Floor Statements

Mr. President, I congratulate the Republican leader for his remarks. Without being presumptuous, I think I could express the hope that all of us feel that he will help us restore the Senate to the role the American people need it to play in this country.

There is a new history of the Senate, ``The American Senate,'' written by Neil MacNeil, the late Neil MacNeil, who wrote the best book about the House of Representatives, and the former Historian of the Senate. I suspect this book is likely to become the best chronicle of this body. It speaks of the Senate as ``the one touch of authentic genius in the American political system.'' It needs to be restored to that position.

The Republican leader is absolutely right. This does not require a change of rules. This requires a change of behavior--some behavior on our part on this side of the aisle, but a great deal of behavior on the part of whomever the majority leader of the Senate is, because that is the person who sets the agenda.

The debate for this year really is: Will this year be the end of the Senate--which is what the distinguished majority leader said it would be if we ever changed the rules in a way that allowed the majority to cut off debate--or will it be the year in which the Senate is restored, restored to that role of authentic genius in the American system? I hope it would be that way. I hope it starts tomorrow because it could be started as quickly as tomorrow because it requires no change of rules, only a change in behavior, and that could happen as soon as tomorrow. But we know it can happen after November if we have six more Republican Senators on this side.

We have heard your commitment on the floor today about how the committees can operate, about how amendments should operate. We have heard that before in our own meetings, in private lunches, and I am glad you took the occasion in this eloquent way to say to the American people and all of us what we expect out of service in the Senate.

I had the privilege, as the Senator from Kentucky did, of seeing Senator Mansfield as the leader of this body. I have not served in the Senate as long as others who were here, but I came here--it seems hard to believe--47 years ago as a young aide to a Senator who eventually became the majority leader of the Senate, Howard Baker. Those were the days of Mansfield and Dirksen. Those were the days when Barry Goldwater and John Tower and Hubert Humphrey would engage in hours of debates here and hug each other at the end of their discussion. Those were the days when the Democratic majority leader would offer an amendment of a Republican Senator whose amendment had been denied unfairly, he thought. Those were the days of committees that did their work and Republicans and Democrats who came to the floor and together offered bills.

I saw the Senate in the 1970s when I came back and Senator Baker was the Republican leader and I saw it in the 1980s and the 1990s. I saw what the Republican leader said--let's take the Panama Canal debate. Senator Baker and Senator Byrd would run the Senate in the way the Republican leader suggested, in the way most majority leaders have suggested. They would come to the floor and they would put a bill on the floor that a Republican and a Democratic Senator agreed on--let's say it is Senator McCain and Senator Levin, Senator Inhofe and Senator Levin. They would ask for amendments. They might get 300 amendments. They would then ask for unanimous consent to cut off all the amendments and of course they would get it because everyone had a chance to have his or her amendment.

Then within that unanimous consent agreement would be a procedure for how to vote on them, and they would say: We are here on Monday and we are going to finish this week, just as the Republican leader had said.

It does not work perfectly. There was a Senator from Alabama, and then there was a Senator from Ohio, and they did all they could to put glue in the works. But the majority leader had all the tools he needed to run the Senate in that way. Everybody got a say. Senator Byrd, in his last remarks before the Rules Committee, and I was there to hear it, said we should never tear down this necessary fence. He meant the filibuster that protects us from an excess of the executive and runaway popular factions. But he said one other thing. Senator Byrd said in 2010 that any majority leader had the tools he needed already in the rules to operate this Senate in the way it should be run. So we need a change in behavior, not a change of the rules.

One more example that goes to the point the Senator from Kentucky made. How important is it to be able to offer an amendment? Serving in the Senate today is like being invited to join the Grand Ole Opry and not being allowed to sing. The people of Tennessee expect me to have an opinion on their behalf about ObamaCare, about Iran, about all of the issues--how do we help unemployed Americans get a job, about the minimum wage or the lack of it. They expect me to have a say about that, not because they want to hear me but because I am their voice.

Senator Byrd wrote eloquently about that in his book. He talked about the Panama Canal debate. There was a tough debate. They didn't just bring the Panama Canal treaty here and plop it on the floor and say we are going to vote on it next Monday. Do you think it would have gotten 67 votes? No, it would not have gotten 67 votes. How did it get 67 votes? The Democratic leader, Senator Byrd, and the Republican leader, Senator Baker, read David McCullough's book and changed their minds and they both supported the treaty. Then they allowed every single amendment and reservation that anybody wanted to offer.

Senator Byrd wrote that many of those were killer amendments. In other words, they were designed to kill the treaty. But, he said, we allowed every one of them--192 of them. Nothing passed that was not acceptable to the joint leadership. He said we beat everything else. We tabled them or defeated them. But if we had not allowed that to happen and the Senators had not had a chance to have their say, we would have never ratified the treaty.

I know there may be others who want to speak. But we have gone down a trail in the last several years--just a few years--that I never thought imaginable. We have 43 new Members of the Senate, 43 Members of the Senate who are in their first term, plus 1, the Senator from Indiana, who is in his first term but served before so he has a broader view of this. Those Senators have never seen this body operate properly. Most of them are on the other side. So it is not necessarily their fault that this is happening, but this is not the way the Senate earned the reputation as the unique deliberative body in the world. No one would recognize it as that today. No one would recognize it as the authentic touch of creative genius in the American system of government.

My hope would be that the Democratic leader would recognize this and have a change of behavior tomorrow, or maybe later this afternoon. But if he does not, I hope the American people take this seriously and take it into account when they cast their votes in November and put six more Republicans on this side of the aisle so a Republican leader can restore this body to the luster it deserves, and the American people deserve, as the authentic touch of genius in the American political system.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I congratulate the Senator from Missouri for his comments. Sometimes I think Republican Senators especially should begin and end every speech with an answer to the question, What would the Senator do if he were in charge? And the Senator from Missouri has said that very eloquently. It is not the first time what Republicans would do has been said on this floor. He mentioned that the law was passed 3\1/2\ years ago. We counted it one time. We mentioned 173 times on this floor the Republican step-by-step proposal for a different approach to health care in this country.

We said: Don't expect Senator McConnell or any other Republican to come in with a 3,000-page Republican bill in a wheelbarrow. We don't believe in that. We believe in a different direction, a different approach. We don't believe we are wise enough in Washington to write 3,000 pages of rules to govern every aspect of our health care system in America that takes 18 or 19 percent of the economy.

We live in the iPhone age, where we want to increase the personal freedom of Americans to live longer, better, safer, and healthier. We want people to be able to do these things for themselves. We want to increase choice, competition, and in that way lower costs. If we lower costs, then more people will be able to afford to buy health insurance. That is the real way to expand health insurance in America--make it more affordable; make it so people can afford it.

So I am beginning these short remarks with a salute to the Senator from Missouri for talking about what we would do if we were in charge, and I am going to end in that way as well.

For the last couple of months, we have heard countless stories from constituents who are losing the health plans they purchased on the individual market.

According to America's Health Insurance Plans, there are 19 million Americans in the individual market. The Obama administration knew in 2010 that the rules it wrote for health plans would mean that 47 to 60 percent of those policies could not be legally offered under ObamaCare by 2014. Nevertheless, the President still said, ``If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.''

Now we all know that wasn't true. According to news reports collected by my staff, at least 5 million Americans, including 82,000 Tennesseans, will lose their individual plans starting January 1. That is an unwelcome Christmas present for those 82,000 Tennesseans. 16,000 Tennesseans are losing their Cover Tennessee plans; these are people who especially need help. There are also 66,000 Tennesseans who will lose their Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee coverage.

I heard from a woman named Emilie, who is from Middle Tennessee. She is 39 years of age and has lupus.

She wrote:

I cannot keep my current plan because it doesn't meet the

standards of coverage. This alone is a travesty. CoverTN has

been a lifeline. . . . With the discontinuation of CoverTN, I

am being forced to purchase a plan through the Exchange. . .

. My insurance premiums alone will increase a staggering 410

percent. My out-of-pocket expense will increase by more than

$6,000 a year--that includes subsidies. Please help me

understand how this is ``affordable.''

Unfortunately, Emilie is not the only one experiencing rate shock. Millions of Americans are losing their insurance plans. They are being forced to buy new plans, many of them with higher premiums, deductibles, and coinsurance.

According to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, Tennesseans can expect to pay up to three times more on the exchanges being set up under ObamaCare for the health insurance they now have.

In 2013, a 27-year-old man in Memphis can buy a private insurance plan for as low as $41 a month. On the exchange, the lowest State average is $119 a month--a 190-percent increase.

Today, a 27-year-old woman in Nashville can buy a plan for as low as $58 a month. On the exchange, the lowest priced plan in Nashville is $114 a month--a 97-percent increase. Even with a tax subsidy, if she made $25,000 a year, the plan would be $104 a month--almost twice what she could pay today if the $58 plan was all she felt she needed.

Today, women in Nashville can choose from 30 insurance plans that cost less than the administration says insurance plans on the exchange will cost, even with the new tax subsidy.

In Nashville, 105 insurance plans offered today will not be available in the exchange.

According to HealthPocket Inc., a consumer-oriented health research firm, the average individual deductible for a bronze plan on the federally-run exchange is $5,081 a year. That is 42 percent more than the average deductible of $3,500 for an individually purchased plan in 2013. According to Deloitte, that is 348 percent more than the $1,135 average deductible for an employer health plan in 2013.

These are a lot of numbers, but Americans--millions of them--are getting familiar with these numbers because this has gone from being political to very personal.

According to Avalere Health, 90 percent of bronze plans require patients to pay 40 percent of the cost of their tier 3 and 4 drugs out of their own pockets, compared with 29 percent of employer-sponsored plans that most Americans currently use. Most silver plans also require patients to pay 40 percent. For cancer patients and those with chronic illnesses, this kind of cost sharing could mean they will pay thousands of dollars out-of-pocket or go without the drugs they need to stay healthy.

Americans had to wait until the exchanges opened on October 1 to find out just how much they were going to have to pay for insurance in 2014. With such dramatic hikes in premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, it is no wonder that Americans are outraged.

Then, just before Thanksgiving, we learned that the Obama administration is delaying open enrollment for 2015 until after the midterm elections in November. The only American consumers this change will help are Democratic politicians who voted for ObamaCare because it would delay disclosure of some of the law's most insidious effects until after the election.

Senators Barrasso, Enzi, and I introduced today the Premium Disclosure Act. We want to change the open enrollment date back to October and provide Americans notice of their premiums and cost-sharing requirements

30 days in advance so that they can plan for the future knowing their health care costs for the next year. This is a commonsense proposal that I hope my colleagues will support.

As my colleague Senator Barrasso likes to say, what we know now about ObamaCare is just the tip of the iceberg. Much of the media attention has focused on the disastrous rollout of the Web site and the 19 million Americans in the individual market. But just below the tip of the iceberg are 160 million Americans--nearly 10 times more than have individual policies--who the Congressional Budget Office says get their insurance through the job, employer insurance.

Think about issues such as restrictive grandfathered plan rules, limits on the number of hours employees can work and be considered part time, the mandate that employers provide government-approved insurance or pay a fine, and the millions of dollars in new taxes on health plans. All of these issues will have an impact on employer-sponsored health insurance in both the public and private sector. We are already seeing that. Employers such as Sea World, Trader Joe's, The Home Depot, and other companies have publicly said they are reducing worker hours or dropping part-time employee health benefits. The chief executive officer of Ruby Tuesday, a restaurant company, told me that the cost to implement ObamaCare would be equal to the profit his company earned all of last year.

In case you think these are isolated examples, the National Association of Manufacturers says that more than three-fourths of manufacturers cited rising health care and insurance costs as the most important business challenge. The U.S. Chamber also has a membership survey saying that 74 percent of businesses are reporting that the health care law makes it harder for their firms to hire new workers. This is at a time when jobs are supposed to be the principal concern in our country.

Many of these businesses self-insure, meaning they design and pay directly for the health plans they offer their employees. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than 100 million Americans currently have employer-sponsored health plans that are self-insured.

Self-insurance is a method of providing health insurance that has worked well since its inception in 1974. It needs to be preserved. Last month Senators Rubio, Risch, McConnell, and I introduced a bill to make sure the Obama administration doesn't change that, doesn't change the rule that allows the companies to insure themselves against a medical claim that could bankrupt them. Any effort by the Obama administration to change the rule on companies that self-insure will break the President's promise to millions of Americans. It won't matter if they like their employers' health plans; they won't be able to keep them.

It is not only the private sector facing fiscal challenges because of ObamaCare. Our Nation's schools, colleges, and universities are also being hit hard. There is no shortage of examples in my State of Tennessee of local leaders dealing with the burdens of ObamaCare.

The Franklin Special School District has begun limiting substitute teachers to working 4 days a week in order to avoid paying between $1 million and $4.5 million more per year in health care costs.

Maury County Schools, south of Nashville, is also limiting its substitute teachers to no more than 28 hours a week for the same reason. One school board member told the local news:

Students struggle enough having one substitute teacher, but

then now we're going to have to possibly split the substitute

time between two substitute teachers. It just makes it hard

on the students to learn.

Wilson County Board of Education wrote to tell me that ObamaCare's reinsurance fee will cost the district an additional $165,000 in 2014 alone.

At least eight other Tennessee school districts are reportedly limiting employee work hours or entire jobs, including Clarksville, Rutherford County, Johnson City, Carter County, Washington County, Oneida Special School District, Scott County, and Stewart County.

Cumberland University in Lebanon has adopted a new policy to limit adjunct faculty to no more than three courses each term, meaning they won't be able to offer a course even if they are the most qualified instructor available.

The impact of ObamaCare on education is by no means limited to Tennessee. Investor's Business Daily has identified well over 100 school districts and institutions of higher education nationwide that have made cuts or limited employee work hours because of ObamaCare. That number is climbing daily, again suggesting this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Remember, what we are hearing about today are individual policies. What we are going to hear about next year are employer policies being cancelled, new costs, and there are 10 times as many Americans with employer policies as individual policies. Who pays the price for this? Our children. Cash-strapped schools simply don't have the money to absorb these costs, so they are forced to make difficult choices.

For these reasons--broken promises, higher costs, fewer choices-- ObamaCare was an historic mistake. It expanded a health care delivery system that already costs too much and left Americans with fewer choices.

I said at the beginning of my remarks that I would like to end in the same way, and I will do that with an answer to this question: What would we do if we were in charge? What if we elected a Republican Senate and even a Republican President in 2016? We would replace ObamaCare, not by moving backward, but by moving in a different direction.

Remember, ObamaCare's real problem was it expanded a delivery system that already costs too much. What we would do instead is go step by step to introduce new ways to increase choices, to have more competition and to lower costs. We would make Medicare solvent, so seniors can depend on it. We would give Governors more flexibility with Medicaid so they can create programs with lower costs. We would repeal the ObamaCare wellness regulation--the Senator from Missouri talked about that--and replace it with one that makes it easier, not harder, for employers to give employees lower health insurance costs if they live a healthy lifestyle. We would let small businesses pool their resources and offer low-cost insurance plans for their employees. The Congressional Budget Office says that Senator Enzi's bill would allow coverage for 750,000 more Americans at a lower cost if we did that. We would allow families to purchase insurance across State lines. If there is a policy regulated by Kentucky that fits my needs, and I want to buy it, why shouldn't I be able to do it if I can afford it? We will expand health savings accounts. We would incentivize the growth of private health insurance exchanges. That is beginning to develop all across our country, giving more choices to employees. We would make it easier for patients to compare prices and quality of doctors and medical services. We would incentivize States to reform junk lawsuits. Those are the steps in the right direction where we would like to go.

When Irving Kristol died not long ago, James Q. Wilson wrote a tribute in The Wall Street Journal which struck me. He said when they began their association as neoconservatives--they were mostly Democrats--he said we were policy skeptics. He said that was mainly what our common view was. By that, I think he must have meant they did not believe Washington could, through a comprehensive piece of legislation, fix our whole health care system; that what Washington should do, particularly in this iPhone age, is to go step by step in a direction that gives more personal freedom to consumers, to Americans, so they can live longer, live healthier, live safer, and be happier.

That is what we would like to do. That is how we would like to change ObamaCare, and we would like to have that opportunity.

So unfortunately, an unwelcome Christmas present this year for 82,000 Tennesseans is that they are losing their individual policies. Even more unfortunately, an unhappy New Year is coming, in which hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans will lose their employer policies--the policies they get through their employers--because of ObamaCare. We are ready to go in a

different direction and create a way for Americans to have more choices, more competition, and insurance they can purchase at a lower cost.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are watching America pass from the hands of the ``greatest generation'' to the hands of the debt-paying generation with nothing to show for it but the bill. For months Republicans have challenged President Obama to fix the

Federal debt, to save entitlement programs that Americans depend upon, and to rescue young Americans from being forever known as the debt- paying generation.

Earlier this year, for example, I called on the President to show the same kind of leadership that President Johnson did on civil rights, that President Nixon did on China, that President Carter did on the Panama Canal Treaty, and that President Reagan did on Social Security. Confront your own party. Say what needs to be said. Do what needs to be done. This has not happened.

I appreciate very much the efforts of the Senator from Washington and Representative Ryan to try to bring certainty to the budget process. That is why I voted today to allow a vote on the House-passed budget agreement. It seems to me, at least, that a Republican Senator could allow a vote on legislation passed by the House of Representatives with the support of the House Republican leadership and two-thirds of the House Republicans, so I voted yes to allow a vote.

However, I am going to vote against the Ryan-Murray budget amendment because it avoids the Federal Government's single greatest challenge; that is, reducing the growth of runaway entitlement spending. Instead, it spends savings that should be used to strengthen Medicare, to strengthen pensions, and to strengthen the air transportation system.

I believe in user fees. When you build a highway, you have a gas tax to pay for the highway. You do not raise the gas tax to pay for education. You do not raise the gas tax to pay for a health program. A user fee is related to the service it provides. This budget agreement does not withstand that test.

It would have been much better to pay for this budget agreement by using a small part of the almost $1 trillion in entitlement savings that Senator Corker and I have suggested in the Fiscal Sustainability Act or with meaningful entitlement savings from the President's own budget.

The Fiscal Sustainability Act that Senator Corker and I have suggested would slow the growth of out-of-control mandatory spending by, among other things, recommending a more realistic Consumer Price Index. This is a Consumer Price Index that most economists have said is more realistic in its assessment of what the increase in the standard of living is. The monthly difference between the current Consumer Price Index and the more accurate Consumer Price Index is about $3 per month for the average beneficiary, which is less than the average cost of a gallon of gasoline. This modest change would help to slow the growth-- not cut but help slow the growth of mandatory entitlement spending. The purpose of that is to help make those programs solvent so beneficiaries can depend on them.

The Medicare trustees have told us that Medicare will not have enough money in it in 13 years to pay all of the hospital bills. What are seniors going to think of Senators who in 2013 did not take the steps to make Medicare solvent? We could do that if we would begin to adopt some of the recommendations in the Corker-Alexander Fiscal Sustainability Act or in the President's own budget. He also recommended a smaller version of the more realistic Consumer Price Index. He recommended several hundred billion other dollars of changes in entitlement programs that Republican Senators might be able to agree with.

To go back to the Consumer Price Index, according to the Congressional Budget Office, we could save $162 billion over 10 years if we adopted a more realistic Consumer Price Index for entitlement programs. That is twice as much money as we needed for the budget agreement. The rest could have been used to reduce the debt today, and the reduction would be even more in future years.

As I emphasized before, the purpose of reducing the growth of entitlement spending is so the programs are solvent, so a Medicare beneficiary does not get to a point in 13 years and say: Why does Medicare not have enough money to pay for all of my hospital bill?

Here is another way we could have cut wasteful spending: Eliminate the wind production tax credit. The Senator from West Virginia and I have written a letter to the Finance Committee and suggested we do that. Here we are in the budget agreement struggling to find $63 billion over the next 10 years. Where could we find $63 billion? That amount about equals what we could save if we did not extend the wind production tax credit each year for the next 10 years.

So any way you slice it, we could either have taken some of the President's suggested savings in entitlement spending, some of Senator Corker's and my suggested savings, we could have taken half of the savings from the more realistic Consumer Price Index, paid for the budget agreement that way, and then I could have voted for it because we would have moved money from the out-of-control side of the budget to relieve the sequester, and we would have done what we should have done.

What I have to ask with all respect is, Where was the President in all of this? I mean, if Lyndon Johnson can pass a civil rights bill and Richard Nixon can go to China, if Jimmy Carter can pass the Panama Canal Treaty and Ronald Reagan can work with Tip O'Neill on Social Security, why can't President Obama get involved with his own budget recommendations and help us begin to deal with entitlement spending, which everybody knows is the single biggest problem we have facing our country?

Washington could learn a lot about debt and taxes from Tennessee. Tennessee's tax burden ranks third lowest of any State, it has the lowest per capita debt, and it balances its budget every year. All that did not happen by accident. I was Governor when we needed three big road programs. Instead of borrowing the money, we paid for it as we went. We used user fees, the gasoline tax, but we applied that to the roads. Guess where we are today? We have one of the best four-lane highway systems in America and zero road debt. While other States have billions of dollars of road debt, we have zero. So all of our gas tax money goes to keeping one of the best four-lane highway systems in the country. Those policies have paid off. According to the Department of Labor, Tennessee is the fourth best State in the country in net new jobs.

Getting debt under control is the foremost problem we have facing our country. If we do not do that, the people who depend upon Medicare and other important programs will be not able to depend on them to pay their hospital bills. Runaway spending is going to leave our young Americans forever known as the debt-paying generation.

We are watching America pass from the hands of the ``greatest generation'' to the debt-paying generation with nothing to show for it but the bill.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont for engaging in this dialogue and appreciate the Senator from Washington clarifying that it is the intent of the budget measure for the Department of Education to continue to use not-for-profit servicers for the Federal loan program and that these entities should be permitted to compete for additional loan volume in the future.

Madam President, I intend to speak for more than 10 minutes when I get the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for as much time as I may require after Senator Reid does what he wants to do on the floor tonight, which would not interfere with the Senator from New Hampshire going ahead at this time.

I thank the Chair.

Reserving my right, and I will make my remarks on this matter after the majority leader has completed his business today, I would note that on the last day we were here, November 21, there were only 16 nominations on the Executive Calendar that had been there more than 3 weeks, only 8 more than 9 weeks, and the Republicans were ready to confirm more than 40 who had been there only a few weeks. The Democratic majority changed the rules of the Senate in a way that creates a Senate without rules. Until I understand better how a Senator is supposed to operate in a Senate without rules, I object.

Reserving my right to object, again I will make my comments after the majority leader has completed his business, but all Senate Republicans wanted with the DC Circuit judges was to do what Democratic Senators insisted on doing in 2006, transferring judges from a court where they are not needed to courts where they are needed.

I object.

Madam President, I wonder if I might ask the majority leader a question.

If I may ask it through the Chair, as I understand it, there are a total of 13 district judges on the calendar, and the majority leader is the only one in the Chamber who has the right to bring a judge from the calendar to the floor.

If I heard him correctly, he filed cloture on four district judges. The way I understand the Senate procedure is that means we have an intervening day tomorrow and we can start voting on Wednesday.

Because we changed the rules at the majority leader's request to make it easier to confirm district judges, there is only, in effect, 1 hour of debate on each district judge, 2 hours equally divided. Then, if Democrats decide they don't want to use their hour, we could use our hour if we wanted to--and that there never has been in the history of the Senate a district judge denied his or her seat by a filibuster, not President Obama, not anyone else.

If that is the case, why doesn't the majority leader bring up all the district judges? Let's bring up all 14 of them, bring them to the floor, have 1 hour of debate on each one? Why don't we do that?

Madam President, I appreciate the courtesy of the majority leader in allowing me to ask him a question. I have more to say about this whole subject. But let me go back to my point. There are 13 district judges on the calendar. On November 21, when we last met, there were 13 district judges. There is only one person in this Chamber who can bring a judge from the calendar to the floor for confirmation. That is the majority leader. Why did he not bring them all up? Why didn't he move them? Because under our rules all he has to do is make a motion that so-and-so district judge be confirmed. If he files cloture, we have to wait 1 day, and then we have 2 hours of debate.

Never in the history of the country, according to the Congressional Research Service, has a district judge been denied his or her seat because of a failed cloture vote, because of a filibuster. I know this from personal experience because a judge named McConnell from Rhode Island was nominated by President Obama at the recommendation of the Rhode Island Senators, and there were a number on this side who said we should filibuster the judge.

I thought not. I argued to all of the Republicans that we never had done that in history and we ought not to do it, we ought not to start it. So what has happened? I believe, with all due respect, the majority leader is manufacturing a crisis. There is no crisis with those 13 district judges. He is the one who could bring them up. He could have done it on Thursday, November 21st, the day he changed the rules. Friday would be the intervening day. The maximum amount of debate the Democrats could require on each judge would be 1 hour, if they yield back their hour. So in 13 hours, before midnight tonight, they could all be district judges. They were sitting on the calendar waiting for the majority leader to move.

The same is true with the sub-Cabinet members. But let's just stay with the district judges for a minute. I know I am right about this because I have sat down with the Senate historian. I sat down with the Congressional Research Service. I said, has there ever been a President's nominee for a Federal district judge who has not been confirmed because of a failed cloture vote? The answer is zero--not for President Obama, not for President Bush, not for President Clinton, not for any President.

Because Senator Reid, the distinguished majority leader, believed that the district judges were moving too slowly through the Senate, we changed the rules this past year. We said that with district judges, once there is a cloture vote--and remember, no judge has ever been denied his seat because of a cloture vote. Once there is a cloture vote, there can only be 2 hours of debate, one for the minority and one for the majority. So this is a manufactured crisis. That is what was done in order to do what the Democratic majority did on November 21, which is the most stunning development in the history of the Senate in terms of a rules change, and I intend to talk about that tonight. I want to go through some very specific facts--not speeches, not something made up, but facts.

I am glad that the majority leader moved four district judges but every one of the other nine might ask, Mr. Majority Leader, why did you not move my name? Why are you leaving me out? Because you could move it on Monday, wait a day, and on Wednesday you could confirm every single one of the judges there?

The reason was because the majority leader wanted to make it look like there was a problem here so he could do as Senator Levin said we did on November 21--in effect create a Senate without rules--over the objection of 48 Senators the Democratic majority established a precedent that the Senate can change the rules any time it wants to for any reason it wants to. So I want to speak a little bit tonight about how I and other Senators are expected to serve in a Senate with no rules.

Yesterday was a pretty exciting day in the National Football League. There were a lot of close games. The Ravens and the Vikings scored 5 touchdowns in 2 minutes and 1 second. In Pittsburgh, Miami was ahead when the Steelers Anthony Brown raced into the end zone after a series of lateral passes. It was one of those things where it is the last play of the game and they start playing, passing to each other. It rarely works. Every now and then it does, and it appeared to in this case because Brown was the last one with the ball. He got into the end zone before time expired, but the officials ruled he had stepped out of bounds before scoring.

What if Pittsburgh had said yesterday: Wait a minute, we are the home team. We will change the rules and say if you go step out of bounds only once as you are running toward the end zone with lateral passes on the last play of the game then you score, so Pittsburgh wins the game?

Or what if they had said: We are the home team. We will just add 5 minutes and see if we can win the game in that 5 minutes? They would have been happy in Pittsburgh yesterday but maybe not for long.

But what happens when Miami becomes the home team and Pittsburgh goes to Miami to play and Miami changes the rules in the middle of the game so Miami can win? What would happen to the game of professional football if the home team could change the rules in the middle of the game to get the result it wanted? The National Football League knows. They spend a lot of time on rules. They know if there is no integrity for the rules there is no integrity for the game, and pretty soon the fans do not watch the game because the game has no integrity.

That is why the NFL goes to such great lengths about its rules. There are officials all over the field. They are standing, you know, right in the middle of the play. There is an instant review of every call they make. When they make a call they huddle to see if they interpreted the rule right. If a coach doesn't like it, he has an opportunity to challenge the ruling. There is someone up in a box who looks at that and reviews it. Today, Monday morning in New York, in the National Football League office, senior retired officials get together and they review every single call and every single no-call that was made yesterday in every league game. They grade every single official based on those calls, and rarely does anyone get 100 percent. The NFL is in a constant review of the rules because if there is no integrity to the rules, they know there is no integrity to the game, and there will be no fans.

I say this because on Thursday, the last day we were here, November 21, before Senators went home for Thanksgiving, the Democratic majority destroyed the rules of the Senate. With all of the Republican Members opposed and 3 Democratic Members opposed, the Senate voted 52 to 48 to invoke the so-called nuclear option, allowing a majority of Senators present and voting--so not necessarily 51--to approve Presidential nominees except for Supreme Court Justices. For those positions they eliminated the filibuster, which required 60 votes to proceed to an up or down majority vote.

That is what Senator Reid went through a few minutes ago. He was saying that we will move for cloture, we will have an intervening day, and then we will have a cloture vote. Before Thursday, before November 21, that took 60 votes. Although, as I said, in the case of Federal district judges it had never been used to deny a seat. But now it only takes a majority of those present and voting. This was the most dangerous restructuring of Senate rules since Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules because it creates a perpetual opportunity for what Alexis de Tocqueville called, when he traveled our country in the 1830s, one of the greatest threats to our democracy, and that is the tyranny of the majority.

This stunning rules change by the Senate majority can best be described as ObamaCare 2. One of the things that Americans really didn't like about the new health care law, ObamaCare, was that it was passed in the dead of night by a purely partisan vote during a snowstorm. It showed that those who had the votes could do whatever they wanted no matter what the minority thought, and we can see the results: millions of Americans having their policies canceled. Next year, tens of millions will--those who get their insurance through employers. This is another example of that kind of power play. This time the goal was to help the administration and the Democratic majority advance its radical agenda, unchecked through the courts and the executive agencies.

As the Senator from Michigan, Senator Levin said--quoting a former Republican Senator, Senator Vandenberg--Senator Levin is a Democrat-- said on that Thursday, ``If a majority of the Senate can change its rules at any time, there are no rules.''

``If a majority of the Senate can change its rules at any time, there are no rules.''

Similar to the Pittsburgh game, if the home team can change its rules at any time there are no rules to the game. Every child knows that there have to be rules to the game. So I have this question: How am I and how are other Senators supposed to serve in a Senate with no rules? How is this different from what could have happened in Pittsburgh if they changed the rules in the middle of the game? Or if the Red Sox, finding themselves behind in the ninth inning, added a few innings just to make sure they beat the Cardinals in the World Series. In the Senate, future majorities could do whatever they want, end the filibuster for legislation, removing any obstacle to the tyranny of the majority. Just as if there were no integrity of the rules of football and there would be no integrity of the game and there would be no fans, if there were no integrity to the rules of the Senate, there is no integrity for the Senate and no respect for this part of our system of government.

I think I was not overstating it when I said this is the most dangerous change to the rules since Thomas Jefferson wrote them. When he did write the rules, he had this to say about why we have rules. His words are in the Senate rules book that every single one of us has and hopefully have read at least the beginning parts of. This is worth reading. It is entitled ``The Importance of Adhering to Rules.''

Remember the argument here is not about the filibuster, it is about how the rules were changed. The Importance of Adhering to Rules. I am going to read

a little bit of this. According to Thomas Jefferson, when he wrote the Senate rules:

Mr. Onslow, the ablest among the Speakers of the House of Commons, used to say, ``it was a maxim he had often heard, when he was a young man, from old and experienced members, that nothing tended to throw power more into the hand of administration and those who acted with the majority of the House of Commons, than a neglect of, or departure from, the rules of proceeding: that these forms, as instituted by our ancestors, operated as a check and control on the actions of the majority; and that they were in many instances a shelter, and a protection to the minority, against the attempts of power.

This is Thomas Jefferson writing about the importance of rules when he wrote the Senate rules.

Continuing:

So far the maxim is certainly true, and is founded in good

sense, that as it is always in the power of the majority, by

their numbers, to stop any improper measures proposed on the

part of their opponents, the only weapons by which the

minority can defend themselves against similar attempts from

those in power, are the forms and rules of proceeding which

have been adopted as they were found necessary from time to

time, and are become the law of the House; by a strict

adherence to which, the weaker party can only be protected

from those irregularities and abuses which these forms were

intended to check, and which the wantonness of power is but

too often apt to suggest to large and successful majorities.

I would think a majority that claims to protect the rights of minorities would be interested in these words of Jefferson and especially in the following words:

And whether these forms be in all cases the most rational

or not, is really not of so great importance. It is much more

material that there should be a rule to go by, than what that

rule is; that there may be a uniformity of proceeding in

business, not subject to the caprice of the Speaker, or

captiousness of the members. It is very material that order,

decency and regularity be preserved in a dignified public

body.

That was Thomas Jefferson on the importance of Senate rules when he wrote them at the beginning of our country. The majority has set a precedent that destroys those rules--that destroys the integrity of the rules because a Senate in which a majority can change the rules at any time for any reason is a Senate with no rules. That is why it is not too much to say that the Democratic majority has created a perpetual opportunity for the tyranny of the majority. The majority can do anything it wants any time it wants.

In this case, what it wanted to do was stack the Federal court that hears most of the challenges to its radical regulatory agenda with judges who believe in that agenda. Who knows what the next power play will be. First it was ObamaCare, then ObamaCare 2, the change of the rules. What we do know is that this majority has set an unprecedented precedent. They have set the precedent to do whatever they want to do anytime they want to do it. They have created a Senate without rules.

Now let's talk a little bit about what the justification might be for such a stunning action because there are so many words thrown around that don't represent facts at all that--somehow--I wonder about this. For example, the Democrats complain that their radical action was warranted because the Senate is broken. I agree with that. I will explain in a few moments why I think so. Their reason is that President Obama's appointees have been unfairly denied seats by failed cloture votes or filibusters. The charge was--and you heard the majority leader a few minutes ago--things have gotten so bad that this Republican majority has treated President Obama unfairly by denying his nominees their seats by failed cloture votes or filibusters. The Democrats have gotten themselves in a room and convinced each other that this is true, but it is flat out not true.

According to the Congressional Research Service--and I have researched this for several months and asked them this question: Has there ever been any Supreme Court nominee, by any President, who has been denied his or her seat by a filibuster? The answer is no. It is zero. Now, there is one possible exception. Abe Fortas was nominated by President Lyndon Johnson as Chief Justice. The nomination was in trouble on both sides of the aisle, and to help his friend Abe Fortas save face, President Johnson engineered a cloture vote in 1968. I think the vote was 45 to 43. They called that a win to help ``Abe save face.'' But certainly President Obama's nominees have not been denied their seats by a failed cloture vote, and neither have any other Presidents.

Have there ever been any Cabinet members of President Obama or any other President who have been denied their seats by a failed cloture vote or by a filibuster? According to the Congressional Research Service, the answer is no. The number is zero. There have been no Cabinet members who have been denied their seats in the Obama administration by a failed cloture vote.

Have there ever been any Federal district judges denied their seats by a failed cloture vote for President Obama or any other President? The answer is zero. Except for perhaps Fortas, there has never been a Supreme Court Justice, Cabinet member, or Federal district judge nomination in the history of President Obama--and never in the history of this country has a President's nomination been denied by a filibuster. Interesting.

Then why did we go to this stunning radical move on November 21? Well, maybe it was because of sub-Cabinet members. How many of those have been denied their seats by a filibuster, according to the Congressional Research Service? Two of President Obama's, three of President George W. Bush's, and two of President Clinton's. That is a total of seven in the history of the Senate when a filibuster has said to a sub-Cabinet member that we are going to deny them their seat because of a filibuster or a failed cloture vote. So President Obama has been treated about exactly the same as his last two predecessors.

In all of those I just mentioned, among Cabinet members, district judges, Supreme Court Justices, and sub-Cabinet members, we only found two Obama nominees who have been denied their seats by a failed cloture vote. Now, that is a fact. That is not a piece of Republican propaganda. That comes from the Congressional Research Service.

Why is there a fuss about this? Well, maybe it is because of the Federal circuit judges. Well, let's talk about that. As for appeals court judges, Republican filibusters have blocked five. Why did that happen? That happened as a result of what happened in 2003, the year I came to the Senate. Then, Democrats got together and said: We think President Bush's nominees are too conservative, so for the first time in the history of the Senate we are going to block 10 of President Bush's nominees basically because they are too conservative. I knew some of those judges. I used to clerk on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for Judge John Minor Wisdom. I knew the respect he had for Judge Pryor. I knew Mr. Pickering, who had really been a pioneer for civil rights in the State of Mississippi in the 1960s and 1970s when it was hard to do that.

The truth is that the majority of Democrats said: We are going to block 10 of the Bush judges. It has never been done before, but we are going to do it with a cloture vote.

Well, as you can guess, everyone on the Republican side--and the majority then--got very excited. The majority leader, Senator Frist, said: We are going to change the rules and do something that Senator Lott--a majority leader at one time--said was the nuclear option.

There was great consternation. In 2006 Senator Reid said--and he recounts this very well in his book--``to do so would be the end of the Senate.''

I made two speeches. I suggested that, well, this is a terrible thing to do. A President ought to have an up-or-down vote on his circuit judges. So why don't we see if we can't get a few Republicans and a few Democrats and just take it out of the hands of the leaders and agree we will only use the filibuster on circuit judges in extraordinary circumstances, which was the result. I said at the time that I would never vote for a filibuster on a circuit judge. I adjusted my view to be the same as the Senate precedent that came out of the Gang of 14. Of the 10 Bush judges, 5 were not confirmed and 5 were confirmed. In 2003 the Democratic Senators for the first time in history refused to confirm five Presidential nominees for the Federal court

of appeals by a cloture vote--by a filibuster--and the expected happened. Over time, the Republicans now have blocked five nominations. So Republicans and Democrats are even.

When you start something, things have a way of coming back around. What the Democrats said was fair to do in 2003 and 2004 the Republicans now say is fair to do. If the Democrats think the Republican nominees are too conservative, they will block five of them. If we think President Obama's nominees are too liberal, then we will block five of them. We put in the trash heap the tradition that we will never use the filibuster on Federal courts of appeals judges.

The majority leader and others have said: Well, that is not the only problem. The problem is that President Obama has had to wait too long to get his judges confirmed.

Again, that is not true either. This is another case where the Democrats apparently have gotten themselves in a room and convinced themselves that something that isn't true is true. According to the Congressional Research Service, President Obama's second-term Cabinet nominees have been confirmed at about the same pace as President Bush's Cabinet nominees and President Clinton's Cabinet nominees.

The other day I heard the majority leader use the example of the distinguished Secretary of Defense and a former Member of this body, Senator Hagel, as an example of delay. Well, let me comment on that, if I may. Senator Hagel's nomination was reported to the Senate floor. The day after it was reported by the Armed Services Committee, the majority leader filed cloture and called that a filibuster.

Now, many Republican Senators--I watched the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from South Carolina and others say on the floor to the majority leader: That is premature. You are cutting off debate before we have had a chance to consider the Secretary of Defense of this country. If you will allow us more time--at that time we were going into the Presidents Day recess for a week--we will cut off debate the day we come back and then we will have an up-or-down vote.

But, no, the majority leader and the White House said: Ram it through.

They insisted on a vote, the vote was turned down, and he called that a filibuster. I call it cutting off debate--cutting off debate prematurely. Why in the world wouldn't you allow a Secretary of Defense to be on the floor for more than 1 day before you cut off the debate prematurely and call it a filibuster?

The majority leader said: Well, we could be attacked.

I think he must have forgotten we had a perfectly adequate Secretary of Defense in place--Leon Panetta--until the next one was confirmed, and he was going to be confirmed because the majority had the majority of votes to do that and a Cabinet member has never been denied his or her seat because of a cloture vote.

I want to keep coming back to that. A Cabinet member has never been denied confirmation because of a failed cloture vote. A Cabinet member will be confirmed after a while--after you have questions. But in that case, they filed cloture after 1 day.

Now, in my case, 20 years ago when President Bush nominated me as the Education Secretary, there was a Democratic Senate. I was announced in December, nominated in January, and it was March before some of the Democratic Senators saw fit to give me a vote, and I was confirmed by unanimous consent. During that time I tried to get ready for our education program. It gave me some time to work. When President Reagan nominated Ed Meese to be the Attorney General, it took a year before the Senate confirmed Ed Meese, but he was confirmed. There have been some Cabinet members who have withdrawn their names because they have become embarrassed or for some other reason.

If the question is whether a failed cloture vote has ever been used to deny a Cabinet member his or her seat, the answer is no. In the case of Secretary Hagel, I would think 1 day is not quite long enough to file a motion to cut off debate and claim it is a filibuster.

What about judges? Has the Senate been slow on judges? This year the Senate has confirmed 36 of the President's second-term nominees to circuit and district courts compared with 14 for President Bush as of November 21st in his second term in 2005. These things are never exact because there are vacancies for a variety of reasons. That is a pretty big difference. It is very hard to argue that it is unfair. But the majority leader did argue successfully that the minority was holding up district judges in order to negotiate for other points. He did that the second time a bipartisan group of us sat down to talk about how to change the Senate rules so we could move along better. So what the Senate agreed to do earlier this year was to change the rules to make it easier to confirm district judges.

Here is the procedure: Remember, first they have to be on the calendar. How do they get on the calendar? A committee majority puts them on the calendar. What party has the majority in the Judiciary Committee? The Judiciary Committee majority is Democratic. That puts them on the calendar. So Democrats put them on the calendar. Only the majority leader can take them off the calendar, and when he does that, he has no motion to proceed; he just takes them right off just like he did tonight. If he wants to, he can just bring them up and ask unanimous consent that they be approved, which they often are.

I am told by the Republican leader's office that when the majority leader rammed the rules change through on November 21, there were about 40 or so noncontroversial--so-called--nominees who were about to be confirmed, including many district judges. But tonight the majority leader has selected 4 of the 13 district judges who are on the calendar and made a big show out of the fact that we are going to take an intervening day tomorrow and then we are going to vote on them, I guess, beginning on Wednesday. Under the rules change he asked for, the debate on each one of those can only be 2 hours, and it is divided evenly, which means the Democrats have an hour and the Republicans have an hour. If the Democrats want to speed things up, they can give their hour back. On a noncontroversial judge, Republicans normally wouldn't say anything, except a word or two of praise. But let's say the Republicans are upset by the rules changes and we are going to say we will take that whole hour. The Democrats could say 2 or 3 minutes of praise for the district judge and we could confirm those four in 4 hours. That is half a day's work.

The question I asked the majority leader was, What about the other nine? What about the other nine district judges who are sitting on this calendar, put there by the Democratic majority of the Judiciary Committee, and only one person in the Senate can bring them up for a vote, and he didn't bring them up. Why doesn't he bring them up? He could bring them up today. Tomorrow would be the intervening day and we could vote on Wednesday and vote on them all. He could have brought every single district judge up Thursday before recess, when he turned the Senate into a place that has no rules; Friday would have been the intervening day, and we could have been voting all day today, and by the time we went home for supper, every district judge would be confirmed because of the earlier rules change that limited post-cloture debate on district judges to 2 hours. The only reason I can see to go through all of this is to manufacture a crisis to make the American people think that somehow the minority is abusing its privileges.

I read the Executive Calendar on November 21 very carefully. Remember, this is the document that is on every Senator's desk. A nominee has to be on here in order to be confirmed. If a person is an executive nominee, the only person who can bring it up is the majority leader. It is the same with legislation. So legislative matters require a motion of consent. There were only 16 on the calendar who had been there 3 weeks and only 8 more who had been there more than 9 weeks, and 2 of the 8 were being held up by Democratic Senators. That is hardly a crisis.

Finally, let me address the claim the majority leader didn't take seriously; that is, Republicans have unfairly blocked the President from filling vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Remember, I pointed out the Democrats started this by saying that if President Bush nominates judges that are too conservative,

we will block them, so the Republicans now have blocked an equal number of President Obama's judges. But that is not the primary reason for blocking them. The primary reason is stated in a letter written on July 27, 2006, to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a Republican, Senator Specter, from all of the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee. President Bush had nominated someone for this same court, the District of Columbia Federal Circuit Court, and this is what the Democratic Senators said in 2006:

We believe that Mr. Keisler should under no circumstances

be considered--much less confirmed--by this Committee before

we first address the very need for that judgeship, receive

and review necessary information about the nominee, and deal

with the genuine judicial emergencies identified by the

Judicial Conference.

In other words, what the Democrats were saying--and it included a number of the most distinguished Members of this body--the chairman Senator Leahy, Senator Schumer, Senator Feingold, Senator Feinstein, Senator Kohl, Senator Kennedy, Senator Durbin, Senator Biden--they were saying that this court, the DC court, is an important court, but it doesn't need any more judges. Before we add any more judges to a court that is underworked, we ought to consider transferring those judgeships to courts that are overworked.

That argument had been made since at least 2001 by Senator Grassley from Iowa, and finally, with some bipartisan cooperation in 2007, he achieved some success. With President Bush's agreement, the Republican President, he agreed with the Democratic Senators that the DC Circuit should under no circumstances--those are their words in their letter-- have more judges. They reduced by one the number of judges, and they transferred a judge to the Ninth Circuit, which was overworked.

So what Republicans have said about the three judges whom the President has nominated to the DC Circuit is, before we consider any of them, consider Senator Grassley's bill. Do in 2013 what you said we should do in 2006 and 2007 and which we did in a bipartisan way.

So how can this be dismissed when Republicans are asking to do in 2013 exactly what the Democrats successfully insisted on in 2006, which is to transfer judges from the courts where they are not needed to the courts where they are needed. In fact, the DC Circuit has a lower caseload by comparison today than it did in 2007 when, by a bipartisan agreement, it was considered underworked. The Democrats didn't think it was unfair then to insist that we not appoint more judges to a court that was underworked. It must be they are trying to manufacture a crisis now.

So if there is no good reason to change the rules in such a dramatic way as the majority did on November 21, why would the majority leader insist on cramming through in a power play a rules change that in 2006 he said would be the end of the Senate? Because the vote was not about the filibuster. All of that is pretext. The vote was about allowing the majority to do whatever it wants to do any time it wants to do it.

One of the things the American people detest about ObamaCare, as I said earlier, is that it was crammed through in the middle of the night in a partisan power play and we can see the results. Unlike the civil rights bill which had broad bipartisan support--I can remember Senator Dirksen and President Johnson working together on it when it required 67 votes in the Senate, and because it achieved that consensus, Senator Russell, the great opponent of the bill, went home to Georgia and said: It is the law of the land and we should now support it.

When we cram a big social change--or any big change--through the Congress, we are going to get the kind of result we get with ObamaCare today: millions of people losing their policies, tens of millions will next year, great concern, Web site not working. That is what we get when we cram things through in a partisan way, and the Democrats have done it again.

So if the filibuster was not the problem, then why is the Senate not functioning better? Why are we so low in public opinion polls? Frankly, it is because of the Senate leadership. I have had the privilege over the years of watching the Senate. I came here for the first time in 1967 as an aide to Senator Howard Baker, the future majority leader of the Senate. I watched Senator Mansfield and Senator Dirksen. I watched Senator Byrd and Senator Baker. I watched Senator Daschle, Senator Lott, Senator Frist. I wasn't in the Senate all of that time--I have only been here since 2003--but I have seen it over that time up close. All of them could operate this body very well under the rules we had until Thursday of 2 weeks ago, until November 21.

I was at the Rules Committee meeting when Senator Byrd, former majority leader and acknowledged as the great historian of the Senate, came. He could barely speak, but he had one last message for the Senate and it was: Don't change the filibuster. He called it the necessary fence against the excesses of the executive and the popular will. That was what Senator Byrd said. He also said that under the rules we had until November 21, a majority leader could operate the Senate if he wanted to.

The current majority leader seems to be unable to do that, and we saw an example of it here tonight. He brings up 4 district judges, while there are 13 on the calendar. He could have brought them up on November 21 and we could have been voting on all of them today. He could bring them all up today and we could vote on all of them Wednesday, but he is parceling them out as if there were a crisis somewhere. Why is he doing that? I don't see why he is doing that. It is not the way to make the Senate function. It is not what Senator Byrd would do. It is not what Senator Baker would do. I saw them come in and open the Senate to amendments, put a bill on the floor, ask for amendments. Here came 300 amendments. Ask for unanimous consent to cut off amendments. They got unanimous consent because nobody could think of any other amendments, and then Senator Byrd would say--and Senator Baker did as well--all right, let's start voting, and vote, vote, vote, vote. Then we could get to about Wednesday or Thursday and Senators would think, well, maybe my amendment is not so important, and by Friday, when it was clear the majority leader was going to finish the bill that week, they would drop the amendments, and we got it done.

So the Senate wasn't a perfect place--things were still bumpy. There was Senator Metzenbaum sitting in the front row objecting. There was Senator Williams before him, Senator Allen before him, exercising their rights, but the majority leaders were able to work with that. The Senate worked on Mondays and Fridays, it worked at night, and the threat of that usually caused people who were trying to not show a proper amount of restraint and use of their privileges to back down.

Instead, what the current majority leader does--and we heard him tonight--is complain about obstructionism when there isn't any, certainly not on nominations. I am not going to say Senators on both sides of the aisle haven't abused their privileges and slowed down the Senate. But he complains about obstructionism when, in fact, he has become the obstructionist in chief by making it more difficult for those of us who are elected from our States to represent the people who have a right to be heard. Seventy-seven times this majority leader has cut off amendments in a body whose whole purpose is to amend, debate, and vote. I call it a gag rule, with the majority cutting off the right of American voices to be heard on the Senate floor. There have been 114 times when he has filed a motion to cut off debate on the same day he has introduced a bill, and he calls that a filibuster. I call it a gag rule. He has bypassed Senate committees in an unprecedented way: 76 times in the last 7 years.

He set himself up as the king of the Senate: May I offer an amendment on Iran, a Senator might ask. No. May I offer an amendment on Egypt? No. How about an amendment on ObamaCare? No. What about a bill on the National Labor Relations Board? No. Can we work on appropriations bills? No. Only one person is deciding what happens here when, in fact, the history of the Senate has been a place of virtually unlimited debate on virtually any amendment. That has been the history of the Senate. It is different than the House of Representatives. It has been different than any other body in the

world. It operates by unanimous consent, and it requires restraint which hasn't always been exercised, but majority leaders who have been effective have found their way to deal with that.

I have spent the last 3 years doing my best to help make this place function. I cannot say where this rules change on November 21 will lead, but it is heading in a dangerous direction--a direction that is dangerous for the Senate and dangerous for our country.

This is a country that prizes the rule of law. Other countries around the world that do not have it wish they did, they wish they had a country with the rule of law. So in a country that prizes the rule of law, we now have a Senate without any rules because the Senate majority has decided, for the first time, that a majority can change the rules at any time, for any reason it wants, which makes this a body without rules.

In a country that yearns for solutions on Iran, on health care, on our debt crisis, we have a king of the Senate saying: No amendments, no debate. I will make all the decisions.

I know of only one cure for this dangerous trend, and that is one word, an election--the election of six new Republican Senators so power plays such as ObamaCare and the November 21 rules change will be ended and the Senate will again be alive with bills, amendments, and debates, reflecting the will of the American people on the important issues of our time.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letter from the year 2006 from the Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee saying there should be no new judges added to the DC Court of Appeals because it is underworked.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Alabama for his thoughtfulness and leadership.

As Senator Byrd used to say: The purpose of the Senate is to have a place where there can be an opportunity for unlimited discussion, unlimited debates and unlimited amendments. That is why we are here.

Senator Byrd used to say so eloquently that the Senate was a unique body because it provided the necessary fence against the abuses of the executive. That is what Senator Byrd said in his last speech to the Senate when he spoke before the rules committee. He said the Senate is the necessary fence against abuses of the executive--remembering how this country was founded in opposition to the king and the popular excesses. That was what the Senate was supposed to be. I am afraid that ended today.

This action by the Democratic majority is the most important and most dangerous restructuring of the rules of the Senate since Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules at the founding of our country. It creates the perpetual opportunity--as Alexis de Tocqueville described--that is most dangerous for our country. He said that when he came to our country to visit in the 1830s. The young Frenchman said: I see two great dangers for this new American democracy. One was Russia and the other was the tyranny of the majority.

The action that was taken today creates a perpetual opportunity for the tyranny of the majority because it permits a majority in this body to do whatever it wants to do anytime it wants to do it. This should be called ObamaCare 2 because it is another example of the use of raw partisan political power for the majority to do whatever it wants to do any time it wants to do it.

In this case what it wants to do is implement the President's radical regulatory agenda through the District of Columbia court. That's what this is. It is not about an abuse of the filibuster.

There is a big football weekend coming up in Tennessee. Vanderbilt University plays the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Let's imagine this: The Vanderbilt-Tennessee game, which is being played in Knoxville, home of the University of Tennessee, and Vanderbilt gets on the 1-yard line. The University of Tennessee says: Well, we are the home team, so we will just add 20 yards to the field or whatever it takes for us to win the game. Or the Boston Red Sox are playing at home. Let's say they are behind the Cardinals this year. They get to the ninth inning and they are behind and they say: Well, it is our home field. We will just add a few innings or whatever it takes so we can win the game. That is what the Democratic majority did today. They say: The rules don't allow us to do what we want to do, so we will just change the rules to do whatever it takes to get the result we want.

That is what they did with ObamaCare. We remember that. I was standing right here at the desk. It was snowing. It was the middle of the winter. Senators were coming in, in the middle of the night, and what happened? Among the things the American people like the least about ObamaCare is that it was crammed down the throat of the American people by the raw exercise of partisan political power with not one single Republican vote. That is not the way the civil rights bill was passed. That is not the way Social Security and other great bills were passed. They were passed by a bipartisan majority so we could gain the support of the American people.

Our Democratic majority must have liked that ObamaCare night. The American people aren't liking it so much because apparently nobody read the bill very closely. There are millions of Americans who have had their policies canceled. There are going to be millions more when employers start looking at the cost of ObamaCare.

This is ObamaCare 2; I say to my colleagues. This is another exercise of raw partisan political power for the Democratic majority to get the result it wants. There is only one cure for it, and that is an election. An election is coming up in about a year. The American people can speak. In the meantime, this has been the most dangerous, most important restructuring of the Senate since Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules.

It is, according to the Senator from Nevada, who is the majority leader--it is, according to his book in 2008, the end of the Senate. That is what he said this would be, and now he has done it. He has written the end of the Senate by his actions today.

The Senator from Michigan, Mr. Levin, said to all of us when we were discussing this earlier this year--he reminded us of the great Senator from Michigan, Arthur Vandenberg, who was the author of the idea of a bipartisan foreign policy. Senator Vandenberg said shortly after World War II that a U.S. Senate in which a majority can change the rules anytime the majority wants is a U.S. Senate without any rules. Let me say that again. A U.S. Senate in which the majority can change the rules anytime the majority wants is a U.S. Senate without any rules.

So this is not about the filibuster. This is another raw partisan political power grab so the Democratic majority can do whatever it wants to do whenever it wants to do it. It is ObamaCare II, and the American people will see it that way when they can take time away from the Web sites trying to fill

out their new insurance policies to be able to pay enough attention to it.

What is the excuse for this extraordinarily disturbing action today? They are the flimsiest of excuses, and I will take a few minutes to outline what those are.

The first allegation is that the Republican minority was using the filibuster to keep President Obama's appointees from gaining their seats. Well, let's look at the history from the Congressional Research Service. How many Supreme Court nominees have ever not been seated because of a failed cloture vote? That is a filibuster. The answer is zero in the history of the Senate--not just President Obama but the history of the Senate. Someone might point to the Abe Fortas case when President Johnson--I guess it was in the late 1960s--engineered a 45- to-43 cloture vote so, in Johnson's words, Abe Fortas could hold his head up, but, in fact, the filibuster has never been used to deny a Supreme Court Justice his or her seat. How many Cabinet Members of President Obama have been denied their seat by a filibuster? Zero. This is the Congressional Research Service.

The majority leader said: Well, what about Secretary Hagel, the distinguished Defense Secretary? He had to wait 34 days to be confirmed. Why shouldn't he wait 34 days to be confirmed? He was confirmed shortly after his name was reported. We had a perfectly adequate Secretary of Defense sitting in the office at the time-- Secretary Panetta. I remember the Senator from Nevada standing over there and asking: What if we are attacked and Secretary Hagel is not there? Well, Secretary Panetta was there.

The number is zero.

Of course.

Certainly. And if the Senator from Oklahoma needs to speak now, I will be glad to yield.

Madam President, my point is that the charge is that Republicans had been denying President Obama his nominations by filibuster. Not on the Supreme Court, not to his Cabinet, and no district judges, I say to my colleagues.

How many in the history of the country have ever been denied their seats by a failed cloture vote, including President Obama? The answer is zero.

That is very interesting. So what is the reason for this? Well, let's go on. Maybe it was some other nomination that caused such a problem that would justify this dangerous restructuring of the Senate rules.

Let's go to the sub-Cabinet category. These are all the executive appointments below the Cabinet level. How many of those have been denied? Under President Clinton, the Senate rejected two nominees of his by a cloture vote. Under George W. Bush, it was three. Under President Obama, it has been two. So in the history of the Senate, the cloture vote has been used to deny seven Presidential nominees their seat, including two for President Obama.

Let's go to the one area where there has been a little bit more; that is, the circuit judges. Remember, on the Supreme Court, never; district judges, never; Cabinet member, never; but circuit judges, yes. There have been 10 instances where Presidential nominees for the Federal circuit courts of appeals have been denied their seats because of a failed cloture vote--that is a filibuster--five Democrats, five Republicans.

How did this happen? If in all of these other areas it never happens, why did it happen here? Because, as the Republican leader explained this morning, Democrats got together in 2003--the year I came to the Senate--and said, for the first time in the history of the U.S. Senate, we are going to use the filibuster to deny President George W. Bush 10 nominations to the circuit court because they are too conservative, not because they are not qualified. One was Miguel Estrada, one of the most highly qualified nominees ever presented. One was Judge Pickering. One was Judge Pryor, who used to be a law clerk to Judge Wisdom, as I once was. I know the high respect Judge Wisdom had for him. The end result was that we had this Gang of 14, and the Democrats ended up only stopping five of President Bush's judges, but that was the first time in the history of the Senate. To date, including the judges we are discussing now, the three on the DC Circuit Court, the total is five. So that is it.

How can anyone say President Obama has not been treated fairly when, in fact, the answer is zero on the Supreme Court, zero on district judges, zero on Cabinet and two on sub-Cabinet, and the same on circuit courts that President Bush had?

I asked the Senate Historian if President Obama's second term Cabinet nominees had been moved through the Senate more swiftly or slower than those of his two predecessors, Bush and Clinton. The Senate Historian told me it was about the same. So on that question, that is a fake crisis.

The second allegation is that it takes too long for President Obama's nominees to come through the Senate. Well, we have something on our desks called the Executive Calendar. Every Senator has this. There are 44 Senators in their first term, and maybe some haven't had a chance to read it very carefully, but it has on it all of the names of everyone who could possibly be confirmed.

The way Senate procedure works is a nominee comes out of a committee to the Executive Calendar. Let me state the obvious: All of the committees are controlled by the Democrats. So if we want to report someone for the National Labor Relations Board, it has to be approved by a majority of senators on the committee on which I serve. Democrats have a majority of the seats on the Committee; so a nominee gets on this calendar by a majority of Democratic votes.

So how long have the people on the calendar been waiting? Well, 54 of them have been waiting only 3 weeks; in other words, they just got there. Most of them aren't controversial. Usually they are approved on a day such as this when we are wrapping up before we go home for a week or two, so half of them would probably be gone today. There are 16 who have been on the calendar for up to 9 weeks. That is a very short period of time in the U.S. Senate for people to have a chance to do their other business and get to know the nominees. There are eight who have been on the calendar more than 9 weeks. Of the eight, two are being held up by Democrats, and two more are Congressman Watt and Ms. Millett. That leaves four, and one of those is a newscaster who has been nominated to be a member of the board of the Morris K. Udall Foundation and who is being moved along with other people to that foundation board.

In other words, it is not true that there are people being held up for a long period of time because the only way a nominee can be confirmed in the U.S. Senate is if the majority takes someone from this Executive Calendar, moves their nomination--it doesn't have to go through any sort of other motion; he can do it on his own--and then we move to consider that person.

Well, one might say: But someone can hold each up one of those. Yes, we can, under the cloture procedure. But let's take an example. Let's say Senator Reid, the distinguished majority leader, were to come, under the old rules, to the floor and say: I believe Republicans are holding up 10 of our lower-level nominees in an obstructionist way. So let's say he arrives on Monday and he files cloture. He moves to confirm all 10 of those. He takes them off this calendar, he moves them to be confirmed, and he files cloture on each of the 10 on Monday. Tuesday is what we call an intervening day. He can get the rest of them confirmed, by bankers' hours, by Friday if he wants to because after he has that intervening day, there could only be, because we changed the rules earlier this year, 8 hours of debate, and his side can yield back their 4 hours, and then we go to the next one and then the next one. So we have 40 or 45 hours, and we have them all.

The majority leader, if he wished to, could confirm all of these people very

easily unless 41 Republicans said no. But what we have already seen is that almost never happens. In the history of the country, it has happened twice to President Obama on his sub-Cabinet members, never on a Cabinet member; and never on district judges.

So the majority leader had plenty of opportunity to have everybody confirmed if he wanted to. This is why Senator Byrd, who was majority leader and minority leader, in his last speech to the Senate said: There is no need to change the rules--and I am paraphrasing. I was at the Rules Committee hearing when he spoke. He said: A majority leader can use the rules that we have--that is, until today--to do whatever he wants to get done.

Then there is the last charge about the District of Columbia Circuit. That was the other pretext for this. Somehow Republicans were doing something wrong by saying it is too soon to cut off debate on the President's three nominees for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Republicans were doing--to the letter--exactly what Democrats did in 2006 and 2007. They were saying that court is underworked, that other courts are overworked, and we ought to move judges from where they are needed least to where they are needed most before we put anymore judges on the court.

This is the letter sent on July 27, 2006, by all the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Senators Leahy, Schumer, Feingold, Kohl, Biden, Feinstein, Ted Kennedy. They said ``under no circumstances'' should President Bush's Republican nominee be considered, much less confirmed, by this committee before we address the very need for the judges on the committee.

All we in the Republican Party were saying is--Senator Grassley has had his bill in since 2003; the Democrats said in 2006 we should not put anymore judges on the court until we look at where the judges are needed--we are saying: Consider Senator Grassley's bill before you confirm the judges.

So that is the excuse--the flimsiest of excuses. The idea that President Obama is not being treated at least as well as previous Presidents with his nominees is just not true. The filibuster has not been used to deny him nominees, except in two cases for sub-Cabinet members; and in the case of circuit judges, no more than with President Bush.

The majority leader has not used the rules he had before him to easily confirm the people on the Executive Calendar. Those on the Executive Calendar for the most part have only been there for a few weeks. So why then did the majority feel the need to take this extraordinary action?

That takes us back to where we started. This is, very simply, another partisan political power grab to permit the majority to do whatever it wants to any time it wants to do it.

The American people--millions of them--are filling out their insurance forms. They are trying to make the Web site work. They are terrified by the fact that they may not have insurance by January 1. That is totally the result of a partisan political power grab in the middle of the night 3 years ago that put ObamaCare into place. This is another example of that. The only cure for that is a referendum next November.

I deeply regret the action the Democratic majority took today. It is the most dangerous and the most consequential change in the rules of the Senate since Thomas Jefferson wrote those rules at the founding of our country.

Madam President, I would refer my colleagues to the letter I had included in the Record yesterday, the letter from the Senate Democrats in 2006 arguing that the DC Circuit should have no more judges until we consider the proper number and also a 1-page list of the total number of sub-Cabinet members who have ever been denied their seat by a failed cloture vote--and that number is seventeen in the history of the Senate; two under Clinton, three under Bush, and two under President Obama--plus five Bush judges and five Obama judges.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business for 10 minutes, without taking the time from either side.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Texas and the Senator from Missouri for their courtesy, and I will endeavor to do it a little quicker than in 10 minutes.

Changing Senate Rules

Madam President, this weekend, Vanderbilt plays Tennessee in a football game in Knoxville. Let's say Vanderbilt gets on the 1-yard line of Tennessee and Tennessee then says: Well, we are the home team. Let's add 20 yards or whatever it takes to win the game. Or let's say in the World Series recently the Red Sox were behind St. Louis in the ninth inning and the Red Sox said: Well, we are the home team. Let's add a couple of innings or whatever it takes to win the game. Everyone, I think, would say that is cheating. Everyone would say: You are destroying the game of football or baseball.

If a home team could change the rules at any time during the game or whatever it takes to win the game, what kind of game is it? That is what Senator Vandenberg said after World War II and Senator Levin repeated to all of us--that a Senate in which a majority can change the rules any time the majority wants to change the rules is a Senate without any rules.

Yet we hear that is what the Democratic majority may be seeking to do this week. They are unhappy, they say, that Republicans have said it is premature to vote up or down on three circuit judges nominated by President Obama--even though that was exactly the position of the Democratic Senators in 2006 and 2007 when they argued that the DC Circuit Court is underworked and that we should transfer judges from where they are needed the least to where they are needed the most. So they are going to change the rules of the game during the game or whatever it takes to get the results they want.

We have a lot of new Senators on both sides of the aisle. Nearly half the Senate, 44 members, are in their first term. It is important for them to remember that in Senator Reid's book he said that to do this would be the end of the U.S. Senate, that Senator Robert Byrd--probably the most distinguished Senate historian in its history--said in his last speech to us that the filibuster is the necessary fence against the excesses of the majority and of the Executive. It is the fence against what de Tocqueville called in the early 1830s the greatest danger to our country that he saw, which was the tyranny of the majority.

You may ask, how could this possibly happen? Here is how I am afraid it is happening. Sometimes we get off in our rooms by ourselves--and Republicans do it as well as Democrats--and we give ourselves our own version of the facts. The last time this came up, we tried to address this in the Old Senate Chamber. I think all of us thought it was a pretty good session. But this is my third opportunity to respond to these nuclear threats, and I am not going to do it again.

The President said during the government shutdown that he was not going to negotiate with a gun to his head. Neither am I. Democrats have had their finger on the nuclear button for 2 years. I hope they will reconsider.

No. 1, I hope they will read Senator Leahy's letter, which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.

It was signed in 2006 by all the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee: Senator Leahy, Senator Feinstein, Senator Kennedy, Senator Biden, Senator Schumer, Senator Durbin, Senator Feingold, and Senator Kohl. These Senate Democrats said under no circumstances should we consider confirming a judge to the DC Circuit when it is so underworked. So the Republican President and the Democratic Senate agreed with that and reduced the Court's size by one judge--just the same argument being made today.

No. 2, any suggestion that the President's nominations are being held up is completely wrong. I invited the Congressional Research Service into my office. I asked that question. They have said: No. President Obama's cabinet nominations in his second term are being considered at about the rate as those of President Clinton and President George W. Bush.

On every Senator's desk is an Executive Calendar. Every person who could be confirmed by the Senate is on this calendar. There are about 11 pages. The one who has been on there the longest goes back to February and six were reported in the Summer. But all the rest of them go back just to September 12--just a few weeks. Most of them have been there just 3 or 4 weeks.

So people are not being held up. The only way a nominee can be reported to the Senate floor is by a Democratic committee. The only person who can bring them from the calendar to be confirmed is the Democratic leader. Why doesn't he bring them to the floor and let them be confirmed?

In the history of the Senate--and this is from the Congressional Research Service--there have only been 17 executive nominees in its history who have failed to be seated because of a filibuster vote, a failed cloture vote. There have been two under the Clinton administration, three in the Bush administration, two in the Obama administration. There have been five Bush circuit judges and five Obama circuit judges. Never a Supreme Court Justice--there was a little exception with Abe Fortas, which was different--never a district court judge, and never a Cabinet member denied a seat by a filibuster--a failed cloture vote. So where is the crisis?

In conclusion, I would make this suggestion: I think what makes Americans angry about ObamaCare is it is taking us in the wrong direction, it is the 3,000-page bill, but as much as anything else it is the raw exercise of political power in the middle of the night during a snowstorm to pass a bill by a partisan vote, without any bipartisan support.

If the Democrats proceed to use the nuclear option in this way, it will be ObamaCare II, it will be the raw exercise of political power to say: We can do whatever we want to do.

Grantland Rice, a famous sportswriter, once said: ``It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.'' In this case, it is not so much what the rule is, it is how you change the rule. There have always been a few Senators on either side of the aisle who care enough about our institution and enough about our Constitution of checks and balances to stop a stampede that we will later regret. I hope that will be true again. I hope we will resist turning the Senate into an institution where the home team can cheat to win the game, to get whatever result it wants at any time it wants. Because as Senator Vandenberg said, and Senator Levin has repeated: A Senate where a majority can change the rules any time it wants is a Senate without any rules at all.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a 1-page summary of the 17 nominations that have not been confirmed after a failed cloture vote, which, according to the Congressional Research Service, is the entire number in the history of the U.S. Senate that have ever been denied their seat by a filibuster.

Mr. President, I agree that there are issues associated with animal drug compounding that should be examined. This bill does not change the current animal drug regulatory structure, and it is my hope that FDA would exercise its current enforcement authorities, as well as work with State pharmacy boards, to ensure that the law is being followed with respect to animal drug compounding, including compounding from bulk chemicals and the copying of approved drugs. In addition, Congress should utilize its oversight authorities to ensure that the agency acts accordingly. I plan to work with my colleagues in the Senate and the House to ask the Government Accountability Office to look at compounding of animal drugs.

Mr. President, I have been working very hard with Senator Harkin, members of the HELP Committee, and members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on legislation to provide options for patients and providers who want compounded drugs made in FDA-regulated facilities. As we debate this bill today, I want to make clear that all involved on this legislation have no intent of limiting patient or provider access to quality compounded drugs that fill a clinical need.

The process in the HELP Committee began as soon as news of the outbreak broke in Tennessee, and I cannot thank enough the folks at the Tennessee Department of Health, including Dr. Kainer, for all their good work that prevented so many further cases and lives being destroyed.

We have been working very hard to reach an agreement on how compounding should be regulated--and we have come a long way. Stakeholders including pharmacists, public health groups, and the FDA, have been sitting around a table to find a consensus solution. We have made good progress, and I want to talk about this legislation.

For traditional pharmacy, currently regulated under 503A of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, we strike the provisions found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court related to marketing.

In addition, and what will help prevent another New England Compounding Center, NECC, the Drug Quality and Security Act establishes a completely separate and distinct section 503B that authorizes FDA to regulate an optional category for larger compounding facilities. Sterile compounding facilities that do not want to comply with the patchwork of State laws and requirements can choose instead to have FDA regulate their compounding. 503B establishes rigorous quality standards, registration, adverse event reporting, inspections, and fees. If there are unintended consequences to this legislation, I stand ready to work with my colleagues and provide necessary oversight.

It has been almost 10 years since the Supreme Court decision that left a great deal of uncertainty in the regulation of pharmacy compounding. We clarify that 503A applies nationwide, and create an FDA regulated source for sterile compounded drugs. Nothing in the legislation is intended to limit access to quality compounded drugs for providers and patients or alter the practice of medicine but, rather, create a whole new alternative for safe sources of sterile compounded drugs that are held to a nationwide quality standard. The legislation does not change current law on office use compounding or repackaging.

Chairman Harkin will discuss the importance of this language, and I thank him for working with me so hard on this over the last year.

Mr. President, I thank my friend Dr. Coburn for his remarks, concern, and assistance with this legislation. I agree with him, and want to clarify that nothing in this legislation will constrain a doctor's options to practice medicine. The legislation tries to ensure that if a doctor or patient needs access to compounded drugs, that there is an FDA-regulated source for those drugs where the quality standards are uniform nationwide. Doctors know their patients best and should have access to accurate information on the safety and quality of the drugs they use.

If there are unintended consequences to this legislation, I stand ready to work with my colleagues and provide necessary oversight.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the Drug Quality and Security Act and also to thank the members and staff who have worked with us to reach an agreement and pass this bill. The legislation addresses the current ambiguity around the regulation of compounding pharmacies, one of which is tied to more than 60 deaths. It also establishes a workable system to get to unit level tracing of the nearly 4 billion prescriptions filled a year in the U.S. within a decade. In addition to bipartisan support in Congress, the bill enjoys broad support from the biomedical industry,

patient groups, consumer groups, and other stakeholders.

Over a year ago, staff began to work on identifying the cause and possible solutions to help prevent another meningitis outbreak. A group of staff from Republican and Democratic offices on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee began a series of standing meetings and proceeded to meet every week for several months. They met with stakeholders and discussed policy solutions that each member thought would solve the problem. After much discussion of the benefits, costs, and possible unintended consequences, members agreed to a list of policy concepts. That bill, S. 959, is a strong bill, and was voted out of committee unanimously. While I believe our Senate bill was a stronger solution, it would not have gotten through the Chamber on the other side of the Capitol.

We held bipartisan and bicameral meetings throughout August to try to find a consensus that could pass both Chambers, and that legislation is what you see before you. Is it perfect? No, but I believe it is a good first step and a market-driven solution to this terrible tragedy.

I would like to thank Senator Harkin for his tireless work on this bill, along with Chairman Upton and Ranking Member Waxman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Senator Harkin's staff has also worked tirelessly on this bipartisan bill. They worked many late evenings, long weekends, and through countless discussions to get the bill to where it is today.

Specifically, I want to recognize and thank Jenelle Krishnamoorthy, Elizabeth Jungman, and Nathan Brown. I also want to thank Pam Smith, Senator Harkin's staff director, for her leadership in getting this bill to the finish line.

I also would like to thank Jennifer Boyer with Senator Roberts and Hannah Katch with Senator Franken for all their help as well.

Senators Bennet and Burr were instrumental in the drug tracing title on which they have been working for almost 2 years. Rohini Kosoglu with Senator Bennet and Anna Abram and Margaret Coulter with Senator Burr worked very hard to craft this section, and I would like to thank them, too. I would also like to thank our Senate legislative counsels Stacy Kern Scherer and Kim Tamber, and from the Congressional Budget Office Julia Christensen, Jean Hearne and Ellen Werble.

Finally, I would like to thank my staff--Grace Stuntz, and my Health Policy Director, Mary-Sumpter Lapiniski. I also want to thank my staff director, David Cleary, for his work on this bill. My staff has been working around the clock for many days and weeks, and I sincerely appreciate their dedication to getting this bill passed.

I know Members are pulled in many different directions and there is always a lot of work to complete. We have a bipartisan bill that we believe will pass the Senate later today and passed the House on Saturday, September 28th, that takes a big step in addressing the regulation of compounded drugs and preventing counterfeit, stolen, and substandard drugs from reaching consumers. I urge my colleagues to support this compromise.

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

Mr. President, this afternoon the Senate passed and sent to the President legislation that Tennesseans and Americans will welcome because it deals with the terrifying fungal meningitis outbreak that occurred more than a year ago that killed 16 Tennesseans and made many others sick.

The problem at that time was sterile compounded drugs that turned out not to be sterile. So when they were injected into patients for back pain or neck pain, those tainted drugs caused fungal meningitis and caused a number of Tennesseans to die and many others to become sick. Had it not been for the heroic efforts of the Tennessee State Department of Public Health, many others across the country may have been injected with that tainted medicine and become sick.

This is a very important piece of legislation which Senators and House Members have been working on for a year. I am glad it passed. I am sure the President will sign it. In our State, we know how personal this was. There is the story of Diana Reed from Brentwood, TN, who was the caregiver for her husband, who has Lou Gehrig's disease. She had neck pain--maybe because of helping him in and out of a wheelchair-- went to the doctor, and got an injection for her neck pain. The next thing she knew, she had fungal meningitis and she died. Still, her husband with Lou Gehrig's disease lives on.

That story has been told in many States. We have been told by the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration that if we do not act, it will happen again. If we do not act, Commissioner Hamburg said, the question is not if but when there will be another tragedy. We have acted. No one should believe we can guarantee such a tragedy will never happen again, but for two reasons, it is much less likely we will have another tragedy like fungal meningitis as the result of contaminated drugs.

No. 1, we have cleared up the question of accountability. After this happened, and it was discovered that the tainted drugs came from the Massachusetts compounding pharmacy, there was a lot of finger pointing back and forth between the FDA and the State board about who should have been regulating this pharmacy, because there were other trouble signs. This never should have happened and would not have happened if they had been either properly regulated either by the State or the Federal agency, the FDA.

That often happens when there is not accountability, when it is not clear who is on the flagpole, as I like to say--when it is not clear who is in charge. We have used the example of Admiral Hyman Rickover, who was a Navy officer. In the 1950s, when he was assigned the job of the nuclear Navy, he told his captains two things: No. 1, you are in charge of the ship; and, No. 2, you are in charge of the reactor. If anything goes wrong with the nuclear reactor, your career is over.

As a result of that level of clear accountability, since the 1950s there has never been a death as a result of a reactor accident on one of our nuclear ships. This legislation creates that kind of accountability for compounded drugs.

It preserves the traditional role of States to regulate drugstores. Compounding is something almost every drugstore does. We have 60,000 of those, and that is an important job to the States. Most States do an excellent job.

It preserves the role of the Food and Drug Administration for manufacturers, those who manufacture large amounts of drugs which are prepared without an individual prescription. But it creates a new sort of facility which we call outsourcing facility. This facility is regulated by the FDA.

Two things have happened. One is either the FDA or the State is in charge of a compounding pharmacy. It will be one or the other. The second is there is a new outsourcing facility. A doctor or a hospital in Virginia or Tennessee may choose to buy all of its sterile drugs, for example, from a compounding pharmacy that is regulated by the FDA. It doesn't have to, but it may choose to do that.

We believe many will choose to do that, particularly with the sterile drugs that are sent across State lines without a prescription. This legislation affects the health and safety of millions of Americans.

There was a second part this legislation that was passed this afternoon that is equally as important and in some ways more far- reaching. We call it track and trace. That is the shorthand name for it. Four billion prescriptions are written every year.

What this legislation does is attach a serial number to each drug that is manufactured and follows it all the way from the drug manufacturer to the individual pharmacy. Why is that important. It is important so that one will know, if given a prescribed drug, that it works, is not counterfeit, and that it is safe. It will take several years to implement this, but the drugs that make the 4 billion prescriptions will now be able to be tracked and traced from the manufacturer to the pharmacy.

Many of our disputes are well advertised around the Senate. In fact, one could argue that is what we are for--the resolution of disputes. If there weren't a dispute, we probably wouldn't be here. We would work everything out at the city council, the Governor's office or somewhere else.

The big issues of the day stand here. Some of those are hard to resolve. ObamaCare is hard to resolve, fixing the debt is hard to resolve. We have very different points of view.

On this issue, which was difficult to do, we worked for more than 1 year on the compounding pharmacy bill and more than 2 years on the track-and-trace bill. It was very difficult to do. We were able to do it.

I commend Senator Harkin, who is chairman of our committee, Senator Franken, Senator Roberts, Senator Burr, Senator Bennet, and many other Members of the committee. We were able to involve many people in it and

come out with the unanimous recommendation of our committee, and it was unanimous today.

Just because it was unanimous, I don't want anyone to think it was easy. It was hard work. Because it was unanimous, I don't want anyone to think it is not important.

It is important in Tennessee to those 16 families who had a family member die. It is important to the dozens of families with a member of their family who is sick because of those injections. It is important to those families who may still become sick in our State and other States.

No. 1, it is important to know after this who is on the flagpole. It is either the FDA or the State agencies, and there will be no more finger pointing.

No. 2, any doctor or hospital that chooses to buy its sterile compounded drugs that are shipped interstate in large amounts without prescription from an FDA-related facility may do that.

This is a day of results in the Senate, which I am pleased to see.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, The Tennessean reported on Tuesday morning in its headline that the State's largest underwriter is notifying 66,000 clients that their policies don't meet ACA coverage requirements. In other words, they are losing those policies.

I have a letter from a woman, Emilie, who lives in Middle Tennessee who was 1 of 16,000 Tennesseans who are part of another plan called CoverTN. She is losing her policy.

She says:

I am a 39 year old single woman with a chronic illness,

Lupus. I worked my way through college.

As a person with a chronic illness that was deemed

``uninsurable,'' the only way I was able to obtain health

insurance was through an employer based program called

CoverTN . . . Although some call it a minimal coverage plan,

it has been stellar AND affordable . . . I was excited to

hear about the Affordable Health Care Act. I was glad to hear

that ``uninsurables'' could no longer be denied coverage . .

. unfortunately [that] is NOT TRUE.

I cannot keep my current plan because it does not meet the

standards of coverage. This alone is a travesty. CoverTN has

been a lifeline.

With the discontinuation of CoverTN, I am being forced to

purchase a plan . . . that will increase [my costs] by a

staggering 410%. My out of pocket expense will increase by

more than $6,000.00 a year. Please help me understand how

this is ``affordable.''

I beg of you to continue the fight for those, like me, who

would only ask to be allowed to continue to have what we

already enjoy. A fair health insurance plan at a fair price.

That is from Emilie, who is a 39-year-old woman from Tennessee.

I yield the floor.

On behalf of the people of Tennessee, whom I represent, and the American people, as well, I wish to thank the Senator from Iowa for his leadership on these two bills, but particularly on the compounding pharmacy bill.

Our differences of opinion in the Senate are well advertised on ObamaCare, on debt, on Syria, and on a whole variety of matters. In fact, one would say the reason we exist is to debate the big issues that haven't been resolved somewhere else.

There is another aspect of the Senate that is rarely well advertised, and that is when we get a result. Sometimes the results take a long time, involve a lot of people, and are very difficult to reach, and that is the case with this bill. Had not Senator Harkin been patient, as well as aggressive at the same time, in working with Republicans and Democrats and with Members of the House, we would not have reached this point today.

It is important to call the attention of the American people to this result, these two pieces of legislation. One makes it clear who is in charge, as Senator Harkin said, who is on the flagpole when it comes to making sure the sterile drugs that are injected into your back--because a person has back pain--are safe so that they don't end up with a horrible death from fungal meningitis. Who is responsible for preventing that?

The second bill is how are we going to make sure the 4 billion prescriptions we have every year in this country are safe, that they are not stolen, and that they do what they are supposed to do. How are we to make sure we can track them all the way from the manufacturer to the pharmacy who dispenses them?

We have been working on these bills for 2 years. Lest anyone think that because it was a voice vote in the House and because we are close to unanimous consent in the Senate that it was easy to do, it is not that easy to do. In fact, it is worth going through how this happened before I say just a word to add to what the Senator said about the importance of bills.

The FDA became involved in the fungal meningitis issue in September of 2012, 1 year ago, after reports from Tennessee that fungal meningitis was tied to a sterile compounded drug. This hits home to many Americans because a great many Americans have been injected in their necks, their backs, or their feet with a drug that is supposed to be sterile. If it is not, it could have terrible consequences.

Immediately, Senator Harkin called a hearing. November 15, 1 year ago, we had our first hearing. Within 6 months we released draft legislation to address the compounding pharmacy issue. We then had a hearing on that legislation. Then we passed the legislation after a lot of comment, all in the open. Everyone had a chance to weigh in. We passed it unanimously.

This committee on which we serve, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, probably reflects the widest span of ideological differences we have in the Senate. The Republicans can be very conservative and the Democrats can be very progressive or very liberal, so one would think it would be hard to get a unanimous agreement, but we did.

The House went to work and came up with their own version of the bill, taking our work into account. We then worked with them through the summer to reach an agreement on how to reconcile the two. The House passed it by a voice vote and sent it to us. Today we have a piece of legislation that has been hot-lined. That means that both sides have sent it around to every single office. All but one Senator have agreed we can pass it by unanimous consent. The Senator has that right, as I have that right, the Senator from West Virginia, and the Senator from Iowa has that right, and sometimes we exercise that right. Later this afternoon we will be having a cloture vote, a vote to move to this bill. That cloture vote is going to succeed. There will be a sufficient number of Republican votes and a sufficient number of Democratic votes to say we are ready to deal with this.

Why are we ready to deal with this? Because Commissioner Hamburg of the Food and Drug Administration told us at our hearing what would happen if we don't. She said:

We have a collective opportunity and responsibility to help

prevent further tragedies. If we fail to act, this type of

incident will happen again. It is a matter of when, not if,

I'm afraid. If we fail to act now, it will only be a matter

of time until we're all back in this room asking why more

people have died and what could have been done to prevent it.

No one is saying this legislation is going to guarantee that there will never ever be a tragedy again, but it will help prevent future tragedies. It will take up the responsibility she challenged us to do. We have spent 1 year on it, so many people have been involved, and it is time we move to do it. My hope is that after the cloture vote tonight, very soon thereafter, after everyone has had a chance to speak and say what they have to say, that we can pass this by unanimous consent, send it to the President, and say to the American people that our differences are well advertised, but our results can be equally important. We can pass a piece of legislation which, when taken with the track-and-trace legislation which accompanies it, affects the health and safety of every single American, period. I know the people of Tennessee would welcome a prompt solution to this, and this is what I hope we have.

Senator Harkin, as he often does, spoke in very personal terms about this legislation. I want to tell one story from Tennessee so we know what we are talking about.

Diana Reed, 56, of Tennessee, had tried massage and acupuncture, but neither eased her neck pain. One of the potential causes for her pain was an injury sustained while helping her husband, who has Lou Gehrig's disease, in and out of the wheelchair. Diana Reed was healthy, either ran or swam every day, in addition to becoming Wayne's arms, legs, and voice, according to her brother, Bob.

She decided to try a series of epidural steroid injections for her neck problems before her health insurance ran out after losing her job at a nonprofit group. This decision ended her life on October 3 of last year. She began receiving injections August 21, with a total of three scheduled, one every 2 weeks. She felt pain and nausea for a full day after the first two injections. After the third she began having headaches.

September 23, she finally agreed to go to a doctor and was quickly diagnosed with meningitis. While she remained stable for a few days and was mostly concerned about her husband's well-being--remember, he has Lou Gehrig's disease--and getting home to him as soon as possible, she took a turn for the worse. Her speech began to slur, she had trouble seeing, and eventually she had a stroke. One day later she was in a coma.

One thousand people packed Otter Creek Church for her funeral, among them the alumni of a childcare learning center for inner-city preschoolers that she and her husband had founded. The autopsy found fungal meningitis at the injection site and in Mrs. Reed's brain.

Mr. Reed has a rare form of ALS that worsens more slowly, and his mind has not been affected. Diana Reed would help him get in and out of bed, the shower, and his wheelchair. She became more instrumental in his accounting business as his speech worsened. After her death, members of their church brought meals, did laundry, and the church accepted donations to hire help to assist Mr. Reed with his personal care.

This is only one story of the tragedy that the Commissioner of the FDA says will happen again if we don't act. We believe this bill will help to prevent such a tragedy. Steroid injections last year were meant to ease the pain of hundreds of Americans, and for many Tennesseans, instead, it became their worst nightmare. These vials of compounded medicine were contaminated. Sixty-four Americans, including sixteen from my State, died from the outbreak. It is a horrible way to die.

When the HELP Committee held its first hearings on this tragic outbreak in November of last year, we looked at how could this possibly happen. It became clear that these contaminated vials were produced in a facility that was nothing like a traditional pharmacy, a corner drugstore, if you will. It operated more like a manufacturer, but it was unclear which regulator was in charge. Was the State in charge or was the FDA in charge? I made it clear at the beginning of the hearing that my priority was to find a way to clarify who is accountable for large-scale drug compounding facilities, who is on the flagpole for overseeing the safety of drugs made in these facilities.

I used the example of Hyman Rickover and the nuclear Navy in the 1950s. Admiral Rickover was doing something new. He was doing something dangerous, potentially dangerous. He was putting reactors on submarines and ships, and no one knew quite how that was going to work.

What did he do about it? Admiral Rickover hired the captain. He interviewed the captain and said: First, you are responsible for your ship; and, second, you are responsible for the reactor. If there is ever a problem with the reactor, your career is over.

The U.S. Navy has never had a death on a nuclear ship as a result of a reactor problem because everyone knew, after Admiral Rickover made those decisions, who was on the flagpole.

There should be no confusion, after this bill is passed and signed by the President, who is on the flagpole for a particular facility that makes sterile drugs. We should be able to walk into any one of our 60,000 drugstores, pharmacies, our doctors' offices, or pain clinics, and not have to worry about whether the medicines we get there are safe. The bill we are voting on represents that year of work we talked about to find a solution.

Today we have drug manufacturers on the one hand and traditional pharmacies, the corner drugstore, on the other. This legislation creates a new, voluntary third category which we call an outsourcing facility. If a drugstore chooses to be in this category, they follow one nationwide quality standard, and the FDA is responsible for all the drugs made in that facility. FDA is on the flagpole.

What is the advantage of this? First, it eliminates the confusion, it eliminates the finger pointing. If, Heaven forbid, this should happen again, it will be clear whose fault it was, who didn't do their job of regulating.

Second, it provides an option available to doctors and hospitals who, if they wish, can choose to buy all their sterile drugs from a facility regulated by the FDA.

Outsourcing facilities are subject to regular FDA inspections. The New England compounding center that caused these problems was not inspected by the State or the FDA from 2006 to 2011. Outsourcing facilities must report the products made at the facility to the FDA. The New England center that caused the problems was making copies of commercially available drugs, which is illegal. Outsourcing facilities must report to FDA when things go wrong with a product. Currently, large-scale compounders don't have any required reporting to FDA if they know about a problem with a product.

Finally, outsourcing facilities, this new category, must clearly label their products so patients know it is compounded rather than FDA approved. Traditional pharmacy compounders will continue to be primarily regulated by the States, but for outsourcing facilities, the FDA is in charge.

During our discussions we heard a lot about drug shortages. The Senator from Iowa and I worked especially to deal with that. We tried to address it where appropriate in this legislation. We know that compounded products aren't the answer to drug shortages. We don't want compounded products to be the backup solution to drug shortages; we want a better answer than that. We recognized the problem and tried to address it.

Because of heroic reactions of State officials with the Tennessee Department of Health, more people didn't become sick from the outbreak last fall. I don't intend to sit through another hearing where FDA can point the finger at someone else instead of taking responsibility or claim it doesn't have enough authority, and if we pass this legislation, FDA won't be able to.

This legislation also establishes clear rules for outsourcing facilities and puts FDA on the flagpole for drugs made in those facilities.

I hope my colleagues will vote this afternoon to move to the bill, and then shortly after that we will be able to move to approve it, as the House did.

Just one other comment, Mr. President. The chairman, the Senator from Iowa, and Senator Burr, Senator Bennett, and others have been working for at least 2 years on this form of legislation we call track and trace. It has been through vetting. I think everybody has had a chance to read it and to make a suggestion about it. There have been many changes and adjustments to make sure it works.

Here is the problem. In the United States today, we have about 4 billion prescriptions written every year. We don't have a uniform system to track and trace these drugs once they leave the manufacturer, which makes it easier for counterfeits and substandard products to enter the market and puts patients at risk. The laws governing the tracking of drugs haven't been updated since 1988. In the last 2 years alone there have been three cases of counterfeit Avastin--a cancer drug being distributed in the United States to physicians and patients-- where the counterfeit did not contain any of the active ingredient.

We have seen an increase in drug theft. We have no way of knowing if and when these drugs are resold in the U.S. supply chain. In 2009 insulin stolen from a truck much earlier was sold by pharmacies, and the insulin was ineffective due to improper storage. Stealing drugs has turned into a big business, and without assurance that drugs are stored under certain conditions and handled correctly throughout the supply chain, the drugs may not work.

This legislation would set up a system over time--10 years--where products that are stolen could be flagged as such, preventing distribution to patients. It represents a consensus on establishing a national system for all prescription drugs to have a specific serial number on the bottles. That means wholesalers, repackagers, and pharmacies will be able to check the serial number on the bottle with the manufacturer to see whether that number was assigned by the manufacturer. The serial number will not only help prove it is not counterfeit, but the information can also be used to determine whether anything else has been reported about that bottle, including whether the product was stolen.

This won't happen overnight. Creating a system that traces 4 billion prescriptions, made by over 80 manufacturers on over 3,600 manufacturing lines, that are dispensed to patients through a variety of ways will take some time. But the path laid out for us over a number of years will ensure that the U.S. drug supply chain is secure and that consumers receive drugs that work.

I want to thank the Senator from Iowa, as I have already, for his leadership on these two extraordinary pieces of legislation; Senator Burr and Senator Bennet on the track-and-trace legislation; and Senator Roberts and

Senator Franken worked hard on compounding legislation.

Let me end where I began. The FDA Commissioner challenged us. She said that if we don't act, this tragedy will happen again. We have an opportunity to act tonight. I hope we do. The families who were devastated by this tragedy because of contaminated sterile injections that caused fungal meningitis in many of our States, especially in Tennessee, expect us to act. If we do, it will not be as well advertised as the differences of opinion we can have in the Senate, but it will demonstrate how, when we work together over a period of a couple of years, we can take a very big piece of complex legislation-- in fact, two--that affects the health and safety of every American and come to a consensus that takes a large step forward.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

I thank the Senator from Alaska for her excellent remarks. I was pleased I was able to hear them. The Senator from Alaska and the Senator from Massachusetts were at the hearing this morning when the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services talked about the health care law.

I thought the Senator from Alaska was especially cogent in pointing out the difficulties and the differences between those who live in Alaska and their inability to connect to the services in the new health care law. If I remember correctly, she said only three had been able to enroll and she pointed out the differences in time.

I wish to spend a few minutes reflecting on what happened this morning and what I said to Ms. Tavenner, the administration's witness. I began by telling her a story, a story about 16,000 Tennesseans who have insurance through something called CoverTN, a low-cost, narrow coverage State program. ObamaCare is canceling their policies, those 16,000 policies. CoverTN apparently is an example of what the President has called ``bad apples,'' an insurance plan that Washington has decided isn't good enough for you.

I recently heard from one of those Tennesseans whose policy will be cancelled on January 1. Her name is Emilie, and she is 39 years of age. She has lupus and lives in Middle Tennessee. She told me:

I cannot keep my current plan because it does not meet the

standards of coverage. This alone is a travesty. CoverTN has

been a lifeline. . . . With the discontinuation of CoverTN, I

am being forced to purchase a plan through the Exchange. . .

. My insurance premiums alone will increase a staggering

410%. My out of pocket expense will increase by more than

$6,000.00 a year [including subsidies]. Please help me

understand how this is ``affordable.''

Our health care system makes up nearly 20 percent of our economy, touching the lives of every American. Today ObamaCare is pushing that 20 percent of our economy in the wrong direction.

As the President has said, this law is more than a Web site that will not work. It is a law transforming our health care system in the wrong direction by increasing premiums, canceling insurance plans, destroying patient relationships with doctors, raising taxes, forcing people into Medicaid, spending $500 billion Medicare dollars on a new program instead of using the money to make Medicare more solvent, encouraging employers to reduce their employees to a 30-hour work week, and having the IRS fine Americans for failing to sign up for insurance on a Web site that doesn't work.

The President has promised--at this morning's hearing I read from an iPad on the White House Web site. The President's Web site says: ``If you like your plan you can keep it and you don't have to change a thing due to the health care law.''

It says, ``If you like your plan, you can keep it, and you don't have to change a thing due to the health care law.''

In fact, the law cancels millions of individual policies. For millions of others, employers are dropping insurance programs as they discover the added costs of ObamaCare. For these Americans, the new promise is if you want health care, go find it on a Web site that the administration says will not be working properly until the end of November. That is an unwelcome

Christmas present, to have only 2 weeks to shop for and buy a new insurance policy by December 15 so people are covered next year when ObamaCare outlaws their policies.

This administration had 3\1/2\ years to set up the Web site. Millions of Americans will have 2 weeks to buy their insurance.

The President put Secretary Sebelius in charge of implementing this law. I have called on her to resign because this has hurt so many Americans.

Before the Internet, RCA could tell us every day how many records Elvis was selling. Ford could tell us every day how many cars they were selling. McDonald's would tell us every day how many hamburgers it sold. Congressman Issa has put on his committee's Web site notes from meetings at an Obama administration war room where apparently they are telling each other how many people are enrolling in health care.

I asked Ms. Tavenner this morning if she knew how many people are enrolling, how many have tried, what level of insurance they are buying, and in what ZIP Code they live. Why don't you tell us? Why don't you tell Congress? Why don't you tell the American people?

She said she would tell us by the end of the month--but we need to know every day. We need to know every week at least. Governors need to know. As they make decisions about expanding Medicaid, wouldn't it help to know how many of these new enrollees are going into Medicaid?

Members of Congress need to know. We have appropriated at least $400 million for this Web site that doesn't work. The American people need to know. They might gain confidence in the system if they could see that every day more people were signing up for this or that.

I can't get over the fact that we are not being told how many are enrolled, how many trying, what kind of insurance they are buying, where they live. We have a right to know that.

Why doesn't the administration tell us that? One Senator has described the new health care law as an approaching train wreck. I know something about trains.

My grandfather was a railroad engineer in Newton, KS, when I was a little boy. I was sure he was probably the most important person in the world sitting in that big locomotive. His job was to drive a steam engine locomotive onto what they called a round table, turn the train around and head it in the right direction. That was the only way you could turn something that big that fast.

That is what our country needs to do. We need to turn this train around. We need to turn this law around and head it in the right direction.

ObamaCare is the wrong direction because it expands a health care delivery system that we already knew cost too much.

What is the right direction? The right direction is more choices and more competition that lowers costs so more Americans can afford to buy insurance.

Don't expect Republicans to show up on this Senate floor with our 3,000-page plan to move the health care delivery system in the way we think it ought to go. We don't believe in that approach. We are policy skeptics, one might say. We don't believe these big comprehensive plans are wise enough to do what needs to be done. Instead, we believe we should change our health care delivery system step-by-step.

I remember during the health care debate in 2010 I counted the number of times Republicans spoke on the floor about our step-by-step plan to take the health care delivery system in a different direction--173 times just during 2010.

These are some of the steps we suggested and still do suggest that we should take to turn the train around and head it in the right direction:

Make Medicare solvent. The trustees have said that in 13 years it will not have enough money to pay hospital bills. I know plenty of Tennesseans who are counting on Medicare to pay their hospital bills.

Reform Traditional Medicare to compete on a level playing field with Medicare Advantage. That would provide competition and more choices for seniors. The Congressional Budget Office says it would save taxpayers money.

Make Medicaid flexible. When I was Governor of Tennessee in the 1980s, Medicaid was 8 percent of the State budget. Today it is 26 percent. As a result, Democratic and Republican Governors of Tennessee have been told by Washington to spend money on Medicaid that they instead would rather spend on higher education.

Make Medicaid more flexible. Perhaps we can cover more people and set our own priorities.

Encourage employee wellness incentives. We talk a good game in the Senate about that, but the administration's regulation actually limits the ability of employers to say to employees if you have a healthy lifestyle, your insurance will be cheaper. We should repeal that regulation and make it easier for employers to encourage that kind of behavior, and offer cheaper insurance.

Allow small businesses to pool their resources and offer insurance together. We call that small business health plans.

All of these steps, by the way, are in legislative form. They are bills we have introduced. They are steps we could take today if we had enough votes to pass them, turning the train around and heading it in a different direction.

Buy insurance across State lines. If Americans could look on the Internet and buy insurance across State lines that suited their needs, perhaps more Americans could afford insurance. Isn't that what we want to do? Change the 30-hour workweek to 40 hours. Both Democrats and Republicans support this idea. I am not sure where it ever came from, but it is one of the worst features of ObamaCare. It creates a big incentive to cause businesses to reduce the number of working hours from 40 to 30 so their employees will be part-time and the business won't be affected by the ObamaCare rule. That creates consternation within business, and it doesn't create good relations between the employer and the employee. Think about the employee. Think about the pay cut from 40 hours to 30 hours. Think about the employee going out to find another part-time job at, say, another restaurant. Why not give these employees a 33 percent pay increase? That would be a pretty good way to get up above the so-called minimum wage and give businesses a chance to have full-time employees again.

So these are all steps that would change the health care delivery system by changing its direction away from expanding a health care system that we know already costs too much and sending it in the direction of choice and competition and finding ways to lower the cost of health care plans so more Americans can afford to buy insurance.

The 39-year-old Tennessee woman whom I talked about this morning to Ms. Tavenner, the woman named Emilie who is losing insurance because ObamaCare has decided that her plan isn't good enough for her, finished her story with these words:

This is one of the biggest betrayals our government has

ever been committed on its citizens. I beg of you to continue

to fight for those, like me, who would only ask to be allowed

to continue to have what we already enjoy. A fair health

insurance plan at a fair price. Please find a way to return

to affordable health care.

One good way to do that is to put the President's words into law: ``If you like your health plan, you can keep it.'' Senator Johnson of Wisconsin has offered that legislation. I have cosponsored it, as have others.

My message to Emilie is that I am going to do my best to turn this train around and head our health care delivery system in the right direction so that she can buy and keep health care insurance that she can afford.

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