{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=5afc6950-3300-48c1-9fe3-b0b237bb3150", "Obamacare  A Direct Attack on Americas Middle Class", "2015-12-02", "2015", "2015-12", "Republican", "House", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "WASHINGTON, D.C.  U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor today regarding the pitfalls of Obamacare:\r\nObamacare is a direct attack on the Middle Class of our country. Its a partisan law that puts ideology before people, that hurts many of the very Americans it was supposed to help.\r\nIt resulted in millions of cancellation notices for hardworking Americans who had plans they liked, and who'd done nothing wrong.\nIt raised premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and taxes for Americans who were already struggling.\nIt restricted choice and access to doctors and hospitals for patients in need.  We see the pain and hurt of this law all across the country. We see it where we live.\nIn my home state of Kentucky, health costs have spiked. Obamacare first caused tens of thousands of Kentuckians to lose the health care plans they were promised they could keep during the first year of implementation, then victimized 50,000 more when the commonwealths much-vaunted Obamacare co-op collapsed. Obamacare has also contributed to Kentucky hospitals being forced to cut jobs, reduce wages, and even shutter altogether.\nSome in Washington may have cheered when a Democrat administration in Frankfort poured a quarter-billion dollars of tax money into Kentuckys Obamacare exchange, or when our Democrat governor confidently declared it an undisputed fact that Obamacare's Medicaid expansion had added 12,000 jobs to Kentuckys economy.  But like so much of Obamacare, it was just another broken promise.\nThose jobs numbers were not an undisputed fact at all, they were just projectionsand they failed to materialize. Healthcare jobs have actually declined in Kentucky.\r\nToday, few of those Obamacare cheerleaders are cheering anymore.\nNearly 80 percent of Kentuckys enrollees were simply shoehorned into an already-broken Medicaid system, and many of the remaining 20 percent found themselves stuck with unaffordable Obamacare coverage.\r\nListen to what this Mom from Breckinridge County wrote to say:\r\nMy family is being pushed out of the middle class by the Obamacare law, she said, How can we pay almost $1,200 a month on health insurance?\nListen to what this father of two boys from Owensboro wrote to tell me:\r\nBefore the Affordable Care Act, we paid around $100 bi-weekly for the family plan. That has now increased to $235 during the same timeframe, he explained. It seems these days there is no incentive to work. We are punished for working hard and trying to provide for our children while others are encouraged to not further themselves because if they do they would be in our situation.\r\nWhat happened, he wondered, to being rewarded for working hard in America? What happened to the American dream?\nThis Kentucky Dad isnt the only one wondering this.\nAmericans across the country continue to demand a better way forward.\nAmericans made that clear last November. Kentuckians made that doubly clear again last month.\r\nThis is simply the reality.\r\nDemocrats can deny it.\nDemocrats can again dismiss Americans' real-life experiences as lies.\r\nDemocrats can continue to lecture Americans about their supposed inability to understand just how great Obamacare has been for them.\nBut Americans are intimately familiar with the painful reality of Obamacare. Americans want a fresh start. Americans want to see Washington build a bridge away from Obamacare and toward better care for them.\nThats what the bill before us would do.\nIts something every Senator should support, Republicans and Democrats alike.\nDemocrats may have forced this law on the Middle Class.\nDemocrats may own the pain theyve caused across the country, especially in states like Kentucky.\nBut its not too late for our Democratic colleagues to work with us to build a bridge to better care.\nThis is their chance, and President Obamas chance, to begin to make amends for the pain and the hurt theyve causedfor all the broken promises, for all the higher costs, for all the failures.\r\nThis is Americas chance to turn the page and write a new and more hopeful beginning.\r\nThis is our chance to work toward a healthier and more prosperous future with true reform that moves beyond the failures of a broken law.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=5afc6950-3300-48c1-9fe3-b0b237bb3150"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4148710761219263, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}