Rep. Kinzinger: Obamacare 'Failing Much Faster than Expected'

Rep. Adam Kinzinger said Sunday the failure of the Obamacare website to function is symptomatic of a larger problem with the new healthcare system that will cost consumers more money and rob them of their current health plan.

"This thing is failing, but this is failing much faster than they expected," the freshman Republican from President Barack Obama's home state of Illinois told ABC's "This Week" program.

The website will eventually be fixed, Kinzinger said, but the bigger issue is that deductibles will go up by thousands of dollars.

"I'm not celebrating this because this hurts real Americans, but from a political perspective, we came out of a government shutdown where I think undoubtedly Republicans took the brunt of the hit and we had an immensely, amazingly quick change of fortunes," Kinzinger said.

Former Vermont Governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean also appeared on the program, and described the failings of the website as an initial setback that will be forgotten once the program is in place for all Americans. 

"I think the greatest fear of the Republican Party is that this works, and I think it will work," Dean said.

But Kinzinger responded that one of the few issues Republicans are united on is that Obamacare is a flawed system. 

"We've been saying from the beginning this plan doesn't work," Kinzinger said. 

"It's beyond the website, and when the website gets fixed, I think Americans are going to be shocked to see that there is still a problem."


Via: Newsmax

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Kinzinger: First Time Since I’ve Been in Congress That Obama’s Reached Out to Republicans

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.) said President Obama’s seeking of Republican support to take military action in Syria marked the first time he’d reached out to the GOP in the two-and-a-half years he’d served in the U.S. Congress.

“I mean, we may have had a big meeting or something but typically he’s never talked to us,” he said. “Now what you’re seeing is a lack of belief that this president has a plan.”

During an interview Friday on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, Kinzinger continued to criticize Obama’s leadership on the issue and implored him to sell it to the American people and lay out exactly what he plans to accomplish. Obama said at a press conference Friday morning that he will address Americans directly on Tuesday:

LUKE RUSSERT: Question for you. Some of the latest informal whip counts place support for any type of action in Syria from the Republican side as maybe getting 50 or 70 votes from your conference. Do you think this is a new GOP that’s more libertarian and isolationist in nature, or is this straight-up opposition to President Obama and anything he supports?

KINZINGER: I don’t think it’s either of that. We obviously have a group in the Republicans — you see them on the news all the time that are talking about the United States needing to disengage from the rest of the world. But the vast majority of Republicans still understand the need for a strong United States. What’s happened here though, this is actually the first time, literally in five years, at least the 2 1/2 years I’ve been in Congress, when the president’s actually reached out to the Republicans on anything. I mean, we may have had a big meeting or something but typically he’s never talked to us. Now what you’re seeing is a lack of belief that this president has a plan. Look, I’m supportive of action in Syria. I think it has to be done. I think for decades America’s put down a red line saying no chemical weapons. But I will put a lot of the struggle right now in Washington on the President of the United States. He needs to be all over television selling this to the American people. Any beginning of any military action has never been popular in the United States of America, until its leaders come forward and talk about what exactly they want to accomplish there. Secretary Kerry’s done a great job. President Obama really hasn’t.

Kinzinger laid out his case for taking action in Syria at Wednesday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Via: WFB

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