Defending Public Safety Employee's Retirement Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I wish to spend the next few minutes
speaking about the Supreme Court and particularly the fact that the
Supreme Court has some big cases they are going to hand down probably
tomorrow, Friday, and Monday, before they adjourn for the summer.

I particularly wish to speak about King v. Burwell, which, as the
Presiding Officer knows, could be the beginning of the end of
ObamaCare. In the process, it also will potentially disrupt the health
care coverage for more than 6 million Americans. The Court could issue
its decision, as I said, as early as tomorrow. What they will decide is
whether the IRS is bound by the law which Congress writes and which is
signed by the President or whether they can make it up on their own.

Specifically, the case challenges the legality of subsidies provided
to 6 million people in up to 37 States that they have depended on to
buy their ObamaCare-approved policies, including about 1 million in my
State of Texas.

If the Court rules against the IRS, it will literally be the third
strike against ObamaCare from the Supreme Court of the United States.
It would serve as yet another reminder of the administration's
overreach of its authority under the Constitution--a practice that has
become disturbingly routine.

This administration and our friends across the aisle have failed to
own up to the repeated demonstrations of the flaws of ObamaCare since
it passed in March of 2010. The biggest problem is that this is
partisan legislation jammed through Congress that no Republican in the
Senate voted for, so the responsibility lies clearly at their feet.

Through this law, the administration has wasted billions of dollars
on exchanges that have failed to function properly. My colleagues may
recall that the President even called the healthcare.gov exchange--
which was so broken and just didn't work--a disaster. The President
himself said that.

It is also based on a system that grows the bureaucracy at the
expense of legitimate, needed health care delivery. I would have
thought that if Congress was going to reform health care, it would
certainly include reducing the cost and making it more affordable.
However, time after time, we have seen that ObamaCare has actually
driven up costs. Just last month, one study noted that nearly $274
billion of projected ObamaCare spending will end up going to its
implementation--bureaucratic and administrative costs--and not actually
for health care. That is $274 billion. Do we think that money could
have been better spent providing people with health care policies they
can afford and access to the doctors and the hospitals they need?

Today, ObamaCare has utterly failed to live up to the many promises
the President and congressional Democrats made to the American people.
Seeing the Presiding Officer in the chair reminds me that both he and I
served as attorneys general in our States. One of my responsibilities
in Texas--and no doubt the Presiding Officer's as well--was to enforce
our consumer protection laws. Can my colleagues imagine, if anybody
other than the Federal Government had made the series of promises the
President and congressional Democrats made under ObamaCare that proved
over time to be demonstrably false, whether a company in the private
sector could withstand the flood of lawsuits by the Attorney General
and other consumer protection officials against that company?

I guess the fact is that there is very little recourse to the
American people--certainly the courts--to enforce our consumer
protection laws against the outright deceit and misleading promises
that were made in order to sell ObamaCare, which are clearly, as time
has demonstrated, not true.

The President's trail of broken promises has instead led us to a
damaged health care system and a limping economy. There is a reason why
the economy shrunk last quarter by 0.7 percent. What that means is that
fewer people can find work and their wages are depressed. We need our
economy to grow. But as long as additional and heavy burdens, such as
ObamaCare and unnecessary regulations, are imposed on the private
sector, those jobs and those rising wages are simply not going to
exist.

This week, many are rightly concerned that, depending on what the
Supreme Court decides, millions of people will lose their access to
health care should the Court rule against the President. I must point
out that is a feature of ObamaCare. That is not the fault of the
Supreme Court, and it is not the fault of the opponents of ObamaCare;
it is the fault of the President and of the people who passed ObamaCare
because this will be a feature of ObamaCare, this failed law.
Having said where the responsibility lies, while we didn't contribute
to getting the country in this mess, we are ready, willing, and able to
provide an off-ramp for the millions of people who may have their
health care interrupted. My State, as I indicated earlier, is not
immune. Close to 1 million Texans could suddenly see their costs shoot
up. So I am here to emphatically say to the Texans whose health care
coverage may be disrupted: We will not leave you out in the cold as a
casualty of this flawed law, and we will no longer allow this flawed
piece of legislation to cause additional hardship for hard-working
Texas families.

In order to protect Americans and Texans who may lose their health
care coverage if the Court decides against the President and against
the IRS, we are prepared, having worked for months now, to protect
those who need it as they transition out of ObamaCare.

Make no mistake about it--this will be the beginning of the end of
ObamaCare if the Court rules for the plaintiff in King v. Burwell.

At the same time, we plan to provide an end to the individual and
employer mandates, the opportunity for States to opt out of ObamaCare,
and finally, an end to government-backed health care that the American
people don't want, don't need, and cannot afford.

There is a better alternative. If the Supreme Court rules for King,
we will offer the American people what ObamaCare never could--options,
choices, and the freedom to choose the health care coverage they want
at a price they can afford. Most importantly, we want to allow
individuals as well as the States to opt out of this disastrous law all
across the country. In doing so, Americans can get what they actually
need and not what government tells them they must buy. By empowering
States to opt out, we put the States back in the driver's seat. I must
say, every public opinion poll I have seen indicates that the people
have a lot more confidence in the ability of the States to deal with
their health care needs than they do the Federal Government,
particularly in light of the failed experiment over the last 5 years.
We put the States back in the driver's seat and allow them the flexibility
they need to more effectively lower costs and increase choices.

So while we didn't create this mess, we are ready to do our best to
work together to protect the American people from any more harm caused
by this legislation. The American people deserve real, patient-centered
reforms which, again, lower costs, making it more affordable, and
increase access to care--not the opposite.

If the Court delivers what could be a third strike against ObamaCare,
my colleagues and I are eager to provide the American people with the
freedom and the options they need in order to get the best health care
available at a price they can afford.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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