Update from U.S. Senator John Cornyn

Friday, September 25, 2009

This week the Senate Finance Committee began marking up Chairman Baucus’ health care reform legislation. On the opening day of the Finance Committee mark up, I revealed an analysis I requested from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which shows how devastating this health care proposal would be to Texans. The report estimates that Chairman Baucus’ legislation would increase Texas Medicaid costs by $20.4 billion over 10 years. Additionally, it revealed that 2.5 million Texans could end up on Medicaid if this legislation is enacted.

The proposal we are debating right now in the Finance Committee is not good for Texans. The best estimate for its true cost is more than $1.6 trillion, it would cut Medicare by $500 billion, create massive new taxes on families and small businesses and create another thousand page, trillion dollar government program. President Obama and Congressional Democrats have consistently maintained that Americans who like the coverage they currently have will be able to keep it under any new health care legislation. But that’s just not the case.

My colleagues across the aisle know it. Since they are so insistent on forcing so many Americans onto government run health care, I offered an amendment that would require Members of the Congress to enroll in the Medicaid program should this legislation become law. Not surprisingly, it was overwhelmingly rejected. Over the last week it has become apparent that some are more concerned with forcing through bad legislation to meet arbitrary deadlines than they are with getting it right. Never was this more apparent than late last night when I discovered that the Congressional Budget Office had made a $600 million mistake when estimating the cost of one of my colleagues’ amendments. The Chairman had hurriedly forced this amendment through on a voice vote before this error was discovered. I offered a common sense amendment that would require us to know the true cost of any amendment before we vote on it. It was met with great resistance and voted down.

I continue to be alarmed over ACORN’s blatant misuse of taxpayer dollars, and I recently asked Majority Leader Harry Reid to instruct relevant Senate committee chairmen to investigate ACORN's offenses and identify the sources of all federal funds that ACORN and its affiliates receive, so that we can ensure taxpayers don’t continue to fund this fraud-ridden organization. The Majority Leader is currently refusing to investigate ACORN, stating that it would be a “distraction.” It appears that for Majority Leader Reid, ‘oversight' is a selective responsibility.

We also learned this week that General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan, has apparently determined that additional troops and resources are necessary to win the war in Afghanistan. I wrote to President Obama after hearing reports that his Administration is considering an abrupt strategy shift in Afghanistan and has yet to consider General McChrystal’s pending request. I will continue to urge the President not to abandon the very counterinsurgency strategy he began implementing just a few months ago, to supply senior commanders in Afghanistan with any additional troops and resources they need, and to stand firm on his promise to do whatever it takes to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. We must complete the mission in Afghanistan and do whatever is necessary to defeat al Qaeda, which has proven itself to be a lethal, mobile, and resilient enemy. The safety of American citizens depends on it.

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Sincerely,

U.S. Senator John Cornyn

But we already knew all this, did we not? We're in deep doo doo boys and girls.