Divided in the usual form. The senator from connecticut. Mr. Murphy mr. President i ask that the record reflect this colloquy and this dialogue be shown in the same place in the record. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Murphy i think that i might not be alone to my good friend from wyoming in suggest you ing that most people probably wouldnt suggest that 11 Million People signing up for Health Care Means the law is unpopular. Indeed weve seen a reduction by 25 in those across the country that dont have insurance in a years worth of time. I think thats a pretty stunning uptake and it shows how desperately people wanted insurance. Again i ask this same question to the c. B. O. Head yesterday and his review of why there has been a slight differential its a pretty small one between what they initially estimated and why people signed up is because more companies are maintaining their own Health Care Insurance less cancellations are happening and thus there are fewer people who are uninsured. And so this second argument as to how the sky was going to fall after health care reform, that you were going to see mass cancellations of policies, the c. B. O. Director is saying that the reason is number coming in slightly below where he had initially estimated albeit it is still 11 Million People who have insurance because of this law, is because employers are holding on to their insurance even though we heard from many detractors of the law that there was going to be a mass exodus of private insurance plans. 25 less people have no insurance today. Thats the bottom line. In connecticut 50 people have less insurance. There is no way to argue that we have made a big dent in the number of uninsured because of this laws passage. Mr. Barrasso mr. President , i ask unanimous consent that ten minutes of this next period be reserved for senator cornyn to address the issue. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Barrasso thank you mr. President. Then i would point out im going to be in buffalo wyoming on saturday at a health fair as a doctor. I continue to visit health fairnsd the state designed health fairs around the state who are designed to bring low Cost Health Screenings and i know there are people there concerned about the fact that the c. B. O. Said the premiums are going to go up 8 next year and 8 the year after that and some of them are going to be on the obamacare chair and i know some of them are people that had insurance that worked well for them before the president passed his law. And their insurance was canceled. So the president , the senator from connecticut may list them as successes but they dont believe its that way. They had insurance. They had insurance that they liked. It worked for them, worked for their family, had the benefits that were important for their family things for which they needed insurance. The president in the Health Care Law came out with his mandates that everyone buy Health Insurance and not just what worked for them. The president described them as essential benefits. I would describe them as excessive benefits because theres a lot of insurance they are forced to buy according to the law that they dont need. They had to lose insurance that worked for them and buy insurance that the president said they had to buy even though it wasnt what was best for them and their families. They know whats best for them and their families. Not president obama. I expect while im in buffalo wyoming, visiting with people, listening to what they have to say at a health fair that ill hear stories like that, because i do every weekend in wyoming. People are concerned about the cost even those who have been getting subsidies through the exchanges are noticing that deductibles are higher than their previous insurance. Copay is higher. Theyre paying more. Theyre paying more and getting less, which is why this Health Care Law continues to be unpopular across the country. Take a look at any of the National Numbers that are coming out and youre going to find many more people who feel they were harmed by the law than helped by the law. There is a ratio of more people thip they were harmed people think they were harmed than helped. More people want it repeal. That is what were seeing across the country with this Health Care Law. The president should listen to the American People who have these stories to tell. I was on the floor yesterday talked about a woman from maine. There was an article in a paper from maine she found the whole experience that shes been going through now frightening and she has insurance through the exchange. And she says it is a frightening experience. She did her taxes and found out she ended up owing a lot of money in taxes that she didnt know she was going to owe because of mistakes being made and the way the bookkeeping works. Thats whats happening. H r block the insurance folks are saying on average half of the people filing their returns this year are finding that theyre getting shocked and surprised that they their amount of money coming in for the returns is a lot lesbian average of 530 according to a lot lesbian average of 530. Theres a lot of people disgruntled about a president who made promises to them. A study came out yesterday that many people with insurance cant afford anything close to the deductibles that they are forced to be paying under the president s insurance that they had to buy many of whom lost the insurance that they liked. You know, we see these problems and the amount of government waste in this program is incredible. Oregon earlier this week shut down their exchange. The state of oregon has spent 248 million putting together their own state exchange, and the governor just signed the thing and said were done with it. They have not signed up one Single Person on the oregon Computer Exchange ever. 248 million taxpayer dollars gone. Gone. The only people that could sign up in oregon had to do it by filling out with paper and pen and this is supposed to be i heard president obama as easy as shopping on amazon. Insurance cheaper than your cell phone. Keep your doctor if you like your doctor. Thats notd what happened under this Health Care Law. People lost their doctors very complicated situation related to this. Then you get washingtons statement, state after state after state 13,000 people had too much money taken out of their Checking Account as just part of the regular process of the monthly withdrawals. Sometimes they took out three times as much. The presiding officer the senator has used five minutes. Mr. Barrasso thank you mr. President. The presiding officer who yields time . Mr. Barrasso mr. President i note the absence of a quorum and ask the time be divided equally. The presiding officer without objection. The clerk will call the roll. Quorum call a senator mr. President . The presiding officer the senator from florida. Mr. Nelson mr. President i ask consent that the quorum call be lifted. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Nelson thank you mr. President. Mr. President , i want to speak on a number of things. I rise in support of the nominations of christopher a. Hart to be chairman and tho dinhzarr to be board member of the National Transportation safety board. The National Transportation safety board helps keep all of us safe. And when a terrible crash happens, we watch on television or read about the crash and wonder what happened, but its the National Transportation safety board that steps in during those first moments. They get in, preserve evidence to sift through the debris and then to figure out what went wrong. And they play a difficult role. They must put aside all differences between jurisdictions, politics and partisanship just to get the job done. And in the last month alone the board has launched investigations into a Ship Collision in texas a plane veering off the run way in new york two terrible and fatal train crashes in new york and california and a tragic incident right here in d. C. Where smoke filled one of the metro tunnels and resulted in a passenger dying. Theyre also helping with an Oil Train Derailment in West Virginia and one in illinois that sparked fires and an evacuation. And their work plays a Critical Role in guiding our decisions about safety and their recommendations have influenced critical safety improvements. Theyve played a role in everything from drunk driving and seat belt laws to the amount of rest that pilots and Truck Drivers should get. And theyre also helping to shape the safety requirements of travel in the future. And in october of last year, a test flight for commercial space flight ended in tragedy when an experimental spacecraft broke apart in midflight over the desert in california. The National Transportation safety board stepped in to investigate the tragic accident. Theyre still conducting the investigation. The results are going to help us better address the future safety of commercial space flight to and from the edge of space which is what that spacecraft was designed to do. And this is why its so critical that we select people with Technical Knowledge and human compassion to put the pieces of these tragedies back together. And so we have two great nominees christopher. Christopher hart is a dedicated Public Servant with an extensive career in Public Transportation safety. He has served as vice children of the ntsb for five years and hes served as the acting chairman of that agency since 2014. Like mr. Hart, dr. Tho bella dinhzarr has a distinguished career in transportation safety. She currently serves as the director of the f. I. A. Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting safe and sustainable transportation. And previously dr. Dinhzarr worked in various safety capacities with make roads Safe Campaign the American Automobile Association and the national highway Traffic Safety administration. And so theyre both good leaders, and i ask the senate to join me in supporting their nominations. Now, id like to provide the senate with an update about what every senator has had their attention called to, the takata air bag recall. Weve seen five deaths, weve seen a spate of serious injuries related to these defective air bags. One of the deaths occurred right in my home state of florida. And through my position of working with the chairman of the Commerce Committee john thune i have been pushing takata and the automakers to speed up fixes for these defective air bags. People are driving around with a lethal bomb in their steering wheel, and if its defective and it goes off, they are filled with shrapnel. That has killed five people. Thats documented in this country. In this country its killed five people. Nobody ought to be driving therefore, a car for five months when, in fact, they have a known defect that can seriously kill them. Well, i. T. Just not its just not acceptable. And progress has been painfully slow. And we received a letter from nhtsa noting that only 2 million of the 17 million vehicles recently recalled 2 million of 17 million are thats all thats been repaired as of the end of last year. And that letter notes that takata has continued to stonewall nhtsas requests for documents related to the defect. I. T. Its now being fined 14,000 a day until they start cooperating fully. And theyve also failed to produce a number of critical documents that the Commerce Committee has requested as part of its investigation into this mess. Earlier today senator thune and i sent a letter to takata again, requesting that they turn over these documents to the committee as soon as possible so that we can complete our investigation into how this mess happened and very importantly how we can get peoples cars fixed so theyre not driving around with this bomb about to explode in their steering wheel. Safety cant wait. Mr. President , i conclude by saying that, sadly this week is the eighth year that bob levinson a retired f. B. I. Agent who disappeared on the tourist island in iran called kish island, this is eight years that he has not been seen or heard from. A wife and seven children. A couple of years ago the family received a video. A few months after they received a photo. Mr. President in these extensive discussions with iran over matters of war and peace as to whether or not iran is going to be willing to step down and not have a nuclear weapon, one of the discussion items also are not only the three known americans in captivity in iran but bob levinson who has been missing for eight years. Only the iranian government can produce the evidence of what has happened to bob and where he is, and we continue that vigil. Mr. President , i yield the floor. Mr. Cornyn mr. President . The presiding officer the majority whip. Mr. Cornyn mr. President , i had a ask consent to id ask consent to speak for up to ten minutes. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Cornyn mr. President all week we have been on an important piece of legislation called the justice for victims of trafficking act. Just to remind everybody, this is a bill designed to treat child prostitutes not as the criminal but as the victim they are. Obviously beneath the age of consent. And to recognize that the criminal organizations that traffic in human flesh for sale, for economic sex other reasons, that this is a real problem in our society and that so much of what happens in this trade is really nothing more, nothing less than modernday slavery, something we thought was relegated to the history books and didnt exist in the United States of america the freest country in the world. We got here through a rather strange set of circumstances because the legislation that i introduced, it was broadly bipartisan, which is a novelty these days, but we had 10 democratic cosponsors of the legislation, and then when we had a vote in the Senate JudiciaryCommittee Chairman grassley kindly called that bill up in february we had a unanimous vote of the Senate Judiciary committee. All republicans and all democrats voted for it. Then we had another unusual development. When majority leader mcconnell was left wondering, am i going to have to go through the procedural steps to get the bill to the floor the minority, our democratic friends, i think fairly, said this is not a covesial piece of legislation not a controversial piece of legislation. Were going to agree to get on the legislation. But then something very strange happened. All of a sudden, some of our democratic friends including the democratic leader, said were going to filibuster this legislation, which you can imagine my surprise, after that bipartisan record of cooperation leading up to that point. And i was even more surprised when the stated reason for that was a provision in the bill which was plain as the face on your as the nose on your face and it actually was a provision of the law that was voted on unanimously by all of our democratic friends just late last year. So its a provision that has been in the law of the land for 39 years, which they reaffirmed with their vote just late last year. Heres what one of the 200 groups, Law Enforcement and victims groups, had to say about this discovery this week about this appropriation provision known as the hyde amendment. They said, Senate Democrats are choosing a phantom problem over real victims. So id like to take a minute to think about who is actually paying the price for the political games that are going on here in the United States senate . Who is bearing the consequences . Is it going to be the Republican Party or the Democratic Party in the next election . That seems to be the rage in washington d. C. People want to talk about the politics. But here we have children, typically between the age of 12 and 14, mainly girls, who are trafficked for sex and who have nowhere to turn. Our bill gives them an opportunity to begin to heal by penalizing the very people who demand this sex trade and taking that money and diverting it into services for the victims. You know, reflecting on what has happened this week and thinking that surely we can all get together on something as bipartisan as combating human sex trafficking for children, surely we can finally come together and all join hands together and support this important legislation, i had to reflect, why in the world would you ever want to come to the United States senate if youre not going to try to help make the lives of these victims of Human Trafficking just a little better . I mean, were all used to the hardball of elections and politics. We get it. The were all volunteers. Were grownup men and women. But these children shouldnt have to pay the price for the political games that are going on right here in the United States senate. And its not just this legislation. I think it really speaks to why in the world would anybody want to serve in a body where all youre doing is filling space and throwing obstacles up to the passage of Bipartisan Legislation thats going to help some of the most Vulnerable People in our society . And i think its if this is our legacy, i just have to say shame on us. Shame on those who would put partisan political games and phantom problems ahead of the welfare of these child victims of Human Trafficking. Is this the legacy that any member of the senate, republican or democrat, would want to be known by . Yeah they served in the United States senate, the greatest deliberative body had in body in the world. But you know what theyre remembered for . For stopping help for child victims of trafficking. Does anybody want that . I dont think so. And why in the world would we squander a perfectly Good Opportunity to do everything we can . This isnt a panacea. This isnt going to all of a sudden wipe out the issue of Human Trafficking in america. But it is a small first step to dedicate 30 million in a Crime Victims Compensation Fund paid for by the very people who purchase these services and who are convicted and pay fines. This is a first step to take that 30 million and to divert it to help the victims of this sordid crime begin to heal. So i just would ask our colleagues to reconsider to reflect on why theyre here just to play partisan games or are you actually here to do some good . Is this what you want to be known by . Is this how you want to be remembered by your children and grandchildren . Is this how you want to be remembered in our history books . Why in the world would you come to the United States senate only to squander away something to do something good for the most Vulnerable People in our country by blocking this legislation over a provision of law thats been the law of the land for 39 years, in which all of our Democrat Friends have repeatedly voted for time and time and time