Fairness for American Families Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak the truth. This bill and the other bill are not real; they are purely partisan politics. They have nothing to do with reality. My friends and Mr. Speaker, the American people ought to know that is the truth.

These bills take time, with no effect. And everybody in this House--the majority leader and 434 of the rest of us--know these bills are going nowhere. They are, in fact, the 38th and 39th effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, an attempt which has been made some 37 times already with no substantive alternative to assure quality, affordable health care for all Americans. My friends, that is the truth.

This is a game. This is political messaging, nothing more, nothing less. It is a ``gotcha'' game.

The President has already taken action to make sure that businesses--some 4 percent of the businesses in America, by the way, are affected by what the President did and your purported bill--to make sure that they can do the paperwork properly. The administration took the right action.

Your first bill is not necessary and you know it. It is a setup so that your second bill, which takes away the individual mandate--which America ought to know, Mr. Speaker, would undermine the very benefits that are today being enjoyed by seniors, by young people, by children with preexisting conditions, and by so many millions of Americans enjoying the benefits today. But without the individual mandate, as the Heritage Foundation pointed out so many years ago--a position they have now changed, of course--was absolutely essential to make sure that we could bring costs down. The New York Times of course, today, ironically, said on its front page that there is a possibility that premiums are going to be reduced 50 percent.

So, Mr. Speaker, I would tell my friends in the press, in the media, don't take any of these votes for real. They're ``gotcha'' votes so that maybe some people will vote ``yes'' to confirm the President's opinion and then say, But we don't want to undermine the Affordable Care Act--as all of you who have voted so often have expressed your willingness and intent to do. But then they will vote ``no'' on the individual mandate, and you will say, of course, My, my, my; they were for businesses but against all you individuals. That RNC ad I'm sure is written already. That's what this is about, ``gotcha'' politics.

Isn't it a shame. Isn't it a shame, when millions of Americans have no health care, when millions of Americans have no jobs, when people are being furloughed in the defense sector, undermining the security of our country--in Virginia and in Maryland--undermining our national security, that we spend our time here on this floor with ``gotcha'' politics, with no expectation whatsoever that either of these bills will ever become law.

This is simply messaging. This is simply saying for the people who have been, for the last 4 years, trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And so many people were absolutely positive that President Obama was going to go down to defeat on the horns of the dilemma of the Affordable Health Care Act. It didn't happen. The American people said, No, we don't buy that argument. We believe providing Americans with health care is an important objective. We believe in making sure that kids and individuals with preexisting conditions can get health care, making sure that seniors won't be driven into poverty by paying for expensive drugs to keep them alive, making sure that people get preventive health care and are not disincentivized in doing that by additional costs.

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Mr. HOYER. I thank my friend.

Ladies and gentlemen, we really need to come together and talk about how we reasonably move forward.

Speaker Boehner said, when the President was reelected, well, the Affordable Care Act is here. But you continue, you continue this very day, to pretend you're going to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That's maybe what your constituents want. That's maybe good politics for you, but it's lousy substance. That's the truth.

This is a ``gotcha'' vote. The press ought to disregard and constituents ought to disregard anything other than this is a vote to end the Affordable Care Act. Reject it. Reject it. Reject this politics as usual.

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