the cost of health care in this country? why wouldn't you allow for expanded opportunities for people to care -- take care of their own health care circumstances by allowing for expanded, larger health savings accounts, opportunities for people to put money aside in an account, perhaps buy a catastrophic policy with a high deductible but tax-free, you can put money aside that allows them to cover some of those health care costs that don't reach that -- that catastrophic level? how about finally, finally doing something to reduce the costs of defensive medicine, which means we would have to reform our medical malpractice laws in this country and weed out a lot of the junk lawsuits that clog up our legal system and make it so much more expensive to deliver health care. i talk to physicians all the time for whom concern about liability is a major issue. it creates overutilization.

you take all this great technology that we have in america today, you have physicians who are worried about being sued, of course they're going to probably run duplicative tests. there are probably hospitals, anybody who is involved in the delivery of health care in this country knows very well about the cost of practicing defensive medicine. there have been lots of studies on it done, all of which conclude that it adds significantly to the cost of delivering health care in this country. there are differences of opinion about how much that is, but there is no question that it's a factor in the high cost of health care. there have been proposals. we have a number of my colleagues on this side of the aisle who have suggested allowing people to have a -- their own personal refundable tax credit for the purchase of health insurance and to create equity between the tax treatment of health care that people can get through their employer with that that they would be able to get in the individual

marketplace. but again, the principle is greater choice, greater competition and therefore lower prices. it's a fairly straightforward and simple, i think, formula when it comes to a market-based approach to how we deal with the health care crisis that we have in this country. now, clearly, we've got programs like medicare and medicaid that -- where the government is fairly heavily involved in the delivery of health care in this country, and that, too, is an area where we need to be looking at how can we reform and make those programs work more efficiently, more effectively in a way that hopefully maximizes the return that the taxpayers get on those particular programs. and so if you look at programs like medicare, there was a good example a few years ago, medicare part d, which is the only program i think of since i have been here or for that matter since i have been following policies that have been put in place over time,

that actually has cost less than what it was projected to cost. why? why? because it allowed for competition. it created a private component where private insurance companies would vie for, would bid for the business of senior citizens across this country when it comes to their medications. and as a consequence of that, you have seen those costs come down to a -- a reasonable level. it actually has cost less than what was anticipated. that is a principle that we could start to apply in other areas. there are a number of things that could be done to reduce the cost of delivery of health care when it comes to the -- the component of it that government is heavily involved with. but the point very simply, madam president, is that whenever you create more choices, when you create more competition, it has a downward impact on costs. it drives costs down. and so why weren't a lot of these things considered or incorporated into obamacare when

it was passed? well, we all know the answer to that. it's because the majority party who had the votes decideed to do it their way. they tried to go -- they decide to go their own way and we ended up as a consequence with a bill, a piece of legislation, and now a huge new program that has been an utter disaster, and i think any objective observer would come to that conclusion based upon the rollout of the web site and everything subsequent to that that impacts costs, that impacts people's ability to keep the plans that they have and the doctor that they have, that impacts the economy which is overburdened with the cost of regulation in the new law as well as the many -- and i think many taxes that were included in the new law, and there were lots of new taxes included, not to mention lots of cuts to medicare, which interestingly enough were double counted. they were allowed to be used

as -- as -- quote -- "savings put in the medicare trust fund, therefore expanding the life span of medicare at the same time that was going to be spent on the new health care proposal. only in washington, d.c. could you get away with a counting convention that would allow you to doublecount revenue, which is essentially what happened. we raised that question many times, and eventually we had a letter from the congressional budget office that said yes, this is doublecounting revenue. you are -- you are spending the same money twice. and yet, the majority party had the votes. and around here, it's a function of math. if you have the votes, you can do pretty much whatever you wanted, and that is what they did. we are paying a dear, dear price for that, but the people who are really paying the biggest price are the american people who are seeing these increased premium costs, increased deductibles, fewer jobs, slower economy and lower take-home pay. that's the bottom line.

if you want to really put this -- boil this down into basic economic terms of what we're talking about here is a slower, more sluggish, anemic economy, chronic high unemployment and lower take-home pay for middle-class americans. in fact, if you look at average household income, which is something that you use as a metric to measure people's overall economic situations, the average household income in this country since 2009 when the president took office has decreased by about $3,700 per family. so a lot of things obviously contribute to that, but i don't think it's any surprise that when you drive up the costs of something that everybody needs in this country -- and by that i mean health care in the form of higher premiums and higher deductibles, it's inevitable that you're going to see a lot of people's household incomes impacted by that. and then you couple and layer on top of that the impact that it

has on the economy when you have a sluggish economy creating fewer jobs out there, that, too, has a -- a very devastating impact on people's personal economic circumstances and livelihood. and so average household income since the president took office has gone down by about $3,700. lower take-home pay. another of the results and the outcomes and the ultimate impacts, if you will, of policies created here in washington, d.c., that make it more expensive and more difficult to create jobs in this country. so anyway, as i said earlier, madam president, i think ultimately what gets us to where we really can change this, change course, change direction, take this thing which is headed for the cliff and turn it around and move it the other direction is going to be the american people, and i can tell you that if every united states senator, every member of congress, if the

white house is hearing what i'm hearing from people in south dakota, perhaps there is some hope that we can persuade enough people around here that we've got to change the direction that we're headed. i want to just share a few things from people that i have heard from in my state of south dakota. i had a male constituent from sioux falls, south dakota, who wrote and said i just received notice that our health insurance will go up almost 60% due to the affordable care act or obamacare from $718 per month to 1,146 per month. we will also lose our prescription drug benefits and office co-pay against until each of us reaches a $5,000 deductible. he goes on to say we have maternity benefits now and pediatric, dental and vision care. although i am 64 and my wife is 59. this will cost us an additional additional $5,000 per year.

well, you know, for somebody who is trying to make ends meet in this country, trying to get the mortgage paid, trying to put a little aside for their kids' education, $5,000 is real money. that is a tangible impact of this law on the economic circumstances, the standard of living, the quality of life that this particular couple is experiencing in america today. i have another letter. it says obamacare -- i'm sorry. this actually goes on. i should say this is a continuation of that letter. it says obamacare is sticking hardworking americans with higher costs for unnecessary coverage. families were denied the ability to keep their plans, the plans that best fit their needs, lifestyles and budgets. this is a letter we got from a female constituent from wilmott,

south dakota. she says my husband and i have four small children and purchase our own health care. my husband runs his own small business and i'm privileged to stay at home. we are very healthy. so we have always purchased a plan with a large deductible so we can afford a reasonable premium. today we received our letter from our health insurance provider letting us know that next month our premium will be jumping 232%. 232% increase in premium. that's over $500 more a month, and we barely use our health insurance. we currently live in an 1,800 square-foot house and have been trying to find something bigger. this jump in our monthly health care premium could prevent us from being able to afford any kind of monthly house payment. madam president, obamacare is cutting into the carefully planned budgets of american

families, holding them back from the futures for which they had carefully budgeted. this again is an cample of a family that is trying to get by o'four small kids, buy their own health care on the individual marketplace. husband is self-employed, runs his own business, and a mom who has been able to stay home and care for those four kids. they work very hard at staying healthy. very rarely use their health insurance policy who are going to see a 232% increase. over $500 more a month and live in an 1,800 square-foot house that they had hoped to be able to find something a little bit bigger and aren't going to be able to because of the consequences of obamacare. this is from a female constituent in spencer, south dakota, and she writes thanks to obamacare, my monthly premium will increase over 100%, which equals 45% of my monthly income.

my daughter lost her insurance as well. the affordable care act is not affordable. and if i could tell the president so, i would. my private insurance did change. madam president, the obama administration has broken its promise that americans that wanted to keep their plans could, and we are also learning that this law simply isn't affordable for many middle-class families like this lady from spencer, south dakota, that the obama administration said that it would protect. when they said if you like your plan, you can keep it, period, a lot of americans took that to the bank. well, clearly they should have known better, and the double talk coming out of washington, d.c., is now not only frustrating a lot of americans, it is creating the cynicism and a lack of trust and confidence that is going to make it difficult to do big things in the future. this is from a male constituent in rapid city, south dakota, who wrote i know you did not vote

for this, thank you, but i wanted to tell you my health care premium went from $640 a month to $1,080 a month. my deductible went from $3,600 to $5,000. i feel like the federal government has stolen over $5,000 a year from me. madam president, americans feel betrayed by this law, likening the increased rates to theft by their own government. i mean, that's the level of frustration that people across this country are feeling. they're frustrated. they are discouraged. they are despondent. they want something to get, they want something to change. they know, they know that we can't continue down this path and expect that any of these families are going to be able to provide a better standard of living and a better quality of life for their children and

grandchildren. $400 increase over $400 increase in monthly premium and $1,400 increase in their deductible. that's the effect for this constituent from rapid city, south dakota. i had a constituent family from watertown, south dakota, who writes this. you need to know how obamacare is harming my life and health care. we were one of the families that lost their health care plan. we heard president obama say if you like your health care, you can keep it. that was a lie. our new health care plan is going to cost our family $21,600 a year compared to the health care plan of 2013 which cost us us $7,335.96. that is a 300% -- 300%-plus

increase. we're a healthy family of six people. we are outraged and upset. madam president, these letters and calls to my office echo similar complaints from american families back home in my state of south dakota and all across the country. obamacare is costing this family more money and denying them the plan that they want. that is the real-life, real-world impact. this is really, if you think about it, pretty staggering. new health care plans going to cost a family over $21,000 a year compared to $7,335 today. a 300-plus percent increase for a healthy family of six. you can't blame them when they say that they're upset and outraged. who wouldn't be? who wouldn't be? this is from a small business

owner from brookings, south dakota, who wroets in the mail today was a letter from my health care insurance provider. and well, guess what? thanks to the great obamacare plan, my monthly premium almost doubled and my deductible doubled. i'm a small business owner. i like to hire an employee next spring. well, that's not going to happen. when will those we elect to washington ever do something to help people in small businesses? madam president, obamacare is not only slamming individuals, but it's hitting the small businesses, the job creators that washington needs to be protecting. obamacare is stopping employers from expanding their workforces. again, in a bigger place, in a big city, this may not have the domino effect, the ripple effect

that it does. but in a small state like south dakota, when you have a small business owner like this gentleman from brookings, south dakota, who wants to expand his business, wants to hire another employee, and says that's not going to happen, and the reason it's not going to happen is because of this huge increase in their monthly premiums, almost doubling, almost doubling the monthly premium and doubling the deductible. i don't know how you, if you're an employer today in this country who is trying to grow their business, expand their business and provide for themselves and their families, perhaps put a little bit aside that they can use for their college, for the kids' college education or perhaps put a little aside for retirement, how you deal with the doubling of one of your probably biggest costs of doing business, the

cost of health care. you double your premiums, you double your deductible. this is from a mother in garrettson, south dakota who writes next year our insurance is cleaning and i will lose my family practice doctor of 22 years. the doctor that delivered all my children and has cared for our teenage children all their lives. we'll also lose all the backup doctors our family has seen when we couldn't see our regular doctor. i was happy with my insurance, and now i have to lose my doctor. madam president, this is another testimony of people that are losing their plans and doctors which the obama administration, president obama himself repeatedly over and over again told the american people they could keep. families are losing their trusted doctors.

so whether it's a doctor, hospital, prescription drug coverage, all these real-life examples, real-world examples of the impacts of obamacare point to just one thing, and that is this law, one, doesn't work, and two, can't be fixed. there's no way that you're going to be able to address what most people care about when it comes to their health care, and that's the cost, when you are requiring the people who provide that health care coverage to deal with more minutes, more requirements, higher taxes, all of which are going to get passed on, all of which are going to get passed on and paid for by the very people in this country who are just trying to make ends meet and make a living and provide for their families. those are examples from my state of south dakota. i could go on because there are

many more examples. there are examples from people all across the country. but i think the point, madam president, that needs to be made here and can't be made often enough is that these are real-world economic impacts that are affecting everyday americans in a way that is making it more difficult for them, making their economic circumstances more complicated and more difficult. and what, if anything, should we here in washington take away from that? well, i think, first off, as i said earlier that this doesn't work. let's start over. let's do this the right way. it's not too late to do that. it's never too late to do the right thing. we could, if we decided to pull this thing out by the roots and start over, come up with a whole series of reforms that would move us in a step-by-step direction toward the ultimate goal, and that is to address the health care challenge that we face in america today, namely,

again, which is cost. i don't think there's anybody, any american family, any individual who as they go about having to purchase health care, if you're a young, healthy person, obviously you don't want to pay a lot for it because you're probably not going to use it a lot. those are the people that are going to get hit the hardest. i can't tell you how somebody, if you're in your 20's how much more you're going to have to pay to get health coverage in this country simply because the law requires that what they call a community rating band be narrowed so that people who are healthier and younger are going to pay much, much more to cover people who are less healthy. that's a reality in the legislation and it's the reality now in terms of the way it's being applied and the way it's being implemented. you're looking at a lot of people in this country, younger americans and americans of all

ages, for that matter, but for sure younger americans who are looking at higher costs because of these regulations and mandates and requirements that are being imposed upon the insurance companies, health care providers in this country. and you know, the new taxes which i mentioned a little bit earlier are also something that ultimately gets passed on. when we were debating this, the democrats, as they argued, they would say there will be $500 billion in tax increases and $500 billion in medicare cuts. that is how this is going to be financed. it turns out that when it's fully implemented, the cost is much, much higher because what they did, they front end loaded some of the revenues, back end loaded the costs. when we score things in washington, d.c. the congressional budget office says the ten year window is going to be about a $10 trillion cost. when it is fully implemented and

you see the full impact of the costs and revenue together the ten year cost is more like $2.5 trillion. it is the largest expansion of the federal government literally in 50 years and again literally a takeover of one-sixth of the american economy. that is what health care represents in this country. if you think about that in those terms, how much this thing is going to cost and at the time you say don't worry, it is all paid for, we're finding out now more and more information comes to light, more analysis being done that in fact it is going to cost way more than what was initially expected, i think this is the tip of the iceberg, the tip of the iceberg in terms of the cost to the american taxpayers of this. financed, tkpwerpbgs by higher taxes all of which gets passed on to the american people in this country this was spoefsed

to help. the medicare cuts proposed to help pay for this, many of us said at the time that cutting hospitals, cutting home health agencies, cutting nursing homes, cutting hospices -- which is what this did. this was all designed to take $5 hundred hrupb -- take $500 billion, it is $1 trillion when you look at the full ten-year implementation. out of medicare was, one, going to help pay for all the new benefits that would happen under obamacare. and two, somehow, somehow don't ask me how, be credited to the medicare trust fund therebill extending the life of medicare. again, how do you do that? how do you with a straight face say that we're going to take, let's just use the conservative number that was used by the democrats on the floor, $500 billion out of medicare, use it to finance a new entitlement

benefit but somehow, somehow be able to say we're going to credit the medicare trust fund and that this is actually going to prolong the life span of medicare? it was absolutely stunning at the time that we were having this debate where we raised this issue and people would say c.b.o. says this and c.b.o. says this because c.b.o. uses pretty strange accounting conventions that aren't used anyplace else in the world. anyplace else in the world you would be in jailed for doing stuff like that. for double counting revenue but that is essentially what happened. many of us as i said at the time raised this issue on the floor, tried to point out we're spending the same money twice. at that time it fell on deaf ears. but, again, that, to me, is a symptom of a process that is geared to get a result with a

majority vote driven through here, jammed through here, forced through here on christmas eve. we all had that vote christmas eve morning. and all i can say is as someone who was here and observed that entire process, tried our best to warn the american people about what was going to happen, it was too bad that we didn't decide at the time like we usually do when we do major legislation that has enormous consequence with the american people, to do it in a bipartisan way that incorporates the best ideas of both sides of the aisle and perhaps gets a big bipartisan vote. usually when you pass major legislation around here, you're sort of hoping for 70 to 75 votes, perhaps even more, because you have the buy-in. everybody has been involved in helping shape and formulate that legislation. but that wasn't the case when this passed. again, i understand this. it becomes a function of math.

you have the votes or you don't. that's the way this place operates. at that particular time, 60 votes was something that had the majority had the luxury of and didn't seem to care a whole lot about what republicans had to say. and the president was bent on getting his initiative through and getting it his way. and that today is the reason, in my view at least, that we are where we are with a piece of legislation, the impacts are now being fully felt by the american people and their conclusion is what i think their conclusion should be. this is a really raw deal. and i can't tell you, as i think about the, in the broader context beyond just the world and space of health care when it comes to public policy, how these decisions that are made here, major policy decisions impact the broader economy. there is no question, there is no debate about the impact that this is having on the economy if

you talk to any small business person in this country. anybody who has the responsibility of providing health insurance for their employees has the responsibility for hiring and employing people and hopefully paying them a living wage and benefits that go with it, there is no question that this is having a detrimental impact on the overall economy which continues to sputter along at 1% or 2% growth rate. the best thing that we can do is if you want to really help the standard and improve the standard of living and quality of life for people in this country, get people who are unemployed back to work. but secondly, get the economy expanding at a faster rate. we're growing at 1% to 2% a year. and instead of 3% to 4%. that has a profound difference in not only the number of jobs that are created, but also the

wealth that's 0 created in your country. and when you think about an economy that's growing at 3% to 4% versus an economy growing at 1% to 2%, the difference in your gross domestic product, the difference in your total economic output is substantial. in fact it's dramatic. what does that mean? it means a lot of things not the least of which is that government revenue -- are a lot lower than they otherwise would be. if you had a robust economy, people are working, people are investing, people are making money and people are paying taxes. we have this debate around here like it occurs in a vacuum, a stat 'tis environment that somehow republicans come in here, we ought to do what we can to make government more efficient and have it cost less. democrats believe that we ought to have more revenues, more taxes. the problem isn't that we, you know, spend too much.

it's that we tax too little. that's a fundamental philosophical debate we have here on a regular basis. one of the reasons, by the way, it is so hard to reach any significant budget agreement. there is a profound difference in the way that we view the world and how we get our country on a more sustainable fiscal path. those of us who believe in spending reforms, lower spending, more limited role for the government think that's with a we ought to be doing. democrats by and large believe if we get a little more tax revenue, raise taxes a little bit more, we could do more things here in washington, more things for the american people. well, i happen to be of the view that the american people could do just fine for themselves if you allow them to keep more of what they earn. but the reality is that there is a third way, and that is to grow the economy. you can reduce spending. you can raise taxes. we ought to reduce spending. we ought to reform spending in a twhaeu -- way that changes this fiscal trajectory we're on today

which becomes increasingly problematic the farther you get down the road into the future, but we also ought to be looking at in addition to reducing spending and reforming our spending programs in this country, about growing the economy and actually making the pie bigger, because that is a sure-fire way, a certain way of getting the kind of growth in your economy that would allow federal revenues to go up rather than down. and we've seen this over time historically. if you look at history, if history is any sort of guide, you go back to the 1920's under coolidge or to the 1960's under kennedy, a democrat president who understood the importance of reducing marnl natural income tax rates -- marginal income tax rates, or reagan in the 1980's or more recently in this last decade with president george w. bush, when you reduce taxes on income and investment, you don't get less revenue, you get more. because it changes the behavior of the american people. people have an incentive then to invest, to go to work.

that generates not less revenue but more and puts us in a situation ar where we are much better off not only in terms of our economy and the opportunities that it provides the american people but also to the fiscal track that we're on as a nation. madam president, i -- i see my colleague from kentucky is here and would be happy to hand off to him. i know he's got some observations on i think this issue, obamacare, the economy generally, other matters before us. but certainly one of the reasons that we're here is because we got at this rush to approve all these nominees to these very agencies of government, many agencies which are guilty of the very overreach that has contributed to where we are with regard to obamacare. we've got too many regulatory agencies that have way too much power and are circumventing the will in many cases of the congress to accomplish an agenda that's very contrary to the very things that i just talked about, which are economic growth and job creation. but i'd be happy to,

madam president, through the chair, yield the floor. and i think the senator from kentucky, senator paul, is here to take up the mantle. mr. paul: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from kentucky. mr. paul: as we enter into the christmas season, i think it is a good time to talk about stories that describe sort of pastorally where we are, where the senate is. so i have a story today i'd like to tell you about, how the senate works or doesn't work. and so it came to pass that the filibuster was dismembered, dishonored, and indefinitely detained. with the end of the filibuster came the end of any semblance of comity and compromise on capitol hill. the party that never cared much for the rule of law broke the rules of the senate to change the rules. senate rules for nearly two centuries allowed the

filibuster. the filibuster was simply a requirement that 60% of senators must approve nominations and legislation. this supermajority requirement actually fostered more centrist solutions and compromises. in order to change the rules, though, and kill the filibuster, it required a two-thirds majority to change the rules. however, the party that doesn't and hasn't concerned themselves with the rule of law simply broke the rules when th.when thr said, "that's against the rules," they said, we don't care if that's against the rules, the rules are whatever we say the rules are. the best way to put this in perspective, you're watching a tennis match. the ball is clearly a foot out of bounds. the umpire says, out of bounds. instead of going by the rules, you have everyone vote.

so the audience at wimbledon votes that it was inbounds when it was really out of bounds. that's what we have here. we have no more rules and we have no more comity. we have no more compromise. what we have is poison, poison that's been given to us by people who have no concern for the rules. historically, this has always required two-thirds of congress to change the rules, two-thirds of the senate, but for the first time, we break the rules to change the rules. so when the parliamentarian rules to senate democrats that you're breaking the rules, they say, no, it really wasn't out of bounds, it was inbounds. or, we don't care that it was out of bounds, we don't care what the rules say, we want our way, we're impatient, we want our nominations and we want them now. we don't care about the history of the senate, we don't care about the history of the congress. we want our way or we will pick

up our toys and we will go home. we want it now. we want it now. we want all of it. we don't want to talk with the other side. we don't want compromise. we don't want discussion. we don't want negotiation. we want our way or the highway. the rules, it seems, aren't binding upon the senate democrats. to them, the rules are living, breathing, evolving and apparently optional. we shouldn't be surprised, though. we shouldn't be surprised that a party that believes in a living, breathing, ever-evolving, whatever you want it to be constitution, that they might not think the rule of the senate are important. we shouldn't be surprised that the party that believes that morality is unfixed, unhinged, unchanged, unchained to any constants, that all ethics are a

situation that this party might break the rules. we shouldn't be surprised. is anyone really surprised that a party with no apparent concern for the burden of debt that they are placing on every american family, that such a party would break the rules to get their way? we are told that they are upset that the senate just takes too long. they want their way and they want it now. they want their people nominat nominated. they don't want to talk to the other side. they won the election, they want their way. so now they have. they have bullied and brayed and they've won the day. the iron-fisted rule of the rule breakers has now begun. there will be no return. are they going to return to the rules halfway, partway? no, i predict they will only go further. if they don't get their way, they don't get it quick enough,

i predict they'll break the rules further. what passed for gridlock before this will pale in comparison to the poison that seeps from the hands of those who are careless and reckless with the law. where the filibuster once created conversation, the iron-fisted rule of the rule breakers will stifle it. for, you you see, contrary to popular belief, the filibuster actually fostered compromise, dialogue and often results. in exchange for the release of nominations, in exchange for the cooperation of the minority party with the majority party, often there was votes on legislation that not everybody wanted, there was discussion, there were amendments, there was dialogue because we were forced to talk to each other because one side couldn't always get what they wanted, they couldn't slam their fist down in angry

tantrum and say, "my way or the highway. we want what we want. we don't care what 50% of america wants or what 47% of america wants. we want our way and we want it now." the tantrum used to not work, but now we will live in an era where the iron-fisted rule breakers will throw their tantrum and they will get whatever they want. contrary to popular belief, the filibuster led to dialogue. every week the majority party talked to the minority party. there was a meeting each week in which the agenda for the week was set through dialogue and discussion and compromise. behind the scenes, not always out in public, but there was discussion and compromise every week because the majority party could not rule with an iron fi fist. but now in the era of the iron fist, in the era of the iron-fisted rule breakers, why will there be any discussion? why not just roll over the

opposition? why allow debate? why have debate? why have discussion? why have dialogue? why have votes? it's been getting less and less and less. as the grip gets tighter and tighter, there's less debate, there's less voting, there's less amendments. and i don't think the american public likes that. i think the american public disavows this place and is unhappy with congress in general because of lack of dialogue. but that's where we're headed. we're headed towards less dialogue, not more. in the past, republicans and democrats would come together. they would agree to votes. they would schedule them for the week. they would agree to dialogue. they would agree to nominations. and they would agree to quick and easy votes for noncontroversial nominees. but if there is to be no rules, what incentive is there for cooperation? if it's to be "my way or the highway," if the majority party

is simply to roll over, if they are to beat their fists, beat their iron fists on the table and say "my way or the highway, we don't need you. we don't care if half the country disagrees with our policy. it's our way or the highway." if that's the way it's going to be, i think there will be less dialogue and less compromise. historically, the filibuster encouraged a reluctant president to cooperate with oversight from the congress. this isn't a republican or democrat thing. this is about the separation of powers. this is about the checks and balances to power. this is about a president who might say or not say whether or not he would kill americans with a drone. this is about using the filibuster to get information from a reluctant president. this is about a filibuster that allowed congress to get information to say and to force a president to say, i will not kill americans with drones. this is about a reluctant

president being asked, "will you detain americans? can you put an american in jail without a trial? can you send an american to guantanamo bay?" how do we get those answers from a president who is reluctant to answer? through the filibuster. the filibuster is an empowerment of congress. it really isn't republican versus democrat. the filibuster's about congress having power over the presidency or having power to counterbalance a presidency. information about malfeasance or transparency can be pried from a president in exchange for nominations. quite typically, holds on nominations were used to get information, were used to force people to testify. recently, i had questions for the nominee for homeland security. i asked him, does the fourth amendment apply to third-party records?

this is a big question. it's a big constitutional question. and there are answers. i might not have agreed with his answer. he said he had no opinion. he had no legal opinion on the fourth amendment. i asked him, can one warrant, can one warrant from a secret court apply to all telephone records? can every american who has their records with a phone company have their records looked at through one warrant? is that consistent with the fourth amendment? and this nominee says, yeah, i really don't have an opinion on the fourth amendment, really haven't thought that much about the constitution, but he's going to lead one of the largest agencies in our government that may well have to do with spying on americans and yet has no opinion on the fourth amendment. so what would the filibuster do? historically, the filibuster would stop his nomination. what would a hold do? would it be petulant? maybe at times. but for the most part, holds were placed on nominees that

wouldn't answer questions. so if you wanted answers from nominees, you didn't want them to get up there and say "i don't recall" 49 times or "i can't remember" or "i don't have an opinion today, sir, on the constitution," you would hold their nomination, you would hold their feet to the fire. the filibuster, holds -- about slowing things down. this is about the separation of powers. this is about the checks and balances. currently we have a president who apparently thinks he's more than a president. he thinks he has a few monarchial powers. he believes more than he's a monarch than he is a president because he thinks he can amend legislation. 20 times -- more than 20 times obamacare's been amended after the fact. they don't come back to congre congress. so what would the filibuster do? what would a hold do? it would say to that president, you will obey the constitution. we have no way really to get him in court on these things. it's very difficult to prove the constitutionality or disprove it

by a challenge. but the -- the beauty of our founding fathers was that they separated the power. so one of the powers of congress is the filibuster. it is placing holds. and by doing that, we check a rebellious or an adventurous president or a president who thinks he can take this power upon himself. one of the people we have looked to about the separation of powers once wrote that when you allow the legislative power to gravitate to the president, when you allow the president to take this power and he can legislate or do whatever he wants, you're allowing a tyranny. that's why montesquieu wrote that you have to separate these powers, so that no one body of people, no one grouping within government would assume or absorb too much power. that's what's happening here. by giving up our power for petty partisan reasons. let's be really frank with each other. the senate democrats have for

petty partisan reasons taken away the power of congress, taken away one of the checks and balances on a rogue presidency. these checks and balances are not something that really should be -- we should stoop to the level of petty partisanship over. by allowing us to do so, what has happened is we have allowed ourselves to give up one of the great checks and balances that were one of the beauties of our constitution. the loss of the filibuster i think truly weakens congress, and it makes the executive, regardless of party, more powerful and less likely to be transparent and really less likely to compromise. in short, when you give power to the party in the minority, when you have that power in the party that is in the minority, it works to coax compromise out of people. in the era of filibusters and

holds, someone like myself who is new to the senate could place a hold on the federal reserve chairman and release it in exchange for a vote on auditing the fed. auditing the fed passed three years ago in the house. it's a transparency bill. we should know what decisions happen. congress created the fed. people are getting personally wealthy off of the policies of the fed. there's a revolving door between the fed and the treasury and the people who sell the treasury bonds. there are treasury secretaries who leave employment in government and make $160 million a year buying and selling the securities that are bought from a bank that we are not overseeing properly. there is always kinds of reasons why we should audit the fed. every republican in the house voted for it. 100 democrats voted for it. you rarely have a bill that 350 out of 435 representatives voted

to audit the fed. it's been over here for three years. it's been held hostage by the senate majority. the only way the minority party ever gets any votes on anything is by using their leverage, by using the leverage of the filibuster, by using the leverage of a hold i think often to get something good. there are a lot of things that need to be discussed that are never discussed in this body. whether or not your phone calls, the records of your phone calls, the records of your young people should be looked at by your government without a warrant, without an individualized warrant is something that should have a debate here. we are in the next week supposed to go back on the defense authorization bill. the defense authorization bill in 2011 allowed for the first time in our history an american citizen to be held indefinitely, allowed for the first time an

american citizen to be sent from america to guantanamo bay and held in a foreign prison in a foreign land forever without charge, without trial, without lawyer, without accusation. when i had the debate on the floor with another senator over this in 2011, i said incredulously, you mean an american citizen could be sent to guantanamo bay without a jury trial by a jury of their peers, and he said yeah, if they are dangerous. i said it sort of begs the question who gets to decide who is dangerous and who is not? are these not questions we would want debated on the floor? a year ago, we voted to get rid of indefinite detention. 67 senators voted to get rid of indefinite detention, and then secretly in conference committee it was stripped out by a minority of one or two senators. so this year, we have been preparing for six months to have a vote on whether or not an

american can be detained in prison without a trial. we'll get no vote because of the iron-fisted rule of the rule breakers. the rule breakers have decided no debate, no dialogue, no compromise, no discussion of questions until we tell you it's time. there never seems to be time. you have to think about this because there have been times in our history when we have detained americans unjustly. we have to think about how important a jury trial is for everyone, and you don't have to go far back in our history to see times when we made mistakes. do you remember richard jewel, falsely accused, unfairly accused, wrongly accused of being a bomber, the olympic bomber in atlanta about a decade or so ago. if he had been a black man in 1920 in the south, he might not have survived the day. fortunately, he lived in an era when we believed in a trial by jury, when we believe that no one should be detained without a

trial by a jury, no one should be convicted and kept in prison without a trial. for goodness sakes, can there be anything more american than that? and yet, the law of the land said that's not -- no longer true. anybody in our society who ever thinks they have been treated unfairly, whether you're an african-american or a japanese american, who can remember what happened to the japanese americans in world war ii, should be horrified that your current law says that an individual, an american citizen can be detained. the president says i'm a good man and i will never use it. he signs into law the authority for all presidents for all time to indefinitely detain american citizens without a trial, and yet he says hey, i'm not going to do it. that's not a lot of comfort to those of us who believe in the law. i believe that -- that appropriateness or the ability for us to get to dialogue and

discussion is important, that the american people want it and the filibuster actually aided that. i think it aided it, forced us to have discussion. without the discussion, without the filibuster, i don't think there will be discussion. i don't think compromise will occur. it was infrequent before. i don't think it's going to occur without the threat of filibuster. the senate will now be run with an iron fist, a fist clenched so tightly, a power wound so closely that dissent will no longer be heard. debate will be stifled and amendments to legislation will become nonexistent. they are already rare. washington described the senate as the saucer that cools the tea that boils over from the cup of the house of representatives. the senate was that saucer that cooled the tea, deliberateing, gave review and time for calmer

minds to prevail. the senate was one of those items that our founders established to separate our republic from the whims of an unrestrained majority. from the head-long dash of an unrestrained mobocracy. i think the public will be burned more often as the senate becomes less saucer and more boiling caldron. the loss of the filibuster will lead to more enmity and less compromise. the death of the filibuster is the death of negotiation. why negotiate if you don't have to? through brute force and a disregard for the rule of law, senate democrats have found temporary victory, but at what cost? we will now become the other house of representatives. we'll debate -- will debate and

amendments become a thing of the past? will an iron fist smash the saucer that once cooled the tea? make no mistake about it. the death of the filibuster is the death of dialogue. all power taken from the minority power, all power that is taken from the minority party is a leverage that is taken from possible compromise. one day i believe those who have seen fit to break the rules to change the rules will regret their actions. the question is when cooler heads prevail, will there be anybody left with a spirit of compromise? all one has to do to see what happens when there is no debate, when there is no dialogue, when there is no compromise, all one has to do is look at the health care fiasco. it was passed without any discussion with republicans. no input.

zero input from republicans. why? because at the time even though we still had the filibuster, senate democrats were 60 and republicans were 40. they didn't have to talk to us. when the majority party does not have to talk to the minority party, they won't. so with obamacare, with the unaffordable health care plan that he's given us, there was no discussion, no debate. 60 democrats, 40 republicans. we got a bill that is completely and entirely their baby. no compromise. same thing in the house. passed by brute force by majority democrats and no republicans. so what we have now is something that is completely unworkable and doesn't represent the american people. i'll be the first to admit we are divided. you know, not everybody's a republican, not everybody's a democrat, but the interesting thing is it's about 50-50. it's not 80-20. it isn't that everybody or the

vast majority of the country want one way and another. it's almost 50-50. but instead of having 50-50 solutions come out of here, what's coming out of here is my way or the highway. it's interesting, you look back about a month ago when government was shut down, we were trying to open the government. every day, we tried to open the government, we said what about just delaying obamacare a little bit? what about delaying just the individual mandate? no way. we will not negotiate with a gun to our head, the president said. the president bellowed i will not negotiate, you can't make me negotiate, i will not compromise, and immediately after the government opened back up, he did exactly the same thing we were asking for. he delayed the individual mandate. of course, he did it unconstitutionally and illegally because he did it without the approval of congress. that's the way it's been from the beginning. this is something that we as

americans should be extremely worried about. this is the stuff of kings. this is the stuff of monarchs, and this is the stuff of tyrants, because he thinks that he can do the legislation by himself, but if there is no recourse to come back to congress, what happens? obamacare is a story of favoritism. it's a story of dispensing favorites to your contributors, your friends. shouldn't we have a government where your campaign contribution buys you a different sort of scrutiny? it's no longer equal protection under the law. it's protection based on contribution history. so we have given waiver after waiver to special interest groups. you can see them with a big smile plastered on their face when they come out of the white house. there are special interest groups that have been to the white house hundreds of times. meanwhile, the secretary in charge of putting up obamacare

and getting it started was there once, but hundreds of times special interests came. they paid first. they gave their campaign contributions, they paid. they got access to the white house and they got a waiver. why would mcdonald's get a waiver and not burger king? why would one business get a waiver and not another? why would a union business get a waiver and not another business that's not union? is that equal protection under the law? is that the way we're going to live? that's the way you will live if you allow all the power to gravitate to one person who has no checks and balances. that's why we're supposed to have a separation of powers. that's why we are supposed to live under a rule of law. legislation is messy, and it takes a while. they no longer have the 60 votes to have his way or the highway. they can't get everything they want, and so they do it by executive fiat.

but realize that an executive can dictate for good and for harm, or does one person always know what's best for the country? so we have been dictated to all of these changes with obamacare, but the bottom line is more people are now losing their health insurance than are gaining it. those who are gaining it, those who have been forced into obamacare will recognize a few things. you were losing your freedom of choice and you are being forced to pay more. so there are two things that are irrefutable about obamacare. you have lost your freedom of choice, you are being dictated for plans where there were once hundreds of plans that you could purchase for insurance, there are four, four plans left in america that you can choose from, and they are more expensive. why? because you're told that your kids have to have dental coverage, pediatric dental coverage. what if you don't have any kids?

you are being told you have to have infertility coverage. what if you're not married? you're told you have to have pregnancy coverage. what if you're not married? the thing is what's being outlawed are cheaper insurance policies. so let's think back to the original problem. 85% of america had health insurance; right? 15% of americans didn't. of the 15% who didn't have health insurance, a third of them were eligible for medicaid, and we could have helped them by fixing some eligibility with medicaid. or actually trying to help people understand how to sign up. a third of the 15% that were uninsured, some reports said were not here in the country legally. and then a third of the 15% made between $50,000 and $75,000 but they weren't buying insurance because they were young and healthy and they decided to roll the dice and because they perceived health insurance as being too expensive. so the main impediment to the

body of people who we could have gotten insured was expense. so what have we done to help them? we've made health insurance for expensive for them. so if you're young and healthy, you should want a high deductible with very few mandates that's very cheap. so what does obamacare give you? it gives you a very high deductible that covers a million and one things you don't need and don't want and it's very expensive. really what we have done here is we've taken away freedom of choice and given you something you don't want and made it more expensive. this is the danger of having one-sided, one-party rule. there is no debate, no discussion. and that's what happened with obamacare. a lopsided result, a misbegotten legislation that doesn't work, can't work, and is leading to disaster. some have said how could we fix it? can we make obamacare less bad? i'm not positive you can. because some are saying, well, this is what the president

finally did, the president finally came back unilaterally and said okay, i'll give you another year. look at it from the perspective now of the insurance company. they can offer the cheaper policies for one more year. what incentive do they have? you're being told within a year you've got to buy more expensive insurance. does the insurance company have any incentive to sell insurance that's less expensive again? if you're mandated to buy something more expensive, why would they offer something less expensive? now everybody in the country is going to be forced to buy something more expensive. but many young people are going to look at this and say it's more expensive and the penalty is not that bad for my income. maybe i'd be better off not having insurance. besides now i can buy it any time when i get sick. so there is no incentive to buy health insurance when you're healthy now other than the penalty. many people may say i'll wait until i'm rolling in the emergency room or until i get in an auto accident; then i'll buy my insurance. make no mistake about this, this

is about choice versus coercion. so we have one party that has decided that they know best. they know what's best for you. they feel that you're not smart enough to take care of yourself. they feel that they should be in a benevolent way your parents. so you have a party that's decided they will take care of you from cradle to grave. but don't worry, it's free. no big deal. it's free. we're going to give you free health care. mark my words, there's nothing free about this. you will pay for this. if you had insurance before, you will pay for this with more expensive insurance premiums. if you didn't have insurance before, you will pay for this with more expensive insurance than you could have bought before this. the question is: how do you make it work? it only works now if it's going to work at all through coercion. you are forced to buy something. to me, that's antithetical with

what the republican republic was founded upon. we're founded upon freedom of choice. you make freedom of choice every day in the things you purchase. why is the one thing that you're not allowed would be your health insurance? no one's allowed to have the freedom of choosing what type of health insurance they buy. we realize what this stems from. this stems from allowing government to get so completely in one's hands that there is no check and balance. so there are checks and balances between the branches of government and there are checks and balances between the parties. so you've let one party get too strong of a hold in congress, you will get something that is not the product of compromise, not the product of discussion. but also if you weaken the body of the senate which was intended to slow down legislation, if you weaken that body by taking away the ability to filibuster or to place holds on nominees, once you do that, you're going to get

away from compromise. so i think it's important that people know when they look at this and they say, well, that's just obstruction. republicans, filibusters and holds, that's just obstructing the process. if the process is to run headlong away from the constitution or to run head over heels over the bill of rights, to trample the bill of rights, if that's the direction you're heading, aould want things to -- you would want things to cool off. you want want that saucer that the senate was that allowed the tea not to boil over or to boil over to cool off. so the question really we have is do we want checks and balances? and this is a big question. we've gotten to the point in our history where so much power has gravitated to the president, not just this president. republican presidents also. this is not a four- or an eight-year revolution. this is a 100-year evolution

towards a stronger presidency. we've allowed presidents to go to war without congressional authority. we've allowed them to trample over civil liberties without congressional authority. we now allow regulatory regimes to write so many rules that your elected officials have very little say under what laws you live under. for example, obamacare, we complained about was 2,000 pages. the democrat leader in the house of representatives says don't worry, you can read about it after we pass it. that is a mistake, and that's why we got this that many people still aren't understanding this piece of legislation. but top it off, you had a 2,000-page legislation that then 20,000 pages of rules were written. unelected bureaucrats are writing most of the rules. so, for example, when obamacare passed, believe it or not, i think the original legislation would have let you keep your doctor.

period. a regulation written three months after the bill was passed changed it and said you can keep your doctor, but you have to pay more and it has to obey this rule and, well, let's just say you can maybe keep your doctor if president obama likes your doctor. but this was a real written not by congress. it wasn't part of the legislation. this is a rule written afterwards. about three months later as they're writing 20,000 pages of rules, a rule comes up and says if your insurance ever changes, it's not grandfathered in and you will lose your insurance. it will be canceled. you'll be forced to be canceled. so the millions of people who are having their insurance canceled, it's because the president authorized this through his bureaucracy without the permission of the senate. however, it gets more interesting. occasionally when a regulation is passed, we can try to stop it. so three months after obamacare was passed, they passed this

regulation that says you will be canceled. millions of people are being canceled because president obama and his team wrote this regulation. one republican senator, senator enzi from wyoming, stood up and said no, we will vote on this. we will vote on whether or not your policy can be canceled. and so what happened? it came back and guess what? the regulation that says your policy can be canceled if it ever changes, the regulation that's allowing millions of people to be canceled, every democrat in the body voted for it, including a few of them who are running headlong away from the president. they can't get away from the president -- they can't get away from him fast enough. so they're running headlong away from the president saying, oh, i didn't know that that rule was going to be there. i really thought you could keep your doctor. bunk. they all knew it. they all voted directly on it. not only did they vote for obamacare, three months later they voted for the rule that is

allowing millions of people to have their insurance canceled. so these senators who are saying, oh, mr. president, we might need to fix this and i have a solution, they all voted for the rule. we had a direct vote in the senate on the rule that says if you like your doctor, you can't keep your doctor. so the whole idea of the president said if you like your doctor you can keep it, period, which is now found out to be false, we had a chance to fix it. we had a vote in this body. every senate democrat voted to allow your insurance to be canceled. so if you're one of the millions of americans who have had your insurance canceled, you can thank the senate democrats. every senate republican voted to say you shouldn't allow -- you shouldn't have your insurance canceled. every senate democrat voted to allow your insurance to be canceled if it ever changes. ever changes. so while some people have been wondering how many people are going to lose their insurance because of obamacare, everyone.

because insurance changes gradually over time. so within a few years everybody's insurance policy will change, and you will be canceled. everyone in america will lose their insurance. they will be canceled eventually and they will have to buy obamacare. so people had hundreds and hundreds of choices for insurance. there will be four choices in america. so really what this debate is about, it's about whether you believe in freedom of choice, whether you think you're smart enough to rule over your own destiny or whether you want a paternalistic government that makes these decisions for you. are we so insecure as a people that we need the nanny state? do we need the nanny state to take care of us? do we not want choice? why don't we extend it to all things? health care is important, but so's food. why don't we have the government decide what type of food you

eat. why don't we have the government decide how much you can charge. god forbid that we charge too much for food. shouldn't food be cheap and economical and affordable? maybe the government should own the farms. maybe the government should distribute the food. if the government is going to distribute health care and health care is so important, so's food. so's water. how can we let anybody in the private marketplace determine water? how can we let private people control water? shouldn't we let the government be in charge of everything? the bottom line is we shouldn't let the government be in charge of anything that can't be handled by the private marketplace, which means very little should be handled by the government. the reason why you want minimal government is that government is just not very good at stuff. i tell people it's not that government is inherently stupid -- although it's a debatable point -- it's that government doesn't get the same signals that we get. in the private marketplace, you get signals. you have to make a profit.

you have to meet a payroll. so there are different signals that come. to health care, if the government runs it, there is no signal. they get no feedback. right now they have a web site that would have, it would have sent any private business into bankruptcy. this would have been a failed initiation and the company would have immediately gone bankrupt. no company could roll out something as bad as the government, but no private company would, because a private company is influenced by the marketplace and they have to make good decisions. the government doesn't make good decisions because they're not required to. and so it's why when you have a choice whether or not something should be done by government or done by private marketplace, you want the private marketplace. milton friedman often talked about this. this is a truism of all government. nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely as they spend their own. so the private marketplace inevitably will make better decisions because it's a cruel

master. the marketplace, you have to please consumers all the time every day. they vote. you've heard the term democratic capitalism. there is nothing more democratic than consumers and capitalism voting every day and the people who are rewarded are those who give a product, that people want to buy and they do it in an efficient manner. so people are forced to be efficient. they're forced to have good consumer service. the consumer is king only in the private marketplace. the consumer is treated as a stepchild if it's government. you are treated with reckless abandon by government. i know. as a physician i dealt with the government for decades and decades, and you know what? it takes at least an hour to get someone on the phone. when you get them on the phone, they tell you they can only answer two questions. if they're not in a good mood you've got to call again. get on the phone for an hour and wait another hour to talk to another government bureaucrat who may be surly, maybe had a

bad day and probably will get a bonus anyway. think about about it. if you want government to take over your health care, take about the case of jonathan beale. he worked for the e.p.a. for 11 years. he told his boss that he was a spy and that he worked for the c.i.a.. he took six months off at a time. for years and years, he always got bonuses for good employment, good behavior, for good productivity for 11 years. would that happen for a week or two weeks in private industry? no way would that. government is so big and vast they have no idea who is working in government. we're going to turn that over, our health care system. the bottom line is it won't be efficient. it won't try to save money. it will try to spend money. and it won't lead to you having lower premiums. it will lead to having higher premiums. thomas paine said the government is a necessary evil.

he was right. that sounds kind of harsh but the thing is we need to have government. but because government is inefficient, we should keep what government does to a minimum. there's certain things we probably can't have private industry do. a national defense, an army, a navy, an air force. government needs to be in place for that. we've decided with most of our infrastructure to have government involved. we have some private entities involved as well. but do we really want government involved in every one of our affairs? do we really think government is going to be distributing goods very well? think of it this way. think of it tomorrow we nationalize grocery shopping. we nationalize and you all get insurance and it's going to be subsidized. when you go to wal-mart you'll pay a $20 co-pay. do you think you'll buy less or more there? you'll empty the shelves. the other day you may have heard the food stamp cards quit working and they didn't have any limits. people just loaded up thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stuff, trashed the whole place, carts were everywhere,

and then someone turned the cards back on and the limits were there and they had to leave the store. when there were no limits, people will spend without limits. the same goes with health care. so the thing is when government does itant gives it to you for free the tendency is to use it. so what we find is that, for example, with medicaid, a big part of obamacare is expansion of medicaid. i want to help people who can't help themselves. there are a lot of people who are missing both legs and on dialysis and their $10,000 a month insurance, i think we can find a way to help these people but we've now added able-bodied people to this. we've added generation after generation of able-bodied people to the medicaid rolls. so instead of a temporary hand up, a helping hand, we've turned it into something permanent. but it's also the most rapidly rising cost in state governments, so state governments, i believe, will ultimately succomb to this burden. in our state it will be a 50% increase in medicaid. in fact, most of the people signing up around the country,

three-fourths of them in my state are signing up for free health care. not really free. you're going to pay for it. anybody that's working will pay for it. the thing is that's what they're signing up for is free. i think that if we expand our safety net beyond soefrt the able -- those who are not able-bodied, that we expand it and make it permanent for people, what it becomes is a drag on the economy and a drag on everything and it disallows or prevents us from growing as an economy. we've been having this debate for awhile. the president has decided that you know, people who are working just have too much money and i've got to take from those who are working to give to those who aren't working. that's not how you get more jobs. that's how you make the pie smaller. you keep dividing up a pie and shifting the pie from those working to those nonworking doesn't really help anybody. it divides the pie smaller. there have been times in our history when we have greatly grown the pie but you have to get beyond some petty things.

the president preaches fear and envy. he preaches class warfare. he preaches that if your neighbor has three cars, send me, i'll take one of their cars. i'll get some of your neighbor's stuff and i'll give it to you. the problem is it doesn't make us richer as a nation. there has been a discussion for thousands of years about whether it's good or bad to spend your time coveting your neighbor's property. it isn't healthy personally, spiritually. it's not also healthy for our country. the thing is if i labor my whole day saying my neighbor's got a mercedes and i don't, i should be instead saying maybe my son or daughter will be working at the mercedes dealer or selling it to somebody who is buying a mercedes. instead of being jealous of others i should be saying we're all interconnected and we want all people to rise up and be part of the top 1% instead of taking a meat-ax to those who are successful in our society and try to drive them down, we

should try to raise everybody's boat. there have been many times this happened in. the 1920's, coolidge took the top rate from 70% down to 23%. we had a boom, employment thrived, he balanced the budget. we did it again under kennedy in the 1960's. unemployment was one again cut in half. by the time we get to reagan, the rates have risen to 70% again and reagan said, our economy will boom if we lower rates on everybody. and he did. he lowered rates from 70% of the top rate, the top 1%, he lowered their rates. he didn't raise their rates. he didn't say, covet thy neighbor, he didn't say, i'll get you one of your neighbor's cars. he said, lower the rates and the economy will boom and it did. we lowered the rates from 70% on the wealthy to 50% to 28% and we had a decade-long boom with millions of jobs created. we have to have this debate as a country.

we can't say the debate's over. if we say the debate is over and that really what we need to do is just divide it up, pass the money around, we're going to be talking about a shrinking pie that we pass around. we also have a pie right now that has millions of people unemployed. you know? so how are we going to grow this economy? are we going to grow this economy by saying let's tax people more. it's exactly the opposite. i was in detroit last week talking about how we could help detroit. we can't -- we can't send money from houston to detroit and bail them out. it doesn't work. one, because it's just like when the president did his government stimulus. when the president chose to pick winners and losers, he wound up with a bunch of losers. because no -- no central planner knows who's going to be the winner and who's going to be the loser. nine out of ten businesses fail. that's why you don't want government choosing the winners and losers. so when government chooses the winners and losers, they choose people like solyndra. one, it was a little bit unfair

on the face of it. the guy who ran the company was the 20th richest man in the country. what business do the middle class, who the president says he's so proud of, what business does the middle class giving money to the 20th richest man in the world. we lost $500 million because it turns out people didn't want his solar panels. but that's the government picking winners and losers, many times based on campaign history and based on, you know, environmental politics. but it's picking winners and losers and it doesn't work. why? because the marketplace, when it win notices out and finds who will be successful running a business, is a harsh task master but it asks all of you, it asks 300 million americans every day to vote on which businesses will succeed. and so you get to vote every d day. so there's a big difference between reducing taxes for those who are in business and trying to stimulate the economy and taxing people in houston, bringing it up here and then

passing it out to people i think might be good at business in detroit. no one knows that. no one has that knowledge. only the marketplace can decide who's a good risk and who's a bad risk. banks are part of that but really the consumer votes every day on which businesses are good and should receive more money. so my plan is basically economic freedom zones. let's lower the taxes in impoverished areas. let's don't tax houston and bring a bunch of money up to detroit and say, here, you're going to succeed. the same thing will happen to that money that happened i to te last 50 years of money. some of it's stolen, some of it's misappropriated, some of it's given to the wrong people. but if you were to lower the taxes for the people in detroit, i think you could truly help them. my plan would lower the personal income tax to 5% for everybody in detroit. it would lower the corporate tax to 5%. you might find people in the suburbs want to move back into detroit if their income tax is 5%. that's a good thing. they would pay less taxes.

so instead of being envious of these people, instead of saying, oh, my goodness, they might buy another car, i'll be saying they might buy that car from somebody selling a car in detroit. the thing is, is that economic freedom zones, reducing taxes i think would help to spur the economy. in my state, there are 20 county in eastern kentucky that have unemployment 1 1/2 times the national rate. now, a large degree of our unemployment is due to the president and his war on coal. he always talks about a balanced solution but he doesn't really balance his hatred for the coal industry with jobs. he doesn't balance his so-called like for the environment with jobs. when we look at regulations, we should preserve the environment and we have many federal regulations that i do agree with on the environment. you shouldn't be allowed to dump chemicals in a stream. i agree completely with that. clean water act says cannot discharge pollutants into the navigable waters of the united states.

i agree completely. but you know what they have done done over the last 30 years? they've taken that commonsense regular labor, which we can probably all agree to, and they now say that dirt is a pollutant and your backyard's a navigable stream. so we have actually put people in prison for putting clean dirt on dry land. and as a consequence, i think we spend less time protecting the ohio river and more time meddling with some property owner. we've gone crazy with regulations because they're now written by unelected bureaucrats. they're not written by people you can unelect, they're written by bureaucrats. we have to get back to some common sense with these things. we have to look at how injurious this is. even things that are well-intended. you think, well, gosh, we -- we have to protect the bald eagle and we have to have endangered species protected. well, i agree. i've got two bald eagles in my backyard. they've come from the second year and they're fascinating. they live on the other side of a

pond behind my house and they're fascinating to see them. but what we've done is protection for the environment and protection for certain species, we've gone nuts with it. in my state, we're protecting the indiana bat. well, i had a guy come up to me and he said, the indiana bat? well, they came out to my property and they took a survey and they found one bat. it was already tagged as a brown bat. the scientists had a big fight. two of them said it was an indiana bat and one said it was a brown bat. they took the tag off of it, called an indiana bat but did they tell me i had to do anything to help the bat? no, they just cut me money to cut down trees on my own land. so it really isn't about the bat. it's about money. they charge you $2,400 per acre to chop your own trees down. another city in my state, grand rivers, when it rained, the sewage was flowing into the river, overflowing. they were over capacity and wanted to have a new sewage plant. they couldn't do it because the e.p.a. was saying, we need to

know how many pocketbook muscles there are. now, are we going to stop the building of plant? no. what it does is it causes hundreds of thousands of dollars to be spent looking at this. bottom line is, remember, separation of powers is important and the loss of the filibuster i think is leading towards a one-sided party rule and leading towards less power here and more power in the executive branch. i think all to the detriment of the voter. at this point, i see my colleague from ohio -- oklahoma. [laughter] oklahoma. and i will yield my time back to the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: i thank the senator from hawaii. [laughter] no. i thank my good friend from kentucky. the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: yes. thank you, madam chair. since he was talking about the

e.p.a., it's the overregulations there. i happened to be privileged when we were in the majority, i was the chairman of the environmental protection agency. it does a lot of -- chairman of the environment and public works committee. what the senator from kentucky was talking about is all the overregulations that come from that. it's one i'm very sensitive to. that's not why i'm here tonight. in fact, i want to talk a little bit about the nuclear option, about how this has changed things around here and -- and it's -- it's somewhat of a crisis level that we have arrived at. but before i do, i want to share something on obamacare that -- you know, a lot of things have been said on this -- on this floor about the problems with obamacare, and i do want to elaborate a little bit about that in a minute but not right now. i only want to say two months ago, when my good friend from texas, senator cruz, and 11 of

us were concerned about trying to do something to stop obamacare and we took some pretty drastic steps. he actually stayed up and spoke all night. i did not but i spoke during the evening and again in the morni morning. but i told a story at that time. it's a -- it puts it into a context that people don't understand. and the story was this, that -- that -- and keep in mind, this was two months ago. i said that it has been admitted by obama and by many of the leaders, even the leader of the senate, that the ultimate goal of obamacare would be the single-payer health system -- health care system. very much like was talked about back in the early 1992's when bill clinton was president and hillary had her hillary health care. and at that time, it was going to be one that -- i think it was ultimately going to be a single-payer system. now, as you well know,

madam president, a single-payer system by definition is socialized medicine and that's what it was going to be at that time. and i remember talking and we ultimately did defeat it, but at that time, we -- i would ask the question, i would say, well, wait a minute, you're talking about socialized medicine. it doesn't work in denmark. it doesn't work in sweden. it doesn't work in canada. it doesn't work in the u.k. why do you think it would work if you were doing it? now, they never tell you this but most of them will say, well, it may not work any somewhere ae but if i were running it, it would work. well, we defeated that back in the 1990's. now some time has gone by and we have very much the same situation. we have a system that is edging into socialized medicine, a single-payer system. this is what they want. this is what liberals normally do want. and they somehow think that government can run things better than people can. so i told this story, i say to my good friend in the chair,

that it had been -- keep in mind, this is two months ago -- it had been just less than a year before that that my wife -- and my wife is just a year younger than i am -- something happened and all of a sudden out of the blue she found out that she had to have emergency open-heart surgery. it was a valve that was -- that was the problem at that time. and we did some research. she immediately had open-heart surgery. it was successful. she's great now and they replaced the valve and she's in really good shape. but point i'm making is, under -- if this had happened and we had been citizens of canada, we went and checked, someone that age, with that kind of an emergency would have to wait six months before they could determine whether or not they're going to allow them to have a -- that operation. if it were u.k., it would be two months and that would be -- you know, she wouldn't have lasted that long.

now, that was to let people know that when it hits close to home, that it really means a lot more. instead of just talking about how many people are not happy with enrollment and all this stuff. well, ironically, what happened to me five weeks ago was exactly the same thing. i ended up having to have an emergency surgery, four heart bypasses, and i got to thinking just a few weeks before i had been talking about my wife wouldn't be here now. that's how serious this is, because those individuals who are talking about obamacare, they really want a system the government is running, and it hasn't worked anywhere else in the world. in cases like mine, i would be on the waiting list and i probably would not have made it this far and probably would not have been here tonight. i only say that and i want to elaborate a little bit on that shortly, but i need to get in something very significant that's going to take place. first of all, i don't like the idea of what's going on right now. i am very much upset that we had

the nuclear option. i think most people -- and it's been said over and over on the floor that constitutionally we have a system that's set up that puts the senate in a position where there has to be a supermajority that will ratify the various treaties and that will confirm nominees. well, the nominees that are confirmed are confirmed with a supermajority, and consequently when you -- that would preclude one party from being able to control the confirmation of nominees. well, the makeup of the united states senate today and for the next year is going to be about 57 -- the dominating 53 democrats, which means, of course, that they can always get 53 votes for confirmation but not any more, not enough to reach 60, so they changed all that. and that's wrong, they shouldn't

have done it. so now we're going through this operation, and i decided rather than stay here for this christmas season for the next few days just voting no on judges, i'm going to say right now i'm going to vote against all the judges but i'm not going to be around here to do it. i will say this, though, there is one vote that's coming up and i am going to appeal to the -- to the leadership that i hope that the confirmation, deborah lee james as secretary of the air force does not come up until this coming -- this next week, because i want to be here for that, and i would hope that it could be postponed until monday, and the reason for that is i think that's a great appointment. i don't remember in the years i have been here -- and i am the ranking member on the senate armed services committee. i don't remember any time when we have had someone who is as qualified on the outset as she is. she has an incredible background for this.

i have met her, i have talked to her, i have talked to her about the concerns about the readiness, which is very, very serious right now. our readiness capabilities are lower than they have ever been since world war ii, and i -- i know that she is the right person to be at the helm to take care of that. it wasn't long ago that through the sequestration or preparing for sequestration, they made a decision to ground one-third of the combat coded active squadrons. now, let's keep in mind she is to be -- nominated to be the secretary of the air force, so this is something she would directly be interested in and concerned about. what they did was they -- in order, i suppose, at that time the motivation was to try to save money, they grounded one-third of the combat coded active squadrons. that was in april of this year. it wasn't until three months later they decided that this is not good because you have the idle airplanes, idle pilots, pilots were resigning, they are

upset because they weren't being used, so they reinstated the squadrons that had been closed. general welch, a great general, the commander of the air force, he made the statement and made it in a very articulate way that it is going to cost us more to reinstate and to requalify the pilots and make sure that the planes are back in flying order than it would have, just the amount of money that was saved during that three-month period. now, that's -- that's really quite a statement. it is very serious. so that he said it could cut the flying hours by 15% in the months to come, and it has as a result of that closure. well, i have to say to miss james that i'm -- i'm very convinced you are going to be confirmed as secretary of the air force. i will do all i can to make sure

you are confirmed, but you are walking into a horn evident's -- hornet's nest. it's a real serious thing that is happening there. the things happening to our military which i will talk about in just a minute are very, very serious. now, she has a background. she served in a technical defense contractor in virginia. it was the same technical and engineering sector. she was the executive vice president for the communications and government affairs and the senior vice president for the homeland security. prior to that she served as vice president for international operations marketing and united technologies from -- that was all the way from 1998-2000. she served as assistant secretary of events for reserve affairs from 1993-1998, overseeing all the manners -- the matters pertaining to the guard and reserve forces. so she has probably as much

preparation, background, expertise, education and knowledge as anyone who has ever been nominated to be secretary of the air force. i would hope that we will be able to have that vote maybe on monday as opposed to sometime in the next few -- in the next few hours. since i want to be here. again, i want to be one of the first to congratulate her. let me say something about the budget, and i only say something that -- i try to think of things other people haven't talked about. i don't even know right now whether i'm going to be for or against this budget, but i have looked and i was very alarmed that the staff, the minority staff of the armed services, did some research and came out, that there are some parts of this act that we didn't know that were there, that would include an annual adjustment for retired pay and retainer pay for retired

members of the armed forces under age 62. this penalizes current and future military members who have served our nation for over 40 -- for over 20 years. now, keep in mind, people go into the military quite young sometimes knowing that the time that they would serve would be for 20 years, many of them longer but most of the time 20 years. that's kind of a given. and they do this predicated on the assumption that retirement benefits and all these things are going to be there. they are making a career decision. i say to the share, -- to the chair, that is very significant, and to come along with a bill that would supposedly they say save $6.2 billion, there are about two million retirees of those. just under half are over the age of 62 and would see a steady erosion of their retired pay, approaching 20% of the retirement pay by the time they reach age 62. the 1% annual reduction to

uniformed service retired pay cost of living adjustment, the colas for those under age 62 will have a devastating long-term impact for those who retire at the 20-year point. it implements an annual adjustment to retire pay of the consumer price index minus 1% beginning january of 2015. now, what that means in summary is you could have a gunnery sergeant retiring attaining -- age 42 and by the time he is 62, this bill would cause him to receive his retirement pay approximately $72,000 less than he would otherwise. so it's a big deal, and i -- i just -- this hasn't been discussed on the floor, and i think as we get into the discussion that we're going to have on the budget that we have to keep these things in mind. again, i haven't decided yet because i know it's not an easy job. i know that we had a democrat

and republican working very hard on it, but that's one thing i want to -- i believe that can be changed. in fact, it would have to be changed before i would support it. well, we went through something, and i want to talk a little bit about the -- the national defense authorization act. every year, we have a national defense authorization act. that act is more important than anything else we do around here, in my opinion. now, if you read the constitution, it will say providing for the nation's defense is our major concern. this is what we are supposed to be doing. and so we have always had -- in fact, for 51 consecutive years, we have passed an ndaa bill prior to january, and -- and it's always -- it's always been that way. this is a budget that must take place. now, this is very disturbing to me because we -- we were -- the

house passed an ndaa bill some time ago. we in the senate, in the senate armed services committee way back -- was it may or june i guess? in june. in june, we passed the ndaa out of our committee, not unanimously but by almost unanimously and with bipartisan, strong bipartisan support to come to the floor. well, it never came up, and why it never came up is not that important right now. the fact is we're now at a position where we have to do it and have to have one coming up very -- it has to be this coming week. so anyway, we put together a bill. there is a thing a lot of people don't understand because it's not very often used, but when the house and the senate are not able to put something together, they go to the big four, they get the committee of jurisdiction. in this case, the senate armed services committee. so they had the chairman, the ranking member. the ranking member is the one that has the most rank from the minority. that's me in the case of the

senate. and then the chairman of the house and the ranking member of the house. four people. we sat together ten days ago here in washington and put together a bill, taking the best parts out of the house bill, the best parts out of the senate bill, and put together this thing. and the -- and it's one that i think when people understand it, it is -- it is one that -- i don't know of anyone who would really oppose it. the problem we're having is that the way it was done is not the way it should have been done. it should have been done as has been done in the past, and that is take about what's been in the last ten years it's taken nine days average to pass this bill. so we have all of the amendments process and people come forthwith amendments. well, that didn't happen this time, so what we did in this bill, we took 79 of the amendments that people had in the house and the senate, republicans and democrats, and

we -- we did 79, that's 41 republican amendments and 38 democrat amendments. these are ones that had been introduced on the senate floor, and we were able to go ahead and put these into the -- into the bill. so we have a good bill. it's out there. we need to -- we -- we really need to do it. and i believe that people are concerned about the process. i am concerned we're going to get busy and make sure this doesn't happen in future years. we don't want it to happen, but we don't want our service people in harm's way today to be paying for the fact that we had a procedure that was wrong. we have a vehicle here, we have a bill. it will come up for consideration. it will come over from the house, and i anticipate the first part of the week we'll have this bill. now, what does it do? first, it authorizes 37 special incentive pays, including re-enlistment bonuses and certain health professionals

bonuses. here we're talking about people who are considering re-enlisting right now that they are in the service. i mentioned a minute ago some of the aviators. this is mostly the army and the marines and the navy. these people are making career decisions. they make career decisions predicated on what they anticipate is going to be out there. what's going to be out there is what kind of -- of a bonus they'll get at the time, and of course they -- if in the event this doesn't happen, they would not be entitled to these bonuses if we don't pass this bill. that's how significant this is. if you talk about certain health professional bonuses, they would expire also, and these health benefit bonuses are very significant because these are the people who are the health providers for our -- our wounded warriors, our wounded warriors, not just the ones that you -- that are in our hospitals today but also in hospice care, and we can't do that to them.

however, if we don't pass this bill, that's going to be a real serious problem. there has been a lot of talk about the sexual assault. we have two senators, both democrats, senator gillibrand, senator mccaskill who disagree with each other but they have amendments, and so what we did is take the parts of each one of these bills, 27 specific reforms to support victims to encourage sexual assault reporting, and an additional nine enhancements to the military justice system. arguably the one on the floor who knows most about this would be our friend, senator graham. i think he's looked at these and agrees that these provisions are really very significant and thinks they aren't going to be there otherwise. these would have been in the house bill, in the senate bill, in the regular procedure to pass these bills, but they won't be there if we don't pass this one bill. they are there.

gitmo, now, i know, i look around the chamber and it seems like there is such a diverse attitude toward what we are -- what we have done in the past and what we will do in the future with gitmo. that's the guantanamo bay down in cuba. well, i have often said from this podium that one of the few good deals that we have had is we have had gitmo since the year 1904. it costs $4,000 a year, and half the time castro doesn't collect it, so it's -- it's a pretty good deal. you don't very often get that in government. i do know, though, it's very expensive to house people there, but it does perform a function that can't be performed anywhere else. so the last year in the senate armed services -- in the national defense authorization bill, we put a provision in there unfortunately that -- fortunately at that time that would restore the one-year prohibition on transferring gitmo detainees to the united states and to construct any type

of facilities to house them if they are successful in doing that. that wasn't good. it should have been forever but it spraoeurs now. that means if we don't have this bill, we will see -- cede that to the president. he will have total control. if he wants to take the terrorists and put them in gitmo, he can do that. that is probably one of the most significant parts of this bill. so this restores the one-year prohibition on transferring gitmo detainees to the united states and it prohibits the construction and the modification of facilities in the united states to house gitmo detainees. our training ranges. this bill provides d.o.d. with access to millions of acres of federal land. keep in mind this doesn't cost anything. this is federal land for military tests and training ranges that are really absolutely necessary for the readiness of our combat forces.

it gives the -- we've all heard about the end strength. the obama administration often said that i think he'll go down in history as the most antidefense president ever and one of the things we know is going to happen is the end strength will continue to reduce. this bill allows the army and the marine corps top people to make the decisions as to where this end strength is going to be reduced and by what amount. and by doing this they can accelerate the strength reductions and save a considerable amount of money. so they'll have the flexibility to draw down faster, save money and do it quicker and do it better. without this bill, they can't do that. military construction, you know, nothing else, no other military construction can take place, but what is worse than that is on military construction that's already been started, this new construction, they would have to

stop that military construction. and when you do that and then you come back later and start it back up again, it costs much, millions and millions of dollars more, a lot more money. a good example of another area that would be a huge savings to this thing, right now we're working on several aircraft carriers. one is the cvn-78. it is a huge project. it is 75% completed. we've already spent $12 billion on it. in the absence of this bill, that construction would have to stop. now, i know that we'd come to our senses and maybe in a few months come up with a c.r. that might have money that would go toward this. but when you stop and then start up again, it would be millions, hundreds of millions of dollars of costs. that is corrected in this bill. and not to say anything about the number of people who would be immediately released, 4,300

shipbuilders who work directsly on the ships and about 1,500 who work indirectly. it is an economic issue for a lot of people. that is important but not as important as the fact that it's going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars if we don't pass this bill. the l.c.s., that allows the latoro combat ship construction to continue at the shipyards. that's in alabama and wisconsin. again, if it doesn't happen, if this bill isn't passed that isn't going to happen. special operations, i think we're all familiar with the special ops guys. i know the holder of the chair is very familiar with that. these are the ones who go out in harm's way and take the risks and are specially trained. the commander there is admiral mcgraven. his number one priority is the separation of special operations forces and families after the 12 years of sustained combat by authorizing various human

resiliency and family care programs. in other words, these people, many of them have families. the families are cared for in a way that has been certainly well deserved by the fighter that they represent. and yet those programs would stop in the absence of this. i think that's a very important thing. just looking at the human end of it. the family, the mother and the kids that are back there, they have special needs because of the sustained deployment that these great troops had. i would mention also that in addition to some of the things that we talked about in using some of the federal land, this includes land use agreements to ensure special operations -- that's what we're just talking about -- special operations forces have sufficient access to training ranges including the chocolate mountain aerial

gunnery range in california which serves as an indispensable row in training navy seals. when you watch them, you can't train our navy seals without this facility. it takes care of that. lastly, i could mention a whole lot more, but one of the significant things is people are talking about waste in the pentagon and all of this. this provides for an audit of the department of defense, requires a full audit of d.o.d. no later than march 31 of 2019. it will take a long time to do this. it's never been done before. but this bill will call for the beginning that process. we all know about the nuclear triad. the nuclear triad gives us that nuclear capability in our bombers, our acbm's and our submarine launch ballistic missiles. this bill prohibits the elimination of one of those three legs. we've seen a lot of programs which say you can save so much money if you eliminate the submarine element of that. in order to adequately protect

america, it's important that we have all three legs. so that nuclear triad -- and remember that phrase. that's the one that would be one leg would be eliminated in the absence of this bill. the prohibition on tech transfers with russia, this would prohibit the transfer of some missile defense technology to russia and strengthens the congressional oversight of administration efforts with regard to the united states. russia's missile defense cooperation. you know, if we don't do it, the president is going to do it. i would hope that anyone who would be voting in this chamber where that's a key issue, it should be a key issue, we'd recognize if we don't take, continue to take control of that in the, in congress, then that would automatically go to the president. and i don't think we'd want that to happen. we all saw what happened in the first budget that the president had. i'll never forget that because i

went -- i knew that he was going to be antimilitary, antidefense, and so i went over to afghanistan to respond to it, knowing full well that we were going to have to do something to let the american people know how bad that budget was on the military. and that first budget, president obama, this was four and a half years ago, almost five years ago, he did away with our future -- with our only fifth general fighter, the f-22; did away with our new lift capacity, kr-pb -- c-17, and he did away with the ground-based interceptor in poland. let's keep in mind the ground-based interceptor in poland is one we were putting there because we have currently 33 ground-based interceptors here in america but they're on the west coast. that's where the threat was at

that time. now, things have changed and we found out in the year 2007 it wasn't even classified, our intelligence said that we were going to have the capability of, that iran is going to have the nuclear capability and a delivery system by 2015. 2015 is just a little over a year away from right now. so we knew that way back in 2007. we started building a ground-based interceptor in poland and with a radar in czechoslovakia and the czech republic. i thought we were doing very well. we had to give them the assurance that we wouldn't pull the rug out from under them if they would cooperate on this and they didn't. that went out. that was withdrawn in the president's first budget four and a half years ago. now we're facing with that threat, because if something comes in to this country from iran it's going to come from the east. if there was po a lucky shot from the west coast, that's fine. but i don't have that confidence that that could happen.

i say that because it fits in with the missile defense. it directs the administration in this bill to make improvements and modernize the ground-based midcourse defense system. that's what we're talking about here. without this, that could probably be -- not probably. possibly be the most secure -- significant thing that we've been talking about here, because now we're talking about an incoming missile to the united states. in a brac process, the brac process, base realignment and closure commission, we've had five of them since 1987. because of the fact, whether you're for a base closure or not is not as significant as we're at a time in history where we have the greatest need to put back some of the money that's been taken out by this administration into our defense system. as good as a lot of brac systems are, the fact that the first three to five years of a brac

system, it costs money. it doesn't save money. and that's what we can't let happen. we restrict of the use of funds to conduct around a base realignment and closures for the coming year because people are talking about that. here's a big one too that means a lot to my son jimmy, who is real big time in second amendment rights. we're from oklahoma. we actually believe that stuff. we believe in the constitution of the united states. there is a treaty called the u.n. arms trade treaty that the u.n. has. i'm the wrong one to talk about this because i have never seen anything good come out of the united nations. but in this case it's worse than usual. the u.n. arms trade treaty is one that our secretary of state has already signed on to but it has to be ratified by the senate. in this bill, we say it restricts the funding to

implement the u.n. trade, arms trade treaty without the senate advise and consent on the treaty. well, that's important. in fact, it reminds me a little bit of what happened when we had the budget vote a few months ago. at that time -- i'm trying to remember now but i think it was 5:00 in the morning. you'd be surprised the kind of amendments you can get passed at 5:00 in the morning. so at 5:00 in the morning i had an amendment that said that we would not allow the united states to join the, be a part of the u.n. arms trade treaty. and that's exactly, you know, that was good. but this reinforces that and says that it restricts so that if we were to do it, even if the senate were to do it, it would restrict the funding so it can't happen. so i say to all of my friends out there who believe in the second amendment rights, who have been concerned that through a u.n. treaty you could lose those second amendment rights,

don't worry about it because we would have it. we passed this bill and you're going to be well taken care of. so i feel very good about the provisions of this bill, and i really believe that when you stop and think about the fact that we actually have 79 amendments that were agreed to in this bill that we tried to pass before. the senate armed services committee adopted its version of the ndaa by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in june, and yet we know what has happened and we know why it's necessary because this is the last shot that we actually have at a bill the house at 11:00 on friday morning will go out of session. they will be adjourned for this year. a week after that the senate will. and so that shows the time that

we have to get all of this done. and that's why those individuals who say, well, you don't have to just adopt a bill that the four of you put together, even though it may be good, we want to have a lot of amendments. we want to go through that process. unfortunately, there is not time because if we did that, you'd have to go over to the house and they're out of session. they're already adjourned as of 11:00 friday morning. so we're out of time. and the only choice we have now is either to adopt this or not have a bill at all. so as frustrated as i am about the process, we have a commitment to provide our military men and women the support that they require and we have a bill that would do that. fanned we fail to pass the n -- and if we fail to pass the ndaa it would send a terrible signal to all of our troops over there. i've got a card here. some of these things that we would lose that i mentioned in that rather lengthy list may not happen until next year, may