On the recordDecember 3, 2015
when President Clinton proposed his health care bill in 1993, Republicans were so upset that they came up with a radical idea. This radical idea was to give tax credits to poor people to buy private insurance, to set up an insurance exchange where they could do that, to ban preexisting conditions, and to include an individual mandate--in short, the Affordable Care Act, built by Republicans, many of them still in this Chamber today. At the heart of that proposal was the idea that people should get a tax cut in order to be able to buy private insurance. At the heart of the underlying Republican amendment is a gutting of that ability of individuals to go out and buy private insurance for themselves. This amendment is pretty simple. It says that at the very least we can come together on the idea that we should preserve those tax credits for the most vulnerable--for pregnant women, for victims of domestic violence, for people suffering from heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's. At the very least, we can come together and decide to protect those tax credits--a Republican idea at the genesis for those vulnerable individuals. I urge adoption of the amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
