Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam Speaker, I want to visit with my colleagues this morning for a few minutes about the impact of our Federal Government and what it is doing to our country's future and to future generations. That is something that has been foremost in my mind this week.
This week, our family has welcomed a new baby. Georgia K. Graham was born in New York City at 2:25 Monday morning. So as we have welcomed her, as we think about her future, one of the things we are discussing is: What kind of America will she have to grow up in? How solvent will we be? Will we still be the country that celebrates the American Dream? Will we be the country that focuses on opportunity, that looks to entrepreneurs and innovators to create a better day, not only for America, but for the entire world?
This is also the time, Madam Speaker, as we look at what has happened with our Nation's budget, with our Nation's spending, that we look at the long-term effects of so many of the programs and entitlements that are placed before us. One of those is a program that is commonly known as ObamaCare, and some of my colleagues say: Why is it that we talk about ObamaCare in conjunction with the budget? I would like to remind my colleagues it is because it is a very expensive program. And I have a chart that shows what has happened with the cost of that program since the law was passed and now as we are focusing on implementation.
You will see we were told this was to be a program that would run about $900 billion over a 10-year period of time. It was to be access to health care insurance for those that did not have that access. But when we look at the chart that reflects the Congressional Budget Office's findings--this is a chart that was prepared on the Senate side--what we see is the cost estimate over that same 10-year period of time from when the law was passed. Remember, we had to pass it in order to read it and find out what was in it? From when it was passed, there at $900 billion, to today, as we look at the implementation of ObamaCare, it has become a $2.6 trillion-over-10-year program. It is a tripling of costs, and we don't even have it out of the starting gates yet. This is why we are looking at the total cost of health care.
In the Budget Committee, as we look at the long-term outlook for our Nation and the implications that our budget will have on the private sector, on hardworking taxpayers, what we find with the cost of health care is that those programs are expected to double in their impact on the budget. We have to remember that every single dollar the Federal Government has comes out of the pocket of taxpayers, men and women who go to work every day and earn that dollar and then have to send more and more of that dollar to the Federal Government.
As we look at the challenges that face this Nation, we focus on what we will spend, how we will use that money, and we think about the children, the grandchildren that we have and their future and the impact our spending habits today will have on their tomorrows.