Congressman George Holding Visits WGBR
Congressman George Holding was in the WGBR NewsTalk1150 studio this morning to discuss many issues going on in Washington. The first topic discussed focused on ObamaCare and the statement made by President Obama yesterday, concerning the cancellation of insurance policies that have been determined not to meet the criteria set for the Affordable Care Act.
“I think we all heard what the President said when he was trying to get his law passed, and then when he was trying to defend his law in the last election. He said, ‘If you like your plan, you can keep it. Period.’ Now that’s a quote – ‘If you like your plan, you can keep it. Period. If you like your doctor, you can keep him. Period.”
“And that is absolutely not what the law was going to be about. And now, it’s coming out that Obama and his political people in the White House, were debating this – should he go out and say it? Or is it misleading? Is it lying to the American people? And the political people won out because for this president, for President Obama, it’s about winning elections.
He wanted to win reelection and that’s why he lied to the American people about what this law actually portends for them, as to whether you can keep your insurance or keep your doctor. It’s pretty frightening and pretty disheartening when the President, you know The President, would put winning an election and being victorious in a political argument over telling the truth to the American people and doing what’s right for the American people.
This was a learning experience for me. Last month, when we were trying to use our constitutional ‘power of the purse’, you know Congress has the ‘power of the purse,’ we decide how to spend money, and we were using that constitutional power to try to defund ObamaCare. Through this, Obama would not negotiate with us at all. In fact, we made the proposal that we will give you the funding for a Continuing Resolution if you delay the individual mandate for a year.
The President has already by Executive Order said we’re going to delay the employer mandate for a year, so employers and big businesses don’t have to comply with ObamaCare. And we said alright, as a compromise position, we’ll do a Continuing Resolution if you’ll just delay the individual mandate for a year. And they wouldn’t even take that. It was the President and Harry Reid that placed ObamaCare over and above keeping the government open.”
In discussing the website, of which the contract amount for design was $90 million, Congressman Holding said,
“…90 Million dollars is a lot of money. Well, to date, they have spent approximately $650 million on a website that does not work. If you, as a business person, contracted with a vendor, to set up a website for your business and you were going to spend $900 on it, and it came in at $6,500, you’d probably be taking this person to small claims court. And if something is contracted to come in at $90 million and it comes in at $650 million, and it doesn’t work and it is fatally flawed, I think I’d be calling the FBI if somebody did that to me. I mean, this is fraud. And incompetence.”
We asked Congressman Holding if anyone in the House was aware the website wasn’t working or ready for the October 1 launch. He responded:
“Oh absolutely not! Because we had…the Congress had been conducting oversight hearings all year…and we had people coming in from HHS, (Department of Health and Human Services), and Secretary Sebellius’ office, and Secretary Sebellius herself had said the website will be ready to go October 1st – We’re good to go October 1st. Now there were some warning signs in there because we got information that they hadn’t tested the website. That they hadn’t done any of the preparatory things that one would expect you would do if you were going to do a huge rollout of this. They hadn’t done any of this. No shakedown period.
But they came in and affirmatively said to the Congress, ‘Yes, we will be good to go October 1st.’ And obviously they weren’t. They had no clue as to whether they’d be ready to go October 1st, basically lying to Congress, lying to the American people. All in an effort for political gain.”
As for the lack of testing, Congressman Holding had this to say:
“There was no testing done. The American people are having the testing done upon them. How does it feel to be a guinea pig?
The Congressman expressed frustration over the failed one-year delay in ObamaCare when all other items were agreed to with the budget:
“We continually passed funding bills that would fund the government and keep the government open. We just consistently said that funding for this flawed law that is unworkable in many respects, that is not having the intended consequences, give folks who voted for this law the benefit of the doubt, that they want it to do good for the American people. The unintended consequences are not doing good for the American people.
Now you have some…I think it’s up to 10 or 16 Senators have come out, who voted for this law, who are aligned with Obama, have come out and said We need to delay this thing! I wish they had come to their senses when we were making that offer last month and forced Harry Reid to vote on a delay of ObamaCare. Then we wouldn’t have had the government shutdown and the intended consequences of that. But no, for them it’s more about winning a political argument than it is doing what’s best for the American people.
When asked if we were any closer to a budget today, Congressman Holding said:
“We are in the middle of a Continuing Resolution. A Continuing Resolution is…they’re not good options at all. You’re basically continuing the spending from a previous budget, and the last budget that the Congress passed was five years ago. Could you run a business, or could you run a household just saying, ‘We’re going to keep on spending the money on stuff we decided was appropriate five or six years ago’? No. I mean, things change – there are things that you would like to spend money on today that maybe you didn’t know about five or six years ago. Or you were spending money on things that turned out to be not as productive or beneficial as you thought they would be and you want to change course.
We have not been able to pass a budget. The House continues to pass a budget. We passed a budget that will balance in ten years and pay off the debt in 30 to 40 years. I wish we could pay off the debt sooner but at least we’ve got a plan to pass the budget. Obama’s folks over in the Senate passed a budget which raises taxes by a trillion dollars, it never balances and it never pays off the debt.
We’ve got to have some serious, serious movement on reducing spending and reducing debt. And the American people understand this and they understand in their own personal life, that they cannot borrow forty cents out of every dollar that they spend and rack up debt ad infinitum.”