The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“OBAMACARE” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H6319-H6321 on Oct. 5, 2013.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
OBAMACARE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, in information that came out after close of business yesterday, there was a report from CNBC about the 99 percent of ObamaCare applications that hit a wall. This report said:
As few as 1 in 100 applications on the Federal exchange contains enough information to enroll the applicant in a plan, several insurance industry sources told CNBC on Friday. Some of the problems involve how the exchange's software collects and verifies an applicant's data.
``It is extraordinary that these systems weren't ready,'' said Sumit Nijhawan, CEO of Infogix, which handles data integrity issues for many major insurers including WellPoint and Cigna, as well as, multiple Blue Cross/Blue Shield affiliates.
Experts said that if Healthcare.gov's success rate doesn't improve within the next month or so, Federal officials could face a situation in January in which relatively large numbers of people believe they have coverage starting that month, but whose enrollment applications have not been processed.
``It could be public relations nightmare,'' said Nijhawan. Insurers have told his company that just 1 in 100 enrollment applicants being sent from the Federal marketplace have provided sufficient verified information.
The article goes on:
One insurer reported a better, but still stunningly low, rate of enrollment applications containing enough data to process for coverage. ``It's about half of what we've received,'' a source at that insurer said.
``We're getting incomplete data--about half of the applications we haven't been able to process,'' said the source, who used the term ``corrupted'' to describe the batch of applications received.
The article goes on to point out what a huge problem, after 3\1/2\ years to get ready for ObamaCare to be the law of the land, after repeated refusals to negotiate whatsoever on delaying anything except for what the President has signed in the way of exemptions and waivers, hundreds of times himself, as he and Chief Justice Roberts completely rewrote the original ObamaCare bill. There has been a refusal to allow everyone in America to stand on the same fair, level playing field as the friends or supporters of the President have gotten through their waivers and exemptions, including people in Congress, which many of us here in this body have refused to accept if Americans don't get them as well.
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One person in the article said he blamed the exchanges' software, which is allowing too many people to finish the process online without making sure they provide answers needed by the insurers processing the applications. But the article also mentions there are going to have to be people who go back and try to get information from these individuals that did not complete the application process--it sounds like through no fault of their own, just for the impropriety of the software programs, themselves.
And it's not difficult to see what a nightmare that will be, as it opens wide the door for identity thieves to start making calls or sending emails telling people they did not adequately complete the process, and they need this information or that information. It's going to be tough for people to know, Am I sending information to the government, or am I sending it to a proper contractor, or am I sending my information to an identity thief?
The process was not ready for prime time, and it's just going to get worse as we move toward January in the problems that are occurring.
Here is an article from Dr. Susan Barry. This was dated October 3, talking about Secretary Sebelius:
The woman who is behind the controls of ObamaCare was unable to convince even one person from Kansas, the State she used to govern, to sign up for it.
Though HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is the former Governor of Kansas, Representative Tim Huelskamp was informed by an insurance provider in his home State that none of the 365,000 uninsured people living there successfully signed up for insurance on the ObamaCare exchange on the first day.
Now in the midst of all the chaos, all of the broken promises where people have lost their insurance, they have lost the coverage they had, even when they keep their insurance, insurance prices have spiked for the vast majority of Americans in this country.
They did not get the $2,500 cheaper insurance the President promised. They either lost their insurance altogether or it has spiked dramatically. They didn't get to keep their doctor. We're hearing from those people constantly. And at the same time, when here in the House, we have sent compromise after compromise before the shutdown occurred down to the Senate, which normally, in a functioning Senate, would have the Senate--if they didn't like what we proposed--send back an alternative. And at that point, after an alternative is passed in the Senate, then the Speaker can appoint negotiators called conferees. The head of the majority in the Senate, Harry Reid, could appoint negotiators, and then come together, and they work out an agreement. And then that comes to the House and Senate for an up-or-down vote, non-amendable, straight up-or-down vote in each House.
But the Senate was playing games. It is now clear that there was no intention of having any agreement, that the conventional wisdom in this town for the last 3 years say that, Gee, if there is a shutdown, then Republicans will likely lose the majority in the next election. So whatever it takes to shut down the government, go ahead.
That was borne out by the fact that the first 21 mainstream stories completely faulted the Republicans, failing to point out the compromises that were sent down the hall and the Democrats' refusal to even entertain them. And then on the fourth, the ultimate capitulation said, All right, all right. Basically, we're appointing conferees; just appoint people to sit down and talk about it. We can probably have this worked out by morning. But it was clear they wanted damage from a government shutdown.
We've learned that as these telltale signs emerged--and one park ranger was quoted as saying that it was disgusting. But as park rangers, they had been instructed to make life as difficult as possible for people.
We're getting stories in from around the country about how this abusive Federal Government that wants to tell you what health care you can have, what surgery you can have, who wants to supervise everything about your private life, they want every page of every medical record about you they can get their grimy hands on so that bureaucrats can decide if you're doing something they don't like, how to jerk you around, as the IRS has been caught doing now, as we've gotten reports of other agencies--whether EPA, FEC, others--being abusive. And we find case after case now, since the shutdown, of this government funding park rangers to go out and create as much chaos for Americans as possible.
We have this administration, where the buck stops with the Commander in Chief, that has now made clear to Catholic chaplains of the military that are independent contractors that you are not to show up and conduct mass on Sunday. And if you do, you may be arrested or subjected to disciplinary action.
There was a time in this country when we believed in volunteerism, where no matter what happened, Americans would step up and make sure things that needed to happen actually got done. Now we have an abusive administration so intent on, as the park ranger said, making life as difficult as possible for people in such a mean-spirited way that it would go shut down facilities that don't take a dime of Federal money just to hurt as many people as possible.
And those same people that are calling those shots want to decide what you can have in the way of health care, Mr. Speaker. No, thank you. I am opting out. I will pay the penalty. I am not going to have the government telling me what I can or cannot have. I will pay the penalty. I'm waiving the subsidies. If Americans can't have it, why should we, in Congress?
That same spirit of entrepreneurialism prevailed in 1995 when the Grand Canyon was actually shut down. It's amazing this administration hasn't tried to pay for some kind of screen to put over the top of the Grand Canyon so commercial airliners can't fly over and look down and see God's creation.
But in '95, there was an agreement between the State, local government, and the Federal Government to make sure that after it was initially closed, it reopened. And State and local government people were able to allow Americans who had scheduled their vacations, their travel time, to allow them to enjoy that.
Not this administration, oh no. They are so intent on refusing to allow even a delay across the board to be given to everyone as they've given to Big Business, to their cronies that they are not going to allow any local government, private business, States to reopen parks and things that have no business being shut.
The stories are coming in of all kinds of places that there was no need to close. There was no need to spend money to barricade but just to make life tough for Americans, because this is how Big Government has grown. This is how abusive government has become.
And I can't help but draw the conclusion that since Lois Lerner was never actually punished for the abuses and the obvious lies that have now come to light, that others in the Federal Government have said, Well, they didn't do anything to Lois Lerner. She got caught red-
handed. So we can be as abusive to people as we want.
So a story from October 4 which talks about how Arizona Governor Brewer, local businesses, local governments are trying to get permission to fund the reopening of at least part of the Grand Canyon, but this Federal Government, like the park ranger said, wants to make life difficult and wants to create as much misery as possible.
I'll say this about the Carter administration. I was in the United States Army at Fort Benning for over half of the Carter administration, and we had a lot of misery as a result of the calls by the Commander in Chief then. And there came something that was called the misery index, to measure how miserable Americans were under President Carter. Because we were having inflation, which is now coming under this administration because of the massive creation of money. You can't keep creating money and not end up causing inflation. That's coming. Interest rates that keep being teased, that they're about to go higher. We'll see. And the unemployment rate was massively high back in those days.
But I'll say this about the Carter administration: they didn't mean to cause that much misery. They really did not mean to cause that much misery. There was massive misery across the country back then. But at least that administration did not intend to make people that miserable.
But reports continue to come in of the misery this administration is inflicting because they can, because they want everyone to succumb to what has been classified as Chicago-style thuggery, that having more to do with tactics of organized crime. If you didn't go along with what they wanted, they made you suffer. And we're seeing that.
I mean, for goodness sake, we passed a law before the shutdown. I've been pushing for a military pay bill for over 2\1/2\ years. And I'm very grateful the Speaker finally brought that to the floor. I'm grateful to the gentleman from Colorado, Michael Coffman, for shepherding that. And then the Department of Defense gets it.
We were going to mitigate as much as we could. To the Senate's credit, they passed that before the shutdown. But then the Department of Defense, this administration chose to interpret it so much more narrowly than the law itself, and said that they furloughed lots of people, just like the park ranger said, trying to make life as difficult as possible. And they said, Well, we're going to take some time to read the legislation and let people suffer for a while. And eventually we'll get around to deciding whether or not we think Congress meant to do what they said they meant to do, and that is, protect our country, provide for the common defense, make sure our military continued to get paid, along with every private contractor that supported them in any way, along with every civilian employee that supported them in their role. They just, apparently, wanted to make life miserable.
There are enough problems being created by ObamaCare and by the overspending of this administration without creating things unnecessarily.
Here's a story from Stephanie Condon from CBS news about ``Obamacare marketplaces raise data security concerns.'' That is continuing to be a concern. It seems to be borne out that this was a train wreck, it is a nightmare, and that it will continue to just get worse.
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And the L.A. Times, Chad Terhune, had a story:
California exchange overstated its Web traffic for ObamaCare launch.
That would be consistent with so many of the mainstream that grabbed ahold of a young man who said he had signed up successfully, so he was hailed. He was interviewed by different media, and then come to find out, actually, he is a paid computer hack who gets paid by Organizing for America, President Obama's lobbying group that he funds. The guy is paid, as he admitted. He's paid to go online and just say things politically supportive of the President. It turns out he had not actually successfully signed up for ObamaCare.
There was a story from Andrew Johnson, National Review:
Zero enroll in the new Louisiana plan on ObamaCare's first day.
One from the Weekly Standard, October 3, the White House on a number of enrollees in ObamaCare:
We don't have that data.
AP reports that pressure continues to mount to fix the health insurance exchanges. Those continue to be a nightmare.
And in the midst of all this, where you had had Franklin Roosevelt say the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, we have John Harwood in a CNBC interview this week saying to the President, ``Wall Street has been pretty calm about this,'' and the President said, ``This time I think Wall Street should be concerned.'' So we have to fear the President making people fear.
There was an interesting online entry this week indicating at the World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington where veterans have been staging protests to keep it open, Washington Examiner reports that at least seven officials were dispatched to Wednesday morning to set up a ring of barricades to block tourists from the memorial. That's two more security officers than the State Department had in Benghazi one year ago on the night of the terrorist attack that killed four, including the U.S. Ambassador.
Well, as I keep going out to the memorial each day to ensure veterans are getting in, I've noted there are more Park Service people out there than I have ever seen at the World War II Memorial. I have been there all times day and night--I don't sleep that much when I'm in Washington--although come to find out, our park rangers don't know the law. They don't know the parking law properly. There are a lot of things they don't know. We find out they have been instructed to make life as difficult as they can for people. As the ranger said, that was disgusting. Thank God there are some people I have met and spoken with with the Park Service that care about the veterans. We have veterans that serve in the Park Service who just want people to enjoy their parks, not to make things difficult. But I'm seeing more Park Service personnel around the Mall than you ever see out there around the World War II Memorial.
The last few days I've been out there, each time you see mounted Park Service people on horseback watching over things keeping their eye on the veterans. You know, those guys in wheelchairs from World War II, they may make a run. They may try to go down the sidewalk where they are not allowed.
It is outrageous what this administration is doing. The Obama administration has decided to block access to public memorials on the National Mall as a result of the government shutdown, like its decision to end White House tours when the sequester cuts took effect. There is no rational reason for this. The Park Service normally in charge of monitoring these spaces isn't even affected by the shutdown, and they are shutting off access to these sites. It is gratuitous and petulant.
Another article about the ObamaCare privacy nightmare.
Shutting down the cemetery at Normandy for people that have spent so much, saved so much, trying to get a family member there to see the graves they never saw of people who fell while serving with them at Normandy is about as outrageous as it gets.
For heaven's sake, make life miserable for Members of Congress; but for Pete's sake, leave our veterans alone. Let them enjoy their memorials. Let them have their times of silence and meditation at their memorials, at their cemeteries. There are private entities, there are local governments, there are State governments wanting to keep these things open. But I can tell you, any administration that is so callous that it would allow and encourage difficulty for its citizens when it has a tantrum and doesn't get what it wants is not somebody you want in charge of your health care. Every American ought to be seeing this and ought to be saying loud and clear, let's hold up for at least a year on ObamaCare. You've done enough damage already. We don't want you controlling our health care. At least give us that break.
We are here this weekend. It would have been nice to have been back in east Texas and to be at the events that I was scheduled to be in different places this weekend, but we're here. I have no regrets. I just hope that the Senate, Mr. Speaker, and the administration will decide that negotiating means more than calling a press conference and announcing that we're willing to work things out, because when the President announces we're going to work things out, we're willing and he calls the leaders of Congress up to the White House so he can announce to them in person that we're not negotiating, I just wanted to make that clear, you give us everything I want, you abdicate, forget the Constitution, forget your requirements that you appropriate the money, you go through, you have oversight, you make sure that we're not wasting money, forget your obligations under that, give me all the money I had last year, don't put anything on it. Just give it to me like I want it or we're not negotiating. That is not an administration you want in control of your health care.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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