Executive Session

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCONNELL. Later today, the Senate will vote to advance the nomination of Daniel Domenico to serve as U.S. District Judge for the District of Colorado.

After we vote on his confirmation, we will do the same for Patrick Wyrick, nominated to a vacancy in the Western District of Oklahoma.

Mr. Wyrick is a two-time graduate of the University of Oklahoma and held a clerkship in the Eastern District of Oklahoma at the outset of his legal career. That career included time in private practice, as the State's Solicitor General and, most recently, as Associate Justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

I am sorry to say that this week will mark 1 year since Mr. Wyrick's nomination was first received in the Senate. I hope each of my colleagues will join me in long-overdue support for its prompt consideration on the floor.

Over the course of the week, as I have outlined, we will consider four other well-qualified nominees who have been waiting on the Executive Calendar for far too long. We will build on the action taken last week to restore some reason and sanity to the nominations process, which has suffered in recent years under the burden of partisan obstruction.

Before the week is through, we will also turn to the nomination of David Bernhardt to lead the Department of the Interior. The Senate has confirmed Mr. Bernhardt twice before to serve that Department as Deputy Secretary and as Solicitor. When you hear the nominee and review his credentials, it is easy to see why. Mr. Bernhardt has significant private practice experience, as well as a past record of service at the Department.

Along the way he has earned the respect of those who rely on the public lands the Department of the Interior is charged to oversee, from Native American leaders to sportsmen's groups. He has been praised as a ``proven leader'' who ``act[s] with integrity'' and has ``the right approach and skill set.''

I hope each of my colleagues will join me in voting to confirm him later this week. Medicare

Madam President, on a completely different matter, we are continuing to watch as our friends across the aisle take big steps in their party's continued march toward the far, far left. As I understand, they will soon introduce the Senate version of the radical healthcare proposal that I have come to call Medicare for None.

It is only the latest installment in the steady drumbeat of calls for socialist central planning that we have been hearing from our Democratic colleagues as of late.

Earlier this year, we saw the Speaker of the House declare her top priority as the Democrat politician protection act, an effort to literally rewrite the rules of free speech in American elections and give political campaigns a big dose of taxpayer dollars, all so the outcome of the political process could be more to the Democrats' liking.

We have seen all but a tiny handful of our Democratic colleagues unable to reject an absurdly intrusive and mind-bogglingly expensive plan to forcibly remodel the U.S. economy and American families' lives until they are sufficiently ``green.''

Now, perhaps as soon as this week, the latest new scheme will make landfall in the Senate. I am sure it will grab a new round of headlines, but under the Cadillac hood, it will offer only the same old push mower engine, the same tired, debunked logic that Washington knows best and the American people can't be trusted to decide what is best for themselves and their families.

That tired, old engine cannot power the kind of healthcare that Americans deserve. The legislation my colleagues want to brand as Medicare for All hollows out the actual Medicare Program that our seniors rely on until the only thing left is the label. Then it takes that label and slaps it on a brandnew, untested, government-run plan that every single American would be forced into--forced into--whether they like it or not. In fact, competing private insurance policies, such as the ones that 180 million Americans currently use, would be banned outright--gone.

For the privilege of having their existing Medicare or existing employer-provided plans ripped away from them by the same old Washington experts who brought us ObamaCare with sky-high premiums and deductibles, out-of-pocket costs, and dysfunction--for that privilege the American people would have to pick up a historic $32 trillion tab. That is just the rough estimate for the first 10 years--$32 trillion over 10 years. That is more than the Federal Government has spent on everything--everything--over the past 8 years combined. It is so much that even senior Democrats aren't claiming to know how it will be paid for. That price is so steep that even left-leaning analysts are admitting that the tax burden is virtually certain to land on the shoulders of the middle class.

Here is the Washington Post, verbatim: ``Medicare-for-all in particular would require tax hikes on middle class families.''

To give you a sense of scale for this nightmare, one think tank has calculated that ``doubling all Federal individual and corporate income taxes''--doubling them--``would be insufficient to fully finance the plan.''

Doubling all of the corporate and individual income taxes would be insufficient to fully finance the plan. Doubling what Americans send to the IRS in income taxes would take away all of the competition and choice in the health insurance market. The failures and foibles of ObamaCare, as painful as they are for so many families, would likely be just the warmup act to this socialist bonanza.

Apparently this is what my Democratic colleagues believe will pass for a political winner. We are looking forward to that debate.

I will give them this: With Republicans standing for preserving what works and fixing what doesn't, for reducing tax rates instead of shooting them sky-high, and for strengthening the employer-sponsored and Medicare Advantage plans that American families actually rely on instead of snatching those plans away, my Democratic friends are certainly working hard to paint a contrast--and we welcome it.

S. 1057

Madam President, on one final matter, even as the Senate grapples with these kinds of major disagreements, I want to highlight that there were still bipartisan accomplishments constantly coming out of this Chamber. They don't always make national front-page news, but they often represent hugely significant progress for the American people.

Just yesterday afternoon, the Senate passed legislation from Senator Martha McSally to formalize a landmark drought contingency plan for the Colorado River Basin. Our Senate colleagues from the West have been working with State and local leaders literally for years to develop this bipartisan, bicameral solution. Seven States, countless local and Tribal authorities, and both the United States and Mexico have skin in this game, so hammering out this coordinated plan was no small feat.

Now that this agreement will be codified in Federal law, tens of millions of Americans will be able to rest easier, knowing that their supply of drinking water and irrigation will be better protected from water shortages.

I want to congratulate all of our colleagues who worked hard to make this happen, particularly Senator McSally and Senator Gardner, who have been strong voices for this agreement and the people of Arizona and Colorado. I look forward to the President signing this into law in the very near future.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source