FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act

Floor Speech

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Madam President, I wish to speak briefly on the amendment that has been offered by the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, that would, in effect, repeal the health care bill that was passed on Christmas Eve at 7 a.m. in the morning about 1 year ago--1 year ago this last Christmas Eve.

Since the time the bill was passed, strictly along party lines, with 60 votes--all our colleagues on the Democratic side voted for it; all the folks on our side voted against it--we predicted this bill would lead to an increase in premiums for those who have health insurance, it would raise taxes on everyone in order to fund this huge expansion of the Federal Government--some $2.7 trillion worth of extra spending--and it would also take a $ 1/2 trillion from Medicare--which, as you know, is one of our troubled entitlement programs that is sorely in need of reform--it takes $ 1/2 trillion from Medicare to fund yet a new entitlement program, this health care bill.

We also know that on at least two occasions now a Federal judge has found that this bill violates the Constitution of the United States because both these judges have said Congress has overreached its authority under the Constitution.

The arguments were made that this was within Congress's power, but actually I agree with a law professor, Jonathan Turley, whose comments I saw today, who said that if the Supreme Court of the United States upholds this health care bill as being within Congress's power, federalism is dead.

There is no limit to the Federal Government's authority if the Federal Government can compel you or me or anyone else to buy a government-approved product. There are no limitations. The 10th amendment of the U.S. Constitution that says all powers not delegated to the Federal Government are reserved to the States and to the people might as well be written out of the Constitution.

So that is why I think these decisions are very important--the one in Florida and the earlier one in Virginia--because they reveal a defect in this bill over and above the others I have already mentioned: raising taxes, taking from Medicare to create a new entitlement program, and, of course, imposing this onerous mandate.

But the real problem with this bill is more nuanced than my remarks would suggest. What it does is, by imposing a mandate on employers to provide government-approved health insurance or pay a penalty--what many employers are going to find out is, it will cost them less to pay the penalty than it will to provide health insurance for their employees. Thus, many Americans who have health coverage they like, which the President promised them time and time again they would be able to keep if they liked it, will find that is not the case because employers will--making a rational business decision, where it costs less to pay the penalty than it does to provide the government-mandated health insurance--they will simply choose to drop their employees and, thus, they will have to go into the exchanges which are supposed to be created by 2014 under this bill.

What is wrong with that? Well, we know this bill was gamed in all sorts of ways to try to provide a Congressional Budget Office score which actually only reflects a fraction of its true cost, implemented over 10 years. The most accurate estimate I have seen is this bill actually will cost some $2.7 trillion over 10 years as opposed to the roughly $1 trillion pricetag the Congressional Budget Office has given, in part, because it was scored over a 10-year period of time but with only 6 years of implementation and through various other ways. As I say, that score--the true cost of this bill--was gamed.

But one of the things the bill provides is that individuals who go to the State-based exchanges to buy their health insurance because they do not have it available from their employer will be subsidized by the Federal taxpayers up to, I believe, $88,000 for a family of four. What happens if a whole lot more people drop their coverage or their employers drop their coverage and they are forced to go to the State-based exchanges in order to buy their health care, which is subsidized to this degree? Well, it is going to explode the costs of this health care bill in ways the Congressional Budget Office score does not adequately reflect.

I am not quibbling with the Congressional Budget Office. They take the assumptions they are asked to take and they do the best they can to try to predict what the costs will be. But, again, it is possible and, indeed, this is an example to game the Congressional Budget Office scoring process to make it look much cheaper than it will actually be, once fully and finally implemented.

So at a time when we are going to be asked to raise the debt limit--our credit card is maxed out, nearly maxed out at $14 trillion-plus--at a time when our deficits are $1.5 trillion--that is just for this current, last fiscal year--we are left with the question, everything else aside about this health care bill: Can we and can the American people afford it? I would say the answer to that is absolutely not. Because we can do so much better by making sure the government does not get between patients and their doctor and by leaving the flexibility and the choices in the hands of consumers to make decisions that are in their best interests.

We could, if we tried--and I hope we will--come up with a better way of delivering health care because, unfortunately, this bill did not--well, we squandered an opportunity to try to help bend that cost curve down. Indeed, all the evidence is, it bends the cost curve up and makes it more expensive.

Let me conclude on this thought. At a time when the President's own fiscal commission says our fiscal situation is dire and is unsustainable, at a time when the President--I had hoped during his State of the Union Message he would say: This fiscal commission I appointed has come up with a report. We need to take this seriously and need to work, on a bipartisan basis, to try to fix what is broken about our Federal Government's finances. The President did not do that. He talked about investment, which we all know when the Federal Government invests money, it is code for more spending, and we have been on a spending binge the last 2 years, with 42 cents of every dollar borrowed from the next generation and beyond, and we know we cannot keep it up.

So beyond the fundamental problems with this bill--No. 1, that it is unconstitutional, so held by two Federal judges; that it continues to make health care more expensive rather than more affordable; that it denies people the opportunity to keep what they have because of the incentives it puts on employers to dump their employees into the exchanges and that they will get the subsidies that Congress voted on, which will make this bill even more expensive than it was originally thought to be--this bill is one that should be repealed. We can, working together on a bipartisan basis, do better.

This is what happens when one side or the other overreaches. They think the victory is worth it when, in fact, what we find out is, there is a tremendous backlash by the American people, reflected in the November 2 election. The more they learn about this bill, they do not like it more, they like it less. Now that two Federal judges have held that this bill is unconstitutional, it is time for us to take up this matter again--once we repeal this bill--and do a better job, which we should have done in the first place.

I yield the floor.

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