Obamacare

Floor Speech

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, many of us will be leaving in the next day or so and heading to States across the country. As we travel across our States, we will be listening to our constituents and hearing what is on their minds.

One of the things I hear about every weekend in Wyoming is that people are concerned about the President's health care law, and specifically how the law affects their lives, their families, and their jobs. People all across Wyoming--and I believe all across the country--are angry. They are angry that the White House is unfairly giving employers a 1-year delay in the mandate to offer insurance but did not delay the individual mandate that says every American must buy or hold Washington-approved insurance. For many of these people this is very expensive insurance.

Instead of granting a permanent delay or helping all Americans, President Obama and his supporters are trying to convince the American people that this health care law is working fine. Once again, the Obama administration is lecturing the American people instead of listening to the American people. They think if they give more speeches and deliver more sales pitches the American people will finally like this law. It is not going to happen.

Look at how far the Obama administration is willing to go with its latest sales pitch. Last week CNN reported the administration called together a bunch of Hollywood celebrities to help convince young Americans to buy expensive health coverage. The youth of America are not going to fall for it. Even though many of these Hollywood stars are great actors who always remember their lines, young Americans understand that ObamaCare is the wrong script for America. Even though some of these stars deliver funny jokes on ``Saturday Night Live,'' they are about to find out that this health care law is no laughing matter.

In fact, Americans of all ages believe the law is unworkable, unaffordable, and deeply unpopular. They are also finding out it is unfair, and that is what CBS found out last week. They did a poll. They found that 54 percent of Americans disapprove of the law. They also found that only 13 percent of the people say the law will actually help them personally. Three times as many Americans in the poll believe the law will hurt them personally. Three times as many people believe the law will hurt them personally than the people it will help. So over the next couple of months the American people can expect a barrage of advertising.

There was a big story about it today in the New York Times. Musicians are playing songs on the west coast and trying to get people to sign up for the exchanges. It was all aimed at trying to distract the American people from the health care train wreck that is coming.

According to the Associated Press, at least $684 million will be spent nationally on publicity, marketing, and advertising for the law. The Washington Post found that the States will be running ads not just on TV and radio--and you are not going to believe this--they are also putting slogans on coffee cups, on airplanes flying banners across beaches, and even, believe it or not, on portable toilets at a cost of nearly $700 million. It is a windfall for advertising agencies and a hard sell for hard-working taxpayers.

The administration is picking the pockets of the American people for advertising while the health care law is shrinking the paychecks of the people who can only find part-time work.

Speaking of part-time workers, I wish to talk about a new story that is out that demonstrates the height of hypocrisy surrounding the President's health care law. Frankly, the story is so outrageous that it is one of those things a person can't make up. The headline of the article reads ``Half of Affordable Care Act call center jobs will be part-time.'' Here are the details.

The article is about a new call center in Contra Costa County, CA. This is part of the effort to have so-called navigators who will answer Americans' questions about the health care law. The call center ran ads for more than 200 jobs that said all of these jobs would be full time. That is what people are looking for in America--full-time jobs, full-time work. But once the new workers started training, some of them got a different story. They found out that they would actually be part-time employees with no health benefits.

Let me emphasize that point. Even the ObamaCare navigators are not going to be covered by the health care law and are not going to be provided health care. Even some of the navigators will not know how they can get affordable health care coverage even though they are the ones who are supposed to be giving advice to Americans. Some navigators are being forced to work part time because the company cannot afford to provide the expensive government-mandated, government-approved insurance they are supposed to teach others how to get. It turns out the ObamaCare navigators need their own ObamaCare navigators.

The article even quotes one worker saying, ``What's really ironic is working for a call center and trying to help people get health care, but we can't afford it ourselves.'' That is what this administration has done to this country. I don't call that ironic; I call it outrageous.

So the question is, Who are the navigators going to call for help and how are they going to answer Americans' questions when many of them don't know how they are personally going to be able to afford the health care coverage the government and the President of the United States mandate they have?

The bad news is this story is only one of many new examples of hypocrisy recently surrounding the President's health care law. Week after week we have seen labor unions--one after another--that originally supported the law now express concerns about how the health care law will impact their members' access to care. Late last week we even heard from something called the National Treasury Employees Union. It is important to know that this union represents most of the IRS workers--the 100,000 IRS workers--who are going to be enforcing the health care law. What about these IRS workers? What are they saying? Well, it turns out the IRS employee union said they are very concerned they might actually have to buy their own health insurance in the exchanges, just as other Americans will. These are the exact same IRS agents who will collect massive amounts of data--personal data--on people's individual lives and their health care choices. They will investigate whether people have the right coverage. They will apply the tax penalties to anyone who doesn't. These are the agents who now say they want no part of the health care law's exchanges for themselves. They actually have sample letters the union has sent to the IRS agents to send to Members of Congress to say: I am one of your constituents, and we don't want it to apply to us, and we want to hear back.

This health care law is bad for all Americans. Each of those stories demonstrates again that the President's health care law is fundamentally broken. Instead of spending the rest of the summer trying to sell an expensive failing product, the President should simply listen. He should listen to young people who are about to see their premiums soar. He should listen to ObamaCare navigators who can't find affordable health care. He should listen to the IRS agents who enforce the law and who don't want to live under the law. He should listen to the American people and what they have to say about the high costs of their health insurance coverage. He should listen to what Americans have to say about how hard it is to find a doctor who will take care of them.

Front-page story: So many people on Medicare cannot get a doctor to take care of them. Why? Because of the health care law. Twenty percent of family physicians in this country--this story was reported in the Wall Street Journal--20 percent of family physicians are not taking new Medicare patients. Thirty-three percent are not taking new Medicaid patients. But a big part of the President's health care law was to force people onto Medicaid--a program that is not working already.

The President should listen to what Americans have to say about how hard it is to keep their current coverage. And the President should listen to what the American people have to say about trying to make ends meet on a part-time salary--a part-time salary because of the health care law, because of the incentives of the health care law to knock down employees' work hours to less than 30.

Then the President should come back to Washington after he actually listens, not lectures, and sit down with Congress--Republicans and Democrats working together--and work on real solutions that will give Americans what they wanted in the first place with health care. Americans want the care they need from a doctor they choose at lower cost. These are the things that have not been provided under the health care law.

Remember what Nancy Pelosi said: First we have to pass it to find out what is in it. The American people now know more and more what is in this health care law, which is why it is even less popular today than it was the day it passed and why; for every American who thinks they will be helped by the health care law, three Americans believe their lives will be made worse by the law forced through this body.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source