Prayer

Floor Speech

REAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as we discuss our efforts to support an effort that started in the House to defund ObamaCare in this legislation, I want to start by congratulating my colleague Senator Cruz on his remarkable 21-hour performance. I promise I will not try to duplicate that, at least not right now. But I do admire his passion and his energy, and I think probably more than anyone in recent memory, he has done more to raise this issue to the American consciousness and inspired people by his passion.

I want to say that I share his determination to stop ObamaCare before it does any more damage to our country. The two of us represent 26 million people in the State of Texas, and we have heard countless stories of how the President's health care law is already hurting not just individuals and families and small businesses, but hurting the economy.

I heard the distinguished Senator from Maine saying the President's health care law is working pretty well. But I have to say, even though I disagree with him about ObamaCare actually working, it strikes me that one point is irrefutable; that is, ObamaCare is hurting the economy and hurting job creation. We have heard at least from some of the major organized labor organizations in America--people like Richard Trumka, who said that ObamaCare is killing the 40-hour workweek. It is making full-time work into part-time work. That is one reason he and other labor organization leaders went to the White House recently and asked the President for a special opt-out or waiver.

I believe the only solution is to dismantle ObamaCare in its entirety. Some have said: After Senator Cruz got through speaking today, after his remarkable 21-hour performance, the debate is over. To them I would say, the debate has only just begun. We will be here in the Senate for the remainder of this week debating the effort to defund ObamaCare.

My friends across the aisle have repeatedly said that because Republicans want to protect the American people from ObamaCare, we want to take health insurance away from millions of Americans. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Democrats argue that Republicans have not put forth any alternatives to ObamaCare. That is false. It is time to set the record straight.

When it comes to health care reform, Republicans have three main objectives, all of which are filed under ObamaCare. One, we want to reduce costs. The President said this was one of his goals in ObamaCare. He promised that the average family would see a reduction in their health care costs of $2,500. What are the facts? We have seen health care costs go up by an average of $2,400 for that same family. We want to expand quality insurance coverage, and we want to improve access to care.

The President has put most of the apples with his health care plan in the same sack, which is Medicaid. In Medicaid in my State, only about one doctor out of every three will see a new Medicaid patient because it only reimburses doctors about 50 percent or less of what they charge other patients. So they simply have had to refuse to see new Medicaid patients.

So we want to reduce costs, we want to expand quality coverage so that you own your own insurance policy, and we want to improve access to care.

In order to achieve those objectives, we first have to remove ObamaCare from the table. We know what the evidence has been in the years since ObamaCare first passed in 2010.

ObamaCare is already causing employers to drop health coverage. So if you like what you have, it turns out you cannot keep it. It is already causing doctors to leave Medicare, for the same reason. As I mentioned, they are leaving Medicaid. It is already causing insurance providers to reduce consumer choice. We saw a story in the New York Times just a couple days ago about that. We know it is already causing businesses to lay off workers and turn full-time work into part-time work.

It is already causing medical device manufacturers to close existing factories here in America and to move their businesses offshore because of the taxes that target that particular part of the health care industry.

And it is already causing many physicians to consider early retirement, causing a restriction in access to coverage, because unless you can find a doctor to accept you, you do not have effective access to coverage, even though you may have something called Medicaid or Medicare.

If and when the law is fully implemented, ObamaCare will drive up individual insurance premiums, it will cause millions of Americans to lose their existing health care coverage, it will jeopardize medical privacy rights by injecting the IRS into the implementation, it will further damage an already broken Medicaid program, and it will prompt even more doctors to stop treating Medicare patients.

The closer we get to full implementation of ObamaCare, the more we learn about its myriad problems and its unintended consequences. For example, the ObamaCare exchanges are supposed to open next Tuesday. But most people still do not know how much money they will be paying for insurance. Meanwhile, a front-page story in USA Today talks about a little noticed provision of ObamaCare which threatens to cost some families thousands of dollars in health insurance and leave up to 500,000 children without coverage.

For that matter, even if ObamaCare is fully implemented on schedule, the Congressional Budget Office projects that about 31 million Americans will still not have coverage. I thought ObamaCare was designed to make sure everybody had coverage. So it seems to me it has failed again in its stated objective.

My friends across the aisle like to say that Republicans are opposed to expanding health insurance coverage. But, as I have just told you, we are actually for replacing ObamaCare, which would provide people with more access to affordable health care.

In reality, what we are opposed to is policies that reduce health care choices and dramatically disrupt people's existing health care coverage. We are opposed to policies that raise taxes by more than $1 trillion on people like the medical device manufacturers that I mentioned a moment ago, which hurts innovation, which hurts people's access to the best quality of health care. And, yes, we are opposed to policies that kill full-time jobs in favor of part-time work. And we are opposed to policies that cause insurance premiums to go up rather than down.

It is true, we are opposed to policies that put government bureaucrats between you and your doctor when it comes to deciding what access to health care you and your family ought to have. And we are opposed to policies that cause physicians to refuse to see Medicare patients.

We are opposed to policies that weaken our health care safety net. And we are opposed to policies that massively expand the power of the Internal Revenue Service--that is currently racked in scandal--getting involved in implementing your health care plan.

So again, we are for reform that helps bring down the cost and improves access to quality health care in a way that does not interfere between the doctor and the patient. The kinds of health care reforms that we are for are those that deal with cost, coverage, and access.

For example, we support equalizing the tax treatment of health insurance so that individuals and employers are put on the same footing, unlike today. We support letting individuals and businesses form risk pools, particularly across State lines, to provide more choices and more competition when it comes to keeping down health care costs. And we support abolishing onerous mandates.

Why should you have to buy health coverage that includes coverage you do not need or want? For example, if you are a young man, why should you have to buy a mandatory health plan that has maternity coverage in it? It does not make a lot of sense.

And, yes, we support giving more Americans choices when it comes to how to pay for their health insurance using pretax dollars--things like tax free health savings accounts.

We also believe that making price information more transparent will create the kind of discipline that comes with a market. For example, if people know what their health care costs are going to be, and they see what their choices are, they know that the competition that comes through market discipline will improve not only the price--it will bring it down--but it will improve the quality of service.

Perhaps the best recent example of that is the Medicare prescription drug plan, which has now come in 40 percent below projected cost, because now seniors have choices when it comes to their prescription drugs, and those plans compete based on price and quality of service. That is benefiting the consumer and providing a lower price.

And, yes, we do support tighter curbs on frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits, which drive up the costs of medical liability insurance and drive doctors out of business. In Texas, we have had a wonderful pilot program. And I tell you, we have seen doctors move to Texas because they want some predictability when it comes to their medical liability exposure and the costs of their malpractice insurance. That, in turn, provides people with better access to doctors.

And, yes, we believe that you can use State high-risk pools to insure people with preexisting conditions. In other words, the idea that you need to embrace the behemoth called ObamaCare just in order to cover people with preexisting conditions is simply false. You do not. We can do it much cheaper and more effectively by supplementing the State high-risk pools so people with preexisting conditions can get access to health care.

We support States having a lot more flexibility to manage Medicaid--something that can only happen now based upon a special dispensation from the Federal Government.

If we are able to help people coordinate their health coverage, we can do a better job of making sure that even people on Medicaid get access to health care at a lower cost.

As I said, we support introducing competition into Medicare so that patients and physicians could work together to hold down costs, just as they have done in the prescription drug program that I mentioned a moment ago.

So here is the bottom line: ObamaCare is not the only way to expand access to quality health care. In fact, it may well be the worst way to expand coverage because it raises costs and it reduces patient choices, and you have to depend on the tender mercies of the Federal Government when it intervenes between you and your doctor when it comes to your choices.

By contrast, we believe that health care reforms such as those I have outlined just a moment ago would allow us to expand access to quality health care at a lower price without interfering with the doctor-patient relationship.

Mr. President, before I conclude--because I know there are other colleagues who want to speak--I want to explain once again why I support moving ahead with this legislation that is now before us.

I note that 100 Senators just voted for cloture on the motion to proceed to the continuing resolution which contains the defunded provision passed in the House. I am committed to defunding ObamaCare for the reasons I said. But I also believe that we ought to avoid a Government shutdown. I believe that to deny cloture--unlike the vote we just had, 100 to 0--to vote against cloture on the very resolution we are for that came from the House that would defund ObamaCare is a little hard to explain.

It may well prompt the government shutdown, which I think benefits no one, and it could possibly damage our economy, which as I said earlier is fragile indeed. Here is the ultimate irony. If we are to shut down the government because we refuse to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government operating, ObamaCare still gets funded. That is because it has mandatory spending, in other words automatic spending, that even if the government shuts down, ObamaCare still, by and large, gets funded.

You do not have to take my word for it. Dr. Coburn, Senator Coburn, has asked the Congressional Research Service for their authoritative opinion. They said even if the government were to shut down, ObamaCare will continue to be funded. So I support whatever strategy is likely to help us defund and ultimately dismantle ObamaCare, but in my view, shutting down the government is not the best strategy, because it would not work. According to the Congressional Research Service, ObamaCare would continue to be funded.

To be clear: Republicans are united in our desire to defund ObamaCare. The bill before us does exactly that. So if we proceed to the bill, my hope is that five Democrats--maybe the five Democrats who voted for ObamaCare in its first instance but have been listening to their constituents as I have, people such as Richard Trumka and organized labor who have said: The promises you made, this simply is not performing as advertised. We need something to be done to ObamaCare.

We have solutions that will address that. So if we can find five Democrats to join us, perhaps those Senators who are running for reelection in States that Mitt Romney carried by double digits, the Senate would have voted to defund ObamaCare. It is that simple.

Plenty of our colleagues have acknowledged the harm ObamaCare is doing to our health care system, and to our broader economy. Now they have a chance to do something about it. Now they have a chance to actually vote with Republicans to stop this law before it is fully implemented.

Four years after Senate Democrats voted to enact ObamaCare on a party-line vote--no Republican voted for it, all Democrats voted for it--the consequences of ObamaCare are plain for all of us to see. By proceeding to the House bill, we are forcing each Member of this Chamber to take a stand either for or against their constituents when it comes to a failed health care bill, one of the most unpopular laws in the history of the country.

I know where I stand on ObamaCare. I know where all of my Republican colleagues stand. All of us stand united in our desire to protect the American people from this failed public policy.

I would urge our colleagues across the aisle to think again, listen to their constituents, including people such as Richard Trumka and organized labor and help us save America from this failed public policy disaster.

I yield the floor.

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