what is happening on the floor right now is absolutely extraordinary. It is absolutely extraordinary that Republicans are using the budget process, the reconciliation process, in between the swearing in of the new Congress and the swearing in of a new President, to rip away from 20 million Americans health care insurance, to drive up rates for one-third of consumers in this country who have some form of preexisting condition--a sickness that without this law would make their rates go higher--and to throw the entire health care marketplace into chaos. It is absolutely exceptional what is happening right now. No one in this body should normalize it. No one outside of this body should perceive this to be just politics as usual. I was here when the Affordable Care Act passed. I was in the House of Representatives. Since then, I have heard my Republican friends say over and over and over again that they want to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it. I can't tell you the hundreds of times I have heard that phrase, ``repeal it and replace it.'' President-Elect Trump talked about that throughout the campaign, and then 2 days after he won the election, on Thursday night, he went on national television to double down on the promise that there would be an immediate replacement. He said: There will not be 2 hours between the Affordable Care Act being repealed and it being replaced with something better.…
On the recordJanuary 5, 2017
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