Making Continuing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2014--Resumed

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, earlier this morning the Senate voted to advance a budget agreement that passed the House last week. The legislation has been a topic of much discussion over the past several days, and there are sincere arguments on both sides.

While I appreciate the challenges House and Senate negotiators faced in crafting these budgetary guidelines, I voted against this legislation because in my view Congress should continue to adhere to the fiscal restraints both parties agreed to under the Budget Control Act.

I was the principal Republican negotiator of that agreement. I have been particularly invested in its success, and I was very proud of it. As a result of the Budget Control Act, government spending has declined for 2 years--2 years in a row--for the first time since the Korean war. This was hard-won progress on the road to getting our Nation's fiscal house in order.

As I said, I fully appreciate the constraints Chairman Ryan and Chairman Murray faced in their negotiations, and there is clearly some good to be said about their agreement. But we should not go back on the agreement we made under the BCA.

Nonetheless, this has been a very important public debate. Unfortunately, our colleagues on the other side do not seem terribly interested in substantial debate on this or any other substantive issues this week, least of all ObamaCare, which has been wreaking havoc on our constituents for months now but which Democrats seem entirely uninterested in discussing. Instead, for much of this week the Democrat-run Senate has decided to devote its attention to pushing through nominations--nominations. They want to spend time seating political appointees at places such as the Department of Interior--positions that, while they may be important, are certainly not in any way emergencies that need to be attended to right this second.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, millions of Americans will continue to suffer under a law they told Washington not to pass in the first place, a law that Washington Democrats still stubbornly refuse to change in any meaningful way. Our colleagues on the other side seem to think they have no responsibility to do anything about the impact of ObamaCare since the White House issued a press release declaring partial victory--partial victory--in fixing the Web site. That is their whole approach to this rolling disaster: Let the White House dodge and deflect on any problem that arises until people forget about the last one. Point the finger at some bureaucrat or some Web technician and basically do nothing.

We are now nearly 3 months into this national calamity, and what have Democrats done about this national calamity? Well, they have issued a lot of talking points and some halfhearted apologies. They have mouthed nostrums about ``private sector velocity.'' They have waived laws for fear of the political impact of leaving them in place. And there has hardly been any accountability for the massive consequences faced by American consumers as a result of this failed law. In other words, they haven't done much of anything. They have treated this whole thing like a public relations problem to get past rather than a real-life problem for middle-class Americans to be solved. They are engaged in daily battle aimed at one overriding goal: Protect the law. Yet nearly every day we hear more about its painful impact.

Since the October rollout, millions of Americans have lost their insurance plans. More than 280,000 have lost coverage in Kentucky alone, and so many are feeling the squeeze of this law, folks such as Lana Lynch, a mom from Brandenburg, KY, who told me the annual out-of-pocket expenses for her family rose from $1,500 to $7,000 under ObamaCare, and folks such as Barrett Simpson from Sweden, KY.

Barrett had a health plan he liked and wanted to keep, a $540-a-month policy that was, in his words, ``perfect'' for his family. The folks responsible for ObamaCare apparently thought they knew better than he did about the needs of his family, so he lost it. Here is what he had to say about that:

[My] plan is being eliminated because of the ACA, and the cheapest, closest plan will cost [u]s $1,400 next year. We can keep the plan until the end of next year, but we will have to pick a new one. We don't need the extra coverage for maternity, for vision or dental, but yet we will be forced to pay for it.

He continued:

These changes are absurd. Most people in this country who are content with what they had are now paying for what Obama is trying to do for a very few.

Barrett closed his letter by asking me to work to repeal ObamaCare.

Well, Barrett and Lana should know this--in fact, every Kentuckian should know this, and every American should know this: Members on my side of the aisle hear you loudly and clearly. We are not going to give up this fight. No matter how much the other side tries to distract the country's attention, we won't be fooled and we know you won't be either.

Look. The folks each of us were sent here to represent--not the government--should be the ones choosing plans that make more sense for their families. And when our colleagues on the other side go around referring to insurance being lost as ``junk,'' that is beyond offensive to the people we represent.

There is a lot of ivory tower thinking that goes on in this city--way too much of it. It is time for our Washington Democratic friends to finally climb out of the ivory tower and see the reality of their ideas in action, witness the failure of their policies firsthand. It is time for Washington Democrats to drop their refusal to change anything of substance in ObamaCare, and it is time for them to listen closely to the people who sent us here in the first place.

Here is what so many Americans are saying. They want Democrats to start working with Republicans to improve our Nation's health care system in a positive way, to help us implement real, patient-centered, commonsense reforms that can actually lower costs and improve the quality of care because we were sent here to solve problems, not to make them worse, as ObamaCare does.

Let's erase that mistake. Let's get rid of it and start over with real reform. Working together, we can do it.

Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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