[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 404-405]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1030
                 OPPOSING REPEAL OF HEALTH CARE REFORM

  (Mr. TONKO asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to repealing 
health care reform. The reason is simple: It does not create jobs, it 
does not protect the middle class, and it balloons the deficit.

[[Page 405]]

  Since March of 2010, the economy has created a total of 1.1 million 
new private-sector jobs. Over 200,000 of these jobs were in the health 
care sector alone. Health care reform is helping to create jobs, not 
take them away. Health care reform helps the middle class. In my 
district alone, 439,000 individuals who currently have health insurance 
now have protections and benefits that they did not have before the 
reform. 113,000 of my senior constituents are able to access preventive 
care and screenings for free because of reform. Tax credits are 
available for up to 14,500 small businesses in the capital region of 
New York.
  These are real changes that benefit real people. Repeal would 
eliminate all of them, thoughtlessly and with great harm to the middle 
class of my district. Finally, repeal would increase the debt by 
trillions of dollars. In fact, 20 years from now, repeal would cost us 
more than $1.2 trillion, ballooning the deficit and severely 
threatening our Nation's debt.

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