[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4617-4618]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        HEALTHCARE TROJAN HORSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, when Queen Helen of Sparta was abducted by 
the Trojan prince Paris, Helen's jilted husband convinced his brother, 
a Greek king, to lead an expedition to retrieve her. He was accompanied 
by a fleet of more than a thousand ships. They crossed the sea to Troy 
and demanded Helen's return.
  The siege, punctuated by all sorts of battles and skirmishes, lasted 
more than 10 years until one day when Odysseus had a bright idea. He 
said: Hey, guys, let's build a really massive wooden horse. Let's 
pretend like we have given up and sailed our fleet behind some island, 
but really about 30 of us will hide inside the horse. We will have 
someone tell the Trojans that it is some kind of gift to Athena, the 
goddess of war, and they will haul it into their city. When they are 
asleep, we will all sneak out, open the gates for everybody else, and 
totally kill everybody in the city.
  And that is the legend of the Trojan horse.
  So what is the moral of that story and why am I reciting Greek lore 
on the floor of Congress today?
  Well, because history has a way of repeating itself. Today we have 
our own Trojan horse, a so-called GOP healthcare bill, TrumpCare, that 
professes to be about health care but, in reality, is a Trojan horse to 
give tax breaks to the wealthiest in the country.
  Let's take a serious look at it. We are told that it is the 
replacement to the Affordable Care Act, a bill that has offered 
insurance to over 20 million people in this country. Now that 
replacement is supposed to fix the problems of the Affordable Care Act 
and ensure health care for everyone, as promised by President Trump.
  But the covert part of TrumpCare was that he got busted last week 
when the Congressional Budget Office, our nonpartisan agency that 
evaluates bills, said that, in reality, the bill does little to improve 
health care. In fact, it said 24 million people would lose access to 
health care, not gain it. And it said older Americans would pay more 
for health insurance than under the Affordable Care Act and get fewer 
subsidies, and that more people on Medicaid would lose access to health 
care as well.
  So how can a supposed healthcare bill actually reduce health care?
  Well, when it is only a pretend healthcare bill.
  And what else did the CBO say?
  Well, they said this bill also includes almost $600 billion in tax 
cuts for the wealthiest individuals in our country, insurance 
companies, and Big Pharma.
  It gets worse. Those tax cuts for the wealthy, just how bad are they?
  Well, the 400 richest families in the country making more than $300 
million a year will get an annual tax cut of $7 million each. So 
Charles Koch and Betsy DeVos get $7 million a year while a retired 
farmer in Janesville, Wisconsin, in Speaker Ryan's district, earning 
$26,000 a year may have to pay $14,600 for the same health care she got 
under the Affordable Care Act, but the old cost was only about $1,700. 
That is a 750 percent increase on low-income, older Americans so the 
richest can bank millions.

                              {time}  1015

  And the CBO said another tax cut in TrumpCare provides about $275 
billion

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in tax breaks that only the top 2 percent of Americans can get, while 
98 percent of us will never see a dime.
  And who else gets tax cuts? Insurance companies get a tax break of 
about $145 billion, drug companies get a tax break of $25 billion, and 
medical device companies get a break of about $20 billion. That is 
almost $600 billion worth of tax cuts for the wealthy, and what do we 
get? Less health care for more money.
  That is not a serious healthcare alternative. That is a tax cut for 
the wealthy disguised as health care, and you and I get to foot the 
bill.
  That is what is called a Trojan horse. And you have to be especially 
careful these days because Trojans are a little bit different than they 
used to be, and they are only used when you get--well, the same thing 
this will do to America, Mr. Speaker.

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