Floor Statements

Mr. President, I first thank my distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Wyoming, who is a good friend and a fine example to all those who know him. People from both sides of the aisle can learn and benefit from my friend from Wyoming who, as a businessman, later as a mayor, as a devoted husband and father, has served his country well and has served his colleagues in the Senate well.

His remarks on the Senate floor tonight have been especially insightful, and I have learned something from him

this evening as I do every time he speaks. He is one who reached out to me shortly after I arrived here in the Senate and has always shown to me great kindness. I have always been grateful for that, and I look forward to continuing to work with him in the Senate.

What is happening in the Senate right now is more than just an attempt by the majority to end debate on nominees. It is an attempt to shut out the American people from the political process.

President Obama and the majority party in the Senate are so dedicated to enacting their progressive agenda that they will do anything, even if it means running roughshod over the minority and ignoring the will of the people.

Our Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution to prevent this sort of thing from happening and to protect the rights of all Americans. They devised a constitutionally limited government, with a system of checks and balances, so that no one branch of government would wield unlimited power. The whole idea of this system was to prevent the excessive abrogation of power, the excessive accumulation of power within the hands of a few.

Under our Constitution, the President's representative function is to faithfully execute the law and not to make it. Congress as a whole alone makes the laws, including a deliberative Senate whose majorities reflect minority views. Senate Democrats' recent actions are an assault on republican institutions and on the protections that they provide to all Americans.

The current administration and Senate Democrats view the Constitution as an impediment to the enactment of their agenda. This is why the President illegally amended the Affordable Care Act--a law passed by Congress--through executive action instead of asking Congress to amend it. It is also why Democrats are willing to break the rules of the Senate in order to change the rules of the Senate so that they can more quickly, more easily confirm the President's nominees.

Make no mistake. The executive and judicial nominees we are considering will be tasked with implementing and upholding President Obama's agenda. Congress is a representative body and is the only branch of government given the constitutional authority to make laws. We represent the people. When the President illegally changes the law or when he tramples on the rights of the minority in the Senate, he guarantees that the people will have no voice and no representation. These are not trivial matters. These are not matters that we can casually cavalierly cast aside. These are matters of great importance.

We have to remember what happened just a few short months ago, when we were told on July 2 of this year that President Obama had decided to change the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in several meaningful ways.

This of course was a law that was passed without consensus. It was passed without any semblance of bipartisanship. It was a law that was passed without a single Republican vote. Not a single Republican voted for it in the Senate; not a single Republican voted for it in the House. All 2,700 pages of this law--a law that wasn't read before it was passed, a law that we were told Members would have to pass in order to find out what was in it--this law took effect. Over time, as the American people learned about the law's contents, they didn't grow more favorably predisposed toward the law.

The law has in fact never enjoyed the support of a solid majority of Americans, but over time its popularity has tended to diminish. Perhaps seeing this, President Obama on July 2 of this year chose to wield his executive pen in such a way as to amend that law.

He chose, among other things, to announce that although the law contains a number of deadlines, a number of start dates, that he would not be enforcing the employer mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He would of course still be enforcing, as of the January 1 start date, the individual mandate. But he would not be implementing or enforcing, at least for the first year of the law's full operation, the employer mandate. Of course, he had no authority to do this. The Constitution sets in place a system for making law.

In order to become law, a legislative proposal has to make its way through the House of Representatives, has to make its way through the Senate, has to be passed by most of the people in the House and in the Senate, and then it has to be presented to the President consistent with article I, section 7, clause 2 of the Constitution before it may become law.

But of course, once it is law, it is law; and a law passed under one administration can't simply be vetoed or fundamentally altered by a subsequent President. In fact, it can't be vetoed or subsequently altered by even the same President who signed it into law in the first place. And yet, that is in some respects exactly what happened here.

The President modified the law. He was too impatient, too unwilling-- too unwilling to defer to the legislative branch, too unwilling to respect the oath that he took to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, too disrespectful of that very document, our founding document that has fostered the development of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. Too unwilling to defer to that document in order to follow its most basic precepts and its most basic commands.

He suggested that he needed to do this because the law wasn't ready to be implemented. He later suggested that he did this because he had to do it because, as he put it: Under normal conditions, under more ideal conditions, obviously the thing to do if you wanted to change the law would be to go back with that branch of government charged with making the law--that branch of government which passed it into law in the first place--Congress. But, as he pointed out, these are not ideal circumstances.

No, they are not ideal. Not ideal, because he controls only one division of the legislative branch of government, the Senate. The Senate is under the control of his party and the House of Representatives isn't.

This can hardly justify this kind of blatant usurpation of legislative authority. This can hardly justify a President taking upon himself the sole task of changing legislation. It is in fact an act of legislation unto itself. Yet this is what he did by a stroke of the executive pen. This is exactly what the Founding Fathers tried to protect against, this kind of unilateral action by the executive, this kind of accumulation of power in the hands of the few--or, in this case, the hands of one person. Yet this is what he did, and he has done it on several occasions.

Some people have suggested that if what the President did was wrong, if it was unconstitutional, if it wasn't authorized by the Constitution--which it wasn't--if it wasn't authorized by an act of Congress, either the Affordable Care Act or some other statute--and it wasn't--then perhaps the courts can and should and must and will remedy the constitutional problem embodied in that act. There are some problems with that.

First of all, as we all know, not every unconstitutional act can necessarily be remedied in court. Many unconstitutional acts are themselves outside the purview of the Federal courts' ability to review. In some cases, an unconstitutional act might be something that the courts consider a nonjusticiable political question, not subject to the court's authority, or something that the courts aren't willing to wade into.

In other circumstances, an unconstitutional act might occur in a situation in which no one party is likely to be able to develop and establish article III standing in order to challenge that unconstitutional act.

In order to establish article III standing--in other words, in order to establish the right to sue in Federal court--article III of the Constitution requires that the plaintiff be able to establish that the plaintiff has suffered an injury in fact, an injury in fact that is fairly traceable to the conduct of the defendant, and, thirdly, that it is subject to redress by the authority of the court.

In this circumstance, one must ask the question: Does anyone really have standing? Can anyone really establish the kind of standing in order to challenge the President's refusal to implement and enforce the individual mandate while refusing or declining to enforce and implement the employer mandate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act?

Who has standing to do that? Who has been harmed by that? One could

suggest, I suppose, that an employer might want to look into that. But when they would examine the situation, most or all employers would probably have to acknowledge that they have been given a reprieve. So employers, No. 1, are not likely to be aggrieved by it in the sense that they are not likely to feel the need to sue; and, No. 2, if they were to try to sue, it seems to me they would have a very difficult time establishing in a court of law the fact that they had suffered an injury in fact.

Who else might do it? Most constitutional scholars would conclude-- probably correctly--that a Member of Congress would lack article III standing under the applicable Supreme Court precedent, Flast v. Cohen and other Supreme Court precedents. Merely being a Member of Congress is not necessarily enough to give a person article III standing.

So I think it is very difficult to reach the conclusion that anyone-- at least obviously--has article III standing to sue.

So we cannot necessarily rely on the courts to be able to undo this constitutional damage, to be able to seek an adequate remedy in a court of law for this blatant insult to the U.S. Constitution. Even if they could, moreover, even if somebody could establish article III standing, even if somebody could come before an article III Federal judge and convince that judge that they have standing, would that Federal court be in a position to dispose of this case within the roughly 1-year period in which this provision of the law is effectively suspended? It takes a lot of time to litigate a case all the way through to completion, and I think it is doubtful whether somebody would be able to bring an action in Federal court and have it be fully litigated all the way through to judgment in the roughly 1-year period in which it would still be relevant.

If you could not get it done in that time period, then it would appear very likely that the case would be rendered moot at that point. So this, quite simply, is the kind of case in which no Federal suit is likely to be brought and if one is brought it would likely fail. So that is yet another reason why we as a Congress ought to be looking very closely at this, you see, because this is one of those many instances in which it is possible that someone can violate the U.S. Constitution, here the President of the United States, without the courts being in a position to effectively remedy that constitutional defect.

We too as Members of this body have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. In my mind, that means doing more than simply refraining from that which the Supreme Court of the United States would obviously invalidate. To my mind, that means more than simply saying: If someone has violated the U.S. Constitution, then I am sure the courts will take care of it. We simply know that is not true. We know that in many circumstances--and I have just outlined a couple of them--the courts are not in a position to be able to remedy a constitutional defect, to be able to remedy a blatant insult to the Constitution and an absolute violation of the Constitution's provisions.

So we need to continue to hold this President accountable when he fails, quite blatantly in this circumstance, to do that which the Constitution requires. This is a question that I think is particularly important, not only in light of how this particular act of Congress came to be, not only in light of how it was enacted and the fact that it is 2,700 pages long, that it has now resulted in 20,000 pages of regulatory implementing text but also in light of the fact that it was challenged in court; that is, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was challenged in court as to its constitutionality, but it was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in a most unusual fashion. Let's talk about that for just a moment.

A number of States and a few others banded together and challenged in Federal court a few years ago Congress's power to enact certain provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Among those provisions that they challenged were the individual mandate. The argument was Congress lacks the power asserted by Congress in the Affordable Care Act, pursuant to article I section 8 clause 3, the commerce clause, to tell individual Americans that they must buy a product--health insurance; not just any health insurance but that specific kind of health insurance that Congress in its infinite wisdom deemed absolutely essential for every American to purchase. The challenge asserted that Congress lacks this power under the commerce clause.

The lawsuit also alleged among other things that Congress lacked the power to tell States that the States had to expand their Medicaid Programs and gave the States no choice; that this, too, violated the Constitution, that it exceeded certain limitations on Congress's power because the courts have long recognized that Congress lacks the power to commandeer the States' legislative and administrative machinery in order to carry out a Federal program.

Congress has the power to encourage States, to ask States to do this, but it lacks the power to direct a State to do X or Y or Z. We cannot just tell a State to do something just because we want it to be done. We might be able to persuade the State to do something. We might even be able to fund the State, to offer funding in case a State wants to participate in a given program, but we lack the power to dictate to States that they do such a thing.

In this circumstance, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was unmistakable in its clarity. It simply told the States they had to expand their Medicaid programs in the fashion outlined in the Act itself.

So these two core pieces, these two core aspects of this judicial challenge made their way up through the Federal court system, made their way up to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court decided these two issues, as I said a moment ago, in a most unusual fashion. Turning to the commerce clause issue, the Court addressed that issue right after addressing another issue that was sort of a jurisdictional question, an introductory question. The Court had to determine first of all, before it even got to the merits of the constitutional challenge as to the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act--it had to address the question of whether the individual mandate and the enforcement mechanism attached to it could fairly be characterized as a tax, for purposes relevant to the so-called anti- injunction act, a Civil War-era statute that basically says that any time someone wants to challenge a tax in Federal court they have to wait until such time as that tax is actually being collected. Then that challenge is brought as against the attempted enforcement of the tax statute.

The Supreme Court of the United States, using centuries' worth of jurisprudence, looked at the language of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, it looked at the manner in which it was written, and easily concluded, no, this is not a tax. This is a penalty. Because it is a penalty and it is not a tax, we, the Court, may proceed to consider the merits of the arguments brought up in this case, the merits of this challenge brought as to Congress's authority, vel non, to enact something like this, the individual mandate under the commerce clause. So the Court quickly dispensed with that issue and reached the merits of the constitutional question before it.

The Court then went on to conclude that Congress does, in fact, lack the power under the commerce clause, under article I, section 8, clause 3 of the Constitution, to tell individual Americans they must buy a particular product, health insurance; not just any health insurance but the specific kind of health insurance that Congress told the American people they have to buy in the Affordable Care Act.

The Court fairly easily and, in my opinion, correctly, decided that Congress lacks that power because of the fact that the power Congress has to regulate interstate commerce is meaningfully different than the power to compel individuals to enter into commerce, to regulate inactivity, to punish inactivity, to punish the failure to buy a particular product that the people might not want to buy.

You see, for a long time we had this understanding as Americans that the power given to Congress was in fact limited. We look at all the authorities granted to Congress under the Constitution, the overwhelming majority of which can be found in article I, section 8. All of these were limited and

they were limited with good reason. They were limited with good reason because that played a very large part, that played a very significant role in how and why we became a country.

We broke away from Great Britain, not just because we grew tired of having a monarch but because we grew tired of the authority of a parliament--a parliament that not only refused to grant us any representation but also a parliament that refused to acknowledge any natural limit on its power to regulate us, and it did in fact regulate us and it regulated us heavily, mercilessly. It taxed us overwhelmingly and it refused to recognize any meaningful--failed, refused to recognize any meaningful limit on its own authority.

That is one of the reasons we became our own country. That is one of the reasons the Founding Fathers put in place this system in which our national legislative body would be vested with only a few specifically listed or enumerated powers. The founding generation understood that each of those powers would in fact be limited, so much so, in fact, that James Madison described the powers given to Congress as few and defined and characterized those reserved to the States as numerous and indefinite.

During the first 140, 150 years or so of our Republic's existence, we as a people continued to recognize the necessarily limited nature of Congress's power. Much of that started to change during the New Deal era in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with the assistance of Democratic majorities in the House and in the Senate, pushed forward with a very progressive agenda, one that expanded not only the role of government in general but also the role of the Federal Government in particular.

Initially, the Supreme Court resisted and the Supreme Court acknowledged the fact that the powers granted to Congress under the spending clause and the commerce clause were, in fact, limited. But the more FDR and the more Congress pushed back against the Supreme Court, the more the Supreme Court seemed inclined to relent. Ultimately, we saw the Supreme Court of the United States back down in the late 1930s from its what had been previously more rigorous, more restrictive interpretations of the spending clause and of the commerce clause.

The Supreme Court ended up adopting a set of rules that would basically say that as long as Congress was acting broadly within the field of what could be loosely considered a regulation of interstate commerce, that the courts would stay away in second-guessing Congress's determinations.

The Court, starting out with a case called NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel in 1937 and culminating in another case 5 years later in Wickard v. Filburn in 1942, ended up concluding that Congress may, without interference from the courts, regulate any activity that when measured and evaluated in the aggregate, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Regardless of whether the discrete activity in question might actually occur entirely intrastate, Congress would be able to regulate that activity pursuant to its commerce clause authority, regardless of how intrastate that activity might be when viewed in isolation.

Under this very broad interpretation, Congress's power could, in a sense, be viewed as extending to virtually every aspect of human existence because, after all, almost everything we do when measured in the aggregate might well be understood to have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Yet even under that broad analysis, that couldn't extend to what was being regulated in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--in the individual mandated provision, which was inactivity. Remember, this is an enormous breadth that the Supreme Court said Congress could, without interference from the courts, regulate under its commerce clause authority.

In Wicker v. Filburn what was at issue was the cultivation of wheat. Congress adopted a statutory framework in which farmers would be severely restricted in how much wheat they could grow--how much they could produce of this or that agricultural commodity.

There was a farmer named Roscoe Filburn who committed a grave offense against the Republic. His offense did not involve dealing drugs; it didn't involve murder or kidnapping. His offense involved growing too much wheat.

Roscoe Filburn grew more wheat than Congress--in its infinite wisdom--viewed appropriate for any American to grow. He was fined many thousands of dollars, which during the New Deal era was an enormous amount of money because of the fact that he grew too much wheat.

Roscoe Filburn was fortunate in that he had access to some good lawyers, and his lawyers advised him on this. They represented him aggressively and competently in court. What they argued, relying on true facts, was that, yes, our client Roscoe Filburn did, in fact, grow wheat in excess of the limit imposed by Federal law, but the amount of wheat he grew in excess of the grain production limit applicable to his farm that year was grain that never entered interstate commerce.

In fact, it never entered commerce at all. You see, that grain never even left Roscoe Filburn's farm. He used it on his farm to feed his family, to feed his livestock, and he held on to the remainder of it to use as seed for a subsequent planting season.

In a very real sense that wheat was not part of interstate commerce at all. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court of the United States, lacking nothing in imagination, said that even that wheat was within Congress's almighty grasp--within the all-knowing, wise reach of the Federal sovereign. What the Court said was that the wheat grown by Roscoe Filburn in excess of the grain production quota was itself something that when viewed in the aggregate, could substantially affect interstate commerce.

In other words, if lots of farmers everywhere--just like Roscoe Filburn--grew too much wheat, even if their wheat never entered instate commerce, the growing of all of that excess wheat would inevitably have an impact on the supply and demand and ultimately the price and availability of wheat on the interstate market. Therefore, even that wheat which was entirely locally grown and locally consumed would be subject to Congress's reach.

Wicker v. Filburn thus erected an extraordinarily low barrier for Congress to clear in establishing that it had properly invoked its authority under the commerce clause. Yet even that extraordinarily low barrier was high enough to stop Congress from acting pursuant to the commerce clause in enacting the individual mandate under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Thus ended the Supreme Court's analysis in June 2012 when it ruled that Congress had exceeded its constitutional limits under the commerce clause in enacting the individual mandate.

Significantly, this was only the third time in about 75 years--only the third time since NLRB v. Jones and Laughlin Steel and Wicker v. Filburn--in which the Supreme Court of the United States recognized Congress had overstepped its limits under the commerce clause. This was a rare thing for the court to do. It was foreseeable because the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act went so far beyond anything that had ever been seen before. Yet it was only the third time in the last 75 years in which that had happened.

Then something different happened--something very few people on either side of the aisle in this body or on either side of the political divide in America generally had seen. After concluding that Congress lacked this power under the commerce clause, the Supreme Court, under the pen of Chief Justice John Roberts, proceeded to analyze the government's backup argument; that is, the argument that even if, as the Court had now concluded, Congress lacked the power to do this under the commerce clause, Congress still had the power to do this consistent with its power to impose taxes.

The Court went on to conclude that Congress did have this power. Strangely, the Court also went on to conclude that is essentially what Congress had done here.

This was odd on many levels. No. 1, the Court had already concluded, as it had to conclude in order to proceed to the case--as it had to conclude in order to exercise jurisdiction over this case--prior to the implementation of the law, prior to the collection of this alleged tax, that it was, in fact, not a tax but

a penalty. It was very strange that the Court was now basically saying: OK, it is a penalty and not a tax for some purposes, but it is a tax and not a penalty for other purposes. Yet that is what the Court did.

It was also strange that the Court did this for the additional reason that Congress had considered legislative proposals in a different, earlier iteration of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that would have enforced the individual mandate by means of a tax.

Congress considered language that would have done that. Congress knew, and still knows, how to enact legislative language that imposes a new tax. Yet when it tried to use that language, language that under 100 years' worth of jurisprudence everyone understands would have imposed a tax, Congress could not get the votes to pass it even in what was then a Congress in which the Democratic Party dominated both Houses.

Even in that Congress they tried but failed to get the requisite number of votes to pass the individual mandate enforced by means of a tax. They could not do it. It was therefore very odd that the Supreme Court of the United States would interpret what Congress couldn't pass as a tax in such a way as to make it a tax for constitutional purposes when Congress itself didn't have the votes to do it.

In order to pass legislation raising revenue--in other words, in order to pass legislation imposing a new tax--the Constitution requires that legislation of that sort originate in the House of Representatives. Why is this? I think most who looked at the issue would agree it has do with the fact that the House of Representatives is the entity within our Federal Government structure that is, by design, most representative of the people.

In the Senate we have elections every 6 years. In the House it is every 2 years. From the outset the House was the body in which the people were represented because, of course, at the outset the Senate was the body in which the States were represented. That is no longer the case. We are directly elected by the people.

But it was always the case, and still is the case, that tax legislation must start in the House because it is the body closest to the people and most responsive to the needs and the desires and the concerns of the people. It is therefore quite ironic that this law-- this tax, as the Supreme Court called it--was put into place as a tax, not by the body within the Federal Government that is most accountable to the people, the House of Representatives, but instead by the body within the Federal Government that is the very least accountable to the people, the Supreme Court of the United States.

I believe this amounted to a usurpation of constitutional authority. I believe this amounted to a betrayal of the judicial oaths of the five robe-wearing men and women who signed on to that opinion. They did not have the power to legislate. They did not have the power to create a tax. They did not have the power to create out of whole cloth tax language out of penalty language--language that under a century's worth of jurisprudence, the Court's own precedence carrying stare decisis effect made clear it was a penalty and not a tax. Yet that is exactly what the Court did.

When people discover this--when they learn about and hear about it and dare to plow through the Supreme Court's opinion so they can understand what happens, they will inevitably ask: How can the Court do this? Does the Court have that power--the power to legislate, the power to impose a tax where Congress has not chosen to impose a tax? No, the Court doesn't have that power.

Then how can the Court do that? How could the Court do that? Why did the Court do that? The Court did that because it could, not because it could in the sense that it had the constitutional power to do it but because the Court has an exercise of raw political power. It chose to do so and did do so.

This was a tragic day in American history. It is a day we should not soon forget and a day we should do all in our power to remedy. This decision was wrong. It was unconscionable. As a matter of jurisprudence, it was unforgivable.

The Court then went on to address the challenge related to Congress's power to compel the States to expand their Medicaid Programs. Medicaid, as we all know, is a program that is partially funded by the Federal Government but administered and partially funded by the States. In the Affordable Care Act, Congress directed the States--whether the States were so inclined--to expand their Medicaid Programs. It gave them no choice but to expand them and to expand them to a very significant degree. It expanded them in a way that would bring about not only significant costs to the States over the years but also very substantial administrative burdens as well. Yet the Affordable Care Act left the States with no choice. You must do this. Just do it because we are Congress and we are all powerful. You have to do it because we say so.

There is this anticommandeering principle embedded within our constitutional jurisprudence, rooted in the enumerated powers doctrine and rooted partially in the Tenth Amendment as well. It says that Congress lacks the power to commandeer States' administrative or legislative machinery to put in place, to carry out the legislature, to administer a Federal program. The Supreme Court of the United States concluded that Congress had violated this anti-commandeering principle in passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and in doing so in a way that left the States with no other alternative.

So this was the second constitutional defect in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

But, here again, the Supreme Court chose to rewrite the law a second time in order to save it. Ordinarily, what the Court would do in this circumstance--in that circumstance, after concluding that Congress had violated this anti-commandeering principle and that this aspect of the Affordable Care Act was, in fact, unconstitutional--the Court would be under an obligation to go into what is called severability analysis, to analyze whether or to what extent or in what way Congress might have intended to allow the rest of the statute's provisions to operate independently, notwithstanding the unconstitutionality of the provision deemed invalid by the court. In this case, quite steadily, the Supreme Court engaged in no such analysis. It never reached the severability question, even though it had been the discussion of extensive briefing and conversation and oral argument.

The Supreme Court didn't get into severability at all. The Court decided it just didn't need to. It didn't need to because the Court rewrote the statute in order to make it constitutional. The Court wrote into the law a carve-out provision. It simply said, We are going to read this law as though it gave the States an opt-out provision, as though it gave the States an option of deciding whether or not to expand their own Medicaid programs.

The only problem is the text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act contained absolutely no such language. We can read through all 2,700 pages of that law, and we won't find any opt-out provision such as what I just described. No, the Court created this too from whole cloth. The Court did this in the absence of any text. This too amounted to a betrayal of the judicial oaths of those who signed their names to that opinion. This too was a blatantly unconstitutional act that was an insult to the high judicial office that those individuals occupy. That too is an insult to the constitutional system, which has fostered the development of the greatest civilization the world has ever known.

We can't likely overlook crimes against the Constitution. We can't likely overlook the usurpation of authority by the few. We can't likely overlook the fact that laws--our most fundamental laws--have been openly flouted in this case, nor will we soon forget the fact that it has occurred here.

So here are all of these reasons why some of us feel so strongly, so passionately that this law started with some unconstitutional premises and has had its constitutional defects compounded over and over and over, as we have had the Supreme Court of the United States rewriting it, not just once but twice, in order to save it. We have the President of the United States rewriting it, in effect, legislating through the

stroke of the executive pen several times now, because, among other things, he says the law is not ready to implement. He doesn't have the power to legislate on his own any more than the Supreme Court of the United States has the power to legislate, any more than the Queen of England has the right to legislate for the United States of America.

The legislative power belongs here. It belongs here in the Congress of the United States, and we must exercise that power. When someone else takes that power from us, when someone else independently exercises the legislative power, we must guard it jealously. We must protect it. I don't care whether one is a Republican or a Democrat, and I don't care whether one is President Obama's biggest fan or his most aggressive critic. The office we occupy here requires us, compels us to defend our institutional prerogative as Federal lawmakers. When someone else exercises that power--a power that does not belong to them but to us--we must protect it, not because it is ours but because it belongs to those we represent. It belongs to those who elected us to serve here, those who elected us and not someone else to make the laws. Whenever--to any degree--we overlook the fact that someone else has legislated, someone not vested with lawmaking authority, we do ourselves and our country a disservice and we reflect a certain cavalier disregard for the oath we have taken to uphold the Constitution of the United States, which was put in place to make the men and the women of the United States of America free.

There is another issue related to all of this that I think we need to touch on, which is the issue of excessive delegation of legislative authority to the executive branch. In some circumstances, we have a situation in which Congress may voluntarily relinquish some of its lawmaking power to the executive branch. I say it may do that, that it can do that, but that is not necessarily saying that it should do that. Perhaps the most influential political philosopher in America's founding era was Charles de Montesquieu. Charles de Montesquieu wrote that the power to legislate is the power to make laws, not the power to make legislators. He recognized, I think, that there was a natural temptation among elected lawmakers to want to pass the buck along to someone else, to want to give to someone else the task of making law.

We do this sometimes when we pass an extraordinarily broad law and then we direct some executive branch agency to simply fill in the gaps, to effectively make the laws. The Affordable Care Act is replete with instances in which this kind of thing occurs, in which certain broad parameters are spelled out and in which we then say to this department or that department that it will have the power to promulgate rules carrying the force of generally applicable Federal law, which that same department or that same agency will then have the power to enforce.

So that is part of how we end up with 20,000 pages of implementing regulations already under ObamaCare--20,000 pages and counting--because we have a lot of instances in which we have delegated de facto lawmaking power. That too presents its own kind of constitutional problem--not necessarily a constitutional problem that the courts are inclined to recognize, but a sort of constitutional problem nonetheless, because the more we delegate de facto lawmaking power to an executive branch agency, the less we see that anyone is accountable to the people for our laws.

One can imagine, for example, if taken to an extreme, what this could look like. Let's suppose one day we just decide we are tired of debating and discussing and voting on and having to pass laws that are controversial, laws that are specific, laws that require us to get our hands dirty, laws that require us to make difficult decisions, so, once and for all, we are going to pass a law that everyone can get behind. It will be called the law of good laws. A law that says we shall have good laws and we hereby delegate to the herewith created U.S. Department of Good Laws the power to make and enforce good laws. We then pass that and we give this Department of Good Laws the power to issue regulations and to enforce those regulations. This is actually not all that different from what we do all the time and what has been done under ObamaCare to a very significant degree--about 20,000 pages of regulations so far, and that is still building.

One of the reasons this is a problem is because when the people don't like our laws, they can come to us and they can hold us accountable for laws that we may have voted to enact. They can choose to replace us with someone else, someone who wouldn't vote for that kind of law the next time they have the chance. But when the law that they don't like is not one that we have enacted but instead one that has been promulgated by an executive branch agency, the people come to complain to us and, in that circumstance, we say: Don't look at me; go to the executive branch agency; they are the ones who did it. They go to the executive branch agency, and they see that the people occupying the executive branch agency, as well mannered, well educated, well intentioned, and well groomed as they might be, are not subject to elections, so they can't be voted out. They can't be fired by the people. That is why we are entrusted with the lawmaking power. It is not necessarily that we are the best equipped in every way to do it; it is that we stand subject to elections in 6-year intervals in the case of the Senate, and in 2-year intervals in the case of the House of Representatives. It is yet another reason why we ought to be more resistant, more concerned when it comes to enacting legislation that delegates an excessive amount of de facto law-making power to an executive branch agency.

It is yet another reason why I think we need to pass something akin to the proposal that has been introduced as the REINS Act, which would say anytime an executive branch agency issues a new rule, a new regulation deemed by the Office of Management and Budget to constitute a major rule, that major rule will take effect if, and only if, it is first passed into law by the House and then by the Senate and then signed into law by the President. Then and only then do I think we will be able to start to reclaim that legislative power which is rightfully ours, and that, more importantly, the American people will be able to hold Congress accountable for the responsibilities properly given to Congress under the Constitution. This is about allowing the people to be governed by those they choose. When we delegate excessively our own lawmaking power to executive branch agencies, we deprive the people of their right to have their laws written and enacted by men and women of their own choosing.

This is important, and it should be important to people of all political backgrounds, to people at every end, at every step, at every stage along the political continuum. This is an issue this is neither Republican nor Democratic, it is neither liberal nor conservative, it is simply American.

When we pass laws, we pass laws through democratically elected Senators and Representatives. We do not do it through nameless, faceless bureaucrats who, regardless of how well-educated and well- intentioned they may be, do not serve the people in the sense that they are not elected by the people. They are not subject to reelection. They are not subject to dismissal by the people.

We must hold that power here. That power belongs to us, not to bureaucrats. It belongs to us, not the President. It belongs to us and not to nine Justices wearing black robes across the street in the Supreme Court of the United States.

These are some of the things that are at stake. These are some of the reasons it is so significant that we have this prolonged, protracted effort by the President of the United States to usurp power that is not his own. We must not facilitate the President in his ongoing effort to aggregate power, to accumulate power within the executive branch of government that is not his own.

That is why we need to stand up to the President. I am against some of these nominees he has pushed forward again and again and again trying to trample over the rights of the minority. We have to do that. We have an obligation to stand up to the President, especially because he is taking power that is not his own, and he is doing it, among other things, to move forward with ObamaCare, a law that a majority

of the American people have never approved of and a law the American people are growing steadily more against every single day.

I see my time is expired.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in Utah I have a program that I call the Mobile Office. It is a way for many of my constituents, many of whom live some distance from my two offices in the State, to meet with members of my staff in order to discuss various concerns they have with the Federal Government, concerns that arise from their interaction with any of various Federal programs and agencies. It allows us to help these constituents, and it provides vital information that I can use to better represent them back here in Washington.

At one meeting in Davis County, a man attended who wanted to tell us about his experience with ObamaCare. He owns two small food stores and a 7-Eleven. He is also an immigrant, having come to the United States just 12 years ago to seek a better life for himself and for his family. He gives back to his community. He contributes to his economy and provides jobs for people who live in his town. Now ObamaCare is threatening all of that. His insurance premiums for his family are going to be rising by $200 a month. This cost will destabilize his personal finances and may well force him to make cutbacks or to let some of his employees go.

These are the real human costs of ObamaCare. It is not what the President promised, and it is turning out to be an absolute, unmitigated disaster for families all across this country. It is time to start over and develop a health care system that works for everyone.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the President of the United States promised: If you like your plan, you can keep it. We all know now that simply wasn't true. Though many of us have been saying this for years, many Americans, including many in my State, are realizing the pain of the President's false statement.

Dave from Utah says: My company just dropped the good insurance plan we have had for years due to ObamaCare. The Affordable Care Act is costing me more money. I am barely able to keep my family out of poverty, and now health care is going to cost me even more. Please do something to change this.

Marcy from Utah says: We own a small business in Utah and we will be forced to cancel our insurance and ourselves go on ObamaCare.

We can start over with a new way to fix our health care system, but starting

over doesn't necessarily have to mean starting from scratch. We should take those lessons we have learned and we should build around the concept of a market-driven, patient-centered health care system, one that empowers individual Americans to choose their own health insurance based on their own personal needs and based on their own preferences.

I thank the Chair.

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

Mr. President, here we are again: Another unnecessary crisis; a proposal that maintains the status quo; very little time to read and evaluate the bill. In fact, we still don't have a final version of the text. No time to explain it to our constituents.

This is Washington at its worst. It is exactly the kind of thing the American people are fed up with and exactly why several colleagues and I began this effort to delay and defund ObamaCare back in July.

It appears this particular fight will end much the same way ObamaCare began: in a last-minute deal, negotiated in back rooms, then forced on Congress and on the American people.

The Washington establishment can't bring itself to believe this is why Congress's approval rating is so low--because Washington doesn't listen to the American people. It ignores them. And when the American people can no longer be ignored, the administration shuts down national parks, blocks veterans from going to their own memorials, uses the IRS to target certain groups, and holds hostage critical funding for cancer research, low-income women and children, veterans' health benefits, border security, and our National Guard. It is shameful how Washington treats the American people, and the people are right to be upset about it.

The media keeps asking, was it worth it? My answer is it is always worth it to do the right thing. Fighting against an abusive government in defense of protecting the individual rights and freedoms of the American people is always the right thing.

Some say we shouldn't have fought because we couldn't win. But this country wasn't built by fighting only when victory was absolutely certain. In fact, some of the most important victories in our history were the result of fighting battles against significant odds. And even if victory seemed difficult or impossible, that wouldn't excuse me or anyone else from doing the right thing. Avoiding difficult battles, after all, is how we ended up in this kind of mess--a government with $17 trillion in debt which we add to at a rate close to $1 trillion a year, out-of-control spending, a broken entitlement system, a Tax Code no one understands--all because Washington is willing to act only when there is guaranteed political gain. When the avoidance of political risk becomes our dominant motivation, only the Washington establishment wins the American people lose.

Furthermore, in Washington, victories are rarely immediate and very few end up being permanent. ObamaCare wasn't enacted overnight and it won't be repealed overnight. We must remind the American people of the harmful effects of this law at every opportunity if we are ever going to see it repealed. We have repeatedly warned the American people will be shocked when they realize the way the President has misled the American people about ObamaCare.

The embarrassing rollout of the exchanges doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. Every day brings a new story of a family whose deductible has doubled or a married couple who can't keep the plan they have or a business that can no longer provide health insurance for its employees or workers who are seeing their hours cut or losing their jobs altogether.

The realization that the administration has either been dishonest or incompetent--or perhaps a combination of both--is just starting to dawn on the American people. Even the President's friends in the media are watching this slow-rolling train wreck and are demanding the President do something to stop it. The Chicago Tribune, the President's own hometown newspaper, puts it this way:

Last spring, President Barack Obama said, ``there will

still be, you know, glitches and bumps'' in the rollout of

the new system. But what we're seeing now is no glitch or

bump. There is a growing mountain of evidence that Obamacare

has fundamental problems in design and implementation.

The Tribune goes on to say:

We encouraged a one-year delay in the law. We recognize

that's not going to happen. Obamacare is here. It's time,

though, for the Obama administration to level with Americans

about what's happening here. It's time to stop blaming

Republicans and start talking about what needs to change.

So it is interesting to see that the Chicago Tribune, the President's own hometown paper, is calling to a significant degree for exactly what I have been calling for since July--for a 1-year halt, a 1-year delay, a 1-year timeout to protect the American people from the harmful effects of this law, a law the President himself has acknowledged isn't ready for prime time, a law the President himself has indicated he is not willing to follow as was written. Incidentally, this again was exactly what we were arguing for all the way back in July and it now appears that the President's hometown paper was with us.

Almost everyone but the President seems to recognize this law is going to be terrible for the American people. It is costing jobs. It is hurting families. It is making people's health care situation worse, and it won't solve the problems in our broken health care system. And let me be clear. There will be very real consequences for people in both parties as a result of the implementation of this law.

Today Washington has the upper hand, but the American people will always have the last word. This is not over. We have an obligation to fight for the American people, and I do not intend to let the American people down.

Mr. President, there can be no doubt that no one wants to be here. Not one Member of this body wants to be in shutdown. We all may have different reasons, different explanations as to why we are here. We might differ with regard to our own beliefs as to how best we should get out of this. But not one of us wants to be here. Every one of us recognizes how awful it is to be in a shutdown posture.

I would like to take a few moments and explain my thoughts on both of those two points. I believe perhaps the single most important reason, single most undisputable reason why we are in a shutdown posture has to do with the fact that for a variety of reasons we have been operating on the basis of continuing resolutions for several years in a row. A continuing resolution, of course, is a bill, a legislative vehicle through which Congress may choose to keep government programs funded at current levels. It is kind of a reset button. It propels us forward on the basis of our current spending pattern, rather than on the basis of an independently, freshly negotiated set of priorities.

This is a different way of running government. Normally this is reserved for unusual circumstances. It usually does not last as long as we have been going this time around, for about 4\1/2\ years this way. But this causes us to do things in a way that is different than one would otherwise choose to do them. It is certainly very different than the manner in which we would operate in any other aspect of our lives.

To use one familiar example, let's analogize Congress's spending pattern, its spending decisions, to a consumer going to the grocery store. Suppose you went to the grocery store having been informed by your spouse that you need to bring home bread, milk, and eggs. So you went to that grocery store, you put bread and milk and eggs in your basket. You go to the checkout counter. You place the bread, the milk, and the eggs on the counter. The cashier rings you up. The cashier at that point says: Okay, here is what you will owe us for these items, but we will not allow you to buy just bread, milk, and

eggs. In order to buy these items at this store, we will also require you to purchase a half ton of iron ore, a bucket of nails, a book about cowboy poetry, and a Barry Manilow album.

Of course, anyone being told that would be a little surprised. Anyone being told that would be reluctant to shop at that same store in the future. And if another store existed, another alternative, very few, if any, consumers would continue shopping at that institution.

Yet that in some ways is the way we are asked to spend money here in Congress when we are operating on the basis of back-to-back continuing resolutions, just pushing reset on our spending button, keeping a Federal Government that spends about $3.7 trillion a year operating sort of on economic autopilot.

It would actually be a little bit closer analogy if we changed the hypothetical to a circumstance in which the cashier said not just that you have to buy half a ton of iron ore, a bucket of nails, a book about cowboy poetry, and a Barry Manilow album, but you also have to buy one of every single item in the entire grocery store in order to buy anything--no bread, no milk, no eggs, nothing unless you buy one of everything in the entire store. That would bring us a little closer to the analogy we are dealing with here where we have to choose to fund everything or alternatively to fund nothing. Neither one of those, it seems to me, is a terribly good solution. Neither one of those fairly represents good decisionmaking practices.

We ought to be able to proceed, as past Congresses have historically, passing a dozen or so--sometimes more--appropriations bills and going through our Federal Government category by category debating and discussing each appropriations measure, discussing the contents of that measure to make sure there is sufficient agreement within this body and within the House of Representatives to continue funding the government function in question.

We have a new item in the store, so to speak, as we are shopping this year. This new item in the store is called ObamaCare, one that is about to take full effect on January 1, 2014. Yes, it is the law of the land, but we do have the final choice, the final option, the final authority to choose whether to fund that moving forward or, alternatively, to defund it. We can take that out of the grocery cart.

It is a new item that has caused a lot of people a lot of concern. A lot of people are fearing and experiencing job losses, cuts to their wages, having their hours slashed and losing their health care benefits as a result of this law, and they see more of these disturbing trends coming in the near future. So they are asking for Congress to help. They are asking for Congress to defund the implementation of this law.

A lot of people and many of my colleagues in this body have responded by saying: Yes, but it is the law. That is true. It was passed by Congress 3\1/2\ years ago and signed into law by President Obama. It is important to remember two facts about this, however.

First of all, the President himself has announced that he is not following the law. He himself says the law is not ready to implement as it is written. He himself has refused to follow it as it is written.

Secondly, it is not unusual, it is not unheard of by any means to have a law that puts in place one standard, one program, and then have a subsequent appropriations decision made by Congress that results in the defunding of that very program. Let me cite one of many examples I could point to. Under Federal law, currently there is designated something known as the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. That is our official nuclear waste repository. Yet for many years it has been defunded by the Congress. That is Congress's prerogative. Congress holds the power of the purse. Congress may decide to do that.

It is also important to remember that this was by design that it would work this way. Our Founding Fathers understood and set up the system so that it would work this way, and they put the power of the purse in the hands of the House of Representatives, understanding the House of Representatives would act first when exercising the power of the purse.

James Madison acknowledged this fact in Federalist No. 58, and if I can quote from that in pertinent part, James Madison wrote:

The House of Representatives can not only refuse, but they

alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of

Government. They, in a word, hold the purse; that powerful

instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British

Constitution, an infant and humble representation of the

People gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and

importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have

wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches

of the Government. This power over the purse may, in fact, be

regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which

any Constitution can arm the immediate Representatives of the

People, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for

carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.

So we find ourselves now in a position in which the House of Representatives is wanting to get the government funded again and is acting to keep the government funded on a step-by-step basis, starting with those areas as to which there is the most broad-based bipartisan support, those areas of government that have nothing to do with the implementation and enforcement of ObamaCare. Moving step by step in this fashion, we can get the government funded again. We should be getting the government funded again.

In many respects, what we have seen over the last week--the conduct of the Obama administration during the first week of this shutdown--may well serve as the single best argument against ObamaCare. What we have seen is a willingness of this President and his administration to utilize the already vast resources of the Federal Government to make it hurt--to hurt families, to hurt businesses, to hurt those who depend on their access to Federal lands, to national monuments, national parks, and other Federal installations. This itself is evidence of the fact that when we give government too much power, that power may, and ultimately will, be abused.

I want to be clear that this is not a problem that is distinctively Democratic. It is not something that belongs uniquely to liberals. This is equally a Republican problem. Republican and Democratic administrations in the past and in the future will have chosen at times to abuse power when it suits their interests in order to get their way politically. We need to not give yet another source of power to the Federal Government--a source of power that intrudes into one of the most personal aspects of human existence.

When we give the Federal Government control of our health care system, we give them control of aspects of our lives that are intensely personal, very intimate, and, frankly, not the business of the Federal Government. We don't want to give that power to a government that may one day be used against us for someone's partisan political gain. It is for that reason we are having this discussion. It is for that reason we need to keep the government funded.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, someone wisely declared: After all is said and done, much more is said than done. A lot has been said in the well of this Chamber this week. Unfortunately, not much has been done. On the other hand, Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor and the Members of the House of Representatives, including Members of both political parties, have done much to end the shutdown and to protect the American people. The House has passed bills that would fund veterans' benefits and fund the National Institutes of Health. The House has also approved measures to make sure our National Guard gets paid and to keep our national parks open. The House funded WIC, the program that provides health care and nutrition for low-income women and their children. The House has funded FEMA. Moreover, all of these bills have been passed with significant bipartisan support in the House of Representatives.

At the risk of overstating it, I am still frankly stunned at what we are hearing from some of my colleagues. It is difficult for me to understand their objections to passing these bills in the Senate.

First, none of these bills is controversial--not one of them. The bills provide funding for noncontroversial things such as veterans' disability payments, the GI bill, and cancer research. These bills keep our national parks open and make sure our National Guard personnel get paid. There are many things on which Republicans and Democrats disagree, but whether to take care of our veterans should not be one of them, and the last I checked it was not one of them.

Second, the President himself asked Congress to do this. Republicans in the House took the President at his word and acted immediately to draft bills that would make sure his priorities and the Nation's priorities would receive funding. In response, Senate Democrats said that this plan to fund veterans, national parks, and other priorities was unserious. They said Republicans were playing games.

The biggest head-scratcher of them all: the President issued a veto threat for bills that fund the very things he said he wanted funded. Why will the President and why will Senate Democrats not take yes for an answer? Why are they demanding that we fund everything? They tell us: You have to fund everything or we will allow you to fund nothing.

Third, all of these bills received significant bipartisan support in the House. In the middle of a government shutdown, surrounded by all this divisive rhetoric, Republicans and Democrats came together in the House overwhelmingly to approve these bills. I think we owe it to the country to show we can do the same in the Senate.

Fourth, this approach, the approach that has been advocated by the House of Representatives, represents a path forward that was first introduced by none other than the distinguished Senate majority leader himself. On Monday afternoon Senator Harry Reid asked for unanimous consent to pass a bill that ensured that our Active-Duty military personnel would be paid in the event of a government shutdown, and in a matter of minutes it was passed. I ask my friends across the aisle: Was Senator Reid playing games? Was that unserious? Of course not. So why is it unserious when we try to fund veterans' disability payments or cancer research or the National Guard or national parks? Why is it all of a sudden playing games to keep our national parks open? What exactly has changed since Monday? Why can we come together to pass a bill funding military pay but not to fund veterans' disability payments?

Finally, none of these bills have any connection to the implementation of ObamaCare. I understand my friends across the aisle support that law despite its numerous and harmful failings. I understand they want to protect it. But none of the bills we are considering relate in any way to the implementation of ObamaCare.

I am concerned that my friends across the aisle cannot see this law for what it is and what it is already doing to American families all across the country. Now the government is shut down because Democrats have refused to work with us to do anything to protect the American people from the harmful, potentially devastating effects of ObamaCare. They will not even consider passing bills to fund veterans' benefits, cancer research, or national parks unless ObamaCare is fully funded and fully implemented. We have an obligation to address the negative effects of this law, but the Democrats refuse to negotiate.

The President has issued a veto threat on funding for things that he himself asked Congress to fund because the bills do not include ObamaCare funding, even though the programs funded in these bills have nothing to do with ObamaCare. I fear that the Democrats are now simply the ObamaCare party. It is the only thing that matters to them even though it is hurting people throughout the country already and threatens to do so far more in the coming months.

A recent report included a story of a man named Tom, Tom from Seattle, who signed up with the exchanges only to find out that his health care costs were going to skyrocket under ObamaCare. I will quote from the story.

Tom of Seattle, who is self-employed, said, ``My premiums

would increase approximately 61 percent. I went from $891 a

month to $1,437 a month. And also my deductibles all

doubled.''

The letter from his insurer said his current deductible for

his family of five would double from $4,000 a year to $8,000.

Even though that is for the Bronze Plan, the least

expensive option under ObamaCare, he says his additional

payment of $550 a month will give him a plan that is no

better than what he already has.

What's more, it also carries a benefit his family does not

need: maternity and newborn care.

``My wife is 58 years old and our youngest child is soon to

be 18,'' says Tom. ``We'll be having no more children. That

is not a benefit that we would ever purchase nor need or be

able to use.''

These are the kinds of people we are trying to protect from this law. This is just one story among many stories.

I ask my friends: Join us in ending the shutdown. Join us in protecting the country from ObamaCare, and let's do the right thing for the American people. Leadership is not about what is said; leadership is about what is done. So I invite my colleagues to join House Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor and the other House Members who are leading. They are leading by doing. We can and must lead. We can end the shutdown and simultaneously protect the American people from the harmful effects of ObamaCare. We can do this. We must do this. If we stand together in support of the American people, we will do this.

Yes.

In response to the question posed by my distinguished colleague, my friend from Rhode Island, yes, I will acknowledge that we have taken votes--some votes in response to many of the pieces of legislation enacted within the House of Representatives.

The House has not voted on all the things passed by the Senate just as the Senate has not voted on all the things passed in the House.

That is not accurate. The House of Representatives has voted on things, sent them back in the form of messages, with some of those messages carrying two amendments that we considered. I see the Senator's point. It is a valid one in that we have had action taken in both Houses. We have had votes cast in both Houses.

It is important, however, to recognize that Republicans have offered significant elements of compromise in all of this. Republicans started from the standpoint that what they would like is repeal of the law. Understanding that is not possible under the current circumstances, they sought first to defund ObamaCare indefinitely. They sought that first. That was stripped out. That went back to them. They responded with a significant compromise offer in the next go-around to defund it for a period of 1 year. That was send back, that was rejected.

There have been other elements since then that have been passed to fund parts of government. Recognizing there are a lot of areas in government spending as to which there is broad bipartisan, basically unanimous consent in both Houses, in both political parties, that we ought to be continuing to fund those things at those levels, they have acted in those areas, and the Senate has so far refused to go along with those. So, in the spirit of compromise, it would be helpful if we act on those. In the spirit of compromise, it would be helpful if the Senate would act on those aspects of legislation as to which there is broad-based bipartisan support.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate receives H.J. Res. 72, making continuing appropriations for veterans' benefits for fiscal year 2014, the measure be read three times and passed; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

I object to the proposed modification.

Madam President, what we are being told by the majority is that we have to vote for everything in order to fund anything. Moments ago, I proposed a unanimous consent request that if approved would provide for the immediate availability of mandatory funds generally controlled through the annual appropriations process for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

I thank the Republican leader for making similar requests earlier today and other Republican colleagues for joining him. I look forward to making other similar requests in the coming hours. Frankly, I am a little stunned at some of the things we are hearing from the other side of the aisle. It is difficult for me to understand the objection to bills the House passed last night and the ones Senate Republicans are trying to pass today.

First, this legislation does not fund anything that is controversial. None of the pieces of legislation being worked on and passed by the House right now and last night can be considered controversial. These bills provide funding for things such as veterans' disability benefits, the GI bill, and cancer research. These bills keep our national parks open and they make sure our National Guard personnel get paid.

There are many things on which Republicans and Democrats do not agree, but whether to take care of our veterans should not be among those things. Second, the President himself has asked Congress to do this. I remind my friends exactly what he said a few days ago, speaking to what might happen during a government shutdown.

He said:

Office buildings would close, paychecks would be delayed.

Vital services for seniors and veterans, women and children,

businesses and our economy depend on would be hamstrung . . .

Veterans who've sacrificed for their country, will find their

support centers unstaffed . . . Tourists will find every one

of America's national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to

the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, immediately closed.

And of course the communities and small businesses that rely

on these national treasures for their livelihoods will be out

of customers and out of luck.

The Republicans in the House of Representatives took the President of the United States at his word and started acting immediately to draft bills that would make sure these priorities received funding. In response, Senate Democrats have said this plan to fund things such as veterans, national parks, and others was fundamentally unserious. They said Republicans were playing games. The biggest head-scratcher of them all, the President issued a veto threat for bills that fund the very things he said he wanted to fund, that he would like Congress to fund.

It makes me wonder, why is it that the President of the United States and the Democrats in the Senate are having such a hard time taking yes for an answer. The fundamental objection, as I understand it, has been that because these bills, passed by the House of Representatives last night, and those being passed today, within the next couple of hours, because those bills do not fund everything, they are objectionable; in other words, we have to fund everything or we may fund nothing.

I have to remind my colleagues that normally, under regular order, Congress will vote on and ultimately approve a dozen or so separate segmented appropriations measures, making sure we address each year within our Federal Government what it is that we are spending money on. This is a big government, one that expends between $3.5 and $4 trillion a year. It is appropriate that we break this up into pieces.

But over the last 4\1/2\ years or so, we have been operating on the basis of back-to-back continuing resolutions, measures that basically require us to fund everything or fund nothing. So what this proposal does, what the Republicans in the House of Representatives are quite wisely doing is saying let's start with those areas as to which there is the most broad-based bipartisan consensus, and let's keep government funded at current levels, as the continuing resolution would do within those areas, and let's build consensus and let's start funding the government in those areas where there is not significant objection.

What I do not hear from my colleagues is a substantive objection to what it does fund. What I hear is they are objecting to what it does not fund. So let's pass those things we can agree should be funded, and let's move forward. I think we can get most of this resolved fairly quickly.

Two of the bills in the House of Representatives that have been passed in this fashion have, quite significantly, received substantial bipartisan support. I expect that the rest of them will receive bipartisan support as well. In the middle of an unfortunate government shutdown, surrounded by all of this diverse rhetoric, Republicans and Democrats came together in the House, overwhelmingly, to approve these bills. I think we owe it to the country to show we can do the same in the Senate, acting upon the advice of our better angels and acting in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation to keep our government funded.

Fourth, this is a path forward that was first introduced by none other than the distinguished majority leader himself. On Monday afternoon, Senator Harry Reid from Nevada, the Senate majority leader, asked for unanimous consent to pass a bill that ensured our Active-Duty military would be paid in the event of a shutdown. In a matter of minutes it was done.

So I ask my friends across the aisle: Was Senator Reid playing games? Was that unserious? We did that then. Monday, just a few days ago, we passed something that did not fund everything, but it did fund something. It funded the government to the extent necessary to allow us to continue paying our Active-Duty military personnel.

Was that unserious? Well, of course not. Why is it unserious when we try to fund veterans' disability payments, cancer research, or our National Guard?

Why is it all of a sudden trying to play games trying to keep our national parks open?

What exactly has changed since Monday? Why can we come together to pass a bill funding military pay but not to fund veterans' benefits?

Finally, none of these bills has any connection to the implementation of ObamaCare.

I understand that my friends across the aisle support that law despite its numerous failings and indications that it is harming the American people and the economy, that it is hurting jobs and threatening the affordability of health insurance.

I understand that some of my friends across the aisle want to protect that law.

We are going to continue to have that debate about that law, especially in light of all of the problems people are having signing up with the exchanges, not to mention the ongoing problems of job losses, wage reductions, hours lost, and people losing their health coverage because of ObamaCare. Especially in light of all of those problems, we should continue

having that debate, but that debate isn't essential to every aspect of our government's funding.

Let me be clear. We will do everything in our power to protect the American people from the harmful effects of ObamaCare. That fight will most certainly continue.

My friends across the aisle are welcome to join that debate, as I am sure they will. But none of these bills, none of the bills that we are considering today relate in any way to the implementation of ObamaCare.

For this moment, at the very least, we should focus on keeping our promise to the people, those who have sacrificed the most to keep this country free.

I applaud the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives. I applaud the Republicans and the Democrats who have supported legislation to help keep our government funded in these critical areas. We can come together if we act in a step-by-step process, if we pursue a step-by-step process for funding our government.

It more closely resembles the way we should have been appropriating in the first place. This is the best way forward. It is the way to help minimize the pain that Americans are experiencing as a result of this unfortunate shutdown.

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

Mr. President, yesterday when the President of the United States addressed the American people, he was very clear about what a shutdown would mean. He said:

Office buildings would close. Paychecks would be delayed.

Vital services that seniors and veterans, women and children,

businesses and our economy depend on would be hamstrung.

Business owners would see delays in raising capital, seeking

infrastructure permits or rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy.

Veterans, who have sacrificed for their country, will find

their support centers unstaffed. Tourists will find every one

of America's national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to

the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, immediately closed.

And of course, the communities and small businesses that rely

on these national treasures for their livelihoods will be out

of customers and out of luck.

I share the President's concerns about what will happen to the American people--about ``real people,'' as one of my colleagues put it yesterday--during and in connection with a government shutdown.

I wish to focus our attention in the coming hours and days on these people. I think it is also important that we continue to focus as well on those who are already hurting--hurting for reasons that don't have to do with the shutdown.

So I would like to turn for a moment to people who are and for a number of months have been already feeling the negative effects of another government policy the President and his allies in Congress staunchly defend.

ObamaCare happens to be the No. 1 job killer in the country. A recent analysis documented hundreds of businesses that are cutting back hours to avoid the crushing cost of ObamaCare's severe mandates. As a result, major unions have said ObamaCare could destroy the 40-hour workweek-- the backbone of the American economy. People are losing their health insurance. Just a week ago Friday, 20,000 people--employees of Home Depot--were informed they would be losing their health insurance. UPS is no longer going to provide health insurance for spouses of employees. The grocery store chain Trader Joe's has dropped health care coverage for part-time workers altogether.

For everyone who has been furloughed by the government shutdown, the change hopefully will be temporary--perhaps lasting a few days, maybe even a few hours--if the Democrats decide to negotiate. For everyone who has lost a job, had their hours cut, their wages reduced, or who no longer receives health insurance, the change could well prove to be far more permanent. Do we not have an obligation to do something for those people? I think we do. So let's look for the path forward. Let's return to the President's concern about those who are hurt by a government shutdown.

One positive and encouraging step was taken yesterday in response to action taken by the House of Representatives late Saturday night. Late Saturday night, of course, the House of Representatives passed a bill to ensure that all Active-Duty military personnel--the brave men and women in uniform who serve us bravely--will continue to get paid. Yesterday the Senate took up that measure and passed it unanimously. It did so in a matter of minutes, in a seemingly effortless legislative act.

I think we can do the exact same thing with a number of noncontroversial spending bills that fund aspects of government that Americans overwhelmingly support, that Americans acknowledge we need, and that are completely unrelated to ObamaCare. My plan, in other words, would involve setting up segmented continuing resolutions, appropriations measures that would keep the funding going at current levels to various areas within government, including the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, military construction, CJS, which includes funding for the Department of Justice, the Federal Court system, the FBI, NASA, the National Weather Service, for example, and also the U.S. Department of the Interior, which includes our national parks.

I mention national parks with special interest because today is the first day of what we hope will be a short, quickly resolved government shutdown. We have at least two Honor Flights coming in from around the country bringing World War II veterans--members of the ``greatest generation''--to Washington, DC, who plan to visit the World War II veterans memorial, a memorial designed specifically for them. When they arrive, if nothing changes between now and then, they will painfully discover what we have learned this morning, which is that those parts of the National Mall have been fenced off and barricaded. They will not be able to get in. They will not even be able to get very close. This is unfortunate and, just as important, it is unnecessary. We can act. We should act. We must act today to resolve this. There is absolutely no reason this noncontroversial aspect of our Federal Government's operations should continue 1 more day or even 1 more hour, for that matter, without being funded.

This is an effort to compromise, an effort that is badly needed, an effort that comes in the wake of other efforts to compromise that have for the most part failed. The House of Representatives has tried now three different times to avoid a shutdown, passing three different measures to make sure our government would continue to be funded. Senator Reid and those Members of his conference who support him have rejected all three plans, rejected all three offers to keep the government funded, accusing Republicans of playing games with ObamaCare.

In light of that, let's leave ObamaCare for another day and not hold the vast majority of government functions hostage when the vast majority of government functions do not have anything to do with the implementation and enforcement of ObamaCare. We did it yesterday. We did it. It worked well. It was seamless. It was done with absolute unanimous consent. We did it with respect to Active-Duty military pay yesterday. We can do it for veterans benefits, for border security, for national parks, and for many other government agencies. We can keep government open. We can keep those aspects of our Federal Government funded. We can do so. We should do so. Together, we will do so.

I look forward to having these discussions in the coming hours to make sure we can continue to work together as colleagues. We may not agree on everything, but in those areas where we should agree and where we in reality do agree, let's keep the government funded.

I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that the time during any quorum call be equally divided between the two parties.

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

Mr. President, everyone knows that the vote we are about to take--cloture on the House-passed continuing resolution--is essentially a vote to allow the Democrats to gut the House bill. That is why the Senate majority leader, the Senator from Nevada Mr. Reid and every other Senate Democrat are supporting it.

Twenty-one House Members know this is a vote to gut the bill that they passed, that they worked so hard to pass out of the House of Representatives. That is why they signed a letter yesterday asking the Senate Republicans to stand united and vote against cloture on this bill.

You see, what happened was the House of Representatives, acting boldly and nobly and in response to a growing cry from the American people--a cry for help--acted to keep the government funded, to fund government while defunding ObamaCare, protecting the American people from a law they are becoming increasingly aware of; a law that was passed 3\1/2\ years ago without Members of Congress having read it and all of its 2,700 pages; a law that has since led to the promulgation of 20,000 pages of implementing regulatory text; a law that has since been rewritten not just once but twice by the Supreme Court of the United States, which, having concluded that the law as written was constitutionally deficient in two respects, became convinced that it was its duty, its prerogative, and within its power to rewrite the law in order to shoehorn it within the provisions of the U.S. Constitution; a law that has since then been rewritten three or four times by the President of the United States without any statutory or constitutional authorization to do so--a President who has acknowledged that the legislation, this law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is not ready to be implemented.

If the President of the United States is convinced this law is not ready to be implemented, if the President of the United States, who pushed this law through Congress 3\1/2\ years ago and counts this as his signature legislative accomplishment--if this same President is unwilling to follow the law and is convinced it is not ready to be implemented, Congress should not fund it, and Congress should keep the government funded while protecting the people from ObamaCare.

Millions of Americans are concerned about what this law will do for them. We have seen millions of Americans worried about keeping their jobs, noticing that jobs are becoming harder and harder to find. Many are losing their jobs. Others are seeing their wages cut. Others still are seeing their hours cut. Many, including those 20,000 Americans who work for Home Depot who were informed last week--like many other Americans, they will be losing their health coverage.

This is why the House of Representatives acted. This is why what the House of Representatives did by passing this continuing resolution is such a good thing. It keeps the government funded, and it protects the American people from the harmful effects of ObamaCare.

Now we get over to the Senate. When it came to the Senate, we saw that the Senate really had a couple of options--a couple of very legitimate options--upon receiving this legislation from the House.

The Senate could take up this legislation and subject the legislation to an open amendment process, allowing Democrats and Republicans to submit amendments as they deemed fit, to debate those amendments, discuss their relative merits, their pros and their cons, and ultimately vote on them, making compromises and adjustments along the way, in the forum that has long been honored and revered in this institution, which heralds itself as the world's greatest deliberative body. Another option, of course, would be to bring it up for a vote as is, an up-or-down vote based on what the House passed. You can vote on it as it was passed by the House or you can subject it to an open amendment process.

Either one of those would be fine. If that is what we were looking at, I would be voting yes on this cloture vote on this resolution. That, however, is not the option majority leader Harry Reid selected. Instead, what he chose was a different procedure whereby he would select a single amendment--one that guts the House-passed bill of its most important provisions--without allowing anyone else the opportunity even to present an amendment and have that considered for a vote.

The American people are tired of the games that hide the true meaning of this kind of tactic, of this kind of vote. So it is incumbent upon us to try to explain them as best we can. The people who elect us do expect us to do what we say we are going to do--not sometimes, not just when it is convenient. In fact, they expect us to do what we say we are going to do especially when it is inconvenient. That is really what this first vote is about. Cloture on this resolution is about showing the American people that we will do what we say we are going to do even when--especially when--it is inconvenient.

We have the ability to prevent the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, from unfairly gutting the House continuing resolution. If we all vote no, that is what we will achieve. It is what many of us have told--have promised--the American people we will do.

I, along with several of my colleagues, including Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and several others, have promised to do everything in my power to bring the message that we have received-- received overwhelmingly and repeatedly--from the American people, to bring that message inside this Chamber, inside these halls. That is what this effort has been all about. We promised to do everything we can to improve the procedure and improve the outcome for the American people, taking their message to Washington, incorporating their message into our legislative strategy.

Across this great country, Americans stayed up with us this week. They stayed up with us even overnight, choosing to forgo sleep, just to show they were supportive in this effort, and we greatly appreciate that.

I want you all who have participated in this effort in one way or another to reflect on how you feel at this very moment. It has been said that opportunity looks a lot like hard work, how change is hard work, especially here in Washington. This is what it feels like to take on Washington. This is what it feels like to take on the immense and intimidating inertia of big government. This is what it feels like to do what the American people ask and expect and demand. Those of you who have been involved in this effort should be proud, should feel energized and motivated to take on the next big challenge. The American people, of course, expect more and deserve better than what they frequently get from Washington.

I wish I could say that the fight that has ensued over the last few days was just about ObamaCare and nothing more. Sadly, ObamaCare is just one symptom of a much larger problem. It all stems from the syndrome of self-importance that the political ruling class in Washington tends to feel. The bigger problem in Washington is that the bigger the problem the American people face, the more people in Washington tend to think Washington has all the answers. ObamaCare, like the fiscal cliff, like our $17 trillion debt, like our almost $1 trillion annual deficit, like our $2 trillion annual regulatory compliance costs in this country, all are the natural, inevitable results of a Federal Government that is simply too big and too expensive, that delves far too deeply into the lives of the American people, delves far too deeply into everything from our communications to our health care decisions, into everything from what kind of light bulbs we use, to how much water our toilets flush.

These are deep and personal decisions that are getting deeper and more personal every single day. The American people understand that they are the sovereigns in this country. They are not subjects. We the people are citizens. The government works for us, even though it has started to feel as though it is the other way around.

All these things show what happens when the political elite, not we the people, pretend to be in control. This is not about any one person or even any one policy or even one political party. This is about this town and it is about the American people, what they deserve, what they demand, what they expect, and what they have a right to, which is the right to live free of undue interference from their national government.

This vote is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. This is simply the end of the beginning. Washington may appear to have the upper hand at this moment, but it is essential that we remember that the American people will always have the final word.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, if we were to vote tomorrow, if we were to have these votes tomorrow, that would represent the product of waiving two separate 30-hour periods--one in connection with the motion to proceed, the other in connection with the cloture vote on the bill.

The American people are paying attention to this. The American people

are watching this. A lot of them have expected this might occur Friday or Saturday.

So I ask the question, would the majority leader be willing to modify the request slightly, with the same provisions in place but with the votes to occur during tomorrow's session of the Senate?

Madam President, reserving the right to object.

Madam President, we have been willing to compromise. The offer that was made by my colleague, the junior Senator from Texas yesterday, from the floor represented a significant compromise. Significantly, I believe it was the Senator from Nevada, the majority leader, who objected to a unanimous consent request made yesterday by the Senator from Texas to proceed with having these votes tomorrow.

This still represents a significant compromise offer--a compromise offer that consolidates, collapses two separate 30-hour periods required by the rules. This is not an unreasonable request. Moreover, I am not understanding what it is about having a vote tomorrow morning instead of tonight that would make a difference between being able to get something to them tomorrow, if we pushed it out, versus Sunday.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I requested to

modify the request made by the majority leader and he turned that down. In light of the fact that he turned it down, I object.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I would ask my distinguished colleague, the Senator from Texas, a series of questions with regard to this concept to make DC listen. It is interesting that we are having this discussion right now at a time in our history when never has it been easier for so many people throughout the country with so few resources to be heard by so many.

In the past, you had to own a newspaper or perhaps in more recent years you had to own a radio station or a television company or something like that to be heard by a lot of people. But these days pretty much anyone can gain access to a telephone or the Internet, they can send an e-mail, they can submit a post. It is one of the things that have made possible a groundswell of people--just a few minutes ago the Senator mentioned 1.6 million Americans just in the last few weeks signing a petition asking for Congress to make a decision to protect the American people from the harmful effects of ObamaCare.

They want government funded, just as we want government funded. They want government to be able to continue to do the things government does. They want people to be able to rely on government to protect them, to protect our borders, to protect our sovereignty, protect our homeland against those who would harm us. They want government to be able to carry out its basic functions and its responsibility. They want their government funded. But they do not want that held hostage by something else. They do not want that funding tied to the funding of ObamaCare in the sense that they want to keep government funded but they want us to defund ObamaCare.

The House of Representatives shows that at least that side of DC, that side of the Capitol was listening. I applaud the Speaker of the House and the other leaders in the House of Representatives who did that. That suggests to me that they were listening on that side of the Capitol. They had many millions of Americans calling out on the telephone, through mail, e-mail, every conceivable medium for relief from this bill. They listened. They listened because they understand that the American people are being hurt by this. They ask the same questions the Senator from Texas and I and others have asked: How many more Americans will have to lose their jobs because of ObamaCare before Congress acts? How many more Americans will have to see their wages or their hours cut as a result of this ill-conceived law before we do something about this? How many more people will have to lose access to health coverage before Congress does something?

Just last Friday we saw Home Depot--one of America's great companies, one of America's great success stories, one of America's great employers--announce that 20,000 employees will be losing their health coverage. How many more stories like this will we have to hear before Congress does something to protect Americans from the harmful effects of this law--a law that was passed a few years ago without a single Republican vote in the House of Representatives; a law that was passed a few years ago without a single Republican vote in the Senate; a law that was passed--all 2,700 pages as it was then constituted--without, as far as I know, many, if any, Members of this body or the other body in the Capitol having had the opportunity fully to read it. Since then, of course, it has expanded. We have had an additional 20,000 pages of regulations promulgated, increasing rather exponentially the impact of this law. The popularity of the law has not improved with time, just as the complexity of the law has not become less problematic in the intervening 3\1/2\-year period.

So as we look at this, we think about the fact that it is important for Congress to listen to the American people. Again, today it has never been so easy for so many Americans with so few resources at their disposal to make sure that they are, in fact, heard. So we have to ask ourselves the question--I have to ask the Senator the question: How long will it be before Congress acts?

I am pleased that the Senator referred to the opportunity crisis, the economic opportunity crisis in America. He referred to the economic ladder in this country. You know, I think it is an interesting fact and we need to consider that--according to one recent study published I believe just in the last few weeks--for the first time in American history, 40 percent of those born in America, into the bottom quintile of the American economy, the bottom 20 percent of income earners in this country--40 percent of the bottom 20 percent will remain in the bottom 20 percent throughout the duration of their lifetime. To my knowledge, that has never happened in this country. To my knowledge, this undercuts what has long been a very distinguishing, enviable characteristic of the United States. It is what has made this the greatest civilization the world has ever known--the fact that this is a country where regardless of where you were born on the economic ladder, regardless of the circumstances in which you came into this world or came into this country, you could make it. In fact, your chances of doing so were relatively strong. Yet 40 percent of those people, we now understand, will stay there throughout the duration of their lives.

Another study came out, also a few weeks ago, indicating that in 34 States and the District of Colombia, an individual or a family is actually likely to see a dip in their well-being, a dip in their standard of living if, instead of receiving welfare benefits, they decide instead to shed those benefits and go on to an entry level job. That is sad. That is sad because that suggests that our government--as well-intentioned as many of those programs might be, they will have set in place a series of conditions that trap people, especially parents, into a vulnerable, poor condition.

If there is one thing that I think parents feel somewhat universally, it is a degree of risk aversion. People do not like to take risks that could jeopardize their ability to provide for their children. If we set up a set of conditions in which people, in order to maintain their level of certainty that they might have while surviving under a system of welfare benefits provided by the Federal Government--if they become locked into that, locked into poverty in perpetuity because of that, that is disconcerting because the risk is always too high to make that jump to an entry level job. Without the entry level job, there will never be the secondary job, there will never be the first raise or the second raise or the first, second, or third promotion. Without those things, there is no ladder. Without those things, there is an opportunity lost and people remain on the bottom rungs of that very ladder.

We see at the top rung a system of crony capitalism that sometimes has the impact of keeping some people and some big businesses artificially held in place at the top of the economic ladder at the expense of others, at the expense of would-be competitors who are driven out or held out from the beginning from the competitive marketplace through the oppressive intervention of the government, through the government's favoritism, and through the government's ability sometimes, regrettably, to choose winners and losers in the marketplace.

You see where most Americans are, right in the middle of the ladder. On the middle rungs you see people working, trying to get by from day to day. They are able to survive, able to provide for the basic needs of their families. But they would like to do better. They would like to be able to provide a more comfortable living for their families.

They find very often that no sooner do they find an increase in their income than that same increase has been gobbled up by a combination of oppressive taxes, oppressive regulations, and a devastating impact of inflation. When those things happen, we find people are unable to make their way up that economic ladder.

We find ourselves at a precipice of sorts. We find ourselves about to embark on a very bold experiment in which we rather dramatically expand the role of the Federal Government, injecting it more directly, more completely, more dangerously into one of

the most personal aspects of most people's lives, into the health care industry. This is an industry that comprises a very significant portion of our Nation's economy in an area in which people feel strongly about their own right, about their own innate, inherent need and desire to maintain a degree of control that is not subject to the will and whim of government bureaucrats in Washington.

At the same time the government is doing that, the government will be consuming an increasingly large share of the resources moving through our economy, making it even harder for people who are trying to get by to do so and to do so without undue interference from the government.

This is an issue that is important to so many people. This is an issue that reminds people of the fact that whenever government acts, it does so at the expense of our own individual liberty. It does so at the expense of our ability to live our lives as we would live them. It does so very often at the expense of the American economy. It does so very often at the expense of economic opportunity for Americans, you see, because when we expand government, we expand its cost. We make ourselves as a country less free. We leave ourselves with fewer alternatives.

Is there a role for government to play in health care? Absolutely. Of course there is. No one disputes that. Are there improvements that can be made to our health care system? Certainly there are.

But a 2,700-page law that was passed after Members of Congress were told they had to pass it in order to find out what is in it, that has expanded since then to include within its penumbra 20,000 pages of regulatory text, a law that has become less and less popular as time has gone on--this has become very difficult. We find this becomes less and less something that the American people support.

I would ask if Senator Cruz feels that the American people have every right to speak out on this. Specifically does the Senator feel the American people have every right to expect that those of us serving in the Senate will do everything we possibly can, even casting difficult votes, even casting procedural votes that might be difficult to cast or difficult to explain? Do they have every right to do that even if it causes great inconvenience for them and for us in the process of complying with their wishes?

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I wish to ask the Senator from Texas whether he has received comments similar to those I have received from my constituents and from other concerned citizens from around the country in recent months. I wish to highlight a few and ask whether these are similar to comments the Senator from Texas has heard, concerns he has heard expressed.

Let me start by sharing one expressed by Shawn from Utah, who says:

I do not like the fact that the President is picking

winners and picking and choosing which parts of the law he

will enforce. We need the three branches of government to

keep freedom alive.

Well, Shawn from Utah, I share your concern. I would add to that, to Shawn from Utah, the fact that this is really what started this effort. In other words, during the first week of July 2013, when the President announced there were several provisions in the law he simply would not be implementing, he simply would not be enforcing, along the lines of what Congress enacted with the Affordable Care Act in 2010, it was at that point that I and several others put our heads together and realized that if the President is saying this law is not ready to implement, if the law objectively is not ready to implement; if, as we now understand it, the law is going to make health care less affordable rather than more affordable for so many Americans, perhaps Congress shouldn't be funding its implementation and enforcement. Perhaps that ought to be telling us something.

So it is important to remember, as Shawn from Utah points out to us, that we do have three branches of government. This is the legislative branch. Our job is to make the laws. The President does not have law- making authority. The President can seek changes in the law just as other citizens can seek them from Congress, but Congress does have to act.

Although the President wields the veto pen, the veto pen is not the legislation pen. He doesn't have the power to legislate on his own without the assistance of Congress. It is one of the reasons we are in this debacle today. It is one of the reasons we have, along with so many millions of Americans, expressed this position that we would like to fund government while defunding ObamaCare. This is something the American people are calling out for. It is something they are requesting. It is something the House of Representatives acted boldly and bravely in doing, in standing behind the American people. This really is what we are doing. This is the whole reason we are concerned about this, because we want to stand with the American people and with the House leadership, Speaker Boehner and the other leaders in the other body in Congress, who bravely put forward this legislation to keep government funded while defunding ObamaCare.

One of the things we have been concerned about today and one of the things I think we need to focus on over the next few days is the fact that with the House of Representatives acting last week, passing this legislation, this continuing resolution to keep government funded while defunding ObamaCare, in order for us to stand behind them, we have to monitor the manner in which that legislation is reviewed over here.

Now that the House-passed continuing resolution has reached the Senate, we have a few options. There are a few acceptable ways of treating this legislation now that it has been passed by the House. One very acceptable approach would be for us to say: OK, let's bring up the House-passed continuing resolution--the resolution that funds government but defunds ObamaCare--and let's have an up-or-down vote. Let's vote for it as is, the same way it was crafted in the House of Representatives. That would be an acceptable approach. I would be comfortable with that.

Another acceptable approach would be to say: Instead of just taking it up and passing it or not passing it as is, let's have an amendment process. Let's allow Democrats and Republicans as they may deem fit to offer amendments. Let's debate those amendments, discuss their relative merits, the pros and the cons. Let's put those before the American people in the few days we have left before the existing continuing resolution expires, let's vote on all of those, and then at the end of it we will get to the bill itself as it may have been amended by that point. That would be acceptable as well.

What is not acceptable is what many have suggested will occur. Many have suggested that the majority leader will bring up this bill and instead of saying ``let's vote on it as is'' or instead of saying ``let's have an amendment process,'' he apparently wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to have it both ways. He wants to bring it up and subject it to one and only one amendment--an amendment that would strip out a very critical part of the legislation, a part of the legislation that probably is the ``without which not'' element for many of the House Members who voted for it: the provision defunding ObamaCare. He wants that amendment and no other. That is not acceptable, and under that circumstance, in my opinion and in the opinions of several of my colleagues, some of whom we have heard from today, the appropriate way to register that concern is to vote against cloture on the bill if, in fact, that is what the majority leader chooses to do.

That is why we are fighting this particular battle today. That is much of what we are discussing today, is why it is that we should not be facilitating the effort of Senate leadership to, in effect, gut the House-passed continuing resolution of an extraordinarily critical element, an element without which it could never have passed in the House of Representatives and an element which, frankly, the American people expect us to take up and discuss and debate. So either way--an open amendment process, fine; an up-or-down vote on the bill as is, fine. What is not fine is an effort to try to have it both ways.

Let me share with the Senator from Texas another comment I received from a man named Michael who is also from Utah:

We are getting a bigger and bigger government. They're

telling us what we should have, what we are entitled to

instead of protecting a free people paving our own path.

Government gets bigger while the job market is getting

crushed. I work for a company in the middle of layoffs and

more are to follow. We can't continue like this.

This is an acknowledgment that so many people across our great country are making as they discover the impact of this bill--passed into law some 3\1/2\ years ago--that has not increased in popularity over the last 3 years.

Time might not have increased its popularity--in fact, it has had quite the opposite effect--but time has had the effect of expanding its volume. It has gone from 2,700 pages when it was passed to more than 20,000 pages now when we add the implementing regulations. That is quite stunning. The length of it is quite stunning. It reminds me of something James Madison wrote--I believe it was in Federalist No. 62. He said, if I may paraphrase him, it will be of little benefit to the American people that their laws may be written by individuals of their own choosing if those laws are so voluminous and complex that they can't reasonably be read and understood by the American people. Well, 2,700 pages is a little too long. It is a lot too long. And I certainly know that 20,000 pages is much, much, much too long.

That brings to mind a comment I received from Marcia, also from Utah, who writes this:

However well intentioned Obama care may be, I do not feel

this is the best solution. I think something ``less wordy''

and more succinct would be a much better plan. If you can't

say it in 5 pages or less, it may be best unsaid! The changes

already enacted have made it more difficult for me to get

medical care. Not a big help!

Well said, Marcia, very well said.

When we vote on legislation people haven't read, the American people tend to suffer. When we perpetuate a mistake once made embodied in a 2,700-page bill, things go from bad to worse to much, much worse.

What we have right now is an opportunity for us to debate and discuss the merits of something that perhaps was not adequately debated and discussed 3\1/2\ years ago when this law was passed, when Members of Congress were told to pass this law to find out what is in it. Well, we know a lot more about what is in it now. The American people have concerns.

It is appropriate to have the discussion now in connection with spending legislation because, after all, Congress does have the power of the purse. Congress is given this power, this responsibility of making decisions regarding taxing and spending. It was for this reason the founding generation wisely put it in the hands of the House of Representatives--the power of the purse--giving the House of Representatives the responsibility to initiate or originate bills relating to this power. It is the House of Representatives that is, after all, the branch of a government and of Congress that is most directly responsive to the needs of the people.

It is appropriate that we have this discussion regarding funding or not funding a piece of legislation that is going to require a lot of money and is going to be proven costly to the American people in many, many ways in the coming years--I say ``costly in many ways'' to reflect the fact that it is not just the cost of government money; it costs the American people a lot of things as well. It is costing them jobs. It is costing them wages. It is costing them access to health care in many circumstances.

Let me read something I received from Randy. Randy is from my neighboring State of Idaho. Randy writes:

My wife and I have a small business with about 20

employees. We struggle to stay in business. We feel that if

and when Obamacare is implemented, we will not be able to

continue to be in business.

Randy, I can't tell you how many people I have heard make very similar comments from one end of my State of Utah to the other and from people across America. You are not alone, Randy. A lot of people out there are concerned as well.

That is one thing people lose in addition to wages or jobs or access to health care--some of them lose the opportunity they have to stay in business. We are not talking about millionaires and billionaires; we are talking about hard-working Americans who put a lot on the line in order to make a decent living, in order to provide jobs for their few employees. This is something we need to look out for. This is something we may not, we must not lightly brush aside.

Here is something else some Americans will sometimes lose--something they were promised they would not lose--access to a doctor they like, access to a doctor they have come to trust over the years.

This one comes from Jack from the State of Texas. Jack says:

My family doctor of 25 years is talking about an early

retirement because of policies Obamacare is going to require

him to follow that will compromise the oath he took when he

became an M.D.

This is sad, Jack. This is something we were promised would not happen, and it is something that should not happen. This is something that we are told is happening from time to time.

Ryan, also from Texas, writes:

My mother is a middle-class mortician whose health care

coverage is going up by 68 percent for this poorly envisioned

law with no other changes. She simply cannot afford to

maintain health care coverage without significant changes to

her lifestyle, and for what?

Sometimes we have to ask that question: And for what?

Sometimes we have to ask the question, the same question that physicians are required to ask themselves: Are we doing harm? It is my understanding that when a physician becomes licensed, he or she must take an oath, an oath that involves an obligation to first do no harm. We as lawmakers have to ask ourselves that question from time to time. We as lawmakers have to view ourselves as subject to a similar obligation to first do no harm.

(Mr. DONNELLY assumed the chair.)

Some have said that when you are carrying around a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. I wonder whether that is sometimes true of Congress and the law-making power. Because of the law-making power we wield, sometimes, when we view problems, we assume we automatically, necessarily, inevitably have the right solutions. Well, in some cases that may be true. In other cases, it might be true in part. But that power might be used incorrectly. Sometimes when legislation is hastily drafted, thrown together in a hurry, rather than for purposes of making sure it is part of a cohesive whole--something that will be a coherent mechanism that can be implemented in a commonsense fashion--sometimes if it is thrown together too hastily and these cautions are ignored, we can end up doing a lot of harm, we can find ourselves first doing harm above all else, and that is not OK.

When we look at this law, and we look at the fact that the American people are funding its implementation, we discover it is much deeper than something that deals with an individual mandate or an employer mandate or a set of regulations governing the insurance industry. It is much more than that. It is much more than what people will have to do with regard to the reporting of some fairly personal details about their lives to the IRS, an agency that Americans have come to trust substantially less than they already did, as if that were possible.

It is about the fact that the American people--in addition to being made less free by this law, and in addition to being made less prosperous by this law--are also required to fund its implementation and its enforcement against them. That is where the power of the purse must come into play. That is what makes it so appropriate, so essential, so vital that we have this discussion right here and right now as we consider spending legislation, spending legislation that may well represent our last best hope of achieving a degree of delay or defunding of this legislation before its primary operative provisions take full effect. That is why it is important for us to have this discussion right now.

Let me emphasize again the importance of the cloture vote and the position we are taking on that. It is grounded fundamentally in the understanding that the House of Representatives acted in a manner consistent with what the American people have been asking. I cannot emphasize enough the fact that House Speaker John Boehner and his leadership team in the House--the House Republicans have supported him in this effort. They did great work. They stood valiantly with the American people who were calling out overwhelmingly for them to take this step, to keep government funded but defund ObamaCare. And that is what they did.

Now that they have acted, there are two approaches we could take to this that are perfectly appropriate. We could vote on that legislation as is, up or down, or we could subject it to an amendment process, allow Democrats and Republicans alike to present amendments to make the House-passed resolution better, as they might deem fit. We can debate and discuss and vote on each of those. Sure, it can be time-consuming. Sure, it can be grueling. But that is our job. We took an oath to do that job. We do this all the time--maybe not as much as we should. But a few months ago in connection with the budget resolution, we as Senators stood and sat--a little of both--here all night long. We voted all night long, until 5 o'clock in the morning. People got a little cranky at times, but that is what we are here to do--not to be cranky, but we are here to vote, to cast votes on amendments. That is what we had to do that day because there were a lot of amendments. That is what we should be doing with this if, in fact, we decide we want amendments to the House-passed resolution.

So vote on it up or down as is; fine. Subject it to an open amendment process; fine. Trying to have it both ways, the majority leader telling us this will be subject to one amendment, one amendment only--an amendment that

would gut and render nugatory the operative provision that was so important to so many House Members--that is not OK. That is why those who agree with us on this point, those who feel that way, those who feel the American people need us to stand up for them, should vote no on cloture when we get to the cloture vote on the bill later in this week.

I would ask my colleague from Texas, as to these concerns I have expressed, these statements that have been made from people around the country--some of them my constituents in Utah, some of them from other parts of the country, including a couple from Texas--what similarities does the Senator see between these statements I have read today and comments the Senator has heard from his constituents as he has traveled through his great State, a State of great expanse and a State of close to 30 million people? What similarities does the Senator see between these statements and those he has heard around his State?

Will the Senator from Texas yield for a question?

I say to Senator Cruz I have come with some updates from the outside world, updates based on what I am hearing from my constituents at home. You may be interested in learning, I say to Senator Cruz, that just today in the last 12 hours or so my office has received nearly 1,100 e-mails, 1,093 to be precise. Almost every single one of those is asking us to do whatever we can, do whatever it takes, to defund ObamaCare. People are asking us to fund government, keep government functioning, but to defund ObamaCare.

I also have some news from a local paper in the State of Utah. This is from the Box Elder News Journal in the northern part of my State. In an article written by Mike Nelson, an associated editor with the Box Elder News Journal, we read about Brigham City moving to adjust its pay, to cut its payroll, in order to avoid certain ObamaCare provisions. I am going to quote just from part of it here. It says:

Changes are coming for paid on-call employees at Brigham

City Emergency Services Department in an effort by the

department and the city to avoid employee eligibility for

health care under the Affordable Care Act. ``Back in February

it became apparent the ACA--

Or for those of you who see the newspapers, ObamaCare--

was going to dramatically impact the way we manage our fire

and ambulance crews,'' said emergency services director Jim

Buchanan, while addressing the issue at an August 1 city

council meeting.

This is one of many examples of not just businesses but also local governments that are having to make cuts in their payroll in order to adjust for this law. This is having a real impact on real people.

It is having an impact also on students. I received a message from a student in Utah named Sarah. Sarah, today, a college student, writes:

I am a student facing a shrinking job market with fewer

options. Now it seems ObamaCare is going to force me as a

healthy young person to pay more to keep the President's

health plan functioning. How is that fair?

She asks rhetorically. Sarah, it is not fair. Sarah, I would add to that, we have this health care law called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The idea of it is it is supposed to make health care more affordable. What we have found in recent months is that it is going to make health care less affordable, with premium hikes expected around the country. What we are seeing is that this law will make health care not only less affordable, it is also fundamentally unfair. It is unfair in that it is forcing a lot of people to have cuts made to their wages, cuts made to their hours. In many cases, people are losing access to health care plans that they have enjoyed for years. In some cases, they are even seeing that they will no longer have access to the same physician or other health care provider that they have enjoyed for years.

This is a law that while touted as making health care somehow more affordable is actually making it less affordable. It is also being implemented in a manner that will make our health care system fundamentally unfair. Within my State, the State of Utah, we have no fewer than five school districts and three universities that have been announcing cuts in their hours, cuts in their number of employees, all in response to this law. It is interesting that what we are discussing, much of what we have been discussing, has been on the upcoming cloture vote. There have been those who have argued that if you want to support the continuing resolution passed by the House of Representatives-- remember, this is the continuing resolution that will keep our Federal Government funded while defunding ObamaCare--that if you want to support that, that you must vote yes on the cloture vote on the bill.

That is an interesting take on it because not withstanding the fact that some in my party have been making that suggestion, it is anticipated that Mr. Harry Reid--the Senator from Nevada who is currently serving as the Senate majority leader--that Harry Reid and 53 Democratic allies will, as I understand it, all be voting for cloture on that bill. That begs the question, are those same people who are suggesting that if you support the House-passed continuing resolution, the one that funds government, keeps government funded while defunding ObamaCare, that you have to vote yes on cloture on the bill, does that mean that Harry Reid and the 53 Democrats who are likely to follow him are also supporting the House-passed continuing resolution, the one that keeps government funded while defunding ObamaCare?

I find that a little strange. I find that a little counterintuitive. I think it is important that we remember, and we continually remind ourselves, what this is about. When this continuing resolution passed by the House last week--heroically in my opinion. It showed a real strong sense of leadership by Speaker John Boehner and by

the other Republican leaders in the House of Representatives and by the rank-and-file Members of the House who voted for this legislation. When they voted for this legislation to keep government funded while defunding ObamaCare they stood with the American people who asked them for relief from this bill.

American people had been telling them: Look, we need help. They have been asking: How many of us will have to see our hours cut? How many of us will have to experience wage cuts? How many of us will have to lose access to the health care we have enjoyed for many years before Congress acts?

The House of Representatives did act. The body within our government, the branch within Congress that is most responsive to the American people, acted to protect the American people from this harmful law while simultaneously keeping the Federal Government operating.

Now that that has happened and that bill is moving over to the Senate, the ball is in our court, we have a couple of possible responses to that. The first would be we could take it up and we could vote on it as is. We could vote on it just as it was passed by the House. We could vote on it, up or down, as is without any amendment. That would be fine. I would be fine with that. If that is what we were doing, I would be voting yes on the cloture vote. Of course I would. I suspect my friend, the junior Senator from Texas, would as well.

There is another option. We could say rather than vote on it as is, let's make adjustments to it. Let's invite amendments. Let's have an open amendment process whereby Senators, whether Democrats or Republicans or the couple of Independents we have, could submit amendments as they deem fit, have those amendments not just proposed but debated, discussed, and ultimately voted upon. That would be an acceptable alternative.

People around here often call this, the Senate, the world's greatest deliberative body. They call it that because this is a place where, in theory, we are supposed to have access to an open amendment process; theoretically unlimited debate. Is it time consuming? Yes. Is it cumbersome? Absolutely. Can it be frustrating? Without question. But it is one of the things that distinguishes this body. It is one of the things that makes this the Senate.

So if we were to have an open amendment process, it would take a lot of time and it might even require another all-night session just like we had a few months ago in connection with the budget resolution, but it would be worth it. It would be entirely acceptable, and I would be voting yes on cloture on the bill if that is what we were faced with. But what we are faced with, what we are told is going to happen, what we are told is being prepared to accept is neither of those options; not being given the opportunity to vote yes or no, up or down on the resolution passed by the House of Representatives nor would we be given the opportunity to have an open amendment process, one that allows individual Senators to propose amendments and have those amendment considered, voted on in this body.

What we are being told instead is that what we will have is a single amendment brought forward by the Senate majority leader, one amendment and one amendment only, and that amendment, by the way, would strip out the defunding language, it would gut the House-passed continuing resolution of a provision that many would consider the ``without which not'' part of the House-passed bill, meaning the part without which the House of Representatives could not and would not have gotten the necessary 218 votes to pass a continuing resolution. That is a problem. That is a problem indeed because that suggests that by voting for cloture in that posture, where Senator Reid is contemplating allowing neither an open amendment process nor an up-or-down vote on the House- passed resolution in as-is condition--in either of those circumstances, we would be fine. But we are not getting that. We are getting stuck with something else. He wants to gut the House-passed continuing resolution with the defunding language without any open amendment process and without the opportunity for an up-or-down vote.

So in that circumstance, I don't understand why it would be the case that Republicans would feel that voting yes would be supporting the House of Representatives and voting no would be voting against the House of Representatives. In fact, it seems to me, I say to Senator Cruz, that would be quite the opposite of that. It seems to me that if, in fact, one wanted to stand behind the House of Representatives and stand behind their willingness to defend the American people and protect them from this harmful law, at the end of the day that would entail that anyone who wanted to stand with the House of Representatives on that point would necessarily need to vote no if, in fact, Senator Reid does what we expect him to do later this week.

Would the Senator agree that is what one could expect in that circumstance? And would the Senator also agree that Senator Reid is likely to have 53 Democrats going along with him, and if Senator Reid has 53 Democrats going along with him, doesn't that rather undercut the argument that in order to support the House-passed bill one must vote yes on the cloture vote on cloture on the bill?

Will the Senator yield for a question?

As I listened to the Senator's remarks, I am reminded of many events throughout our Nation's history. It is a storied history involving a lot of comebacks. There were a lot of instances in which the American people were up against a brick wall of sorts, in which a small group of Americans, often not just a minority but sometimes a minority within a minority, faced a substantial obstacle.

The founding of our Republic, at the moment of our independence, involved a battle against what was then the world's greatest superpower. Even within our own continent we did not have unanimous support. Even among our own people, at times it was a minority within an a minority who believed that the cause of independence was worthwhile, that it was worthy of the great effort that declaring independence and fighting a war for it would inevitably require.

Yet we persevered, we rallied together as a people, believing fundamentally that our cause was just. And it worked. We followed that formula many times when it has mattered and we have not backed away from fights when those fights were necessary. This may be one of those moments where even though those who are willing to fight against this law, those who are willing to take this effort are not in the majority, are in the minority--in this case in a sense we are a minority within the minority--it is still worth fighting.

I commend my colleague, the junior Senator from Texas, for his dedication, his commitment, his leadership on this issue. Senator Cruz has never shrunk from this. He has been willing to fight hard for it. He has been willing to speak his mind even at moments when it was difficult, even at moments when many were suggesting it could not be done or should not be done. It reminds me of other examples we have seen over the years, of Senators who were willing to speak at great length.

I see our pages who are here tonight, pages who serve us well and who are willing to stay late at night, working hard. I am reminded that 27 years ago I was a page much like these who are serving us here today. I remember a young Senator then in his first term. His name was Harry Reid. I remember watching him speak at great length for 10, 12--I don't know, maybe 13 hours at a time. I am not certain what the issue was at the time, but I know it was important to him. I know it was an issue on which he was somewhat outnumbered. I know that I saw his colleagues approaching him. Some of them were quite critical of the effort in which he was engaged. Yet he stood by his message, he did not shrink from it, because he had an inner commitment to the people he represented and I respected that about him. I could tell he had that kind of tenacity.

I watched, as I was a Republican page at the time--I watched my Democratic page colleagues as they brought him a lot of water, hoping perhaps that eventually he would drink enough water that he would decide it was no longer in his best interests to continue speaking on the floor. Yet somehow he managed to stay speaking for, I don't know, 10, 12, 13, 14 hours at a time, and I have a great deal of respect for what he did at that moment. I hope there is some aspect of Senator Reid that is able to sympathize with what Senator Cruz is going through, that is able to respect the great level of commitment it takes to stand here, hour after hour, and engage in this discussion, a discussion that is important for the American people to have.

We all continue to hear from our constituents about some of the things ObamaCare might do, some of the things ObamaCare might do to the people rather than for them. I received this one from James in Utah. James writes:

Sir, as a retired U.S. Marine Corps gunny, I would like to

express my view and ask that you vote to defund ObamaCare. I

am part of the security team here at--

And I have deleted the name of his employer.

--and our new contract has a massive increase in the cost for

health coverage. I fought for the people of this country. Now

I ask the same from you. Please help us.

Gunnery Sergeant Charlie Jones, U.S. Marine Corps, retired.

From Utah.

Then I hear comments such as this from constituent after constituent, from people who will write in from throughout my State and from throughout the country. Steven from Minnesota writes:

Dear Senator Lee. Please do all you can to stop the

implementation of ObamaCare. My work insurance went up 8.1

percent in January in anticipation of ObamaCare. I make about

$40,000 a year. We do not have any extra money after bills. I

would like to see health care available to everyone. We've

gone without health care insurance at times but I believe

that ObamaCare is not the solution and will result in poorer

quality health care overall, and hurt our economy.

Thank you for considering a Minnesota resident's concerns.

Steven, I am happy to consider your concerns and I am happy to share those with my constituents. This next one comes from Kevin from Massachusetts.

Dear Senator. I strongly urge you to approve and vote yes

on the House resolution bill passed by the House and is now

before the Senate that fully funds the Government and

protects the full credit of the United States but defunds the

Affordable Care Act as provided for in the bill and

continuing resolution sponsored by Congressman Graves. It is

unfair to exempt everyone with political connections from

ObamaCare and not to exempt the rest of us. You must

understand that ObamaCare is undermining American workers and

selling out hard for union benefits. It is not fair for

businesses to reduce workers' hours to survive. It is time to

defund the Affordable Care Act until such time when it can be

repealed and things can be straightened out and workers

protected.

I urge you please to delay funding for ObamaCare now.

That is Kevin, from Massachusetts.

When we look at these examples and we read other similar examples like them from people writing from throughout my State of Utah, people writing from throughout the country, we see a consistent pattern. Americans are justifiably, understandably fearful of losing their jobs, of having their wages cut, of having their hours cut, in some instances losing access to health care--sometimes through a health plan upon which they and their families have relied on for many years. This is a difficult situation for them because

health care is an especially unusually personal thing.

Access to health care is something people do not necessarily want to entrust entirely to their government. Yet that seems to be the direction in which ObamaCare inevitably takes us. It puts more and more of our health care into the control of the Federal Government and, as has been suggested on the floor tonight, as some of my colleagues, some of my Democratic colleagues from within the Senate have acknowledged, this is but a step in the direction of what they hope will be a single- payer, government-funded, government-run health care system, funded, operated, and administered entirely from Washington, DC.

There are some things government can do in the sense that there are some things that government is rather uniquely empowered to do. Providing, for example, for our national defense, that is something we do from Washington. That is a power that is entrusted to us by article I, section 8, of the Constitution with roughly one-third of the provisions of article I, section 8, being dedicated in one way or another to our national defense. That is something Washington can do. It is something Washington must do and that Washington is rather uniquely empowered to do under our constitutional system.

Health care is of course important, undeniably important. In many respects it is as important as national defense. The fact that it is important doesn't necessarily make it a responsibility of the Federal Government nor does it necessarily qualify the Federal Government as a practical matter, setting aside the constitutional question. It doesn't necessarily qualify the Federal Government as an effective health care provider. Many people fear the day when our Federal Government becomes much more empowered over the very personal decisions of our lives, particularly those affecting our access to health care.

Many people are also suspect of the new taxes imposed by this law, the new permutations this law will introduce into the lives of the American people. We have discussed several times today the manner in which this law was enacted, the manner in which it was introduced as a bill, brought to the floor of the House of Representatives after then- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi informed her Members that they needed to pass their bill and then they could find out what is in it.

One of the things we have not discussed as much is the fact that even after that was passed, without Members of Congress having adequate opportunity to review this legislation--even after that happened, setting aside the 20,000 pages of regulations that have been added to this corpus of Federal law up until this point, we have had two significant revisions of the law, revisions that were brought about not legislatively but by the judicial branch of government, revisions the judicial branch of government had no authority to impose.

I would like to talk about both of those. When the Affordable Care Act was challenged as to its constitutionality, there were two primary constitutional challenges brought to the attention of the Federal court system that ultimately made their way to the Supreme Court of the United States. One of those challenges involved a constitutional attack on Congress's authority to enact the individual mandate. The provision compelled individuals to buy health insurance--and not just any kind of health insurance but the kind of health insurance the Federal Government in its infinite wisdom deemed appropriate, necessary, essential, and indispensable to every American everywhere.

The argument presented in those constitutional challenges culminating at the Supreme Court of the United States was that Congress had acted pursuant to its authority under the commerce clause, article I, section 8, clause 3 of the Constitution, which empowers Congress to regulate commerce among the several States, Indian tribes, and foreign nations. The argument said that Congress does have the power to regulate interstate commerce, and the Supreme Court has interpreted that power rather broadly since 1937.

Yet, even under that extraordinarily broad interpretation of the commerce clause, the argument was that Congress doesn't have the power to regulate an activity. The failure to purchase health insurance is not an interstate commercial transaction. In fact, it is not a transaction at all. It is a failure to act.

The Supreme Court of the United States accepted that argument and concluded that even under the extraordinarily broad deferential standard of review used by the Supreme Court since 1937, this could not pass muster as a valid, legitimate exercise of Congress's commerce clause authority. The Supreme Court Justices rejected that argument by a vote of 5 to 4. Oddly, however, the Supreme Court went on to conclude that the individual mandate was nevertheless constitutional--not under the commerce power but under Congress's power to tax. In essence, what they had was five Justices of the Supreme Court--led by the Chief Justice of the United States, the Honorable John Roberts--who, as I see it, effectively rewrote the individual mandate provision as a tax. They saved it only by recasting it as a tax or as a valid exercise of Congress's power to impose taxes.

There were a couple of problems with that interpretation. First and foremost, Congress could have imposed a tax as an enforcement mechanism to bring about compliance with the individual mandate provision. Yet it decidedly did not. It used language that--under at least a century's worth of jurisprudence--was clearly and unequivocally a penalty and not a tax. There is a long line of cases that help courts decide whether something is a penalty or tax. Under a century or more of jurisprudence, this was a penalty and not a tax.

It is also important to note that the House of Representatives initially considered language that would have attempted to enforce compliance with the individual mandate provision by means of a tax and using language that under a century's worth of jurisprudence would have been regarded as a tax. Yet, interestingly enough and not surprisingly, that language was rejected. That proposal did not carry the day. That proposal could not carry the day. Why? Well, most Americans understandably are reluctant to raise taxes on middle-class Americans. It was soundly rejected. It could not carry enough votes even in the Congress that was in place during the first 2 years of President Obama's administration. It could not carry the day in a Congress that was overwhelmingly Democratic in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate.

The Constitution requires that revenue bills originate in the House of Representatives. If this was a new tax, it would have to originate in the House. In a very significant sense, one could argue that the bill that ultimately became the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, did originate in the House. It came over here to the Senate and had its provisions stripped out and replaced by Senate language, but many people still consider that a House bill.

The problem here has a lot to do with the fact that the tax language did not originate in the House or in the Senate. Instead, it originated across the street with five lawyers wearing black robes whom we call Justices. Those five lawyers wearing black robes whom we call Justices are no more empowered than the Queen of England to impose a tax on the American people. Yet they imposed a tax on the American people. This is not OK. This is not acceptable. This was a lawless act. This is something we should be ashamed of as Americans. It was a sad, shameful moment when the Supreme Court of the United States took upon itself the mantle of a superlegislative body, which it is not.

Unable to bring about a massive tax increase on the middle class, Congress adopted what it could. What it did adopt the Supreme Court found to be unconstitutional on its own terms as it was written. The Supreme Court--apparently unwilling to do its job and all too eager to do the job of the legislative branch rather than acknowledging the unconstitutionality of that provision--simply resurrected it by rewriting it as something that it is not, was not, and never could be.

Interestingly, this was not the only insult to the Constitution in connection with that case. In the same dispute in which the Supreme Court rewrote ObamaCare in order to save it, in

the same case in which the Supreme Court of the United States rewrote the individual mandate provision as a tax when in fact it was a penalty, they did something else: A separate and even larger majority-- a 7-to-2 majority--concluded that another aspect of the Affordable Care Act as written could not withstand constitutional muster.

The Medicaid expansion provisions left the States with no option, no alternative, and no choice other than to accept a significantly expanded Medicaid Program, which is a program that is administered by the States. It is partially funded by the Federal Government but ultimately administered by the States.

The Supreme Court of the United States, citing longstanding precedence, said: This is not OK. Congress doesn't have the power to commandeer the State's legislative and administrative machinery for the purpose of implementing a Federal policy. Congress may not do that.

It is not within our power. Yet a large majority of the Supreme Court concluded that is exactly what Congress did in the Affordable Care Act. So faced with yet another constitutional problem, the Supreme Court adopted another rewrite that the Supreme Court of the United States was not constitutionally empowered to bring about. What the Supreme Court did in that circumstance was to just read in or write in an opt-out for the States so as to make it constitutional.

Some have tried to defend this by saying: Well, that is what courts do. When courts find that something is unconstitutional, they have to look a second time to see whether they can read into it a different interpretation that might be fairly plausible--a fairly plausible interpretation that could allow them to save it. But in this case there was nothing there. There was nothing that could allow them to do this.

The Court's job at that moment was to figure out whether the unconstitutional provision could be severed from the rest of the statute, whether it could be excised, sort of like a cancerous tumor, allowing the healthy tissue to remain with the cancerous tissue gone forever. There are rules and standards the Supreme Court is supposed to follow when engaging in this exercise, and whenever it does this, it follows decades-old severability jurisprudence. Well, that standard, I believe, if followed, would have inevitably culminated in the Supreme Court of the United States finding that the Medicaid expansion provisions could not be severed from the rest of the statute--the other provisions in the Affordable Care Act. I suspect that may well be why the Supreme Court did not engage in severability analysis. Instead, it rewrote the law.

So the Supreme Court of the United States rewrote ObamaCare not just once but twice in order to save it. This is not OK. This is not constitutional. This is not America.

The next response the defenders of this law usually bring up is, well, it is, after all, the Supreme Court's job to decide what is constitutional and what is not constitutional. So if they say it is constitutional, then it must be constitutional, and who is anyone else to second guess their judgment as to constitutionality?

OK. Well, I understand that argument. That argument is fine, perhaps, as far as it goes. You can't read too much into that statement. It is not fair to say that the Supreme Court is the sole expositor of constitutional meaning. It is true, of course, that within our Federal system the Supreme Court has the last word in deciding questions of Federal statutory and constitutional interpretation for the purpose of deciding discrete cases and controversies properly before the Court's jurisdiction. However, that does not excuse the rest of us from independently exercising our own judgment, nor is it the case that every constitutional infraction and every constitutional indiscretion is necessarily within the competence of the Federal courts to resolve.

In fact, there are countless circumstances in which, either because the courts might lack jurisdiction or because no plaintiff can be brought forward with article III standing necessary to challenge the Federal action in question or because the courts have recognized that there is a nonjusticiable political question at stake--for whatever reason, courts might not be competent to address a particular issue. In other circumstances, a case for whatever reason simply is not brought. In many circumstances the courts don't have occasion to address a constitutional infraction.

Regardless, we are never excused. We, as Senators of the United States, having taken an oath under article VI of the Constitution to uphold the Constitution of the United States, are never excused from our responsibility to look out for, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. When we see an unconstitutional action, we need to call it out as such, and we need to do whatever we can to stop the Constitution from being violated.

The Constitution was violated, the Constitution was distorted, and the Constitution was manipulated. It was defiled not once but twice by the Supreme Court of the United States when the Court rewrote the Affordable Care Act twice in this decision that was rendered at the end of June 2012.

This is one of many reasons why I think it is important for us to have this debate and discussion about whether we fully fund the implementation and enforcement of this law--a law that was never read by those who enacted it, a law that has become less popular rather than more popular subsequent to its enactment, a law that has now spawned some 20,000 pages and counting of new regulatory text.

This same law was rewritten not just once but twice by a supreme court of the United States that openly flouted the Constitution of the United States. They thumbed their noses at their own constitutional responsibilities. We are now being asked whether we should continue funding the implementation and enforcement of that act, and I think not.

In addition to the unconstitutional rewriting by the Supreme Court of the United States, we now have several instances in which the President of the United States himself has attempted to rewrite the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The President of the United States has said that although enforcement of the employer mandate provision is set to begin on January 1, 2014, the President's administration will not implement and enforce that provision effective January 1, 2014. Although the President lacks any constitutional or statutory authority to make this decision, although the President has neither sought nor obtained a legislative modification from the legislative branch of government--Congress--the President is treating the law as if it contained that modification already.

There was another modification that took place with respect to the implementation of the out-of-pocket spending limits, the spending caps. This, too, was done without any legislative or any constitutional authority. There is another modification the President made with respect to proof of eligibility for subsidies on the exchange network set up by the Affordable Care Act. All three of these modifications were made by the President without any statutory authority, and they were, therefore, extra constitutional modifications.

As I understand it, a few weeks ago somebody asked the President of the United States why this was appropriate. Somebody challenged the President of the United States with regard to his authority on these modifications. His response was something similar to this: Under ordinary circumstances, under more ideal circumstances, perhaps I might have gone to Congress to get Congress to modify the statutory provisions in question, but these are not ordinary or ideal circumstances.

I am not sure exactly what he meant, but it sounds to me as though what he was saying was, I am in a tough spot so I have to do what I can do, what I can get away with, because I have a Congress that is now less cooperative, less inclined to cooperate with me, less inclined to do what I as President of the United States want Congress to do, than the Congress that was in place in 2010 when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was enacted into law.

That is interesting. It is interesting on a number of levels because, No. 1, one of the reasons Congress is now less inclined to be cooperative with the President, one of the reasons the Congress is no longer as inclined to do the

President's bidding is, interestingly enough, because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, because of the widespread public outcry that came from across this country as a direct result of the enactment of this statute.

It is not at all unusual to have a divided Congress. It is not at all unusual for one or both Houses of Congress to be under the control of a party other than the President's own political party. Yet it has never been the case and can never be the case if there is somehow an exception to the Constitution, if there is somehow an exception to article I's provision that all legislative powers granted by the Constitution shall be vested in a Congress consisting of a Senate and of a House of Representatives.

The fact that the President finds political dissent within the Congress irritating does not make him a king. The fact that Congress will not always do the President's bidding does not vest him with the powers of a despot. When someone holding the office of President of the United States purports to wield legislative power, when the President of the United States purports to make law by the stroke of the executive pen, we have exited the territorial confines of constitutional government.

These are some of the reasons we have focused this debate back on ObamaCare. People are frequently bringing up the argument: This is law. This is settled law. Because it is settled law, you must fund it. First of all, I am aware of no constitutional command that says that simply because a law has been adopted, Congress must fund any and every provision authorized under that law. In fact, quite to the contrary. Because Congress holds the power of the purse, Congress may--Congress must--continue to have the authority to decide which programs to fund and which programs not to fund. Were it otherwise, we would have a straining set of circumstances in which one Congress could bind another Congress simply by passing a piece of legislation and not by a constitutional amendment.

That is not the case. It never has been the case. It never could be, should be or will be the case under our constitutional system today.

What we see is the fact that this is not simply a partisan political debate. Many are casting it as that. Many are pointing to the fact that we have some Republicans agreeing with some Democrats, but for the most part we see widespread disagreement between Republicans and Democrats. But that dramatically oversimplifies the matter. This is no longer simply a dispute between Republicans and Democrats. In many respects, this represents a dispute between the political ruling establishment in Washington, DC, on the one hand and the American people on the other hand.

One of the things we are often told we have to face is that we have to choose to keep everything funded or we have to choose to fund nothing. It is a frequent source of frustration to many who serve in this body. It certainly has been a frequent source of frustration to me and to the 3 million people I represent in the State of Utah. It is odd that we find ourselves in a position to vote on a continuing resolution that funds everything in government or nothing in government. It is a frustrating exercise we have to go through. Because of the fact that we have chosen to appropriate this way year after year, we basically have one opportunity to decide what we are going to fund in government and what we are not going to fund in government. I wish what we could do is, at a minimum, a bare minimum--it should be a lot more than this-- but at a bare minimum, to have two different debates, two different discussions, both starting with the presupposition that we fund nothing but culminating in funding or not funding something; one that would deal with funding for ObamaCare and another one that would deal with funding for everything else in government. It would be nice if ObamaCare funding had to stand or fall on its own merits. If we were starting from zero when it came to providing ObamaCare funding and we had to justify it, we had to make the case for it, and we had to say, let's prove to the American people why we ought to be funding the enforcement of this law--this law that will make health care less affordable rather than more and this law that is being implemented in a fundamentally unfair manner, I think that would prove a very different debate and discussion. But very often the way things work in Washington, the way continuing resolutions work, is we are faced with a set of circumstances that don't accurately reflect the way we make decisions in any other aspect of our lives.

I sometimes am inclined to analogize this kind of continuing resolution spending default. This is a vast oversimplification, but suppose someone lived in a very remote area. Suppose the closest town to where they lived was at least 100 miles away, but there was one market, one grocery store just 1 mile from their home. It was the only grocery store within at least 150 miles, let's just say. One day the person's spouse calls them on their way home from work and says: Stop at the store. We need bread, milk, and eggs. The person goes to the grocery store and finds the bread, puts it in the cart, finds the milk and eggs, puts them in the cart, and goes to the checkout counter. The cashier checks out those things and then the cashier says: Wait a second. You can't just buy these things. You cannot just buy bread, milk, and eggs.

You say: Why on Earth can I not buy just these three items? This is all I need.

This is a different kind of grocery store. This is a grocery store patterned after the U.S. Congress. In order to buy bread, milk, and eggs, we are also going to require you to buy a bucket of nails, a half ton of iron ore, and you can use our wheelbarrow to take it out to your car, a book about cowboy poetry, and a Barry Manilow album.

You say: I don't want any of those things. And the cashier says: That is fine. Then you don't get your bread, your milk, and your eggs.

At that point, the shopper, not wanting to come home to a very disappointed spouse, is likely to say: Fine, even though I don't want the nails or the iron ore or the cowboy poetry book, and I definitely don't want the Barry Manilow album, I am going to buy those things because I can't buy the things I need unless I also buy those things.

That is how we spend in the Congress. Whether we like it or not--and most of us don't like it--that is what we are stuck with. So that is one of the reasons we are having this debate now, one of the reasons I think it is appropriate for us to have this debate in connection with this. It is unfortunate in many respects that we tie something so fundamental to who we are as a country, something so essential to our ongoing existence as a nation as national defense. It seems absurd that we should tie that to funding for ObamaCare. Yet that is where we find ourselves because of the fact that we have been operating under a continuous string of back-to-back continuing resolutions for the last 4 or 5 years.

It is time for us to start breaking away from those false and ultimately ridiculous choices. It is time for us to demand more as a people from our Congress. It is time for us as a people to start to demand independent debate and discussion, debate and discussion that far more closely reflects the will of the American people and their ongoing needs.

If the Senate must choose between standing with the longstanding interests, the entrenched interests of the political governing class in Washington on the one hand or, on the other hand, standing with the American people, I hope--I expect--that we will stand with the American people. If we ask any Member how constituents are feeling about the Affordable Care Act, how constituents are feeling about ObamaCare and its coming implementation and enforcement, the response we will get is that, at best, constituents are mixed. In many cases, they are apprehensive, they are uncertain. But overwhelmingly, we will find a lot of opposition from people who are seeing those all around them facing job losses, wage cuts, cuts to their hours, and cuts to their health care benefits.

How long are we going to have to continue to hear these things before we act? Are we as a Congress willing to just look at these things and say: Yes, well, bad things happen. Let's just allow them to happen. Are we willing to do that? Those who are Democrats, are they willing to do that saying, yes,

I know this law is not perfect, but it is a speed dump that we have to cross over on our way to a single-payer system run by the health care system? As Republicans, are we willing to endure that, saying, yes, it is a train wreck, but the good news is it might inure to our political benefit if it gets in? I hope we are not willing to do that. I hope we have not descended to such a shameful, cynical low that we would be willing to allow those political interests to trump the needs of the American people who are calling out, crying out for help and for relief.

Ultimately, as we think about our responsibilities as Senators, as we think about our responsibilities as citizens, I hope we will reflect from time to time on the fact that we have all taken an oath to uphold this document, this 226-year-old document, a document that I believe was written by the hands of wise men raised up by their Creator for that very purpose, to help foster and promote what will become--what has become--the greatest civilization the world has ever known.

To the extent that we respect and honor this document, to the extent that we follow it, to the extent that we defend it, we uphold it at every turn, to the extent that we consider it not just a responsibility of the judiciary but also of the political branches of government, including our own branch, we have prospered as a country. And to the extent that we will return to those practices, we will benefit directly as a result.

So I have to ask Senator Cruz, as a constitutional lawyer, as one of our Nation's preeminent appellate litigators, as one who has argued many times before the U.S. Supreme Court, and as one who clerked for the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist and now as a U.S. Senator, how does the Senator see this role, the role of what some describe as coordinate branch construction of the Constitution? What role does it play in this body? What role does the Constitution play in the Senate? Does it have a place or is that something that is supposed to be left to the nine men and women wearing black robes across the street who are lawyers and hold a different constitutional office than we do?

(Mr. SCHATZ assumed the Chair.)

Would the Senator yield for a question?

I wish to ask the Senator from Texas his reaction to a couple of stories that I think relate well to what the Senator from Texas is saying to us about the fact that Congress has adopted a law that has brought about a series of nightmares for the American people, only these are real. This is not some dream we are going to wake up from and discover that this is a figment of our subconscious mind that is causing us torment. It is real.

Sometimes we react as a lawmaking body to situations in such a way that we don't necessarily improve upon the status quo. We identify a problem, and we try to act. Sometimes the results aren't necessarily what we intend them to be. Sometimes the results can be quite the opposite of what was intended at the outset. I think this may well have been the case with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which at the end of the day neither protects patients nor makes health care more affordable.

It reminds me a little bit of a story, something I experienced a few years ago when I was working at the Supreme Court. I shared an office with three other law clerks at the time.

We discovered something very interesting about our office space. During the summer months, when we started our clerkships, our office was almost unbearably cold, something that was unusual for me because I like an office or a home to be relatively cool, but this was unusually cold. It was so cold we were tempted to wear gloves in the middle of the summer indoors because our office was so cold. It was so cold that sometimes we would open our windows to our office, even though it was hot outside, and it would let in this hot, humid air. Sometimes we were tempted to build fires in the fireplace in our small office in the middle of the summer, because it was so cold in the office that our hands would get numb and we could barely write. That is a significant portion of a law clerk's job is to write, write a lot of material.

We would walk over to the thermostat thinking that might solve the problem. It was too cold, so we turned the thermostat up thinking that would make it a little bit warmer and, therefore, more tolerable in our office. First

we would move it up a little. It didn't do any good. Then we would move it up a lot and it still didn't do any good. It was still freezing cold in our office in the middle of the summer in Washington.

When it came to be wintertime, we had a similar problem but at the opposite end of the thermometer. In the wintertime we found that our office was intolerably hot. It was hot all the time. It was so hot that we were sweating. It is hardly appropriate, when working as a law clerk at the Supreme Court of the United States, to wear shorts to work, especially in January, so we didn't do that. Because it was so hot we frequently found ourselves tempted to open the windows again, letting in very cold air from the outside. Because we were so hot we had to do something to balance out the temperature. Again, we went to the thermostat to no avail. It was intolerably hot so we, of course, turned the thermostat down, first a little, and it didn't do any good, and then a lot, and it still didn't do any good.

After a while we called the maintenance people of the building. In fact, we called several of the maintenance people in the building. It was an old building, finished in 1935. It was undergoing renovation at the time. The renovation went on for many years. We ultimately got to the top maintenance and management supervisor in the Supreme Court. He ended up spending a fair amount of time trying to find out what was wrong with our heating and air conditioning system, trying to figure out why on Earth it was so intolerably cold in our office in the summer and why it was so intolerably hot in the wintertime.

His conclusion was relatively simple, and it was not what we expected. He came to us and he said, OK, I have dismantled your entire system and I found the problem. Your thermostat was installed backward. When you turned the thermostat up, trying to make it warmer, it had the opposite effect. It was only making it colder. When you turned the thermostat down, trying to make it cooler, it was only making it hotter in your office, hence your problem.

As he said this, I looked out the window across the street at the Capitol, and I thought I wonder if there is something Congress can learn from this. Sometimes Congress, out of an abundant, legitimate, well-intentioned desire to achieve good in society will do something. Sometimes that something is the only thing Congress knows how to do at the moment. Why? Because Congress legislates. It is what we do.

As I have said before, sometimes when you are holding a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Sometimes when Congress acts, even with the best of intentions, it gets it wrong. The risk of this is especially high when Congress acts in 2,700-page increments that no one has read prior to passing those increments into law. I believe that is what happened here.

But the proper response to a broken thermostat, or a thermostat that is installed backward, is not to continue using the same thermostat. The solution has to be to fix the thermostat, to replace it. We have got a broken thermostat with this law and it needs to be replaced entirely.

I am also reminded of another story, a story that is somewhat related that helps us understand some similar points.

One night when I was a teenager, I think I was about 14 years old, I was out with my family. I grew up in a large family, seven children, but in Utah that is sort of a medium-sized family, but that is a discussion for a different day. We were out somewhere with the family. I think we had gone out for dinner, and we were headed home. As we were almost to our home, one of my younger sisters suggested to my dad that we go out for ice cream as a family. We were almost home, and recognizing that we were almost home, I all of a sudden realized I didn't want to go out for ice cream because I had homework. I asked my dad to keep driving home, drop me off at the house. The rest of the family could continue on and go and get ice cream together. That way I could stay home, get my homework done, and I wouldn't have to be up too late.

It all worked well. I had all my siblings in the car. That is a lot of kids in the car, but my dad pulled up in front of our house to let me out. I was in the back seat of the car. I opened the car door, and I put one foot out of the car, starting to get out. I wish to tell you something a little bit about my father--my late father, may he rest in peace; he died 17 years ago. He was a very good man, a wise man, a smart man. He was one of my greatest heroes in this life. He had many talents, but he was also very absentminded. Sometimes he wasn't paying attention, and this was one of those moments.

As I stepped one foot out of our Oldsmobile, my dad started to drive off with half of my body still in the car. Somehow the Oldsmobile ended up on top of my foot turned around backwards. That is a little bit hard to describe. The Oldsmobile, with a whole bunch of kids in it, weighs a lot. All of a sudden the Oldsmobile was on top of my foot as it was turned around backwards. I was trying to explain to my dad we had a problem, but all that came out were grunts and groans. I couldn't quite find the words to tell him that we had a problem, because I was in so much pain.

He realized at that point I was still in the car, but it still didn't occur to him that the car was on top of my foot. Finally I mustered the presence of mind to get out one word, one word that I knew I could pronounce, one word that would send the message unequivocally to my father: Get the Oldsmobile off of my foot. But I couldn't utter that many words, so I spit out one word. The word was ``reverse.'' Dad, reverse. Well, he got that message. He put the car in reverse, and he got the Oldsmobile off my foot.

But for my ability to utter that one word in a relatively short period of time that seemed like an eternity under the circumstances, my foot may well have been broken, my siblings probably would have found that mildly amusing under the circumstances, and I probably wouldn't have gotten my homework done that night. As it turned out, I was able to avoid that and it was because I was able to utter that one word, reverse.

Sometimes when you are doing something that hurts someone, you have to reverse. You have to turn off that which has been turned on which has been harming people. This law, turned on 3\1/2\ years ago, is harming people. It is going to do a lot more if it remains in the on position. We need to put this car into reverse. We need, at a minimum, to halt the operation of this law.

The best way, I believe the only way at this point, to achieve that, short of repeal, is by defunding. Say: Look, at a minimum, let's halt the spending on further implementation and enforcement of this law while we get certain things sorted out as a country, while we figure out what else we can do.

The objections to this are many. Some say this can't ever happen. You don't have the political will to do that, and you don't have the political muscle to do that. It can't happen. We know one thing for certain. It is never going to happen if we don't try.

We also know a number of other can't-win battles have been fought and ultimately won. A few months ago, Americans were being told we are going to have significant gun control legislation, significant legislation that could eat away in a meaningful way through your privacy and your right to own a gun in this country. We are going to have some form of gun registration system. We were told this is happening, just accept it, just deal with it, there is nothing you can do about it. A few people in Congress disagreed with that conclusion. A few people in Congress resisted, and we stopped it.

Only a few weeks ago it was regarded as an indisputable truth that we were going to get involved in some kind of military strife in Syria. A swelling group of lawmakers from both Houses in both political parties started expressing reservations with that idea. Before long people stopped saying resisting that effort was impossible. After a while, they stopped saying it was improbable, and after a while movement to resist getting the United States involved in military action in Syria became absolutely unstoppable.

In one way or another, I believe the effort to stop ObamaCare might bear some resemblance to this. It might operate under a somewhat different timeframe. Initially, people said the effort

to stop this law was one that was impossible.

I think we are reaching the point at which it is being described by many as improbable. In time, as more and more Americans join this cause, as more and more Americans reach out to their Senators and their Congressmen, this effort will become absolutely unstoppable.

Because the American people love freedom, the American people were born to live free. The sons and daughters of America have freedom as their birthright, and they don't take particularly well to micromanagement from a large, distant, national government--one that is slow to respond to the needs of the people, one that often approaches the people with something that does not exactly resemble deep sympathy or compassion, because this is not what large national governments are all about.

A large national government can do certain things well. It can do certain things no one else can do well. But it can't be all things to all people, least of all physician and general caretaker to all. When we try to do all things, we often cause far more problems than we resolve.

So in this circumstance, we have to remember the lesson we learned from the thermostat, the lesson I learned while working at the Supreme Court; that sometimes if you have a broken thermostat, what you do might actually be having the opposite effect of what you are trying to do. What you are trying to do might actually make matters worse if your thermostat's broken, if it is installed backward.

We also have to remember that sometimes when you get into a position where you are causing harm or you could cause more harm unless you change direction, that you sometimes just have to reverse. This, I believe, is one of those times.

To reframe all of this, we are here at nearly 2 in the morning on an otherwise perfectly good Tuesday night. I guess now it is Wednesday morning. We are here because we feel strongly about how best to proceed with a funding mechanism passed by the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives last week responded to a call from the American people--a call to do something very important, a call to keep the Federal Government funded and operating but to do so while defunding ObamaCare. Once that was passed by the House, once that started making its way over to the Senate, we in the Senate were faced with several alternatives.

I believe there are two very good alternatives to addressing that. One is to vote on the House-passed continuing resolution that funds government but defunds ObamaCare on an up-or-down basis, either pass it or don't pass it, but pass it or don't pass it in as-is condition based on how it was passed by the House.

That is one good option. Another option would be to subject that same House-passed continuing resolution that funds government but defunds ObamaCare to an open amendment process, a process by which Senators, both Republicans and Democrats, may propose alterations to that continuing resolution as they deem fit. This would require us to debate, discuss, and vote on a number of amendments.

Either of these alternatives would be equally acceptable. I can see arguments for either one of them. But what is not acceptable is for the Senate majority leader to do as he is expected to do by many, which is to say we will have one amendment and one amendment only to the House- passed continuing resolution and that amendment will be one to gut the continuing resolution of a provision that was the ``without which not'' measure of the entire bill to gut the defunding language.

At the same time, the majority leader is expected widely to fill the tree, meaning to say no other amendments will be allowed. This is it. There is no more. If he is going to do that, he is not going to have my help doing it, and because he is not going to have my help doing it, that means I must vote no on cloture on the bill.

In other words, Harry Reid is expected to ask his Members, and is expected to be followed by the 53 other Members in his caucus, for a total of 54 Democrats who will vote yes when it comes to cloture on this bill, who will vote yes knowing full well Harry Reid and the 53 Democrats who follow him, for a combined total of 54, will vote on cloture on this bill. This doesn't mean they are in support of the House-passed resolution as adopted by the House, funding government but defunding ObamaCare. Quite to the contrary, this means they are in favor of gutting it, of severing, of cutting out its most important single provision.

If Harry Reid and the 53 Democrats who follow him want to do that, that is their prerogative. As a Republican who was elected to combat ObamaCare, to try to stop it, I will not be voting for cloture on the bill for that very reason. That could change, of course, if Harry Reid decides to bring up this continuing resolution for a vote as is, on its own merits, as it was written or, alternatively, if Harry Reid decides to bring up the House-passed continuing resolution under an open amendment process, allowing Senators to propose, debate, discuss and, ultimately, vote on amendments.

But what is not acceptable is for him to allow one and only one amendment, one gutting the continuing resolution of its most important provision. With him doing that, the Democrats can oppose this if they want. I will not be joining them, and I don't believe they need Republican help if that is what they want to do. If they do want Republicans to vote with them, I will not be among them. My job is not to make it easier for them to gut the House-passed resolution.

I stand with the House of Representatives. I stand behind Speaker Boehner and the Republicans who assisted him in getting this passed. I want to get this passed. I would like to pass it as is. If we can't pass it as is, on a single as-is vote, I want to see us with an open amendment process. The Senate majority leader is proposing neither.

So I ask Senator Cruz: How does the Senator see this, how could one possibly see a ``yes'' vote on cloture on the bill, under the circumstances I have described, as a vote in favor of the House-passed continuing resolution that funds government while defunding ObamaCare?

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I have two sons and a daughter. My two sons are twins. They are teenagers. They are good boys. They are both 4.0 students, and I couldn't be more pleased with them. They work hard.

I had an experience with them about 1\1/2\ years ago that comes to mind. I was driving down the street with them in my car one day. We were listening to the radio, as I often do with them. We were listening to a popular song familiar to all three of us, a song we had heard on many, many occasions.

On this particular occasion I started noticing the lyrics more than I had on previous occasions in the past. All of a sudden, for whatever reason, I noticed that these were not good lyrics. These were not wholesome lyrics. These were not lyrics that any God-fearing father of teenaged boys would necessarily want his sons listening to. All of a sudden I pointed out to my twin sons, turning down the radio, These were terrible lyrics, and I asked them: Have you ever really listened to the words of this song? Do we like the message that is in this song?

My son John didn't miss a beat. Without hesitating, without batting an eye, John looked right at me and said, Dad, it is not bad if you don't think about it. I immediately thought it was funny that was his response. This was teenage reasoning at its very best. It is not just teenage reasoning. It is the way a lot of us think about things by saying certain things aren't bad if you don't think about them.

In many respects, that is reflective of what we face in our country today. A $17 trillion debt growing at a rate approaching $1 trillion a year isn't bad if you don't think about it. Having a 2,700-page health care law with 20,000 pages of implementing legislation isn't bad if you don't think about it; having between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion a year in existing Federal regulatory compliance costs is not bad, if you don't think about it; having the world's highest corporate tax rate, at least the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world, isn't bad if you don't think about it. A lot of these problems we face are not bad, but only if you don't think about them.

The problem is in the Senate it is our job to think about these problems. It is our job to think about the fact that we have on the books a law called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that will make a lot of things worse for a lot of people, a law that will have an effect not consistent with the lofty sounding title of that law, an effect that will actually result, in many instances, in health care that is both unfair and less affordable.

We have to think about what our responsibilities are. We have to think

every single day about how this is going to affect the American people. We have to be willing to say we are not going to allow certain things to persist, things that would harm the American people, and that means we have to listen to the American people when they cry out for help.

They have cried out for help in recent weeks as they have asked Congress again and again to defund ObamaCare, as they have asked Congress to keep government funded. They don't want a shutdown. We don't want a shutdown. I know I don't want a shutdown. I don't think Senator Cruz wants a shutdown. In fact, I don't think I know any Member of Congress of either House or either political party representing any of our country's 50 States who wants a shutdown.

What we want is to keep government funded. What the American people want is for us to fund government while defunding ObamaCare. That is precisely what the House of Representatives has done. I salute the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives, the Republican leadership, has been thinking about it. They have been thinking about this law and the many problems it threatens to create for our Nation's 300 million-plus people.

We have to think about the fact that every time we make a law we are expanding the reach of this government. We have to think about the fact that we became an independent nation, a nation that flies its own flag rather than the Union Jack, a nation that pays tribute to the sovereignty of the people rather than to the supposed sovereignty of a monarch. A couple of centuries ago this was not just an act of rejection of the idea of having a monarch, this was not just a rejection of the Union Jack, this was not just a statement to the effect that we did not want to sing ``God Save the King'' or ``God Save the Queen.'' We became our own Republic at least in part because we were subject then to a large distant national government, a large distant national government that was so far from the people that it was sometimes slow to respond to the needs of the people, and that national government based not in Washington, DC, because Washington, DC, did not exist then. What is now Washington DC was then part of the colony of Maryland.

Our national capital, based in London, taxed the people too much. It regulated the people too aggressively, too oppressively. When the people called out for help, that government was slow to respond to their needs--in part because it was so far from them, so distant from them. It was not just distant from them in terms of measurement, in terms of geography, but also distant from them in that its interests were somewhat detached from those of the American people.

Ultimately we became our own country. Ultimately we declared our independence, we fought for it, we won our independence. Instinctively, reflexively, quite understandably we established a national government because we knew we would need one. We knew that each of these Thirteen Colonies could not exist independently as a freestanding Republic. We knew we would need a national government to provide for those basic things that a national government generally must provide.

We knew that national governments, at least our national government in this circumstance, would need to be in charge of a few basic things such as national defense. Yet we feared what national governments could do because we know that when governments become big there is a greater risk toward tyranny--even if it is a type of tyranny that exists only by degrees. We knew that the risk of this kind of tyranny--some might call it soft or incremental tyranny--exists even in republics, even when democratic forces are at play. We knew this type of risk of soft tyranny, as some would describe it, is greatest within national governments.

The bigger the nation, the more powerful the government and the fewer the restrictions on that government, the greater the risk that the rights of the people will be undermined; the greater the risk the people of that great nation will become subjects rather than sovereigns--which of course they should always be.

So for that very purpose we put in place a very limited-purpose national government, originally under the Articles of Confederation. We put together a weak national government. It was so weak in fact it was ineffective. It was not able to do the things our basic national government needed to do. Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, had some powers but they proved to be not enough. It had no power of raising revenue independently of the States. It had no power of regulating commerce or trade between the States and with foreign countries. So after a period of just a few years under the Articles of Confederation, our Founding Fathers came together in that hot, fateful summer of 1787 in Philadelphia and they put together a compromise document. They said we need a national government that is at once strong enough to be able to do what a National Government must be able to do in order to protect us so we can be a nation. Yet we also need those powers to be sufficiently limited that the risk of tyranny, even incremental tyranny or tyranny by degrees, will be kept to a minimum.

So our Founding Fathers wisely came up with a list, a list of powers that we knew the national government would need powers that we knew needed to be exercised at the national level. Those powers, the vast majority of which are found in one part of the Constitution--often overlooked but perhaps the single most important portion of the Constitution, at least for our purposes here--the part of the Constitution we have to look to more frequently here, article I, section 8.

Article I, section 8, has 18 clauses and goes through the basic powers of Congress. Congress, of course, has the power to tax and the power to spend within the powers authorized by the Constitution. Congress has the power to regulate trade--referred to in the Constitution as commerce--among the States, with foreign nations and among the Indian tribes. Congress has the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof; develop the uniform set of laws governing naturalization or what we would today call immigration; the power to provide for our national defense; to declare war; the power to come up with a system of laws dealing with bankruptcy; to establish a uniform system of weights and measures; to establish postal roads. There are a few other powers, but this is the basic gist of them.

Then there is my favorite power, the power to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, a power that we too often fail to recognize, a power I wish we would get to debate and discuss longer and more frequently in the Senate. A Letter of Marque and Reprisal was effectively a hall pass issued by the U.S. Congress in the name of the U.S. Government that entitles the bearer of that hall pass to be a pirate on the high seas. Regardless of how long I might serve in the Senate, I hope one day to be granted a Letter of Marque and Reprisal so I can become a pirate as I longed to be as a child. You are all invited to join me when I get that Letter of Marque and Reprisal.

The point is the powers of Congress are limited. These are powers that James Madison cited in defending the Constitution against people who questioned him, against those who feared this Constitution might give rise to a general purpose national government, one empowered with so many powers that it could become a tyrant. He tried to set at ease the concerns of the people in Federalist 45 when he said:

The powers that would be granted to the newly established

federal government upon ratification of the Constitution are

few and defined while those reserved to the States are

numerous and indefinite.

He was right and he was persuasive. Upon the advice of James Madison and others, the States ratified the Constitution. They did so with that very understanding, that this body, the legislative body created by the Constitution, the U.S. Congress, consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives, would possess legislative powers that were not so broad as to encompass all the day-to-day interactions of human beings. We would not possess what people refer to as general police powers. We do not have the power to make whatever law we think is a good idea. A good idea is not nearly enough. We have to find something in the Constitution that puts us in charge of legislating within that area to promote that good idea. We have to find something in the Constitution that gives us the power to do it.

During the first 100, maybe 150 years of our Republic as it operated under the Constitution, we followed pretty closely this document, what some describe as the enumerated powers doctrine. Sure, there were arguments from time to time over this or that legislative proposal. There were arguments that arose, for example, over whether we should have a national bank.

You had debates among and between the political branches of government, meaning Congress and the Presidency, that often centered on the principles of the Constitution. It was very common to have constitutional concerns brought up on the floor of this body or on the floor of the House of Representatives as a basis for halting serious consideration of a legislative proposal on grounds that it simply was not within Congress's power to enact.

It was not necessarily considered acceptable to say let's let another branch of government think about it. Let's let the Supreme Court iron it out. Let's let the Supreme Court decide whether it is constitutional. Within the political branches of government, frequently proposals were stopped on grounds that they were unconstitutional.

Fast forward 130, 140, 150 years, and things started to change. The Supreme Court, early in the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pushed back on a lot of FDR's more aggressive attempts to expand the reach, the size, the scope, the cost of the Federal Government. It resisted those and said: Look, regardless of what the policy merits might be of this Federal program or that one, we still have a limited purpose as the Federal Government and not an all-purpose national government. That limited purpose--the national government--has to find something in the Constitution each time it legislates. If it fails to do that, then no matter how good of an idea it is, it can't fly.

By the end of F.D.R.'s Presidency, the Court changed course. There are a number of reasons for this, but the prevailing theory is that the Supreme Court got scared. It got scared as a result of F.D.R.'s Court- packing plan.

In 1935, the Supreme Court moved into its new building across the street, the shining marble palace we see just outside the door to the Senate. The Justices liked their new white marble palace. They enjoyed it. They didn't want F.D.R., or any other President, raining on their parade by packing the Court and fundamentally altering the nature of the Court's composition. So for that reason, many theorized, the Court changed its position. The Court stopped resisting F.D.R.'s attempts at expanding the Federal Government's power.

People trace the change in jurisprudence to a number of different moments. I think one of the pivotal moments occurred in 1937 when the Supreme Court of the United States decided a case called the NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Company. In that case, the Supreme Court adopted an early version of what has become its modern common clause jurisprudence. The Supreme Court started concluding that where there is an activity that is commercial or economic in nature, Congress may regulate that activity so long as there is a substantial connection between that activity and interstate commerce. It was in that case that the Supreme Court, for the first time, smiled upon Federal regulation of what were previous to that time considered local activities, such as labor, manufacturing, agriculture, and mining.

That is not to say those things should not be regulated by any government anywhere. It is not to say the Supreme Court--prior to NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel--ever suggested otherwise, but it is to suggest that prior to that case regulation of local activities, such as labor, manufacturing, agriculture, and mining were considered more appropriate for State and local governments and not for our national government. Within the next 5 years, the Supreme Court solidified its position on the commerce clause, and in many respects it allowed its power to reach a high watermark in the 1942 case of Wickard v. Filburn.

Let's talk about that case for just a minute because I think it bears on what we are talking about. That case involved a farmer by the name of Roscoe Filburn. He got in trouble with the law. You might be asking yourselves: What did farmer Roscoe Filburn do? What did he do to get in trouble with the Feds? Was he a bank robber? No, he didn't rob a bank. Was he a drug dealer? No, he didn't do that. Was he a murderer or a kidnapper? No. You want to know what Roscoe Filburn did? He committed a grave offense against the United States. He grew too much wheat. Yes, scary but true. Roscoe Filburn grew more wheat than Congress, in its infinite wisdom, saw fit for any American to grow in any 1 single year.

By then Congress decided it needed to regulate every aspect of human existence, if possible. It even had the wisdom and foresight necessary to direct the entire economy right down to how much wheat a particular farmer could legally grow. Roscoe Filburn was fined many thousands of dollars for growing too much wheat. That was a lot of money in those days.

Fortunately, Mr. Filburn had a good lawyer. Mr. Filburn was determined not to allow his life to be micromanaged by Federal officials in Washington, DC. Mr. Filburn challenged the enforcement of this law against him with a theory. He said: Look, the statute I have been accused of violating was enacted pursuant to the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, article I, section 8, clause 3. The commerce clause applies to interstate commerce or commerce for trade occurring between the States and not intrastate commerce--commerce within a State. Commerce which is within a particular State is not subject to Congress's authority and the commerce clause.

Roscoe Filburn argued--through his lawyer--that the wheat he grew in excess of the national wheat production limit never entered interstate commerce because it never entered commerce at all. Roscoe Filburn used that wheat entirely on his farm. He used some of it to feed his animals, some of it to feed his own family, and he reserved the balance of that grain to use as seed for the following season.

So on that basis, he said: Look, you can get after me for any reason you want. You can get after me, if you want, for violating this wheat production limit, but the fact is this law can have no application here because this wheat never entered interstate commerce or any other form of commerce. It never left my farm.

Interestingly enough, the Supreme Court of the United States saw it differently. The Supreme Court of the United States found that even that wheat that never left Roscoe Filburn's farm was subject to the long arm of Congress and the long arm of the Federal Government. It was subject to that same Federal power that James Madison once described as few and defined. All of a sudden the supposedly few and defined powers were broad enough somehow to extend to Roscoe Filburn's pernicious wheat.

The Supreme Court said, in essence, that this wheat, because it was grown and used on Roscoe Filburn's farm in excess of the grain production limit imposed by Federal law, it was grain that Roscoe Filburn would have otherwise purchased but did not have to purchase on the open market, a market that was distinctively interstate.

Because he grew it and used it on the farm and did not buy it somewhere else, thus by growing too much wheat, Roscoe Filburn shamefully distorted and undermined the interstate market and wheat. He undermined it in the sense that it drove the price in a different direction than Congress, in its infinite judgment, saw fit to direct the economy. So the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the fine that was assessed against Roscoe Filburn. The reasoning of the Supreme Court employed in Wickard v. Filburn is a fascinating study in legal and verbal gymnastics. It is a fascinating study in the idea that everything affects everything else. They basically said that the wheat Roscoe Filburn grew on his farm affects the interstate wheat market in much the same way that butterflies flapping their wings in Brazil can affect weather patterns in North America.

We are somehow asked to have faith that this does, in fact, happen. I am told that climatologists can prove there is an impact by the butterflies in South America on weather patterns in North America. I don't know how, but you have to make a lot of inferences

before you get there. But as many inferences as has to be made with the butterflies, I think there are even more inferences that have to be drawn with respect to Roscoe Filburn's wheat.

I remember studying this case in my high school history class. I remember arguing with my history teacher about this. I remember my history teacher eventually telling me: Get over it, Mr. Lee. The Federal Government is big and powerful, and that is just the way things are. Yet I think we have a certain responsibility to look back through our history and to question from time to time the judgments of the Supreme Court of the United States, especially when those judgments enable the Congress to extend its power far beyond what Madison described as few and defined powers.

In a sense, what we have done ever since Wickard v. Filburn is we continued to expand Federal authority beyond that. We have never fully retreated from that high watermark. What we have seen is a perpetually expanding national government, one that is capable of imposing an estimated $2 trillion in Federal regulatory compliance costs alone, a Federal Government that imposes a couple of more trillion dollars in taxes a year from the American people, and manages to spend between $3.5 and $4 trillion every single year. That is a very big government.

Since Wickard v. Filburn, there are only two instances in which the Supreme Court of the United States has invalidated an act of Congress as being beyond the scope of Congress's power under the commerce clause. Sometimes I almost add a third, but then I remember the Supreme Court stopped short on that third.

The first two involved a case called the United States v. Lopez, which is a case from 1995 where the Supreme Court invalidated the Gun- Free School Zones Act prohibiting the bare possession of a handgun within a school zone. The Supreme Court concluded that the bare possession of a gun was not commercial activity at all. It was not interstate commercial activity. It was not interstate commerce, and they couldn't get to the point where they could conclude that this was a valid subject of Congress's commerce clause authority.

The second case was decided in 2000. It was a case called the United States v. Morrison in which the Supreme Court invalidated provisions of the Violence Against Women Act, including that those provisions attempted to regulate acts of violence, however reprehensible, were themselves neither interstate or commercial.

Then, of course, in 2012 the Supreme Court sort of invalidated the penalty provisions attached to the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. I say they sort of invalidated that provision because the Supreme Court of the United States concluded that provision, though enacted pursuant to the commerce clause, could not be defended as a valid exercise of Congress's power under the commerce clause. To that extent, they concluded it was unconstitutional.

But then the Supreme Court went on somehow to conclude that this was a valid exercise of Congress's power to impose taxes even though Congress had attempted unsuccessfully to pass this as a tax, even though new taxes have to be introduced in the House of Representatives and passed into law by both Houses of Congress and signed into law by the President, even though the Supreme Court of the United States has no authority to levy taxes, impose taxes or create taxes.

The Supreme Court of the United States created out of whole cloth a new tax which it imposed on the American people. They imposed a middle- class tax hike, which the Court has no power to impose. It has no power to levy taxes. Yet the Court did it anyway.

When I tell that story, I get asked all the time: How then did the Court do it? If the Court has no power to do it, how did it do it? It just did. It just declared it to be so and the rest of us were expected to accept that and get over it and move on, just as I was told by my high school history teacher to accept, get over, and move on from Wickard v. Filburn because the Federal Government is big and powerful and we can live with it. Well, we all just have to live with it but only as long as the American people put up with it, only as long as the American people are willing to accept it.

The American people have never been enthusiastic about ObamaCare--not from the beginning. Their satisfaction with this law has not improved over time, and it has not been enhanced. The American people don't deserve to have to live under a law that imposes a massive middle-class tax hike on the American people, one that was not imposed by the people's elected representatives in Congress but instead was imposed by five of nine lawyers who wear black robes and sit in big fancy chairs in the building just across the street from us.

The American people deserve to live under a system where the laws are written by men and women of their own choosing, who serve in increments of 2 years in the case of Members of the House of Representatives and in increments of 6 years in the case of U.S. Senators.

Supreme Court Justices, of course, are smart men and women--every one of them. They are very intelligent, well-trained individuals. I am convinced that each and every one of them loves this country and wants to serve it well. Yet the members of the Supreme Court of the United States are not elected. They are not subject to election at regular intervals, and that is one of the many reasons we don't trust them with the power to write law. It is one of the many reasons we don't trust them with the power to impose taxes. They are there to decide cases and controversies based on the law and the facts before them.

In the case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, they rewrote the law not just once but twice--once by transforming what was enacted as a penalty into a tax in order to save that law from an otherwise certain doom, a doom necessitated by important constitutional limitations; the second time when the Court concluded by an even wider margin--7 to 2--that Congress had violated the Constitution by imposing on the States a mandate to expand their Medicaid Programs without giving them any reasonable alternative, any available alternative. The Supreme Court, again by a 5-to-4 margin, after 7 to 2--after the Justices, by a margin of 7 to 2, had found that this was unconstitutional, five of them--by a margin of 5 to 4--saved the provisions simply by rewriting the law, by inserting into the law an exception in the law that the law did not provide.

I believe it may have been Shakespeare who originally penned the words ``he will cheat without scruple who can without fear.'' I have also heard it attributed to Benjamin Franklin. I am not sure which of them was the originator of that quote, but I have heard it attributed to both. Regardless, there has to be a legal corollary to that. When Supreme Court Justices are able to make law, when Supreme Court Justices are able to impose taxes and no one calls them out on it, that is when the people have to live with that. That is when they get away with it. That is when they are allowed to cheat the American people out of their right to have their laws made by men and women of their own choosing, to have their taxes increased, if at all, only by men and women of their own choosing. This was wrong. This was a dastardly, cowardly act, one we can't simply ignore.

One of the things I found so offensive, so appalling, so disturbing, so distressing was the fact that in the wake of this decision, so many people--many of them from my own political party--praised Chief Justice Roberts for his participation in this dastardly, inexcusable act of rewriting the Affordable Care Act not just once but twice in order to save it. They praised him. Some of them said that this showed he was willing to cross the aisle at the Supreme Court. Well, that is a problem. There is no aisle in the Supreme Court of the United States. They sit along a bench. At the center of the bench is the Chief Justice. There isn't an aisle. In fact, particularly once they have been appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, Supreme Court Justices operate in a world in which partisan political affiliation has no meaning. This wasn't reaching across the aisle.

Some suggested that this was somehow a statesman-like act by the Chief Justice, an act that revealed that he was willing to sort of balance various

interests, an act that some Republicans even were convinced was carefully and wisely engineered to procure a Republican partisan victory in the 2012 election cycle. That is absolutely nonsense, first of all. As a political matter, we saw that it turned out not to work at all. I don't necessarily think there is any validity to the theory that that is what the Chief Justice was trying to bring about. If it was, that would amount to an utter betrayal of his judicial oath. It would also reveal him to be a really bad political tactician, but that is not the Chief Justice's job. It is not the job of any justice or any jurist. The job of any jurist is to decide each case before the court based on the law and the facts of the particular case.

Some have suggested that this was designed to protect the enumerated powers doctrine or at least the idea that there is some limit to Congress's power under the commerce clause. I believe that is utter nonsense. This didn't do that. In fact, I think it blew a hole a mile wide in the enumerated powers doctrine because what this suggested is that, OK, the Supreme Court is going to pay at least lipservice to the idea that the power of Congress is, in fact, limited. But if Congress colors outside the lines, if Congress doesn't utter the magic words, if Congress really does something quite wrong in drafting such that its power can no longer be appropriately assigned, its power can no longer be appropriately justified under the commerce clause, then all of a sudden the Supreme Court of the United States will find some other basis in the Constitution upon which to rest this authority.

This is really disturbing because if the Supreme Court can do that and if the Supreme Court can do that even to raise taxes, then Congress can pass all kinds of laws in theory purporting to be simply exercises of its regulatory power under the commerce clause and then rely on the Supreme Court of the United States to say: Yes, OK, this may not be a valid exercise of Congress's power under the commerce clause, but we will rewrite it as a tax. We will rewrite it as a tax and thereby uphold it, thereby stand behind it.

So we get back to the question--a question I get asked all the time by people around my State, by people across the country when they hear about this decision. They ask: How can the Supreme Court of the United States do this? How can the Supreme Court of the United States get away with it?

Well, they can do it because they wear the black robes. They can do it because they have the printing press that prints out those decisions with the fancy wording of the Supreme Court behind it. They can do it because the people still regard the decisions, the rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States as legitimate.

I do have to point out another aspect of this ruling. In the same ruling in which the Supreme Court of the United States concluded that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's individual mandate provision was a valid exercise of the taxing power, the Supreme Court of the United States also said--with, by the way, the concurrence of Chief Justice Roberts, who was the author of the majority opinion upholding it as a valid exercise of the taxing power--that same opinion authored by the same Chief Justice concluded that this same provision was not a tax for purposes of a law called the Anti-Injunction Act. Had the Supreme Court of the United States not reached that conclusion, had it reached the same conclusion under the Anti-Injunction Act that it reached under the constitutional aspect of the challenge, and had the Court concluded that this was, in fact, a tax and not a penalty, as it did under the constitutional analysis, then the Supreme Court of the United States would have been without jurisdiction to hear the case because the Anti-Injunction Act said: If it is a tax, you can't review the statute being challenged until after it has been enforced, which meant that no legal, no judicial challenge could have been properly brought, could have been countenanced by an article III court of the United States until, at the earliest, sometime in 2014, after enforcement of the individual mandate began.

So it was very odd that the Court, led by the same Chief Justice, concluded at once that this was a tax for purposes of constitutional analysis but that it was not a tax for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act. Here again, how does the Court get away with that? It gets away with it because we recognize the validity, the legitimacy of the decision.

But the more people learn about this, the more they read about it, the more they become upset. I have yet to explain this to a constituent who isn't deeply disturbed by it. I have yet to explain this to anyone who can really defend it on its own merits.

So we see that this was a law that was put in place quite improperly. It was a law that was put in place not by an elected legislative body but instead by a judiciary that, at least for purposes of this case, transformed itself into a judicial oligarchy of sorts, a judicial legislative body--one of the many reasons we need to defund the implementation of this law. It was unconstitutional as written in two respects and would have been invalidated but for the Supreme Court of the United States rewriting it not just once but twice.

We have to ask ourselves these questions from time to time: Where do we go with this? What do we do with it? That is where we get back to where we are now, where the House of Representatives boldly stood behind the American people and decided to keep funding the government, funding the operations of government while defunding ObamaCare. That bill, that continuing resolution is now moving over here. That continuing resolution is now before us.

Sometimes we have to ask ourselves these questions of what is it that we are funding, why is it that we are funding it, and why is it that we should continue to stand behind a law that is causing so much harm to the American people--a law that was improperly brought into being in the first place, a law that was improperly upheld and sustained, ultimately rewritten by the Court, improperly, unconstitutionally rewritten by the President of the United States.

So I wish to ask Senator Cruz, does the Senator know how long the Hundred Years War lasted?

Can the Senator tell me, where do Chinese gooseberries come from?

If the Senator will yield for another question.

Commercial airplanes, as far as I know, all airplanes in the United States, have within them something called a black box--a black box that records the events of the cockpit. It also records critical operating data from the airplane so that in the event of an accident, the data and the voice recordings can be reviewed to try to figure out what happened.

Does the Senator know what color the black box is?

There is something called a Panama hat. Can the Senator tell me what part of the world the Panama hat comes from?

The device known as a camel's hair brush, does the Senator know what it is made of?

What color is a purple finch?

There is a chain of islands off the coast of Spain, a chain of islands known as the Canary Islands. Can the Senator tell me after what animal were these islands named?

But the question is, Would any of them be willing to listen to it or interested in it or would most of them consider it a form of torture?

Will the Senator yield for question?

Hearing the Senator from Texas, I started humming the theme to ``Jeopardy,'' while stating lots of these things in the form of a question. It does occur to me it is absolutely certain there was a reason why this was not called a tax when it was presented to the Congress. The reason is tax hikes are unpopular. Tax hikes are especially unpopular when they are directed at the American middle class. Tax hikes are especially unpopular when they are directed at the American middle class, when they are presented by a President who ran specifically on a campaign of not raising taxes on the American middle class, which, of course, nearly all candidates for President will promise and in this case did promise.

So, no, it is not by any means an accident that this happened--the fact that language, consistent with 100 years' worth of jurisprudence, language that was used in this law, created a penalty. There is a very clear distinction between a penalty under Federal law and a tax under Federal law. A tax under Federal law is something that is an obligation, a generalized obligation to fund government; whereas, a penalty is something that involves both a requirement under Federal law and a provision exacting a payment as something that occurs in response to noncompliance with that requirement. So no, this was not an accident at all.

So I would ask Senator Cruz whether this aspect of the Affordable Care Act--and also the fact that ObamaCare is called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--doesn't it strike the Senator that this, in so many ways, is a misnomer in much the same way that the Hundred Years' War did not last 100 years, Chinese gooseberries come not from China but from New Zealand, that the black box is orange, that Panama hats come from Ecuador, that camel hair brushes are made of squirrel fur--by the way, I do not ever want to try one of those; it does not sound pleasant--that the purple finch is actually red and that the Canary Islands are named after a dog? So, too, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a name that does not accurately describe the finished product because this is a law that will make health care less affordable rather than more, and it is a law that subjects patients to a lot of harm rather than protecting them.

Does that mean we should think again about ObamaCare in the same way that we need to think again in the answers to some of these questions?

Will the Senator from Texas yield?

It occurs to me, as I think of this question that I am about to ask the Senator, that, inevitably, one constitutional violation facilitates another. It cannot be that you violate one aspect of the Constitution, in this circumstance, especially, where you are tinkering with the lawmaking power in ways that impact both federalism--the relative power of States and localities, on the one hand, vis-a-vis the Federal Government on the other hand--and also when you manipulate the power to legislate, the power to impose taxes.

Anytime you distort the operation of the legislative power, anytime you allow the judicial branch to commandeer the legislative machinery from Congress, you are also distorting the accountability you describe. In other words, you have in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act a massive intrusion by the Federal Government into the sovereign authority that is retained by the States and by the people.

The bigger the legislative package, the bigger the intrusion, and the greater the potential threat to federalism. The more removed that legislative package is from the people's elected representatives in the House and in the Senate, the greater the potential distortion that is at play in the constitutional system.

What we have at the end of the day is a new tax. Nobody knows who to blame. When the people are upset that they are going to be paying this tax, who do they blame? They go to their Members of Congress. You ask any Member of Congress who is still here who was here when this was enacted, any Member of Congress who voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and I can pretty well guarantee you they are going to say: Oh, no, I did not vote for a middle-class tax hike. I did not vote to impose a new tax on middle-class Americans. No. No. I voted for this, but I did not vote for that because this imposed a penalty and not a tax.

I know that because even in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in 2012, people who supported this legislation in the House and in the Senate and in the White House continued to insist: No, this is not a tax, this is a penalty. This notwithstanding the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States concluded it could not be upheld as a penalty, that it can be upheld only as an exercise of Congress's authority to tax, an authority which Congress decidedly did not exercise. So the accountability is thrown off severely.

This is what prompted me to introduce a piece of legislation, S. 560. S. 560, which stands in rather stark contrast to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act with its 2,700 pages and 20,000 pages of implementing regulations--S. 560, 1 page.

Here is what it says, to paraphrase: Section 1501 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the individual mandates provision, is hereby amended as follows: Nothing in this provision shall be interpreted as a tax or as a valid exercise of Congress's power to tax pursuant to article I, Section 8, clause 1, or the 16th Amendment.

You see, the part of S. 560 is that it gives those who voted for ObamaCare, those in Congress who still defend ObamaCare, something other than a tax on the middle class, an opportunity to register that belief, to register that belief by a vote, a vote that would say yes, I do not believe this is a tax, and it should not be considered as a tax by the courts, and it should not be upheld by the courts as a tax. It should not be construed under any circumstance as a tax, because we do not regard it as that.

The interesting thing, of course, is that that is naturally the way people who are the law's biggest defenders would like to vote in some respects, because they want to tell the American public, and they are still telling the American public: It is not a tax, it is a penalty. But if, in fact, they actually put their vote in that direction, if they put their money where their mouth is and they pass that into law, guess what happens to the Supreme Court's ruling. What would happen to the Supreme Court's ruling in that circumstance, if we were to pass S. 560 into law? Let's assume that somehow magically it passed the House and the Senate and President Obama signed it. Perhaps it united both parties behind this concept that this is not a tax. What then would become of the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on that basis?

Will the Senator yield for a question?

It certainly is important that we call something by an appropriate name. It was important back then that the Congress properly name what it was doing. It was appropriate back then for the Congress to say: We are enforcing the individual mandate through a penalty and not through a tax. In fact, it was so important that but for Congress's decision to make this a penalty and not a tax, it would never have passed in the first place.

What you call something and what you make of it can mean all the difference between passage and failure of a particular legislative proposal. When you dress something up in different language, something might appear to be more palatable than it actually is. Certainly, it could be argued that if there are people among us--if there are Republicans among us who are saying that if you support the House- passed continuing resolution, then you must vote for cloture on the bill, cloture on the House-passed resolution, that would not be accurate, in my opinion. I would respectfully but strongly disagree with someone who would make that claim. I certainly do not believe it is accurate to say that if you support the House-passed continuing resolution, the one that keeps government funding but defunds ObamaCare at the same time, I think it would be inaccurate to say you must vote yes on cloture on the bill in this circumstance.

It is not to say that in every circumstance you would have to vote no. In fact, it seems counterintuitive when you first approach it, say why would you vote no on cloture on a bill that you liked. There is one circumstance where I can see where you would want to do that. It is a circumstance in which the continuing resolution you want to support moves over from the House of Representatives, and there are three alternatives the Senate could consider, but the Senate chooses only the third, three doors the majority leader could choose to open. He chooses only the third.

The first door is one in which he says: Okay, we are going to vote on this. We are going to vote on it up or down on its merits as is. We are going to vote on it as it was passed by the House of Representatives.

Behind door two is another option. We are going to allow amendments. We are going to allow individual Members, Democrats and Republicans, to submit amendments as they deem fit. We will debate and discuss those amendments. We will consider them. We will vote on them. Some of them may pass, some of them may not pass. But we will get to amendments. Door one is okay. Door two is okay. They are both appropriate. I would be okay with either one. I would vote yes on cloture on the bill if we were going to go through either of those first two doors.

But door three is the one the majority leader appears likely to open. And behind door three is a very different alternative, one where the majority leader says: I do not want to vote on it as is. But I also do not want to allow an open amendment process. In fact, I am going to allow one and only one amendment. That amendment will gut the continuing resolution passed by the House of the single most important provision relative to its ability to pass the House, the provision defunding ObamaCare.

Door 3 is unacceptable. Door 3 is unacceptable because it allows the majority leader to gut the House-passed continuing resolution funding government but defunding ObamaCare.

I find door 3 unacceptable. Because I find door 3 unacceptable, I am not going to help the majority leader get there. If he wants to get there with the help of himself, his own vote, and the 53 Democrats who follow him in his conference, that is fine. Let them do that. If he wants to try to convince some Republicans to join him in that effort to make it easier for him to gut the House-passed continuing resolution, to strip out the language defunding ObamaCare, then that is the prerogative of anyone who may go along with him. I choose not to do that because I was elected to fight this law, not to facilitate its implementation.

I don't want to facilitate its implementation. I therefore don't want to facilitate the demise of what I regard as the single most important provision of the House-passed continuing resolution. I will therefore vote against cloture on the bill.

I ask Senator Cruz, how does he view the upcoming cloture vote? I am speaking here not on cloture on the motion to proceed but on the cloture on the bill, on the House-passed bill, the continuing resolution.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

First, by way of clarification, it was not a Buick but an Oldsmobile.

Those were not rocks I was purchasing in my hypothetical; it was instead a half ton of iron ore. I am not sure it is critical to the merits of the story, but I did think that deserved some clarification. I am not certain that I would, in fact, do that. I wish to be very clear. I did engage in a transaction like that.

It does remind me of how we are often asked to vote here. We tie together program after program. Things are funded not on their own merits but on the merits of other programs. When you tie every single piece of government spending together, then all of a sudden it becomes a must-pass piece of legislation. Everybody sinks or swims together, and it becomes a practice of collusive spending in which Congress funds things not because each program deserves to be funded but because nobody wants to have his ox gored, and that does become a problem.

I appreciate the Senator's comments about my late father. He has been dead for the last 17 years. We miss him. We have missed him every day since then.

The Journal of the American Bar Association once referred to him as ``Huck Finn in a morning suit,'' referring to the ceremonial dress worn by the U.S. Solicitor General. They regard him as sort of the Huckleberry Finn character. It was not typical that a boy from the Rocky Mountains, as he used to describe himself, ends up in that position, but he loved that position and loved it very much.

It is worth noting that I have met the father of the junior Senator from Texas. He is an inspiring speaker. He is a true patriot. Even though he was not born or raised in this country, the Senator's father has a great love of the United States of America that is unparalleled, certainly unexceeded by almost anyone I have ever met. He is one who certainly can understand the angst the American people feel about laws like ObamaCare. He is someone who I think can understand that in many respects the very best kinds of jobs program the Senate could enact, as my friend Jared Stone from Danville, CA, recently told me, would be legislation defunding ObamaCare. As my friend Jared Stone pointed out to me, ObamaCare presents a sort of double whammy for the American people. At once, it imposes a massive new tax on the middle class and at the same time kills job opportunities for the middle class. Most people who work in real jobs or want to have a good job understand this. That is why the overwhelming majority of Americans want the Senate to defund ObamaCare.

This is a principle that I think the father of the junior Senator from Texas understands very well. The father of the junior Senator from Texas came here as a young man, initially working at a restaurant waiting tables, as I recall. This was a young man who had escaped tyranny in various forms, originally the form of tyranny Cuba saw under Castro's predecessor, Fulgencio Batista.

The Senator's father had quite an experience coming to this country. I was wondering if the junior Senator from Texas would be willing to share a little bit more about his father's story, the story of Rafael Cruz, how he came to this country, and how the Senator's father might look upon ObamaCare based upon his rather unique experience coming to this country.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

My question relates to the nature of our government and the nature of our system which is a system of laws. One of the reasons America has been attractive to so many people over the last few centuries and one of the reasons people have wanted to move here from all over the world is that this has always been a land of opportunity. It has been a place where you can be born into one station in life and die in a much better station. We worry that land of opportunity might cease to be. We worry about the fact that people are being trapped at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder and finding it increasingly difficult to move up along that ladder.

One of the reasons this is the case is because the distinction between what is properly within the domain of government and what is properly within the domain of people is sometimes blurred. In other instances, that which is properly within the domain of the Federal Government and properly within the domain of the State and local governments in this country is blurred.

On other occasions, it is because what is properly within the domain of the legislative branch is usurped by the executive branch or the judicial branch or a combination of the two. The more our legal system becomes deteriorated, the less faithful it becomes to the blueprint that was created for our government some 226 years ago, and the more we struggle in this country.

I quoted James Madison earlier. I referred to something he said in Federalist No. 62. I have the actual text of the language, which I largely paraphrased earlier, and I wish to expand on it a little more and explain some of what he was saying.

He writes:

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are

made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous

that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot

be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are

promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man,

who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be

to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can

that be a rule, which is little known, and less

fixed? Another effect of public instability is the

unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the

enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and

uninformed mass of the people. Every new regulation

concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting

the value of the different species of property, presents a

new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace

its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but

by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-

citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be

said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not

for the many.

In another point of view, great injury results from an

unstable government. The want of confidence in the public

councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and

profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing

arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes

in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his

plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?

What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the

encouragement given to any particular cultivation or

establishment when he can have no assurance that his

preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim

to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement

or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the

auspices of a steady system of national policy.

But the most deplorable effect of all is that diminution of

attachment and reverence which steals into the hearts of the

people, towards a political system which betrays so many

marks of infirmity, and disappoints so many of their

flattering hopes. No government any more than an individual,

will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor

be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of

order and stability.

We see in this an age-old warning, a warning about what happens when governments do certain things which tend toward voluminous legislation, excessive regulation, and deliberate manipulation by those who have access to the power lovers of government, whereby they may commandeer the economic machinery of an entire civilization--commandeer it to their advantage, and thereby secure a position at the top end of the economic spectrum of that society. When people do this, they very frequently use really long, really complex laws. They necessarily rely on extensive regulation, the kind of regulation that can be found in a 2,700-page law passed by Members of Congress who have not read it, who pass it after being told they have to pass it in order to find out what is in it, who do so only to discover later that this 2,700-page piece of legislation has become 20,000 pages of regulation.

As we stand this evening, or this morning, or whatever we call this time of day as we move forward together on this path toward standing with the American people, I invite my colleagues to join me on a journey back to a place and time not unlike our own. It was a turbulent time of deep division within our young Republic. George Washington recorded the events of March 4, 1797--his last day as President of the United States. Washington wrote:

It was with a heavy heart that I left my room today

thinking not so much of myself as of our country . . .

Walking out onto Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, Washington continued:

I was plain George Washington now, neither general nor

President. Suddenly I realized I was not alone. People were

following me, at first only a few, then a swelling crowd.

For a long moment, I stood face to face with them--the

young cobbler, the carpenter, the storekeeper, the laborer.

All of them stood facing me. They said not a word. I realized

that providence was showing me a vision of America, of what

it will become. I could feel assured that, come what may,

whether it be political bickering . . . or any other evil in

government, . . . our country rests in good hands, in the

hands of its people . . .

A similar crowd we might say gathers every time people converge at a townhall meeting. It is not necessarily a crowd consisting of carpenters, storekeepers, laborers, and cobblers. It might well consist of a crowd including schoolteachers, Web designers, business consultants, mothers and fathers and friends.

Every time I hold townhall meetings, as I look around the crowd and I see groups of people represented from those groups I described, I think about the fact that today, as in Washington's time, the hands of our great Nation rest in good hands. It rests in the hands of its people.

So hand in hand and acting on the instincts of our better angels and connected in the principle of civil society and in the principles that allow our country to be great, we know that we the people and not we the government will form a more perfect union and help ensure that the vision of George Washington becomes the destiny of the Nation.

Our discussions tonight have been about keeping the country in the hands of the people and making sure the government serves the people and not the other way around, making sure the people are in charge of their own government; that whenever the things that government does become destructive of the ability of the people to achieve happiness and secure their own lives and their liberty and their pursuit of happiness, it is important that the people restore to themselves the power which is rightfully theirs.

Throughout the history of the world, in many civilizations, people have called that idea radical. They have called it crazy. They have called it insane. Here we call it a very American ideal.

Here, tonight, we have been talking a lot about this law. We have been talking a lot about our ability to defund this law which we believe has become destructive of the people. We have been told by some of our colleagues--some from within our own party--that this effort is futile, that we shouldn't fight it because, as we are told over and over, we don't have the votes. Those things can change and they do change when the people speak to their elected representatives and they ask their elected representatives to do that which they were sent to our Nation's capital to do.

There is a man named William Morris, a man whose political philosophy I don't share in many respects, but a man who occasionally said things that were profound and reflect broader truths.

William Morris once wrote:

One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being

considered a madman; two men with the same idea in common may

be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea

begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a

thousand and society begins to tremble; a hundred thousand .

. . and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why

only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and more .

. . ? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to

answer that question.

So when we find ourselves with an idea in our head, when we find ourselves listening to people, people who might begin with a chorus of one calling out for Congress to do something to protect the American people, we might be inclined to dismiss that one idea coming from that one person as the product of madness. When two people join together, when 10, when 100, 1,000, 10,000, and so forth--with each order of magnitude, we find that the idea acquires more potency, the idea acquires more lasting power, the idea moves more and more people.

The idea to defund ObamaCare is not new. It has been discussed since 2010, since shortly after the law's enactment, since about the time when many people were predicting that the Republican Party might gain control of at least one House of Congress. That is when it began in earnest.

We hoped, we expected, that once the Republican majority took hold, once Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January 2011, in the wake of the 2010 election cycle, that the defunding of ObamaCare would be imminent. In fact, H.R. 1, the continuing resolution, as I recall, was filed at the beginning of the last Congress and originally was written to defund ObamaCare. I am not quite sure why that didn't move forward, but many expected it would happen. It didn't happen. We have continued to pass continuing resolution after continuing resolution since January of 2011 to keep the government funded and we have done so without defunding ObamaCare. There have been reasons for that. There were many who expected the Supreme Court would invalidate ObamaCare, thus obviating the need for Congress to go through the process of defunding it and later repealing it. That didn't happen.

There were those who expected that a Republican would be elected to President of the United States in the 2012 election cycle, thereby making it possible for ObamaCare to be repealed or perhaps at least stalled out with the assistance of the President and with the assistance of an Executive order suspending many of its major provisions. That, of course, didn't happen. We are now at the point when we are being asked to fund the operations of government potentially for the last time between now and the time when the law's major operative provisions will take effect.

This will not be the end of the debate, assuming this effort either does or doesn't succeed. I have no doubt this debate will continue for some time. If we do not succeed in defunding ObamaCare at this point, it doesn't mean the cause is lost forever. It may nonetheless mean it becomes far more difficult to stop this law.

Once a law such as this takes effect, it is frequently suggested it will be much harder to stop, much harder to defund, and much harder to repeal down the road. So before we take this step, I think it is appropriate that we consider very seriously defunding this law's implementation and enforcement, especially in light of taking into account the potentially devastating impact this law will have, could have, and is already having on our Nation's workers, the impact it is having with regard to wages, to employment opportunities, to access to health care, and to the cost of health care. We have to take that very seriously, as the House of Representatives has done in passing this continuing resolution.

As we take that up, we have to remember the fate of this Nation lies in good hands. It lies in the hands of the American people--the people who were represented well by the House of Representatives when it passed the continuing resolution funding the operations of government, while defunding ObamaCare.

I ask Senator Cruz the question: What can we do as citizens, what can we do as Senators, to make sure the hands of our government will, indeed, remain in good hands, in the hands of its people, rather than in the hands of a perpetual oligarchy, albeit an elected oligarchy, a bipartisan political establishment that might limit the freedom of the American people?

(Mr. DONNELLY assumed the Chair.)

Will the Seantor yield for a question?

As the Senator was mentioning, the fact that it is time for people to stand for their own rights and it is time for the people's elected representatives in Washington to stand for them reminds me of the fact that sometimes people do take this challenge, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes people will square their shoulders heading into a challenge, and other times people will simply engage in shoulder- shrugging and ignore problems all together.

A few years ago I was traveling through southern Utah with my family, and we went to a restaurant. It was sort of a fast food restaurant that had a salad bar. For some strange reason, instead of ordering a cheeseburger, I ordered a salad. I don't know why, but I got the salad bar. I went through the salad bar with my plate, and I was putting all of these horribly healthy foods on my plate--lettuce, vegetables. Then I saw at the end of the salad bar something that I didn't expect, a little bonus. There was a little tub of chocolate pudding, and I thought, this is fantastic. I can feel like I am eating a healthy meal because I am eating a salad, but I get chocolate pudding in with salad, so I put a bunch of that on my salad plate.

I sat down a few minutes later, and, of course, rather than eating the salad, I went right for the pudding. There was only one problem: The pudding was disgusting. It was spoiled rotten. It tasted as if it had been left out overnight unrefrigerated for 3 nights in a row, which is not a good thing.

I immediately thought, I have to find somebody who works here. I have to tell someone that the pudding is bad so that they don't have to deal with any other customers eating rotten pudding. I found the nearest employee of the restaurant. I said to her in a sort of hushed tone of voice: Hey, the pudding is bad. You need to do something about it. You need to replace it. It is rancid. It is spoiled rotten. Please do something about it.

She looked at me with a sort of blank stare. She couldn't have been older than maybe 17 years old, and she just said: I am not on salad. Then she walked away. My response to that was, I am not suggesting that you are on salad.

I all of a sudden wondered whether I had stumbled across some rift among the employees of this particular fast food establishment. Maybe she didn't like the implication that she was one of the salad bar attendants. Maybe that was a bad thing. I don't know. All I know is that it was kind of strange because she worked for the same employer who ran the salad bar. I would have thought she would have cared about that. Instead, she said: I am not on salad, shrugged her shoulders, and walked away.

I wonder if that is sometimes what we have too much of here in Washington: I am not on salad. I am not on ObamaCare. I am not on excessive regulation. I am not on dealing with a law that is going to result in a lot of Americans losing their jobs, having their hours cut, their wages cut, or losing access to their health care benefits.

Well, our problems are acute. Our problems are, in fact, chronic. We have to do more than shrug our shoulders. What we need right now is more shoulder-squaring than shoulder-shrugging. We have to have people who will follow the admonition of Ronald Reagan, who declared more than 30 years ago that it is morning in America again. As it is now morning in Washington again, it is an appropriate time of day for us to bring this up. To paraphrase the words of Ronald Reagan, as spoken in his speech at the Republican National Convention in July 1980, and to apply those same words today, let me just say as follows:

Our problems are both acute and chronic, yet all we hear

from those in positions of leadership are the same tired

proposals for more government tinkering, more meddling and

more control, all of which led us to this state in the first

place. Can anyone look at the record of this administration

and say: Well done? Can anyone compare the state of our

economy when this administration took office with where we

are today and say: Keep up the good work? Can anyone look at

our reduced stand in the world today and say: Let's have more

of this?

We must have the clarity of vision to see the difference

between what is essential and what is merely desirable, and

then the courage to use this insight to bring our government

back under control and make it acceptable to the people. It

has long been said that freedom is the condition in which the

government fears the people and tyranny is the condition in

which the people fear the government.

Throughout the duration of our history as a republic, we have enjoyed liberty, we have enjoyed freedom, and we have had a notable absence of tyranny. Sure, there have been excesses from time to time. We have kept those under control because the government has always been in good hands--in the hands of its people. When the people weigh in from time to time and decide they have had too much of something, it ends up having a benefit for everyone. Everyone benefits when the people speak and are heard. Everyone benefits when the people's elected representatives are willing to square their shoulders and stand up to a challenge rather than shrug their shoulders and walk away saying, as it were, I am not on salad.

Today, we are all on ObamaCare. We are all on it in the sense we can't walk away from it. We are all on it in the sense that we have no choice but to confront the many challenges facing our people. There is not widespread agreement as to what we can or should or must or might do.

In the absence of consensus, and understanding the widespread disruption to our economy this will create once it is fully implemented, some have suggested that a good compromise position might be to delay its impact. And the best way to fully delay it is to defund it--defund it for at least 1 year. The President himself has acknowledged the law is not ready to be implemented as written. The American people are reluctant to confront the many economic challenges this law presents.

It is, therefore, appropriate that we do this, and it is appropriate the House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to keep government funded while defunding ObamaCare.

It is for that position we have been speaking, and it is for that position that we continue to insist that as we approach the cloture vote this week, that I and Senator Cruz and a few others will be voting no on cloture on the bill because we support the House-passed continuing resolution--H.J. Res. 59. We support that, and because we support it, we cannot support a process that would enable Senator Reid, the Senate majority leader, to strip out, to gut the most important provision within that resolution--the ObamaCare defunding legislation-- by a simple majority vote without allowing any other votes on any other amendments, without allowing for an open amendment process, without ever allowing Members of this body to have an up-or-down vote on the legislation as a whole, as it was enacted, as is.

That is what we are fighting for. Is this difficult? Yes, absolutely it is. Do we have consensus within our own political party? Of course we don't. That is one of the reasons we are standing here today, to persuade our colleagues and to persuade more of the American people to join in with us. No one Senator can do this alone. Not one of us, certainly by means of our persuasive abilities, will be able to do this. But with the American people, we can do a lot of things.

It wasn't very long ago, it wasn't even 2 weeks ago when people were still saying it would not be possible to pass a continuing resolution such as H.J. Res. 59--one that keeps government funded while defunding ObamaCare. Yet when the people weighed in strongly in support of this measure, it became possible. I hope and I expect the same can be true in the Senate.

So I would ask Senator Cruz: What is the best way the American people, in confronting this challenge and others similar to it, but in particular this challenge confronting ObamaCare, can square their shoulders and avoid the kind of shoulder shrugging that has resulted in so much expansion of government almost as if by default?

Will the Senator from Texas yield for a question?

From day 1, there have been those in the Washington establishment who have been working against this, and it was the American people who stood up in strong support of us. It was the American people who served as the heroes of this story who spoke overwhelmingly to the Congress and spoke overwhelmingly to the House of Representatives and convinced the House of Representatives to pass this great continuing resolution--one that keeps government funded and allows it to avoid a shutdown while defunding ObamaCare. That is what this effort has been all about. It has been all about the people we are trying to protect from this horrible law.

Across the country Americans stayed up with us overnight forging this argument, helping us distribute this argument, choosing to forego sleep and to show their support of this effort, and we greatly appreciate that. I want to take a moment to reflect on how all of us who have been up all night feel right now--with dry eyes, with a certain amount of grogginess, and yet ultimately this is an exhilarating moment. It is exhilarating because we are inspired by the American people who have informed this message and who have expressed their views so well and so forcefully, and I am grateful to have been part of this effort.

I ask the Senator from Texas: As we come to the end of this uphill climb we have experienced over the past 24 hours, give or take, we see the cards are somewhat stacked against us. Today, although Washington may appear to have the upper hand, in our hearts don't we know the American people are with us, and don't we know the American people will have the final word, and that as George Washington predicted a couple of centuries ago, this country will always remain in good hands--in the hands of its people?

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

Mr. President, on Friday a unified House Republican conference sent a strong message to the American people: Let's keep the government open, and let's protect the American people simultaneously from the harmful and potentially devastating effects of ObamaCare.

It is now time for the Senate to act. We know the President's health care law is not ready to implement. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the government's software that runs the online insurance marketplaces, known as exchanges, simply is not ready. It can't reliably determine how much people need to pay for coverage.

In the face of this and the other aspects of the law that are not ready--many of them by the President's own admission--if the administration goes ahead with this law anyway, we know ObamaCare will be implemented in a manner that is manifestly unfair and that is likely to harm hard-working Americans. Big business, unions, and other special interests may well all receive special treatment under ObamaCare while the rest of the country will be forced into ObamaCare's unfair, unworkable, and fundamentally unsound system.

We know the law is unaffordable. We know it will be bad for the economy. At a time when we are running annual deficits approaching $1 trillion, ObamaCare is going to cost roughly $2 trillion over the next 10 years. The law is forcing employers to shed workers, cut back hours, and stop providing health insurance for employees. And we know it is not going to work. The Congressional Budget Office recently concluded that after 10 years of ObamaCare, 31 million Americans will still lack health insurance.

We understand these are inconvenient facts for the President and for Members of this body who still support this law. But those are the facts, and we have a responsibility to do something about it.

How many more people will have to lose their jobs, wages, and health care benefits before Congress acts? How many more States will have to announce that premiums are going up before we do something to protect the country? If the President won't act to protect the American people from this law and its harmful effects, Congress should.

Last Friday a unified Republican House showed tremendous courage in enacting legislation, knowing full well what the media would say, what the President would say, and what Democrats on both sides of the Capitol would say. Two hundred twenty-eight Republicans responded to the will of the American people and overwhelmingly passed a bill that would fund government and protect the country from ObamaCare. Only one party has voted to fund the government. Only one party has voted to avoid a government shutdown. Right now the ball is in the Senate's court.

Once the ball has reached the Senate, as has now happened, the Senate can respond in one of several ways. Basically, I see three options on the table, two of which are perfectly appropriate, one of which is unacceptable.

The first option would be for this body, under the leadership of our majority leader, to take a vote on the House-passed continuing resolution--the House-passed continuing resolution that keeps government funded but defunds ObamaCare--and to give that an up-or-down vote, to vote on that bill, as is, without any modification.

The second approach would be to open it for an open amendment process, to allow us to debate and discuss and consider amendments on the House-passed bill as each individual Senator might deem appropriate for this body to consider.

Both of these first two options are appropriate. Both of these first two options are understandable and acceptable under the totality of the circumstances. Some might naturally lean toward the first option, moving quickly to consideration of the House-passed bill in an as-is condition, given the fact that we are T-minus 7 days and a few hours until the existing continuing resolution expires on midnight of next Monday night. We are a little over 7 days before that continuing resolution expires. So under those circumstances many of us might suggest the best option might be to take that first approach, for the Senate to open this for a vote on the House-passed continuing resolution in as-is condition.

But if this body doesn't want to do that, if it wants to amend the House-passed continuing resolution, it would still be appropriate for us to have an amendment process. But that needs to be an open amendment process, one that is appropriate for this body--a body that many have described as the world's greatest deliberative body. If in fact it is great and deliberative, if in fact we want to continue this tradition, then we need to have an open amendment process when amendments are considered.

The third option I referred to, the option I would consider unacceptable, would be an option in which the majority leader would use a procedural trick to allow the majority party to gut the House-passed continuing resolution, removing its single most significant provision without allowing even consideration of one single additional amendment. This is not OK.

What I am saying is we need to either pass the bill as is--pass it or don't pass it--or we need to open the amendment process so all Members of this body have the opportunity to introduce and vote on amendments as each individual Senator deems appropriate. Those are the only two acceptable options.

It would not be an acceptable option if the majority leader were to decide to use a procedural trick to allow only one amendment--an amendment that would gut the House-passed continuing resolution and effectively negate its single most distinguishing provision.

The question that leaves us with is that once this bill comes up in this body, will we as Senators be courageous? Will we do the right thing for the American people or will Senate Democrats threaten to shut down the government in order to protect an ill-conceived, unworkable, unaffordable, and fundamentally unfair law?

There is no doubt that many voices will say we can't win this fight, but I am not so sure. Two months ago these same voices said we could not and would not get this far. They said this effort would amount to bad politics. They said this simply would not work in the Congress as it exists in 2013. And they were wrong. They were wrong because what the House of Representatives passed on Friday is what the American people have been demanding, and they have been demanding it overwhelmingly. They have demanded that Congress act to keep the government open and functioning while protecting the American people from the harmful, potentially devastating effects of ObamaCare. That is why I believe we can win.

The Senate majority may have the upper hand, but the American people will and always must have the last word.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, on April 16, 2013 President Ma Ying-jeiou of Taiwan gave a speech on a videoconference with Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. I feel my colleagues could benefit from reading this speech. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record President Ma Ying-jeiou's speech.

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

I also ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business and to be permitted to engage in a colloquy with my Republican colleagues.

Mr. President, I rise in support of parents, families, students, employees, taxpayers, and other hard-working Americans, who, as of January 1, 2014, will find themselves unfairly impacted by ObamaCare. ObamaCare is an ill-conceived, poorly crafted, and economically damaging piece of legislation.

We have known for some time now that ObamaCare would create a set of circumstances that would make health care unaffordable. It is unaffordable from several standpoints: No. 1, for the country and for the U.S. Government. The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan entity, recently reported that this law is likely to cost the U.S. Government about $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years. That is significantly more--some would say roughly double--than the initial estimates given to Congress when this law was passed.

This is an enormous amount of money. It is an especially enormous amount of money for a government that is now $17 trillion in debt and is adding to that debt at a rate of about $1 trillion every single year. It is not as though we have an overabundance of money within the Federal Government. It is not as though we can afford to take on newer, more expensive programs, such as this one, especially when they run pricetags that are substantially above and beyond what was presented to us.

It is also proving to be unaffordable for American families. There are a number of studies that have been conducted in recent months which tell us that premiums are going to become more expensive. The name of the law, of course, was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This implies, of course, this would protect patients and make health care more affordable, not less. What we found is that this is a misnomer. What we have found through the studies that have been released recently is that it is going to make health care less affordable for American families, not more affordable.

The interesting thing about these studies is that they are all over the map. We don't know exactly how much health care is going to cost us. We don't know exactly how much less affordable health care will become under the Affordable Care Act because there are so many uncertainties created by this law. The 2,700-page bill that became ObamaCare has been modified and will continue to be modified by countless pages--tens of thousands of pages of regulations.

This act has also been modified in significant ways on a couple of occasions, which we will get to in a minute. All of these modifications have created additional uncertainty that is a source of a lot of concern to a lot of Americans. What we do know is that it is likely to result in premium increases.

One study concluded that even on the low end, the increased premiums families would be paying in a small group premium context would go up between 13 and 23 percent, on average. Other studies--including one that was conducted in the State of Indiana--suggested that premiums would go up in that State by 72 percent for those with individual plans. I am told Maryland's biggest health insurance provider has proposed raising premiums for individual policies by an average of 25 percent next year.

In many instances, these numbers are even worse for young people. There are also numbers which suggest that there is a lot of uncertainty, and we truly don't know. It is almost impossible to know. An analysis of more than 30 studies has shown that premiums are likely to increase between 145 and 189 percent for young people seeking health insurance. In Utah, my State, there is a study suggesting that for young people seeking health insurance, their premiums are likely to increase between 56 and 90 percent with respect to individual policies.

This law is also bad for America's workers. Businesses are cutting hours, moving workers to part-time, and in many cases they are not hiring at all.

According to a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey, 74 percent of businesses will fire employees or cut hours; 61 percent will not hire next year.

Daniel Kessler, who is a professor of law and business at Stanford University, has predicted that 30 to 40 million Americans will be directly harmed by ObamaCare through higher premiums, stiff penalties, cutbacks in hours, and job losses.

We have known for some time--as a result of these studies--that ObamaCare was going to make health care unaffordable. We now know it is also going to be fundamentally unfair. The President recently admitted the law is not ready for prime time. He admitted he is not ready to implement the law as it has been written. Because ObamaCare was so poorly crafted, he simply is not going to enforce it the way it was crafted. He is going to selectively enforce its provisions.

Most important, the President of the United States has said that while he is going to require hard-working Americans, individuals, to comply with the law's individual mandate. According to one recent study, only 12 percent of the American people actually support that provision today. However, he is going to implement and enforce that provision, but at least for the first year of the law's full effect next year, he will not be implementing or enforcing the employer mandate. So hard-working Americans have to comply but big business does not have to comply.

This is significant because the law doesn't give the President of the United States the power to rewrite the law. The law sets forth a specific set of timelines, a specific set of deadlines that cause the law's various provisions to kick in. This did not give the President the authority or the discretion to decide which among the law's several provisions could be favored or disfavored by the President of the United States.

So we have hard-working Americans, individuals, and families on the hook, and we have big business being thrown a big bone. This is not fair. This is not something that is consistent with the rule of law. This is not something the American people ought to tolerate.

The Affordable Care Act, as it is called, will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but in many instances it will destroy the foundation of the 40-hour workweek that has become the backbone of the American middle class. It will do all of this in a way that will contribute to or be part of a system of selective unfair enforcement.

The American people deserve better. The American people demand better. The American people deserve not to have this law implemented and enforced if, as the President of the United States has told us, it is not ready for prime time. Then it is not ready to be implemented.

I ask of my friend and colleague, the distinguished junior Senator from Florida, how he feels about this and how the people in the State of Florida feel about the selective implementation and enforcement of a law that Americans already knew would be unaffordable and a law they know will also be unfair.

Mr. President, I see we have been joined by my friend and colleague, the Senator from Texas. I wish to ask him if his observations from his interactions with his constituents in Texas have been similar to those that have been shared today by the junior Senator from Florida.

Mr. President, those of us who share this position feel strongly that it is indisputably, constitutionally the prerogative of the Congress to exercise the power of the purse. This means we don't have to vote to fund something with which we fundamentally disagree.

Some have suggested that because this was passed by Congress 3 years ago, we somehow have an obligation to fund it. Well, I would remind my colleagues who might make that statement that the Congress as it existed then is not the same Congress as it exists today. That was two Congresses ago. The Congress that enacted that law was fundamentally changed in part because it enacted that law.

The law has not been popular. It has not been good to those who voted to enact it. Ever since the majority party in the House of Representatives changed hands after the 2010 election--due in large part to ObamaCare--there have been a lot of people who have suggested that the Republicans in Congress need to defund ObamaCare's implementation and enforcement. For a variety of reasons, that has not happened.

We have continued to pass continuing resolutions with no restrictions on ObamaCare's implementation and enforcement, at least as it relates to the ultimate implementation and enforcement of the exchanges, of the individual mandate, and so forth. Republicans have had reasons for doing this. Some of those reasons have included the statement to the effect that, well, the Supreme Court is going to knock it down. It will strike it down. It will invalidate ObamaCare because it is unconstitutional. Of course it is, and a majority of the Supreme Court concluded that it was unconstitutional as written. But the Supreme Court, rather than invalidating it, instead rewrote the law not just once but twice in order to save it. Some Republicans have also justified continuing to vote for funding

bills that contain ObamaCare implementation funding because they believed a Republican would be elected President in 2012 and would stop ObamaCare. Well, that did not happen either.

We have one last opportunity to defund the implementation of this law before these provisions I just mentioned kick in on January 1--one last opportunity--and that is in connection with our current spending bill, our current continuing resolution that is set to expire on September 30--just 62 days from right now.

So what we are saying is that if you agree with us, if you agree with the President that this law is not ready to be implemented as it was written, as it was enacted by Congress, if the President is not going to follow the law, then the American people should not have to fund it. If you do not like it, if you agree it is not ready, do not fund it. We can and we should and we must fund government but not ObamaCare.

So I would ask the Senator from Florida if these are sentiments that are consistent with what he has been thinking, sentiments that are consistent with what he has been hearing from his constituents in Florida.

Surely.

That is correct. That is correct, and it is how it has happened in the past. This is not something we want. This is not something we have threatened. This is something we think can and should be avoided and we want to avoid. In the unfortunate, completely avoidable event that did happen, it would be largely as the Senator described it.

Well, first of all, that tells me that those who are part of that union do not want to be subject to the same provisions of the same law they will be enforcing.

What it also tells me in the bigger picture is that above all, this law creates uncertainty. That is why we see so much angst among people right here on Capitol Hill who are facing the very real prospect, the very real future in the next few months of going onto these exchanges because nobody knows what this is going to look like. Nobody has any idea.

One thing Americans really do not like, in this world of a lot of unavoidable uncertainties, is more uncertainties heaped upon them by dictate of the Federal Government. We have enough uncertainties in life. We do not know when somebody is going to get sick. We do not know when accidents are going to happen. So we should be able to avoid those things that government thrusts upon us.

This is one of the many reasons why there is so much angst within the IRS and within the ranks of the Capitol Hill workforce. People do not want to go onto these exchanges because they have absolutely no idea what this is going to look like.

Based on historical precedent, we have every reason to believe that once this new entitlement program kicks in, it is not going away. It is a one-way ratchet. You have death, taxes, and entitlements. Once created, they do not go away.

To answer the second part of that question, I am not aware of any plan among any Republicans--aside from this one; aside from the plan that says: Do not fund ObamaCare, fund government but not ObamaCare-- that would address this issue. I am not aware of any plan. The only other plan I am aware of would be one that says: Let's just wait and see what happens. Let's wait and see what a horrible disaster this will be. Let's wait and see how awful this will be for the American people, how utterly intolerable they will find it. And let's just hope that will provide enough political momentum for us perhaps to win elections at some unknown point in the future. This is not a good way to run a government. This is not a kind thing to do to an unsuspecting public who hopes and expects that we have their best interests at heart.

So to all those in this body who support ObamaCare, this argument might not be all that persuasive to you, although you ought to look at the fact that the President, who signed this into law, has said he himself is not ready, is not willing, is not able to enforce and implement the law evenhandedly as it was written. So maybe that ought to give you pause as to whether you should fund it.

But for those of you in this body who are, in fact, opposed to ObamaCare, I ask you: How can you oppose it, be against it, and yet fund it? So I would invite you to consider the possibility that what you are doing in thinking about funding it is not really where you want to go. Consider what might be said about this. Defund it or own it. If you fund it, you are for it.

This law was enacted without a meaningful opportunity for the Members voting on it to read it. It is 2,700 pages long. After it was enacted into law, it was rewritten a total of four times: twice by the Supreme Court of the United States, twice more by the President of the United States. The President's rewrite came just a few weeks ago, the Supreme Court's rewrite was over a year ago.

But what the President did was acknowledge that this law is not ready for prime time. This law is not ready to implement. This law is not one that he is willing to implement as written. He is going to implement and enforce it selectively, holding hard-working Americans, individuals and families to the fire, while throwing a big bone to big business.

This is not acceptable. This is un-American. This is not something that those of us who purport to be against ObamaCare can support by funding it. So I invite my colleagues to join me in this cause to vote to fund government but not ObamaCare.