Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., slammed Democrats for choosing former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear to provide the Democratic response to President Trump’s speech to Congress tonight, arguing that the “Obamacare disaster” that he presided over continues to harm the state.
“Obamacare has pushed Kentucky’s insurance market to the brink of collapse, and now Democrats want to throw a victory party,” McConnell said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “I’m not sure how else to interpret their choice to respond to the president’s address tonight.”
Kentucky voters, McConnell said, have continued to repudiate Beshear’s legacy in “election after election,” replacing him with an “anti-Obamacare governor and legislature” and voting in favor of Trump, a president who he said “listened to them, who promised to repeal and replace Obamacare.”
He then called Beshear the “poster child for Obamacare.”
“Maybe it’s time to finally listen to Kentuckians and families around the country and move on from this disastrous law,” McConnell said.
He went on to counter Democrats’ charges that Trump is assailing the middle-class during just two months in office by arguing that the Obama administration “launched a direct attack on the middle class in the form of Obamacare.”
“Kentuckians were promised that health insurance premiums would go down, but they soared as much as 47 percent just this year,” he said. “Kentuckians were promised that health choices would increase, but they plummeted down to just one exchange provider in nearly half our counties.”
Despite President Obama’s promise that they could keep their health plans, many Kentuckians found themselves forced into insurance “so expensive, insurance that so few of their doctors will accept, it’s basically useless.”
Trump, he said, offered a new direction and voters flocked to him in his state.
“He will now have an opportunity to talk about how he can make that change,” McConnell said, adding that he looks forward to his thoughts on simplifying the tax code, strengthening the military and helping veterans.
McConnell called Trump’s speech tonight “a big moment for our country.”
“Americans are ready to move forward. They’re ready to get our economy moving. They’re ready to leave the failures of the status quo behind, like Obamacare, and move toward a more hopeful future,” he said.
