Obamacare

Floor Speech

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Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Speaker, I think it's important for the country to know that the House of Representatives has done its job in passing the most important appropriations bills to make sure that our military is fully funded, that our veterans are taken care of, that the essential functions of Homeland Security are taken care of.

In fact, we passed those bills. The Defense bill out of the House on July 24, the Homeland Security bill was passed on June 6, and the Military Construction and Veterans appropriations bill was passed on June 4. We've also passed out of the House the Energy and Water appropriations bill. And the Senate has been sitting on these bills for over 90 days.

Mr. Speaker, the President has very few responsibilities set out in the Constitution. One of those specific responsibilities is Commander-in-Chief. And it's been reported that the President recently said that the troops in the field might not be paid unless the CR was passed.

Well, the Senate has had these bills for over 90 days. And I think it does not--how does that reflect on the Office of the President, for the Commander-in-Chief to say that the troops are not going to be paid, when, in fact, we've already passed the legislation out of the House--and the Senate's been sitting on it for over 90 days--to make sure the troops are paid?

We, in the House of Representatives, the constitutional conservative majority in the House, are keeping our word to the Nation and to our constituents to do everything in our power to defund, repeal, delay, whatever it takes to stop the most destructive piece of legislation ever passed by this Congress.

And I don't think it should be called ObamaCare. It should be called ``DemocratCare'' because it was done with 100 percent Democrat support. Not a single Republican voted for it because we recognized the damage it would do to the economy and to our magnificent health care system.

The Democrats passed this bill on their own and, all of a sudden, they're discovering, as the asteroid enters the atmosphere, they've got a big problem because it is causing doctors to leave the profession. It's driving up the cost of health insurance premiums. It's raising deductibles. People are losing their health insurance and being dropped into these nonexistent exchanges.

One other problem that I just discovered and that no one is, I think, aware of yet, are nonprofit organizations who have been lifting people out of homelessness or addiction and giving them job skills and training them, and they find local employers that are willing to take these folks and give them a clean slate, a fresh start, and a new job, and it would wipe out any convictions they've had. They wipe out any history they've got of drug addiction.

These nonprofit organizations have suddenly discovered that the employers are pulling up the drawbridge because, all of a sudden, the employer could be faced with--he's got to decide, as an employer, do I have to provide health care coverage for this, essentially, volunteer, this worker who was previously homeless and had no job skills, and I could be fined for every employee in the company.

So the disasters continue to unfold. It's urgent the House of Representatives--we will all, I know--stand together working and doing everything we can to repeal, delay, defund ``DemocratCare,'' using every legislative tool at our disposal.

I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota for the time.

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