Floor Statements

Mr. President, if businesses ran their operations the same way the government is running this shutdown, they would be bankrupt. Oh, that is right. That is kind of where we are, isn't it.

Our national parks, particularly the ones that are revenue producers, are shut down. Yellowstone Park is a revenue producer. You pay to go into the park. You pay to travel through the park. The roads connect Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. It is a thoroughfare. You have to pay to be able to do that. But right now you cannot do that, which means you probably have to travel an extra 300 miles to get to your destination.

The park does not get the revenue, and not only that, there are people in the park who are visiting there and they have been made to leave. They were made to leave in a very ungracious way. One of the tours was from Japan, Australia, Canada, and some people from the United States. They had reservations at Old Faithful. That is one of the historic places in the park, one place that everybody goes because they like to see the geyser go off. It is probably the most famous geyser in the world.

But they were told they had to leave. They had 2 days of reservations. They said: OK. You can stay for the 2 days. But an armed guard was outside of their room and they could not leave their room to go watch the geyser go off, which they do not have any control over, nor can they harm. It has been written up as Gestapo tactics that met senior citizens in Yellowstone Park.

So we are giving up the revenue and we are creating a bad impression. We should not be doing that. We ought to be taking revenue. The revenue is a little more difficult than that because we have concessionaires in the park, people who run the hotels and the stores and the filling stations and the other services in there. They pay a fee for doing that and a percentage of what they take in. So we are not getting that percentage now either.

They are losing about $4.9 million a week by not being able to be open. There are a lot of other things I could say about the way the parks are being treated here and around the country, but the ones that are revenue-producing are particularly egregious.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 203, H.J. Res. 70, making continuing appropriations for National Park Service operations; I ask further that the measure be read three times and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid on the table.

Reserving the right to object, the reason we are in this mess right now is because we didn't do the budgets piecemeal. We are supposed to do them piecemeal. We are supposed to do 12 separate spending bills. We are supposed to do them one at a time. We are supposed to have the right to amend them. This way we can get into the details of what we are spending, instead of an Omnibus bill, which is what is being suggested by this amendment.

Had we gone through each of those, we could have had all of these discussions. This is how we should do it, which is our second most important task. Our most important one, of course, is the defense of our country, but the second most important one is the spending bills, and we are not doing the spending bills. I know the other side will say: Well, we brought out one, it was filibustered, and we didn't get cloture on it. We only did that one time. There should have been every one of these bills brought up with the right to amend and then they wouldn't have been filibustered. Then they could have been passed when the House sent their companion bill. Since we didn't do the process right, we are stuck with the continuing resolution.

Piecemeal is one way we can get it through. There was a request for a conference between the two sides. That was turned down by the Democrats. It would have been a chance to raise all of these things at once. That was turned down.

I object to the modification.

I yield to the Senator.

I have looked at both of the histories that have been discussed. One of them is the budget. The failure of the budget to not have a conference committee did not stop the Appropriations Committee from going through and doing 12 appropriations bills. I think that is what I count on the calendar that could have been brought up. There was only the one brought up.

The Senator has said, appropriately, that in committee there ought to be some amendments, but on the floor there were none.

What we have spent a lot of time on around the body this year is try to negotiate how few amendments would be brought up. That has taken longer than it would have taken to vote on the whole issue.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article from the Eagle Tribune.

I object, and I yield the floor.

Madam President, this has been an interesting discussion for the last 37 minutes. It lacks a little bit of a preamble.

The reason we are in the situation we are in now is because Congress didn't do the spending bills when they were supposed to do the spending bills. We have 12 spending bills. There is no reason we didn't spend 12 weeks, 1 week doing each of those for a period of 12 weeks. It is the second most important job we have. I think the most important job we have is national defense, but budgeting--spending--is the next biggest. If we had done one bill each week for the 12 weeks we needed to and had open amendments on them, there wouldn't have needed to be any of this discussion. Most of the things would have been resolved by now. They would have either won or lost, and that is what happens around here.

Except we are busy dealmaking instead of legislating. We don't allow amendments now. When a bill comes to the floor, there is a discussion between the two leaders to see how limited they can make the amendments. I try to only do relevant amendments. I wouldn't mind if that were the law around here. That is the law in the Wyoming legislature. Whatever the title of the bill is, your amendment has to be relevant to that. It helps to get through a lot of the process in a hurry. But we don't even bring them up.

I take that back. The leader did come to the floor and chastise me for forgetting we had the Transportation bill brought up on the floor. We didn't get to do amendments on it, and when we didn't get to do amendments on it, our side said nuts to finishing that right now. The leader could have brought it right back and showed we were not interested in doing transportation. He talked about us not being interested in transportation, but that was not the case. There were amendments that needed to be done to the Transportation bill.

That is 1 bill out of 12. What happened to the other 11? If we had done the bills timely, we wouldn't be in a continuing resolution. What is the matter with a government that can't operate like a business and have a preplan for what is going to happen if this tragedy does happen? We don't have any plans like that. What we do is stand and chastise each other for not having plans for what is happening. That is wrong. We shouldn't be doing that. We should be getting our work done in a timely manner, and we should be doing it through legislation, which means allowing amendments on the floor.

Yes, I know there are some amendments I wouldn't want to vote on. There are some amendments the other side wouldn't want to vote on. But that is what we signed on for. We have to vote on the amendments and get the process done, but we are not doing that.

As to the shutdown, I wish to share what actually wound up as a guest editorial from a guy named Bill Johnson who lives in Pinedale, but he got his guest editorial in the Powell Tribune, which is quite a ways away from there. He is an old truckdriver, and he said he is tired of pulling the load; that it is time for a producers' shutdown. Whoa. I wouldn't verify his math, but this is the way he sees it.

He sees that there are 11 people taking money out of the pot and thus riding on the wagon. That leaves nine people paying the taxes into the pot and thus pulling the wagon. ``A bad ratio indeed!''

He says: Now government people ``will tell you they pay taxes, but let's not forget that all their wages first come out of the pot.'' Government people ``don't create wealth. They spend the wealth!'' Now these same government people ``are enjoying quite a party.''

We hear them bragging about the following:

``We have better pensions and wages.

``We have paid sick days, cheaper medical insurance, free

vehicles. . . .''

We get paid when the government shuts down and we come back to work without having worked.

``Some States pay $15 an hour on welfare, so why work?''

They say a government agency's success is measured by the

size of its budget. There's no incentive to cut a budget!

``They say if a tax-paying `person' is successful, it's because `the government people' have helped him!''

They ask, ``How can we raise the tax-paying `people's'

taxes again?''

We need more money for raises and Obamacare. Work harder,

please! We'll take care of the rules and the regulations.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this entire article.

Continuing from Mr. Johnson's article, he asks, ``So what can we do?'' Here is his answer:

The nonviolent answer is simple! When the time comes, just

quit pulling on the wagon. Take a three- to five-day vacation

instead.

Take as long a vacation as the government takes. This means that farmers will not farm, stores will not open, manufacturers will not manufacture, powerplants will not produce power--and continuing his article:

Truckers don't truck. Trainmen don't train. Pilots don't

plane. Miners don't mine. Marketers don't market. Bankers

don't bank. Groceries don't go and pipelines don't flow!

That is what would happen if we had a shutdown of the private sector, the ones that are carrying the load. He says this scheduled vacation for our Nation's producers, the taxpaying people still pulling the wagon, ought to be nationwide.

Of course, he knows that will never happen, but he hopes people get the picture.

Continuing his article:

It is amusing to listen to all the hoopla about potential

government shutdowns. Big deal! Remember the scene in

``Crocodile Dundee'' when the would-be robbers pull a knife?

Mr. Dundee says, ``That's not a knife, this is a knife!''

And, remember, he pulls out his near machete? He says:

That's what a producers' strike would look like!

``This is the way to cut government spending, lower your tax rates, and shove some government'' people ``off the wagon.''

We would score a few touchdowns and give them a list of the

people's demands.

So that's the view of the trucker in Wyoming, and he gets to think about this a lot as he drives miles and miles and miles and miles. It is a long way between towns. But he is pointing out that our government is being weighted down with a lot of different things, not just people's salaries with growing government--each of those adds to the need for a tax increase--but we are also weighted down with the interest load. If the interest rate goes up, that wagon load is going to get mired in mud.

He mentions the rules and the regulations. Paperwork alone kills jobs. It eliminates people who could pull the wagon, and government growth and benefits add to the weight of the wagon.

So we are in a shutdown, and what has happened? The government has shut down some of its revenue centers--the national parks. People drive through those and they pay to drive through those. There are hotels and restaurants and things. There are concessionaires in there, and they pay a fee for the right to do that, and they collect money for the Federal Government. They are not having any customers. It is hard to be a business and not have a customer. But we have forced that on them with supposedly shutting down a revenue center for us. People actually pay for that.

The sequester. We made it hurt because there was no preplanning. Now we have the shutdown and we are making it hurt with the barricades and closing the national parks and all the other things that got mentioned out here, but it is because of no preplanning.

Incidentally, when we talk about ObamaCare and no plan, I had a plan before President Obama became a Senator, a 10-step plan that would have done more than the present bill does.

I worked with Senators Coburn and Burr on a substitute bill which would have done what the President promised would be in the bill but is not in the bill. But there were 60 votes on the other side of the aisle, and with a few special deals the 60 votes carried the day and we are stuck with what will be a train wreck--and then we will get what the Democrats have always wanted, which is single-pay, universal service through the government.

But I have a plan for fixing this debt load, pulling the wagon a little easier. It is called the penny plan. Originally when I introduced the penny plan, which is eliminating 1 penny out of every dollar the Federal Government spends, it had to work for 7 years in order to balance the budget. We need to be on the downtrend. Seven years wouldn't be so bad. But with the sequester, that turns out to be 2 years and we would have a balanced budget. We go a couple more years and pay down some of this debt we have. The debt keeps me awake nights. That is less than a 10-percent total decrease in what we are spending right now. Businesses have to make that kind of a change sometimes in less than 1 year, and sometimes it is painful the way they have to do it. If we have more time--and 2 years could be quite a bit of time--we ought to be able to plan our way out of it.

So let's quit spending, let's cut up the credit cards. That is the debt limit we are coming up with, that is the credit cards. We could allow for a little bit of use of the credit cards--as long as there is a plan for how we are not going to need the credit cards anymore. And that would be the penny plan. So I hope we would all take a look at it.

I do feel sorry for the 8 million Federal employees who I know work hard.

That is a lot compared to the ones pulling the wagon.

I will have some more comments on this later because it is a major crisis, but it didn't need to be a major crisis.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent that an extra 5 minutes be added to our side later.

Madam President, I wish to thank the Senator from Alabama for his comments. I too want to add my thanks and appreciation for law enforcement people all over the United States who are doing their job and often have to do things such as give tickets. They do not get anything but bad news and grief for it, but they are out there protecting us at the same time and they definitely deserve credit, our admiration, and our prayers.

Madam President, I also wish to comment a little bit on what the Senator from Michigan said with his indisputable facts. The indisputable fact is that we are only where we are right now with a government shutdown and the attempts to get a continuing resolution through because Congress did not do its job, the Senate did not do its job, the job we have to pass spending bills. If we had passed the spending bills--and there are 12 of them--if we passed the 12 spending bills, there would not be a need for a continuing resolution.

What is a continuing resolution? It is permission for government to continue functioning as it has been functioning, spending one-twelfth of what they spent the year before for each month until we finally come up with a spending bill.

The way the law is written, we are supposed to have a budget by April 15 and that is a very significant day and it is an intentional day. Then, right after that, we are supposed to start doing spending bills, and we are supposed to allocate the amount of money we want each agency, program, department to spend.

We have not done that for years. Consequently, we get into this bind where we are saying: Go ahead and spend money, and we will figure it out later.

We have had a sequester, and the way the sequester works is it is supposed to be a 2.3-percent reduction from each agency, program, department. We did continuing resolutions last year. We did continuing resolutions for at least 7 months--probably 7\1/2\, maybe 8 months. So they got to continue spending what they had been spending the year before.

They knew a sequester was coming because Congress again did not do its work and come up with an alternate way to fund government. So they only had 4 months left to take their 2.3 percent out of their total spending, which would be the whole spending for the year. Do you know what that does? That makes it 5.3 percent.

But that is not bad enough. We have an administration that sent out word to make it hurt, and we have an administration that also took care of Washington but did not take care of the people out in the hinterlands of Wyoming--Wyoming and the rest of the United States-- people who are out there actually doing the work, person-to-person, that is supposed to be done with what we are funding. Instead, it went to a lot of administration.

I had some people in this week from the Head Start program, and they showed me how they were cut 7.5 percent. What part of 2.3 percent would 7.5 percent be? Part of that is that 5.3 percent because it came so late. But it is 7.5 percent because 2.5 percent of that goes to fund the Federal Government in Washington. That is not where the work is done. That is where the reports are done. That is where the regulations are done. That is where the things are done that stymie the people out there who are having to actually help the people.

The Civil Air Patrol came to me. They do search and rescue from the air when people are lost around Wyoming. They said: We are being cut 60 percent. I said: What part of 2.3 percent would 60 percent be? They are even taking three of their five airplanes. I said: If they do not have any money, how can they take your airplanes? How would they have the money to fly them anywhere?

It is just one more of those things where the administration is saying make them feel the pain. Of course, part of that was closing down White House tours. How much can it cost for a self-guided White House tour? That is what they are. They are self-guided. You get a brochure. It is my understanding it is about an $18,000 savings. That is nothing compared to what we are working with.

We have $9 billion a year worth of duplication just on things under health and education and labor and pensions--$9 billion in duplication. What is $18,000? Why couldn't we take a look at those budgets in detail and get rid of duplication? This is duplication that is evaluated by the White House. But when we have a shutdown, we do not do that. We do not eliminate any of that.

Everybody has seen the World War II Memorial with the barricades. Ever since the World War II Memorial went up, I have never seen barricades there. I have been down there in the middle of the night and been able to walk through the World War II Memorial or any of the other memorials down there. I do not think I could use the restroom, and there is probably some justification for having the restrooms closed because there is the problem of cleaning them--what would require some additional personnel--but just to walk through things?

We are making progress, though, because they also barricaded off Lincoln Park. It is a children's playground up here on the Hill. There were pictures in the paper the other day of a little girl looking at the sign on the gate that was locked saying that the park was closed. I am pleased to report that yesterday that sign was gone, kids were playing in the park. There is no cost to that. So there is no purpose in having any kind of a shutdown regarding that.

The Smithsonian out here is a national park, and there are streets that go through the national park. They go through it one way primarily, but they do not have any additional cost to them. They do not serve anything. But they were blocked off. You could not go through streets that people normally drive through on any given day.

In my own State, Jackson Hole--if you are driving from Dubois to Jackson, on the right-hand side of the road is a gorgeous view of the Tetons. These are some lands left over from the Alps that God had, so he put them in Wyoming. People like to stop and take pictures of them, particularly at this time of year because the aspens are turning to gold and they are mixed in with the pine trees. There is a river that runs through there and then there are these majestic mountains.

The turnouts along that road are barricaded. You cannot turn out. You could not turn out to fix a flat tire. You could not turn out if you needed a nap. You cannot turn out to take a picture. Why? How did they get the barricades? How much did they have to spend for the barricades? How much did they have to spend to have somebody go out and put up those barricades?

Incidentally, if you drive along the GW Parkway out here, it is the same way. The little turnouts that are along there are barricaded. Where did we get all these barricades? If it was a business and they treated their customers that way, they would be out of business, and they would deserve to be out of business. We should be operating differently than that.

I did notice Air Force is going to play Navy tomorrow. But the justification is there is some revenue for that, and there is. If you charge admission to those things, and they are highly popular sporting events, there will be a lot of people who go and they will pay a lot of money for it and it will exceed the cost of putting it on at the venue. That would be the government making money. There is an oxymoron.

But Yellowstone Park is in my State. Yellowstone was the first national park. In fact, it was the first park in the world. It is a huge park. In fact, it is the size of Connecticut. It sits up there in the corner of Wyoming. A lot of people go through Yellowstone in order to get to Idaho or Montana or maybe Montana folks trying to get down to Wyoming. But that is all closed off now.

What is interesting to me is that if you do drive through there, you pay a fee. It is actually revenue. Now, of course, when I brought that up, I was reminded that the revenue goes to the general fund. But I had to say: Do you know where the money for the national parks comes from? It comes from the general fund. So if you do not collect the money, you will not have the money to put back into the park.

Not only that, there are concessionaires who pay to be able to sell gas and food and lodging in Yellowstone Park. Their customers cannot get to them. I do not think we relieved them of paying the fee they have to pay. I am pretty sure the concessionaires were expecting about $4.5 million worth of business this month--not the busiest month but an important month. I think there are ways we could have continued to collect revenue, but we are not doing it. Let's make it hurt.

We are here with this continuing resolution. The last vote I got to do was actually a vote to have a conference committee. It wasn't any demand from the House, it was a request for a conference committee. What happens in a conference committee? The leader appoints some people from here, in conjunction with the minority leader. They appoint some in the House. They get together and try to work this out. But, no, that was voted down by the Democrats, so we are not going to have that.

I have a lot more that I would say. I realize my time has expired. We are in this position because we have been doing a bad job of governing.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to thank the chairman of the Appropriations Committee for her comments and all of the effort she has made and the bipartisan cooperation there has been to get bills to the floor. But we are in kind of a pickle right now. We are talking about a continuing resolution. A continuing resolution means we didn't get our work done. If we had the appropriations bills passed through this body, we wouldn't need a continuing resolution. Every agency would understand what it can spend for the whole next year. Instead, we are quibbling over how long a continuing resolution we ought to have and what ought to be in it.

We haven't done total appropriations by the October 1 deadline for I am not even sure how many years. That would be the answer to what we are going through right now. If we got to debate each of those bills in a timely fashion, with an open amendment process--I appreciate there has been an open amendment process in the committee. I am always disturbed that we haven't had much of an open amendment process around here on the floor. Every time a bill comes to the floor--almost every time a bill comes to the floor--there are negotiations about how many amendments each side can have. I have seen those negotiations go on for 2 weeks. Do you know how many amendments we could vote on in 2 weeks? I think we could probably vote on 50, maybe 100 in 2 weeks. Instead, we don't vote on amendments, which gives everyone the impression, of course, that there isn't an open amendment process.

The longer the stopper is kept in the bottle, the more anger there is around here. I would say there is anger on both sides because both sides have amendments they would like to bring up.

We have to quit dealmaking and start legislating around here. This is the way this process was designed. They had legislation in the committee, but we need to have the ability to legislate on the floor-- not allocating something to a few people on both sides of the aisle and both ends of the building to come back with some kind of a proposal by some kind of a fiscal falloff date, and that fiscal falloff date, of course, happens to be in statute that the year begins on October 1. That was yesterday. That is when every agency is supposed to know exactly how much they can spend.

How has that been affecting us? There was a sequester. The interesting thing about the sequester is it was 2.3 percent of the amount of money an

agency, program, department was to get. What did it actually turned out to be? It turned out to be 5.3 percent. Why did it turn out to be 5.3 percent? We were already eight-twelfths of the way through the year before they found out that there was going to be a sequester, that they found out for sure that there was going to be a limitation on their spending. They had already spent one-twelfth of what they spent the year before, each month, during that 8-month period and then found out that for the whole year's worth of revenue that they got--eight- twelfths of what they already spent--they have to take a 2.3-percent cut. That makes it a 5.3 cut. That makes it much more difficult.

Actually, CBO scored my penny plan--that is where we just do a 1- percent reduction in every dollar the U.S. Government spends, with flexibility--and if we add that to the sequester, which would bring it to 3.3 percent, they say the budget would balance in 2 years--2 years we could balance the budget. It hasn't happened for over a decade. It only happened four times, I think, in the last 50 years. But we could do it, and I am pretty sure the people would say if we had our appropriations done timely so the agencies knew what they were doing on October 1 and then had a sequester plus 1 percent, I think they could live with it. I think they could make effective cuts, if they wanted to.

One of our problems around here is that government doesn't usually like to make effective cuts. Government likes to make it hurt. When it hurts, people come back and are very upset at what has been taken away from them. But we have a lot of redundancy in government. We have a lot of waste. We have a lot of programs that are happening in a whole bunch of different agencies, none of which are effective, but we are still doing it everywhere. We could get rid of all that duplication or at least half of it. Half of it is all that could be totally effective and give them a little bit of a bonus for doing it. But we are now at a point where we are going to make it hurt.

There were World War II veterans in town yesterday. They were flown in here so they could see their memorial, a tribute to their tremendous efforts. What did they find? They found barricades. I have been to the World War II Memorial a lot of times. There haven't been any barricades there. I also didn't see another person there if I was there late at night. So what was the purpose of the barricades? We have the national parks. Did the national parks get shut down?

Here is the extreme this is being carried to: Over in Teton National Park they even have barricades at the turnouts. Turnouts can be used to fix a flat tire or get a rest if one is tired of driving. They can also be used to take pictures of gorgeous scenery such as the Tetons. That is what the turnouts are primarily designed for. But how much does it cost us if somebody pulls off and takes a picture of mountains? How much could that cost us? How much does it save us by putting up barricades so they can't pull off the road? How much did it cost us to put barricades out there so they can't pull off the road and take pictures of the Tetons?

Throughout government, we are trying to make it hurt. We are trying to emphasize to people that we did so poorly they need to suffer, and if they suffer enough, they will get hold of us and make us reverse what we have done. We should have been busy last April working on appropriations and working through that process.

The President is about to leave on a trip. I am not planning on leaving until everything has been cleared up here, and I would suggest that he not do that either.

I got an interesting letter from one of my constituents that says: How does the private sector see the Federal Government? The private sector sees the Federal Government as a wagon being pulled by the private sector, and the wagon is filled with people who work for the Federal Government, and there aren't enough people pulling the wagon and too many people riding in the wagon. He makes quite a point. He does admit that the people riding in the wagon pay taxes too, but he also points out that those taxes came from the private sector to pay the wages from which the taxes are taken. So, yes, there are people riding in the wagon, even though they are working as well, but he is pointing out how the private sector has this extra load and now they are getting a little bit more of a load. He makes the point that we need more people in the private sector and said that maybe the private sector ought to shut down.

What would happen if the private sector shut down? What would happen if trucks did not haul any more goods across this country? What happens if the filling stations do not open? What happens with the myriad of things, groceries, the things we count on every day that come from the private sector? He just wanted me to know he is tired of pulling the wagon with so many people in the wagon.

We have a chance to reduce the load in the wagon, and we ought to take advantage of that, but we are not. We need to take advantage of that in a timely manner, and we need to get this wrapped up and get the government under way so people are not suffering in the ``make it hurt atmosphere'' we have right now. There is another way to do it. There is a better way to do it. We should have done it. We should have been doing it much earlier.

I yield the floor.

Through the Chair, would the Senator yield for a question, retaining the floor?

I want to thank the Senator for the recitation of ``Green Eggs and Ham.'' That is as good as I have heard. I loved the different voices in it. One of my favorites was ``Hand, Hand, Finger, Thumb'' by Dr. Seuss. And another one was ``Hop on Pop.'' I think all of those could have related to the messages here. They might even be simple enough that we could get the message across.

I appreciate all the passion and preparation the Senator has put into explaining this and his careful way with words.

We are on a continuing resolution, and I don't know that people out there understand what continuing resolution is. It means that we failed to do our job on time--that we should have had 12 appropriations bills, one at a time, and been able to go through them with some care.

I think maybe the Senator would agree that perhaps if we had done that, when we got to Health and Human Services we might have had the issue on the individual items of defunding ObamaCare. Had we had those individual ones, I think some of those would have passed and it wouldn't have had to have been an all-or-nothing as we have now.

Would the Senator agree that doing it this way, particularly if we have no debate and no amendments, would be the wrong way, and that all we are doing is delaying some more decisions a little further down the road that again should have been covered by appropriations in a very timely manner? Isn't that the same problem we had with sequester, where we went through two-thirds of the year when there was supposed to be a 2.3-percent sequester, so we only had 4 months left and those agencies had to pack it into the 4 months, and that made it 5.3 percent and that hurt worse? Of course, the President's note to everybody to ``make it hurt'' was not particularly helpful either.

But aren't we faced again with that when we are doing a 2-month delay on a CR, so that we have to go through this exercise again probably when we would like to be home at Christmas personally reading those stories to kids? I would like to be reading to my grandkids.

We have been kind of put in a box here that the American public doesn't like, I don't like, but it wasn't our doing.

If those bills would have been brought up one at a time, we could have debated each of them and gotten into some details on them. It has been a long time since we got into details on trillions of dollars of spending. Health care is a part of that, and health care deserves some individual attention. That is what the Senator and I and a number of people are trying to give it, some individual attention. But we are being denied that right. We are not being allowed to go into it in detail so we can show exactly which parts we would defund, which parts we would dismantle and replace with something better.

I spent a lot of time on this bill because I was here when it was going through the committee process. In fact, I had a 10-step plan on my Web site that would have done more than this bill and it would have been paid for. But that isn't a part of the bill. When they say the Republicans don't have solutions, they are not willing to look at any of the solutions even if they would wind up in a better situation.

This was passed with a partisan government. It is a health care that is failing and we are not getting a chance to change it. Of course, I am one of those who would have liked to have repealed it and started over again and gotten it right.

I know of another substitute bill that Senator Coburn and Senator Burr did, and that would have been a better replacement too. It would have covered more of the things the President, in a joint session of Congress when he covered it--I was on a committee that was working on it particularly, and I sat there and took extensive notes. The next day in our meeting I said, There are 14 things that he said in that speech we did not cover and I think we should have covered them.

Instead, we wound up with the bill we have because there were 60 Democrats and that is all it took to pass the bill. They had to make a few deals in order to get the 60 to stick together, and it is surprising they did stick together.

I will end on that question. I have one other I would like to ask too. But I think our failure to do appropriations leads us to this point, and also gets us to a point where we can't go into the details of the bill. We have to take an all-or-nothing approach. That is not legislating. That is deal-making. I think we have an alternate approach and I would like the Senator to comment on it.

Mr. President, I ask permission to ask another question through the Chair, with the Senator being allowed to keep the floor.

Mr. President, would the Senator agree that there are a number of things in this bill that have been changed because we have recognized that those things would not work? We have changed--not we, the President has changed a number of these things. I am having trouble finding in the law where those changes come from. There is not a lot of waiver authority in the bill, but every time a difficulty is found with the bill, then there appears to be a waiver so that particular part of the bill no longer exists.

I have never seen that done before on legislation. How do they take a piece of the law that is in the bill, that does not have a waiver right, and go ahead and exempt us under that particular part of the law? One particular part of that I am particularly sensitive on because I worked on it very diligently. As the bill came through committee, that piece was the one where Congress should be under the law that we passed, Congress and the staff.

That got remodeled, as you will recall, a little bit so that the committee staffs did not have to come under it because the committee staffs were actually going to finish up the bill. But we had intended for all of our staffs to be under that bill.

Would the Senator agree that one of the amendments that we have not been able to vote on--it would have only taken 30 minutes to do a 15- minute vote. That is kind of standard around here; it takes us a little longer to do a 15-minute vote. Heck, it takes us 20 minutes to do a 10- minute vote and that has to follow on the heels of a 30-minute 15- minute vote.

We could have had that vote, but we were not allowed to. What that amendment is, as you will recall, what it would have done is put Congress back under the bill. It would have subjected Congress to suffering the same exact thing the American public is going to start experiencing on Tuesday as they go into the exchange or at the very latest by the 1st of January when they are required to do that.

If their company is no longer providing them with insurance, the company will pay a little penalty but they get to come under the exchange. But they do not get to bring the company's tax-free donation to their health care along with them. But that is the way we had envisioned it working for Congress too. They would not get a special dispensation. So we brought up this amendment which would require that not only would Congress come under it, but since the President is the one who exempted this and did not have the right to exempt this from it, we thought perhaps he and the Vice President and the political appointees maybe ought to come under that same bill. I mean, why wouldn't the President want to come under it? After all, it is called ObamaCare. It is named after him.

Apparently there is a tremendous desire not to do that, to explain that the Federal Government is different. That is exactly what the American people are upset about, that we are different. We should not be different. That is one of the things that could have been taken care of if we had taken this all through regular order.

I appreciate efforts of the Senator to be able to do something. I ask if the Senator believes we ought to be exempted under any parts of this law or if these exemptions would be legal for the President to do if it is not written in the law? As a lawyer, my colleague probably has better insight into that than I do--and a constitutionalist. That is why I ask the question. Does the President have the right to do that?

Mr. President, Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota and I are submitting this resolution today because of the significant role the North American Bison has played in the history of our Nation. This resolution honors that legacy by designating November 2, 2013, as National Bison Day.

Since our frontier days, the bison has become a symbol of American strength and determination. The bison has also been integrally linked to the economic and spiritual lives of many Native American tribes over the centuries. The Department of Interior has depicted the bison on its official seal since 1912 and several sports teams across America have chosen the bison as their mascot. At one point in American history, bison were brought in to graze outside the original Smithsonian Institution Building here in Washington, DC.

In 1911, when sculptor James Earle Fraser was tasked with designing a new nickel, he wanted to ``do something totally American.'' On the reverse of his design, he chose to depict the American bison, as a symbol of America's western background that was ``100 percent American.'' This coin came to be known as the buffalo nickel and played an important role in modernizing our currency in the early 20th century.

I must also add that my home state of Wyoming is one of three states that recognize the bison as its official state mammal and has honored an image of a bison on the Wyoming state flag since it was first adopted in 1917. Today, thousands of American bison freely roam Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. The bison is also important to our state's economic well-being with a growing number of ranchers raising bison for consumers all over the world.

This resolution is supported by a wide variety of stakeholders. I want to recognize the National Bison Association that represents the interests of the bison ranchers in nearly every single State. Also behind this effort is the

Intertribal Bison Council that supports the cultural role the bison has played in Native American history. Finally, there is the Wildlife Conservation Society that wishes to honor the restoration of bison in North America since the 19th century.

I ask my colleagues to help me support and pass this resolution honoring the bison and designating November 2, 2013, as National Bison Day. The bison has and will continue to be a symbol of America, its people and way of life.

Mr. President. I rise today in support of H.R. 527, the Helium Stewardship Act, as amended by the Wyden substitute. This bill is very important to protecting the U.S. supply of helium. Helium is used in MRI scanners, superconductors, and has many other very important uses. For example, helium is even used to test mechanical heart valves to make sure they don't leak.

Helium also has important security implications. It is used by DoD, NASA, and other agencies. The bill helps those efforts by extending the authority of the Secretary of the Interior to sell helium from the Federal Helium Reserve.

The bill also includes important reforms such as provisions ensuring that the Secretary sells helium at market prices, and most importantly, it gets the Federal Government out of the helium business once and for all.

The bill would also reduce the Federal debt and deficit by $51 million. The bill has bipartisan support. In June, the Energy Committee voted to report the helium bill by voice vote. The Senate should pass this bill as soon as possible so we have an opportunity to negotiate with the House.

I understand that some of my colleagues had some concerns with the bill. I appreciate them giving me the opportunity to speak with them before the vote about those concerns. I also thank my colleagues for agreeing to allow this bill to come to a vote. While I do not support every item in the bill, I believe it is a critical piece of legislation that needs to be passed.

Madam President, I also would like to welcome the new Senator from Massachusetts to this body. I listened to his speech, and we will have some discussions over some of those items at some time, I am certain. But I also listened to the leader's speech following that, and I am a little bit disappointed in that speech.

He mentioned that we were the least productive Senate in history. I think there is a reason for that, and the reason is that we are doing dealmaking now instead of legislating.

I came here 16 years ago and have watched for a number of years as we have legislated--and ``legislated'' means getting votes on amendments. Getting votes on amendments happens much quicker than trying to make some kind of deal to limit amendments. Yes, some of the amendments in all those years have not been relevant to the bill we were talking about. Usually, once they have been covered, they are kind of done with and they do not come up on every bill. But the same tactic has been used to stifle amendments to bills, even relevant ones.

Both sides are at fault. It is not just one side. Both sides are stopping amendments from being voted on. We need to vote on amendments. Of course, the first one up is one I have been working on. The reason it is being brought up on this bill is that this is the first bill after a recess on which we can put anything.

During the recess, there was a huge change in the health care reform bill. That huge change was that the President decided he would exempt Congress from being under the bill, from having to do the same thing the rest of America will do. If you work in a business in America, a private business, and your business does not provide insurance and you have to go on the exchange--now, of course, the Senate and Federal Government provides insurance, but we all agreed we would go on the exchange because the American people had to go on the exchange. When we go on the exchange, we should have to abide by the same rules as anybody else who goes on the exchange.

Private business, if they say we are not going to buy insurance, their people have to go on the exchange, and if they go on the exchange, they cannot get a contribution from their employer for their insurance. There is a subsidy for people who earn under, I think it is $42,000 a year as an individual or $92,000 as a family. They can get a Federal subsidy. They cannot get a subsidy from their employer.

The President decided, through the Office of Personnel Management, that Senators should be able to move that contribution over to the exchanges. That is different from everybody else. We should have to live under the same laws we passed. That was the contention we made when we put that amendment in the bill. That amendment went in the bill in the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee. It went in the bill in the Finance Committee. It was agreed to on the floor of the Senate. We said we ought to be under the same rules as everybody else when it comes to the health exchanges, and we ought to try those health exchanges so we can see what America is going through.

We did that. We did it--maybe did it to ourselves--but that is the way government ought to work, with those who pass the law living under the law. All we are asking for is a vote to see if the Senate agrees we ought to live under the law the way the other people will have to live under the law.

As far as delaying the bill, it only takes probably 30 minutes for a 15-minute vote. It should only take 15 minutes for a 15-minute vote, but it takes 30 minutes at least, sometimes a couple hours for a 15- minute vote, if it is a close one and they want to negotiate with some of the people voting on it, but we ought to have to vote on it. We ought to put our names on the line as to how we feel about having the American people in a situation where their employer cannot contribute to their health insurance if they go on the exchange and make that same law apply to us.

I traveled Wyoming during the recess. We traveled about 6,000 miles by car, and I did a lot of listening sessions. I never heard anybody say, no, I think Congress ought to be able to continue doing what they have been doing before; instead, Congress ought to come under the same law.

There is a little addition to this bill that we did not put in the original bill. Maybe that is what is holding it up. That little addition to the bill is saying the President and the Vice President and the President's appointees should come under the same rules as Congress in this instance, going into the exchange. I hope the President, since the bill is kind of named after him, would want to be under the bill just like everybody else. If we are not going to allow contributions from businesses to go to regular people who go onto the exchange, then the same rule ought to apply to us.

That is pretty much what the amendment says. It clarifies the law and makes sure the Office of Personnel Management cannot exempt us without authority. It is more than a clarification, it is a complete reversal of what we passed in this body. When we passed it, I think on the floor it was unanimous. That means it was pretty bipartisan. That means we all agreed that maybe we ought to live under the same laws as the rest of the people in America.

Let's just have a vote on it. As I say, 30 minutes is about all it would take for a 15-minute vote and we could move on to other issues. That is the way we used to do things around here. It was not unusual for a bill to have 150 amendments. I don't ever remember voting on 150 amendments because there is some duplication in amendments that are turned in. There are also some people who realize, as the debate goes along, that their amendment would not pass and they do not want it to be voted on and lose when they might be able to win with it later. Of course I am in favor of doing relevant amendments on bills. You will find usually any amendment I am signed on to is relevant to the bill.

The reason this is an exception is because it came up during the recess and the effect begins on October 1. I do not know what other bills are going to come up before October 1. At the pace we are going, this will not even make it by October 1. Just voting on bills rather than trying to negotiate it down to a 10-vote package--on the immigration bill I think we had 9 votes. It took us 3 weeks. There were about 200 amendments, probably 150 that could have been voted on and in 3 weeks I think we could have been through 150 of them and it would have made it a better bill. That is what legislating is.

All of those would not have passed. Maybe very few would have passed. Maybe only 9 would have passed. But people would have had a decision and would have been able to represent what their people back home are telling them, and that is what we are supposed to do here. The reason the Senate has the rules it does is so we can actually represent the people back home. One of the ways we do that is through amendments. Occasionally, there will be surprises that something that is not relevant might wind up on a bill. Usually, if it is not relevant, it gets defeated. There is usually a way to process a whole lot of amendments in a hurry; that is, with a tabling motion, but we are just not getting the vote. We ought to do some voting around here and move on.

This is an important bill, and there are some good amendments that have been turned in on which we would also like a vote. We should go through them and then we can be a productive body. Then we could cover a lot of bills that would go through in about 3 days, but we spend days negotiating not having amendments, and when we have that pent-up objection to our amendments not getting on there, it gets more pent up, more angry, more divisive, more partisan as the process goes by.

What I have referred to, the way the Senate used to work--just vote on amendments. We will not like all of them. We know some of them will wind up in an ad against us when we run, but that has always been the case and there is no reason to change it now.

I hope we vote on amendments and get busy. It is an important bill. I would like to see the bill finished. We need to do a lot of things on energy for

this country, particularly to keep energy prices down where people expect them to be. Again, let's vote.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to extend my sympathy to all those who have suffered a loss yesterday, both here in DC and any other place in the country. A loss, a quick and unexpected loss, is always difficult.

Constitution Day

I also wish to take a second today to recognize that this is Constitution Day. It is 226 years of our country having this Constitution, which is a world record for a constitution. Hopefully we will continue to live under the Constitution, work and make progress.

ObamaCare

My main purpose today is to take a few minutes to talk about something that occurred during the recess that is another sad example of business as usual in Washington. The health care law we are all under requires Members of Congress and their congressional staff to obtain health insurance under the new exchanges provided by ObamaCare next year. I voted to include Congress under the health care law in 2009 because I believe very strongly that Congress should have to live under the laws it passes.

Let me say that again. I think Congress ought to live under the laws it passes. We passed a law that is going to affect most people in the United States. I can tell you that the administration doesn't appear to share this belief.

On August 2, immediately after Congress adjourned, the Office of Personnel Management, under heavy pressure from congressional leaders, announced it would issue regulations saying the government can continue to make the employer contribution to the health plans of congressional Members and staff. No one else in America who will get their health insurance through an exchange may receive a contribution from their employer, but the administration decided it would be OK for Congress.

I am not sure where the authority came from to be able to do that or say that. It was difficult at the beginning of the process for us to get that amendment in the HELP Committee, Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, when the bill was coming through there. It was repeated again in the Finance Committee, and it wound up in the final bill.

That is a law we passed. It is a law we passed that said we are going to be subject to the same thing the American people are going to be subject to.

Now the administration has said, no, it doesn't apply to Congress. Where does it say it doesn't apply to Congress?

I was in Wyoming for the last month or so, holding listening sessions and meeting with the people as I drove 6,000 miles across the State. I can tell you people are angry that Congress gets some exemptions from ObamaCare that they don't. They are tired of the deal making that happens here instead of legislating that could be occurring. They see these kinds of exemptions and they don't think it is fair. I agree. I don't think it is fair either.

This is why Senator Vitter and I have introduced a bill that would prohibit Members of Congress from receiving a contribution from the Federal Government toward their health insurance. Of course, it is not only--in our amendment, it is not only Congress but the President, the Vice President, and the people responsible for implementing the health care law who will not be allowed to receive any government subsidy.

The President talks about how great the health care bill will be for everyone, but the administration doesn't think it is so great that they should have to live under it. That should change.

In addition, the legislation ensures Congress and the administration will have to live under the laws it passes and enforces by clarifying that all of us can only obtain our health insurance next year through an exchange. That is what it says.

The bill also states Members do not have the authority to define official staff. That would be a sneaky way of making an exclusion for some of the people we consider to be critical, and can thereby not exempt any of their staff from going into the exchange. Yes, that is difficult. Yes, that is the same thing that is going to happen with the rest of America. The rest of America is going to have these same pangs of wishing their contribution could go with them to the exchange. But they are going to have to go to the exchange and it is not going to follow, and there is no reason we should get an extension.

The reason we have this amendment is to show Congress shouldn't be special, that the American people are going to have this great pain and we ought to suffer from it too or change it for everybody. That would be unique.

I wish to clarify that our bill does not end the government contribution for all congressional staff. Those who make the least amount of money will still receive a contribution, but many staff who would not qualify for any assistance otherwise will not. There is a provision in the law that anybody who goes on the exchange, and they make less than $43,000 a year as an individual or $92,000 as a family, can get a subsidy under the exchange. It would work the same way for Congress.

Legislation is needed to prevent lawmakers and their staff from getting special treatment under the law. Absent this legislative change, Congress and the administration are essentially shielded from the higher cost, the limited access, and the confusion everybody else is going to feel.

I continue to oppose the health care law, as I have done since it was passed. When you pass something from one side of the aisle, without taking into consideration the amendments from the other side of the aisle, and when you make special deals in order to keep the one side, you will end up with a law you will own and it will have flaws in it. It is time we quit dealmaking and start legislating on all the issues and considering all of the amendments. This is one example of an amendment that is up--it is the next amendment up--and it should get a vote. It could have had a vote last week and it can have a vote this week, but we need to vote on these things and see how they wind up.

I do continue to oppose the health care law, as I have done, and I support full repeal of the law. There are replacements out there. I have worked with replacements. In fact, I had my own 10-step plan before the President even became a Member of the Senate. That 10-step plan would have done more than this bill does and it would have been paid for.

I also worked with Senators Burr and Coburn on a substitute when this legislation was going through the process, and that one would have done many of the things the President promised in his joint speech to Congress. He promised there would be certain things in the bill. I took very careful notes at that meeting and found out there were 14 things that didn't appear to be in the bill. So I asked those things be in the bill, and that is when it became a partisan issue.

The President said the bill would have tort reform. There is no tort reform in the bill. The President said there would be a doc fix. There is no doc fix in the bill. I guess the thing that amazed me was that people from the American Medical Association stood behind the President when he signed the bill, realizing they didn't get the two things they insisted on and said they would continue to push for and continue to oppose the bill until they were in there, and that was tort reform and the doc fix.

Doctors, under the law for Medicare are not going to be paid adequately. If they are not paid adequately, they have a tendency to not see Medicare patients. I am pretty sure all of us know somebody who has tried to get an appointment with the doctor and the doctor asked: Do you get Medicare? If they said yes, he said: I am sorry. I am not taking Medicare patients.

So if you can't see a doctor, do you have insurance at all? I don't think so. Medicare has been the lifesaver for seniors in our country for some time, and we haven't begun to see the tip of the iceberg yet on what is going to happen to our seniors.

This amendment, which we should get to vote on, is just one piece of an overall effort to make sure the bill will work for everybody in America. I have 17 other amendments that would, hopefully, close loopholes and dismantle pieces we know would not work and make changes. So there are ideas out there that could make this bill work, but this one amendment is just part of an overall effort. It will close the loophole for Congress and it will ensure that everyone is treated equally under the health care law.

For better or for worse, we should all be in this together. Again, this isn't just to subject our colleagues to pain; it is to get them to recognize the pain America is about to feel. It is not fair for us to make ourselves pain free. We can't inoculate ourselves or give ourselves some special medication. That is what we are doing in the bill. This amendment clarifies Members don't have the authority to define ``official staff'' and, therefore, they can't exempt any of their staff from going into the exchange. It clarifies that Members of Congress, all of their staff, the President, the Vice President, and all political appointees are no longer eligible for the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan and have to go into the exchange.

That seems fair to me. The bill is named after the President. Why wouldn't the President want to be under the bill? How could he possibly avoid being under the bill and doing what the rest of Americans will have to do? If it is such a great deal, and since the bill is named for him, one would think he would want to do that.

I voted to include Members and staff on ObamaCare before the bill passed, in the HELP Committee, in the Finance Committee, and on this floor. It got tweaked a little after it passed on the floor--and I am a little disturbed about that--but even that doesn't warrant the clarification of this magnitude. People deserve and expect those who are responsible for passing and implementing laws will have to live under the same laws they do.

I have cosponsored this legislation with Senator Vitter, and I appreciate all of the initiative he has taken, the difficult and specific task of drafting, and all of the work that has gone into this. This will make a difference. Congress will realize the difference. The American people will blame us if they see the difference and we haven't.

I would ask we get to vote on this amendment. I hope we get to vote on it soon and we can then move on to other amendments on an important bill and get things done. That is what the American people expect us to do. They expect us to get some things done. If somebody thinks this is something that would be wrong for us, they should consider it to be wrong for America as well and join us in fixing it one way or the other.

Again, I thank Senator Vitter for all his efforts on it, and I do expect we should get a vote.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I filed an amendment to S. 1392 that will prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from a massive regulatory overreach. It has been cosponsored by Senators Barrasso and Flake.

My amendment is simple and straightforward. It promotes the right of a 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 the best ways to address it.

I hope my colleagues will support my effort.

The Environmental Protection Agency's move to partially disapprove the State of Wyoming regional haze plan will create an economic and bureaucratic nightmare that will have a devastating impact on western economies. The proposal by 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 imposes onerous regulations on powerplants, that will, in turn, pass those increased costs in the form of higher energy prices on to consumers.

That tells me the EPA's purpose is to ensure no opportunity to impose its chosen agenda on the Nation is wasted. It does not seem to matter to them that their proposed rule flies directly in the face of the States' 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 back seat and grabbed the steering wheel to head this effort in its own previously determined direction.

That is not 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 the authority is purely for aesthetic value and not to regulate public health. Most importantly, the EPA should not be using regulations to pick winners and losers in our national energy market. This is a State issue. Congress recognized that States should know how to determine what the best regulatory approach would be to find and implement a solution to the problem.

The courts reaffirmed this position by ruling in favor of the State's primacy on regional haze several times. Unfortunately, that is not what happened in this case. The EPA ignored all of the clear precedents and instead handed a top-down approach that ignored the will and expertise of the State of Wyoming.

This inexplicable position flies in the face of the strong and commonsense approach of the State of Wyoming to addressing regional haze in a reasonable and cost-effective manner. The EPA's approach would be much more costly, and it would have a tremendous impact on the economy and quality of life not only in Wyoming but in the neighboring States as well. Clearly, we can't allow this to happen.

Preliminary estimates by the State of Wyoming show that the best available retrofit technologies and long-term strategies under the proposed rule would cost well over $1 billion--plus millions more every year in additional operational costs that gets passed on to the consumer.

I mentioned that Cheyenne needed some additional powerplants. They went out and found the best natural gas technology available and then found it wouldn't meet the new requirements. This is the best worldwide technology, and it won't meet the new requirements they wish to put on it. Again, those costs would be passed on to the consumers in the form of higher energy prices. Every family knows that when the price of energy goes up, it is their economic security, as well as their hopes and dreams for the future, that is 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 doesn't. It admits that. One billion dollars in costs and then millions more each year, and it isn't going to give any better results than what the State plan is? What sense does that make? This 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 with no real benefits. Again, it is $1 billion up front, millions a year, and no real benefits.

The plan doesn't even take into account other sources of haze in the State, such as wildfires. We have those every year. They are a problem on Wyoming's plains and mountains. They are a major cause of haze in my home State. It makes no sense for the EPA to draft a plan that fails to take into consideration one of the biggest natural causes of the very problem they are supposed to be solving.

This is one that can be solved. The State of Wyoming has spent over a decade producing a plan that is reasonable, productive, cost-effective, and focused on the problem. 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 won't adequately address the issue of regional haze. Again, there will be no noticeable effect--$1 billion up front, millions each year, and no noticeable effect. What sense does that make?

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 very issue. It only makes sense to me that Wyoming's plan, which results from a more than 10-year effort, be given a chance to work. It is not only fair, it is the right thing to do.

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

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

Madam President, a lot of Americans are worried right now about their health insurance. They know what is coming. Seniors have been turned down by their doctors for Medicare treatment because the doctors are not adequately compensated. If they have not been turned down, they know someone who has been turned down.

Medicaid is uncertain and a stigma. On the one hand, advances in medical technology and the capabilities and knowledge of our health care providers mean we are living longer and have more tools at hand than ever before to address diseases and illnesses.

However, on the other hand, this increasing life expectancy, coupled with the aging of our population and the steady increases in health care costs, means our health care system is on the verge of becoming completely unsustainable financially.

All across the country health insurance rates are skyrocketing. Families are struggling to cope with the higher costs and less choice. Employees are losing coverage and they are losing working hours. Businesses are not hiring. At the center of this uncertainty is the President's health care law. A number of provisions have already gone into effect, but we will not experience the full force of the law until 2014; that is, January.

The Democrats' ``go it alone'' health care reform plan in 2009 was the first major piece of legislation to pass Congress without a bipartisan vote. Let me repeat that again. The Democratic ``go it alone'' health care reform plan in 2009 was the first major piece of legislation to pass Congress without a bipartisan vote. When you have a partisan bill you get partisan results.

After 20,000 pages of regulations and still a lot more to come, they are a little behind on those, and after over 150 new bureaucratic boards, agencies, and programs, the Federal Government still cannot figure out how to make the law work and has had to delay it, in part.

What I have seen to date is enough to convince me that we need a different path. I opposed the health care law initially and I support full repeal of the law. Fixing our health care system does not have to be divisive or partisan. There are clear differences in the approach to fixing health care from all across the political ideological spectrum. However, the least we have to do is to dismantle the worst parts of the law and replace them with reforms that actually work, reforms that lower cost and expand choice, reforms that do not bankrupt the country and every taxpayer.

The Federal Government needs to support viable solutions when needed and refrain from handcuffing innovative private designs with the excessive regulations for narrowed political interests. We need more competition, not less.

Unless we take concrete steps now, we will soon be unable to switch off the track toward government-run health care. When I first got here, I was warned that there were people who did not care who ran the train of health as long as it wrecked. Then we could have universal single- pay, government-run health care. I am not sure that is not still the goal.

One clear example of how convoluted this law is comes from the definition of who an employee is. I used to work in the shoe business, so I understand the difference between full-time work, which was 40 hours a week, and part-time work, which was under 40 hours a week.

However, under the health care law, there are now full-time employees and full-time equivalents. What this means is the law requires employers, and particularly small businesses, to determine how many of their part-time employees it takes to equal a full-time employee. They don't come under the full force of the law until they hit 50 employees. There are businesses that understand that, and they are trying to avoid getting to the 50th employee. But there are some catches in this law.

First of all, the health care law sets full time at 30 hours, not 40 hours per week but 30 hours. It was news to me. It always was 40 hours.

Second, the law requires these employers to take everyone working 29 hours a week or less, combine all of their time for a week, and then divide by the number 30 to establish how many full-time equivalents these part-time workers represent. I don't think a lot of people planned on that.

If you are still following along at this point, congratulations. You can see how costly the taxes imposed by this law will be.

What if the rule forces you to add all of your employees' hours and divide by 30 hours to determine your full-time employees? What if you have 10 employees who are working 40 hours? That would be 400 hours. If you divided that by 30 and find out that you are paying 10 people, but you actually have 13\1/3\ employees at the full-time requirement, that could put you over the 50 and put you into a whole different category of costs and penalties.

If you have 10 employees and you watched it so that there are only 29 hours, that comes to 290 hours. If you divided that by 30, you would find out that even though none of these people are full-time employees, you have 9\2/3\ full-time employees. You can see how they could do a little miscalculation, suddenly be at the 50, and be into a whole new series of penalties.

The Obama administration also had to admit recently that the employer mandate, one of the key pieces of the law, isn't ready.

One of the most economically crushing and burdensome regulations will not be implemented until past 2014, past the 2014 election in 2015. I don't think that was a mistake on their part. I think it was intentional--to come after the election.

There is another little complication that gets thrown in here though. If those employers are not providing the health insurance and not being fined for not providing the health insurance, then the people who work for them have to go on the exchange to get their health insurance. If they go on the exchange to get their health insurance, they can't be subsidized by the businesses they worked for. That is going to be a surprise to a lot of employees too.

The delay will force more people to enroll in health care exchanges or face the tax penalty if they don't. A lot of people don't realize if they do go on the exchange, there is also a surcharge on the cost of their health insurance. They are going to be paying a 3.5 percent tax for buying the insurance. Of course, if they don't buy the insurance, then they get a penalty.

The delay was also made for the businesses without congressional approval, done administratively. The Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation informed Senator Hatch this week that this delay will increase the cost of the new insurance program established by law by $12 billion. It is not as if we had an extra $12 billion laying around here.

In particular, the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the Federal Government will be required to pay an additional $3 billion in subsidies for people on the exchanges. A lot of extra costs were just kicked in there. This delay not only increases the costs on hard-working Americans, but it fails the original intent of health care reform, and that is to provide Americans with high quality, affordable health care.

In addition, the law requires the administration to set up health insurance exchanges in a number of States, including Wyoming. We are sparsely populated, low numbers. The numbers wouldn't work out to do our own exchange.

One problem is the administration has yet to tell anyone exactly how they are going to do those exchanges or what even a basic plan is. If you are going to have a range of plans that insurance companies can bid on, that you can look up on the computer, doesn't it seem, before you can even start, that you would have to know what the basic plan is?

How the President can argue that everyone will love the health care law once it goes into effect is beyond me. This administration can't even tell anyone where they can buy their insurance, what plan options will be available, and, most importantly, what the costs will be.

Remember what Nancy Pelosi said before they passed the law? They will have to pass the bill before we get to know what is in it. The administration is shopping its own version of that statement.

As the Senate Finance Committee chairman put it recently: this law is a train wreck waiting to happen. That is the Democratic Senate Finance Committee chairman.

Of course, on top of all of this, the law relies in part on new taxes and tax subsidies to support the coverage expansion.

This means the IRS will be involved in implementation. I have significant concerns with the ability of the IRS, particularly in the wake of the current scandal. The fact that this organization, the IRS-- tainted by such political behavior--is involved in implementing the new health care law has increased my belief that the health care law is not something the country wants or needs. Of course, the IRS employees don't want to come under this law either. I don't know of anybody who really wants to come under it.

I will take a close look at proposals to remove the IRS from any implementation activities, but I do think they should be subject to the law too. At the same time, I will continue to work to provide folks with relief from the health care law as a whole.

One of the things they have said if you are going on the exchange is, if you are in certain income categories, then you get a subsidy from the government to help you purchase your insurance. We are told now that will be self-reporting and will not be subject to audit. Doesn't that sound like something that could be fraught with a lot of fraud, where you say you just make enough to get into the biggest subsidies? Everybody wouldn't do that, of course, but I think there are some who would.

How is the government doing on some of the things that they already put into effect? I saw a little article on high-risk pools. When the bill went in, a lot of the States already had high-risk pools, and we worked with States to make those viable, but the Federal Government said we could do it for less. They put in a high-risk pool.

To keep people from jumping from the State ones, which, yes, are more expensive, over into the Federal one, which is less expensive, they said you couldn't make the jump unless you were without insurance for 6 months. People who are in the high-risk pool can't afford to be without insurance for 6 months.

There wasn't a big jump to the high-risk pool. But in spite of the fact that there wasn't a jump to the high-risk pool, the Federal high- risk pool went broke. It ran out of money.

Here is the disturbing part of that article. They said, well, they would just shift that cost over to the States. The States are already doing it, and they are doing the right thing. Now they are going to be asked to pick up the additional costs. How many parts of ObamaCare are going to get shifted over to the States? The States have had a lot of promises. Can any of those promises be met? Will they be met? A lot of decisions are being based on what the Federal Government promised.

Of course, in truth, we are out of money. The new law also tried to address the problem of rising health care costs. I believe the Federal fiscal situation is untenable, and we need to implement significant and far-reaching spending cuts to get our fiscal house in order. We cannot continue on our current path.

The President and his administration will argue that the new law will expand access and lower costs. While the law certainly increases access to insurance, it also moved billions of dollars from the Medicare Program to pay for this new insurance program. That is not exactly saving the government money.

The projections for lower costs also don't add up for the average American either. Insurance premiums and rates are increasing. Small businesses are unable to continue to provide health insurance for their workers.

Businesses in general have delayed hiring or are only hiring people part time--although I hope they listen to the part that I gave about the little part-time catch that is built into the law.

All of these decisions are directly driven by the economic impact of the health care law. My Senate Republican colleagues and I are focused on developing proposals that address the worst aspects of the health care law. The law increases premiums and health care costs, forces employers to stop offering insurance to their employees, and slashes benefits for millions of Medicare beneficiaries.

I support repealing both the cap on health savings accounts, flexible spending accounts, and the prohibition on over-the-counter purchases included in the health care law.

Flexible spending accounts help make consumers more aware and engage in their health care spending.

Health savings accounts are something that young, healthy staffers of the Senate like to do. They can do the math real easy. They can look at the regular program and see how much that would cost or they could take a look at health savings accounts. The difference in the price, in only 3 years they could cover the whole deductible part as long as they were healthy for 3 years. They would be covered for that part until something major happened--and they were covered for catastrophic--so they found that to be a real bargain. But not anymore.

Additionally, a number of other Senators and I have put forward bills to repeal the taxes imposed by the President's health care law. That would be

relief from new taxes on prescription drugs, relief from new taxes on medical devices, and relief from new taxes on health insurance plans. I wish to provide relief to employers from new regulations imposed on them by the law.

These ideas preserve competition in a private market for health care coverage and lower the cost of care for the consumer. All of these steps are commonsense reforms to the health care law that take us off the path toward a national, Federal health care system.

One of the most effective ways Congress can address the rising costs of health care is to focus on the way it is delivered as part of the Nation's current cost-driven and ineffective patient care system. America's broken fee-for-service structure is driving our Nation's health care system further downward.

Today's method of payment encourages providers to see as many patients and prescribe as many treatments as possible, but it does nothing to reward providers who keep patients healthy. Maligned incentives created by the fee-for-service system drive up costs and hurt patient care.

Tackling this issue is a good start to reining in rising health care costs. The health care law championed by President Obama and the majority party in the Senate did little to address these problems because the vast majority of the legislation involved a massive expansion of the government price controls found in the fee-for-service Medicare and Medicaid Programs.

If we wish to address the threat posed by out-of-control entitlement spending, we need to restructure Medicare to better align incentives for providers and beneficiaries. This will not only lower health care costs, it will also improve the quality of care for millions of Americans. It is very important that we protect access to rural health care services too.

There is more that can be done to better align Federal programs to meet the needs of rural and frontier States. The criteria that determine eligibility for Federal funds to support rural health care programs are based on factors that make it difficult to prove the needs of the underserved, rural, and frontier areas.

For example, one provider for 3,500 people in New York City is entirely different than the 3,500 people living in Fremont, Campbell County or, perhaps more so, Niobrara County. I use Niobrara County quite a bit, for example, because Niobrara County is the size of Delaware and has 2,500 people living in it. It is 90 miles tall, 75 miles wide, and near the bottom of the center is a town called Lusk. This is where almost all of the people live. They do have a hospital there.

When they have a doctor or a physician's assistant, the hospital is open. When they do not, they are 104 miles from a trauma center.

You can't apply the same rules to that hospital that you apply to New York City hospitals. In addition, we need to think more creatively about how to use technology services, to improve telemedicine capabilities, particularly for the rural areas so that where a person lives has less impact on the level of care they are able to receive.

The advancement of more powerful, wireless technologies has substantial potential to remotely link individuals across the country to deliver health care in more accessible settings. Our Nation has made great strides in improving the quality of life for all Americans. We need to remember that every major legislative initiative that has helped transform our country has been forged in the spirit of cooperation. These qualities are essential to the success and longevity of crucial programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

When it comes to health care decisions being made in Washington lately, the only thing the government is doing well is increasing partisanship and legislative gridlock. The President and Democrats need to listen. It is time to admit that this partisan experiment in government-run health care is failing. In order for this to get better, they must acknowledge the problem. Some of the law's authors and biggest supporters admit this law is a mess, and it will only get worse.

However, those in the Democratic leadership continue to support flawed health care laws out of pride, politics, or a belief that the government knows best. It makes no sense to stubbornly cling to a law that is so massive, burdensome, bureaucratic, and confusing that it is collapsing under its own weight.

By focusing on positive changes, Congress can give the failed law's proponents a way out. The key is finding common ground. More often than not, the country hears about what divides Congress instead of what unifies us. We could come together and focus on commonsense solutions with the kinds of step-by-step reforms that would protect Americans. I believe Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle can agree on 80 percent of an issue 100 percent of the time.

I want to be clear that this isn't compromise. When you compromise, each side gives up something they believe in, and in the end they get something no one believes in. I am about agreeing on common ground without compromise, without sacrificing each party's principles, by leaving out parts of the issue to look for a solution later.

Congress also needs to stop deal-making and start legislating. We need to stop developing comprehensive bills and then marketing them as the only option. To me, comprehensive means incomprehensible. The larger a bill is, the harder it is to agree. And, of course, you can tuck some things in there that people never see. This is especially true when we pass a bill that no one has fully read and then afterwards we find out what is in it.

No party has all the good ideas. By working together, the end result should be something that not only works but moves the country forward in a responsible way.

We still need health care reform, but it has to be the right way, with strong bipartisan support on individual health care issues. What happened to individual choice on a policy? What happened to liability reform? What about the sale of insurance across State lines or pooling through an association so they have leverage against the insurance companies? What happened to adequate compensation for providers? All of these have been left out. Providing Americans with access to affordable health care at a high quality is something Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree upon.

The challenges of the American health care system are not going away. If we improve health care in a practical instead of a political way, we can make its better. Good policy is good politics. Why do I have some hope this is going to happen? Congress is more interested now than they have ever been, and the reason is there was a Republican--yes, there was one Republican provision in the bill that forced Congress to go into the exchanges too. We and our staffs have to live under the law we passed. That is how it should be. But the result is hitting everyone in their offices right now. Every Senator and every Representative is looking at what may happen to their staff on January 1, and their staffs are concerned. It has changed the tenor of some of the hearings we are having. It is pretty hard-hitting on both sides. So with that, I do have hope.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to speak on behalf of Dick Loper, who will be inducted into the Wyoming Agriculture Hall of Fame at the 101st Wyoming State Fair in August. Since 1992, Wyoming has recognized individuals each year who have made substantial contributions to agriculture in our State. This year I have the honor of presenting this award to Dick with my colleague, Senator Barrasso.

Dick Loper is known across Wyoming for his rangeland consulting, Federal agency cooperation, and community involvement. As a rangeland consultant, Dick has served Wyoming's farmers, ranchers, and agricultural organizations throughout his entire career. He has also worked as a range consultant to the Wyoming State Grazing Board and has been involved in the organization since its creation. Rawlins Rancher and 2011 Wyoming Agriculture Hall of Fame inductee Niels Hansen commented,

Since his time in the Reagan Administration, Dick has made

his home in Wyoming working as a range consultant and helping

and teaching many ranchers about the benefits of range

monitoring and good range stewardship.

Dick is best known for his commitment to the health of Wyoming's rangelands. For over 30 years, he has worked with Bureau of Land Management, BLM, permitees and other parties to advance livestock management and oversee the implementation of range improvements. As a member of the Committee on Rangeland Classification, his efforts were crucial in gaining national attention for rangeland health, which led to the establishment of standards of healthy rangelands. These standards now give public land users and managers clear goals for grazing.

Dick Loper is also active in a variety of community organizations important to Wyoming agriculture. He served on the Society for Range Management Select Task Force on Unity in Concepts and the Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable. For his service, Dick has been honored with the Guardian of the Grasslands Award.

On a personal note, it seems I can't go very long without visiting with Dick Loper in Washington. In addition to seeing him in Wyoming, Dick is regularly in DC for meetings with Federal agencies and other partners. It is always helpful receiving the latest on public lands during his visits. I am proud to have the opportunity to recognize Dick Loper's achievements with Senator Barrasso as a 2013 inductee into the Wyoming Agriculture Hall of Fame. Wyoming and its public lands are well served by his lasting and continuing contributions to our State.

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

Mr. President, I wish to speak today on the nomination of Richard Cordray to be the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I want to speak against this confirmation.

Why is this nomination important? Once the Director is approved by Congress, by the Senate--not all the Congress, just by the Senate--we will no longer have any control over a bureau that collects everyone's financial records in detail and can cancel a loan up to 180 days even if both parties to the loan are happy.

Mr. Cordray was recess-appointed. I think it was because the President thought he would not be approved by Congress.

What I am about to tell you already is under the direction of this nominee. That recess appointment put him in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It sounds like a good title, but the reason this is of utmost concern to me and has been for the past 3 years is the lack of congressional oversight and blatant privacy intrusions of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB.

The Dodd-Frank Act, which created the CFPB, has been a hot topic of conversation since its passage in 2010. There are a lot of important discussions about different parts of the bill and some of the consequences we are seeing now, 3 years down the road. These are all important conversations to have, but today I am focusing on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The Bureau, as allowed by the Dodd-Frank Act, could direct up to $600 million every year, but it is not subject to the congressional appropriations process--the same congressional appropriations process that approves the budgets of the other agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Instead, the agency is funded from revenues from the Federal Reserve--the Federal Reserve--before the revenues come to the Treasury, funds that are supposed to be remitted to the Treasury for deficit reduction.

Some might ask: Isn't there a cap to the funding available to the CFPB? Yes, there is, but here is what it looks like. The cap was 10 percent of the Federal revenues for fiscal year 2010, 11 percent for fiscal year 2012, and it will be 12 percent for fiscal year 2013, with an inflation factor each and every year after that. 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 have been $500 million. These numbers are astonishing, and anyone saying that the Bureau is not funded by taxpayers is trying to pull a sleight-of-hand. The funds may not come directly from the Treasury, but taxpayers are going to have to take up the slack for funds they are no longer receiving from the Federal Reserve. I am not sure how we do that constitutionally, to move somebody outside and still take Federal money.

In addition, the Director of the Bureau has unlimited discretion over how the agency's money--these hundreds of millions of dollars I just talked about--is spent. Let me repeat that. The Director of the Bureau has unlimited discretion over how the agency's money is spent. He doesn't submit a budget. Nothing is approved.

Not only that, the Director is allowed to put fines and penalties collected by the Bureau into a slush fund that it does not have to return to the Treasury the way other agencies have to do. Do you think that might encourage a lot of fines and penalties by this Bureau? I think it would. I don't think it ought to be done that way.

The same Director who has so much unchecked authority doesn't even answer to the Office of Management and Budget and only has to submit routine financial information to the Office.

There is also no inspector general for this Bureau. Here is one example of why that is a problem. The Dodd-Frank Act expressly exempted auto dealers from the oversight purview of the Bureau. They listened to me when this bill was passing and found out that loans could be canceled within 180 days by the Bureau without the approval of the automobile dealer or the person who bought the automobile.

However, the Bureau doesn't think auto dealers should be exempt from oversight, so it found ways to exert itself through the banks. Banks are now looking at auto loans made, and the Bureau has issued its first significant penalty in connection with the vehicle financing.

The Bureau has also issued what it calls a fair lending guidance bulletin directed at institutions that make indirect automobile loans. In it the Bureau says indirect lenders will be viewed as participants in any discriminatory pricing by dealers due to their role in the auto loan credit decision process and suggests lenders impose controls on dealer markup and compensation policies. Is this revenge for them getting an exemption in the bill?

The Bureau's interpretation of Dodd-Frank and this guidance will have wide ramifications for indirect lenders and ultimately auto dealers. Because the bulletin issued is considered guidance and not a rule, there has been no opportunity for the public--including consumers, lenders, and dealers--to comment on this policy interpretation that will affect an industry that was exempted from the Bureau oversight.

The lack of accountability and congressional oversight over the Bureau's budget and Director are troubling, to say the least, but the picture becomes even more concerning when the lens is shifted to what kinds of oversight power are afforded to and being practiced by this Bureau--this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It sounds like it is for everybody.

Here is what I said when expressing my concern about this Bureau and the Dodd-Frank Act on May 20, 2010:

This bill was supposed to be about regulating Wall Street;

instead it's creating a Google Earth on every financial

transaction. That's right--the government will be able to see

every detail of your finances.

Your permission is not needed.

They can look at your transactions from the 50,000 foot

perspective or they can look right down to the tiny details

of the time and place where you pulled cash out of an ATM or

charged to your credit card.

Unfortunately, we are now finding this fear has become a reality. A recent Bloomberg article states that the Bureau is demanding records from banks and buying information from companies on at least 10 million American consumers for ``use in a wide range of policy research projects.'' This information gathering from banks includes credit card and checking account overdraft information as well as requirements to provide records on credit cards and on products such as credit monitoring.

In addition to the bank records it is collecting, the Bureau is collecting data on payday loans from debt collection agencies and building a mortgage database of loan and property records with information from agencies and other financial and property information holders.

The CFPD also says they are not including any personally identifiable information such as names and Social Security numbers while compiling all of this information. I made that statement at one of our listening sessions in Wyoming, and somebody from the audience yelled: No, they just check with the NSA.

What they are doing is taking all of that consumer data and layering it into consumer profiles to show a complete snapshot of each consumer's finances. For example, they can say: There is a consumer at a specified zip code who has $1,500 in the bank, $6,000 in credit card debt, $10,000 in student loan debt, and a $200,000 mortgage.

To the American people who are listening to me speak right now, what happens if you are one of the 10 million customers whose data is being collected? Does this make you angry and uncomfortable? What happens if you don't want all of your financial information compiled and used by the Bureau for policy research projects?

I am sure you would like to hear me tell you that you can call or write the Bureau and say you don't want the Bureau collecting your financial records from your bank, your student loan from a third party provider, your mortgage data, or your ATM data. I am sorry. You can't. You can't tell them to stay out of your records. It is not possible. If your data is being collected, you do not have the option to opt out nor does the CFPB need any kind of permission from you to gather your personal financial information.

This is another issue I tried to work on when the Dodd-Frank Act passed. I had an amendment that would simply require a privacy release, a signature from the consumer before the Bureau could collect the consumer's financial data. Unfortunately, my amendment was not accepted and we find ourselves in the situation we are in today: Americans cannot tell the government they don't want their personal financial information collected and stored.

What I would like to know is how this information is reining in Wall Street. The Dodd-Frank Act was sold to the public as a way to rein in Wall Street. As far as I can tell, it has turned out to be the perfect excuse for Big Brother to worm his way even further into our lives and our privacy.

Actually, Big Brother doesn't have to worm his way in. Dodd-Frank opened the door and invited him in, and that is what this lack of oversight is signaling. Go ahead and collect millions of consumers' information. Don't tell us what you are using it for, and don't feel the need to tell us much of anything else because this Director and this Bureau will not be accountable to Congress.

Meanwhile, the message we are getting from the Bureau, and some of my colleagues, is that Congress needs to sit back and butt out of the Bureau's business. We are hearing the message that asking for congressional oversight is akin to wanting consumers to be deceived and discriminated against.

Let's get one thing straight. None of my colleagues disagree that protecting consumers is important. We all want consumers to get a fair shake and be able to make informed financial decisions. I never envisioned the Federal Government making your financial decisions. I have championed financial literacy for much of my time in Washington and believe strongly in the value of individuals having the tools they need to make sound financial decisions for themselves and their families. I repeat: I never envisioned the Federal Government making your financial decisions, but that is not the issue. The issue is the need for checks and balances and for consumers to be able to make a choice as to whether their financial information is collected and used.

I cannot in good conscience, with these concerns weighing so heavily on my mind, support moving forward with the confirmation of a Director to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--the one already in charge of collecting your financial records--while doing a daily speech about his good work.

Wait until his confirmation. We will see more intrusion into our personal lives. Until it has changed so this man does not have this much power--power beyond anybody else in the Federal Government--there needs to be some changes that will balance consumers' protections with privacy protections and allow for a healthy and appropriate level of congressional oversight over an agency that wields this tremendous power and has its own source of revenue and no oversight. Not even an inspector general has this kind of power. Until that happens, I have to oppose this nomination. I hope my colleagues will join me.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I wish to make some comments about the vote we had on the floor awhile ago. I think it is time to stop holding the students of this country hostage 1 year at a time. That is what the bill did that just got turned down for cloture. It kicked the can down the road for a year. There were several Democrats who voted with the Republicans on that one, because they thought it is time to stop kicking the can down the road.

How do we stop kicking the can down the road? Take a look at the Republican alternative that was offered. The Democratic bill was going to save 40 percent of the students half of the interest rate for 1 year so that 3.44 percent would be their interest rate. The Republican plan solves it for all students getting a loan and it solves it in perpetuity. It does it by making it 3 percent greater than what the Federal Government borrows its money at, which at the present time is 3.66 percent. I submit 3.66 percent is not much higher than 3.44 percent and it is a lot less than 6.88 percent.

Why do we have a rise in the interest rate to 6.88 percent? The Federal Government, this body and the other body, and the President, decided a way we could fund health care in this country would be to take over the student loan business and then raise the rates to 6.88 percent. It provides money for the Affordable Care Act.

So we had a vote without having a side-by-side. Nobody got to vote on the 3.66-percent interest rate for everybody in perpetuity, but we got to vote for the 3.44-percent interest rate, which means kicking the can down the road for a year for 40 percent of the students. That is wrong.

Why didn't we get to vote on both of them? Well, the Republican plan would have had more votes than the Democratic plan. There are people on the other side who don't want to kick the can down the road and who understand the alternative is a reasonable solution to the problem. It would take care of all the students and take care of them from now on, and it provides a solution to the problem.

I have to say it is pretty clever, that by bringing up this bill by itself and having it defeated on cloture, it solves two problems: No. 1, they get to blame the Republicans. No. 2, the money will still be there for the Affordable Care Act. That means keeping the money and blaming the Republicans. How can it get better than that? It can get better than that if we solve the problem for all of the kids applying for loans this year, not just 40 percent of them, and solve it so they know exactly where the interest rate is going to be at the time they apply and it stays that way on their loan for the whole time they have the loan.

In future years, as others apply, the interest rate may be higher. The rate will be the same as whatever rate the Federal Government pays to borrow money. We are not going to be able to borrow at the low rates we are borrowing at now, but students will get the same break everybody else does, at just the 3-percent higher interest rate.

I notice the majority leader changed his vote to no, and that is so he can bring up this bill again. Why would we bring up this bill again without having the alternative bill so people can vote for it, which I think might pass? It is so we can be blamed one more time.

This isn't supposed to be a blame game around here. This is supposed to be about finding common ground and getting things done. I think there is some common ground; otherwise, there wouldn't be some Democrats joining with Republicans on a bill Republicans proposed, but that is not the way we need to do bills anyway. We need to have the chairman and the ranking member of the appropriate committee sit down and work out a basic bill that can then be amended on the floor--first amended in committee. We are not going through a regular process on a lot of these bills and yet we should be. I assume it would go to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Maybe, since it deals with the health care act, it would go to the Committee on Finance. At any rate, there would be an appropriate committee for it to go to, perhaps both the Finance Committee and the HELP Committee, but it didn't come to either. Neither proposal came to that committee.

It is time to quit making deals around here and start legislating. That is the way things have been done in America for a couple of hundred years and it is time we did that again. We can get solutions if we go through the regular process.

It is time to stop kicking the can down the road. I hope we can reach a solution. I hope we get to vote on both proposals and we can see where a majority of the votes go. Slowly, people are coming to realize that a solution for 100 percent of the students taking out loans is better than a solution for 40 percent of the students taking out loans, and one that goes on in perpetuity is better than one that goes on for 1 year.

Every year in July we say to the students, Your interest rate is going to go up unless we take action, and then we show how one side or the other doesn't want to take the action.

We have to get this problem solved. There are a lot of other aspects of higher education that need to be solved as well. It is time for that bill to be reauthorized, and it should go through the regular process as well.

I hope we quit blaming each other and get something done. I personally like the long-term solution for 100 percent of the students instead of half of a solution for 40 percent of the students.

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

Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for expediting the confirmation of Greg Phillips.

I rise this afternoon to add strong support for the confirmation of Gregory Alan Phillips to serve as a judge on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. I believe Mr. Phillips has all the characteristics necessary to serve as a Federal appellate judge. I worked with Mr. Phillips in the Wyoming Legislature and can say with confidence that he is recognized throughout the Wyoming legal community as a talented, respected, and thoughtful attorney.

This vote is also important because the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has experienced a number of judicial vacancies recently. In February the Senate confirmed Judge Bacharach of Oklahoma to the panel, and we now have the opportunity to fill another vacancy so the Tenth Circuit can continue its work.

Mr. Phillips has served as Wyoming's attorney general since 2011. The attorney general is not an elected position in Wyoming, and it is important to note that Mr. Phillips was appointed by Governor Mead, although they do not share the same party affiliation. This speaks tremendously to Mr. Phillips' talent and legal reputation. Governor Mead and former U.S. attorney comments that Greg is a ``first-rate legal thinker, a tireless worker and has an abiding sense of fair play.'' Governor Mead goes on to say that if confirmed, all those who appear before Mr. Phillips will find ``a judge fully prepared, engaged, and respectful to all.''

Mr. Phillips was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee with a unanimous vote on April 18. The fact that he now stands for a vote after only being nominated in January is a credit to his abilities and strong bipartisan support. I thank Chairman Leahy, Ranking Member Grassley, and members of the Judiciary Committee for reviewing and moving this nomination along so quickly.

It is no surprise that the American Bar Association unanimously gave Mr. Phillips its highest rating. Greg has extensive experience practicing law as a deputy county attorney and in private practice. Before becoming Wyoming's attorney general, Mr. Phillips served 7 years as an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Wyoming, handling criminal prosecutions and appeals. Greg has extensive experience arguing in Federal court, including taking nearly 20 cases before the Tenth Circuit.

Mr. Phillips studied economics at the University of Wyoming and graduated with honors from the Wyoming College of Law, where he was on the Law Review. Immediately following law school

Mr. Phillips served as a clerk for U.S. district judge Alan Johnson of Wyoming. Judge Johnson writes that Greg is ``devoted to the rule of law and will honor the remarkable judicial officers who preceded him.'' Specifically, Judge Johnson notes that Mr. Phillips' thorough study of the U.S. sentencing guidelines, experience as a Federal criminal prosecutor, and understanding of State and Federal legal issues will serve him well on the Tenth Circuit.

Mr. Phillips also has strong support from his colleagues from around the Nation. Thirty-four attorneys general wrote the Senate Judiciary Committee in March expressing their support for the nomination. I am told there would have been more signatures on that letter, but the nomination was advanced so diligently that some did not get a chance to sign the letter before Greg's hearing.

I would like to conclude by saying that I can personally attest to Mr. Phillips' qualifications to serve as a Federal judge. Greg was on the senate Judiciary Committee when we served together in the Wyoming Legislature. On the senate floor, we sat across the aisle from each other--and I do not mean just across the Republican-Democratic aisle, I mean right next to each other across the aisle--and got to visit a lot. He was a part of formulating my 80 percent rule for legislating.

Greg and his family are highly respected in their Wyoming community, and Wyoming is proud to call Greg one of our own. He will be an outstanding judge to follow Terry O'Brien, another longtime friend of mine. Terry and I, when he was a Wyoming District Court judge and I was in the Wyoming State senate, used to have dinner together to solve the world's problems. Then I became a U.S. Senator and he became a U.S. circuit court judge. I know his successor will honorably fill that seat.

Mr. Phillips is highly qualified to serve on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, and I call on my colleagues to also support his confirmation. Let's get this man to work in his new job.

I yield the floor.

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

I yield back the remainder of any of our time and ask for the yeas and nays.