that then are stopped being offered. The Affordable Care Act is not solely responsible for the fact that plans are being cancelled. People will still pay a lot in premiums. The Affordable Care Act makes it better. There are a lot fewer premium increases of over 10 percent since the Affordable Care Act was passed than before it was passed. But every time somebody is paying more than they would like for the health care they receive, that is not the fault of the Affordable Care Act.

The second argument is the difference between data and anecdote. So let me just spend a few minutes talking about what the ongoing avalanche of information, of data, of statistics tells us. So many of my colleagues come down and talk about the huge rates that people are paying for health care and blame it on the Affordable Care Act. The average premium that individuals paid for a plan on one of the Affordable Care Act exchanges over the course of the first year of its implementation was $82 per month--$82 per month. Now, there are some people who are paying more, but the average is $82 a month. That is a pretty sweet deal to get health care coverage in this country.

And they needed it. A study showed that 60 percent of adults with new coverage used it and 60 percent of those individuals say they could never have afforded to get the care had they not had insurance in the first place.

And people like it. Consumer survey after consumer survey shows that the majority of people who are on these new plans want to keep them and have said their experience has been good, excellent or satisfactory. So that is the real story about what is happening on the exchanges.

What about cost? My colleagues say it really hasn't done anything to control costs. That is not the case. Health care inflation in this country is at a 50-year low. Medicare spending--that is the money that we all pay as federal taxpayers--is $1,000 per beneficiary lower than it was projected to be in 2014. So $1,000 in spending per individual has disappeared from the system, and a large part of the reason for that is the Affordable Care Act.

We had a bipartisan briefing sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund this week, and both the Republican economists and the Democratic economists believe the Affordable Care Act, though not solely responsible for that reduction in price, is a big, big part of that cost-reduction story.

People will say it is not coming through on premiums; we are still seeing premium increases that are bigger than we would like. Well, they are smaller than they were before the Affordable Care Act, but the Affordable Care Act also has this provision in it that requires insurance companies to spend a certain percentage of all the money they collect on care, and if they pad their profits with too much of your premiums, then they have to return that money to you. We just found out that consumers have already saved $330 million in money that was directly returned to them, and over all have saved $9 billion in savings on premiums because of this provision, which essentially says if you get charged too much, the insurance company now cannot keep that money for themselves. They have to return it to you. That is the best protection you can have from premiums that are too high. It is not theoretical; it is practical--the $330 million in checks written by insurance companies and given to individuals.

The data continues to show us the Affordable Care Act is working, and I haven't even gotten into the data I have brought down here week after week, which is stunning in terms of the number of people who now have insurance: 8 million people insured on the exchanges--a 25-percent reduction in the number of uninsured in this country. Even the most optimistic of ACA supporters could never have thought we would have a 25-percent reduction in the number of uninsured in this country in the first 6 months of implementation. The numbers don't lie.

But here is my last point: Senators and Members of Congress who come down and complain about the performance of the Affordable Care Act in their State, when their State has done everything in its power to undermine the Affordable Care Act, have some explaining to do. The reality is there are States such as Connecticut that are working hard to implement the Affordable Care Act, and there are other States that are working to undermine the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act works really well in States that want it to work, and it has a little bit more trouble in States that are trying to undermine it. Let me give you an example that comes from a speech given earlier on the floor by Senator Nelson. Senator Nelson talked about how Florida, through its Republican Governor and Republican legislature, has taken away from the insurance commissioner the ability to approve increases in insurance rates. And so, guess what. They are seeing premium increases that are rather unappetizing to Florida residents because the legislature has taken away from the government the ability to monitor, review, and approve those rates.

Compare that with the State of Connecticut, which is working hard to implement the Affordable Care Act and act on behalf of rate payers and consumers. Our biggest insurer a couple of months ago proposed a 12- percent increase in rates under the Affordable Care Act in Connecticut's exchange. We have the ability to review those rates in Connecticut. We did that, and the insurance commission in our State just 2 days ago came back and reduced that rate increase from 12 percent to 1 percent. Blue Cross Blue Shield is not going to stop offering insurance on the Connecticut exchange. They are just going to do it with a rate increase that is commensurate with the actual increase in costs of care to Anthem rather than a number that is not based on actual data.

So in a State such as Connecticut, where we have seen twice as many people enroll as we originally estimated, where we have seen Medicaid expansion provide access to insurance for thousands upon thousands of Connecticut residents who have insurance in a way that people in Florida do not because of their lack of Medicaid expansion, we also have taken steps to protect consumers from premium increases.

So for colleagues who are going to complain about high premium increases, you have to acknowledge there are steps that your State could have taken to make it better. For colleagues who are going to talk about the fact that there aren't enough people enrolled, well, then your State could have taken steps to enroll more people.

Not everything is the fault of the Affordable Care Act when things go wrong for families. The data does not back up the anecdotes that are brought to this floor. In States that are working to implement the law, it works a lot better than in States that are working to undermine it.

The story is clear. Whether it is a decrease in people that don't have insurance, the decreasing rate of medical inflation all across the country or the improving quality of health care in every corner of this Nation, the Affordable Care Act is working.

I yield back the floor.

Reserving the right to object----

Madam President, I would ask that the Senator modify his request to allow Senator Bennet to alternate with one of the Republican speakers in this series of remarks.

Madam President, I will withdraw my request for modification.

Madam President----

Would the Senator yield for a question?

I thank the Senator.

I appreciate the amount of time the Senator has taken to educate my colleagues on Connecticut's success in adding 200,000 people to the rolls of the insured. But the chart the Senator just had up next to him for the majority of his remarks about Anthem's request to increase rates in Connecticut by 12 percent is, frankly, the best advertisement you can make for the Affordable Care Act because under the Affordable Care Act, States are given the ability to review these rate increases and modify them. Connecticut has taken advantage of that, and had you read the papers from 2 days ago, rather than taking the headline from several months ago, you would have seen that the Connecticut insurance commission rejected the 12-percent increase and actually approved a 1- percent increase.

Regardless of someone's claim that insurance premiums were going to go down, my constituents in Connecticut will be very welcome to take a 1-percent increase in premiums. Should you repeal the Affordable Care Act--parts or all of it--you would remove from many State the ability to offer these plans in the first place or to be able to monitor them. So I appreciate the Senator putting a month's old headline on the floor of the Senate, but yesterday's headline actually tells us that because of the Affordable Care Act rates under the exchange for the people in Connecticut will be at historic lows in terms of premium increases. Given the fact the Senator is putting up news about the State of Connecticut, I want to make sure that he is putting up the latest and most accurate news about our State.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

I know we have a number of colleagues who still want to speak, and we want to get to votes tonight, so I want to be very brief speaking in opposition to the Lee amendment and in support of the amendment of my friends Senator Carper, Senator Boxer, and Senator Corker.

Madam President, I want to quickly tell you about the Norwalk River Bridge, which is a bridge in the State of Connecticut, which is pretty important to the transit of people and goods throughout the Northeast because it spans the Norwalk River and allows for trains--Amtrak trains, Metro-North trains--to be able to transit millions of people over millions of trips up and down the Northeast Corridor. Without the Norwalk River Bridge, you cannot get from New Haven to New York, but you also cannot get from Washington, DC, to Boston.

That bridge is 118 years old, and it is a miracle that it opens at all. It needs to open in order to allow maritime traffic to go up and down the Norwalk River. It is a miracle that it opens at all. But, in fact, on 16 of its 271 openings last year, it did not open and it interrupted Metro-North service 175 times.

The result for not just Connecticut but the entire region is hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost productivity. Our inability to pass a long-term transportation bill means that big projects like the replacement of the Norwalk River Bridge cannot get done. Why? Because when you only budget for 12 months or 24 months at a time--or in this instance only 6 months or 4 months at a time--there is no way for a State to be able to plan to do that kind of massive work.

So I am here on the floor to beg my colleagues to support the amendment from Senator Boxer and Senator Carper because it is time we started to get some political courage and admit that the emperor has no clothes when it comes to Federal transportation policy. Yes, it is politically difficult to make the choices necessary to come up with the funding to fill that gap.

Senator Corker and I have one particular idea, but we would love to hear others. But it is time for us to sit down and have that honest conversation because you cannot do projects like this if you do not.

But to Senator Lee's amendment, this is exactly why you need a Federal commitment to transportation funding. The idea that you are just going to devolve all of these projects down to the local level is preposterous. Why? Because this is a regional asset. The Norwalk River happens to be located in the State of Connecticut. But if all transportation funding came from the States, and Connecticut, for one reason or another, decided not to spend money on replacing the Norwalk River Bridge, it is not just Connecticut that is affected by that; transit stops in Massachusetts, in New York, in New Jersey, in Delaware, all the way down to Washington, DC.

So the reason we have made a robust commitment to Federal funding for both highways and mass transit is because the benefits accrue to all of us.

Senator Lee said that this is just an innovation in the way we fund transportation, like, as he said, the innovation in the way in which people buy books. That analogy speaks to our imperative for Federal funding because the way that books have been sold is different. It used to be that you just used the local roads to drive down and buy your book from the local bookstore. Today, you buy at amazon.com, and it is the Interstate Highway System, the interstate rail system that is used to get your book from a warehouse somewhere out in the Midwest to you after you ordered it online in Connecticut. If you want to talk about the great innovations of the last 20 to 30 years, they all buttress the idea that we live in an interconnected, interstate world in which we need a Federal commitment to highway funding--one that does not just parse out funding one month at a time.

My State is particularly dependent on this kind of funding. Connecticut only survives if we are able to unlock the congested highways and byways and rail lines that connect my State to New York and to Boston in particular. But this Nation as a whole will not succeed, will not survive economically if we do not grapple with the fact that as China spends 12 percent of its GDP on infrastructure, Europe spends 6 percent of its GDP on infrastructure, even if we just held the line, we would still only be spending 3 percent of our GDP on the most important asset to the future of America's economy.

So I hope we reject the Lee amendment. I hope we pass the Carper- Boxer-Corker amendment. I am glad to join them in support of it this evening.

I yield back.

Thank you, Mr. President. Let me join my friend Senator Crapo in congratulating the leadership on both the Republican and Democratic side and the leadership on the banking committee for bringing this bill before us this morning. It is, unfortunately, all too rare when we can bring a piece of legislation to the floor that has been worked on by both sides of the aisle and has broad agreement on both sides of the aisle. Of course, as the Senator from Idaho knows, there is nothing partisan about the effects of not reauthorizing TRIA. This is going to affect every part of the country. Republicans and Democrats, people of liberal and conservative persuasions, will ultimately be paying a lot more and losing a lot more because of our failure to get this bill done. So let me again thank Senator Crapo and Senator Johnson for all the work they have done. I was one of the original cointroducers of this bill, along with Senator Schumer and Senator Reid, as well as Senators Menendez, Warner, Kirk, Heller, Johanns, and Blunt.

Ultimately, we were educated by what happened in the weeks and months following September 11. In that period of time, the real estate market in large parts of this country--certainly in my part of the country surrounding New York City--collapsed. As a result, $15 billion worth of projects stalled overnight, and we lost about 300,000 construction jobs that were planned to come online--all because the insurance industry decided, with justification, that they could no longer insure for the risk of terrorism. Prior to September 11 we got coverage for terrorism essentially at no cost. But after September 11, again, for good reason, for good cause, insurers, without knowing what their exposure was going to be should there be another attack, decided they could no longer insure for that risk. So, in this sense, it logically fell to the Federal Government to provide that assurance that no matter where one is--whether in Idaho or Nebraska or Connecticut or New Jersey--if a person is building a project and they were the subject of terrorism, they would get a backstop of protection for those losses.

Some said at the time: Why don't we treat insurance, when it comes to protecting for terrorism, the same as we protect against other disasters? Of course, we see these threats as fundamentally different. We can make a decision as to whether we want to live in a part of the country that may be subject to greater risk from floods or hurricanes. So we have grown to accept the fact that we are going to pay a little bit more if we are going to have a house or a business right on the water. And we have a program here by which we mitigate that risk so that it is not extraordinarily different, understanding there is still good reason why people have to congregate in those spaces. But a terrorist attack, frankly, whether it happens in New York City right on the precipice of Connecticut, or in Los Angeles or in a rural environment in the Midwest, is an attack on the United States of America. That is an attack on all of us, no matter what specific geography in which it happens to be located. So that is why we made the decision as a Nation to help backstop those localities that may feel the initial burden of having to reconstruct after a terrorism attack, because we believe it is a national responsibility.

So for the practical reason that there was no longer an ability for the insurance industry to calculate how on Earth they would assess a premium based on the enormous potential loss of a terrorist event, and because of the fact that as Americans we felt as though we should come together and insure against this risk, we passed TRIA initially. Over time we have come together as Republicans and Democrats to reauthorize it.

Now, as time has gone on, we have had a conversation about how to best share this responsibility between the public sector and the private sector, because we expect that private insurers still should, as is their business, pick up some of this cost. So this version of the bill continues along the line of transferring some of this responsibility from the Federal Government and the Federal taxpayers to private insurers. For instance, the underlying legislation continues to have a 20-percent deductible. But after that 20-percent deductible is met, under the previous version of the bill the insurer was responsible for picking up 15 percent of the cost. Under this bill they are going to pick up 20 percent of the cost. So there is a little bit more responsibility built in for the cost of paying out claims after a terrorist attack is picked up by insurers.

There is a provision in the bill which says the Federal Treasury will recoup the costs from insurers of any claims it pays out. It can do that over a long period of time. Previously, it was mandatory to recoup all of that money for claims under $27 billion. Now that number is $37 billion. So we now have a mandatory return to the Treasury of any claims under $37 billion, which is an additional protection for taxpayers as well as an additional responsibility for insurers now because we will collect from the insurers for losses up to a higher amount than the previous law. I think all of this is pretty reasonable.

I wish there were more days such as this and weeks such as this-- although maybe TRIA isn't infused with the same kind of politics that other issues such as immigration reform and energy reform and criminal justice reform can be--but this was made possible by some really hard work by a number of people who knew this was right to do for the country. Speaking as a Senator from a State that has a big stake in the reauthorization of TRIA, I say thank you to all of the people who made this possible and give an advanced shout-out to the House of Representatives which we hope will pass this bipartisan bill in an expeditious manner. Connecticut cares about this because we were, as I said, on the edge of the attack of September 11. We lost dozens and dozens of Connecticut residents in that attack. Our economy was effectively shut down because of the inability to assess this risk throughout the real estate sector surrounding New York City. But we also are home to some of the biggest and, frankly, most responsible property and casualty insurers. The Hartford and Travelers, in particular, have been a big part of trying to figure out a public- private partnership to solve this problem, and this certainly helps them to be able to provide more of a very important product to the rest of the country.

So, again, my thanks to all of those who made this piece of legislation possible. My hope is we get a big vote later today across the aisle, sending a message to the House of Representatives

that they can take this bipartisan piece of legislation, pass it, and then get it to the President's desk. Then we can, once again, give some sense of surety to our insurance markets and our real estate market that the United States of America is, once again, going to step up and decide that terrorism, no matter where it happens--whether it is in New York City or in Topeka--is not going to get this country back.

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

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

Mr. President, we are entering into a new era in which five men in the Supreme Court are going to get to make the decisions about what kind of health care you get as a matter of right, living under the protection of the laws of the United States, and what kind of health care you get as an employee, at the whim of the decisions made by your boss.

These are the kinds of decisions that your boss should be making: decisions about the direction of your company, decisions about the level of your salary, about new products that your business is going to offer.

This should not be your boss's decision. It should not be up to your boss as to whether you as a female employee get access to prescription contraceptives. But that is the world we live in today after the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, has given the power to particular employers to deny women access to prescription birth control.

Prescription birth control, contraception, is used by 99 percent of women in this country at one point over their life. A big portion of those prescriptions are actually for purposes related to complicated medical treatments such as cancer therapy. No matter how the Supreme Court tries to explain this, there is no way to effectively differentiate what the Supreme Court has done on birth control with a whole other range of potential discrimination.

As Justice Ginsburg said in her dissent, this exemption the Supreme Court has given for employers' religious beliefs would extend logically with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions held by Jehovah's Witnesses; to religious objections to antidepressants held by Scientologists; medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin held by certain religions; and even vaccinations, a belief held by Christian Scientists, amongst others.

The idea that the Supreme Court is now going to get into the business of micromanaging which particular religious beliefs they are going to protect and which ones they are not going to protect is unacceptable to the majority of people I represent, so that is why I am here today to support the Protect Women's Health from Corporate Interference Act. Pretty simple. All we are saying here is that employers should not be allowed to refuse health coverage that is guaranteed to their employees and their dependents under Federal law.

When we decide to pass a law with the majority of the House and the Senate agreeing to it, signed by the President, those protections should be available to all employees. It is not easy to pass a law and get it signed by the President. The Senate has already set up a lot of pretty significant barriers to the passage of any law, never mind a law that guarantees a certain level of health care coverage.

Until the Hobby Lobby decision, the Supreme Court has stayed out of that decision, said that if the Congress decides a minimum level of coverage should be available to employees, then employers should not be able to get in the way. That precedent is now blown up. There is no going back, as Justice Ginsburg has said. I hope we pass it this week.

The reality is it is more important now than ever to protect this coverage, because as a result of the Affordable Care Act, there are millions more women, millions more families all across the country who have access to prescription contraception. Twenty-four million more prescriptions for oral contraceptives were filled without a copay in 2013 than in 2012. That is by virtue of the protections in the Affordable Care Act.

On this particular type of prescription alone, the Affordable Care Act has saved $483 million in out-of-pocket costs for oral contraceptives. That saved a lot of families money, but that has also given access to this important medication for millions of women.

It is just another example, just another piece of evidence amidst a mounting pile, that tells us the Affordable Care Act is working today. I want to spend a few additional minutes going over the latest litany of good news when it comes to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Republicans have kind of gone quiet, silent even, in many parts of the Nation, when it comes to their critique of the Affordable Care Act. That is in large part because on both sides of the aisle, there is a quiet acceptance that the Affordable Care Act is working. It has vanished from most campaigns as a political issue this summer and this fall because it is increasingly impossible, aside from anecdotal evidence, to make the case on an empirical data-driven basis that the Affordable Care Act is not working.

Senator Reid did a little bit of this earlier this week, but I want to share again some of the new numbers we have. Here is maybe the most stunning number: The uninsured rate in the United States fell 2.2 percentage points in the second quarter of 2014. We now have the lowest quarterly rate of uninsured in this country since Gallup began tracking this percentage in 2008. There are approximately 20 to 25 percent less people and families in this country without insurance than 6 months ago. That is absolutely stunning, that in 6 months of implementation of this act, we have taken one-quarter off the rolls of the uninsured in this country. Even the biggest optimists about how the implementation of the Affordable Care Act was going to go could not have guessed we were going to take that big a chunk out of the rolls of the uninsured.

But here is more evidence that this is working. Fifty-seven percent of the individuals who purchased coverage through the exchanges were uninsured when they were enrolled. So a lot of Republicans said: Well, you know, the big numbers you are seeing, 8 million people insured through the private health care exchanges, that may be people shifting from one kind of insurance to another.

Well, a Kaiser study says that, in fact, 6 out of 10 of the people who got insurance in the exchanges, through Medicaid, through staying on their parents' insurance, had no insurance beforehand. Frankly, to my mind, it does not necessarily matter, because to the extent they went on these plans coming off of another plan, it was for a reason: They were saving money, by and large. That is a good thing in and of itself.

But you have 4 out of 10 people going onto the new plans to save them money, 6 out of 10 people coming onto the new plans because they had no insurance at all. They are getting care as well. A new Commonwealth Fund survey says that 60 percent of the adults with this new coverage through the marketplace or Medicaid reported that they had visited a hospital or a doctor or filled a prescription. Sixty-two percent of those people said they could not have had access or afforded this care previously.

That was the theory. All of these people who were waiting to get so sick that they had to go to the emergency room, costing us all sorts of money in the long run, now can get preventive care. Of the 60 percent of the people who went out and saw a doctor because of the new coverage they had by virtue of the Affordable Care Act, 60 percent of them said they would have never gotten that care had they not had that coverage. That is millions of people, millions of people all across the country who are going to have an injury or an illness, who were going to sit at home and live with it until it got so bad they had to show up at the emergency room--they are now getting care.

What about the premiums? People said: Well, you know, these presume are going to be unaffordable and people are going to start paying them and then stop paying them. HHS did a survey of the premiums and found, on average, that the monthly premium people are paying is $82 per month, after a tax credit is factored in.

Listen, $82 a month is not pocket change. There are a lot of families out there who have trouble coming up with $82 a month. But for somebody like Susie Clayton, a breast cancer survivor from North Canaan, CT, that is a big deal. She is paying right about that number, $90 per month. But prior to the Affordable Care Act, because she had a preexisting condition, Susie Clayton was spending $1,600 per month. There are hundreds of thousands of Susie Claytons out there. Premiums are pretty affordable.

The critics said: All right, we will concede that more people are getting covered. We will concede they are using the care. We will concede premiums are affordable, in part because you are spending all of this money on premium assistance. But you are going to just start spiraling health care costs. Well, that did not come true either. With April's updated CBO projections, spending on major Federal health care programs--Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA subsidies--has now been revised downward by $900 billion. That is a half a percent of GDP since the 2011 projections. So in 3 years, CBO has pushed down its projections of 10-year spending by $900 billion.

Here is an even more stunning way to think about this. If you look at what CBO said we were going to spend on a per-Medicare recipient basis in 2010 versus what they now say we are going to spend on that recipient today over the next 10 years, that per-Medicare recipient spending level has been decreased by $1,000. We are spending $1,000 less per Medicare recipient.

That does not have anything to do with the private exchanges. That has to do with all of the other provisions in the bill that start to shift health care spending away from a system that rewards volume: How much medicine you practice to a system that rewards outcomes: How good is the medicine you are practicing. Are you keeping your patients healthy?

The reality is that spending is remarkably low, historically low on health care. Listen, admittedly, some of that is because of an economy that has been slow to recover over the course of the last 6 years. But a lot of that is because of the Affordable Care Act, so much so that I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal the other day that said the President was to blame for the slow economy because he had been so successful in pushing down the rate of health care spending that now it was an economic catastrophe that we were spending so much less than we had initially projected on health care. There is no way for the President to win. If health care expenses spiral and premiums spiral, it is his fault. But if he does something to control health care premiums and health care costs, than it is a drag on the economy.

In the long run, the truth is if we get health care spending down, really just a transfer payment within our economy, then we have room to spend more money on much more necessary investments, in our infrastructure, in our scientific edge over other countries.

I am here today to support the underlying bill, because I think it is the right thing to do for women in this country, but also because it is part of a growing success story of the Affordable Care Act: $500 million saved on prescription contraception alone. But add that to all of the other evidence, and we are living in a world in which it is increasingly hard to argue that the Affordable Care Act is not working: millions more people covered, huge chunks out of the uninsured rolls being eliminated, costs for overall health care expenses decreasing. I will not even get into it this afternoon, but quality is improving as well. That is people having hospital-acquired infections, having to be readmitted to the hospital.

The stories just keep on coming in. I certainly understand that on an anecdotal basis you can find people who have had negative experiences with the health care system under the Affordable Care Act. I could find millions of other people before the Affordable Care Act was passed as well. But there are many more people like Sean and Emilie Hannon, who are two freelancers from Weston, CT, who were looking for coverage previous to the Affordable Care Act being passed. The best they could do was $1,500 per month from Golden Rule. When they heard about the Affordable Care Act, they called the Connecticut exchange and they found a plan through ConnectiCare that was going to cost them $309 a month. This is a fairly young couple, a savings of nearly 80 percent compared to what they used to pay. That is a story that can be replicated millions of times all across this country.

We would be wise this week to restore this protection to women across this country so they have access to affordable prescription birth control. That is just one part of a growing, overwhelming array of both success stories and positive data about the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, proving that the ACA works.

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

I know we have some other colleagues on the way down to the floor to speak, so I will be brief. I just want to join Senator Blumenthal and thank him for his tremendous leadership, as he noted, going back to his days as Connecticut's attorney general and now as a member of the Judiciary Committee. There have been few people in this country, frankly, who have led more on taking on the fight against gun violence, especially when it comes to protecting victims of domestic violence, than Senator Blumenthal. I am proud to join him in offering this amendment.

After being married for a number of years, Zina Daniel and her husband Radcliffe Haughton became estranged. In October of 2012 she got a restraining order against him, telling a court that he had slashed her tires and had threatened to throw acid in her face and burn her and her family with gas.

She told the court that his threats against her terrorized her every waking moment. She got a permanent restraining order, but even that permanent restraining order was not enough. He went on line--her estranged husband--went around our background check system, as is currently part of Federal law, and posted a ``want to buy'' ad on Armslist, one of the biggest online marketers of firearms. Within hours he found a seller. He bought a Glock handgun for $500 cash in a McDonald's parking lot. There was no background check. There were no questions asked by our seller. It was a simple transaction that was allowed because of our lax gun laws.

The next day he stormed into the Brookfield, WI, spa where his estranged wife worked and he murdered her and two other women. He injured four others and then he killed himself. This story is a caution both about our laws that protect victims of domestic violence but then also our unreasonable laws right now around how we conduct background checks in this country.

He was prevented from going into a store and buying a handgun only because Zina had gotten a permanent restraining order. But had she had a temporary restraining order, there would have been no such protection. That is what the amendment Senator Blumenthal and I have will cure. It will give spouses, girlfriends, partners, protection during that moment of intense rage right when the husband is expelled from the house for violence, when that temporary restraining order is being taken out.

But this story also tells us that we have miles to go when it comes to the other protections that are necessary to reduce the incidents of gun violence. In this case she had one protection surrounding the permanent restraining order, but because we do not require background checks for online purchases, her husband was able to buy a gun within a day and go and murder her and two others.

If we had background checks required for online purchases, it is likely that Zina Daniel and her two coworkers would still be alive today. So that is why we are on the floor today. Senator Blumenthal and I and many others of our colleagues believe that if we are going to have a weeklong debate about guns, we should be talking about what actions are actually going to reduce the epidemic rates of gun violence across this country, in particular the epidemic rates of gun violence when it comes to people who are victims of domestic abuse.

Senator Blumenthal probably covered the landscape in terms of the statistics.

But it is pretty stunning the risks that women in particular are put in when their spouse has easy access to a firearm. Abused women are five times more likely to be killed by their abuser if their abuser owns a firearm, and one of the few moments we can prevent that abuser from obtaining that firearm is when the court gets involved at that moment of separation between the wife and the husband, between the abused and the abuser, that moment of the temporary restraining order.

Senator Blumenthal and I think this is an amendment that could get broad bipartisan support. I wish we could get 60 votes for background checks, but I am realistic that it is not likely that five minds have changed since the last time we took this vote.

But just as we came together after a period of disagreement to pass the Violence Against Women Act, we can certainly make the decision that in those limited circumstances, during those limited days of a temporary restraining order, that abuser shouldn't be able to go out and buy a weapon.

Our amendment builds in protections so that this isn't a denial of due process; that the judge actually has to make a finding that there is a threat of violence. Those are fairly limited circumstances, but if this amendment is passed, we will save lives.

Senator Blumenthal closed, and I will close in the same vein, by noting that while this amendment will save lives, it is not going to dramatically change the reality in this country, which is 80-plus people killed every day by guns. But everybody has a role to play in trying to reduce the rates of gun violence.

A young man in New Haven, CT, by the name of Doug Bethea, lost a close friend of his this summer, a 16-year-old boy named Torrence Gamble, whom he saw at a funeral for another friend of theirs who had been killed by gun violence. Torrence said he wanted to get off the streets and start setting his life straight.

He wanted to set up a time to meet with his friend Doug Bethea to try to find a way out. It was only a couple of days after saying, ``Doug, don't forget about me''--in fact, the very next day--that Torrance was shot in his head and died of his injuries at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

So Doug decided to do something about it, and he spent the summer going out bringing information to house-to-house to tell families and kids

in New Haven about their options to get off the streets, to do something productive with their time this summer, all of the rec leagues, arts programs, and dance programs that kids can invest positive energy in.

Target did their part a couple weeks ago by asking their customers to refrain from bringing guns onto their property, and we can do our part this week. If we are going to talk about guns this week, let's make sure we do something that reduces the rates of gun violence all across this country. This is a commonsense amendment, an amendment I am sure can gain broad bipartisan support. We hope we can do our part this week to try to stem the plague and scourge of gun violence on the streets of America.

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

Madam President, last week Target stores announced that they were going to initiate a new policy in their stores across the country. They were going to politely ask all of their consumers to refrain from bringing guns inside their stores.

This is a picture of one of their customers bringing what appears to be a semiautomatic rifle into a store in order to buy Oreos. Their statement read like this:

As you have likely seen in the media, there has been debate

about whether guests in communities that permit ``open

carry'' should be allowed to bring firearms into Target

stores. Our approach has always been to follow local laws,

and of course we will continue to do so, but starting today

we will also respectfully request that guests not bring

firearms to Target--even in communities where it is permitted

by law.

We've listened carefully to the nuances of this debate and

respect the protected rights of everyone involved. . . . This

is a complicated issue, but it boils down to a simple belief:

Bringing firearms to Target creates an environment that is at

odds with the family-friendly shopping and work experience we

strive to create.

I am thankful that Target has taken this position. I am hopeful that other retail stores across the country will follow suit. My only point of disagreement is that there is any nuance to this debate. My only point of contention is that there is anything complicated about whether this is appropriate for workers across retail stores and restaurants in the United States or the little kids who come in and shop there on a regular basis.

Here is what the NRA had to say about this. The NRA released a statement that said:

Let's not mince words, not only is it rare, it is downright

weird and certainly not a practical way to normally go about

your business while being prepared to defend yourself--

talking about bringing firearms into stores--to those who are

not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public

displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to one's

self or one's cause, it can be down right scary. Using guns

really to draw attention to yourself in public not only

defies common sense, it shows a lack of consideration and

manners.

That was the NRA's position for a couple of days, until a handful of NRA members got upset and started tearing up their membership cards, and then the NRA's top lobbyist apologized for that statement and effectively withdrew it. Luckily, Target some weeks later changed their policies.

That is weird. That is scary. That is inappropriate. It is this policy which we have perpetuated by our inaction in this place that allows for the continued diffusion of weapons, many of which are military grade such as the one displayed here that is leading to the spiraling rates of mass gun violence across this country.

We went for a stretch in January or February where there was a school shooting almost every other day that school was open. We expect now to pick up the newspaper and read about another mass slaughter somewhere in this country, and we wonder why it is happening. There are guys buying Oreos with an assault rifle strapped onto their shoulder, and that debate is nuanced and complicated about whether we should allow it.

The gun lobby's position speaks to this mythology--that is charitable, a lie to the cynics--that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. That is not what actually any of the data tells us. The data tells us if you have a gun in your home, you are much more likely to be the victim of a gunshot from that gun than you are to ever use that on an assailant. If you are a woman, for instance, you are five times more likely to die as a result of domestic violence with a gun if it is in your home rather than if you are in a home without a gun. Health Affairs came out with a study of 50 States. A longitudinal study of experience related to rates of gun violence and rates of gun ownership found that for every percentage increase of gun ownership in a community, there is a percentage increase in gun violence.

There have been 79 shootings in Walmarts in the last year--79 shootings in Walmarts, of all places, in the last year. I am glad Target made the decision to take guns out of the workplace.

Senator Blumenthal will speak after me. Senator Blumenthal and I sent a letter to Target asking them to make this change in policy, and I am glad they did.

It appears we will have debate this week on a piece of legislation that will allow for individuals to bring more firearms onto public property throughout this country. It is not a debate about bringing firearms into Target stores; it is a debate about bringing firearms onto public lands.

There is a perfectly legitimate debate to be had about bringing more legal guns onto public property, but there is a more important debate than that about taking illegal guns off of

our city streets. If the Senate is going to spend a week debating a bill about gun policy, then we should be talking about getting rid of illegal guns. We should be talking about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. We should be talking about stopping the epidemic of gun violence across this country.

These are the numbers: 31,000 people are killed by guns every year, 2,600 people are killed by guns every month, and 86 people are killed by guns every day. If we are going to be talking on the floor of the Senate about guns this week, we should be talking about how to stop another Newtown, another Aurora, another bloody Chicago summer.

The bill we are being asked to debate this week is a gun bill that does nothing to stop the scourge of gun violence across our country, and I for one cannot vote for it. I cannot vote for it because there are not only families still grieving in Newtown, but every single day there are families grieving across this country, such as the families associated with a young man by the name of Michael Mayfield in Baltimore, MD. Michael was killed earlier this year. He was an outstanding student. He was passionate about being a member of the Junior ROTC. He was a gifted baseball star in Baltimore. The paramedics found Michael shot in the head inside a vehicle in Northwest Baltimore and took him to a local hospital, where he died. He left his house at about 6 o'clock, and somebody walked up to him on the street, shot him four times in the head, and then fled on foot to an awaiting car up the street. He had been accepted to college, and he was due to start there this fall, but instead of going to his graduation, his family and friends--hundreds of them--went to his funeral.

Paul Lee was killed some weeks later in another school shooting at Seattle Pacific University. A delusional young man started shooting and killed Paul, who was described as easygoing and energetic. A friend and dorm mate of his said he was adored by everyone and affectionate with everybody. He loved to dance. He was a member of Seattle Pacific University's hip-hop club, and his friend said he would walk around his dorm doing the robot. At a makeshift memorial to him outside where his funeral took place, one friend wrote, ``Keep dancing in heaven.''

Kristjan Ndoj, a 15-year-old from Connecticut, was out on his bike one night. When the clock approached 8:45, two gunshots were fired from a wooded area near his house and struck Kristjan in the head and leg, dropping him onto the driveway at Agawam Trail. He died 5 days later. Police say the shooting may have involved trouble over a teenage girl.

The casualness of violence in this country and the idea that a dispute over a teenage girl would result in the death of a 15-year-old is directly connected to our casualness about guns in this country. If we are so casual as to think someone needs to be armed when they go to buy Oreos at a Target, it stands to reason that some kids may think they can have a casualness about settling disputes with guns as well.

I will not be voting for cloture today because we are long overdue to make a statement in the Senate about the tens of thousands of deaths happening due to guns all across this country. Everyone has a role to play in trying to stem this epidemic of violence. Target has a role to play, and they stepped up last week by taking guns out of their stores. Our hospitals and our mental health professionals have a role to play. This is not just about the number of guns out in our communities, this is also about getting resources to very troubled kids. This Congress has a role to play as well. Our role is to have a debate about how we can take guns out of the hands of criminals, take military-style assault weapons off the streets, and give real resources to people who want to help these troubled individuals. That is the debate we should be having on the floor of the Senate this week if we really want to honor all of the voices of these victims.

I yield the floor.

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