Examining The President's Claims On Health Care

Floor Speech

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, in a recent article, conservative commentator Thomas Sowell, an African American, examined some of President Obama's claims about the health care legislation moving through the Congress. I wanted to quote some excerpts from his column that I found insightful.

Sowell writes that in his joint address to Congress, President Obama is wrong about the spending levels of his health care reform. Sowell says:

``To tell us, with a straight face, that he can insure millions more people without adding to the already skyrocketing deficit, is world class chutzpa and an insult to anyone's intelligence. To do so after an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office has already showed this to be impossible reveals the depths of moral bankruptcy behind the glittering words.''

Sowell continues along this accounting line by addressing the issue of paying for the health infrastructure implied in the President's health reform plan. He writes:

``Even those who believe that Obama can conjure up the money by eliminating `waste, fraud and abuse' should ask themselves where he is going to conjure up the additional doctors, nurses, and hospitals needed to take care of millions more patients.

``If he can't pull off that miracle, then government-run medical care in the United States can be expected to produce what government-run medical care in Canada, Britain and other countries has produced--delays of weeks or months to get many treatments, not to mention arbitrary rationing decisions by bureaucrats.''

Sowell later draws a parallel to the difference in the words and deeds of President Obama in other areas of policy. He writes:

``Obama can deny it in words but what matters are deeds--and no one's words have been more repeatedly the direct opposite of his deeds--whether talking about how his election campaign would be financed, how he would not rush legislation through Congress, or how his administration was not going after CIA agents for their past efforts to extract information from captured terrorists.

``President Obama has also declared emphatically that he will not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations--while telling the Israelis where they can and cannot build settlements and telling the Hondurans whom they should and should not choose to be their President.''

Then Sowell writes that:

``President Obama tells us that he will impose various mandates on insurance companies but will not interfere with our free choice between being insured by these companies or by the government. But if he can drive up the cost of private insurance with mandates and subsidize government insurance with the taxpayers' money, how long do you think it will be before we have the `single payer' system that he has advocated in the past?

``Mandates by politicians are what have driven up the cost of insurance already. Politicians love to play Santa Claus and leave it to others to raise prices to cover the inevitable costs.''

Sowell concludes by noting that no manner of lofty rhetoric about certain policies not coming to pass will convince many Americans that those same policies will not in fact occur because of the intrusive nature of government-run health care. As Sowell says:

``Barack Obama's insistence that various dangerous policies are not in the legislation he proposes sounds good, but means nothing. Unbridled power is a blank check, no matter what its rationale may be. No law gave the President of the United States the power to fire the head of General Motors, but TARP money did.''

Furthermore, in the bill, an analysis of the bill by objective agencies tell us that the Democrats' health care bill would increase the Federal deficit by $239 billion over 10 years. The bill includes $1.2 trillion in new Federal spending over the next 10 years.

The Democrats' bill spends so much that it needs 8 years of higher taxes to finance just 6 years of spending. The Democrats embedded an automatic tax increase in their bill by doubling the 1 percent and 1.5 percent small business tax in 2013, continuing their revenue grab from small businesses. 4.7 million jobs could be lost as a result of ``pay or play'' taxes on small businesses.

The prescription of a health care bill from the Democrats and the President is wrong, and we need to do everything we can to stop it.

Source