Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Labor, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Relating to ``Short-Term, Limited Duration Insurance''

Floor Speech

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Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of S.J. Res. 63, a resolution of disapproval on the Trump administration's final rule allowing the expansion of short-term junk health insurance plans.

My home State of California recently passed a law prohibiting these short-term plans to protect consumers because these plans do not offer real coverage and are allowed to only take healthy consumers.

One hundred thirty million non-elderly Americans have a preexisting condition, including 16 million in California. Among the most important provisions in the Affordable Care Act are the consumer protection requirements for health insurance plans that ensure preexisting conditions no longer dictate access to health coverage and essential benefits that ensure coverage is meaningful and comprehensive.

It does a cancer patient little good to have health insurance that doesn't cover chemotherapy, just as coverage without maternal care is meaningless to an expectant mother. In fact, before the Affordable Care Act was passed, three out of four plans on the individual market did not cover labor and delivery.

An analysis by Kaiser Family Foundation just this last April found that of the more than 600 short-term plans offered through two major insurance websites, eHealth and Agile Health Insurance, across 45 States, none included maternity care. It gets worse: 71 percent offered no prescription drug coverage, and 43 percent of these plans didn't cover mental healthcare services.

To be frank, these plans are junk insurance. The major protections in the Affordable Care Act are basically tossed out the window, and we are reminded of why health reform was needed so badly in the first place. These plans can include annual and lifetime limits on care, meaning that, if you need an expensive medical treatment, you may be out of luck, even after paying your premiums. Women can once again be charged more than men for the same plan.

Insurance companies don't have to comply with medical loss ratio rules that limit administrative costs. In fact, short-term plans covering 80 percent of the market in 2016 only spent half of premium dollars on actual medical care.

Short-term plans have traditionally been used by some consumers for what the name implies, to bridge short gaps between long-term coverage for a matter of months. The final rule changes this to years. Given the severe shortfalls these plans have and significant consumer risk, they are simply not meant to be a substitute for real health insurance.

I urge my colleagues to support this resolution to protect consumers and look forward to working together to improve health coverage, not make it worse.

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Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the pending bill, America's Water Infrastructure Act.

I congratulate Chairman Barrasso and Ranking Member Carper of the Environment and Public Works Committee for completing this vitally important bill on time. It is critical that we reauthorize Army Corps projects and other water financing authorities every 2 years, as they have done.

The bill before us authorizes construction of 12 new water resource development projects and 65 studies.

America's Water Infrastructure Act also includes a number of provisions that will benefit California.

The bill includes a provision I authored that will require EPA and the Bureau of Reclamation to enter into an agreement within a year. The agreement must specify how the two agencies will jointly administer a Treasury-rate loan program for storage, water recycling, groundwater recharge, and other water supply projects.

This provision builds off EPA's success using Treasury-rate loans to fund projects under the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, WIFIA. The idea is to extend these Treasury-rate loans to water supply projects.

There are three significant ways WIFIA loans will lower costs for local agencies wanting to build storage, water recycling, groundwater recharge, or other water supply projects:

No. 1, they will pay only 3.2 percent interest rate on their loans based on today's rates, versus 4 percent or greater rates for municipal bond financing;

No. 2, the districts would not need to start paying interest until 5 years after substantial completion of the project; and No. 3, loans are for 35 rather than 30 years, lowering annual debt service costs.

The combination of these benefits could reduce the costs of building a project by as much as 25 percent. For example, if a consortium of water districts takes out a loan to build Sites Reservoir, they would pay only $512/acre-foot instead of $682/acre-foot, a 25 percent saving.

These water district savings of up to 25 percent are a highly cost- effective use of taxpayer dollars because they can be obtained by appropriations of only 1-1.5 percent of the cost of the loan, as validated by OMB.

OMB has approved loans of $5 billion backed only by appropriations of only 1 percent of that amount, or $50 million for WIFIA, because there is a virtually nonexistent default rate for water projects.

Only four in a thousand water infrastructure projects default, based on a study conducted by Fitch credit rating agency.

Moreover, WIFIA loans include substantial taxpayer protections. Private sector loans have to cover at least 51 percent of the project cost, and the Federal loans would have senior status in the event of any default. These provisions protect the taxpayer in the event of any default.

The provision in the bill before us is a compromise, different in some significant ways from the provision I included in the Senate bill. Like the Senate bill, the bill before us requires EPA and the Bureau of Reclamation to enter into an agreement within a year on how they would jointly administer a Treasury-rate loan program for water supply projects.

However, the House was unwilling to allow the Bureau of Reclamation to recommend water supply projects for loans within EPA's existing WIFIA authority. As a result, additional legislation will be needed to authorize Reclamation loans for water supply projects once EPA and Reclamation reach their agreement.

While further legislation will be needed, the legislation before us today provides an important step forward. EPA has developed expertise in processing and administering water supply loans, so it is more efficient if Reclamation can recommend the loans and EPA can administer them. Without the legislation before us, EPA and Reclamation would not reach an agreement on how they would jointly administer these water supply loans.

Now that we know that Reclamation and EPA will reach this agreement within a year, Congress can shortly thereafter move legislation with both agencies' support to extend the successful and cost-effective WIFIA loan program to water supply projects. I look forward to working with my colleagues on this additional legislation.

I am also pleased that this bill authorizes construction and studies and provides other needed modifications for many important water infrastructure projects in California.

One such project that received a construction authorization is the Lower San Joaquin River project, which provides critical flood control to the Stockton metropolitan area.

Additionally, this bill doubles Federal funding for the Harbor South Bay water recycling project, authorizing up to $70 million in Federal funds.

This increase in Federal funding will meaningfully expand this project's capability to provide recycled water to surrounding communities. I am pleased to see Army Corps funding utilized for water recycling, which is truly a key for sustainability and water security in drought-prone California.

Other key California projects in this bill include authorization for a flood risk management, navigation, and ecosystem restoration project in the San Diego River and directing the Army Corps to expedite flood risk management, water conservation and ecosystem restoration studies at the Coyote Valley Dam, Lower Cache Creek, Lower San Joaquin River, South San Francisco, Tijuana River, Westminster-East Garden Grove, and San Luis Rey River.

Lastly, I would like to mention the two other very important provisions for California as well as the Nation that I strongly support.

This bill increases funding for the Army Corps' dam rehabilitation program for structures built before 1940 from $10 million to $40 million until fiscal year 2026. The United States is facing many challenges due to aging infrastructure, and in California, we saw the serious ramifications of that with the Oroville Dam disaster.

Additionally, this legislation reauthorizes and expands the Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund for the first time in 22 years to address aging or damaged drinking water infrastructure in communities across the country.

For all these reasons, I support the America's Water Infrastructure Act before us today. Thank you.

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