[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 16]
[House]
[Pages 21533-21534]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2115
         EXAMINING THE FACTS ON HEALTH CARE REFORM LEGISLATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to take a little time to 
examine some of the statements President Obama made when he addressed 
Congress on the issue of health care. Many of the things he mentioned 
in his address deserve some clarification or outright rebuttal.
  The President said that, Not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will 
be used to pay for this plan. That was easy for the President to say, 
and it is technically correct. It is technically correct only because 
there is no Medicare trust fund. It is an accounting mirage, a sham of 
government IOUs, thanks to decades of government deficit spending.
  And, furthermore, among more than $500 million in proposed savings 
from Medicare, the Democrat bills also propose redirecting $23 billion 
from the Medicare Improvement Fund to fund new health care 
entitlements. According to current law, the Medicare Improvement Fund 
is designated specifically ``to make improvements under the original 
Medicare fee-for-service program.''
  Then there is the issue of taxpayer-funded abortion coverage. 
President Obama said, Under our plan, no Federal dollars will be used 
to fund abortions,

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and Federal conscience laws will remain in place. But independent 
groups have confirmed that the legislation will result in Federal funds 
being used to pay for abortions--both through the government-run health 
plan and through Federal subsidies provided through the exchange, 
despite various accounting gimmicks created in a so-called Energy and 
Commerce Committee ``compromise.''
  Republicans offered amendments in all three of the committees to say 
this money cannot be used for abortions, and they were rebuffed at each 
turn.
  President Obama also went on to claim that, ``Reducing the waste and 
inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan. 
Much of the rest will be paid for with revenues from the very same drug 
and insurance companies that stand to benefit from tens of millions of 
new customers.''
  But the Congressional Budget Office had previously found that the 
cuts to Medicare Advantage plans included in the Democrat legislation 
would result in millions of seniors, including thousands and thousands 
in my district in North Carolina, losing their current plan--a direct 
contradiction of the President's assertion that, Nothing in this plan 
requires you to change what you have.
  The President could have strengthened his statements by quoting 
sections and lines to back up the statements. We who have presented our 
alternatives and who have stood to refute the comments have been able, 
in most cases, to quote the section and the line of the bill to show 
that what we are saying is the truth.
  As you can see from this discussion of the President's speech, when 
it comes to the debate over health care reform, there are often two 
sides to the issue, and it is simply not as cut and dried as President 
Obama has tried to make it out.
  Many of us have serious misgivings and disagreements with the 
proposed legislation and will not allow our disagreements to be 
mischaracterized and sidelined by lofty rhetoric.

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