Floor Statements

Mr. President, the majority leader says it is time to cut off debate and vote on the President's nominees to fill three vacancies on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. I will not vote to end debate now because I think such a vote would be premature.

Before the Senate has an up-or-down vote on the three judges, there is something else we ought to do first. We should first consider the bipartisan proposal that was made 10 years ago to have the right number of judges on this Federal appellate court. For more than a decade, Senators of both parties have argued that this court has more judges than it needs and that other Federal appellate courts have too few. In 2003, 2005, and 2007, with a Republican President in the White House, Republican Senators Sessions and Grassley introduced legislation to reduce the number of seats on the DC Circuit.

In 2006, they were joined by a distinguished group of eight Judiciary Committee Democrats who made the same argument. These included the chairman, Senator Leahy, Senator Schumer, Senator Feingold, Senator Kennedy, Senator Feinstein, Senator Durbin, Senator Kohl, and Senator Biden. When President Bush nominated Peter Keisler to the DC Circuit, the Democrats wrote Senator Specter, the committee chairman, a strong letter.

The letter says:

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 . . . and deal with the genuine

judicial emergencies identified by the Judicial Conference.

The Democratic Senators argued, first, the committee should--before turning to the nomination itself--hold a hearing on the necessity of filling the 11th seat on the DC Circuit, to which Mr. Keisler has been nominated. They cited a number of objections by Senators to the need for more judges on that circuit.

They then argued 6 years ago:

[That] since these emphatic objections were raised in 1997,

by every relevant benchmark, the caseload for that circuit

has dropped further.

Only after we reassess the need to fill this seat and tend

to judicial emergencies should we hold a hearing on Mr.

Keisler's nomination.

That was the Democratic Senators' position in 2007. These distinguished Democratic Senators were not only forceful in 2006 and 2007, they were persuasive. They worked with President Bush and Congress agreed to reduce the DC Circuit by one seat and add it to the Ninth Circuit, where the caseload was 526 filings per judge--well above the caseload average for all the judicial circuits.

In 2007, Senator Feinstein, a Democrat, and Senator Kyl, a Republican wrote:

It makes sense to take a judgeship from where it is needed

the least and transfer it to where it is needed the most.

Mr. Keisler, by the way, was never confirmed. For 2\1/2\ years his nomination was held in the Judiciary Committee, from June 2006 until January 2009. The same arguments made in 2006 and 2007 should be persuasive today.

Today, the average caseload for the DC Circuit--even if it were reduced by three judgeships to the eight seats currently occupied-- would be less than one-half the national average for circuit courts. The national average is 344 cases filed per judge this year in Federal appellate courts. The DC Circuit average, if it were reduced to the 8 current judges, would be 149 per year. The national average is 344 cases per year. The DC Circuit average--even if it is reduced to 8-- would be 149 per year, less than half.

Since 2005, there has been a decrease of 27 percent in the number of written decisions by an active judge on the DC Circuit. Since 2005, the number of appeals filed in the DC Circuit has fallen by 17\1/2\ percent.

Before it considers any of the President's nominees for the DC Circuit, the Senate should do in 2013, today, what Republican President Bush and the Democratic Senate did in 2007; first, consider the appropriate number of judges for the DC Circuit, and then, as Senator Kyl and Senator Feinstein wrote, ``take a judgeship from where it is needed least and transfer it to where it is needed most.''

I heard the argument that the cases in the DC Circuit are more complex than in another circuit, and therefore the caseload ought to be lighter. With eight judges, it will be a lot lighter--half the national average for circuit courts. That ought to allow plenty of time to write decisions in complex cases.

Other circuits have complex cases as well. For example, the Second Circuit, including New York, regularly handles many of the most complex cases that come to the Federal courts. Finally, there are a number of senior judges who are active in the DC Circuit--that is true in almost all the circuits, and that is part of the way our system works today. They can carry some of the workload when that becomes necessary.

I think it is striking that even if this court only has eight seats, that the average caseload is less than half of the national average. So why does it need three additional judges? That is the question Democratic Senators asked in 2007, and that is what the Senate and President Bush addressed. That is the question we should be asking today before we fill any more seats for an underworked circuit court.

So I will not vote to end the debate on the President's nominees until the Senate does in 2013 what Democratic Senators suggested and what the Senate did in 2007: Assess the need for judges on the DC Circuit and transfer judges from where they are needed least to where they are needed most. That means that before we act on the President's three nominees, the Judiciary Committee and the full Senate should consider Senator Grassley's legislation that would transfer one judge to each of the overworked Second and Eleventh Circuits and eliminate one judge, leaving the DC Circuit with a caseload that still is less than half the national average for the eight remaining judgeships. Then, if there are still vacancies to be filled in the DC Circuit, the Senate can consider them one by one.

The Senate has treated President Obama very well in considering his nominations. According to the Congressional Research Service, as of August of this year President Obama's Cabinet members were, on average, 54 days--moving from announcement to confirmation at about the same pace as those of President Bush and President Clinton.

As far as President Obama's judicial nominees, President Obama has had 38 article III judges confirmed at this point in his second term, including 9 circuit judges, 25 district judges, and 4 judges to other article III courts. By comparison to those 38, President George Bush had 16 article III judges confirmed, 7 circuit judges, 7 district judges, and 2 judges to other article III courts.

What about a waiting list of judges who are waiting to be confirmed by the Senate? Is there a big backlog? The answer is no. As of today, only two circuit judges have been reported by the committee and await floor action. Remember, the committee is controlled by Democrats and they can report whomever they want. Both of these are for the DC Circuit and are not judicial emergencies. Only seven district court nominations await floor action. None have been waiting long. Three were reported in August, and four were reported in September.

So while there are always a few nominations that provoke controversy and take a while to consider, one of the Senate's most important and best known powers is the constitutional authority to advise and consent on Presidential nominations. That is a part of the checks and balances our Founders set up so we didn't have a king, we didn't have a tyranny. We made it slower. We gave the President the right to nominate, but the Senate has the right to advise and consent. Sometimes that takes a while. Sometimes those nominees are rejected.

I believe and have argued consistently that with rare exceptions, Presidential nominations deserve an up-or-down vote after an appropriate time for consideration. President Obama's nominations have been receiving timely up-or-down votes. But first, as Senators of both political parties have argued for 10 years, we should make certain we have the right number of judges on the court. We don't have money to waste in this country with the debt we have today. We should transfer judges from where they are needed the least to where they are needed the most. That is the sensible thing to do. The President's nominees for the DC Circuit will receive up-or-down votes insofar as I am concerned unless there are exceptional circumstances.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letter of July 27, 2006, from eight Democratic Senators to Chairman Arlen Specter suggesting that the hearing on Mr. Keisler be postponed until the Senate had considered the number of judges on the DC Circuit. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record as well ``Additional Views of Senators Feinstein and Kyl'' which were written at that time.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to give thanks and show respect to World War II and Cold War heroes who served in our Nation's nuclear weapons programs on this fifth National Day of Remembrance. They weren't serving in the heat of battle but in the laboratory, handling materials on a daily basis that ranged from benign to toxic and highly radioactive. These materials posed risks that many scientists did not understand at the time.

Today in Oak Ridge, TN, the American Museum of Science and Energy, and Cold War Patriots are gathering to celebrate former workers and view a quilt that honors nuclear workers for their contribution to America's safety. This one-of-a-kind remembrance quilt has 1,250 commemorative handwritten quilt squares that form an American flag that measures 17 feet by 11 feet.

I want to specifically remember Bill Wilcox for his service to our country and passion for preserving Oak Ridge history. Bill passed this September. Bill was a former manager of the K-25 operations, a Manhattan Project veteran, and the official historian for the city of Oak Ridge.

In 1943, Bill was hired by Tennessee Eastman on a ``Secret, secret, secret!'' project in an unknown location. When he started at Eastman he was told:

As chemists you'll have to know that you'll be working [on]

this project with a substance called uranium. That is the

last time that you will hear that word or you will speak it

until after the war. And if you are

ever heard speaking the word you will be subject to discharge

from our employment immediately, and very likely prosecuted

by the United States government, and may end up in jail. Is

that clear?

In Oak Ridge ground was broken for the Y-12 plant in February of 1943, and by the end of the summer they started installing complex physics machines, called calutrons. About 1,000 calutrons were installed at Y-12.

How were these calutrons operated? Tennessee Eastman said that the calutrons couldn't be run as an experiment but should be run like an industrial plant. Rather than manuals, there should be a simple red line on meter A. The operator would turn knob A until the needle is on the red line on meter A.

However, General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, along with physicists disagreed. So they took five calutrons and ran them for a week with the best physicists and then another week with girls right out of high school that kept the needle on the red line of the meters. ``After a week the girls had won hands down in terms of productivity.''

These women were called the ``calutron girls.'' One calutron girl first learned of the war effort in Oak Ridge when she was at a cafe in Sweetwater, TN. She was working in a hardware store at the time. The store had a big window where people from the surrounding counties put photos of their sons who went away to war. She had the job of straightening up the photos when the heat from the window caused the cardboard frames to buckle. With great dignity, the families would take down the pictures of their fallen soldiers.

Wanting to help the war effort, she went to Oak Ridge, where there was ``mud everywhere, and green Army trucks, and vehicles, and soldiers, and that was just inside the gate.'' As a calutron girl, she wore a blue uniform. The chemical workers wore white. She said:

You weren't allowed to go in the other room . . . you'd

stick out like a sore thumb, a blue something in a white-

uniformed place . . . But they let us go over--towards the

end . . . they told us to take all the bobby pins out of your

hair before you go out there because it would yank your bobby

pins out.

She remembers:

You couldn't talk. You couldn't say anything to anybody

about where you worked, what building, when you left the

plant. In fact, there were huge banners up all over the

plant: `When you leave here what you see here stays here.'

And you weren't allowed to tell even . . . somebody [that]

worked on the same thing you did.

There were signs everywhere: ``Keep your mouth shut!'' ``Loose lips sink ships!'' ``See no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil'' with posted fines of $10,000 and warnings of jail time.

One of the things that was curious about Oak Ridge was that these rail cars came in every week, but nobody ever saw any product going out. The reason was that the product went out in a standard-sized briefcase every week chained to the wrist of a military officer, in plainclothes. He would get on the train and go to Chicago to exchange the briefcase.

During 1945, a different process at the K-25 building was surprisingly successful and cost less than 10 percent of the cost of the Y-12 process. The K-25 building was a mile-long U-shape--once the world's largest buildings under one roof. The operators had to use bicycles just to get around their building.

The successful K-25 process ran full blast for another 20 years, while the Y-12 plant received a new mission.

These efforts along with others by our nuclear weapons workers across the country won World War II and the cold war. At the peak of the Cold War, nearly 600,000 workers across the country were involved in the research and production of nuclear weapons.

Today, many former nuclear weapons workers are retired. Many of them are sick. Some are dying. The government is helping these sick nuclear workers through the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program created by Congress in 2001.

This program provides compensation to those who were exposed to radiation and toxic materials while building our nuclear weapons, especially those that were instrumental in our winning the cold war. This program receives claims from all 50 States nearly 100,000 individual workers.

This program is especially important to Tennessee. Tennessee has the highest number of claims than any other State--over 14,000 workers. Tennesseans, mostly former workers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Y- 12 and K-25, have received over $1.7 billion in compensation and paid medical bills, according to the Department of Labor.

Today, the nuclear workers across the country continue this heroic legacy to advance nuclear power, nuclear medicine and other technology that continues to make our lives better and keep our country safe.

So I am privileged to work with Senator Mark Udall in honoring these patriots who worked countless hours with little-understood hazardous materials to build our country's nuclear deterrent.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah. If that suits his convenience, I appreciate that courtesy very much. I will not take more than 8 or 10 minutes.

The President should ask the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, to resign her position because of the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare.

Taxpayers have spent $400 million to create exchanges that--after 3\1/2\ years--still don't work. As a result, the White House had to announce last night that the key enforcement mechanism to their individual mandate--a $95 fine that increases every year--will be waived until the end of March of next year. That may be fine for those currently without insurance, but for the millions being forced into the exchanges and losing their current insurance, there is no relief, just higher prices, a likely lapse in insurance coverage, a broken Web site, and broken promises.

We already know of 1.5 million Americans who are losing their policies because starting January 1, many insurance policies they now have will not be legal under ObamaCare, and because the exchange will not be working, they will not be able to choose another policy. This chart gives an example of what is going on. Just in three States-- California, Florida, and New Jersey--there are 1.4 million insurance policies that will not be valid after January 1 because they are not legal under ObamaCare.

Compare that number, 1.4 million, to the number of Americans in those three States who have reportedly applied or enrolled on the Web site for insurance, 7 or 8 percent of all the people who will lose their current policy have applied for a different policy through the exchange. That is what is going on with families across this country as people worry about health care.

These are policies in the individual market. There are 19 million Americans in the individual market. We also heard on NBC News over the last couple of days that the Obama administration knew that 47 to 60 percent of the policies in the individual market would not be legally offered under ObamaCare. Yet they still said to people: ``If you like your insurance, you can keep it.''

At some point there has to be accountability. Expecting this Secretary to be able to fix what she has not been able to fix during the last 3\1/2\ years is unrealistic. It is throwing good money after bad. It is time for her to resign and for someone else to take charge. No private sector chief executive would escape accountability after such a poor performance. The principle of accountability is not and should not be foreign to the public sector.

Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy, told his submarine captains they were not only accountable for their ships, they were also accountable for the nuclear reactors on their ships. If anything went wrong with the reactor, their career in the Navy was over, the Admiral said. As a result of that dose of accountability, since the 1950s, there has never been a death as a result of a problem with a nuclear naval submarine reactor.

Americans deserve that kind of accountability in the implementation of the new health care law. Instead, the Secretary appears not even to have told the President about known problems with the ObamaCare Web site in the months and days leading up to the launch. Despite repeated requests, she has refused to tell Congress or the public the reasons the ObamaCare Web site continues to fail, while insisting on more time and an undisclosed amount of money to fix it.

Before the Internet, RCA knew how many records Elvis was selling every day, Ford knew how many cars they were selling every day, and McDonald's could tell us how many hamburgers they were selling each day. Yet, here we are in the advanced stages of the Internet age and, under Secretary Sebelius's leadership, the Obama administration will not tell us how many Americans have tried to sign up for ObamaCare, or how many have actually signed up, or what level of insurance they have purchased, or in what ZIP Code they live. Not only will they not tell us, they have done their best to keep us from finding out.

With WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden spilling our beans every day, what is happening on the ObamaCare exchanges is the best kept secret left in Washington, DC. The National Security Agency could learn some lessons from Secretary Sebelius.

Later today I will ask unanimous consent to approve a six-page bill I introduced yesterday to require the administration to answer these questions every week. Secretary Sebelius is not responsible for enacting ObamaCare, but she has been responsible for 3\1/2\ years for implementing it. Now many Americans have only a few weeks to purchase new insurance or be without health insurance. To expect the Secretary to correct in a few weeks what she has not been able to do in 3\1/2\ years is unrealistic.

It is time for the President to ask the Secretary of Health and Human Services to resign.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Madam President, before the Internet, RCA knew how many records Elvis was selling every day. Before the Internet, Ford knew how many cars they were selling every day. Before the Internet, McDonald's could tell you how many hamburgers it sold each day. Yet the Obama administration cannot tell us how many Americans have tried to sign up for ObamaCare. They can't tell us how many people have tried to sign up for ObamaCare. They haven't told us what level of insurance they bought or in what ZIP Code they live. Not only can they not tell us, they have done their best to keep us from finding out.

With WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden spilling our beans every day, what's happening on the ObamaCare exchanges is the only secret left in Washington. The National Security Agency should learn some lessons from Secretary Sebelius.

We shouldn't have to rely on anonymous sources to get basic information about what's happening with the ObamaCare exchanges.

Yesterday I introduced legislation to require the administration to tell Congress and the American people how many people have tried to sign up, how many did sign up, what level of insurance did they buy, in what ZIP Code do they live, and what the administration is doing to fix the problems. This isn't complicated information. In the Internet age, the administration ought to be able to provide this information every day. They should be able to provide it really every minute. We shouldn't have to pass a law to find these things out.

So I hope every Senator will support my legislation. It is a six-page bill. It has been available to the public now for 24 hours. It is easy to read. The stakes are high for every American.

So I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of S. 1590, a bill to require transparency in the operation of the American health benefit exchanges, and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, I thank my friend, the Senator from Iowa. I'm disappointed--this administration described itself as the most transparent in history. All we have asked for is how many people are signing up, how did they do, where do they live, and what level of insurance do they have. We ought to know that. Taxpayers ought to know it. So we'll keep trying other ways to get the information the American people deserve to have.

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

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, tomorrow, according to the statement made by the majority leader, we will be voting on the nomination of Richard Griffin, Jr. for General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board.

I will be voting against Mr. Griffin's nomination for general counsel because I am concerned about the direction of the NLRB as an advocate more than an umpire, and I do not believe his presence as the general counsel will improve that situation.

As the senior Republican on the Labor Committee, working with my friend, the chairman, Senator Harkin, and with others, what I hope we can do over the next several years is look for a long-term solution for the restructuring of the National Labor Relations Board--one that will ensure that it will operate more as an umpire than as an advocate, whether the President is a Democrat or a Republican.

The Board has become far too politicized under recent administrations. This did not start with the Obama administration, but it has gotten worse with this administration, and it has moved more and more toward the side of union advocacy with such major shifts as ambush elections, micro-unions, and undermining State right-to-work laws.

Swinging back and forth on important labor policy issues does the American working man and woman no good in this time of underemployment and unemployment.

So, later this fall, I will join other Senators in introducing legislation that will restore balance to the National Labor Relations Board--a proposal that will retain the rights of workers and employees, but reduce the swing that occurs from administration to administration based upon who is in power. What we should be striving for is fairness and consistency.

There are exceptions, of course, but as a general proposition, I believe a President should have an up-or-down vote on his nominee, so I intend to vote for cloture. But Mr. Griffin's nomination does not do enough for me to show the promise of moving the Board from advocacy toward umpire and, therefore, I do not intend to vote to confirm his nomination.

I thank the Presiding Officer and I thank Senator Harkin for his courtesy in allowing me to go first.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, before the Internet, RCA knew how many records Elvis sold every day. Before the Internet, Ford knew how many cars they were selling every day. Before the Internet, McDonald's could tell you how many hamburgers it was selling every day. Yet the Obama administration cannot tell us how many Americans have tried to sign up for ObamaCare. They can't tell us how many Americans did sign up for ObamaCare. They can't tell us what level of insurance they bought, nor can they tell us in what zip code they live.

They told us that 20 million Americans have visited the ObamaCare Web site. They have the basic information to shop, but how many have tried to sign up? How many did sign up? Where do they live? What kind of insurance did they buy? Not only have they not told us, they have done their best to keep us from finding out.

With WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden spilling our beans every day, what is happening on the ObamaCare exchanges is the biggest secret left in Washington, DC. The National Security Agency could learn lessons from Secretary Sebelius. We should not have to rely on anonymous sources to get basic information about what is happening with ObamaCare.

Therefore, I am introducing legislation today to require the administration answer the following questions every week: How many people tried to sign up? How many people did sign up? What level of insurance did they buy? In what ZIP code do they live? What are they doing to fix the problems? This is not complicated information.

In the Internet age, the administration ought to be able to provide this information not every week but every day. In fact, they should be able to provide it every minute. We should not have to pass a law to find these things out. I hope that every Senator will support this simple request that this legislation makes. It is a six-page bill. I will put it in the Congressional Record today, and everyone will have a chance to read it tomorrow. After everyone has had a chance to read it, I intend to ask unanimous consent to pass it.

This Congress--both sides of the aisle--is dedicated to transparency. This administration has described itself as the most transparent administration in American history. So why should we not unanimously pass legislation to ask for the most basic information about what is happening on the ObamaCare exchanges?

Health insurance companies say that in order to guarantee that everyone has a chance to sign up for insurance before January 1, which is when the law says they must, the application has to be in by December 15. That is not very far away.

The administration has been talking about giving a grace period of a few weeks before the IRS will fine them for not having bought insurance, as

ObamaCare says most Americans must buy health insurance. Still, if the Web site is not fixed, millions of Americans will be required to sign up for health insurance on a Web site that does not work. As a consequence of not being able to sign up for health care, they will be fined by the Internal Revenue Service.

There is a much bigger problem than the fine, and that is millions of Americans may be without any health insurance at all after January 1 because their insurance is being canceled because of ObamaCare. Remember when President Obama said: If you like your insurance, you can keep it? Well, like a lot of things that have been said about ObamaCare, that is turning out not to be the case.

Our staff has counted the announcements by health insurance companies that are ceasing to offer policies on January 1 because they don't qualify under the ObamaCare law. For example, in Tennessee, the State provides 16,000 Tennesseans who have trouble getting insurance with a plan called CoverTN. Because it doesn't meet the exact requirements of ObamaCare, the State is having to cancel that insurance on January 1, and those 16,000 Tennesseans won't have health insurance.

Other Americans--for example, Tennesseans I have talked to--have what we call catastrophic insurance. They have insurance that provides for a catastrophe. That kind of insurance is often not available under ObamaCare. It is not allowed by ObamaCare for most people. An insurance company that offers these policies will not be offering them after January 1, and as a result, millions of Americans will not be able to buy the insurance they now have.

If individuals can't or won't sign up, that will mean that after January 1, many of the sickest people will go into the exchanges. The result will be that the price of insurance--for everyone who has insurance--will go through the roof. We are already seeing that in the insurance markets today.

The bottom line: If the Web site is not fixed, millions of Americans will not only be fined by the IRS for not buying insurance on a Web site that doesn't work, more importantly, they will be without health care insurance on January 1, insurance that many of them have today.

The President has said over the last few days that the Web site will be ready by November 30. You are supposed to have your application in by December 15 and have the insurance bought by January 1, which only gives 2 weeks for millions of Americans to make their way through this maze. We tried to obtain this simple information that I have asked for, yet repeatedly, the requests which I have directed to Secretary Sebelius have come back with no answer at all--no answers, nothing.

Outside analysts tell us that only \1/2\ of 1 percent of the people who logged on to the ObamaCare Web site in the first week were able to enroll, but we really don't know.

Two weeks ago I sent a letter with House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa to Secretary Sebelius, asking for the information she and the President are not giving us Such as how many people have enrolled successfully in the exchanges, what the technical problems are, how much it already costs, and how much it will cost to address these problems. The deadline for a response to our request has passed. Chairman Issa has said--and I joined him in the letter--that he may consider a subpoena to get that information. The American people deserve an answer to these questions.

Often when the debate comes up, someone will say, Well, the Republicans don't have any proposals of their own. I have often made those proposals. I remember on this floor of the Senate many times proposing steps we should take to change our health care system so more people could afford insurance. We went back and counted the number of times when, during the health care debate, various Republicans talked about our step-by-step proposals for what we should do about health care, and there were 173 mentions of our step-by-step proposals.

The basic problem with what happened with the new health care law was that we--the Democratic Congress did, I didn't; I didn't vote for it-- expanded a health care delivery system that already costs too much. That was the wrong thing to do. That was an historic mistake. What we should have done is to make changes, step by step, in the health care delivery system that would reduce the cost of health care for the largest number of Americans so more people could have afforded it. Those were the steps we should have taken. We can still do that. Our health care delivery system is nearly 20 percent of our economy.

ObamaCare is not our health care delivery system. Rather, ObamaCare includes some additions to our health care delivery system. ObamaCare is an expansion of a health care delivery system that already costs too much. The law is making some changes such as the ones I described earlier in my remarks. Those changes have been described as a train wreck, but we can turn the train around and head it in another direction--a direction of more competition, more choices, and lower costs for Americans buying health insurance.

How can we do that? That is a subject for a long discussion, but here are a few of the ideas: Make Medicare solvent. The trustees have said that in 10 years there won't be enough money to pay hospital bills. We have a duty to make Medicare solvent.

Reform Medicare Advantage to increase more choices and put it on a more level playing field with Traditional Medicare. That will provide seniors more options and it should save some money.

Make Medicaid more flexible. I was Governor. I said on the floor that every Senator who voted for ObamaCare ought to be sentenced to go home and serve as Governor and try to implement the law. During my time as Governor, Medicaid was 8 percent of the State budget. I see it has grown to 26 percent today in Tennessee, soaking up money that otherwise would go for higher education or for other needed parts of State government.

We should encourage workplace wellness. We had a lot of debate about that during the ObamaCare debate and we have ended up with a regulation that is too restrictive. We can change that.

We can allow small businesses to pool their resources and offer a larger number of plans to a larger number of Americans at prices they can afford. We can allow Americans to purchase insurance across State lines. That would reduce the cost of health care, which should be our major goal.

We could expand health care savings accounts.

There is bipartisan legislation before the Senate that would define full-time employment for purposes of the health care law--this one or any one in the future--as 40 hours instead of 30 hours. That would be a great help to American business and an even bigger help to the employees who are being forced to go from 40 hours to 30 hours-- employees who most need that income, and who, by going to 30 hours, will have to go to a second part-time job, and in many cases, in doing so, lose whatever health care benefits that might be available to them. I don't know where the 30 hours came from. That sounds as though it was made in France. A made-in-America part-time job ought to be up to 40 hours.

Those are just a few of the steps we could take to turn the train around and avoid the wreck and move us in the right direction. We will be making those arguments over time. But for now, we need information about what is happening on the ObamaCare exchanges.

I intend to ask unanimous consent tomorrow to pass a simple, six-page bill. It is legislation which requires the administration to give us weekly reports about how many have tried to enroll, how many have succeeded, what ZIP Code they live in, and what level of insurance they have purchased. Congress needs to know that, if millions of Americans are going to lose insurance on January 1, before they have a way to buy it through a Web site that doesn't work. States need to know it because, as time goes on, these decisions are going to have an effect on the Medicaid Programs that States are a partner in and are operating. Americans need to know it because, in many cases--we have counted at least 1.5 million cases and we expect millions more policies that were available to Americans when the law passed will not be available after January 1. So these

Americans--and this includes people working in the Congress and people who are in the Congress--these Americans are going to have to make decisions before January 1 about what insurance they will have, because the insurance they now have isn't going to be available under the new health care law.

This is a six-page bill, and a pretty simple idea. If RCA knew how many records Elvis was selling every day, if Ford knew before the Internet age how many cars Ford was selling every day, if McDonald's before the Internet age knew how many hamburgers it was selling every day, surely the Obama administration can tell us every week how many are enrolling on ObamaCare's Web site, how many are successfully getting their insurance, where they live, and what kind of insurance they buy. The stakes are much higher than Elvis's records, than Ford's cars, and than McDonald's hamburgers. These are the stakes of health insurance that involve the lives of millions of Americans, and I hope my colleagues will join me tomorrow when I ask unanimous consent to approve legislation that will require these weekly reports.

Mr. President, before the Internet, RCA knew how many records Elvis sold every day. Before the Internet, Ford knew how many cars they were selling every day. Before the Internet, McDonald's could tell you how many hamburgers it was selling every day. Yet the Obama administration cannot tell us how many Americans have tried to sign up for ObamaCare. They can't tell us how many Americans did sign up for ObamaCare. They can't tell us what level of insurance they bought, nor can they tell us in what zip code they live.

They told us that 20 million Americans have visited the ObamaCare Web site. They have the basic information to shop, but how many have tried to sign up? How many did sign up? Where do they live? What kind of insurance did they buy? Not only have they not told us, they have done their best to keep us from finding out.

With WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden spilling our beans every day, what is happening on the ObamaCare exchanges is the biggest secret left in Washington, DC. The National Security Agency could learn lessons from Secretary Sebelius. We should not have to rely on anonymous sources to get basic information about what is happening with ObamaCare.

Therefore, I am introducing legislation today to require the administration answer the following questions every week: How many people tried to sign up? How many people did sign up? What level of insurance did they buy? In what ZIP code do they live? What are they doing to fix the problems? This is not complicated information.

In the Internet age, the administration ought to be able to provide this information not every week but every day. In fact, they should be able to provide it every minute. We should not have to pass a law to find these things out. I hope that every Senator will support this simple request that this legislation makes. It is a six-page bill. I will put it in the Congressional Record today, and everyone will have a chance to read it tomorrow. After everyone has had a chance to read it, I intend to ask unanimous consent to pass it.

This Congress--both sides of the aisle--is dedicated to transparency. This administration has described itself as the most transparent administration in American history. So why should we not unanimously pass legislation to ask for the most basic information about what is happening on the ObamaCare exchanges?

Health insurance companies say that in order to guarantee that everyone has a chance to sign up for insurance before January 1, which is when the law says they must, the application has to be in by December 15. That is not very far away.

The administration has been talking about giving a grace period of a few weeks before the IRS will fine them for not having bought insurance, as

ObamaCare says most Americans must buy health insurance. Still, if the Web site is not fixed, millions of Americans will be required to sign up for health insurance on a Web site that does not work. As a consequence of not being able to sign up for health care, they will be fined by the Internal Revenue Service.

There is a much bigger problem than the fine, and that is millions of Americans may be without any health insurance at all after January 1 because their insurance is being canceled because of ObamaCare. Remember when President Obama said: If you like your insurance, you can keep it? Well, like a lot of things that have been said about ObamaCare, that is turning out not to be the case.

Our staff has counted the announcements by health insurance companies that are ceasing to offer policies on January 1 because they don't qualify under the ObamaCare law. For example, in Tennessee, the State provides 16,000 Tennesseans who have trouble getting insurance with a plan called CoverTN. Because it doesn't meet the exact requirements of ObamaCare, the State is having to cancel that insurance on January 1, and those 16,000 Tennesseans won't have health insurance.

Other Americans--for example, Tennesseans I have talked to--have what we call catastrophic insurance. They have insurance that provides for a catastrophe. That kind of insurance is often not available under ObamaCare. It is not allowed by ObamaCare for most people. An insurance company that offers these policies will not be offering them after January 1, and as a result, millions of Americans will not be able to buy the insurance they now have.

If individuals can't or won't sign up, that will mean that after January 1, many of the sickest people will go into the exchanges. The result will be that the price of insurance--for everyone who has insurance--will go through the roof. We are already seeing that in the insurance markets today.

The bottom line: If the Web site is not fixed, millions of Americans will not only be fined by the IRS for not buying insurance on a Web site that doesn't work, more importantly, they will be without health care insurance on January 1, insurance that many of them have today.

The President has said over the last few days that the Web site will be ready by November 30. You are supposed to have your application in by December 15 and have the insurance bought by January 1, which only gives 2 weeks for millions of Americans to make their way through this maze. We tried to obtain this simple information that I have asked for, yet repeatedly, the requests which I have directed to Secretary Sebelius have come back with no answer at all--no answers, nothing.

Outside analysts tell us that only \1/2\ of 1 percent of the people who logged on to the ObamaCare Web site in the first week were able to enroll, but we really don't know.

Two weeks ago I sent a letter with House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa to Secretary Sebelius, asking for the information she and the President are not giving us Such as how many people have enrolled successfully in the exchanges, what the technical problems are, how much it already costs, and how much it will cost to address these problems. The deadline for a response to our request has passed. Chairman Issa has said--and I joined him in the letter--that he may consider a subpoena to get that information. The American people deserve an answer to these questions.

Often when the debate comes up, someone will say, Well, the Republicans don't have any proposals of their own. I have often made those proposals. I remember on this floor of the Senate many times proposing steps we should take to change our health care system so more people could afford insurance. We went back and counted the number of times when, during the health care debate, various Republicans talked about our step-by-step proposals for what we should do about health care, and there were 173 mentions of our step-by-step proposals.

The basic problem with what happened with the new health care law was that we--the Democratic Congress did, I didn't; I didn't vote for it-- expanded a health care delivery system that already costs too much. That was the wrong thing to do. That was an historic mistake. What we should have done is to make changes, step by step, in the health care delivery system that would reduce the cost of health care for the largest number of Americans so more people could have afforded it. Those were the steps we should have taken. We can still do that. Our health care delivery system is nearly 20 percent of our economy.

ObamaCare is not our health care delivery system. Rather, ObamaCare includes some additions to our health care delivery system. ObamaCare is an expansion of a health care delivery system that already costs too much. The law is making some changes such as the ones I described earlier in my remarks. Those changes have been described as a train wreck, but we can turn the train around and head it in another direction--a direction of more competition, more choices, and lower costs for Americans buying health insurance.

How can we do that? That is a subject for a long discussion, but here are a few of the ideas: Make Medicare solvent. The trustees have said that in 10 years there won't be enough money to pay hospital bills. We have a duty to make Medicare solvent.

Reform Medicare Advantage to increase more choices and put it on a more level playing field with Traditional Medicare. That will provide seniors more options and it should save some money.

Make Medicaid more flexible. I was Governor. I said on the floor that every Senator who voted for ObamaCare ought to be sentenced to go home and serve as Governor and try to implement the law. During my time as Governor, Medicaid was 8 percent of the State budget. I see it has grown to 26 percent today in Tennessee, soaking up money that otherwise would go for higher education or for other needed parts of State government.

We should encourage workplace wellness. We had a lot of debate about that during the ObamaCare debate and we have ended up with a regulation that is too restrictive. We can change that.

We can allow small businesses to pool their resources and offer a larger number of plans to a larger number of Americans at prices they can afford. We can allow Americans to purchase insurance across State lines. That would reduce the cost of health care, which should be our major goal.

We could expand health care savings accounts.

There is bipartisan legislation before the Senate that would define full-time employment for purposes of the health care law--this one or any one in the future--as 40 hours instead of 30 hours. That would be a great help to American business and an even bigger help to the employees who are being forced to go from 40 hours to 30 hours-- employees who most need that income, and who, by going to 30 hours, will have to go to a second part-time job, and in many cases, in doing so, lose whatever health care benefits that might be available to them. I don't know where the 30 hours came from. That sounds as though it was made in France. A made-in-America part-time job ought to be up to 40 hours.

Those are just a few of the steps we could take to turn the train around and avoid the wreck and move us in the right direction. We will be making those arguments over time. But for now, we need information about what is happening on the ObamaCare exchanges.

I intend to ask unanimous consent tomorrow to pass a simple, six-page bill. It is legislation which requires the administration to give us weekly reports about how many have tried to enroll, how many have succeeded, what ZIP Code they live in, and what level of insurance they have purchased. Congress needs to know that, if millions of Americans are going to lose insurance on January 1, before they have a way to buy it through a Web site that doesn't work. States need to know it because, as time goes on, these decisions are going to have an effect on the Medicaid Programs that States are a partner in and are operating. Americans need to know it because, in many cases--we have counted at least 1.5 million cases and we expect millions more policies that were available to Americans when the law passed will not be available after January 1. So these

Americans--and this includes people working in the Congress and people who are in the Congress--these Americans are going to have to make decisions before January 1 about what insurance they will have, because the insurance they now have isn't going to be available under the new health care law.

This is a six-page bill, and a pretty simple idea. If RCA knew how many records Elvis was selling every day, if Ford knew before the Internet age how many cars Ford was selling every day, if McDonald's before the Internet age knew how many hamburgers it was selling every day, surely the Obama administration can tell us every week how many are enrolling on ObamaCare's Web site, how many are successfully getting their insurance, where they live, and what kind of insurance they buy. The stakes are much higher than Elvis's records, than Ford's cars, and than McDonald's hamburgers. These are the stakes of health insurance that involve the lives of millions of Americans, and I hope my colleagues will join me tomorrow when I ask unanimous consent to approve legislation that will require these weekly reports.

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Madam President, this government shutdown is disappointing to me. It's disappointing to those who are affected by it, and I'm sure it's disappointing to the American people. Because they're seeing their government not function in such a visible way.

What is especially disappointing to me is the unwillingness of the President and Senate Democrats to make a reasonable effort to resolve the real differences of opinion that exist here.

It's not unusual, Madam President, that we have differences of opinion in Washington, DC. In fact, the Founders created a government here with the expectation that it would kick up to the Nation's Capitol the disputes we couldn't resolve in our own families, disputes we couldn't resolve in our city councils, in county commissions, and our State legislatures and State government. And the Founders intended that those disputes, which are in this body, not be resolved easily by creating a system of checks and balances: A Supreme Court, a Presidency, and a Congress.

And by creating, in this body, the rules that make it very difficult to come to a result.

The idea was that we didn't want a king.

A king is efficient. Tyranny is efficient.

Our Founders didn't want that.

They didn't want a despot. They wanted a way to get, eventually, to a result. They sought to avoid the tyranny of the majority by creating these checks and balances and these rules in the Senate. They sought to create a situation where the majority couldn't ride roughshod over the minority.

But I do not think the Founders envisioned a system of checks and balances that produced a permanent stalemate on issues that are important to the American people. Even in the most contentious of issues--and there have been many issues in our history much more contentious than anything we are dealing with today.

They didn't envision that the government would simply shut down or stop operating or stop trying to come to a result. That is why I find the attitude of the President and the Senate Democrats so disappointing.

By any fair measure, the proposals by the Republican House of Representatives to bring this to a solution are reasonable proposals. Let's look at what they've proposed.

They proposed that we continue funding the government. Every single proposal the House has made to this body is that we continue funding the government. And they've proposed that we also, at the same time, No. 1, be fair to the middle class by delaying the individual mandate in the new health care law for a year.

Now, the President has already himself delayed seven major provisions in the new health care law that is supposed to take effect today. These include the employer mandate, which is $12 billion over 10 years for corporations. Yet the President and Senate Democrats are saying we can give the employers a $12 billion break by a 1-year delay, but we're going to stick it to the middle class of America by fining them $95 if they do not buy health care and sending the IRS out to collect it next year if they fail to do it.

What we suggested was, since the President himself has already delayed seven major provisions, since the regulations aren't written, let's also delay

the individual mandate for a year. That would be fair to the middle class.

No. 2, the House has suggested that we can continue funding the government and be fair to those who are ill by repealing the medical device tax. Seventy-nine senators have voted for the medical device tax repeal, including a large number of Democratic senators.

No. 3, the House Republicans have said, let's continue to fund the government and be fair to the American people when it comes to health care. Treat the American people the same way Congress is treated.

And finally, most recently, the House Republicans have said, let's continue to fund the government and can we not just sit down and talk about it? Have a conference?

Which is the way, under our rules established by the Constitution, we're always supposed to resolve disputes. And the answer has been no from the Senate Democrats.

No, to giving the same consideration to the middle class, the people who are required to buy health insurance; no, to giving fairness to those who are ill by repealing the medical device tax; no, to giving fairness to the American people by treating them the same way Congress is treated; and no, to giving fairness to the system in saying can we not just sit down and talk in a conference, which is our way of resolving disputes.

And the answer by the President and the Senate Democrats is no, no, no.

The President's role is to bring us together. He said that during his campaigns. He has a great capacity for persuading the American people that he is right. He seems to be able to talk with the Iranian rulers, but not to the congressional leaders.

Our goal is fairness for the middle class, fairness for the taxpayer.

Our latest offer from the House of Representatives was, let's keep the government running and let's sit down according to our rules and have a conference and talk about it.

This stubbornness in the face of reasonableness will not be good for our country, will not be good for either political party, it will not help us to achieve the kind of result on this and other issues that the Founders intended by creating a system of checks and balances in our democratic form of government.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I appreciate being part of the colloquy with the Senator from Texas, and I was listening to his comments.

I remember being asked by Senator McConnell and the House Speaker John Boehner to speak on behalf of Republicans at the President's health care summit 3 years ago about the new

health care law. I was the first speaker there and since that time have done my best to try to void its passage and then to repeal and replace it.

But I'm not in the shut down the government crowd. I'm in the let's- take-over-the-government crowd and elect a number of more Republicans and even a Republican President who agrees with us and who wants a different kind of health care law, one that introduces choice and competition and that actually reduces health care costs for most Americans.

What bothers me so much about this impasse today is the effect it might have on our military men and women around the world. I'm trying to imagine what it must be like for someone fighting in Afghanistan whose check might be late, whose spouse is at Fort Campbell, and whose mortgage is due today or tomorrow or the next day, or what if the Department of Defense school closes there and that spouse has a job and no childcare? These are very practical problems we need to be thinking about. We need not be thinking about shutting down the government. We need to be thinking about a way to fund the government and change the health care law at the same time.

Now, the House of Representatives has tried once and now is trying it again to make a reasonable offer. These discussions are all about compromise, about taking suggestions that come from one body to the other body and taking what you can. So if they have come back and said: Well, the United States Senate had 79 Senators, including many Democrats, who voted to repeal the medical device tax. And they said: Let's delay the individual mandate for a year.

I'm surprised the President himself has not done that. The President himself has delayed seven provisions, major provisions in the health care law, including the employer mandate. The regulations aren't ready. The program is supposed to start tomorrow. It would seem to me it would actually be to the President's benefit, as well as the country's benefit, to say instead of just delaying parts and exempting these people, let's get it right. Let's delay it for 1 year.

That is what the House of Representatives, the Republican House, has said to the Senate. They have said let's repeal the medical device tax, a particularly onerous 2.3% tax on top of revenues that increases the cost of medical devices for millions of Americans. We all agree we ought to get rid of it--79 of us do anyway, including about as many Democrats as Republicans. And the President himself has acknowledged this law isn't ready. The chairman of the Democratic Committee that wrote it says it is a coming train wreck.

So it seems to me this is a reasonable suggestion from the House of Representatives to say let's work on getting rid of ObamaCare, that is what we would like to do, or changing it, that is what they would like to do to make it work, but let's fund the government. Let's not run the risk that one single soldier fighting in Afghanistan has a paycheck that is one day late because his spouse is home in Fort Campbell and the mortgage can't be paid or the Department of Defense School is closed and there is no childcare for the spouse who has a job while her husband or his wife is fighting overseas. Now, that's something we should not allow to happen, whether it's Republicans or Democrats.

It may be that the majority leader agrees with that and he has brought that up and we have brought that up, but we should do more than bring up political points. People expect us to act like adults, work together, come to a result, so we can change the health care law and we can keep the government going.

I've said for three years that instead of the historic mistake we passed which expanded health care delivery systems that already cost too much, we should go step by step to have a health care law that actually reduces health care costs: Make Medicare solvent instead of taking one-half trillion dollars out of it for other programs. Give Medicaid more flexibility so Governors can serve more people. Repeal the medical device tax. Make it easier for employers who want to help employees have a healthier lifestyle so they can have cheaper insurance. Allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Allow small businesses to pool their resources and offer insurance. I have listed a half dozen already, steps we could agree on that would reduce health care costs in the country.

I'm not in the shut down the government crowd, and neither are most everybody I know around here. We are in the take-over-the-government crowd, and let's elect enough Republicans and a Republican President to change the health care law.

But in the meantime, we should make absolutely sure that men and women, whether on Active Duty or in the National Guard, not on Active Duty at this time, we should make sure they are paid on the day they are supposed to be paid and their spouses are not waiting for the check.

I thank the Senator from Texas for engaging in this colloquy, and I wish to join him in this effort.

Mr. President, will the Chair please let me know when 15 minutes has expired. I have 20 minutes. I would like to know when 15 minutes has expired.

Mr. President, once after I made a speech my late friend Alex Haley, the author of ``Roots,'' came up to me and said: Lamar, may I make a suggestion.

I said: Of course.

He said: When you speak--instead of ``making a speech,'' would you say, ``let me tell you a story,'' and someone might actually listen to what you have to say. So I do have a little speech on the new health care law to make. But before I make a speech, let me tell a story that I think applies to the new health care law. It is a story about two famous and patriotic Tennesseans who went to Texas.

The two men are Sam Houston and Davy Crockett. In the early part of the 19th century, Sam Houston was the Governor of Tennessee. He resigned that position because of a problem with his marriage. He went to Arkansas, lived with Indians, and he went to Texas. Congressman Davy Crockett went for a different reason. He got crossways with President Andrew Jackson, who recruited a one-legged veteran of the War of 1812 to run against him and he lost his race for Congress in 1834. He later went to the courthouse steps in Madison County,

TN, and said what every defeated candidate has always wanted to say to such voters. He said: I am going to Texas and you can go to hell and he went to Texas. That is historic fact. I am not using bad words here.

So we had these two famous Tennesseans, patriotic, brave men, both of whom went to Texas. They had the same goal in mind, the independence of Texas, but they had different tactics. Former Congressman Davy Crockett said: I think I will go to the Alamo. Some people said: Davy, if you go to the Alamo, you will get killed. He went to the Alamo anyway and he did get killed, but we remember him for his bravery and we remember the Alamo.

Sam Houston took a different tack. He withdrew with his men to San Jacinto. He was heavily criticized by some people in Texas at that time for withdrawing. Some said it was a retreat, but he waited until the Mexican General Santa Anna was in a siesta with his troops, he attacked, defeated his troops, and he won the war.

Today we celebrate both men. We think of them both as patriots, as great Americans, and we remember the Alamo. But we celebrate Texas Independence Day on March 2, 1836, when Sam Houston won the war.

The moral of the story is that sometimes in a long battle, patience is a valuable tactic. That is why I am in Sam Houston's camp on this one. I am not in the shut down the government crowd, I am in the take over the government crowd. Americans should elect more Republican Senators and then ultimately a Republican President and then I am going to delay, dismantle, and replace the new health care law which we call ObamaCare with a law that actually reduces health care costs for Americans.

My first reason for not shutting down the government is that it will not work. The problem is even if we were to vote to shut down the government, according to the way some people argue--and I understand their passion and I respect it--ObamaCare would just keep going like the Energizer bunny. The reason Senator Coburn, the Senator from Oklahoma, has pointed out is that 85 percent of the funding for ObamaCare is mandatory spending. Mandatory spending is the type of spending that just keeps going. So money for the exchanges, money for the subsidies, and the individual mandate would continue. What would we have achieved? We would have shut down the government, but most of ObamaCare would keep going. If that is not enough, the President has authority in the law to declare some services essential. I assume, since this is his signature issue and he is President for another 3 years, that he would declare most of ObamaCare essential services.

So where would we be? As long as we have a Democratic majority in the Senate and President Obama in the White House, it takes 67 votes in the Senate to repeal ObamaCare and we have 46 on the Republican side. Every one of us has voted against ObamaCare repeatedly. Every one of us would do so again. Every one of us would vote to repeal it. But in my view, the right tactic is not to shut down the government. It won't work, ObamaCare would just keep going, and we would have shut down the government.

What does that mean? What does a government shutdown mean? Not everything would shut down, but here are some of the things that would or could happen: The 3.4 million Active-Duty military who would have to report to work--whether at Fort Campbell in Kentucky and Tennessee or in Afghanistan--would not be paid for their service as long as the government is shut down. At home, their spouses could suddenly find the Department of Defense schools closed. What are they going to do for childcare, or with a check arriving too late to pay the mortgage? Social Security checks would continue to be paid, but the offices might be closed. Same for more than 20 million of our veterans who receive benefits; they might come late. Two million Americans fly everyday. There would likely be fewer TSA agents, fewer air traffic controllers, leading to long lines at the airports in Nashville and New York and Chicago. How do you think those 2 million people are going to feel about that?

The national parks would close. Head Start might close and many of the 110,000 people at our National Laboratories could be furloughed.

The last time the government shut down was nearly 20 years ago. Back then, 200,000 people applied for passports and couldn't get them during the shutdown. There are 200,000 Tennesseans going to college this fall who want or are in the process of getting a new student loan and they might not get it on time.

Your gun permit might not come through, neither might your FHA loan. The last time we had a government shutdown, it cost the taxpayers $1.4 billion extra dollars, according to the Congressional Research Service.

So I am in the Sam Houston camp on this issue in that I want to show a little patience in trying to win the war. If we shut down the government, ObamaCare keeps going, it costs the taxpayers a lot of money, and inconveniences a lot of Americans. Who do you suspect is going to get blamed for this? We will have suceeded in shifting the blame for passing ObamaCare from the Democrats, who did it unanimously, to the Republicans for shutting down the government. You would think the Democratic National Committee might have come up with that idea, not the Republican National Committee. That might not be a good public policy position, but it is a fact and people are observing it.

Then there are people who say to be a good conservative, you have to vote to shut down the government. I have been listening to these people who define who is a good conservative and who is not a good conservative. It is a little bit like being in Sunday school and somebody new comes into class and says: I am a better Christian than you are and if you don't agree with me get out of the church.

You might say: Grandma is a Quaker and Uncle Sam is a Baptist and we all try pretty hard in our faith. It is not up to us to judge which one of us on the Republican side is a better conservative than another. Everyone who looks around knows among Republicans, most of us are conservatives, but we have different kinds. We have neoconservatives, we have paleoconservatives, we have fiscal conservatives, we have social conservatives, we have cultural conservatives, we have Ross Perot conservatives--we have opened the door over the last 40 years to every kind of conservative, and it has made our party bigger and more successful because we have tolerated different points of view.

So I am not for shutting down the government for all those reasons. It will not work. When the government has been shut down before the Congressmen could not buy their plane tickets back to Washington fast enough to open the government because the voters were absolutely outraged. It would shift the blame for ObamaCare, which ought to be the referendum in 2014, to should you shut down the government or not shut down the government? We should not be in this business of saying I am a better Christian than you are or I am a better Jew than you are or I am a better conservative than you are. We ought to respect each other's point of view.

Instead, what should we do? First, we ought to delay implementation of the new health care law. My colleague from Tennessee, Representative Marsha Blackburn whose conservative credentials I've never heard anybody question, and Senator Jeff Flake from Arizona wrote an editorial the other day--I ask unanimous consent for it be printed in the Record following my remarks--saying the health care law must be delayed.

There is good reason for that. It is coming too fast and the chairman of the Finance Committee said it is going to be a train wreck. The logical thing to do is delay it for 1 year. The President has already delayed many provisions of the health care law. The employer mandate has been delayed for 1 year. The requirement that insurance companies report to the IRS information about health insurance products has been delayed for 1 year. The ability for small employers to provide employees with multiple health insurance plan options in something we call the small business SHOP exchange has been delayed for 1 year. The ability for state Medicaid programs to send electronic notices to beneficiaries, that is delayed for 1 year. The start of the Basic Health Program, delayed for 1 year.

Other provisions have been delayed for 1 year and there are regulations that the administration has simply not had time to issue. So why not delay the entire law for 1 year? That would give the administration time to at least get ready it would give the American people a chance to have a referendum on the law in 2014. So that is the first thing we could do.

The second thing we could do is begin to dismantle the law. By that I mean we should repeal all of the job-killing, premium-hiking taxes, especially the medical device tax. This is a particularly onerous tax that is 2.3 percent on the revenues of those companies and it drives up the cost of medical devices that tens of millions of Americans use. We should also and repeal the mandates on individuals, families, and job creators that drive up premiums. But that is not all we should do.

We have a responsibility to say what we would do as Republicans if the voters were to trust us with the government. If they were to give us more Senators who would vote to delay, dismantle, and repeal ObamaCare, what would we do with it? Or if in a couple of years they were to give us a Republican President, what would we propose?

We can do a pretty good job of saying what we don't like in ObamaCare. Three years ago, I was asked by Senator McConnell and Speaker Boehner to lead off for the Republicans at the President's Health Care Summit. I took the opportunity to outline for the President some of the problems with his proposal that we saw at that time. It turned out that we were pretty prescient in what we were saying because most of the problems we predicted have happened: increased premiums, more spending, more taxes. We said a 2,700-page bill, more or less, probably has a lot of surprises in it. The bill cut Medicare by one- half trillion dollars, not to make Medicare solvent, but to spend on a new entitlement even though Medicare is going broke within several years according to the Medicare trustees. If Medicare goes broke, people will not be able to depend on it.

We said the new law would mean there will be about one-half trillion dollars of new taxes, and millions of Americans' premiums would go up. Today, the newspapers are filled with stories of rising premiums. So that is what we said at the President's Health Care summit 3 years ago. Now we have an obligation to say what we would like to do instead.

I said to the President at that time: Mr. President, the President's--your proposed health care law is an historic mistake because it expands a health care delivery system that already costs too much instead of taking steps to reduce its costs. The law is a mistake because it attempts to be comprehensive, and it is too big a bite to chew, too much to swallow, and too much to digest at one time.

That is turning out to be right. That is why we have all these delays. So we suggested why don't we go step-by-step to begin to reduce health care costs? We suggested at the President's health care summit working with him in a bipartisan way to do that.

We can still do that. We can delay it. We can dismantle the parts of it I talked about. Then what do we do?

Step No. 1, make Medicare solvent so seniors can depend on it. Senator Corker and I have a proposal which will do that, offer seniors more choices and at the same time reduce the Federal debt by nearly one trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Medicare needs to be solvent because we have many Tennesseans who depend on it to pay their hospital bills, and it is going broke in a few years if we don't take steps to do that.

No. 2, give Governors more flexibility with their state Medicaid programs. Medicaid has gone from 8 percent of the State budget when I was Governor in the 1980s to 26 percent today. It is soaking up money that ought to go to higher education. Governors would like to keep tuitions from going higher, but they cannot and the main reason is Federal Medicaid mandates get in the way so we need to make Medicaid more flexible.

I said when the health care debate was going on that every Senator who votes for it ought to be sentenced to go home and serve as Governor for 2 years to implement it. That may be one reason we have so many Governors who are having a hard time balancing their budgets with all these federal mandates.

No. 3, strengthen innovative workplace wellness programs. The administration has a regulation that needs to be repealed that restricts the ability of employers to say to employees: If you live a healthy lifestyle, you can have lower insurance premiums.

No. 4, let small businesses pool their resources and offer a lower cost insurance plan for their employees.

No. 5, provide families the opportunity to purchase insurance across State lines.

No. 6, expand access to health savings accounts and catastrophic health insurance plans, which would give people an opportunity to buy cheaper insurance rather than more expensive insurance.

No. 7, incentivize the growth of private health insurance exchanges.

No. 8, make it easier for patients to compare prices and the qualities of doctors.

No. 9, incentivize States to reform junk medical malpractice lawsuits.

I have talked about one way to delay ObamaCare, two ways to dismantle it, and nine steps to move from expanding a health care delivery system that already costs too much. By introducing more choice and competition into our health care delivery system, we can acheive the goal of reducing costs for most Americans. That is a strategy, an agenda and a plan that will earn the confidence of enough independent voters in Tennessee and other States across this country to elect more Republican Senators, or Democratic Senators who agree with us, and that will give us a chance to dismantle, delay, and repeal the health care law, which was an historic mistake.

This is nothing new. We counted it up. Republicans mentioned 173 times in the health care debate our step-by-step plan to reduce health care costs. We still stand ready to put it into place.

The best way to repeal Obamacare is not to shut down the government. The best way to do it is to take over the government, elect some more Senators, and elect a President. Put it in a bill. That is our constitutional system. We all admire the Constitution. We carry it in our pockets, and we talk about it. We have a constitutional system, and we have to follow those rules if we want to make legislative changes.

I greatly respect the passion and the endurance of those Senators who argue that we should shut down the government if we don't get our way immediately on the health care law. I respect that just as I remember the Alamo and respect our great Tennessean Davy Crockett who went to Texas. But on this one, when it comes to tactics, I am in General Sam Houston's camp. I think we will have to show patience to win the war. In the meantime, let's delay ObamaCare, let's dismantle it, and let's show the American people that we have a better plan with better steps to replace what is in the law now with a step-by-step plan to reduce the cost of Americans' health care. That is the plan I am voting for today and the rest of this week and the rest of this year and next year, until we get the job done.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Madam President, I am pleased today to praise the service of Nick Geale, who was until July the director of oversight and investigations on the minority staff of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions--HELP--Committee, of which I am ranking member. In July, Nick was confirmed by this body as a member of the National Mediation Board, where he will surely continue his hard work, thoughtful deliberation, and fair application of the law on behalf of workers and employers in the railroad and airline industries.

Nick joined the HELP Committee in 2009 under the previous ranking member, Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming, for whom he first served as oversight and investigations counsel before becoming director of oversight and investigations. I was fortunate that he agreed to stay when I became the Ranking Member and appreciate his service. In his role here, Nick investigated waste, fraud, and abuse in government programs and agencies, often working with agency inspectors general and the Government Accountability Office in that capacity. He also led the HELP Committee's investigations into the implementation of Federal programs and to ensure proper enforcement of Federal laws. He thoroughly evaluated and advised the HELP Committee on the President's nominees and assisted the HELP Committee's staff in policy matters and hearings.

Nick came to the HELP Committee from the U.S. Department of Labor, where he served as an attorney to the Solicitor and then as counsel to the Deputy Secretary under the leadership of Secretary Elaine L. Chao. In both those roles, he assisted the agency in implementing labor policies for the more than 180 laws under its jurisdiction and helped manage the Department's 15,000 employees. Nick also has a distinguished academic background. He graduated cum laude from Claremont McKenna College in 1996 and received a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1999.

Maybe more important than noting his worthy accomplishments in public service is to note his character and his attitude toward his work, the taxpayers he served, and the colleagues he worked alongside. Nick worked hard to ensure that every taxpayer is treated fairly. With his practical experience in labor and employment matters, litigation, and alternative dispute resolution, Nick has been an eloquent and effective help to the committee. His dedication and friendship to those he worked with, on both sides of the aisle, is a testament to the character he has and will continue to have as he transitions to this next phase of his career.

I thank him for the passionate service on behalf of the HELP Committee, the U.S. Senate, and the American taxpayer. I wish him the best in his service on the National Mediation Board.

Mr. President, I thank the majority leader and the Republican leader for what they expressed about David Schiappa. We rank-and-file Senators feel the same way on both sides of the aisle.

I was reminded that the late Alex Haley, the author of ``Roots,'' once said: ``When an old person dies, it's like a library burning down.'' Dave is neither old nor dying, but there is some similarity in what is happening. With his leaving after 30 years, a number of volumes from the Senate library are going out the door. We won't have that wisdom, that experience, or that knowledge that has been so valuable to

us, and that has been especially important to the Senate where nearly half the Members are in their first term. This is an institution that depends on precedent, understanding, and respect of its strengths over a long period of time.

I had a chance to work with Dave at the request of Senator McConnell at the beginning of the last two Congresses to work on the Senate rules. In working with Dave and with Gary, what I found was they were representing our point of view, but they also had such a love of the institution, they wanted to make sure whatever we came up with enhanced it, strengthened it, and didn't destroy it.

We wish Dave the best. We have admired his service and his friendship, and we hope that over the next few years he will allow us to bring those volumes of wisdom, knowledge, and experience back because occasionally we may need to read them.

I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. President, this week the Senate is voting on five of the President's nominations for membership on the National Labor Relations Board. I expect all five to receive up-or-down votes, as they generally do, and I expect all five to be confirmed. The Board will then have a full complement, with a Democratic majority of three and two Republican members.

I would like to review for a moment what has happened and how we got to this spot because it is an important moment in the history of our ability as a country to maintain the checks and balances and certain separations of power among the various branches of government and especially to restrain the Executive, which has been an important part of our country's history.

In January 2012 the President nominated two individuals to be members of the National Labor Relations Board using his recess-appointment power. He has that power in the Constitution. The only problem was that the Senate wasn't in recess--at least that was our view. The Senate was in a 3-day pro forma session. A 3-day pro forma session is a device that was employed by Senator Reid, the distinguished majority leader, when Bush was President, and he did it to keep President Bush from using his recess-appointment power when the Senate was in recess.

Most of our Presidents have chafed under the restraints we have placed upon our Executive. President Bush didn't like that, but he respected it, and President Bush never made recess appointments while the Senate was in session. But President Obama did--on January 4, 2012. Senate Republicans objected strongly to that. After a great deal of discussion, we decided to support a lawsuit challenging the appointments. That lawsuit went before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with our position and said in effect that the President could not make a recess appointment when the Senate itself had determined it was in session.

Since then there have been two other decisions by other federal courts of appeals that have said what the President did on January 4, 2012, was unconstitutional. The case will come before the Supreme Court this next term. No one knows what decision the Supreme Court will make, but my sense would be that the Supreme Court will say to this President or to any President that, Mr. President, you can't use your constitutional power to make a recess appointment at a time when the Senate is not in recess.

I said earlier that Presidents have chafed under these restraints on the executive branch. That has been true ever since the days of George Washington. George Washington imposed his own modesty and restraint upon the American character when he resigned

his commission after the Revolutionary War, when he stepped down after two terms as President and went back to Mount Vernon, when he asked to be called Mr. President instead of Your Excellency. Ever since then we have had many strong Presidents. They haven't all liked the idea that Washington also helped write a constitution that created a congress and a bill of rights, and the whole purpose of that was to restrain the Executive. After all, our revolution was against a king, and most of our Founders--not all of them, but the majority of the drafters of the Constitution didn't want a king of the United States, they wanted a president of the United States.

One of the most important checks upon the power of the Executive is the Senate's power to advise and consent, the power to review. About 1,000 Presidential nominations come to us, and it takes a while to confirm them. Sometimes it takes longer than the nominees think it should. I have repeated many times on this floor that when the first President Bush nominated me to be Education Secretary and the Senator from Ohio held up my nomination for 3 months, I didn't think that was such a good idea, but the Senate had the power to do it because the Constitution restrains the Executive. Unfortunately, this President didn't seem to read that chapter in American history because we have seen during this President's time repeated efforts to circumvent the constitutional checks on the Executive.

This administration has appointed more czars than the Romanovs had. That is the way you get around the nomination process. This administration's excellent Education Secretary has used a simple waiver authority in effect to create a national school board. When Congress says we don't want to appropriate money to implement ObamaCare, the Health and Human Services Secretary says: Well, if Congress won't do it, I will do it anyway; I will just go out and raise private money and do it. Then we have recess appointments being made when the Senate is not in recess. That is unconstitutional. If that could happen, the Senate could adjourn for lunch and come back and we would have a new Supreme Court Justice because the President said we were in recess.

So what is happening this week with these National Labor Relations Board nominees has a special significance in our constitutional history because not only did Republicans support a lawsuit challenging the appointments, which we are winning and the case has been won in two other Federal courts--but the President, after much discussion, has withdrawn his two unconstitutionally appointed nominees.

I suggested that he do this in May when we had a markup of the five nominees the President sent. I voted for three--the Democratic Chairman and the two Republicans--and I voted against the two who were unconstitutionally appointed. They were well-qualified people. That wasn't the issue. The issue was that the Senate needed a way to express its objection to this unconstitutional action by the Executive.

I suggested that what the President should do is withdraw those two nominees and send us two new ones in the normal process--people who had not stayed on after a Federal court decided they were unconstitutionally there. These two unconstitutionally appointed nominees have participated in more than 1,000 cases. These cases are all subject to being vacated because there was no constitutional quorum.

It leaves quite a mess in our labor laws. But the President withdrew those two and now we are, this week, doing what the Senate normally does. We are considering in the normal process his new nominees.

I am voting, as I said, for the two Republicans and the Chairman. The Chairman was not unconstitutionally appointed. He did not continue to serve as an unconstitutionally appointed person, since he was not so appointed, so I voted for him in committee. I do not agree with the Chairman and his view of labor laws, but I will have to take that up during the next election. Elections have consequences, and when we elect the President of the United States, he normally appoints people who agree with him.

I am also voting for having an up-or-down vote. We almost always do that with the President's nominees. There have only been a few times in our history when we have not. We have never failed to have an up-or- down vote on a Supreme Court Justice after they have come to the floor. We have never failed to have an up-or-down vote on a district court judge after they have come to the floor; the same in terms of circuit courts. We never did, until Democrats started filibustering President Bush's judges about 10 years ago when I came to the Senate. We all know that story.

But normally we have an up-or-down vote, and we will be doing that this week on the President's five nominees. I am voting against two of the nominees when that up-or-down vote comes, and I wish to explain why.

One is Mr. Hirozawa and the other is Ms. Schiffer. Both of them have excellent legal backgrounds. But the problem is I am not persuaded--I hope I will be proven wrong--that they will be able to transfer their positions of advocacy to positions of adjudication; that they can be impartial when employers come before them.

Employers as well as employees have a right, when they come before the National Labor Relations Board, to expect that all five members, whether Republicans or Democrats, from whatever background they might have, will look at the case and decide it in an impartial way. It may be possible that Mr. Hirozawa and Ms. Schiffer can do that, but I am not persuaded that is true, and so while I am voting that they have up- or-down votes, I am not voting for them.

The President has nominated for the Board three different individuals who were employed directly by major labor unions. The first was Craig Becker, who was counsel for two unions, and whose nomination was rejected by a bipartisan vote in 2010. The second was Mr. Griffin. The third is Ms. Schiffer.

I asked Ms. Schiffer at her hearing if she could remember other examples of an administration stocking the National Labor Relations Board with organized labor employees and she could not think of examples and I could not either. Over the last several years, the National Labor Relations Board seems to have veered away from impartiality. Instead of preserving a level playing field and protecting the carefully balanced rights of all parties, it has shown favoritism toward organized labor leadership and very little interest in the rights of individual employers or individual employees who want to exercise their rights not to join a union.

In fairness, I have to admit this politicization of the National Labor Relations Board has occurred both under Republican and Democratic administrations, but I think appointing a person directly from a high level job within a major labor union is not an example of trying to move away from that trend.

The trend is causing confusion. One labor law professor at a nationally recognized law school recently said she cannot even use her labor law textbook anymore. She has to resort to handing out NLRB decisions to explain the law because they are changing it so much. The NLRB has ventured into rulemaking with two new efforts, both of which have been stalled by the Federal courts.

In August 2011, the Board issued a new rule requiring employers to post a biased employee rights poster in the workplace and making it an unfair labor practice to fail to do so. Two separate Federal courts have struck down the rule because it exceeded statutory authority.

In December 2011, the Board issued a new rule shortening the time in which a union election is held, otherwise known as the ambush elections rule. The DC Circuit Court struck down this rule on the grounds it lacked a quorum, and the NLRB is appealing the decision.

So far, this administration's NLRB has sought to change the rules for determining bargaining units, the process for certifying a representation election, the legal obligation of employers to withhold dues from employees' paychecks, even when there is no valid collective bargaining agreement in place, the validity of arbitration provisions in employment contracts, the legality of numerous well-intentioned employee handbook provisions, the rules governing employee discipline when there is no valid collective bargaining agreement in place, the rules governing the

confidentiality of employee witness statements given during a legitimate investigation, the policy against forcing nonunion member employees to pay for union lobbying expenses, the rules governing employers' rights to limit access to their property, and attempting to create an entirely new employer obligation and unfair labor practice through the poster requirement struck down by multiple Federal appellate courts.

The effect of all of these changes seems to me to tilt the playing field in favor of organized labor instead of impartiality, which is the directive of the statute. So fairness and impartiality is what I am looking for in any NLRB nominee. These two nominees do not pass this test. That is why I plan to oppose their nominations.

But the most important message from this week's debate is this: The Senate is saying, not just to this President but to any President, Republican and Democrat, that you may not abuse your constitutional power of recess appointments by making appointments when the Senate itself determines it is not in recess. To do so is an affront to the separation of powers. It undermines checks and balances that were placed upon the Executive at the beginning of our country as a way of preserving our liberties. That is an important step in the history of constitutional law in this country, and I am glad to see it has been done in this way.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the privilege of the floor be granted to the following member of my staff: Chris Jacob.

I ask unanimous consent that after I speak for about 10 minutes, the Senator from California be recognized for up to 30 minutes, and following her, the Senator from Oregon be recognized, Mr. Merkley.

Mr. President, I think the Senator from Maine, the Independent Senator from Maine, probably said it best when he observed on the floor and in private conversation that if you took four or five of us and said forget that you are elected to public office, here is a problem to be solved, we would have come up with something similar to the solution that the President, the House of Representatives, and the bipartisan proposal on the floor today. This is a very good solution on a very big problem that affects millions of families and about 9 million undergraduate students who are headed to college this year.

The bipartisan proposal makes it cheaper, simpler, and fairer for students going to college. It makes their loans more certain, because it locks in a rate for the life of the loan. It ends the political football game which we play every other year, it seems, on student interest rates and solves the problem permanently.

It is based upon an idea recommended by President Obama, passed by the House of Representatives, and endorsed by the bipartisan group that has been working on it. I wish all of the major problems that came before us could be solved in this way. As far as cost goes, it is a big difference. Two-thirds of all federal loans are undergraduate loans. There are about 11 million borrowers who will take out about 18 million loans, because students take out more than one loan.

For all of the undergraduate loans, about two-thirds of the loans, the rate of the loan will be cut about in half, which means if you get a loan this year at a 3.86-percent rate, that is the rate that is locked in for the entire life of the loan. It is simpler and fairer because there is a single rate for all undergraduates. Before, we had one rate for a subsidized loan and another rate for the unsubsidized loan. That is confusing. It was unfair, because 80 percent of the lower income students who had the subsidized loan also had an unsubsidized loan. So now everybody who shows up at the University of Tennessee and borrows money, if they are undergraduates, all of their loans will have the same rate.

It is fair to taxpayers because we asked the Congressional Budget Office to comment on what it costs the government to borrow the money and administer the loan, take into account the cost, and try to come as close to zero as possible to the cost of issuing loans for the taxpayers. They have done that.

It is fair to students because we also asked the Congressional Budget Office to do the same thing for students. They said, we are loaning more than $100 billion a year over $1 trillion over 10 years, so help us find a formula that comes as close to zero as practical so we do not overcharge students and make money on the backs of students. They came within seven-tenths of 1 percent in their estimates, which is only an estimate, and for all practical purposes that is a rounding error. That is a good-faith effort to get to zero in terms of fairness to the taxpayers and students.

But I would want to say to those who suggest it is not fair to students, let's keep in mind a few things. First, thanks to Senator Harkin and many of the Democratic Members of the Senate, there are caps on the loans. So if rates go up too high, there is a limit on how high they can go.

Second, there is, as has been mentioned, the income repayment plan which means that under the existing law today, if you take out a student loan and then you get a job, you only have to pay back about 10 percent of your disposable income. That is not all of your income, that is after you subtract your living expenses and your taxes, about 10 percent of what is left. If that is not enough, after paying it back over 10 or 20 years, depending on whether you have a public or private sector job, the government forgives it. So there is that cap on there as well.

Then there is the interest subsidy. About 40 percent of the loans are subsidized for lower income students, which means the government, the taxpayer, pays the interest while you are in college. So if you are a low-income student at the University of Tennessee, you take out a loan, the government will pay your interest the whole time you are in college.

Then there is the Pell grant. We spend about $35 billion a year of taxpayer money on Pell grants which go to low-income students. So a student at the University of Tennessee may have a Pell grant of up to about $5,500 or so. They might have a Hope scholarship in the State another $3,000. The tuition at the University of Tennessee is about $8,000 or $9,000. At the community college it is about $3,000 or $4,000. So you can see there is relatively a lot of financial aid out there before students borrow these low-rate student loans that taxpayers are making available to 9 million students at a rate of 3.86 percent for undergraduates.

Then there is one other aspect in which this is favorable to students; that is, the accounting system that we use. I have heard some say the government is making money on the backs of students. Let me try to put that in the simplest form I can. All we are doing with the proposal today is resetting the rates, a very simple bill with a few pages. It is on top of a student loan system with a lot of cash going in and out of it, $100 billion going out this year in new loans, maybe about as much coming back in, being repaid from old loans. There are two ways of accounting for that cash back and forth to determine whether it benefits the taxpayers or whether it benefits the students.

Under the law, we have something called the Federal Credit Reform Act, which says the taxpayers are benefiting to the tune of about $185 billion over 10 years. That is correct. That is exactly what it says. Not from what we are voting on today but for the underlying system that already exists.

But the Congressional Budget Office has said that is not the way they recommend measuring how we count the cost to the government of loaning money. To be specific, the Congressional Budget Office says the Federal Credit Reform Act estimates do not provide a comprehensive measure of what Federal programs actually cost the government, because they do not take into consideration the market risk.

CBO says that adopting a fair value approach would provide a more comprehensive way to measure the cost to the Federal credit programs and would permit more level comparisons between those costs and the costs of other forms of Federal assistance. The Congressional Budget Office says: We already use that fair value approach, which includes taking into account the market risk with such things as the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the bailouts, as we called them in 2008. CBO uses those with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In other words, the nonpartisan group we rely on to advise us about money says that if we actually use the right accounting tools, the current student loan system benefits students to the tune of about $95 billion over the next 10 years, not taxpayers. So there is another benefit to students. It is not true that under the recommended form of evaluating the cost to the government that taxpayers come out better than students.

One other thing I would like to say--or two other things. One is, I would like to compliment those who have worked on this. My colleague Senator Harkin, who is chairman of the Education Committee here in the Senate, argued forcefully for caps. I congratulate the President for including this idea in the budget and forcefully supporting it.

I congratulate the House of Representatives. I suppose it is not lost on anyone the Senate is run by Democrats and the House is run by Republicans.

This is a bipartisan proposal. I like the sound of that. I think that shows we can get results done when we keep our eye on the ball.

I especially compliment Senator Burr, Senator Coburn, Senator Manchin, Senator King, and Senator Carper for working carefully on this, and Senator Durbin for his leadership in putting this together.

As most speakers have said, it is true that we have a larger question before us. Do we need to make some changes in student loans? It is a lot of money--$100 billion a year. That is a lot of money. We need to make sure that it is available in the right way and that students aren't borrowing too much.

Right now, if you are 20-year-old and you show up at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and you want $5,500, you get it. The university can't say to you: I am sorry, Lamar, we don't think given your circumstances you are going to be able to pay that back in 10 years. I can say: Give me my money.

This is what the law says. Maybe we need to take a look at that and we need to be careful about our facts.

The Federal Reserve, for example, says that 70 percent of borrowers with student loans today--we are in the year 2012, in the fourth quarter--have a balance of less than $25,000. Seventy percent of all student loans at the end of last year had a balance of less than $25,000. Forty percent had a balance of less than $10,000.

The trend is going in the wrong direction. Some students are borrowing too much money. But the average undergraduate loan debt is about $25,000--that is the average debt--and the undergraduate student can't really borrow more than $31,000, and that is two-thirds of the loans.

So while there may be some problems with the student loan program-- and I, for one, think some students borrow more than they should--we have 6,000 institutions out there, from the Nashville Diesel College, to Harvard, to Notre Dame, to the University of Tennessee, and we need to be careful that we understand exactly what the problem is, that we focus in on it, we don't apply a lot of mandates from Washington, and that we work with the colleges and universities. We need to find those universities, such as Tennessee Tech University, where they have a very low level of student loans and others where they may have loan rates that are too high. We need to make sure students don't saddle themselves with too much debt.

But when we have a 20-year-old in Knoxville showing up who is entitled to $5,500 in loans for a community college tuition that only costs $3,000 and he or she can put the other $2,500 in his or her pocket and the community college can't say no, well, that is one of the reasons many community colleges have gotten out of the loan business-- because they think that is wrong for the student. If this is the case, then we in the Senate ought to look at that. Senator Harkin and I are committed to looking at student loans in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

For today, if the Senate does what I hope it does, this will be a victory for students. It makes loans cheaper, simpler, fairer, and more certain. It stops this annual business of political football with the student interest rates. It gives students a low interest rate that they can lock in over time and a cap at the top so that if rates spiral through the roof, student loans won't spiral through the roof. It is done in the context of a larger system that includes Pell grants and interest subsidies for low-income students. If it were based upon an accounting system that is recommended by the Congressional Budget Office, it would tilt the whole program to the advantage of students to the tune of an additional $95 billion over the next 10 years.

I congratulate all those who have worked on it, from the bipartisan sponsors, to the Republican leadership in the House, to the Democratic President of the United States.

I hope that we adopt it by a big vote and that the 9 million students going to college this fall will have the advantage of planning their long-term futures with the lowest possible interest rate on 18 million student loans.

I yield the floor.