Floor Statements

Mr. President. I am honored today to be able to pay tribute to a truly remarkable woman, and world-renowned dental consultant--Dr. Rella P. Christensen. Appropriately, at its 35th Anniversary Celebration in Las Vegas, on May 18, 2012, the Board of Directors of the CR Foundation will honor the life's work of Dr. Christensen.

Born on September 27, 1938, Rella received a Bachelor of Science in Dental Hygiene from the University of Southern California in 1960, and practiced dental hygiene for more than 25 years. She established and became the Director of the Bachelor's Degree in Dental Hygiene at the University of Colorado in 1970. Later, in 1986, she earned a PhD in physiology, with an emphasis on microbiology, from Brigham Young University and completed a post-graduate course in anaerobic microbiology at Virginia Polytechnic State University.

Rella co-founded Clinical Research Associates, now known as the CR Foundation, in 1976 with her husband Gordon, a world renowned and respected dentist and educator. For 27 years Rella directed this influential dental products testing institute as a full time volunteer. Her additional responsibilities included being the lead researcher and Editor-in-Chief of the CRA Newsletter which was published in 10 languages under her leadership with a worldwide circulation in 92 countries.

She went on to serve as Chairman of CR's Board of Directors for 2 years. Currently she volunteers as the team leader of Technologies in Restoratives and Caries Research section of CR.

Rella has been a steady, humble, but significant influence in the profession of dentistry, worldwide, for over a third of a century. Helping others in dentistry to find tools and concepts that really work is a passion for Rella. She has presented over one thousand dental continuing education programs, totaling over 5,200 hours, at national and international locations. Guided by her research discoveries, lectures, and writings, dentists are better able to secure their own professional development and understanding of materials, methods, dental products, and their own dental missions.

Dr. Rella Christensen has received numerous honors for her commitment to her field. In 2001 she was selected as the Distinguished Alumnus of Brigham Young University's School of Life Sciences, and now serves on its National Advisory Board.

In 2002 Rella received an Honorary Doctorate from Utah Valley State University. In 2011, Rella was named one of the Dental Products Report ``Top 25 Women in Dentistry'' and one of the

``30 Leaders in Dentistry'' by Takacs Learning Center. In 2012, she was named ``Most Influential Researcher'' by Dr Bicuspid.com, an online professional publication.

As one of dentistry's great leaders, it is with great respect, gratitude, admiration, and affection that I pay tribute to Dr. Rella P. Christensen.

Madam President, I am pleased that the Senate today will confirm U.S. Magistrate Judge David Nuffer to the U.S. District Court in Utah. Two of the five judicial positions on that busy court have been vacant for some time, and Judge Nuffer will be a welcome addition.

Judge Nuffer has been involved in virtually all aspects of the legal community in Utah. He was in private practice for more than 20 years and has been an adjunct professor at Brigham Young University's J. Reuben Clark Law School since 2001. He has chaired the Utah Judicial Conduct Commission and served on advisory and study committees, task forces, and councils appointed by the Utah Supreme Court. This diversity of experience and commitment to both the bar and the bench

make him well qualified to join the U.S. District Court.

Judge Nuffer has also worked to promote the rule of law internationally, as a consultant and lecturer with the Ukraine Rule of Law Project. I was pleased last year to meet with a group of judges from Ukraine who were in the United States, both Washington and in Utah, as part of this educational program. Our independent judicial system and commitment to the rule of law is unparalleled anywhere in the world.

I also want to note Judge Nuffer's efforts to promote access to the courts through technology. He has definitely been ahead of the curve on this issue. Back in the 1990s, Judge Nuffer directed the Utah Electronic Law Project and served on the Utah Supreme Court's Ad Hoc Committee on Access to Electronic Court Records. As Chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force, I appreciate how such cutting edge efforts can benefit all Americans at low cost.

As I travel throughout Utah talking to lawyers and judges, the unanimous opinion is that Judge Nuffer has the experience, temperament, and integrity to be a great Federal judge. It was no surprise when the American Bar Association unanimously gave him its highest rating. I thank my colleagues for their support of this fine nominee.

Madam President, in defending the Constitution and arguing for its ratification, Alexander Hamilton stated plainly in the first of the Federalist Papers the challenge and the promise of American democracy.

He explained:

It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been

reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and

example, to decide the important question, whether societies

of men are really capable or not of establishing good

government from reflection and choice, or whether they are

forever destined to depend for their political constitutions

on accident and force.

The challenge identified by Hamilton and our Founding Fathers remains with us today.

Will American citizens and will our political institutions maintain our Constitution and adhere to the rule of law or will we succumb to force and the whims of the moment?

Will the law be supreme and will the Constitution endure or will politics prevail?

This is a choice that Americans and public officials face every day.

But some moments present this choice in bolder terms. And the legal challenge to the President's health care law is one of those moments that present a stark choice.

Will we support the Constitution or will we throw in with the passing wishes of temporary majorities?

That is the choice that we as Americans face and that the Supreme Court will face when it hears oral arguments on this case next week.

There are a number of issues before the Court, but at the top of the list is the constitutionality of the individual mandate.

Like many critical constitutional questions that come before the American people, particularly those of first impression, it often takes some time for a consensus to emerge.

The answer is not always immediately clear. But through public dialogue and argument, the constitutionality of these actions comes into greater focus.

That is what happened with ObamaCare's individual mandate. As the implications of this sweeping exercise of Federal power became clear, the American people's initial hesitation about this provision solidified into an enduring bipartisan consensus that this mandate violates our constitutional commitment to limited government.

The American people came to understand that if the individual mandate is permissible, then anything is permissible.

If the individual mandate is allowed to stand, then there are no effective limits on the Federal Government.

And if there are no limits on the Federal Government, then our constitutional liberties are in jeopardy.

The American people came to understand that the question about the individual mandate runs far deeper than any debate about health care. They understand that the mandate presents us with a pivotal question.

Will we maintain the Constitution as our supreme law, one which puts effective limits on the powers of the Federal Government, or will we abandon the Constitution bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers and, instead, accept a new constitutional order where the only restraints on the Federal Government are those it deigns to place on itself?

The American people--and certainly the people of Utah--have made clear at every opportunity their deep skepticism about the individual mandate.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama understood these concerns about the individual mandate. The media noted during the Presidential

campaign that while then-Senator Hillary Clinton's plan would require all Americans to purchase health insurance, then-Senator Obama declined to go down that road.

One writer predicted that an economic mandate requiring Americans to purchase a particular product ``would give the inevitable conservative opposition a nice fat target to rally around.''

That nice fat target was an historically unprecedented expansion of Federal power in violation of the Constitution's commitment to limited government.

Unfortunately, President Obama put the politics of health care reform over any concerns about the constitutionality of the individual mandate.

This is how the journalist Ron Suskind explained the President's conversion:

Obama, never much for the mandate, was concerned about

legal challenges to it but was impressed by DeParle's

coverage numbers. Without the mandate, the still-sketchy

Obama plan would leave twenty-eight million Americans

uninsured; with the mandate, the estimates of the number left

uninsured were well below ten million.

And so he made his decision.

The President of the United States takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution. As a candidate, and as President, it appears that President Obama was aware of the constitutional concerns with the individual mandate.

But like his progressive forebears, he put his policy desires before the long-term integrity of our Constitution.

Fortunately, the American people were not so quick to put the Constitution second.

Along with a number of my colleagues here in the Senate, I made the case for the mandate's unconstitutionality a priority.

On the first day of the Senate Finance Committee's markup of what would become ObamaCare, I raised doubts about the constitutionality of the individual mandate.

Those doubts were dismissed.

I offered an amendment that would have provided for expedited judicial review of any constitutional challenges to the legislation.

That amendment was ruled out of order.

But the constitutional concerns with this mandate would not be buried.

The people of this country would get their say on this sweeping assertion of Federal power, one far in excess of anything the Founders contemplated.

My State of Utah helped to lead the way, signing on as an original plaintiff in the litigation that is now before the Supreme Court. And I was honored to work with the Republican leader, my friend and colleague, Senator McConnell, in developing friend-of-the-court briefs filed at the trial level, at the initial appellate level, and now before the Supreme Court.

Putting aside all of the precedents, this really is a matter of simple logic and common sense.

Our Constitution is one of limited powers. The powers of Congress are few and enumerated. Yet if this mandate is allowed to stand, then there are effectively no limits on the Constitution any longer.

Something has to give.

Either this mandate will stand or our Constitution will stand.

But both cannot survive this litigation.

The Eleventh Circuit got it right in its analysis of this law. This is what they concluded:

Economic mandates such as the one contained in the Act are

so unprecedented, however, that the government has been

unable, either in its briefs or at oral argument, to point

this Court to Supreme Court precedent that addresses their

constitutionality. Nor does out independent review reveal

such a precedent.

The partisan supporters of ObamaCare will say that this is just the opinion of a conservative court.

But it is also the opinion voiced by the liberal writer Timothy Noah as far back as 2007.

And there is some evidence that it was the opinion of Senator Obama when he declined to endorse a sweeping individual mandate when running for President.

But once elected, President Obama put politics first. In the interest of supercharging the welfare state and passing his signature legislative initiative, he put aside any concerns with the individual mandate and endorsed this unprecedented regulation of individual decisionmaking.

The President should have stuck with his original position.

Those who defend the constitutionality of the individual mandate make an astounding claim--that the decision not to buy something, in the aggregate, substantially affects interstate commerce. Those who defend this position stand for the proposition that the Federal Government can regulate your decision not to do something, that it can regulate not just economic activity but economic inactivity, and that Congress can regulate not just physical activity but mental activity.

If Congress can do these things, Congress has no limits.

A Constitution that creates a limited Federal Government has been transformed into a Constitution that gives plenary, and unconstrained, power to the Federal Government.

This is not only something that the American Founders worked hard to prevent, but it is something that contemporary Americans continue to reject.

There are many reasons to oppose ObamaCare. Today, the administration's allies are touting the benefits of the law for small business. This is laughable.

The administration promised that ObamaCare's small business credit would help more than 4 million small businesses. This was a pretty paltry concession to the businesses that would be harmed by the employer mandate, new regulations, and half a trillion dollars in taxes and penalties imposed by ObamaCare.

And as could be expected from such a top-down, Washington-centered approach, businesses have been less than eager to take up this complex credit. The administration claimed that 4 million small businesses would use this credit. Yet according to a report from the Treasury Inspector General, after 2 years, only 309,000 taxpayers, or 7 percent of qualified entities, have claimed this credit.

But as bad as ObamaCare's policies are--confusing benefits, heavyhanded mandates, and enormous economic costs for families and businesses--it is the profound unconstitutionality of the law that remains paramount in the minds of most Americans.

Next week, almost 2 years to the day after ObamaCare became law, the Supreme Court will consider arguments in this historic case.

I am confident that when the dust settles, our Constitution will emerge standing and strong.

And I am equally confident that the American people will have the last word on those politicians who chose to look the other way, rather than acknowledge the deep constitutional shortcomings of this unprecedented intrusion on the liberty of America's citizens and taxpayers.

Mr. President, this Friday the Nation observes an anniversary that most Americans would prefer to see removed from its calendar. I am talking about the second anniversary of the passage of the President's health care law. Rather than celebrate this day, it is one that citizens and taxpayers have come to rue and regret. The process by which Obamacare became law was an affront to republican principles of democratic self-government. The substance of this law is an historic threat to the liberties our Constitution was designed to secure.

A decent respect for the opinions of the American people cautioned against passing this law on a purely partisan basis. Yet in spite of the clear opposition of the American people to this massive expansion of government power, and to its historic spending and tax increases, the President and his congressional allies were determined to jam this bill through the Congress.

The architects of this strategy, if not the party loyalists who carried it out against the wishes of their constituents, sleep easy at night having done so, because they knew that this was a once-in-a- generation opportunity, the crowning achievement of the liberal bureaucratic state. A takeover of the Nation's health care sector and its top-down regulation by Washington had eluded Democrats for over 70 years.

The economic downturn of 2008 changed that. With the election of President Obama and significant majorities in the Congress, the left was not going to, in the words of the President's Chief of Staff, ``let a crisis go to waste.'' What this strategy meant in practice was that Democrats would advance a radical liberal agenda whether the American people supported it or not. That is the anniversary we are observing this week, and it is a dark spot on our Nation's history, in my opinion.

The Obamacare episode showed a fundamental disrespect for the opinions and constitutional common sense of the American people. Faced with growing unrest and real concerns about the impact of this law on families, the economy, and access to health care, the law's proponents assumed that the American people were too dumb to get it; that once Obamacare became law, the American people would come to love it, as well as the benefactors who gave it to them. That is what they thought. As Speaker Pelosi explained: We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.

The great liberal conceit was on full display in the process that led to this bill becoming law. We know better than you, they said. We can plan one-sixth of the American economy, and you will eventually come to like it.

Well, as we all know, the American people had something else in mind. They reminded Congress and the President that in this country the people are sovereign. They stood up as free men and women rejecting Obamacare before it became law and refused to embrace it afterwards. And as their understanding of the law has deepened, they have remained constant in their commitment to full repeal. According to a Rasmussen poll this week, over half of Americans support the full repeal of Obamacare.

Next week, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument on the constitutionality of this misguided law. In arriving at their decision later this year, they will consider Obamacare through the prism of past precedents and the

Constitution's original historic meaning. But the Justices of the Supreme Court are not the only ones evaluating the constitutionality of this law. The American people and citizens of this Nation have their own obligation to consider whether this law comports with our Constitution and principles of limited government, and on that the verdict is already in. According to a recent Gallup poll, 72 percent of American adults, including 56 percent of self-professed Democrats, believe that the law's individual mandate is unconstitutional.

The average American who opposes this law on constitutional grounds might not be a law professor or an appellate advocate, but those citizens and taxpayers understand our Constitution was designed to guarantee liberty and that it did so, in part, by limiting the powers of the Federal Government and maintaining the sovereign powers of the States.

They know the unconstitutionality of ObamaCare runs far deeper than the onerous individual mandate. The law is, at its core, a violation of our most deeply held constitutional principles.

It undermines personal liberty and puts more power in the hands of the Federal Government. In the interest of advancing what the left views as a constitutional right to health care, they undermine actual constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property.

The law's mandate for abortion-inducing drugs undermines sacred rights of personal conscience and religious liberty.

Its expansion of Medicaid fundamentally transforms the relationship of the States to the Federal Government, undercutting the ability of those sovereign communities to make basic decisions about the welfare of their citizens by crowding out spending for police, infrastructure, and education.

The American people might not have submitted complex legal briefs in the Supreme Court litigation, but their conclusions about ObamaCare possess a unique and powerful wisdom. The people of Utah and the rest of this country understand the very DNA of ObamaCare--a commitment to more government control, the empowering of an already unaccountable administrative state, and an assault on free markets--is unconstitutional.

This was not what President Obama promised the American people. The President couched this government takeover of the Nation's health care sector as a modest reform designed to reduce costs.

When he spoke before a joint session of Congress in September of 2009 to push for his plan, the President promised it would ``slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government.''

The President swung and missed on all three. According to the President's own Actuary at CMS, national health expenditures would increase by $311 billion over the law's first 10 years. This comes as no surprise to the American people. The President's health care law promised all sorts of new free care. But we all know, contrary to the repeated assertions of President Obama and his administration, nothing in life is free.

The bill will eventually come due for all this so-called ``free care,'' and it is taxpayers who will pay that bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, ``Rising costs for health care will push Federal spending up considerably as a percentage of GDP.''

This is not what the President and his allies promised. We were promised lower costs. What we got were higher costs, more Federal spending on health care and, with it, more taxes and more debt.

When fully implemented, ObamaCare authorizes $2.6 trillion in new Federal spending over 10 years. It will increase premiums by $2,100 for families forced by ObamaCare to purchase their own insurance. Its Medicaid expansions will impose $118 billion in new costs on the States.

It will increase spending on prescription drugs, physician and clinical services, and hospital spending. It will increase the deficit by $701 billion over its first 10 years.

How does the President propose to pay for this? Here is how: He will pay for it by selling more Treasurys to China. He will pay for it by increasing taxes and penalties by over $500 billion, and American workers will ultimately pay for it with 800,000 fewer jobs than would have otherwise existed.

This is not the story the President or the Democrats in Congress responsible for this law want the American people to hear. So they will attempt to spin their way out of it.

In a memo obtained by the press last week, the advocates of ObamaCare laid out their strategy to sell the merits of this misguided law prior to oral arguments at the Supreme Court.

This week was designed to lay out all the great things provided by ObamaCare. But, naturally, that memo mentions absolutely none of the costs. It doesn't mention the cost of these benefits for Federal taxpayers. It doesn't mention the costs for employers and workers. It doesn't mention that the law could lead to as many as 20 million Americans losing employer-sponsored health benefits by 2019. It doesn't mention the impact the $\1/2\ trillion in tax increases and penalties will have on the economy, and it doesn't mention the harm this law does to our Constitution and its principles of republicanism, personal liberty, and limited government.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but I am not. ObamaCare is merely the capstone to a generations-long liberal project that has attempted to convince citizens that they can have their cake and eat it too. They can have all the benefits of an ever-expanding welfare state, and nobody--or only the very rich--would have to pay for it. ObamaCare exploded this myth. It is the culmination of generations of government expansion, and it shows once and for all that we are all going to be paying for the liberal welfare state.

Taxing Warren Buffet is not going to cut it. All American families will pay for this $2.6 trillion spending law one way or the other. After centralizing control of the Nation's health care system in Washington, DC, and putting health care decisions into the hands of government bureaucrats, we will all pay for it through higher taxes, less opportunity, and diminished access to care.

Our children are going to have to pay for it, as a nation conceived in liberty is increasingly burdened by an unsustainable national indebtedness; that is, unless the American people get the final word on this. They certainly should.

I believe in the American people. I know what my fellow Utahans think about the President's health care law. No less than legislators or Justices, they take the Constitution seriously. They know this law is unconstitutional. They know what it does to free markets and to free men and women. They know that if this law is constitutional, then there are effectively no limits on what the Federal Government can do. They know this law has to go. I look forward to showing it the door.

Mr. President, I came here to talk on another matter, but I wish to take a few minutes to talk about my friend Barbara Mikulski. We have served a long time together. When she came to this body, I think I may have been chairman of what was then called the Labor and Human Resources Committee, now the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

From the day she got on that committee, she made a difference in every way, not just for women but for every single American in this country. I have a tremendous amount of profound respect for Senator Mikulski and what she has been able to accomplish.

Let me mention one thing. Back in the early 1990s, she and I worked together on what was called the FDA Revitalization Act. That act was a very important one, because we had the FDA spread out all over the Greater Washington, DC, area, probably 30, 35 different offices, some of which were in converted chicken coops. It was ridiculous to have these top scientists in anything but a centralized location with top computerization and all of the other scientific instruments they need to do this work for the American people. I have to say that Barbara Mikulski played a pivotal role in helping to

develop that tremendous facility. I want you to know that I do not think it would have been developed without her effort and her dogged work to make sure that we now have a centralized--and it still needs improvement but centralized FDA campus that literally is saving the lives of millions of people and making the lives of millions of people better.

I could go on and on. But I have a lot of respect for my distinguished colleague from Maryland. I would feel badly if I did not get up and tell people how much I do respect her. She believes in what she does. She loves this body, most of the time, I think. And she cares for her follow Senators. We care for her. I want her to know that.

Mr. President, today I wish to pay tribute to our dear friend and colleague, the senior Senator from Maryland, Barbara Mikulski. This week, Senator Mikulski became the longest-serving woman in the history of the United States Congress. That is quite a milestone and I want to congratulate her on her many years of devoted service to the people of her home State.

Senator Mikulski is a Maryland native. Descended from Polish immigrants, she was born and raised in Baltimore. She attended college at both St. Agnes College in Baltimore and the University of Maryland.

After several years of working as a social worker in the Baltimore area, Senator Mikulski began her political career in 1971 when she was elected to the Baltimore City Council. She served there for 5 years before running for Congress in 1976. For 10 years, she represented the Third Congressional District of Maryland. Then, in 1986, she was elected to serve here in the Senate.

Although the milestone we are recognizing today is a significant one, it is not the first for Senator Mikulski. Indeed, throughout her time in the Senate she has been a pioneer for women in public service.

For example, Senator Mikulski was the first woman elected to statewide office in Maryland. She was also the first Democratic woman elected to a Senate seat that was not previously held by her husband. And, she was the first woman to serve in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

I have known Senator Mikulski a long time, having served with her in the Senate for over 25 years now. While she and I have often found ourselves on opposite sides of many issues, I have long admired her commitment to her principles and, most importantly, her devotion to the people of her home State. Indeed, she has been a stalwart and often times fierce advocate for the interests of Marylanders.

I want to congratulate Senator Mikulski on this important milestone and I am grateful for this opportunity to pay tribute to her and to her many years of public service.

Mr. President, I join the Senator from California, Senator Feinstein, in introducing legislation to clarify the legal protections for art that is loaned from overseas for exhibition in the United States. This bill passed the House yesterday by voice vote and I hope it can soon become law.

We are blessed in this country to have so many fine institutions that provide exposure to the art, culture, and history of other lands. Both public and private art museums can be found all over America, including at many of our fine universities. We must ensure that the exhibitions hosted by these museums continue to benefit all Americans.

A major exhibition can take years to develop and potential overseas lenders must be assured that their art will be legally protected while it is in the United States. Many exhibitions simply will not be possible without that assurance. We have had laws in place for decades that did just that, and they worked exactly the way they were supposed to. Specifically, the Protection from Seizure Act guaranteed that once the State Department reviewed and certified an exhibition as being in the national interest, the art was immune from legal judgments or court orders while in this country.

This legal protection was thrown into doubt by a Federal court decision several years ago. The U.S. District Court here in the Washington considered a case involving the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which allows certain kinds of lawsuits against foreign countries in American courts. One of those categories is when art allegedly taken in violation of international law is present in this country in connection with a commercial activity. The court construed that condition of being present ``in connection with a commercial activity'' in a way that could include art that is here for exhibition under the Protection from Seizure Act.

The dilemma here is easy to see. These statutes are not supposed to be in conflict. Bringing art here under the protection of one statute is not supposed to create jurisdiction for a lawsuit against the lender under another statute.

The solution is also easy to see. The bill we introduce today is very short and very simple. It clarifies that the presence in this country of art under the Protection from Seizure Act does not create jurisdiction for a lawsuit under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. It simply returns these two statutes to the harmony they were intended to have all along and to lift the cloud of doubt that has hung over the art exhibition process for the last several years.

I want to thank the Brigham Young University Museum of Art for bringing this issue to my attention. The BYU museum is the premier art museum in the Mountain West and the most attended university art museum in North America. BYU is the organizing institution for a major exhibition titled Beauty and Belief: Crossing Bridges with the Art of Islamic Cultures. This amazing event, which will be at BYU through September and is free to the public, includes art from a dozen foreign countries. As this project was in development, the museum director raised with me the need to clarify the law protecting art loaned for exhibition. Thankfully, the BYU exhibition was not hindered, but the Association of Art Museum Directors has documented that this is a problem elsewhere.

This is a problem that is easy to fix. It is not a partisan or an ideological issue. It is not a spending program. It involves neither regulations nor taxes. Each of our States has institutions that can benefit from this clarification. As my colleagues will see, we did put a caveat in the bill so that it will not apply to the ongoing efforts to identify and recover art and cultural objects seized by the Nazis during the World War II era.

Again, I want to applaud the BYU Museum of Art for its triumphant exhibition and for bringing this issue to my attention so that Americans can continue to enjoy this enriching and educational experience. I thank my colleague from California for introducing this bill, and for working to refine its language so that we can solve this specific problem. This short bill proves that good things can come in small packages and I hope the Senate will follow the House and quickly pass this bill.

Mr. President, I join the Senator from California, Senator Feinstein, in introducing legislation to clarify the legal protections for art that is loaned from overseas for exhibition in the United States. This bill passed the House yesterday by voice vote and I hope it can soon become law.

We are blessed in this country to have so many fine institutions that provide exposure to the art, culture, and history of other lands. Both public and private art museums can be found all over America, including at many of our fine universities. We must ensure that the exhibitions hosted by these museums continue to benefit all Americans.

A major exhibition can take years to develop and potential overseas lenders must be assured that their art will be legally protected while it is in the United States. Many exhibitions simply will not be possible without that assurance. We have had laws in place for decades that did just that, and they worked exactly the way they were supposed to. Specifically, the Protection from Seizure Act guaranteed that once the State Department reviewed and certified an exhibition as being in the national interest, the art was immune from legal judgments or court orders while in this country.

This legal protection was thrown into doubt by a Federal court decision several years ago. The U.S. District Court here in the Washington considered a case involving the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which allows certain kinds of lawsuits against foreign countries in American courts. One of those categories is when art allegedly taken in violation of international law is present in this country in connection with a commercial activity. The court construed that condition of being present ``in connection with a commercial activity'' in a way that could include art that is here for exhibition under the Protection from Seizure Act.

The dilemma here is easy to see. These statutes are not supposed to be in conflict. Bringing art here under the protection of one statute is not supposed to create jurisdiction for a lawsuit against the lender under another statute.

The solution is also easy to see. The bill we introduce today is very short and very simple. It clarifies that the presence in this country of art under the Protection from Seizure Act does not create jurisdiction for a lawsuit under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. It simply returns these two statutes to the harmony they were intended to have all along and to lift the cloud of doubt that has hung over the art exhibition process for the last several years.

I want to thank the Brigham Young University Museum of Art for bringing this issue to my attention. The BYU museum is the premier art museum in the Mountain West and the most attended university art museum in North America. BYU is the organizing institution for a major exhibition titled Beauty and Belief: Crossing Bridges with the Art of Islamic Cultures. This amazing event, which will be at BYU through September and is free to the public, includes art from a dozen foreign countries. As this project was in development, the museum director raised with me the need to clarify the law protecting art loaned for exhibition. Thankfully, the BYU exhibition was not hindered, but the Association of Art Museum Directors has documented that this is a problem elsewhere.

This is a problem that is easy to fix. It is not a partisan or an ideological issue. It is not a spending program. It involves neither regulations nor taxes. Each of our States has institutions that can benefit from this clarification. As my colleagues will see, we did put a caveat in the bill so that it will not apply to the ongoing efforts to identify and recover art and cultural objects seized by the Nazis during the World War II era.

Again, I want to applaud the BYU Museum of Art for its triumphant exhibition and for bringing this issue to my attention so that Americans can continue to enjoy this enriching and educational experience. I thank my colleague from California for introducing this bill, and for working to refine its language so that we can solve this specific problem. This short bill proves that good things can come in small packages and I hope the Senate will follow the House and quickly pass this bill.

I thank leaders Reid, McConnell, and Chairman Baucus for discussing tax extender provisions this afternoon.

I want to reinforce a couple of points I raised earlier this year when the Finance Committee held a hearing on tax extenders.

My first point is that the explosion of temporary tax provisions in recent years has been a very notable and problematic trend. The number of temporary tax provisions has grown from 42 in 1998 to 154 in 2011. Not many people can be found that will say that Congress should continue dealing with tax extenders in a business-as-usual manner. And we should not continue doing business as usual when it comes to extenders. Recently, Congress has allowed important temporary tax incentives such as the research and development credit to expire. Then, after the business decisions have already been made, Congress has retroactively extended the tax provisions. If a provision is worthy of being in the tax code, then optimally it should be permanent. For instance, the R and D credit is an extremely worthy provision, and it should be an enhanced and permanent tax incentive. That is what Chairman Baucus and I have proposed in a bill we introduced in September 2011.

My second point is that tax incentives play a very important role in businesses' planning of their affairs, making investments, and creating jobs. And these job creators don't want bad certainty they don't want to hear that their taxes are going up. Congress should provide this certainty by making permanent the provisions that are worthy of remaining in the law, and eliminating those that are not. Chairman Baucus and I agree, along with many of our colleagues, that the current tax code needs to be reformed. In the meantime, before tax reform is accomplished, Congress needs to decide what to do about the tax extender provisions that have expired. The Finance Committee should play its role in considering these time-sensitive issues. The members should debate the merits of each of these provisions and vote accordingly. After that exercise, then the full Senate should consider the Finance Committee's recommendations and move that product through the legislative process.

Mr. President, very shortly we will be voting on the amendment filed by my colleague from Missouri, Senator Blunt--the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. I am a cosponsor of this amendment, and I think we all ought to be cosponsors of it. Many of my colleagues have supported it as well, and for good reason. It provides statutory protection for one of our deepest constitutional commitments--the right to free exercise of religion. It is an effort to fulfill our oath to protect and defend the Constitution. It is an effort to put the enduring constitutional rights of the American people first, over any fleeting and controversial political interests.

In my view, those who support this amendment have been unjustly criticized over the past few days, and they have been unjustly criticized on a political basis, not really on an intellectual basis. Unable to win this debate through a fair criticism of the amendment, it has been mischaracterized and misrepresented.

Opponents are desperate to distract the public from one simple fact: This amendment is necessary because of ObamaCare, the health care law that manifests new threats to personal liberty and individual rights with each passing week. It is an indictment of the President's signature domestic achievement and all of those who support it.

ObamaCare took over and regulated the Nation's health care sector-- one-sixth of the American economy. It stripped individuals and employers of their right to go without coverage and the right to determine what type of coverage they would have.

ObamaCare is what has brought us here today. The health care law requires that women's preventive services, including sterilization and access to abortion-inducing drugs, be included in health care coverage beginning in 2012. This is a questionable policy in and of itself. Like the rest of ObamaCare, it assumes the government is able to provide all good things to the American people through a simple mandate with no consequences for cost or access.

The problems with this mandate were compounded, however, when the administration, deferring to its feminist allies, determined that the mandate would apply to religious citizens and institutions. To their credit, these institutions, which are compelled by this regulation to violate their moral beliefs, announced that they would not comply with this unjust law. They refused to roll over and allow the government to force them to provide sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs to their employees. They stood as a witness for constitutional liberty, the free exercise of religion, and against an administration that put basic partisan politics above our beloved Constitution.

The President's self-proclaimed compromise does absolutely nothing to minimize the constitutional problems with this mandate. The Department of Health and Human Services never--never--consulted with the Department of Justice about the constitutionality of this mandate, and it shows. That is why we are here today: to undo just some of the damage to our liberty and our Constitution wrought by ObamaCare.

All of the misleading arguments regarding this amendment run square to one simple fact: ObamaCare only became law in 2010. There was no Federal mandate for these services prior to 2010, and the regulations have not yet gone into effect. In other words, nobody is taking anything away from anybody. But to hear the other side talk, one would think the cosponsors of this amendment and the groups who support it are committed to a monstrous deprivation of women's rights. With due respect, that is absolute hogwash.

I appreciate that the advocates of ObamaCare might be embarrassed by this episode, but we are not going to

let them get away with a gross misrepresentation of what we are trying to do here.

Prior to 2010 and the partisan passage of ObamaCare, access to contraceptives was abundant and nobody advocated that the Federal Government involve itself in those personal, moral decisions. After 2010, access to contraceptives remained abundant, with nobody advocating for restrictions on their access.

Here is what changed in the meantime. In 2010, ObamaCare mandated that health coverage include sterilizations, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraceptive coverage. As a result, religious institutions and persons will now be compelled by the State to violate their conscience--compelled by the Federal Government to violate their conscience. It isn't just the Catholic Church; it is many churches that feel just the same way as the Catholic Church does. It is a moral and religious issue that should not be interfered with by the Federal Government.

Prior to 2010 and the passage of ObamaCare, the first amendment was intact. Today, the first amendment is in tatters. The Democrats who passed this law know this to be true, so they have to distract and confuse. They claim Senator Blunt's amendment is overbroad. They claim religious institutions and individuals would deny critical health services, such as blood transfusions and psychiatric care. The Senate Democratic steering committee claims 20.4 million women who are now receiving coverage for preventive services would lose that coverage under this amendment. Absolutely none of this is accurate.

Again, all this amendment does is restore the pre-ObamaCare status quo. All it does is restore the religious liberties and constitutional freedoms that existed prior to this government takeover of our Nation's health care system. It restores the conscience protections that existed for all Americans for the past 220 years.

If this amendment passes, here are a few things that do not change: State mandates for health coverage will remain in place. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, preventing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment benefits remains in place. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, requiring health plans to cover pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions remains in place. The Americans With Disabilities Act prohibiting s discriminatory withholding of health care and other benefits for people with HIV or other disabilities remains in place. And the Mental Health Parity Act of 2008 requiring equitable coverage of mental illness remains in place.

Prior to ObamaCare, very few people excluded any of the services that Democrats are pointing at in their efforts to scare the American people, and few will do so should the Blunt amendment pass. But our Constitution demands that those individuals and institutions that object to providing these services on religious and moral grounds be protected. That is what the Constitution demands.

Even though the individuals and institutions protected by the Blunt amendment are a minority, it is that minority that our first amendment exists to protect. The rule agreed to by President Obama would force religious organizations to violate their moral convictions. This cannot be allowed to stand.

I call on my colleagues on the other side to wake up and realize what they are doing. There is only so much politics that should be played around here, and this is an issue we should not be playing politics with. It involves religious freedom and liberty.

There was a time when a regulation of this sort would not have been countenanced by this body, let alone some of the arguments that have been made on the other side--trying to obscure and to make a political issue out of this.

I have had the good fortune of representing the people of Utah for many years. It has been an honor for me. In that time, I have seen many good people on both sides of the aisle serve well in the Senate. One thing we could always be sure of was that when it came to our first amendment freedoms--in particular, the freedom to practice one's religion without interference from the State--Republicans and Democrats would join together in the defense of religious rights and liberty. Why are we not joining together? Yet under this administration, our Bill of Rights has been subordinated to President Obama's desire to micromanage the Nation's health care system.

It was not always this way. When the Senate considered President Clinton's health care law--itself an attempt at a sweeping takover of the Nation's health care system--giants such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat and colleague who served as the chairman of the Finance Committee, stood up for broad conscience protections such as the one we are considering today in the Blunt amendment.

I worked closely with many of my Democratic colleagues in passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. I was the author of that bill. We passed it. It overwhelmingly passed. I was there when President Clinton signed it into law. A lot of religious leaders were there and a lot of liberals and conservatives were there who were very happy to pass that law. But, apparently, those days of bipartisanship are laid to rest, and they are long past.

Today the administration ignores the clear dictates of the first amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

ObamaCare is unconstitutional to its core. It threatens the liberties announced and protected by our Declaration of Independence. This mandate is just one more example of how the law restricts personal liberty. It will force religious persons and institutions to violate their beliefs or pay a fine.

Defending this disaster at a townhall meeting recently, one Democratic Member of the House of Representatives told her constituents that they were ``not looking to the Constitution'' when they supported this mandate. No kidding. Our Founding Fathers fought a revolution to prevent this type of tyranny; and that is what this is. This is tyranny. It is the political bullying of a religious group with--in the views of the President's allies--unpopular religious beliefs. So for political reasons the religious groups who differ with this are being pushed around. The media, polite society, and the administration are picking on religious freedom and on religious people.

Democrats like to claim they stand for the little guy. Not in this case. In this case, the little guy is being pushed around by the State. I, for one, am not going to stand for it. This is discrimination masquerading as compassion, and I am going to fight it. My oath of office, an oath to protect the Constitution, compels me to do this.

I am putting the administration on notice: I am not done with you, and my colleagues are not done with you. Whatever happens with this vote today, you are going to be held to account for your actions. We are going to get to the bottom of how this happened and, ultimately, I am confident that justice will prevail.

Ultimately, I am confident justice will prevail.

I commend my colleague from Missouri and all of the Members who have spoken out for this amendment. It is reasonable. It is just. I urge all of my colleagues to vote for it.

The American people understand this amendment is necessary because of ObamaCare, and they know who is responsible for this monstrosity. I expect they will look favorably on those who stand up for the first amendment today and attempt to correct their folly by restoring the conscience protections that preexisted ObamaCare. The reaction to those who stand by this historic deprivation of first amendment rights? Only time is going to tell.

Let me close by saying there are very few things that get me worked up as much as I am about this. I feel very deeply about a lot of things, but the first amendment, to me, means everything. I have heard the President say, well, we will just require the insurance companies to provide this. Give me a break. A lot of Catholic institutions are self-insured, and that is true of other churches as well.

Religious beliefs are important. The first amendment is important. The free exercise of religion is important. That is what is involved here.

My gosh, to hear these arguments that this is all about contraception--that is not what it is about. It is about the right of people with religious beliefs to practice their religion, unmolested by government.

I want to commend the distinguished Senator from Missouri. It takes guts to stand up on these issues when they are so distorted by some on the other side. I would be ashamed to make some of the arguments that were made on this issue. The Catholic Church, which is the largest congregation in our country, is not going to abide by this mandate. And I am 100 percent with them.

When we start going down this road, let me tell you, beware, because that is when tyranny begins. The religious commitments of our Nation have made it the greatest Nation in the world. I have to tell you, those of you who vote against this amendment are playing with fire. Those of you who vote against this amendment are ignoring the Constitution. Those of you who vote against this amendment are wrong.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to finish my remarks and that I be granted enough time to do so.

Madam President, the first 3 years of President Obama's administration were a frenzy of activity. He pushed the stimulus, he spent over a year pursuing his health care law, and he forced through Dodd-Frank, imposing historic regulations on the banking industry. Even The Economist magazine has found fault with that. Yet, at a time when the Nation was in economic free fall, the President chose an agenda of more regulation and higher taxes.

The President ignored private sector job creation and the primacy of economic growth, and nowhere was this more evident than with respect to energy policy. President Obama has failed entirely to address one of the greatest obstacles to economic growth; that is, high energy prices.

Today he claims he is for an all-of-the-above approach to energy. All of a sudden, facing $5-a-gallon gasoline, weak job creation, and a Presidential election, he claims to have found religion on energy production. But whether we look at oil, natural gas, or the Keystone Pipeline, the American people are not buying this conversion story, and I certainly agree with our distinguished minority leader and his comments here this morning.

This failure by the President to tackle our energy needs is a national crisis for which the American people should hold him accountable. Yet his inability to put jobs ahead of his radical and unrepresentative environmental base has particular implications for the citizens of my State of Utah as well. Days after announcing in his State of the Union an ``all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy,'' the administration cut access to Federal lands in the West for oil shale development by 75 percent and proposed a 50 percent royalty hike on domestic energy production on public lands.

Whether it is closing off more Federal lands to American energy production or saying no to the Keystone Pipeline, this White House has shown it is more focused on appeasing its extremist ideological allies than putting forward an energy policy that works for Utahans and Americans everywhere. With gas prices and home heating costs on the rise, the American people deserve action, not more campaign speeches-- and I might add, from the most anti-American energy administration in our Nation's history.

When it comes to energy policy, the President is a man divided. On almost all economic policy, his answer is, tax the rich more. Taxing the rich more is his go-to option for reducing the deficit, paying for Obamacare, and paying for new roads and bridges. Higher taxes are a matter of fundamental fairness, the President claims, but when it comes to gas prices, the President sides with the 1 percent.

The folks who would benefit most from increased energy production are blue-collar workers and middle-class families. High energy prices hit the wallets of lower income Americans the hardest. Middle-class Americans are more likely to have longer commutes and bigger cars than wealthy urban citizens. The passthrough cost of high fuel prices hits the grocery budgets of all Americans. The jobs that never materialize due to the failure to develop energy resources undermines every blue- collar American.

The President claims to be for fairness and an egalitarian economic policy, but his energy policy is incredibly regressive, putting the burden of his environmental agenda on the backs of the middle class. The situation got no better with the budget the President recently submitted or with this long-delayed proposal for business tax reform.

Rather than advance an energy agenda that would spur production, lower prices, and create jobs, the President continues to advocate for increased taxes on oil and gas production in the United States.

On March 3 of last year, the Congressional Research Service concluded that the President's proposals would ``make oil and natural gas more expensive for U.S. consumers and likely increase foreign dependence.'' The same holds true today. These decisions are based in political appeals to his elitist base rather than any interest in developing sound energy policy. For example, in his budget the President cites the following as his reason for repealing tax incentives for oil and gas production:

Special tax treatment of working interests in oil and gas

properties . . . distorts markets by encouraging more

investment in the oil and gas industry than would occur under

a neutral system.

Give me a break. The reason the President opposes current tax policy for oil and gas is because he opposes distorting markets?

The Energy Information Administration reports that in fiscal year 2010, $14.7 billion in energy-specific subsidies went to advance renewable energy compared to $4.2 billion in energy-related subsidies that went to advance fossil fuels. In other words, there are three times as many government subsidies going to renewable energy as there are going to oil, gas, and coal combined. Now, that is what you call distorting the market.

Contrary to the President's presentation, these are not tax loopholes that need to be closed. The term ``tax loophole'' implies that a tax incentive is susceptible to an exploitation of an unintended benefit. While the Tax Code has some tax loopholes that we must clearly eliminate, the tax expenditures that benefit oil and gas companies were intended to incentivize a particular activity or behavior. For instance, section 199 of the Internal Revenue Code includes an incentive for the domestic production of oil and gas. This is no loophole. Congress, on a bipartisan basis, understands that without this incentive, we could see an enormous reduction in employment, and it is simply inaccurate to state that this incentive adds little to our economic or energy security.

The American people need to understand that repeal of this policy will only increase our dependence on foreign-produced oil. But this does not seem to bother the President one bit. On March 20 of last year, the President told a group of political and business leaders in Brazil that we ``want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you're ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.''

As hard as it is to believe, the administration does not even seem to share the desire of the American people for lower energy prices. The President's Secretary of Energy, Secretary Steven Chu, stated: ``We have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.'' Gas prices in Europe are $8 to $10 a gallon, and that is where the administration and environmental activists want gas prices to be for Americans. Even President Obama stated in 2008 that he would prefer a gradual adjustment to high gasoline prices, just maybe not a quick spike.

The President claims he is for an all-of-the-above energy policy so long as it

does not include offshore drilling, drilling on our western lands, the development of energy in Alaska, and the Keystone Pipeline. My reading of his all-of-the-above approach is some-of-the-above and only those that are poll-tested and approved by environmental activists.

This is terrible tax policy, it is terrible energy policy, and it is terrible economic policy. Unfortunately, it is all we have from this administration.

The reality is that our country relies upon oil and gas because it is dependable, abundant, affordable, and domestic. Raising taxes on American companies that produce oil and gas will be felt by all Americans not only at the pump but also through a decrease in dividends to many middle-class shareholders. This is the wrong prescription for our ailing economy.

For this administration, the goal remains not lower energy prices but the liberal dream of getting America off of oil. Just the other day, the President's Secretary of Energy acknowledged that the overall goal of his Department is not to lower the cost of traditional energy but to decrease dependency on oil.

For what it is worth, this commitment to restricting domestic production is a policy that divides my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They know the President is putting the preferred lifestyle policies of wealthy urbanites ahead of the needs of blue-collar and union workers and middle-class Americans. They know the decision by the President to kill the Keystone Pipeline put environmental interest groups ahead of the needs of workers, commuters, and families.

President Obama has traded in the hardhat-and-lunch-bucket heritage of the Democratic Party for a hipster fedora and a double-skim latte. He has put liberal environmental dreams ahead of the economic reality that working-class Americans have been struggling with for years. The Nation's unemployment rate has been above 8 percent for 36 straight months. The average duration of unemployment was 40.1 weeks in January 2012. Yet the President and his allies in the Senate have helped to kill projects that would undeniably lead to the creation of hundreds of thousands of high-paying American jobs.

Gas prices have now risen for 20 straight days. Gas prices are now up 30 cents over the last month and 18 cents in the past 2 weeks. We are cruising toward $5-a-gallon gas, and the President resists any long- term solutions to these rising energy prices.

The American people deserve better than this. They have waited 3 long years for a serious energy agenda from this President, and if he does not address this energy crisis soon, in less than a year the American people will be looking to another President to promote an energy program that will finally create jobs and lower the cost of energy for all Americans. Look, we have energy within our country's boundaries. We have energy that is just begging to be developed, that would help us to make it through these trying times. We need the lowest cost energy we can possibly have, and we are not going to get it under this President. We are not going to get it under this administration. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle wake up and realize we are putting our country right down the drain.

I saw, sometime over the last couple of weeks, The Economist magazine. The front page of that magazine criticizes us for the overregulatory nature of our economy and of our government. We are making it so it is almost impossible for businesses to expand and create high-paid jobs.

We can solve our own energy needs. We have between 800 billion and 1.6 trillion barrels of recoverable oil in oil shale in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming alone. We have billions of barrels of oil in ANWR up in Alaska and billions of barrels of oil at other sites in Alaska. Fortunately, we found oil in the Bakken claim in North Dakota, but the only reason we have been able to drill there is because it is private land. Fortunately, we found some places down in Texas, but again they are on private land. We can't get the permits and the ability to drill on public land or even develop oil shale on public land. Yes, it would cost us more per barrel to develop that oil, but it would also bring down the intense problems we have in trying to find enough oil and gas to keep our country moving ahead as the greatest country in the world. We have to simply get this administration to wake up and realize there are many ways we can solve our energy problems--many ways.

We are also awash in natural gas. A lot of people have been saying we need to develop our natural gas. We need to develop more of our energy resources than we are developing now. And we can do it. America can do it if we get the government off the backs of those who produce energy. I hope and pray that Democrats and Republicans alike will lock arms, get together, and solve the problems facing our country, regardless of this President, who doesn't seem to know what to do or how to do it.

This is a crucial time for our country. There is no excuse for us to be in the mess we are in. But unfortunately, we are here because of the poor energy policies of this administration.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to finish my speech regardless of the time.

Mr. President, earlier today, we were treated to some very partisan remarks from one of my colleagues on the preventive services mandate. That is the legal term. Here is what the mandate is in practice.

It is a mandate that will require religious individuals and institutions to purchase abortion-inducing drugs for their employees. It will require that they purchase insurance coverage that provides for sterilizations and the morning-after pill. In doing so, it will require that they violate their most

deeply held religious beliefs, in stark contrast to the first amendment's guarantee of religious liberty.

You would not know that from hearing some on the other side talk. You would think that opposition to this mandate was grounded in bigotry and a lack of concern for our fellow citizens.

This is a serious charge--one deserving of a response. My colleague from California suggested earlier today that the reason Republicans are opposed to this mandate--and the reason tens of millions of Americans are opposed to this mandate--is because they are antiwoman.

With due respect, one would be hard pressed to concoct a more insidious and misleading explanation of the opposition to this mandate.

People are opposed to this mandate for one simple reason--because they are in favor of religious liberty. They are opposed to it because it is an affront to our constitutional government, to the first right listed in our first amendment--the right to free exercise of religion.

We would not know that from my colleague's remarks. She did not even mention the Constitution--not once.

As Members of the Senate, we take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. But to hear members of the administration and some Members of Congress talk, it is clear to me that providing abortion- inducing drugs, sterilizations, and the morning-after pill to women is more important than the first amendment we are sworn to the Nation and our constituents to defend.

I do not shock easily, but the cavalier attitude of the President, his administration, and many in Congress to this frontal assault on religious liberty is truly shocking.

There was a time when both parties, liberals and conservatives, could come together on the matter of religious liberty--but not any longer, apparently.

I think it is because for many liberals, religion and the right to practice it freely are not the foundation of our Nation's liberties; rather, they are viewed as a threat to our Nation's liberties. They do not understand religious people. I guess we should have seen this coming when the President ran for the White House in 2008, and he referred pejoratively to these American who cling to their Bibles.

But the fact is, it was people who clung to their Bibles who were at the forefront of some of our Nation's greatest civil rights struggles and have been most committed to advancing the cause of personal liberty. They are at the forefront today serving as a solemn witness of the importance of religious liberty, threatening civil disobedience against the President's unconstitutional abortion mandate that would force them to violate their most cherished moral beliefs.

Instead of treating these powerful witnesses to our founding ideals with the respect they deserve, they are looked at with contempt. This morning, one of my colleagues referred to a panel testifying about this assault on religious liberty as full of ``dudes.''

Her suggestion was that the all-male composition of this panel somehow serves as proof that the objection to this abortion mandate is due to hostility to women. Give me a break. Let me tell you who these so called ``dudes'' were: the Roman Catholic Bishop of Bridgeport, CT; the president of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod; the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University; the director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, and the chair of the Ethics Department at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

These men, whom my colleague refers to as ``dudes,'' came to Congress to testify about the grave impact this Obamacare rule poses to religious freedom. My colleague from California does not mention these other names because they are inconvenient. She does not mention Margaret Brining, Mary Keys, and Nicole Garnett of the University of Notre Dame. She does not mention Harvard's Mary Ann Glendon or the University of Chicago's Jean Bethke Elshtain or Maria Garlock of Princeton University.

She does not mention Helen Alvare of George Mason University or Maria Aguirre of the Catholic University of America. She does not mention the Mother Superior of the Sisters for Life.

All of these women signed a letter, along with hundreds of other scholars and clergy, stating the obvious truth--that the President's so-called compromise is unacceptable.

Are they all antiwomen too?

These thoughtful citizens, scholars, and religious people deserve our attention not our ridicule. Here is the bottom line: Obamacare is an unconstitutional abomination. It is unconstitutional to its core. The individual mandate is obviously unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court will rule on that soon enough.

But what this episode shows is that Obamacare is unconstitutional in its very DNA. It transfers power over one-sixth of the American economy to the Federal Government, and the government has proven with this episode that individual liberty is threatened by that transfer of power.

If the administration cannot be relied on to protect even religious liberty, the right of persons and churches and synagogues to practice their faith without interference from the State, then nobody is safe. If they are willing to trammel on the first amendment, they are willing to trammel on anything. That is the story.

The story is that earlier this week, Secretary Sebelius acknowledged to me and to the Finance Committee that she never consulted the Roman Catholic bishops before announcing the politically driven compromise that they would be forced to comply with.

The story is that Secretary Sebelius admitted that she never requested any first amendment analysis of this rule from the Department of Justice. The administration has clearly decided this is a political loser for them, so they are trying to change the subject. They send out their surrogates with talking points designed to scare the public into thinking this fight is about contraception. It is not, and the American people will not be fooled. They will not be tricked into thinking that those who oppose this mandate are antiwoman.

Do those who are promoting this spin think we do not have mothers, wives, and daughters? Do they think the women in the Senate and the House representing millions of more women are antiwomen? This is beyond absurd, and the American people will not be duped.

They know this rule exists because the administration is beholden to the pro-abortion lobby. And I can tell you, there is one group that the modern Democratic Party will never cross, never. They will never cross the abortion lobby. So it is no surprise that the Nation's largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, came out in support of the so- called compromise.

The Catholic Church and millions of Americans, however, responded that this is unacceptable. I agree with their assessment. The so-called compromise is nothing of the sort. But as bad as this mandate is, keep in mind it is only the beginning. It is only the first step in a fresh assault on the constitutional liberties of the American people. Believe me, the tragedy of Obamacare is only beginning.

The other day, former Speaker Pelosi suggested that even the Roman Catholic Church itself should have to provide abortion-inducing drugs to their employees. Catholic bishops would be forced, in her regime, to subsidize practices that the Church finds morally abhorrent. That is where this is going. The administration might feel cowed into providing a weak exception to their rule for religious institutions right now, but in the long run we know where they want to go. And the resulting loss of liberty would be bad for men and women alike.

Our Constitution protects all of us. By undermining religious liberty, this administration goes down a very dangerous path. In so doing, the officers responsible for this decision, if they knew of the serious constitutional issues and still went ahead with this action for political reasons, violated their oath to uphold the Constitution.

The Congress and the American people are going to hold them accountable. The President and his reelection campaign would prefer that this just go away. Hence, the admonition from the mainstream media that we stop talking about this issue.

Well, I, for one, am not going to stop talking about it, and I am not going away. I am just getting warmed up. We have seen major countries slip down

the road toward totalitarianism because they did not stand up for religious liberty. This is not a question about contraception. This is a question about religious liberty and where we are going to stand.

The fact is, once we start down the road of denying the individual rights of personal conscience and religious freedom, and begin to tell churches and synagogues what they must believe, we are on the way to losing the freedoms all of us hold dear.

Religious freedom is the first freedom mentioned in the Bill of Rights. This is important stuff. I am not Catholic. But I would fight to my death for the Catholic people to be able to live their faith. My own faith feels the same way about many of these issues. No church or person should be forced to make abortion-inducing drugs accessible, as the President's mandate will require them to do.

I do not think any compromise has been suggested so far that would meet the high bar set by our Constitution. There is only one option for the President on this issue. He needs to rescind this unlawful regulation. There is no middle ground. When it comes to the first amendment right to religious liberty, there can be no compromise.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to the Salt Lake Council of Women on the upcoming 100th anniversary of its founding.

In the ranks of those who greatly admire this wonderful organization and its exemplary members, I stand front and center today to salute them for their accomplishments and outstanding public service. As I do so, I am humbled by the magnitude of the task. It is difficult to find the right words that will do justice to their extraordinary contributions to Utah.

A century after its founding, this remarkable group has more than lived up to its motto: ``Community Service for Civic Improvement.'' Evidence of its good works is found throughout the Wasatch Front, including the International Peace Gardens the group was instrumental in making a reality in 1947 and has helped preside over ever since.

That alone is sufficient to ensure that the Salt Lake Council of Women's legacy will long endure in the heads and hearts of its legions of admirers. But this service organization's legacy neither begins nor ends there.

Its service began on February 26, 1912, when it organized with the aim of bettering the ``social, civic and moral'' environment of the Salt Lake City area, and that service has continued unabated and on an ever-increasing scale ever since.

Over the years, members of the Council have been a tireless advocate for Utah's youth, supporting child labor laws, visiting nurse and teacher programs for children who are ill, respect for the American flag, and the installation of the first drinking fountains in public schools.

They have further assisted with the Boy and Girl Scouts programs and helped found a home for troubled girls, which has evolved into what is now known as the Utah Youth Village. The organization has also helped the Utah State Development Center, Alcoholics Anonymous, Ronald McDonald House, and numerous hospitals, nursing homes, and homeless shelters and animal shelters, just to name a few.

And Utahns have not been the only beneficiaries. During World War I, the group provided relief to the embattled and starving Finnish people. When World War II erupted, the council gave generously to the USO, American Red Cross, and War Bond Drives. The council also has been a strong advocate for the arts, supporting the Utah Symphony, Ballet West and the Days of '47, Utah's annual July celebration to commemorate the 1847 arrival of the Mormon Pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley.

Today, as the Salt Lake Council of Women's centennial anniversary nears, its 200 members--representing 40 organizations and 5,000 women-- are as engaging and anxiously engaged in the community as ever. Along with their continued commitment to the International Peace Gardens and Utah Youth Village, council members are involved with the YWCA, University Hospital Project, Wasatch Youth Center, and with an ever- widening variety of special projects. This month, for instance, the council will award a college scholarship to a victim of domestic violence, who will be chosen from mothers in the YWCA's long-term transitional housing program.

No matter what they do or who they serve, members of the Salt Lake Council of Women are the embodiment of what Mahatma Gandhi called ``the spirit of service and sacrifice.'' As the council gathers February 25th to celebrate its 100th anniversary, I add my voice to the chorus of praise in saluting its visionary and selfless members, both past and present, who have done so much for so many to make Utah the great place it is today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be permitted to speak and give my remarks in full.

Mr. President, for some time now Americans have suspected that this administration has lost touch with the American people. John Meacham, the former editor of Newsweek and a fan of the President, explained this detachment by explaining that the President does not ``particularly like people.'' That might be an overstatement, but he is on to something. This administration seems to take its cues from the far left, whether or not they represent the aspirations and hopes of ordinary Americans.

Nowhere is this disconnection from the American people on better display than with the hamfisted decision by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Department of Health and Human Services to require that religious persons and institutions violate their most cherished beliefs or face the consequences.

Late last year, HHS ordered all employers, including religious institutions, to cover in their employer insurance plans such things as sterilization, contraception, and abortion-inducing drugs and devices. With very limited exceptions, religious hospitals, universities, and charitable institutions would face the choice of dropping coverage for their employees or violating their consciences.

The Nation's Catholic bishops and many other religious institutions pleaded with this administration to grant broader waivers to avoid jeopardizing these institutions' constitutional rights to freely exercise religion. But the administration, rather than side with millions of religious Americans who just want to be left alone to practice their own faith, decided to throw in with the most radical of proabortion advocates. They decided to subordinate our central constitutional commitment to religious liberty to a radical agenda that is overtly hostile to all of these people of faith.

The response has been overwhelming. At church this weekend millions of American Catholics were read a letter from their bishops. The message was simple, and it was powerful. This action is unjust and one with which they

will not comply. They are right, and they shouldn't. The first amendment doubly protects religious liberty. It prohibits the government establishment of religion and explicitly protects the free exercise of religion, the first individual right listed in the Bill of Rights. That is how important religious liberty is to America.

In our system of government, such fundamental rights and principles are supposed to trump statutes, regulations, and political agendas. The Constitution and the liberties that it protects are supreme not the fleeting politically driven motivations of any particular administration. Yet the Obama administration, as it has always does, has turned these priorities upside down. In this administration, politics trumps absolutely everything else, even the Constitution and religious liberty. Instead of conforming their political agenda to the Constitution, they distort the Constitution and even liberty itself to conform to their political agenda.

The politicians driving this mandate underestimated the American people who have in succession rejected the sorry efforts by the administration to defend its actions. The administration first hid behind the opinion of a purportedly objective medical group that birth control should be included in health insurance plans, but the American people knew who was ultimately responsible for this rule--not some board of so-called experts but the President and his officers. They tried to minimize this mandate's impact by arguing that many States already have similar requirements. But this was incredibly misleading since nearly all of those States have much broader religious protections. In fact, only three States have religious exemptions as narrow and limited as this new Federal mandate.

They tried to assuage the concerns of religious citizens by saying that the rule does not cover churches and houses of worship, but Americans will not accept only the remnant of our constitutional rights that the President chooses to recognize. Were we supposed to thank the Obama administration for letting us retain a few scraps of religious liberty? There are many religious institutions and organizations that do not fit into the Obama administration's artificial, narrow categories but that just as fully exercise their faith and religious missions. Religious liberty belongs to the Catholic hospital or the University of Notre Dame no less than it belongs to the Catholic Church.

Then, when this simmering controversy broke wide open a few weeks ago, Secretary Sebelius thought she could make it all go away by agreeing not to impose this mandate for another year. Like her boss the President she just plain doesn't get it. Religious liberty is not a bargaining chip or a deal sweetener like premium floor mats or an upgraded appliance. Did she think Americans would not mind losing this cherished liberty if they were allowed to spend just a little extra time with it?

The Obama administration's attitude toward religious liberty has become ``enjoy it while it lasts.'' And to the administration's surprise, the American people have been less than enthusiastic about this cavalier attitude toward constitutional rights.

The President of the United States takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution, to stand for the fundamental liberty of all Americans. He and the officials responsible for this mandate have fallen far short of this oath.

The fight for religious liberty began before America was born, and it must be fought continually. We can all see that now. It is a part of our constitutional heritage. Our Founding Fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to defend the principle that all people are created equal and endowed by God with certain unalienable rights. The right for persons and institutions to be free to practice their faith without undue interference by the government is among our most cherished rights and liberties.

There was a day when liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans--everyone--joined to defend liberty. I should know. I was the principal Republican co-sponsor of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which brought together unprecedented grassroots and congressional coalitions to defend this first freedom. They knew that rights such as religious liberty rise and fall together, that religious liberty cannot be packaged, sliced, diced, and doled out in little pieces to please certain interest groups. We need that same unity today because religious liberty is just as important and, sadly, just as threatened as it was in the past.

In addition to violating the first amendment right to freely exercise our religion, this mandate also appears to violate that landmark law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It burdens the free exercise of religion and is clearly not, as the law requires, a narrow means of achieving a compelling purpose.

Last month the Supreme Court unanimously held that the right of religious organizations to decide who may further their religious mission trumps nondiscrimination statutes. The Obama administration argued that religious organizations are nothing special, that they should have no more freedom from Federal control than, say, a labor union or a social club. In other words, religious liberty is simply no big deal to the Obama administration.

Writing for the entire Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts called this a remarkable view of religious liberty, one that is ``hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.''

Soon the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to rule on the constitutionality of ObamaCare. What the preventive services mandate confirms beyond all doubt is that the constitutional defects in ObamaCare only begin with the insurance mandate that will be before the Supreme Court. There are some other issues there as well, and I hope the Court examines every one of them and overturns this law.

The very DNA of ObamaCare is unconstitutional. At its core, the law and its expansion of government are a threat to personal liberty. The decision to implement this law in a way that forces religious institutions to violate their deepest principles is a vivid demonstration of what happens to personal liberty when the power of the state expands. As the state controls more and more of our lives to further a political agenda, our freedom is put in greater and greater jeopardy.

After 3 years of this administration, the American people seem to be saying enough is enough. Those responsible for this decision to force religious institutions to subsidize health coverage for abortifacient drugs need to be brought to account. The President needs to answer for this. Secretary Sebelius needs to answer for this. The Attorney General needs to answer for this. How could he let this happen?

Let me say, however, that getting answers is not enough. Congress needs to assert its authority as the representative of the American people, stand for the first amendment, and restore religious liberty by overturning this health care law.

For those who are on the front lines fighting this mandate: I applaud your courage, and please understand that you are not alone; you are Democrats, Independents, Republicans, and others. The Obama administration may not care about religious liberty, but the Constitution does, and I, along with many of my colleagues, will fight alongside you until we prevail over this unjust law. This new HHS mandate cannot be allowed to stand, and I am confident that if the will of the American people prevails, it will not stand.

I belong to a faith that has been persecuted and mischaracterized for many decades. We are the only church in the history of America that had a Governor issue an extermination order against its members. That is how bad it got in this greatest of all countries where religious liberty is without question our most valued right. We understand what it is like to be persecuted. I don't care whether one is liberal, conservative, independent, or what, and I don't care what religious beliefs folks out there all have. There is no excuse for this type of heavy-handed, ham-handed, overgovernmentalization of our religious freedom. We simply cannot allow this to stand.

Does President Obama have the guts to stand up for religious liberty? If he doesn't, he should not be President of this United States. If he does, I will be

the first to compliment him for it. It comes right down to the Constitution itself and, in many respects, I believe the most important provision in the Constitution. Religious liberty is something that our early leaders risked their lives to obtain because they were persecuted because of their religious beliefs.

I call on the President of the United States to change this, to acknowledge that this is a mistake, and to understand that we are united--Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and others--in the protection of this great liberty.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to deliver my full speech regardless of the time.