Straight Talk With Sam

Statement

Otto Van Bismarck once famously said that "laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." It is probably a coincidence that Bismarck was the Chancellor of Germany in 1883 when they passed a health insurance bill.

This past weekend the majority party passed a health care reform bill. It costs over $1 trillion dollars and cuts nearly $500 billion from Medicare. It also mandates that all individuals must buy health insurance. To my knowledge this is the first time that Congress has required any citizen to purchase a good or a service.

The bill also has an employer mandate in it that will require all but the smallest of small businesses to provide "acceptable" health insurance. This will impose up to an eight percent payroll tax on small businesses that cannot afford this mandate.

We now have an unemployment rate over 10 percent in the country, the highest it has been in a quarter of a century. The President's own Council of Economic Advisors estimates that this bill will kill 5.5 million jobs. In a time of economic uncertainty, Congresses' first priority should be helping to create jobs.

I hope that the United States Senate will reject this measure and work on a bi-partisan bill that fixes what is broken. We can increase access through small business health plans, control costs by implementing medical malpractice reform and increase competition by getting rid of state lines. I will continue to fight for common sense solutions to fix our health care system.

Source