Providing for Consideration of the Senate Amendment to Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, one of the realities of ObamaCare is that millions of Americans are going to lose their employer-provided health insurance and be put into exchanges. And as you look through the 2,500-pages, there's actually a provision that makes Congress eat its own cooking. It takes Congress--who voted on it in 2010, and it was signed by the President--out of the congressional and Federal plan and puts them into ObamaCare exchanges.

Well, as we get close to the day of reckoning--October 1, and January 1, when the exchanges fully take effect--a lot of people around here don't like that. And so as we were leaving for August recess, the administration issued a ruling through the bureaucracy granting subsidies to Members of Congress, essentially rewarding their political friends, without any basis in the statute, and indeed subsidies that Americans who get removed from their employer plan will not be allowed to get in the private sector.

And so I think this rule allows Members to go on record. Does Congress deserve this bailout? The statute wasn't read and understood. They're looking for an easy escape. You need to go on record and say whether you want to get this bailout.

Should Congress receive benefits for its Members that are not available to private sector employees who are in the same situation? I think the answer to that is ``no.'' And I'll cite James Madison in Federalist 57. Madison said that the beauty of a constitutional system is that the ruling class can make no law which does not have its full operation on them and their friends as on the great mass of society.

Congress should not be treated differently. This rule allows Members of this body to go on record. So I'm glad that the chairman has written it.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source