Floor Statements

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to acknowledge my colleagues in the Senate for standing up for family farms. I am also here to issue a very straightforward warning to OSHA: The Senate makes crystal clear in the new appropriations bill that OSHA policies and inspectors better get in line with the law.

Since 1976 Congress has included specific language in appropriations bills very specifically prohibiting OSHA from enforcement action on farms with 10 or fewer employees. However, this did not stop the agency from distorting the definitions of farming practices in sending inspectors to small family-owned farming operations anyway.

In my home State of Nebraska, OSHA targeted a family farm that grows corn and soybeans and has just one nonfamily employee. It is clearly within the scope of the congressional exemption. As do most American farms, this farming operation includes grain bins for crop storage after harvest. But according to OSHA's absurd logic, grain storage, they say, is not part of farming operations, so it is not exempt from the regulations. I can't make this stuff up. While OSHA made no claim that anyone on the farm had been injured, the agency said the grain bins failed to comply with OSHA regulations, and--get this--they slapped the farm with fines totaling $132,000.

This is not an issue that is confined to one farm in Nebraska. A 2011 memo from OSHA's enforcement chief to regional administrators acknowledged that the law prevents the agency from regulating small farms. They got that right. However, the memo proceeds to recategorize farming operations that happen after harvest, and OSHA said those are not exempt. Under this recategorization, OSHA claimed that its inspectors had the authority to regulate small family-owned farms and their grain storage facilities. This is a blatant overreach and yet another example of this administration's backdoor rulemaking.

Whenever I meet with farmers and ranchers in Nebraska, they oftentimes raise concerns about Federal regulatory overreach. It is absolutely no wonder farmers and ranchers feel as though they have a target on their backs. OSHA's twisting of the law serves as evidence that farmers' concerns are legitimate.

In response to OSHA's regulatory overreach, I wrote a letter to Secretary Perez, joined by a bipartisan group of 42 of my Senate colleagues. We requested that OSHA immediately stop its unlawful regulation of family farms. We also directed OSHA to issue updated guidance correcting its obvious misinterpretation of the law.

I am pleased that the Omnibus appropriations bill further reinforces our position through report language specifically addressing OSHA's overreach while continuing the long-standing small-farm exemption. The report language calls on OSHA to work with USDA before moving forward with any attempts to redefine and regulate post-harvest activities such as storing grain. It also makes it clear that the exemption applies to those activities that occur on the farm. That includes the entire farming operation.

I thank my 42 colleagues who joined me in signing the letter, as well as my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee for sending a clear message that Federal agencies are not above the law. As I stated earlier, small family-owned farms have been exempt from OSHA regulations for the past 35 years. This is not a new concept. Simply put, this language reaffirms the commonsense ideas that Federal agencies cannot and should not bypass the law by redefining it to expand their jurisdiction.

Let me be clear that we all want farms and ranches to be safe. In fact, a safe working environment is especially important for small farmers and ranchers whose families are oftentimes the only ones who work the farm or the ranch. Small family farms and ranches in my home State and across this country should be able to continue their work to feed and fuel the world without fear of being targeted by this administration in direct violation of the law. If the administration believes the law should be changed, they should come to Congress and make their case. They should not ignore the law as if it does not exist.

Again, I thank my colleagues for affirming the law of the land and supporting our Nation's farmers and ranchers.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I wish to congratulate Marie and John ``Jack'' Nolan of Lincoln, NE, on their 70th wedding anniversary. Their commitment to one another and their devotion to family and faith are an inspiration.

Jack Nolan and Marie Barrett met in Pennington, NJ, where Jack and Marie's brothers were classmates at Pennington Prep School. Jack and

Marie became friends and then started to date. They kept dating as Jack left for college to play center for Temple University's football team in Philadelphia, PA. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the U.S. entrance into the war, Jack volunteered for Army Air Forces Aviation. In an instant, Jack was no longer playing football for Temple but, rather, beginning his primary training in San Antonio, Texas.

Jack's move to San Antonio would be the first of many moves to follow. After completing flight school and additional trainings, he was sent to B-25 bomber school in Greenville, SC. During this time, Jack and Marie wrote letters and remained devoted to one another. Jack knew that he would soon be sent overseas to fight in World War II, but he had one last thing to do at home: marry Marie. Marie travelled on a troop train to Greenville, SC, and married Jack on January 6, 1944. Three weeks later, Jack was sent to fight in New Guinea.

After his service in New Guinea, Jack and Marie were moved to Pampa, TX, and then to Enid, OK, where he taught others to fly the B-25 bombers. World War II ended while they were living in Enid. After the war, Jack remained in the Air Force, continuing his service to our great Nation. I am told that Marie and Jack like to reminisce about their more than 20 moves throughout his military career. They lived in numerous places across the United States, and Jack spent more than a year in Japan. Marie's support of Jack and his military service was unwavering. She remained focused on her husband, faith, and growing family.

His last assignment was at Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base in Kansas City, MO. After his retirement from the Air Force in the early 1960s, Marie and Jack remained in Kansas City. Jack coordinated emergency preparedness for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Marie served as a church secretary at St. Elizabeth Catholic Church in Kansas City. They called Kansas City home for 30 years.

Since 1990, they have lived in Lincoln, NE. Being active in their church and community and helping others has always been of great importance to them. Marie and Jack have been blessed with four children, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. The family has shared that they are grateful for Jack and Marie's relentless love, example of faith in action, and encouragement. Their partnership as husband and wife sets a great example for others to follow. Congratulations to Marie and Jack on seventy years of marriage. May God bless them always.

If there is not an objection, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 6 to 8 minutes as in morning business.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Arkansas and the chair of the Budget Committee. I am here on the floor today to voice strong objection to a Federal agency that is disregarding the clear language of the law in pursuit of what has appeared time and time again to be what I describe as an antiagriculture agenda with this administration.

Let me explain. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is known as OSHA, is now claiming jurisdiction, of all things, of family farms. But they are doing that in defiance of Congress. For the past 35 years, literally 35 years, Congress has included very specific language in appropriations bills. It prohibits OSHA from enforcement on small farms. Literally since 1976, the law has said very clearly: No funds appropriated for OSHA can be used for rules or regulations that apply to farming operations with 10 or fewer employees.

Clearly what Congress is trying to do is provide protection for the family farms that exist in our States across this country. Yet, lo and behold, OSHA has decided it can label certain sections of the farm something else by fiat and send in their inspectors. Let me explain what has happened in Nebraska.

OSHA targeted a family farm in rural Nebraska. They grow corn and soybeans and raise some cattle. This farm has one nonfamily employee on that farm. In other words, it is a very typical Nebraska farm, just the kind of farm Congress envisioned in creating the exemption dating back to 1976.

OSHA ignored what Congress directed. They ignored the law exempting farms and slapped this family farm with fines totaling more than $130,000. OSHA accused the farmer of willful violations. Let me give you a couple of examples: Failure to conduct atmospheric tests in a grain bin; failure to wear OSHA-approved gear when entering the grain bin, to name a few.

You cannot make this stuff up. I kid you not. The violations I listed were $28,000 each, with a long list of lesser violations piled on top. They threw the book at this farmer. Let me be clear that OSHA made no claim that anyone had been hurt. They claimed only that the farm failed to comply with the OSHA manual.

I am sure the farmer was stunned to find OSHA inspectors on his farm out in the middle of Nebraska, and be told he suddenly must comply with OSHA regulations, knowing the law says his farm is exempt from OSHA regulations. I suspect he was rightly confused, angry, and frustrated.

OSHA claimed it was not regulating the farming operation at all; rather, it was only regulating the nonfarming operations. Congress had not exempted the nonfarming parts of farms. Right? So what was this nonfarming activity that OSHA believes it can regulate? Grain storage. Grain storage.

I grew up on a farm. Every farm has grain storage. It has hay storage. It has silage storage. Can they regulate the farming operations relative to those items? Yes. That is right. OSHA in their wisdom says storing grain after a harvest allows them to go in and regulate this farm. I am not sure how many OSHA employees have spent much time on a farm. I suspect not very many.

But there are not too many grain farms that do not store some of their grain. An iconic part of the agricultural landscape is grain bins. They are fundamental to farming and have been since I grew up on a farm. If farmers had to sell everything at harvest, they would not make much money, because that is when prices are typically the lowest. So it is only responsible for a farmer in a part of the farming operation to have grain bins on the farm and it has been that way forever. OSHA's claim that the storage of grain is not part of farming is absolutely incredible and it is absurd.

It is also a blatant overreach in violation of the law, the law we have been passing in Congress dating back to 1976.

Whenever I meet the farmers and ranchers in Nebraska, they often raise concern about regulatory overreach. In fact, they feel as if they are targeted by this administration. OSHA's distorted definition of farming, in order to expand its jurisdiction, serves as evidence that farmers' concerns are legitimate concerns. OSHA should never be allowed to end-run the law in this manner.

I am asking Labor Secretary Perez to rein in OSHA and send a clear signal to America's farmers that they don't have a target on their backs. OSHA must rescind its absurd guidance suggesting that grain bins, of all things, are not a part of the farming operation, and it must stop sending inspectors on to family farms in violation of the law.

I have drafted, and I am sending a letter to Secretary Perez, a letter requesting that he make these changes in compliance with the law. I am inviting all of my colleagues to join me in signing that letter.

Let me conclude by saying let's stand with our Nation's family farmers,

which we have done since 1976. Let's rein in this regulatory overreach and send a message that Federal agencies must abide by the clear direction of Congress.

I thank the Senators on the floor for the courtesy, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Oklahoma, and I would like to use his comments maybe as a springboard for some thoughts I have, not only on this nomination but on the terrible mess we find ourselves in today here in the Senate.

I am a fairly new Member of the Senate. I came here just 5 years ago. I thought a lot about reelection, and I announced some months ago that I would not seek a second term in the Senate. So you might say I don't really have a fighter in this ring. I am here for a limited period of time. I have already decided that. My interest is seeing the Senate operate in a way which will be in the best interests of our country, that will fulfill the vision that our Founders had of a country where there would be freedom and where the minority would be able to voice their view as well as the majority.

The process by which the House of Representatives and the Senate were put together was a very thoughtful process. Our Founders looked at our country and its future, and they decided there needed to be a body where the population would be represented based upon numbers, based upon the population, and that became the House of Representatives.

For a State like Nebraska, 200-some years later that doesn't work very well. It is pretty obvious that our three House Members can be consistently, routinely outvoted by a whole bunch of other States: California, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas. I could go on and on. We have three Members in the House. It is obvious that we are going to be on the losing end.

The other piece of that is it is a majority-based body. So if you are in the majority, with the Rules Committee, you pretty well set the rules. It just works that as long as the majority can keep their members together, they are going to win. That is just the way it works. About the only way you can change that is to change the majority.

When our Founders looked at that, they said: We have to have a different approach in the Senate. That led to the great compromise.

What we ended up with is just a remarkable system. If you think about it, Nebraska in the Senate is as powerful as California. Nebraska is as powerful as Pennsylvania because we each get two Members. We are equally represented.

They also recognize that the pendulum would swing. Sometimes one party would be in control, and sometimes another party would be in control. Originally, when the Senate was set up, any one Member of the body could come to the Senate floor and object or just debate something to death. That pretty well was how it operated, and it operated for decades and decades that way.

Then came World War I and Senators began to recognize that funding the

war was going to be a very serious problem. There was a tremendous amount of affinity between Senators and people back in the country where their ancestors came from--Germany--and they had to find a way to end debate. So they finally, after discussing this and debating it, decided the best way of doing that was to put something in place where you could literally take a vote. I think back then, if my memory serves me correctly, if two-thirds of the Senators voted, they could end debate.

That was quite a change for the Senate. The whole idea that a single Senator wasn't going to be able to literally force issues in the Senate was a very difficult issue. But that change was made, and it operated that way for many decades following. Then in the 1970s, the decision was made that it would take 60 votes to end debate. It would pull the number down to 60. But it was always recognized that the rules could only be changed by a two-thirds majority; that is, until just a few weeks ago. Then, something happened here in the Senate that literally shakes the foundation of this country and it shakes the foundation of this body.

I guess if you are in the majority at the moment, you are probably saying: Geez, Mike. It seems to work out pretty well. Well, it won't work out very well for the history of this body, for this institution, for its Members, and, most importantly, for the citizens of the United States, because it was the method chosen to change the rules that is the frightening piece.

Think about this. We came down here a few weeks ago. A ruling was made by the Chair, and the majority leader said: I will appeal that ruling.

Now, we all know, if we have read the Senate rules--and I hope to goodness we have all read the Senate rules--that by appealing the ruling of the Chair, you can overrule the Chair by a majority vote.

Let me repeat that. We bypassed the rule that says it takes two- thirds to change the rules of the Senate, and the majority said: We will appeal the ruling; and if we get a majority, we will overturn the ruling. That is what happened, and that is where we find ourselves tonight.

This isn't inconsequential, and we are not trying to be arbitrary and capricious, but we are trying to make the point that this is a huge issue for the future of our country. Let me point out what this now means for the Senate. What this means is that if the majority leader, whoever that is, Republican or Democrat, does not like the way things are going, they can appeal the ruling of the Chair and overturn that ruling by a majority vote because now the precedent is set. It is in our history. It is in our rules.

Some look at this and say: You need not panic; this only applies to circuit court nominees, district court nominees, and executive appointments.

Let's think about that for a second. Let's say we have a Supreme Court of the United States where there are four members who are pretty consistent in ruling one way--some might call it the liberal way--and we have four members who are pretty consistent in ruling another way-- some might call it the conservative way--and there is one member of the Supreme Court who kind of moves back and forth between the four over here and the four over here, between the four liberal members and the four conservative members, whatever you want to call it. That is a pretty unpredictable vote.

Let's say something happens. Maybe there is a health issue. Maybe there is a decision by that member there in the middle to retire. I don't know. It could be a whole host of things. That is the human condition. Things happen to us. Let's say we are in the last 18 months of an administration. The President is due to go out. The campaign has already started. People are showing up in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and everywhere else. They are raising money. They have Presidential races they are organizing, and they are doing all the things they need to do. You have Republicans thinking: By golly, it is our time. We either keep the White House or win the White House. You have Democrats thinking the same. And you have a President who all of a sudden has a Supreme Court appointment smack dab in the middle of four members on one side and four members on the other side.

Let's say the majority has the ability to put somebody of their own ilk into that position--whether it is Republican or Democrat or liberal or conservative. They look at this and they say: You know, we could lose the White House or we might not get the White House. These are appointments for life. It is not as if we are appointing somebody for 4 years; these are appointments for life. We have kind of come to the conclusion, as we talked about it on our side of the aisle, that, by golly, it is in the best interests of this country if we can make this appointment. You know what. We do not have 60 votes to get it done. We have counted the votes. It looks as though this is going to come out of the Judiciary Committee on a straight party-line vote. What are we going to do now?

I know what will happen. You know what will happen. Every Member of the Senate knows what will happen. I don't care if you are a Republican or a Democrat or a conservative or a liberal or a Socialist or whatever you want to call yourself, we know what will happen. There will be a ruling by the Chair. There will be an appeal by the majority leader. And all of a sudden we will have a rule where you can confirm a Supreme Court nomination--a nomination to a job for life--based upon a majority vote. Does anybody think for a minute that is not going to happen? Does anybody think for a minute that the circumstances surrounding that will not occur?

I guess if you are on the Republican side of the aisle and it is a very strong conservative who is going to the Supreme Court, maybe you look at that and say: Thank goodness. We saved the country.

Maybe if you are a Democrat and it is a good strong liberal who is going onto the Supreme Court, you say: Thank goodness. We saved the country, and it was worth it.

But you see, here is the dilemma in which we find ourselves. The dilemma in which we find ourselves is that the majority of this body has now set the precedent and you cannot pull it back. There is not any way now that you can unwind the clock and turn back the clock.

Let me offer another thought. Let's say we are a few years down the road and you have a piece of legislation and your side of the aisle has decided that piece of legislation is absolutely critical for the future of this country. Maybe it is cap-and-trade, maybe it is another health care bill--whatever. All of a sudden somebody says: We have to get this done. We are in the last 12 months of this administration. We are looking at the numbers. We are not going to win the White House again, the way it is looking. The precedent is there: Appeal the ruling of the chair.

The point I am making is this. It is not that the rules were changed. The rules have been changed in the Senate a number of times by the way the Senate rules contemplate--with a supermajority voting to change those rules. Now we have torn that up because now we have established a precedent.

I am in the process of reading Senator Byrd's history of the Senate-- a remarkable man. I got to know him a little bit. He was still here when I came to the Senate, before he passed. He happened to be on the other side of the aisle, but I came to respect him so much. He would never have stood for this. He never would have tolerated that this institution would be so mistreated by anybody, Republican or Democrat. Boy, in his heyday he would have been at his seat screaming at the top of his lungs about what we were doing to the Senate with this vote, what the majority was going to do to the future of this great body.

In his history of the Senate, he talks about how important it is that there is this body where a minority view of the world can be represented.

If I were the majority leader, I guess I would like this to run efficiently and well-oiled and smoothly. I was a Governor. I was a mayor. The days when I got my way were much better than days when I did not get my way. I did not like being frustrated by the legislature. I didn't like the city council telling me I couldn't get my way. I could not understand, some days, why they could not figure out that I was right.

One day I was sitting down with a State senator. He had been there a lot of years. I was complaining about the way the legislature was treating me. I couldn't understand why the legislature couldn't follow everything the

Governor wanted done. He listened very patiently and he looked at me and he said: You know, Mike, nobody elected you king.

I think that is what Bob Byrd would have said--nobody elected any of us king. You see, our Founders set up this system with the whole idea that we would not have kings anymore, that there would be checks and balances, and that we would be forced to deal with each other, sometimes more artfully than at other times but that we would be forced to deal with each other.

The majority leader came down here and he said: I don't understand this, and he talks about this process. This process got started because he filed cloture on 10 nominations. Why are we not working on this? If you look at the history of the Senate over the last years--I have been here; I watched it; I turn on my TV in the office to see what is going on on the Senate floor. Do you know what I see? Exactly what you see, what all of us see. We sit hour after hour, in cloture or in quorum call hour after hour when amendments are pending.

I thought--I had this mistaken impression--that every Senator could file an amendment; that if I had a better idea on something, I could file an amendment and I would get a hearing on the amendment. I would be able to come down here and try to argue to my colleagues: Pass my amendment. We have not seen that kind of process for years under this majority.

I didn't think it was possible to mishandle the Senate when I came here. I looked at the books of rules and interpretations and volumes, chapter after chapter written about the rules of the Senate, and I said to myself: There is no way you could mismanage this body because these rules are as intricate as they could be. Boy, was I proven wrong. You can mismanage this body. We have seen it. And that is where we find ourselves today.

At the end of the day, why did it happen? Why did it happen? Why are we putting ourselves in this position? A former U.S. Senator from Nebraska who had been here--I think he was here three terms. He had a wonderful saying. When his party was not in power, he would say at speeches: Ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you, the worm will turn. It was his way of saying: You know what. I have been in the majority and I have been in the minority, and it will change because the people will send a message into this Chamber, just as they did on the health care bill. They will send a message that this is not the kind of country they want.

We somehow have to figure out how to put this back in the box. This nuclear option needs to be sealed up, hidden away, and never used again--I don't care if the Republicans are in the majority or the Democrats are in the majority. This basically means, today, that all of those rules, all of those chapters written about those rules have no meaning whatsoever because there are no rules. If I do not like what is going on here and I am in the majority, all I have to do is appeal the ruling of the Chair and get my team to stand together and we have changed the way the Senate operates. It is as simple as that.

I think at times in our history we would like to think that we are the smartest people in the world, that we thought of something no other person has thought of in the history of this country. Not true. If you read what Senator Byrd wrote about the history of the Senate, many times U.S. Senators, dissatisfied, losing personally because of a ruling of the Chair, had an opportunity to appeal that ruling and win and realized that was the wrong course of action because they would set a precedent that you could change the rules by breaking the rules. That is exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago. It is not the fact that the rule has changed, although I disagree with where we ended up, it is the method by which the majority--Democrats--changed those rules, because that method is now precedent and it is now available to Republicans and Democrats and it is wide open. I guarantee that in our lifetime we will see a Supreme Court nominee put on the Supreme Court by this method. I guarantee that we will see--whether it is in our lifetime or at some point after--that there will be a situation where legislation is now done by a majority.

What does that mean for the country? I will give a good example. The great compromise protected States such as Nevada, Nebraska, and Iowa. We all get two Senators. We all get to come to the floor and fight for what we believe in.

I imagine that every Senator would say something to the effect of: I come from a beautiful State, the State of Nebraska. We are conservative people by nature. I don't think you live in Nebraska unless you have a pioneer spirit and you are conservative by nature. That is who we are. We essentially believe that less government is a good idea.

When I was Governor, people didn't want me running their schools. They had a school board. They felt they could make thoughtful and intelligent decisions about running their schools. I thought they could too. That is the nature of who we are.

Do you realize that on executive appointments--district court and circuit court judges--we basically get dealt out of this. Let's say I have a problem with a nominee, and I want to put a hold on that nominee until they come to my office and deal with me. Everybody on both sides of the aisle gets the opportunity to use that. Well, guess what. That was voted away a few weeks ago.

Why would a Republican administration deal with anyone in today's majority? Why would they care? It doesn't make any difference.

I went through that process. I was a member of the President's Cabinet. I hope I would have the decency that if anybody asked me a question, I would answer the question or try to solve their problem or try to work with them. Quite honestly, why do they need to? How can that issue be forced now? They don't need your vote. They can get through the process if their party is the majority of the Senate. This body was never intended to operate that way.

I want to spend a few minutes of my time talking about what I really think this is about, and this makes it an even more tragic story. The majority leader was here a few minutes ago and said: Well, if you are going to be like this, then we will work on Christmas. We will work the weekend before; we will work the day before.

I was sitting there thinking: What is new about that? What's even threatening about that? I mean, that is the way business is done.

We sit through hours and hours of quorum calls and then all of a sudden they file cloture on 10 nominees 2 weeks before the break? It is kind of obvious to me what is going on here. Is it obvious to anyone else what is going on here? They are trying to force the issue.

Why didn't we start working on this weeks ago? Why don't you run the Senate 24/7 so we can move amendments and give us the opportunity to vote on amendments? Why sit hour after hour in a quorum call?

I think what this is really all about is this: We had reached an agreement. Remember that evening when we all walked down the hall-- Republicans, Democrats, and Independents--and went into the Old Senate Chamber and shut the doors. There was no media or staff. It was just us talking about the Senate.

I am not going to share a lot about what was talked about in there, but I thought it was a pretty good meeting. We have done that a couple of times. We did that on the START treaty, and we did it that evening a few months ago.

It wasn't very pleasant, but over the next day or so we shook hands and said to each other: OK, we get it. We don't want to get in the business of breaking the rules to change the rules. We understand the precedent that is setting. Once you put that on the books, like I said, you can't unwind the clock.

So, OK, this is what we are going to do--and I must admit I didn't like it very much. I thought we were giving up too much. Having said that, the alternative was not very attractive. We shook hands, like gentlemen do, and we called a truce and those were the rules we would operate under.

Everybody said: We dodged a bullet on that one, and the Senate will continue to function like it has functioned the last 225 years. It will function as a place where the minority, whoever that might be at any given time, has a

voice. It is the only body in the world that operates like that.

As I said, I must admit I had qualms about it. I talked to some of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle about my qualms, and at the end of the day I reached the conclusion that it was better than the nuclear option.

So why did this come up again? If we had reached a deal--if we shook hands like gentlemen and women do, why did this come up again? I thought this was behind us. I thought we would make our way through nominations and work long hours. Most of these are very noncontroversial, and I thought we had reached an agreement.

We had reached an agreement. We all knew we had reached an agreement. So why did Democrats feel that all of a sudden we needed to revisit this?

The argument I want to make tonight is this--and I am going to draw on a little bit of history. When I first came here, I sat in a chair over there. I will never forget it. It was Christmas Eve day when we were brought in here to vote on a piece of legislation. Christmas Eve votes are pretty unusual around here. We all sat at our desks. We don't usually enforce that rule, but we all sat at our desks.

For people like me, I left this Chamber very, very sad and discouraged. On a pure party-line vote, a monumental piece of legislation that practically no one had read and was poorly understood--in fact, the Speaker said: We have to pass this to understand what is in it. No truer words were ever spoken. It passed. Not a single Republican in the House or the Senate voted yes on that legislation.

When I came here, I kind of had the idea that there would be give and take, that I would get my idea, you would get your idea, and at the end of the day the Senate was a body that would force compromise or the bill wouldn't pass.

Something unusual happened. The President was a Democrat, the Senate had 60 Democrats, so debate could end, and the majority of the House was overwhelmingly Democrat. It became very clear to me that my view of the world didn't matter, and it wasn't going to matter because as long as they could sweeten this thing up and do deals, and whatever else, my State was impacted by it. We all remember the Cornhusker Kickback. But at the end of the day it passed.

I could never figure out how that bill would work. It just didn't make any sense to me. I had been a Governor. I had seen how failed Medicaid was--40 percent of the doctors would not take Medicaid. I could not imagine how adding millions to that system was going to help poor people. To me it looked like it was going to hurt them. It was kind of like giving them the bus ticket and then saying: We are only running one bus in Washington, DC, these days. It is probably not going to be very successful.

I looked at what was happening in the rest of the bill, and it just didn't make any sense to me. I think I know why we revisited this rule. When the rollout occurred right about that time, all heck broke loose. The American people finally realized how bad this bill was. In fact, there is one State out there, the State of Oregon, that didn't sign anybody up because their system melted down.

The exchange was a mess. People found out that all of these promises--remember this one: If you like your plan, you can keep it, period. If you like your plan, you can keep it, period.

Not only was that used on the campaign trail--you know, we all get out on the campaign trail and hyperventilate here and there. That phrase was used by somebody in real authority: The President of the United States of America. He went to the American people and said: If you like your plan, you can keep it.

I said how could that possibly work. The whole idea is you have to force people off their plan and onto a different plan. If you like your plan, you get to keep it?

In 2010, the administration's own rule on this subject showed that as many as 80 percent of small business plans and 69 percent of all business plans would lose their grandfathered status.

A very thoughtful Senator, a guy by the name of Mike Enzi, put in a resolution of disapproval which would have canceled that regulation. Back then he was able to get it to a vote. You would think that if you want to support the President of your party and his pledge to the American people--if you like your plan, you get to keep it, period--you would vote with your President. You would think that would be 100 to 0.

I don't know how Republicans could be against that. I don't know how Democrats could be against that. After all, that is what this person in authority promised the American people: If you like your plan, you get to keep it, period. He said it over and over. It was like a broken record.

You know how that vote went here? Let me remind everybody. It failed on party-line votes. Democrats voted no on the resolution: If you like your plan, you get to keep it. My goodness. Is that an embarrassment or what?

What was the message that day? Were they trying to say: No, if you like your plan, you don't get to keep it? The President isn't being truthful with you. Was that the message that day? What was going on? I mean, I was stunned by that vote.

How could you be against the President's own promise? That was back in 2010. That information was available to the President and his people back in 2010. Yet they kept saying it: If you like your plan, you get to keep your plan.

One other estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, which I think generally we all respect--they do good work for us. They do our scoring. They said that up to 20 million employees could lose their employer-sponsored insurance. Wait a second. That information was available too. So how has this promise worked out?

This fall, more than 4.7 million cancellation letters went out in 32 different States. I have read the articles. I imagine everybody in the Chamber has read the articles. They say 4.7 million people got cancellation letters in 32 different States. The cancellation letter basically said: Well, sorry. This big law got passed on a party-line vote, and you don't get to keep your plan, just as was predicted by the CBO and the administration's own people. This should not be stunning to anybody in this body, but it was stunning to the American people.

The President said: Oh my goodness. I think this is a problem. So he said to insurance companies: You have to fix this. You have to get people their plan. If they like their plan, they get to keep their plan. And it didn't matter whether it was Democrats or Republicans in given States, they said: Mr. President, you can't unwind that clock.

What I would say to that is, wait a second here. I don't like this law, but it passed. I was sitting there the day it passed. It passed on a completely party-line vote. And people literally were caught in a situation--millions of them--where they realized they wouldn't get to keep their plan. So could the President solve that problem? No. It wasn't a policy fix; it was a political fix. That is what he was doing. He was literally trying to solve a political problem for the majority that passed the darn bill. I mean, it is unbelievable.

Many weighed in. The American Academy of Actuaries said this:

Changing the ACA provisions could alter the dynamics of the

insurance market, creating two parallel markets operating

under different rules, thereby threatening the viability of

insurance markets operating under the new rules.

Now, I am as competitive as anybody. I have run a lot of elections. I understand the importance of being in the majority in this body. I especially understand that after what the majority did over the last few weeks. We went 225 years as a country, and it was only in the last couple of weeks that the majority said: Look, we are tired of dealing with you, minority. We are going to get our own way.

It reminded me of the day ObamaCare was passed. It was identical. It was like: Johanns, get lost. We don't care what you think about this. We have 60 votes. Sit down and shut up.

Is that the way the Senate is supposed to operate? I don't think so. I don't think that is what was envisioned when this body was put together, and it has been forever changed. It happened because ObamaCare is out of control. It is not the Web site. The Web site was a mess. It just proved to us that the White House couldn't manage this. That is what it proved to us. But we can fix a Web site. They can get smart people who go in and figure it out.

That wouldn't be me, but there are many people in the United States who could be brought to bear to solve this problem of dealing with the Web site. It is not the Web site, although it is a huge embarrassment. It was a huge embarrassment for the White House. It was a huge embarrassment for the President of the United States. It was a huge embarrassment for Kathleen Sebelius. It was a huge embarrassment for the Democrats who voted for this. But at the end of the day it can be fixed, and I would guess they would fix it. I kept saying to people back home that I think they will get it fixed. How tough is that? How tough would it be to do it the right way the first time? But they didn't. It just proves they are not very competitive.

What is happening here is the wheels are coming off this policy because the policy never made any sense. When the President made this announcement: Insurance companies, you fix it, America's health insurance plans said that premiums have already been set for the next year based on the assumption of when consumers will transition into the new marketplace. Who decided when they would transition into the new marketplace? The insurance companies didn't. The majority did. The White House did. Health and Human Services did.

They go on in their statement:

If now fewer younger and healthier people choose to

purchase coverage in the exchange, premiums will increase and

there will be fewer choices for consumers.

Well, let me say something that is obvious to everybody in this Chamber. Your premiums are going up. Why? Young people are so turned off. Young people are so turned off by what is happening. I had a young person show up at a town hall. This was a year and a half ago. They said: Here is kind of the deal. It is just my wife and I. We don't have children. We are both working. We are trying to get ahead. We don't make a lot of money, and we decided the best plan for us was kind of a catastrophic plan. We will deal with our day-to-day health care needs, which, incidentally, aren't much because we are young and fortunately we are healthy. We have a high deductible.

I was listening to that, and I said: God bless you. This is America. They can make that choice. That was the best choice for them. They thought about it and decided the money they were making might be better allocated someplace else. What a great country that people can decide that.

Well, what happened with this health care bill? That decision was taken away from that young couple. They were ordered by the Federal Government, under penalty, to buy a given plan. Now, I have not caught up with that young couple, but I bet they are mad as wet hens. I will bet they have looked at what has happened to them and they are saying: Why?

We all know the little secret here: Young people are paying more for coverage that they don't need to finance me in my sixties. Does that make any sense?

I could go on and on about what is happening here with this health care bill, but it is not sheer coincidence that Senators in the Senate reached an agreement months ago on the rules. We shook hands on it. We put that behind us. Right about the time ObamaCare rolled out, all of a sudden that agreement wasn't valid anymore, and we got set up on a manufactured crisis to force a vote, and the method chosen to change the rules forever changes how the Senate operates.

In our history, many Senators had the opportunity to change these rules and thought better of it because they so respected and admired this institution, that they believed there was a place for a minority whether that Senator was in the minority or the majority at the time. That is what happened.

I will take another step. All of us know what this is really about. This is about control of this body. All of a sudden, because of ObamaCare and the truth coming out about what a terrible piece of policy this is, it became evident that Members over here were in deep trouble and were going to lose their elections if their elections were held now, and the majority had to change the conversation. So the agreement we reached after that night we spent in the Old Senate Chamber hashing through this, debating and discussing it, basically got torn up and tossed out the window, and the majority forever changed how this body will operate and what this body is going to be about in the future.

So what I say to my colleagues tonight is this: I am not planning on being here much longer. I have made that decision. One could say I don't have a boxer in the ring. A year from now, I will be doing something else. Some will be here, some won't be here. But at the end of the day, what I will remember about this time in the Senate is that a precedent was set that is vastly different from the way this Senate operated for 225 years. A precedent was set that allows the majority to take control of executive branch appointments, district court appointments, circuit court appointments. It is a precedent that would allow a majority to take control of a Supreme Court appointment. It is a precedent that will allow a majority, when it chooses to--not if; I believe it is a question of when--to take control of the policymaking.

So it is true when we say that if they were attempting to change the conversation, I say to the majority Members of the U.S. Senate, away from ObamaCare to this, all they have done is reminded the American people that what they are really doing is abusing this institution in a way that, quite honestly, is going to be very hard to turn around.

My thought is this: I feel very strongly that we can reverse what has occurred here, but we can't do it as a minority. We need the majority to back off. We need the majority to recognize that this body has existed through difficult times, it has existed through wars, it has existed through attacks on our country, and we have found a way to operate. We need the majority to recognize that we reached an agreement many months ago after an evening spent together in the Old Senate Chamber where we debated these things and, like gentlemen and gentlewomen, we shook hands and put this behind us for this session.

We can do the work of the Senate. We can do the work for the American people. I have no doubt about that whatsoever.

I am very concerned, though, that we have put the Senate in a position where it is a very vulnerable body now. Any majority can now use this precedent to turn this into something that is entirely different than what anybody who founded this country believed it should be. When the majority decided that it would bypass the requirement that rules would be changed by a two-thirds vote and do it by appealing the ruling of the Chair, they put the Senate in a position where there are no rules. There are no rules. All you need is 51 Members--50 if you have the Vice President in the Chair--who decide to stick together and make that Supreme Court appointment. They can get it done. All you need is 50 Members, if you have the Vice President in the Chair, who decide they stick together, and they would do a legislative process by a majority vote.

Many, many times the nuclear option was discussed, it was debated, and Senators much wiser than I looked at the history of this great country and its future and decided it was a step that should never be taken--that was until a couple of weeks ago, all driven by the fact that this piece of legislation called ObamaCare has turned out to be such a train wreck and that there was a need to change the discussion and change the topic and try to draw the people's attention away from that legislation, and that is how this rule got adopted. It is a sad time in our Nation's history. It is a sad time in terms of what is going on.

What I would offer is my hope is that wise people will realize the problems they have created for this country in the future, realize that the precedent they have set forever changes the way we operate and back away from what occurred.

Let's start doing the work of the Senate. If that means we work through Christmas, good. I am here. If that means we work on weekends, if that means we work around the clock, fine with me. I am good. I will do it. I will be happy to do it. But to try to streamline this process in a way that silences the minority is not right, and it is not what this country should be about.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to enter into this colloquy with my colleague from Nebraska.

We have a rather unique experience. For 6 years I was the Governor of Nebraska, and when Senator Fischer was elected to the unicameral, I was actually coming to Washington to be the Secretary of Agriculture, so we did not work together. But we both worked in the same system.

I would like to get a legislative perspective about how the Nebraska unicameral works. I saw it from the Governor's office, but, of course, I was not on the floor every day. That is not typically what a Governor would do--to go to the floor every day. But Nebraska is a pretty Republican State. I think we all recognize that. We know that. It is a nonpartisan unicameral. So not only is it a one-house system, but the senators do not run as Republicans or Democrats. They run on a nonpartisan ticket.

I would also say that our voter registration in Nebraska is public record. So, of course, the media, when we would run for office, would always look up how we were registered or they would ask us. I do not remember a time--maybe there was a time, but I do not remember a time-- when Democrats had the majority in the unicameral by their voter registration.

I would like the Senator from Nebraska to explain how the majority party, Republicans, worked with the minority party in terms of committee assignments, how they would work with the minority party in terms of chairs. Would a member of the minority ever get a chance to be a chair of a committee? How does that work? And I would like the Senator to talk a little bit, if she would, about how this system works on a day-to-day basis in terms of the relationship between the majority and the minority. Maybe it will be instructive today.

Madam President, I would love to be able to stand here today and say to my colleague from Nebraska that every time I submitted something to the legislature they loved it, blessed it, and passed it. But that did not happen. There was a give-and-take process that would occur. The budget is actually a perfect example. Like this system, the Governor of Nebraska gets the first shot. The Governor, soon after the legislature would go into session in January of each year, would submit a budget. We have a long session. It is a 90-day session 1 year, and then next year it is followed by a 60-day session. In the 90-day session we would do the full budget exercise. Typically, in the 60-day session we would do the fine tuning. It was a biennial budget that would be passed.

I quickly learned if I was going to have any success, whether it was the budget or any other initiative, I had to reach out on an individual basis and convince each senator of the merits of my idea I was proposing. This was not a situation where I had the ability to go to the majority leader and say: Get your people in line. Crush the minority and pass my budget. That would never happen in Nebraska. It would not happen with the majority--typically that would be Republican in Nebraska--and it would not happen with the minority, which is typically Democratic in Nebraska.

I always said as Governor that most days the one thing that the unicameral could almost unanimously agree upon is that they were mad about something when it came to the Governor. But the reality is we worked through these things. There was give-and-take. There were things that I wanted that I did not get. There were things that I did want that they would have to give in and compromise on. It never failed, we would pass a budget by the end of the legislative session.

I have said many times looking back on my time as Governor that at the start of the legislative session--the 90-day session--there was one thing I could guarantee to Nebraskans. That was that by the end of the session a budget would be passed. The second thing I could guarantee is, without gimmicks, that budget would balance. We had a simple philosophy. We would not spend money that we did not have. No. 3, I could promise Nebraskans that we would not borrow money to make that budget balance because, you see, in Nebraska we are limited by our constitution. We are only allowed to borrow $100,000, which I am sure when the constitution was written many, many decades ago that was a very handsome sum of money. Today it does not get you very far. So at the end of day we had to balance the budget.

Some of my greatest allies as Governor were Democrats. Some people who fought me the hardest on certain issues were Republicans. But we had to work through that.

I would ask my colleague from Nebraska, does she ever remember a time in the 8 years she was a Nebraska senator where she was in a meeting where her Republican colleagues said to her: Let's figure out a way to silence the minority and get our way on every vote because we have the majority. We could win every vote if we do that. Let's figure out a way to break the rules so we can change the rules so this minority means nothing anymore in this legislative body when it comes to these issues.

I ask my colleague from Nebraska, did that ever happen?

Madam President, I remember that night well. It occurred just some months ago. The nuclear option was being threatened. Many had worked very hard to avoid that.

Keep in mind that the nuclear option was not just discovered this year or last year; Senators have known of the nuclear option for a long time. We have been down this road before when Republicans were in the majority. Fortunately and wisely, they backed off. A group of I think 14 Senators got together and said: You know, we have to figure out a way to deal with this. And they did. They got a lot of criticism. I remember that. I remember the criticism was that they caved in, they gave in, they compromised, and that they should not have compromised and all of the things that you hear. But at the end of the day, leadership backed off of doing exactly what happened here right before Thanksgiving.

Well, that night we went into the Old Senate Chamber. Anybody who has ever visited that room, you walk in and you feel the history of that place immediately. Some of the great Senators in our Nation's history have spent time in that room arguing for the great causes of the day. It is a remarkable place. The doors were closed. There was no staff in the room. There was no media in the room. There were no cameras recording everything we were saying. This was a meeting of the Senators who were there to try to figure out whether there was a way forward.

I will not talk about the specifics of who said what to whom on this, that, and the other, but I will tell you about the atmosphere. I felt the atmosphere was extremely tense and uncomfortable, especially at the start of the meeting. We were really hopelessly divided on the issues we were facing. But the conversation began. People started making points on all sides of these issues.

In the context of that meeting and some things that had happened previously, a picture started to come together. The picture was that we had agreed as Senators--most of us, not all of us; some had disagreement with what we were doing--that there were certain executive branch appointees that, if there was no objection from any Senator, could move forward through the process really unimpeded. If a single Senator had an objection and said: Wait a second, I have had a dealing with this person, or whatever, that is very problematic, well then they have to go through the whole process. But we set aside hundreds of executive branch appointees. We said: Look, there is no good reason to force them through this process when there is no objection. Democrats, Republicans, and Independents shook hands on that, and that became the way we operate today.

Another piece of the context was that there was discussion about some things we could do with the rules. At this very lengthy night meeting, like gentlemen and gentlewomen, we shook hands and we had a way forward. It took a while to develop it. It took a while after the meeting to flesh it out. There was give-and-take. Some were concerned that it did not embody what we agreed upon. I personally thought we gave too much on our side, but at the end of the day I thought it made sense as a way forward to avoid the nuclear option. We reached an agreement. As I said, we shook hands. That put the issue to bed.

As I would talk to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, we would say to each other: You know, that was a good meeting. It has only happened twice since I have been here--once on the START treaty and once on this. We congratulated each other for finding that way forward.

But then we started to hear just a couple of weeks ago that the agreement was not holding, not because either side had violated it but because all of a sudden the majority, led by Senator Reid, decided they wanted to revisit this whole issue. I felt we had put the nuclear option in a lockbox, locked it up, and thrown away the key. I felt we had come to an agreement as a Senate that the damage to our Nation and its citizens in employing the nuclear option was too great a price to pay. That is what I came out of that meeting believing. That is what I continued to believe as I talked to my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle.

So what happened? If the agreement was not violated, if people were living by the agreement and a whole host of nominees had gone through the process, some of whom I did not like a bit but they got the votes necessary--they were confirmed, they had gone through the process. So what was different about a couple of weeks ago versus when we walked out of that meeting that evening? Well, I would ask my colleague's thought on that, but I think I know what that was about. I am going to continue to talk about this in the days ahead as we talk about this nuclear option and what it is doing to our country.

What happened is this: ObamaCare started to roll out. I remember the day ObamaCare passed. As I said last night, I was sitting in a chair right in front of Senator Fischer. It was my first couple of years here in the Senate. What happened before Thanksgiving in the breaking of the rules to change the rules reminded me exactly of what happened with ObamaCare. The Democrats had the votes. It was a very unusual time in our Nation's history. They had 60 Senators and they had the majority in the House and they had the Presidency. Under the rules, they could stop debate and pass anything they wanted to pass. That Christmas Eve day, I remember feeling, as a member of the minority, I was told to sit down and shut up because my viewpoint on ObamaCare meant nothing. What mattered that day was raw, sheer political power. They had the 60 votes. I sat there during the rollcall vote. I heard every Democrat vote for one of the worst pieces of policy ever passed by this body. I felt that day as though I was told to sit down and shut up.

Then a couple of weeks ago, when ObamaCare was literally melting down before our eyes, people were being thrown off their insurance plan, they were beginning to realize what the cost of this was going to be, and they were beginning to realize that the promise that ``if you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period'' was a political gimmick. It was a lie. They were being thrown off their plans, and they could not even get on the Web site. All of a sudden, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle began to realize their jobs were at stake. Their numbers were crashing. All of a sudden, after we shook hands like gentlemen and gentlewomen after a very tense meeting and we implemented what people agreed would be implemented, we came back to revisit the nuclear option.

I would like to offer one additional thought about what this means. The rules of the Senate have been changed on occasion. It is not something we do very often around here, but on occasion they have been changed. The rules contemplate a way to change the rules: Two-thirds of the Senators have to agree to the rules change.

How did this come about? Let me explain that. The majority leader asked for a ruling of the Chair. Basically, the ruling got to the question of how many votes it takes to confirm somebody. That ruling was properly decided. The majority leader announced: I want to appeal that ruling.

That ruling was, in fact, appealed. How does one successfully appeal a ruling of the Chair with the majority vote, and that is exactly what happened. The Democrats fell in line, and I had the same feeling that day before Thanksgiving that I had on that Christmas Eve Day when ObamaCare was passed. The feeling I had, as a Member of the minority, was that every single Member sitting in those chairs, the majority, the Democrats, were saying to my colleagues and me: Sit down and shut up.

I said last night that I have a tremendous amount of respect for a man who served here for many years with great distinction, admired by everybody. I got to know him a little bit as he had not passed when I came to the Senate. Senator Robert Byrd was probably the finest historian of the Senate,

maybe ever. He would come to the floor and talk about the beautiful history of the Senate, this institution, and the sacred rights of every single Senator to come to the floor, argue, make their point, and offer an amendment.

Under the rules, the amendment doesn't even have to be germane to get a vote on it.

This beautiful institution worked for over 200 years under that rule, under that philosophy. Unbelievable.

It worked through wars, it worked through the 1918 flu pandemic. It worked through attacks on our Nation, 9/11, and Pearl Harbor.

Somehow, some way, great men and women came into this Chamber and figured out a way to make this body work until 2 weeks ago, when by sheer political force the majority pulled out of Pandora's box the nuclear option.

I ask my colleague from Nebraska to offer her thoughts as a new Member. I look forward, as the senior Senator from Nebraska, to watching the junior Senator from Nebraska.

I am not running again. What impact is this going to have? How does the Senator implement the desires, wishes, and dreams of Nebraskans who elected the Senator and sent her to Washington under circumstances such as this?

Does the Senator worry that what is going to happen will not just stop; that it will be Supreme Court appointments at some point and it will be legislative activity. I wish to hear those thoughts.

I thank my colleague for being with me for this colloquy. I appreciate so much the legislative experience Senator Fischer brings to this body. It is very extensive. She was regarded as the leader in the Nebraska unicameral and chaired an extremely important committee. She would be too modest to point this out, but at the time when our road system needed funding, she figured out a way not only to identify funding--and not by raising taxes but by better efficiency and better management, and it was a significant amount of funding--but she then built the coalitions necessary to actually get that passed. Back home, today, that is getting rave reviews. So I thank her for that because I drive on those roads and I know she does too.

My colleague mentioned the Defense bill, and nothing could be a better example of what we are dealing with here. This bill came out of the Armed Services Committee, which has a reputation for being one of the most bipartisan committees in the whole Senate system. It is not about Republicans and Democrats on that committee, for a whole host of reasons. One is there is just great leadership on that committee, and there has been great leadership in the past, but the focus is on the national defense of our United States and our allies.

For 50-some years we have passed a Defense authorization bill. It is one of the things, even when nothing else could get done, that we would get done. The hallmark of that is that it is a very open process. The bill comes out of committee--this one came out in May--and the amendment process starts, and we might go days working our way through that bill. It is very normal. It is very much a part of the process. At the end of it, typically that bill is passed with very strong bipartisan support.

What has happened that we would get a bill in May that has bipartisan support in this committee, it comes out of the committee ready for floor action, and we can't get to that bill except right before the holidays? We all know who controls the floor. Democrats control the floor. They are in the majority. The majority leader, through the election by Democrats, controls the floor. So it feels to me as though we are saying to our United States military: You are not important enough that we would give you 2 or 3 weeks in June or July, September or October to work through this huge package of spending. In fact, we are going to relegate you to the last hours before the Christmas break. Then the majority leader is going to say to those of us in the minority: By the way, I will pick your amendments. I think some of these amendments are pretty tough amendments for my people to vote on, so I will pick the amendments.

So what has happened to the right of every individual Senator to come to the floor of the Senate and offer their idea on a piece of legislation or, for that matter, any other important issue facing our United States?

This is like sending a message to the military from the Democrat majority that says: Look, you are important enough to get a few hours before we break, and we all go back and enjoy a big ham dinner for Christmas, and we open our presents while you are off fighting in Afghanistan or wherever you have been ordered to serve.

I don't think that is right. There isn't any reason why this bill can't get done. It has been done for 50-some years. What is so tough about it? There isn't any reason why this bill can't get called up in the summer. There isn't any reason why we can't deal with this bill in June. It came out of committee in May. There isn't any reason why we can't use these months leading up to now--the end of the year--to pass this bill.

There are few guarantees in the Senate these days, but one guarantee I can make is that if you allow this Defense authorization bill to go through the regular process, allow Senators to offer their amendments, come to the floor, debate their amendments, and pass or not pass those amendments, at the end of the day that bill will pass.

Instead, what has happened is the bill is put on the floor right before a holiday break and the majority leader says: I will decide whose amendments are going to get heard. I will be the one picking the amendments, and we have to get this done. If you don't agree with the way I want to do things around here, then you are an obstructionist, you are an anarchist.

Wait a second. I should have a say about that bill. It authorizes billions and billions of dollars. I should be able to go home to Nebraskans and say that I gave my best effort with an amendment that I supported or sponsored or whatever, and at the end of the day I won or I lost. After all, that is what they elected me to do.

It is not just what happened with the nuclear option, it is the way this Senate is being operated by those who are in the majority-- Democrats. Never in the history of this institution has a leader filled the amendment tree, which is a fancy Washington way of saying I'm taking away the amendments from the minority, more times far and away than any other majority leader. When he does that, when he takes away the right to amend, he silences the minority because we don't control what comes to the floor. We are not in the majority. We don't control when a bill is going to be heard. We are not in the majority. So the only thing we can do as a minority is offer an amendment and plead our case.

Senator Fischer mentioned a perfect example of the point I am trying to make. She says that she and others, on a bipartisan basis, have an amendment on sexual assaults, which we know is a very serious problem. Now, some might find this surprising, but I want her amendment to go further. I don't think it goes far enough. I don't think she would mind me saying that. I signed on to an amendment offered by Senator Gillibrand. I was one of the early ones to sign on. It is a bipartisan amendment, and it has over 50 cosponsors. That is the amendment I want.

I think this is an important issue. I see these young men and women come to my office, and they are proud as proud can be. They have just signed up or they want to go to the military academy, and it breaks my heart to think they may be subjected to sexual assault in the military. I believe we can't be tough enough. I believe we can't work hard enough to create an atmosphere that is so inhospitable to the sexual offender that they would never think of being in the military. I want to go as far as we can and I want to argue that point. I believe there will be Nebraskans that will agree with me and perhaps disagree with me. Why shouldn't we have that bill on the floor?

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I will start by thanking my colleagues from Indiana and Kansas for their discussion on this very important issue. I say this somewhat facetiously, but I have been reading the stories about the rollout of ObamaCare just like the rest of us have. What an incredible embarrassment. If there is a State out there that epitomizes the embarrassment of all embarrassments, it is the State of Oregon. Recently, they had not signed up a single person through their exchange--not one. Not a single person in Oregon could get through that. That is notwithstanding that the Democratic Governor supported it, embraced it, notwithstanding that the U.S. Senators in this body supported it, embraced it. They could not find a single person.

Well, I just read an article; I think it was this morning. I was catching up on some reading. Somehow, some way, they went out there and they found 44 people in Oregon who have signed up successfully. After all of these weeks since this rollout occurred, they probably went door-to-door in Oregon and found 44 people who they believe have signed up successfully. We will see whether they actually have insurance.

Well, maybe we could offer this for that poor State: Maybe we could offer that if they signed up successfully, they get a picture with their Governor and their U.S. Senators--their own individual picture. Madam President, 44 people would not be too many to get through in a picture line. They probably have fundraisers that are twice that big or three times that big, where they do pictures with everybody. I think those persistent citizens of the great State of Oregon deserve something more than just a mention that they are 1 of 44 in some newspaper somewhere, that they successfully navigated the site. I would offer that I think they need a picture.

An autographed picture with their U.S. Senators and their Governor.

Let me move on to something far more serious, and I am going to talk about ObamaCare too. I am going to tie that into why I believe this process we are going through relating to our constitutional right to advise and consent the President of the United States when it comes to his appointments--I am going to tie that into why I believe that has all happened and why we find ourselves here today because of this failed ObamaCare system.

Yesterday when I was on the floor, I talked at some length about the history of filibuster changes. I mentioned that I have a tremendous amount of respect for a Senator who passed not all that long ago, who served in this body for a long time and probably knew the body better than anybody who ever served in the history of the Senate. That would be Senator Bob Byrd.

I came here, and he was in failing health by the time I arrived in the Senate about 5 years ago, but what a wonderful man. I got to know him a little bit. We actually participated, worked together on a climate change amendment. The knowledge this gentleman had of the Senate was always amazing to me.

On the 200th anniversary of what is called the Great Compromise, when the whole concept of the U.S. Senate was created, some people went to Senator Byrd and convinced him that speeches he had given on the floor of the Senate and historical writings he had done should be put together in a book. It would be commemorative of the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Senate--the Great Compromise. So that was done.

When I first got to know Senator Byrd, I became so impressed with the man that I decided that my Senate office needed that historical record from him. Well, I thought I was buying a book. I was not buying a book at all. I was buying four books--four books filled with beautiful information about the Senate, its history, people who had served here, people who stood up for the U.S. Senate and therefore stood up for the people they represented in the United States of America.

I talked a little bit yesterday about that history leading up to filibuster changes. It was the system here originally in the early part of our country--in fact, until the early 1900s--where basically there was not a way to end debate. So if a debate was going on, an individual Senator could come to the floor and literally take a bill down a path where it may never become law. Somehow, some way, through the years the Senate figured out a way to operate with that kind of unusual situation where a single Senator could take a bill down that road.

Along came World War I. If you think about World War I, there were many Members in the body who had pretty close relatives in Germany, and this was a challenge because they had to debate and decide issues relating to that war and that country. As we might expect, it became very difficult to get things passed.

A piece of legislation came forward, and you can imagine what happened. It got carried down this road of never seeing the light of day, and they could not get that legislation passed although that legislation was considered very important by many in our country, maybe the vast majority of the people in our country.

The country reacted to that, and there was a big debate. I think people in this body and people in the country came to the conclusion that kind of this open-ended process where debate may never end--and there was no vehicle or mechanism to end that debate--well, that had to end; that somehow, some way, the wisdom of the individual Members in this body had to be brought to bear on how to allow Senators to have their day, have their say, be able to come here and debate the great issues and offer amendments. How could we allow that to happen and give them their rights as Senators while still having an ability at some point to stop the debate and cast a vote? The Senators, in their wisdom, decided they had to find that way, and they did.

Originally, if I remember the history correctly, and I may have this piece not quite accurate, but I think they agreed that two-thirds of the Senators could vote at some point to end debate and then vote on the legislation. But Senators still had the right to offer amendments. They still had the right to come to the floor and debate. They still had the right to work through the day and the night and build coalitions to get their amendments passed, to shape a piece of legislation, to make that legislation maybe better for the country or for their individual State. All of those rights continued to exist because, after all, everybody recognized that the power of an individual Senator to do that was significant to our country. It was important to our Nation, not only then but in the future.

That process went on for a number of decades following that decision. Then in the 1970s a decision was made again by this body under its rules, and that decision basically said: When 60 Senators come to the floor and they agree to end debate, that they would get themselves to a point where that debate would terminate and they could vote on passage of the bill, they could vote on getting that bill done. So in the 1970s, 60 votes became the norm.

An important point to mention is this: The rights we have as individual Senators representing our constituency--which in my case is the great people of Nebraska, and the people of the United States of America, for that matter--those rights were intended to exist in every respect. In other words, I could come to the floor as a Senator, under the rules, and if a piece of legislation was there and I had an important issue I wanted to bring to the attention of the country or this body, I could offer an amendment, and, except under certain circumstances, that amendment did not even need to be germane.

I remember, for example, that when this health care bill was passed there was a provision that if somebody in business bought over $600 worth of items, they had to file forms with the IRS, a 1099, and give a form to the vendor.

That is a mess because you never know if the first purchase on January 1 is going to be the last purchase or the first of a series of purchases that get you over $600. I wanted to get that out of the bill. It did not make any sense. Even the citizens' advocate for the IRS was saying: Well, gosh, we have looked at this. It does not make any sense.

So we started working, and on every piece of legislation that would come forward I would offer that amendment to get rid of the 1099 requirement in the health care bill. Originally, I was nearly laughed out of the Chamber. Democrats who had passed the bill were basically saying to me: You want us to change our bill? Get lost. I came back a second time. I came back a third time. I came back a fourth time. The business community got involved, and small businesses started calling their Senators and saying: Senator, please, look at what Mike is offering. This is sensible. This needs to happen. We offered it a fifth time. At some point, the President of the United States in his State of the Union--I was sitting right there, about two rows back from where he was. Madam President, I was not any farther from the President of the United States than I am standing from you today. He mentioned that it was time for this provision to go. So we offered it a sixth time, and then we offered it a seventh time, and we finally got it done.

Do you know what? I did not go out and crow: My goodness, I must be the smartest Senator in the body or I must be the best Republican and those evil Democrats. I did not do that at all. I went out and I said to public: This is very important for small businesses. I am glad my colleagues agree with me, and we can all take credit for this. Go back home and tell people you supported it.

There were very few who voted against it in this body. So an issue that started out with basically no support to speak of in a bipartisan way not only got huge bipartisan support--over 80 votes--it even got a mention by the President of the United States in his State of the Union Address as something that needed to get done. And we could all take ownership of it then and today.

Why do I mention that point? I mention that point because those rights continued after those filibuster changes. This body came to the conclusion that under the Senate rules it was appropriate to somehow get to a point where we could say: OK, everybody, you have had your day. It is time to bring the debate to an end, if we can, if we can get sufficient votes. If we cannot, well then we cannot. This bill is probably not going to go any further. That has been the history of this institution literally from its beginning. Read Bob Byrd's books. He will explain that to you. As you read what he is saying there, you begin to feel the admiration that he felt for the Senate. But the other thing you will begin to feel as you read through these books is this: You will begin to feel how deeply he cared about the individual rights of each Senator, whether they were in the majority, whether they were Democrats, whether they were in the minority, whether they were Republicans. You see, Senator Byrd understood that the pendulum does swing. There will be times where Republicans will be in control of the Senate. The voters will decide that. There will be times, therefore, that Democrats will be in the minority.

He also understood that there would be times when Democrats would be in the majority and Republicans would be in the minority and that as our country would go through various transformations and various political processes, we would end up with a different

Senate depending upon what happened in each election cycle.

But the one thing Senator Byrd wanted to emphasize and hold as a sacred constant in our system of government was that each Senator had rights. Each Senator could come to the floor and exercise those rights whether the person they called leader was Democrat or Republican. He wanted to make sure the tyranny of the majority would never silence those rights of the minority or the individual Senator.

With that context in mind, let me review the events of the last few weeks. With that context in mind, I am hoping that is instructive relative to what happened here. As I said yesterday during my comments on the floor, I guess we would all like to probably think we are the smartest Senator who has ever served in the body. We are not. Some of the giants of this great country have served in this body. Some of the intellectual giants who have ever lived in the United States found their way to the Senate.

They not only worried about what was happening in their period of history, they worried about what the Senate would be 10 and 20 and 100 and 150 years in the future. Keep in mind, this body has been here over 200 years. In many respects, as Senator Byrd points out in his book, the rules we operate under are similar. Why? Because they were smart in the beginning and they are smart today. They have served us well for over 200 years.

As I said, I guess we probably all like to think we are about the smartest Senator who has ever served. I can tell you, during the vote right before Thanksgiving, there were some Senators who were kind of crowing about the change that had occurred. I even read some newspaper articles that, boy, their day had arrived.

So what happened? Let me tell you what did not happen. Under our rules that govern how we operate, how we pass laws, how we debate the important issues of the day, we can amend our rules with 67 votes, a two-thirds majority. It is right there in the rules. What a thoughtful provision.

The whole idea behind that provision was you do not want the tyranny of the majority to crush the minority. You do not want the tyranny of the majority to crush the rights of the individual Senator, whether he is from Nebraska or California or Florida or wherever.

So in those rules it takes 67 votes. Did that happen before Thanksgiving? Did Members who wanted to see this done come over here to this side and say: You know, Mike, think through this with me. Please join with me in trying to get this done. I cannot get it done with 55 Democrats. I need your help to get to 67. That is going to take Democrats and it is going to take Republicans and it might even take an Independent or two to get this rule change done.

Is that the way this happened? No, not the way it happened at all. So what did happen right before Thanksgiving? The majority leader, in essence when you cut through everything, asked for a ruling from the Chair. The ruling by the Chair was consistent with the rules of the Senate. Then the majority leader said: I will appeal the ruling of the Chair. What does it take to overrule the Chair? It takes a majority vote.

All of a sudden on executive appointments, circuit court judges across the United States of America--a lifetime appointment, I remind you, there is no way they can be removed except by the impeachment process once there--and Federal district court judges across the United States of America, the rule was changed.

By a two-thirds vote as the rules would contemplate? No. By appealing a correct ruling of the Chair and overruling it with a majority vote. Like I said, there are probably many here who would like to think: I thought that up. I must be pretty much the smartest person who ever served in this body. I cannot imagine why somebody did not think that one up before. Do not fool yourself.

That was thought up many times. Read the writings of Senator Byrd. Read the writings of any great intellectual who has looked at the Senate and how it operates and understands the rules. We have known for decades and decades and decades, maybe since the beginning, that you could appeal a ruling of the Chair and make reality out of a majority vote even though the Chair ruled correctly. That is what happened.

I spoke of the tyranny of the majority. The Senate was never intended to be a majority-based body. Let me get back to the Great Compromise. I mentioned that when Senator Byrd decided to put all of this information together in that four-volume set, it was to honor 200 years of history of the Senate or, stated another way, 200 years since the Great Compromise.

The Great Compromise came about because when we as an infant country decided there were going to be two Houses in our legislative process, almost immediately our Founders decided that one House, the House of Representatives, would be population based and majority ruled. If you are California or New York, as it turns out, that works pretty well; if you are Nebraska or South Dakota, not so well. Why? We have three Members in the House. It seems to me every day of the week California is going to outvote Nebraska. New York is going to outvote Nebraska. Florida is going to outvote Nebraska. Darn near anybody in the country is going to outvote Nebraska.

Although we have this very large land mass, our population is 1.7 million to 1.8 million people. It is spread out across this very large land mass called the great State of Nebraska.

Our Founders looked at that and said: It does not take much to figure this out. This is not going to work out very well over time. It is a majority-based body. So political parties have been a feature almost from the beginning of our country. So if you are in the majority, you are always going to win. You are also going to beat the minority as long as your team sticks together.

But they wisely said: The Senate is going to be different. The Senate is going to be that body where every State gets two. You see, in that regard, Nebraska is just as powerful as New York. We are just as powerful as Pennsylvania. We are just as powerful as California. We are just as powerful as Hawaii. Why? Because we each get two.

Then the Senate was structured in a way, as I have pointed out, where literally from the beginning one could debate a bill right down to a pathway where it was not going to get passed and thoughtfully and carefully. But under the rules of the Senate what was happening is as we decided to limit debate at some point in the process, you had to get this supermajority

Senators knew they could appeal a correct ruling of the Chair and reverse it. But they knew that option should never be used. It did not get its name ``nuclear option'' by accident. Most recently when Republicans were in control, the threat was made: We might go to the nuclear option to get our judges confirmed.

Oh, my goodness. Democrats in this body rose up. They were offended that those words would even come out of a Senator's mouth. They were fighting tooth and nail to stop that because it so changes what happens in this body. Now what has happened? The worm did turn. They are in power. All of a sudden, well, I reserve the right to change my mind.

So just before Thanksgiving, a correct ruling of the Chair was overturned on a pure party-line vote, where Democrats said to each individual Senator who is a Republican, where Democrats said to each individual Member who sits in the minority if a Republican: Sit down and shut up.

That is what this rule change does. It relegates my voice as a Member of a minority party in the Senate on district judges, executive appointments, and circuit court judges--two of those being appointments for life--it renders my voice absolutely, positively meaningless.

No Democrat has to cross that line and come over here and say: Mike, I want you to look at this judge in wherever--let's say Arkansas-- because I think they are qualified and I want you to think about voting for them. They do not have to do that anymore. They do not need me. They can just outlast me, just like they are doing right now. They can bring this to a vote, and on a straight party-line vote they can appoint the entire judiciary of the United States in the district courts and in the circuit courts with absolutely no involvement whatsoever from the minority. None. That is what their rule change did.

Let me take that rule change and think out loud about where we have put ourselves as a country. I wonder who was the first Senator in our history who came to the floor and said: My fellow Senators, I have thought about this, I have contemplated it, maybe I have even prayed about it, and I believe the day has arrived to end slavery in the United States, and I will be attaching an amendment to every bill to end that horrific practice.

I will bet they were a very lonely Senator at that point in our history. But I am also guessing that Senator, and tenacious other Senators along the way, exercised their rights as a minority and as an individual Senator to continue to force that issue. What a courageous, remarkable thing to do.

So let's think about where we are headed. We now have a precedent. As Bob Byrd pointed out in his writings, precedents voted on by Senators have significant binding effect in this body. It is not something you do one time, tear up and throw away. It is something that becomes a part of the heart and soul of this body. It is something that is a method of operation, a rule, if you will, by which future decisions are made within the Senate.

What is this precedent? This precedent is not that Democrats or Republicans have to cross the aisle and get 67 votes together to change the rules. This precedent now is that you can ask for a ruling of the Chair, the Chair can correctly deliver a ruling, and you can then get your team together, Republican or Democrat, and you can vitiate, overrule, and annihilate the correct ruling of the Chair to get a different result.

So for the first time in our history we are now confirming judges in the circuit court, in the district court, and executive appointments under a majority rule--for the first time in history. Why? Was it because 67 Senators said: Look, let's do it this way. No. It is because the majority leader asked for a ruling from the Chair, the Chair gave a correct ruling, and then the majority leader stepped in and said: I will appeal that. He kept his Democrats together and successfully appealed it and, all of a sudden, we are off in a different direction.

So let's think about this. Let's say you are a Democratic President and the Senate is Democratic--maybe it is evenly divided, but you have the Vice President in the Chair so you can break ties. You are in the last 18 months of your time in office and you have already won a reelection so you are term limited. In 18 months you move on down the road. Let's say you have a Supreme Court where four of the members are conservative, four are what would be regarded as liberal and you have one member kind of right in the middle. So whenever there is a major argument before the Supreme Court everybody is trying to guess which way the one in the middle will go. Will he or she side with the liberals on this one? What has he or she done in the past? Will that Supreme Court Justice side with the conservatives? What has he or she done in the past on these kind of issues? You can kind of get a roadmap of what they might do on this major constitutional issue.

Now, for whatever reason, that Supreme Court Justice dies in office, becomes ill, can't perform the duties, decides to retire, decides: Look. I have been here a long time. It is time for me to move on. Maybe they even have an inkling they want this President to appoint their replacement. My goodness, this is a pretty important issue. You have that one vote that kind of moves back and forth, and this is pretty darned critical for the next 10, 25 or 50 years in the United States. It could make all the difference in the world.

Let's say the President of the United States takes a look at that and says: 18 months. I am not sure I can get this done. The President calls his friend, the majority leader in the Senate, and says: My friend, how do we move this Supreme Court nominee whom I am going to announce tomorrow before I leave the White House? We need to get this done. Maybe it is not even 18 months, maybe it is 12 months or 6 months. How do we get this done?

The majority leader says: Mr. President, you know, under the current rules change we did in 2013, right before Thanksgiving, we took the voice away from the minority. So on circuit court or district court I could help you out, but we didn't apply that rule to the Supreme Court.

Maybe it is even further down the road and parties have switched. There is a Republican in the White House and the Senate is Republican and the majority leader is Republican. The Republican President calls and says: How do I get this done?

My friends, let me remind us again the precedence is set. Let me remind us again, as Senator Byrd points out in his very scholarly analysis of the Senate, that a Member-voted change appeal of a ruling of the Chair is a big dang deal. It is how we operate.

So the majority leader says: Let me think about it. He calls the President back and says: Here is how you get there. I will ask for a ruling of the Chair at the appropriate time. I don't know exactly when that will be. But at the appropriate time you have my commitment, Mr. President, just like they did right before Thanksgiving in 2013, I will ask for a ruling of the Chair. The Chair is going to rule against me, I want you to be aware of that. So if you are watching the proceedings, don't faint because this isn't over. But I need to have you go to work, as President Obama did in 2013, and make sure Members are in line. I will go to work and I will turn my whip team loose and we will keep our team together.

Let's say it is a Republican situation and all of a sudden you have the ruling and the majority leader says: I want to appeal that and the team stays together and so now we can change the complexion of the U.S. Supreme Court because the precedent is set.

I had somebody from the Democratic side say to me yesterday: Well, Mike, I would never agree to that. I thought about the comment he made. In fact, I was trying to get to sleep last night and I thought about that comment, and it was just so obvious to me I wish I had said it to my friend and colleague. I wish I would have said: You won't have a voice because you are in the minority. Under the precedent set right before Thanksgiving, your voice was silenced. You were told to sit down and shut up because of the passage of this rule.

So huff and puff all you want, go to the floor and scream, cry, yell, threaten to do whatever you are going to do, but at the end of the day you don't have a voice because my team is together on this, and by a majority vote we are going to overrule a correct ruling of the Chair and we are going to pave the way for a new Supreme Court Justice who will decide cases based upon our philosophy. You know what. We are going to go a step further. We think those four Republicans there or four Democrats there, they haven't gone far enough. So we are going to get somebody who is really out there.

You know what. The precedent is set. You have the pathway to get it done.

Is there anybody in this country who believes for a moment that temptation will not be just too darned great? Look. How many times did my colleagues on the other side of the aisle during the last debate on this a few years ago say: Never do this. It will destroy the Senate. We aren't going to do this. They signed letters, and those same people voted yes to break the rules to change the rules. Those same people came in and--of course, they had a reason. Of course--they came in and said: Well, you know, these evil Republicans. I really don't want to do this. I feel so badly about doing it, but they are so darned bad, they are so evil, and they are such obstructionists, when there was no evidence to support that.

The reality is it is not what is happening these days, it is not what is happening over the next year on circuit court appointments or district court appointments or who is going to be the Under Secretary or the Deputy of something in the USDA; it is what is going to happen next when that President has that short a period of time to leave a lasting imprint on this great country and they can't pass up the opportunity. So all of a sudden the precedent is set and you are off to the races.

Some may be thinking: Mike, if that ever happens, I am going to call my Senator--who is in the minority, whether Republican or Democratic-- and I am going to chew on them up one side and down the other side. I am going to point out to them that if they don't do something about this, I will run against them or I will find somebody to run against them because this

can't happen to our country; because Supreme Court appointments, you can't get rid of them once they are there, unless it is some kind of impeachment process. This is a lifetime appointment. Once done, it is over.

Do you know what that minority Member will say to all those calls? They will come in by the hundreds and thousands, if not the tens of thousands. Thank you for your call, but I have been silenced. I have no ability to stop that. I am in the minority.

It will not be a situation where that Senator will be able to say: I am just not persuasive enough. I don't think I can build the argument.

It will be a situation where they say: I am in the minority. My voice has been silenced. So we have a situation where the precedent is set, and that Member now has no voice.

Let's think about this in the last minutes that I have, because it doesn't end here. Again, keep in mind the precedent is set.

Let's say again that there is a very important piece of legislation. Maybe it is a health care bill, maybe it is a climate change bill. Maybe it is a bill to do whatever. I could think of a whole bunch of bills on either side that people would like to see get done. All of a sudden, the majority, working with their President in the White House, realizes the only way it is going to get done--because they can't get the 60 votes necessary--is try to change how things operate.

Not to worry, because the precedent has been set: Ask for a ruling of the Chair. The Chair will correctly rule. Keep your team together. Overrule the Chair and, by a majority vote, we now pass legislation by a majority.

Many in the Chamber who are majority or minority would say: Well, Mike. I don't like that. Gosh, I am not going to let that happen. I have heard that before. Because the same people who voted for this argued forcefully just a few years ago: We can't ever let this happen. This would destroy the Senate. This would destroy the purpose of the Senate.

But then they came in here and voted for it. Of course it will happen. The precedent is set, and then you have a different country. Let's think about that.

I have traveled all over the world in my roles as Governor and as Secretary of Agriculture trying to sell our ag products. There were certain parts of the world where markets were open and the economy was working and people were employed. They were good markets for our products. There were other parts of the world where, my goodness, even today not much is going on. People live in poverty. They live in crime and filth and disease. It is just horrific. There are a lot of reasons for that. It is complex.

But one of the constants in that was the political instability of the country. Whoever won got the spoils. So they would throw out everything the last group passed and they would pass a whole bunch of new things because they had the majority. Then the voters would rebel and say: Oh, my goodness. Did we make a mistake on this. Let's get rid of these fools. Then a whole new group would come in on the other side and they would throw out all the laws the last group had passed and they would pass their own laws. Why? Because they had the majority. On and on it went.

Businesses would look at that and say: How do we ever invest there? You are asking me to build a $25 million warehouse to do my work when I don't know what the laws are going to be 2 or 4 years from now? Because the elections would determine that.

In the United States of America we have had this remarkable economy for over 200 years. It has had good times and bad. I am not Pollyannaish about this. But jobs have been created, small entrepreneurs--and I could name them--built businesses that grew into remarkable companies. It is just incredible. Who are the next ones? What an amazing country we live in.

I will acknowledge, there are a lot of reasons for that. We are blessed with enormous resources, and I could go on and on. Our education system. But one of the reasons it has worked is we have tremendous governmental stability. Whether we want to or not, every administration is kind of in a position where they build upon the shoulders of the last administration.

What is the constant there? The White House can change every 4 years. It has to change every 8. The House of Representatives can change every 2 years, and it often does. Sometimes it doesn't. It is a majority- based body. So a new group comes in, they throw things out; a new group passes new things. It is kind of always moving and shaking. That is what the House was intended to do. What has been the constant in all of this? The Senate.

I know people get frustrated. They look over here and say: Geez, Mike. I wish you could pass something. Why can't you get more done? Why is this pace so frustrating? I will tell you, as a former chief executive, a mayor, a Governor, a Cabinet member, I sometimes come in here and go: My goodness. I am going to be 80 before this law ever passes, and I will not even recognize it.

It is the give-and-take of the Senate. It is exactly what was contemplated, and no one was going to come in and throw this out in 2 years and put this in and then 2 years later throw this out. Why? Because the Senate said: Wait a second. Not only are we going to call this the Great Compromise, but you are going to have to reach across the aisle to get things done.

Sometimes in our history that hasn't happened. At other times in our history it has happened. But through pandemics, world wars, crises, attacks upon our Nation, this body found a way to function and a way to stabilize the United States.

So when a young entrepreneur went out there and said: If I build this software, according to the tax laws we have now, will those laws be there 2 years from now? Yes, we can say they will be. We don't change the Tax Code very often. I am one of these people who argue we need reform in our Tax Code. But having said that, I know I am going to have to get it done in a bipartisan way.

But the precedent is set. We know now that if the majority leader asked for a ruling of the Chair and the Presiding Officer decides correctly, under the rules of the Senate, in consultation with the Parliamentarian, how that issue should be decided and decides it correctly under the rules, we know now what we feared over the last decades; that is, that the majority leader can say to the Presiding Officer: I want to appeal your ruling. I want to appeal your ruling. I want to get this Supreme Court Justice on the Supreme Court and a lifetime appointment.

I want to appeal your ruling because I am sick and tired of the other side not cooperating with me on what I want done. I have had enough of it. I am going to get my way. My team is together, and they are all going to vote just as I will. Even though your ruling was correct under our rules, we are going to set that aside, we are going to vitiate it, and we are going to get our way because my team--my team--is in control.

That is where we are today.

These rules have been changed over time. They were changed in accordance with our rules.

I see the leader is here. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I wish to recognize Lt. Col. Charles Lane, Jr., of Omaha, for his contributions to the United States of America through his military and public service. Mr. Lane passed away on November 8, 2013, at the age of 88. He lived a life dedicated to defending our country and helping others in the greater Omaha community.

Lieutenant Colonel Lane's military career began in 1943, when he entered

the Cadet Corps at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, AL. He soon became a fighter pilot and joined the Army Air Corps 99th Pursuit Squadron. In World War II, Lane flew 26 combat missions, flying P-51 Mustang fighter planes. Following the war, Lieutenant Colonel Lane continued his service in the U.S. Air Force for 27 years, until his retirement in 1970. His last station was at Strategic Air Command, Offutt Air Base, near Bellevue, NE. Following his service, Lane and his family remained in the area.

In 2007, Lane was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President George W. Bush in recognition of his bravery, courage and sacrifice during World War II. Along with his fellow Tuskegee Airmen, he bravely rose above the racial divisions of the time to serve our country with honor and valor. In addition to their courageous service, the Tuskegee Airman provided inspiration to our country, paving the way towards greater equality for all Americans.

As a civilian, Lieutenant Colonel Lane continued to serve his community. As Executive Director of the Greater Omaha Community Action Inc.--GOCA, he fought poverty on a number of fronts by addressing hunger, substance abuse, mental health and others. Spanning his tenure of more than two decades at the agency, he was known as being determined efforts to help the impoverished achieve self-sufficiency.

Demonstrating Lieutenant Colonel Lane's tireless passion for service, upon retirement he continued to volunteer his time, talent and resources to a number of important causes in the Omaha area. He founded the 99th Pursuit Cadet Squadron of the Nebraska Wing of the Civil Air Patrol, the official auxiliary of the United States Air Force. As the Squadron's first Commander and later its Commander Emeritus, he mentored countless youth and promoted aviation throughout Nebraska. He also served as a national representative of Tuskegee Airmen, Inc.

May Lieutenant Colonel Lane's lifelong commitment to our great Nation and serving others is truly commendable. I ask my colleagues and the citizens of the United States to join me in honoring his service on this day.

I come to the floor to discuss reports I have heard from my fellow Nebraskans about the President's health care law.

Senators have been quoting facts, figures, and reports about the negative effects of this law, and that dates back to when the debate began in 2009. The reality is that no amount of facts or figures can illustrate the real-life stories from our hometowns and from the Main Streets of Nebraska. These personal stories are compelling and powerful examples of what the reports have been saying all along, why we must stand with the American people, and repeal ObamaCare.

A woman named Deb from Kearney, NE, reached out to me. As millions of other Americans, her family's insurance plan has been cancelled, notwithstanding the President's promise that if you like your plan, you can keep it, period.

Now she is facing new premiums for her family. They have increased an unbelievable 133 percent. Their plan pays for maternity coverage, even though they no longer need maternity coverage. Why? Because ObamaCare mandates this, they have no choice about it.

Deb said:

Obama needs to call it like it is. This is not the

affordable health care act.

Jennifer, from Madison, NE, reached out to me with a very compelling story. Jennifer is a two-time cancer survivor. She shared that last year she spent a fair amount of time evaluating health care plans, doing her homework. She picked a plan that made a lot of sense for her family under her circumstances. Recently, Jennifer learned that her current plan would no longer be available because of the health care law's new requirements. She described her new plan and said:

My deductible is going up, my co-insurance is going up, and

my premium is almost doubling. . . . I think it is an insult

to hard working, responsible people like myself to require me

to pay for coverage of all these additional services.

A woman named Hannah from Lincoln, NE, 25 years old, is seeing massive increases as well. Her monthly premium is increasing by about 160 percent, and her annual deductible is more than doubling to over $6,000. She explains:

I'm healthy and active--I love long-distance running--and I

rarely get sick. This is impossible for my budget. I feel

like Obama is punishing those of us who have graduated

college and are working hard trying to make a life for

ourselves. We're starting our families, building businesses,

launching our careers, and trying to give back to our

communities however we can. Now ObamaCare is devastating the

American dream of an entire generation.

These Nebraskans and people all over this great country are understandably frustrated. There has been a lot of talk recently about this law. There has been a lot of talk about the President's promises. Over the course of the last 4 years, none of his promises have centered on American families such as these who are losing the plans they like or who are paying more for their coverage. None of its promises indicated that young people's costs, such as Hannah's, would go through the roof.

One wonders if there had been honesty in this debate whether the bill would ever have passed. In fact, President Obama's promises signal just the opposite. He said over and over that people could keep their plans if they liked them. He even put a ``period'' there, and he said they would pay less.

These consequences are not happening by accident. They are the central pillars of the President's law, ObamaCare. The law mandated coverage standards for health insurance plans and forced people into policies that meet those mandates.

What is the result? The result is a law that drives up costs. It eliminates choices. It is motivated by a simple guiding principle; that is, that Nebraskans and Americans can't decide for themselves. It is motivated by a principle that government knows best. It is saying that the health insurance people freely chose is an inferior plan because the President and his people say so. It says that government must protect people from their own decisionmaking.

That is not what the American people want and is not the kind of country they want to live in. They have spoken loudly and clearly, especially when the truth came out as the realities of ObamaCare are settling into their daily lives.

The frustrating part is that the President's announcement last week that Americans can supposedly keep their plans was provoked not by devastating stories of millions of Americans or Nebraskans but by members of

his own party who are now in a panic about their reelection. To the American people, to the people I represent in Nebraska, this is far too little and far too late.

In 2010, the administration's own rule on this subject showed as many as 80 percent of small business plans and 69 percent of all business plans would lose their grandfathered status. I went to the Senate floor at the time to warn about it. Everyone on this side of the aisle voted to cancel this ill-advised ObamaCare regulation. Let me remind everyone that every single Senator on the other side of the aisle voted to let this destructive rule go forward. Now Americans and Nebraskans are paying the price for that vote.

Taking action 3 years ago would have been a very thoughtful step to avoiding disastrous consequences, but a surprise announcement caught everybody by surprise. Essentially 45 days to undo 3 years of ObamaCare damage, to protect people in their reelection, is not a serious policy effort. If a team is five touchdowns behind, they can't wait until there is 1 minute left to start playing. Let's face it. President Obama's announcement last week was not a policy decision. It was an attempt to arrive at a political fix to save reelection for members of his party. Once again he sidestepped Congress and the legislative process to unilaterally enact a temporary delay of one of his signature law's major provisions. Let me emphasize, it is temporary. It is only designed to get us past election day and to try to save some seats for his party.

Even if people believe that insurance companies and every insurance commissioner in 50 States can undo all of the planning they have done to comply with ObamaCare, to follow the rules--even if one assumes they can undo that in 45 days, our citizens will be back in the same boat next year after election day. The cancellation policies will again be printed. The replacement ObamaCare-approved policies will reveal skyrocketing prices, and our citizens will be back in the same lurch. The time for temporary fixes that shift the blame or delay the pain until the election is over needs to end.

While I will fight to eliminate this law's most burdensome provisions, the truth is that changes to this law create an avalanche of consequences. The provisions of this failed policy are so interconnected, so ill-fated, that no amount of amending and tweaking will solve the problems that American families and businesses are facing. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg. I believe full repeal is the only real answer for American families.

Congress can take a stand so millions of Americans can keep their doctors and keep the plans they like. We don't need a 2,700-page law and $1 trillion in taxes to address the cost of health care or to help individuals with preexisting conditions.

Americans are demanding what they didn't get in 2010 and since this law passed. They are demanding transparency. They are demanding thoughtful policy steps for a better, more efficient, and lower cost health care system. They want leaders who recognize we are not on the right track; we never have been with this law. It is time to head in a direction that puts Americans first, not political opportunity.

I believe this is a critical moment. I hope we seize upon this moment and do all we can to listen to the American people.

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

Mr. President, a few weeks ago we opened our Web site to Nebraskans so they could tell us what they were dealing with regarding ObamaCare. I heard from a family in Grand Island, NE, and this is what they said:

ObamaCare has made the prospect of getting sick very scary

at our house. Our monthly premium is set to go up from $578

to $714. If that's not bad enough, our maximum out-of-pocket

will go from $5,000 to $12,700.

This family is facing a 24-percent increase in premiums and a whopping 154-percent increase in their out-of-pocket maximum.

The letter goes on to say:

That's not affordable; in fact, if a member of my family

were to get sick and need hospitalization, we'd be in major

financial trouble. Not only that, but we only qualify for a

$6 tax credit. It really feels as if those of us who work

hard, do the right thing, and set good examples for our

children are now being punished.

It is time to stand with the American people and actually fulfill our promises and repeal this law.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 10 minutes.

Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk about the health care law. We have reached the 1-month milestone of the embarrassing rollout of healthcare.gov, and it doesn't work. There is no shortage of headlines about the issues.

CNBC: ``99 percent of Obamacare applications hit a wall.''

Bloomberg: ``Insurers Getting Faulty Data From U.S. Health Exchanges.''

Consumer Reports: ``Stay away from HealthCare.gov for at least another month if you can.''

Forbes: ``Now She Tells Us: Sebelius Says Obamacare's Exchange Website Needed Six Years of Development, Instead Of Two.''

The Associated Press: `` . . . government memo shows . . . a lack of testing posed a high security risk . . . ''

Nebraskans have relayed the same frustrating messages to me and to my office. One Nebraskan from Ogallala

shared that she was on the Web site from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. and was not able to set up an account. She said that after 6 hours the Web site screen read: ``The account couldn't be created at this time.'' Another Nebraskan from Norfolk said he couldn't get the Web site to work, so he contacted a Web site official, who actually said he could not help him. Instead, the official directed him back to the nonworking Web site.

The accounts from people who have experienced page crashes, hours and hours of slow service, no service, and information errors goes on and on. Yesterday, I launched a page on my Web site for Nebraskans to share their ObamaCare stories. In just the first 24 hours, nearly all of the stories I have received are heart-wrenching accounts about the law's negative impact.

Despite the headlines and stories flooding in across the country, the President continues his all-too-familiar cheerleading act. Rather than offering Americans the accountability and the transparency they deserve, the President claims, ``the product is working; it's really good.''

Top HHS officials reflected the President's poor leadership in their hearings today and last week. They dodged questions, they withheld critical information, and they delivered more promises that won't be kept. Strikingly, the ObamaCare enrollment site was actually down as the HHS Secretary testified for the first time about the Web site's troubled rollout and even assured Americans the Web site is working and that it is just slow and unreliable.

Americans are understandably frustrated with this failed effort and, most importantly, this failed law. Last week I cosponsored legislation that requires HHS to provide weekly reports to Congress and to the public about healthcare.gov. This ensures Americans, who have paid over $400 million for this exchange, will actually receive the transparency they deserve. While enacting this bill is one worthwhile step, the issues with this law aren't just about the Web site. The reality is there are much larger issues--issues that no fix to the Web site can solve.

Not surprisingly, the law's botched implementation is mimicking the clumsy passage. I was here. I saw it--2,700 pages written behind closed doors, passed on party-line votes, full of unrealistic promises and filled with pork. It indeed has been a recipe for disaster since day 1. We received clear warnings in 2009 that a lack of transparency, missed deadlines, and broken promises were to be the legacy of this law. And now, almost 4 years later, we are seeing just the start of the real- life consequences of this irresponsible process and policy.

A number of stories I have heard from Nebraskans reflect what is happening on a large-scale basis across this great country. A widowed mother from Kearney pays for her family's health insurance out of her own wages. She is extremely disappointed because her existing plan won't be offered next year. The President's repeated promise to her and to others that ``if you like your plan, you can keep it'' is not true for that mother in Kearney or for millions of Americans.

So this Nebraskan is stuck with two options: She can choose a plan with a similar premium, but her coinsurance will go up, her deductible will increase to $1,500, and her family out-of-pocket limit will increase to $9,700. Her second option is to select a plan with similar coverage that costs an additional $200 per month. That is $2,400 more per year. She said in her letter:

I don't find this to be affordable health care. I had

affordable health care.

This woman is not alone, according to figures released by the Nebraska Department of Insurance about the exchange in our State. Nebraska's insurance director said:

Basically, the rates are going up.

Family coverage for a single mom with 3 children in Hastings, NE, will increase 21 percent. A single male in Lincoln will see a 144 percent increase. Let me repeat that--a 144 percent increase.

A Manhattan Institute study found that Nebraska would be one of the worst-hit States for rate hikes, specifically citing young males and middle-aged women.

A practicing physician in Nebraska wrote to me saying Obamacare will ``destroy'' our health care system. She says the law means ``more paperwork, less time with patients, doctors outright quitting or retiring early, and fewer students willing to invest time and money to become doctors.''

This fall Nebraska grocers came to my office to discuss ObamaCare. They shared that small grocery stores are hiring fewer people and are cutting back hours. As we all know, the employer mandate requires businesses with over 50 employees to provide coverage for all of their employees or pay a $2,000 penalty for each employee. Even though the mandate was delayed, grocers shared, ``The labor force is fundamentally changing already.'' I might add, not for the better.

I find it amazingly contradictory that the Obama administration is granting a delay that provides private businesses temporary relief from an employer mandate. Yet American families will be subject to the individual mandate. It is even more inconsistent and unfair to punish American families by imposing a penalty for not enrolling on a Web site that isn't working.

Last week I signed on to legislation to delay the individual mandate until 6 months after the Web site is verifiably fixed. I have also signed on to a bill that delays the mandate for 1 year and another bill that would repeal it entirely. I firmly oppose the mandate. I hope to repeal it. But at the very least, I believe the American people should have the same protection our Nation's businesses have been promised. Because the reality is this law has put goodwill and hardworking Americans, who are playing by the rules, in the most frustrating and heartbreaking situations.

When it comes to this law, I have already said I believe the people of Nebraska and the citizens of our great country deserve so much better. They deserve a law that addresses the rising cost of care. They deserve a government that fosters economic growth so that families can confidently make a downpayment on a house, send their kids to college, grow their businesses or start a new one. Instead, because of their government, Americans are more uncertain than ever. They simply can't make sense of the 2,700-page law or its 20,000 pages of regulations and what that means for their families. You would need a cadre of lawyers to figure that out.

The administration's failed Web site launch only deepens Americans' concern about what more could come. ObamaCare was never ready for prime time. It wasn't ready that Christmas Eve when it was passed on a pure party-line vote. Sadly, we all knew this when it passed, but now we are beginning to see that you reap what you sew.

Today we find ourselves at a crossroads, and it is time to listen to the American people and repeal the law. That would deliver the single biggest solution to removing the uncertainty, anxiety, and burden upon our economy. History will harshly judge those who defend, for political reasons, a law that is so clearly inflicting so much harm.

Lately, a few of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle have begun to admit the problems and admit they are real and substantial. There is tremendous pressure on them not to break ranks. Yet several are beginning to speak for the people instead of the party. Some are rightly beginning to refuse to defend promises that have now proven to be lies. Most importantly, some are now signaling a willingness to support legislative solutions.

Maybe there is a crack in the armor, but we need more than the current few to stand with the American people. We need 15 Democrats to join our 45 Republican Senators to actually repeal or amend any section of this ill-advised law. It is a worthwhile endeavor, and it is one we must pursue.

I believe that, ultimately, history will commend those who rise above the political fray to recognize that at this moment in time true statesmen, true public servants must stand with the American people.

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

Mr. President, I appreciate the good working relationship with Senator Landrieu. We have been talking back and forth. We exchanged phone calls through the evening--never quite did connect--but we have been talking here today. It is our desire to find a solution to this issue.

We understand that what the District of Columbia is asking for is the simple ability to use its funding. We are talking and working, and I am optimistic we are going to find a solution.

I would also say, as a former mayor, I can only understand the sleepless nights the mayor is going through. So both of us want to try to solve this issue, and I think the Senate does.

What I would like to do is continue our conversations over the next hour or so. They have been fruitful, and I think we are working our way toward a solution.

I appreciate the opportunity to work with Senator Landrieu.

Mr. President, Stephanie and I wish to pay tribute to the life and legacy of Suzanne ``Sue'' Scott. Sue passed away on September 9, 2013. Her husband, Walter, and the entire Scott and Singer families remain in our thoughts and prayers during this sad time. Her loving family, special circle of friends, and many admirers throughout the State of Nebraska and this great Nation are mourning her passing and reflecting on her remarkable life of service.

Sue truly embodied compassion in action, lending her time and talents to many community organizations. She leaves behind a wonderful legacy. One could list the many brick and mortar improvements attributed to Sue and identify them as her legacy. This is true and itself worthy of acknowledgement. But, there is a much more profound aspect of her legacy. It is the remarkable example of selfless and tireless service to others, which will inspire generations to come. She gave of herself: not only in name, but in genuine service to others. Sue was not afraid to roll up her sleeves and do the real work of volunteering. Her remarkable leadership extended to: Children's Hospital & Medical Center, Children's Hospital & Medical Center Foundation, Boys & Girls Clubs of the Midlands, Omaha Zoological Society, and Joslyn Art Museum, among others. With Walter, she delighted in supporting the Kingdoms of the Seas Aquarium at the Henry Doorly Zoo and the Recital Hall at the Holland Performing Arts Center, bearing their names, in addition to numerous other philanthropic contributions. I am confident I speak for all Nebraskans in thanking the Scotts--indeed, Sue and Walter made an outstanding team--for their commitment to the community and willingness to help neighbors in need.

Thanks to the Scotts, ``The Good Life'' in Nebraska has been made even better and will surely remain vibrant for years to come. Sue's volunteerism and her can-do attitude will continue to serve as a worthy example for others to follow. Though Sue is no longer with us, her spirit will surely live on through those who follow her example and answer the call to community service and share their time, talents and treasure with fellow citizens.

We are saddened by her passing and wish to again extend our heartfelt sympathy to Walter and the Singer and Scott families. May God bless them.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for 5 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. President, as we begin our final week of legislative activity prior to the August work period, I rise today to discuss the fiscal challenges that will await us on our return. When the Senate gavels back into session on September 9, we will be only 3 short weeks away from the end of the fiscal year. We will have only 15 business days to reach an agreement on all 12 appropriations bills and avoid a government shutdown.

Unfortunately, our progress toward reaching this goal has been less than stellar. The transportation-housing appropriations bill we are currently considering is the first of 12 bills that has even been brought to the Senate floor. Consider this: We cannot even agree to comply with the spending limits mandated under current law. We are headed for a big multitrain pileup.

Last Congress, the Senate and the House made a promise to the American people--made a promise about a basic level of fiscal constraint on our appropriations process; not enough, but a step in the right direction. As a part of the Budget Control Act, which passed with bipartisan support and was signed by the President, we committed to capping appropriations spending at certain levels for each of the next 10 years.

Less than a year ago, the majority leader emphatically proclaimed them binding when he said:

We passed the Budget Control Act. We have agreed to all of

those numbers. They are done. They are agreed to.

In only the second year of this 10-year schedule, the 12 appropriation bills are mandated to spend no more than $967 billion. That is a huge number to almost everyone. It is simply a whole lot of spending, almost $3 billion a day. But my colleagues on the other side want to spend even more. In fact, they want to spend well over $1 trillion this year.

You see, they want to pretend the Budget Control Act never passed and was never signed into law. They want to keep on spending as if there is some kind of alternative reality. But sadly that is not the case. Our Nation's deficit is still too large. We are still miles away from a balanced budget. The national debt continues on a course toward disaster. Yet, apparently, we are going to ignore the appropriations caps we all agreed to 2 years ago--not by an insignificant amount, an additional $91 billion above the legal limit in the next fiscal year alone.

As a new member of the Appropriations Committee, I have been surprised to watch week after week bills being advanced that simply ignore current law. With a $17 trillion national debt, we cannot simply imagine our way out of this crisis. But by ignoring the Budget Control Act, that is exactly what we are attempting to do.

I continue to believe very strongly that we should be preparing bills that are consistent with current law, abiding by the spending caps we voted for and were signed by the President. I think we should even do more than that, but complying with the current law is the bare minimum.

What does all of this mean? Who gets hurt if we ignore the BCA caps? Well, ignoring the BCA spending levels is not free money we can print down at the Treasury Department. Spending over the BCA caps simply sets the stage for yet another round of sequester cuts. We all remember how popular that was beginning this year. The administration officials claimed our health, our safety, our well-being, were in the balance as they traveled the country, threatening services such as Head Start, food safety inspectors, and massive delays at airports because of the indiscriminate, across-the-board spending cuts.

That is exactly what we are going to see in a few weeks because the majority would rather wash their hands of the responsibility to honor the caps and continue spending as though actions do not matter. But that is exactly the Senate's plan, spend $91 billion over what the law allows. When $91 billion worth of across-the-board cuts kick in, they hope the outcry from the American people is loud enough to convince us here in Congress to add the additional spending to our national debt. In my judgment, that is no way to run a railroad, but that seems to be the plan: keep spending us right into another sequester, ignore the consequences, and hope for the best.

It simply boggles the mind, especially when you consider all but two Senate Democrats on the Appropriations Committee supported--I emphasize supported--the increased level of spending restraint in the BCA.

Instead, we should have been using this time as an opportunity to more thoughtfully reduce spending before the end of the fiscal year. That is exactly what President Obama says he wants, when he says Congress should use a scalpel to tame our budget problems, not an axe, in across-the-board spending cuts. We can responsibly meet the $967 billion spending target in current law, but we have to try. But instead of seizing the opportunity, we are once again shirking our responsibility in the hopes that no one will notice. That is disappointing to the American people. By exceeding the caps, we are violating yet another commitment we have made to them to get our fiscal house in order. You see, the American people figured this out long ago. Washington simply spends too much and, most importantly, spends too much of their own money. As their elected representatives, we should not ignore this. I am hopeful we can change course, take this opportunity and ensure that our spending bills total no more than what we promised months ago.

Come October 1, the American people will have the opportunity to see whether we have met that challenge. I hope for the sake of the country they get better news than what appears today.

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

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