Health care law fails patients, doctors and taxpayers
Click here to watch Sen. Barrasso’s remarks.
In advance of next week’s two year anniversary of the President’s health care law, the White House is stepping up its plans to aggressively defend the law. Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) compared the White House’s previous promises about the law to the actual consequences of the law.
Excerpts of Senator Barrasso’s remarks on the floor of the U.S. Senate:
Broken Promise: “I will protect Medicare”
“The President talked about protecting Medicare. Yet, with the health care law, they took $500 billion away from Medicare not to save Medicare, not to strengthen Medicare, but to start a whole new government program for other people.
Broken Promise: Will not add “one dime to our deficits”
“The President said this will not add one dime to our deficit. Not a dime to our deficit.
“A C.B.O report came out yesterday talking about greater money being spent than had been anticipated.
‘”If you take a look at an honest accounting of the health care law, it is going to find that this will increase the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars in the first ten years alone, and much higher than that beyond that.
Broken Promise: No need for a “mandate”
“The President when he was Senator claimed that penalizing people for not buying health insurance was like and I will quote him: ‘it was like solving homelessness by mandating everyone buy a house.’
“That was his words talking about the impact of a mandate. So here we are now two years later, three-quarters of Americans believe it’s unconstitutional for this body, for Congress and for any President to sign something that mandates that they buy a government-approved product.
“We don’t know what the Supreme Court is going to do, but in fact the American people are opposed, significantly opposed to the key component of the President’s health care law.
Broken Promise: Will not raise “any of your taxes”
“The President also said we won’t raise any of your taxes, and yet there’s a list of taxes that have been raised as a result of this health care law. So it’s not surprising that two years later there are more people opposed to the health care law than support it.
Broken Promise: “Four million small businesses may be eligible for tax credits”
“I remember the discussions and debates on this floor about the small businesses and the expenses that this was going to place on our small businesses. And the President said four million small businesses may be eligible for tax credits.
“In fact, the I.R.S. spent $1 million in taxpayer money to pay to mail millions and millions of postcards to small businesses promoting the so-called tax credit.
“But Treasury Department’s Inspector General—here we are two years later—recently testified that the volume of credit claims has been lower than expected.
“7% of the four million firms that the administration and the Democrats in the Senate said would receive the tax credits. So when people look at that and say did they really help me, the answer is no.”
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