barrasso: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with my colleague, the senator from south carolina, senator graham. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. barrasso: i thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i come today to the senate floor as a physician who's practiced medicine in wyoming for a quarter of a century, taken care of the families of wyoming and to do what i've done throughout the past year, provide a doctor's second opinion on this health care law that people across the crun now coming to grips with, as they finally are realizing what's in the bill or as the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi has once said -- former speaker of the house, mr. president, said, "first you have to pass it before you get to find out what's in it." people are finding out what's in it and people all across the crun not happy. they -- you know what the people of america want. i know what the people of wyoming want in terms of health care. they want the care they need from the

barrasso: thank you, madam president.serving the right to object. the gentleman's unanimous consent request contains components that he knows are controversial, are opposed by numerous senators, and for that reason, that proposal cannot pass the senate today. specifically, the proposal would extend the t.a.a. related provisions of the american recovery and reinvestment act of 2009, better known as the failed stimulus package, which most members of this side of the aisle strenuously opposed for very sound reasons. that stimulus spent approximately a trillion dollars under the guise that it would keep unemployment rates below 8%, yet nearly two years later, we are still at a point where unemployment rates, which had risen to the -- to the area of 10%, are now still a at 9% and i am reminded this is nearly double the average annual rate of the last administration. it would be one thing to me, madam president, if there was clear evidence that differing t.a.a. programs were effective, meeting these intended goals. but research

host: senator john barrasso has this piece published today. this would put the brakes on washington's efforts and these regulations are contrary to the will of the american people. the legislation would stop your bill -- was not modest regulation the agency has already proposed closed stronger ones it would issue later this year. that should lead to the retirement of many of the older, dirty air power plants and a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions. what is your reaction guest:? we need to make all of our energy as clean as we can. guest: i am the only senator or on the republican side of the public works committee, we need to deal with energy security as law's environmental stewardship and economic growth. we need all of the energy and we need to work in ways to make it cleaner. look at what is happening around the world. china is doing an incredible job with coal. we need to protect our air. laws were never intended to deal with global warming. my specific bill focuses on using rules and regulations to try to address climate change, when

caller: senator barrasso? host: he is listening, james. caller: i think the health-care law is a great thing. it probably does need to be revised. it is going to create jobs. it would get the for-profit doctors out of the business and keep the four-care doctors in the industry, and that is where we will get our innovation, also, to deal with the energy problem. i think it will help the infrastructure some sort of ways, i'm sure. you've got good hospitals and you get some good care, you probably want to do more for your city, i suppose. host: ok, james likes the bill, and asks the question of why not think of areas to improve it rather than overhaul it? guest: like james, i want to make sure people get the care they need from doctors and they want at a price and they can afford. i think that is a wonderful goal for all of a sp -- all of us. having read this whole law, i don't think it does those things. it puts government regulators between the patient and doctor and people will not be able to keep what they liked it if they have it. there

and senator john barrasso. at back.ause] [applause] >> thank you for that incredible introduction. i want to tell you the topic here today is obama care, can it be stopped. the answer is yes. not by me, but by all of us. we need everybody involved because, remember, you are the ones through your activism, your commitment, your focus, your dedication, you of the one that sent the cavalry to the united states sent by sending 13 republican senators, six brand new ones, incredible, and you are the ones that fired nancy pelosi. [applause] you had a chance to visit with senator mitch mcconnell yesterday. i'm sure he told you that what we've really no need are four more republican senators so that we will be in the majority. you have done it in the house. we need you to help us do it in the senate. the bottom line is this, we need a new president. [applause] now, if you need to be motivated about this fight all you need to do is read for articles, for articles by grace murray to article. chopping off the many heads of the obam

barrasso: the headline is "repeal of obamacare would help wyoming." just a few excerpts. he says -- "the obamacare law is a disaster for our country, a disaster for our country and especially for wyoming." he says our american health care system costs too much, there are too many uninsured. obama reform makes these problems worse. makes these problems worse. he goes on, the centerpiece of the obama effort to insure the uninsured is to expand the medicaid program, the existing program for poor people. this, he says, is the most expensive way available to insure the uninsured, the most expensive way to insure the uninsured. this is someone who studied this for 20 years. the medicaid program is designed to be a high-cost program. the federal government has required a set of medicaid benefits that are richer than any insurance the rest of us can buy. the feds forbid most of the effective cost controls the rest of us face. he goes on, one consequence is that medicaid clients are free to use the hospital emergency room for things most of us take care of at home. the health care

barrasso: i'd like to see every citizen in this country have a waiver. i'd like to have every state have an opportunity to have waivers. because just last week, the secretary of health and human services gave another 500 new waivers. the total now, 729 waivers. you can find them on the health and human service web site. this covers 2.2 million people. now, it's interesting, because in this debate before this bill was passed through in the middle of the night, after being written behind closed doors, labor unions publicly supported this health care law. well, now there are 166 union benefit funds who are exempt, they got the waivers. they got the waivers. unions now have 860,000 of the waivers of the 2.2 million waivers. so unions now have 40% of all the waivers even though there are only 7% of the private-sector work force in this country. so my question to my colleague is, if this law is so good, why do so many people who supported it in the first place now say i don't want it to apply to me? is it, as nancy pelosi said when she was speaker of the house

the other thing, this was brought up i senator barrasso. i know that this is on water, this hearing, but i agree with you, it's appropriate to bring up anything that is in the jurisdiction of this committee. when he talks about the finding, and i think it's very important, and since we have administrator jackson here, i will recall a question i asked administrator jackson. this would've been last december right before i left for copenhagen when i said, as the question, i have a feeling we will be making an endangerment finding in the next few days, and when you do i would like to find out, asked for the record what side you would be basing it on. your answer was for the proposal the agency relied on large part on the assessment report developed by the intergovernmental panel of climate change. we have talked about quite often how coincidentally that was precisely the same time that "climategate" came up that was characterized as one of the worst scandals in our recent history. the daily telegraph in london said the scandal could well be the

barrasso and dr. coburn to make additional comments about the impact of this new health care bill on the quality of american health care. so with that, let me call on ron johnson. >> thank you, leader mcconnell. i do bring the perspective as a business person who's been running a manufacturing plant for the last 31 years, and i think the point i've been trying to make is as a manufacturer, you learn to look for the root cause, not the mere symptoms of the problem. to me, sluggish job creation, a slow economy, high deficits are the symptoms of the problem, not the root cause. it's the size, scope and cost of government that are the root cause hampering job creation. and to me, exhibit a of large government, out-of-control government, intrusive government is the health care bill. that's why i totally support the repeal of that. i believe that once we do that, it'll remove -- it'll help remove uncertainty from this economy and help job creation. thank you. >> well, if you saw the latest thomson reuters p

tomorrow morning, we will talk to note representative -- to representative jay inslee, and senator john barrasso joins us, and we will look at the future of community service block grants with the head of the community action partnership, don mathis. "washington journal" is live every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. up next, tonight's t hall -- the tea party town hall meeting with members of congress. speakers include senators orrin hatch and rand paul, along with steve king and michele bachmann. this is about 1.5 hours. while our members are getting miced up, i will tell you that these have grown leagues and downs. our two-year anniversary is coming up in just a few weeks. we can have rallies until the end of time and protests, but, ultimately, if you want to change what is going on in washington, you have to change your players in washington, and the tea party express got involved in the political aspects, in the campaigns, and we all work together to bring new members of congress here to represent our principles and values of the tea party movement and to have people here that we know that we can w

on the republican side, you don't and barrasso. >> thank you, madam chairman take you very much for calling this hearing. it's an extremely important subject. welcome, administrator jackson, and doctor beerbohm to our committee and look for to working with us to make sure that all people in this country have clean and safe water. i think for many years in the wake of seminal laws like the clean water act safe drinking water act, many of us took for granted that our water will be safe. but when you hear the stories and the accounts now that we are finding chromium-6 in our water supplies, it raises serious questions as to whether we're doing everything we need to to make sure that our water supplies are say. and i add to that the fact that my constituents had to boil water because of a water main break. that also raises questions as to the availability of clean safe water for people in this nation. that's why i'm so glad we have the environmental protection agency, whose job it is under the safety water act to study chemicals and compounds in a drinking water to decide what he says, what isn

. >> republican senators lindsey graham and john barrasso of wyoming -- what can you tell us about this legislation? >> this would allow states to opt out of requirements of the bill, such as paying a tax penalty, the requirement for employers to offer insurance to their employees, for states to examine the medicaid rolls. lindsey graham was very honest about this, saying that this was a way to bring the law down. if enough states opt out of these provisions, the law becomes financially unworkable and congress would have to repeal it because it would be such a mess and disaster. -- in terms of the debate and the mechanics, that could be in the form of a future bill, right? >> exactly right. >> thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> you can see that senate debate on our companion network c-span2 between 5:00 at 6:00. the house returns next tuesday at 2:00 p.m. eastern. you can see live house coverage here on c-span. this weekend on "booktv" on c- span2, "after words" with michael reagan on his father's legacy, ron reagen, and emily lambert on the futures markets. "in debt" with -- "i

barrasso: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, today i come to the floor because the -- the presiding officer: we are in a quorum call. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent that i be allowed to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i come to the floor today because on monday, president obama introduced his new budget, and what we saw in that budget is that for the most part it's more of the same -- more spending, more taxes, more borrowing. and we see this budget from a president who doesn't seem to understand the gravity of the nation's fiscal crisis. the -- when you start digging down into that budget that the president proposed and looking into the internal revenue service component of that budg budget, what you see is that the internal revenue service is starti