OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Adopting the Rules of the House of Representatives for the 116th Congress

Floor Speech

Date: Jan. 9, 2019
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Health Insurance Health and Health Care

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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Shalala) for yielding me the time.

It is an honor to serve with her on the House Rules Committee. As the longest serving HHS Secretary in U.S. history, she spent much of her life leading on the issue of healthcare.

Madam Speaker, the American people have been living in fear for years, worried that Washington Republicans would make good on their promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act and that the President and his allies in Congress would take away their ability to see a doctor or afford care, including for preexisting conditions from asthma to domestic abuse.

Who can blame them?

When the minority controlled this institution, they voted 69 times to undermine the Affordable Care Act. Sixty-nine times they tried to take away healthcare from more than 23 million Americans. Thankfully, the Senate thwarted these efforts, and Republicans weren't successful.

Now the Trump administration is using the legal system to try to do what the Republican Congress could not: strike down the Affordable Care Act. Its Justice Department has asked in a legal filing for the courts to invalidate this law and, in doing so, erase protections for preexisting conditions.

Now, I have heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle try to pretend that they are somehow champions of this provision, despite working relentlessly to abolish it and voting nearly 70 times to undermine the ACA.

Madam Speaker, who are they kidding?

This Democratic majority doesn't deal in alternative facts. The American people are smarter than that.

Thankfully, it is a new Congress, and this majority isn't trying to abolish preexisting condition coverage. Instead, we are moving swiftly to protect it on the opening days of this Congress.

This measure will allow this House to legally intervene to protect preexisting condition coverage in the Affordable Care Act. If you support coverage for preexisting conditions, then you will support this measure to try and protect it. It is that simple.

Enough with the sound bites. It is time to vote. I urge all my colleagues to vote for this measure.

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