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WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding the negative effects of Obamacare on the Middle Class:

“The President put forth a mighty Obamacare spin effort yesterday. You have to give him credit for trying to salvage a law that only 1 out of every 9 Americans think is actually working. But I don’t think condescending to Obamacare’s victims was the best approach for him to take.

“Consider this cringe-inducing assertion: Americans who already had health insurance, quote, ‘may not know that they’ve got a better deal now [under Obamacare] than they did, but they do.’

“In other words: He knows what’s best for you, so quit complaining.

“It’s the very mindset that led to this partisan law being forced through over the objections of the American people in the first place. It’s the very mindset that said it was okay to cut a few corners and tell a few white lies to sell the country a law it didn’t want.

“So what, the Obamacare crowd seems to think, if Americans couldn’t keep the plans they had and liked.

“So what, Obamacare’s defenders must reason, if Americans see costs rise after being told they’d fall.

“To our friends on the Left, it’s just the cost of doing business.

“And these days, they’ve all but given up the ghost of empathy; they just talk past the Middle Class instead.

“Consider some of the things we’ve heard from top Democrats:

• ‘Obamacare has been wonderful for America’
• ‘None’ of the predictions about how Obamacare wouldn’t work have ‘come to pass’
• The implementation of this is fabulous’

“These are the kind of things that raise blood pressures across America. But quotes like these betray more than just a certain incongruence from reality. They also signal a party that’s lost confidence in the force of its own arguments — one that seems more intent on reassuring itself than convincing others.

“Why else would they be saying things they know aren’t true?

“Now I’ve already spoken broadly over the past week about how Obamacare has failed Americans in terms of higher costs especially. But allow me just to touch on the assertion that Obamacare’s implementation has been ‘fabulous’ too.

“Fabulous. That’s certainly one way to describe how Obamacare has been plagued by failure since day one.

“Consider the disastrous rollout.

“Many Americans won’t forget the crashing websites, the hours on hold, the instructions to ‘fax in’ their applications — while at the same time seeing reports of Obamacare contractors sitting idle, waiting for work to come through the door.

“The White House tried to spin it all away as nothing more than a glitch on a website. But the American people knew it pointed to broader, systemic challenges in an unworkable law.

“Consider the many pro-Obamacare states that launched exchanges with great enthusiasm. These true-blue administrations did everything they could to make Obamacare work — but they often ended up exposing Obamacare’s tragic realities instead.

“Take deep-blue Vermont. Many on the Left looked to Vermont’s extra-ambitious Obamacare experiment as the crown jewel in their ideological crown, but it turned out to be little more than ‘an unending money pit,’ as one Vermonter put it.

“In Oregon, officials spent over 300 million taxpayer dollars to launch an Obamacare exchange and marketing campaign. That’s a big investment. But Obamacare’s been an even bigger flop. Millions of dollars down the tubes, and Oregon has little to show for it beyond a couple bizarre marketing videos and a criminal investigation.

“Hawaii just announced that it will be the latest state to shutter its faltering exchange.

“And in my home state of Kentucky, a Democrat administration poured a quarter-billion dollars into an exchange that placed nearly 80 percent of enrollees into an already-broken Medicaid system. Too many of the remaining 20 percent or so now find themselves stuck with unaffordable Obamacare coverage, like a constituent from Ashland who wrote to let me know that his monthly premium increased by more than 30 percent.

“So it’s hard to disagree with the top Vermont health official who said ‘Good God, this just wasn’t set up for success.’

“Given the spectacular flop in his state, he’d know. And he certainly seems to have a point: of the 17 original Obamacare exchanges, some have failed outright and half of those that remain are struggling financially.

“So the truth is this.

“Obamacare never had a website problem, it had an Obamacare problem.

“No amount of wishful thinking or fast talk is going to change that reality.

“It’s not going to change the failures I just mentioned, and it’s not going to change the failures I haven’t: like the failed CLASS Act, the troubled CO-OPS, the debacle of giving people the wrong amount of subsidy, or what we just learned yesterday — that the IRS may not even be able to verify that many of the people who received a tax credit for health insurance actually bought health insurance.

I’m asking Obamacare’s defenders in the White House and in Congress to redirect their efforts away from spin and toward reality instead. We all know that Obamacare is a law filled with broken promises, higher costs, and failure. So let’s work together to start over with real health reform instead.

“That’s the kind of health care outcome that actually would be ‘fabulous’ for our constituents. It’s something that really would be ‘wonderful for America.’ And it’s what we can work together to achieve once Washington politicians can move past the failure of Obamacare.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding the failures of Obamacare:

“Sometimes, the divide between the White House and reality can be stark.

“That was on evident display yesterday, when President Obama told us that Obamacare was ‘working’ and that essentially ‘none’ of the warnings of the law’s failures and broken promises had come to pass.

“I imagine the families threatened with double-digit premium increases would beg to differ, as would the millions of families who received cancellation notices for the plans they had and wanted to keep.

“That’s especially true considering something else the President said — that Obamacare ‘hasn’t had an adverse effect on people who already had health insurance.’

“President Obama actually said that. It may border on the absurd, but he said it.

“Perhaps the President will make even more bizarre claims today as he tries to bolster the image of a law only 11 percent of Americans say is a success. Or perhaps he’ll keep realities facing the Middle Class in mind. Instead of jousting with reality again, perhaps he’ll consider the concerns of the constituents who write in every day to tell us how this law is hurting them. Maybe he’ll remember the Kentuckian who wrote to tell me this:

“‘I cried myself to sleep.’

“That’s how this Kentuckian said she felt after losing health coverage with her employer and then being forced into an exchange plan she called ‘subpar’ with a nearly $5,000 deductible.

“‘I work hard for every penny I earn,’ she said, and this ‘is unacceptable.’

“It’s also another example of a law that’s failed. And the sooner President Obama can get to grips with that reality, the sooner we can work together to replace the fear and anguish of Obamacare with the hope and promise of true health reform.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding defense authorization legislation:

“The defense authorization legislation before the Senate would authorize the programs and funding that provide the kind of training and equipment our military needs in the face of aggressive threats like ISIL. It would provide a well-deserved pay raise to the brave men and women who give everything to keep us safe. And it contains exactly the same level of funding President Obama requested in his own budget: $612 billion.

“It’s just the kind of legislation you’d expect to receive strong bipartisan support.

“Up until now, it has.

“The NDAA is a bill we typically consider every year, and it’s one that typically passes with bipartisan support.

“This year’s House bill passed with votes from both parties, while the Senate version of the bill passed the Armed Services Committee by a huge bipartisan margin of 22 to 4.

“It should be sailing through to Senate passage by a similar margin this week. But some in the Democrat leadership are now trying to hold it hostage for partisan reasons.

“We live in an age when, as Henry Kissinger recently put, ‘the United States has not faced a more diverse and complex array of crises since the end of the Second World War.’ And yet some Democrat leaders seem to think this is the moment to hold our national security hostage to partisan demands for more spending on Washington bureaucracies like the IRS. They seem to think it’s okay to hold our troops and their families to ransom if they can’t plus-up unrelated bills like the one that funds their own congressional offices.

“The Armed Services Committee Chairman just penned an op-ed on the issue that I would ask my colleagues to read. It made many important points, including this one: There is bipartisan consensus that we cannot continue to hold defense funding at BCA levels after years of dangerous cuts. Military officials have told us that to do so could put American lives at risk, which means it’s a scenario we should be working to avoid at all costs. But some Democrat leaders seem to view such a worrying scenario as little more than leverage to extract more spending for unrelated bureaucracies.
“‘It is the first duty of the federal government to protect the nation,’ Senator McCain wrote in his piece, and ‘with global threats rising, it simply makes no sense to oppose a defense policy bill full of vital authorities that our troops need…’
“‘[And] for a reason,’ he said, ‘that has nothing to do with national defense spending.’
“He’s right, and I’d ask that this op-ed be included in the record at the conclusion of my remarks.

“Here’s what I’m asking today.

“I’m asking every sensible Democrat colleague to keep onside with the American people and pull these party leaders back from the edge. I’m asking my friends across the aisle to join with us to support wounded warriors instead of more partisan brinksmanship, to give our troops a raise instead of giving gridlock a boost.

“And I’m asking them to work with us to defeat the contingency-funding amendment offered by the senior Senator from Rhode Island, so that we can keep this bill intact and consistent with the Budget resolution.

“The new Congress has been on a roll in recent months, getting things done for the American people in a spirit of greater openness and cooperation. Let’s keep that momentum going. Let’s keep that spirit alive.

“If you have amendments, I’d encourage you to work with the bill managers to get them processed.

“But above all, let’s ignore the partisan voices of the past and work together for more shared achievements instead. I think our troops and their families deserve no less.”

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