Flood Insurance and Veterans Medical Clinics

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I, too, want to lend my voice--after listening to the discussion that just occurred on the floor--because I don't think there is any group of Americans who are more deserving of our support than the men and women who have worn the uniform of this country and so bravely and courageously defended America's freedom and our democracy. I hope, such as my colleagues who spoke just a minute ago, we can come to an agreement that would allow us to do the things on which we agree.

There are so many things on which we agree--I think 80 percent of the debate last week between what the Senator from Vermont proposed and the Senator from North Carolina proposed were the same--that we ought to be able at least to do those we agree on and address some of the very vital and urgent needs our veterans community has. So I would lend my voice to supporting efforts to get things moving.

There is a bill that has come over from the House of Representatives that addresses many of these issues, not as comprehensively as was proposed last week by the Senator from Vermont and the Senator from North Carolina. Obviously, we have some issues that need to be addressed that will support and help those Americans who have borne the cost of battle for our country and defended America's freedoms, but we should work together to find that agreement and to move legislation forward that would address those needs.

THE BUDGET

Mr. President, I come to the floor, however, to talk about the pain that ObamaCare and the Obama economy are causing Americans.

CBS News/New York Times released a new poll last week finding there is widespread dissatisfaction with President Obama: 59 percent of the American people are disappointed in the President's Presidency, the poll found, while 63 percent think the country is on the wrong track.

Just 38 percent of the people in this country approve of the President's handling of the economy, and 39 percent approve of his handling of foreign policy.

When it comes to the President's signature law, ObamaCare, just 6 percent--6 percent--of the American people think the law is working well. A whopping 92 percent support changing the health care law or repealing it altogether.

In similar news, Gallup reported last month that its Economic Confidence Index was negative for every single State. In other words, the majority of Americans in every State have a generally negative view of the economy. Only in DC--in the District of Columbia, home of too many disconnected Democratic politicians--did Gallup find a net positive view of the economy.

Needless to say, the American people are, to put it mildly, dissatisfied. Why are they dissatisfied? Because they spent 5 years waiting for the relief they were promised and it hasn't arrived.

A Pew Research Center poll in September found that 63 percent of the American people believe the Nation's economic system is no more secure today than it was before the 2008 market crash. The same poll also found the majority of Americans report household incomes and the job situation have hardly recovered at all from the recession. President Obama may have inherited a difficult economic situation, but he has had 5 years to make it better. Instead, he is making things worse.

Over the past 5 years household income has declined by $3,600. Income inequality is at its highest point literally since the Great Depression. The number of Americans receiving food stamps has soared from over 32 million to now more than 47 million--almost 48 million Americans receiving food stamps.

That means that one in five--literally one in five--American households is on food stamps. Ten million Americans are unemployed, almost 4 million of them for more than 6 months, and the labor force participation rate is at Jimmy Carter-era lows, thanks in part to literally thousands of Americans who have simply given up hope of ever finding a job and dropped out of the labor force altogether.

Then there is the President's health care law. The President promises a health care law with lower costs while allowing you to keep the plan and the doctor you like. In reality health care costs have skyrocketed and Americans have been losing their doctors and their health care plans in droves. Seniors are being hit hard by cuts in the Medicare Advantage Program and lower income seniors are being hit the hardest. Meanwhile, businesses are struggling with the law's burdensome taxes and regulations, while workers struggle with reduced hours and fewer opportunities.

A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office found that the President's health care law will reduce the number of full-time workers by up to 2.5 million over the next 10 years. Then there is last week's report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that found that 11 million small businesses are going to see workers have their premiums increased as a result of ObamaCare.

Yesterday, in an attempt to improve the Democrats' steadily worsening election prospects in November, the administration announced yet another--another--ObamaCare delay for selecting health plans, as well as a pardon for the administration's union friends. It is no wonder Americans are so unhappy.

Despite the abundance of evidence that their policies have failed, the Democrats and the President continue to dismiss Americans' stories. In fact, the Senate majority leader had the gall the other day to get up on the floor of the Senate and say every single ObamaCare horror story is untrue. That is right. Instead of looking at the overwhelming evidence that ObamaCare just isn't working, and maybe rethinking his support of that law, the majority leader decided to accuse every single American who has had a bad experience with ObamaCare of lying about his or her story. Now that is a lot of denial right there.

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result. Yet that is exactly what the Democrats and President are doing. Instead of looking at the evidence of the past 5 years and rethinking their policies, Democrats are piling on more of the same. For Americans hurting for jobs and opportunities, Democrats have recently taken to advocating a hike in the minimum wage--a policy, I might add, that the Congressional Budget Office said would result in up to 1 million fewer jobs and a policy that would hit the lowest income workers the hardest.

Then there is the President's budget. The President's budget proposal would have been a great opportunity for the President to rethink some of these failed strategies of the past 5 years and to focus on controlling spending and promoting economic growth. Instead the President produced a political document that panders to the far leftwing of his party and eschews any type of meaningful reform.

His budget won't control spending. Instead, it increases spending by 63 percent over the next 10 years and it adds another $8.3 trillion to our $17 trillion debt. To pay for some of that spending, the administration is proposing even more tax increases, over $1 trillion worth of new tax increases on top of the $1.7 trillion in tax increases the President has already gotten since he came to office.

The administration has even backed away from changes to our broken entitlement programs, such as gradually raising the eligibility age for Medicare, which would have helped put the Medicare Program on a stronger financial footing going forward.

And as for balancing the budget, well, that is a fantasy. The President's budget doesn't even pretend to balance. With 2 years left in his Presidency, it appears the President has given up on governing and resigned himself to playing election year politics. His lameduck budget will further grow the Federal Government while the middle class continues to shrink.

If the President and Democrats really want to help Americans the way they claim, there are real steps they could take right now to start turning our economy around and putting Americans back to work. Instead of a job-killing minimum wage hike, they could support initiatives to reduce the cost of hiring and give businesses incentives to hire workers. Instead of perpetually extending unemployment benefits, they could support legislation, such as a bill I introduced to provide relocation resources to allow the long-term unemployed to move to areas where the job market is stronger, and strengthen Federal worker training programs. This would help give the unemployed what they really want--not months of meager government benefits but steady, good-paying jobs with the potential for growth.

Speaking of jobs, if the President wanted to create jobs immediately, he could easily do that today with a stroke of the pen that he talks about: Approve the bipartisan Keystone Pipeline and the 42,000-plus jobs it would support. All it would take is a stroke of the pen he keeps talking about.

Then there is trade promotion authority. The President did talk about trade promotion authority in his State of the Union Address, but he abandoned it shortly afterwards as a result of some Democrats' political concerns about pushing the policy in an election year. Trade promotion authority would help farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs, and job creators gain access to 1 billion new consumers around the globe. If the President were serious about creating jobs for Americans, he would be urging the majority leader to take up this bipartisan legislation today.

Finally, the President should be supporting bipartisan efforts to repeal the costly medical device tax in his health care law, the tax on pacemakers and insulin pumps. According to a recent study, more than 30,000 jobs in the medical device industry have been affected by this burdensome provision in the law. If this tax isn't eliminated soon, even more jobs in the industry are going to be lost or sent overseas.

It is not surprising that the American people are unhappy. ObamaCare and the Obama economy have done nothing to ease the struggles Americans have faced since the recession, and instead of proposing new initiatives, the Democrats and the President continue to push for more of the same, and to double down on the same failed policies.

Well, 5 years is long enough. It is time for Democrats to abandon their failed economic experiments and to work with Republicans to pass legislation that will actually create jobs and opportunities and put Americans back to work. We can do that. We can do that today. The President can pick up the phone he talks about and call the majority leader. Ask him to bring up any one of these initiatives I have mentioned on which there is broad bipartisan support: the Keystone Pipeline, trade promotion authority--initiatives that would grow jobs--repealing the medical device tax. There were 79 votes in the Senate on amendments to the budget last year in support of appealing that onerous tax.

There are things we can do together, that we can do today to create jobs and grow and expand this economy, lower the cost of hiring people in this country, so we can get more Americans back to work with good-paying jobs that will help lift them higher in their economic circumstances and give them a better and a brighter future. I hope that is what the President will choose to do rather than following through on so many of these election year ploys, if you will, that are simply designed to help win elections come election day rather than doing something that is meaningful to help middle-class families and the American people.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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