A Week in Review
Floor Speech
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Mr. DeSANTIS. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. Speaker, I just want to say a few words about accountability.
Normally, the way it works is that Congress can consider a piece of legislation. Maybe it passes. Maybe the President signs it. You implement it. Then the voters can decide whether they like it, whether it lived up to its billing, so to speak.
With ObamaCare, it was interesting because this was rammed through Congress at the beginning of 2010; yet it is just now really being implemented. I am starting to get a lot of people in my district contacting my office who are really shocked at some of the stiff premium increases they are seeing. So I think it is useful just to review some of the promises that were made and whether any of those promises have been kept. I think what you will find is that this is a law not only that the public opposed, not only that was rammed through with no bipartisan support, but a law that in many ways is resting on false pretenses.
Promise one, the President made this: it will lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.
I have not seen that true anyplace. In fact, people are seeing $2,500 increases. There was a family in California, it was reported, who saw an increase of $10,000. So I think, right here, as this is being implemented, we know that that is just not going to be the case.
Promise number two, the President said this: ``If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan.'' Period.
Well, we know that that is not true. We see spouses losing spousal coverage. We see people with major companies losing their employer-provided insurance, getting pushed into some of these exchanges.
So the idea that ``if you like your plan, you can keep it'' is absolutely not proving to be true for thousands of people throughout the country.
This is just beginning. People who have looked at this from the Congressional Budget Office to other groups say you could have anywhere from 7 to 30 million Americans who actually lose their employer plans because of ObamaCare.
Of course, if you are losing your plan and you are getting pushed into an exchange, you may not be able to keep your doctor because that doctor may not be in the network, may not be available based on the plan that you are having to take because you have lost your original plan.
Promise number three--this is the President: ``I can make a firm pledge: under my plan no family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase.''
Well, we know that the individual mandate he said wasn't a tax. Then when it got challenged in the Supreme Court, his administration was saying, yeah, uphold it because it is a tax. That is eventually what the court did, saying that it is a tax. That is a tax that hits blue collar ``salt of the Earth'' people, forcing them to buy a product that essentially they may not even be physically able to obtain because the Web sites don't work, and if not, they are going to tax you. That certainly hasn't been true.
But there are a whole bunch of other things in the law that hit middle-income and lower-income people. There is a cap on flexible spending accounts. It is actually harder under ObamaCare to deduct medical expenses from your income taxes. Even a tax on indoor tanning salons. I think there are a lot of people who make less than $250,000 a year who are doing the tanning salons.
Then, of course, there are a whole bunch of other taxes--over a trillion dollars--that may not be directly levied on somebody making less than $250,000, but the costs will end up being passed on. For example, the employer mandate, the tax on health insurance plans, the medical device tax. Those taxes are on companies, but those costs are going to get pushed to individuals, and they are going to have to bear the cost of that. And, oh, by the way, certain good health care plans that a lot of union members have who are not making $250,000 a year, those are considered Cadillac plans, and those will be taxed extra going forward.
Finally, the President said: ``I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as President that will cover every American.'' It is interesting--people on the other side of the aisle will say, oh, you Republicans, why don't you want everybody to be covered? The most recent analysis from the Congressional Budget Office said that in 10 years from now--so after 13 years of ObamaCare being the law--you will still have in this country 31 million Americans that don't have any insurance. Of course, we know ObamaCare is causing people to lose the insurance that they have.
So this is not something that is a universal health care bill, by any stretch of the imagination. There are going to be a lot of people who aren't going to have any insurance.
The point I just wanted to make with this is, there has got to be accountability in government. People want to have a redress of their grievances. These issues were not necessarily teed up in the election, and so now people are coming to terms with what has happened. So the point I would just make is, at a minimum when you are dealing with the broken promises of ObamaCare, we have got to communicate to the public that this has got to be based on some semblance of fairness.
For example, the Members of Congress who wrote this law must live under the exact terms of the statute. They should not be granted any extra legal relief from the burdens of ObamaCare. The fact that businesses have had the law delayed for them--and, of course, Members of Congress have gotten special treatment as well--I think individual Americans have got to be given the same deal. It is just wrong to have the IRS tax people to buy something from Web sites that aren't functional--and buy products that they may not like.
So accountability is key. This is a law that was passed. There were specific promises made over and over again. What we are finding now, unfortunately, is those promises are not being kept.
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