Burwell Nomination

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, this afternoon we are going to vote on the nomination of Ms. Burwell to be the Secretary of HHS. I am going to support that nomination. I am here on the floor to alert people to some of the problems she will face and hopefully she can correct.

For starters, I hope that everybody remembers the government has checks and balances. Congress passes laws, the executive branch enforces them, and it is our responsibility to make sure that those laws are enforced according to the intent of Congress. When they are not enforced, we have a responsibility to point that out, and that is what I will be doing. I hope she will be able to correct the issues that my colleagues and I will be pointing out this morning.

We also have a situation where Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, and in that process the President has done a lot of things that some of us think are illegal and in some cases even unconstitutional. Hopefully, she, as the new director, will make sure that those practices don't continue.

When Ms. Burwell was nominated, I said that anyone put in charge of ObamaCare would be set up to fail. The theme of this law has really been ``by any means necessary.'' In other words, it doesn't really matter what the law says, do whatever it takes to get this program underway: the President can fix it later. He has done that 38 times--and surely sometimes contrary to what the law says and contrary to the oath he took to uphold the laws of this country: The legislative process was certainly, by no means, necessary; if you want to change it, change it.

The implementation of this law has operated similarly. The department we are considering Ms. Burwell to lead has ignored the plain read of the statute whenever it was considered necessary. In other words, don't bother to come to Congress to correct something you think is not working; just correct it yourself. Deadlines were considered to be written in pencil.

If the statute needed to be creatively reinterpreted to make the program work, the Department of HHS did so, and that still continues today. Consequently, that is why I am pleading with Ms. Burwell to change things.

The Department is supposed to implement the employer mandate, which is a year overdue, and it has been significantly altered from the statute. The Department is supposed to implement risk corridors this year, although the legal authority to distribute funds is questionable and the standards used to make those distributions will likely be kept very quiet.

Speaking of things that will be kept quiet, Congress is going to want to know what the premiums will be next year for health insurance. We consider the information very important and relevant.

My State of Iowa is considered to be one of the States most at risk for premium spikes. The Department will want to use any means necessary to hide the premiums until after the November elections unless, of course, the premium numbers are good, and then I am sure the Department will shout them from the rooftops, much as they did with enrollment numbers.

We have heard over and over about enrollment numbers, but the enrollment numbers don't tell the whole story--not even close. I was under the impression that the law was supposed to increase coverage and lower costs. So far that is not the case. The independent research firm McKinsey found that 74 percent of the people getting coverage through ObamaCare plans were previously insured. If those numbers are accurate, that means one in four people getting coverage was previously uninsured. Certainly that is what I hear from my constituents. They have had to change their coverage, and often that coverage has been much more expensive.

Furthermore, the McKinsey research also found that the majority of people who shopped for an ObamaCare plan but did not purchase that plan cited affordability as the No. 1 reason for not buying that insurance.

A poll released by the Kaiser Foundation found that roughly 4 in 10 uninsured Americans named affordability as their primary reason for going without health insurance. It is not working as it was intended.

I hope Ms. Burwell will change the relationship the Department has with Congress. I hope she will be willing to break the ``by any means necessary'' mindset that we have seen for the last 5 years. I hope she doesn't disappear into the bunker over there in that office building and that we will never hear from her again.

Her challenge is very severe. The law appears to be shifting around the previously insured more than it is covering the previously uninsured. The previously uninsured are citing costs as a primary reason for not purchasing insurance.

I will support the nomination of Ms. Burwell today and hope that down the road--several months from now--I am not sorry I did that. I think she is a person who has the capability of turning things around, and that she will do that. But the law remains far from being worthy of support.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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