Making Continuing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, ObamaCare is more unpopular today than when it was passed in 2010. I know the proponents of ObamaCare--my Democratic friends who voted for it in a party-line vote--had hoped it would meet their expectations and the promises the President and other people made about how it would be implemented and what its impact would be on our health care system.

I am amazed, though, that our colleagues say: You know, it is the law of the land. We cannot change it.

Well, that is completely contrary to our constitutional system where the very legitimacy of our laws depends on the consent of the governed. Of course it is within the power of Congress to change the law. That is what we do when it turns out the law does not work as those who hoped it would or it, unfortunately, meets the expectations of those skeptics who thought it would never work. So it is within our power to change this law.

We will be voting today on a very important provision that will give us an opportunity to start over and to address the failures of ObamaCare that even some of its most ardent advocates had hoped it would meet. So today we will vote on a number of matters, including a cloture vote on the underlying bill. I will be voting yes on cloture because I do not understand how I can otherwise vote on a matter I want to see passed. In other words, we will vote to proceed to a bill that defunds ObamaCare. I believe we should defund ObamaCare. Indeed, just as we did on the motion to proceed--we had 100 Senators vote for cloture on the motion to proceed--I do not know why we would not vote to proceed on the cloture vote on the underlying bill--especially those of us who believe we ought to go ahead and defund ObamaCare today in light of experience between 2010 and 2013 which shows it has not lived up to expectations and promises.

There are some people across America who are so upset with ObamaCare--and I understand their frustration--that they say we ought to shut down the Federal Government. Our colleague Senator Coburn asked the Congressional Research Service to look at what would happen to ObamaCare if the government shut down for some reason. Their conclusion is that ObamaCare would continue to be funded even though the government was shut down because there are alternate sources of revenue that could be used to keep it going.

So I say to my friends who say we ought to shut the government down to get rid of ObamaCare that it will not work. Even if they hoped it would work, it will not work. Of course, we can imagine the disruptions to our seniors, military, and to our economy, which is bouncing along the bottom with slow growth and high unemployment, and what that disruption might mean there.

So I think the real vote today is going to be on the vote the majority leader will offer to strip out the defunding language. I hope we have five Democrats--perhaps those who hoped in 2010 that ObamaCare would actually work but will, in light of subsequent experience, reconsider and say: Maybe we ought to start over again because ObamaCare has not worked. Maybe it is not the best way to make health care policy, to have a bill that was passed strictly on a party-line vote.

No one is invested in trying to actually make sure it will work, such as when Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan fixed Social Security and secured it for subsequent generations. Unfortunately, we have seen the President of the United States govern by waiver, exception, and exemption when it comes to implementing ObamaCare. We have learned that ObamaCare is not ready for prime time even though the exchanges are supposed to go into effect next Tuesday.

Why are the American people so upset with ObamaCare? Why are there some people who are so upset that they are willing to see the government shut down in order to get rid of it and change it? Well, it is simple. When the President was promoting his health care overhaul in 2009 and 2010, he repeatedly assured the American people: If you like what you have, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you do not have to worry, nothing will change.

He made that promise time and time again. He was always 100 percent unequivocal. Here is a direct quote from the President's speech in January of 2009 before the American Medical Association. He said:

If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.

That is the President of the United States. When the President made those remarks 4 years ago, many Americans believed him or at least gave him the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, we now know ObamaCare was sold to the American people under false pretenses. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that ObamaCare will cause millions of Americans to lose their existing health care coverage.

Employers large and small have already announced that because of ObamaCare they are ending their employer-provided coverage for their employees and some of their retirees. In a front-page story, even the New York Times admits that because of ObamaCare, ``many insurers are significantly limiting the number of doctors and hospitals available to consumers.'' So if you like your doctor, if you like your hospital, you will not necessarily be able to keep them. For that matter, earlier this year one of my constituents sent me a letter she got from her insurance company informing her that because of ObamaCare the coverage she had would be terminated by the end of 2013.

That letter said:

Never have we experienced the uncertainty and immense challenges that confront the insurance industry during this time of health-care reform.

It is now painfully clear that many people who do wish to keep their existing coverage and wish to keep their current doctors will not be able to do so if this law is implemented.

This is why we are seeing some leading Democrats who are saying maybe we ought to reconsider in the light of experience since the time we voted to pass ObamaCare in 2009 and 2010.

It is also clear that ObamaCare is destroying our economy. Recently, a group of labor leaders went to the White House to ask for a special carve-out because they said ObamaCare, as implemented, was killing the 40-hour work week. These are some of the folks who were the biggest cheerleaders for ObamaCare at the time it passed, but they have realized, based on subsequent experience, that it is turning full-time work into part-time work so employers can avoid some of the penalties and costs.

We know it is having a particular impact on some specific types of employment such as restaurants, retailers, hotels, the people who develop medical devices which save lives and increase lifespan, and it is having a negative impact on hospitals as well.

For example, the Franciscan Alliance health system recently announced that because of ObamaCare it was eliminating about 125 jobs at two hospitals in President Obama's hometown of Chicago.

Meanwhile, in a letter to a DC city councilman, the owner of a popular area restaurant chain described ObamaCare as: ``the biggest mandated cost ever inflicted on restaurateurs ..... in the HISTORY OF RESTAURANTS.'' The restaurant owner added: ``We still haven't figured out how we are going to pay for that.''

Also, as I mentioned a moment ago, because of the tax on medical devices to pay for medical care, medical device manufacturers are leaving the United States or they are not hiring new people. Some constituents from Texas came in to see me and said they had an operation in Costa Rica. Instead of hiring more people in Texas, they are going to be moving that operation to Costa Rica for one reason and one reason only; that is, to avoid the medical device tax in ObamaCare.

We know that because of ObamaCare's impact on the economy, many college graduates--who advocates celebrate are now able to stay on their parents' health insurance until 26--those same young men and women are unable to find jobs because of ObamaCare. We know that its impact on the medical profession is having a dramatic outcome on people's access to health care.

It is very important to make a distinction between coverage and access. Just because the government provides Medicare coverage doesn't mean you are going to find a doctor to see you. Increasingly, in my State and around the country, doctors are saying: We can't afford to see new Medicare and Medicaid patients because of how much the government compensates for that service.

As a matter of fact in Texas, only about one out of every three doctors who currently see Medicaid patients will accept a new Medicaid patient because of the low reimbursement rate. Medicaid is already failing to meet the important needs of the most vulnerable people in our country. Because of ObamaCare, States are preparing for a massive spike in individual health care premiums and because of ObamaCare insurance carriers are already limiting consumer choice.

As many of us warned years ago, ObamaCare affects everyone. It affects working families who are happy with their employer-provided coverage. It affects Medicare recipients living on a fixed income. It affects Medicaid patients who are already having trouble finding doctors and dentists who will take their insurance. It affects young people who are struggling to pay off their student loan debt, and, yes, as I said, it affects small business owners who wish to expand their workforce.

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Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair.

It affects medical device companies that produce technology that has helped millions of Americans with disabilities. The false promises of ObamaCare have been shattered by the harsh realities of ObamaCare. A law that was supposed to solve some of our biggest health care problems in the country has, instead, made those problems even worse.

Now we have a second chance. Congress has a second chance as the elected representatives of the American people under our constitutional system of learning from the experience we have had since 2010 when Congress passed ObamaCare on a party-line vote, we have a second chance today to do the right thing, a chance to stop ObamaCare in its tracks, a chance to reverse the mistakes of 2009 and to allow Congress, instead, to pass real health care reforms that will lower costs, improve access, expand quality insurance coverage to more people.

Republicans have said we have an alternative to ObamaCare. Some of our colleagues who support ObamaCare said: The only way you can cover people with preexisting conditions is with ObamaCare, a $2.7 trillion expenditure. That is baloney. We all know many States have health risk pools. If we provided additional funding to those State health risk pools, people with preexisting conditions could get coverage without having to embrace the whole behemoth of ObamaCare at a much more affordable cost.

We are eager to adopt reforms such as equalizing the tax treatment of health insurance and making health care price and quality information more transparent and accessible so people can actually shop based on quality and price--what a concept--also, by letting people buy insurance coverage across State lines, allowing both individuals and businesses to form risk pools for individual markets, by curbing frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits, using State-based health insurance pools to cover people with preexisting conditions, and to give States more flexibility to improve Medicaid and to bring more competition to Medicare.

Republicans have spent years advocating these policies. Now that we know ObamaCare has failed in its intended purpose, it is time to look to these alternatives. We are prepared to defund ObamaCare and to move ahead with real reform as I described.

The only question is how many Democrats are going to learn from the evidence since 2010. How many of them are going to listen to their constituents and say we can do better than this failed attempt from the Federal Government to take over our health care system and deny people access to the doctors of their choice and to keep the insurance coverage they have.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this is the moment of truth. We need to be absolutely clear about what we are voting on here. A ``yes'' vote will be a vote to fund ObamaCare

because it will take out of the underlying continuing resolution the House position that Republicans have universally supported to defund ObamaCare.

I ask my colleagues, before they vote yes on this important amendment, Do you really want to be responsible for killing more jobs? Do you really want to be responsible for more people losing their health insurance and their own doctors? Do you really want to be responsible for making full-time work part-time work? If not, then vote no.

This is a second chance, and in life we don't get many second chances. I hope our colleagues will take advantage of the opportunity.

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