Congressman Boustany – Obamacare Not Ready For Primetime

3rd District Congressman Charles Boustany visited 'Mornings With Ken and Bernie' by phone from Washington today and discussed the federal government shutdown and the start of Obamacare.

When asked to explain how the government shutdown would effect federal employees Congressman Boustany said,

Each agency has to determine or set up a plan as to who is essential and who is not essential.  If you're essential you don't get paid until this is solved and you get back-pay.  You do go to work and have access to government phones and computers.  If you're deemed non-essential you're forbidden from using any of that.  You go home and you don't get paid period.  The only way you could get paid is after a solution to the 'shut-down' is arrived at, Congress would have to separately vote to issue 'back-pay'.

When asked if we in Louisiana would feel any direct effects of the shutdown Congressman Boustany replied,

What I'm concerned about with this, if it goes on for a while it will effect oil and gas permitting and Army Corps of Engineers permitting.  Things that affect us directly.  We saw what happened when we had a shutdown in the Gulf.

One of our NewsJunkies pointed out that CNN and other networks were referring to this government shutdown as the GOP government shutdown and we asked Congressman Boustany if this fired him up and he said,

It does...We have repeatedly sent bills to the Senate.  We've got them to agreed on a top-line number on continued funding....But they've tabled everything we've sent to them.  They don't even have the courage to vote for the bills....We think it's grossly unfair to have big business to get exemptions to Obamacare by excluding the employer mandate for a year.

According to Congressman Boustany,

We've got a big problem with Obamacare.  It's not ready for primetime.  These exchanges go into effect and they are not ready.  They depend on data being shared among government agencies with no safeguards in place to protect that private information and many of them are not ready to except information but they want to implement this flawed bill.

There's a lot more to hear from Congressman Boustany about the government shutdown and Obamacare as well as questions from the audience which you can hear by listening to the interview: