Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2575, Save American Workers Act of 2014
Floor Speech
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Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise against the 52nd closed rule and the 52nd attempt to dismantle the ACA, the Affordable Care Act.
Once again, my colleagues in the Republican Party are standing on the wrong side of history. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed an ambitious program called Social Security in order to ensure that America's seniors had a measure of financial safety in their old age, a floor through which they could not fall; yet as it was being debated in the halls of Congress, Republicans and their allies in the business community tried to portray Social Security as something far more sinister.
Representative Daniel Reed of New York predicted that, under Social Security, Americans would feel ``the lash of the dictator,'' while Republican Senator Daniel Hastings of Delaware declared that Social Security would ``end the progress of a great country.''
Republican Congressman John Taber even said of the proposed law:
Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery and to enslave workers.
Thirty years later, these same arguments are being used to decry the creation of Medicare as the beginning of socialized medicine, and it was strictly with the votes of Democrats that the legislation to create Medicare was passed out of the Ways and Means Committee and the Rules Committee before being brought to the floor.
In other words, Mr. Speaker, we have been through this same story many times. A cynical person might believe that one of the reasons that the ACA has been fought so hard, as this is the third time Republicans failed to come up with any program that would help Americans either achieve independence or security in their old age, is that since every one of them voted against it, it is in their best interest that it fail.
All those claims that were made were absolutely untrue; and today, despite the current majority's attempts to portray the Affordable Care Act as another law that will steal personal freedoms, destroy the economy, and hurt American workers, the facts are once again proving them wrong.
Instead, it is quickly becoming clear that the Affordable Care Act will stand alongside Social Security and Medicare as an enduring commitment to the welfare of our fellow citizens.
Mr. Speaker, when we passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, our Nation had reached the depths of a crisis that was decades in the making.
In fact, Presidents dating back as far as Harry Truman, including Republicans like Richard Nixon and Democrats like Bill Clinton, saw the urgent need to reform our health care system and expand coverage to every American, yet each time that a President tried to act, their efforts failed.
As a result, by 2010, our Nation was spending 17.6 percent of the Nation's gross domestic product on health care, and yet a record high number of 49.9 million Americans had no care at all.
With the health care crisis more acute than ever, President Obama and Democrats in Congress decided that we had to act. In fact, the percentage of GDP that health care was consuming was rising beyond 18 percent, causing a serious threat to our economy. Thus began one of the most comprehensive legislative debates in history, a debate that included the views of both Democrats and Republicans, since they occupy all committees, and a debate conducted in full view of the American people.
The House held nearly 100 hours of hearings and 83 hours of committee markups. We heard from 181 witnesses, and 239 amendments from both Democrats and Republicans were considered in the three committees of jurisdiction, and 121 of them were adopted.
Finally, the bill was available for 72 hours before Members were asked to vote on it on the House floor. Despite this thorough and collaborative process, not a single member of the Republican Party on this floor voted for the historic law, true to their pattern of decades.
Today, thanks exclusively to the votes of Democrats, the numbers of Americans with access to health care is going up, and most importantly, the cost to providing health care to our citizens is slowing down. We have seen the slowest growth in the rise of health care in these last 2 years than we have in 50 years.
We all know that 7.2 million Americans registered for health insurance this year through the online health care exchanges--and even more in State exchanges, and we don't have that number yet. Indeed, RAND put out a report this week stating that 20 million Americans are benefiting, including the number of children under 26 who are on their parents' health care insurance. So, this week, in addition to that, the Los Angeles Times said at least 9.5 million previously uninsured Americans now have health insurance because of the ACA.
For those of us who have been carrying health insurance and been lucky enough to have it from our employers, each of our policies have cost $1,000 more because of what we were having to pay for uncompensated care for those who had no health insurance. That alone is one measure that is going to reduce the cost of insurance.
In the face of its success, it is not surprising the majority has come here today with a 52nd attempt to undermine the Affordable Care Act. After unanimously opposing its passage, spending millions of dollars campaigning against it, the majority has firmly planted their feet on the wrong side of history. Their only way forward is to dismantle the ACA as quickly as possible and prevent the American people from seeing more benefits under the law.
Mr. Speaker, even though the majority may claim that today's legislation is an attempt to fix the Affordable Care Act, it is, in fact, a fiscally irresponsible attempt to undermine the law. First, the legislation is not paid for, which flies in the face of the rules of all the Republicans in the House. The bill costs $74 million, and there is no hint at all of how that is going to be paid for. In fact, the Rules Committee last night, as it may, waived the rules of the House that require a pay-for, despite denying countless similar waiver requests in the past.
According to analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, this legislation would increase the deficit by $74 billion and force 1 million people to lose their sponsored health care coverage and increase the number of uninsured. It is not true that under this piece of legislation no one would lose their health care.
Over the next few hours, we will surely hear many claims about how much we care about the American worker. And I have no doubt that each claim contains a measure of truth because, after all, those American workers are our constituents. Words, no matter how moving, are only as powerful as the actions that are taken to back them up. It is the vote we take, not the speeches we make, that will show how much we care for the well-being of the American people.
Will we continue the progress being made under the Affordable Care Act, progress that is providing millions of Americans with access to health care for the very first time, or will we vote to try and undermine the progress with a bill that is before us today?
I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on today's rule and the underlying legislation. The facts become clearer every day. The Affordable Care Act is delivering on its promise of lower cost, greater access to lifesaving health care for millions of Americans. Millions, Mr. Speaker, for the first time, have health care because they had been born with a preexisting condition which no longer hampers their having health care.
It is time the majority stop playing political games and start supporting the historic law that will benefit Americans now and for generations to come. As I have pointed out many times on the floor during a rule, running the House of Representatives of the Congress costs $24 million a week. This is again another week where we do nothing to earn that.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Ms. SLAUGHTER. Then I am prepared to close and yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, we heard, again, today that the Affordable Care Act has caused a lot of job loss, which simply flies in the face of reality because since the bill was passed, 8.6 million new jobs have been created in the United States. And every time we see one of those ads where somebody says, oh, I couldn't do this, I couldn't do that because of the health care bill, we have discovered that, generally, oftentimes people have been paid to say that on ads or that they have, unfortunately, been mistaken.
Now, today's rule grants 3 hours of debate on a bill going nowhere because we don't have anything else to do. We all know that the Senate will never take up this legislation, and if it did, the President has already said he would veto it. So instead of wasting 3 hours of debate on a 52nd attempt to undermine the Affordable Care Act, I urge my colleagues to finally hold a vote to reform our immigration system, renew unemployment benefits, raise the minimum wage, or create jobs.
This economy would be roaring if we could pass some of our bills. We have 48 bills ready to go that would create new jobs that we can't put on the floor because of our single occupation here of trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.
So if we defeat the previous question today--and I hope everybody will vote ``no'' on it--it will give us a chance to do something that cries out to be done.
Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up legislation to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. The American people are calling for an economy that works for everyone, not just for those at the top.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentlewoman from New York?
There was no objection.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' to defeat the previous question, vote ``no'' on the underlying bill, and yield back the balance of my time.
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