Ron Johnson

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. This is the problem. This is a huge problem. It is one that is being ignored because we simply refuse to address it. This body refuses to pass a budget to lay out a plan to fix it; to stabilize one of our primary metrics, a key one--that debt-to-GDP ratio, stabilize that and start bringing it down. The other is the percentage of government in relation to the size of our economy. One hundred years ago that was 2 percent. Last year, it was about 24 percent, which means 24 cents of every $1 filters through some form of government. I do not find the Federal Government particularly effective or efficient. That is what the private sector does. It is the private sector that creates long-term self-sustaining jobs. It is the private sector we need to rely on to grow our economy and create jobs. As to the vision for America, we are going to have a very clear choice on the vision for America, between what this administration wants to do with a government-centered society and what Republicans want to do in terms of an opportunity society led by free people, free enterprise, led by freedom. That is our choice. But until the majority party in the Senate lays out their plan, the American people will not have a plan. They will not understand what the plan is for the other side. Again, let me close by saying it is well past time for the Senate to fulfill its responsibility and pass a budget. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to mark an amazing anniversary. And by amazing, I don't mean good. I mean unbelievable. I mean sad. On Sunday we will mark the anniversary--April 29--of the date where it has been 3 years since the Senate has passed a budget. I know a lot of Americans have heard that date, they have heard the talking point that it has been 1,000-and-umpteen days since we passed a budget. But it is not a talking point. It is simply unbelievable. It is jaw-dropping. The U.S. Government is the largest financial entity in the world, and it has been operating now for 3 years without a budget. It is a $3.8 trillion-a-year entity. I come from the private sector. I am an accountant. When I tell the voters, the citizens of Wisconsin, that the Federal Government hasn't passed a budget, they really are amazed. That is why I call it an amazing anniversary date. The Senate has not fulfilled a basic responsibility. It is required by law to pass a budget by April 15 of every year. It is a reasonable requirement. It is a reasonable responsibility. The House Republicans have fulfilled their responsibility and have put forward a plan. They have shown the American people what they would do to solve our looming debt and deficit problem. The Senate hasn't. Why hasn't the majority in the Senate passed a budget? They have all the votes. They have them in the Budget Committee to refer a budget to the floor. They have the votes and they have the number of Members on the floor of the Senate to pass a budget. Why do they refuse? Is it because they have no solutions to our problem or is it that they have a solution, and they simply don't want the American people to know what it is? ``Trust us. We will take care of us.'' Is it also because they don't want their fingerprints on that solution? They don't want to be held accountable? I think more likely that is the reason we haven't passed a budget here the Senate for 3 years now. I guess they could claim President Obama's budget is their plan. But the problem with that is President Obama's last two budgets have been so unserious--last year his budget lost in this body of the Senate by a vote of 0 to 97. Not one member of the President's own party gave it a vote. As a matter of fact, not one member of the President's own party was willing to bring that budget to the floor for a vote. Republicans had to do that. Now this year's budget--3 weeks ago, in the House of Representatives again, the President's budget was brought forward to the House--by a Republican, not a Democrat. It lost 0 to 414. Again, I ask the American people to think about that. Think about what a stunning repudiation that is of leadership. What it really represents is a total abdication of leadership. The American people deserve better. They deserve far better. They deserve to have a plan. They deserve to have a choice. The President now has put forward four budgets. He has yet to propose any solution to save Social Security or to save Medicare. Again, the House has provided that plan. They have passed a budget. They have been responsible. Republicans have been willing to be held accountable. That is our job. It is well past time for the Senate to fulfill its responsibility to bring a budget to the floor--not just vote on one but to work on it and pass one so that we can go to conference and we can reconcile that with the House budget so the United States finally, after 3 years, will start operating under a budget in the next fiscal year. I know the Budget Control Act sets spending caps. I get that. I get that. Washington is going to make sure it can continue to spend money. But spending money is only half the equation. What is this body going to do in terms of showing the American people what our plan is to live within our means, to get our debt and deficit under control? The American people are waiting. The result of this embarrassing abdication of responsibility and leadership can be clearly described by a few charts. Let me start going through a couple. I think most people have seen all kinds of different debt charts. I like this one because it starts in 1987, when our total Federal debt was $2.3 trillion. If we were to pass President Obama's budget and live by it, in 10 years our total Federal debt would be $25.9 trillion. In the Budget Control Act, this body--Congress--gave President Obama the authority to increase our debt limit by $2.1 trillion. It took us 200 years to incur $2.3 trillion. We will have blown through that $2.1 trillion debt ceiling increase in less than 2 years. Just in case anybody is still confused, we have a spending problem in this Nation. It is not that we take too little from the American people, it is because we spend too much. I know the American people are frequently subjected to phrases such as ``Draconian cuts.'' I think this proves we are not cutting anything. In 2002 the Federal Government spent $2 trillion. Last year, or the current fiscal year, it is projected that we will spend $3.8 trillion. We have virtually doubled spending in just 10 years. And the argument moving forward is, according to President Obama, he would like to spend $5.8 trillion in the year 2022. The House budget would spend $4.9 trillion. Another way of looking at that is 10-year spending. In the 10-year period from 1992 to 2001, the Federal Government spent a total of $16 trillion. From 2002 to 2011, the Federal Government spent $28 trillion. Again, the argument moving forward is that President Obama's budget in 10 years would spend $47 trillion. The House budget proposes spending $40 trillion. You don't have to be a math major or an engineer to do that math. Both $40 trillion and $47 trillion are greater than $28 trillion. We are not cutting spending, we are just trying to reduce the rate of growth. That is an incredibly important distinction. Don't be misled. We are trying to get our debt and deficit under control. A couple months ago, President Obama said he had the solution. His Buffett rule was going to stabilize the debt and deficit. Here is a little history. I hope the American people look at this. President Bush, in his first 4 years in office, ran a total deficit of $0.8 trillion--$800 billion. Now, back in Oshkosh, WI, I wasn't happy with that result. I didn't like seeing that deficit spending. His second 4 years didn't improve. He had a total deficit of $1.2 trillion between the years of 2005 and 2008. Again, I don't think there are very many fiscal conservatives who were happy with that result. Now President Obama has increased that dramatically. During the 4 years of his administration, the total deficit will be $5.3 trillion. That is on total spending of about $14.4 trillion. We are borrowing 37 cents of every $1 we spend and our debt now exceeds the size of our economy. Again, President Obama's solution? I realize this is hard to see, but he has proposed the Buffett tax. If we were to actually enact that tax over 4 years, it would raise some $20 billion. I know you cannot see it, but there is a line there. It does not even fill in the marker lines here. It is $20 billion to solve a $5,300 billion problem. I am sorry, that is not a serious proposal. It is just class warfare. Let me show one of the problems President Obama refuses to address: the looming bankruptcy of our Social Security Program, the program millions of seniors rely on, that Americans plan their retirement around. We hear all too frequently that Social Security is solvent to the year 2035. No, it is not. It is solvent because of an accounting fiction called the trust fund, which is simply government bonds held by the Government. The analogy I use, it is akin to you had $20 and you spend the $20 and you write yourself a note and put it in your pocket and say I have $20. No, you do not, nor does the Federal Government. It has bonds which, by the way, it can print any day of the week, but it has to sell those bonds. Social Security went cash negative, which means it paid out more in cash benefits than it took in, in cash receipts by 2010--by about $51 billion. Last year, it was $46 billion in deficit. Through the year 2035, all this red ink represents $6 trillion in additional deficit spending in the Social Security fund. It is insolvent. It is bankrupt. It needs to be addressed. This President refuses to address it. When we project out and we see another $10 trillion to $11 trillion in increased spending and debt according to President Obama's budget, I am concerned we are not even fully realizing the other risks involved. Before I get to this chart, let me mention the first one. If we fail to meet the growth targets President Obama is projecting in his budget by just 1 percent, we add $3.1 trillion to that 10-year deficit figure. That is a 30-percent increase. I know when they passed the health care law the American people were told--they were hoodwinked into believing it would actually reduce our deficit. It will not. The way they were going to pay for 6 years' worth of spending is with 10 years' worth of receipts and reductions in Medicare. The receipts come in taxes, fees and penalties on, by the way, drug manufacturers, medical device manufacturers, health care plans. I don't know what economics course members of this administration took, but we do not bend down the cost curve by increasing the costs to providers. That is what they were doing for about $590 billion of that revenue stream to pay for ObamaCare. The other $665 billion was going to come out of cuts to Medicare, Medicare Advantage, and Medicaid. We have not imposed the provider reductions under the SGR fix, the doc fix--about $208 billion. What makes anybody believe we will actually impose the $665 billion in savings in Medicare? If we move the 10-year window forward to when ObamaCare kicks in, when the full spending occurs starting about 2016, the total cost of the health care law will not be $1.1 trillion, it will be $2.4 trillion, and that is a conservative estimate, not even taking into account millions of employees who will lose their employer-sponsored care and get put into the exchanges at highly subsidized rates. But using a conservative cost figure of $2.4 trillion and growth in taxes, fees, and penalties by a reasonable amount, $816 billion, that leaves a $1.6 trillion what I am calling deficit risk. How is that going to be filled? Are we going to borrow it or are we going to take it out of Medicare? Somehow I do not think we will be taking it out of Medicare. Somehow I think we will have to borrow it, if we can. That brings me to our last chart, interest rate risk. I was never concerned, not even for a moment last year during the debt ceiling debate, that the Federal Government was going to default on any of its obligations. We were going to pay Social Security recipients. We were going to pay our soldiers. We were going to meet every obligation of the Federal Government. The day I fear is the true day of reckoning, the day when creditors around the world take a look at the United States and say: You know what, I am not going to loan you any more money or what is more likely to occur is they will say: I will loan you some money but not at these rates. If we take a look at the history of the borrowing costs of the United States, from 1970 to the year 2000, our average borrowing cost for the Federal Government was 5.3 percent. Over the last 3 years, from 2010 to 2012, our average borrowing costs were about 1.5 percent. That is a difference of 3.8 percent between these two figures. If we just revert to that average--and by the way, back then the United States was a far more creditworthy borrower--our debt-to-GDP ratio ranged somewhere between 45 percent and 67 percent. Currently, our debt-to-GDP ratio exceeds 100 percent. If we revert to that average borrowing cost, that would cost the Federal Government $600 billion in added interest expense per year. That is 60 percent of the discretionary spending level of $1.47 trillion this year.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Mr. President, I wasn't here when they passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This week will mark the second anniversary of what I call a very Orwellian name for that piece of legislation because I personally do not believe it is going to protect patients, nor do I believe it is going to improve the affordability of our health care system. The reason I ran for the Senate was primarily because of this law. I certainly recognized how it was going to result in a lower quality of health care, how it was going to lead to rationing, and how it was going to severely limit the amount of medical innovation we enjoy in this country. In particular, I was offended by the political process demonizing doctors and health care providers, demonizing the health care system in order to pass this health care law. The reason that offended me is a very personal story. It has to do with my daughter who was born with a very serious congenital heart defect, her aorta and pulmonary artery were reversed. So her first day of life, the doctors--who President Obama said would take out a set of tonsils for a few extra dollars--saved her life within the very first few hours of life. Then, 8 months later, when her heart was only the size of a small plum, another incredibly dedicated and incredibly skilled team of medical professionals totally reconstructed the upper chamber of her heart. Her heart operates backwards now, but she is 28 years old and now she is a nurse herself in a neonatal intensive care unit and she is taking care of those babies. So when they passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I knew the health care system that saved my daughter was at risk. I also knew this health care law was in no way, shape or form going to reduce our Federal deficit. It is just not possible. How can we expect to add 25 million people to government-run health care and reduce the deficit at the same time? The reason they were able to put forward that fiction is they proposed a piece of legislation that would have revenue, fees, taxes, and penalties for 10 years, while at the same time only providing benefits for the last 6 years of that time period. Basically, what they did was to say we will raise revenue for 10 years of about $1.1 trillion, and we will have 6 years' worth of cost, a little under $1 trillion. That was the fiction. Half of that revenue generated is going to be in taxes, fees, and penalties. Personally, by increasing taxes and increasing fees on things such as medical insurance, on medical devices, and on pharmaceuticals, I don't see how that bends the cost curve down. It would not bend the cost curve down. It is the same logic this President has used when he is talking about high gasoline prices. He says by increasing taxes on oil companies we will reduce the price of gas. It is just not possible. Increasing fees on providers, reducing reimbursement rates to providers is not going to bend the cost curve down. It is basically not going to happen. The other half of the pay-fors--the other half of that $1.1 trillion--was proposed reductions basically in payments to Medicare providers. Congress, I would say wisely, has not enacted the sustainable growth rate cuts to providers because they realize, if they do that, access for seniors to medical care will be reduced. I don't see how, if we reduce Medicare by $529 billion, that same access also would not be reduced. From my standpoint, I think it is highly unlikely Congress will actually enact that $529 billion worth of reductions to Medicare. When they do not do that, the $143 billion reduction in our deficit, that fiction, will totally go away. Another reason for that fiction being exposed is because, fortunately, Congress realized the CLASS Act portion of ObamaCare simply wasn't going to save the money they said it was going to save. It simply wasn't sustainable. Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad actually called the CLASS Act a Ponzi scheme. So this administration has decided not to move forward with its implementation. In doing so, that is removing $70 billion of revenue from that budgetary fiction. I know Senator Kyl has been following this very carefully, in terms of what is going to happen to our Federal budget, and I am wondering if Senator Kyl would want to comment on how he sees the real effect of the health care law on the Federal budget and why that is not going to save us $143 billion in the first year and probably result in far greater costs to the Federal Government if this thing is actually implemented.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. I certainly appreciate Senator Sessions' comments and those of Senator Roberts, Senator Kyl, and Senator Boozman. There are two points I would like to make. It is important to understand that all these numbers we are talking about are estimates. The Federal Government is not particularly good at making those estimates because if you think back to 1965 when they first passed Medicare, they projected out about 25 years and said that in 1990 it will cost $12 billion. In fact, it ended up costing $110 billion--nine times the original cost estimate. The other point you were making is, Does it make sense for the Federal Government to take over one-sixth of our economy? When I went back to Wisconsin, I asked that question of thousands of individuals. Do you really believe the Federal Government can take over one-sixth of our economy--the health care sector--and do it effectively and efficiently? I asked that to thousands of people. I have had two brave souls raise their hands. The fact is, the American people do not believe the American Government is capable of doing that. In closing, I would like to remind everybody what Speaker Pelosi very famously said: We have to pass this bill so we can find out what is in it. I know Senator Sessions and Senator Boozman are dedicated to making sure we don't have to fully implement the health care law before we did figure out what it truly costs us because it could bankrupt this Nation. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. I think the bottom line of this health care law is that it is basically going to increase demand while at the same time reducing supply, and that is not a good thing. It is certainly not the way you bend the cost curve down. I understand Senator Sessions has a few more comments.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. If this is implemented, we are just beginning to see the tip of the iceberg of the assault on our freedom that this is going to represent.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Earlier Senator Roberts mentioned the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Wasn't that the agency that proposed denying women mammograms until they reached the age of 50?

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. I remember back in Oshkosh, WI, President Obama famously promised: If you pass this health care law, the average costs per family would decline by $2,500 per year. That is one of those broken promises that Senator Roberts was mentioning earlier.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. I appreciate the comments of the Senator. He mentioned rationing. What is the Independent Advisory Board for? Do you have a clue? To me that would somewhat lead, potentially, to rationing. I would be suspicious of that. Senator Kyl stood up here. He may have some additional comments.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. I thank Senator Boozman. I think it is extremely important for us, in the next coming weeks and months, to paint a very accurate picture for the American people about what our health care system is going to look like, what our Federal budget is going to look like, the effect on American jobs and our economy, and the effect on our freedoms that we are going to witness if this health care law is fully implemented. I think it is critical we provide the American people that type of information. Of course I know Senator Roberts has some thoughts in terms of how this health care law will affect jobs and our economy. He has been very good at describing some of the nonsense regulations that are being undertaken by this administration. I want Senator Roberts to share his thoughts about what he thinks--paint us a picture of what is America going to look like under this health care law.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. That is one of my concerns. Let's say we actually do enact those cuts to Medicare and we don't reimburse providers and doctors in some cases to even cover their costs. I know this is hard to get to, but I have read where only 60 percent of providers are willing to see and treat Medicaid patients. Now what we are going to be doing is adding 25 million new individuals onto Medicaid rolls, where only 67 percent of providers are seeing those. I would ask Senator Boozman, because he is not only a new Senator but also a doctor and he ran a business, would he comment on that as well. I think he has some comments in terms of how this health care law will be affecting employment and jobs.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Does the Senator believe those Medicare savings will actually be realized? Does the Senator believe Congress will actually enact those savings?

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Again, it is becoming so complex. It is becoming so expensive. Again, the big difference ObamaCare throws into the equation is, in the past, responsible employers--and most employers truly care about the people who work with them--wouldn't have dreamed of exposing their employees to financial risk that would be obvious if they didn't provide health care insurance. But with ObamaCare, that is not what is happening. Now these exchanges will be available as well as huge subsidies. I am not aware of too many large Federal subsidies that go unused, and that is my concern. So the equation is totally different now. It is going to be totally different under ObamaCare. My question for CBO--I know they just conducted a study and did some sensitivity analysis, but they didn't go anywhere near far enough, from my standpoint. I think the largest number of employees they took a look at might have been 20 million individuals. But when we have 154 million Americans getting employer-sponsored care and the McKinsey study saying half of those, more than 75 million--I think we need to take a very serious look at what effect on our budget that would have.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. I wish to point out, the numbers Senator Kyl is talking about are CBO projections, just using a different timeframe. That isn't even taking into account what I have been talking about is an even more significant risk to the deficit, and that is one particular CBO estimate that says, on net, only 1 million Americans will lose their employer-sponsored care. There are 154 million Americans who get their employer-sponsored care from employer-sponsored plans. To assume that only 1 million people will lose that coverage and get forced into the exchanges is absurd, particularly when we have a study by a very reputable firm, McKinsey & Company, surveying 1,300 employers, which said 30 to 50 percent of employers plan on dropping coverage and having their employees go into the exchanges. It is pretty easy to understand why that might happen. Right now, the health care law is 2,700 pages; there have been another 12,000 pages of rules and regulations. So employers looking at the health care law are looking at, Do I try and comply with, do I try and understand 15,000 pages of regulations and then pay $20,000 for a family plan--which is the new CBO estimate for a family plan in the year 2016. Do I do that or pay the $2,000 penalty? With ObamaCare, they are not exposing their employees to a financial risk. They are making them eligible for huge subsidies, $10,000, if they have a household income of $64,000. So I will throw it over to Senator Sessions on the Budget Committee. My concern is we are not even beginning to contemplate what the effects of that might be. What does the Senator think of that?

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. I wish to ask Senator Sessions a question. We have talked about this in the past. I know a lot of people talked about the Medicare cuts being double counted, and I never quite understood exactly what that was. Can the Senator maybe explain a little bit to the American people what that means.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with my Republican colleagues for up to 45 minutes.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. I thank the Senator for his leadership.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Again, I am an accountant. I have been in hundreds of budget meetings, and when you are presenting your budget to a budget committee, you are armed with the information and you are ready to answer questions. I was surprised that the Secretary was unable to answer the questions, and particularly when I mentioned the waivers, she seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. It is her agency, her department that is actually granting those waivers. So that troubles me. So I appreciate the fact that the Senator has and we have sent a letter to Budget Chairman Conrad requesting, to be fair to Secretary Sebelius, to give her a chance to be fully prepared to come before us and to explain what is this $111 billion in additional requested funds for the exchanges. And I would like to really dig down and talk about this 1 million-person estimate and what is going to be the effect if the administration is wrong, if CBO has been wrong in the previous estimate and the McKenzie study is right and half the people very quickly after implementation get dropped from their employer coverage and put in the exchanges. What effect is that going to have on our budget? I would love to give and I think it is appropriate to give Secretary Sebelius the opportunity to come before our Budget Committee and have a fair exchange in terms of her explanation for those parts of her budget.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. It is essential that we pull back, and it is essential that we put the brakes on this. I guess we can all keep our fingers crossed and hope the Supreme Court rules the individual mandate unconstitutional, and there is no severability clause, so the entire law would be repealed, so we can then actually fix the problems in the health care system with patient-centered, free market-based reforms. That is the way to really address this.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. And, unfortunately, we are not even owning up to the current deficit projections. We are not seriously addressing that. So nobody really wants to take a look at the danger inherent in this. Of course, the administration doesn't want to talk about it or admit to it because they want to go full speed ahead to implement it so we will not be able to reverse it. That is the main point. It is time to put the brakes on the implementation of the health care law before it bankrupts this Nation. We simply can't afford to fully implement it to find out what the true cost is. It will be disastrous for our deficit and debt.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Exactly.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. That is astounding.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Well, I worked with former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin in trying to look at the numbers that are presented, and we don't have enough. We don't have enough information, which is why I am grateful for the fact that Director Elmendorf recognized that there is some credible evidence to cause the CBO to reassess that estimate of 1 million people. So they are working through those numbers right now. Hopefully, they will give us a very full accounting of that in the next couple of weeks. But the work I did with Douglas Holtz-Eakin showed that if 90 million get put in those exchanges, it could cost over $400 billion a year.

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Exactly. That is broken promise No. 2. Of course, broken promise No. 3 is also--very famously this President said: If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what. There are a couple of pieces of evidence that prove that is a broken promise. First of all, the CBO, in its initial cost estimate of the health care law, estimated that 1 million people would lose their employer-sponsored care and be put in the exchanges. By the way, that is a gross underestimate, and we will talk about that a little later. But also the Department of HHS has granted 1,200 to 1,700 waivers from basically some of the requirements of the health care law. That indicates that were it not for those waivers--basically employers saying: Listen, we need some relief here--my concern would be, and I think this is probably pretty true, those employers would be forced to drop coverage. And those waivers cover about 4 million Americans. But let me describe a little bit why I believe the 1 million-person estimate is so understated. There have been surveys of employers conducted in the last year that indicate that employers, when they take a look at the whole cost equation of the health care law, 30 to 50 percent, in one survey conducted by McKinsey & Company, of employers, when asked, plan on dropping their health care coverage shortly after implementation. If that were to happen--180 million Americans get their care through an employer-sponsored plan. If 50 percent drop coverage, that could mean 90 million Americans--not 1 million but 90 million Americans-- could lose their employer-sponsored care and then get put in the exchanges. We are trying to work with the CBO to find out exactly what that would cost, but in their initial estimate, they estimated that it would be about a $7,000 average subsidy per person in the exchange. If you deduct for the $2,000 penalty and the deductibility of the health care cost, that subsidy could range anywhere from a $4,000 to $5,000 cost to the government times 90 million. Instead of $95 billion a year, the health care law could cost us close to $\1/2\ trillion if 50 percent of the employers drop their coverage. This is incredibly scary. And my colleague is fully aware, because he has been a real leader in terms of our debt and deficit, as Admiral Mullen has said, the greatest threat to our national security is our debt and deficit. We can't afford to increase our deficit on an annual basis by close to $\1/2\ trillion. If everybody were to lose their coverage--which, by the way, is exactly what I think this plan was designed to do: lead to a single-payer system, which is what I believe President Obama really wanted--that would cost us close to $1 trillion a year. That represents a deficit risk that will absolutely ensure the final bankruptcy of this Nation.