Floor Statements

Mr. President, each of us was sent here to serve and protect our constituents. That is why Republicans voted unanimously against ObamaCare in 2009, because we believed it was our job to stand for middle-class families we were sent here to represent, because we-- and not just us, but countless health care professionals, policy experts, and citizens across the country--saw this train wreck coming literally years ago, knew the pain it would cause, and warned against it.

I wish the President and Washington Democrats had listened back then. I really do. I wish we had been wrong about ObamaCare too, because the failings of this law are about so much more than a Web site. They are about real people.

Yes, the healthcare.gov fiasco can seem almost comical at times--like a surreal parody of government bungling. But as the President says, this is about so much more than a Web site. He is right about that. The pain this law is causing is not digital--it is real.

Workers first began to feel the pain when employers started cutting hours, and then benefits, and some jobs altogether. Spouses felt it when they lost their health coverage they had had through their husband's or wife's job. College graduates felt it when they could only find part-time work, if they could find anything at all in the Obama economy. And this was before basically anyone had even heard of this ObamaCare Web site.

Now that the health care law is actually coming online, many Americans are finding they will be seeing premium increases or that they will be getting hit with higher copays and deductibles or that they can no longer see the doctors who use the hospitals of their choice. In fact, I have been hearing from constituents in western Kentucky that a number of the hospitals and health care providers they have relied upon will no longer be available in their network--and, in many cases, they will be responsible for 100 percent of the costs associated with services performed at those facilities they used to use.

Let me repeat. One hundred percent of the costs. How is that an improvement? How is that reform?

Many in the middle class are also learning that the health plans they were promised they could keep are being taken away from them anyway. They feel absolutely betrayed. They feel hurt. And they feel vulnerable. When these folks are offered ``comparable'' plans at all, they are often completely unaffordable. And if they poke around on the exchanges--assuming they could even log on--many are finding that ObamaCare coverage is going to cost them way too much, not offer them what they want, or both.

Here is a note I recently received from a constituent in Caldwell County:

According to . . . our health insurance provider, we can

elect to stay on our current plan for this year with less

coverage or switch to the `Affordable' Care Plan that

provides a little more coverage but at a cost increase that

is almost double. We currently pay $653 per month and it

would increase to over $1100 . . . after talking to the

insurance company today, it seems . . . I was lied to by the

President and Congress when we were told that the

`Affordable' Care Act would not require us to switch from our

current insurance provider. My husband and I work hard, pay a

lot in taxes and ask for little from our government. Is it

asking too much for government to stay out of my health

insurance?

Her family is not alone. A CNN report this morning estimates that roughly one-half of the 600,000 people in Kentucky's private insurance market will have their current insurance plans discontinued by the end of the year.

This is not right and it is certainly not fair. It is even more unfair when you consider that the administration chose to exempt businesses from this law for a year but did not think the middle class deserved the same treatment.

Republicans do. We think the middle class actually deserves a permanent exemption from this law. But as long as partisans in Washington continue to jealously defend ObamaCare, we will do at least whatever we can to fight for greater fairness for the middle class.

I hope more Democrats will join us to make that happen because a Web site can be fixed but the pain this law is causing--higher premiums, canceled coverage--that is what is really important, and that is what Democrats need to work with us to address by starting over, completely over, with true bipartisan health care reform.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, as we all know, today is Senator Chiesa's last day in the Senate.

And while the Senator has only been here four months, it has been an interesting few months to say the least. He has found himself right in the middle of everything from the farm bill to the immigration bill, to the debate over Syria, to an October I am sure he will not soon forget.

He has had to work out of a temporary office, complete with vinyl siding and plastic chairs. He was here for less than an hour before having to take his first vote. He has had to deal with 99 Senators pronouncing his name 99 different ways. And one of our colleagues from Arizona threatened to quote ``waterboard'' the Senator if he didn't support a particular bill. I haven't asked how that situation ended up working out, but I see the Senator from New Jersey is still here.

Bottom line: Senator Chiesa is going to have quite a few stories for his family--for his wife Jenny and his kids, Al and Hannah. I know he is eager to get back home to see them--and catch up on some Notre Dame football--too. Even though he tells us his rank is ``fourth'' out of four in the family pecking order.

Well, that is at least better than 100th out of 100. But Senator Chiesa has not let his lack of Senate seniority stand in the way of pushing important issues.

Human trafficking was his focus as Attorney General, and it has been his focus here too. He has helped convene committee hearings about it, he has raised the issue with administration officials, he has embarked on a series of school visits to educate young folks on the issue, and he has worked with the Junior Senator from Ohio to advance awareness through the Caucus to End Human Trafficking. His determination is something we all admire. I know a lot of it comes from his strong Catholic faith. Much of it must come from his upbringing too: this is a Senator who lost his father and was forced to become the man of the house when he was just 8 years old.

Last year, Senator Chiesa said this:

If someone had ever said 20 years from now you'd be the

attorney general of New Jersey, I would have laughed . . . I

didn't think I'd even have met the attorney general by the

age of 46.

Well, he has done more than that. He can add Senator to his resume too--a Senator who has made the most of his time here, who has done good work, who we have all enjoyed getting to know. So, Senator Chiesa can be proud of his service. We thank him for it, and we look forward to welcoming our newest colleague from New Jersey.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I think at this point Senators from both parties can agree that healthcare.gov is a rolling disaster. Every day seems to bring more near-comic calamities. We hear about visitors being told things like their wife is really their daughter or that they have multiple spouses or that they are unable to apply ``due to current incarceration.''

Unsurprisingly, just 12 percent of Americans think the rollout has gone well. That is less than the 14 percent of Americans who believe in Bigfoot. Those who have succeeded in actually enrolling in a plan are vastly outnumbered by those who have lost their plan. The real tragedy is that many who have succeeded are finding out the product is actually worse than the Web site.

The only thing the Web site seems to be good at right now is creating punchlines for late-night comedians. It is almost as though Americans are being forced to live through a real-life ``Saturday Night Live'' sketch. If you caught last week's opener, it is getting harder to tell the ObamaCare headlines from the ObamaCare punchlines these days.

Paper applications, 800 numbers, applying by fax--ObamaCare appears to be leading us boldly into the 1980s. Remember, before this thing launched, the administration swore up and down that ObamaCare was ready to go. Democratic leaders in Congress told Americans that the law's implementation was fabulous and that ObamaCare was wonderful. The President reassured everyone it was working the way it was supposed to, and of course Washington Democrats bragged about their fancy new Web site, the Web site that cost taxpayers--$100 million? $200 million? $300 million? No one is quite sure. That is just one of the unanswered questions we hope they will clarify soon.

To be fair, the President likes to say that ObamaCare is about more than just a Web site. He is absolutely right, and that is why fixing a Web site will not solve the larger problem. The larger problem is ObamaCare itself. The larger problem is what the few people who actually have signed up for coverage have discovered about this law. The larger problem is how ObamaCare is hurting people out there.

It is about college graduates and middle-class families getting hit with massive premium increases they cannot afford. It is about workers seeing their hours cut and their paychecks shrink because of this law. It is about millions of Americans who will lose their current health coverage because of ObamaCare, despite the President's promises.

According to news reports, the Obama administration knew for at least 3 years that millions of Americans would not be able to keep their health care coverage. The President's press secretary basically admitted yesterday that Americans would lose coverage too. Remember, this is the same President who said:

If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep

your health care plan, period . . . No one will take it away,

no matter what.

This is just one of the many reasons Americans feel betrayed. One woman who was quoted in the Los Angeles Times put it this way:

All we have been hearing for the last 3 years is if you

like your policy, you can keep it . . . [well] I'm infuriated

because I was lied to.

Here is how one North Carolinian put it to NBC News:

Everybody's worried about whether the website works or not,

but that's fixable. That's just the tip of the iceberg. This

stuff isn't fixable.

That was after he lost a $228-a-month plan and was faced with a choice of taking a comparable plan for $1,208 or the best option he could find on the exchanges, one for $948 a month.

After looking at all of that, he said: ``I'm sitting here looking at this, thinking we ought to pay the fine and get insurance when we're sick.''

Americans up and down the country are beginning to experience the cost of ObamaCare firsthand, and they are realizing they are the ones stuck with the bill. It is not fair, it is not right, and Republicans are going to keep fighting to get our constituents relief from this partisan law.

Of course, the most logical course would be to stop this train wreck and start over, but Washington Democrats still appear more interested in protecting the President's namesake and legacy than protecting their constituents from this law. I hope that will change because we cannot move forward without Democrats.

We have seen some signs that at least some Democrats are coming around slowly--slowly--much more slowly than we would like. I am happy to engage in discussions to see where we might find common ground. Hopefully, we will eventually get to the increasingly obvious endgame: Repeal, followed by true bipartisan health care reform. It may be universally accepted that healthcare.gov is a disaster, but as the President reminds us, that disaster does not exist in a vacuum. The failure of the ObamaCare Web site is emblematic of the larger failure of ObamaCare itself and of the kind of problems we can expect if Washington Democrats continue their stubborn defense of this partisan law.

Fiscal Responsibility

Politicians regularly come to Washington promising fiscal responsibility, but too often they can't agree to cut spending when it counts, and that is why the Budget Control Act is such a big deal. Since Congress passed the BCA with overwhelming bipartisan majorities in 2011, Washington has actually reduced the level of government spending for 2 years running. That is the first time this has happened since the Korean war.

The BCA savings are such a big deal, in fact, that the President campaigned on it endlessly in 2012. He bragged about the bipartisan cuts in Colorado and in Iowa. He trumpeted the reductions from coast to coast, telling audiences from California to Baltimore that he ``signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law.''

As our Democratic friends like to say these days, elections matter, and the President explicitly staked his reelection on the back of these bipartisan spending cuts.

Look at the exit polls from November. A majority of Americans said the government was doing too much. About two-thirds said raising taxes to cut the deficit was a nonstarter. Compared to ObamaCare, which more voters said they wanted to repeal, these levels of support are striking.

If our friends on the other side want to keep trying to claim an electoral mandate for retaining ObamaCare--contradicted by the facts as that might be--using their own logic, we would then have to call the mandate for reducing the size of government a supermandate. That is why their new plan to undo the cuts the President campaigned on and increase the debt is so outrageous.

We hear that the senior Senator from New York will soon announce a proposal to give the President permanent power to borrow more; in other words, he wants to extend the debt ceiling permanently by going around Congress. Let me repeat that. The so-called Schumer-Obama plan is a plan to permanently hand the President a credit card without spending limits and without lifting a finger to address the national debt. It is truly outrageous, especially when we consider that our debt is now $17 trillion, which makes us look a lot like a European country. We have to get our debt under control before we move any further down the road to Greece or Spain, and time is not on our side.

I hear the Senator from New York is going to try and sell his proposal as a ``McConnell'' plan. I appreciate the attempt at a PR gimmick, but there are two huge differences between the Schumer-Obama plan and what I have proposed in the past.

First, Schumer-Obama would raise the debt ceiling permanently. I reject that idea entirely. Second, unlike Schumer-Obama, I believe that increases in the debt ceiling should be accompanied by reforms. That is what we did in 2011 when Congress raised the debt ceiling in return for enacting $2 trillion in bipartisan spending control--the spending control the President endlessly campaigned on last year. That is the real ``McConnell'' plan.

If the Senator from New York is interested in working with me to enact another $2 trillion in bipartisan cuts, then let's get down to brass tacks. The American people would love to see us working in a bipartisan way to actually help them. If he insists on pushing the Schumer-Obama plan, he is not going to find any dance partners on this side of the aisle. Handing the President a permanent blank check, increasing the size of government, and trying to overturn the most significant bipartisan accomplishment of the Obama years is a nonstarter.

Our debt is a serious problem. I know Kentuckians think so. Similar to Americans all across the country, they understand it is completely unsustainable over the long run, and they understand it is standing in the way of jobs and economic growth today.

Let's shelve the gimmicks and the blank checks and get to work on bipartisan plans to get spending under control. That is what our constituents expect.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to S.J. Res. 26.

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

Madam President, our good friend, the senior Senator from Mississippi, is about to cast his 12,000th vote, a truly remarkable accomplishment by a remarkable man. He was the first Republican to be elected to the Senate from Mississippi since Reconstruction. A few years ago he was named by Time magazine as one of the 10 most effective Members of the Senate, and they called him ``the quiet persuader.''

For those of you who have recently arrived at the Senate, if you have not had any dealings with Senator Cochran yet, you will find that indeed he is the quiet persuader. In fact, it may be the secret to his success.

He has had an extraordinarily accomplished career here in the Senate, and I wanted to take a few moments to congratulate him, not only on his service to his State and the Nation but to our institution.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the joint resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the joint resolution be printed in the Record.

Madam President, this has been a long, challenging few weeks for Congress and for the country. It is my hope that today we can put some of those most urgent issues behind us.

After yesterday's events the majority leader and I began a series of conversations about a way to get the government reopened and to prevent default. I am confident we will be able to do both of those things later today.

Crucially, I am also confident we will be able to announce that we are protecting the government's spending reductions that both parties agreed to under the Budget Control Act and that the President signed into law. That has been a top priority for me and for my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle throughout this debate, and it has been worth the effort. Some have suggested that we break that promise as part of this agreement. Some have said that Washington needs to spend more, that we need to raise taxes, that we need to just tax our way to prosperity and balance. But what the BCA showed is that Washington actually can cut spending, and because of this law, that is just what we have done. For the first time since the Korean war--for the first time in 50 years--government spending has declined for 2 years in a row. And we are not going back on this agreement.

There is a lot more we need to do to get our Nation's fiscal house in order. Hopefully, once we have gotten past the drama of the moment, we can get to work on it. But for now, let's not understate the importance of the Budget Control Act or the importance of the fight to preserve it. This legislation is the largest spending reduction bill of the last quarter century and the largest deficit reduction bill since 1981 that didn't include a tax hike. Preserving this law is critically important to the future of our country.

Throughout this debate, the public has rightly focused on ObamaCare-- for good reason. This law is ravaging our economy, killing jobs, driving up premiums, and driving people off the health care plans they have and like in droves. Its disastrous rollout is a sign of even worse things to come. The refusal to delay it reflects the kind of stubborn, ideological obsession that will do untold damage to our country, and Republicans remain determined to repeal this terrible law. But for today, the relief we hope for is to reopen the government, avoid default, and protect the historic cuts we achieved under the Budget Control Act. This is far less than many of us had hoped for, frankly, but it is far better than what some had sought. Now it is time for Republicans to unite behind other crucial goals.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Reservation of Leader Time

Mr. President, let me echo the remarks of my good friend, the majority leader. We have had an opportunity over the last couple of days to have some very constructive exchanges of views about how to move forward. Those discussions continue, and I share his optimism that we are going to get a result that will be acceptable to both sides.

Reservation of Leader Time

Mr. President, if I may echo the remarks of the majority leader, we had a good day yesterday. We had another good day today. I think it is safe to say we have made substantial progress, and we look forward to making more progress in the near future.

Shortly I will join my Republican colleagues at the White House. It will be a good time to engage in a frank exchange of ideas with the President, if that is what he is looking for. But if all the President wants is to drag us over there to say he won't negotiate, that won't be particularly productive.

Throughout this crisis, the President has taken what you might call an unorthodox approach to governing. His basic position could be summed up in basically three words: He won't negotiate.

I think that has left many Americans scratching their heads. I know the President and the Democratic leaders in Congress want to borrow more money without any strings attached. But the rest of us actually want to enact some commonsense reforms to get our debt under control, and we want to keep our commitments to the American people.

A key point is: Nobody wants a default. That is why, in 50 years of negotiations over multiple debt ceiling increases, we haven't had a single default, not a one. We have negotiated over debt ceilings for 50 years and never had a default. Let's put this hysterical talk of default behind us and instead start talking about finding solutions to the problems.

There are a variety of ways to get debt and spending under control, a lot of innovative reforms we should consider. But we need to talk to each other if we are going to make any of that happen.

I will bet that some of my Democratic friends have spending-cut ideas as well, and we would like to hear them. Let's sit down and talk this out. Members on both sides of the aisle in Congress are discussing solutions, and these discussions will continue as soon as we get back from the White House.