July 31, 2012 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S5693 

I think we should understand that I 

don’t think a woman getting contraception has a thing to do with shutting 

down the power grids in America or the 

financial services in America or our 

water systems or our sewer systems. 

That is what cyber security is all 

about, not whether a woman can have 

contraception or whether she can have 

a wellness check to find out if she has 

cancer from not having had a mammogram. 

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, will the 

majority leader yield for a question? 

Mr. REID. I would be happy to yield. 

Mr. DURBIN. I would like to ask the 

majority leader, do I remember correctly that the very first amendment 

on the Transportation bill was offered 

by Senator BLUNT of Missouri on family planning? So is there a family planning amendment available on every 

bill now that will be offered by the Republican side? 

I know the House Republicans have 

had 30 or 33 votes to repeal ObamaCare. 

Are we going to try to match them 

with similar efforts in the Senate? 

Mr. REID. My response to my friend 

is this: I try to be very calm about 

things in life generally, especially 

things here on the floor, but I can’t remain very calm about this. I have, as 

do a lot of people I know, 16 grandchildren. They are evenly divided between boys and girls. I want my granddaughters to be treated so that if they 

want to go get some contraception, 

have some contraceptive device while 

in school at New York University or 

Berkeley—I am bragging that they got 

into those schools—they should have 

the ability to do that. 

I just can’t imagine what we are 

talking about here on the Senate floor. 

Cyber security is one of the most important—it is the most important 

issue, as I have already said. If my colleagues want to talk to General 

Petraeus, he will tell us about what it 

is, or General Dempsey will tell us 

what the important issue is. The No. 1 

issue today is whether we are going to 

have bad people attack our country 

and shut it down. Now we are here 

being asked if we are going to have a 

vote, on cyber security, as to when my 

grandchildren can have contraception. 

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader. 

Mr. MCCONNELL. I guess the answer 

is no. 

My friends are going to spend the 

week lauding the advantages as they 

see them of an immensely unpopular 

bill that was passed a couple of years 

ago on a straight party-line vote— 

ObamaCare. Yet, in a week in which, 

apparently, they are going to laud the 

various positions of it, they are not 

willing to have a vote in support of it. 

So I gather that is a vote we will not 

have. I will request the opportunity to 

do that again. After listening to my 

good friend the majority leader, I anticipate such a request would likely be 

blocked. 

On another matter—— 

Mr. REID. Mr. President, my friend 

asked me a question. 

Mr. MCCONNELL. I believe I have 

the floor. 

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader has the 

floor. 

Mr. REID. OK. I won’t answer the 

question then. 

f 

DEFENSE SEQUESTER 

Mr. MCCONNELL. Mr. President, 4 

years after the great recession began, 

millions of Americans are still looking 

for work, millions more have literally 

dropped out of the workforce altogether, and uncertainty about our Nation’s future continues to spread. The 

stories of disappointment and of loss 

haven’t diminished; they have, in fact, 

multiplied. 

What is worse, a President who was 

elected on a pledge that he would turn 

all those things around is still pointing 

the finger at his predecessor. Three and 

a half years after he took office, he is 

acting as though he just showed up. I 

think most Americans are smart 

enough to know he has made things 

worse. He has hammered small businesses with a barrage of new regulations, with dozens more in the pipeline. 

He expects them to plan for the future 

without even knowing what their tax 

and health care liabilities will be. Last 

week he even spearheaded a legislative 

effort to take even more of what nearly 

1 million of these small businesses 

earn, and then he told Republicans 

that if we don’t go along with it, he 

will raise taxes on everybody else. 

That was the message last week: Either give me what I want—raise taxes 

on 1 million of our most successful 

small businesses—or we will let 

everybody’s taxes go up, is what he 

said at the end of the week. In other 

words, he used small businesses as little more than a bargaining chip. The 

week before that he told business owners that they are not really responsible 

for what they have built. Listen to 

that. To business owners, the President 

said: You are not really responsible for 

what you have built. No amount of 

White House spin or manufactured outrage can change what the President 

said in Roanoke, and no amount of finger-pointing can change the fact that 

his policies have actually made things 

worse. 

But what is most upsetting to a lot of 

us is the fact that the administration 

pretends its policies would help the 

economy or create jobs when it knows 

they won’t. It knows these policies are 

not going to create any jobs. What is 

most upsetting is the deception that 

lies at the heart of so many of the sales 

jobs, from health care to the stimulus. 

Americans wanted the President to 

focus on jobs, and he focused on a 

health care bill that we now learn not 

only includes a tax on the middle class 

but will lead to hundreds of thousands 

of fewer jobs. Now the President claims 

he is fighting for the middle class, but 

31⁄2 years into his Presidency their 

wages are still stagnant while their dependency on government assistance actually continues to rise. Wages are 

stagnant, and dependence on government assistance continues to rise. 

In some cases the President doesn’t 

even bother with the sales jobs; he just 

keeps his plans a secret. That is what 

we are now seeing with the defense 

cuts he demanded during last year’s 

budget negotiations. Literally for 

weeks, Republicans asked the President to tell the American people how 

he planned to carry out these cuts. He 

refused. 

Mr. President, the Senate is not in 

order. 

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senate will be in order. 

The Republican leader. 

Mr. MCCONNELL. As I was saying, 

for weeks Republicans asked the President to tell the American people how 

he plans to carry out these cuts. He 

simply refused to do so. So last week 

Congress passed legislation requiring 

him to do so. In fact, it cleared the 

Senate, I believe, unanimously. 

Then yesterday there was this: An 

Assistant Secretary down at the Department of Labor is now telling people 

they are under no legal obligation to 

let employees know if they will lose 

their jobs as a result of these cuts. Let 

me say that again. We have an Assistant Secretary of Labor who just yesterday said that employers are under no 

legal obligation to tell their employees 

they may lose their jobs as a result of 

these cuts. In other words, the President is trying to keep those folks in 

the dark about whether they can expect to lose their jobs. Why? Well, I 

think it is pretty obvious: to insulate 

himself from the political fallout that 

will result. The President doesn’t want 

people reading about pink slips in the 

weeks before his election, so the White 

House is telling people to keep the effects of these cuts a secret—don’t tell 

anybody, he says, keep it a secret— 

until, of course, after the election. 

Once again, a President who holds himself out as a great defender of the middle class and the goals of organized 

labor is putting his own political goals 

ahead of the hard-working Americans 

who will be affected by these policies. 

Rather than let those who will be affected by the cuts know about them, he 

will make everybody nervous. 

For 31⁄2 years—31⁄2 long years—this 

President has pushed an ideological 

agenda without regard for the consequences it would have on the very 

middle-class Americans he purports to 

defend. 

The President may not want to 

admit it, but the economic mess we are 

in is his legacy—his legacy. After 31⁄2

years of finger-pointing—31⁄2 years of 

finger-pointing—he owes it to the 

American people to be straight about 

it. 

Mr. President, I yield the floor. 


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S5694 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE July 31, 2012 

CYBERSECURITY ACT OF 2012 

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the pending 

business. 

The legislative clerk read as follows: 

A bill (S. 3414) to enhance the security and 

resiliency of the cyber and communications 

infrastructure of the United States. 

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maryland. 

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, every 

Senator has to decide what they are 

going to do every day when they wake 

up in the morning. For some in this 

Chamber, they wake up every day 

thinking about how they are going to 

stop President Obama, how they are 

going to stop his agenda, and how they 

are going to do everything they can to 

stop him from having a second term. 

Some spend their time waking up every 

day thinking about how they want to 

stop America from moving forward. 

That is not how I spend my day. I try 

to look at two things every day: the 

needs of my people—their day-to-day 

needs for a job, for an opportunity, for 

health care—and how that translates 

into national policy; then I try to look 

at the long range needs of our country. 

That is why I am excited about being 

on the Intelligence Committee, where I 

am working on protecting America 

from the cyber attacks that are happening every day to our country, including the stealing of identity and the 

stealing of trade secrets. I want to 

move America forward. I have worked 

very hard to do that. 

One of the areas I am most proud of 

that I have worked on with the men 

and women in this Chamber from both 

sides of the aisle is the whole area of 

women’s health care. Many want to 

talk about repealing Obama health 

care. Well, I don’t want to repeal it. 

They talk about replacing it. They 

never have an idea. So let me tell my 

colleagues one of the areas we fought 

for. 

One of the things we knew as we embarked upon the health care debate was 

that we wanted to save lives and we 

wanted to save money. One of the areas 

where we wanted to do both was to 

look at how to utilize the new scientific breakthroughs in prevention, 

particularly early detection and 

screening. We could identify those diseases with early intervention and save 

lives as well as money and counteract 

escalating disease that ultimately 

costs more and can even cost a life. 

Nowhere was it more glaring than 

with the issue of women’s health care. 

My hearings revealed that women were 

charged more for their health care and 

got less than men of equal age and 

health care status. We found that we 

had barriers to health care because everything about being a woman was 

treated as a preexisting condition. If a 

woman had a C-section for the delivery 

of her baby, that was counted. In eight 

States, they even counted domestic violence as a preexisting condition. Then 

what we saw during this debate was the 

fact that they even wanted to take our 

mammograms away from us. Well, that 

just went too far. 

So during the health care debate, 

while everybody was being a bean 

counter, I wanted American women to 

know they could count on the Senate 

and the women and men of the Senate 

to stand up for them. So we came to 

the floor. We suited up, and we fought 

for a preventive health care amendment that not only passed but goes 

into effect tomorrow, on August 1. It 

will be a new day for women of all ages, 

who will be able to get health care coverage for preventive health care at no 

additional cost, no copays, no 

deductibles, and no discrimination 

where they are charged more and get 

less. That is what ObamaCare is. If 

somebody wants to repeal that, then 

bring it on. We are ready to fight. We 

want to fight for that annual health 

care checkup that will involve mammograms, Pap testing, and pelvic 

exams. We want to be able to do the 

screening for that dread ‘‘C’’ word, for 

colorectal cancer and lung cancer. We 

want to make sure that if a person 

thinks they are possibly a victim—a 

doctor suspects domestic violence—we 

can screen and counsel. We want 

women to be able to have that access, 

to be able to know early on what are 

those illnesses they are facing. 

August 1 means our long-fought battle will actually go into effect. Where 

does it go into effect? Well, it is already in effect on the Federal law 

books. Now it will go into effect in doctors’ offices. Women will have access to 

the health care their doctor says they 

need, not what an insurance company 

says they need or what some rightwinger wants to take away from them. 

We are pretty mad about this. We 

were mad 2 years ago when they wanted to take our mammograms away 

from us, and we are going to be pretty 

mad if they try to take our health care 

away from us. But what we are happy 

about—what we are happy about—is 

that for over more than 50 million 

American women tomorrow it will be a 

new day. They will be able to walk into 

their doctor’s office. In the doctor’s office they will say: Good morning. Can I 

help you? And when they say: When 

was the last time you had a mammogram, and the patient says: Well, I 

never had one because I could not afford it, they will say: Oh, we can sign 

you right up for that. Tell me about 

your family history. Is it true that 

your father had colon cancer? Well, listen, we worry about that for you. You 

could be at high risk. We are going to 

take a look at that and make sure you 

are OK. 

For young women, we are going to 

make sure you have other kinds of 

counseling and services you need in 

order to have a productive family life. 

This is what this health care bill is all 

about. It is about people. It is about access. It is about preventing dread diseases. 

People will come to this floor and 

they will pound their chest and complain about the President. We want to 

pound the table and make sure women 

have gotten the health care they need. 

Tomorrow, we are going to be very 

excited when we keep the doors of doctors’ offices open to the women of 

America. 

Mr. President, I yield the floor. 

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New York. 

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, I 

wish to give two thank-yous: first, to 

my colleague from California for letting me go ahead of her—I have a Finance Committee meeting—and second, to both my colleague from Maryland and my colleague from California, 

whose voices are so clear and clarion. I 

love to listen to the Senator from 

Maryland. She speaks right to the people. She has it. She gets it. And do you 

know what. If we could get every 

American in a giant football stadium 

and they could listen to Senators MIKULSKI and BOXER on health care, 80 

percent would be for it. So I want to 

salute them and salute particularly 

Senator MIKULSKI for putting both the 

event earlier today and these speeches 

together. 

I heard the minority leader speak, 

and it meant two things. First, it 

meant the Republican party does not 

want to do cyber security. It means the 

greatest threat to our Nation—probably even greater than terrorism, if 

you speak to some of our intelligence 

and military experts—will not be dealt 

with because we know what he is 

doing. He is asking for an unreasonable 

demand, unrelated to cyber security, to 

go on the floor, knowing that will stop 

us from moving forward. 

It is a sad day. We have some of our 

colleagues from the other side of the 

aisle talking about that we must not 

abandon defense. Well, one of the 

strongest things the defense of our Nation needs is a strong cyber security 

bill. Because special interests—the 

Chamber of Commerce and others—do 

not want it, even though every military and intelligence leader has said 

how vital it is, it seems the other party’s tea leaves show that the other 

party is going to block us from going 

forward. It is unfortunate and it is sad. 

Then, second, the way he chose to 

block cyber security could not be worse 

in terms of substance and in terms of 

timing. Today, July 31, the minority 

leader wants to put on the floor the repeal of so many things that are going 

to happen tomorrow to women and to 

men across America that benefit them. 

So his timing could not be worse. The 

very day before we are going to see 

huge benefits for the American people, 

he wants us to debate repeal. Why 

don’t we let the American people see 

the good parts of health care before we 

repeal it. And we are not going to repeal it. 

I want to talk about this day—or tomorrow, actually—where so many portions of the Affordable Care Act go into 

effect. 

Three million women in my home 

State of New York will benefit. From 


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