Nomination of Chai Rachel Feldblum to Be a Member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as we continue this week's vote-arama on executive branch nominations, I wish to remind the American people how we got here today and what it means to the future of our great country and our system of government.

Over the last 5 years President Obama and his administration have repeatedly bent the law to serve their own purposes in a way that I think is unprecedented in my experience. We saw this when he gave special treatment to union pension funds during the Chrysler bankruptcy process. We saw it again during the Solyndra bankruptcy. We saw it when President Obama unilaterally announced a moratorium on the enforcement of certain immigration laws. We saw it when the administration unilaterally issued waivers from the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and the 2002 No Child Left Behind law. And, of course, we have seen it multiple times with the President's signature legislative--accomplishment, if you can call it that--ObamaCare, which effectively became a law that means whatever the President wants it to mean. Indeed, without any real legal authority, the administration has unilaterally delayed the employer mandate, unilaterally delayed the income verification required in the ObamaCare exchanges, unilaterally delayed the cap on out-of-pocket expenses, and has unilaterally delayed other insurance regulations.

Meanwhile, the Internal Revenue Service has been hauled into court because it has said that it will flout the text of the law by issuing ObamaCare tax subsidies in the Federal exchange even though the law that Congress passed and the President signed made clear that those subsidies may only be used in the State-based insurance exchanges.

I constantly get asked by my constituents back home whether Congress can do something about it. My response ordinarily is, well, the Congress under our system of government passes the laws, but it is the executive branch's obligation to enforce those laws. Indeed, that is the oath the President takes when he is inaugurated--to uphold and defend the laws and to faithfully execute those laws.

I think we have seen the kind of havoc that can be wreaked when the executive decides to pick and choose which laws to enforce based on expediency, political or otherwise. We used to say that we are a nation of laws and not of men. Indeed, that is one of our country's--indeed, our economy's--great strengths.

There is a great little book written by a Peruvian economist on the nature of capital, which, of course, is so important to our economic growth. The point he makes is there are a lot of entrepreneurial societies in the world, but one of the things that really distinguishes the U.S. economy and our success relative to those other entrepreneurial societies is the rule of law. It is the things, for example, that mean that when you invest money in a piece of real estate or in a contract or in some other investment, you know with reasonable certainty that investment will be protected against arbitrary action by either government or some other person, which, if you think about it, really is one of the unique characteristics of the U.S. system of laws because we know with reasonable certainty that if those rights are breached, if that investment is stolen, if it is nationalized by the Federal Government, you can go to court and seek compensation for that law-breaking.

Well, if President Obama wanted to continue to legislate in this time and effect from the White House by changing the laws Congress passed, he should have stayed in the Senate. But his responsibility--indeed, his sacred oath--is to enforce the laws even if those laws prove awkward or inconvenient.

One of the other important aspects of being a nation of laws is that if, in fact, it turns out that those laws prove inconvenient or awkward or undesirable for some reason, we have the capacity through the legislative process to change those laws. That is sometimes referred to as a conversation or a dialog that the branches of government have with one another.

So Congress passes laws that the President signs, and then if they are being implemented either by the executive branch or by administrative agencies that are part of the executive branch and they turn out not to have the result Congress thought they would have or the President thought they would have, the great thing about our system of government is we have the capacity to change those laws when they prove to have resulted in unintended consequences or when they prove inconvenient or awkward or otherwise undesirable.

I believe that, notwithstanding the greatest hopes and, I would grant, the good faith of those who actually thought ObamaCare was going to work--it sounded pretty good. The President said: If you like what you have, you can keep it, and if you think your premiums are too high, the average family of four is going to see their premiums go down by $2,500. And if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Well, all of that sounded pretty good, especially when you looked at the public opinion polling back in 2009 when the President first started saying those kinds of things because 88 to 90 percent of the people polled said they liked what they had. So when the President said they could keep it, they said: OK; that is fine. I guess this is all about dealing with that 10 or 12 percent of people who had no coverage or who had what they viewed as inadequate or otherwise undesirable coverage.

So I understand that some people may have been lulled into this idea that this is the best thing that has happened in terms of health care delivery in a long time. As a matter of fact, we have talked about this approach for many years. Even before I got to Congress, during the Clinton administration we had HillaryCare. That was another grand scheme to basically commandeer the health care delivery system in the country that, in a way--again, I would grant the good faith of those who actually thought they could make it work, but it didn't work, at least as manifested in ObamaCare. And now we are confronted not with the grand theory and good intentions but with the hard facts and the reality that ObamaCare has proved to be an unmitigated disaster.

Whether you are one of ObamaCare's biggest cheerleaders or whether you were a skeptic like me and voted against it because you did not think it was going to work, I think it is incumbent upon us to try to figure out how to come up with an alternative, to hit the reset button and to pivot to patient-centered health care reform that leaves the choices not in the hands of bureaucrats and the Federal Government but leaves the choices in the hands of hard-working American families and patients, where doctors whom we choose and trust can work with us to come up with the best solutions rather than having the Federal Government say: We have done a cost-benefit analysis, and you are out of luck. You're not worth it. The Federal Government, the bureaucracy doesn't think you should get that kind of treatment.

Well, what I don't want is for any President, including this President, to unilaterally waive or change or refuse to enforce a law for political reasons. And that is what has happened. We have watched the President's poll numbers plummet as the American people, who by and large during his first term of office and now during the first year or so of his second term of office wanted this President to succeed--I think the fact that President Obama's Presidency was historic in many ways, as the first African-American President ever elected in this country, gave all of us a sense of pride that our country had come so far--over, admittedly, a long period of time but so far that a person who back at the beginning of our country might have been considered less than a fully human being would now be the President of the United States. That gave us all hope in the future and hope in this great experiment known as America, to have the first African-American President of the United States.

So this President was elected in 2008 and reelected in 2012 with a huge reservoir of good will and hope that he would be successful. Indeed, all of us, regardless of our political stripes--whether we are conservatives or liberals, whether we are Independents, Republicans, or Democrats, we are Americans first and we want America to succeed. That is what we want more than anything.

It is also important to remember that our system of government is important to our success over these last couple of centuries and that we haven't gotten here by accident. We have gotten here because of our Constitution, because of the genius of checks and balances between coequal branches of government. That is a lesson this President seems to have forgotten; that too often he decides to go it alone or do an end run around Congress because he can't get what he wants.

Well, we are not guaranteed, any of us, in political life or in life in general, to get everything we want. We know that particularly when it comes to legislation--things like health care reform--nobody gets everything they want if, in fact, it is going to be a bipartisan product.

But rather than attempting a bipartisan product, this President and our friends across the aisle decided to jam the American people and to jam the minority party in Congress and to pass a law which now they own lock, stock, and barrel.

Again, I am willing to concede the good faith and good intentions of those who thought this would work, but now we have gone from theory to evidence and experience, and we know it hasn't worked.

Well, thankfully, in our three coequal branches of government, we have not just the legislative branch that passes the laws and the executive branch that is supposed to enforce the laws, we have a third branch of government; that is, the judiciary. And they have done their part--but they are not through yet--to stop executive overreach and uphold the rule of law.

I have heard some of our colleagues say: Well, the Supreme Court has upheld most of ObamaCare and it is the law of the land--as if it is somehow sacrosanct and can never be changed. Well, that is just not true, at least not under our system of laws. As I said to begin with, if we find that the laws we passed result in consequences we did not intend or we find that the American people are dissatisfied with it and it leads to undesirable results, we can change it, and that is the way our system works.

We are not bound forever by any law. We can change them because that is the way our system works. So when people say it is the law of the land, get over it, move on down the road, that is not an American perspective, at least under our Constitution.

As I said, we have seen a number of times where this President and this White House have simply ignored laws, refused to enforce laws, and overreached. For example, the District of Columbia Circuit Court has demanded that this administration follow the law on issues related to corporate governance, emissions requirements, recess appointments and the disposal of nuclear waste. This is the same court that this majority leader, Senator Reid, and his political party have decided to stack. They decided to break the rules of the U.S. Senate that have been in effect a long time in an overt power play in order to stack this second most important court in the Nation, the DC Circuit Court, by breaking the Senate rules in order to deny the minority a voice in the confirmation process and to confirm these nominees in what we are engaged in this week, which is another overt power play.

But the stated reason for doing that, and the supposed necessity of doing that, is because the senior Senator from New York, the majority leader, and others say they are not happy with the way the DC Court of Appeals has ruled on cases involving the Obama administration. But as I said a moment ago, in at least four of these big areas, the DC Circuit Court has upheld the administration's point of view in important appeals before the court.

At the same time, the DC Circuit Court has also ruled in favor of the administration on some issues related to health care, embryonic stem cell research, and several other major environmental matters. But notwithstanding those successes in terms of policy approval by the DC Circuit Court of this administration's policies and of the bureaucracy's interpretation of those policies, we know that the majority leader was bound and determined, along with his allies in the other party--that they were bound and determined to make sure the DC Circuit Court of Appeals would issue no rulings which would undercut or fail to enforce this administration's policies. So they decided to pack this court, which is what this process we are engaged in this week is all about, with ideological allies who would rubberstamp their agenda.

When the minority in the Senate--and, by the way, I am not just talking about my rights or Senators' rights. We are just representatives. I represent 26 million people. When the majority leader shuts me out of the amendment process or the opportunity to have a say in the advice and consent over the nomination of judicial nominees or executive branch nominees, he is not affecting my rights per se but the rights of 26 million Texans, to have their voice heard in this process. That is something he ought to think about and reconsider.

We know the nature of the Senate has been fundamentally transformed under the leadership of Senator Reid. When I first got to the Senate, which was a while ago--it doesn't seem like that long ago, but it has dramatically changed--we had an open amendment process. We would actually have bills come to the floor, legislation such as the national defense authorization bill, and we would spend up to 3 weeks debating and offering amendments on that important piece of legislation. As we have heard at different times, the national defense authorization bill is viewed as so important by both political parties and by the entire Senate that we have passed a Defense authorization bill for I think at least 50 consecutive years. That is quite a tradition. But instead of doing that, Majority Leader Reid decided to cut off the opportunity for the minority to offer amendments to this important piece of national security legislation.

When we were able to block cloture in order to protest that in order to provoke, hopefully, a negotiation which would result in a process whereby minority rights would be respected and an opportunity to amend this legislation provided, now we learn that as part of this end-of-the-year sprint to Christmas, that in addition to jamming through these nominees, the majority leader's intention is to take a bill that was basically negotiated among four Members of Congress, that would be the four Members of the Armed Services Committee, both the chairman and ranking members on both sides of the Capitol, to fill up the amendment tree, file for cloture, and pass it in the last week we are in session.

It is beyond outrageous, this transformation in the Senate. I think what shocks many of us the most is that Majority Leader Reid is an institutionalist, and by that I mean it as a compliment. He has been in the Senate a long time. He understands how the Senate works and why the Senate rules are so important. Yet nobody in my memory has done more to undermine the institution of the Senate and its rules and traditions than the current majority leader. For what purpose? For short-term gain.

Why do I say it is short-term gain? They can get away with it when they are in the majority, but it is temporary, because during the time I have been in the Senate I have been in the majority and I have been in the minority. I have to admit, being in the majority is a lot more fun. But in other words, what I am saying is this short-term power play by the majority party in the Senate to break the Senate rules, to jam through legislation and to deny my 26 million constituents in Texas an opportunity for me, on their behalf, to offer amendments to important legislation affecting the national security of the United States is an outrage. It is an outrage.

I will give just one example. Four years ago at Fort Hood, TX, Nidal Hasan, a major in the U.S. Army, killed 11 people and wounded about 30 more. This is about 4 years ago. You will remember it. The reason it took so long for him to be brought to justice--I am not sure I understand exactly why--but there was some concern, and a concern I shared, that if we identified this for what it truly was, which is a terrorist attack on our own soil, it might undermine the fairness of his trial and give him some grounds to appeal and perhaps escape the just punishment for what he did.

Major Hasan, when there was initial review of what he did and evidence that he had shown absolutely clear signs of being radicalized and joining the fight of Islamic extremists against the United States of America, against his own government, that those were completely ignored by the military, by the Army, in an exercise of political
correctness. Even though he stood up that day and he said Allahu Akbar, ``God is great,'' in the traditional cry of Al Qaeda and Islamic extremists and others who were bent on suicide and homicidal acts, initially when that was reviewed, the conclusion by the politically correct police here when they reviewed it was this is workplace violence. In other words, they refused to call it what it was, which was a terrorist act on our own soil.

I do not fully understand the reticence to identify it for what it is because we all know we had at least one other major terrorist attack on our own soil on September 11, 2001, when approximately 3,000 Americans were killed by one of the most horrific terrorist acts to occur in our lifetime and hopefully ever--hopefully it will never occur again.

After that, the Department of Defense decided to use its discretion to award the people who were injured or killed in that incident the recognition and benefits they deserved under our laws--Purple Hearts and other death benefits. But when I and my colleagues on the other side of the Capitol, Congressmen John Carter and Roger Williams, sponsored legislation to recognize that this attack at Ford Hood that cost the lives of 11 Americans, including 10 members of the U.S. military and 30 more people were shot and injured, many of whom bear those wounds even today--when we filed legislation on the national defense authorization bill in order to amend that bill in order to give that same recognition to these 11 Americans who lost their lives and the 30 more who were injured in that terrorist attack on that day at Fort Hood, TX, in Killeen, TX, some 4 years ago, that amendment has been shut out of this process.

Do not be confused. This is not about denying me my rights as a Senator. This is about denying those 11 Americans who lost their lives that day justice, and the 30 more who survived that attack, the benefits they are entitled to by virtue of being a victim of a terrorist attack on our own soil--again.

There are real human consequences to the machinations of the majority leader and this revolutionary change in the nature of the Senate, denying the rights of the minority to be heard and to offer legislation on behalf of our constituents. That has such far-reaching impact.

In many ways I think what we are experiencing this week and what we have experienced recently is an attempt to distract the American people from the train wreck known as ObamaCare. If I had voted for the President's signature legislative proposal and I was one of the Democrats who voted for it, since no Republican voted for it, I would want to change the subject too. As someone who served in this Chamber for 11 years, it saddens me that our Democratic friends choose to obliterate the Senate rules and gravely weaken minority rights for petty partisan reasons. Again, it is so shortsighted it is just unimaginable. It is as if Members of this body have attention deficit syndrome, where they are so focused on immediate gratification that they forget or they ignore the long-term consequences of this revolutionary change in what once was called the world's greatest deliberative body, which is no more the world's greatest deliberative body, at least under this majority leader and under his rule-breaking regime.

Over the years leading up to last month's showdown, the majority leader repeatedly promised not to use the nuclear option. Again, I know this is about process. The eyes of the American people begin to glaze over when we talk about the internal processes and operation of the Senate. But as I attempted to demonstrate a moment ago, they have real-world consequences. Tell that to the people back at Fort Hood who lost their family member in this terrible terrorist attack on our own soil, committed by an American citizen wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army, where he joined the enemy, Islamic extremists, was radicalized by the same person who essentially tutored the Underwear Bomber who was arrested in Detroit, who tried to blow up another airplane on that day. Those people are the ones who are suffering the negative impact of the undermining of this institution by the majority leader.

Well, the majority leader repeatedly promised not to use the nuclear option, but he broke that promise.

My experience in public life is--again, we all have different ideas about how to accomplish our goals and hopefully improve life for the American people, but one of the things that are even more important is the personal relationships between Members of the Senate.

There is a lot of good work that can get done when there is good faith and trust between Members of the Senate, and, indeed, those are not the kinds of things that typically make their way into the newspapers or that people pay much attention to because they are done quietly behind the scenes, cooperatively and collaboratively. But when the majority leader--the leader of this institution--breaks his word repeatedly about undermining the Senate rules in a partisan power grab, it necessarily undermines the trust that has come to be the important glue to this institution, and because it is important to this institution, it is important to the country. When we learned that trust is unjustified and that his promise is hollow and meaningless--well, it reminds me of another American who has made extravagant promises to the American people that were obviously false and could not and cannot be relied upon. I am talking about the President's promise in ObamaCare that if you like what you have, you can keep it. I saw a poll recently that said 37 percent of the respondents in that poll believe the President is honest and trustworthy.

I didn't vote for this President, but he is still my President. The ability of the President of the United States to actually govern and to be respected--not only here in America but around the world--and viewed as a person of character and substance, well, it is completely undermined by the kinds of false promises this President has made in ObamaCare.

It is not just limited to health care; it has broad ramifications and a huge ripple effect. In terms of the way that, for example, Bashar al-Assad in Syria used the President's redline on the use of chemical weapons--if Bashar al-Assad thinks this President is not going to be honest or trustworthy in terms of his statements, then his threats of a redline simply will not be believed.

It is the same thing in Tehran, where 19,000 centrifuges are spinning and enriching uranium in Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons--a goal which, if achieved, and which is not too far off in the distant future, will destabilize the Middle East and will threaten not only a regional war but a larger conflict because if Iran gets a nuclear weapon--Iran is not just any average nation state. It is a state sponsor of international terrorism in the form of Hezbollah and other support, particularly directed at our ally and friend, the nation of Israel.

Iran has been killing American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq for many years through their training and support for our more obvious adversaries there, through the design and importation in Iraq, for example, of explosively formed penetrators that will melt through the metal of our vehicles and other protective armament that our military uses and, as I said, resulted in the deaths of multiple American GIs. So Iran is not our friend.

So when the President says: This is another redline, well, our enemies can read our newspapers. They read the same polls we read. They see a President making false statements that cannot be relied upon, and it undermines his credibility when it comes to our enemies--people who want to wipe Israel off the face of the map. That can have very dangerous consequences, obviously, because when people don't believe what America says through the voice and in the person of our Commander in Chief, the leader of the free world, it emboldens our enemies.

They push the envelope in North Korea, Iran, Syria, and other places around the world. This is not a minor issue. When the President acts as if the law does not apply to him and if the law means just what he says it will--meaning at any given moment--it is as if the law doesn't really matter and his word cannot be trusted.

Just a few other thoughts on how ObamaCare was passed. I remember being in this Chamber on Christmas Eve in 2009. I think it was 7 in the morning. It may have been 7:30 in the morning when we had the vote on the ObamaCare passage--at least the initial passage. It passed with 60 Democratic votes and no Republican votes.

I often pointed out that before ObamaCare, every major domestic reform in modern U.S. history--from civil rights, to Medicare, to welfare reform, to No Child Left Behind--enjoyed significant bipartisan support at the time of its passage. Why is that important? Well, because ObamaCare was a pure partisan power play. It was shoved through on a party-line basis without a single Republican vote and despite high levels of public opposition.

I remember people were told: Well, we just haven't done a very good job of messaging and explaining or when ObamaCare is implemented, people will learn to love it. Well, we now know that jamming through legislation which basically commandeers one-sixth of the American economy is a recipe for disaster. It is a bad way to pass any major

law, let alone a measure that affects everyone in the country because our health care delivery system affects every man, woman, and child in our country.

ObamaCare is a part of a broader pattern that should be deeply disturbing to anyone who cares about our Constitution and the checks and balances that the Framers of our Constitution knew would be so important to maintaining consensus and maintaining balance.

Today's Democratic leaders seem to believe that might makes right and that inconvenient legislation can be swept aside by Executive fiat and that when the Senate rules prove to be an obstacle to obtaining what they want, such as stacking the second most important court in the Nation in order to be a rubberstamp for the bureaucracy's ideological zeal, well, they can sweep aside those rules too.

This debate is about far more than policy differences. It is about the respect for the rule of law and respect for our Constitution, it is about preventing the executive branch from running roughshod over Congress, and it is about safeguarding the constitutional government.

If we need any more examples about the Obama administration's abuse of power, I am prepared to provide that. We know the Obama administration showed contempt for the normal legislative process in a number of ways. When Congress refused to enforce card check for labor unions, the administration turned to unelected bureaucrats at the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB. When Congress refused to, on a bipartisan basis, pass cap-and-trade energy taxes, the administration turned to unelected bureaucrats, the Environmental Protection Agency. Indeed, now President Obama has authorized the EPA to regulate virtually every aspect of the American economy without congressional approval even though the EPA itself has acknowledged that its proposed greenhouse gas rule would not have a notable impact on carbon dioxide emissions during the next decade.

The Obama administration is acting in a lawless manner in other ways as well. In early 2011, more than 2 years before the Supreme Court ruled on the Defense of Marriage Act, President Obama ordered his Justice Department to stop defending the law even though it was passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Congress. It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton and broadly supported by the American people. The right way to deal with that is not for the executive branch to refuse to enforce the law, but it is to come back to Congress and say: You know what. We think things have changed. Congress ought to reconsider.

Rather than do that, the President decided to have the Justice Department refuse to enforce the very law Bill Clinton signed.

Then there is the Independent Payment Advisory Board. This is part of ObamaCare--one that perhaps has one of the most pernicious impacts because what it does is it puts unelected bureaucrats in charge of deciding health care for your mother, your father, your grandmother, or your grandfather--in other words, whether Medicare beneficiaries can get the health care they need. How do they have an impact? Well, these 15 bureaucrats, under this ObamaCare-created bureaucracy, will have the authority to decide what sort of health care Medicare pays for. This is just a way to ration access to care. So if these 15 bureaucrats on IPAB--the Independent Payment Advisory Board--say: You know what. We think you are too old; we don't think it is worth it for you to get a hip replacement so you can walk and be productive and mobile; we don't think it is worth it for you to get bypass surgery; we are not going to pay for it, the Federal Government will not pay for it, and so it will not be delivered.

What is worse is that IPAB's recommended Medicare cuts automatically take effect unless a congressional supermajority votes to cut health care spending by an equivalent amount.

Columnist George Will said:

This is a travesty of constitutional lawmaking: An executive branch agency makes laws unless Congress acts to achieve the executive agency's aim.

This is the Constitution turned on its head. Indeed, IPAB makes a mockery of our constitutional system of separation of powers, and it should be repealed immediately.

Not only has the administration used unelected bureaucrats to sidestep the normal legislative process and disregarded the rule of law for transparently political or ideological reasons, it has also fostered a culture of deception and intimidation.

One example is Operation Fast and Furious. This has particular impact to my State, which is a big border State. My colleagues will recall that Operation Fast and Furious was this boneheaded idea wherein the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives would actually allow weapons to go from American gunshops into the hands of the drug cartels without interdiction. I guess the idea was once they got in the hands of the cartels, we would somehow trace them and know who the bad guys are, but it broke down along the way. So many of these guns were simply not recovered and no doubt have been used to kill many people in Mexico, as well as an American citizen, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, 3 years ago.

Attorney General Holder, who is administratively responsible for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, repeatedly obstructed a congressional investigation into Fast and Furious, and his sworn testimony was repeatedly contradicted by the Justice Department itself, by their own memos. One DOJ official--a U.S. attorney in Arizona--tried to smear a whistleblower by leaking a private document. The Department of Justice's own inspector general called this behavior inappropriate for a Department employee and wholly unbefitting a U.S. attorney. A separate DOJ official was forced to resign her position after she was caught collaborating with leftwing bloggers to slander both whistleblowers and journalists.

Then there is the IRS scandal. It is almost hard to keep up with all of the scandals, but we can't let these get away from us because they are so important to get to the bottom of one of the most important governmental bodies in the U.S. Government, and that is the Internal Revenue Service that, again, touches all of our lives. We found out, of course, that IRS agents were deliberately targeting people based on their political views. At least one conservative activist, Catherine Engelbrecht from Houston, TX, was targeted by multiple agencies, including the IRS, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA.

We also know the administration--or at least the bureaucracy--has targeted political donors. The 2012 Obama campaign bullied private citizens who donated money to Gov. Mitt Romney, including a man named Frank VanderSloot whose experience was chronicled by Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal. In April of 2012, Mr. VanderSloot found himself, along with seven other Romney donors, condemned by an Obama campaign Web site for being ``less than reputable.'' The Web site suggested that quite a few of the eight donors had placed themselves on the wrong side of the law and had gotten rich at the expense of so many other Americans. Mr. VanderSloot was singled out because--or I should say he was singled out as a ``bitter foe'' of the gay rights movement.

Mr. VanderSloot didn't run for public office. He didn't volunteer to be treated like this. He is an American citizen who was engaging in a constitutionally protected right to provide financial support to a political candidate of his choosing. Rather than keep the fight on the political opponent--Governor Romney--the Obama campaign went after the donors. Mr. VanderSloot didn't have a criminal background, nor did any other of the Romney donors who were similarly targeted. But shortly after he was denounced by the Obama campaign in this manner, a Democratic opposition researcher began researching his divorce records. Meanwhile, the IRS decided to audit 2 years' worth of his tax filings, and the Labor Department announced a separate audit of the immigrant workers employed at his cattle ranch.

As Kimberley Strassel wrote for the Wall Street Journal: ``Every thinking American must henceforth wonder if Mr. VanderSloot has been targeted for inquiry because of his political leanings.''

We also know this administration has harassed journalists. Although President Obama said this administration would be the most transparent administration in American history, it has proven not to be so. In the case of FOX News correspondent James Rosen, the Obama Justice Department tracked him down like a common criminal simply for doing his job. The Department of Justice tracked Rosen's movements, got a search warrant to examine his private emails, and even obtained his parents' phone records. This is a journalist. As a Washington correspondent for the New Yorker magazine noted: ``It is unprecedented for the government, in an official court document, to accuse a reporter of breaking the law for conducting the routine business of reporting on government secrets.''

We also know the Obama Justice Department has conducted a disturbingly intrusive investigation into the phone records of journalists who work for the Associated Press, and, as I said, displayed an unprecedented level of contempt and obstruction for the Freedom of Information Act.

Washington lawyer Katherine Meyer has filed FOIA cases under six different administrations dating back into the late 1970s. FOIA is the shorthand for the Freedom of Information Act, of course. Last year, she told Politico that ``this administration is the worst on FOIA issues--the worst.'' So much for the President's claim to be the most transparent administration in this Nation's history.

In 2011, the Obama-Holder Justice Department received a mock award from the nonpartisan National Security Archive which said that the DOJ had shown the ``worst open government performance'' of any Federal agency that year. This is the agency that is supposed to enforce the Freedom of Information laws, and it was recognized as demonstrating the ``worst open government performance'' of any agency that year. Among other things, the Department of Justice was cited for its mistreatment of whistleblowers and its efforts to undermine the Freedom of Information law.

Speaking of whistleblowers, we know the State Department has also punished U.S. diplomats for cooperating with congressional investigators looking into the September 2012 terrorist attack that killed four Americans at Benghazi, Libya. This is so outrageous that it bears recall that Susan Rice, the President's U.N. Ambassador, showed up on five, I believe it was, Sunday morning talk shows and claimed the attack at the American consulate in Benghazi that took the life of four Americans was precipitated by a video that was deemed to be disrespectful of the religion of Islam. It turns out that wasn't true, and for a long time the administration denied this was even a terrorist attack--something which it now acknowledges. But when people come forward, such as the whistleblowers, diplomats who knew the Ambassador and those who lost their lives on that terrible night in September of 2012, then they are punished, not welcomed as truth tellers, to get to the bottom of this terrible incident in Benghazi, Libya.

Then we know that further intimidation continued with ObamaCare in 2010. Actually, this preceded the Benghazi intimidation. In 2010, various health insurance companies began alerting their customers that ObamaCare was going to force them to raise premiums. This is back in 2010. Fast forward to 2012. That is what has happened. So first of all, people saw the Web site was a problem and now that is getting fixed, and now they are experiencing cancellations, and then there is the sticker shock where their premiums have gone up. In 2010, when the insurance industry tried to tell their own customers their premiums are going to go up because of this law, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, responded by threatening to punish these companies and bar them from participating in the ObamaCare exchanges.

It is quite remarkable. I think in any other context we could call this thuggery, intimidation, abuse of power.

A few years later, we learned that Secretary Sebelius was shaking down private companies to help fund the implementation of ObamaCare because Congress, believing it had been misled in so many instances regarding ObamaCare, had refused funding. It is very disturbing to learn that the same IRS official who led the division that targeted people because of their political beliefs is now in charge of administering large portions of ObamaCare.

As I said a moment ago, one of the biggest casualties in all of this--particularly as it relates to the false promises of ObamaCare--is the President's own credibility. The other day I had a chance to speak on this topic and I said, ``ObamaCare is the single biggest case of consumer fraud in American history.'' Anybody else under any circumstance would find themselves hauled into court and be called to account. If a private citizen or a private company had spoken out, they would be sued for money damages. They would likely be put out of business because there would be an injunction granted or perhaps punitive damages.

When the President speaks on behalf of the United States, whether it is in domestic affairs such as ObamaCare or whether it is on international matters such as the red line on chemical weapons in Syria or the red line on Iranian nuclear aspirations, it should count for something. But according to a new NBC Wall Street Journal poll, only 37 percent of Americans give President Obama a ``very good'' rating for ``being honest and straightforward''--37 percent. That compares with 63 percent in January of 2009. So the President's reputation for honesty went from 63 percent in January 2009 to 37 percent on December 11, 2013, or at least that is the date the Wall Street Journal and NBC reported the results.

We know when the President's approval rating--particularly his approval rating for honesty and truthfulness--is damaged, all of those who trusted the President as he led them down the gangplank with the implementation of ObamaCare are bound to get pretty nervous, because while the President was able to move the actual implementation of ObamaCare past his own reelection in 2012--this law was passed back in 2010. Yet the President himself was able to avoid accountability, by and large, by pushing the implementation past his election in November 2010. But 2014 will be a midterm election. The President will not be on the ballot, but his allies will be on the ballot--people who trusted him, as he told them and he told the American people that you are going to be able to keep what you have if you like it, even though he knew it wasn't true. We know that from as far back as 2010.

Senator Mike Enzi led the effort to expand the grandfathering flexibility in the Health and Human Services rules, and that was defeated on a party-line vote. All of our Democratic friends voted against expanding the flexibility of these grandfathering provisions back in 2010 when HHS and, indeed, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that as many as 78 million Americans on employer-provided plans would find they would no longer be able to keep their coverage either.

So there is going to be a day of accountability in November of 2014, as those who, perhaps unwisely, trusted the President, who believed in this big government scheme that simply has not worked--and that many of us believed would never work--there will be a day of accountability.

My hour has come and gone, and I see the Senator from Oklahoma on the floor. In conclusion, I ask unanimous consent that a summary of stories from Texans who have been affected by ObamaCare be printed in the Record.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

Stories From Texans Who Have Been Affected by Obamacare

TEXANS CONTINUE TO WRITE IN WITH PAINFUL STORIES OF HOW OBAMACARE HAS AFFECTED THEM AND THEIR LOVED ONES

My husband and I are self-employed. We have coverage through BCBS of TX. Our current premium for us and our 2 children is $854 per month. Our premium was raised to $854 from $814 three months ago. We have a $6000 family deductible, and an out of pocket amount of $12,000. We have been very happy with our policy. However, I created an account on healthcare.gov to see if we could get a cheaper policy with similar coverage.

The cheapest insurance coverage offered on the website is a Bronze package with 60% coverage and monthly premium of $1189. This is the cheapest policy with less coverage than what we currently have!

Texas Resident,
Austin, Texas.

--
``I worked 34 years for AT&T/Lucent/Avaya and took an early retirement in 2001 with pension and healthcare. I became Medicare eligible this year as I turned 65, however my wife is only 59 and remains on my employer group plan. This month we were notified that Avaya would stop providing all pre-65 healthcare to retirees and their dependents. Living on fixed income this additional expense is taking me out of the middle class and putting me financial jeopardy for my remaining years.''

Don Whisenant,
Mesquite, TX.

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``Because of health conditions, both my wife and I are in the Texas State High Risk Pool and have been for at least 12 years. Now because of Obamacare, at midnight on December 31st, we are no longer going to be covered by an insurance policy that covers my heart condition and my wife's epilepsy. While the State High Risk Pool is expensive ($2300.00/month) it is about half of what ACA is, our $1000.00 deductible will jump to over $7000 and possibly up to $10,000.00 with half the benefits. This law needs to be repealed.''

Chuck Marsh,
Canadian, TX.

--
I am one of those whose plan was canceled. I have a high quality, admittedly high deductible, PPO plan from a major carrier. There is nothing discount or low quality about it. The ACA offering is for the same coverage and the same deductible. There are two differences in the ACA plan from mine. The first is that it includes maternity and pediatric care, which in our fifties my wife and I don't need. The second difference is the ACA plan premium is 65% more per month that my current plan.

The president said I could keep my plan, at 65% less for the same high quality coverage offered by the ACA option I want to keep it. For Americans who have to purchase their health care independently, the ACA is deeply flawed. Please help.

Glenn Barlow,
Plano, TX.

--
Obamacare has caused my mother to lose her insurance because she no longer meets the minimum for coverage. My father went back to work for insurance and his company won't give it to him because he is older than 65 so he has to go on Medicare. Most doctors in his area won't take it and the ones that do offer sub-par care. He needs a hernia surgery and they won't cover it because of his age. No one wants a hernia surgery unless they need it. My husband switched jobs for a pay raise. It ended up being a pay cut because of the crippling cost of insurance. We now pay close to $24,000 a year for insurance and we can't afford to use it because it covers so little. We were promised all these things wouldn't happen.

Christine Robinson,
Round Rock, Texas.

--
I am writing to add my name to the growing list of your constituents that will be canceled from coverage next year. I am self-employed, a small business owner insured through Blue Cross Blue Shield Texas. Apparently my current plan is `substandard' as it does not offer maternity coverage. Something you can imagine is vitally important to a single male of 54 years age.

Anthony DeVito,
Fort Worth, TX.

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``We get our employee coverage from Pepsico the #43 company on the Fortune list. Everyone enrolled with our BCBS was canceled.

That policy is not what you seem to expect. We had birth control, prenatal, substance abuse, psychiatric, family counseling, chiropractic. In the last 3 years they paid out over 300,000 dollars for me alone in things like open heart surgery, new corneas, 21 days in the hospital, 5 days in ICU. In total for those 3 years I paid 7,500 and they paid 300,000+. That is NOT the sub-par insurance that Obama says he canceled.

I was canceled because it isn't ACA compliant. The replacement is much higher and the deductible is 1250 and the out of pocket is 6,000. If my next 3 years is like the last 3 it would cost me 21,750 instead of 7,500. How is that better?''

Clint McLaughlin,
Dallas, TX.

Mr. CORNYN. I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. I just ask my colleague, I am aware of his own experience that he just recounted here with the fact that MD Anderson--the world class hospital located in Houston that is really the premier cancer treatment facility in America and perhaps even in the world--they are not in the exchanges so the Senator cannot continue his treatment there.

Can the Senator explain how that happens because I think a lot of people think if they like their current doctor and they like their current hospital facility, they are expecting that when they sign up for ObamaCare they are going to be able to continue to see that doctor and go to some same high-class health care facilities. How did that happen?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. To the Senator's point about Medicaid, in Texas, I believe the number is basically only one out of every three doctors--about a third of doctors--will see a new Medicaid patient because it reimburses at about 50 cents on the dollar of what a private insurance plan will. I know there is the problem of coverage versus access that the Senator alluded to. But I wanted to just ask the Senator about that sometimes our friends who supported this legislation said: If you care about getting people with preexisting conditions coverage or if you care about young people being able to stay on their parents' health insurance coverage, you have to take the whole enchilada; in other words, you have to accept all 2,700 pages of ObamaCare, and that is the only way you could address these concerns.

Are there ways to address some of these legitimate concerns, such as preexisting conditions, without embracing all of ObamaCare?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. To the Senator's point about Medicaid, in Texas, I believe the number is basically only one out of every three doctors--about a third of doctors--will see a new Medicaid patient because it reimburses at about 50 cents on the dollar of what a private insurance plan will. I know there is the problem of coverage versus access that the Senator alluded to. But I wanted to just ask the Senator about that sometimes our friends who supported this legislation said: If you care about getting people with preexisting conditions coverage or if you care about young people being able to stay on their parents' health insurance coverage, you have to take the whole enchilada; in other words, you have to accept all 2,700 pages of ObamaCare, and that is the only way you could address these concerns.

Are there ways to address some of these legitimate concerns, such as preexisting conditions, without embracing all of ObamaCare?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. To the Senator's point about Medicaid, in Texas, I believe the number is basically only one out of every three doctors--about a third of doctors--will see a new Medicaid patient because it reimburses at about 50 cents on the dollar of what a private insurance plan will. I know there is the problem of coverage versus access that the Senator alluded to. But I wanted to just ask the Senator about that sometimes our friends who supported this legislation said: If you care about getting people with preexisting conditions coverage or if you care about young people being able to stay on their parents' health insurance coverage, you have to take the whole enchilada; in other words, you have to accept all 2,700 pages of ObamaCare, and that is the only way you could address these concerns.

Are there ways to address some of these legitimate concerns, such as preexisting conditions, without embracing all of ObamaCare?

Mr. COBURN. Sure. One of those things is adverse selection, where sicker people raise the costs for everybody in the pool. But if, in fact, you looked at the Nation as a whole, and you had a law that said for any insurance company that is cherry-picking only healthy people, a portion of their profits will go into a pool at the end of the year for people with high-risk illnesses, that is what Switzerland does. It works wonderfully. What it does is it changes the behavior of the insurance company. They cover everybody.

So the whole idea behind insurance is to spread the risk. We did not have good risk rating. There is no question we need to address it. The Senator was on a bill with me, the Patients' Choice Act, which actually would not have created any of this mess and actually would have created a market with some of the parameters that would have spread the risk and had real indemnification in the country, but also would have had market forces driving it and still let you choose what you want.

The biggest problem with the unaffordable care act is it takes any discretion away from you about what is best for you and your family. It does it two ways. One is in terms of the details of what you can and cannot buy. I have 63-year-olds who have to buy maternity coverage.

But the final point I would make in that regard is that it takes away your ability to do what is your free and correct right to not buy health care if you do not want it. What is freedom about? You have to buy health care? We say: It does not really do it. It just charges you a tax, right? Even though we said it was not a tax, we somehow got it twisted around, and the Supreme Court says this is now a tax. I have not figured that one out yet. I hope the Senator has.

What does that have to do with freedom? If I choose to not buy a product--what if I choose not to buy high-definition cable? Is there a penalty for that? In other words, does Washington really know better? I think we have seen in the last 10 years, in my experience in the Senate, we are really the last ones to know, and the common sense of the American people is far greater than most of the ideas that were ever thought about coming out of here, other than some of the original founding documents that our Founders had.

So I would make one other comment on Medicaid. There is a recent study out of Oregon, which has done a good job of expanding its Medicaid. But when they went to look at what the difference was of expanded Medicaid, what they found out was that you were still, in Oregon, better off if you did not have Medicaid. You were better off if you had no insurance at all than if you had Medicaid. That is because we downward select through Medicaid, because of its pricing, to not the best of the health care system.

So when they looked at the control of diabetes, when they looked at high blood pressure, when they looked at the control of heart disease and congestive heart failure--when they looked at all those things--they found one thing that was better: the treatment of anxiety.

That was it. So in Oregon, when they actually looked at the study--and part of that is because, even though you say you got Medicaid, if you do not have a great doctor-patient relationship, where someone can get in your face who loves you and cares for you and cares about your health, and says: You have to do these things to change, you are going to change. So there is no impact.

So running it from Washington versus having real markets with a real safety net like the Patient Choice Act, which had a real safety net so that people are auto-enrolled who are irresponsible against catastrophic illnesses, is not a much better answer.

The other thing that is going to happen--I predict in April--is that you are going to see another uproar in this country. That is when the seniors in this country pay their taxes and they find out that the little meager interest income they got off their savings because of what the Federal Reserve is doing, or the few dividends they got, 3.5 percent of that is going to now come to ``pay for ObamaCare,'' because that is called investment income--3.5 percent.

So whatever your tax rate is, if you have any earnings on an investment, you are going to be paying that. You know, I will never forget Christmas Eve morning 2009--not having an opportunity to go over the Patient's Choice Act or have it voted on through the raw, brute political force of this body and ignoring the rights of the minority. We voted on the bill that many of us predicted--I am not worried about the exchanges. They will get that fixed. That is just the incompetency of management. They will get it fixed. It will eventually work and work well.

What will not work is the rest of it. It will not work. Just look at centralized management everywhere else in the Federal Government. It is inefficient, most of the time ineffective, oftentimes complicated by fraud or incompetence. We are going to do that to one-sixth of our economy. We are doing to it one-sixth of our economy.

The other thing that is going to happen in April of this year is people who have a health insurance policy through their employment, not buying through an exchange, are going to see their personal contributions through their employer rise significantly. That is because the insurance industry is going to have to pay for all of this. They are going to have adverse selection in what is being signed up on the exchanges.

The insurance companies that sell to the medium-size businesses and the smaller businesses who are not in a risk plan, they are going to be raising the costs for small businesses. So what is probably going to happen is that those small businesses are either going to markedly increase their employees' share or they are going to drop insurance all together and pay the fine--pay the tax or pay the fee, whatever it is. Pay the penalty. But the individuals, the people who we said we were helping, then will not be with the insurance that they had. They will be back to an exchange with a price, even with subsidies that are greater, 1. No. 2, with a copay that is greater--2. And, No. 3, with a massive deductible which is at 6,000 or 7,000 bucks, and all you really have is catastrophic coverage. Why did we not just do that? Why did we not just write catastrophic coverage for everyone in the country and let the market work on the rest of it?

That does not allow the elites in our society to make decisions for you. That is what we have done.

Let me share another story. This is from Tina Wilkerson. Tina called in. She has been a school cafeteria worker for a long time. For the last 14 years she has worked 40 hours a week for 10 months out of the year. She works for a food contractor company.

She has now been changed to a seasonal employee because of ObamaCare, so that her employer can avoid the ObamaCare mandates. It was costing her about $400 a month for a health care premium, which included medical, dental, vision, plus life insurance, plus a short-term disability policy. She went to the Web site, looked at plans. With her subsidy, she pays $645 a month premium, with a $12,000 deductible, does not have vision care, does not have dental care, does not have life insurance coverage, and does not have disability coverage.

That is middle income in Oklahoma. Here is someone who, because of what we have done, is now far worse off--far more exposed in her attempt to do good. I will give my colleagues credit. Their ambitions, their goals are worthy; they were worthy. But the results are a disaster and will become much worse of a disaster.

I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the fact of what is really going to happen in the medical world. I have four former partners. I go by there sometimes on Friday and visit. You cannot believe the morale in the medical community today--unbelievably negative. You talk about worried. Think about the average physician. They have an undergraduate degree. They spend 4 years in medical school. They then spend 3 or 4 years in specialty training. So they have 12 years at a minimum of higher education.

They come out all excited about actually doing good, real good, making a difference in individual people's lives--whether it is holding a hand when somebody is going through a rough time or diagnosing a very serious disease. The payment for being a physician is the relationship with a patient. It does not have anything to do with money. It has to do with helping your fellow man. I want to tell you, that is totally upside down right now. If you do not think that makes a difference when you have a doctor walk into a clinic setting, and you are sitting there on an exam table, and that doctor is focused on: How am I going to pay the overhead? How am I going to buy the next piece of equipment that I need to care for you the way I need to care? How am I going to buy insurance for my own employees? How am I going to pay for the necessary bills?

Oh, by the way, I have got the Independent Payment Advisory Board coming that is going to tell me what I can and cannot do as a physician, regardless of how I am trained, regardless of what I know, regardless of how much gray hair, regardless of how much experience I have in terms of really caring for folks, I am going to have a group of unelected, appointed bureaucrats decide what I can and cannot do for you.

Then on top of that, we have ICD-10. Most people do not know that. That is a diagnostic code manual that has just been expanded from some 10,000 diagnoses to over 66,000 with Federal penalties if you do not explicitly get

it down to the detail. It is not enough that you broke a metacarpal in your hand, you now have to label which hand, which finger, and describe in subsets the fracture. Your nurse cannot do that for you. You have got to do it. So now we are taking more time, and the penalties are going to be severe if you do not do it right.

As a matter of fact, they will not pay you for Medicare or Medicaid if you have not done that. There is no significant benefit to the health care community, but certainly a mandated bureaucratic cost on every physician practicing in this country that will offer no long-term benefit to the individual patient.

So now you have a doctor walking in. He may have been up all night the night before delivering a baby, carrying this added burden of all of this bureaucratic mess that the affordable/unaffordable care act placed on physicians in this country. Think that has any impact on diagnostic skills, on compassion, on empathy? Think it will impact care? It certainly will. It is going to have a devastating impact.

I want my physician focused on me. I do not want him worried about the Federal Government. I do not want him worried about IPAB. I do not want him worried about ICD-10. I do not want him worried about whether or not they have met the requirements of electronic medical records. I want him worried about me. I want him concentrating on me.

So we have put this big distraction out there because we know better than the market, than the trained professionals, and the arrogant assumption that we know better than the average American about what they need because we have already told them what they must buy. We have told them, if you do not buy what you must buy, here is the penalty. Thank goodness the young people of this country have figured that out.

Which brings us back to the integrity of the statements of the President. What did he say? We have seen all sorts of rationalization evidence: If you like your insurance now you have got, you can keep it. Is that right? Right now, for 5.8 million, and soon to be 15 million Americans that is not true. They knew it was not true when they said it. But it sounded good.

Second deceitful thing: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period. Oh, really? Can I if I did not have individual separate means to keep Chris Logothetis? No, no. You cannot keep your doctor. You can have a new doctor, based on what your insurance company--based on what the pricing mechanism has. You can have one of those doctors. But if your doctor is not on that list, you cannot keep him.

So somebody may have delivered all of your babies, taken care of your parents, delivered your babys' babies, cared for your husband's heart attack, knows everything about your family, knows your psychosocial profile, knows your emotional needs, someone who has really been your ally in life--that is gone for millions and millions and millions of Americans.

But oh, no: You like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Every one of my colleagues voted against Mike Enzi's bill to allow you to keep your insurance under the grandfather clause. Every one. Mike Enzi knew what was going to happen. He put a bill on the floor. All of my colleagues said: No, we do not want you to be able to keep your insurance. It does not work that way. What about the deceit of this? Is it significant? Sure it is. It is a matter of trust.

Third thing. The promise of President Obama, who said, on average, that your health insurance costs will go down $2,500 a year. I do not know who told him that, whether it was Dr. Emanuel or who. I do not know what whiz-bang accountant or financial forecaster told him that. But it is just the opposite of that. Probably the average American is going to spend about $2,500 more trying to get equivalent care to what they had, not keeping their same insurance and not keeping their doctor.

Then, finally, the deceit that is assumed but not spoken, is that your doctor is going to make decisions for you and with you about your health care.

When the independent advisory board gets going, it will be not only about Medicare, it will be about everybody. If a group of unelected bureaucrats thinks I shouldn't run a non-stress test on a pregnant woman whom I am watching closely and they say I can't do that, I won't be able to do that.

We are going to be having a group of people practicing medicine in this country who don't know the patient, don't know the situation, don't have their hands on the patient, haven't ever touched the patient, making decisions about what kind of care that patient will get.

When we try to unwind the unaffordable care act, we have a routine chorus of noes. So the consequence is, who is going to be held accountable?

A total disruption of the indemnification market in this country is now occurring in terms of health care insurance. When the insurance companies look at what their ratios are in terms of young to old, in terms of higher risk patients who cost more versus younger patients who cost less, they will make a calculation this spring about what their fees will be for next year.

The ObamaCare administration did something else deceitful--intentionally deceitful. Before the election next fall, they don't want you to know how much the health care costs are going to rise, and so they changed the date on which you will make a selection for next year and on which those prices will go through until after the November elections next year because they know that if you know the significant increase in costs that are going to come next year--not just this year but next year--based on the adverse selection and the mix of all of the insurance companies in this country--they know that the rise in your insurance health cost is going to be significant. So what did they do? They passed a little rule, and they changed the day to make the knowledge available to you, the purchaser, come after the election. So you won't be a fully informed voter knowing that your insurance costs are going to rise 20 or 25 percent again next year under the unaffordable care act--the unaffordable care act.

We are in a mess in a lot of ways. We are going to continue to see significant disruptions in the health care in this country. We are going to see a continuous decline in the quality of health care in this country--just the opposite of what they promised--because we are disrupting the doctor-patient relationship. I know this, having practiced for 25 years. I know what it takes to really care for someone. I know what it means to be in a room and spend the time that it takes to listen, to find out what is really going on, to find out why the patient is really there. We are going to drive down all of that.

We have this payment system in Medicare which pays on the basis of procedure--which is a dumb system--instead of paying on the basis of time that is spent with a patient. What most people don't recognize is that all reimbursements in this country for physicians--unless a doctor is in concierge medicine, which is another thing I will talk about in a minute--force doctors to spend less time with their patients because as we crank down reimbursements, either through Medicaid or through the insurance or through Medicare, and a doctor has fixed overhead which has been markedly expanded under the mandates associated with the Affordable Care Act, less time means less quality care. Less time means less quality care.

There was an interesting study done recently about how long--after your doctor comes into the room and asks ``why are you here today?'' how long before you are interrupted because the doctor is in a hurry to get to the next patient. It is 6 1/2 seconds.

So our reimbursement mechanism, mandated by the Federal Government--another positive aspect of us meddling in the markets--is decreasing the time, the quality, and the quantity of health care that patients rightly deserve when they are sitting in your office.

What is the market doing about this? There is this growing expanse of what are called concierge doctors where, for a certain fee, that doctor is yours no matter how many times per year you want to go to him or them. No matter what your needs are, they are available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. How does it work? Well, most people can't afford concierge medicine. It is about $1,000 a year that you pay. Insurance doesn't reimburse you for it. You pay $1,000, and they are available. You get a comprehensive, thorough health care screening exam once a year. All of your tests are included in that as far as blood tests and laboratory tests at a physician's office. Then if you have a need at any time during that year, you have access to that physician.

What do we find? The first studies that have come out on that, where we take the time pressure off the doctors and let them actually practice medicine the way they were trained, show that they order 40 percent fewer tests. Isn't that interesting?

The axiom in medicine that every doctor is trained with is if you will listen to your patients, they will tell you what is wrong with them, whether it is cancer or diabetes or heart disease or anxiety or depression or hypertension. But it takes time, it takes interaction, and it takes a great differential diagnosis. The unaffordable care act is destroying that. This is why you are seeing this little blurb out in the market where you see concierge medicine because now the reason they are ordering fewer tests is they spend about five times as long with a patient because they are not in a hurry to get to the next patient because they are not making their money by filling out a code and filing it with an insurance company. There is a complete relationship between the physician and their patient.

I would like to return to this gentleman named Brian who is from Oklahoma. He and his wife have two children under 5 years of age. They believed what the President said when he told them they would keep their health insurance plan and their doctors if they liked them. Brian recently called my office and said: That isn't true. That was a lie to me. It was deceitful. It was untrue.

Brian works in Tulsa, and the company he works for, he felt the insurance cost was too much, so he didn't take insurance from his employer, and he went on the private market and bought, through Community Care in Tulsa, a plan he and his wife could afford. His wife decided to quit working, stay home, and raise their two kids. He was paying a $330 premium, but it didn't cover maternity care, and they didn't want any more children, so he underwent a vasectomy, which is an elective procedure, to make sure he wouldn't have more children.

On November 1, Brian received a letter in the mail stating that as of November 1 of this next year he would be terminated from his current plan and he would have to find a plan that satisfied the new mandates that the wisdom of Washington said had to be in there--maternity care. He spent hours on the ACA Web site, and what he found were plans that ranged in costs from $800 to $1,100 per month--four times what he was paying. He can't afford that. He didn't qualify for a subsidy, but he can't afford that.

So now what does he do? He had plan for $330 a month that met his needs and covered what he and his wife thought they needed covered. He is a young man. What is going to happen to Brian? Brian is going to get taxed, not because he doesn't want to buy health care, not because he can't afford the $330 or even $400 or $500 a month, but because he can't afford $800 or $1,100 a month. So now Brian is going to be without health care--I am going to say it again: without health care--and then we are going to fine him, we are going to tax him because we designed a system that took him out of the market. It didn't put him in the market; it took him out of the market.

What have we done? We had an opportunity to fix that with the Enzi amendment, to grandfather all of these plans in, and all of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said no.

So here is Brian with a wife at home and two small children under 5, and he is stuck in no man's land. Do you think he thinks President Obama is truthful? No. Does he think those who touted the Affordable Care Act are truthful? No. He has lost confidence in his government.

That is really where we are in our country today. We are in a crisis of confidence with Washington. It was never meant to be. If you read the enumerated powers--as a matter of fact, we have an Enumerated Powers Act. It has 36 cosponsors. It says simply that if you bring a bill to the floor, you have to state what section of the Constitution gives you authority to legislate in that area based on what article I, section 8 of the Constitution has to say.

Disappointingly, there is not one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who is a cosponsor of that bill. It doesn't stop you from offering the bill, it just says please reference where in the Constitution you have the authority to legislate in this way. None of our colleagues believe the Constitution has any bearing on what we do by the fact they will not even cosponsor that bill.

The very thing our Founders emphasized was our authority to make or change law. That is fundamental, structural to this country. As we have ignored--as does the affordable-unaffordable care act--the enumerated powers, the consequences to our country are monstrous.

This book contains, through the middle of November, all the emails my office has gotten on the Affordable Care Act from a State of just 4 million people. We are just 4 million people. There is not much positive in here. As a matter of fact, there is not one positive story in here. They are all stories similar to Brian's and Tina's--identical. Had care; don't have care now. Had an affordable plan; don't have an affordable plan now. Had a doctor; don't have that doctor now.

As a matter of fact, one of the stories in here is from somebody who had their doctor for 35 years and can't have that doctor anymore. It is not because the doctor doesn't want the patient, and it is not because the patient doesn't want the doctor. It is because the unaffordable care act has decided that will not work in our system anymore.

We have heard through the press that we didn't have any ideas on health care. My colleagues know that isn't true. Senator Baucus stood right over there on December 8, when we tried to bring up the Patients' Choice Act. That did everything in terms of the goals which the Affordable Care Act did, without raising taxes, without disrupting the indemnification market in this country, creating a true safety net for those who could not afford health care, and created auto-enrollment for the irresponsible. We were never allowed to vote on that.

It was very similar to what we are seeing now with the Defense authorization bill. We have to pass one, but you can't have your say. My 4 million people don't count when it comes to the Defense authorization bill because they do not like the amendments I might offer.

Under the Constitution, it is illegal for the Pentagon not to give a report of how it is spending its money. It is a violation of the Constitution. We have an Audit the Pentagon Act. It has real teeth in it. There is somewhere between $50 billion and $100 billion worth of waste a year in the Pentagon. We will never manage the Pentagon if we can't measure what they are doing. Yet we don't get an opportunity to offer that. It is a smart good government amendment. But it is not in there, and it is not ever going to get offered. Why? Because the majority leader in this body has decided he will decide what amendments are offered and what amendments will not be.

This is no longer the greatest deliberative body. This is a mimic of the House of Representatives--the exact opposite of what our Founders intended the Senate to be. Their genius was they created a House of Representatives to be responsive to the populace demands of our country. That is why elections are every 2 years for the House of Representatives.

When the Senate was first formed, it was an appointed body by the State legislature and it was for a 6-year term. Jefferson wrote the rules--the first rules under which the Senate would operate--and the Senate was designed to make sure there could never be a tyranny of the majority, as we see today; that the minority rights of those in opposition would never be limited. For the first 130 years, it took absolute unanimous consent to do anything in this body. The rules were always changed--when the rules changes were made--with a two-thirds vote of those duly sworn and present, until November of this year.

Are things raw in the Senate right now? You bet. And they are going to stay that way because the very genius behind our Founders was to force consensus and compromise in the Senate, something the majority leader doesn't believe in. We saw the raw, brute political power with the unaffordable care act. Not a single Republican voted for that bill. It was forced through with a 60-vote margin in December 2009 on Christmas Eve morning.

Now we see more raw, brute political force, not because it had to be that way but because leadership is lacking, an understanding of the traditions and history of the Senate. Carl Levin explained why he didn't agree with that. We didn't listen to one of

the senior Members who has been here a long time, who understands the history of the Senate, and so consequently we find ourselves in a situation where consensus is not derived, the mechanism to force consensus has been diminished, long-term thought goes out the window, and bipartisanship will as well.

I wish to spend another minute or two talking about the Defense Authorization Act and the waste in the Pentagon. A little over 1 year ago I put out a report on the Pentagon. In the Pentagon's budget is $67 billion a year which the Pentagon spends on items that have nothing to do with defending this country. I put out that report in the hopes the Senate Armed Services Committee would look at that report and say: We ought to take all this out of the Defense Department.

Do my colleagues realize the Defense Department has 112 science, technology, engineering, and math programs--110 separate programs. That doesn't have anything to do with defending the country. They have 138 green energy programs, spending billions of dollars every year on them. That should be at the Department of Energy, not in the Pentagon. It costs $50,000 a year to educate a child on a military base in this country--four and a half times what it costs to educate anybody anywhere else in this country. That doesn't have anything to do with defending the country either. Why?

So we have $67 billion that not one aspect of was acted on in the Defense Authorization bill. That was not taken out. Let's have the military defend this country and not do all these other things that don't have anything to do with defending the country.

Oh, by the way, if we moved that $67 billion out, it is estimated we could save about $15 billion in overhead absorption by moving medical research to the NIH, where it belongs, instead of the billions of dollars we send to the Pentagon for medical research that doesn't have anything to do with extraneous diseases that our combat forces might encounter in odd places around the world.

So $67 billion, and we could have saved $15 billion. That $15 billion is three-quarters of what the new ``agreement'' between the House and the Senate on the budget for the next 2 years is. We could have saved that. That is $15 billion that would have paid for training; $15 billion that would have bought more ships; $15 billion that would have worked on missile defense, now that we are going to need it since Iran is going to eventually be armed with a missile-based nuclear weapon. But we didn't do it.

We have the Government Accountability Office that in the last 3 years has identified duplication throughout the Federal Government coming close to the tune of $250 billion. One committee in the House has actually acted on their report. Of that $250 billion, perhaps $50 billion or $40 billion could be saved by eliminating some duplication. Yet not one committee in the Senate acted on the recommendations of the Government Accountability Office to eliminate duplication--not one. Not one bill came to the floor.

We have tried to insert a lot of it, but we can't offer amendments anymore. We don't have the opportunity--the 4 million people in Oklahoma--to have a say on what happens. They see what is not happening, and they wonder why we don't fix these things.

Let me create a scenario for a minute. What do my colleagues think would happen in the country if we actually did the things the Government Accountability Office recommends we do? What would the people think if we eliminated the duplication, if we eliminated the fraud, if we eliminated the waste? The confidence of the American people in this Congress would rise because we are actually addressing the problems. We are actually addressing the key components that put us in deficit every year.

It is true--my colleagues all tell me--the biggest problem is our entitlements. That is true. But it doesn't mean we don't worry about the smaller problems. As a matter of fact, I am reminded--as I see the Presiding Officer in the Chair--that I owe Senator King some information on some programs I forgot to give him that he asked me for in November. But if in fact we did all those things, if our committees were charged, through the leadership of this body, to eliminate the duplication, consolidate the programs, and save the money because we need the money right now, we need to not be charging it to our children, what would happen to the confidence in this country? It would rise. We would actually be doing what the people expect us to do. Nobody in the real world gets to do what we do--ignore the real problems, don't act on the real problems and say: It is too hard. It is too difficult.

I yearn for bipartisanship, for consensus. I yearn for a system that forces us into consensus--not all my way, not all somebody else's way but somewhere in the middle. That requires using the rules of the Senate and a long-term vision of where our country needs to be going and not caring about what a political career looks like but caring about what our country looks like.

We have lost focus on what is important. It is not my career, it is not the career of the distinguished Senator from Iowa, it is what happens to our country. We have our eye on the wrong ball. I do too. I admit it. We degenerate to the easiest thing to be critical about.

I am human. I admit to that as well. It doesn't have to be that way.

Mr. President, I see that the majority leader and several others are on the floor. I yield the floor in anticipation of our vote.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise in enthusiastic support of the nomination of Chai Feldblum to serve a second term at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Commissioner Feldblum has served with distinction at the Commission since 2010. She is a respected professor of law, and one of America's premier experts on employment discrimination and civil rights laws.

I have had the pleasure of working personally with Commissioner Feldblum first on the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, and more recently in 2008 on the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act. She was a tremendous help to me in both of those efforts.

Chai Feldblum has a fierce intellect and a passionate commitment to ensuring equal opportunity for all. Perhaps the most important quality in a Commissioner at this critical agency, Commissioner Feldblum has the ability to listen to all sides and to make careful decisions about the allocation of the scarce resources that Congress provides to the EEOC. That ability to listen carefully, to search for compromise, and to forge consensus are skills that I have observed during our work together, and that I know she brings those skills to the EEOC.

She has built close working relationships over the course of her career with both worker advocates and the business community. This explains why her nomination has broad bipartisan support here in the Senate and in the employment community as a whole.

I have here letters of support from the Society of Human Resource Managers, the U.S. Business Leadership Network, and a letter signed by leading attorneys in the labor and employment bar. The signatories on that letter include five former GOP Commissioners and officers of the EEOC and the Department of Labor. Speaking of Ms. Feldblum, these attorneys say, and I quote, ``Commissioner Feldblum has been one of the leading lights in the employment law field. She is a tireless contributor to the employment law bar and to educating stakeholders on employment law issues.''

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