Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, just a few moments ago I heard the President speaking from the White House regarding ObamaCare. He was lamenting, saying: Why are we still litigating old news around here? Let's move on to other things. This issue has been finished.

The reason this issue is still being talked about is because ObamaCare is a disaster. I think it is important to remember when we talk about health insurance that most Americans do have health insurance they are happy with. But no one would dispute that we have a health insurance problem in this country.

For many who have insurance the cost of their insurance is getting unaffordable, and many others have no access to insurance at all. They have a job, perhaps, that doesn't provide it or they are chronically ill so insurance is impossible for them to find or they are young and healthy and they never go to a doctor, so they figure, why do they need it? Yes, for millions of people the cost and availability of insurance is a real problem, and we should do something about that.

The problem is ObamaCare, as a solution, is a massive government takeover of health insurance in America, and it does not fix the problem. It only makes it worse, and that is why we are still talking about it. It makes it worse for a number of reasons.

Tomorrow I am going to visit a business in Florida where the reality is growing every single day. Tomorrow I will visit Gatorland. Gatorland is in central Florida. It is a tourist destination where many Floridians and tourists have taken their kids to see alligators and to enjoy Florida's unique wildlife.

For 135 Orlando area residents, however, Gatorland is their workplace. It is their livelihood. It is how they feed their families. It is how they pay their mortgages. It is how they get ahead in life. The reason we are still litigating this, Mr. President, is because like hundreds of thousands of other businesses around the country, ObamaCare is threatening to unravel it all. It is threatening to unravel the livelihood of 135 Floridians who work at Gatorland, to shatter their financial security for them and their families.

Let me describe the problem. Gatorland has 135 full-time employees. Gatorland is currently paying 80 percent of the insurance cost for these employees. But now, under ObamaCare, evidently what they are doing is not going to be enough. ObamaCare, first of all, requires them not to just provide insurance but to provide for them a certain type of insurance, a type of insurance the government decided is enough.

Second, because of ObamaCare, the cost of the insurance that Gatorland wants to provide for its employees is going to go up; that is, if they want to continue to pay 80 percent of the insurance costs for the 135 Floridians who work there, it is going to cost them a lot more money. Those are the two problems.

No. 1 is they have to offer a certain type of insurance; the one they have potentially may not be enough according to the government. No. 2, because of all these changes, it is going to cost Gatorland more money to provide 80 percent of the cost of the insurance.

What does this mean in the real world? Here is what it means. It means that as Gatorland looks to next year and into the future, they now have a new cost on their books. As they look at their business plan for the coming year, all of a sudden they see on the cost side it has gotten more expensive. So if they want to stay in business, they are going to have to figure out a way to come up with that extra money.

What are their options to come up with this extra money? Option No. 1 is they can raise their prices. Option No. 2 is they can cut back on expenses, such as the number of employees and benefits and hours. Option No. 3 is just not to comply at all with ObamaCare and pay a fine. Basically, don't offer insurance to these employees; let them go off and find it in the so-called exchanges and pay a fine to the IRS.

I ask you, Mr. President, and I ask the people of this country, and I ask my colleagues, which one of these three options is good for our country? Which one of these three options is good for America, and which one of these three options is good for the 135 people who feed their families by working at Gatorland?

If they raise their prices, that means the cost of going to Gatorland will go up. I understand our economy is not doing very well these days. Millions of people are underemployed and unemployed. They are working twice as hard and making half as much, and you are going to make it more expensive for them to go on vacation. I would argue that raising their prices is probably not an option available to them anyway. Gatorland is not Disneyland and not Universal, and it is not one these big tourist destinations. It is a small place that has to compete, and if you raise prices there comes a point where people just will not go.

Not only is raising prices bad for our economy and people who want to visit Florida and take their families there, it might not even be feasible. So that certainly is not a good option. It may not even be an option at all.

The second option is they would have to cut down on their expenses with their employees. That means they can lay off some people; find the money by instead of having 135 employees, try to get by with 125 employees. That could mean not laying off people but as people retire or quit just not replacing them. That could also mean moving some of these people who are working full time to part time so they can get around the ObamaCare mandates, and so they can lower their costs. How is that good for our economy? How is that good for 135 people who work at Gatorland? How is that good for Florida? How is that good for us?

The third option is they could pay the fine, but it is going to cost at least 135 people in my State the insurance they are happy with. I want you, Mr. President, to remember what you said--in fact what you repeated today in your statements a moment ago at the White House. You said if you are happy with your insurance, you can keep it. For 135 people working in Gatorland in central Florida, that may not be true. They could lose their insurance that is working well for them, that they are happy with, because of this experiment. That is why we keep revisiting this issue.

Interestingly enough, by the way, that is not just me saying that. This week some prominent labor unions, labor unions who are actually in favor of this law--lead among them was the Teamsters head, Jimmy Hoffa--wrote a letter to the President attacking this very point. They said the new law is breaking the promise that was made that if you are happy with your coverage, you are not going to lose it.

I single out Gatorland because that is the real world. That is where I am going tomorrow, and that happens to be in my State. There are thousands of businesses like this that are facing these decisions. There is not one, there are hundreds of thousands of businesses that are facing this dilemma, that have these same concerns.

By the way, this is not the only problem with ObamaCare. There are many others. The President keeps saying: There are people in town who want this plan to fail. They keep bringing up ObamaCare because they want it to fail.

The plan is already failing. It is failing by your own admission. You just had to cancel, had to suspend one of the critical components of this bill because it is not doable. This plan is already failing on its own.

By the way, if you are going to accuse us of wanting ObamaCare to fail, you better accuse the Teamsters of it because they have the same criticisms on this point that I have raised today.

I think we have reached a point where no matter how you voted on ObamaCare--I was not here, but no matter how you may have voted on ObamaCare if you were here, no matter who you voted for for President, no matter if you are a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent,

it is bigger than politics--this is really about people. Today I highlighted the plight that 135 people in Florida are facing, but hundreds of thousands if not millions of others will soon face this plight as well. As Americans, we have to come to grips with the fact that this law is a terrible mistake, and we cannot go forward with it because it is going to hurt millions of middle-class Americans in the ways I have just described.

We are going to have an opportunity to get this right in September because we are going to have to vote on a short-term budget to fund the government. I implore my colleagues to use that as an opportunity to put the brakes on this terrible mistake before more people lose their insurance, put the brakes on this before more people lose their jobs, put the brakes on this before more people lose their businesses. In that short-term funding bill, we should not pay for the implementation of ObamaCare. Let me be clear. Anyone who votes for the short-term budget that funds ObamaCare is voting to move forward with ObamaCare. Don't come here and say ``I am against ObamaCare'' if you are willing to vote for a budget that funds it. If you pay for it, you own it.

I want to make myself clear to the employees of Gatorland, the working people of Florida, and anyone in America who is watching that I, for one, will not vote for any bill or any budget that funds the implementation of this disaster. Does that mean we shouldn't do anything about health insurance in America? Of course it doesn't mean that. We should do something--something that protects what is good about the current system and fixes what is bad with it. ObamaCare throws out what is good about the current system in order to try to fix what is bad with it, and in the end it messes up everything.

We should repeal ObamaCare and replace it. We should replace it with ideas that allow uninsured and underinsured Americans to find affordable insurance without taking away other people's insurance and other people's jobs.

For example, we should expand flexible savings accounts. These are accounts like the ones to which every Member of Congress has access. That allows us to take money out of our paycheck every month tax free and put it in a savings account for health purposes. We don't have to pay taxes on that money. A deposit is made every month, and it starts adding up. That money can be used to buy medicine or to pay for a copayment or any other medical expense. It is our money, and we control it. It has to be used on health care, but it is tax free. If Members of Congress get this, why shouldn't every American have a chance to have something like that?

I used that account last year to pay for my daughter's braces. Millions of Americans should have the chance to do that. Why don't they? Because ObamaCare undermines it instead of encouraging it. It lowered the amount we can save every year from $5,000 to $2,500. Ridiculously enough, it says that in order for me to pay for children's Advil for my kids with my flex savings account, I have to get a prescription from a doctor. Think about that. If you buy children's Advil because your child has a fever, you now have to go to a doctor and get a prescription if you want to use your money to pay for it. Instead of encouraging the flex savings account, ObamaCare undermines it.

Another good idea would be to allow people to buy insurance with their own tax-free money. Let's use the example of Gatorland. Let's say that the monthly premium is $1,000 and Gatorland pays $800 of it. They don't pay taxes on that $800. But let's say that tomorrow a business like that decides it is going to give you the $800 so you can go out and buy insurance from any company. If it does that, you have to pay taxes on the $800. If the employer buys the insurance for you, they don't pay taxes on the money. If you buy insurance for yourself, you pay taxes on the money. That is ridiculous. That is something we should be for.

Here is another one. Why can't we Americans buy insurance from any company that will sell it to us? I live in Florida. If there is a company in Georgia that will sell me health insurance, why can't I buy it? I can't buy it because they are not licensed by the State of Florida. This ignores the fact that every American needs a different type of health insurance.

If you are like me, with four children, you need a family plan that will cover a lot of things, and that will cost more.

What if you are a 25-year-old healthy single person who hardly ever gets sick? What you probably want is a hospitalization and catastrophic insurance account and a health savings account. The health savings account can be used if you get the flu, so you can take out $50 or $100 with the tax-free money you have saved and pay for the doctor's visit. If, God forbid, you get hit by a car, your insurance steps up and pays for it. A plan such as that is a lot more affordable, but right now you can't buy it. Most States have rules, and most of the rules say: You either have to sell them a Cadillac or nothing at all. What if you don't want a Cadillac? What if you want a Geo? The same is true with health insurance, and it is wrong. We should encourage those things.

It is not too late to change all of this. It would be a terrible mistake to move forward. This is not about defeating a President's agenda or wanting or rooting for it to fail. We do have a health insurance problem, and we should address it. What we are doing now is going to hurt an economy that is already struggling. There are people who will lose their jobs, lose hours at their jobs, paychecks will be cut, and they will lose the health insurance they are happy with. There are businesses in America that are going to be forced to absorb these costs by laying people off or raising prices or both. There are people who will lose coverage now and be thrown into exchanges that don't exist yet. This is a disaster. We should take the time to slow this down, and we will have a chance to do that in September.

I will repeat it. I, for one, will not vote for any budget that funds the implementation of this disaster and hurts people in this way. I hope my colleagues will put partisanship and pride aside and come together. The fact is that if ObamaCare goes through and begins to be implemented, it is going to hurt us in ways that are potentially irreversible. It is not too late to stop.

I yield the floor.

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