WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) released the following statement after the Senate passed the Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act (H.R.3762) to repeal Obamacare:

“It has been more than five years since Obamacare was rammed through Congress on a purely partisan basis in the face of significant public opposition. After all this time, most Americans still oppose this unprecedented expansion of federal government intrusion into health care decisions for families and job creators. 

“This 2,700 page law has burdened millions of Americans with a litany of broken promises, higher taxes and costs, reduced health care choices, and new regulations that have stifled the economy. Individuals, families and employers continue to face increasing health insurance costs, new taxes overseen by a politically-biased IRS, burdensome mandates, and great uncertainty because of this flawed law. By repealing Obamacare, we can replace it with step-by-step improvements to enable individuals to purchase affordable health coverage that meets their unique needs and lower overall costs.”

Background

• Sen. Moran was the first Member of Congress to call to repeal Obamacare in January 2011.
• Obamacare will raise taxes by more than $1 trillion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. For Kansans, additional taxes from Obamacare will be more than $949 million over the next 10 years.
• Health insurance premiums under Obamacare have increased between 2015 and 2016.
• President Obama promised that Obamacare would bring down premiums by $2,500 per year for the typical family. However, a November 2015 Gallup poll shows that nearly 1 in 3 Americans delay receiving health care for themselves and their families because of cost.  
• For 2016, the premium increase for benchmark silver plans on the Obamacare federal exchange is 7.5 percent – more than triple last year’s increase. By comparison, this cost increase is far more than the pay raises most Americans received as average hourly earnings have risen by just over 2 percent over the past year.
• In Kansas, premiums for benchmark silver plans on HealthCare.gov rose by more than 16 percent compared to the previous year.

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WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) today sponsored S. 2051 – the Improving Postal Operations, Service, and Transparency Act of 2015 (iPOST) – to fix the serious financial challenges facing the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). As the lead Republican sponsor, Sen. Moran joins U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.) who introduced the bill in September. It has been six years since the Government Accountability Office first classified the USPS’s financial condition as “high-risk,” and Kansans and individuals across rural America continue to face declining postal service quality.

“The U.S. Postal Service has long been an important part of American communication and commerce, but its deteriorating financial condition threatens its future,” Sen. Moran said. “We’ve also seen postal service quality across rural America decline as the USPS’ debts and future liabilities rise. Failure to make reforms now will cause the Postal Service’s financial crisis to worsen and increase the cost of any future fix. To protect taxpayers from the costs of a truly bankrupt Postal Service, Congress must act to put the agency on a path toward solvency. These reforms offer a serious policy framework to return the Postal Service to economic stability and preserve postal services across the country.”

S. 2051 reflects the views of a broad range of postal stakeholders and offers a solution to the difficult issues that Congress and the Postal Service have struggled with for years. The bill includes an extensive package of reforms that would steady the Postal Service’s financial footing, stabilize and improve service performance, allow for the development of new products and services, and enhance transparency. 

The financial condition of the Postal Service has been in consistent decline for nearly a decade, but the 2008 economic downturn and the continuing transition to digital communications and commerce accelerated its downward spiral. The Postal Service currently owes $15 billion and faces tens of billions of dollars more in unfunded pension and health care obligations in the years to come. It ended fiscal year 2015 with a net loss of $5.1 billion and now has a net deficit totaling more than $50 billion. Cost cutting efforts have disproportionally affected rural operations, resulting in postal facility closures and reduced service quality. Without serious, long-term reform, this iconic American institution will take on more and more debt and risk federal intervention.

U.S. Senators Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) also cosponsor S. 2051. Sen. Moran met with U.S. Postmaster General Megan Brennan on May 5, 2015, to discuss Kansans’ stories of slow or unreliable postal service and the critical importance this service has to rural communities. He also expressed concerns about degraded customer experience to PG Brennan as a result of changed collection times in an Oct. 22, 2015, letter.

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Thank you, Madam President, I rise to visit for a moment with my colleagues, both Republican and Democrat, about the ongoing debate that we are having over the appropriateness of having policy issues decided – debated and then decided in appropriation bills.

We are now at the stage in our legislative process in which it looks like we are going to complete our work on the final spending bill for the fiscal year that ended a few months ago and that by December 11, when the continuing resolution concludes, that we very well may have an appropriations bill that takes us into the new year completed.

There are some in the Senate who have argued that within this appropriations bill there is no place for policy riders, for provisions in that bill that direct in a more specific way how we spend money. I would say that is a terrible mistake on the part of members of the Senate to reach that conclusion, and I would say it’s wrong for our country. It’s wrong based upon the Constitution of the United States that creates three co-equal branches of government. 

The legislative branch, we know that our role is, which is to legislate, to create the laws, to appropriate the money. And there cannot be a distinction between legislating and appropriating money. They end up being the same thing – that when we appropriate money, we are directing an administration to conduct itself according to that appropriation bill. But we have, particularly in this case, a few Democrats who are arguing that there shouldn’t be any policy riders included in that appropriations bill. I doubt that we would hear that from Democrats if this was a Republican President and a Democrat Congress. And in my view, it ought not to be any different. Congress’s role is to make decisions about how money is spent and for too long, Congress has given up the power of the purse string. 

Why this is a significant development in our constitutional history is because in giving up the power of the purse strings, we authorize the executive branch – that branch of government that is to execute the laws, to administer the laws – to have significantly more power and the American people and our Constitution are harmed when any Executive – this President, previous Presidents, future Presidents – exceed the authority granted to them by the United States Constitution. Sometimes I think we end up supporting presidential decisions that we agree with and oppose those, obviously, that we disagree with. But the reality is, if those decisions are unconstitutional, if they exceed the authority that Congress has granted an executive branch, they ought to be denied regardless of whether we agree with those decisions or not. In other words, the Constitution should trump.

And in my view, again, this Congress and many who preceded us have taken the opportunity to be in the back seat and granting authority or allowing Presidents to consume additional power well beyond the Constitution. So, Madam President, I am here to encourage my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, to re-exert our constitutional grant of authority to legislate. And we ought not to pay undue deference to an executive branch whether the President is a Republican or a Democrat. 

I would say that in the time I have been a Senator, in this first term of my term in office, we have seen an executive branch that has continued to increase its power and authority to exceed, in my view, its constitutional grant of authority and in so many instances exceed the authority granted to them by a statute – a piece of legislation passed by the House, passed by the Senate and sent to the President. 

A President should be able to do those things which are granted to him or her by the Constitution or by legislative enactment pursuant to the Constitution. And that seemingly has been forgotten during the recent history of our country. Congress holds the power of the purse string. 

There are many of us, Republicans and Democrats, who would like to direct the executive branch in how money is spent. The appropriations bill ultimately will determine how much money is spent, but, in addition to that, we have the ability to direct whether that spending can occur, shouldn’t occur or how it should occur. I offered on the Senate floor – in fact some of you have heard me speak previously, I think all of you have heard me speak previously, some of you may remember about a particular provision that I wanted included in the Interior and Environment appropriations bill related to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – the designation of the Lesser Prairie Chicken as a threatened species. 

We have had this conversation. In fact, in a bipartisan way that issue was voted on the Senate floor. It was approved, but that legislation that it was attached to did not become law. So now the opportunity to instruct a federal agency arises as we appropriate the money for them to operate. There [are] five states in the middle of the country, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma, that have felt the consequences of a decision made by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the Lesser Prairie Chicken as a threatened species. The issue that is so troublesome to me is those five states have come together to solve this problem on their own without the heavy hand of the federal government. And conservation practices were being put in place. The U.S. Department of Agriculture was providing technical and financial assistance to conservation efforts to landowners to provide the incentives to put voluntary conservation practices in place across those five states. And yet the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in my view, only paid lip service to those conservation efforts. Their actions spoke louder than the words and they listed the Lesser Prairie Chicken as threatened. 

This decision, at that point in time, didn’t provide enough time for local plans to prove their effectiveness, and the reality is the problem in our state and across that region of the country was we didn’t have moisture. We didn't have adequate snowfall. We don’t have adequate rainfall. When you have little or no rain, you have little or no habitat. You can’t solve that problem without moisture. Now the rains have returned and, in fact, over the last 2 years, just as you would predict, as common sense would tell us, if there is more rain, there is more habitat, there’s more birds.

And the most recent census of the Lesser Prairie Chicken indicates that in the last 2 years, the population of that bird—that species—has increased by 50 percent. Again, common sense tells us if there is rain and if there is moisture, there is habitat and the birds return. As the rainfall has returned, the habitat is growing, and it is healthy again. And local surveys indicate what we would expect: the bird's population is again increasing. 

One might think it would be useful to take a second look at the listing. Despite our request of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, they dismissed that with little thought that as the species has returned, that maybe it should no longer be listed. So the opportunity that I and others have to rein in decisions that we believe are poorly made, lack common sense, [and] are unreasonable occurs in this appropriations process. And my guess is that all of my colleagues have certain issues in which they want to direct a federal agency about how to behave – what rules and regulations are appropriate, where we believe they have exceeded their authority or where they just simply lack the common sense or sound science to have made an appropriate decision. 

There are some who say you shouldn’t legislate on an appropriations bill. An appropriation bill is a legislative effort and it would be wrong for us not to take the opportunity to direct agencies on behalf of the American people, on behalf of the constituents – in my case of Kansas – who feel very strongly about this issue and have suffered the consequences of the listing of the Lesser Prairie Chicken by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

So despite the practical reasons that this listing should be reversed, the agency is not listening and we therefore ought to take the opportunity to direct their behavior in a legislative way. Whether or not an amendment is approved is decided here in the Senate by a majority vote. I would tell you that in the case of this issue, again, the amendment was offered in the Appropriations Committee. It is included in the Interior appropriations bill. The House has adopted similar language in their appropriation bill. So for those who say this is inappropriate, this is the legislative process as it should be. This is United States Senators and the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives speaking on behalf of their constituents in a very constitutional and appropriate way. 

It is important for us to utilize our authority as Members of Congress to make decisions that benefit our country as we see best and we ought to work together to accomplish that. There will be riders, provisions that are offered that I will – that are included in an appropriations bill – that I will disagree with, but the appropriations process ought to work and I as a member of the Appropriations Committee and as a member of the Senate want to see us get back to the days in which the power of the legislative branch is able, is to be utilized and we make certain that we make decisions on how we spend the money.

Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to be on the Senate floor today to speak as we move apparently next week toward the appropriation bill and its conclusion. And I just would say that, in a bipartisan way, we ought to work together to find opportunities to solve problems that our constituents and Americans face. And the legislative process is a way that we can do that. It’s not inappropriate. In fact, it is the constitutional response to an abuse of power in an executive branch. Whether it’s a Republican executive branch or a Democratic executive branch, we ought to work together as Members of Congress utilizing our constitutional authority to make appropriate decisions for the American people.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) today voted in favor of S.J. Res. 24 and S.J. Res. 23, which both passed the Senate, to express disapproval with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan rule. The latest proposal threatens to increase energy costs for Americans with minimal environmental benefits.

“Washington should focus on commonsense policies to make energy cleaner and more affordable rather than adding more cost, red tape and regulations,” Sen. Moran said. “This administration continues to ignore the impact a rule like this has on Americans, and I believe we should work to put in place environmental policies that can both protect our natural resources and safeguard our economy.

Sen. Moran continued, “Kansans would be disproportionately affected because nearly two-thirds of our electricity production comes from coal. Our state’s power providers have made great progress in reducing emissions over the years, but the additional regulations mandated in this rule will result in higher costs without demonstrating much environmental benefit.”

According to a recent National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) study that measures the impact of a 10 and 25 percent electricity price increase on jobs and gross domestic product (GDP) from 2020 to 2040, there is a devastating relationship between higher electricity prices and job losses. Even a 10 percent increase results in 1.2 million jobs lost in 2021 across the country with nearly 500,000 of those lost jobs in rural communities.

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