[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 16304-16305]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               OBAMACARE

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I think at this point Senators from 
both parties can agree that healthcare.gov is a rolling disaster. Every 
day seems to bring more near-comic calamities. We hear about visitors 
being told things like their wife is really their daughter or that they 
have multiple spouses or that they are unable to apply ``due to current 
incarceration.''
  Unsurprisingly, just 12 percent of Americans think the rollout has 
gone well. That is less than the 14 percent of Americans who believe in 
Bigfoot. Those who have succeeded in actually enrolling in a plan are 
vastly outnumbered by those who have lost their plan. The real tragedy 
is that many who have succeeded are finding out the product is actually 
worse than the Web site.
  The only thing the Web site seems to be good at right now is creating 
punchlines for late-night comedians. It is almost as though Americans 
are being forced to live through a real-life ``Saturday Night Live'' 
sketch. If you caught last week's opener, it is getting harder to tell 
the ObamaCare headlines from the ObamaCare punchlines these days.
  Paper applications, 800 numbers, applying by fax--ObamaCare appears 
to be leading us boldly into the 1980s. Remember, before this thing 
launched, the administration swore up and down that ObamaCare was ready 
to go. Democratic leaders in Congress told Americans that the law's 
implementation was fabulous and that ObamaCare was wonderful. The 
President reassured everyone it was working the way it was supposed to, 
and of course Washington Democrats bragged about their fancy new Web 
site, the Web site that cost taxpayers--$100 million? $200 million? 
$300 million? No one is quite sure. That is just one of the unanswered 
questions we hope they will clarify soon.
  To be fair, the President likes to say that ObamaCare is about more 
than just a Web site. He is absolutely right, and that is why fixing a 
Web site will not solve the larger problem. The larger problem is 
ObamaCare itself. The larger problem is what the few people who 
actually have signed up for coverage have discovered about this law. 
The larger problem is how ObamaCare is hurting people out there.
  It is about college graduates and middle-class families getting hit 
with massive premium increases they cannot afford. It is about workers 
seeing their hours cut and their paychecks shrink because of this law. 
It is about millions of Americans who will lose their current health 
coverage because of ObamaCare, despite the President's promises.
  According to news reports, the Obama administration knew for at least 
3 years that millions of Americans would not be able to keep their 
health care coverage. The President's press secretary basically 
admitted yesterday that Americans would lose coverage too. Remember, 
this is the same President who said:

       If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep 
     your health care plan, period . . . No one will take it away, 
     no matter what.

  This is just one of the many reasons Americans feel betrayed. One 
woman who was quoted in the Los Angeles Times put it this way:

       All we have been hearing for the last 3 years is if you 
     like your policy, you can keep

[[Page 16305]]

     it . . . [well] I'm infuriated because I was lied to.

  Here is how one North Carolinian put it to NBC News:

       Everybody's worried about whether the website works or not, 
     but that's fixable. That's just the tip of the iceberg. This 
     stuff isn't fixable.

  That was after he lost a $228-a-month plan and was faced with a 
choice of taking a comparable plan for $1,208 or the best option he 
could find on the exchanges, one for $948 a month.
  After looking at all of that, he said: ``I'm sitting here looking at 
this, thinking we ought to pay the fine and get insurance when we're 
sick.''
  Americans up and down the country are beginning to experience the 
cost of ObamaCare firsthand, and they are realizing they are the ones 
stuck with the bill. It is not fair, it is not right, and Republicans 
are going to keep fighting to get our constituents relief from this 
partisan law.
  Of course, the most logical course would be to stop this train wreck 
and start over, but Washington Democrats still appear more interested 
in protecting the President's namesake and legacy than protecting their 
constituents from this law. I hope that will change because we cannot 
move forward without Democrats.
  We have seen some signs that at least some Democrats are coming 
around slowly--slowly--much more slowly than we would like. I am happy 
to engage in discussions to see where we might find common ground. 
Hopefully, we will eventually get to the increasingly obvious endgame: 
Repeal, followed by true bipartisan health care reform. It may be 
universally accepted that healthcare.gov is a disaster, but as the 
President reminds us, that disaster does not exist in a vacuum. The 
failure of the ObamaCare Web site is emblematic of the larger failure 
of ObamaCare itself and of the kind of problems we can expect if 
Washington Democrats continue their stubborn defense of this partisan 
law.


                         Fiscal Responsibility

  Politicians regularly come to Washington promising fiscal 
responsibility, but too often they can't agree to cut spending when it 
counts, and that is why the Budget Control Act is such a big deal. 
Since Congress passed the BCA with overwhelming bipartisan majorities 
in 2011, Washington has actually reduced the level of government 
spending for 2 years running. That is the first time this has happened 
since the Korean war.
  The BCA savings are such a big deal, in fact, that the President 
campaigned on it endlessly in 2012. He bragged about the bipartisan 
cuts in Colorado and in Iowa. He trumpeted the reductions from coast to 
coast, telling audiences from California to Baltimore that he ``signed 
$2 trillion of spending cuts into law.''
  As our Democratic friends like to say these days, elections matter, 
and the President explicitly staked his reelection on the back of these 
bipartisan spending cuts.
  Look at the exit polls from November. A majority of Americans said 
the government was doing too much. About two-thirds said raising taxes 
to cut the deficit was a nonstarter. Compared to ObamaCare, which more 
voters said they wanted to repeal, these levels of support are 
striking.
  If our friends on the other side want to keep trying to claim an 
electoral mandate for retaining ObamaCare--contradicted by the facts as 
that might be--using their own logic, we would then have to call the 
mandate for reducing the size of government a supermandate. That is why 
their new plan to undo the cuts the President campaigned on and 
increase the debt is so outrageous.
  We hear that the senior Senator from New York will soon announce a 
proposal to give the President permanent power to borrow more; in other 
words, he wants to extend the debt ceiling permanently by going around 
Congress. Let me repeat that. The so-called Schumer-Obama plan is a 
plan to permanently hand the President a credit card without spending 
limits and without lifting a finger to address the national debt. It is 
truly outrageous, especially when we consider that our debt is now $17 
trillion, which makes us look a lot like a European country. We have to 
get our debt under control before we move any further down the road to 
Greece or Spain, and time is not on our side.
  I hear the Senator from New York is going to try and sell his 
proposal as a ``McConnell'' plan. I appreciate the attempt at a PR 
gimmick, but there are two huge differences between the Schumer-Obama 
plan and what I have proposed in the past.
  First, Schumer-Obama would raise the debt ceiling permanently. I 
reject that idea entirely. Second, unlike Schumer-Obama, I believe that 
increases in the debt ceiling should be accompanied by reforms. That is 
what we did in 2011 when Congress raised the debt ceiling in return for 
enacting $2 trillion in bipartisan spending control--the spending 
control the President endlessly campaigned on last year. That is the 
real ``McConnell'' plan.
  If the Senator from New York is interested in working with me to 
enact another $2 trillion in bipartisan cuts, then let's get down to 
brass tacks. The American people would love to see us working in a 
bipartisan way to actually help them. If he insists on pushing the 
Schumer-Obama plan, he is not going to find any dance partners on this 
side of the aisle. Handing the President a permanent blank check, 
increasing the size of government, and trying to overturn the most 
significant bipartisan accomplishment of the Obama years is a 
nonstarter.
  Our debt is a serious problem. I know Kentuckians think so. Similar 
to Americans all across the country, they understand it is completely 
unsustainable over the long run, and they understand it is standing in 
the way of jobs and economic growth today.
  Let's shelve the gimmicks and the blank checks and get to work on 
bipartisan plans to get spending under control. That is what our 
constituents expect.

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