Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for floor privileges for the day for Daniel Head of my staff.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Illinois for his comments about a problem--and how extensive it is--we are seeing across the United States. I don't think there is a Senator who is not looking into that and ensuring that something is done. I looked at the resources that have been allocated, and noticed that we increased the resources 60 percent in the last 5 years. I think there is a severe management problem, and after reading some of the emails I have received, I am very concerned about that.

I want to talk about a different subject today. A recent headline from a Capitol Hill newspaper declared that our current Congress could be the ``worst ever.'' Another said negotiating political agreements is a ``lost art.'' The whole country knows something is wrong with our government. The problem is that Senators are being prevented from doing their job. Common sense is ignored because bills are being made in a political vacuum. This results in more lengthy, complex, incomprehensible laws that defy logic.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said that Congress would first have to pass a bill in order to find out what was in it. That is a problem. Legislation is often hundreds, if not thousands, of pages long. One bill could contain provisions affecting everything from health care to housing and increase the debt by hundreds of billions of dollars.

I recently introduced a bill with Senator John Barrasso, also from Wyoming, that would take a page from Wyoming's State legislature handbook. In order to stop Congress from passing bills with countless, unrelated measures, S. Res. 351 would require any legislation considered by the Senate to be limited to a single issue. One topic per bill will help get things done. It means more understandable and manageable bills. This is not a flashy concept, but I have found people of both parties are receptive to it. It makes sense to them.

Change is hard and those who control the Senate now like the system we have. Most Members of Congress have no opportunity to weigh in, and neither does the public--directly or indirectly. This is a very tidy arrangement for those who are in power now, especially in the Senate. Nothing is approved unless the majority leader allows it to come out.

Dissenting opinions are rarely considered. The majority leader uses procedural tactics to prohibit amendments to improve bills in order to control the legislation and to prevent his party from taking politically difficult votes. He has done this more than any other majority leader--perhaps more than all the previous leaders. Political motivations and consolidation of power should not be used to deny Senators from either party the right to represent their people.

Last week the majority leader used procedural tactics to prevent us from voting on tax amendments important to Wyoming, such as the permanent State and local sales tax deduction amendment offered by my friend on the other side of the aisle, the Senator from Washington. We were also prevented from voting on amendments that would be important to all of us, such as preventing waste of taxpayers' dollars by stopping the IRS from giving bonuses to employees who have not paid their taxes. Amendments were filed by Members from across the country. By my count, more than 60 amendments to the tax package were filed by Senators from the other side of the aisle. Nobody is being represented by amendments. At some point we need to actually vote on the issues that are important to our constituents, and Members on both sides of the aisle who support these amendments need to insist on that.

Last week Politico's Huddle claimed ``Senate GOP Filibusters $85B Tax Extenders,'' but there is no opportunity to filibuster when the debate is cut off before it ever begins. That is what the majority leader did by filing cloture on the tax extenders package. Cloture is a political tactic designed to bring debate to a close after a supermajority of the Senate is satisfied that a matter has received adequate consideration.

In recent years this majority leader has often filed a cloture motion immediately--before there is an opportunity to debate or introduce amendments, not after adequate consideration. The number of same-day cloture filings has more than doubled compared to when Republicans last controlled the Senate. We are not even being given a chance to debate, much less offer amendments, and that is why I have joined Senator Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, in cosponsoring his Stop Cloture Abuse Resolution. It would amend the Senate rules to prohibit filing cloture until there has been at least 24 hours of debate.

Another telling statistic is the number of amendments the current majority has blocked from being considered in the Senate. As this chart shows, in 2005 and 2006, the Senate voted on almost 700 amendments on the Senate floor. Since the Senate has been controlled by the current majority, the number has dwindled. In 2011 and 2012, there were about 350 amendments, and since July of last year, the majority leader has allowed votes on only 9 Senate Republican amendments. The House--where debate is very limited and controlled by the majority--had 132 votes on Democrat minority amendments.

Let's see. The minority in the Senate--the cooling saucer for the country where there is supposed to be open debate--had nine amendments. The House--always controlled by the majority in a very strict way with a rules committee--had 132 Democratic minority votes on amendments.

The leader has used the tactic of filling the amendment tree to prevent amendments from being introduced, and because of that tactic, the amendment to prevent wasting taxpayers' dollars by stopping the IRS from giving bonuses to employees who have not paid their taxes doesn't get to come up. That is just one example of many that has happened. In the last 8 years, he has used this tactic 86 times, and of course, we are still counting. By contrast, the last six majority leaders combined only filled the tree 40 times.

What is filling the tree? It is a political tactic of setting up a few amendments that cannot be taken down, that have to be voted on before the bill can be done, and filing cloture even prevents those from getting done.

The chart shows that there have been 86, and still counting, and the six previous leaders only filed cloture 40 times.

Filling the amendment tree has become a routine way to prevent any Senator--majority or minority--from exercising their right to offer an amendment because once the tree is filled, no Senator can offer an amendment.

Almost half of the Senate has been here less than 6 years. Yes, 45 of the 100 Senators are in their first term. They don't realize that there is a better way. They have not seen how it could work, how it did work, and how it should work.

I know how this can hurt. I once had a bill that would have been the first step of 10 for solving health care in this country, and it was a small business health plan. It would have allowed small businesses across the country to join together through their association to get a big enough block to effectively negotiate with the insurance company or even set up their own selfinsurance pool.

The majority leader was willing to bring it up and then filled the tree and filed cloture. I had 2 people that would have made the 60 votes necessary to get that passed, but each had 1 amendment to the bill, and they would have been good amendments. They were not allowed to bring up their amendments, and consequently I wound up being just short to pass a very important bill that would have brought down health care costs for this country and might have encouraged people to do the other nine steps in the plan that Senator Kennedy and I put together and provided more in the way of insurance than what we have now, and it would have been paid for.

Committees should have the first opportunity to shape legislation. It is there that Members are able to iron out unintended consequences and craft better legislation before it goes to the floor. There is a lot of flexibility in the committee process. I used to sit down and go through all the amendments. There might be 200 amendments on a bill we were working on, and we would put them into piles according to what we covered. We would look to see who was involved in that particular pile and send that bipartisan group off to come up with a solution to these multiple solutions that had been presented. They were usually able to craft something out of that and bring it back as another amendment that would make the bill better and eliminate unintended consequences and perform a real service for our country.

Most of the bills now don't go to committee first. After a bill goes to committee, then it comes to the floor. All 100 Members of the Senate should have an opportunity to improve the legislation. The reason we have so many people in Congress--100 here and 435 at the other end of the building--is to bring together 535 different backgrounds that can suggest improvements to bills. Different Members may know something from their background that others may not have noticed, and that is why we do amendments. Rarely is that happening in today's Senate. More often than not, committees are ignored and massive legislation is the result of a few people behind closed doors deal making for the more than 535 Members of Congress. We need to get away from deal making and start legislating again, and that is apparent, especially in our spending. The job of Congress is to decide how much the Federal Government should spend and on what priorities. That is not being done under the Senate's current management. Deals are made.

In fact, last January, the legislation we voted on was a deal between one Member of the House and one Member of the Senate. Do you know how many amendments we got on that? Nobody had an amendment to it. The debate was very limited. There was $1.1 trillion spent on one vote that was put together by two people. That is deal making, not legislating, and that is what is costing this country so much money and what stifles things.

A couple of weeks ago we had a bill that was allowed to have amendments, and in 2 days we covered the amendments and passed the bill unanimously because it had been improved significantly. That is what we need to get back to. More time is spent on negotiating not to have amendments than it would take to vote on 75 amendments on a bill. Yes, a lot of them would fail, and that is typical, but at least a Senator could feel that his constituents have been heard but he just didn't have the votes for it. At least they have been heard, and that is what we are missing right now.

We are not getting to cover the amendments, and they can be covered relatively quickly. So deals are made and then spending bills are all packaged into one massive ``take it or leave it'' bill and the deficit has increased.

In 2013, the Senate didn't pass a single appropriations bill. We were supposed to do 12 of them right after April 15. We didn't do any of them. We only considered 1 of the 12 bills on the Senate floor, and that bill was shut down because the first amendment the majority leader didn't like, so he pulled it off of the floor and he never brought it up again, nor did he bring up any other spending bill. Is it any wonder that since January 2009 the total Federal debt stood at $10.6 trillion and now it is over $17 trillion? We don't budget; we don't appropriate; we just deal-make. It has never risen so high so fast in our country's history.

Similar to legislation on one topic per bill, we should look at each spending bill individually. The committees should be able to look closely at each branch and each agency. That is how it used to work before the power shift, but we can make some changes now to encourage more spending scrutiny. We could switch to a biennial appropriations process. That means once every 2

years for each agency. I have introduced S. 625, the Biennial Appropriations Act, and I am cosponsoring Senator Johnny Isakson's version of the legislation.

My bill would require the President to submit a 2-year budget resolution at the beginning of each Congress. Congress would then adopt a budget resolution. Following adoption of a budget resolution, Congress would focus on appropriations bills. Each Congress would debate the Defense appropriations bill; however, the other appropriations bills would be split into two groups. The more controversial bills would be debated in the first year after an election and the easy ones would be done the year before an election. Of course the bill would mandate at least one joint oversight hearing with the authorization committee and the Appropriations Committee in the off-appropriations year for those particular bills.

When you are spending a trillion dollars, it is so much money that nobody can look at the details. I don't even remember the last time we looked at something as small as a billion dollars, let alone a million dollars, and a million is a lot of money out where I live. We have to get back to where we can have some scrutiny on the appropriations, not a one-time deal.

Congress has 535 elected representatives. When each of us looks at every proposal, lots of viewpoints and experience get put into the decisions we make for our country, but if all decisions are made by the majority leader, the vast majority of Americans get shortchanged. Shortcuts are taken, committees are skipped. Legislation is long, cumbersome, and it is not easily read and understood. If you skip all the process to do that, then spending will reach all-time highs and we will get less for our money. That has to change.

These are some ideas on how we can solve those problems. This won't change unless those who are here exercise our rights. That may not happen until those outside Washington demand that these and other ideas get considered. Demand your Senators be allowed to represent you.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I rise to offer an amendment to S. 2262 that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from a massive regulatory outreach. I understand under current procedure we are not allowed to do that, but I will explain it so when I can bring this amendment up, people will already know about it and join me in voting for it. It is similar to an amendment I offered last September to the energy efficiency bill. Unfortunately, the Senate majority leader blocked amendments from being considered. I am hoping that doesn't happen this time.

My amendment is simple and straightforward. It promotes the right of each State to deal with its own problems. It returns the regulation of regional haze to where it properly belongs: in the hands of State officials who are more familiar with the problem and know the best way to address it. I hope my colleagues will support my effort.

The Environmental Protection Agency's move to partially disapprove of the State of Wyoming's regional haze will create an economic and bureaucratic nightmare that will have a devastating impact on western economies. The decision by the EPA ignores more than a decade's worth of work on this subject by officials in my home State and seems to be more designed to regulate coal out of existence than to regulate haze. The haze we most need to regulate, in fact, seems to be the one that is clouding the vision of the EPA as it promotes a plan that would impose onerous regulations on powerplants that will, in turn, pass those increased costs in the form of higher energy prices on to consumers. These are the middle-class folks we keep talking about. It will also increase the cost for manufacturers, and that will drive them overseas, so that will eliminate jobs. So we are talking about a lot of impact.

That tells me the EPA's purpose is to ensure that no opportunity to impose its chosen agenda on the Nation is wasted. It doesn't seem to matter to them that their proposed rule flies directly in the face of the State's traditional and legal role in addressing air quality issues.

When Congress passed the 1977 amendments to the Clean Air Act to regulate regional haze, it very clearly gave the States the lead authority. Now the EPA has tossed them in the backseat and grabbed the steering wheel to head this effort in its own previously determined direction. That isn't the kind of teamwork and cooperation Congress intended.

The goal of regulating regional haze is to improve visibility in our national parks and wilderness areas. The stated legislative purpose for that authority is purely for aesthetic value and not to regulate public health. Most importantly, the EPA shouldn't be using regulations to pick winners and losers in our national energy market. The cost for this rule is in the billions, and the bureaucratic evaluation says it will still have little or no actual effect. Why would we force the spending of billions for little or no actual effect?

This is a State issue, and Congress recognized that States would know how to determine what the best regulatory approach would be to find and implement a solution to the problem. The courts then reaffirmed this position by ruling in favor of the States' primacy on regional haze several times. The EPA ignored all of that clear precedent and, instead, handed a top-down approach that ignored the will and expertise of the State of Wyoming and other States.

This inexplicable position flies in the face of Wyoming's strong and commonsense approach to addressing regional haze in a reasonable and cost-effective manner.

I invite everybody to come to Wyoming. We have the clear skies. People can see more miles there than people can see here. Of course, a lot of it out here is humidity, I think. But we do not have the regional haze they are talking about. The EPA's approach will be much more costly and have a tremendous impact on the economy and the quality of life not only in Wyoming but in neighboring States as well. Clearly, we cannot allow this to happen.

Every family knows when the price of energy goes up, it is their economic security--costing more--as well as their hopes and dreams for the future that are threatened and all too often destroyed.

The EPA's determination to take such an approach would be understandable if it would create better results than the State plan. It does not. That is another reason why it makes no sense for the EPA to overstep its authority under the Clean Air Act to force Wyoming to comply with an all-too-costly plan that in the end will provide the people of Wyoming and America with no real benefits.

The plan does not even take into account other sources of haze in Wyoming such as wildfires. Wildfires are a problem on Wyoming's plains and mountains every year. It is a major cause of haze in the West. It makes no sense for the EPA to draft a plan that fails to take into consideration the biggest natural cause of the very problem they are supposed to be solving.

The Forest Service could do a lot of prevention if forest plans did not get delayed.

The State of Wyoming has spent over a decade producing an air quality plan that is reasonable, productive, cost-effective, and focused on the problem at hand. The EPA has taken an unnecessary and unreasonable approach that violates the legislatively granted job of State regulators to address this issue. We cannot afford to increase the cost of energy to families, schools, and vital public services by implementing an EPA plan that will not adequately address the issue of regional haze.

I know my colleagues will see the importance of this matter and support my amendment that will stop the EPA in its tracks and end its interference with Wyoming's efforts to address this issue. It only makes sense to me that Wyoming's plan be given a chance to work. It is more than a 10-year effort, and it will make a difference, and not at the cost that will be imposed.

It is only fair, and it is the right thing to do. I ask for the support of my colleagues.

I thank the Chair and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Alexander for the leadership he has shown on this bill. We had a much more extensive bill designed, and I worked on it for all of the years he mentioned, which is all the years I have been here, 17 years. We made some progress every single time it came up, but there were misconceptions with it. Senator Alexander suggested the solution that is the true solution for this bill. He changed it to a very brief States rights bill, not a Federal bill. This doesn't have any requirements for any State, but it has an ability for States to make up their own mind.

So I rise today with my colleagues from Illinois, Tennessee, and North Dakota to recognize the anniversary of this significant event. One year ago today, with a show of strong bipartisan support, the Senate took an important step forward to level the playing field for all retailers that collect sales taxes. But it is not really about the retailers; it is about the people who work in those stores. We are talking about middle America. They can't afford to have the employees unless they make the sales, and if they just do the sales pitch and then it is ordered online, there is no revenue the employee brought in, and if there is a prolonged period when there is no revenue, the business doesn't need the employee. This bill is about supporting the jobs we have in our towns. It is about the people who are our neighbors who work in the stores and the people who have the stores that participate in all of the community events.

As the Senator from North Dakota said--and she is probably the only one

who has worked on this bill longer than I have because she was involved in it in State government when she was in North Dakota. I appreciate her expertise on this bill. Without some of the explanations she was able to give on the history of this bill, we wouldn't have been able to get it done.

Of course, Senator Durbin and I have been speaking for what seems like years now trying to explain how this bill works, taking into consideration any concerns people had and trying to overcome those concerns. I couldn't guess how many hundreds of meetings there have been over trying to get this bill right and to get it fair, all so the States still have the revenue they need to operate without imposing perhaps a personal income tax. In the case of Virginia, I think they are not going to raise the gas tax if this bill passes. So this is a States rights bill. It takes money to the States, and it is money that is really owed right now.

I did a little checking. Wyoming started collecting their sales tax in 1935, and it has been virtually unchanged since that time. There is a provision in the sales tax law that requires a form, so that if someone buys something from out of State and didn't pay sales and use tax on it, they are supposed to fill out this form before the end of the month and send the sales and use tax with the form to the State government to pay it.

One of the surprises I discovered is there is about $1\1/2\ million a year collected in Wyoming that way--people obeying the law. But that is pretty tough to keep track of and especially if one doesn't make out- of-State purchases every day. So the State, of course, imposed on local retailers the requirement that they collect sales tax, and then people don't have to fill out that form. They don't have to send it in before the end of the month.

So they made it a lot easier by making the retailers collect the money. Unfortunately, they weren't able to make all of the retailers collect the money. Because of a court case, they aren't able to do it out of State, and that is very important because it is a huge loss of revenue. I think Wyoming actually loses about $23 million a year because of purchases over the Internet where no sales tax is paid.

On May 6, 2013, this Chamber passed the Marketplace Fairness Act, and we passed it with 69 votes. Some of the votes we had were as high as 76 votes. That is very significant around here. Sixty-nine is an incredible number for the Senate to produce on any bill. It came from a majority of both sides of the aisle, which is important. I wish to remind my colleagues that this bill is about fairness. It is about leveling the playing field between brick-and-mortar and online companies, and it is about collecting that tax that is already due. It is not about raising taxes. It isn't about taxing the Internet, and it isn't about taxing Internet access. I think we are all opposed to that. But we are in favor of the States, if they wish, to be able to collect the taxes they have imposed on the people who live in their State. So it is a States rights bill.

In a nutshell, the Marketplace Fairness Act is a straightforward, 11- page bill that brings clarity to a vexing area of sales tax collection inequity. Online sales often go without collection of the sales tax from the point of purchase, while the Main Street stores and the other brick-and-mortar stores in town typically face established collection procedures--no choice, regular reports.

Wyoming shouldn't subsidize online retailers that operate and sell to people in our State. Neither should Illinois or North Dakota or Tennessee or any other State that has sales tax laws. But right now, online retailers can offer lower prices than the local businesses that hire the local people who pay the property taxes and that participate in the community events; the most important thing being those local jobs, simply because they do not have to charge the same sales tax out of State that all our local merchants do.

Sales taxes are important. They pay for the roads we drive on. They pay for the schools our kids go to. In Wyoming, with the particularly small towns, they rely on sales tax for the fire protection and the police protection. When people ask me about the sales tax bill, I ask them what county they are from and, if it is a small town, I say: Check with your fire department and see if, without sales tax, they would be able to function. When people understand it is part of their fire protection and part of their law enforcement protection, they are much more interested in it and understand why the sales tax needs to be collected. I don't want to see a situation where other taxes will have to be raised to cover basic local services because the online retailers are not collecting the sales taxes that are owed on the products they sell.

I remember going into a camera store--I try to get into some stores on the weekend and find out what kinds of decisions they have to make, particularly decisions that have to do with the Federal Government. I was in the camera store and the fellow was explaining he had just lost a sale. The sales tax rate in that town is 6 percent. A man came in to buy a camera, and the camera was $2,000. But this owner of the store-- the only employee of the store--took the time to help him with all of the different gadgets and how to operate it, and showed him what he needed and how to do it. Then the customer took a picture of the bar code and ordered it online because he saved $120. Technically, he still owed $120 to his State. Whether he filled out one of those forms and got it in by the end of the month, I doubt it, but that is the law. If a State meets the simplification requirements outlined in the bill, it may choose to require collection of sales taxes that are already due at the point of purchase, including sales conducted through e-commerce. Congress is not forcing States to do anything because the Federal Government should not have the role or authority in telling a State how to manage its finances. This bill specifically says that it is up to the States to enforce the law, and it is 100 percent optional. If the States do act, they are collecting taxes that are already due by the consumers.

I have been working on this sales tax fairness or marketplace fairness issue--or any of the number of names we have had on it through the years as we gained more and more support and as people came to understand more and more of what was involved--since 1997. As a former small business owner, it is important to ensure parity for all retailers by modernizing rules for sales tax collection in a way that respects technology advances and the existing practices of large and small and more traditional businesses, and this bill accomplishes that. It uniquely balances the interests of all businesses and respects the existing laws and rights of states.

The Senator from North Dakota mentioned there is a $1 million exclusion. This is to help out small businesses, new start-up businesses. If you have a start-up business or a small business, until you have sold $1 million online or through a catalog in a given year, you don't have to comply with this. But once you hit that $1 million mark, you can consider yourself a success. We know that is a very small percentage of the Nation, but an important part of the total sales of the Nation. I think that is why one year ago, 68 of our Senators joined me in supporting that Marketplace Fairness Act.

This evening, my lead cosponsors and I are again taking a stand in favor of good public policy for our Nation's retailers while highlighting the need to fix some long-standing sales tax system complexities. By balancing this collection inequity, the Marketplace Fairness Act would help States ensure the viability of the sales tax as a major revenue source for State budgets. We found in Wyoming that it often constitutes 40 percent of a municipality's revenue. It also would close opportunities that encourage tax avoidance.

Beyond the walls of Congress, the Marketplace Fairness Act has received broad support. Trade associations, Governors, mayors, legislators, and numerous businesses have expressed support for the legislation.

But there is work still to be done. Our colleagues in the House need to pass the Marketplace Fairness Act. I know some Members in the other Chamber are working on this issue. A companion Marketplace Fairness Act has been introduced. A hearing has been held, and new Members are engaged in the issue. I appreciate those efforts, and I hope our colleagues in the House will pick up the baton and complete the effort to guarantee sales tax fairness. This is the year to finish the work. Our States and businesses and

employees in those businesses cannot wait longer. Enacting the Marketplace Fairness Act is the right thing to do.

In conclusion, I wish to thank everyone associated with this bill for their hard work and efforts in getting us to this point: our countless supporters across the country, the 68 Senators who joined me to vote for a bill a year ago, the 29 cosponsors of the bill for their support, and especially my colleagues who joined me tonight for their unwavering support of this bill. I can't thank Senator Alexander, Senator Heitkamp, and Senator Durbin enough for their efforts. I am going to yield the floor and turn it over to Senator Durbin who has been a real champion and one of the best explainers of the parts of this bill that I have ever run into. I really appreciate his efforts and his help. We wouldn't be this far were it not for his efforts.

Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Illinois for his excellent explanation. I have been joining him and watching him do that for several years. It would be nice to get this finished.

There are a few things we may not have mentioned that are sometimes raised when people ask me about marketplace fairness. One of them is from small towns. They say: We have to go on the Internet because there is not enough selection in our town and we can get things we cannot buy in town and some of the things we can get at a lower price by going out of town.

I always ask them, when they are figuring that lower price, are they figuring it without sales tax or with sales tax, because it is not truly a lower price if what you are doing is just cheating your local merchant out of the right to collect the sales tax--which he does not get paid for anyway--and submitting it, when the out-of-State retailer does not have to do that.

As to the revenue that companies are voluntarily collecting now--and there are a number of them that recognize it is difficult for everybody to keep track of their purchases, so they voluntarily collect it--the question I have had is, Does that money they voluntarily collect go back to the States? Yes, it absolutely does, and it will work that way under the bill as well. It is not money that you are just sending to wherever you ordered it from. You are sending it to where it was ordered from, and then they are sending it back to States.

That is what these programs the Senator from Illinois mentioned do. They keep track of what State all the purchases were from. Here is how difficult that is. When you call in your order or you do it online, at some point you have to put in an address with a ZIP Code. That ZIP Code is all the program needs in order to be able to assess your tax. That is how those programs are designed. So if you have to give an address, you have to give the ZIP Code. If you have to give the ZIP Code, they already know what the tax is going to be. So there is no difficulty for any size retailer to be able to figure out what the tax is they are supposed to be doing.

Another argument I hear is the online place provides free shipping. I want you to know your local retailer provides free shipping and immediate pickup. Somebody had to pay the shipping on it. It got to the store, and you can pick it up right there, instantly. You do not have to wait 2 or 3 days or pay a special rate to get it overnight. You can get it right then.

One of the things that is discouraging for retailers is, if you waited on somebody and they got the barcode and they ordered it online and it came in and it was not exactly what they wanted, then they come to you and say: Well, this is the brand you are selling. Won't you take it back?

Let's see, they did not make anything on it, they used a whole bunch of time, and now they want you to put it in your inventory. That is very discouraging.

So think about those local clerks. They are your friends and neighbors who are being hired locally who really depend on a job. If everything gets ordered online, they will not have a job. Your friends will have to move, and you will not have as much selection as you have right now in your local store.

Again, I wish to thank all those who voted for it, all those who have worked on it, and all those who are considering voting for it the next time they get it because I know we have picked up some momentum since we did it last time. There are people who have heard from their communities now who say: Well, I did not vote right last time, but I will get it right next time. I am looking forward to that, and I am looking for the House to finish it and send it to the President.

Thanks again, I say to Senator Durbin, for his tremendous effort.

I yield the floor.

Thank you, Madam President.

I rise to offer rebuttal to the claims my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are making about their proposals to enact an unprecedented increase in the Federal minimum wage. I come at this issue as a former small business owner and an employee who once worked for the minimum wage. I started as a stock boy. Another time I was a window washer. I learned some important things while I was doing that: I learned work ethic, I learned to show up on time, I learned to do the job well, and learned other skills so I could advance. Eventually I got the schooling, skills and the work ethic to own my own business.

My colleagues gloss over the fact that minimum wage is for entry- level employees. Unskilled workers, young people, and those new to the workforce are those who typically earn the minimum wage because it is their first job or opportunity to gain career skills. This is evidenced by the fact that a majority of minimum wage earners are between the ages of 16 and 24. These are the jobs where the workers learn to be dependable, how to work with other employees, and how to obtain that work ethic. A lot of them don't know how to run a cash register. They don't know how to make change. They don't know how to greet a customer. They don't know how to interrupt their texting in order to wait on the customer. This is why two-thirds of the employees who start at the minimum wage are earning more than the minimum wage within 1 year. They learn how to do those things. They pick up skills.

Somebody was talking to me about how people who are getting the minimum wage are in dead-end jobs such as fast food. I happened to be standing next to a guy who was working at Burger King. He said: Wait a minute. I started 6 months ago. I started at minimum wage. I learned the job. I am dependable. I show up. I know what the other work is. I am a supervisor now. In 6 months, I am a supervisor. I am making a lot more than the minimum wage, and in another year I might have my own store.

That might have some validity because I have a friend in Cheyenne who owns a McDonald's, and he points out to me the other people in Wyoming who now own a McDonald's who used to work for him who all started at a minimum wage. You have to start somewhere.

A lot of people think when they graduate from college they are supposed to move into an executive position. Chances are they will get a job and they will start at the bottom of the company. If they do their work well, learn the skills and become dependable, they will work their way up and they will make more money.

Even more troubling are the claims my colleagues are making to justify this particular increase. Increasing the Federal minimum wage by nearly 40 percent represents an arbitrary and unprecedented increase which is largely unsupported by economic analysis. Both in the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee and on the Senate floor advocates for this bill have declared that an increase to $10.10 an hour would restore the minimum wage to the purchasing power it had in 1968. They make this claim because they use the Consumer Price Index to justify their point of view. What they are doing is starting an inflation cycle.

Look at this. If somebody is making $7 and they get moved to $10, the person who is working for $9 has to go to $12 and the person at $11 has to go to $14 and so on up. You cannot put on a new guy with no skills at a wage higher than they were before unless everybody gets a pay raise. That is wonderful. It goes all the way up the ladder. It just doesn't stop at the $14 level. In fact, it even affects seniors. The seniors' cost of living is based on wages, not on what it costs a senior to buy something. So everybody in America is going to get a raise, and that is wonderful, except--and here is the catch--in order to pay for those raises the money has to come from somewhere.

So if you like the dollar deal at your fast-food place, get ready for a dollar and a half at your fast-food place. Yes, right, it is only a 40-percent increase, but a buck and a half sounds better than $1.40, so they are going to raise it to the next level where they can pick up the customers, where it will sound good. Yes, you get a 30-percent increase, but the cost of what you buy goes up 30 percent. Did you get ahead? I don't think so.

The only one that gains in that is the Federal Government. You have moved into a higher tax bracket. That is how we raise taxes in America. We cause an inflation cycle. We give people more money and we make them pay more taxes and all they get to buy is whatever they bought before. So that purchasing power of 1968 will go up to the purchasing power of 2009 and beyond because the prices will have to go up.

My colleagues are quick to deny the CBO estimates that we have all seen which suggest their proposed plan would result in a loss of low- wage jobs. The minimum wage does not have to go up for minimum wage employees to get a raise. The proposal before the Senate throws cold water on job creation and adds to the burden businesses are already facing under the President's failed health care program.

Instead, the Senate should be considering proposals which promote job growth. The Workforce Investment Act has been out there for 8 years. It would train millions of people to jobs that are available in their community right now. It would give them skills beyond the minimum wage. Let's consider tax reform, growing U.S. exports, approving the Keystone XL Pipeline, as several of my colleagues and I recently highlighted.

But let me also speak on a personal level about the minimum wage. I have noted many times that I was a small business owner. My wife and I operated our own shoe stores in Wyoming and Montana. I know that all small business owners have families, their own and the families who work with them. One cannot credibly claim to be helping workers while at the same time hurting the businesses that employ them, especially under the guise of helping working families.

At our shoe store we hired people who didn't have basic skills. Some of them had never run a cash register. They never sold anything. They weren't sure how you dressed in the business community. We put them through courses. Each course resulted in a pay raise. For several people after several months they were actually able to earn what they were paid. Yes, it costs money to train people, especially those who have little or no skills, and those are the ones whom we need to help.

By increasing the minimum wage Congress would shut the employment door on the very individuals they are trying to help. Small business is the driver of our economy. They take these

unskilled workers and they train them. The simple fact is that an increase of minimum wage is of no benefit to a worker without a job or a job seeker without a prospect of getting a job.

I want to cover that tax problem again--the inflation issue. Minimum wage increases also start an inflation cycle. When some people get a wage increase, then everyone has to get a wage increase to recognize those who know more, do more, are more reliable, and have more skills. To pay everyone more, prices have to go up. When this happens, people will make more, but they have to spend more so they actually don't get ahead. The only one who benefits is the Federal Government because they get a tax increase.

At some point someone actually has to produce more to get more, and that can be done with new skills or a new idea with training. The problem we face is one of minimum skills, not minimum wages. The effect may be low wages, but the cause is low skills. We need to address those workers who have few, if any, of the skills they need to compete for a better job and command higher wages.

We need to start thinking in terms of skills, the kind of skills that will help students support themselves and their families in the future, that will empower our current workforce to pursue higher-paying jobs and those without a job to become selfsustaining. I sincerely hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle reconsider their plans to continue to push this effort. There are a number of bills this Senate can consider that would promote job creation over an arbitrary increase in the Federal minimum wage. Our focus should be on small businesses and creating a business environment that is friendly for growth, builds and gives people jobs that pay more than the minimum wage. Higher prices, higher taxes, and fewer jobs is not what Wyoming and the rest of the country needs in these fragile times.

I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I rise today to again express my great disappointment about a matter of importance to our Nation--the administration's decision to put off a decision to start building the Keystone Pipeline so they can do a little more study and review--again. It is getting to be like watching a rerun of the same show--over and over and over again.

How many times have we been through this? I have lost count. Time after time momentum seems to build to finally approve this project so we can reap the benefits that will come from the pipeline--namely, the jobs that will be available to people who need them and the boost to our Nation's energy supplies that will help to bring some certainty to our energy policy.

Well, we can forget about those benefits in the near term. The administration has once again spoken with certainty that they aren't certain about what they want to do--they just know they don't want to do it now. If one is supportive of the pipeline one can still hope it may happen someday. If one is opposed to it, one can be assured that ``someday'' won't happen anytime soon.

I think there is more of a political reason than a practical reason for this delay. After all, there have already been 5 years of studies that have reaffirmed the benefits of building the pipeline now.

That isn't all. The State Department reviewed the proposal and found that it was the safest way to transport the oil. Most pipelines require a presidential permit that is issued after an 18-to 24-month review process. We did that. In fact, the first leg of the Keystone XL pipeline took 21 months to obtain approval. Most times that would be a cause for optimism. Not this time. We are 5 years down the road and we are still awaiting the start of construction.

Instead of spending this week on misguided legislation that will actually discourage new hiring and harm the job prospects of long-term unemployed individuals, we should be doing everything we can to encourage the creation of new jobs and the growth of new business opportunities. According to the State Department, the Keystone XL has the potential to create 42,000 jobs with good wages that will help to get the economy going again, strengthen our energy supplies, and put those 42,000 individuals further along the road of living the American dream and supporting their families. What is not to like about that? Plus, it will accomplish all that without raising taxes or increasing our crushing national debt. In fact, this would increase revenues--jobs increase revenues, sales increase revenues. More people driving to work also creates more money for highways.

Getting this massive private sector job creator moving into high gear is a win-win for all Americans. Unfortunately, it hasn't happened yet and the White House has decided to step in again and once again delay the project for political reasons. Instead of supporting a job creator, the administration is putting up a job barrier. We deserve better. We deserve an administration that is willing to work overtime to lead us out of this dismal time of long-term unemployment--a slump that shows no signs of ending soon.

That isn't the only reason why we need to take action on this immediately. Haven't we all spoken time and time again about the need to do something to reduce our dependence on sources of energy from unstable countries? This pipeline will help us to do that.

The administration's own Department of Energy stated in a June 2011 memo that Keystone XL would lower gas prices in all the markets in the United States. Flipping the XL switch from ``standby'' to ``on'' should have been done years ago. It is a no-brainer that calls for action--not more thought, reflection, meditation, consideration, review, and planning--and who knows what else.

The record is clear. We have been told time and time again that a decision on the pipeline was ``in the pipeline'' and would be coming our way shortly. In March of last year the President told us that the final decision as to whether or not he would approve the pipeline would reach us by year's end. We never heard from him.

Before that, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a promise that we would have a decision on the status of the pipeline by the end of 2011. We never heard from her, either.

That is unacceptable for so many different reasons. We need the jobs. We

need the energy. We need the certainty that comes from knowing whether this project will be completed or not.

The resources this pipeline is intended to carry will be developed whether the administration approves it or not. Doesn't it make sense by having the United States of America receive the benefit of all that energy instead of our competitors?

We have an alternative before us. The senior Senator from North Dakota has a new bill that I am cosponsoring that would recognize the final supplemental environmental impact statement and give approval to the Keystone XL Pipeline. It will put the Senate on record and recognize the need for the pipeline and all the benefits it will provide. It has strong bipartisan support and should move forward with all deliberate speed.

There is an old saying that reminds us that he who hesitates is lost. We have been hesitating for years and have nothing to show for it but lost time. We have a chance to change things and put ourselves on the right side of this equation. It is time to do it--now! Let's leave yesterday behind and move forward to tomorrow by taking action instead of putting it off again for another round of thoughtful gazing and reflection while our problems grow more serious and our options start to diminish.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and I be allowed to call up my amendment No. 2812.

I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, when the Child Care and Development Block Grant Program was first created in the 1990s, it was seen primarily as a way to help parents enter the workforce or get job training.

The program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, gets about $5.2 billion a year in Federal funding plus State matching funds, although the fiscal year 2014 appropriation is approximately $2.4 billion.

The last reauthorization of this program took place nearly 20 years ago. This bipartisan CCDBG reauthorization, the Mikulski-Burr-Harkin- Alexander bill, puts a greater emphasis on the quality of the childcare programs children are entering. The bipartisan bill would refocus the program on quality, not just access.

The legislation emphasizes the protection of vulnerable populations, incentivizing self-sufficiency and individual responsibility. The bill also improves coordination among Federal early childhood education programs.

As a block grant, States have a great deal of flexibility in how they administer child care and development block grant funds but are generally required to set health, safety, and quality guidelines, promote parental choice, assist parents in becoming independent through work promotion, and provide consumer information so parents can make decisions about their child's care. The money helps States provide grants to low-income parents to cover the cost of childcare and afterschool care, typically through a voucher which parents can use at the home-based program or childcare center of their choice.

My amendment requires the Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Education to carry out an interdepartmental review of all early learning and childcare programs administered by the Federal Government--and we have lots of them.

We all agree the funding invested in early education programs saves taxpayers money down the road. So for a long time the Federal Government has been doing a lot to increase access to these important programs. Federal support for early learning and childcare developed over time to meet emerging needs, but at this point multiple Federal agencies administer this important investment through numerous programs.

What my amendment does is ask Health and Human Services and the Department of Education to report back to Congress with a plan for eliminating duplication and overlap, as well as a plan with ways we can streamline these programs.

Every year the Government Accountability Office, GAO, submits a report to Congress with recommendations for ways to reduce duplication, overlap, and fragmentation in Federal Governmental programs. In its 2012 annual report to Congress, GAO recommended the Department of Education and Health and Human Services should extend their coordination efforts to other Federal agencies with early learning and childcare programs to combat program fragmentation, simplify children's access to these services, collect the data necessary to coordinate operation of these programs, and identify and minimize overlap and duplication.

GAO identified 45 early learning and childcare programs funded by the Federal Government. Twelve of these programs explicitly provide only early learning or childcare services. These 45 programs are administered by multiple agencies, including the Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Department of Housing and Urban Development, the General Services Administration, and the Appalachian Regional Commission. When I was chairman of the HELP Committee, the late Senator Ted Kennedy and I worked to eliminate duplication and overlap in programs under our jurisdiction--we got it down from about 119 to 69-- but could not look at any of the programs administered by other agencies. We knew there was room for streamlining programs at other agencies, but we couldn't work on it, which was frustrating and shows how far-flung some of these programs are. Let me report again: the 45 programs administered by multiple agencies, including not only Education but Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Interior, Justice, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, General Services Administration, and the Appalachian Regional Commission.

We have to believe we ought to be able to do some consolidation there and save some money and improve the quality of programs while we are at it.

In a recent GAO report issued on February 5, 2014, GAO noted that as of December 2013, Education and Health and Human Services has taken initial steps toward greater coordination but had not yet included all Federal agencies which administer these early learning and childcare programs in their established interdepartmental workgroup.

This amendment takes a further step in identifying fragmentation, overlap, duplication, and inefficiencies in the Federal Government's delivery of numerous learning and care programs beyond the Government Administration Organization's report. Streamlining programs to eliminate duplication is essential for program integrity and good governance but also for eliminating service gaps for eligible children.

We are doing a lot. We can do better with less through coordination and getting it down to where there are less sources and less places where there has to be permission, regulation, and oversight. We can do better for the kids, and all we are asking for with this is to come up with a plan. It doesn't force anything, but hopefully it is a plan we will pay attention to and not just put it on the shelf.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today to again express my great disappointment about a matter of importance to Wyoming and many other public land States that have not been properly addressed by this omnibus bill in the Senate. Instead of producing a legislative solution based on discussions with our colleagues, debate and consideration in committee, and a fair and complete process on the floor, we have a bill before us that was put together by making another deal. Simply put, the Senate fails to do its job when we refuse to allow a fair, free, and open debate about an issue that is of such great concern to the people who will be affected by the decision.

It is no secret; anyone who has seen the Senate in operation as we take up this legislation will know that the back-room deal does not include critical funding that nearly 1,900 counties in 49 States--49 States; that is all but 1--and 3 U.S. territories rely on. One would think this kind of participation would draw an extraordinary amount of interest by us all to make sure this bill was written with the best interests of all the States and all of our constituents in mind. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the case.

So what program is it that draws such interest from 1,900 counties, 3 territories, 49 States--concern from such a widespread portion of our Nation? I am speaking, of course, of payments in lieu of taxes. It is a program that has been in place for decades; it is not an issue that is new to the Senate. That is why I recently led an effort by several of my Senate colleagues urging that appropriators include this critical funding in the Interior appropriations. If they had done that, we would have already completed the work to produce a well-reasoned, well- thought-out answer to an issue of such importance to the States. Unfortunately, our efforts seem to have fallen on deaf ears, so here I am before my colleagues hoping with all my heart that I can make the Senate understand how crucial this funding is to almost every State in the Union.

This body often overlooks the important role of local government in the lives of our constituents. I know this because before I came to the Senate I served as a mayor, as did another handful of people in this body, and I know there are several others who have been county officials. Communities and counties are responsible for providing fire protection, law enforcement, sanitation, public health, and education, just to name a few. They provide these services largely by raising revenue. One common source is through property taxes. In States where there is little federally owned land, local communities have a large number of private homeowners to help provide these services. However, there are States where the Federal Government decided to retain most if not a majority of its ownership of the land. The problem is that these Federal lands cannot be taxed.

Yet local governments must still provide critical fire, law enforcement, and health services in these areas and for the people who work on them. In order to make up this shortfall, Congress created payment in lieu of taxes to compensate local governments to offset the losses caused by having nontaxable Federal lands within their boundaries.

For decades, the Payment in Lieu of Taxes Program has provided counties and local governments with funding to help meet critical community needs. One of the reasons the Payment in Lieu of Taxes Program was instituted was because of the creation of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which placed a major hurdle on the Federal Government from disposing of public lands. In place of the Federal Government's ability to move land from Federal to private ownership Congress decided to reimburse county and local governments with payments that would replace the revenue lost from the property taxes they would have received if those Federal lands had been transferred to private ownership. It seemed the only fair thing to do back then, and it is still only fair to live up to our obligations as a nation to provide the States with the revenue they are losing because of the laws we have enacted.

I have to tell you, we are talking about 1,900 counties in the United States; 49 States. In some of those counties, it is 40 percent to 80 percent of their total revenue. That is a big cut to make--in 1 year. No transition, just boom, gone. How do you adjust to that if you are those local government people trying to figure out how to balance your budget? After all, I am not aware of anybody who lives at the Federal level. They all live at the local level. So it is the local folks who have to take care of the people.

If we fail to adequately address this issue, we are forcing our communities to make do with less--a lot less--because we are breaking a promise we have made. By doing so, we are forcing them to reduce--or even eliminate--the vital resources upon which their citizens rely.

I wish to emphasize and make it clear that this is not an additional source of revenue. It is not a bonus. County and local governments depend on this revenue when they plan their budgets each year. It is part of the law. They count on it, and without it, their budgets are stretched and strained and they will be bankrupt.

The decision by the Appropriations Committee to not include the vital payment in lieu of taxes funding in the omnibus will place counties across the country in very difficult positions and great financial hardship for them all, especially since there was no transition, there was no warning. It was just done.

We need to stop playing games with the Payment in Lieu of Taxes Program and find a way to ensure it is adequately and fairly funded now and for years to come. We could learn a lesson from local governments. I remind you, that is where everyone lives. Many are obligated to have a balanced budget. That forces communities to budget in advance, debate priorities, and stick to considering spending measures through the normal legislative process.

As we look for ways to adequately fund payment in lieu of taxes, we also need to be sure we are not robbing Peter to pay Paul. I was extremely disappointed about the provision in the conference report-- now, a conference report comes to us for an up-or-down vote. We do not have any chance to debate them on the floor. We do not have a chance to amend it. But the conference report for the highway reauthorization in 2012 robbed the abandoned mine land trust fund--trust fund--to pay for the payment in lieu of taxes obligation that time. They got paid, though, but we stole from a trust fund to do it. Again, it was a conference report, so there was no opportunity for amendments on it-- just like this omnibus. States rely on those funds to clean up high- priority abandoned mines. We should not pit those funds against each other.

Yes, the Federal Government is out of money. We are going to have to prioritize. We are going to have to move some things around. We are going to have to bring down the deficits so eventually we can hopefully bring down the debt. This is not the only time we have been doing this sort of thing.

Twice now we have robbed the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Where do they get their money? Any private company--private company, not Federal company--any private company that has a pension fund has to pay a tax into this Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation so that in case they go out of business, the people who were promised a retirement will be compensated. They will get compensated 60 percent of what they were promised--just 60 percent. But we have raised that amount dramatically twice now on private corporations that were providing retirement for their workers.

That is all voluntary. They do not have to provide retirements for their workers. If we keep raising that amount, and it does not go to provide assurance that their employees will get their retirement, why would they keep their retirement going?

People are going to lose retirement in the United States. Nobody is starting defined benefit plans right now because of the extra taxes we are putting on it. Twice now we have raised that price, and we have put it to something other than it was promised for. Here is the real kicker: We said that for the next 8 years we are going to steal that money, so we can spend that amount this year.

I am not sure it is legal. How do we force future Congresses to be sure to pay the money--no, we will have already spent the money--so we are asking them to pay back the money, and we are asking them to steal it out of a trust fund. We have to quit stealing from the trust funds. That is the same thing with the abandoned mine land trust fund. That was stealing for 10 years to pay for 2 years. We cannot keep doing that.

Somehow we have to have the kind of budgeting we are expecting these local governments, these towns and cities and counties to do, where they have to balance their budget. We do not have to balance our budget. We just steal the money. But there is a point at which we cannot steal the money anymore.

What do we do now next time on the Transportation bill, when we have already obligated 8 more years of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation to the current highways? We will not have collected that yet. Where do we steal it from next time?

Infrastructure is extremely important. We are going to have to eventually prioritize around here. We are going to have to do the same thing we expect of those towns and counties that we are stealing the payment in lieu of taxes money from in order to keep this business afloat.

The Payment in Lieu of Taxes Program represents a promise we made to counties and local governments all across the Nation. They are looking to us to see how we will act and to see how we will keep that promise. If we fail to do so, it will have an impact on almost every one of us who will surely hear about the repercussions when we go back home to meet with our constituents. I encourage and urge the Senate in the strongest terms to reconsider the Payment in Lieu of Taxes Program and the impact we may be bringing to people across the Nation by failing to include it in this legislation.

These are governments that--they have property taxes on the private property. What happens if the people with the private property do not pay their taxes? The local government gets to put a lien on it and gets to put it on the market. Maybe that is what we ought to do with this Federal land: put a lien on it, put it on the market.

It is a debt the Federal Government said they would pay and they are not paying. It is payment in lieu of property taxes. If the property taxes are not paid, there is a way the local government can make up for it, but there is not if the Federal Government just decides to quit paying, and that is kind of what we did. We said taxes are hard to pay. If everybody in America said taxes are hard to pay and quit paying them, we would be in one heck of a fix. We cannot do that to the towns and counties either.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, 49 percent of Wyoming is Federal land. We understand the value of having some Federal land. We like the people who come to visit it. But there are a lot of expenses that go with that, and to just jerk the money away--right away.

In the committee the Senator is talking about with Senator Wyden, what we have always talked about is a transition to do anything. There are a number of ways we could transition this that I do not think would hurt the Federal Government or hurt the local counties, but it requires a lot of flexibility, it requires going through the regular process in committee and then coming to the floor and making some decisions. This is wrong to just steal it one time.

Mr. President, I too wish to congratulate the Senator from Oklahoma and Kay for their 54th wedding anniversary. It is quite a landmark for an outstanding couple. I hope they get to celebrate on their day. I think that probably, if we knew the final vote on this was going to be the end of the whole process before Christmas, it probably would include time yielded back. But if there are going to be a whole bunch of things thrown in that really have relatively little importance before the end of the year, the Senator probably won't get his wish. So I am hoping we can end it with this bill.

I rise to express my disappointment that this National Defense Authorization Act on which we will soon be having a final vote is the product of another deal instead of the result of discussion, debate, and amendment process on the floor. Once again, the Senate has failed to do its job. The Senate majority leader has blocked all but two amendments to this NDAA from consideration, and those were to prevent any other amendments from happening. That is not right. That is not the way we used to do it. If we want to know what is wrong with the Senate and why people of all political persuasions are upset with Congress, that is a big part of the answer right there--no amendments allowed.

Here we are at the end of the year--this didn't have to come at the end of the year. In fact, I never remember us debating it this late in the year.

Incidentally, this is the only committee that gets a bill every year. The other committees have to fight for some time and hopefully have a persuasive enough bill to get it. But every year I have been here, we have debated this National Defense Authorization Act, and it is important.

There are two primary things we are charged with, and one is spending for the United States and the other is national defense. And this is about the national defense. It shouldn't be crowded into 30 hours or even 1 week. There ought to be the ability to express what we think is important dealing with national defense, and we are not being allowed to do that.

This is an important bill for our country. There are a lot of important issues in it that we need to discuss. We haven't considered issues relating to our nuclear deterrent, to privacy concerns related to the National Security Administration, to detention of U.S. citizens, and the need to address sexual assault in the military, or a number of other important issues. In the past, we have spent multiple weeks on the Defense bill and considered dozens of amendments. That is what we should be doing this year too.

I understand we have come up against this December 31 deadline and how critical that is. That should not have happened. Our national security needs to be fully debated, and it needs to be debated by the whole Senate.

Every voice needs to be heard. That means every constituent out there whom we represent has to have at least an opportunity to have their interests reflected in this national bill. We all have some military in our States, and it is very important. That is how it is supposed to happen, and that is the way the Senate does its best work.

One of the things that have been holding it up, of course, are the nominations. Most of those nominations did not have urgency to them. They could have been done next year without hurting the United States at all--not the case with the National Defense Authorization Act. So we do not have priorities on what we are debating around here, and then we have limits because of the timeframe. It is not right.

One of those important issues we are skipping over is the nuclear deterrent. I offered several amendments on this issue because I believe the administration is playing a dangerous game with national security. The solution I proposed in my amendment was simple and straightforward. It would have ensured that American citizens and our allies would not be harmed by this administration's bad policy decisions--both today and for years to come--by ensuring that any further reductions in our nuclear arsenal could not be done by the administration unilaterally.

As background, here in the Senate I have the honor of representing the city of Cheyenne, WY, which is the home of F.E. Warren Air Force Base and the 90th ICBM Missile Wing. Those who proudly serve there have an awesome responsibility and a history of doing excellent work. We have entrusted the most powerful of our weaponry to the best, to the most capable of managing these weapons in a thoroughly professional and reliable manner. Every day, the top-notch men and women who are stationed at F.E. Warren work together to maintain the world's most powerful military force, our ICBMs. Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, they stand guard to ensure our safety and our freedom. They maintain a constant vigil from which they can never stand down because their mission is that critical. In a very real sense, that is why each one of us is able to sleep well at night. Moms and dads and grandpas and grandmas all across America know that when they tuck their kids in at night, someone is on duty and will continue to be watching through the lonely hours of the night to make sure their little ones are safe and secure.

Unfortunately, there are those in the administration who take the contributions of our military for granted. They do not have the sense of history that is needed to fully appreciate why these weapons were designed and put into operation in the first place. They do not see how much they are needed today and will still be needed tomorrow to ensure our future. They do not fully appreciate the key role they have played in the past either. They seem to think that nuclear weapons are part of a bygone era, a relic of the past that has not been needed since the Cold War ended.

The adoption of such a position is dangerous because it takes our position of strength for granted. What they fail to understand is the power of this deterrent and how it has kept us safe for decades. In the past, any nation that gave even a casual thought to threatening us or trying to do us harm had to quickly shelve those plans when the realization of what they would be up against was made clear. That is, after all, the point of having these weapons. That is one of the reasons why they are necessary. They have served us well ever since they were first deployed.

The administration's views on our nuclear deterrent should not come as a surprise to any of us who have watched the development of these ideas when they were first offered for consideration. We have seen President Obama promise to do all he can to reduce our nuclear arsenal--step by step. First, he rammed the New START treaty through the Senate by promising commitments that he ultimately did not

keep. One of those was the promise to modernize our nuclear force, which we are still waiting on. I voted against ratification of the New START treaty because I believe maintaining a strong nuclear force is a critical part of protecting our country. It still is.

The Obama administration has stated its intention to reduce the number of deployed nuclear warheads to as few as 1,000, which would be 550 fewer than is allowed under that New START treaty. What is more, in the factsheet on the Nuclear Posture Review Implementation Study, it states that the President could go outside the formal treaty-making process and reduce our nuclear arsenal unilaterally. That has ``bad idea'' written all over it. It means the administration can still make drastic nuclear reductions even if Russia will not agree to do the same. Does that make any sense? Should we just bargain with ourselves? That is something which should give us all pause and encourage us to go on record as to what needs to be done to keep our people safe.

In case you think I am overreacting, last year President Obama was caught on an open microphone promising former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more flexibility to negotiate on nuclear defense issues after his election. Those comments are still before us, and they do not exactly instill trust and confidence that the President will not choose to bypass Congress and act unilaterally on nuclear reductions.

All we have to do is look around the world to see why we should be concerned. Everywhere we look, nations are looking to increase, not decrease, their weaponry. In fact, as the President makes plans for reducing our own nuclear arsenal, it appears Russia and China are looking for ways to modernize and update their own arsenals.

These are dangerous weapons, and we need to be certain we do everything we can to ensure that they continue to be fully monitored. They must never be used. But it seems to me that the best way to make certain they are never used is to be certain that no one would ever dare to think of using them against us or our allies.

The concerns I have that some other country might use these weapons first are increased, not decreased, when I see the administration sending signals that they might not wait for everyone to disarm; they might do it on their own first. It would be like taking your own team off the field and allowing the other team to score at will. Relying on the good will of the opponent rarely works, and it is clearly not a good strategy.

One final point. We are not the only ones who are relying on our nuclear arsenal for our safety and security. There are other countries that rely on the United States for their national security. If we make it clear that we are dropping out of this vital source of our strength as a nation, this could encourage other countries to increase their own nuclear capability because they will suspect that they can no longer rely on us. Increasing the number of nations that have a nuclear capability is clearly something we dare not encourage.

Simply put, this is exactly what my amendment was trying to stop. It would have ensured that any further reductions in our nuclear arsenal could not be done on a unilateral basis by the President alone. Instead, any changes would have to follow the application of the treaty system, which would give the Senate an opportunity to weigh in on this matter again when a proposal in the form of a treaty is brought before us for our consideration.

Just as ridiculous, the President threatened a veto if the amendment were in the bill. Now, unfortunately, due to the majority leader's actions, we are not going to be able to debate this and other important issues like I mentioned before--the privacy issue at the National Security Agency, the NSA listening in on telephone calls; the detention of U.S. citizens; addressing sexual assault in the military; and a number of others.

For all of these reasons, I cannot support moving forward on the Defense bill. I hope that on our next Defense authorization bill we will all recognize the importance of being allowed to fully debate these issues, so we will not wait until the end of the year when there is this looming deadline regarding bonuses, so our men and women in uniform can continue to fulfill their mission of keeping our Nation safe, secure, and free, knowing what their future is.

Something as important as the Defense authorization bill must not be drafted or taken up for a vote until it has made it through the whole legislative process. The legislative process was created for a reason, and we do ourselves and our constituents and those who serve in our Armed Forces a disservice when we fail to make full use of it. The bill has not made it through each step of the process. In my opinion, that is a fatal flaw. We can do better. We need to do better. We better do better in the future.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise to express my disappointment that the budget deal we will soon be voting on reflects just that, a deal--not legislation, a deal. It raises spending above the cap. That is the spending limit we put in place just 2 years ago.

It raises revenue from hard-working Americans to pay for this new spending and promises to cut some spending in the future. We have seen before how that story ends. We have already read that book. We will spend more now, we will grow the government more now, and ultimately the spending cuts will never materialize.

I have a favorite retired truckdriver in Pinedale, WY, who has suggested that we need to quit putting people in the wagon and get more people pulling the wagon. What he, of course, is referring to is the way we are growing government. Every time we grow government we put some more people in this wagon that the private sector has to pull. Yes, everybody in government pays taxes. But not one person in the government pays as much in taxes as they earn, so they become a part of the burden in the wagon.

Yes, even Senators are part of that burden in the wagon. But we are getting less and less people pulling the wagon. They are getting a little tired of pulling the wagon. I am going to show some things that are happening in this budget that are making it even tougher for them to pull the wagon.

So this is not the right path forward. My constituents back home in Wyoming and Americans across this country deserve better. We talk about how we have reduced the deficit. Reduced the deficit? Yes, that means we used to be overspending $1 trillion a year, and now we are only overspending $500 billion, which is one-half trillion. That is still overspending.

Families across America know you cannot keep spending more than you take in. Is there any indication that this causes a problem? We have been experiencing some of the lowest interest rates in the history of the country, which means the Federal Government has been able to borrow its money for less than it ever has before.

A few months ago I went to one of these bond sales. It was $40 billion worth of bond sales, sold in 30 minutes. People in other countries had so much confidence in the United States that they were willing to pay us to take their money. They put in bids of negative interest rates. They paid us to take their money, to keep it, to make sure it was secure. They believed it would be secure. So they paid us a negative interest rate.

At that particular bond sale, the interest rate was .86 percent to borrow $40 billion. That is what it averaged out at. Last week we did bond sales. Last week we sold $30 billion worth of bonds. I do not know how many minutes it took to do that, but it was a relatively short period of time, probably less than 30 minutes as well.

Do you know what the interest rate was? It was 3.90 percent. In just a few months it has gone from .86 to 3.90. Is that factored into this budget? I bet you it is not. If that interest rate keeps going up, if it hits 5 percent, we are not going to be able to do nearly as much as we are now. We have to pay our interest first, otherwise we have bankrupted the United States and proven it.

When we talk about raising the debt ceiling, it is a minor issue compared to being able to pay the interest on the debt. If it keeps going up significantly, we and our kids and our grandkids are not going to be able to pay the debt. That is what I hear across Wyoming. That is what I hear across America. So what are we trying to do? We are trying to come up with a reasonable amount of spending for the United States. This budget does not do it.

Because Members are going to be voting on a deal rather than a bill that had the opportunity to be improved through the committee process with feedback from other Members, we will not have the opportunity to discuss the potential unintended consequences and address them before they become law. I just heard 15 minutes of that discussion from the Senator from Maryland who knows a whole bunch of items that are in this bill that he is upset with, and I, quite frankly, think he ought to be upset with.

But I am on that conference committee. When the deal was made, we read about it in the papers just like everybody else. We did not get any special notice that there had been a deal made. On conference committees, I have seen the deals made before. I have never seen one made by so few people before. In this one there was a Democrat from the Senate and a Republican from the House. The two of them came up with a conclusion that this is what we should have.

That is not too bad, provided it goes through a normal process, which means we get to make some amendments. When we make amendments, some pass, some fail. But at least we get to bring up the unintended consequences that we see. That is why we have so many people in Congress: 100 here and 435 on the other side. That is why we have a whole lot of backgrounds looking at everything that happens around here from a whole lot of perspectives so maybe we can stop the unintended consequences.

But that is only if it goes through a normal process. So far the tree is filled on this bill. What does that mean? That means no amendments allowed. Take it or leave it. No matter what you think of it, forget it. We are going to have some unintended consequences that are going to come out of this and they are going to become law.

For example, I applaud the proposal that would limit access to Social Security's Death Master File to prevent identity theft, and individuals from fraudulently claiming government benefits and tax refunds associated with those who have passed away. That is a good idea. However, I am concerned that certain organizations that use that same Death Master File for legitimate business purposes that benefit consumers may have their access restricted.

If we discussed these issues in committee, we might have been able to address them, perhaps with a sensible solution, perhaps in a way that would

have protected the identity and still protected the benefits to the consumer.

The budget deal makes a permanent provision that would require States to pay a 2-percent administrative fee to the Federal Government for the collection of mineral royalties. This only affects a few States, particularly Wyoming. The negotiators and the administration see this as an easy pot of money. We saw the same situation play out last year when the Federal Government saw a pot of money associated with the abandoned mine lands, that primarily go to Wyoming, and spent it on an unrelated highway bill.

When the Federal Government first started to withhold the mineral royalty money owed to States, I introduced legislation with Senator Barrasso and Representative Lummis and a bipartisan group of legislators from affected States to stop it. Each of those States is fully capable of collecting its own share of the mineral revenues without help from the Federal Government. We should not have to pay for that. We will continue to reverse this unjust practice.

Another fascinating little item was when we did the sequester, the money that comes in from Federal mineral royalties to the Federal Government was considered to be revenue. The money that went out, which is by law to the States, was considered to be revenue to the States that passed through the Federal Government. The Federal Government took 5.3 percent out of it until, of course, we started having a lot of success at reversing both this 2 percent that I just talked about and the stealing of the Federal mineral royalties. Suddenly the Federal Government said: Oh, that was a mistake. You are going to get your full half of the Federal mineral royalties less, of course, the 2 percent.

Another little problem is the deal raises premiums private companies pay the Federal Government to guarantee their pension benefits. That is something we have also insisted on. We have said companies need to pay a fee so if they go out of business, the people they promised a pension to will get at least 60 percent of what they were promised. That is supposed to be a trust fund, a trust fund to be able to pay those people if the company goes out of business.

We have addressed that a number of times. We have held that sacrosanct until a couple of years ago. This raises the premium. That is gentle for a new tax. A premium is a tax. If every company has to pay another $200 per employee who receives a pension, that is a tax.

If it goes into the trust fund, maybe it is a fee. But here is the real kicker: This money we raise does not go to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, so it is a tax increase. It does not shore up this trust fund. It will be spent on discretionary programs, and it will be spent this year. But it will be collected for 10 years. How many people in America get to take 10 years of revenue, spend it this year, and then not worry about it? Nobody that I know of.

Employers are still in the process of implementing and paying for a $9 billion tax increase called for in the highway bill last year. That, again, is a 10-year tax to build highways for 2 years. When that highway bill comes up, where are we going to steal the money next time?

There is always the Social Security trust fund and a whole bunch of other trust funds. I can hear the yelling about that, and I will join the yelling about that if it is even considered. If we can tap it in the private sector, undoubtedly we can tap it in the government sector as well.

A $9 billion increase, that was for the highway bill. We have another $200 per employee, so we have another $900 billion increase that is put on the backs of private industry, the ones pulling the wagon that I talked about. To put it simply, over 2 years the flat-rate premium will have increased 40 percent, and over 3 years the variable-rate premium-- which is a tax if it doesn't go where it is supposed to--will have increased over 100 percent. That is a huge tax.

I guarantee that will end the willingness of some companies to continue pensions. Pensions are voluntary.

If the cost to continue them goes up, the companies will reevaluate.

In fact, I can state that they are reevaluating right now. When we are looking at $200 per year per employee, we have to take a look at how that affects this. Pensions will change drastically because of this agreement.

A few of the concerns I have just raised could be addressed, if not in committee, then on the Senate floor. Once again, the majority leader has decided that no amendments will be allowed. They won't be allowed to be offered, and they won't be allowed to be voted on.

I filed two amendments to the budget deal that are relevant to this discussion. One was with Senator Murphy regarding the need to follow congressional intent and to clarify that the funding of the accounting standards-setting bodies is not subject to sequestration.

We have a system where there are rules set up to have generally accepted accounting principles, and we have a body that is supposed to be very independent that is supposed to come up with those rules.

We do force the companies that are in the accounting business to pay for that body, to standardize the accounting process. It comes directly from the accountants, and it is supposed to go directly to this accounting board. We have decided that sequestration should take a little chunk out of that. That should not happen. That is stealing money again. That is one of the amendments.

Another one was to strike the language making it permanent for the Federal Government to withhold 2 percent of mineral royalty owed to the States for administrative expenses. We should have the opportunity to discuss, debate, and vote on them on the Senate floor.

There are a lot of others, but those are the two primary ones. We have to stop dealmaking and we have to start legislating.

Our constituents sent us here to legislate. They deserve better than a deal agreed to behind closed doors without input and improvements from the rest of the legislators, not even the committee to which it was assigned. Even though I am disappointed in the process that has led to this point today, I am even more disappointed in the product that resulted from the dealmaking.

This budget deal breaks the promise we made to our constituents in 2011--as part of the Budget Control Act--that we would reduce spending. It has worked. It hasn't worked the way a lot of people would like for it to work because it has been across-the-board. But for the first time since the Korean War, it has reduced spending 2 consecutive years.

We were close. After 2014, overall discretionary spending would have increased even with the sequester. Yes, we were almost at the end of the part of taking down the spending, but we couldn't find the will to prioritize spending this year under the current spending levels and, instead, decided to ask Americans to send in more of their hard-earned money to Washington so the Federal Government could spend it the same way we always have--promise the cuts in the end and take more money in the beginning.

I think my constituents in Wyoming know best how to spend their money. Of course, this penalizes them for their principled budgeting which they have been doing and makes it look as if they have money. Every State could have money if they were as careful as Wyoming has been.

Washington, DC, has a spending problem. We don't have a revenue problem. We can think of all kinds of things we would like to spend money on, things that we think would be a good deal and probably that would buy some votes out there. That is wrong. We need to get things under control before that 3.9 percent interest rate goes to 5 percent, 10 percent--or it has been as high as, I think, 18 percent before.

The budget deal increases spending and shows the one thing that some Democrats and Republicans can agree on, and that is putting off our decisions. This plan spends more than the current law. It charges people and States for more and uses the money to increase spending in nonrelated areas.

Spending cuts are scheduled for outlying years, and so the so-called savings are used right away. Yes, just shift that money from out there and put it into the current spending. That isn't real. Nobody else gets to do it. It is only a government trick.

We cannot spend our way to prosperity. We need to prioritize spending

cuts. We need to find the spending cuts that will do the least harm, start there, and go through an appropriations process that works. We have been doing omnibus bills around here for a long time. I have constituents who will start coming in January, and they will want me to take a look at their program and add only a few dollars there. I have to tell them the last time I had a look at a line on appropriations was about 5 years ago. We just take one whole lump of $1 trillion and vote it up or down one time. That is not doing our job. Our main job is spending the money. We need to prioritize those cuts.

I will tell us how Wyoming did it. Wyoming was facing an 8-percent cut, they thought. We are talking about 2.03 percent for the Federal Government. If we compress it down to only a few months, we are talking about 5.3 percent. But the true amount of that sequestration was 2.3 percent.

Wyoming thought they were going to get hit for 8 percent, mostly because of some of the regulations on energy that reduced some of the energy production in Wyoming.

How did they go about doing this? The Governor said to every single agency: I wish to see from you how you would spend it if you have to cut 2 percent, if you have to cut 4 percent, if you have to cut 6 percent, and if you have to cut 8 percent.

Do you know what he did when he got those four lists from all of the agencies? He looked to see if the items at 2 percent, 4 percent, 6 percent, and 8 percent were the same.

That is the way we find out what the agency thinks they can get rid of. That is a simple way of prioritizing spending. Did we ever do that around here? No. We do have a process by which the President can have his agencies say what they intend to get done and then tell what they got done and how well they were doing.

We never pay attention to that. So the ones that come out rated very badly on this continue spending money as they always did. We need to have a prioritization process. We need to have a way that we can look at some of the details of the spending bills. Putting off spending forever and forever, and then coming in after the fact and saying: OK, this is how much we spent, how much we are going to spend, then we get to vote yes or no, is wrong. That again is dealmaking, not legislating, and it won't rein in the out-of-control spending.

I have talked a little bit about the prioritization we have to start doing around here. When we do the sequestration, the complaints are the agencies will always make it hurt. I watched this when I was in the Wyoming legislature. If we only told them how much of a cut to make and didn't tell them specifically where to take it, they always did something that was very visual that their constituents would notice. Their constituents would complain about, and their constituents would make us put it back into the spending.

They didn't have to do that. There isn't any business, there isn't government agency that doesn't have some waste. That is what ought to go first.

Then the duplication ought to go--and there is about $900 billion a year in duplication around here, but we ought to take a look at that.

Another thing we can do is the government shutdown legislation. That is the one that needs to tell those spending committees they need to get the leader to bring up their bill and get it finished with the amendments in the appropriate time. If they don't, then they will have to cut another 1 percent off their spending every quarter until they get their work done. Then we don't have a shutdown, but we have a reduction in spending; there is some incentive for them to do that.

We need to do tax reform. I agree with Senator Cardin. I think that could make a huge difference in how we are doing our revenue.

I also have a penny plan. The penny plan just takes 1 cent off of every Federal dollar the Federal Government spends. When I first started looking at this, the Congressional Budget Office said that it would balance the budget in 7 years. If we did that for 7 consecutive years with 1 percent off every year, it would balance it in 7 years.

The newer valuation is that with the sequestration it balances the budget in 2 years--only 2 years. When I talk to my constituents about it, that it would be 3.3 percent over 2 years, and it comes to almost 7 percent over 3 years--I think that we could do that, and we could do it with so little pain--people would say: Please continue that another couple of years and pay down some of the debt.

Just getting rid of part of the deficit means we are still overspending, but we ought to at some point start paying down that debt so we don't have to pay the interest on the debt.

When we pay down a little bit of the debt so we don't have to pay as much interest, we ought to use that interest that we saved to pay down the debt some more. That is how we pay off things. People who have credit card problems know that is the way to go about it.

I would also like to go to biennial budgeting. We supposedly spend $1 trillion in discretionary spending and the military every year--$1 trillion. That is so much money that nobody can look at it, and we don't.

If we divided those 12 spending bills up into two packages of six, and we allowed them to have spending worth 2 years each time, they could plan ahead much better. We would do the six toughest bills right after the election, the year right after the election and we would do the six easy bills just before election. We could get through those.

Then we could do what my constituents think that we are doing, which is to look at every one of those expenditures and decide whether they ought to go up or down--allowing amendments on bills, allowing the spending bills to go through one at a time, maybe a week at a time. We could have them all done before October, and then there wouldn't be any government shutdown anyway.

There are a lot of ideas out there on what we could do. I sit up nights worrying about the Nation's debt and how it will affect the children of Wyoming, how it will affect my children, and how it will affect my grandchildren. This budget conference was an opportunity to apply reasonable constraints to impossibly high future spending, but instead we got more spending and no real plan to solve the problem. Yes, we said, we got some savings from out there in the future. We will spend that now, and we will make those cuts later. It never happens.

For all of those reasons, I cannot support the budget deal. I hope our next fiscal deadline dealing with the debt limit early next year will provide an opportunity for my colleagues and me to have a real conversation about the spending problems our country faces. The spending issue isn't going away. The longer we put it off, the worse it will become. That is the reality our country faces.

I hope that we continue on the bill that says, no budget, no pay, and actually get that done so that we have the emphasis to actually finish a budget much earlier. Yes, there is blame, blame enough to go around on the budget process. We are actually too late for the budget process to have an impact. We are at the spending part. We are not getting to address that with amendments, and I am deeply disappointed we are not legislating.

I yield the floor.

Yes, that is exactly the issue I was raising. We keep promising people that money is going to go to certain places and then we divert it to other places.

I think that under the system of accounting we use, we probably could get it to show up in two places and get to spend it twice. That is double the problem. So we have to start being honest with the public about where we are taking the money and where we are actually putting the money, and that was my purpose in making that comment.

I thank my colleague for his comments and for his dedication on the budget. I don't think anybody spends as much time looking at those numbers as the Senator from Alabama does, and commenting here on the floor. It is an effort to educate America on what is really going on, and my colleague is very good at it. I thank him for his leadership.

Mr. President, we are here today dealing with a non- essential distraction from the issues our country should be dealing with. None of these nominees need to be confirmed right now. Rather, we should be dealing with the problems we see each day. I talked about two of the biggest problems we face last Wednesday: Obamacare and our debt and deficit. I want to expand on those matters and discuss some of the other things we should be addressing.

We are here today dealing with a non-essential distraction from the mounting Obamacare problems. None of these nominees need to be confirmed right now. Rather, we should be dealing with the problems we see each day of how the health care law will fail to live up to the promises made by the administration. We must repeal this law, because as these reports demonstrate, it is bad for consumers and bad for small businesses. The outcry of millions of people who lost health care plans they were told they could keep forced President Obama to admit that he broke his promise. He then announced a new initiative that he said would really allow people to keep their existing health insurance plans this time--for a short time.

This isn't true either because for one thing he doesn't have the power under the Constitution to rewrite or ignore laws passed by Congress. It would also mean he would have to be willing to ignore a 2010 administration regulation that has prevented insurers from continuing to offer insurance for millions of individuals and small businesses. That's right, at the same time the President was promising out of one side of his mouth that people could keep their health insurance, the other side was approving rules that would make that impossible.

And everyone who was in the Senate at the time knew it. It was right there in the Federal Register and written by the President's own administration. Congress knew and the administration knew the President was not telling the truth, but kept making the promise anyway.

When one party has 60 votes in the Senate, the minority party is very limited in what it can do. There are few exceptions to the majority leader's control. He decides what the Senate can debate and vote on. Through parliamentary manipulation he can also block amendments.

One sure way to inject something not approved by the majority leader is to find an offensive regulation and petition the Senate for a debate and a simple majority vote. I did that in 2010. One catch is that has to be acted upon within 60 days of the regulation's publication in the Federal Register. Miss that date and it can't be brought up again. Lose the vote and the opportunity is also gone. That's an opportunity Democrats in the Senate squandered. Every single one voted to defeat my resolution and many ridiculed the effort. Over the next few months their constituents are going to make them answer for this.

I have fought against the new health care law for the past 4 years because I knew that there was no way the President could keep all of the promises he was making about how the law would affect average Americans. As an accountant and former small business owner, I understood that you cannot mandate that everyone must purchase gold- plated health insurance plans without increasing costs and causing millions of people to lose their existing insurance plans.

But wait. There is more. If you can't keep the health plans that you like, then you are going to have a tougher time keeping the doctors and hospitals you like. Get ready for the next wave of disappointment and frustration when expectations created by this President and his PR machine come crashing up against the harsh reality of the real world. Obamacare casualties will continue to grow even as this President launches media blitz after media blitz in attempt to convince people that higher premiums, worse coverage and a bigger debt for this country is a good thing.

During the health care debate, the President and his Congressional allies also promised that the new health care

law would reduce health insurance premiums for American families. I and my colleagues argued that rather than saving money, the new law would instead drive up the costs of insurance for millions of families.

Disastrous planning and implementation of the healthcare.gov website have made it difficult for Americans to learn just how much this partisan law has driven up costs. People are starting to learn how much their premiums are increasing, and the more they do the more people will not appreciate how the President's promise failed to reflect the reality of the new health care law.

The President and his allies also promised that the new law would improve the economy and protect Medicare beneficiaries. We now know that small businesses across the country are not hiring new workers because of the impact the health care law will have on their bottom lines. In addition, millions of Medicare beneficiaries face reductions in their existing benefits as a result of the $500 billion that was taken from Medicare to fund the new law.

It is not quite 2014 yet and most of the 2,700 pages of the new law haven't gone into effect. But each day it seems there is a new breaking story about what a debacle this health care law is turning out to be.

I received a letter from Jessica in Laramie who explains how this health care law is negatively affecting her. Jessica's ``catastrophic'' health care plan as a single adult, according to healthcare.gov, is $297 per month. This is with the premium support from the Federal Government. I repeat, this is with the subsidy. The University of Wyoming health insurance rate for a semester is $452. That's over the course of 4 months. The university's rate is nothing new. It has been available to students long before the Democrats forced their health care disaster through Congress. Today, Jessica's premiums would cost more than any of her medical bills to date. Jessica recently fractured her foot, a very common injury, and this cost her less than $300 in medical bills. Jessica's mother also works for the State government, and has a health care through the state. However, even though she is under the age of 26, Jessica is not allowed to join her mother's insurance plan. This is yet another example of a broken promise from the Obama administration. The President's flawed health care bill is a raw deal for our students, and for our Nation. Jessica said, ``It feels like the government is punishing everyone for the few people who have health bills worth more than a house. It isn't remotely fair.''

Karen from Cody contacted me because her construction company had to drop their Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance plan. Why is this? The President's flawed health care plan mandates health care coverage for full time employees that work more than 90 days for the company. The company was already providing health care plans for their employees, and now these folks can't keep their health care plan they liked. Their employees are mostly young Americans and are trying to make their budgets work. They couldn't afford to sign up for health care plans that would reduce their pay. As a result, all of her employees will have to seek individual policies in 2014. Karen also said there is a lack of information on insurance plans. She doesn't know what doctors and medical facilities will be included or even available in any health insurance plan next year. Karen is upset. I am upset, too.

It is time for Congress to heed the calls of the majority of Americans and repeal this partisan law, but that won't happen unless ordinary Americans continue to speak out and demand those who brought them Obamacare keep their promises--all of them.

I also want to talk about the recently announced Murray/Ryan budget legislation. I had hoped we would have an open process to finally come up with a solution to our Nation's spending problems, but that didn't happen. Instead, we have another backroom deal put together by two members that is bad for our country. It increases spending and shows that one thing some Democrats and Republicans can agree on is putting off hard decisions.

This plan spends more than current law. It charges people and States more for things and uses the money to increase spending in non-related areas. Spending cuts are scheduled for outlying years and the so-called ``savings'' are used up right away. It isn't real.

This bill has a lot of problems. It again raises rates for premiums that private companies pay the Federal Government to guarantee their pension benefits. Raising premiums for all companies participating in PBGC is effectively a tax increase. Moreover, this money isn't going to shore up PBGC. The ``savings'' that these rate increases generate will be spent on other Federal discretionary programs. And employers are still in the process of implementing a $9 billion rate increase to pay for highways per last year's transit bill. To put it simply, over 2 years the flat-rate premium will have increased 40 percent and over 3 years, the variable-rate premium will have increased over 100 percent. This is a huge tax that will cause companies to end their voluntary pension and retirement plans. These pensions are completely voluntary and if the cost to keep them goes up, companies may have to re- evaluate. Workers and their families will be forced to find other ways to save for retirement due to this increased ``tax'' on companies.

Under this budget deal, they are also again telling Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and other States that allow for the production of minerals on their lands that the Federal Government deserves more than half of the revenues. Under Federal law, States are entitled to half of the royalties collected by the Federal Government for energy production on their lands. To distribute the State share, the law intends for the Minerals Management Service to divide the amount of mineral royalties collected by two, write a check for that amount, and mail it to the States. But an even split is not enough under the new budget bill. In an attempt to satisfy an insatiable appetite for spending, the budget bill's plan is to take more money away from our States, about $40 million every year. This is money that our State governments use for roads, health care, education for our children, and more efficient and environmentally-friendly development of our energy resources. It is money that finds its way directly to the people, not down some bureaucratic black hole. A disproportionate share of this funding--about $20 million--comes from my home State of Wyoming, which supplies a disproportionate share of energy to our country. Yet the Federal Government still wants more. Unlike bureaucrats, we answer to our constituents. Mine are telling me they don't want the Federal Government to take any more of our State's money. I am sure yours will tell you the same thing, either now or later.

Worst of all, the so-called budget conference committee for all practical purposes did not exist. The agreement was the sole product of one House member and one Senate member. I sat on the conference committee and I can tell you that I learned the particulars of the deal at the same time as the public. We were not part of the process or negotiations. This is a symptom of the abandonment of the committee process. Instead of Representatives and Senators offering constructive amendments and debating spending bills in public, a couple people and their staff sit in a room and then present a take-it-or-leave-it deal right before a holiday or manufactured crisis deadline.

This is not the way to operate. We have to start legislating and stop deal-making. I had hoped we could make a small move in that direction with this conference committee because I have several ideas for how to keep us out of the situation we were just in--the government shutdown and whether and to what extent to raise the debt limit--and make reasonable, but real, progress on our deficits and debt. I have a penny plan, a proposal on biennial budgeting, some relevant amendments for spending bills, the End Government Shutdowns legislation, forced prioritization for spending cuts, and tax reform.

My penny plan cuts overall spending by 1 percent for 2 years and balances the budget so that we don't have to raise the debt ceiling. We have to stop spending more than we take in and find a way to start paying down the $17 trillion--and growing--debt. The penny plan doesn't mandate any specific cuts. Congress would have the authority to make targeted cuts and focus on the

worst first, but would be required to meet the 1 percent overall cut. Everything would be on the table. And I would argue that we should focus on identifying and eliminating all of the wasteful spending that occurs in Washington before we look to other important programs and services. Let's not make the cuts hurt. Let's be smart about the spending cuts and prioritize how we spend taxpayers' dollars.

My biennial appropriations bill would allow for each of the appropriation bills to be taken up over a 2-year period, with the more controversial bills taken up in a non-election year and the less controversial bills taken up in an election year. The defense appropriations bill would be taken up each year. This would allow us to get into the spending details more and eliminate duplication and waste.

The End Government Shutdowns Act that I've cosponsored would help us move away from the crisis governing and deal making that has become a mainstay when it comes to funding the Federal Government. It would automatically continue funding for programs, but would use the mechanism from my penny plan to reduce spending across the board by one percent.

We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. We shouldn't raise taxes in order for Washington to spend more. We cannot spend our way to prosperity. Identifying a process forward for tax reform is where part of our efforts on the budget conference should be focused. If done correctly, tax reform will help to generate additional revenue through economic growth to reduce the deficits and pay down the debt. I am ready to make that happen.

We need to prioritize spending cuts--find the spending cuts that will do the least harm and start there. It worked here in Wyoming, and it can work in Washington. Raising taxes to offset more spending is not the path forward. Reigning in out-of-control spending is.

I sit up nights worrying about our Nation's debt and how it will affect Wyoming children, my children and grandchildren. This was a chance to apply reasonable constraints to impossibly high future spending, but instead we got more spending and no plan to solve the problem.

Congress should have been working on Federal spending bills and a responsible budget for months. Instead, the Senate majority put off this work. If the Senate majority would have allowed the 12 appropriations bills to move through the committee process to floor debate in a timely manner, with input and amendments from Senators on both sides, there would have been no need for a continuing resolution and no government shutdown. Deal making instead of legislating is not an appropriate way to run the country.

And even now we are not working on issues we should be working on. Instead, the Senate majority broke the rules the change the rules, and we are here processing nominations instead of dealing with the problems of Obamacare and reining in our debt and spending problems.

One of the other things we should be working on is a Defense authorization bill, but once again the Senate has been prohibited from doing its job. The Senate majority leader blocked all but two amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act from consideration, and now we will be asked to vote on a package put together in a back room by a few Members. That is not right. If you want to know what is wrong with the Senate and why people of all political persuasions are upset with Congress, that is a big part of the answer right there.

This is a very important bill for our country and there are a lot if important issues that we need to discuss. We haven't considered issues relating to our nuclear deterrent, privacy concerns relating to the NSA, how to address sexual assault in the military, or a number of other important issues. In the past, we have spent multiple weeks on the defense bill and considered dozens of amendments. That's what we should be doing this year too. Our national security needs to be fully debated by the entire Senate.

One of those important issues that we are skipping over is our nuclear deterrent on which I offered several amendments. I have the honor of representing the city of Cheyenne, WY which is the home of F.E. Warren Air Force Base and the 90th ICBM Missile Wing. These are top notch men and women who work together to maintain the world's most powerful military force.

Unfortunately, there are those in this administration who take the contributions of our military for granted. They don't have the sense of history that is needed to appreciate why these weapons were designed and put into operation in the first place. They don't see how much they are still needed to ensure our future. They don't fully appreciate the key role they have played in the past. They seem to think that nuclear weapons are part of a bygone era--a relic of the past--that has not been needed since the Cold War ended.

The President is playing a dangerous game with our nation's national security. In June he announced that the administration is reducing U.S. strategic warheads to as few as 1,000. This is 550 below the requirements under New START. This comes at a time that both Russia and China are modernizing their nuclear arsenals at a frenetic pace. Even more troubling, however, are the reports that the administration may seek to avoid Congress and undertake further nuclear reductions outside of the formal treaty process.

The administration's views on our nuclear deterrent should come as no surprise to us or anyone who has watched the development of these ideas since they were first offered for consideration. We've seen President Obama promise to do all that he can to reduce our nuclear arsenal--step by step. First, he rammed the New START Treaty through the Senate by promising commitments that he ultimately did not keep. One of those was the promise to modernize our nuclear force, which we're still waiting on.

I have serious concerns about this policy position, because I believe maintaining a strong nuclear force, which includes ICBMs, is a critical part of protecting our country, which is why I voted against New START. ICBMs are not only cost-effective and reliable, they are a visual reminder that America stands ready to protect itself and its allies from any who would do us harm. By preserving our ICBM force, states like Wyoming play an important role in keeping America strong and free.

Important issues like these are why we need to allow Senators to do their job--offer amendments, debate them, and take votes. This is the least we can do for our national security and the men and women who lay their lives on the line every day to protect our freedoms.

We should also be addressing the fact that the coal industry is under regulatory attack in Washington. Since being sworn into office, President Obama's rule-making machine has released rule-after-rule designed to make it more expensive to use coal.

Instead of encouraging production, the administration always seems to be busy trying to do everything it can to restrict production. When their policies cause a drop in supplies and prices go up they're mystified when they see that people are growing more and more concerned about their energy bills.

Instead of running from coal, we should invest in its abundance, in its power and its potential. Instead of running from coal, America needs to run on coal. Coal supplies nearly half the Nation with low cost, reliable energy. Because we generate 87 percent of our electricity from coal, Wyoming's electricity rates are among the lowest in the Nation. The coal industry also provided--directly and indirectly--over 700,000 good paying jobs in 2010. It is no wonder it is so essential to the U.S. economy.

Fortunately, we have coal champions in the House and Senate who fully realize that we have to work together to keep our coal industry active, vital and productive for the people they employ, the families in America who rely on inexpensive energy and our Nation's economy.

I hope more of my Senate colleagues will join me in fighting back against President Obama's war on coal. Working together we can take a stand against this administration's goal of higher electricity costs.

We should be working to address improper payments and duplication. These are a huge leak in our national finances. They are avoidable wastes of

taxpayer dollars. They are obstacles to better and more efficient operations. Ending waste and duplication like this not only helps get our fiscal house back in order, but can help restore some confidence in the ability of the government to operate effectively.

The Government Accountability Office has reported that 31 areas of the Federal Government are in need of reform to eliminate duplicative and unnecessary programs. Consolidating programs and agency functions that overlap would save 95 billion; 2013 is the third year the GAO has been producing its report on duplication. Unfortunately, Congress and the administration have only address a fifth of the recommendations that have been made to fix overlap and duplication.

In fiscal year 2012, there were nearly $100 billion in improper payments. These are payments that shouldn't even be going out the door, to people who are no longer eligible for benefits or overpayments of benefits or, in the worst cases, payments to people who are deceased. To put the overpayments in perspective, the annual spending reductions required under sequestration are $85 billion. That's almost 15 billion less than the improper payments going out the door.

We should be working on the problems that have arisen as a result of Dodd-Frank. In 2010, I voted against the Dodd-Frank act because I had serious concerns about the excessive regulations it created and the unintended consequences it would have for folks who had nothing to do with the financial crisis.

The law requires a host of new regulations for banks and non-banking entities no matter what size they are. The big banks that have more funds and man power to handle the new regulations are fine; it's the small banks in our communities that don't have the resources to keep up with all the extra paperwork.

The 300 plus new regulations from the act--only about 40 percent of the total expected--are already creating regulatory uncertainty as they are written and implemented. We are now seeing some of the consequences I spoke about in 2010. The problems are numerous and I am glad that some of my colleagues are starting to listen and help look for solutions.

One of my constituents, Wesley from Jackson, WY, wrote to me with a great example of some of the unintended consequences of this law and its effect on small business. Here's what he had to say: ``I am writing to you as member of the Wyoming small business community to report on the implementation of an add-on to the Dodd-Frank act. Specifically section 1502, conflict minerals. This legislation is imposing a very severe burden especially on small businesses in the tech sector. I and others struggling to conform to the new requirements have found that they are usually impossible to meet in either the spirit or the letter of the law. I will explain. Section 1502 requires as I understand that publicly traded American companies must certify that their products do not contain conflict minerals--minerals obtained in the DRC--a noble goal indeed. The basic problem is that in practice, this certification is nearly impossible to meet. We are a small private company and are not explicitly subject to the regulation. However we have received numerous requests for these certifications from our (publicly traded) clients, which means that for them to meet the regulation, we must do so as well, and on down the line. Attempting to fulfill these requirements in order to keep our business will occupy 100s of man hours this year that we don't have. This chain of requirements goes all the way to the raw material suppliers, where the ore originates. This is perhaps hundreds of levels in the chain for us. For the vast majority of materials we would want to purchase, our suppliers (of finished parts) cannot provide the certification, which means that we cannot provide it to our clients, which means that they will not buy from us. It is not possible for any honest firm to actually meet the requirements, because it is not possible to buy certified parts in many cases. For example we purchase resistors, which are purchased from large wholesalers and may come from many different vendors. Some of these vendors are overseas, and will not provide the certification even though the products are probably conflict-free. This means that the wholesaler must either lie to certify his product to us, or provide a certification that says ``we don't know the status of our parts but are looking into it''. We must then do the same to our clients, and on up the chain. At no point in this process is it possible for an honest citizen to actually know the conflict status of their materials. We have received boilerplate ``we don't know'' certificates from nearly every vendor we have asked for certification, and this is happening all across the industry. No one can provide a real certificate: if anyone along the supply chain is foreign-owned, the chain of certification usually ends there. Nearly everything we would want to use in our products has some components that are foreign, and not certifiable. I would suggest that the burden of proof should be confined to companies that purchase the raw materials from smelters. At this level of the supply chain it would be possible to actually verify one's sources, but for thousands of small to large businesses across the nation, this is simply a severe paperwork burden which does not actually serve to meet the intended goal. Please let us get back to our work.''

First let me say I love representing folks in Wyoming. They understand the issues and offer great common sense solutions. What Wesley pointed out in his letter is what I talked about when we debated this bill--the unintended consequences associated with a massive bill like this one that the majority crams through without consideration in the committee of jurisdiction will be many and they will be complex. It is unfortunate that businesses like Wesley's are being stymied by regulations while trying to maintain honest business practices. As a former small business owner, I have been an advocate for small business and have worked to scale back the inundation of federal regulations on businesses large and small.

Dodd-Frank also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has no congressional oversight and is funded not through the congressional appropriations process but by the FED. I have serious concerns about this agency and the lack of oversight and transparency.

The Bureau, as allowed by the Dodd-Frank act, could spend up to $600 million every year, but is not subject to the congressional appropriations process, the same congressional appropriations process that approves the budgets of other agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Instead, the agency is funded through revenues from the Federal Reserve, funds that are supposed to be remitted to the Treasury for deficit reduction. The CFPBs cut is 10 percent for fiscal year 2011, 11 percent for fiscal year 2012, and will be 12 percent for fiscal year 2013 and beyond. This means 12 percent of the combined earnings of the Federal Reserve System, which was $4.98 billion in 2009. At that time, 10 percent would be just under $500 million.

We are giving all this money to an agency to look into, and track, the financial decisions of American consumers. That's right. News reports in April 2013 indicated the CFPB was collecting information on as many as 10 million Americans and compiling sophisticated, layered consumer profiles including credit card, overdraft, mortgage and student loan information on individuals. Most recently, reports indicate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking to monitor four out of every five U.S. credit card transactions this year--up to 42 billion transactions. The agency also has the goal of monitoring up to 95 percent of all mortgage transactions.

When the Dodd-Frank act was under consideration in the Senate, I filed an amendment to require the CFPB to obtain the written consent of the consumer before they could collect any financial data. My amendment was not allowed to come up for a vote. I most recently filed a similar amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, NDAA, to address this issue. Right now consumers have no say; the CFPB can and will collect their financial data with no input from consumers at all. I have long believed in the importance of financial literacy and consumer protections, but I can't condone the CFPB putting together a ``Google Earth'' of the financial transactions of American citizens.

Any conversation I have with the banking community in my home State of Wyoming invariably turns to concerns over the regulatory burden being passed down to them by the CFPB. Just last month a longtime member of the banking community in Wyoming relayed that a small community bank in Lusk, WY--population around 1,550--has discontinued residential real estate lending because they don't have the man power to comply with new regulations from the CFPB.

The bad actors this agency is supposed to weed out is hitting the folks who provide needed services in our country's smallest communities with their one-size-fits-all regulations and requirements. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Mr. President, these are not the only issues we need to address, but they are some of the most important. And the United States would be better served if we were working on these issues than voting on non- essential nominations.

Mr. President, good morning, Wyoming. In Wyoming it is midnight right now. I suspect there are people watching and probably wondering what the heck is going on. We are here at this hour dealing with a nonessential distraction, and it is being done so that it is a distraction from the mounting ObamaCare problems.

None of these nominees need to be confirmed, not even the circuit court judges, and maybe especially the circuit court judges. I was here when President Bush tried to fill those circuit court judges in the DC Circuit. And I remember Senator Reid and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee making an impassioned speech that they were not needed, that the workload was too low in the District of Columbia, that they should not be approved. Of course, since they were in the majority, they had the capability to ever keep that from happening. But when the shoe is on the other foot, they need those DC court judges, even though the caseload has not gone up.

So they broke the rules to the change the rules, and part of that was so that--we are calling it ObamaCare 2--it was so that the American people would be distracted from the problems they are having signing up for ObamaCare. Some of my constituents ask that I not call it ``ObamaCare.'' They ask that I call it ``the Obama tax'' because that is what the Supreme Court said was the legal part of it, that we can virtually tax anybody anything we want as long as we call it a tax. If we put it in the Commerce clause, oh, that will not work. But that is the ruling we got from the Supreme Court.

So right now the Democrats are trying to distract us from what is going on across this country; and, oh boy, is it going on across this country. So we should be dealing with the problems of ObamaCare. Each day the health care law is going to fail to live up to the promises made by the administration. How many people have heard the President say--and he started doing this clear back in the joint sessions of Congress so he could explain his law--he said: If you like the insurance you have, you can keep it. That has not been true almost since day one. It especially has not been true since some of the regulations have been put in place.

So we have a failed law. Let me tell you how bad it is failing. A couple weekends ago I got to Cheyenne, WY, early enough to address some school kids. I actually read a children's book to the kindergarten classes of the whole school. After I finished, a little girl came up. She could not have been any taller than that, and she said: Are we going to be able to fix this health care mess? When it has gotten down to kindergartners, you know that the adults are talking about it even more.

It is a problem. It is a problem that needs to be solved. We should not be playing ``the Grinch that stole Christmas'' and doing a whole bunch of nonessential appointments that could well wait until after Christmas or next year without hurting the courts at all. But, again, they want this outcry. They want this to detract from what is happening with ObamaCare.

Millions of people have lost their health care plans that they were told they could keep. Of course, the President has been forced now to admit that he broke his promise. But he did not remove the promise from the White House health care Web site. A week ago, it still said: If you like your plan, you can keep it, and you do not have to do a thing. I guess that might be partly true because he announced a new initiative that he said would really allow people to keep their existing health insurance plans this time. He should have added, if he wanted to be honest: for a short time. Because that is all he gave them. That is not even true because one thing he does not have the power under the Constitution to do is to rewrite or ignore the law.

We passed a law by this body and the House, and he signed it, and he continually talks about how that is settled law and you cannot change it. Then about twice a week he changes it without authority, ignoring the written laws passed by Congress.

So it would also mean that he would have to be willing to ignore a 2010 administration regulation that has prevented insurers from continuing to offer insurance for millions of individuals and small businesses. That is right. At the same time the President was promising out of one side of his mouth that people could keep their health insurance, the other side was approving rules that would make that impossible. Everyone who was in the Senate at the time knew it. It was right there in the Federal Register. It was written by the President's own administration. Congress knew and the administration knew the President was not telling the truth. But he kept making the promise anyway.

When one party has 60 votes in the Senate, the minority party has very limited things that it can do. There are a few exceptions to the majority leader's control. But essentially he decides what the Senate can debate and vote on. I have noticed if an amendment comes up that he does not like, instead of having us vote on it, he pulls the bill down.

Now, that is not the way it used to be. We used to be able to put amendments in, and even if the majority did not like the amendment, we still had to vote on it. Of course, if they did not like it, they voted it down. But that does not happen anymore. A number of bills that we have done around here have been prevented from having amendments, and sometimes this negotiation process that the leader uses takes 2 or 3 weeks. The amendments could be voted on in a week if they were just allowed to be voted on. But this process of negotiating so that he can tell the minority what amendments he is willing to address of ours-- that takes away the right for us to represent our constituents.

Problems are different in the West. Problems are different in Wyoming. Problems are different in big cities. You cannot have one size fits all that works for everything. The reason there are so many Members of the Senate and so many Members of the House is so that the unintended consequences might be found before a bill becomes law. That has not been the case around here. That definitely was not the case on ObamaCare.

So the leader has helped the majority to prevent us from being able to bring up any amendments on any number of topics, and that has led to what we are doing tonight. We are taking advantage of some of our rights as the minority to see if we are going to get a chance at all. Nobody ever expected one party to be able to dictate to the other party. Of course, the other side did have 60 votes, and when you have 60 votes you can do anything you want because there is no such thing as a filibuster if you can get all 60 votes.

Of course, you probably remember that the majority had to kind of buy some of those votes. Yes, there was the Nebraska ``Cornhusker kickback,'' and that Senator decided not to run again, and there has been the ``Louisiana Purchase,'' and that Senator is up for election. There was the Florida deal and the New York deal that dealt with Medicare Advantage. Now, none of the rest of the States got those deals, and they had to be done. Those are places where there are a lot of seniors, and it was going to take away some of their capability for health care insurance that they already had. In fact, the bill stole $716 billion from Medicare. Medicare is going broke, and it did it to make new programs. It did not do it to fix Medicare.

Tomorrow in the Finance Committee we are going to be marking up a doc fix, a thing so that doctors will be paid adequately, because there was a provision there that will continually reduce the amount they are getting. Of course, as you reduce the amount that a doctor can get, even in times of inflation, pretty quickly the doctors cannot afford to run their practice. When they cannot run their practice, they do not see Medicare patients. In fact, some practices shut down. Others sell out to the hospital. Do you think it is cheaper to get health care from a doctor or health care from a hospital? That drives up the cost again.

So one sure way to inject something not approved by the majority leader is to find an offensive regulation and petition the Senate for a debate and a simple majority vote. We have this thing called the Congressional Review Act, and that is exactly how it works. But you have to keep your eye on the Federal Register because that is where the administration reports what the effects are going to be and what the actual regulations are. Sometimes the regulations have more of an impact than the law itself, and that was the case in this instance. Again, it dealt with this: If you like your health insurance, you can keep it. But there was a regulation that came out in 2010 that took away that right.

Yes, I am the accountant. I read the bills, and now I even have to admit that I read the Federal Register. But there are a lot of dollars that are mentioned in there, and some of those are consequences of the bill. If you can catch one of those regulations within 60 days of the regulation's publication, and you can get enough people to sign the petition, you are guaranteed 8 hours of debate and an up-or-down vote. If you miss that date, it cannot be brought up again, and once it has been brought up, it cannot be brought up again. So if you lose the vote or you lose the opportunity, it cannot be brought up again. That opportunity is gone.

That is an opportunity that Democrats in the Senate squandered. Every single one voted to defeat my resolution, and many ridiculed the effort. Over the next few months their constituents are going to make them answer for this. I can tell, some of them are already antsy over it. They are already drafting bills, and, of course, when you draft a bill in the context of a crisis, there is this legislative rule that if it is worth reacting to, it is worth overreacting to.

So, once again, it is not something that will be brought through the correct process and ironed out so there are not unintended consequences. They will have to pay a price. They need to pay attention when there is a rule that is going to affect people adversely. I have heard their arguments. There were a number of issues in this regulation, and there were two that they thought were good.

There is not any reason they could not have voted for the thing, gotten rid of it, and then brought those two back. That is how it ought to work. I really think that Congress ought to have the right to review every major regulation, and if we do not have a majority vote for that regulation, it should never go into effect.

A lot of the regulations are written by the administration. But the direction for doing the regulation comes from Congress. It is to get into a level of detail that we do not handle here, but maybe we should. Maybe that ought to be our biggest job: to make sure that the regulations are what we want to have happen, and to be sure that the unintended consequences are not even in the regulation. We have kind of given that away. But now we need to be sure we take back some oversight over that; otherwise, you have an administration that is a runaway. And that is the situation we have right now.

I fought against the new health care law for the past 4 years because I knew there was no way the President could keep all of the promises he was making about how the law would affect the average American. As an accountant and a former small business owner, I understood that you cannot mandate that everyone must purchase gold plated health insurance plans without increasing costs and causing millions of people to lose their existing insurance plans.

In fact, I have talked about exchanges, and the exchange that is there is not the one that I envisioned at all. I did not expect that the Federal Government would say: There are only four kinds of plans you can buy. You pick it out from bronze to platinum, but if you do not pick out one of our four plans, you cannot have a plan.

We did prescription Part D, and at that time there were only two companies that were providing seniors with prescription drugs in Wyoming. I was a little worried about what was going to happen if we opened the market a little bit. I was hopeful it would cause more competition, and that is exactly what happened. Instead of 2 companies providing the pharmaceuticals, 48 of them were interested in doing it. That created a little confusion, but there was an exchange that you could go into, and you could list the drugs that you were taking, and when you hit the button it said: These are the companies that can provide that drug, and this is the price that you will have to pay.

Before that went into effect, it saved seniors 25 percent. That is what competition does. That is how the insurance plans should be set up. I have had a 10-step bill since before the President became a Senator that suggested how we could provide insurance for everyone.

Another thing that kind of fascinates me is the President talks about how we eliminated the caps for chronic illnesses so that nobody has to lose their insurance or lose their pay just because they have a chronic illness. Do you know what the flaw in that one is? If you are in Medicare, there are still caps. If you are a senior, there are still caps. We did not remove those. So even that is not a completely true statement.

So there is a little bit more here. If you cannot keep the health plans you like, then you are going to have a tougher time keeping the doctors and the hospitals you like. We are hearing those stories all over the Nation right now. Of course, the biggest problem--and the one that this little kindergartner was raising--was getting on the Web site to even be able to sign up for one of these policies that has more in it than what a family might want, particularly what an individual might want.

There is a lot of discussion on that. But that Web site is just the tip of the iceberg. That is what we have seen so far, the Web site failures. I think a lot of people have noticed that there are some Web site failures out there. In fact, I remember Jay Leno saying: You got to watch these health care sites because there are 700 sites already that are trying to steal your personal information, steal your identity. But he did point out that there is one way to know if you are on one of those phony sites: If you are able to sign up, you are on a phony site.

So, yes, there have been Web site failures. Here is what is coming: higher premiums, canceled coverages, you cannot keep your doctor. If you cannot see your doctor, do you have any insurance at all? I do not think so. And then there is the fraud and identity theft I mentioned and higher copays and deductibles. Pretty universal. There might be a few examples out there of where this has benefited someone, but most of the people are now paying through the nose and finding out that it is very hard for them to be able to afford the insurance they want.

So we should get ready for the next wave of disappointment and frustration from the expectations created by this President and his public relations machine as they come crashing up against the harsh reality of the real world.

ObamaCare casualties will continue to grow even if the President launches media blitz after media blitz--and those cost some money, incidentally--in an attempt to convince people that higher premiums, worse coverage, and a bigger debt for this country is a good thing.

One of the things we were able to get in the bill was a requirement that the Senate and the House come under the same rules as everyone else when it comes to exchanges. That has created quite a bit of consternation around here.

In the committee, it has improved things. I remember that about 4 months ago in the Finance Committee we were having a hearing with the people doing this Web site that has all of the failures. Both sides were asking intense questions because we wanted to be sure this would work.

One of the questions was: How is it coming?

They said: Oh, it is fine. We have already beta-tested it. It will work when it comes to October 1. Everything will work.

Well, I remember Senator Baucus saying: Can we get a list of the people who beta-tested it?

To my knowledge, he has never gotten that list because what we found out since is that it had not yet been tested at that time. So would that be considered a lie? I am not sure that all of the hearings are under oath. Maybe they ought to be.

But at any rate, it was not ready. As it turned out, there was 26 hours of beta testing. Talking to some of the other companies that would have liked to have tried to bid for a final project instead of bidding for a cost-plus job--that is what we got, a cost-plus job. Anyway, that complicates it, makes it more expensive, makes them earn more money. Talking to some of those other companies, they said that should have been beta-tested for at least 6 weeks to 6 months. Not only that, they should have had professional hackers trying to get into that system to see what is happening.

We keep having hearings on this issue. I remember at one of them Secretary Sebelius was there. We were asking about the security of the information. I am still trying to figure this out. She said the information goes in there, it pings around to the different people who need it, but none of it is stored on the system. Everybody is saying: So how do you retrieve your records? Well, I guess that is the problem so many Americans are having. They put in their information, they try to retrieve their records, and they cannot get their records. So it is a system that is fraught with a lot of problems and should never have happened. I guess that is what happens when you get in a hurry and you are not ready for it and you are more interested in public relations and media blitzes than you are in getting it right.

I know the President went coast to coast and all over the place and he sent others trying to convince people that higher premiums and worse coverage and a bigger debt for this country is a good thing.

There was another interesting thing at our hearing. They said the premiums came down. So there were some extensive questions about that because there were not very many people who were aware of any of them coming down. The explanation was that the administration's estimate was that the prices would go up by 68 percent and they only went up by 45 percent. So that was a reduction in rates. No, that was an increase in rates. You cannot fool the American people that way. A lot of this is a smoke-and-mirrors attempt. It is not working.

So what is the opposition doing? We are doing a bunch of judges who do not need to be approved. That is to take the attention off ObamaCare. Well, we are not going to let that happen. The American public deserves to know what is happening with ObamaCare. The American public is concerned about it. We have kindergartners concerned about it. We have a lot of people concerned about it.

In fact, we had a cookie party at our office today. My wife bakes a couple thousand cookies every year. It is for the people who do the real work around the Senate. It is for the janitors and the carpenters and the electricians and the plumbers and the guards and people who work in the restaurants, and they all come by. I was surprised at how many of them were concerned about what is happening with their insurance and their ability to get on it. Some of them even recognized the effort I made in 2010 to get the Congressional Review Act--the only window we had to reverse that lie that if you like your insurance, you can keep it.

So during the health care debate, the President and his congressional allies also promised that the new health care law would reduce health insurance premiums for American families. I covered that briefly. I and my colleagues argued that rather than saving money, the new law instead would drive up the cost of insurance for millions of families. There is no way in there to increase the competition. If you are going to increase the competition, you need to have a sale of insurance across State lines and you need people to be able to go through an association to get a big enough group who can effectively negotiate with an insurance company. There are a lot of ways of getting that to increase. That did not happen. There also were some co-ops that were formed. Now it looks as though the money that went to the co-ops may have been money poured down the drain because apparently they are not doing too well. So the disastrous planning and implementation of the healthcare.gov Web site made it difficult for Americans to learn just how much this partisan law has driven up costs.

We warned, when it was 60 votes that could pass the whole thing, that if the 60 votes passed the whole thing without a single Republican vote, they would be stuck with it. That is exactly where the majority is at the present time--stuck with it.

So people are learning how much their premiums are increasing. The more they do, the more people will not appreciate how the President's promise failed to reflect the reality of the new health care law. I think they really thought they might get to just kind of pick what they needed and find out what the cost was. That was my idea for how we ought to do it. I presented that at the summit with the President. He invited several of us after the bill passed. He should have done it before the bill passed, but he did it after the bill passed. A dozen of us and a dozen Democrats got invited to the Blair House to tell him what we thought should be in the bill. The strange thing about that was every time Republicans threw out an idea, he chopped it to bits. He did not comment on the Democratic ones. At the end of the day he gave a speech he had obviously written the day before because it did not deal with any of the ideas we had discussed on either side of the aisle. He obviously rejected every one of the Republican ideas.

I talked about exchanges and said: You should be able to go online, have a list of insurance possibilities. You could check whatever possibility you thought you needed. One of the things they talked about is if you are a 60-year-old lady who has had a hysterectomy, you probably do not need maternity care, so you would not check that box. But you would check the boxes that you thought applied, that you would really like to have. Then when you hit the ``enter'' key, it would bring up the list of the companies that would provide exactly what you wanted and tell you what the cost would be. You would not have to sit down with a dozen or two dozen insurance agents and hear their pitch for why they are the best. You would be able to tell what you wanted, and then you would be able to see who provided it and what it would cost. Then you would have choices. That would inspire competition, partly because each of the companies would know what the other companies were selling things for. That sometimes brings prices down as well.

So we had disastrous planning and implementation. People are starting to learn how much their premiums are increasing.

The President and his allies also promised that the new law would improve the economy and protect Medicare beneficiaries. I have often been wondering how that would work. We now know that the small businesses across the country are not hiring workers because of the impact of the health care law and the impact it will have on the bottom line.

I am traveling Wyoming, and I run into a guy who says: You know, I have this great business. It is time for me to

expand. In this town I want to go to, there is a phenomenal location. It is the perfect location and the price is right. Should I expand?

One of the questions that I ask is, How many employees do you have? If he says 45 to 50, I say: I would take another look at it because you better see the effects ObamaCare is going to have on what you are trying to do. In most of those instances, they have not increased. There are a number of problems like that.

I was in a small business committee hearing. I was kind of wondering what ``aggregation'' meant. That is a pretty big word to use. But they were able to explain aggregation. An aggregation means this rule that if you work under 30 hours, you are considered part time. So we changed it from being under 40 hours to being under 30 hours before it was part time, and that has caused a lot of people to take two jobs and not get benefits from either of the jobs. So they are getting a reduction in pay because of this law.

But here is the kicker. That doesn't help the small businessman anyway. Here is how aggregation works. You have 10 employees at 29 hours; that is 290 hours. You divide by 30, and then you find out that you still have 9 2/3 employees. So by making this drastic cut, you were only able to reduce your numbers by one-third of an employee. Again, that is kind of a fraudulent situation to rope people into doing the ObamaCare thing.

Another way that aggregation works, according to this hearing I went to, is that if you own a piece of one business and you own a piece of another business but you do not own a majority of either of the businesses, the two have to be combined to figure out whether you have employees who come under ObamaCare. That is wrong. That is fraud.

These things ought to be very clear. I think that if we were able to get a vote on raising that part-time work back up to 40 hours, we would see a huge number of people who would vote for it or a huge number of people who would not be around here much longer. Of course, the Small Business Administration says that a small business is not 50 employees, a small business is 500 employees.

So just by changing those two things in ObamaCare, we could probably have more jobs in the economy than the stimulus package ever provided. There are other changes we could make in ObamaCare that would have a bigger effect than the stimulus package. Oh, yes, that is right, that is not a very high mountain to climb, is it?

Another thing we ought to do is eliminate some of the regulations that have been put out there. I know of six regulations that if we got rid of them, it would not affect our way of life, but it would increase jobs and the economy more than the stimulus. We could have an increase in the economy around here, but we cannot do it if we keep loading up the businesses with more regulations. You know we had a government shutdown not too long ago.

I got an interesting letter from a trucker from Pinedale, WY. He said he was getting a little tired of all of the people who were riding in the wagon and how many fewer people were pulling the wagon. What he is referring to with that is that every time we expand the government, every time we do one of those new programs and put a whole bunch of new people on the payroll--heck, we got a whole bunch more just in IRS people who are supposed to be checking on ObamaCare. If you put them in the wagon and the private sector has to pull it, there will come a point where they cannot pull it anymore.

What he was suggesting was that if we wanted to really find out about America, that the private sector ought to have a shutdown. It would not take 16 days for us to realize the effect of the private market. That is something we have to watch out for because that is where the taxes come from.

Oh, yes, all of us in government pay taxes. None of us pay as much in taxes as we receive in wages. We are riding in the wagon, and it is getting tougher and tougher to pull.

ObamaCare is something that really loaded the wagon with the regulations they have to pull around. It is a tremendous burden. A small businessman can't read the thousands of pages of regulations. Do you know what. They have to.

I was able to get a review committee, and it was over $1 million in costs in new regulations. That is a very severe committee. They do a very good job. I am pleased with the people who run it. Unfortunately, again we are missing an enforcement piece, so that again the regulation disappears for small businessmen. It is going to be very detrimental.

We try to do these one-size-fits-all things around here, which is what ObamaCare is. Well, it is four-sizes-fit-all. One-size-fits-all or four-sizes-fit-all won't take care of America. This is probably the most diverse country in the whole world and the most successful country in the whole world because it is so diverse. We have so many different kinds of people doing so many different things.

It has also been one of the most innovative countries in the world, and that is where we want be. We want to be inventing things for the world and having the other countries pick them up when they get a little older and steal them at that point. That is the way it has always worked. But we are taking away the incentives for these people to use their minds to create new things that will sell all over the world the way we are used to it. That is what has brought prosperity to the United States--inventiveness. We invented a new government, and it has worked very well up to now. We have invented all kinds of things from which the world has benefited. We need to make sure that what we do encourages that instead of discourages it.

This thing that the government knows best--I don't run into many people who think that is right. Most of them think the government doesn't have enough experience in business.

I go back to Wyoming almost every weekend, and I travel to a different part of the State. Over the weekend I try to get into a business or two. I try to find out what they do, how they do it, and, most importantly, how the Federal Government might interfere or help them. It is very valuable. I have found that if a person hasn't been in business, every business looks simple.

We should look at how people look at our jobs. It looks very simple. They don't expect that anybody is going to be speaking at 2:30 in the morning. They think all we do is vote, which is not true. We have to draft bills. But it is more difficult in the private sector than it is in government because people's wages, people's food, and people's housing rely on that business paying them.

Among the small business committee--and I keep explaining that one really hasn't been in business unless they wake straight up in the middle of the night in a sweat, saying: Tomorrow is payday. How do I meet the payroll? That is being in business, and it happens to every small businessman out there once in a while. For some of them, it is the end of that small business.

We have to watch out for those small businesses because those are the ones that grow into big businesses. Those are the ones that become a part of the world market. There is more opportunity for that now more than there ever was, but there won't be if we keep stifling them, if we keep piling regulations on so they spend all of their time reading the regulations that we did. Thousands of pages of regulations are turned out all the time. I read the Federal Register, and it is getting heavier to carry all the time.

We know that small businesses across the country are not hiring new workers because of the impact of the health care law and what it will have on their bottom lines. If they are not profitable, they will be out of business. They are not like the government. They can't spend more money than they have. They don't understand why we don't understand. Why do we keep spending more money than we have coming in and doing it continually? I guess it is because we can sell bonds and we don't think there is going to be any consequence to it. If interest rates go up, we are not going to be able to do even national defense. So we need to be more careful about what we are doing and do things more timely.

Millions of Medicare beneficiaries are going to face reductions in their existing benefits as a result of the billions that were taken from Medicare. That was to fund the new law; it wasn't to

provide more benefits for seniors. Most of the seniors have figured that out. I already mentioned that they have caps on their benefits even though the President promised there wouldn't be caps on benefits. There aren't caps on benefits if someone is out there working in the private sector, which, incidentally, makes it very hard to figure out the actuarial cost of a plan.

It is not quite 2014 yet, and most of the thousands of pages of the new law haven't even gone into effect. But each day it seems there is a new breaking story about what a debacle this health care law is turning out to be.

I received a letter from Jessica in Laramie, who explained how this health care law is negatively affecting her. Jessica's catastrophic health care plan, as a single adult, according to healthcare.gov, is $297 per month. This is with the premium support from the Federal Government. I repeat, this is with the subsidy.

The University of Wyoming health insurance rate for a semester is $452. This is over the course of 4 months. The university's rate is nothing new; it was available for students long before the Democrats forced their health care disaster through Congress.

Today, Jessica's premiums would cost more than any of her medical bills to date. Jessica recently fractured her foot--a very common injury--and that cost her less than $300 in some medical bills. When they start looking at the Web site, they are going to find out that the deductibles have gone up dramatically.

One of the things that has been constrained and in some cases eliminated is health savings accounts. That is the right thing for young people to have. Of course, that doesn't pay for the older, sicker people, so we had to force them out of that system and get them into the regular system with everybody else and compress the prices so that the younger people are paying for the older people. I don't think they are going to stand for that for very long. I think they are going to be upset about it. I think they are already upset about it. Health savings accounts provided them a way to have catastrophic insurance and the right to put money, tax free, into an account that could grow over time and provide for the deductible they have. That is very essential. If they keep putting money in the account tax free and it keeps growing, it might take care of their health care for the rest of their lives. I think it is a solution for everybody. Again, it is one of those where one size doesn't fit all, but it fits a lot of people, and they ought to have that option, but they don't.

Of course, the bill doesn't really allow us to do the flex spending accounts either. That is one where some people have the right, through their company's health insurance plan, to set aside some additional money to take care of health care during the year--again, tax free. Of course, since it is tax free and we want to raise taxes, we are going to eliminate that. Well, I don't want to. I think that was essential and we ought to have it. But the other side of the aisle decided it was terrible and we ought to eliminate it or reduce it and put extra requirements on it so there was less that you could get with it even though those are individual choices on health care expenditures that a person has to make with their own money.

That is one of the keys to bringing down health care expenditures-- have people make their own choices with their own money. If people are making the choices with their company's money or the Federal Government's money, it doesn't make nearly as much difference. If they are not participating in a plan at all and they can get whatever they need and they can go to a very expensive place instead of a less expensive place, that is going to break the system, and that is some of where we are.

I mentioned Jessica's plan and how it is going to go up considerably higher than what her costs are for normal medical. Well, Jessica's mother also works for the State government and she has health care through the State. However, even though she is under the age of 26, Jessica is not allowed to join her mother's insurance plan. That is yet another example of a broken promise from the Obama administration. The President's flawed health care bill is a raw deal for our students and for our Nation.

Jessica said: It feels like the government is punishing everyone for the few people who have health care bills worth more than a house. It isn't remotely fair.

Students are paying the price, and they are realizing it. They know what a bad deal has been foisted on them.

Karen from Cody contacted me because her construction company had to drop their Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance plan. Why? The President's flawed health care plan mandates health care coverage for full-time employees who work more than 90 days for the company. The company was already providing health care plans for their employees, and now these folks can't keep the health care plan they like. Their employees are mostly young Americans, and they are trying to make their budgets work. They couldn't afford to sign up for health care plans that would reduce their pay. As a result, all of her employees will have to seek individual policies in 2014. Karen also said there is a lack of information on insurance plans. She doesn't know what doctors and what medical facilities will be included or even available in any health insurance plan next year. Karen is upset. I am upset too.

I have said for 5 or 6 years that if a person can't see a doctor, they don't have any kind of insurance. And that is what we are running into. Doctors are changing the way they operate, and they are saying: If you are on Medicare, I don't think I will be able to take you. We have problems with doctors who deliver babies because of the long tail on their potential liability, which goes until the child is of age. That creates a lot of other costs, but that is a different story.

It is time for Congress to heed the calls of the majority of Americans and repeal this partisan law. That isn't going to happen unless ordinary Americans continue to speak out and demand those who brought them ObamaCare keep their promises, every one of them.

I can go on about health care much more, and I may come back to it, but I am going to talk about the budget deal because I am a little upset about that.

One of the problems we have is that we are now in a mode of making deals instead of legislating. This body isn't designed to make deals, to send half a dozen people to solve a problem or, in this case of the budget deal, 2 people--one from the House and one from the Senate. Everybody else feels as if they ought to have some input. No--everybody feels their constituents should have some input, and that is what we are missing.

We send 2 people, 6 people, or 10 people to come up with a deal, we set a date so the media can crescendo up to that point, and then they bring us what the budget deal will be and we vote yes or no. We don't get to do any amendments. That is not how we are designed, and that won't work either.

I would like to talk about the recently announced Murray-Ryan budget deal. I hoped we would have an open process to finally come up with a solution to our Nation's spending problems, but that didn't happen. Instead, we have another backroom deal put together by two Members. That is bad for our country. It is tough on those individuals. They worked hard and came up with something, but they didn't have all of the input from everybody. That makes it difficult too. It is usually done through amendments--amendments that are debated and voted up-or-down. But that doesn't happen anymore.

This budget deal increases spending and shows that one thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on is putting off the tough decisions. We can't keep on doing that. I just showed how we are piling it onto the young with ObamaCare. Now we are piling it onto them with the budget deal. Every man, woman, and child out there--a child who was just born today already owes $50,000 in national debt. How would you like to carry that burden around and then be looking at student loans?

Incidentally, student loans were a part of paying for ObamaCare. People probably heard the controversy where the rates were to go to 6.88 percent. At that time the Federal Government was paying .86 percent for interest, so that other 6 percent was to go to help fund ObamaCare. But the students found that out and said: That is not fair. The President said: Yes, it is not fair. We

are going to change that. We are going to knock it down to 3.44 percent. Well, that is still 3 percent the students are paying on ObamaCare. But the real kicker is that it was just extended for 1 year and it was only extended for 40 percent of the students attending college. That is wrong. When it came up the next time, several of us got together and did a little bill. That bill makes its more fair for 100 percent of the kids going to college. We set it as a slight fee above whatever the Federal Government is borrowing the money at. What that fee is when you enter into that loan will be the price of that loan for the life of the loan, and it will apply for 100 percent of the individuals. So we found a way, and it actually passed. I think everybody was relieved, although we have this habit around here of wanting to hold people hostage 6 months at a time. That is what we have been doing on the doc fix for quite a while.

But to get back to the budget deal, the plan does spend more than the current law. It charges people in States for more things and uses the money to increase the spending in nonrelated areas. Spending cuts are scheduled for outlying years. We say: Oh, yes, we are going to cut that stuff, but we are going to do it on the end of 10 years, but the so- called savings from that are used up right now.

Is there anybody in America who can go ahead and spend their future earnings now and not have to do it on the other end, when it actually comes due? That is what we have been doing for far too long. Those spending cuts are scheduled for outlying years and are called savings but are used up right away, and that just isn't real. Let's call it what it is. It is not real, and it is wrong.

This bill has a lot of problems. It again raises rates for premiums that private companies pay the Federal Government to guarantee their pension benefits. I worked on a bill--the Pension Protection Act-- several years ago, and the goal of that bill was to make sure companies that promised people pensions would result in people getting pensions. We wanted to do it without putting the companies out of business because then it falls on the Federal Government with this Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

Two years ago, we raised the rates, and the PBGC could use the money, but that isn't where the money went. We put it into highways for 2 years. Ten years' worth of money, 2 years' worth of highways. Now we are raising that pension guaranty again by $200 per person. How many companies do you think are going to keep their pension plans?

People might not be aware that pensions are voluntary in this country. They are not mandated. They are voluntary. Fortunately, there are a lot of companies that realize the value of maintaining their employees and so they have pension plans and they worry about those pension plans. They want to make sure they are going to be solvent so they can provide what they need to. They are liable for it. So it is wrong for us to increase a tax to say we are going to help make sure those are more secure and then the money never goes into the fund that insures it. Let's see. Should that come under the category of fraud?

So those savings from these rate increases will be spent on Federal discretionary programs, and employers are still in the process of implementing a $9 billion rate increase to pay for the highways in last year's transit bill. So to put it simply, over 2 years the flat rate premium will have increased 40 percent, and over 3 years the variable rate premium will have increased over 100 percent.

If you are in business and you are looking at a 100-percent increase in your pension costs, you have to take a look at it and say there has to be a different way we can go, and that is going to mean a lot of people are not going to have pensions. They will have the pensions they have been promised to that date but not the pensions they were looking forward to at the time they retire. That is a huge tax and it will cause companies to end their voluntary pension and their retirement plans.

These pensions are completely voluntary, and if the cost to keep them goes up, companies may have to reevaluate. Workers and their families will be forced to find other ways to save for retirement due to this increased tax on companies.

There isn't anything else you can call it. I notice they are trying to call it a fee. The definition of a fee is if you don't participate, then you don't have to pay it. But that isn't what we are trying to do. We are trying to have companies provide pensions. We are not trying to have them realize they can't afford the pensions they are giving out because of increased charges by the Federal Government. So that is wrong.

Under this budget deal, they are again telling Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and other States that allow for the production of minerals on their land that the Federal Government deserves more than half the revenue. Under Federal law, States are entitled to half the royalties collected by the Federal Government for energy production on their lands. To distribute the State's share, the law intends for the Minerals Management Service to divide the amount of mineral royalties collected by the two and to write a check for that amount and mail it to the States. But an even split isn't enough under this new budget. In an attempt to satisfy an insatiable appetite for spending, the budget bill plans to take more money away from our States--about $40 million each year.

We had an interesting situation this last year when they did the sequester. The Federal Government said: OK. Our half of the money when it comes in is revenue. Your half of the money when it goes out is an expenditure. Therefore, we need to take the 5.3 percent out of that. When we heard that, we started passing a bill around and getting a lot of traction on it from both red and blue States saying: That is wrong. You can't take our money away. If you are going to take something out for sequester, it at least ought to come out of both halves, but it definitely doesn't deserve to come out of what is by law money that belongs to the State.

We raised enough furor, and it looked like that bill could pass--and I am sorry we didn't go ahead and pass it. The Federal Government decided they were wrong, so they have agreed they are going to pay back that 5.3 percent they stole from the States. But this budget puts about another $40 million each year in there that the Federal Government is going to keep out of the State's half. That is money the States use for roads, for health care--yes, health care--education for children and more efficient environmentally friendly development of our energy resources.

It is money that finds its way directly to the people, not down some bureaucratic black hole. A disproportionate share of this funding-- about $20 million--comes from my home State of Wyoming, which supplies a disproportionate share of energy to this country. Yet the Federal Government still wants more. Unlike bureaucrats, we have to answer to our constituents. Mine are telling me they do not want the Federal Government to take any more of our State's money. I am sure my colleagues will hear the same thing. Whenever you have some money, they are saying: OK. The States are rich now, compared to the Federal Government, and that is true for almost every State. So they are planning on how they can steal money from the States and give to it the Federal Government.

Worst of all, the so-called budget conference committee, for all practical purposes, did not exist. The agreement was the sole product of one House Member and one Senate Member. I sat on the conference committee, but I can tell you that I am hearing the particulars of the deal at the same time as the public. They weren't part of the process or the negotiations and neither were we. We did have a meeting to begin with, and everybody got to give statements for how they thought this deal ought to go, but there were no further meetings of the conference.

Any conference I have ever been on, once there was a deal made, you met again and you got an explanation of the deal and then all the sides voted. If it didn't receive a positive vote in the Senate and in the House, it wasn't passed on as a conference that was finished yet. You went back to the drawing board again.

I guess we are in a crisis here and decided we had to do something in a

hurry, but that is the worst of all worlds when you do that. We were not a part of the process or the negotiations, and it is not the way this body was designed. Conference committees have a definite purpose.

Actually, the task should not have even been assigned to the Budget Committee. The task should have been assigned to the spending committees. We were at the point where in the calendar business there are already bills that the appropriators--the spending people--have put together for all 12 items. Those could have been brought up one at a time, probably would take 1 week for each of them, if amendments were allowed, and we would have wound up with a pretty good budget, in pretty good standing.

Of course, I am kind of fascinated. We are about to January, and in January I will have dozens of people visiting me. It is a long trip from Wyoming to come out here and they will come out here on individual programs of the Federal Government and they will say: Please, this is how important this particular program is. Please make sure we get funding for it.

One of them is Head Start. They actually think we get to look at the Head Start budget and make additions or subtractions from it. We don't even get to look at Health and Human Services or transportation or any of those. They all get lumped together sometime in the year. There is no oversight. There are no decisions by the main body on how to spend $1 trillion a year. That is the wrong way to do it.

So this is a symptom of the abandonment of the committee process. Instead of Representatives and Senators offering constructive amendments and debating spending bills in public, a couple of people and their staffs sit in a room and then present a take it or leave it right before a holiday or a manufactured crisis deadline.

We are going to have that yet on the Omnibus spending bill. Right now we are just doing a continuing resolution and allowing those agencies to spend one-twelfth of what they spent the year before, essentially. So they do not know what they get to do for the rest of the year. When the sequester hit, it was supposed to be 2.3 percent, so they had to take those cuts out of the last 4 months. The result was they had to take 5.3 percent out.

I mentioned Head Start. They came to me and they said: We can't afford to have a 7\1/2\-percent cut every year. I said: Where did the 7\1/2\-percent come from? They said: That is what we are being cut.

It looks to me like what happened is the bureaucracy in Washington took their 5.3-percent cut but stole 2.3 percent from the local folks in order to pay for the Washington bureaucracy. So it was the kids who suffered. The kids didn't get the money. More kids had to be taken off the roll instead of more kids put on the roll. If it is going to hurt, it ought to hurt in Washington. It shouldn't hurt out there where the kids are.

I have some solutions for it. One of them is the no government shutdowns. The way that would work is if those spending committees don't have their work done by the time they are supposed to, which would be October 1, each spending committee would have to take 1 percent off of what they are allowed to spend each quarter until they actually get their work done. I think that would be a little incentive for them to get their work done.

I also have a penny plan. A penny plan would cut one cent off of every dollar the Federal Government spends. That in conjunction with the sequester would balance our budget in just 2 years--just 2 years. That would be 3.2 percent for 2 years. I think the people would say: You know, that wasn't too bad--provided we didn't make it hurt.

That is one of the terrible things about government. They always like to pick the things people will notice, instead of eliminating things such as duplication. There is plenty of duplication out there. There is $900 billion a year in the Federal Government in duplication. We ought to be able to eliminate half of duplication, shouldn't we? That would be a better deal than the sequester. But we don't do that. We make it hurt. We want people to notice their item is being cut and then they complain and then we restore it and that is how you get to $17 trillion worth of debt.

But with the penny plan everything would be on the table. It would have flexibility so it didn't have to hurt. We could get rid of that duplication.

Then, of course, I am also proposing a biennial budget. The way that would work is we would appropriate for every agency for a 2-year period so they know what they are doing for 2 years. They could actually do some planning. We shouldn't wait until we are 8 months through the year before we tell them how to spend their money for the last 4 months.

I have a little twist in my biennial budgeting. I would split the 12 spending bills into 2 categories. Right after an election, that year we would do the six bills that are tough, and then the next year we would do the six bills that are easy. Then we would actually be able to look at those individual items, and then a lot of these things that come up on the floor as extraneous amendments to other bills wouldn't need to be done because they would be done with the spending part they are supposed to do.

So those are a few plans right there. We do have a spending problem. We don't have a revenue problem. We shouldn't raise taxes in order for Washington to spend more. We can't spend our way to prosperity. That is more people getting in the wagon and less people pulling the wagon.

Identifying a process forward for tax reform is where part of the effort for the budget conference should be focused. If done correctly, tax reform will help to generate additional revenue through economic growth. Let me repeat that--not through new taxes but through economic growth to reduce the deficit and pay down the debt, and I am ready to make that happen.

We need to prioritize spending. Find the spending cuts that do the least harm and start there. It has worked in Wyoming. Our Governor knew he might be having an 8-percent cut in the revenues the State was going to get. So what did he do? He got ahold of all the agencies and said: I want to know what you would cut if you had to cut 2 percent; what you would cut if you had to cut 4 percent; what you would cut if you had to cut 6 percent; and what you would cut if you had to cut 8 percent.

Why did he do that? That gives him four lists to look at and he can see what that agency thinks is the most important to cut. What would be the least hurt to cut. That is exactly what they did. They wound up having to do a 6-percent cut and there wasn't a whimper. We could do that too.

I sit up nights worrying about our Nation's debt and how it will affect Wyoming children, my children, grandchildren. There is a chance to apply reasonable constraints to impossibly high future spending, but instead we get more spending and no plan to solve the problem.

America wants a plan. There is nothing as universal as that. They tell me every time in Wyoming: We have got to quit spending more than we take in. I agree. Congress should have been working on Federal spending bills and a responsible budget for months, and the Senate majority put that work off.

I could go into some things on the Defense bill. I have a lot of things here, and over the next few days I will be talking about these. But what we are going through right now is, instead of these things that are really important to the American people and will really make a difference in their lives, we are working on judges which doesn't make any difference. There are plenty of judges out there already. But that is to detract us from these problems of ObamaCare and a budget. We have got to solve the real problems and quit worrying about whether the judges can be stacked in the District of Columbia so that the President can have his way. That is wrong.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, many people supported President Obama's health care law based on his promises. Those words don't mean much now for millions of people receiving cancellation notices from insurers for their current plans, paying prices higher than promised and losing work hours, wages, and in some cases jobs.

In Wyoming alone, there are over 2,600 people who are losing health care coverage they like. I have received numerous letters from my constituents illustrating the scope of this problem. Greta from Laramie is one of them. Greta is in graduate school and paying for tuition out- of-pocket. She had the university's student BlueCross BlueShield insurance plan. In September, her husband and two daughters received notice that their family insurance policy was gone. They were happy with their coverage. Greta said their plan had very good coverage of maternity and well-child visits, low deductibles, and an affordable monthly premium. Her family can't afford a new health insurance plan which, according to her, ``costs more and gives me less.'' That is what we are facing as a Nation: Health care plans we can no longer keep and broken promises from the White House.

The President misinformed the American people when he said, ``If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.'' Just last week, he said the Democrats didn't do a good enough job crafting the law. To me, that sounds like a law that should have never been passed. We must continue to push for repeal of this law of broken promises and work on alternative solutions that really do what the people were promised.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today with great pride to speak about another Wyoming success story. I am very pleased to have this opportunity to extend our congratulations to the Buckskin Mine, which is located in my home State of Wyoming, for the outstanding record of safety they were able to compile in 2012. The mine's focus on safety and the great results they were able to achieve speak volumes about the mine and the care and attention they give to safety and to keeping their employees safe at work.

I have often heard it said that successful safety and health programs don't just ``happen.'' They take a great deal of time and effort and they result from a teamwork approach that involves everyone from the owner of the mine to the dedicated and hard-working team that works in the mine every day. That means this safety award was earned by everyone at the mine.

It is no secret. Working in a mine is a difficult and dangerous job, and it requires every worker to look out for their own safety as well as their fellow workers' safety. That kind of diligence, exercised every day, is what helps to ensure that all our workers will make a safe return home at the end of the day to be with their families.

Simply put, that is why the Buckskin Mine is receiving this recognition. Their staff goes the extra mile every day to make sure their mine is as safe as it can possibly be. The culture of workplace safety that is then created helps to keep each of their workers focused on safety throughout the day. The result is this special award.

I have always believed that the best way to lead is by example, and by earning this important recognition they have established a record of safety that other mines will want to emulate. In the end, that is something that will continue to benefit Wyoming and the mining industry all across the Nation.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, on which I serve, has focused our attention on this key issue for many years. As a committee, we are well aware of what an impressive record this is, and we hope their record of success will become the norm across the United States. Safe work habits create safe workplaces and low accident rates for all employees which makes our business community, especially our mining

industry, more productive. Good safety records also help to make our businesses more prosperous which is another benefit that comes from putting workplace safety first.

That is why it gives me a great deal of pride to extend these best wishes and words of congratulations to every employee of the Buckskin Mine, its management, and all those who have worked so hard to keep the mine safe. It took a team with a vision to create and put a safety program into effect, and the Buckskin mine team can be very proud of their efforts and the great result they were able to achieve. They have made a difference that will have an impact from their own backyard to every corner of our country that relies on mines and mining.

Now their challenge is to keep up the good work and to keep their excellent safety record going strong. With the hard-working group that makes the Buckskin Mine such a safe workplace, I have every confidence they will continue to serve as an example of what is possible when workers and management work together to keep our workplaces safe.

Madam President, I appreciate all of the speeches being given, and all of them have a seed of possibility. But evidently we are not going to water them or try to grow them. We are just going to talk about possibilities.

There is enough blame to go around. It isn't just on one side. But I would like to remind people of why we are here, hoping that we won't be here again. The reason we are here is we didn't do the appropriations bills the way we are supposed to.

I know we had a budget process, and the budget process got bogged down between the House and the Senate. But obviously we have gotten past that problem, because I noticed on the calendar we have a whole bunch of appropriations bills--I think, actually, all 12 of them that we are supposed to pass--and the first one went on the calendar on June 27. Obviously they didn't feel constrained by not having a budget that was agreed to by the House and the Senate. They set some parameters and came up with bills. So we are past that budget argument that there was no conference committee. I thought there should be a conference committee, but there wasn't a conference committee.

While we are talking about conference committees, I have to mention the last offer from the House we voted

on in regard to this shutdown was a request by the House to have a conference committee--a conference committee made up of the Senate and House--to work out these problems before the shutdown went on this long. The Democrats voted against that unanimously. It seems to me if they want a conference committee on a budget that was supposed to be done by April 15, but that we have bypassed and done the appropriations for already, that is kind of a weak argument for saying now that there shouldn't be a conference regarding all of these issues that are coming up right now.

I don't know how you get this resolved without getting the two sides talking. Neither side can solve the problem in the Senate without some help from the other side. It will take 60 votes, and that means neither side has the clear majority that is necessary to pass it.

The cloture vote we voted on yesterday was to fix the credit cards of the Federal Government indefinitely, with no limits for another year, through 2014. That amounts to $1.1 trillion of estimated additional debt for the country, for our kids and our grandkids. I used to talk a lot about our grandkids, then I moved it up to our kids, and now I am talking about us. We are finally the ones at risk. That should certainly make all of the seniors interested.

We went to the White House the other day, and the President did a marvelous job of going through a speech and then taking questions and giving answers. But I was very disappointed at the end because the end speech was give me what I want for the shutdown and government; give me what I want for the debt limit increase, and then we can talk. The reason we are talking is because we have a government shutdown and we have this looming debt ceiling problem. There ought to be other ways we can talk, but we don't. So like I said, there is plenty of blame to go around.

This comment about we shouldn't do it piecemeal, that is a reference to the different measures the House has sent over in regard to problems the Senate said we were having--problems that people immediately recognized. Yet none of those have been voted on. None of them have been voted on. Maybe they weren't that much of a crisis. I think we all agreed they were that much of a crisis, but the answer is: Let's not do it piecemeal.

Do you know why the appropriations process has 12 separate budgets, 12 separate spending bills? It is so we do it piecemeal, so we can look at them with some depth and maybe get some clarity out of the spending we are doing. When we wind up doing an omnibus bill--and that is where we are headed, where everything will be grouped into one, and it will be passed for the rest of the year--we won't get to look at any of the details. We won't get to offer any amendments to it, and we won't get to say what is effective and what isn't. We will just keep doing what we have been doing, which is running up the national debt. But we can't afford to keep doing that.

I talked about the national parks being a problem. I specifically talked about the national parks that are revenue producers and how we shouldn't shut down the businesses that produce the revenue. Well, I think in response to that, the States were allowed to take over national parks, but at their own expense and not from the revenue that would be generated by the park. That creates some complications for Yellowstone park, because Yellowstone park is shared by three States. They did that specifically so Wyoming couldn't claim that Yellowstone was Wyoming's national park. So a little goes into Montana, and a little goes into Idaho. So that would require a joint agreement by the three States on exactly how that would work, and I am hoping those three States are working out a plan for that if this ever happens again.

That is one of the things government ought to do, to look at what the future possibilities are and say: No, we are never going to have a shutdown or we are never going to have a debt ceiling crisis. We create these crises. We create them by putting definite deadlines on things and then everything crescendos up to that point. The people who are then picked for the task force to deal with that crisis have a huge media listening group, which is a disincentive, actually, to get it solved before the deadline.

A few other problems that were mentioned that need to be solved: The National Institutes of Health, armed forces who are on Active-Duty training, veterans benefits--particularly veterans benefits for the year--compensation for furloughed Federal employees, special nutrition programs, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, continuing appropriations for Head Start, and salaries and related expenses for certain Federal employees.

Traditionally, when we have had a situation like this, when the employees do come back to work, they get compensated for the time they weren't there. Do you know what the people in my State think of that? Why are we paying people for not working?

So if the principle behind that is to go ahead and approve their salaries and expenses and get them back to work, that would take care of most of the problems. But then the people wouldn't be feeling the hurt out there, and if they don't feel the hurt, they don't know whom to blame, and if they can blame one side or the other, that makes a difference in elections.

That is not what this body is about. We should be about getting things done in the regular order, following the right spending process--which we don't do--and avoiding situations where we make it hurt.

We have a sequester in effect. It is the first time the Federal appropriations and the Federal spending have been cut probably since the Korean war. It was a true cut, but it was a 2.3-percent cut. You won't find anybody agreeing it is really 2.3 percent even though that is what the law says, and that is because we didn't do our spending process in the proper order. So we got through 8 months before the sequester went into effect, and when it goes into effect with only 4 months left, the 2.3 percent of the whole year's spending has to be taken out of the 4 months' worth of budget. That made it 5.3 percent.

I was visited by the Head Start folks of my State, and they showed me what was going to happen if the sequester stayed in place. It was kind of fascinating because they were cut 7.5 percent and are projected to be cut 7.5 percent each year after this. If we did the appropriations, the spending process, at the beginning of the year, it would be 2.3 percent, and we should anticipate that it is going to be done that way for the future, so they should have been told to watch for 2.3 percent cuts--5.3 for last year, for the 4 months they knew about it--although we knew about it for a whole year in advance, just didn't imagine it would ever happen.

So why 7.5 percent? Well, I have to believe, from other spending information I have seen by the people from Wyoming coming to Washington and telling me their dilemma, I think the Washington bureaucracy is holding on to an overproportion of the money to keep their jobs in place instead of out there where the kids are, and 7.5 percent when it should be 5.3 percent tells me that they kept 2.2 percent for running Washington. I don't think they think that is a very important part of the spending process.

The papers have been covering a number of things that people have been having trouble with. One of them is a fellow who went into the rum-making business. You can do that legally, and there are certain requirements you have to meet. Now he can't sell the rum. I thought, well, sure, his formula hasn't been approved or there hasn't been an inspection of the premises or something disastrous like that. No. He can't do it because the FDA hasn't approved the labels. I didn't even know we had a law that said Washington had to approve labels on liquors. I know we used to have one for labels that had to go on cigarettes, but even that didn't require Senate and House or administrative or FDA approval; it just required it. But evidently, if you are making rum, you have to have somebody approve your labels. I didn't run into that before, and I questioned it.

But we don't have to be in this position. We could have the government running, people could be paid, but we need to do it through the regular process. We need to do 12 spending bills and do them over a period of at least a week each and have amendments to them. There isn't an appropriator who

is the ultimate answer for any spending bill. There isn't even a committee that is the ultimate answer for each spending bill. The reason we have 100 people here and 435 people over there is so that we have 535 opinions on what could be unintended consequences or what is or what isn't important, and if they are denied the right to amendments, they are being denied the right to a voice for their constituents. It is not for us; it is for our constituents. That is why amendments are important.

We have had important bills come up here, and we worked on them for maybe 3 weeks with no votes on amendments while they tried to negotiate for a limited number of amendments.

Madam President, I yield the floor.