Authority for Mandate Delay Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. KIND. Madam Speaker, I rise today again with disappointment at the fact that these two bills are nonsense and completely unnecessary.
One is doing what the Obama administration has already said they would do, and that is to delay the employer reporting requirements because of the feedback they got from businesses large and small and from associations who said not that they can't do it; they just need a little bit more time in implementing it.
The other would do away with the individual responsibility component.
But the real story today, Madam Speaker, is not what's happening on the House floor or the votes that these two bills are going to get. It was what announcement came out of the State of New York and was reported in The New York Times:
``Health plan costs for New Yorkers set to fall 50 percent.''
This is because of the creation of the health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. Individual policy rates are going to be at least 50 percent less than what individuals are currently paying today because the exchanges are doing what they were meant to do, increase competition and transparency, making it more affordable for uninsured Americans to go out and obtain affordable coverage.
My father gave me some pretty good advice early on in my life when he said, Son, you are going to encounter two forms of critics in your life: one who criticizes you because they want to see you fail, and the other is going to criticize you because they want to see you succeed, and being able to differentiate between the two is going to determine how successful you are in life.
That has been the problem with the Affordable Care Act from the very beginning. We have a major political party who does not want to see this succeed, and they're doing everything they can to undermine it, even if it brings increased pain and difficulty to more businesses, families, and individuals throughout the country. Today's demonstration with these two bills just reaffirms that proposition.
I encourage my colleagues to vote ``no'' on H.R. 2668.
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