Fiscal_Responsibility_and_Retirement_Security_Act_of_2011

I heard from a gentleman who ran a music business in Palestine, Texas: Our business is hampered by the uncertainty of tax policy, regulations, and ObamaCare.

I had one in Dallas, Texas, after having to lay off 24 people in the last 2 years, who wrote to me and said: You know what? We're going to have to terminate one more in February due almost entirely to the impact on my business of the health care reform we have. We are stymied.

There is no doubt that the President's health care plan is killing jobs. House Republicans have repealed it in its totality. It has been blocked by the President, by Democrats. So if we can't do it in its totality, we'll do it piecemeal.

We need to start out by repealing the CLASS Act, which Secretary Sebelius has said is totally unsustainable. Democrat Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad called it a Ponzi scheme of the first order.

The President's policies have failed. It's time to enact the House Republican Plan for America's Job Creators. It's time to repeal the CLASS Act. Mr. PALLONE. Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

Mr. PASCRELL. Madam Chair, I'm tired of hearing the President is a failure. I'm tired.

You can smirk all you want. There's no perfection on this floor. There's no perfection down the street. You didn't give these speeches in 2008 when we were losing 500, 600, 700,000 jobs a month. Not one of you came to the floor. Shame on you.

Now what we want to do, we want to turn our backs on those 10 million Americans currently who need long-term care. We have no alternative.

We all agree that there needs to be change in the present system that has yet to work.

We have to find a way to make long-term care both accessible and affordable. These problems will not simply disappear. They're not going to go away.

This bill certainly does not fix these problems. The bill does not even provide an alternative. All it does is attack the progress made in the Affordable Care Act. You've tried to wean it down. You've tried to bevel it. You've tried to covet. You tried to take all the money away that's going into it in order to have a system in this country that was not sustainable in the first place.

Sixty-two percent of small businesses over the last 5 years went under because they couldn't pay their health care bills, and you stand there with no alternative whatsoever.

Whatever happened to the ``replace'' part of the ``repeal and replace?'' Remember that?

That nonsense we heard last year?