[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 18 (Friday, February 3, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H468-H470]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               OBAMACARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Harris) is recognized 
for the remainder of the hour.
  Mr. HARRIS. May I inquire of the Chair how much time remains.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Maryland has 16 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. HARRIS. I want to thank the gentleman from Texas who spoke so 
eloquently about the condition of the country and the condition it's 
left in. I want to remind the American people that one of the obstacles 
we still have to overcome is that we have a health care plan that was 
passed out of the last Congress that isn't in full effect yet, but 
we're starting to feel the problems with it.
  What I'm referring to is, of course, what everyone else calls the 
ObamaCare legislation, passed 2\1/2\ years ago now, not fully 
implemented until after this next election, but influencing Americans 
in their daily lives. Now, the majority of Americans don't agree with 
the plan. A majority of Americans don't want the plan, but we still 
have it.
  Interestingly, about a third of Americans think we don't have it 
anymore, that when the House passed their repeal last year in January--
one of the very first actions we took in the new House--they thought we 
were done with it, that America could wash its hands of it. But, in 
fact, the repeal bill was sent to the Senate where, as many other bills 
coming out of the House last year, it suffered the same fate. It sits 
in the Senate without the Senate taking action to do what the American 
people want, which is to repeal ObamaCare.
  America understands that that bill has many, many problems, some of 
which we'll talk about in the next few minutes, just to remind 
Americans this is still there. It's still causing problems.
  The gentleman from Texas spoke about the problems with our economy. 
As I go through the district I represent, I talk to businessmen and -
women every week; and they tell me the same thing: they're worried 
about the economy. They're worried about government regulation. They're 
worried about health care insurance for their employees because they're 
worried about what the effect of ObamaCare is. And as this shows, 74 
percent of American businesses surveyed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 
say: The recent health care law--that's ObamaCare--makes it harder for 
their businesses to hire more employees.
  The bottom line is they don't know what the rules are. The rules are 
changing. As we know, 1,700 businesses and unions have to get waivers 
from that bill in order to keep their health care going this year. And 
of course those waivers will disappear in a year, and businesses don't 
know what's going to happen once those waivers expire.
  A real life example: a furniture business owner in the Fifth District 
of Texas, this is what he said: I could start two companies and hire 
multiple people; but based on this administration and the lack of facts 
with ObamaCare, I will continue to sit and wait.
  Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Speaker, America knows that you can't 
possibly make another empty government promise to ensure 14 million 
additional Americans while you are going to save money, increase 
access, and increase quality. Americans have figured this out a long 
time ago. You can't get all those things. And they know and they 
suspect what's going to happen is what will happen: the quality will go 
down, and the amount of money spent on other health care programs by 
the government will go down.
  What's the other major health care program paid for by the 
government? Medicare. The ObamaCare bill takes $500 billion out of 
Medicare over the next 10 years. Most worrisome is how it takes that 
$500 billion out of Medicare. It sets up what's called the Independent 
Payment Advisory Board. Now, every American ought to be familiar with 
those terms because this is what's going to control your health care 
when you get old or your parent gets old or a loved one you know enters 
Medicare.

                              {time}  1320

  These 15 bureaucrats, chosen by the President, not accountable to 
anyone, with no appeal of their decision, will decide what gets covered 
and what doesn't get covered in Medicare when the government runs short 
of money.

[[Page H469]]

  Now, Mr. Speaker, you read the same headlines I do. The government's 
$15.2 trillion short of money, with no end in sight. The President's 
last budget, submitted to Congress a year ago--we're waiting to see the 
budget he's supposed to submit next week, which we understand will be a 
week or two late--that budget never balanced.
  Mr. Speaker, I don't have that luxury in my household. I actually 
have to make a budget balance. And Mr. Speaker, I would never make a 
financial move that I knew was passing along a debt to my children and 
my family. I wouldn't go out, buy a big house, buy a big car, take an 
expensive vacation, put it on a credit card that I knew my children are 
going to have to pay.
  But, Mr. Speaker, that's exactly what the President's budget and 
ObamaCare does. It takes the big government credit card, which is 
already past its credit limit, $15.2 trillion, runs it through the 
swiper one more time and says, we're going to insure 14 million more 
people. But don't worry, the cost will go down, the access will go up, 
and the quality will go up. Americans just don't believe it, and they 
have a right not to believe it.
  This 15-member board, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, IPAB is 
what we call it around here. What you ought to call it is the Voucher 
Rationing Panel.
  Mr. Speaker, what they are are 15 bureaucrats, specifically excluding 
someone who practices medicine from participating in the decisions of 
what Medicare is going to cover and not cover if and when the 
government runs out of money. But we know the government's going to run 
out of money. We know Medicare's going to exceed its budget. It does 
every year.
  But if that were all that was bad in the bill, we might be able to 
just repeal that and move on. But it's not. We saw earlier there were 
provisions on small businesses called the 1099 provision, making small 
businesses do tens of billions of dollars worth of paperwork so that 
the government can collect a few billion dollars more in taxes, 
meanwhile, strangling small businesses. This Congress was smart enough 
to repeal that aspect.
  Just last week we repealed another aspect of the bill. It was called, 
strangely enough, the CLASS Act. Now, what this act did is, this was 
long-term care insurance under the Medicare provisions that starts 
collecting the premiums now, but doesn't provide services until the 
future, meanwhile, spending those premiums on other expenses in the 
government.
  Sound familiar? Sound like what's happening to your Social Security 
dollars and your Medicare employment taxes now, your payroll taxes? 
That's exactly what this was. Set up what even Democrats called, in the 
Senate, a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud. So we 
repealed it.
  But last week, in perhaps one of the worst parts of the bill, which 
really had nothing to do with money, was when the Secretary of Health 
held that religious institutions had to provide care under their 
insurance policies that was not consistent with their religious 
beliefs. That is, sterilization, contraception, and abortion. Full 
coverage, no deductible, zero deductible, putting it in the same 
category as breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, 
the other measures that were meant to be covered by that clause in 
ObamaCare, the preventive care clause.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, that assumes, if you want to prevent illness, that 
pregnancy is a disease. Or pregnancy is an illness. What a long way we 
have come from when society felt that pregnancy was something to be 
celebrated, it was an extension of life, it was an extension of 
society, the next generation.
  The Secretary of, and I put it in quotes, ``Health'' in this 
administration, has decided that pregnancy is a disease or illness that 
needs to be prevented. That's not a good recipe for the future of our 
society or this country. And worst of all, it's a stark violation of 
the First Amendment of the United States that the government shall not 
compel anyone to go against their religious principles.
  They'll tell you there's an exemption, but there isn't. Yes, if 
you're a church, you're the church itself, you are. But God forbid that 
church goes into the community and runs a center for social justice, a 
center for adoption, a hospital. That religious institution running 
that other entity would be forced to provide coverage for something 
that is antithetical to the religious beliefs of that religion.
  Ladies and gentlemen, that is just wrong. It's bad policy, and it 
violates the First Amendment of the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, if I might inquire, how much more time do I have 
remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has approximately 7 minutes.
  Mr. HARRIS. So let's walk through some of this.
  Why do we need to repeal this bill?
  The bottom line is there is so much wrong with this bill, a bill that 
not only will cut $500 billion from current Medicare recipients, 
because you'll hear a lot of talk about, oh, that Ryan bill, it 
destroyed Medicare as we know it. Well, they forget to tell you that it 
doesn't touch Medicare for people over the age of 55. In fact, we 
restore that $500 billion for people who are currently covered or for 
people who are 55 and older who will be entering Medicare in the next 
10 years.
  The little secret of ObamaCare is it takes current Medicare and cuts 
it by $500 billion. Now, my mother's 88 years old. I don't want a board 
of bureaucrats in Washington making a life-or-death decision on whether 
she gets Medicare treatment paid for--by 15 bureaucrats sitting in 
Washington who never met her. I think that decision ought to be made by 
my mother and her health care providers. No government bureaucrat in 
the room, no appointed bureaucrat with no appeals process who can 
say no, we don't really know your specific situation, but you know 
what? This is what it sounds like to us, and we think that shouldn't be 
covered, so you're not getting that care covered.

  And ladies and gentleman, you know, with the cost of medical care, if 
the government says it's not covering it, it's not getting done. Is 
that the way we want health care delivered in the United States? Is 
that what we want?
  Do we want a bill that says what kind of care you're going to 
receive, even if you're not on Medicare, that you have to go into 
specific health care plans, your employer is shoehorned into them? That 
promise--don't worry, if you like your plan, you'll keep it--had to 
have 1,700 waivers in the first year alone, 1,700 waivers. That's not 
the kind of health care we need. That's not the kind of health care 
plan we need.
  Do we want a plan that can be taken to the extreme by the Secretary 
of Health to say that we're going to violate closely, deeply held 
religious principles in certain religions in the United States, and 
we're going to force those people to do things against their religion? 
Is that what we've come down to?
  So, ladies and gentlemen, the cure is simple. We need to simply 
repeal ObamaCare. There is too much wrong with it. We tried to fix it 
piece by piece. We tried to pull out the things that hurt small 
business. We tried to deal with why you need 1,700 waivers. We tried to 
deal with that long-term care coverage. I'm convinced that bill will go 
to the Senate and it will die. We'll have instituted yet another Ponzi 
scheme in the United States.
  And those are not words from this side of the aisle. Those are the 
words of a Democrat Senator describing that long-term care plan that 
was part of ObamaCare, the one that takes your dollars, your dollars 
that you will put in it now, spends it now, with a promise, don't 
worry, when you get old and need it, there will be some money there.
  Ladies and gentlemen, we've heard that before. That dog don't hunt 
anymore. We've heard it with Medicare. We've heard it with Social 
Security. Americans have realized this Congress has spent us into 
bankruptcy with promises like that in the past. If we have made those 
promises in the past, we have to keep the promises we've made.
  But ladies and gentlemen, we have not implemented ObamaCare in its 
fullest, and now is the time to repeal it before we begin that. So, 
ladies and gentlemen, that's why over the next few weeks you'll hear, 
and Mr. Speaker, we'll see things come to the floor that deal with it, 
like we did last week and repealed that long-term care act that a 
Democrat Senator called a Ponzi scheme that Bernie Madoff would be 
proud of. A Ponzi scheme that Bernie Madoff would be proud of. That's 
why

[[Page H470]]

congressional approval rating is at 9 percent, because America watches 
as we come down to Washington and create Ponzi schemes.
  It's just time to stop. It's time for common sense to prevail. Common 
sense is we have to stop spending more money than we have. We have to 
stop burdening the hardworking taxpayers of America. We have to balance 
our budget. We have to pass a balanced budget amendment so that future 
Congresses can't create more Ponzi schemes.

                              {time}  1330

  We have to deal with the debt and the deficit. Are they hard 
decisions? They certainly are. Are they decisions the American public 
expects us to come together and make? They certainly do. Let's rise to 
the occasion. I join with the President, who, a week ago, says let's 
work together to solve these problems.
  Mr. President, you don't solve these problems by impeding people's 
First Amendment rights to freedom of religion. You don't solve these 
problems by proposing $300 billion new stimulus spending in your State 
of the Union speech. You don't solve these problems by going out and 
doubling down on Solyndra. You don't solve these problems by denying 
the Keystone XL pipeline.
  Mr. President, we're ready. Let's come together and solve America's 
problems.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. West). Members are reminded to address 
their remarks to the Chair.

                          ____________________