John Yarmuth

I thank my colleague for yielding. The one question I think many Americans who follow this debate would be asking now is: What is the rush? What is the rush? For 7 years now, our Republican colleagues have consistently said we are going to…

The American people need more from us. They deserve more from us.

As we move into budget season, I am deeply concerned about Republican plans for the budget.

We all know the Republican leadership can pass a budget without bipartisan support, but bipartisanship will be required to fund discretionary programs.

Ultimately, that puts more and more pressure on State and local governments to pick up the slack if we cut this vital funding.

In listening to both sides and to Director Hall during this hearing we heard very few ideas for stimulating growth in the economy or specifics about what we would cut or how we would fix some of the mandatory spending programs.

President Obama inherited an economy in freefall. The country was in the midst of the deepest recession in generations.

To return to where we were and abandon all the progress we have made would be devastating, not just for American families today but for generations to come.

Long-term outlook remains troubling, of course. We are a few years away from an increase in Federal deficits and debt.

When you are looking at over a trillion dollars of tax expenditures, you are looking at another significant impact on the deficit.

Last year, this House renewed about $800 billion of tax expenditures as I recall with no offset.

the projections if, not your projections, but other projections, show that if we actually were to rescind the Affordable Care Act, the Medicaid expansion or just the Medicaid expansion we would lose an awful lot of jobs, 10s of thousands…

Most of the mortgage deduction benefit goes to wealthier taxpayers, is that not correct?

It is my hope that my colleagues across the aisle will recognize these facts and enact the immigration reform we so desperately need.

Thanks. Another point you make is that the subsidies on the exchanges, assuming that they are not repealed, would double basically from this year until 10 years.

But that has not been the case over the last 5 years.

Okay, so now turn to Medicaid. This is now regular Medicaid not the expanding Medicaid, you project expenditures growing from $389 billion in 2017 to $650 billion in 2027 which is a significant increase.

We passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010; I would be interested in knowing how many of those hospitals have closed in the last 2 or 3 years because in my State of Kentucky, what we have heard is that rural hospitals have been saved by the…

And finally, I think it is interesting that several of you said the ACA focused largely on coverage...

I thank the chairman. I just want to thank all the witnesses and these discussions have been going on for a long time, in many different forms, and sometimes it gets pretty heated up.

Republicans have been unwilling to address problems. Instead, they have just said, 'Let's repeal it,' and they have done that 65 times in the House.

There are only, in my opinion, two alternatives to the Affordable Care Act. One is to go back to where we were, where insurance companies decided who lived and died, and single-payer, Medicare for everyone.

we spent a lot of time hearing about the problems with the ACA and very little hearing about the alternatives

I would wager that at the end of the day, these ideas will also fail to garner the majority of their conference.

So, let me get you to repeat that. We would be talking about $25,000 per insured in deductibles, $50,000 for a family, and elimination of a substantial amount of the coverage that a policy under the Affordable Care Act would provide?