Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the impressive accomplishments of a remarkable woman and native of the Commonwealth, Lieutenant Anna Dixon of the U.S. Coast Guard. Lieutenant Dixon has always possessed an adventurous spirit and harbored a desire to expand her horizons and explore the possibilities of the world outside of her hometown of Barbourville, KY. So it came as no surprise to those who know her that upon graduating from Barbourville High School and attending the University of Kentucky to study architecture for a year, Lieutenant Dixon decided to take advantage of an exchange program and follow her dream of becoming a marine biologist at Coastal Carolina College in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Upon graduating with her degree in marine science and working at an environmental testing lab, Lieutenant Dixon decided to take another adventurous and courageous leap and enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard. Lieutenant Dixon not only completed her basic training at Camp May, NJ, in August of 2004, but also graduated at the top of her class and was assigned to the Coast Guard Station in Long Beach, CA, where she remained for 2 years.

In the years that followed, this bright and determined woman worked tirelessly to qualify for numerous positions within the U.S. Coast Guard, including Officer Candidate School where she graduated third in her class, as a patroller on the Coast Guard Cutter Spencer, and as Chief of Contingency Preparedness at the Coast Guard Station in Key West, FL. Most recently, Lieutenant Dixon was assigned the duties of public information officer for the Florida Keys response to the Deepwater Horizon oilspill, and was hand-selected to be the lead advance officer and deputy press secretary for now-retired National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen of the U.S. Coast Guard.

During her time in the post from July to October of 2010, Lieutenant Dixon worked steadfastly to coordinate daily national press conferences for Admiral Allen and other high-ranking national leader, to make sure information on one of the Nation's most devastating offshore disasters was delivered in a timely and accurate manner. Because of her strong sense of leadership and her eye for detail, Lieutenant Dixon was selected by a board of Coast Guard officers to attend a fully funded graduate program to further her experience in communications and public relations, as well as to complete a follow-on tour as a public affairs officer for a multistate Coast Guard district.

It is unquestionable that Lieutenant Dixon's career successes, including her recent change in rank, have come with much sacrifice, but have been well-deserved. I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing the accomplishments of LT Anna Dixon, and in sending congratulations to her proud parents Katy Jones and Bill Matt Dixon, and stepparents Michael Jones and Kay Dixon. I wish Lieutenant Dixon continued success for the future.

The Mountain Advocate recently published a story about Lieutenant Dixon and her successful career. I ask unanimous consent that the full article be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, as the debate over spending gears up ahead of the President's budget next week, I thought it important that we just step back this morning and note one thing: and that is the fact that this debate has completely changed. Two years ago, the President and Democrats running Congress were not debating whether to cut spending. They were debating how much to spend.

You will recall that a lot of them were disappointed that the stimulus wasn't bigger than it ended up being. Some still are.

So we have seen a welcome shift. Today, the only debate is how much to cut. It is a debate that Republicans and, I think, the vast majority of Americans, are happy to have.

And it is in that context that I wanted to mention the President's pledge to freeze his already outrageous spending levels for the next 5 years, and some troubling estimates we got yesterday about what that would mean for the deficit from the people whose job it is to analyze spending and debt here in Washington.

In their monthly budget review, the Congressional Budget Office said that if the current spending levels are frozen at the same level as they are now, and Congress were to enact no other legislation affecting spending or revenues, the Federal Government would end this fiscal year with a deficit of $1.5 trillion, or about $200 billion more than the deficit Democrats ran last year.

In other words, even if we do not add another dime to the current spending levels, the deficit will get even worse than last year. That is what would happen under the President's best offer, which is to lock in the dramatically higher spending levels from the past 2 years and put the budget on cruise control. The deficit would not stand still, it will grow by $200 billion, over the next several months.

So yesterday's predictions by the CBO should be a wake up call to anyone who thinks they can hide behind a spending freeze. This is a dire warning that business as usual is a recipe for disaster. If we do not immediately reduce the size and scope of the Federal Government, the deficit will be even bigger than last year's record deficit.

So we have to get real. We need to listen to our constituents. Freezes are not going to cut it.

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

Mr. President, earlier today, the President spoke to the Chamber of Commerce in what some have described as an effort to make nice with the business community. I will leave others to analyze what the speech means politically. The first concern of the American people is what it will mean for the economy. As I have said before, what the President says matters a lot less than what he does.

So we will just have to wait and see whether the administration's actions support its rhetoric. And it is in that spirit that I would like to suggest one thing the President could do immediately, with Republican support, to show he is serious about jobs and the economy. He could work with us to pass free trade agreements with Colombia and Panama that have been languishing for years now.

We welcome the President's support for the South Korea Free Trade Agreement which has earned strong bipartisan support. But by failing to show the same commitment in passing these two other free trade agreements, the President is missing out on an important opportunity to do something good for the economy and for jobs.

The President says he wants to double U.S. exports in 5 years. Free trade agreements with Colombia and Panama would go a long way toward meeting that goal--and creating jobs here in America--by opening markets in Latin America.

In my view, the time for delay on these two agreements is over. The President needs to do more than promise to ``pursue'' these agreements, as he did today. He should work with Congress to pass these two agreements and sign them into law.

This should be an easy one. Colombia is a strong strategic ally in South America, and it has made great strides in addressing the concerns of labor union critics here in the U.S. It has come a long way. We should not walk away from Colombia now. As for Panama, our two nations have had strong strategic and economic ties for years. This agreement would only strengthen those bonds and build on them.

As America sits on the sidelines, our competitors around the world, including the EU and Canada, are moving forward to lower barriers to trade and increase access for their businesses and workers. This is unacceptable, particularly for an administration that is claiming as its top priority to ``win the future.''

It won't be enough for Republicans and it shouldn't be enough for the business community to allow the administration's trade agenda to start and end with South Korea. We should be passing all pending trade agreements and inking new ones on a bipartisan basis, even when it requires the President bringing his own party along.

We have heard Secretary Clinton, Senator Baucus, and Ambassador Kirk all express support for submitting a Colombia FTA to Congress. But the President's own pronouncements continue to fall short. It is not enough for the President to say good things about free trade while siding with labor bosses over job creators and the vast majority of American workers who do not belong to unions and who would largely benefit from opening markets overseas. We shouldn't allow labor union bosses to have veto power over economic policies that benefit us all.

So the question is: will the President allow our allies in South America to continue waiting for us to move forward, or will he send the message that America stands by her allies and is prepared to do something good for American workers, good for the American economy, and good for key allies. Congress is ready to pass these two deals today. It is time for the President to commit to the same.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this month we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, our Nation's 40th President. He was born in a second-story apartment above a tavern in small-town Tampico, IL, on February 6, 1911.

The values he learned there he would carry with him throughout a long and momentous life--from the radio announcer's booth, the Hollywood sound stage, and the union leader's negotiating table to the Governor's mansion, the White House and the world.

One hundred years after his birth, 30 years after his inauguration as President, and only 7 years after his passing, it is already widely acknowledged by both sides of the aisle that Ronald Reagan was a great man and a great President. His role in ending the Cold War, with America victorious and the forces of Marxism-Leninism, as he so eloquently put it, ``on the ash heap of history,'' has been assured. You could almost say we are all Reaganites now.

But oh, how so much has changed. For when Ronald Reagan was still a force actively shaping history, and not yet a part of it, he had many fewer friends.

One opinion writer in 1986 made his disdain clear when he wrote this:

It seemed to us, the carping critics, that this man was not

terribly bright, not terribly thoughtful or well informed,

not terribly honest, and in most other ways not up to the

most important job in the world.

But it seems a lot of people just did not understand Ronald Reagan's vision at the time--not just his Communist adversaries, not just his political opponents here at home, even those in his own party, and on his own staff sometimes failed to see the strength of the man's commitment to freedom--or his courage in seeking it.

I can think of one prominent example: The words that we now think of as Reagan's most powerful utterance as President were almost never spoken. On June 12, 1987, Reagan traveled to what was then West Berlin to make unmistakably clear his commitment to increasing freedom in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. As the draft of his prepared remarks was circulated through the many byzantine layers of bureaucracy that come with the modern presidency, one little phrase kept getting edited out.

Virtually the entire foreign policy apparatus of the U.S. Government was opposed to what Reagan wanted to say. His Secretary of State, his National Security Adviser--they told him he would embarrass his host, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. They said he would anger and provoke Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. They warned he would arouse false hopes among the East Germans unlucky enough to live on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall.

It finally got to the point where Reagan had to have a confrontation with his own deputy chief of staff. ``I'm the president, right?'' he is reported to have asked. ``So I get to decide whether the line about tearing down the wall stays in?'' When assured that he was, and he did, Reagan said, ``Then it stays in.''

Only after pulling rank on his own staff this way did Reagan finally address the crowd of 20,000 gathered at the Brandenburg Gate and issue his famous declaration, ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.''

Two years later, Germans East and West did exactly that, presaging German unification and the fall of the Soviet Union. A piece of the Berlin Wall is preserved today at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA, to remind us of the power one man's words can have.

Ronald Reagan once said, ``We don't have to turn to our history books for heroes; they are all around us.'' That is true even if you don't know where to look. Thirty years ago some dismissed Reagan as a man of no great importance. With hindsight it is much easier to see him for the giant figure in history that he was.

And while we are thankful that, for most of us, Ronald Reagan's vision and accomplishments are still within living memory, his life, his vision of a freer America and a free world, and his accomplishments to achieve that are most assuredly in the history books.

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

Mr. President, we are making good progress on this bill. This bill is being handled as we have been accustomed in the old days to

handling bills in the Senate. I commend the majority leader for that. We are going to be able to work our way through it with amendments related to the subject from here on in and wrap it up, as he suggests, the week of February 14.

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, it is my intention also that this new approach will serve us for the Congress and future Congresses. In addition, we are making a transition to restore Special Reserves to its historic purpose. We know that we will face tight budgets for the foreseeable future and cannot expect increases in funding. We have to move toward funding authorizations that are in line with our actual resources and I look forward to working with my friend, the majority leader, to accomplish this.

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

Madam President, later today, as I noted yesterday, the Senate will have a rare opportunity. For those who have supported the health care spending bill in the past, it is an opportunity to revisit your first vote, to listen to those who have desperately been trying to get your attention, to say, yes, maybe my vote for this bill was a mistake, maybe we can do better, to listen to the small business owners who have been contacting our offices every single day and telling us all the ways this bill keeps them from creating the jobs we need, to show you have actually noticed most Americans don't want this bill, to show you are aware more people want it repealed than do not, to show you have noticed the townhalls in your States, to show you have noticed the opposition to this bill continues to grow, to show you have noticed the Federal court rulings that show this bill is unconstitutional at its core.

It is not every day you get a second chance on a big decision after you know all the facts. This is that second chance.

For all of us who opposed the health care bill, today we reaffirm our commitment to work a little harder to get it right; we can't afford to get it wrong. But let's not anyone hide behind the preposterous talking point that repealing this bill would add to the deficit. Only in Washington would somebody claim that spending trillions of dollars on a brand new government entitlement and a massive bureaucracy to go along with it will save money.

I urge all my colleagues to move beyond party affiliation, to look at the facts alone. If everyone in this Chamber did that, we would repeal this bill right now, and then we would begin the work of achieving our common goal of delivering health care at a higher quality for lower cost. We would put in place the commonsense reforms people actually want.

We also expect a vote later today that would clear away one of the many impediments to job creation that was

layered into this bill. It turns out Senator Johanns did such an outstanding job of raising awareness about the 1099 requirement that our friends on the other side have basically co-opted the idea and are now claiming it as their own. Actually, that is fine with us. It is not a bad precedent, actually. We have a lot of other good ideas we would be happy to share--not replacing one 2,700-page bill with another but passing commonsense reforms that people actually want.

The case against this bill is more compelling every day. Everything we learn tells us it was a bad idea, that it should be repealed and replaced. The courts say so, the American people say so, job creators say so. It is time for those who passed this bill to show they noticed. Let's take this opportunity.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I congratulate Senator Paul on his maiden speech in the Senate, and applaud him for taking the opportunity to underscore the seriousness of the fiscal situation we are in.

Solving the Nation's fiscal problems will indeed require principled leadership, and I am confident Senator Paul

will play an important role in guiding us toward real solutions.

Senator Paul is a lawmaker to watch. He brings a keen intellect and rare passion to the job. He will be an important voice in this body in the many debates to come.

I look forward to working with him on behalf of Kentuckians and all Americans.

Mr. President, only in Washington could you argue with a straight face that starting a new multitrillion-dollar entitlement program is going to save money. CBO could only look at the proposition that was presented to it, which frontloads tax increases in Medicare cuts and backloads benefits.

Therefore, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and section 4(G)(3) of the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010, I move to waive all applicable sections of those acts and applicable budget resolutions for purposes of my amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, it is no secret that most Americans opposed the health care bill that Democrats jammed through Congress last March. It is also no secret that Democrats would like to move past it. But the fact is, the more Americans learn about this bill the less they like it, and the more urgent it becomes for those who pledged to repeal and replace it to follow through.

Opposition to the bill continues to build. And when two Federal courts in a row rule that this bill is unconstitutional and we learn every day of some other way it is not only making health care worse but also hurting jobs and the economy, it is no wonder more Americans support repeal than oppose it, and that the percentage of those who say they support full repeal is higher now than ever. Americans are outraged that the promises they were made about this bill have turned out to be empty. And court rulings like the one out of Florida yesterday only add to the urgency of scrapping this bill and starting over.

Leave aside for a moment all the broken promises. The first requirement of this law or any law is that it at least be constitutional. This bill fails to meet that basic test.

And, as yesterday's ruling concluded, it can't be fixed.

This entire bill hinges on its core requirement that every citizen purchase health insurance. If that is unconstitutional, and two Federal courts now say it is, then the whole thing needs to be scrapped.

But of course we knew that already, based on all the other chaos this bill has wrought.

Let's review.

The President said as recently as last week that this law would slow rising health care costs--that it would bend the cost-curve down. Yet just 2 days later, his own actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said that Federal health spending would rise by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years as a result of this bill.

The President said again and again that Americans would be able to keep the plans they had. Yet since the bill's passage, business after business has announced that it would rather pay a fine to the government than cover the health insurance costs of employees that would grow under the new mandates and regulations, and millions of seniors are now expected to lose access to the Medicare Advantage plans they know and like.

As recently as last week, the President said: ``This Law Will Lower Premiums.'' Yet since its passage we continually hear the opposite: insurers across the country are raising premiums to cover the cost of all the new mandates they will have to comply with. One insurer in California recently stunned policyholders by announcing it would be increasing rates by as much as 59 percent for tens of thousands of customers starting next month. Hikes are also expected in Iowa, Vermont, and Connecticut. In Washington State, one father of five was recently told his $532 monthly premium could nearly triple next year. He said that when he heard the news he just sat back and said: ``You've got to be kidding me.''

It is a good way to sum up how many Americans have felt about this bill all along.

And that is to say nothing of the effect this bill has had on the economy and jobs. Despite the empty promises we have heard from politicians about this bill being a job-creator, we continue to hear just the opposite from the businesses themselves. Job creators are telling us that all of the bill's new mandates and fees are stifling businesses and making it even harder for them to start hiring again.

The National Federation of Independent Business says that if this bill stays intact it will ``stifle the ability [of businesses] to hire, grow and invest. . . .'' ``Simply put,'' the NFIB said in a recent letter, ``Congress must repeal [this bill] immediately.'' To take just one example, Abbott Laboratories said last week it plans to cut nearly 2,000 jobs in response to changes in the health care industry, including this bill.

As I said, yesterday's ruling out of Florida, only adds to the urgency of repeal. As if it weren't enough that this bill increases health care costs, increases insurance premiums, and is leading people to lose coverage they already have and like, it is also unconstitutional--something many opponents of the bill, including me, have been arguing all along. The state can no more compel Americans to buy health insurance under the Constitution than it can compel them to buy vitamins, even if it concluded they would be good for our health. While Congress may have the power to regulate commercial activity, no court in our nation's history has ever interpreted that to mean that Congress can regulate commercial inactivity as well, which is precisely what the health care bill would do.

Most Americans have opposed this bill from the start because they were skeptical of all the claims that were being made about what it would do. The process that was used to jam it through made it even less popular. But the reality has been even worse than people feared. It violates the Constitution--which is reason enough to repeal it--it is driving up premiums, increasing costs, and driving people off the plans they have. And Americans are just as outraged by the special waivers the administration is giving out to select groups as it was by the special deals. The special deals are reminiscent of the deals it gave out to lawmakers who agreed to vote for it. In other words, the implementation of this bill is no better than the process used to pass it.

At this point, it would be a dereliction of duty if Republicans didn't fight

for repeal. We made a promise to our constituents that we would vote to repeal this bill on their behalf and that is just what we intend to do.

The importance of a repeal vote becomes more evident every day. Americans view it as an important decision point--a marker that shows we are serious about a return to limited government. On that point, it should be clear where Republicans stand. Every one of us voted against the bill. Every one of us voted for repeal after that. And this week, every Republican reaffirmed his or her commitment to doing it again.

Democrats made a lot of promises about this bill. Virtually every one has proved to be empty. Republicans have made one promise: that we would work to repeal it and replace it with common-sense reforms that lower costs, protect job creation and that people actually want. It is a promise we will keep.