Washington, D.C. – House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA-23) spoke on Mornings with Maria on Fox Business as well as Fox News’ America’s Newsroom on the CBO score for the American Health Care Act (AHCA) and how our plan reduces premiums and saves taxpayer money.
Fox Business
On how the AHCA lower premiums, reduces the deficit, and lowers taxes:
“When you look at the core of what CBO says, does it lower premiums? Does it lower our deficit? And does it remove taxes from small business? Those are all yeses. And yes, we remove individual mandate, and we’ve talked about that from the very beginning. So what we’re going to see too, though, in phase two and three, to be able to make those improvements of what we are looking for. We have never hidden from that fact. It is the rules of the Senate that forces us to do this in three phases, and that’s exactly what we’re doing, I’m actually encouraged by what the CBO says, because it proves that yes, we’ll lower premiums.”
On the House’s aggressive legislative timeline:
“We’re going exactly to the timeline that we laid out. Our first process was regulation reform, and look how successful we’ve been at that…. We have already put three [Congressional Review Acts] into law and passed 14 in the House. We have now moved to health care. We produced the bill, gone through two committees, and we’re on track exactly where we thought we would be. Once done with health care, and this is what CBO says as well, it’s repealing more than $800 billion worth of taxes. Well that lowers the baseline that allows us to do and broaden tax reform. That’s where we’ll go next once health care is done. But you are correct, that’s why it is so critical to get health care done now so we can move to tax reform and get growth coming back in to America. To me, that is the number one thing we need. Growth in America will solve many of our problems. “
Fox’s America’s Newsroom
On the CBO’s predictions on the deficit, premiums, and taxes:
“I go through the CBO on all of the different parts…. Premiums will go down 10%. You’ll save more than $800 billion in taxes, and that’s why you’re seeing small business confidence rise today. You’re also going to lower the deficit by $300 billion. And that’s without looking at phase two and phase three. Look, yes, we repeal the individual mandate, so are people right now having insurance because they’re forced to and don’t want to have it? Yes. Can we sustain the current projection that we’re on? No, because the exchanges have collapsed. One-third of all the counties only have one option. And then have you Medicaid, which in ten years is going to cost $1 trillion. That’s equal to the entire amount we use on discretionary spend from the military to agriculture to every department in government. That’s unsustainable.”
On why the first phase of health care reform must be reconciliation:
“We have to go through reconciliation. If we wanted to just repeal and then try to get 60 votes and wait for the Democrats to get eight of them to come and join us, that bill would look a lot like Obamacare. This is Obamacare gone. We repeal it and repeal the taxes, and we actually make a system that works and lowers premiums. That’s what the CBO says.”