Health Care
Floor Speech
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, a few months back one of our Democratic colleagues warned of a huge train wreck on the horizon--the implementation of ObamaCare. Yesterday we received another warning as ObamaCare speeds down the tracks. This one came from the Government Accountability Office, which highlighted a number of missed deadlines that cast doubt on the ability of the administration to even get the law up and running by October 1.
Of course, the GAO is not the first to issue such warnings. Some of us have been sounding a similar call literally for years. What we have said is that ObamaCare is set to become a bureaucratic nightmare. Most of the law's key provisions have not even been implemented yet. Not a single American has signed up for an exchange. Already it is turning into one big mess.
It was not hard to see this coming. We are talking about a 2,700-page piece of legislation. We are talking about a law that has already generated more than 20,000 pages of regulations--literally a redtape tower 7 feet tall. We are talking about an edict that proposes to alter one of the most personal, most private aspects of our lives in a fundamental way. So it does not take an expert to understand what that leads to--reams of paperwork; a massive new bureaucracy; the coordination of numerous, hulking government agencies, including, of course, the IRS.
It cannot be done without the people the government is attempting to regulate--the doctors, the hospitals, States, small businesses, hundreds of millions of Americans--actually having a clue how to comply. Nobody knows how to comply. The law is maddeningly complex. So, of course, ObamaCare is going to be a mess--going to be a mess. We said it would be. Actually, it already is. Yet earlier this month the President said that ObamaCare was ``working the way it is supposed to.'' That is literally what he said.
Maybe that is why just yesterday a survey of Americans showed that only 19 percent--fewer than one in five--believe ObamaCare will make their family better off--only 19 percent. It found that a much greater number--roughly half of Americans--worried about losing the health care coverage they already have.
There was another survey released too, a survey of small business owners. It found that 41 percent of small business owners said they had frozen hiring, literally quit hiring people because of ObamaCare--41 percent of small businesses. About 20 percent said they had already reduced their workforces because of it. Forty percent quit hiring people and 20 percent reduced their workforce because of ObamaCare. Remember, this is a law that is still being implemented, and many businesses already seem to be laying people off. I hope that is not a preview of what we will see once ObamaCare actually comes online. But given the evidence thus far, it is hard to draw a different conclusion.
The Kentucky Retail Federation recently cited ObamaCare as the thing having the most impact on their businesses' ability to grow. As the leader of that group put it, the companies in his federation are hesitant to take on new staff or to invest in their own business growth until they know how much health care reform is going to cost.
So if this is the law that is ``working the way it is supposed to,'' then it is obviously a very bad law. It is Congress's duty to repeal bad laws. I hope that it will. I hope my Democratic friends here in the Senate will finally work with us to do just that because we cannot do it without them. They have the majority. If they can muster the will to admit their mistake, I hope they can also find the will to work with us to start fresh on health care. This time, I hope they will actually work together with Republicans to get something done for the American people. In my view, that means pursuing effective, step-by-step reforms that cannot only lower costs but they can also be implemented effectively and understood completely by the constituents we were sent here to serve. I know my constituents back in Kentucky would expect as much of us, and frankly they should expect that much of us.
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