From the office of Congressman Andy Harris:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Tonight, Congressman Andy Harris, MD voted for two bills that would give both individuals and businesses a one year delay from The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
The first bill H.R. 2667 “The Authority for Mandate Delay Act” would delay for one year the requirement that employers who have more than 50 full time employees provide health insurance for their employees. It would also delay the reporting requirements associated with the mandate. The second bill H.R. 2668 “The Fairness for American Families Act” would delay for a year the mandate that individuals purchase health insurance.
The House of Representatives took up both bills in light of the Obama administration’s announcement to delay the business mandate for a year. Knowing that the President cannot enact legislation at whim, the House passed H.R. 2667 to delay the mandate for businesses. Also, understanding the basic unfairness of exempting some from the law and not all, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2668 to exempt individuals from the mandate.
“Individuals and families deserve the same relief under Obamacare as big businesses,” said Congressman Harris. “The President’s decision to give them a one year delay from the insurance mandate but not individuals and families is unfair. This law needs to be applied in a uniform way. It shouldn’t benefit one group at the expense of another.
“Despite promises that Obamacare would insure every American with quality, affordable healthcare, we’re seeing firsthand how it’s leading to higher premiums, denied care, and fewer jobs. In Maryland, young people could pay up to 150% more for their insurance under the Obamacare exchange. It’s clear that everyone deserves relief from Obamacare’s bad medicine – not just big businesses – so we can get our economy growing again and get more people back to work.”
Harris is a joke. Instead of legislating in order to better our district, he prefers to collect paychecks and cast votes based on ideology instead of reality (check out his long-debunked keystone pipeline “fast facts”, and his opposition to the VAWA if you don’t believe me). If Obama had denied the requests by businesses to delay, Congress and Harris would be whining about how Obama is anti-business. Here’s an idea: Instead of wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on “symbolic” and dead-end political votes to de-fund, delay, or repeal Obamacare, Harris should take his own advice and, “Get over it.” The ACA is law, and has been upheld by the Supreme Court. Can we move on already? And, the ACA is “leading to higher premiums, denied care, and fewer jobs?” Ha! Really? I would say you can’t make this stuff up, but clearly you can!
Here’s a real “Fast Fact:” Delaying parts of legislation is nothing new. If Congress really has a problem with delays then they should probably get on the EPA about delaying rules to limit carbon emissions (it has been 3 years, after all). Strangely enough, I don’t see this happening. I wonder why?
You’re so right… the party of “no” is so tiresome isn’t it? All reasonable people understand that you can add millions of people to the health care roles and actually SAVE money… it’ll be cheaper! It’s such clear logic… all you have to do is put the government in charge of things, I mean, they are so efficient and thoughtful in all the things they do already it’s just self evident that health care will be better than ever. All we really need to do is forget that the architects wrote themselves out of the law, squinch our eyes real tight, think happy thoughts, repeat I think we can, I think we can and it’ll all be right as rain. Just think, if we can put those horrible insurance companies out of business those employees can go on unemployment and welfare and we’ll save even MORE! I’m so glad clear heads are in charge… the government loves me so much I get all misty eyed…
Once again, Mr. Harris has the temerity to vote the way the first district voters want him to vote. The majority of us in Harford and Cecil know how terrible this law is. As a matter of fact a great many of us have taken the time to even read it. Keep at it Andy! We appreciate what you are trying to do.
The one thing Harris and company are good at. Trying to stop anything Obamacare. Close to 40 times now. “The majority” might be the majority of people like you but not the entire county. The GOP stronghold in this county is slowly breaking down. and that’s a good thing because “the majority” don’t fall into line with this “tea party” mentality.
Andy Harris isn’t tea party, he’s an establishment neocon who treads on the bill of rights and constitution while praising it. He used the tea party, as many other politicians did, to get in office and continue the same old same old. How can someone be pro constitution and vote for the renewal of the patriot act, which has now been confirmed that the NSA is tapping every phone, email, etc. to data-mine and the US post office scans every piece of mail to find out who you are sending/receiving mail from. Not to mention the drones flying over US soil for domestic surveillance.
A real Tea Party representative would not stand for Big Brother/Police State.
Oh and all the searches of personal information I mentioned are unreasonable and unwarranted, thus illegal.
GiveHarrisTheBoot,
The opponents of Obamacare, which include about 70% of Americans according to most polls, including those conducted by liberal organizations, will leave no stone unturned to stop ACA, You are the one who had better get used to it.
You wish that were true.
Congressman Harris,
Thank you for opposing this piece of legislation and I encourage you to do so at every opportunity.
Now that the unions are actually seeing what the act will do to them they are livid. I guess I can’t fault them too much because Ms. Pelosi did tell them that they had to pass it to find out what was in it.
If you want to do something constructive, create a public option instead of making mandatory health insurance the law of the land. What you people choose to ignore is when someone visits an ER with no means to pay for their sniffles, we all bear the cost through distributed higher health care costs. The cost of Health Care in this country is twice as high as the next developed nation. And while you fret about someone getting something for nothing you are invariably not sharing in the real cost of what it takes to support the infrastructure we have. When did conservatism adopt the philosophy “Not my wallet, I don’t need clean air or water or public roads, but I want to regulate your Vagina”?
Conservatives only want to regulate the sex organs of people whop don’t use them responsibly. Liberals are happy to let people like Gosnell kill as many babies as he wants to, even after they are born.
Oh yes, there was absolutely no outrage over his killing live babies AFTER they were born healthy because “a mother has a right to choose”. Hypocrites who are silent at the murder of live children.
Why would anyone want to reduce the number of abortions that are possible? We need to encourage more. Maybe even expand the definition to include children that have already been born and have grown into adults like you.
With conservatives all about reducing the size of government and entitlements, you would think they would be in favor of reducing the number of people that will need government services by any means necessary…what better way than encouraging abortions. The unborn can never draw on services from the government,.
Thanks for expressing your point of view, Herr Hitler.
How about less government in reproductive issues Judy? Why do you give a rat’s ass about an unborn child, only to deprive them later of public assistance for being born to poor people and kill them later in the prisons you prefer to build as opposed to schools. Because it’s all about blame and never about addressing the root causes of people’s conditions. I swear, talking to some of you conservatives, you would think you all have an asocial personality disorder. You never seem to take other people seriously, or their rights, you focus exclusively on your own selfish interests. Glad we can include you in society.
What I give a rat’s ass about is people like Gosnell killing live babies after they are born. Get it, Because? He was killing live babies after they were born. Let me say it one more time so it might sink in to your Dem/Lib thick skull. He was killing LIVE BABIES after they were born. And the pro-abortion crowd was defending him because a mother has a right to choose. That is until he was convicted of murder. Shame on them. But they have no shame. Anything, anytime, anywhere for ‘the cause’. Even murder.
The only problem in the Gosnell case was that it is, for now, illegal in the US to kill live babies, or people like you. That will change.
Government regulates all forms of murder. What about the rights of the unborn child.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
No one says get rid of all public assistance. Giving someone a helping hand is fine, but no one should be allowed to live on the doll.
Glad to see you haven’t given up the irrational hysterics to try and back up your position.
I guess the constitution needs to be amended then. It should read, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator (read…their Mother!!!) with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, and the mother can take those rights away at anytime, including after birth.” Now please, go get aborted.
Hey “Kill…”… the document you are hoping to quote is not the Constitution. Those words are in the Declaration of Independence. Glad I could help you out with that. Are there any other fine points of history you need help with?
Then we’ll just have to rewrite that, too.
Because doesn’t really care about either document. See his support of abortion and obamacare mentioned above.
I don’t think you got the difference between a live child already born in the Gosnell case and your focusing on ‘an unborn child’. Either that or you went to some lengths to confuse the issue purposely. You choose which.
Enough is enough. Obamacare is law and it’s not going anywhere. I understand people may not understand it/ like it, but at the end of the day it doesn’t help to just keep saying no years after its passage. Under the Bush Administration, Democrats strongly objected to Medicare Part D. However, once it was clear that this was law, they worked with Republicans and the administration to see that it’s implementation was possible. Voting 40 times to “repeal” something that can’t be repealed is an utter waste of time.
Believe me you haven’t seen anything yet. Now that the unions are up in arms there will be big changes. And those of us opposed to it will do everything we can to stop it.
Get Over It,
I suggest you read carefully the letter sent by the top leaders of 3 of America’s largest labor unions to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. They are beyond angry at Obamacare. They actually believed what they were told by the White House and Reid and Pelosi. What morons.
Now Obamacare is their worst nightmare. But Reid and Pelosi and Obama did get a lot of their money and other support for their campaigns. Ha, ha, ha. Suck it up, boys. The politicos had unwilling sex with you and no, they never had any intention of respecting you in the morning or any other time.
After reading all her comments (e.g.’s, unions, taxes, social programs, regulations, etc) over the weeks/months, I gather that Jaguar Judy derives her nom de plume from her love of and desire to protect the American Hemisphere’s largest feline and not from any attachment to the British luxury car.
Actually the “British luxury car” is a great alternative to all of the Japanese cars, many of which are actually built in the US, as compared to US car companies who build their cars in Mexico and Canada.
On the other hand, Judy is quick and ferocious just like her namesake. I wouldn’t cross her and I wouldn’t say anything stupid or she will pounce in a flash.
They also have a reputation for lousy reliability
But limousine liberals who only support the needy with your money and save our money for me, me, me don’t care about the cost.
Judy must be too busy giving hand jobs to realize the stupid things that Alex R says. She has missed quite a bit.
One of Andy Harris’ first actions as a freshman Congressman was to whine about his taxpayer-funded health care taking a month to kick in.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45181.html
As for H.R. 2668, it’s interesting seeing Republicans run away from the individual mandate which they championed.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/28/individual-health-care-insurance-mandate-has-long-checkered-past/
Remember the Republican primaries when Gingrich and Romney were trying to blame each other for the mandate that they both once supported? I do.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/12/28/144318988/reversal-on-health-mandate-came-late-for-gingrich-and-romney
The worst things about Obamacare are the ideas that Republicans shoehorned into the bill. Harris is a perfect fit for the clown car that is Boehner’s majority in the House of Representatives.