Health Care

Floor Speech

Mr. WICKER. Madam President, on Friday of this week 2 years will have passed since President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. This is actually a sad anniversary because more than enough time has gone by to reveal the failures of this massive, burdensome piece of legislation.

The fact that 26 of our 50 States--more than half of the States--are part of the legal challenge currently under review by the Supreme Court points out the inevitable truth: This is a law that simply does not work.

The case that will be heard in a few days will be one of the most consequential Supreme Court cases of my lifetime--consequential not only because it deals with this massive, burdensome piece of legislation but because the implications go so much further. The Supreme Court case will decide the scope of the commerce clause. Indeed, my colleagues, if the Supreme Court decides this law can withstand constitutional scrutiny, then this large, massive Federal Government can, in fact, do almost anything, and there will be hardly any limitations under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights on the power of the U.S. Federal Government.

Americans are right to be disappointed with Obamacare, and they are right to want it repealed. And regardless of the outcome of the Supreme Court case, this Congress can decide and, as a matter of fact, the people of the United States will have a chance in November, as we do every 2 years, to decide.

A recent Gallup poll shows that twice as many Americans think the law will make things worse for their families than those who believe it will make things better. Seventy-two percent of Americans believe the individual mandate is unconstitutional.

The truth is that Americans deserve affordable, high-quality health care, not a 2,700-page, big-government piece of legislation that taxes, spends, and regulates. The President's health care law has not lowered the cost of health care as promised. It has not created jobs as promised. It has not reduced the deficit as promised. So this week we mark the anniversary not with progress but with bitter realities.

President Obama, in his joint session speech to Congress in 2009, asserted that his plan ``will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government.'' In fact, last week the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation updated their outlook of the health care law's impact on the Federal budget. Not surprisingly, their latest analysis says Obamacare will cost even more than anticipated. And the anticipated costs were high, indeed, but they say the health care law will cost nearly $1.8 trillion over the next decade or double the estimated cost that accompanied the bill when Democratic supermajorities passed it in 2010. This is hardly the relief President Obama promised.

During his campaign, the President said the plan would reduce health care premiums by an average of $2,500 per family. Instead, premiums have grown by nearly that much since he was elected.

I see I am joined by two of my colleagues, the distinguished Senator from Wyoming and the distinguished Senator from Kansas. Mr. WICKER. If I could jump in on the issue of Medicare because I have a quote here from President Obama, July 29, 2009: ``Medicare is a government program, but do not worry, I am not going touch it.'' As a matter of fact, only months later he signed into law Obamacare, which takes $ 1/2 trillion from Medicare. And it touches on the very issue the Senator from Kansas was referring to with regard to Medicare access for people in rural Kansas.

There are a number of other promises we are talking about today, and I know we don't impugn motives around here--that is against the rules--but one has to wonder, did advocates of this massive law actually believe these promises or were they simply duped and misled? And I don't know which is worse, but I know that my colleague Dr. Barrasso, himself a physician who is on the front line of this issue, has given this a great deal of thought, so at this point I ask him to join in this colloquy.

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Mr. WICKER. If I could jump in on the issue of Medicare because I have a quote here from President Obama, July 29, 2009: ``Medicare is a government program, but do not worry, I am not going touch it.'' As a matter of fact, only months later he signed into law Obamacare, which takes $ 1/2 trillion from Medicare. And it touches on the very issue the Senator from Kansas was referring to with regard to Medicare access for people in rural Kansas.

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Mr. WICKER. Madam President, to summarize what the Senator from Arizona has just said, the CLASS Act was sold to the American people as a budget deficit reducer. It was going to reduce the deficit. No sooner was it signed and they started looking at it that the administration itself said: We know it is unworkable, and we abandon it. We are not even going to try to enforce it.

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Mr. WICKER. Madam President, I know our friend from South Dakota has joined us and is eager to join in this discussion. I wonder if he has anything to add about the broken promises that were made during the passage of ObamaCare.

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Mr. WICKER. Madam President, let me ask my colleagues about another promise. They will call time on us soon.

Does anybody recall hearing this statement from the President of the United States in 2009? He said this:

If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.

That was the President on June 15, 2009. What happened to that?

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Mr. WICKER. So the promise was not to touch Medicare, and that promise has not been fulfilled. The promise was to reduce the deficit, and that turned out to be an empty promise.

Also, we were told by the President and by Speaker Pelosi this bill would create jobs. The President said it was a key pillar for a new foundation for prosperity. How has that turned out? Former Speaker Pelosi said in its life the health care bill will create 4 million jobs--400,000 almost immediately.

Of course, neither of those promises has come true. The nonpartisan CBO has estimated the health care law will reduce America's workforce. This is the bipartisan CBO. They said it will reduce America's workforce by 800,000 jobs over the next 10 years. That fact has been confirmed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

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