[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11050-11051]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             OPPOSING THE REPEAL OF THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Florida (Ms. Brown) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, the poor will always be with us, 
but our job is to help raise the standards. I've got to tell you, if it 
were not already invented, I would say this Congress invented the words 
the ``do nothing Congress''--do nothing.
  Today is the second day that we are debating the repeal of the 
Affordable Care Act. Let me be clear that not one single person who has 
come to this floor debating doing away with it doesn't have insurance, 
because we have the best insurance. In fact, my blood pressure is up, 
so I went downstairs. Because I have insurance, I was able to test my 
blood pressure and get some additional medication. In fact, later I was 
able to go to the dentist because I have insurance. Yet what we are 
debating is you at home not having health care, because we--everybody 
in this House, every Member who has come to this floor--has health 
care.

                              {time}  1110

  Every single President, since Franklin Roosevelt, for 75 years has 
tried to push some form of universal health care, and I want to thank 
President Barack Obama. They like to say ``ObamaCare.'' I want to say, 
``President Barack Obama cares, and he was able to accomplish 
something.'' Let's be clear that the President proposes, and the 
Congress disposes. So it had to be the Congress. It was the Democratic 
Congress, the Democratic Senate, and the President that passed the 
bill.
  Instead of discussing health care repeal, we should be debating VA 
construction. In my State as of July 1, the VA paid an additional 
$500,000 to rent a portable operating room for a project that is 95 
percent complete, but we haven't had a chance on the floor to take up 
VA construction. We have 31 times that we're taking up repealing health 
care. I visited that facility last month, and I found out that it would 
have been a health risk not to expand the program for the veterans in 
that area.
  People often say, ``What did the Democratic House, President, and 
Congress do?'' We passed the largest VA

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budget in the history of the United States of America. We took care of 
the veterans. We had a far-reaching budget. We gave care to the 
caregivers of our veterans. It goes on and on.
  I really do believe to whom God has given much, much is expected. He 
expects us to work to empower the American people with jobs and health 
care. Basically ``do nothing'' is the label of this Congress, the Do-
Nothing Congress.

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