Water Resources Development Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, while the Democratic leader is still on the floor, let me express my gratitude to him for his remarks earlier. It is true that for better or for worse, we both have to bear the burden of legal training and experience in courtrooms where we learned that adversaries don't necessarily have to be enemies and to disassociate the arguments we are making from any personal animus or animosity, which, I think, is a very healthy and constructive thing to do. I always remember the excerpt from ``The Taming of the Shrew'' where one of the speakers said: ``Do as adversaries in law; strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.''

So I think that kind of civility is an important admonition for all of us. It is one that maybe we don't always live up to but one that I think we should continue to strive to emulate.

So let me just say to the Democratic leader that I appreciate his comments and perhaps we can all do a little bit better in that category. ObamaCare

As the minority leader also pointed out, we have some very big disagreements. It seems as though each day is likely to bring more news about the awful side effects of President Obama's signature health care legislation, ObamaCare, as it has come to be called. The truth is that the implementation and the reality of ObamaCare has been nothing short of a disaster for many of the people who I represent in Texas, but it is not limited to the 27 million people or so who live in Texas. The problem has been visited on many people, as the majority leader commented about earlier with some of the statements he made with regard to its implementation in various other States.

Unfortunately, when Congress and Washington make a mistake, it is the American people who have to pay the price, and it seems as though the consequences of ObamaCare are only getting worse.

I think it is worth remembering--I certainly remember--that it was on Christmas Eve in 2009, at 7 o'clock in the morning, when the Senate passed the ObamaCare legislation with 60 Democrats voting in favor of it and all Republicans voting against it. I think that was the beginning of the failure of ObamaCare. What our Democratic friends, including the President, failed to learn is that any time signature legislation that affects one-sixth of the economy and every American in this country--any time we pass a law like that, in the absence of some political consensus where each side gets something and gives up something and that builds consensus, then that law is simply not going to be sustainable, beyond the policy problems the law has obviously manifested.

I still remember as if it were yesterday, when the President said: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. He said: If you like your policy, you can keep your policy. He said that the average family of four would save $2,500 on their health care costs. None of that has proven to be true. In fact, just the opposite is true. That is, unfortunately, part of the legacy of the broken promises of ObamaCare. It was essentially sold under false pretenses.

Back in my old job, before I came to the Senate, I was attorney general of Texas, and we had a consumer protection division that sued people who committed consumer fraud, who represented one thing to consumers and delivered another. We sued them for consumer fraud. Unfortunately, the American people can't sue the Federal Government for consumer fraud. They would have a pretty good case because of the trail of broken promises known as ObamaCare.

I just want to point out a few instances of how ObamaCare has proven to be such a disaster for the folks I represent in Texas.

Under the so-called Affordable Care Act--which really should be called the un-Affordable Care Act--many of my constituents in Texas are paying more for their insurance. Of course many remember the PR campaign the President and his administration rolled out to the American people. He promised better coverage, more choices, and lower prices. The one component we would think health care reform would deliver and that ObamaCare has been a complete failure on is lower costs for consumers. In fact, because of the mandates in ObamaCare, such as guaranteed issue--which is an arcane topic, but because of the way it was structured, it was bound to cost more money, not less--how in the world are we going to get more people covered by charging them more than they currently pay for their health care? We are not, unless we are going to come in the back door and use taxpayer subsidies to sort of cushion the blow, but even then, many people are finding ObamaCare simply unaffordable or maybe they can get coverage, but they find out they have a $5,000 deductible. So when they go to the hospital or when they go to the doctor, while they may think they have coverage, they basically are self-insured.

Unfortunately, my constituents have learned that ObamaCare has simply failed to deliver. Many people in my State are suffering. Over the past 2 months, it seems as though every week I read another headline in the Texas newspaper about the way it is hurting my constituents. I brought a few of those with me today.

First of all, here is the headline in the San Antonio Express-News: ``Obamacare hitting Texas hard as insurers propose steep rate increases.'' One might say: Why are you upset with ObamaCare when it is the insurance companies that are raising rates? The reason the insurance companies are raising rates is because people aren't signing up for ObamaCare if they can avoid it, unless they happen to be older and subject to more illnesses, which means the cost goes up for those who are buying those policies.

The article talks about how insurance companies are losing hundreds of millions of dollars under ObamaCare. Again, why would we care about insurance companies losing hundreds of millions of dollars? As we found out, many of them simply can't sustain themselves in the States so they are leaving. The majority leader talked about that a moment ago. Just to make ObamaCare viable, many of them are raising premiums by as much as 60 percent next year, just to stay in business.

Unfortunately, Texas is not unique. Other States such as New York and Illinois are looking at double-digit premium increases in 2017 as well. That is because, under the President's signature health care law, insurers are forced to pass along higher costs to customers. If they can't do it, their only other choice is to leave, leaving consumers with fewer choices and maybe only one choice in a State. That happens when the government--when the masters of the universe in Washington, DC,--think they know better than the market. It is basic economics.

The bad headlines don't stop there. Here is one from the Austin American-Statesman: ``Thousands affected in Texas as Aetna rolls back Obamacare plans.'' Aetna alone has more than 80,000 customers in Texas. It is one of the biggest health care providers in the country. Their leaving means that thousands of people will have to find a new health care plan. So much for ``if you like what you have, you can keep it,'' assuming they have a plan they liked, which now is more expensive than what many were paying before ObamaCare was passed. Again, it is not just my constituents in Texas who are hurting. Starting next year, Aetna will offer plans in only 4 States--4 States--down from the current 15. So consumers will have even fewer choices starting next year.

Aetna wasn't the only company to leave the State. This poster shows the headline from the Waco Tribune-Herald. Scott & White is one of our premier hospitals and health care systems in central Texas. The headline says: ``Scott & White Health Plan leaving Obamacare.'' According to the article, more than 44,000 Texans will have to find another insurance plan in 2017. Again, because of the extra costs burdening these companies, they simply can't afford to offer coverage, and they have no alternative but to pack up and leave.

Finally, here is a headline from the Texas Tribune: ``Health Insurers' Exit Spells Trouble for Obamacare in Texas.'' In this story, the Tribune reports that in addition to Scott & White and Aetna, an insurance startup called Oscar Insurance also announced it would withdraw from Texas exchanges in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The Dallas-Fort Worth area is one of the most populous parts of the State. This is absolutely unacceptable. With so many insurance companies pulling out of Texas, Texans will have less health care options, plain and simple.

I am beginning to wonder whether the conspiracy theories we heard early on about ObamaCare, that it was built to fail because what the advocates wanted is a single-payer, government-run system, and this was just a predicate or prelude to that because it could not work as structured. We can draw our own conclusions, but, the fact is, consumers will have less choice and their health care coverage comes at a higher price.

According to one estimate, 60 counties out of 254 counties in Texas will have just one option in 2017 unless other insurance companies decide to enter the market, which is highly unlikely given the way ObamaCare is structured. That means prices will continue to go up. And you wonder why people are frustrated in America, why our politics seem too polarized, and why people seem so angry at what is happening in Washington? At a time when their wages have remained flat because of this administration's economic policies--and overregulation being a large part of it--the costs for consumers continue to go up. That means people's real disposable income is going down, and they are not happy about it--and they shouldn't be.

Texas is a big State. We have very highly populated areas like the Metroplex in Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston and Austin, but we are a big rural State as well. People who live outside of the major cities are the very demographic that ObamaCare was supposed to help, but they will be disproportionately hurt as fewer companies are able to offer insurance away from major population centers. Company after company is packing up and leaving the exchanges in Texas because ObamaCare simply will not work as structured. It can't deliver on its promises. At the end of the day, hard-working Texas families have to pay for the partisan policies of this administration and our Democratic colleagues who jammed this through Congress rather than trying to build some consensus, on a bipartisan basis, that would make this sustainable.

I remember being at a program where James Baker III, who obviously served in the Reagan administration, and Joe Califano, former Secretary of Health and Human Services--a Democrat who served in the Carter administration, a Democratic administration--made the commonsense observation that any time you pass legislation as big as ObamaCare, it is bound to fail because you can't expect people who opposed the legislation from the very beginning to say: Let me try to rescue you from a bad decision in the first place, when they were essentially frozen out of the process.

For example, when Social Security became the law, consensus was reached, and that is the way it should be done. Unfortunately, my constituents in Texas and the American people are paying the price for a bad decision made in 2009 and 2010 to make ObamaCare a purely partisan piece of legislation.

I get letters from my constituents all the time who liked their insurance before it was cancelled because of ObamaCare, they liked their doctor whom they could see under their existing health care policy, and they even liked the price they were paying for it--it was affordable before the mandates of ObamaCare, but one by one they lost their coverage when ObamaCare became the law of the land.

I have had some of my constituents tell me they feel terrorized by ObamaCare. Strong words. Others have told me bluntly, they need relief from it: Please, help us. We are drowning in higher costs and fewer choices and we don't like what we have under ObamaCare. The bottom line is, for all of the purported benefits the Democratic leader talked about--more people on Medicaid, more people with some form of coverage--we know a huge majority of people feel as though they got a raw deal, and we knew it would be that way from the beginning. That is the reason many people, including myself, opposed it.

That is also the reason why just this year Senate Republicans passed a bill under the budget reconciliation process to repeal ObamaCare, because we feel the American people deserve better. Not surprisingly, President Obama vetoed it. What we demonstrated is, the political support in the Senate, working with the House, to, hopefully under the next President, build a health care system the American people can afford, giving them the choices they want because unfortunately ObamaCare did not deliver on its promises.

We have our work cut out for us in 2017. We demonstrated there are enough votes there to repeal ObamaCare. All we need now is a President who will sign it, as we work together to repeal it and give a more affordable alternative to ObamaCare that gives people the choices they want and deserve.

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