Repeal of Obamacare Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, from its very inception, this law was bad and remains bad for America. It was written in secret down at the White House. Now our committee has exposed all the secret deals that went on literally 3 years ago this month that led to the formation and the writing of the legislation behind closed doors--the very doors that the President, when he was running for office, said would always remain open. He said this would be an open and transparent process. But when it came time to actually write the law, they invited the lobbyists in, they closed the doors, and they wrote the law.

We all remember the travesty of December 2009 when the Senate passed a bill out the day before Christmas, right before a snowstorm, and this bill that was hastily drafted, full of errors, full of problems, was passed out of the Senate, and that's what was signed into law. It wasn't even a good rough draft. It never came back to the House, and it never came to a conference committee. The dog ate our homework on the way to the President's office, and we just passed the rough draft and sent it on to the American people, and, by golly, they'll just have to live with it.

Look, there were some promises made by the President 4 years ago. One of those promises was, if you liked what you had you could keep it. It turns out what he should have been saying was, do you know what? It's going to cost you a lot more to get a lot less. There were promises made to seniors that their care would not be harmed with the passage of this law, but we all know now that that's anything but true. What about our provider communities? They were promised relief from the sustainable growth rate formula. They were promised some medical liability reform. They were promised that if we expect doctors to hold down costs, we're going to at

least let them get together and talk about price. But none of these things came into being, and instead, what did we get? A bill that contains 23 new taxes, albeit one has been repealed and one has been postponed under the CLASS Act, but, still, 21 taxes that remain out there for the American people.

It was not necessary for it to be like this. There were Republican ideas that were stymied at the committee level, and then, of course, ultimately every House idea was stymied because the House simply took up and passed a very bad Senate bill. Kids on until 26, this was part of the Republican plan from 3 years ago. It could have been part of a bipartisan plan had the Democrats chosen to do so. They rejected that notion.

I urge you to repeal this law. Let's get back to work and do it right for the American people.

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