On the recordOctober 4, 2013
Mr. Speaker, we are here on a Friday. The government has partially been shut down for some 4 days now. Republicans have tried to be reasonable. Many of us did not like ObamaCare. Some folks, like myself--my family didn't have health care at certain times. And I thought we had a responsibility to help people who had preexisting conditions, help some of our young people. And we disagreed with the other side. They passed it. They said you'd know what was in the bill after we passed it. After we passed it, and it became the law, we saw what was in it. The President, some 17 times now--many times in contravention of the law that was passed--changed the law. Now when we came a few days ago, October 1, there wasn't money to run the government, but there was money to run ObamaCare. Still, many people were left in the lurch after many exceptions were made for special interest folks, even business. And I admit to being pro- business. They gave them a waiver. We said that Members of Congress and also the White House staff and others should be under ObamaCare, and we said that the individual should also have a break here. This is a system that some Democrats said was a train wreck. We didn't say that. But we should have the opportunity to make some changes. And we offered three opportunities to make changes--some of them minor--that we thought were fair.…





