Public calls for repeal of ObamaCare are rising – and House and Senate Republicans are offense, calling attention to steadily-mounting evidence that President Obama’s massive health care law is crushing small business job creation at a time when the American economy can least afford it. The uprising against ObamaCare has again forced the White House into defense mode, and will gain further momentum Thursday when the House GOP Health Care Solutions Group holds a public forum on the cost of the health care law to small businesses and families. [A live feed of the forum, which will feature testimony by small business operator Gail Johnson of Rainbow Station, Inc., will be available at http://health.burgess.house.gov; House Republicans will also be live-tweeting the forum at twitter.com/GOP_HCSG as well as twitter.com/RepShimkus, using the hashtag #HCSG.]
As Congress prepares to head home for Memorial Day, Congressional Republicans are harnessing the rising public backlash against the president’s law. In the Senate, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), an orthopedic surgeon, has joined with other Republican colleagues to launch Second Opinion, a effort to sound the alarm about the harmful consequences ObamaCare is having on the American people. The House Republican Conference, led by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), has launched a similar initiative, dubbed ObamaCare Flatlines. And throughout the Memorial Day break, House Republicans will be doing a town hall blitz in support of America Speaking Out, a project aimed at involving the American people directly in the process of creating a new governing agenda.
House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who on May 20 stood with small business operators from Ohio outside the U.S. Capitol to discuss ObamaCare’s job-crushing taxes and mandates, today called on the White House to watch the May 27 solutions group forum and address the issues it will raise:
I hope President Obama and his aides will respond to Thursday’s forum and offer a legitimate and substantive response to the issues that are raised. If the president and Speaker Pelosi are truly focused on ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ as they claim to be, then they owe the American people a solution to the roadblocks this new law is placing in the path of America’s small business job creators.
Americans from outside the Beltway are joining with Republicans to speak out on the need to repeal this job-killing law and start over with real reforms that will lower health care costs. President Obama has an obligation to listen to the American people, who asked him not to sign this law, and were ignored.
As Sen. Barrasso said in a Fox News interview on May 23:
Now that this thing has become law, the American people are even more opposed to what was jammed down their throats. The American people are very skeptical. The White House has a whole campaign to try to say what’s good about this bill very early on, but so much of what they’re promising, they’re delivering far less. Even the things that they say are good aren’t working out. As we get into the details of this, when they talk about the tax advantages for small businesses, now small businesses are finding out the way to take advantage of some of these tax breaks is that they need to fire employees and pay them less.
Boehner is a former small businessman. The Republican Leader ran a small company in West Chester, Ohio prior to his election to the House of Representatives.
Earlier this month, the nation’s leading small business organization, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), announced it has joined a lawsuit by 20 states seeking to overturn the president’s job-crushing health law.
During the nearly year-long congressional debate on President Obama’s health care overhaul, House Republicans put forth common-sense alternatives to ObamaCare, which can be seen in detail at GOP.gov.