Why We Must Defund Obamacare

Floor Speech

Mr. HALL. Mr. Speaker, 3 years ago, when the President and the Democratic-controlled House and Senate forced ObamaCare into law without a single Republican vote, my constituents wrote and called my office, telling me they didn't want a government takeover of health care. They expressed many concerns, including losing a health care plan they liked, higher costs, overbearing regulations that would prevent businesses and their owners' ability to hire workers, and the government making health care decisions for citizens, just to name a few.

My constituents' concerns proved true. The ObamaCare Web site has been up for 2 weeks or more, and for those who were able to get the Web site to work, the reports have proved disappointing and anything but affordable: rate hikes of 260 percent, $12,600 deductibles, copays up to 40 percent, and zero competition. Perhaps that is why, according to the Daily Mail, on October 11, in the first week, only 51,000 people completed ObamaCare applications.

My constituents continue to write me about their concerns with this bad law, and today, I would like to read a letter from one of my constituents, Lee Stanley. Mr. Stanley is a small business owner from Atlanta, Texas, who is facing difficult decisions due to ObamaCare. Mr. Stanley wrote to my office as follows:

Dear Congressman Hall, I don't know if you are getting any input from small business owners like us regarding ObamaCare. We are really in a dilemma here at Guard-Line.

We found that there are items that we can manufacture here at the same cost as we currently import from Mexico, China, and Pakistan. We would like to bring these jobs back here, but looming in the background is ObamaCare. We employ 85 people in our Atlanta facility. We compete in a world market with distributors or importers that maybe have 15 to 30 employees, and they fall below the 50 employees and, therefore, do not have to pay the $2,000 penalty for not providing health insurance.

Our industry business model does not provide for employee benefits as it is mostly a minimum-wage industry with profit margins very low.

The situation we are in is that we would have to pay $170,000 in penalties under ObamaCare. This is another example of the government picking the winners and the losers, and we begin to show up here totally as the losers. There is no way I can be competitive if I have to raise my prices to cover the $170,000.

Here are my options:

One, don't pay the penalty;

Two, raise my prices and go out of business--85 people lose their jobs;

Three, lay off 15 to 35 employees to get under 50 in order to not pay the penalty, and move more production out of this country;

Four, reduce 35 jobs to part-time, under 30 hours a week, and move more production out of this country.

As you can see from the above options, there is really not a good one. We are having to run our business in a way that does not make very much business sense as we have to always keep in mind the effects of ObamaCare. We are in a position that we can add more jobs here in the USA, and are being penalized for doing that. This country will never be able to completely recover with restrictions on business like that. I am sure we are not the only employer in this situation. I don't know what we can do except express our concerns to our representatives.

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my constituents, I will continue to fight to defund as much of this bad law as possible. ObamaCare remains widely, completely unpopular across the country for good reason--it is hurting jobs, hurting pocketbooks of already struggling Americans, and preventing people from making their own health care decisions.

The American people deserve better. Responsible health care reform should do better, that offers true health, job, financial, and personal security.

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