{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://www.barrasso.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=454A8D4F-6B10-4ED4-BA00-A48FF9B2E273", "Barrasso: Democrats Are Wrong on Zika", "2016-07-14", "2016", "2016-07", "Republican", "House", "WY", "John Barrasso", "B001261", "www.barrasso.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Click here to watch Sen. Barrasso\u2019s remarks.\r\nWASHINGTON, D.C.\u2014 Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding the Democrats blocking legislation to fight the spread of the Zika virus. Barrasso also highlighted some of the recent damage caused by the president\u2019s health care law.\r\nExcerpts of Senator Barrasso\u2019s remarks:\r\n\u201cThis legislation includes $1.1 billion to fight Zika. The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it would fund all of the agency\u2019s immediate needs in the fight against Zika at this point.\r\n\u201cWhen the Senate voted on this in May, every Democrat in the body voted to support the exact same amount of money.\r\n\u201cTwo months ago, Democrats thought this was the right answer, but now they are willing to let the American people suffer because of this virus.\r\n\u201cWhat happened? What changed in the last two months? Nothing has changed \u2013 except that the situation has gotten worse, more dangerous for people.\r\n\u201cI think that the Democrats were never serious about wanting to do anything at all. Democrats decided that they would rather have a political issue than have a real solution.\r\n\u201cDemocrats aren\u2019t going to be able to dodge responsibility this time. We are running out of time to prevent an epidemic.\r\n\u201cLast week, Senator Bill Nelson from Florida said, \u2018We are at the 11th hour and 59th minute.\u2019  It\u2019s exactly right. So why are Senator Nelson and his Democrat colleagues playing a game of chicken with the American people?\r\n\u201cThere was a poll that came out last week from the Kaiser Family Foundation. It found that 76 percent of Americans support this legislation that we have on the floor, the Zika legislation.\r\n\u201cDemocrats ought to start listening to the American people.\r\n\u201cThey should stop playing political games, and take the money that they asked for \u2013 that the Center for Disease Control says is the right amount of money \u2013 to fight the spread of this threat to the health of the American people.\r\nDamage Caused by Obamacare\r\n\u201cThis is not the first time that Democrats in this body have put their own political talking points ahead of the American people in terms of their health care.\r\n\u201cAt the beginning of this year, Republicans passed legislation to repeal the president\u2019s health care law. Why? So we could replace it with health care reforms that work for the American people.\r\n\u201cPresident Obama vetoed the legislation \u2013 and Democrats in Congress resisted every attempt to undo years of damage caused by Obamacare.\r\n\u201cTaxpayers paid to set up 23 different insurance co-ops across the country, 16 of them have now folded. Only a third of the original co-ops are still operating. Billions of dollars in taxpayer money wasted, never to be paid back.\r\n\u201cAnd more than 850,000 Americans have lost their insurance that they got through the co-ops \u2013 because the insurance co-ops can\u2019t afford to stay in business under the health care law.\r\n\u201cThe co-op in Illinois just collapsed this week\u2014that\u2019s the president\u2019s home state. Last week, it was co-ops in Oregon and Connecticut, yet the senator from Connecticut comes down to the floor and says that the health care law is working. It is not, not even in his home state.\r\n\u201cThere are more than 20,000 people in Oregon who\u2019ve been left scrambling to find new coverage starting July 31 \u2013 just a couple of weeks from now.\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s not just people who belong to the co-ops who are losing their insurance.\r\n\u201cThe largest insurance company in Minnesota says that they\u2019re going to stop selling insurance in the state at the end of this year.\r\n\u201cBlueCross and BlueShield of Minnesota covers 100,000 people. All of them are going to lose their insurance, and have to find coverage elsewhere.\r\n\u201cMore companies have been saying how much they plan to charge next year \u2013 and the numbers are staggering. In Montana, BlueCross BlueShield just announced on Friday that it\u2019s raising Obamacare rates 62 percent. Who can afford that?\r\n\u201cPremiums are skyrocketing, so are deductibles, so are co-pays, every other cost that people pay out of pocket for their health care have gone up.\r\n\u201cJust before the Fourth of July, we learned that 1.6 million people who signed up this year for Obamacare have already quit by the end of March.\r\n\u201cThe Congressional Budget Office said that they were expecting by this time over 21 million people to sign up for Obamacare.\r\n\u201cWell, more and more dropouts, we\u2019re only at half that number. And it is just more evidence that the president's health care law is cratering, it is collapsing.\r\n\u201cOnce again, the Democrats seem to rather have a political issue than a solution.\r\n\u201cRepublicans are here offering solutions, Democrats are offering gridlock and the same old political games.\u201d\r\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0###", 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": ["http://www.barrasso.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=454A8D4F-6B10-4ED4-BA00-A48FF9B2E273"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.918304082006216, "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"}