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I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes and I yield myself 4 minutes.

M. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this resolution.

Once again I am deeply disappointed that instead of working to create jobs and strengthen the economy, the new Republican Majority continues to focus on re-opening old wounds and fighting old battles.

The resolution before us today is, allegedly, the -replace- component of the Republicans' -Repeal and Replace- strategy.

I say -allegedly,- M. Speaker, because this resolution is not a serious legislative effort. It's a series of talking points. It's a press release.

What this resolution does is ask the committees of jurisdiction to hopefully, maybe someday, if they would be so kind, to report legislation to the House that meets certain vague goals.

Instead of -Repeal and Replace,- this is -Repeal and Relax - trust us to do the right thing.-

No thank you, M. Speaker.

Yesterday, this House voted - without a single hearing or mark-up, without a single amendment - to eliminate the Affordable Care Act in its entirety.

The Members who voted for that bill voted to return to the days when insurance companies could discriminate against people based on pre-existing conditions.

They voted to eliminate the ban on annual and lifetime limits on care.

They voted to eliminate the ability for young people to stay on their parents' insurance plans up to age 26.

They voted to re-open the Donut Hole in Medicare - basically, they voted for a tax increase on senior citizens who need prescription drugs.

The voted to eliminate tax credits for small businesses who want to do the right thing and provide health insurance for their workers.

All of that, M. Speaker, would have the force of law. All of that was done with real legislative language.

But not the resolution before us today. Instead of real language that would provide real benefits to real Americans, this resolution is simply a collection of empty promises.

And the ironic thing is that most of the provisions included in the resolution were actually addressed in the Affordable Care Act.

According to this resolution, we should -lower health care premiums through increased competition and choice.- The Affordable Care Act already does that. Of course, many of us argued for a Public Option, which would have lowered premiums even further with increased competition and choice, but my Republican friends didn't want to have anything to do with that.

This resolution says we should -preserve a patient's ability to keep his or her health plan if he or she likes it.- The Affordable Care Act already does that.

Increase the number of insured Americans? We did that by 30 million. Protect the doctor-patient relationship? We did that. And so on.

On the critical issue of people with pre-existing conditions, however, it's interesting to see the language that my Republican friends use in this resolution. They say they support, QUOTE, -provide people with pre-existing conditions access to affordable health coverage.- That sounds nice. But what we did in the Affordable Care Act was to actually BAN insurance companies from discriminating against those people. I'll be very interested to see how my Republican friends handle that critical issue, and how much influence the big insurance lobby has around here now.

And the Donut Hole? This resolution is absolutely silent on that.

M. Speaker, health care is of vital importance to every single American. It's a big deal. And to treat health insurance reform as just another opportunity for happy talk and wishful thinking is not the way to do business in the People's House.

I urge my colleagues to reject this resolution, and I reserve the balance of my time.