Floor Statements

Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order following the vote on the Bass nomination.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to immediate consideration of Calendar No. 183, S. 320.

I ask unanimous consent that the Scott of Florida amendment at the desk to the committee-reported substitute amendment be considered and agreed to, the committee-reported substitute amendment, as amended, be considered and agreed to, the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, my grandma taught me so many things and had so many great, old sayings.

One of the things she taught me is that, if you have your health, you have everything. If you have your health, you have everything. I think that is one of the reasons I wanted to become a doctor. I wanted to help give people their health.

But healthcare is in a crisis right now. Healthcare is in a crisis. Doctors think healthcare is in a crisis. Nurses think healthcare is in a crisis. Patients, families, Americans--we all think that healthcare is in a crisis.

The Democrats' solution is, frankly, just to throw more money at the problem--to throw more money at the problem--which really inflates everybody else's costs of healthcare.

What our party would like to do is to empower patients, not insurance companies. We want to put patients in charge, not insurance companies.

Before we, you know, dive a little deeper into our bill that we are asking unanimous consent for today, I want to answer, I think, one of the toughest questions I have been asked. The question is--you know, when I go back home, in January, families are going to look to me and say: Why couldn't you fix healthcare?

I want the record to show right now that the Democrats are walking away from a yearlong extension on the enhanced subsidies. They are walking away. We are offering it. I don't think the subsidies are a good idea--I never did--but my heart says it is the right thing to do. So let the record show, if the Democrats object to this bill, they are walking away from a yearlong extension of ObamaCare in exchange for empowering patients.

You know, this crisis--I think we need to understand a little bit more where this crisis came from. ObamaCare has been the law of the land now for 15 years. And perhaps Speaker Pelosi's most famous moment of her career is when she said we need to pass the bill so we can see what is in it.

Well, now we know what is in it. We know it was written by insurance companies. We are giving them $150 billion a year. It was written by PBMs. It was written by big hospital systems, big healthcare systems who have driven the spend on healthcare now to $5 trillion a year.

What have we ended up with? Of course, the costs are higher. No one can deny that the average premiums are now more than 200 percent higher than they were. Access is worse. Fraud is rampant. And really ObamaCare is junk insurance, right?

When they talked about what junk insurance was, they argued for ObamaCare. ObamaCare has turned into junk insurance. When families have a deductible of $15,000 a year, that is junk insurance, right? So we ended up doing just the opposite of what they stated their intended goals were. So listen--listen--to what the Democrats are saying now and what they are willing to do.

Let me just sum up, briefly, what our plan does, and then I will maybe go a little bit deeper. No. 1 is we address the fraud. No. 2, we extend the ObamaCare--the Biden-era extended subsidies for another year. We fund CSRs. We address fraud, if I didn't say that yet. And then starting in 2027, we would start taking some of that money that we were using on these extended subsidies--that is about $35 billion a year--we would start putting that into your debit card, into your healthcare debit card, thousands of dollars per family.

You know, for some it might be $7,000. For some, it might be $5,000, but we want you to start making choices. And then, lastly, what our bill does--and this is why I am so confused why Democrats are walking away from this. If there was one good thing about ObamaCare is it addressed preexisting conditions. And we will talk about that more in a second. But our bill funds invisible high-risk reinsurance pools.

So it is like belt and suspenders for people that develop high-risk conditions.

Let's dive into each of these pillars a little bit more. No. 1 is let's stop the fraud. No one can deny that there is significant fraud in ObamaCare. We don't know exactly how much. Is it $20 billion? Is it $30 billion?

We know that a third of people on ObamaCare never make a claim. A third of people on ObamaCare never make a claim.

And we know that--we saw the number--the fraud increased significantly when we allowed people to have zero dollars in the game. So what our bill does is, No. 1, it requires an ID--ID verification. It requires work verification. It requires income verification. And it requires you to contribute $5 a month.

If these were implemented, I really think we would save the country $25 billion a year. And again, that would more than fund this high-risk pool that I would like to do. I think stopping the fraud, there couldn't be anything more simple. But even just yesterday, the Democrats refused, and they voted down addressing the fraud.

Next, our pillar is real price transparency. If we adopted this, the cost of healthcare for everyone--whether you are on ObamaCare or get your money through your work or you are on Medicare--it would drive down the cost of healthcare for everybody by 20 percent.

Rather than spending $5 trillion a year, this country would be spending $4 trillion a year. Think of the great things--what else we could do if we had that money to do better things with. We could fund community health centers. So many great things we could do out there from a healthcare standpoint as well.

But by giving pricetags to patients--by forcing every healthcare provider, upfront, to have a list of everything that they offer and have that already on a website run by CMS and you are sitting there in your hometown and the doctor says you need to have your knee replaced and you could automatically

have populated within 60 miles all the hospitals charges.

You are going to find some hospitals charge $10,000 for that hip replacement; others charge $60,000 for it; some $120,000 for it. Heck, you might even hop on a plane and fly from New York City to Kansas to save $120,000 on a hip replacement--and we will put you up in the best hotel in all of Kansas to do that.

Pricetags are what cures that. Pricetags turn patients into consumers. It lets patients become shoppers again. Over and over again on Black Friday, Americans demonstrate to me that they have strong purchasing power and know what they are wanting to do with those dollars.

So by empowering patients, by turning them into shoppers again, by forcing pricetags, this is going to lower the cost of healthcare for everybody by 20 percent.

Our third pillar is to bridge subsidies for families. Look, you don't have to convince me of the cliff people are facing. Because of ObamaCare, premiums are going to go up 20 to 30 percent regardless. Regardless of what we do here in Congress, premiums are going to go up 30 percent.

I want to help those people. Maybe, you know, the people most impacted by this cliff--there are probably 1 million of them, maybe there are 2 million of them as well. That is why we need to do more than this bill to impact them long term by allowing them to purchase healthcare across State lines and expand association healthcare plans.

But again, we are extending the subsidies for 1 year. No other deal up here, really, on the Republican side addresses that except for this particular deal. I know my friends want 3 years. Look, let's talk about it.

What would it take for you to actually consider driving the true cost of healthcare down and not just throw money at the problem?

I just can't emphasize enough. You are a family of four. You are making $80,000 a year, which is more than the average salary in Kansas, and have a $15,000 deductible. That is not access to healthcare.

You have to admit--and I think my Democrat friends do admit--that ObamaCare is broken.

Next, I want to just talk about our invisible State-run high-risk pool. Look, I talked a second about preexisting conditions. The one thing I was really excited about ObamaCare is that it took care of the preexisting conditions.

Guess what the most common preexisting condition is in America. It is pregnancy. I delivered a baby almost every day of my life for 25 years, and believe it or not, less than half of pregnancies are planned.

And when couples are purchasing--they get married, they purchase health insurance, and they were going to save a couple hundred bucks by not including pregnancy, they thought it was a good idea. But guess what. Mother Nature doesn't always cooperate. Again, half these pregnancies were not planned. So I was glad to see us address preexisting conditions.

But even now we know insurance companies do play games to try to keep you out once you have a tough diagnosis. But if those insurance companies knew that, based upon your diagnosis and the money you are spending, you are already going to this partially federally funded high-risk pool, it would keep everyone's premiums down.

My friends across the aisle talk about--you know, they tug at people's hearts, which I want to do as well. We don't want anyone to face bankruptcy because of healthcare. But that is happening now, right?

Admit it. Your plan is not working. All these many, many families are facing and have taken bankruptcy because of the cost of healthcare.

So we use this belt-and-suspenders approach. We have the preexisting conditions in ObamaCare. We keep those. But then we do something better by funding these high-risk pools as well.

You know, high-risk pools let us protect the sick without punishing the healthy. If these catastrophic costs are covered, premiums fall for everyone. That is just simple common sense.

If you think about these five pillars here that I want the Democrats to agree with, I bet we drive down the cost of healthcare by 40 to 50 percent.

You know, our last pillar is just this theme of turning patients into consumers by giving them pricetags, by putting Federal dollars in your debit account for healthcare, by giving you pricetags. We turn you into shoppers again. It is going to lower the cost for everybody, and then we start reallocating that waste from fraud and abuse.

What makes our plan different than anybody else's out there? We address the fraud. We have pricetags that no other plan has. It bridges the subsidies.

And instead, my Democrat friends are offering a $83 million fix. The Democrats are just compounding the junk insurance. With all due respect to my friends across the aisle, you are just throwing good money after bad money.

By extending these subsidies for 3 years, it will be at least $83 billion. And the way healthcare is accelerating, it will be $100 billion. Again, I do feel the pain of these folks. I mean, these are my friends, my neighbors.

A top-three issue for every family in America, for every business in America, is the cost of healthcare. How can you walk away from a plan that is going to drive the cost of healthcare down 40 to 50 percent? And instead, you just want to offer more junk insurance.

Your plan doesn't do anything to bring down the cost of the deductibles in the plan. That is the problem. You could pay for their whole premium--you are. We are paying for their whole premium. But then they have a $15,000 deductible. That is not access to healthcare.

I don't know why my friends across the aisle don't want to have meaningful discussions. Why do we not want to talk about fixing the problem? There is so much more than this that we should be talking about right now.

Again, pharmacy benefit manager reform comes to mind, expanding community health centers, making sure everybody has meaningful access to primary care, bringing mental health into those community health centers. Those are all real solutions: expanding association healthcare plans, letting it be purchased along State lines.

Could you imagine if Sam's Club or Costco or Amazon had an association health plan that you could sign up for? Think of the purchase power that they would have.

There are real solutions out there. These are real solutions. Democrats have asked for a plan. This is, frankly, just the start of a good plan, but it would help bridge us over the next year to go after these other issues we can address on a bipartisan basis.

And remember--I will just close with this. When patients ask their Senators in January why their health insurance premiums went up, and they are going to ask you: Why did you vote against Senator Marshall's plan that extended the subsidies for a year, I hope you have got a great answer for that.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 3389 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, again, I greatly respect the words and have great respect for the Senator, my colleague and good friend from Delaware. And I know both of us share the same heart--that we want every American to have meaningful access to healthcare.

There are many things we agreed upon. The PBM Disclosure Act is but one example. Bringing down the cost of prescription drugs would be a huge priority for us as well. We both agree that fraud is a problem.

Take this bill and improve it. Is it too little? It probably is too little. But it is a start; it is a framework. You have the legislative text.

Look, I have become very pragmatic in my days in Washington. I can't change what happened in 2010, before I got here. I can't change all the histories of dealing with healthcare. I can't change the fact that we have 100 Senators with 100 ideas to fix ObamaCare. I have already said ObamaCare--tackling ObamaCare is like tackling a buffalo that just ran through a barbed-wire fence; and every time you try to pull a layer of that barbed wire off, you get poked with it. I understand that.

But this is a great framework. It is my effort at a bipartisan framework to get us started. And, again, offering the olive leaf of extending the Biden-era subsidies for another year, I think, is just the biggest olive branch I can make.

Again, come January, my Democrat friends are going to have to answer that question: Why did you walk away from Senator Marshall's plan to extend those subsidies for a year?

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, healthcare is in a crisis. What Republicans want to do is put patients in charge, not insurance companies. But the first thing we need to do to fix ObamaCare is to address the fraud in ObamaCare. If we can't agree on this, I don't know how we can possibly begin to fix ObamaCare.

I refer everyone to the recent week's Government Accounting Office report. They show people enrolled without consent, subsidies flowing from the Federal Government to insurance companies from people who don't even know they are enrolled in ObamaCare. They show that there were toddlers enrolled in ObamaCare. They demonstrated 58,000 dead people who were enrolled in ObamaCare, each of them having premiums sent to insurance companies on their dead body's behalf for some 9 months on average. We saw one Social Security number being used over and over again.

In fact, over a third of the people on ObamaCare didn't file a claim. Now, I am not saying that all those people are fraudulent. In a group of otherwise healthy folks, maybe 20 percent of people don't file a claim. But from 2021 to 2024, we saw that the number of people not filing a claim went from 19 percent to 35 percent, and that is when the enhanced subsidies kicked in, and therefore many people had zero premiums, so the Federal Government was paying their entire premium.

Again, we think that this report demonstrates billions of dollars of fraud, very often estimated at some $25 billion. That is why we introduced our bill, S. 3380, the ACA Marketplace Integrity Act, to stop the fraud. Who could be against that? Who could be against stopping the fraud?

Our solution--I think it is pretty simple.

First of all, mandatory identification verification for enrollment. Look, you can't get on an airplane, you can't get a hotel room, you can't rent a car without an ID. So let's verify identification. That is going to help decrease the fraud.

Secondly, we are asking for a minimal monthly payment from everybody involved in ObamaCare. We are asking for $5--the cost of a Big Mac, maybe a Big Mac meal. For $5--we are asking people to contribute to their own healthcare insurance, and we don't think that is too much to ask.

How is that going to prevent fraud? Well, look, if you are seeing $5 taken out of your paycheck or your bank account or charged to your debit card every month, you are going to sit there and say: Huh, where is that coming from? And if you contact the person where that debit is going to, then you are going to find out, oh, it is an insurance company.

I know we have all had something similar to that happen to us where we signed up for some type of streaming service years ago, and you can't get it off your credit card, but it just keeps recurring.

So what we are asking for is a minimum monthly payment of $5 from everybody on ObamaCare.

Now, my friends across the aisle are going to say that eliminating the zero-dollar premium will prevent people from getting a plan and that it is a trap to dismantle the ACA.

Look, I am not trying to dismantle the ACA; I am trying to fix it. I am trying to fix it for the folks who have seen their premiums more than double, people whose deductibles went from $1,000 a year to $15,000 a year. Why would we want those fraud dollars going to the insurance companies of all things? Let's take that same money and fund healthcare savings accounts.

Now, the next point we do with our bill is we codify President Trump's integrity rule to strengthen verification. I think that just these simple tests, these simple solutions, will decrease the fraud.

I think what consumers need to realize is that, just like shoplifting--even though the day you are there shopping, someone shoplifting doesn't impact the price of what you are buying, eventually it does. So this shoplifting, this fraud that is going on where we are taking good, hard-earned taxpayer money and sending it to insurance companies, is driving up the cost of healthcare for everybody, and every wasted dollar skips the real care that is needed.

I don't know why my Democrat friends want to prioritize insurance companies over real people and shrug their shoulders at fraud by fighting subsidy cuts.

What we as Republicans demand is honesty, accountability, transparency, and then we are going to redirect these subsidies. Let's redirect the subsidies, empowering patients over insurance companies-- again, all with transparent services. But we have to start with anti- fraud. If we can't agree to stop funding imaginary enrollees, what can we agree on? If it is not our plan, then what is the Democrats' plan? Show us a plan that fights fraud.

In Kansas and in every State of this Union, resources are blessings. It is Christmastime. It is a time to remember other people. I truly want every person in America to have meaningful, affordable access to healthcare, and the Republican plan does that. But we have to start by stopping the fraud.

Let's not waste hard-earned taxpayer dollars. Let's stop throwing good money after bad money.

This bill will stop the fraud. It is going to prioritize patients. And I urge every Member of the Senate to help us immediately stop the fraud.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 3380 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, it seems like it was just yesterday. The year was 2010. I was in the surgeons' lounge, and what I remember on the headline news of the day was Nancy Pelosi saying something to the effect of this: We have got to pass the bill so we can read it.

And I knew this bill had something to do with healthcare. They were calling it the Affordable Care Act--ObamaCare, as we now know it by-- the ``Not So Affordable Care Act.''

So the doctors and I scrambled, and we said: We better see what is in this bill.

And we said: First of all, gosh, it looks like the insurance companies wrote this bill. The Federal Government is going to give direct subsidies--corporate welfare--to health insurance companies.

It was supposed to max out at $50 billion a year. Today, it is $150 billion a year.

The next thing, when we looked at that bill, we said: My goodness, there is so much in rules and regulations, and we are going to have to take nurses off the floor and turn them into data entry. We are going to have to stay hours at a time, after practice, after office hours, just to do these electronic medical records.

We said that this overregulation was going to lead to consolidation of industry. Here we are 15 years later, and that is exactly what happened.

We have three PBMs controlling 85 percent of prescription drugs. Most every State has one or two healthcare insurance companies controlling the market. There are typically one or two hospital systems controlling healthcare in a large geographical area. The smaller companies can just never keep up.

So what we have seen is 15 years of failed policies. But families deserve real reform, and that is what we are trying to do. We are trying to reform, to fix the ``Not So Affordable Care Act,'' ObamaCare.

And of all the things we saw coming, we thought it would be fraud. But when fraud really spiked is when we added these enhanced premium tax credits--the Biden enhanced premium tax credits. And just like the original ACA, these enhanced premium tax credits were voted for only with Democrat votes. And what it allowed is for patients to have health insurance without paying anything toward the premium.

So we had headhunters who went across the country. They got a person's name. They got their birth date. They enrolled them in ObamaCare, and the

patient never even knew they were on it. But the Federal Government has been sending money to these insurance companies. In fact, one out of three people on ObamaCare, in a given year, never makes an insurance claim.

One out of three people on ObamaCare never makes an insurance claim. That is because most of them don't even know they are on it. And when there is no money coming out of one of their accounts, they have no idea that they are on it.

I think that to Americans, it is like shoplifting--shoplifting at a grocery store. We all end up paying for that. The rest of the consumers have to pay for the shoplifting. That is what is happening in ObamaCare. Everybody else is paying for that increased premium.

So the first thing that we want to do is to stop the fraud in the Affordable Care Act, and we do that in several ways. How about something as simple as checking IDs? I can't get a hotel room tonight-- when you apply for Medicare, for Social Security, you need an ID. We need to have job verification. We need to check IDs. We need technology to figure out when dead people should have the stipends stop.

The recent GAO report showed that 58,000 dead people were having premiums paid to these insurance companies for an average of about 9 months each. So think of the cost of that to the Federal Government and to taxpayers--58,000 dead people having an insurance premium paid monthly for 9 months before the Federal Government realizes that they are dead.

Probably, a third of that $150 billion a year we are spending on ObamaCare right now is in fraud, waste, and/or abuse.

The next thing we want to talk about is price transparency. Could you imagine--let's just say that, boy, you had a great year, and you are living that American dream, and you are going to go buy a new pickup truck. And, you know, maybe your family usually drove Fords, and maybe your family drove Chevys, but you want a Dodge. So you know you want four-wheel drive. You know you want a nice V-8 engine to be able to pull your boat and to get unstuck when you are out hunting and fishing, but you would like to know the price. So what is the difference between a Dodge four-wheel drive truck, eight-cylinder engine--maybe a HEMI-- versus that Chevy or Ford model which are similar? Could you imagine making that decision without knowing the pricetags?

Could you imagine going into the McDonald's, and you are trying to decide if you want the Big Mac or you want the Filet-O-Fish and not knowing the difference in the prices on that? So why, in healthcare, are we satisfied with not knowing the prices?

So one piece of our solution to solve this riddle of healthcare is to force all healthcare providers to provide prices. So if your doctor says that you need your knee scoped or your doctor says you need an MRI, they can give you a code. You get on your technology, and what the technology shows you, within 60 miles, is all the different facilities that are covered by your insurance and what the cost would be for that procedure and some outcomes as well.

You would be amazed. You can save thousands of dollars on an MRI by doing a little shopping, with the same quality.

You need a joint replaced. You might save $40, $50, $60,000 for having the hip replaced at a surgical hospital as opposed to a traditional hospital setting. And guess what. The infection rates are lower here at this surgical hospital.

So our bill forces, again, all healthcare providers to show you the true costs. This turns patients back into consumers. It is the only industry in America where we don't allow consumerism, and the ACA is just complicating this.

So what our bill does is require, again, all healthcare companies-- healthcare providers--to show you the true costs, no excuses.

Think about the savings of this. Even I underestimated the savings of this. This will mean $1,000 a month per family. If we adopt our pricetags bill, it will save the average American family a thousand dollars a month.

America spends $5 trillion a year on healthcare now--$5 trillion a year. If we give the American consumers pricetags, it is going to save a trillion dollars.

Just like Black Friday, when we had people out there shopping, what is the first thing you want to know? You want to know the prices. And, by the way, 80 percent of healthcare decisions are made by women. And I know these women are expert shoppers. If you give them the technology, if you give them the prices, then they can figure out what they want to buy and where the best place to do it is.

Our third pillar is to bridge the subsidy issue for families. Look, I don't have to tell any American the challenges with the cost of healthcare. I never cared for the subsidies--the Biden-era subsidies. Again, they were passed with all Democrat votes. But here we are, and they are going to expire. The Democrats set them up to expire December 31. It was really a COVID-era extra bonus.

Remember, the other 80 percent of the premiums are still going to be covered. The original Biden-era subsidies are not expiring, and they typically cover about 80 percent of the premiums.

So I am willing to extend those for a year, as long as we get some of these other things, as long as there is long-term reform. We get our pricetag bill. We address the fraud. And then what we would do is slowly start putting money into your healthcare savings account.

Let me say that again. The Federal Government, rather than sending money to the insurance companies, we are going to put money in your healthcare savings account to pay toward your deductibles.

Remember, your deductibles under ObamaCare went from $1,000 a year to $15,000 a year. So our bill would start taking part of that money and turning you into a consumer. You combine our pricetags bill, putting money into your savings accounts, and then we are going to see true consumerism, and we are going to see the cost of healthcare come down 20 percent.

Our next pillar that I would like to talk about is high-risk pool protection. Now, what does that mean? Certainly, ObamaCare did some good things, and one of them was to protect people with preexisting conditions.

You may know, but I was an obstetrician. I delivered a baby every day for 25 years. And the most common preexisting condition that wasn't covered was pregnancy. Less than half of pregnancies are covered--are planned. Excuse me. Less than 50 percent of pregnancies are covered, and people buy their health insurance. They didn't think they needed maternity coverage. But guess what. They did.

So I want to make sure everyone's preexisting conditions are covered. I want everyone to have meaningful, affordable access to healthcare, and I want to make sure we protect this. But one way we protect that issue and drive the cost of healthcare down is a reinsurance pool--a high-risk, invisible reinsurance pool--so that when any person in America hits a certain spending amount, they would go into this high- risk pool. They would be State run. We need State money in the game as well.

Everybody that is getting insurance through that State needs to be contributing--probably $3, $4 a month--to that high-risk pool as well. And if the insurance companies knew that you were going to be able to grasp out those outliers, it is going to bring the premiums down for everybody else.

So we talk a lot about CSRs. You could take half of the money that we would save by funding the CSRs and put that money into the start of high-risk pools, and all of a sudden, you have got something going here. If you would implement our plan, I really do think you are going to see healthcare costs go down by a third, maybe 50 percent, but at least by a third. Between pricetags, between funding your HSAs, by making patients consumers, by setting up these high-risk pools, we are going to start decreasing the costs of healthcare for everybody.

So those are our five pillars. Let's stop the fraud. Let's give patients pricetags. Let's bridge the subsidy. I am willing to include the subsidy for a year longer if we start bridging to a better future, where we are not throwing good money after bad money. We set up the high-risk pools, and you end up with lower costs for patients.

We are fighting for patients. We are fighting for hard-working Americans.

We are not fighting here for big business. We are not here fighting for insurance companies. Small businesses are in desperate need to lower the cost of healthcare. For every business I talk to, every union I talk to, every self-employed person I talk to, the cost of healthcare is a top-three issue. And these pillars will help address that.

This plan was not made overnight. This plan, as I said, started really back in 2010 in a surgeons' lounge.

And when I was elected to come here in 2016, this is one of my three or four issues that I wanted to address. And I have continued to revise and refine and improve this plan from year to year to meet this moment. In fact, it was 2018 that now-Speaker Mike Johnson and I put together a comprehensive replacement bill for the ACA.

And here we are today, no better off. Prices are skyrocketing, and we continue to struggle.

I am encouraged. I think we have some momentum. I continue discussions across the aisle. And what I hear my friends across the aisle saying is that we share a lot of the same goals. We want Americans to have affordable, meaningful healthcare.

And by the way, again, a $15,000 deductible for a family making $120,000 a year--that $15,000 deductible is not the same as access to care.

This is not a conclusive list. There needs to be more. There are more things we can do. We need to expand healthcare association plans. We need to allow insurance to be sold across State lines. We need to take on the PBMs. This is just the start, but this would be a backbone. And I don't know why any of my friends across the aisle would be opposed to any one of these particular pillars.

Our text for our bill is out. The legislative text is out there now. We welcome cosponsors. We welcome this as an opportunity to build toward a bipartisan bill in January.

Americans deserve transparency. They deserve accountability. They deserve affordability. And this plan delivers it.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to use a prop during my remarks.

Mr. President, before I start talking today, I just want to pause for a moment to take a quick drink of the most nutritious, delicious drink known to humankind. So here is to healthy bones and here is to all the hard-working dairy farmers across Kansas and across America.

This summer, the Senate Agriculture Committee worked together to pass this legislation through the committee on a bipartisan basis. Special thanks to our chairman and to our ranking member for working on this with us.

This bill will allow for whole and reduced milk, as well as nutritionally equivalent nondairy options, to be served in schools. This corrects a decades-old policy made here in Congress that consequently created over 10 years of kids without having access to whole milk in schools and, indeed, created a whole generation of young Americans with weak bones.

Passing the Whole Milk for Health Kids Act through the Senate is a huge win for schools, for students, for parents, and for American dairy farmers. We are giving students more choices, schools more flexibility, and ensuring a brighter future for our farmers.

Whole milk delivers 13 essential nutrients and has enough fat content to help students absorb vitamins like A, D, E, and K. It is also packed with protein that helps keep the student full all the way through those long afternoon math classes and then on through gym and on through their sports activities, until they get home at night for dinner. Simply put, it is one of the healthiest--it is the healthiest--option in the cafeteria.

Bringing whole milk and nutritionally equivalent beverages to schools would help fight early onset osteoporosis, osteopenia, and other diet- related diseases by providing students with critical nutrients-- nutrients like calcium, potassium, and vitamin D--that we are all lacking today.

It strengthens bones. It helps your immune system. It builds healthy habits, and it tastes great.

As the grandson of a dairy farmer, as an OB-GYN for over 30 years, it may seem like I am a bit biased, but I assure you this legislation is a slam-dunk solution for our Nation.

Of course, there is always room to improve our public health, and I look forward to working with our colleagues who, I understand, also have a few thoughts on this legislation.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, before we wrap up this Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, I just want to go back over a couple things as well. Senator Welch, it is always a pleasure to work with you. Whether we are trying to connect high-speed internet or give milk to schools, it is always a joy. I appreciate your hard work and greatly appreciate your staff and my staff as well. I think our staff never gets enough credit. They did all the heavy lifting--the chairman and ranking member, of course, and their staff, and the Ag Committee's staff as well.

Senator Alsobrooks, thank you so much for coming down this morning and educating me on this disability issue as well. And I see the Senator from New Mexico Mr. Lujan is here as well and is also engaged in this effort, and we appreciate his support and many, many, many others.

So a big thanks. This has been a multiyear process for my staff, a personal goal. I was raised on whole milk. I didn't know there was anything except whole milk, and I always wondered why all of a sudden our youth weren't drinking any milk.

And just many of us prefer the taste of it, and guess what, nutritionally, I think it has some really great qualities as well.

Mr. President, I would like to ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 111, S. 222.

I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I don't have to tell anybody in this room that this is day 39 of a Democrat shutdown--day 39.

A real common question I get is: Who is winning? Are the Republicans winning? Are the Democrats winning?

I will tell the Presiding Officer: No one wins when there is a government shutdown--especially when it goes on this long--and it is certainly not the American people.

My heart goes out with empathy to those folks who have not received a paycheck since October 1--hard-working Americans. I especially feel for our TSA workers, our air traffic control workers, all those people who are out there keeping us safe, our Capitol Police. All those folks who are involved in the day-to-day safety of Americans, thank you for continuing to work without being paid.

It is interesting to me to understand why the Democrats have shut the government down. And you can blame whomever you want to, but I think it is an 80-20 issue that Americans don't think it is right to shut down the government, holding everybody hostage over these Biden ObamaCare bonuses. So $35 billion a year, that is what they are holding the government up over--$35 billion a year--these enhanced Biden ObamaCare bonuses.

That is one-half of 1 percent of the Federal budget that we are keeping everything else under wraps for--$35 billion that is being given, by the way, to insurance companies--another subsidy to insurance companies.

Overall, ObamaCare actually costs the Federal Government closer to $150 billion a year. That is right. We are spending about $150 billion of your taxpayer dollars supplementing other people's healthcare.

It was interesting. When they sold this to the American people, they said it would cost $40 billion or $50 billion. But we are already triple that, and that is what the American taxpayers are paying. That is $400 million a day. That is right. We are giving insurance companies $400 million a day of stipends from the ACA, from ObamaCare--taxpayer money, $40 million a day.

If you look at this ObamaCare overall, by the way, there is about $25 billion of fraud. And we are going to get into that in a second. And, again, there is $35 billion of these Biden ObamaCare bonuses, and, overall, it is a $150-billion-a-year project.

These dollars are funneled straight into the coffers of big insurance cartels through ObamaCare subsidies. All the while, they deny claims. Think about what insurance companies are doing today. Through prior authorization and other issues, they are able to deny claims, to jack up costs for everyday families, sending many into bankruptcy. All the while, they are boosting their profits, driving up their stock values.

Now, what do you mean ``driving up stock values''? You know, there is driving up stocks, and there is driving up stocks. I think, when you take a look at this one chart here--and I believe that President Trump put this on Truth Social today, as well. United--this is since ObamaCare was enacted. UnitedHealthcare Group is now up almost 1,200 percent. This is their stock price. CIGNA is at 800 percent. I know you are feeling sorry for Humana at only 500 percent. Molina here is at 859 percent as well.

So, certainly, we understand that these insurance companies have profited from these direct subsidies from ObamaCare going into their bank accounts. But what is important is these subsidies aren't really helping the little guy. It is corporate welfare on steroids that boosts the profits of giants like UnitedHealthcare, which pocketed over $14 billion in earnings last year alone, laughing all the way to the bank on the backs of struggling taxpayers--$14 billion in earnings. Don't feel sorry for them that they are not going to get this $35-billion-a- year subsidy.

The big winner of ObamaCare has always been and will always be large health insurance companies, they and the lobbyists who helped write ObamaCare.

I want to remind everyone, though, that the ACA ended up being not so affordable as well. Premiums are up over 200 percent and sometimes 400 percent since its conception, and we are expecting another spike of 25 percent increase in premiums. Regardless of what Congress does or doesn't do with ObamaCare, the premiums are going to go up 25 percent. And for the most part, the government stands to pay for that entire increase.

The way ObamaCare is set up, you pay a percentage of your income. So if the insurance rates--if the premiums go up 10 percent, 20 percent, 100 percent, the government is going to subsidize and take care of all that increase. That is one reason why the insurance companies wrote ObamaCare this way. There is basically no recourse. They know, whatever they make the premium, the government is going to pay it. That is why it is not working.

And what else? ObamaCare, like Medicaid, is not meaningful healthcare. With an average deductible of $5,000, that is not meaningful access to healthcare. ObamaCare is an abstract failure. It is expensive. It doesn't work. It doesn't give you access.

I think everything I have said so far is undeniable. It is inarguable. It is factual. But I want to turn now to think about goals--goals that Republicans, Democrats, and Americans would have when it comes to healthcare. Republicans want every American to have meaningful, affordable access to healthcare. And a $5,000 deductible for people at 200 or 300 percent of the poverty level, frankly, does not give you meaningful access to healthcare.

I want to turn to talk about fraud just a little bit more. Get this: 35 to 40 percent of ObamaCare recipients that are enrolled in ObamaCare never file a claim.

Let me say that again. There are 24 million people on ObamaCare, and 35, 40 percent of those people never file a claim. These are ghost people. They don't even know they are on ObamaCare. They have been falsely enrolled in ObamaCare.

Some people would say: Oh, but there are always some people that don't file a claim. It is usually more like 10 percent. More like 10 percent of people in a pool of insurance products are not filing a claim. In this case, it is 35 to 40 percent.

And, overall, I think we could say that this group of people on ObamaCare is a high-risk group. Big cities like Chicago will push people who took early retirement and push them onto ObamaCare. These are typically sick people who have been pushed off other plans and they went toward ObamaCare.

Trust me, I am going to address that. That is why we need a high-risk pool that would address those types of folks as well. But the point here is that some 10 million people on ObamaCare are not using it, but the insurance companies are getting the entire premium paid by the Federal Government. So 10 million people, a premium every month--it is like a slot machine going to big insurance companies.

So what is the solution? Instead of giving money to insurance companies, let's give it to the American people. Let me say that again. Instead of giving money to the insurance companies, let's give it to hard-working Americans--what a novel idea. Let's turn patients into consumers once again by funding some type of an HSA or a flexible spending account. Call it what you want to. But instead of giving the insurance companies dollars--these premium dollars--let's give that money to hard-working Americans.

I did miss one point I wanted to make when it comes to fraud. In addition, to address those people that are ghosts, there are ways to fix that--real simple ones. No. 1 is to have some type of meaningful ID. Right now, basically, you could give an insurance peddler out there just your name and your birth date, and they can enroll you.

They need to go through the same type of regimen that it would take, say, to enroll for Medicare. There are biometrics that we can use as well.

But, in addition to that, all we would have to do is have a monthly payment. And I understand; it doesn't have to be a lot. You are at 150 percent of poverty level; you don't have a lot of money. But if there is a $10 or a $20 payment coming out of your Apple Pay card once a month, you would see that every month. And if you didn't know you were enrolled in something, it would force you to call this company and say: Hey, I didn't sign up for this. And we need the highest enforcement levels when people are defrauding the Federal Government like this as well.

Let me return now to our flexible spending accounts, our HSAs. Right now, there is about $12 billion every year we are spending on cost- share reductions--CSRs, as they are called up here. So we are spending about $12 billion a year on these cost-sharing reductions. In addition to that, there is another $35 billion we have been spending on these ObamaCare enhanced bonuses, if you will.

So our belief is that we take both of those fundings--the $12 billion and the $35 billion--and put it on an HSA card, no different than we do with food stamps or all the other Federal programs, and use that money, then, for your out-of-pocket expenses. You couldn't use it on premiums. That would not make any sense. You would use it for your out-of- pockets, your deductibles, your copays, and that would allow you to purchase--to start driving insurance premiums down by picking a product that you know that you have some money in your own bank account, so to speak, to take care of those out-of-pocket expenses.

So, eventually, as this group of people become consumers again and they become better consumers out there, comparing the price of one hospital to another or a surgery center to a hospital or a doctor's office versus another's doctor's office--making those choices themselves--they are going to drive the cost of healthcare down.

And I wanted to remind everybody that we wouldn't touch the original subsidies. So the original ACA subsidies--again, this is pre-Joe Biden--those would remain in place. So don't feel sorry. The insurance companies are still going to get $100 billion a year of these subsidies from the original ACA plan. We are just taking these new enhanced subsidies--this Biden bonus money and the CSR money--and putting those into some type of HSA account.

There are lots of other things we could do, as well, to help drive the true cost of healthcare down. We have talked a lot about a pricetags bill, letting patients become consumers and letting them shop--so forcing hospitals and surgery centers and imaging centers and all other healthcare providers to provide a pricetag along with some type of quality outcomes as well.

We need to end silver loading. We need to expand options. I hope that we could let people choose association healthcare plans or ministry plans as well. There are many, many things we could do to impact the cost of prescription drugs for this group of people as well.

I will start winding it down here and just say, you know, enough with the lies about the so-called affordable care. The big insurance company cartels have formed a monopoly that controls premiums, with the Federal Government acting as their personal ATM, dishing out billions in enhanced subsidies that only inflate their executive bonuses and shareholder dividends, while leaving millions without meaningful access to healthcare.

It is time we demand an end to this rigged system where insurance behemoths rake in tens of billions of dollars in revenue yet rely on some $150 billion in yearly government handouts under the ACA, turning public health into a private profit machine at our expense.

Our carrot-and-stick approach uses federally funded FSAs-HSAs to encourage mindful spending and reward efficient users by converting a portion of their savings into a retirement account eventually.

All of this fosters consumerism.

If you think about the ACA, we are spending $6,500 a year of Federal dollars per each patient--$6,500 per year, per patient. We are not spending any more than that on Medicaid, and then the States are putting their money on top. We might as well move these patients into Medicaid and continue to subsidize these insurance companies.

It makes no sense to anybody up here, but yet we continue to throw good money after bad money.

In this case, we are keeping the Federal Government closed because of this insane program. And maybe it is just pride. Maybe it is just the pride of my friends across the aisle that they won't admit that the ACA--``Unaffordable Care Act,'' ObamaCare--was a failure.

It destroys competition. It destroys consumerism. Overregulation always leads to consolidation of industry. We have seen it with insurance companies, with hospitals. We are seeing it now with doctors' practices even.

It is going to be hard to fix this overnight. This has been the law of the land for 15 years. But everything where we are today--the reason that rural hospitals are going broke, the reason that we have $5,000 deductibles, the reason that premiums are going up 25 percent, it is because of the ObamaCare rules.

Again, the insurance companies wrote ObamaCare. They, their lobbyists, big hospital systems--they are the ones that wrote ObamaCare, and here we are. They have been on the gravy train now for over a decade--$150 billion a year for these 24 million people.

I want to open the government. I want to open the government, but I can't be forced to throw good money after bad money.

So many of us want to fix healthcare. That is why I came here. Fixing healthcare won't be easy. It is 18 percent of our GDP. But there are fixes out there. It will take a bipartisan effort. It is going to take months and not weeks and not days to fix it.

All I can do is, I have outlined a plan here. If my friends across the aisle would embrace just two simple concepts of dealing with fraud and instead of giving money to big insurance companies, we give it to hard-working Americans, I think that is framing two pieces of a very good healthcare package--a very good, bipartisan healthcare package.

So I am asking you to come across the aisle and shake our hands and say: Yes, let's get to work on that.

But in the meanwhile, we need to get the government open.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, today we recognize Quinn Lloyd of Columbus, KS, and honor the life and legacy of a young man whose kindness, character, and generosity have had a profound effect on his community and our Nation.

Known for his warm personality and infectious smile, Quinn was a beloved son, brother, friend, and teammate. A force on the gridiron and joy to all who knew him, Quinn brightened the lives of everyone around him.

Even in the face of unimaginable tragedy, Quinn's generosity has continued through the gift of life he provided to others in need through organ donation. This incredible act of selflessness and courage exemplifies the strength of his spirit and the depth of his character.

On November 4, 2025, his family, friends, and the Columbus, KS, community joined together for Quinn's Honor Walk, a moving ceremony that celebrated both his life and the hope he has given others. His gift will help others live, and his light will continue to shine through the lives he touched.

Quinn will be laid to rest alongside his sister Ruby, surrounded by a community that loved him deeply. Though his time with us was far too short, his legacy of kindness and generosity will endure for generations and continue to inspire.

I now ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Quinn Lloyd and in offering our prayers and deepest sympathies to his family, friends, and the entire Columbus, KS, community.

Mr. President, good morning. Good morning to all my colleagues here today.

Now, as all the Senators know, as all America knows, my friends across the aisle have kidnapped the Federal Government. In fact, they have now voted a dozen times not to reopen the government. And even surprising to most of us, twice they voted against funding the military during these challenging times. I think it is obvious to all America that this is a political shutdown; that this is show biz to them; that this is an opportunity for their left, lazy media to shout and scream at President Trump and to kowtow to their far-left, Marxist base.

Now, when you kidnap somebody or an entity, you have to have a ransom. Now, the opening ransom from the Democrats was an additional $1.5 trillion added to our national debt, borrowed from my grandchildren--$1.5 trillion. It was just this week that the Federal Government passed a $38 trillion level for our national debt. We are

spending a trillion dollars a year on interest alone. So that was the opening ransom.

And now they seem to be locked in on throwing more money at a very broken ACA, the 24 million people on the ACA.

But it is interesting to me how, when they want to talk about healthcare, they hide behind rural hospitals, that they think, ``Oh, we are going to help those,'' when 97 percent of rural America voted for President Trump. And under President Trump's leadership, in our Big Beautiful Bill we have $50 billion of a health transformation fund for rural America. But the first thing the Democrats want to do is to take that away.

It has been maybe one of the most hypocritical statements I have ever heard. They want to help rural America, help rural hospitals, but they want to take away this $50 billion transformation fund.

Instead, they want to put all their eggs in one basket on Medicaid. Look, a hospital loses money every time they see a Medicaid patient. Every time a Medicaid patient walks into the emergency room, that hospital is losing money on that patient as well. Despite that, the Republicans, in our Big Beautiful Bill, increased spending on Medicaid to the tune of $200 billion a year.

We need to work on getting people off of Medicaid. Let's get them back to work and help them get good health insurance as well.

Now, their latest idea is that they want to throw more money at the ACA. They want to throw more money for the 24 million people on the ACA. Look, Democrats own healthcare, right? The ACA has been the law of the land for 15 years. If any hospital fails today, tomorrow, next week, next year, the year after, if anybody's health premiums are going up--and they are--then it is on the backs of Democrats.

The first thing you need to realize is that when you are in a hole, stop digging. When do they think we can stop throwing good money after bad money? Look, I want to fix healthcare. I want to drive down the cost of healthcare.

Now, as my colleague from Oklahoma pointed out, the premiums for the ACA are up 200 percent, is what he mentioned--I think that is a pretty good number--over the last 6 years. But beyond that, the average deductible for the ACA now is $5,000. Can you imagine you are a family of four--an average salary back in Kansas is $60,000 a year. And the Democrats think throwing more money at the ACA, which gives you a $5,000 deductible, is going to solve the problem. Well, of course, it is not.

So we need to address the affordability of the ACA, and we need to address the premiums. Then, beyond that, we need to address the fraud.

Look, this program has grown from a $50 billion-a-year projection by the famous Congressional Budget Office--they said it would be $50 billion. We are spending $150 billion a year now on the ACA, and we think there is $25 to $50 billion of fraud in that.

I think that if you polled Americans and said ``Look, there is a Federal program which is paying subsidies for people's premiums, but there is $50 billion of fraud in that,'' I think Americans would say ``Hey, we sent you to Congress, to the Senate, to fix the darn problem.'' And we know how to do that. This is a simple fix.

Not one time have you heard a Democrat say: We want to fix what is broken in the ACA. No. All they want to do is throw more money at it. It would be so easy to fix the fraud, and we know how to do it.

How do we address the cost of healthcare? Well, it starts with adding pricetags, right? Can you imagine walking into a restaurant and trying to decide if you want the two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, onions on a sesame seed bun versus the two quarter-pounders and didn't know the price difference? Of course not. But that is what we are asking Americans to do when they have a procedure done. They have no idea what it is going to cost; they have no idea what outcomes are.

Americans need to realize that you could have a surgery done in one facility for--let's say it is a hip replacement. Maybe one hospital gets $10,000, but another one, they are reimbursing at $50,000. I am not making those numbers up. I ran a hospital. Those were the exact numbers just 6 or 7 years ago. By the way, the hospital that was getting reimbursed the lower amount had better outcomes, less infections, and less blood clots.

Look, the Democrats own healthcare right now. These are their policies. When they are ready to do something more than just throw money at one of the most broken systems in the history of America, then we are here to talk to you. But first of all, we need to open the Federal Government.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I call up my amendment No. 3213 and ask that it be reported by number.

Madam President, the American flag represents something deeply personal to most of us in this room. Someone from every generation in my family, going back to the Civil War, has served under one flag--the American flag.

It is more than stars and stripes. This one flag is a symbol of sacrifice, of freedom and unity. Every time we place our hands over our hearts, we are reminded that we are one Nation under God. We are not a patchwork of ideologies competing for space on a flagpole. No flag that divides or politicizes should ever be flown on a Federal building.

This is about respect. It is about unity and putting America first, standing together under one flag--the Stars and Stripes--and that is why I urge my colleagues to support our amendment, ensuring only the American flag is flown on Federal buildings.

I move to proceed to the motion to reconsider the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to H.R. 5371.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the cloture vote to proceed to H.R. 5371.

Mr. President, here we are, day No. 2 of the Schumer shutdown, or should we call this the AOC shutdown? After all, when the puppet master gets outmaneuvered by his own radical Squad, who is really calling the shots? Shouldn't we give the Squad some credit here for this shutdown?

Now, let me say that a different way. This Democrat shutdown is nothing but a cynical political shutdown, with Senator Schumer kowtowing to his radical, leftwing extremists. He is desperately recoiling, fighting to stave off a primary and to save his party from the piranhas in their own midst. Look, I am sure he feels like he has been steamrolled by President Trump and the overwhelming ``America First'' mandate that 78 million American patriots who voted for real change.

Everything else--all other excuses--is just a pathetic smokescreen to hide their failures. But let's take a closer look at some of these Democrat excuses. Again, they are decoys; they are camouflage and why this is indeed a Schumer shutdown.

First of all, there is no substance to their arguments. They want to talk about healthcare. Boy, do Republicans want to fix healthcare, but the real problem is the cost of healthcare. Healthcare has gone up 400 percent in the last couple of decades. It is the cost of healthcare. All my Democratic friends want to do is just keep throwing more and more money, more and more subsidies, making big healthcare systems rich.

Premiums are going to go up 20 percent this year--20 percent. Again, healthcare is what is leading inflation. If it wasn't for healthcare inflation, we would probably be down closer to 2 percent. So regardless of what happens here in Congress in the next 3 to 4 months, your healthcare premium is going to go up 20 percent on average.

This shutdown is keeping us from working on the real problem, and that is the cost of healthcare. Think about Republican solutions that we have out there right now.

We have legislation that we call the Price Tags bill that we hope to debate, work up, and mark up in our healthcare committee this fall. What that bill does is it forces every hospital, surgery center, imaging center to put a pricetag on the procedures you are going to have done.

Can you imagine walking into a restaurant and not knowing the price of a good Kansas steak versus some cheap-grade steak from another country? You couldn't imagine that. So when you are sitting there, deciding whether to have your hip replaced at a hospital like in my hometown of Great Bend, America, versus having it done at another facility, you will see that you can have the same procedure done for maybe a fifth of what it costs at other facilities. By the way, we have better outcomes, and we have better customer service as well. Patients deserve pricetags.

You know, other solutions out there are expanding healthcare savings accounts where you can use pretax dollars for different opportunities as well.

If you really want me to solve the riddle of the cost of healthcare, we need to make America healthier again. That is why Republicans, under President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, were trying to pass policies which would lead to a healthier America.

Think about it--70 percent of Americans have a chronic disease. You think about heart disease and hypertension, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer, and mental health issues. Ninety percent of the healthcare dollars being spent in this country are spent on those chronic diseases.

Think about our youth. Twenty percent of our youth are on a prescription drug, 30 percent are obese, and 40 percent of our youth have a chronic disease. We have a mental health epidemic in our youth as well.

So if you want to drive down the cost of healthcare, we need to make a healthier America, we need more transparency, we need to promote innovation, and we need to turn patients into consumers again.

Then lastly and most importantly, we need to make America healthy again--and for all the right reasons. The benefit of driving down the cost of healthcare is just one of them. Think about this: America is spending 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare right now. Singapore is spending 4 percent. Most advanced countries are going to spend half of what we do on healthcare.

People ask, well, why are our outcomes worse? It is because we are sick. We have sicker people. The incidence of diabetes, hypertension-- all those things are going through the roof. That is why our outcomes aren't as good as other countries' are.

Rural healthcare. Let's talk about rural healthcare for a second. My goodness, do I care about rural healthcare. I was born in a rural hospital. I had an OB practice for 25 years in rural America. I was on call every day, every other day for 25 years. You can call my wife and ask her--we didn't sleep through the night for 25 years. We delivered a baby almost every day. Then I was blessed to lead a group of doctors and run that rural hospital for over a decade as well. I oversaw three health departments. If anybody understands the importance of rural healthcare, I think it would be me. That is why I have spent a lifetime trying to fix all of these riddles that we have right now.

Now, my friends across the aisle say that they are worried that rural hospitals are closing all of a sudden--all of a sudden--and that they want to try to fix this issue. Well, they have actually contributed to the problem.

But here is one of the most hypocritical things I have ever heard since being up here. So the Democrats say that they are closing the government because they want to save rural hospitals, but the first thing they are going to do is take $50 billion away from our rural health transformation funding--$50 billion from rural health transformation funding--something I have been working on with this administration since the New Year, what that would look like if we had the money. But no. What my friends across the aisle want to do is they want to control healthcare; they want to keep throwing good money after bad money. They think that Medicaid is going to save the day.

Let me tell you something about Medicaid. Only 5 percent of Medicaid funding goes to rural America. Five percent of Medicaid funding goes to

rural America. Hospitals and doctors lose money on every Medicaid patient we see. Now, it doesn't mean we shouldn't take care of them. We took care of everybody in our hospital regardless of their ability to pay, regardless if they were a citizen or not. We didn't know, and we didn't care. We went in and took care of these patients. But certainly, running a private OB practice and running a hospital, I realized that we lose money on every Medicaid patient we see.

Having Medicaid is not the same as access to healthcare. Who in the world even thinks that could be the case? Talk to any doctor, talk to any patient that has Medicaid. Ask them--let's say they have a herniated disc in their back. Ask them how long it is going to take to get in to see a neurosurgeon. It is going to take 6 months; it is going to take a year.

So, in reality, probably less than half of the doctors, in a true measure, participate in Medicaid. It has to be the most failed system, the biggest waste of money I have ever seen. There are better solutions out there than Medicaid.

I am so excited about, again, solutions. Republicans have solutions. I am so excited about this transformation fund and the opportunity that does that.

Here is what is really rich--here is what is rich. So there are hospitals closing and pharmacies closing today, tomorrow, last year, but that is a result of the Democrats' failed policies. Our legislation that we passed this year--signature legislation that is going to change the course of America--none of that is going to really kick in for 2 or 3 years.

It is just beyond me for the leader of the Democratic Party to sit up here and cry about hospitals closing in rural America today and blaming Republicans. If there is any hospital closing today, tomorrow, next year, the Democrats own it. They own the failed policy, and America gets that. My gosh, I have never heard something so ridiculous in my life.

But, again, Republicans have solutions, and we want to fix it. One of the ways to fix the failure of why these hospitals are failing is the economy that hospitals--rural hospitals are a reflection of the local economy. As agriculture goes, so goes rural America, so goes these hospitals.

By the way, 97 percent of these rural counties voted for President Trump. He is never going to turn his back on them. We as Republicans are not going to turn our backs on them. I wake up every morning trying to figure out, how do we save rural hospitals and rural America? how do we recruit doctors to rural America? how do we recruit nurses to rural America? And all of a sudden, the Democrats have got salvation here, and they care about it? No. They are hiding behind that issue. They are hiding behind it because they don't have any substance to stand on.

Again, the ACA has been the rule of the land for 15 years now. If there are any hospitals failing today, and there are, it is because of the overregulation of the ACA. Just like banks consolidating, hospitals consolidating, healthcare consolidating--all these different entities are consolidating because of overregulation created by Democrats. Our rural transformation funding is going to set those rural counties free to do what they think is best with the money.

All right. Let's go to the next Democrat argument. Let's talk about these COVID-era subsidies for the ACA plans. What a joke. I just absolutely cannot believe they are going to hide behind this one.

So think back to the original ACA. The ACA sets up funding to help supplement insurance premiums for a group of people based upon their ability to pay. That is probably 70, 80 percent of the premium right now, on average, is the way it was set up to be. In some cases, it was 95 percent.

But then COVID comes along, and the Democrats boost those subsidies, so that now many Americans aren't contributing anything to those particular funds. And what this has led to is mass fraud, OK? So these COVID-era subsidies have led to mass fraud.

Let me put some dollars and cents on this. When the ACA was first written, they thought we would be spending maybe $25, $50 billion a year on those subsidies. Well, we are spending $150 billion a year on these subsidies. We think that probably a third of that is waste, fraud, and abuse, and I could spend the next half hour talking about why we think there is waste, fraud, and abuse within it. But the way it was created allows for waste, fraud, and abuse. I can't fix that today. I can't fix it tomorrow. We need to fund the government and get back to work on this issue, and we know how to do it.

But for Republicans to agree to these subsidies being continued, the first thing we have to do is to address the fraud. I bet that is a 90- 10 issue. I bet that 90 percent of Americans would like for us to fix the fraud in that issue and make sure the people who need it the most are getting the help.

So that is one issue on the COVID-era subsidies. The next big issue-- I want to go back to premiums, OK. That is the real issue. These premiums are going to go up 20 percent this year. So regardless of what we do here, the premiums are going to go up 20 percent.

That is where the sting is coming from, is how much these premiums are going up, and my friends across the aisle just want to keep throwing money at it. They want this corporate welfare where these subsidies are basically enriching big insurance companies. That is exactly what is happening. These subsidies are basically going to this consolidated insurance business out there.

Most States, like mine, only have two or three insurance carriers left standing. When these subsidies go up for the people with an ACA plan, guess what? They are going to use that as an excuse to increase your plan that you are getting through that hard-working job of yours as well.

So to have a meaningful discussion about these COVID-era subsidies, we need to--No. 1 is to address the fraud, and No. 2 is we need to address the rate of increase of these premiums as well.

And listen to this: Even if this COVID subsidy went away, the Federal Government on average would be paying 80 percent of the premium. So we would be paying 80 percent rather than 90 percent of the premium. But if the premium has gone up 20 percent, just think about the difference on 80 percent versus 90 percent. That is where the sting is truly coming from.

When do Democrats want to have a serious conversation about this, the real conversation about the cost of healthcare?

My friends across the aisle want to bring these two issues together. They want to, you know, take a hostage. In order to keep the government open, they are saying: You have to give us these COVID-era subsidies, to prolong them. They are supposed to expire December 31 of this year. The Democrats passed this. It was supposed to be for COVID, and, like all the other COVID subsidies that drove us into massive debt, there was a sunset on it. They wrote the law. If they didn't want it to sunset, why didn't they continue the program for infinity just like they did with the original subsidies?

So this, to me, is two different issues. We have the issue here of keeping the government open, and we have the issue here of healthcare. I want to take care of both of them, but it is going to take weeks, probably months, for us to come up with a solution for these COVID subsidies. So I don't think it is fair to keep the government closed down because they weren't willing to talk about this.

It is interesting that we didn't hear a thing about this--at least I didn't--from the minority leader, that he was concerned about this, until just a couple days ago. Again, it makes me think he wanted the shutdown. He wanted the shutdown to appease his liberal left base.

Here is another argument the Democrats are making. You know, there is a fight about healthcare for illegal aliens. I don't think anyone can argue that before our working-families tax-cut bill--our signature bill that is going to grow the economy--that before that legislation, that illegal aliens were getting healthcare. Even the CBO--and I hate to pick and choose when I use the CBO numbers--but the CBO said that 2 million illegal aliens were getting healthcare subsidies or free healthcare because of the loose, just unfettered process that States were using to verify who was eligible for Medicare.

That is not me; that is not a Republican; the CBO said 2 million illegal

aliens were getting care each year on the backs of American taxpayers. I don't know if that number is perfectly accurate, but if it is 1 million, 2 million, or 3 million, certainly illegal aliens were getting free healthcare on the backs of American taxpayers.

So when the Democrats want to go in there and gut that bill and end the fixes, the loopholes we closed, I don't know how they can look America in the eye and say that is not the case.

But regardless, I think that is a small issue. I think that is a red herring. That is not really what the issue is. It is just one more thing they can argue about to get America's eyes off the true challenge within their own party.

The minority leader says we are not negotiating. I just think that is such an untruth, that we are not negotiating--my gosh. The Appropriations Committee--the Republican-led Appropriations Committee-- has been negotiating since President Trump was--actually, since we were--sworn in, in January.

And we have just nothing but compliments to Senator Susan Collins and her team and the Democrats on the Appropriations team. They are doing their job, but Leader Schumer--Minority Leader Schumer--wants to do this negotiation in the back doors. He wants to continue the status quo where, for the government funding, they go back behind a door in a closed office. The cameras are off, and they want to cut a deal.

You can talk about the four corners up here: the Speaker of the House, minority leader of the House, minority leader in the Senate, and then the majority leader, the head of the Senate here, of course, John Thune.

So Senator Schumer thinks they can go behind closed doors--and there are two New Yorkers in that room--and build all their bridges to nowhere. But Republicans want to fund the government in open daylight, through the Appropriations Committee, with the lights on and the cameras on.

The Appropriations Committee passes legislation. There are 12 buckets of funding to fund this discretionary spending that Senate Republicans are trying to lead here--12 buckets of funding. Again, under their great leadership, they have passed 8 of these 12 buckets out of committee. It is almost 90 percent of funding for the Federal Government--discretionary spending, again, of course--that they have already finished the job on.

Senator Susan Collins has done an incredible job getting it through committee--bipartisan. You look at the votes on these bills, and it is 25 to 0, 23 to 2, 24 to 1--huge bipartisan victories done in the light of day. And then those should come here to the floor, and let America see exactly what is in them.

And if there is a bridge to nowhere in there, let me stand up here and offer an amendment to strike that funding, and then let that Senator defend why his or her State should have this bridge to nowhere.

That is what is supposed to happen in the light of day, but Senator Schumer wants to go back to the Dark Ages, where he can go in a back room--a back, New York room--and then cut a deal for all of his bridges to nowhere.

The House, I believe, has passed all 12 of their funding bills out of committee.

Now, we have got three of those across the floor. There are five more sitting there, but Senator Schumer refuses to release anybody on his side to vote for them, even though they voted for them in committee. Why? It is part of the political theater. He wants this shutdown.

So I think America sees this, that we wanted to negotiate in good faith, but Schumer's idea--Senator Schumer's idea--of negotiating is now to go behind closed doors, where he is one of four people in the room, and then go tell the President, who was elected by 28 million people, and he wants to tell him what to do.

So I asked, you know, as we go through this process--I asked myself this morning: So what are AOC and the Squad, who are empowered by the liberal legacy media, asking Senator Schumer to do or really telling him what to do? What are AOC, the Squad, the liberal media--what are they demanding from Senator Schumer?

Well, they told him to take a hostage, right? So he did. He took a hostage. He took these COVID-era subsidies as hostage and the $1.5 trillion of added funding as hostage, and now they are asking him to shoot the hostage.

So the Squad and Senator Schumer, they took the bait. They took the bait--hook, line, and sinker--like jumping into Brer Rabbit's briar patch. And guess what. They are about to get mowed down like dry cornstalks in a Kansas tornado. They took the bait. They took the bait, empowering the White House to finally shrink this Federal Government, this monster of a beast that we have here now.

You know, when Joe Biden was sworn in, in 2021, there were about 2.8 million Federal employees. So President Biden started with 2.8 million. By the time he finished, we had over 3 million Federal employees.

Now, President Trump is going to split the difference there. So we are still not back to pre-COVID, pre-Biden levels of Federal employment.

Look, I am grateful for every Federal employee, and many of them do incredible work. But I think it is no secret that we could all be a little more efficient, that we all could work a little harder. And if we had a few less regulations, I think we would need a few less Federal employees as well.

I don't want to sound callous or not caring. I am grateful for every job an American has. But my goal would be to help move some of these people with some of these Federal jobs and move them into the real world and adding to GDP rather than subtracting from GDP. That would be my goal.

There is a reasonable number of people we need to do the work of the Federal Government, but I just think going from 2.8 million pre-COVID to over 3 million just seems to be too much.

So, like I said, the Squad has led the Democrat Party into Brer Rabbit's briar patch, and they are about to get mowed down like cornstalks in a Kansas twister.

I think the last thing I want to go back to here is that the Democrats were saying that they really want to add $1.5 trillion to our debt. Again, we have $37 trillion in national debt now as a nation. We are spending almost $3 billion a day on interest. That is right, America--$3 billion a day on interest alone, a trillion dollars a year. And they want to add $1.5 trillion to our national debt.

But get this: In November of this last year, America rejected that plan, OK. That is why the voters gave Republicans the White House, the House, and the Senate. They didn't want us to borrow another $1.5 trillion.

So what is motivating the Squad? What is motivating Senator Schumer to do this, to shut down the government? What is motivating their lust for power and their control of the American people?

You know, I think the socialists have always thought, if you controlled healthcare, that is the first step in controlling the people, right? So what is motivating them?

I think No. 1 is--let's just be frank here: It is Trump derangement syndrome. I think that is their No. 1 motivation to shut the government down. It is Trump derangement syndrome. They have a hatred for President Trump that I have never seen anything like this before in my life.

I think the second reason is the liberal left has not realized they lost the election. You know, you go through these stages of grief and denial. That is the first one. The liberals have still not realized they lost the election. Seventy-eight million people voted for Republicans to control the House, the Senate, and the White House. They are rejecting the Democrats' lust for power to control Americans, to borrow from our grandchildren. So that is their motivation.

Look, if they want to change these policies, then go win the election. If you want to change the policies, go win the election. You know, I think back to 2020, and the Democrats had a sweep, right? The Democrats swept the elections in 2020, and they added $2 trillion a year in debt. So they grew the budget from about $5 trillion to $7 trillion overnight. But when it came to keeping the government open, the Republicans didn't go back to them and say: Hey, we are going to keep the government open if you decrease your spending by $2 trillion a year.

We didn't take that hostage. We could have. We could have. Does that

make sense, comparing the 2020 election to this election? The Democrats swept in 2020. They came in and added $2 trillion of spending. But over a dozen times, Republicans walked the plank and said: We will keep the government open.

I wasn't happy about it then. I am not happy about it now. I am not happy about the spending levels that we are fighting for right now. I think that they are way too much.

If you want to continue your liberal, socialist policies, Democrats, go win an election. Go win an election. We came through with a bill for America to cut taxes, to grow jobs, to make the government more efficient, and look at what is happening. The gas prices are down. Grocery prices are down. The border is secure. All of those types of things are happening under Republican leadership.

We want to address the cost of healthcare. We truly, truly do. I want to point out that we are just not going to negotiate borrowing another $1.5 trillion for continued throwing money at healthcare issues in order to keep the government open.

Again, these are apples and oranges. We need to open the government back. We need to fund the government for a couple of months--a clean CR. Let Senator Collins and her team, working with Democrats, get that other 10 percent of funding across the finish line. In 2 months' time, we can bring those bills to the floor in front of the American public, debate them, offer amendments, make Senators defend their bridges to nowhere, as I call them, and then continue to work on healthcare.

And it is not going to be easy. It is going to be painful. When $5 trillion is being spent on healthcare in this country every year, and all these big corporations are grabbing that money as it goes by their front desk, it is not going to be easy to drive down the cost of healthcare, but we have to do it.

To me, this is common sense. We are asking the Democrats to vote for a clean CR, based upon levels of spending that every Senate Democrat in here that was in office voted for just 7 months ago. Seven months ago, every Democrat in here voted for these spending limits.

Again, a dozen times under Joe Biden, Republicans walked that plank and kept the government open. I pledge to you; I pledge to every Democrat: No one is going to work harder than I will to help solve this riddle for healthcare, focused on driving the cost of healthcare down.

But at the end of the day, the shutdown keeps us from doing the real work of the people, from having real debates about the cost of healthcare, our national debt, our spending, and all those things. During a shutdown, things freeze up here, and we can't do the work that we need to do in our communities to address these different problems.

One of our Presidents once said this, and I am going to quote him:

I know that it is said that one of the easiest things in

the world is to give away somebody else's money. But

government does not have money except the money it takes from

the people. And so every time we talk about spending money on

this or that program--

On healthcare or COVID subsidies--

let us remember that the government has no money except what

it takes from the people. And the people know that.

And they are feeling it. They are feeling the pain of the government taking so much money. That is my quote.

I go back to the President's quote here:

And the people are tired of big government taking all the

money they earn.

Boy, if you are a Senator up here and you are listening to anybody back home, I think you understand folks back home are tired of Big Government taking all the money they can earn.

So I ask my friends across the aisle--and they truly are friends. There is not an enemy. There is not a Democrat I would call an enemy. President Reagan said he had no political enemy, only political opponents. There is no difference than when we see gladiators on Sunday playing these football games, and at the end of the game, they are shaking each other's hands. Both parties should fight for what they think is right. But if we stay fixed on the goals--the common goals-- working toward a balanced budget, keeping the government open, driving down the cost of healthcare, and all of these things, I bet most of us agree on those goals.

But in the meantime, we need to keep the government open. We need to pass a clean CR.

Again, let's let the Appropriations Committee continue their negotiation to do their job, as we all work together up here.

So as long as we stay on those same goals--those same goals, like I said--we want to keep the government open. We want to work toward a balanced budget. I want to fix healthcare. I want to fix the cost of healthcare.

To anyone up here who agrees on those same goals, I will reach out my hand across the aisle, and I will pledge that we will listen and work together in good faith. But for today, let's pass a clean CR.

I yield the floor.