Lessons Learned from Welfare Reform
Floor Statement by Senator Chuck Grassley
Delivered Thursday, July 27, 2017
I rise today to inject a dose of badly needed reality into this very important debate.
Health care is a profoundly personal issue that matters to every single American.
In fact, every single senator in this body ought to agree on this point. Health care hits close to home for each and every constituent we represent from our home states.
From standard wellness checks to life-saving cancer treatments, each of us wants the best, most effective, and affordable medical care for the people we love and for ourselves.
As policymakers, it’s our job to solve problems.
And it goes without saying that we are facing a big problem right now. Access to affordable health care is simply out of reach for millions of Americans.
And that’s despite the promises made over and over again. Remember that Obamacare was rammed through on a last-ditch, Christmas Eve, party-line vote.
Look what that got us. Health insurance markets are collapsing around the country. Since 2013, the average premium increase on the individual market has jumped 105 percent.
Remember when President Obama promised affordable health care for all?
He promised Americans could keep their doctor. He promised Americans they could keep their health care plan. And he promised all Americans that their premiums would go down by $2,500.
We all know Obamacare did not uphold these promises. Instead, we got higher taxes, costly penalties, double-digit premium increases, unaffordable co-pays, job- and wage-crushing employer mandates, and thickets of federal regulations.
And now, Obamacare is collapsing. No one on the other side of the aisle has made an attempt to legislate remedies to the law, despite its grave condition.
At this very moment, 72,000 Iowans in my home state are gripped with uncertainty. Two insurance carriers have dropped out of the exchanges, leaving only one to offer individual plans starting in January. The policies offered by that insurance company will go up by over 40 percent next year, on top of huge increases this year.
Obamacare is unsustainable, unaffordable and unacceptable.
This brings me to the reality check I mentioned earlier. As I listen to some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I’m frankly astounded they can deliver their talking points with a straight face.
They would like the American people to believe that Republicans are dead set on ripping health care away from children, the elderly and the disabled.
Despite their red-hot rhetoric, we have neither horns nor tails. But we are dead set on working out the devilish details to get to yes.
Democrats’ hyperbole and fear-mongering are standing in the way of getting the job done for the American people.
Fear is easy to achieve. Legislating in good faith is hard work.
Obamacare defenders would rather disengage than engage.
They would rather obstruct a path forward than pave a path forward.
They are standing in the way of solving problems.
And in the process, they are scaring the living daylights out of hardworking Americans who aren’t able to stretch their paychecks to afford health insurance for their families.
If there is one job the defenders of big government have mastered, it’s the role of Chicken Little.
They squawk, cluck and crow at every opportunity to grow the size, scope and reach of government into our daily lives.
To their way of thinking, Obamacare was a step towards single payer.
They will say and do whatever it takes to secure sweeping, universal government control of the health care system, no matter how much it costs the taxpaying public, the toll it takes on the U.S. economy, or the loss of personal freedom.
Their message is dead wrong.
Our reform efforts are not making the sky fall.
The Democrats’ rhetoric reminds me of a similar situation.
The debate 20-some years ago was to reform welfare by reining in runaway federal spending and increasing the independence of individuals.
Just like now, that debate was full of dire predictions.
Some of my colleagues will recall the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan from New York.
As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, he strongly opposed efforts to reform the welfare system.
He predicted that the bipartisan proposal would result in an “apocalypse” and said quote: “If, in 10 years’ time, we find children sleeping on grates, picked up in the morning frozen, and ask, why are they here, scavenging, awful to themselves, awful to one another, will anyone remember how it began? It will have begun on the House floor this spring and the Senate chamber this autumn.” Unquote.
The facts will show that welfare reform was in fact, not, “legislative child abuse,” as the former senator of Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, predicted.
To the contrary. Two decades since historic, bipartisan welfare reform was enacted, reality shatters their doomsday prophesy.
The reality is African American children living in poverty has fallen to its lowest level in history.
The problem still exists and deserves our attention, of course, but 1.5 million fewer children are in poverty today.
3.4 million more families are independent from assistance.
At the time of welfare reform, the Chicken Littles forecasted homelessness, poverty, and despair.
Senator Moynihan also said that requiring welfare recipients to work and limiting the length of time they could collect benefits added up to: “The most brutal act of social policy since Reconstruction. Those involved will take this disgrace to their graves.”
With all due respect to the memory my former colleagues, their rhetoric simply does not square with reality.
The 1996 welfare reform law lifted millions out of generational poverty, replacing lifelong impoverishment and lifestyles of dependency with livelihoods restored with hope and opportunity.
These facts separate Democratic rhetoric from reality.
In the absence of a credible reason to continue with Obamacare’s failures, the only defense tactic left to Democrats is fear.
In a similar vein to her predecessor from New York, former Senator and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton said, “If Republicans pass this bill, they’re the death party.”
In another similar vein to her predecessor, another Senator from Massachusetts said, “I’ve read the Republican ‘health care’ bill. This is blood money. They’re paying for tax cuts with American lives.”
They are not alone in their obstructionism. The Minority Leader has said that Republican-led efforts to reform Obamacare are: “heartless. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It brings shame on the body of the Senate.”
Another Democrat chimed in that the Senate bill is: “downright diabolical” and would be “one of the blackest marks on our national history.”
Still another Democrat said his constituents are “scared for their children, they are scared for their spouses, they are scared for their aging parents …. And … scared … for their own health and well-being.”
Another joined the chorus: “Our emergency rooms would be overwhelmed. They would be unable to deal with the scope of that kind of humanitarian need.”
Not surprisingly, the law’s champion-in-chief, President Obama, has fueled the fear factor, saying the Republican efforts to reform the health care law would put pregnant mothers, addicts, children with disabilities and poor adults in harm’s way.
Such over-heated rhetoric shows Democrats have abandoned rhyme, reason and reality. Too often the arguments from the other side are based on what Obamacare was supposed to do, not what it actually did, which fell far short of projections from the experts. Defenders of Obamacare are relying on a phantom rather than the reality of the law.
Democrats are refusing to work with us towards a better solution that truly works, after years of neglecting consequential problems with the partisan-passed law.
They say they have a “Better Deal.” Let me tell you. Thousands of Iowa families and small business owners have contacted me with their personal stories of hardship. To them, Obamacare has been nothing but a raw deal. What good is having insurance, they say, if it’s too expensive to use?
After more than seven years of Obamacare, the chickens have come home to roost.
And in less than 10 years, look what happens when government gets in the way of the free market and consumer choice: Higher premiums. Bigger co-pays. Fewer choices. Less freedom.
Health insurance that costs too much to use is just not working for hard-working American families.
I’ll end my speech today with an appeal from an Iowan from Avoca. She has contacted me many times about the hardship her family has experienced since Obamacare was enacted. She pays more than $25,000 a year to insure her family on the individual market.
If that sounds like chicken feed to some of Obamacare’s defenders, I urge you with all sincerity to get your head out of the clouds and join us to fix this flawed law.
Republicans and Democrats can work together for the greater good of the country.
It’s said when there's a will, there’s a way.
Many of us recognize that Obamacare isn't working as promised.
Half of us voted this week to move ahead to fix it.
The other half is blocking any effort put forward to reform the broken law. They are digging in their heels and pulling out all the stops to stop any solution dead in its tracks.
Again, it reminds me of those who fought tooth and nail to stop welfare reform. At the time, they predicted the most dire consequences would befall our most vulnerable citizens.
Thank goodness the pessimists back then did not prevail in their obstruction against welfare reform.
While welfare reform has not been perfect, it has restored hope and opportunity to millions of Americans.
We can't afford to let the pessimists and obstructionists prevail today against health care reform.
The American people deserve high quality, affordable health care. Obamacare has not lived up its promises.
It’s time elected leaders live up to our promise to the America people. Let’s worry less about who “wins” and worry more about who will “lose” when Congress fails to reform the collapsing federal law.
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