On the recordOctober 4, 2013
I thank my friend for yielding. Madam Speaker, the people that we're talking about here tonight in this debate are people who work very hard and have a couple of children, usually, and need some help with their nutrition when they're pregnant, when their children are very young. Those folks have another problem, too. It's lack of health insurance. A lot of them have worked their whole lives. They have worked for a small business. They made just a little bit too much money for Medicaid, but not nearly enough to pay $10,000 or $15,000 a year for a health insurance policy. On Tuesday, for the first time in their lives, for many of them, there's a chance to do something about that. A great number could enroll in Medicaid--their whole families. Others were able to buy health insurance for $10 or $15 a week to cover themselves and their families. This whole government shutdown is about shutting down that opportunity for them to buy health care. So all these crocodile tears tonight about these families, the reality is we wouldn't be having this debate if there wasn't a compulsion on the majority side of the aisle to kill the Affordable Care Act. You are not going to be able to.
