On the recordFebruary 2, 2016
The Republican leader said we don't have to worry about the veto. The reality is the President's veto will be sustained today. Apparently, our Republican colleagues are not worried about the 22 million Americans who will lose access to affordable health care. I don't know what the Republican leader's definition of ``mockery'' is, but if anybody is mocking the Republican bill here, it is the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which wrote to each and every Member of Congress that, if you actually overrode the President's veto and enacted this legislation--and I am sorry to repeat it again, but it is here in black and white from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office--you would increase the number of people who are without health insurance coverage by 22 million people. That is what our Republican colleagues are talking about here. So, no, we don't want to do that, and the President doesn't want to do that, and that is not going to happen here today, but it certainly does indicate the stakes in the 2016 elections, because, on the one hand, you have a Republican-controlled Congress that would, at the snap of a finger, like to get rid of affordable health care for 22 million people, and, apparently, it wants to ignore the facts that we learned from the Texas grand jury that vindicated Planned Parenthood and said that their accusers, instead, should be indicted. I reserve the balance of my time.
