Leader McCarthy Talks Obamacare, GOP Agenda on CNBC

March 13, 2017

Leader McCarthy: Health Care Reform Will Boost Our Economy

Washington, D.C. - House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA-23) appeared on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning to discuss how the GOP's three-phase plan to repeal and replace Obamacare will spur economic growth.

Remarks are below or watch online at: https://kevinmccarthyforms.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx'ID=479465-71711765.

On how health care reform will deliver economic growth and opportunity:

"If we want to solve any of our problems, we need to get growth up. When you lower [Obamacare] taxes, you change the baseline of this country as we move forward for tax reform. That is why we will pivot to tax reform next. If we have a pro-growth tax reform that comes out, you will bring jobs back to this country, and you will get growth about 3% to 4%.... Why is less than 2% [GDP growth] the new norm in America" Why do we settle for mediocrity when we can be great"... The future of where we are going is so better than where we currently are."

On why health care reform is critical to the GOP agenda:

"Why you start with health care is you can repeal all those [Obamacare] taxes--which we are doing. That lowers the baseline by a trillion dollars and lets you expand growth even further. If we finish up with regulatory reform, health care reform, tax reform, and infrastructure, this country will see growth like they have not seen in quite some time."

On the process of repeal and replace:

"The difficulty is we have to do this in what is called reconciliation--we can't write all three phases into one [bill].... If you look at it overall, this is going to lower the price--we are not shooting for status quo, we are shooting for something much better."

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