Date: 2010-12-07
Speaker: PAULX BROUN (republican)
Chamber: H

my other colleague who is here tonight. both gentlemen from Georgia. I want to thank you both and state my appreciation for your leadership and for holding these Special Orders. You know. we did a ton of these Special Orders back here in the health care debate. and Ive got a feeling we are going to be doing a bunch more. Because. in my opinion. my humble opinionI am just ending my first term up herebut I have a feeling that the health care debate has just begun. that this thing is far from over. As a preface to my discussion about health care. I want to point out and remind everyone. certainly. Mr. Speaker. the fact that we are in desperate need of reviving our economy. 9.8 percent unemployment. And as I travel around the country. and particularly in my district. there are three main reasons for that given to me by employers. "Why arent you hiring people?" and this is what they tell me. Number one. our tax situation is so uncertain. we dont know what to expect. and hopefully soon we are going to put certainty back into our tax policy by not raising taxes a single dime on any individual in this country. Number two. they tell me that banks are just not lending money. There are many reasons for that. We are not going to get into that tonight. but the bottom line is credit is not available to businesses. Then. finally. and I think most importantly. is the ObamaCare. ObamaCare has thrown such a monkey wrench into the machinery of the economy of this country. creating such uncertainty and difficulty of planning. that employers are just frozen with fear. We know that as soon as it was passed. immediately. companies began to come out and talk about how it was going to immediately eat into their earnings. We get continuous reports of how the premiums are going to go up for the employees as well as the employers. all things that were guaranteed to us by the President would not happen. But I will just give you a quick story. I spoke to a gentleman who owns a small company in my district. The name of it is Explo. and they have a very unique kind of business. What they do is they have the responsibility to take that explosive charge thats normally used in a cannon that has. for some reason. grown too old and no longer useable. they actually recycle that. They tear it down and they take the various parts. And. of course. it is an explosive. so they do have some risk in all of this. They have a 5year contract to dismantle thousands. tens of thousands. hundreds of thousands of these explosive charges that actually propel the shell from the cannon to go to its destination. And he said. you know. I have got a good contract. I dont have a big margin. but I do have a margin that I can make profit. But he said. You know what? With ObamaCare. that margin is totally wiped out. If I stay in business. I am likely to go out of the business and go bankrupt. So just that uncertainty. just that one little factor can make the difference in a company from maybe $100.000. $200.000 a year profit to losing $200.000 or $300.000. which a small business owner can do maybe 1 year. maybe 2 years. Maybe he can borrow money to get by. But this is the reality that faces Americans around the country. 700.000 small businesses. when you enter this unknown about ObamaCare. and it just simply freezes the businessman. So I can say FDR. President Roosevelt. had it right when talking about the Great Depression that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Right now. small businesses. businesses across the land are in desperate fear. They are afraid to make those valuable investments because they just dont know what next week. next month. next year is going to be like. I would say that the largest cause of this is health care. the health care reform. So just to kind of reiterate that again. Mr. Speaker. we have three things that businesses identify as roadblocks to success and to hiring. One is lack of credit. number 2 is uncertainty about taxation. and health care reform. We are about to tackle the taxes. I think the banks are going to be turning the credit around. So that one thing we have ahead of us is ObamaCare. which is. I think. a big stumbling block to recovery. I join with my colleagues this evening calling for a repeal to ObamaCare and a return to commonsense reform methods. which we will do with piecemeal legislation one step at a time. incremental reform. testing and listening to the American people. to what they want. rather than forcing it down the throats of those who have to pay for this thing.