Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 37, S. 188.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following Senate resolutions, which were submitted earlier today: S. Res. 260, S. Res. 261, and S. Res. 262.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table en bloc.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., Tuesday, September 19; further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; further, that following leader remarks, the Senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the Francisco nomination, with the time until the cloture vote equally divided between the two leaders or their designees; further, that if cloture is invoked, all postcloture time expire at 12:15 p.m. and the Senate vote on confirmation of the Francisco nomination with no intervening action or debate; finally, that following disposition of the Francisco nomination, the Senate recess until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly conference meetings.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of our Democratic colleagues.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I would like to tell my colleagues a couple of stories. We are going to talk about what is happening in healthcare right now. There is the healthcare that is happening here in this room in the debate that is ongoing that started months ago, continuing to try to figure out the solutions to what we face with the Affordable Care Act. Then there are the healthcare issues happening at home.

Sometimes we get caught up in this conversation and think this is what the center of the healthcare conversation is about. It is not. The center of the healthcare conversation in America is around dinner tables. Let me tell my colleagues what that conversation sounds like.

This comes from one of my constituents who just wrote to me. He said:

My premium increases from $1,308 per month to $2,489 per

month. This is for just my wife and I. We are self-employed

small business owners and simply cannot afford to pay nearly

$30,000 per year for health insurance. We will have to pay

the penalty for not having healthcare, but we have to eat and

pay our bills. Sadly, we are both in our late 50s, and we

probably need healthcare more now than ever. Mr. Lankford,

this is not the America that I grew up in, the America my

father fought to preserve in World War II.

That is the healthcare debate happening in America right now-- individuals who used to be able to afford their healthcare coverage, but now they cannot and no longer have healthcare.

The Affordable Care Act did cover a new group of people who were not covered before, but it also pushed out another whole group who used to have coverage and now does not.

This is an extremely personal issue. This is not a political issue. These are families and lives and children. These are individuals who have cancer and diabetes and a history of genetic diseases in their families, and they are very concerned about what happens politically in this room because it affects their families and their real lives.

Congress needs to act on this. What is happening right now with the status quo is untenable for families all across the country. Insurance carriers have left the market. Rates have gone up dramatically. We have fewer choices and more control but less control for families.

What does that look like in my State? Well, in my State, premiums went up last year 76 percent--last year--a 1-year increase. I have folks all the time who say to me that their great complaint is about the rising cost of college tuition. Let me give my colleagues a glimpse. College tuition has increased 76 percent in 15 years. Insurance in my State went up 76 percent in 1 year. In fact, since ObamaCare fully rolled out in 2013 until now, insurance in my State has gone up 201 percent. That is not the Affordable Care Act; that is a recipe to be able to push people out of insurance and keep them out.

ObamaCare was designed to force healthy people to buy insurance to increase the risk pools for those insurance companies. But when you can't afford the premiums, you are forced to pay this big tax. Now, the question is, Who is paying the tax? Originally, ObamaCare said: Well, people who didn't buy into the insurance who want to just take the risk on their own, these wealthy individuals, they would have to pay the extra tax. Really? What did that end up looking like? Again, coming back to my State, 96,000 Oklahomans are currently paying the tax to the IRS because they don't have healthcare insurance. Who are they? Eighty- one percent of the people who pay the penalty make less than $50,000 a year. These are individuals who cannot afford the insurance, and they also can't afford the fine that is coming from the IRS. It is a poverty tax that the Affordable Care Act created to try to force these people into insurance they cannot afford, and when they can't afford that, then they get a big hit on their taxes as well. It is literally a no- win situation for them.

One of the major goals of the Affordable Care Act was to provide affordable coverage. It was to be able to help people get into insurance. It was to be able to help improve the safety net. Those are not irrational goals. Those are good goals, but the execution of it was terrible, and the implementation has caused more problems than it has solved.

In my State, many physicians in rural areas used to be independent. Now they have all been forced into working for big hospitals because they can't afford the compliance costs to keep their office moving anymore. So independent doctors and independent clinics are now part of big conglomerate hospital companies. I am glad they are there, or we would have no access to care at all.

My State used to have four insurance carriers in the State. Now it has one, and that one is discussing leaving.

I hear all the time people who are mad at Republicans saying: Why haven't you solved this yet? Quite frankly, this is an incredibly difficult issue. But I also want to be able to respond back to people: Don't gripe at the firefighters fighting the wildfire. They didn't start it. We are trying to put it out. Yes, I know the fire line is big, and, yes, I know it is difficult to put it out, but we are doing our best to resolve a fire we did not start. We will resolve this.

So what is happening right now with our trying to resolve it? What are we trying to accomplish? We are trying to do several specific things dealing with the Affordable Care Act. This is not about resolving everything in healthcare. There are, quite frankly, lots of issues on which we have bipartisan agreement that we should work on in the days ahead, things like prescription drugs and so many other things we can do to help bring down the cost of healthcare itself, but in the meantime, we do have a dispute.

Our Democratic colleagues have said to us that they want to be able to cooperate with us on healthcare, but the parameters are that we have to keep the individual mandate--that tax penalty on people in my State for people who make $50,000 or less to pay this giant tax; they want to keep that. They want to keep the employer mandate, which is dramatically driving up the cost of insurance for employers and decreasing wages. The initial estimates are that people in my State are making about $2,500 a year less now than they would be because of the employer mandate that is on them. So we can't negotiate and say ``Let's form a bipartisan agreement on this'' if they want to keep the individual mandate and the employer mandate. Those things hurt people at home.

So here is what we are trying to do. This is a budget bill. It is called reconciliation. We are limited to only budget-related items to be able to deal with. So we are working on some of the basics of what needs to be repealed in the Affordable Care Act. We do want to get rid of the individual mandate. We do want to get rid of the employer mandate.

We do want to deal with how we can take control of healthcare out of Washington, DC, and get it back to the States, where it used to be. Prices are much cheaper when there is local control on healthcare than when there is Federal, centralized control.

We would also like to find a way to get some of the bureaucracy out of this. You see, when there is a healthcare dollar paid and it first has to pay the Federal bureaucracy, then it goes to the State bureaucracy, then it

pays an insurance company bureaucracy, and then it pays a hospital bureaucracy, there is not much of that dollar left to finally get to patient care at the end. If we can take out one of those bureaucracies, we can actually get more dollars to patients rather than having them just feeding the bureaucracy of another layer.

We are simply trying to deal with the mandates that are there, who actually makes the healthcare decisions for regulations and policy, whether it is the State or the Federal Government, and how we are going to balance out coverage for individuals who desperately need it in the safety net.

I have heard a lot of folks talking about CBO scores. I will tell you, I am in the middle, and I am very frustrated with CBO right now. Every policy we want to float to say this is something we think will be very effective to be able to help people in the safety net or to be able to help people purchase insurance, CBO responds back to us: That sounds like an interesting idea; it will take us about 4 weeks to study it. When we are in the legislative process, when we are doing amendments, we can't wait 4 weeks between each amendment. We have to be able to get answers from them.

So we are stuck in this spot, so our resolution is--we have a House version that has been scored, and we have a Senate version. We have a lot of changes we want to make, even to our latest version. The best answer we have while we wait on CBO scoring--another month to get us an answer--is to be able to get an interim bill, get into a conference between the House and the Senate, allow CBO the month that they need to score this, and for us to be able to pass a better bill in September. So that is where we are stuck right now.

This is not a final bill that is coming out. This is still an interim process that is moving. But we need to be able to keep this process moving because there are people at home who are counting on this actually getting better for them in the future. Their words to me are: This cannot get worse, because I can't afford what we currently have, and I can't afford that access I have been given to healthcare.

In the middle of all of this debate, a lot of people on the outside look at it and say: How come the Senate can't move faster?

I respond back to them: We can't get a score from CBO, so we can't move any faster. We are stuck waiting on them.

They typically will call me and say: Well, just run over CBO.

We are not going to ignore the law, and we are not going to ignore the rules of the Senate, but we are going to work to actually get this right.

In the meantime, I have heard an awful lot of scare tactics coming out. It usually circles around, there will be 22 million people who will suddenly not have insurance. That is a fascinating number to me since only 9 million people have ObamaCare right now. Nine million are actually on the exchange. So it seems difficult to me for 22 million people to lose what only 9 million people have. But if you are an economist, they look at, on the horizon, people who may one day join in at some point, and then those people who may have joined in then might have lost their insurance. It makes total sense to an economist, but to all of us who just look at math, it becomes very difficult.

CBO also believes that without a Federal mandate and a tax penalty on individuals, they will not buy this insurance product. People do not want to buy it and will not buy it unless they are made to buy it.

The problem is, there are 6.5 million people in the country who are also required to buy it who are just paying the tax rather than buying the insurance.

We need to allow people to make decisions on their own lives, but we need to also make sure there is actually an insurance product they can afford. And all the scare tactics about how we are going to throw out preexisting conditions and people who have preexisting conditions will be on their own--that is not true. Every single one that we have debated has included protection for preexisting conditions. We all are still honoring things like lifetime caps, annual caps. We have all included 26 and under. If you want to stay on your parents' insurance, you can still do that.

There have been all of these scare tactics, like this will throw senior adults out on the street, and Medicaid is going to have these dramatic cuts. I looked at one of the proposals that was put out by the Senate and one of the drafts that we went through, and it said ``dramatic cuts.'' Here are the ``dramatic cuts'' we had in Medicaid: Every year for the next 8 years, Medicaid increased at twice the rate of inflation. Every year for 8 years in a row, twice the rate of inflation, Medicaid went up. That is twice as fast as Medicare goes up--twice as fast as Medicare. So Medicaid was accelerating twice as fast as Medicare, and then 8 years from now, Medicaid went back to growing at the same speed as Medicare--at the rate of inflation. That was the ``dramatic cut'' in Medicaid. Every year going up twice as fast as inflation is a cut? Nine years from now, only growing as fast as inflation is a cut? But it is being portrayed that people are going to be thrown out on the streets and Medicaid is going away.

I would encourage Americans to understand that the conversation has been a lot about political rhetoric. This body really is committed to the safety net. This body really is committed to allowing people to have choices again that they can actually afford for insurance. We are really committed to taking control of healthcare out of Washington, DC, and pushing it back to the States and to families so they can control healthcare decisions again. That is the real debate that is happening here. I know it is boisterous, and I know it is much easier just to have bumper sticker comments, but at the end of this, we have to realize there really are people who are involved in this, who are deeply affected by it.

A couple more stories. A gentleman recently sent me an email saying that he received word that his premiums are rising from $1,229 a month to $2,205 a month to cover just him and his wife. His deductible is rising to $4,000 a person. His out-of-pocket maximum is rising to $13,000. That is under ObamaCare now.

Another person who wrote me is currently enrolled in ObamaCare now. He is 62 years old, and his wife is 61.

Our monthly health insurance premium increased by 71

percent to $2,900 last year. My wife and I are healthy with

no major problems, so my health insurance is the size of my

mortgage payment.

That is under ObamaCare now.

Under ObamaCare now, a lady from my State wrote me and said that for her first year, her monthly premium was $1,200. This year, she will pay $1,900 a month. She just got a letter from the one insurance company left in her State--the one opportunity she has to get insurance--saying that her monthly premium next year will be $3,540. That is an increase of 84 percent, or $42,000 a year, for insurance under ObamaCare now. Her simple statement to me is, How is this possible?

I speak to some of my colleagues, and they say: Those stories aren't true.

I say: Let me introduce you to some real-life people outside of this political debate who are debating around their kitchen table about how they are going to make it with the rates that have been put on them.

What we have now has to be addressed. I know this is a boisterous, loud process. But as we walk through the process, the end solutions are for these families, so that our noise helps them to actually move back to thinking about their kids and what they are going to do next in their retirement, and not to say: How in the world am I going to pay for my health insurance anymore?

Let's get this finished. Let's move to the next stage. Let's get to conference and try to resolve the differences between the House and the Senate. By September, when we finally get a score back from CBO on all of our scoring and they finally get us information on the things we have asked for, let's get this passed so we can actually get this done.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, there are some days that are noisy in DC and in the Nation. It seems as if the disagreements and the discourse have paused for just a moment, and we remember again that we are all Americans and that there are issues we are facing as a nation.

Earlier this morning a group of baseball players who are also Members of Congress were getting together to practice for a congressional baseball game happening tomorrow night. It is a friendly game, a great competition for charity, and a few Members, Republicans and Democrats, from both the House and the Senate get together and practice and then play the game.

This morning at the Republican practice, a man walked onto the field and opened fire on guys just practicing baseball.

Steve Scalise, who is the majority whip, was hit, two members of his detail, Capitol Hill police, were injured, and other individuals who were there were injured as well. The Capitol Police saved many lives this morning. They were prepared and they returned fire and were able to stop the person who was shooting over and over again at everybody he could see on that baseball field.

What has been interesting today--since I have come out this morning, as I have walked through the hallways heading back and forth to different meetings, I have been interested to see many doors that I have walked by, and when those doors were open, I could hear people inside praying. There have been at least three organized prayer meetings on the Hill today, specifically related just to that, and others spontaneously occurring. Just for a moment we have the opportunity to be able to reflect and say to God: Thank You so much for protecting the people on that field.

Thank you again to the Capitol Police, who literally put their lives on the line to protect the guests and the Members and staff here every single day.

Once again, we remember that we are a nation that solves things by conversation. We disagree, and that is OK. We have said for two centuries that we can disagree. We don't solve it this way, and we cannot.

I would like to be able to join what is happening all over this Hill for just a moment in this room--for us to be able to pray for a moment, as well, for the people who were there and for the people who are going through surgery right now and for their families. For every single staff member who is here, every single Member who is here, every member of the Capitol Hill police, their families are calling them and texting them and saying: Are you OK? These families are scattered all over the country, and they are worried.

We can help lead. We can set a tone to tell the Nation that we should disagree on things, but we don't ever do this. So I would like to ask for us to be able to take a moment of privilege and just be able to pray.

Father, thank You for the way that You have protected--for those individuals who are in surgery now and recovering now, for the Capitol Hill police, Steve Scalise, and for other individuals who were affected today, God, we pray that You would bring them healing.

We pray that You would take care of families who are worried and the Nation that is worried. We pray that You would cause something good to come out of something that is very evil. Help us to know how we respond as a nation.

I ask this in the Name of Jesus. Amen.

Amendment No. 232, as Modified

Madam President, we have a lot of issues that are moving right now and a lot of issues that we are discussing. Currently we are discussing sanctions. The sanctions for Russia are entirely appropriate.

I have no question in my mind that Russia has tried to interfere with our elections. I have no question in my mind that Russia did work to interfere with the elections across Europe, especially Eastern Europe. There are individuals in Russia that mean to do our Nation economic harm, political harm, and to cause turmoil. For whatever reason, they believe they can strengthen their nation by trying to cause chaos everywhere else.

As Americans, we believe we strengthen our Nation by helping others to succeed. For whatever reason, the Russians believe they can strengthen their nation by trying to cause others to fall. It reminds me a lot of bullies on playgrounds and in middle schools. For whatever reason, they do not advance to the level that they find great joy in helping others; they find their pleasure in trying to diminish others. There is an appropriate response we can make back to that as a Nation; that is, to continue sanctions and to be able to press that.

With the sanctions conversation we have about Russia, we also have an ongoing conversation about sanctions on Iran, and that is one of the reasons I want to visit with this body today to put this word out. For whatever reason, the way sanctions are being organized right now against Russia and Iran, there are two different platforms for how to unwind those sanctions. The way this bill is currently offered, the sanctions against Russia cannot be unwound except by congressional action, but it is not so against Iran, and I am trying to figure out why.

This Congress came to this floor just about a year and a half ago with a bill called the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which passed 98 to 1 in this body. It was to be able to take authority back so that Congress should be able to vote on sanctions being lifted, in case there is ever a time that any President wants to be able to lift sanctions. Obviously, that debate was circling around the Iran nuclear negotiation at that time, and this body voted 98 to 1 that there should be accountability on any President, regardless of who it is, on the lifting of sanctions against the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, which is Iran. So we added in those sanctions, but for whatever reason on this particular vote, those aren't there, and I have an issue with that.

I would say to this body: Can we learn our lesson? When Congress creates sanctions on nation-states and on individuals, we should also have the authority to determine whether they are lifted or not lifted. Because of that, I have filed simple language to be able to take the bill we have currently and to be able to add in simple language that says something very straightforward: The President can, for national security reasons, lift sanctions on the nation or on individuals for 120 days but cannot renew that until it comes back to Congress. If it is truly for national security reasons, there will not be any problem convincing this Congress, either body, that it is essential to be able to do that. But if you can't convince this body that it is for national security reasons, you certainly are not convincing the American people of that.

It is simple, straightforward language that I believe we should have in all of our sanctions bills. Whether it is North Korea, Iran, Russia, or whatever it may be, we should simply say that the American people, through their elected Representatives, say that this group of individuals should be sanctioned, and no individual can pull that back unilaterally without it coming back to the American people again to be able to turn it off. That is how we work as a Nation. I believe that is how we should work in the days ahead.

This is not a hostile amendment. This is an amendment saying that we have learned our lesson as a body. We should actually apply this. This is not a partisan issue. Whether it is a Republican or Democrat President is irrelevant in this issue. If Congress creates sanctions, Congress should not release the authority to make decisions on and off. What we turned on, we should be

able to turn off. That is the way our system works.

I look forward to the open debate on this simple issue, and I look forward to our determining as a body how we handle sanctions for any nation or any group in the days ahead.

With that, I yield back.

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

Madam President, we have a lot of issues we are working on right now. Some of the big ones include the budget conversation. For the first time in a long time, the budget conversation really circles around, how are we going to get back to balance? It is an interesting dialogue. There is going to be a lot of dispute about elements of the President's budget. There will be a lot of controversy back and forth about aspects in the House and the Senate proposals. But for the first time in a long time, the beginning point of the conversation is, how do we get back to balance? That is a good place to start. I am pleased to see that is a part of the conversation again.

There are a tremendous number of things that have to be dealt with in this process. I want to bring up two quick ones and then talk about some of the small business issues we are facing.

One of them is that when we go through the budget process, I encourage my colleagues to deal with the budget gimmicks that are still in place in the budget process--areas that seem to bring down the deficit but we all know actually do not. Those don't help us as Americans. That may help with some sort of scoring issues; that doesn't really help where we are.

The second aspect to that is, let's actually put the appropriations bills on the floor. For the last several years, there have been continuing resolutions or omnibuses without any amendment process brought. We should be able to, in a bipartisan way, agree to bring these appropriations bills to the floor, actually have an amendment process, and actually deal with this in a public setting. There are straightforward ways to deal with our debt and deficit.

It begins with actually confronting debt and deficit in a way that will really matter.

It is interesting as well that when we talk about a lot of the big issues, regulations often come up as one of the prime problems. Regulations are often big, expensive, and deal with a lot of controversy.

Quite frankly, there are thousands of regulations out there that impact small businesses. For a small business, it is not typically just one regulation, it is the hundreds of little ones that they are constantly trying to live under. It is the culmination of all of these different regulations and trying to figure out where they are. Most small businesses don't have lawyers. They don't have compliance people. They don't have folks lined up to monitor all of these things. They have to try to figure it out as they go. They are small businesses. They are family-owned businesses. They are trying to take care of their own families and the neighbors around them. But all of these regulations come at them as well.

Let me read what Karen Karrigan, the president and CEO of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, wrote in an op-ed just last week. She wrote:

Red tape is strangling our small businesses and undermining

entrepreneurship. Indeed, according to [Small Business and

Entrepreneurship] Council research, the cumulative loss of

new businesses over the last decade totals 3.42 million

missing businesses--

Not workers--

for America's economy. For existing small businesses, the

per-employee cost of regulation is just over $11,000.

Excessive regulation in the U.S. has hurt our competitiveness

in the global economy. The U.S. ranks No. 51 in the world for

ease of starting a business, according to the World Bank.

This same report is consistent with other global studies that

have found American's friendliness and general ``ease of

doing business'' has eroded year after year.

That is according to Karen Karrigan, president and CEO of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, in her op-ed last week.

Each new regulation on small business adds another cost, another burden, another requirement that small businesses have to comply with. This cumulative burden is crushing small business.

Let me give some examples. Julian Lumber Company is in Antlers, OK. You ought to come and see Antlers, OK. It is a beautiful area of our State. Julian Lumber Company, a family-owned business, makes wooden fence posts, treated poles. If you have a telephone pole in that area or other posts and poles, it often came from Julian Lumber Company. It also has a small trucking company to be able to haul posts to retail stores across the Midwest and the Southwest. Julian employs about 50 people but recently had to shift a part-time employee who was doing compliance to full-time--doing nothing but compliance 40 hours a week because of all the Federal regulations. When Robert Julian funded this business in 1974, he didn't set out to just create jobs for a compliance officer, he actually set out to do lumber work, but unfortunately, now his business also includes Federal compliance.

Small businesses are vital to our economy. Surely we can agree on that. They drive job creation and innovation. Excessive and poorly crafted government regulations disproportionately--the burden of them-- fall on small businesses and on their growth. If Julian Lumber has to hire more people to just do compliance, not lumber, there is a problem.

Then there is Ander's Shoe Store in Miami, OK, which was founded in 1930 by Joe Ander after he immigrated to Oklahoma from Poland. Today, Ander's Shoe Store is owned and operated by Joe's daughter, Dena Ander, who is 102 years old. She has worked at Ander's Shoe Store for 86 years.

My favorite quote ever from a small business owner came from her when she said, at 101, that her health is better than her help, and so she just keeps working.

Dena Anders is not waking up every day and reading the Federal Register to find out what new Federal regulation came down. She is not trying to track through all the different compliance officers and attorneys that she would have to contact to try to figure out how to read a new Federal regulation that comes down. She is taking care of a shoe store in Miami, OK. She has two employees, but her shoe store has to live by the same regulations that a lot of large stores also have to live by.

Every Member of this body--when they are home, they talk about small businesses and the importance of small businesses and how to help them succeed. I am asking, are we as a body willing to do what we said we were going to do back home? Ninety-seven percent of the businesses in my State of Oklahoma are small businesses. Lots of us make promises to these small businesses. It is time to fulfill them.

Regulatory reform for even small businesses, for whatever reason, is becoming politicized. This is not a political, Republican-Democrat issue. Small business owners are not Republicans or Democrats; they are Americans. They are people, and this should not be a partisan issue. I would be willing to work with every Senator of any party to be able to get this done.

I have introduced the Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act. It has passed its way through committee. It is S. 584. It does some simple things--things that should not be controversial.

It closes loopholes in the Regulatory Flexibility Act, which became law in 1980. That bill was designed to help small businesses, but there are some loopholes in it, and the agencies are going around it.

This is not a bill that I just came up with on my own; it is a bill that had been drafted in direct response to small businesses and small business leaders around the country. It has been discussed for a long time, but for whatever reason, it has never been passed. I want to run through a few things that it does.

First, the agencies should account for the economic impact of regulations, especially on small business, and it should be the full economic impact. Agencies have this little caveat that they will do. They will say: Well, it is not a direct cost, it is an indirect cost on business. So they will put a new regulation on them and say: We are only going to count direct costs of the regulations, but we are not going to count anything indirect, such as electricity.

If they put a Federal regulation down and a State entity is then required to create new regulations based on it, they won't count the State regulations based on it.

If permitting from a different agency is required, they will say: Well, that is somebody else who does that.

Well, if you are a small business, cost is cost is cost. The Federal Government plays this game of what is a direct and indirect cost to a business. A small business does not get to play that game, and they have to pay the bills for it.

So it is a very simple thing for us to say: Include the costs. We try to get some clear language on it. An agency would have to consider ``reasonably foreseeable impacts.'' So I get that you are not going to get every pencil in the process, but what is reasonably foreseeable, you should be able to anticipate that.

Second, we require the IRS to actually listen to small businesses before they release IRS rules. So many hours are spent by every small business complying with IRS regulations and requirements. We would like to have the IRS actually engage with small businesses when they put out policy and guidance and say: How is this going to affect small businesses? How can they work this out to make sure it is as easy as possible for small business owners?

Third, increase the transparency in the rulemaking process. Small businesses tell me that when they learn of new regulatory requirements, they are often blindsided. They had no idea the rule was even coming. In the rare instance when a small business owner speaks out to an agency, they are often confused when they see the final rule because it doesn't look at all like what they had recommended or had raised.

Years ago, there was something created called SBRFIA panels. Only Washington, DC, comes up with a term like that. Small businesses were supposed to be able to engage with the Federal Government on designing how regulations would come out. But, again, the loopholes were so present in the law that the agencies were just going around them. We need to close that.

As simple as it sounds, when an agency is creating a rule, don't you think

they should call small businesses and say: How will this work at your place, or will it work at all?

Fourth, let's deal with old rules. There are lots of regulations out there that are old, that become very complicated for small businesses to be able to maintain, and no one has ever gone back to look at them. Let's create a simple system so that when a rule comes out, it has to be reviewed within 10 years. That way, we have no rule that is 40, 50 years old, and no one has even touched it or looked at it to make sure that it still works, No. 1, and that it is not overcomplicating the process.

Finally, and here is something pretty straightforward, give first- time forgiveness for paperwork violations. When small businesses have a paperwork violation, they have a paperwork violation. They are not trying to break the law. They are not trying to violate regulations. They missed one. Why don't we give first-time grace to small businesses? Now, I wouldn't say that if they are violating health and safety issues. Obviously those are things they should have already taken care of. But just paperwork things--we have so many small businesses that get a fine because they missed a piece of paperwork. Again, so many small businesses don't have compliance people tracking this stuff for them all the time, and occasionally they make a mistake. This is still a government that works for them. They don't work for the government.

My simple recommendation is this: For small businesses, give them first-time paperwork forgiveness rather than a Federal compliance person showing up at their place with a fine. Let's be reasonable about this. That should be a simple, straightforward thing.

Quite frankly, these are all things small business owners have asked for. These were things even in the Obama administration. The chief counsel for the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy-- this is what the Obama administration's small business advocate wanted. I don't understand how this could be a partisan issue. It is simple, straightforward, and clean. There is no hidden anything in the bill. It is trying to actually get regulatory relief and common sense back into the way we do regulations.

Over 200 trade associations representing millions of small businesses have already written me in support of this bill from all over the country--not from Oklahoma, from all over the country.

Many in this Chamber pride themselves on being the advocate for the little guy and standing up for small businesses. I would ask my colleagues if they are ready to actually put feet to those words. This is a straightforward way to do it. We talk about helping small businesses; let's actually do it. I ask my colleagues to be able to walk alongside of us and help us get this bill passed and get some regulatory relief.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we are still dealing with some of the same issues we have dealt with before. It is interesting to me the number of people who have asked: Is Congress obsessed right now with all of the press reports and all of the things that are happening around the Presidency and everything else? I have said to them that is one of the things on our list, but that is not what we are talking about the most. We are working on issues like tax reform and healthcare issues and regulatory issues.

I just had three bills that went through the markup process just yesterday that deal with small business regulation and how we are going to be able to manage getting things back in order. We spent all day at lunch on Tuesday and we spent all day at lunch on Wednesday with our entire conference in a working lunch together and talked about healthcare policies. We are still working on trying to finish these issues that absolutely need to get done.

Healthcare is one of those issues that has been one of the prime conversations now for years, and we are in the final stretch of actually working through an actual repeal and replace of multiple sections of the Affordable Care Act that have caused the greatest amount of damage, but I still have people who will catch me and ask: Well, there are beneficial parts. What are you going to keep, and what is going to go, and why do we need to replace it?

I will typically smile at folks and say: Let me give you a quick recap as to why we need to replace this and what is really happening. It may be different in your State than it is in mine, but let me lay it out as to where we are and what has been said.

Remember, back in the earliest days, the Affordable Care Act being passed, it was all about premiums decreasing. In my State, premiums went up just last year--in 1 year--76 percent in the individual market. It was a 1-year increase of 76 percent. The year before, under the Affordable Care Act, they went up 35 percent in 1 year. Premiums not only have not stabilized, but they have accelerated out of control.

It was all about deductibles decreasing. Deductibles have also skyrocketed. It was about, if you like your doctor or if you like your healthcare, you can keep it. Doctors have moved to other hospitals. Doctors' offices have stopped being independent. They have to be able to work with other facilities so as to maintain the compliance requirements there. Most of the independent doctors in Oklahoma are no longer independent doctors. They now work under a corporate structure or they cannot survive.

As to this whole thing about competition on the open market, we used to have multiple companies in Oklahoma that provided insurance. We now have one. Every other company has left. There is one company left. There is no competition driving down prices. It is a monopoly. It is the same thing that is happening all over the country. Just this year, there are one-third of the counties in America that now only have one insurance provider. In my State, all 77 counties only have one insurance provider.

To tell you where things are really headed in this area of competition, United, which is one of the largest providers of healthcare, dropped out of all

of the exchanges nationwide--everything. It is doing none. In the past couple of days, Aetna announced it will no longer do competition in any State anywhere in the country. The number of companies even willing to try to live up to these regulations continues to drop off. That is what is really happening in our States.

If you want to know what that actually means to real families, let me give you a taste as to what comes into my office regularly because I have many people who call my office and say: Protect this. Protect this. Protect whatever it may be in the healthcare coverage. You have to make sure you guard it.

I will typically say to them: Let me introduce you to some other people who are also calling in and who are also writing in.

I will leave their names out, but let me give you just some of the situations:

A single mom, who has children and is from Norman, OK, contacted us and said her family has seen its premiums triple over the last 2 years. Currently, its premiums are $1,500 a month, with a deductible for the family of $24,000.

Another family contacted me who has a disabled child. The federally mandated health insurance under ObamaCare for 2016 was $895. For 2017, it is $1,553 a month for this family with a disabled child.

A husband and wife in Tulsa, OK, wrote me. Their current monthly expense for just insurance is $1,500--twice the amount of their house payment. They have a relative who is working three part-time jobs and cannot get a full-time job because, under ObamaCare, a full-time job also requires all of the benefits. No one is hiring in that full-time area because of the additional requirements for ObamaCare. He is working three part-time jobs, and because he is working three part-time jobs and has no health insurance, he is also paying the penalty--fine-- on his taxes for not having insurance. Not only can he not get a full- time job because of the ObamaCare requirements, but he is paying a penalty because of it as well.

A husband and wife from Newkirk, OK, wrote me. For their insurance alone, not including out-of-pocket medical expenses, the husband and wife will spend $21,965 this year on healthcare coverage.

Another family wrote me from Stillwater, OK. Their healthcare coverage used to be 5 percent of their family income. Now their healthcare coverage is 22 percent of their family healthcare income.

I have another family who wrote to me, and it is very interesting. They are from Oklahoma City, and they wrote me and just gave me a breakout--a chart--that they had created. In 2015, their monthly premium had skyrocketed to $1,400. In 2016, it was $1,500. Now, in 2017, it is $2,042 a month. Let that soak in for a moment.

Then they made the statement that there are financially strapped families who will not go to the doctor due to this out-of-pocket expense. That is the additional deductible that is on top of their $2,000 premium. Individuals buying private insurance have no recourse because we have no other option that we are allowed to go to. There is only one insurance provider available to us. We need competition in this State in order to take away the financial burden on our families.

All they want are options. Yet right now what the Federal Government has told them is: No. We have a policy, and you have to buy that policy. If you do not buy the policy we pick for you, we will fine you on your taxes.

They are stuck. Thousands of Oklahomans are stuck.

Why is it such a big issue? Because of how it affects individuals. Why is it such a big issue? Because of what is still coming.

There is this false belief that the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented. That is not true. Many of the aspects of the most onerous parts of the Affordable Care Act did not go into implementation until after President Obama left office. Let me give you some examples of some things they had back-loaded that would not start until after he had left office:

There is the Cadillac tax. Every union family across the country will start to face much higher costs on their insurance because their insurance is considered too good under the Affordable Care Act. So all of those great union families who have great healthcare insurance across the country are about to start facing additional taxes and fees for their insurance being better than their next-door neighbors' insurance as the Affordable Care Act tried to push down healthcare insurance to be the same for everyone.

There are increased penalties that are still coming because the full penalties have not been rolled out yet on all of the taxes. They have gone up a little bit each year, but they will accelerate now over the next several years.

There are increased taxes. The medical device tax, which has been sitting out there, has been delayed, but it now will go into full implementation. There is also a tax, which is a health insurer tax, that adds an additional tax to every insurance company that of course they will then pass on to every single premium.

There are still all of the costs that are associated with the expansion of Medicaid. Now, there has been a lot of conversation about the expansion of Medicaid. As many people know, this was an expansion of Medicaid for people from 100 percent of poverty to 138 percent of poverty. It is just in that small bracket that there had been an expansion of Medicaid. Initially, the Federal Government covered all of the costs of that expansion. Then, starting this year, the States pick up the additional cost. My State, like several others, chose not to do the expansion, and my State legislature and my Governor have taken a lot of heat for that. Yet what they said several years ago is, once the State has to pick up the additional bill, we will not be able to afford that expansion. We cannot do that.

Let me tell you what that would mean to my State. Because we did not expand, we do not have an additional cost this year, but let me give you a parallel. The State of Oregon is almost exactly the same size as the population in the State of Oklahoma. It will now start taking on an additional $257 million a year in its State budget because of the expansion of Medicaid it took on.

Now, that may not seem like a big deal to some people in this Chamber, but in my State right now, our State legislature and our Governor are struggling to balance a budget, and we are going through all kinds of issues because, right now, our State is about $800 million behind budget, and this is after being $800 million behind budget last year. If the people in my State will imagine what is going on right now in the State capitol, if we had an additional $257 million added to that hole, then that is what it would mean for our State.

There are real effects that are out there, and I understand healthcare is extremely personal. That is why it has always been something that has been decided by individual families, not by the Federal Government and, in my State, by someone 1,000 miles away who is trying to make healthcare decisions for them.

What we are really trying to do with this is to deal with the issues I just laid out. This is not about partisan politics. This is about people and families who have been hurt by what is happening in the Affordable Care Act--by someone 1,000 miles away who is trying to tell them what policies they can and cannot buy, by the skyrocketing costs, by the actual effect that has happened. While I have some people who say that is not real, I could line up the families in my State who used to have coverage but who no longer have coverage because they cannot afford it anymore.

Then there are the simplistic answers to, Why don't we just cover everybody in the country? Why don't we just do a single-payer system? People do not understand. They know how bad it has become now and how hard it has become now. You would accelerate that multifold if you were to just slip into a single-payer system.

What do we need to do? Let me give you a couple of quick thoughts. We are going to need transition time. Whatever you hear about all of the conversation we have about the Affordable Care Act or replacing the Affordable Care Act, please know that all of the conversations for us begin with how do we do a good transition from where we are now to where we need to be.

I have folks who say: Well, next week, this ends. Well, next year, this suddenly goes away.

No, there will have to be a transition process, and it will be over several years.

We are also still looking at some of the most basic elements. For instance, I have had folks say: I want to be able to keep my kids on my insurance until 26. That has been assumed, quite frankly, by the House and by the Senate, but the House bill that has been passed already keeps that. There has been a lot of conversation about preexisting conditions. Most of the conversation we have had as Senators, behind closed doors, is about taking care of people with preexisting conditions.

Those are very real issues.

We understand the dynamic of what happens back and forth with insurance companies and families and the struggles families have, whether they are cancer patients, diabetic, have rare blood diseases or Alzheimer's. There are so many struggles that are out there. We understand that. That is in our conversation as well. Yet we have to be able to find practical ways to start leveling out the cost of insurance. We cannot survive with rates skyrocketing like they are, and people need to know the safety net is going to actually be there.

We have to resolve these issues. We have to work for the benefit of our States, which cannot afford these overwhelming cost increases. We have to work for the benefit of families who are facing the issue and, quite frankly, for the Federal taxpayer as well.

While my State struggles with an $800 million hole that it is facing right in the budget, by the end of our session, it will have had that resolved. It is constitutionally required to have that resolved. The Federal Government is facing a $20 trillion budget hole right now--$20 trillion. For all the folks who say: Just add more to it, it will be fine, may I remind you, there is a day all of that has to be paid. We have to be able to be responsible with our Federal budget at the same time we are helping our States to be able to manage theirs and at the same time we are helping our families to do the same.

No, this is not simple, but it has to be done. We have to be able to find a way to restore it. This is not about returning healthcare back to where we were years ago. That, quite frankly, is gone. As I mentioned before, all of those private doctors that used to function in my State, they don't function in my State anymore. They are all under corporate structures. The insurance companies have left or have merged. Hospitals in my State have merged because they couldn't survive the last few years of ObamaCare. Even if we wanted to go back to how healthcare was--and we don't--but even if we wanted to, we can't because there has been so much change in the last few years. We have to be able to actually fix where we are.

So I would encourage continued communication. Lots of folks have contacted my office on every side of this issue. Keep doing that. Lots of folks in this Chamber have had dialogue, and though it looks like a partisan exercise, it is actually a pretty open conversation among our conference to try to figure out how we are going to actually help families, help our States, help our Federal budget, and help us to be sustainable on these critical issues.

I have gotten lots of other letters I can bring. There are lots of other stories out there. I think we know enough now to be able to know this is something that needs to be done. So while the Nation is distracted, we cannot be distracted. Let's finish the healthcare conversation. Lots of families are counting on us.

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, it is a busy day. There is a lot going on in Washington, DC. Quite frankly, at home there is a lot going on in homes, families, and lives. Today is also a unique day for America as well. It is the one day that we as a nation have something called the National Day of Prayer. It started in 1988. It was an official day on this day, the first Thursday of May. But in the 1950s, Harry Truman started this process of a national day of prayer. So it far precedes that.

Our Nation has a rich and beautiful history in prayer. Members of the House and Senate, as the Presiding Officer knows, open the day every day with a prayer. It has been that way from the very beginning. Even the first Continental Congress on September 7, 1774, opened in prayer.

Tonight, Americans will gather in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol to celebrate the National Day of Prayer. Statuary Hall was once the House of Representatives, where the House gathered. It was also the largest gathering place in Washington, DC, and many churches for years met in Statuary Hall to be able to pray. It was the common meeting place. In fact, for a period of time in the early 1800s, four churches a Sunday used at that time the House of Representatives Chamber--what is now known as Statuary Hall--as their place for worship.

Thomas Jefferson worshipped there. In fact, every President from Thomas Jefferson all the way to Abraham Lincoln attended church on Sundays in Statuary Hall, what was at that time the House of Representatives Chamber.

That is an interesting fact. I have had folks talk about Thomas Jefferson's statement about the wall of separation between church and state. That was actually in a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association, saying they would not allow the State to take over churches--that there would be this wall of separation between church and state. Two days after President Jefferson wrote that statement, he attended church in the House of Representatives Chamber on a Sunday.

Even earlier, at our Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin stated: ``In the beginning of the Contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for Divine protection.''

Many U.S. Presidents have signed proclamations for national prayer since 1799, from George Washington all the way to the present.

The National Day of Prayer is a good day for us to be able to reflect as a Nation and to be able to remember well that there are many people of faith in our country that do believe there is a Creator God and that he has made a difference in our own personal lives and he has made a difference in our Nation.

We go back to President Truman's statement. He said in 1952: ``The President shall set aside and proclaim a suitable day each year, other than a Sunday, as a National Day of Prayer, on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation in churches, in groups, and as individuals.''

As I mentioned, in 1988, President Reagan even affirmed that.

I don't think I could find very many Americans who would say we are running out of things to pray for: debt; anger in the Nation; conversation about hard, difficult issues that we face; terrorism and threats of violence from around the world. We are not out of things to pray for. Far from it. But people of faith believe that, regardless of the obstacles we face, there is a God that we can call out to who hears us and who cares about our daily lives. He is not a God who just created and walked away. He is a God whom we can know, and we feel confident that God knows and loves us.

Philippians 4:6 says: ``Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.''

I am always encouraged when I travel around Oklahoma and around the Nation. I even ran into some people this week who stopped me in the hallway and just said: ``I want you to know I'll pray for you.''

I encourage Americans to pray for the President, for the Vice President, for their Cabinet, for the Supreme Court, for Members of the Senate and of the House, for the staff who serve around us and with us and serve people around this country, for our military, and for first responders. The list could go on and on of people who set aside their time and their life to be able to serve. It is not an unreasonable request to be able to say: Pray for them; ask God to continue to protect them.

It is amazing to me how many Christians I bump into of my own faith who find it easier to complain about government than it is to pray for those in government. I think that is an issue we need to fix, and today is a good day to begin that, on this National Day of Prayer.

I remember well, personally, that I grew up around the church. My mom dragged me to church. I mean it. She made me go. But I remember extremely well sitting in the balcony of the church one Sunday and actually paying attention to our pastor as he would read through Scriptures. Probably for the first time in my life, I started actually thinking about this one simple truth: There is a God, and I don't know Him.

I couldn't shake that reality. Laying in bed late that Sunday night by myself, I remember praying--probably for me, for the first time in my life, actually praying. And I prayed a very simple 8-year-old prayer. My prayer was this: God, I don't know You, but I know I have done things wrong in my life and I need Your forgiveness. Would You come into my life and take control?

It was the beginning point for me--just the most simple of ways for me to begin a relationship with God, trusting in His forgiveness and His ability to forgive.

I have in my office two paintings that hang. One painting is the hands of a potter at a wheel, shaping the clay as they choose to. It reminds me of the sovereignty of God. Below it is a painting of those same hands sitting at that same bowl holding it, but this time the bowl is done. It is full of water. There is a towel in it, and there are feet around the bowl. It reminds me of the call to serve that we all have--to be able to serve people in the most humble of ways. It reminds me that there is a God, and that He has called us to a task. Part of that task is to pray.

The National Day of Prayer is not a mandate from the Federal Government that all people should pray--far from it. It is just a reminder. It is a reminder for people of faith who choose to pray that this is a good day when we can reset to be able to pray for our Nation and for our leaders. It is an acknowledgement, quite frankly, that millions of people of faith believe in God and that those individuals believe that God hears our prayers and responds. So thus we should pray.

Culturally, it is fascinating to me to be able to talk to people about prayer. I ran into some people that find it perfectly permissible in times of great struggle and anguish to pray, but in times of thanksgiving, it seems odd. Let me give a for instance.

A couple of years ago, a football coach in our country was fired from his job because at the end of a football game he would kneel down after the game was over and thank God for the safety of his players. For that, he was released from his job because, for some reason, Americans don't accept prayers of thanksgiving. But at those same football games, if a player was injured and the coaches and players were to kneel down, the crowd would see that as a good sign of respect--that we respect someone who is injured, and it is entirely reasonable to pray when there is an injury on the field but maybe not if it is just a prayer of thanksgiving.

It is an odd season for us as a nation, trying to figure out who we are and what we believe and if Americans of faith can live their faith. I would challenge us as a country, for those of us who have faith, to be able to live our faith with integrity and with consistency, and on a National Day of Prayer like this, to remind our Nation that there are millions of people of faith but that there are also millions of people that have no faith at all. They are also Americans, and they are also to be respected because many people are on a journey with God.

There are many people who don't practice faith at all today that consider simple things in their life. Their financial house may be in order. Their family life may be in order. But their spiritual life remains a vacuum, and they are, quite frankly, trying to figure that out.

I am always interested in the stories of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln in his earliest political campaigns was chastised that he was anti-faith or that he was secretly an atheist because he never attended church everywhere. He said he had respect for the Bible and read the Bible and had respect for faith, but he just personally didn't practice it. In his earliest campaigns, he was really challenged by that and only narrowly won at times. In fact, he lost some of his campaigns, and he had attributed losing those campaigns to people having challenged him that he was anti-faith.

But then we read his words when he was President of the United States, and we find a person who was on a journey with God. It wasn't anti-faith. He just didn't practice faith.

But listen to these words in 1863 from President Lincoln. He proclaimed a National Day of Prayer, as every President before him has, and he wrote this:

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of

Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace

and in prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and

power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have

forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which

preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and

strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the

deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were

produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-

sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving

grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves

us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to

confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and

forgiveness.

That is a man who was on a journey with God, who came to the Presidency as a person of no faith, who understood the responsibilities, and his heart dramatically changed.

It is a good day for us to reflect on this National Day of Prayer. I would encourage the Nation, if they choose, to be able to watch and join in or to just quietly be able to pray on their own, to remember again that those of us who pray for others should probably spend some time praying for ourselves as well. At times, as we criticize others, we should probably self-evaluate and ask the simple question: Do we live the values that we demand of others?

It is a good day to pray. Later tonight, I will stand in that historic Statuary Hall where Presidents and Members of Congress and individuals have prayed for a long time, and I will read Daniel, Chapter 9 to the group, which reads:

Now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your

servant. For your sake, Lord, look with favor on your

desolate sanctuary. Give ear, our God, and hear us.

It is a similar prayer that many of us pray in gatherings all over this Capitol every week. Members of the House and the Senate and staff quietly find places in this building to pray. It is not a bad idea for the Nation to join us.

Hear, O God, our prayer. We need Your help.

Mr. President, I yield back.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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