News

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio
Excerpt of U.S. Senate Floor Speech
March 13, 2013
http://youtu.be/A4AdqGIsQU4

Senator Marco Rubio: “When they start to fully implement this over the next 12-18 months, it is going to be an epic disaster. An epic disaster. Not because it was ill-intentioned, per se. I think the goal of providing an environment where everybody can buy affordable health insurance is something we should take very seriously and we have to work on. You can’t have a strong, stable middle class if people can’t afford the cost of living. You can’t have a strong and stable middle class if people don’t have access to quality health care at an affordable price. And we should work on that. We should work on that really hard.

“But we have to do that with some balance, and this is not balanced. This is an across-the-board application to the entire country that is going to hurt a lot of people. There are people in America that are going to lose hours at work because of this bill. There are people in America that are going to lose the health insurance they have, which they are happy with, because of this bill. There are people in America that are going to have to lay people off and, therefore, there are people in America that are going to lose their jobs because of this bill. And our debt is going to grow.

“And so I hope we will pass this amendment. I hope we will defund this program. It was ill-designed and as the true ramifications of this bill begin to apply over the next few months and next couple years, we are going to be right back here on this floor trying to fix it. Because this country cannot be what it is meant to be if it has to deal with something like this hanging around its neck.”